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Showing posts from April, 2016

Guest Post by my Pop: A Response to "Recent Heroics and Impressive Charts and Graphs"

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After I posted  Recent Heroics and Impressive Charts  Pop shot me an email in response. I copied it below. To get the context, you might want to read through my original post first, which is here Pop taking a photo. He's taken thousands of photos but no one has ever seen any of them. On Apr 23, 2016, at 11:46 PM, -Pop-  wrote: I liked your blog. I was able to relate to your counting, felt like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Well first, if in 2013 you listened to 33000 songs, and if each song was 3 min, it would consume over 68 full days, or if you slept 6 hrs/d, it would be 84 days of non-sleeping time or almost 1/4 of your waking-time listening to music. Wow, that’s a lot of music. As for visiting 378 drinking establishments since 2010, the summer I drove a cab in Allentown I too counted my drinking estm’ts visited picking up customers. I got to, if my memory correctly serves me, in the neighborhood of 110.   I never did count total museums(

Recent heroics and impressive charts and graphs

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The best thing about stomping around the west village until 3am is when you wake up the next morning, your phone beeps a little motivational “good going champ!” type message. Because you're more than halfway toward your daily fitness goal. The health app has no idea it took 5000 steps to get from the restaurant on Bleeker to that bar Helen likes. And then somewhere else. If you give me a sec, I can pull up the name of the dive. Because I keep track. Since 2010, I’ve worked hard to accomplish: 378 drinking establishments 98 museums or art galleries 103 music or performing art venues We vacationed in Florida a couple weeks ago with some of Kenny’s longtime buddies. They were polite enough to insist I had “taught them some great new iPhone tricks.” I knew this was code for “holy hell you’ve got a problem.”  It could have been a lot worse, but luckily I kept the menace in check. The only app I showed off was the one to track how many glasses of water I drink every d

I am the Anti-Whisperer

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I step into the elevator of our apartment building. A couple is already in there, sporting a certain style of sneaker, cross-body bag, fleece outerwear and frosted hair stripes. I immediately know I am dealing with people who routinely drive a little further for a decent lobby waffle. They type in all caps about libs and Bachman Turner Overdrive. They clearly don’t live in my building.  It’s just the three of us in the elevator. I press the button for my floor, and the husband and wife from Topeka or whoever the hell stand across from me in the corner. The doors slide closed. It’s very quiet. The husband puts his hairy hand up to his wife’s ear and starts whispering. One of those loud cartoon whispers. He whispers and whispers the entire way to my floor. The doors open, I exit. “WELL GOOD BYE,” the husband bursts out all snarky-like to the back of my head.  It’s in that moment that I understand why all the Air BnB squawking at resident meetings in our building. Who wants to come h

A Review of the Ads on my Kindle. Otherwise Known As: WTF, Amazon?

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I saved myself the 25 bucks. I got the cheaper Kindle, the one where Amazon gets to feed me ads. Every time I put my Paperwhite to sleep, a new ad eases onto the screen. The ad lies in wait for my return. I pick up my Kindle and the irresistible copy and graphics lure me to purchase my next book. Except this never happens. Because as cunning as Amazon is at big data-ing me to immediately click "Yes, Please" on Dansko boots and dual-sided micro-cleaning cloths in fashion colors ... they are the exact opposite on the Kindle. House Trained: A Novel. Can perfectionist Alex take a cue from her dog and welcome the chaos that comes with unconditional love? Seriously, Amazon? Yoshi's Wooly World- Untagle the Fun! Game for Wii How does Amazon not know that I have never, not even once, purchased anything, at any time, that came within 500 feet of a video game, Wii or otherwise? Which data scientist over there felt that the striking visual of this indeterminant c