Month: December 2007

Someone plunged out my eardrums

Today I was reading Gordon’s blog and he posted about walking away from his notebook computer but having forgotten that his headphones were on and plugged into the computer. It damaged the headphone jack. That reminded me of something that happened to me a couple of years ago.

I have a set of earbuds that are like foam ear plugs. You squeeze them down and plug them into your head. As they expand they completely block out environmental noise. Then when you turn on your podcast player you have to make sure you turn the volume down really low, or you will blow out your ears.

One day I was wearing them while mowing the lawn. It is nice because they protect your ears from the lawnmower noise and you can still hear your podcast without turning the volume up too much. Like all life changing events, you tend to remember strange details. I was listening to Tom, Molly and Veronica from Buzz Out Loud as they discussed the Akismet spam blocker for Molly’s WordPress blog.

I caught the headphone chord with my hand and violently ripped the earbuds from my head. The way it happened though, I was instantly aware of the result but not the cause. The result was that all of a sudden my ears felt like someone used plungers to pop out my ear drums. I could no longer hear the podcast and this awful noise (lawnmower) was filling my head. I just knew my ears exploded for some un-explainable reason. It took a couple of seconds before I realized that I simply pulled on the chord wrong.

Scary times.

Famous Friday: Daily Writing Tips

I have mentioned this site a few times before, but it seemed absolutely perfect for Famous Friday since their post for today had to do with the word “famous.”

Yesterday they had a list of Yiddish words that we should all learn. I started to skip over it because I don’t know Yiddish. But I found out I happen to know quite a few words. It struck me as odd though that many of the words in the list such as schlep, schmooze and spiel are words I have used quite often, but always thought of as just strange (funny), made-up words.

There are posts about building vocabulary and others about grammar. Maybe not every day will be your type of needed information, but if you are at all interested in becoming a better communicator, then you should check them out.

Are you willing to change?

My friend Nolan said on his blog yesterday that “Prayer without willingness to change my life is pointless.” I thought about that a lot this morning before heading out the door on my run. I have been running with a friend the last couple of weeks and we have been ending our running with a time of prayer with one another.

One of the themes of this week’s prayer time has been that there needs to be a change in certain areas of my life and areas of his. Two totally different areas, but we both see a personal need.

I was struck by what Nolan said. The willingness for change needs to be present, or the prayers are worthless.

An example to us all

Yesterday I was going to town on a bus and had a strange and embarrassing thing happen to me. A man made me feel like a clod for not buying a bookmark from him. He stood there in the aisle of the bus praising me for reading a book. He did all of this in such a way that if I said or did anything I would look like an idiot. I tried to ignore him as much as possible.

Listen to the audio to get the full story. [2:28 min]

[audio:reader_example.mp3]

Overstock contest

Overstock is having a contest called All I want for Christmas Giveaway. It started today (Monday) and will go through the 8th of December.

After you register you can browse through their whole website and choose any item up to $1000 as the item you would like to win. You then indicate to them what the item is. You are entered into the giveaway and will get the item you choose if you win. After you choose your item you are given a chance to sign up 5 of your friends.

Each day you can choose a new item. Today I choose a Tom Tom GPS receiver. I just did that to have something to pick for the day. I will spend a bit more time choosing something I really want for the rest of the week. You have a chance to win every day.

At the end of the week they will have a grand prize drawing. If you win you get all 5 items that you chose during the week.

I have one caveat about the contest. They aren’t giving away something for nothing. They are collecting email addresses. If you are already an Overstock customer, they already have your info. But they are asking you to give up the email addresses to 5 of your friends each day. You could potentially sell out 25 friends this way. While I personally trust Overstock to not sell my email address, I would not appreciate my friends giving out my email address to a company without my knowledge. Just choose wisely if you decide to give away someone’s email address. Not everyone will appreciate it.