{"id":2638,"date":"2012-10-14T16:32:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T22:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2638"},"modified":"2012-10-14T16:32:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T22:32:25","slug":"odd-lots-202","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2638","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>No, I&#8217;m not done yet. I&#8217;m almost a month behind schedule. If I were done, you would have heard the yell all the way over there, no matter where &#8220;there&#8221; is.<\/li>\n<li>One very practical contrarian habit of mine is eating dinner at 5 PM. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2012\/10\/12\/in-defense-of-the-5-o-clock-reservation.html\" target=\"_blank\">Carol and I never have to worry about getting into restaurants<\/a>. I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s uncool. It allows me to get to sleep by 9:30.<\/li>\n<li>Bill Cherepy sent word that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bicyclecards.com\/products\/playing-card\/bicycle-silver-steampunk\" target=\"_blank\">Bicycle is now offering steampunk playing cards<\/a>, in case you&#8217;re partial to poker by the stoker.<\/li>\n<li>Oh, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bicyclecards.com\/products\/playing-card\/bicycle-zombie\" target=\"_blank\">a zombie deck<\/a>, too. Of course.<\/li>\n<li>A visually impaired person in our church reads The Book of Common Prayer (basically, the Episcopal Church&#8217;s missal) on her iPad. The Episcopal Church publishes a large-print edition, but the magic here is that she can make the print as large as she needs to. It&#8217;s part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.episcopalchurch.org\/notice\/episcopal-church-launches-new-ipad-app-wayfarer\" target=\"_blank\">a free app called Wayfarer<\/a>, and is available in the iTunes store.<\/li>\n<li>Toshiba is about to release their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toshibadirect.com\/td\/b2c\/ebtext.to?page=Excite13Tablet\" target=\"_blank\">Excite 13 tablet<\/a>, with a 13.3&#8243; display. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/253549\/toshibas_13_incher_when_is_a_tablet_too_big_.html\" target=\"_blank\">Much bitching has ensued<\/a>. My view: It&#8217;s not a smartphone, nor an ebook reader. It&#8217;s half a laptop (as is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Toshiba_Thrive\" target=\"_blank\">the Toshiba Thrive<\/a>) and there are uses for half a laptop. As my tenure with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transformer_Prime\" target=\"_blank\">the Asus Transformer Prime<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Asus-Transformer-Prime-Mobile-Docking\/dp\/B00685ZDB2\" target=\"_blank\">its docking keyboard<\/a> have shown, keyboards are nice to have on media-consumption devices, but it&#8217;s good to be able to undock them when you don&#8217;t need them.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2012\/10\/amazing-aurora-suomi-satellite\/?pid=5082\" target=\"_blank\">the world is your neon bulb<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I still have a tin of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peppermints.com\/penguin-mints.html\" target=\"_blank\">Penguin Peppermints<\/a>. However, it looks like the in thing now is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vat19.com\/dvds\/energy-gummy-bears.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Energy Gummy Bears<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Or maybe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Concord-DK-Candy-Blox-Lbs\/dp\/B000BHCAJG\" target=\"_blank\">Candy Lego<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>My suggested general term for <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/features\/2012\/10\/can-you-fix-my-windows-95-computer-how-to-troll-a-tech-support-scammer\/\" target=\"_blank\">this sort of scamtrolling<\/a> might be <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tarpit_(networking)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>teergrubing<\/em><\/a>. The idea is to waste as much of a scammer&#8217;s time as possible. This is not new, but the examples cited in the article are <em>very<\/em> funny.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/future_tense\/2012\/10\/12\/giant_eyeball_found_on_pompano_beach_squid_whale_mystery.html\" target=\"_blank\">Here&#8217;s lookin&#8217; at you<\/a>, squid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, I&#8217;m not done yet. I&#8217;m almost a month behind schedule. If I were done, you would have heard the yell all the way over there, no matter where &#8220;there&#8221; is. One very practical contrarian habit of mine is eating dinner at 5 PM. Carol and I never have to worry about getting into restaurants. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[17,37,15,20],"class_list":["post-2638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ebooks","tag-food","tag-hardware","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}