An inside joke is essentially one whose humor is only truly understood by those within the group the joke was intended for. To those outside of the group, which can range from a social clique to an occupation, the humor of the joke doesn’t make any sense. Because of this, it’s completely wasted on “outsiders”. This means, that without the clique or community group, THERE IS NO INSIDE JOKE. You wouldn’t believe how often I hear people spouting off inside jokes when they know full well that they’re the only ones within the situation that get it. The simple futility of this behavior annoys me to no end. But this isn’t even the worst infraction.

Every once in a while, you’ll catch someone misappropriating someone else’s inside joke without any of the context of someone on the inside of said joke. Now this behavior doesn’t even annoy me. To be honest, it just leaves me completely dumbfounded. Why on earth would someone who has no idea why something is funny try to celebrate its humor? It’s not like faking their way into the group they’re trying to appeal to is going to go unnoticed. That’s the beauty of an inside joke. You’re either a part of it or you’re not. And when you’re not, it never comes off as authentic.

Recently I witnessed someone who not only stole someone else’s inside joke, but then turned right around and posted it on a site for an audience who had even less context for the joke than they did. Now if the first example I gave annoys me and the second example leaves me dumbfounded, how do you think I felt after this perfect storm? I’m going to go with annoyingly dumbfounded. I really don’t understand what was going through this person’s head. I mean, its weird enough if you inadvertently bring up an inside joke to someone and then they immediately attempt to adopt it to pretend like they’re apart of it. But turning around blasting it out to complete strangers, while even referencing that no one is going to get it (oh yes, I left that part out), that goes a little beyond weird.

Then again, who am I to judge. I’m probably just another outsider, looking in.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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A person’s home is sacred territory. At least that’s the way I look at it. I mean just think about it. When everything is said and done, the home (or the room if you live with roommates) is a person’s only real place that belongs just to them. The only place that they can exercise complete dominion over. We choose to believe our homes are safe because it’s comforting, but it’s not always the case. Sadly, a lesson one of my roommates and I had to learn the hard way.

I currently rent a house with three other guys. What sort of makes this house unique is that a good majority of my friends have all lived in it at one point or another. Generally, a few guys live in the house for a while, get married, move out, and another friend of the group moves in. Because of this, the house has an almost communal feel to it. While we do lock up at night and whenever we leave, friends often walk in without needing to knock, coming and going as they please. And we welcome the “interruptions”. We’ve always been pretty laid back.

In the last few months, however, my attitude has changed drastically. Back in April we had a couple thousand dollars worth of electronics equipment stolen from our house. I’m not going to go into specifics, but we know who took the stuff and we know who, at the very least, provided the opportunity for the stuff to be taken. The funny thing is, that it’s not the stuff that was stolen that bothers me the most. In fact, there were far more valuable items that weren’t even touched. What really pisses me off is that my room and my personal space was intruded upon. What upsets me is that my sense of security was taken from me. What is really unfortunate is that my willingness to be apart of this communal house experience is now completely gone.

The simple fact is that I can no longer relax in my own house. I’ve had to go out and buy my own locks for my door, I have to lock the house up even if everyone else is still there when I leave, and I find it hard to trust people my roommates bring over. Simply put, my house no longer feels like a home. And it likely will not for some time.

posted by Christopher Schnese

You know, I thought it was common knowledge, but I was completely wrong. Apparently a good portion of the driving public needs me to drop a little bit of knowledge on them. So here it is: Do you know what traffic lights, road signs, painted lanes, center dividers, shoulder barriers, and other common driving indicators have in common? They were all put there by the people who built the roads, freeways, and parking structures to help indicate to drivers where they were actually supposed to be driving their vehicles. I know it sounds obvious, but as the experience in my local Trader Joe’s parking lot has shown me, it’s not really common knowledge.

I do the majority of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, so I’m there at least once a week. Like many parking lots,  each aisle is one-way and only a single car wide. Naturally these aisles also alternate which side of the lot cars should enter and angle toward that direction. Unfortunately, due to the location of the lots entrance, there are only three aisles in front of the store. The two outer ones run down the outsides and the center one comes back up the middle.

I kid you not, every single time I visit Trader Joe’s, some idiot attempts to drive up one of the sides (the wrong way). Obviously this can cause some big problems when other drivers are coming one-way down the other direction (the correct way). I would love to give the drivers the benefit of the doubt and just call them ignorant (instead of idiots), but there really is no excuse for the mistake.

It’s not like this is the one road in the city where things switch from a bidirectional street to one-way street. It’s not even a full speed street where someone might not have a chance to notice the directional indicators because the speed of traffic forces them to make a turn decision before being able to recognize them. This is a 5 mph parking lot where there are clearly huge painted arrows on the ground and all the parking spots are angled in such a way that it would be impossible to pull into a parking spot when driving the wrong direction.

The worst part about it though, is that a majority of the people who make this idiot mistake don’t even realize what they did. They turn down the wrong aisle and then look completely baffled when they see cars stopped and waiting for them to back their confused ass up. No, you know what? That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that today I watched a Trader Joe’s employee walk out to her car and then drive it out the wrong direction. Are you kidding me? On a nice day I could excuse a customer who’d never been to that location and had not yet had the pleasure of dealing with the parking lot there. If you work at the damn store and you still haven’t learned how to navigate your way around it’s parking lot. You should probably be fired for being incompetent. I’m just saying.

posted by Christopher Schnese

Earlier this week while sifting through my RSS feeds, I stumbled onto a pretty ingenious concept design for improving the average traffic light. The “Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well.” While I seriously doubt the validity of the designers ecological intensions, I do believe the concept’s benefits to driver sanity could be enormous.

Sometimes an idea can still be great when the motivation behind it is somewhat misguided. This is how I feel about the Eko light. From the products description (and name for that matter) it sounds like it’s main purpose is to cut down on pollution by allowing cars stopped at intersections to turn their engines off while waiting for the traffic light to change. This is great, in theory, but I don’t see it working in most cases.

Now I’ve read the reports that say idling for 2 minutes is equivalent to actually driving a mile down the road and I understand that it’s better to shut your car on and off when you’re going to be idling for longer than 10 seconds. However, how often are you completely stopped, in park, and ready to shut off your engine the moment the light turns red? The answer is never. Even if you’re the first to the intersection right when the light turns red, you have to decelerate, stop, throw your car into park, and then you can shut down the engine. You’re usually never even the first to the intersection, though. So the light will have already been red before you’ve even begun to slow down your car.

Additionally, traffic lights are already horribly inefficient. When a light turns green, there is a delay between when a car begins to accelerate and when the car behind it begins to follow suit. While that delay isn’t excessively long, it can definitely add up in a line of cars. I’ve sat at several intersections where the light had already begun to change before I had a chance to even start forward progress. Imagine how terrible the delay would become if people future back int the line who couldn’t see the Eko light were waiting to see cars moving before starting their engines. Less cars through each light would mean more congestion, more idling (because you know not everyone would agree to turn off their engines at an intersection), and more pollution in the long run.

All that being said, I still think the Eko light is a brilliant concept. First off, it’s just cool. As a geek, more things should have progress bars. Hell, if my toaster had an LED progress bar and popped up to the AOL guy saying “Toasts Done”, it’d be an improvement. But that’s besides the point. What this invention really offers is peace of mind. You have no idea how many times I’ve sat at a stoplight, especially in a town with trains running through several major intersections, and obsessed about the light’s apparent disregard for the fact that my car was in one of it’s lanes. Sometimes, I think just not knowing when the light is going to change makes it seem like you’re sitting at it for so much longer than you are. Especially late at night when you’re the only car at a red light and you’re not even sure you’ve triggered the sensor. A progress bar would at least give you the feed back you need to know that you’d triggered it. Also, knowing exactly how much time was left would save you from those “damn, I thought I was next” moments.

posted by Christopher Schnese

When it comes down to it, I’ve never really been a huge fan of the holidays. First, they’re really just an excuse to take time off of work to spend time with those you’ve failed to make time for during the off season. Second, the monotonous daily grind of life doesn’t recognize them (i.e. the stresses of the world don’t stop so you can stuff your belly with turkey). And Third, any an all significance inherent in each holiday has all but died off over the years.

Take today for example. We all gather and talk about what we’re ‘so thankful for’, yet we just take it all for granted the other 364 days of the year. What’s the point? Well, it occurred to me this morning that maybe that is the point. We’re all so busy with our lives that we never seem to make time to sit down and reflect on the things we really are thankful for. Maybe we really do need another ‘pointless’ holiday to force us to stop, even if only for a moment, and reflect on the things we really are thankful for.

So what am I thankful for? One of the problems for me is that I’m such a cynic. I often focus on the obstacles standing in the way of the things that I want. Because of this viewpoint, I sometimes forget how amazing what I have is. So I guess what I’m really thankful for is the little things; the bits and pieces. I’m thankful for every little piece of this little puzzle called life. Sure, the final product is far from complete, but it’s coming together quite nicely.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope you stop for a moment and find something to be thankful for.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Now I’m nothing close to a domain squatter, but at one point in time I had built up a small cache of domains to deploy at my will. Some of them were for failed projects, some for possible future projects, and some I just thought were clever and hoped I’d one day have a use for. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ‘conveniently’ consolidating all their renewal dates at the suggestion of the company I buy them from. As it turns out, this is one of the least convenient things I could have done. If you pay for all your domains at once, it can be very expensive.

Unfortunately, last year around this time, I couldn’t’ really afford the cost of renewing all of them. So, I let about half of my domains expire. Admittedly, most of the ones I let go were for old school projects or online personas that I no longer operate under, so it wasn’t completely disastrous. Sill, it was hard to see them go. In the end, I just held on to my favorites (and of course the ones that were actually in use).

This year, however, when it came time to let some more domains expire it was a little more of a sacrifice. I had already dumped everything I could live without, so there was nothing left to abandon without really having to feel it. Long story short, I decided to bite the bullet and I purged every domain I had except the three that are currently in use and two variations of my name. My guess is that most of the people who are going to read this post aren’t going to be able to sympathize with the loss, but trust me it’s sad times. And to add insult to injury, the domain registrar feels the need to send me an email every day reminding me of all the domains I’ve let expire.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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Last night I attended the wedding of some old high school friends (grats! Ben & Kim). Interestingly enough, it was the second wedding I’ve attended this month that joined together a couple that had been a couple for over eight years (grats! also to James & Nancy). When I woke up this morning I began reflecting over the wedding, the duration of the couple’s relationship, and my own past relationships. After a while, I stumbled on to an obvious, yet really interesting, fact that I hadn’t really thought of before. If you’ve ever had a relationship in your life AND you’re currently single, you effectively have a 100% failure rate for relationships.

[Now I know what you're thinking. "Chris, you're just a pessimist." And you're right, I am. However, the point of this post is actually quite optimistic, so just bear with me.]

So, I took my new found failure rate factoid and continued reflecting on my past relationships.  I thought about how in every relationship there can be tensions that arise from both pre-existing friendships and new ones that are made with the people surrounding the couple. I thought about how those relationships are often tested, strained, or made uncomfortable by a break up. And I began to realize that in the beginning portion of many (don’t bother reading into that word choice too much) of my past relationships, one question was brought up in each of them: “What happens if this doesn’t work out?”

Now don’t get me wrong, it is a legitimate question to be concerned about. However, it’s the wrong question to be asking when you’re starting a relationship with someone new. As I already established in the beginning of this post, 100% failure is the norm for most of us. So we know there’s a high probability that there’s a breakup somewhere in the future. With that in mind, what good can come of asking what’s going to happen if the relationship doesn’t work out? All it’s going to do is force you to concentrate on the bad things and the risks associated with the person you want to be with. The real question you should be asking is “what happens if this DOES work out?”

Breaking up isn’t the exception, it’s the rule. What you really want to focus on is the small probability of success and what you’re going to do when you DON’T fail. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to think that knowing your not expected to succeed makes worrying about failing less significant. Now I know that getting into this mind set isn’t’ going to make it feel any better when it doesn’t work out, but cross that bridge when you come to it. Don’t worry about it when you’re just getting to know a person. Every second spent trying to figure out how you’ll be friends with a person after you break up is a second stolen from figuring out how to be friends with them in the relationship. At least that’s the way I see it.

posted by Christopher Schnese

As pissed as I was, in the end it wasn’t all the crap listed above that really had me frustrated. I mean, the blog itself was completely intact. The thing that really had me upset was that my custom theme was what was destroyed in the attack. Now I don’t claim to be any sort of master designer of WordPress themes, but I like knowing that no one is running my theme. I like playing with it, tweaking it, and getting it exactly the way I want it. Even though I was completely back up an running by Friday morning, it just didn’t feel the same running a theme I had downloaded from WordPress.org.

Well, tonight (or this morning I guess) I finally got around to implementing a new custom theme. And it once again feels like home. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve missed a lot of sleep these past few days and I’d like to get some tonight (or this morning I guess).

posted by Christopher Schnese

Go ahead and take a quick look at your alarm clock. If you’re not  home right now, close your eyes and visualize it for a moment. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Now that you’ve got it, try to remember the alarm clock you owned before that one. Now the one before that. If you think about it, the alarm clock hasn’t really changed much over the past several years. With all the technological progress we see every day, why have there been no significant advancements in alarm clocks?

Now sure, alarm clocks today have far more bells and whistles than they did years back. We now have radios, stereos, iPod docks, wall projectors, and all sorts of pointless crap in our alarm clocks, but none of these ‘features’ really changes the core functionality that we care about: waking up at a specifically chosen time (or multiples of ten minutes after said time). When you really break it down, whether you spend $200 or $5, your alarm clock really only allows you to set a time and make the thing beep at you until you hit it. Is that really the best we can do?

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why our alarm clocks are the most under developed and least advanced pieces of technology that we own. Why can’t someone work on a slick and light weight alarm clock operating system that has more computing power and memory then a basic calculator? Since no one else seems to care, I now offer a short list of suggestions for improving the alarm clock.

Top 5 suggestions for improving the alarm clock

5) Support for Multiple Alarms:
This one should be obvious. Even the most advanced alarm clocks I’ve ever owned only allowed me to set two different wake up times. Then, I can’t even use the beeping for the second alarm. The second alarm only applies to the radio setting. Alarm clocks should not just have a digital display, but an actual software operating system with memory that allows me to save an unlimited number of alarms. Which leads me to my next suggestion…

4) Custom Displays & Alerts:
If I can save an unlimited number of alarms, I’m going to need a way to tell them apart (other than their time). This is why I need some sort of input for assigning custom names to each alarm set. Additionally, while I’m adding text input to the device, there should be an option to display or scroll a note with the alarm while it’s going off. If I’ve set my alarm for 5:00am, then I know what time it is when it goes off. It would be nice, however, if the face of my alarm could remind me that I have a 6:00am conference call or a test to take that morning.

3) Calendar based alarms with priority triggers:
The last couple of alarm clocks that I’ve purchased come with a nice little feature that allows me to designate which days of the week my alarm with actually go off (any individual day, just weekdays, or just the weekend). I want more control than this. Anytime that I have to adjust my wakeup time to accommodate a trip (or anything that throws off my normal routine), I run the risk of forgetting to set my alarm back the following night. This could all be fixed by a calendar based alarm system. If I knew that on the 14th of next month I were going to need to wake up at 4:00am to get to the airport on time for a flight, I could set a an alarm specifically for that date. Now this is where my priority triggers would come into play.

Obviously my 4:00am on the 14th alarm would going to conflict with my daily alarm which goes off at 5:00am. This conflict could be avoided by assigning the 4:00am on the 14th alarm to a priority of “High”. Any alarm set to a high priority would then override all standard reoccurring alarms set for that time period.

2) Remote Configuration and Interaction:
In the example above, I left for vacation and was so excited about my alarm clock’s priority triggers that I forgot to disable the recurring daily alarm for the week that I was going to be away. This is exactly why alarm clocks should have remote configuration and interaction. We live in a world where just about every device we own has the ability to connect to the internet. Why don’t our alarm clocks? I should be able administer my scheduled alarms, priorities, or even disable them all together from my computer, iPhone, or any other network connected device.

1) Proximity (RFID) laziness failsafes (admittedly a little overkill):
Ok, this one is a little silly, but there is totally a use for it. I may be crazy, but this feature could totally save my (and your) ass. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve been late somewhere because I fell back asleep after I hopped out of bed and shut off my alarm clock. If I had a secondary (backup) alarm it would really help. If it was proximity aware, using an RFID keychain dongle, it could actually determine for itself whether or not I needed that backup alarm on a case by case basis. Imagine the following scenario:

Lets pretend my schedule looks like this.
5:00am (intended wake up time) [Primary Alarm]
7:00am (intended departure time)
7:15am (last possible second to wake up and not be late) [Secondary Alarm]
7:30am (last possible departure time to not be late)

Now if everything goes as planned, I will depart from my house before my secondary alarm goes off. This means that if I forget to disarm it, my alarm will be ringing all day (or until I remember and find an internet connection so that I can disarm it remotely). This wouldn’t be the case with a proximity aware RFID keychain dongle. The secondary alarm would only ever trigger if the keychain was still in range of the alarm clock.

So there you have it. Sure, I may be the only person on the planet crazy enough to put this much thought into something as simple as an alarm clock, but you’ve got to admit I’ve envisioned a pretty bad ass alarm clock.

posted by Christopher Schnese

I’m not sure if everyone in the less traffic-heavy parts of the country have them too, but here in Southern California we have these intersections where you can’t make a right turn at a red light. It’s not every intersection, it’s just these specific ones. And I do get it. I understand that there are certain intersections which, due to heavy traffic during specific parts of the day, might not be the safest places to pull into traffic. The problem is that I’ve begun to notice these “no turn on red” signs showing up everywhere with little caveats attached to them, designating when you have to actually pay attention to them. This really annoys me.

As I mentioned before, I understand the reason for prohibiting right turns on red lights and it doesn’t annoy me to have to sit through a whole light cycle at an intersection that does this. What does annoy me is when I have to break my driving rhythm to determine whether or not I can proceed through the light. If the light has a blanket “sorry, you have to wait” sign, I can just treat the intersection as if I were in any of the other lanes. But if the light has stupid stipulations attached to it, I have to determine the block of time turning on a red is prohibited, determine the current time, determine whether or not the current time is within the prohibited time, and then make the judgement call of whether or not I’d like to proceed.

Sure, I know the whole process only take a second or two, but when I drive my attention is often on the other drivers and the moves they’re making (or preparing to make). Anything that forces me to break that attention to do stupid calculations to determine whether or not the local time designates making a right turn at my current red light a ticket-able offense, it’s annoying. That’s not even considering the frustrations of being honked at by the always-in-a-rush Californians who never notice the no turn on red signs anyways.

You know, maybe it’s really just the absurdity of the situation that annoys me. I mean, if the intersection is really unsafe, wouldn’t’ it be unsafe all the time? It’s not like the physical layout of the street changes throughout the day. Isn’t that sort of like having a side street that ends with a stop sign during certain hours and a yield sign others? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

posted by Christopher Schnese