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Paper Receipts

I find it revolting that I still get these when I buy things like milk. What a waste of paper (and my time)! The default for minor purchases should be no receipt (although you can always ask for one), and the default for bigger purchases that you might actually want to return should be electronic receipts (electronic receipts should be available for all purchases though). These could be e-mailed to each person automatically with an e-mail address that is linked to the person's debit/credit card. If you pay cash, you might have to tell the cashier your e-mail address, but that's still better than having a paper receipt.

If you make a purchase at the Apple Store, they already do this and it's wonderful. How can this not be more widespread? It cuts costs and makes everyone's life easier. In fact, just this past weekend I had to go back to my apartment to get a receipt in order to return something, instead of just being able to show the receipt to someone on my phone.

What the fuck did we win?

Look, I'm happy that Obama won too, but maybe the level of excitement last night was a little over the top? Can someone let me know when I'm getting my Obama prize in the mail?

Election Day

The only important election

vs.

My First Ever Serious "Bleg"

Does anyone own a lobster oven mitt? Or, better yet, two lobster oven mitts? Let me know ASAP.

PS I know that a bleg doesn't work when no one reads your blog.

Update (10/31): Believe it or not, my mom found these for me! As long as there isn't a run on them between now and about 6 o'clock I'm set...

Good Trivia Question

Courtesy of Ken Jennings:

British king George I, as well as most of the Plantagenets, including Richard the Lionheart, were notable for not being able to do what?

E-mail Etiquette

My name is Richard and I am an ellipsis and parenthetical statement addict. I also like to write in exclusively lower-case letters whenever possible and have been using the abbreviation FYI an alarming amount recently, especially at work. I apologize to anyone that I have harmed or offended on my rampage through your inboxes.

Sorting Google by Date

I often search for technology-related articles on Google (e.g. How many bloggers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? The answer is three. One to do it, one to blog about it, and one to blog about the blog post and then share both posts on Google Reader). The problem is that technology changes rapidly, but Google search results just return whatever articles are most relevant to the keywords entered, regardless of date. So you have issues like searching for "best rss feed reader" and the 8th result is from January 2005! This is useless to me, unless I'm interested in the history of feed readers...Clearly, the published date of results for a search like this is extremely important, but it is completely ignored in standard Google searches.

Amazingly, Google has the date option available in Advanced Search preferences, but has not made this a standard feature...Ilan?

I still shower with Evian

I don't care what kind of misleading headlines Fox News puts up; bottled water like Fred and Fine is really all I can drink/wash my hands with and it always will be.

Midtown Manhattan in a Month?

Ladies first

I've been told recently that my blog simply does not have enough content that appeals to female readers. So here is a post that appeals to what girls love most about the internet:

Part 1: Celebrities!

Part 2: Cute Animals!!

Part 3: Sarah Palin Bashing

Tina Fey does such a good Palin, that at the VP debate I thought Sarah Palin was impersonating Tina Fey! Then I thought better of it when I realized how much she would have had to read up on watch TV to do that. Did I mention that she can see Russia from her house, can't name a single newspaper she reads, and wears lipstick in order to differentiate herself from a pit bull?

Part 4: Exclamation Points!!!!!!!!!!!!

GIRLS, PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON THIS GAME. (Thanks Ilan)

Change you can believe in

Looks like someone at Facebook reads this blog. Take a look at the new splash page:

There's still too much empty space at the bottom (not pictured), but it's a definite improvement!

(Thanks Tom)

User Interface Crimes: Voicemail Edition

Press 1 to send a numeric page. Press 2 to hear Andy Kaufman read the entirety of The Great Gatsby. Or please wait for the tone.

Do you know a single person who has sent a numeric page in the past 10 years? Ever? Why would phone companies possibly keep forcing callers to waste their time listening to this crap? This is COMPLETELY INSANE. People know to leave a message when they hear the beep. They've only been doing it since the 1990s (look it up, that's a long time ago now) or probably earlier.

Kudos to Tom for literally going straight to the beep, although I'm not quite sure that all of America is ready for that...

Can we all agree that...

...sharing on Google Reader is the new commenting for blogs?