My workplace has a series of plaques hanging up next to the lobby, two rows of six plaques, each plaque with maybe a dozen names on those little individual brass plates. The plaques are all titled “Excellence by Example.”

The plaques are all crooked, unevenly spaced, and not hung on the same level.

Guess the maintenance guy never got his name on a plaque…

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So what exactly is in toothpaste that the instant you drop even a molecule of it onto your shirt, it immediately stains and won’t wash off? Seriously, what the hell are they putting in here? Oil-based paint?

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It’s always a sad reminder of just how out of touch I am with popular culture when I hop into the iTunes Store and don’t recognize a single artist on the top sellers list. Actually, it’s getting to the point where I don’t even know how to pronounce them. Ke$ha. 3OH!3. Iyaz. Honestly, it looks like that time our cat jumped on my keyboard.

I know I’m lame and out of touch, Apple. Do you have to rub it in?

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Well, all the big news coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seems to revolve around the new 3D-compatible TVs everyone’s offering. And of course the new Blu-ray 3D specification. Yes, now you too can wear dorky glasses and get headaches in the comfort of your own living room! What is the deal with Hollywood’s insistence on pushing 3D these days? Was there a survey I missed where the entire country rose and spoke as one, demanding their TV shows and movies have an illusion of minor depth added to them?

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I’ve often heard it said that “money is no object.” Nonsense. Money is totally an object. It has mass, displaces matter, can be perceived by the senses… I don’t know. I guess if you get rich enough to say things like that, no one is going to dare point out that they don’t make sense.

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I was walking down to the grocery store yesterday, which takes me past a pretty busy intersection. There’s a homeless shelter just down the street and the bums like to work those corners, begging motorists for change while they’re waiting for the light to change. There was a guy there that day, standard hand-lettered cardboard sign in hand, bumming for coins, and he saw me and shouted, “Hey, man! Happy new year!”

I fired off a “You, too” and kept on walking. About five steps along it hit me: What possible happy new year could this guy have? Short of winning the lottery, I’m not sure there’s much that’s going to improve his current life status. What new year wishes could I offer him that wouldn’t be simply bitterly ironic? Here’s hoping you don’t lose a foot to frostbite? May no yuppie teenagers soak you in gasoline and set you on fire? To a year where you don’t finally succumb to psoriasis?

I need to find another route to the grocery store.

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If you’ve never been to Seattle, the traffic system seems to have been laid out by drunken, blind squirrels. Roads come and go at random directions, loop around, cross over themselves. It’s not unusual to have five- or even seven-way intersections. And so, if someone does the traditional jackass thing in heavy traffic and pulls into the intersection knowing full well they won’t get through it before the light changes, they can block traffic in up to six different directions. To dissuade the practice, there are signs up informing you of the fine for being that kind of social douche. The cost for blocking an intersection? $101. Yes, one-hundred-and-one dollars.

I’m not sure what the thinking is there. Is that the magic price point people don’t want to go over, like the Nintendo Wii, where people say, “Hey, I’m willing to spend $199 on something, but over $200? Forget it!” Is it just to make it more inconvenient at the ATM when you go to get the money to pay the fine? “Aw, man… now I gotta take out $120, then find someplace to break the twenty…” Whatever the reason, all I can say, based on my observations of Seattle drivers, is that fine obviously ain’t nowhere near high enough to stop them. Maybe they should up it to $102.

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Welcomed in the new year with minimum fuss and fanfare. Although more than previous years when I looked up at the clock around 12:10 and muttered, “Oh, shoot… New Year’s. Right.” Still, going into the new year with a new wife, at a new job, in a new city. Frankly, that’s enough new stuff for a while. Fortunately, I’m still old, so I got that going for me.

And isn’t the year we’re supposed to make contact? Isn’t Roy Scheider supposed to living on Jupiter with a giant space domino or something? Well, it’s only January. We got time.

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As you may remember, NASA recently crashed a multi-million dollar spaceship, on purpose, into the surface of the moon, essentially to see how big of a mess they could make. (And how cool of a job is that? I once accidentally damaged a printer toner cartridge at work. Got in all sorts of trouble.) Well, they’ve now looked through the debris and have announced they discovered water on the moon. And not just little dribbles, either. They found “a significant amount,” which since we’re talking about the moon, I’d say anything over about a teaspoon would qualify.

Naturally, NASA is frothing at the panties over this discovery. “We have a significant amount of excitement,” were their exact words. They say this is the first step towards creating colonies on the moon. They found “a significant amount” of water and now we’re talking colonization? I really don’t want to rain on their parade (another water reference!), but I would just like to point out that, while they may have found “a significant amount” of water, they also found “a complete lack” of oxygen. I mean, it’s great that people won’t be thirsty while they asphyxiate, but I’m not too sure that little concession is going to be much of a comfort to them.

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I got an iPhone. I love it. This thing is geek crack. But it has its share of problems, not the least of which is its “helpful” auto-type feature. Now, for the most part, it does a fairly good job of guessing what you’re starting to type and offers up a suggestion for the word which you can then tap and the iPhone will drop it into your email for you. However, it also “corrects” words automatically for you after you’ve typed them and that doesn’t always go so well.

Case in point, the Mrs. loves Starbucks’ frappuccinos. Have one every day if you let her. (And, word to the wise, it’s not a good idea to attempt to prevent her from doing so.) She’ll often ask me to bring her a frap on my home from work, or I’ll ask her if she needs one. Thing is, if I type into my iPhone, “Do I need to bring you a frap?” the phone will take it upon itself to change it to “Do I need to bring you a feap?” I have no idea what a “feap” is. Never heard of it. Neither has Miriam Webster’s. In fact, I checked four different dictionaries and none of them have an entry for “feap.” So the iPhone is automatically changing a word I meant to type into a nonsensical word that doesn’t, technically, exist.

Guess the iPhone is just thinking differently.

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