Random Word

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

Has it really been a year since I've published one of these?!? Wow. In any case, while studying for an exam I got to thinking about those "pop-savers"...the as-seen-on-TV product that replaces your 2 liter bottle cap with a pump-type thing. So every time you open and reclose your bottle, you pump the handle and it "repressurizes" the air inside in the hopes that it won't go flat. We all know 2 liter bottles go flat pretty quickly, and this is supposed to save us from it.

Well, I've seen them in action, but they have never been really successful. I began to wonder why, when I figured its design shouldn't allow it to work in the first place. As you reclose a normal 2 liter bottle, you've left regular air in the top (normal level of CO2). At this point, the CO2 dissolved in the liquid (in the form of HCO3) desires to form an equilibrium with the CO2 in the air above the surface, so it leaks it into the air through a reverse reaction that creates H2O and CO2 gas, causing the drink to taste flat. Every time you open the bottle, it repeats the process.

In the case of the "pop-saver," it claims to stop this by pressurizing the inside air. Problem is, it would need to be far more pressurized to still create a balance between CO2 in drink and air. The real solution? You'd need a pop-saver that pumps in not room air, but something close to pure CO2.

So it turns out that after writing this, a simple Google search brings up a pretty good description of the problem :) http://www.stevespangler.com/fizz_factor.html

Wednesday, October 3, 2001

12,000 Cornellians gather in remembrance of September 11. Not pictured: Aaron runs through the crowd with an 80lb primary bag responding to syncope.

Homeworks... it's not a word! My simplistic site with one message. Look it up in the dictionary or learn the rules and exceptions of the English plural.

Wednesday, May 16, 2001

Random Word A
Guess what I learned just yesterday. I've been wondering about this for quite a while here. Did you know that in New York, construction flaggers actually USE flags? Yeah! I kept wondering what kind of sketchy program they were running here on campus... these guys with just an orange square they hold, fairly nonchalantly, at their waist. Not sure how to describe this, but I suppose it's what you'd expect of a person holding a newspaper who had a broken zipper. And you're supposed to stop for that?

So in Oregon, I'm used to seeing the STOP/SLOW signs on a pole... the ones you flip and stuff. To me, that seems to make so much more sense than an orange flag. So my roommate actually has a NY drivers manual. I looked in it and sure enough... construction flaggers will HAVE FLAGS. Then there's this part at the end.. "Alternatively, they may have a sign that says STOP and SLOW."

Here's the deal. If the flag isn't moving, you stop. If they're waving the flag, in absolutely no specific direction or speed, you're supposed to proceed slowly. Yeah, if that isn't the most anti-intuitive idea about traffic control I have ever heard. Is that an East Coast thing? Seems to me that I have steadily found more and more things that are purely East Coast. The worst being this flag issue, and their obsession with the need to determine if a settlement is a city, town, village, boonie... Yes, there is a Town of Ithaca and a City of Ithaca. I still haven't determined which one I live in or if it refers to the same place.

Oh yeah, and the Town of Lansing (nearby) has the coolest heavy rescue [fire] truck. It simply carries tools you would need at a mass casualty incident. It's the newest and largest in the entire region. Now, you know your citizens are paying too much in taxes when your volunteer fire department has a truck that can handle an MCI with more casualties than your town has residents.

Random Word B
And another! Did you know that in New York, you only pull over and yield right of way to emergency vehicles with red or red+white flashing lights? "These vehicles will have a siren or air horn in conjunction with warning lights." That's right! Not even police cars carry blue lights here. Blue lights are specifically reserved for volunteer firefighters responding to a call. Now as little sense as it might make, drivers need not yield to blue lights, and drivers with blue lights must observe all traffic laws and are not permitted to use siren/air horn tones. Green lights are used for volunteer EMS responders, but I haven't seen these in use--they are similar to blue lights in their use. Amber lights are used as standard DOT warning lights like they are everywhere else.

So all this explains the specific use of "RLS" or "Red lights and siren" response. If the actions of a driver were to enter into court, this indicates that the vehicle responded to a call in emergency mode and was essentially exempt from traffic laws. Funny thing is, once you exercise this ability, ANY injury or accident that involves the emergency vehicle puts the emergency vehicle driver at fault, with little question.

Friday, March 2, 2001

What's wrong with dry erase boards? Those of you in college, do your schools have any dry erase boards? There's not a single classroom whiteboard on campus. They're plastered to nearly every dorm room door, but does no one see the potential? No more trying to see white chalk written on a light-gray surface. Let's face it... erasers don't work. They should be called smudgers--they just blur what's written just enough so you can see something written on top of it.

I took about 20 seconds to look up the price of a classroom sized whiteboard. It's about $200. So I figured my first Cornell donation will be about $500,000, which should cover materials and labor to replace every chalk board on campus with a dry erase board, as well as 4000 packs of Expo pens and erasers.

Let students see what professors write! Down with chalk boards! Let's get some dry erase boards in the classrooms!

Thursday, February 22, 2001

It's venting time for Aaron... For my fellow college students, do you ever have classes where at the end of class students from the next class fight with you to get IN the classroom? So it's end of class, and there are 15 minutes of passing time left (more like passing time has just started). Do they not know this? They peek in the window for the last 5 minutes of class, then the moment we get up, 20 kids rush in the door and take our seats. Two seconds later, the professor will run in and push our TA out of the room or make him erase the board. What kind of class is this?!?

So, here's the lesson for the day. How about being courteous to the people trying to get OUT of the room. These are the people who haven't even had the opportunity to experience a passing time altogether. Half of us need to traverse the whole campus before WE can even arrive at our own next class.

And lesson number two. Take advantage of passing time. This is for several reasons, two of which include enhancing social life, and allowing Aaron to be no longer irritated.

Friday, February 16, 2001

Do you ever notice that professors like to enter the lecture hall through a different door than the students enter through? What's up with that?

Monday, February 5, 2001

I can't take all credit for this one myself because Andrew commented on this a while back. But I feel I had to comment on it since it seems so funny.

Apparently the Cincinnati airport is a rather large commuter jet hub. As in, larger planes come in, and quite a few passengers transfer on to smaller planes. My only route home is through a ComAir (deserves its own Random Word) flight from Syracuse.

Anyway, the commuter jet concourse is simply a stand-alone building with over 70 gates. 70 gates?!? Get real. 70 doors to the tarmac or what? Well as it turns out, there are only 4 "true" exits. So each set of 15 or so doors all lead to the same hallway. Then from there, each of the 4 hallways has its own set of 15 doors. These doors lead to the tarmac. It's amazing, since each door is about 10 feet apart. Did they just want to make each ComAir plane feel special? What's the deal?

Saturday, December 2, 2000

You know what's totally weird? While I was typing, I started to analyze my typing patterns as far as what keys I pressed with what fingers.

It turns out that I use my right pinkie (also pinky) very little. With that finger I type "p", colons, and the quotes. That's it! So at this point, you're probably asking me, "So, Aaron, aren't you missing something? Like the Enter key?"

Nope... Haven't forgotten about it. So here's the deal. My inefficient fingers actually hit the Enter key with the ring finger. That's right, the ring finger. Yes, Mrs. Guyton (she, my third grade teacher, who first introduced us to the correct way of typing), I don't type quite right. And the Backspace and backslash? Middle finger. Square brackets? Pointer. Plus? Equals? Dash? Underscore? Forget about 'em--I look. And even looking, no pinkie (also pinky).

Now I must admit--I haven't been completely honest. The question mark is typed right. But there's a complication. The slash gets forgotten. That's right. It's typed with the pointer. But no peeking this time... I know where it's at.

There is an upside though, in that my typing speed isn't significantly reduced. Truthfully, I guess I'd never know. But I think I type sufficiently fast enough, so my poor pinkie (also pinky) will simply have to suffer.

Here's a tribute to the pinkie (also pinky).

pppppppPPPPP'''''''"""""""??????;;;;;;;:::::

I am pinkie (also pinky). Hear me roar.

Friday, November 10, 2000

Fall color on the east coast. It's supposed to be really beautiful and everything right? Argued by the New Yorkers to be the best colors in the country. Well, in all honesty it is really cool. But the fact is--coming from an impartial outside agent--their emphasis on the leaf color here is a bit overrated. For a week or two, their news channel weathermen show maps that outline the areas in "peak," "70% peak," and "past peak" color.

Indeed, I was quite amazed one clear Sunday morning as I strolled to church. The surrounding hills were covered in bright orange, red and yellow.

The funny thing is, it only lasted that week! I'm not sure if they know this, but back in Oregon our fall colors last a whole lot longer. In New York, when a leaf turns, the tree turns. When the tree turns, every leaf on that tree drops within about a week. It's like a massive leaf dump. I can see the advantages, coming from a yard with trees that randomly drop leaves at a rate that makes you rake every week, but for weeks on end. Here, leaves pile up literally inches deep in just a few hours.

So, in case you're interested, I found this cool page, on why leaves fall. Also, the Weather Channel has produced 360-degree images of the Northeast and its fall color. Maybe it's just me, but I see the same thing on my own street back home!

Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Helpful laundry facts.

• If you think no one's doing laundry, you're wrong. If you think everyone's doing laundry, you're probably right, unless you really don't need to do laundry, in which case no one is doing laundry.
  • Corollary 1: You won't know you need to do laundry until you run out of clothes completely. By laws of nature, this occurs only when you have absolutely no time to do laundry.
• Corollary 2: The number of available dryers decreases proportionally with the minutes left on your wash cycle.
• Your whites will become off-white. Deal with it.
  • Corollary 1: Bleach has no effect.
  • Corollary 2: If whites fade, why separate?
• To determine the number of washes one bottle of detergent will last you, take the number of washes they claim it lasts, divide by 2, multiply by your age, subtract the number of floors in your building, divide again by your age, and add the number of meals you ate during the day you purchased the detergent. If your number is negative, give up now.
  • Corollary 1: Never trust the "Time to Refill" line. Consider it the "If you've reached this line, you better hope those loads already have detergent" line.
• Your least valued shirts will end up being the least clean, but least wrinkled. Your most valued shirts will be clean, but wrinkled, regardless of wash or dry setting.
• Statistically speaking, a coed dorm will house at least one Boy Scout.
  • Corollary 1: If you happen to be a Boy Scout, you begin to wonder when you see a BSA sock lying on the floor of the laundry room.
  • Corollary 2: If you happen to own BSA socks, don't bring them to college.
  • Corollary 3: Aaron did not bring BSA socks to college.
• Accept the fact that washing machines only take a stab at "Minutes Left."
  • Corollary 1: If you show up >1 minute early to take out your clothes, expect to wait 10 to 15 minutes for the cycle to finish.
• Corollary 2: If you show up < or =1 minute before the load should end, your load has ended already. Proceed to iron.

Friday, October 13, 2000

Isn't it always strange how a place can have so many acronyms? It's amazing. Cornell has an amazing number of acronyms. It's staggering. There's no way to know them all. From frat abbreviations, to engineering clubs and organizations, to campus organizations... The funny thing is, they don't repeat. How? I have no clue.

Is there some central acronym database? How do these people keep from stepping on each other's toes? Let's see... Perhaps in the coming days, I will accumulate a good list. We can have a CONTEST! Who can name the most acronyms? Yes! Well that's all I could think about today, and therefore it constitutes valid content for... the first Random Word.

About This Area

So what is this Random Word thing anyway? Arguably cheesy and inevitably random, by the end of the year this page will be chock full of the things that make my brain tick just a little bit harder. Did I lose you yet?

Come back every now and then and you'll usually catch a new random word. The purpose of this page should become clear... well, no guarantees.

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