This site is the new dictionary (dot com)

Not too long ago Dictionary.com got their own abridged version of the Random House dictionary. Naturally, this became the site's dictionary of choice, and so the American Heritage dictionary (which had been the first entry on that site) slipped to second choice. The new abridged entries are so long that it's hard to even find the good entries underneath them.

The American Heritage is my favorite. I like how concise it is and I think it has the most thorough etymologies and usage notes. When Dictionary.com switched their preferred dictionary, I started looking to switch my preferred Web site.

The end of my search is this: TheFreeDictionary.com. The site can do specialized searches in computing, medical, legal and financial dictionaries, as well as searching sites like Google and Wikipedia. The most important to me, though, is that the regular dictionary entries use the American Heritage dictionary.

I even found a search plugin so that I could replace Dictionary.com in the Mozilla search bar. You can get it here (there are plugins for each of the searches, and the last one that is the plain dictionary search).

200th Post!

Wasted.

Not in the Men's Room

There's certain etiquette involved in using public restrooms. I don't know if women have the same unspoken rules, but there are things that you don't do in the men's room:

• You don't look over the little divider at the equipment of your neighbor.
• You don't use the urinal next to a guy when you can use one that gives you a buffer.
  
• You don't make eye contact with a person while you or he have your equipment unsheathed.
  
• You don't ever touch anyone.

Everyone knows these, right?


So I'm in the bathroom in the Talmage building (which is where the computer and math nerds spent most of their time at BYU) blowing my nose. (I have a cold.) There's a dandruff-ridden fellow (somehow typical of people in my major) pacing the bathroom, apparently waiting for a toilet stall to open up. He looks at me and says something unintelligible. I hadn't really paid him any mind until now, so I have to ask him what he said.

"Rub me the wrong way," he repeats to me. I think I just looked at him blankly, not knowing what the heck he was talking about, and half-wondering if he was threatening me in some kind of "I'll bring a gun to school next time" way. You know, like when that guy in the bar tells Luke Skywalker that he doesn't like him, right before trying to kill him.

Then I realize that he's making some kind of joke about my shirt. It says "Rub me for luck."

"Oh, my shirt. Yeah." I turn away from him and start washing my hands, hoping that if I ignore him he'll ignore me. I'm not even looking at him. I'm just washing my hands. Minding my own business.


Before I know what's happening, the fellow comes up and puts his arms around me, and starts singing "Shake that thing" from the Sean Paul song.

My brain went into panic mode here, I think, and I just turned around and walk briskly out the door. I didn't say anything or even look at him. For some reason, I still managed to grab a paper towel on the way out to dry my hands.

Assembly Line

One of the biggest problems with Wendy's is that they take forever. Part of this is probably just due to the fact that they're popular and usually busy (especially around mealtime), but the other part is just a lack of efficiency. For some reason the person that takes your order needs to wait until its done before they can take the next person's order.


Now I admit that it's been a while since I've been to Wendy's (excluding the drive-through, of course), so it's possible that they've been working to fix this problem for a while, but today was the first time that I saw their assembly line in action. And I just have to say, that those people are not smart enough to work in assembly lines.

They had it broken down more than most places. One lady took my order, then a second had me pay for it, and then some idiot in a yellow shirt (which I can only assume was a symbol of his being a leader of the other idiots) actually put it together and handed it to me.

This last idiot threw my receipt away twice. I mean, once could be attributed to not knowing that I wanted to keep it, but the second time he should have known better. He also gave me the wrong burger. (In my opinion the difference between a single and a Big Bacon Classic is significant.) He also filled my cup all of the way up with ice, so that there was only room in it for about two swallows of Coke.

Maybe that last part is a different problem. I mean, would it kill them to put the fountain drinks on our side of the counter like every other fast food place? Do refills really hurt them that bad? I guess I can talk to the yellow-shirt idiot about it. I think he's the big decision maker.

In a nutshell

The Wikipedia article on Libertarianism says this:

Libertarianism is a political philosophy advocating that individuals should be free to do whatever they wish with their person or property, as long as they do not infringe on the same liberty of others.

I think that's a very good explanation. Sometimes the complaints that people have about libertarianism are really about some specific application, an interpretation by some group of libertarians, or some subset of related philosophies; and not with the libertarian ideals themselves.