VaxCave

I’ve been talking (a little too much probably) about the commercial for ShamWow lately. The spokesman for the product is a little too abrasive in my view. He seems to be indicating that we’re all idiots unless we own this product. For the record, the spokesman’s name is Vince Offer. Mr. Offer indicates that we should all buy the ShamWow because we’re going to spend $20 to $30 per month on paper towels. I found that really hard to believe. So I started keeping track of how many paper towels I’ve used over the past two weeks.

I used 11 paper towels over a two week period, which is an average of 0.86 towels per day. Bridgey did not track her towel usage, but she’s in the kitchen much more than me, so I’ll estimate that she uses 10 times more than me. That’s about eight and a half towels per day. That’s a total of (about) 9.4 towels per day which, in a 31 day month, works out to almost 300 paper towels per month. Since we use the half sized paper towels, this amounts to about 150 regular sized paper towels per months. That’s about 2 rolls of Bounty per month. Certainly not $20 to $30 worth.

These are estimates (of course) for our usage. I’d like to do more substantial tracking of the data so I could get some solid numbers on our actual usage. I also realize that our usage is lower because we don’t have kids. Several people with children have pointed out that they likely use $20-$30 a month worth of paper towels. I ran the numbers on that and it works out to about 32 full size paper towels per day on the high price range. (Note: we use the half sized towels in our kitchen because they seem to be used more efficiently.)

I’d encourage anyone reading this to take note of their usage and report back what their totals for towels and price turn out for a month.

On a mildly related note, I checked out Vince Offer’s wikipedia page and found this:

In 1999 (Mr.) Offer released the Underground Comedy Movie to scathing reviews. Lawrence Van Gelder of the New York Times described the movie as “a series of sketches built around subjects like masturbation, defecation, alienation, urination, necrophilia, voyeurism, casual brutality and mockery of the unfortunate.” He added that Offer “makes the common mistake of equating the recognition of comic potential for comedy itself. For the successful, talent bridges the gap, but here it is absent.” DVDs of the film were marketed via television infomercial.

Awesome.

This should’ve taken 10 minutes to give me my username and password. Instead it turned into a one hour ordeal. Transcript below:

Welcome to Verizon Live Chat.
Question: PPPoE login information lost.

12:58:26 A Verizon Service Representative will be with you shortly. Thank you.
12:58:46 Agent Venkatesh has joined.
12:58:46 Venkatesh : Chat ID for this session is [REDACTED]

(more…)

This happens when I try to print. The themes are in the /Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Themes directory. iPhoto insists that they aren’t installed. All info on the web indicates a reinstallation of the program will fix it. This would be useful if I still actually had the installation disk.

sigh

7:21 AM – Janice, southbound, comes to a stop at red light. Makes (legal) right on red. White Chevy Malibu begins sounding horn from northbound side of street before turn lane traffic has begun moving. Malibu races up behind Janice and begins tailgating and blowing horn. Tailgating is so close that the car is not visible in the side view mirrors.

7:22 AM – Malibu passes Janice on left over double yellow line. Malibu cuts in front of Janice and brakes suddenly, coming to a complete stop. Janice nearly slams in to Malibu. Seatbelt locks engage. Janice blows horn. Malibu begins to move again. Then stops suddenly again, nearly causing another collision. Plate number is DZZ-1604

7:26 AM – Malibu enters left lane and brakes slowly coming in line with Janice (in the right lane.) Malibu begins drifting into right lane. Driver appears to be pointing something out of the passenger window. When windows are in line, it becomes evident that the driver of the Malibu is leaning over and attempting to take a picture of Janice with his cell phone. Malibu drops back more, behind Janice, continues taking pictures. Malibu passes on left again, taking pictures while passing.

7:30 AM – Malibu passes through light and pulls over. Driver exits car and waves at Janice while taking pictures of Janice stopped at light. Janice proceeds through light and makes left at next light out of fear for safety.

7:31 AM – Malibu appears ahead of Janice (westbound) on Hamilton.

7:35 AM – Janice makes right at light while Malibu proceeds straight at light.

I really like my MacBook Pro. It’s a great machine and they’ve made great improvements to their prosumer line of laptops since the Titanium Powerbook. That being said, I am not happy with the poor rigidity of the case in relation to the optical disk drive. For the third time in as many months, I’ve wrecked the burning of a DVD because I made the mistake of (gasp) picking up the laptop. Apparently any movement, even normal use such as moving the machine from the coffee table to my lap, results in the case warping just enough to cause the spinning disk to clatter against the inside of the case. This, of course, causes the disc burning progress bar to immediately scream out that it has lost communication with the disk drive. It’s really irritating. It seems pretty lame that I can’t move the laptop while it’s performing such a trivial task. It’s not like I’m jumping up and down with the machine. Yeesh.

Other than that, I have no complaints about this piece of hardware. 4.9 out of 5.0