Dear Steve Jobs: Leftys Also Use Technology

Leftys totally get the shaft - Lots of times I've given up and learned to do things with my right hand because I don't want to deal with trying to do it lefty. For instance, there are never left handed scissors, bowling balls or golf clubs when you need them. Granted I don't bowl with my left hand - I just end up being uncomfortable using a right handed ball (we're talking about 10 pin bowling of course, as there are no holes in candle pin ones).

The latest lefty injustice is the new iPhone4 - apparently when held in the left hand it you lose the signal and calls drop. Check out this Engadget article to see what happens and why.

Actually this fault in the iPhone4 would probably suck for rightys who hold the phone in their left hand and navigate with their right one while using the internet. I guess you could just adjust - or get a case for the phone, which a lot of people do - but like my friend says it takes away from the aesthetics of the phone and makes it bulkier.

So I guess these are the "work arounds" for this problem:

1. Don't upgrade to the new iPhone
2. Get some kind of superfly case to make up for the fact that you have to put the iPhone in the case (and maybe reconsider getting the albino version if your case coves a lot of the phone)
3. Always hold you phone in the right hand - which means learning to navigate with the left hand or your right thumb (yay opposable thumbs!)
4. Hold your iPhone4 in your left hand, but in the same manner that you would hold a teacup so your palm won't touch the left corner - however you might be more likely to drop it if handling the phone this way, and apparently the gorilla glass doesn't work super well either...

Hooray Technology FAILS!

~emy

WIPEOUT

I don't know why but WIPEOUT is soooooo entertaining to watch. Granted it's not a show I need to keep up with every week, or will watch online if I missed it - but when it's the only thing on it's completely captivating. It's like watching a train wreck, but hilarious at the same time.

I would say I feel bad for the people on this show, but they sign up for it! They must have seen it before and realize that they are gonna be hurting REAL bad the next day. I never really get why the physically unfit even try to do this show because that's just torturing yourself as you're not even going to come close to winning the money at the end.

I wonder who comes up with these games? The Big Balls have gotten revamped in this year's show. They seem to be on hydrolic lifts and move up and down as well - basically I never think that anyone is going to make it past these. I know the original Big Ball a number of people have made it through the obstacle -personally I've only ever seen it happen once, so I don't think the Moving Big Balls will be conquered.

For your viewing pleasure, some wipeouts on the Big Balls - I think the worst one is when the contestant gets stuck under one of the balls...



~emy

About that new Katy Perry Song...

Fun Fact: Katy Perry has a cat named Kitty Purry, but that's besides the point.

Her latest song is pretty catchy to listen to on the radio, it's the kind of song that gets in your head and drives you crazy, and for some reason I have a lot to say about it.

First: Why are there so many songs about California?
Popular songs too - a few come to mind off the top of my head: California Girls, Californication, Dani California, California Dreamin', California (Phantom Plant song). I can't only think of one song that's kind of about Mass - Homecoming King by Guster, but then again there are a lot of songs about Boston. In terms of the state though, not so much

Second: Why is the video a "California" Candy land?
It doesn't really even go with the lyrics that much, and it's really weird. I thought this video was going to be Katy Perry doing a old school beach party movie kind of theme going on. However, seeing Snoop Dogg in a suit made out of a cupcake patterned fabric is kind of awesome

Third: Holy crap there are a lot of parodies of this song!
Two about Jersey Guidos and "gurls" from Florida, Oklahoma, Iowa, Philly, New York, Minnesota, Atlanta Boyz, California Dorks... and it goes on and on

This one is actually makes fun of California Gurls, which I kind of like - especially since the C's lost to LA last night...apparently these people make lots of vids too...



~emy

Reality TV Roundup

I guess Wednesday night is now the day I watch reality tv - all of the other shows have ended their seasons and now we're on to summer shows.

First there's So You Think You Can Dance. So first here is the good stuff

• AMAZING cast of dancers - well mainly the guys. It really seems like they've set it up for another male winner. The men just have more personality and were followed more during the audition process. I'm rooting for Alex Wong, who had the judges practically in tears last night after his dance
• Back during it's normal season. I LOVE LOVE LOVE dance, but I just couldn't get into it when it was in the fall. They drag the show out so much between the actual dances that it's hard to focus on it when there's other good network shows on in the fall, like The Office or 30 Rock. In the summer I have the time to focus on the show as there is a lot less on.
• No more shrill banshee yells as Mary Murphy is no longer a permanent judge. The hot tamale train was OK the 1st time - but not screams every time

Now the bad...

• They're still using the giant stage. I miss the old one - you could feel the emotion of the dancers better as there was less space to fill, and I think that the camera men were better at moving around it. Last night the opening sequence was horrible! They were either zoomed too far out or too far in, or not on the dancer at all. BLECK
• Mia Michaels is a judge now - she's a awesome choreographer, but I feel like she plays favorites a lot.
• The most annoying host in reality tv is still around and still pronouncing judges like jidges - double BLECK!

On to the next show!! Top Chef DC! Now this might be super un-PC but there seems to be a lot more African-American chefs on this season than any other. There's four and a half on this season out of 17 contestants. The half is because one guy is half. I wonder if they did it because it's taking place in DC and we have a half African president. Maybe I just noticed it too because the people who were in the top last night were African and it just stood out more...that's all I got about this show so far except for there's an Italian (?) guy who owns an Asian restaurant...weird

~emy

Why I hate weekend napping

This week has been pretty terrible for me, and all because of weekend napping. If I fall asleep during the day, I end up staying up later at night and this throws off my sleep pattern for the rest of the week. It's so hard to resist falling asleep - especially because the weekend is about relaxing and you pretty much lounge around. Then I end up being awake during the wee hours of the night.

The during week I've been falling asleep during Jeopardy to the soothing voice of host Alex Trebek. At least I've been waking up in time to watch the Celtics games - even if they did get crushed tonight.

It actually hasn't been too bad staying awake at work once I get past the first hour, but it really just drags on and on and on. Surprisingly I haven't needed to drink any coffee either to stay awake - although part of that is because the coffee at work is pretty nasty so I try not to drink it at all costs. I wish we had a K-cup machine at work, that would be sweet in a bitter caffeinated way of course.

Napping was so much easier back in college when I didn't have to be up at 6:30am in the morning - I need a schedule like that again without the whole going to classes and taking test thing. I don't think there are jobs like that unless you are a professor - and then where would you nap? In your office? Seems kind of weird to me.

Hopefully more interesting content later on in the week

~emy

Goodbye My (German?!?) Cellphone

So last week I'm getting my phone out of my pocket and yea I definitely dropped it. Now I've dropped this phone before and usually it's no big deal - but this time it hit the corner of the spiral staircase at my work at just the right angle and, well, see for yourself:

It actually still worked - just the front screen is broken. In fact the front screen didn't work anyways because the flip feature of the phone has been broken for a while. this means I couldn't:

• Answer the phone by flipping open
• End a call by flipping shut
• See the time on the front screen
• Easily change the volume of my ring tone
• Also - very unrelated - the T9 texting feature didn't really work, it seemed to want to make words in what I assume was German due to all the umlauts, and not English (despite the language being in English),which was kind of annoying
  

But I can't be expected to carry around sharp plastic around. Thank goodness I still have my old cellphone (so old it doesn't have a camera in it) and I can just move the SIM card. This way I can think about what phone I want to get. You're probably thinking "do you have AT&T? get the iPhone", but I really don't want a smart phone. WHAT?!? NO SMART PHONE? Sounds kinda crazy but here's why:

1. I won't be able to fit it in my back pocket
2. I'd have to get some kind of protective case for it - and my charm couldn't go on it
3. I would probably get addicted to Twitter and be like "Watching Joey eat a sandwich" , "Squirrel across the street climbing a tree" and how annoying would that be?
4. I don't really want to pay more for the data plan - I just need to make calls and sometimes texts
   
5. I'm by a computer most of the day during work - I don't need one on me at all times

But yea - any suggestions on phones that AT&T sells? I've liked flip phones in the past. Any opinions on sliders?

~emy

Ugly Ugly Penguin

These are kind of old - but for some reason I just recently downloaded them off my camera. I bought this penguin cupcake mold for the boyfriend, because he really likes penguins, and this is our feeble attempt and making it:

So it definitely said fill each cup three quarters of the way full - and when we did it ended up baking over looking like a Ghostbuster's Character

Got the back trimmed up and there it is before frosting - not too shabby huh?

So now we're supposed to make little dots of frosting all over, kinda like this owl, but I didn't have tips or an icing bag - so I just used a ziplock bag and cut a hole in the corner, the orange was in a tube so it came out slightly better

I started out with dots but gave up and just piped frosting however I could - the bottom 2 body pieces actually had dots that I covered with stripes after.

He might have been one ugly penguin - but he did taste good!

~emy

Dumpling Dairy - Attempt #1

Yay Google! Blogger is fixed! Now I can blog!!

So the boyfriend was nice enough to order this cook book with his other stuff so I wouldn't have to pay for shipping and I finally made my first attempt at making dumplings from scratch. Now don't get me wrong, I've made dumplings before - just always bought the wrappers from stores, never made them myself.

I started with the first recipe in the book, because it seemed simple enough...three hours later I had dumplings. The wrappers were a lot trickier than I thought they would be - they stuck to everything and I had to keep using more flour - I don't think the humid weather was helping either.

Check out the photos I took along the way of my pork and nappa cabbage water dumplings!

The filling: mainly pork, nappa cabbage & scallion


The dough, tortilla press and the start of the wrappers!

Rolled out with my dowel rolling pin - the middle (aka the belly) is thicker for better wrapper to filling ratio, mine aren't that circular - guess i need more practice

Cooking them up!

Finished pea pod and pleated crescent shapes

That one is a flower bud shape - kinda...

The in the middle is a poor attempt at closed satchel - guess I need a lot more practice before trying to make soup dumplings

~emy

Funkified Glee

I wouldn't call myself a Gleek (Glee Geek) but I definitely enjoy watching this show. I definitely think this weeks show was better than last weeks.

I think there was too much hype about it being Lady Gaga music on Glee last week and they really only did two songs. Granted their version of Bad Romance was pretty good but the Poker Face was kinda weird. Sounded great during parts of it - but just way too put beat and cheery sounding for me.

This week was better as it was about "funk" - yet creepier with Will hitting on Sue, and pregnant girls dancing around, but how can you dislike an episode featuring the musical stylings of Mark Wahlberg? Also I wonder if those were real eggs they chucked at Rachel? It must really suck reading your script and then seeing (gets pelted by eggs) as part of the action. YUCK! Hopefully they get it on the first take - altho I can see one of the people throwing the eggs "messing up" so they have to do the scene again, because how often do you get to hurl an egg at someone?

~emy