Life or Something Close…

Things were a bit slow at work today. I played some Oregon Trail at Virtual Apple 2 and did pretty good if I do say so myself. I was a Carpenter, leaving in March. I did stick around MO for a bit until March 11 to leave on the trail and took my time, bought plenty of food but kept some cash for buying more food later and I hunted a lot. I’m proud to say I finally beat Oregon Trail from 1987!

Surely things around here are going to pick up soon. Honestly I’m bored on a daily basis here. I’m thinking about leaving right now cause I haven’t done much of anything this afternoon. I have like 3 things left on my punch list for the day, I can get them done in about 20 minutes if I go slow enough. Things are on the horizon but just not here yet.

I’ve gotten most of the John Adams mini-series on my AppleTV now, it’s about time to start watching it I think. Over 8 hours long, it’s going to take a bit of time. Praise Jebus for Netflix, you make it so easy to get tons of non-expiring movies on to my AppleTV without any effort what so ever.

As I was completing my transaction with the cashier the local royal frozen treat establishment the other day I noticed something that had been told to me before that I had merely brushed aside as Midwest stereotype. I was getting some cold milk products to take home for later and heard it.

I don’t normally eat ice cream that much so I ordered 3 individual items that should last me for months to come. I got my items, asked for a sack, assumingly the cashier thought that I probably was with someone when I was in fact alone.

As she completed the task of putting them in the bag I said, “Thanks, a have a nice day.”
She replied, “Yup.”

It could have been “Yep” or “Yulp” or any other variation you might know. The point is, I didn’t get a “You’re Welcome” or “Thank you” or anything else like that. Here’s the thing though, I’m not mad about it!

This one event has permanently cemented something that a professor told me about 4 years ago. She was from Canada and had never been to the Midwest before. She said that she noticed people were overall friendly and caring about others around them and even strangers but she said the one thing that really bothered her was the loud guttural “Yup” that people used instead of “You’re Welcome” or some such other phrase. It didn’t seem polite to her and tonight was probably the first time that it really didn’t sound that good to me.

I’m surely guilty of saying this horrid word time and again when provided a service to someone for which they are vocally grateful. I can’t believe how rude I sounded. At least “No Problem” wouldn’t have sounded so indifferent, would it?

Firefox 3 launched today at 1pm EST. That’s like exactly as I’m posting this. If you’re running FF 2.x then go upgrade (assuming your plugins are compatible of course).

If you’re not on FF at all yet, go get it. You’ll soon discover what millions are learning, IE sucks!

• Download
• New Features
• Plugins

Mozilla is also trying for a new world record for software downloads today, so go pitch in and be a part of history, er something like that anyway.

Update 1:36pm: Firefox must be getting hammered on this one. They are completely unreachable currently for me. The record must be going well but I can’t get in to even tell you if it’s worth it.

Update 3:42pm: Finally got it downloaded, installed and all my plugins are updated. Del.icio.us, GoogleToolbar, & ResurrectPages are all in A-OK now. So far so good. I mean it’s still basically the same, a little prettier and I see some new things I like here and there. I’m sure the blogosphere (do people still use that word?) will be abuzz about it over the next day or so.