Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[C is for]

Loudest thunderstorm ever. And super bright. And...I just heard sirens. How is anyone asleep?

[Imogen]

So I'm having my first ever hives allergic reaction, and it totally SUCKS. THEY ARE ALL OVER MY BODY!!!! I think they're in my scalp too. It's like having chicken pox again, except worse since I don't know what caused this!!!

[Whistler]

it's so scary, isn't it! Try to at least write down what you've eaten recently and any medications/strange plants. But sometimes you can get hives as a reaction to stress too :-/. good luck figuring it out!

[Emiliana]

Blech, that's no fun!

[Imogen]

Pretty sure I'm allergic to red food dye, the color of my favorite candy and sno cone flavors....no fair!!!!

[UffishThought]

If you still enjoy HabitRPG after a while, let me know. I am trying to think of incentives and this just might work for me, but I don't think I want to try it yet.

It's been a month, and I'm still using it. It took me a few days to get into it, but there are some features I really like. For example: you can set up daily goals, and it keeps track of how many days in a row you've accomplished them. But it also colors the goal--red for bad, blue for good, and that reflects more of an overall trend. So if I screw up my streak of accomplishments, I don't feel like I've lost all my progress: I still see I'm doing pretty well on that front.

It's not perfect, and it looks like they're still very much developing it, so I won't sing its praises too much. But at the same time, it's a little incentive to set good habits and check a few things off my to-do list, and with a fairly structureless summer, I've really enjoyed a little extra motivation. I say go for it.

[bobtheenchantedone]

I'm also still using HabitRPG. In addition to what Uffish said, one thing I really like is that it's not just for habits or just for daily tasks or just a to-do list - it's all in one, which makes me much more likely to actually go there every day and remember to do all of those things. (One of my biggest roadblocks to success is a) actually putting things on my to-do list and b) remembering to do them.)

It's also working really well to help me start doing things more frequently that I want to make habits, but I can also go about those habits in different ways: if I want to do it every day, I can make it a daily and therefore lose HP when I don't do it (there's also an option to only make it a task on certain days, so I can turn off all of the work dailies for Sundays); otherwise, I can make it a habit and get rewards when I do it but there's no pressure to do it every day. One way I utilize this difference is that exercising is a daily while doing reps of certain exercises are habits, so I both have incentive to do anything (even a little stretching before bed bags me the gold and avoids the HP loss) as well as incentive to do a lot.

[Digit]

I wonder how many other senior citizens are still leasing old rotary phones from the phone company. That linked case was in 2006. $29.10 every three months.

[Squirrel]

Does that mean that, in order to have a rotary phone, it has to be leased? Or can it just be owned? I can't imagine my grandma putting up with having to pay so much for a phone. By the way, She has a dark green one that's a wall mounted-one. I love it- because it's green. and old. But mostly because it's green.

[UffishThought]

Ugh. I keep buying books. This is going to suck when it's time to move, next month. At least they're from a thrift store, right? 6 more regular books (three from series I'm working on completing!) one audio book (on cassette, but that's what cars are for) and two old-time radio show cassettes. (The Shadow!) This puts me up to 392 books, not counting cookbooks. And I'm going to Powell's in a week or two (AND I GET TO SEE GENUINE, WOO!) and I expect to come back with a metric crap-ton of books then, as well.

I comfort myself by saying that many of them will go towards a classroom library, but the truth is I just like owning books. And I'm not sure I want kids destroying some of these books that have taken me years to accumulate. And I don't actually have a position as a teacher, so maybe I don't need to be so gung-ho about collecting them. But still. Boooooooks.

[krebscout]

This has been a terrible, terrible week.

[Digit]

I suppose niche leech markets held onto senior citizens long after it became actually possible to own your own phone (they used to have to be leased from the phone company) by never telling them about the big change in the world and them actually never hearing about it and continuing the plan they were on and the phone company quietly continuing to let them.

This is pretty bad:

As a result, by 1940 the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves. This allowed Bell to prohibit their customers from connecting phones not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a type of phone not leased by the local Bell monopoly, he or she had to purchase the phone at cost, give it to the phone company, then pay a 're-wiring' charge and a monthly lease fee in order to use it.

[Portia]

I suppose niche leech markets held onto senior citizens long after it became actually possible to own your own phone (they used to have to be leased from the phone company) by never telling them about the big change in the world and them actually never hearing about it and continuing the plan they were on and the phone company quietly continuing to let them.

This is pretty bad:

As a result, by 1940 the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves. This allowed Bell to prohibit their customers from connecting phones not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying fees. For example, if a customer desired a type of phone not leased by the local Bell monopoly, he or she had to purchase the phone at cost, give it to the phone company, then pay a 're-wiring' charge and a monthly lease fee in order to use it.

and this is so different from cell phone contracts how?...

[Genuine Article]

And I'm going to Powell's in a week or two (AND I GET TO SEE GENUINE, WOO!) and I expect to come back with a metric crap-ton of books then, as well.

WOOOOO!

[Emiliana]

This has been a terrible, terrible week.

I'm sorry, kreb.

[Digit]

and this is so different from cell phone contracts how?...

I haven't had the misfortune of running into a cell phone contract that required me to give ownership of a handset I already owned to the service provider so they could lease it back to me. That would be a bad cell phone contract.

[Whistler]

This has been a terrible, terrible week.

[Laser Jock]

Does that mean that, in order to have a rotary phone, it has to be leased? Or can it just be owned? I can't imagine my grandma putting up with having to pay so much for a phone. By the way, She has a dark green one that's a wall mounted-one. I love it- because it's green. and old. But mostly because it's green.

You can own your own rotary phone (and I assume that most people who still have rotary phones do own theirs). This was just a shocking case of someone who apparently didn't realize this fact and kept paying the phone company.

[Imogen]

I'm going to WorldCon in San Antonio with the guy I like! I wish I was not so awkward and could make him fall under my spell!

Also, I am depressed by the number of things I probably can't eat anymore since I'm most likely allergic to red dye.

[SmurfBlueSnuggie]

Ugh. I keep buying books. This is going to suck when it's time to move, next month. At least they're from a thrift store, right? 6 more regular books (three from series I'm working on completing!) one audio book (on cassette, but that's what cars are for) and two old-time radio show cassettes. (The Shadow!) This puts me up to 392 books, not counting cookbooks. And I'm going to Powell's in a week or two (AND I GET TO SEE GENUINE, WOO!) and I expect to come back with a metric crap-ton of books then, as well.

Wait, there are epic Board Writers in Portland? Or is there a Powell's elsewhere? Because I'm sort of tempted to be super fan-girl here, and beg to meet you. Also, I'm sad that I've never been to Powell's, so I need to go there sometime anyways.