62,487 Simple Rules of Life
62,487 rules, minus 62,467. Following these simple rules will add twenty years to your life span. I promise.
Rules for Dealing with Two-Year-Olds
- When crouching for any longer than five seconds, assume that you will be giving an enterprising two-year-old a piggy back ride.
- Always lock the bathroom door. If you’re being followed by a two-year-old, assume that said two-year-old will try to open the door and come in after you.
- Wear a cup when play fighting. If you are female… Well, lucky you, then.
- If you buy a Transformer for one of them, you must buy a Transformer for each of them. Transformers are unshareable commodities.
- Everything you say can and will be used against you at some point. Your two-year-old friend will repeat anything you say, and it will always be at the most inopportune time.
Situations That Must be Solved with a Dropkick
Dealing with a temperamental washing machine.- A raccoon attack.
- Getting locked out of your apartment.
- Getting locked in someone else’s apartment.
- A tie in Rock Paper Scissors.
Things You Must Never Leave Home Without
- Your wallet.
- Your keys.
- Your cellular communication device.
- Someone’s pants.
- Your grappling hook.
Reasons to Own a Samurai Sword
Hunting centipedes.- Looking badass walking down the street.
- Frightening passersby as you remove the sword from its scabbard and yell at them like Bruce Lee.
- Being more hardcore than anyone else at live action role playing event (lightning bolt, my ass).
- Slicing bread.
24 Truths for Mature Humans
I didn’t make these up. I read them somewhere on Tumblr. But they made me laugh. Enjoy.
- The most important part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.
- Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize that you’re wrong.
- I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.
- There is a great need for a sarcasm font.
- How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
- Was learning cursive really necessary?
- Map Quest (or Google Maps!) really needs to start their directions on step five. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my own neighbourhood.
- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
- I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.
- Bad decisions make for good stories.
- You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything else productive for the rest of the day.
- Can we all just agree to ignore whatever technology is invented after Blu Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection… Again.
- I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Microsoft Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I did not make any changes to.
- I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.
- I think the freezer deserves a light as well.
- I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I bet on any given Friday or Saturday night, more kisses begin with Budweiser than with Kay.
- I wish Google Maps has an “Avoid this Neighbourhood” routing option.
- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.
- How many times is it appropriate to say, “What?!” before you just smile and nod because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said?
- I love the sense of camaraderie you feel when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front.
- Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.
- Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch three consecutive times and still not know what time it is.
- Even under ideal conditions, people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and pinning the tail on the donkey. But I’d bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from three feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!
- The first testicular guard, the cup, was used in hockey in 1874, and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
Browse the Web Like a Ninja with These Google Chrome Extensions
You just don’t understand how terrible a web browser Internet Explorer 8 is (sorry, Microsoft) until you get around to trying one of the other popular browsers out there right now.
I faithfully stuck to Internet Explorer for years (from version two; no joke). I dismissed other browsers, such as Netscape (didn’t like the annoying bevel on its toolbar buttons, so sue me), Firefox (felt like the hipster of web browsers), Opera (it was just terrible up to version 9.5) and Safari (far too unstable in my tests). But when it took me twelve seconds to open a new tab in Internet Explorer and I felt like stabbing myself in the eye with an unripe banana, I knew it was time for a change.
I installed Google Chrome, tried it out for half an hour, and then never looked back. I could go on about how stable, fast and awesome it is, but this isn’t a browser review. Instead, I’d like to tell you about some extensions (add-ons, if you will) for Chrome that make browsing the web a faster, more efficient and enjoyable experience for me. So, without further ado… My top ten Google Chrome extensions that let me surf like a ninja, in no particular order.
1. Facebook for Google Chrome (download)
This extension installs a little Facebook icon next to your address bar that shows a number when you have unread notifications. You can then click the icon to post a status update, or get quick access to your news feed, wall, notifications and inbox. If you’re an avid Facebook user and you use Chrome, then you need this extension.
2. Google Mail Checker (download)
This extension is similar to the Facebook extension, except that it tells you how many unread messages you have in your Gmail inbox. Clicking its icon next to your address bar will open your Gmail account. Like a boss (don’t ask; I just wanted to put that phrase somewhere in this blog post).
3. Google Translator (download)
I have multi-lingual friends who sometimes post status updates in other languages. After weeks of tabbing between Facebook and Google Translate, I discovered this extension. Click the button beside your address bar, and use Google Translate inside a convenient popup without having to open the web site. Holy useful, Batman.
4. SearchPreview for Google (download)
This extension adds a preview thumbnail beside each result when you do a Google search. Even if you don’t consider this particularly useful, it does make your search results look rad. And after using this extension for a while, seeing a Google search results page in someone else’s browser without the thumbnails looks extremely weird.
5. Google Quick Scroll (download)
Have you ever clicked a Google search result, only to have to scroll through pages of text looking for the information relevant to your search terms? You need this extension. When you do a Google search and open one of the pages from the results, a small popup spawns in the lower-right corner of your browser with direct links to the content on the page that has to do with what you searched for. This saves me precious minutes every single day.
6. Wikipedia Companion – Mini Wiki Browser (download)
I love this extension. It makes my inner Wikipedia whore very, very happy. I read an average of 4,238 Wiki articles per day, and most of the time it’s for quick information on something I’ve just heard or read about. With this extension, I don’t even have to open the Wikipedia web site or do a Google search. I just open the popup from my address bar, type my search terms, and read the Wiki. It even collapses the subheadings to reduce initial clutter, making it easy to find specific information (like artist discographies!).
7. Fast Youtube Search (download)
This is a very simple extension that places a Youtube button next to your address bar. Click the button, type your search terms, and it opens your Youtube search results in a new tab. Another useful function to have if you constantly find yourself looking for specific videos on Youtube throughout the day.
8. Dionysus (download)
If you’ve ever visited a web site that had embedded music that you really wanted to download, and aren’t comfortable looking in your browser’s cache for it, this extension may help. When it detects MP3 or OGG music embedded in a page, it displays a little icon inside your address bar that lists all such files, and gives you links to download them.
9. Chrome Link Checker (download) and RapidShare Link Validator (download)
If you ever download files from file sharing services such as RapidShare, MegaUpload or DepositFiles, you’ve no doubt shared my pain when you clicked on a download link, only to find that it was broken, or had been removed by the service. Chrome Link Checker will automatically highlight any such download links on a page, making them easy to pick out. It’ll highlight broken links in red, and good links in green, so that you know which ones not to bother with. Brilliant.
RapidShare Link Validator goes a step further and gives you an icon inside your address bar whenever a page contains RapidShare links. The icon will be red if none of the links work, yellow if some of them work, and green if all of them are valid. This extension works only for RapidShare links, but is still quite useful, especially when paired with Chrome Link Checker.
10. Mini Google Maps (download)
The Mini Google Maps extension isn’t as functional as opening Google Maps in a full browser tab, but having a map in a little popup window that loads instantly is cool, nonetheless. And it does serve a purpose if you need to check a map really quickly without the need for fancy stuff like driving directions. Either way, it makes my list.
Questions? Comments? I’m always glad to find new useful extensions, so if you have any that you enjoy using, I’ll trade pink coconuts for them.
5 people have commented. What do you think?Laugh Inappropriately (You Jackass)
Sometimes you just can’t help it. You know it’d be wrong to laugh. This a serious situation, damnit! But the more you think about trying not to laugh, the harder it becomes to resist.
It happens to all of us, and I love it. Most of the time. And since everyone enjoys a good list, I present to you the top five most inappropriate situations to laugh in. In no particular order.
1. During a movie. Better yet, a serious movie.
You’re in a movie theatre, and half the audience is getting teary-eyed. But for some reason, you just can’t help but laugh. @diredhanan laughed during Schindler’s List. And it happens to me all the time. Maybe I just like the weird looks I get from people sitting around me when it happens.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a sad movie. Have you ever been to a movie that had funny parts, which made everyone else laugh, but you seemed to laugh at all the other parts? You’re the only idiot sitting in the theatre, laughing when the dude gets fired from his job, or when his dog dies.
2. During an important phone call with a client.
You’re in an important phone call. You know you shouldn’t be browsing Fail Blog while you’re talking to that client, but you’re doing it anyway. Or something funny just pops into your head. A good memory of the time you threw your friend over a fence into an unsuspecting gardener’s yard in grade school.
Yesterday at work, Turkish was talking to a client. I was cleaning up some garbage from breakfast, and he threw his garbage to me to put into a bag. Apparently, I temporarily forgot how to catch things, because the garbage hit me in the face, and we started laughing. I’m not sure what the client thought, but Turkish was laughing so hard, he had to hang up the phone.
3. During a public speaking event/conference.
A couple of years ago, I attended a VMWare conference in Toronto with a colleague. During one of the talks, I looked over to see him scratching some paint off his jeans. He turned to me and, in his best Russell Peters impression, said, “Just got some paaaaaaint.” I started to crack up. I’m not good at holding in my laughter.
I could feel my face turning three shades of red. Maybe seven. I started to shake with laughter-induced convulsions. My colleague, who had started to laugh at me at this point, was now wheezing like a chain smoker from trying to hold it in. The more he laughed, the more I laughed. People around us started to get visibly annoyed. By the time we had finally calmed down, more than half of the people sitting around us had left and our section looked empty!
4. The big one – during funerals!
The scene: My grandmother’s memorial service. The audience is asked to read a quoted scripture from their Bibles. Turkish opens his, turns to the page requested, and finds a little piece of paper hidden in the book. On it, a short message: “Hola senor Turkish! *smiley face*” He starts to crack up. He shows it to Dom, who’s sitting beside him. Dom starts to crack up.
Laughter is highly infectious. Especially Dom’s laugh. Kudos to them both for the effort they put into hiding it, but I could hear them both from the front. I sat there and smiled, vaguely recalling hiding that little note in his book months prior. Turkish still feels embarrassed to this day, but I continue to assure him that we (the family) were all happy about the incident – my grandmother was a jovial woman, and probably would have pulled the prank herself, if she was able to. She would have been glad that it happened at her funeral.
That said, not everyone has as good a sense of humour as my family, so I don’t officially condone this behaviour. 
5. At the expense of others’ pain/injury.
We all laugh at those fail videos. Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t funny:
A guy gets wholloped in the jacobs by a child (been there). Boyo walks into a metal pole (seen it). Girl gets poked in the eye by her boyfriend (@TheChicoProd gets credit for that one). In those precious few moments before it hits us that they may actually need help, we laugh. Who knows why, but if it isn’t serious, then why not?
It’s truly a sad existence that someone lives if they can’t laugh at themselves. I do it all the time. It keeps me sane. It keeps me grounded. It keeps me humble. So next time you feel the urge to run away embarrassed, try just laughing at yourself, instead. Out loud. It helps. And it shows people that you don’t take yourself too seriously.
I’m really enjoying hearing some of your inappropriate laughter stories. Stick yours in a comment and join us all while we laugh at you, too!
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