Category Archives: FL Shorts

The Internet Hates Me!

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This past week, I was working on a brand new learning all about my newfound love for Machine Gun Kelly. It all started just a few short months ago and I even had the chance to see him in concert, but you’ll have to wait for all of that until some time next week or possibly later.

Yesterday, I was pretty much done with my MGK learning when I learned something unexpected — THE INTERNET HATES ME!

Now, when I say “THE INTERNET HATES ME,” I’m not talking about that angry group on the internet that attacks every single social media post with racist rants (they hate everyone).

I’m talking about the internet itself. Like that robot in the corner of your room that allows us all to communicate with anyone, anywhere, all the time.

Work Days

Most of my work days are kind of unstructured, unless I’m working on some sort of multi-day project. I usually just figure out what needs to get done and I try to finish that on that day. Usually that works out ok, and I stay up late at night working on my side projects: Ferdi’s Learnings, myVGBC, and other stuff.

This week, I planned on working on my MGK learning on Tuesday and Wednesday night, but stuff got in the way. I was too tired, or I had something else to do.

Yesterday, I finished my work early so I decided to get my MGK post early so that I could work on other stuff at night. I was pretty much done setting up my post when I realized that the post was Autosaving and had been for quite some time. I then noticed the internet was not working that well.

I restarted it, and still couldn’t save my entire post. Half of it was good to go, the other half went missing. This all happened because I made a plan.

In the past year, any time I try to tell myself “I can do this between these two or three hours, so that I can work on that later on,” the internet craps out on me mid-project and I instead spend that time trying to fix the internet.

I guess I should just continue to wing it every day and stay up late working on my other stuff when I have the time. I’m trying to get better at planning everything out to release more content each week, but I’m sorry that the internet hates me and won’t let me give you more.

If you wish you have more learnings and video game stuff to read and watch, blame it on the internet…

Urinals & Bathroom Humor

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This first question is for the dudes. Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a pee in a public restroom and you hear female voices coming from outside and immediately think you may be in the wrong bathroom? Then, you look down and realize you’re peeing at a urinal and they don’t have those in women’s bathrooms — or at least that is what we’ve been told.

Do women even know what a urinal looks like in real life? I guess from TV and movies, right? But I bet they would look weird in real life if you weren’t used to seeing them all the time.

I remember back in middle school the boys thought it was funny to lock each other in the girls bathroom. It was like the scariest thing that could happen, because that is exactly where you would go to catch the cooties. One day our teacher got annoyed and split the class into two groups: girls and boys.

She then took the girls on a field trip to the boys bathroom and the boys on a field trip to the girls bathroom to show us they were basically the same. I think one boy asked, “hey, where’s the urinals?” I remember the girl’s room having pink tiles on the wall, while we had blue — like a gender reveal party.

Here’s another bathroom thing I hear all the time lately. Any time the line for the Men’s bathroom is longer than the Women’s, I hear about seventeen different people say the same thing, “Wow, the men’s line is longer than the women’s? That never happens.”

What I noticed lately is that this does happen, often. Usually at places like the movies, after watching a big action movie. Something like Top Gun: Maverick or any new Marvel or Star Wars. It happens at sporting events and at rock concerts. It even happens at casinos (last time I was at the Hard Rock).

I’m pretty sure the men’s line is longer than the women’s line in most bathrooms, other than bars. And even there, lately the men have had a longer line. It was in college when women’s lines were always longer.

That’s all the bathroom thoughts I’ve had lately. I hope you enjoyed them. Thanks and I’ll be back later this week or next week with a special new post if everything goes as planned.

High-Level Biblical Names

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I’ve never been close friends with anyone with a high-level biblical name. I’m talking about names like Jesus or Angel, maybe Judas or Abraham (I actually do know of an Abraham who is a terrible criminal). Those old school, main character in a story or proverb type names.

What I’ve learned from Movies and TV is that anyone with one of these high profile names is usually bad news. They’re always criminals or up to no good.

Side Quest:
In college, I met a dude named Michael Jordan who was my same age. His parents probably named him right before MJ became the biggest name in Basketball. By the time I met him, there was only one Michael Jordan (even Michael B. Jordan, the actor, uses his middle initial to make sure people don’t think he’s THE MICHAEL JORDAN). 

The point is, I’m sure everyone who met this average Michael Jordan that I met in college made some kind of joke about him being great at basketball. And, what if he sucked at basketball? How embarrassing would that be?

People might say things like, “Hey man, I thought you were Michael Jordan.”

Of course, he could have answered them with,
“I never said I’m THE MICHAEL JORDAN, I’m just A Michael Jordan.“

Maybe Movies and TV are right in this case. Imagine being named after THE JESUS. Everyone would expect greatness from you. Sure, they know you’re no Messiah, but even when your parents named you, they may have been thinking we are blessing this baby with this great name to go on and do great things.

Star-Lord, man…

What if your parents named you Luke Skywalker or Peter “Star-Lord” Quill or Bruce Wayne. You’d be expected to be some great hero, or to help those in need and stop bad guys. Of course, these kids would end up being outlaws or criminals (and probably made fun of all through their school years).

You know who’s the best person to be friends with? Someone named Damian or Lucifer …Beelzebub?

Lucifer

These are the kids that are expected to be pure evil. The kids you’re supposed to stay away from on the playgrounds. They have no expectations to be a decent member of society, which will most likely push them towards proving their crappy parents wrong for giving them evil names.

Maybe I’m reading into this too much and our names don’t really make us who we are. Most of us are named by our parents as tiny baby humans who can’t even talk or do anything yet. Names are basically based on the first time our parents see us. If you want to know who a person really is, don’t ask them for their name, ask for their nickname.

What do people call you?

Split States

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What happened between the Carolinas and the Dakotas? Why did they have to split up? That’s something we never went over in middle school Geography class — or if we did I wasn’t paying attention that day, maybe I was sick.

Side Quest:
*It’s crazy to think that most grown ups have a few blindspots in Science, History, Math, English, Social Studies or some other popular school subject thanks to being sick, on vacation or just not paying attention. Have you found yourself in a conversation with other grown ups and they mention some historical topic that you have no idea what they are talking about, only to discover everyone else learned about it in middle school. That just means you missed that day (either physically or mentally) and now you’re dumb.

So, why did certain states split into a North and South? And what’s the deal with Virginia vs West Virginia? I don’t actually have any real answers, just my thoughts.

Current Geography

When it comes to the Dakotas (North and South), they are pretty evenly split. Looking at the map with your naked eye, a full Dakota would almost make up a perfect square. It seems as if they just tried to split it pretty straight down the middle, no negotiations. A classic 50/50 divorce.

Now, when we jump to the Carolinas (also, North and South) the split does not look so even, like the Dakotas. North Carolina seems to have gotten some more land in the deal. From my short Google research I have come to the conclusion that South Carolina is sort of the poor man’s Carolina, while North is a bit more diverse with a larger population. It’s also more expensive, so maybe South Carolina is the actual winner here.

The last of the split states are the Virginias. This one is a bit odd, because instead of doing an even “We’ll take the North, you take the South” kind of split, it’s only the Western part that went on its own. It’s like only twenty-five percent of Virginians were in disagreement with the other seventy-five percent, so they just gave them a smaller Virginia. They just said, “Go ahead, we don’t need you.”

Future Geography

My last point I’d like to make is that maybe Florida should be the next state to split. I am from South Florida (Miami) and I went to college in North Florida (Tallahassee). There are many differences between the Southern part of Florida and the top part — for example, we have myriad Cuban restaurants down here, but there was only one in Tallahassee — back when I was there (not counting Gordo’s).

In the future, there will be a South and North Florida. After the split it won’t take ten hours to drive out of one state, instead you’ll make your way through both South and North Florida. I would suggest that South Florida includes Orlando and Tampa, not just because of the hispanics, but mainly because I don’t want to have to pay out-of-state prices to visit Walt Disney World.

Ron DeSantis may remain in the top half of Florida with all of his COVID because he is an idiot. We’ll elect Gloria Estefan, The Rock, Pitbull or pretty much anyone else to be the Governor of South Florida and we’ll be better off.

Oh no, wait, now we have 51 states. It’s ok, that’s not a problem, I have a way to fix it. We get rid of Rhode Island. Not get rid of it and the people who live there, we’ll just let it merge into Connecticut.

*Disclaimer: I am no Geographer or Social Scientist. I just started thinking of the split states the other day and these thoughts came to my mind.

Bye Bye 2021. Hello 2022!

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2021 was a weird year, right?

Remember back in March of 2020 when everything shut down and we thought, Ok, in a couple of weeks things will be back to normal. I could still go to that Elton John concert in May. Sports won’t be canceled. And all those other silly thoughts we had.

Now it’s 2022 and another COVID infested year has passed us by.

Things started to get a little better for a minute. We got our vaccines and now our boosters — unless you didn’t for whatever reason. Then all of these variants started to come out of the woodwork and ruined all of our progress. 

Now, everyone is testing positive (with the Omicron) but mostly not getting sick. It just ruined their holiday weekend plans and made them stay at home for a few extra days.

Will we ever get rid of this?

But now it’s 2022 and we all have the same question — What’s next???

The answer: I don’t know. 

What I do know is that in 2021 I posted an average of about two learnings per month (maybe a little more), and I plan to be more consistent this year. 

Whether it’s a good year or a bad year. Whether you’re stuck at home or at the office, at least you will find some comfort in reading my stupid posts.

So, I guess I just wanted to say Happy 2022!

Also, stay tuned for more learnings and stuff…

Too Many Cars on the Road

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Every single day there are so many cars on the road. And up until recently all of those cars were being controlled by humans. Google and other big tech companies have already started testing out self-driving and robot cars, but I don’t think we’re even ready for this technology.

According to the research from Dayton, Ohio law firm The Brannon Law Firm there were an average of almost 16,000 car accidents per day across the US between 2005 and 2016. That sounds like a lot, but divided across the 50 states (320 daily), and tons of cities and towns (even less) — just think about how many car accidents (including small fender benders) you see each week while driving.

When you think about the roughly 150 million cars on the US streets each day, that is just a small percentage (0.01%). With all of these cars being controlled by humans — humans who now have smartphones and even more ways to easily be distracted than ever before — it’s kind of surprising that so many of us make it to our destination without any problems.

Back in the day the main distractions were the radio and billboards. Billboards are such a strange concept, especially today. You’re not supposed to be texting or reading on your phone, but it’s fine for some big company to pay a bunch of money to put some giant reading material to the side of the road for drivers?

Have you ever been driving on a crowded highway full of speeding cars and wondered How are we all doing this right now? Seriously, it’s like Olympic synchronized swimming*
— Click on the link!

It’s a miracle to see so many cars moving on the same multi-lane highway at such high speeds without everyone running into each other. The only thing keeping us from hitting each other is some paint on the ground which creates an imaginary lane for each car, and somehow that works.

Have you ever driven down a dark one lane highway, with cars headed in both directions, at night? This also makes no sense. You can’t even see what’s coming up ahead unless until right before it’s time to adjust. If there’s a car headed towards you with their headlights on, you can’t really see because they are blinding you.

Maybe you don’t think about these things and it’s just me. It didn’t start until recently. Maybe not driving much during the pandemic has made me appreciate driving on the highway a bit more. Anytime I drive on the highway these days I think, Wow, I haven’t been here in a while. Look at how fast I’m going! And from there I started thinking about the miracle of the highway and all of the cars working together.

If you haven’t thought about any of this then watch this last Olympic Synchronized Swimming video*. Seriously, this is just as impressive as what normal drivers are doing on the highway every single day.

*Sorry, NBC doesn’t allow their Olympic videos to be posted directly to other sites, so I guess you’ll just have to follow the links to YouTube. I hope you enjoy these two videos and please, drive safely. Otherwise the robots will come steal all of our cars and no humans will be driving, ever again.

I am not a Robot… }o; I think

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There’s one main reason why I prefer using my MacBook Pro over my PC for most of my “internet surfing.” People still call it surfin’ the internet, right?

Anytime I buy something or create a username for any website I come across a CAPTCHA quiz where my computer gets to decide whether or not I am a human. What’s with all of the pop quizzes, internet?

Old School Time Vortex of Words Captcha

These quizzes used to consist of strange combinations of letters and numbers that have passed through some wild time vortex. Those were easier than the visual ones of today. Anytime I am forced to choose which boxes contain [the secret item of the day] I’m only about 50% sure I’m right.

Is the pole part of the traffic light? Do jetskis count as boats? Is a boat still a boat if it’s on a trailer and not in the water? If most humans wouldn’t eat it, is it still considered food?

I didn’t know I had to go through an existential crisis to sign up for Bed, Bath and Beyond’s email list, or to buy concert tickets. Why are all of these robots wasting their time buying concert tickets and joining mailing lists? Who programmed them to do this?

They also never flat out tell you when you’re wrong, instead they move on to a new word. Maybe you’re just a dumb dumb, try again to convince me you are not a robot.

Why MacBook over PC:

Back to my main point: On my PC I have to actually choose which pictures are boats, roads, crosswalks or whatever they’re asking for. My MacBook (most of the time) assumes it’s still me and not a robot hijacking my Mac. So, it rarely goes into the guessing game. Instead I check the box I am not a robot (checkmark), and I continue with my purchase or whatever it is I’m doing.

So, although Macs are more expensive than your normal everyday PC, it’s definitely worth paying that extra money, just because your MacBook will remember that you are not a robot. If you don’t mind your computer accusing you of being a robot time and time again, then go ahead and get that DELL (or HP, or whatever Windows PC).

When to Change your Oil in a Pandemic?

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Anytime I’ve asked a mechanic, “How often should I change my oil?” The answer has always been every 5,000 to 7,000 miles — depending on what oil I’m using. I never really pay attention to the second part of their advice, “…or every three to six months.”

I’ve never had to listen to that part. I’ve always reached the mile goal before the time limit. Also, I always give it a few extra hundred or thousand miles — just to be safe. Even though the oil change recommendation sticker usually says “See you at [some number] miles OR [this date].” I’ve always taken it as, “See you at [some number] miles AND [this date].” Plus, some extra on both.

During the pandemic this whole oil sticker thing became a mess. While the time limit was way past due, I wasn’t even halfway to my mile goal. It didn’t make sense to me. How often do you change your oil when you’re not putting any miles on your car? Never…

I did eventually get my oil changed — possibly too late, as always. My car also has a meter that tells me my oil life in percentage. I don’t know how it works so I don’t truly trust it. I don’t think it’s actually testing my oil by reading any specific levels or anything like that. I believe it’s just a slow countdown in percentage.

The oil life meter is now at 30%-ish, so I guess it’s time for another oil change — soon.

If this helped at least one person realize that they need to get an oil change because they forgot that oil changes were a thing in this crazy year, then I have done my job.

Thank you and good night.

Remember Arm Wrestling…

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Remember when arm wrestling was a thing in movies? There was a time where most movies had a scene (usually at a bar) where one character had to arm wrestle another person (usually a giant strong dude) for information, some form of goods or just to prove themselves. This was in the 80s and 90s.

Some companies were dedicated to making specialty arm wrestling tables where you’d strap in your elbow and grab a small handle with your non-wrestling hand to have a stable arm wrestling match.

These tables are completely useless for any other activity. You can’t put snacks
on a table with all of these arm wrestling pillows… it’s just stupid!

Arm wrestling was even a thing you would see on real TV sometimes (like how you see cornhole tournaments, grocery bagging championships and cup stacking competitions today on ESPN). There was an arm wrestling league where people would arm wrestle each other in tournaments to see who had the strongest dominant arm.

Side Note: I actually looked it up and WAL, aka the World Armwrestling League is still a thing and there’s a Buffalo Wild Wings Open, so I guess it’s time we all boycott Buffalo Wild Wings?

I bet becoming the arm wrestling world champ is much easier as a lefty — less competition.

I’m not saying we should bring back the practice of arm wrestling, in fact, I think the exact opposite is true. I hope I never have to see another arm wrestling match in a movie ever again. If I see two people trying to arm wrestle in a bar I’m leaving that bar and I will never return.

Arm wrestling is a stupid thing of the past and it should be made illegal and forever banned in the entire world. I’m sorry if you’re reading this and you happen to be a professional arm wrestler, because that means you’ve wasted your life and you’re just realizing that right now as you read this.

So, in conclusion, Arm wrestling sucks. Why not be a full-body wrestler instead? Well, not a “real” Olympic wrestler because that’s boring to watch, be in the WWE and have a fun backstory. Have a cool finishing move that doesn’t make sense, but people are still afraid of it. Get your hands on that championship belt.

Or, if instead you don’t want to be any type of wrestler that’s ok too. Just keep doing whatever it is you were doing before you read this.

Thanks for your time, bye bye.

Super Bowl LV in Review (Ad Edition)

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Let me start off by saying that I am a trained advertiser. My certificate from the Miami Ad School will prove that to you. Check it out right here:

My Miami Ad School Diploma for Copywriting

I am an also award-winning copywriter. My Andy Award will prove it to you. (I’ve received other awards too, they just wanted us to pay to create a physical version, so we didn’t do that). Check it out right here:

My Andy Award for our student project — The Underground Library

So, I think I’m pretty qualified to analyze Super Bowl Ads. Now, I did not watch the entire Super Bowl, and there’s only one set of ads that I want to talk about — the T-Mobile ones. And although they were very clever and funny, the overall message just doesn’t work and I’ll tell you why. (I hope none of my friends from Ad School were involved with these).

Super Bowl LV – T-Mobile Ad – Gwen & Blake

First off, did you watch the video above? Ok, good…

The ad says, DON’T TRUST YOUR LOVE LIFE TO JUST ANY NETWORK. T-Mobile is blaming Adam Levine’s “bad network” for Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani ending up together. So, if Adam Levine would have been using T-Mobile 5G back “a few year ago” then we wouldn’t have Blake and Gwen together today.

A few weeks ago, Bill Maher talked about how America needs a couple like Blake and Gwen to show us that we can all get along. If Blake and Gwen, two people with completely different political beliefs, can find a way to love each other then we should all be able to love each other too (Of course, some people are racist and evil and you don’t have to love them). This ad shows me that T-Mobile supports a divided country and that’s not cool. I am so glad to be an AT&T customer and I hope to one day have a poor service, life-changing FaceTime call with someone.

Now onto the second ad in this series: Gronk and Brady

Super Bowl LV – T-Mobile Ad – Gronk & Brady

The second ad shows that a poor service FaceTime call between Tom Brady and Gronk is the whole reason Tom Brady didn’t retire and won another Super Bowl. It’s also the reason why Gronk was forced to come back and get another ring with him. So, again if these two dudes had T-Mobile at the time of this call they would have been living a boring retired life instead of adding to their Super Bowl bling collections.

So, what we have learned from these two commercials?
Sometimes, great things happen when you have crappy service.

For these ads to have worked in T-Mobile’s favor they should have reversed the messaging to:
Bad things happen when you have crappy service.

* * *

There is only one Super Bowl commercial that has ever mattered to me. It was for Colgate (even though I’ve always been a Crest person and now a Sensodyne person). The commerical basically said, “Hey! Turn off the water while you brush your teeth, dummy!” It’s been five years and I still think of that message whenever I leave the faucet on while brushing my teeth.

So, that and of course anything featuring talking M&M’s always wins as my favorite commercials.

Colgate Faucet Ad – Super Bowl (2016)

Side Note: *The truth is most people are stupid and they’ll just think, ‘Aw, those T-Mobile commercials were real funny. I think I’ll get T-Mobile.’ And they won’t over-analyze the whole situation like me and that’s fine. I don’t actually believe that T-Mobile supports a divided country, I believe they are just as evil as the rest of the phone companies (including AT&T).