Never refuse an outstretched hand

That's what I've been taught from my parents. If someone wants to shake your hand, shake it. ...and you better be on your feet when you do it. So I do. ...each time. If I'm sitting, I'll get my arse up.

So here's a thought I've had lately, and I definitely wouldn't mind some feedback on this one using the comments button below.

It seems that the people in my office have a problem figuring out how to use the sink in the men's restroom. If it so happens that I'm camped out in there, I can hear footsteps in, squirt squirt squirt, flush, footsteps out. HEY! Where's the running water? I don't consider myself overly germaphobic, but I won't even touch the flusher handles with anything other than the bottom of my shoe. I even open the door using the paper towels I dried my hands with. Not some of the time.... 100% of the time. If there's no trash can near the door to drop the towels in, they go on the floor. That's what cleaning people are for, and they should have put a waste can next to the door.

My point is, I won't touch anything that I know someone else has touched after messing with their wobblies. Forget it. So here's my problem. I can't refuse an outstretched hand. At the work place, it happens all the time. So I can't tell you how many times after 'greetings', I've taken a break to go wash my hands. It's almost to the point where I need to bring my own soap because my hands are getting chewed up by all the industrial soap.

I can't think of any other way to handle this, and I'm not so bold as to post a sign in front of the urinals. I guess y'all can consider this a warning for those of you reading this that work with me. ....and I hope I haven't kicked off a new phobia for you guys, but if ever I needed a support group, I don't want to be alone.

"Hi, I'm Gary, and I'm afraid of pissy hands"

"HI GARY!"

Ok, there's my rant. I'm gonna go make lunch now, but first I'm going to wash my hands because they feel nasty after typing all this.

-Gary

Fine Arts major at the Electoral College

Of those reading this, the majority is about to learn something new. Like, what in the name of 'Fred' is the Electoral College all about?

Here's the poop. Simply put, we (citizens) don't vote for a president. A designated 'elector' does. Why do we vote? Because we tell the 'elector' how to vote with our vote. Different states have different numbers of electors. There's a run down in the pic below. It's hard to see, but my point is that each state has a different number.


So here's how we get the number of designated 'electors' in a given state. A state gets an elector equal to its number of members in the U. S. House of Representatives plus one for each of its two U. S. Senators. The variations usually come based on population. Each elector gets one vote. Currently, if you (can) add up the numbers in the handy picture I stole off the Internet, you will see we have 538 electors, the majority being 270 which, as you saw yesterday, our candidate needed.

Our founding fathers had issue with a direct popular election vote. So instead, they implemented this system to prevent the possibility of election fraud, and also preventing a candidate being elected that was only well known in certain regions and totally unknown in others. If you look at the picture above, we still may find a problem with the way this is being handled. "What are you saying, Gary?" I'm saying it's possible, mathematically, for a candidate to have the greater number of votes, and lose the election. The good news is that has only happened 3 times in the history of Presidential elections. The third time was in 2000 when 'Dubya' lost the popular vote, but won the election over that boring guy whose name I forgot. Al Bore, or something like that...

So, there it is.. A system that has been around since horse and buggy, and we still use it today. My thought is that with the technological advances we've had in communications in our country, it's about time we went and took another look at how elections are done.... But then again, if we had done that before Y2K, then we would have seen this past election with Al Gore's name pasted everywhere. Maybe the system is working alright anyways.

-Gary

It's Raining Elephants

....and they're smashing all the donkeys.

I read today that a study shows that Republicans are most likely to get out and vote in bad weather. Well it's rainy in Houston and various other parts of the nation, so not only is 'Dubya' leading our country, but he's figured out how to control the weather.

So, in the words of Shirley Manson (Lead singer of "Garbage"), let me say that.....

I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains

GO VOTE!! I was lucky, I had no line when I went around 9:30 this morning. I was told by the 'help' that the line was outside and around the block at 7AM this morning, so I definitely suggest going off-peak hours.

-Gary

Why the hub-bub....Bub?

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time. -Dave Barry

Well, let me tell ya... I researched it.

This clock changing crap started back with Ben Franklin days. Actually he was a big influence for it in his oil lamp days. Seemed that when Benny was in Paris as an American delegate, he didn't get out much. (Gout will do that to you). He wrote an essay about an 'Economical Project'. Basically, he was bored enough to record data on how much oil was used in an evening, and how much light it produced. From there, the idea came to borrow sunlight from the morning, and move it to the evening during the summer months for longer natural light in the evening. You do that by changing the clocks. There were many concepts of how to do this over the years, and laws were made and broken on how to standardize time away from sundial reference. Finally, Britain enabled an Act in 1925 and called it 'Summertime'. After all that was settled, and people pushed for standard time zones (mainly railroads) the concept of 'Daylight Saving Time' was applied. In the time of electricity, this reduced the amount of people's electricity bills. (3.5% to 5% drop if you ask the power companies.)

Ronald Reagan (moment of silence) signed Public Law 99-359 in 1986. This changed the date to start Daylight Saving Time from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. This change to include the whole month of April is estimated in saving about 300,000 barrels of oil each year. So there's an example on how to answer the 'why' question on Daylight Saving Time.

Oh, other trivia? The word 'Saving' is used as a verbal adjective (participle). So when you hear someone say "Dayling SavingS Time", you have my blessing to poke them in the eye.

-Gary