I look forward to the day when my complexion doesn't directly reflect my stress level. I think the current rate of exchange is two zits per final.



Also, at what point are they going to stop making airplanes that have a no smoking light above every seat? Is there anyone out there who still needs to be reminded you aren't allowed to smoke on a plane?

How the economy could have been fixed:

Instead of borrowing 800 billion dollars from China, the government should have just printed the 800 it needed.

"You can't do that, dummy. There'll be way too much inflation."

Ok, so we pay China 1 billion dollars to keep our secret. We just tell everyone the money was a loan and go on our merry way. The dollar maintains its integrity while I lose mine, but at least I wouldn't be a billion dollars in debt to the commies.

I don't understand the placement of the Hulu commercials. You'd figure since they only have three per half hour program, they'd make the most of them. Instead, there's always one between the closing scene and the credits. I don't know, maybe there's a lot of people out there who like seeing the credits roll and are willing to wait through another commercial to get to them. Personally, if I were paying to advertise on that site, I'd be a little upset that like 99% of my viewers x'ed out the window because no one wants to end their favorite show with a commercial if they don't have to.

Things I'm Thankful For:

I'm thankful to have been born when I was. Any sooner and I may have been eaten by a dinosaur, and any later and I could have been enslaved by an alien race.

Also, I'm thankful for science fiction movies.

I hope that guy who did the voiceover for "congratulations! you've just won two free ipods!" gets those very same popups nonstop on his computer and rues the day of the birth.

Do you think Kermit feels more at home on Sesame Street or on the Muppet Show? As far as I know, he's the only child of Hensen who lives in more than one puppet universe. He's kind of a big deal among the Muppets, but Kermit's not the type I would picture hogging the spotlight so I don't think the attention matters too much to him. I appreciate his message about self acceptance with "It's Not Easy Being Green", and he had an ok reoccurring skit as a reporter on Sesame Street. He was always a lot funnier on the Muppets, but I think he would have been a lot better off without Miss Piggy around. That girl is like gangrene eating away slowly at Kermit's soul.

No one really feels bad when the Beast throws Gaston off the roof at the end of the movie, but I do. What if Gaston had just arrived a little sooner, like when Belle or her father were still in the prison? Then his actions would have made him the hero of the movie. Even at the end of the movie after the Beast has discovered his humanity again, Gaston's aggressions are fueled by his love for Belle and in defense of his pride, nevermind the fact he's trying to protect the village- all noble causes to fight for. Plus, the Beast was a jerk at the beginning of the movie, all the way from the prologue to when he let Belle leave. He changed only after continued exposure to Belle, an opportunity Gaston was never given. The Beast and Gaston are similar in that they both used Moris' potential captivity to manipulate Belle into staying with them- the Beast only did so sooner. Perhaps if Gaston had been the quicker of the two to resort to abduction Belle could have soften his masculine edges and taught him an appreciation for literacy as well.

All I'm saying in Gaston wasn't such a bad guy.

BYU Review 11.02.2009

Why is every website on the internet user friendly with a competent layout with the exception of BYU's library? Trying to find a pertinent article on that thing is like trying to breath underwater in outer space. You can't do it.


The site with the desktop backgrounds:
http://afremov.com/shop.php?start=150&user_id=100001&parent_id=0&keywords_search=&order_field=a.end_time&order_type=DESC

BYU Review 10.29.2009

BYU Review 10.28.2009

Dr Epic and Blayzer's first BYU Review.

this one was long and boring. in the future we're going to break them up a little more.

Latest million dollar idea

I finally have enough credits to qualify for a decent registration date for classes. Previously, I've been assigned a day a week or two into registration and at that point all of the good classes were already taken.

Here's my idea- underclassmen can sign up for classes they'd like to be able to get into on a third party website. Seniors can check out which classes are there, snag them, and then wait until whatever date the freshman has for registration before dropping the class effectively freeing up one spot for the underclassman. There would be a fee for the underclassmen to use the service.

I can set it up so I'm the one registering for classes and collecting the fees, or I can take a small cut of all the other transactions that occur on my site.

Steven’s Dating Tips*

*Much to his chagrin, Steven is currently “single” in every sense of the word, and has been for a while now. That being the case, Steven makes no promises in regard to success by implementing any of the following tips. Happy courting!

Steven’s Dating Tips*


*Much to his chagrin, Steven is currently “single” in every sense of the word, and has been for a while now. That being the case, Steven makes no promises in regard to success by implementing any of the following tips. Happy courting!

"Good & Plenty", despite their inoculate sounding names, are like the evil twins of "Mike and Ikes".

I don't like the people who think it's ok to underline, make notes in, and otherwise write in library books. Fortunately, it's been my experience that the same type of people who write in library books are the same breed who never make it past page 25, so once you hit that number you can enjoy reading unbesmirched pages.

Fulfillment of a lifelong dream...

Well, half of one at least. I’ve always wanted to at one point in my life be chased by the police. I imagined myself being approached by an officer after having commited some minor infraction of the law like riding my bike down the ramp behind the Smith Field House ($50.00 fine) or throwing snowballs (again, fifty bones if you get caught. Although there was that one time we were walking home from wallball and I hit J-Peck in the face with one and this cop, I swear, he just materialized like two feet to the left of me. No joke, no one was there and then a BYU campus police officer was telling us to stop having fun. Or at least telling me to stop having fun- I’m not sure if Jocelyn was having much fun with a snowball in her eye. He didn’t give me a fine though, probably because he was only a spirit and incapable of interacting with the physical world.) but rather than just taking the fine I’d show off how fast I was and my parkour skills and would lose the pursuing police officer.

So last night I’m longboarding at the Wells Fargo parking garage down by Center Street around 3:30am. It’s sever stories high and it’s fun to coast from the top around in circles to the basement. There are signs all around it expressly forbidding loitering, roller blading, and skateboarding and I had heard stories about people getting their boards confiscated there but didn’t think they were true. They should have signs up telling homeless people it was against the rules to pee in the stairwell, because that place is rank with the smell of urine. Anyway, I’m going up the stairs for my third run down (the outside stairs, not the stairwell because I’m serious, it is a foul and unholy smell in that place) and I get up to the third floor when I see the back of this police suburban going slowly up the parking garage. I made like the BYU officer and evanesced quicker than all get out. And get out I did. I booked it a block and a half away, then watched from behind a parked car the as the suburban made its way to the top of the parking garage.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t see me, because they waiting at the top level for a while before going back down and leaving. So I wasn’t chased by the police, but I did run from them which is half the dream. I’m willing to count that one for now and move on to the next: getting a Vitamin Water on an airplane.

While driving through a residential area on my way to work yesterday I passed a lemonade stand some kid had set up in his driveway. A block later I passed a second one. I was at least two miles away before my conscience caught up to me. I'd had enough entrepreneurial ideas that either never got off the ground or never turned a profit (see the million dollar ideas and nastytie.com, and the most recent one www.nightshiftsteven.com ) and here I was passively watching other dreams die. I turned around and drove back to pick up some lemonade.

The sign in front of the first kid's stand advertised a glass of lemonade for a quarter. I wasn't especially thirsty, but thought the little tike could use the business so I bought two. That kid knew how to make a potent mix of crystal light. I'm not sure what the correct ratio of water to powder is, but the adage of "less is more" would not have been wasted on that particular afternoon. I felt like Socrates looking down at my second cup, but didn't want to hurt the kid's feelings and downed it anyway.

Having already decided to be charitable no matter what the bodily danger may be, I drove to the second lemonade stand. I was grateful to see the second microbusiness had decided to diversify their product lineup and along with what looked like Kool-aid there were also rocks for sale for ten cents apiece. I sure as heck didn't want anymore mismixed liquids, but didn't really want a handful of rocks ( all of which looking suspiciously similar to the ones alongside the driveway) so I told him I'd give him fifty cents for the very best one. I'm not sure what criteria was meet or what separated the rock he gave me from all the others, but I still have it in my car so I'll be able to try and determine exactly what it is later on.

Second chances for first time offenders

Notice anything different about the layout of this here blog? That's right, ads are back. Check them out. Over there to the right. Nice, huh? Google AdSense apparently doesn't have a program to cross reference their clients- this blog was created under the blocked email account tysonvanderwerken@gmail.com (send me funny links/pictures. Don't sign me up for Chinese pharmaceutical products) but I can put ads on it from a new, unblocked account.

Google, 1
Tyson, 1

I ended up going 2 hours and 43 minutes

I'm the firstborn in my family, which means I grew up being a kid for the first time with two adults being parents for the first time. I’d like to think my parents put some thought into how they wanted the raise their kids prior to them making one. Whether a trial and error method for rearing children is any better than making up the parameters after circumstances present themselves is difficult to determine, especially in my case where I feel there were influences from both camps.

Example of the trial and error: if my room wasn’t clean, I wasn’t allowed to play outside until it was. In theory this should have been enough of an incentive to guarantee a tidy living space. In reality I didn’t want to play anywhere outside my room anyway (still the case) so being forced to stay there didn’t have the desired effect. My parents both went to college, and weren’t to be outsmarted by a six year old. Having my mattress removed and not returned until my room was clean caused me to respond the way they hoped I would.

Example of circumstantial parameters: There were rules about when and who I could date. There weren’t rules about the length of individual dates until the day after the night I didn’t come home from one.

One hard and fast rule that applied to the entire duration of my childhood was in regard to the television I was permitted to watch. PBS. Nothing else. “Wishbone” got me through high school English (and some of college), I can’t count the number of times “Bill Nye the Science Guy” was the only reason I got an answer right in Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, and I still know ever y word to the theme songs for Reading Rainbow, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and 3-2-1 Contact (that one really dates me, but I have fond and very vivid memories of The Bloodhound Gang and Math Patrol).

I did sneak in a lot of TV on the sly. Mom napped every afternoon and dad was still at work, so between most days 2:00 to 3:00pm I had a window to indulge in Fox Kid’s cartoon programming. “Spiderman” was a favorite, and the first one in the program lineup so I usually got to see that one before mom woke up. “Big Bad Beetleborgs” was on for a while and came right before the show it ripped off, “Power Rangers”. But always outbalancing my illicit television was the quotidian diet of publically funded programming.

One feature of PBS I miss is what they would show between programs when there wasn’t anything scheduled. I assume the children’s educational television market wasn’t as saturated as it currently is, because often times they would just show B reel footage of a helicopter flying through the Grand Canyon. That was it. The shadow of the helicopter would gracefully as glide over the surface of the canyon walls for half hour blocks, while 4th graders whose parent’s didn’t approve of cartoons waited idly on living room carpets.

Boredom is an excellent motivator for activity (case and point- I’ve now been at my job at a call center for 2 hours and 25 minutes without taking a phone call. That’s a new personal record, if anyone’s interested. With nothing else to do, I log into my blog and proceed to write everything up to the period you’re about to see. <-- That’s the one) and I would likely leave to go build Legos or make puddles of mud to bury stuff in or go pull my sister’s hair. Or I would just watch the shadow and imagine how I would keep up with it were I running alongside it- which crecipices (minted it- sorry, no stealing it now) I would jump over or path I would take to keep pace.

Sadly, the helicopter in the Grand Canyon no longer has a place on the public broadcasting station. In its place are a slew of banal and insipid programs like “Bob the Builder” and “Dora the Explorer” that rot kids’ brains. Sadder yet, my parents have become unbelievably lax in what television they allow the youngest of the six children to watch. Cable? When did we get cable? And why isn’t the Disney channel blocked? That station is all trash, all the time. Have fun being dumber than a pair of bricks, Aspen and Capri- thank mom and dad for it.

Gobius Industries

Connecting the dots

While recently browsing CNN.com on June 16 around 1:30am, I noticed a pecular connection between two stories on the home page. One was a human trafficking report complied by the US State Department and how there was in increase in slave labor that conincided with the recession. Another was a story about how British Airlines was asking its workers to work without pay for one month. I didn't see it in the first story, but I wonder if England made it onto the black list...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/16/human.trafficking.report/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/16/british.airways.work.free/index.html

About last night....

If it takes longer than 40 seconds to tell someone about the funny/cool/weird dream you had last night, you should really reconsider telling it. Four minutes is way too long.

Change in venue

From this point on, "Tales from the Nightshift" will be featured on its own blog. To see the latest and greatest being done with Microsoft Paint, check out http://www.nightshiftsteven.blogspot.com/ . Same humor, different location.

Tales from the Nightshift

May 23, 2009

Tales from the Nightshift

May 22, 2009

Tales from the Nightshift

May 21, 2009

Unethical

I think the public hysteria surrounding the swine flu and previously SARS is incited by the people who make face masks looking to make a quick buck.

One of these things...

E-love

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the making out emoticon.

:Pd:


Also included because I don't feel it's profound or long enough to constitute its own blog entry:

I love the word "albeit". It's like, I want to use these three words, I'm too lazy to put spaces between them.

April's million dollar idea

This last Monday, April 6, the Daily Universe (for all you non-BYU'ers, that's the student run daily newspaper) had an editorial lapse. While covering the LDS conference, they included a caption on the front page under a picture of the twelve apostles that read "...members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities..." (emphasis added). Now, typical of BYU, the mistake was quickly and quietly apologized for and forgotten (similar to when two weeks ago the Humanities department accidentally sent an email intended for one person to the entire college- 2,500 students. Not too big of a deal, except for the email contained the GPA's of every student in the Humanities department. Mine was on there, but nowhere near the top of that list).

I wasn't aware of what happened until later that day. I had seen a sign in one of the newspaper booths apologizing for the delay in delivery but didn’t think anything of it. The next day in class a student mentioned their parents in Oregon had heard about the typo. I wondered if, since the paper had made national news, if there were a market for the pulled copies. I checked on ebay and saw only two- one going to $102 and the other for $34. Those were some inspiring digits.

My roommate Beau and I immediately set off to go dumpster diving. Copies of the paper with the typo were hard to come by; a person had to have picked up the paper super early in the morning, held on to it while the recycle bins were emptied, and then have thrown it away without having folded it all up or done the crossword. After having looked through just about every recycle bin on campus for two hours Beau and I came up with 16 mint copies of the paper and 4 decent ones.

There have been some issues about the morality of profiting an article that labels the leaders of the church I attend as apostates. Cami said it was if I were selling my g’s. I disagree. While it may not be the most reputable way to make a buck, I justify it by a) knowing I’ll pay an eventual tithe on the money I make and b) knowing the people buying the papers most likely have issues with the church, so where’s the harm in making them a little poorer?

There are about 6 other people currently selling them on ebay, but none of them for as much as the two of mine that have already sold, probably because mine were up sooner and people likely thought they would be less available. I haven’t put all my papers on at once- controlling the market by not saturating it was a little trick I picked up from DeBeer’s. I’m fairly positive I have more papers with the typo than anyone else, so in a week or so I’ll be the only person to do business with. Whether or not people still want them in a month is yet to be seen, but I hope so. If they’re not going for very much I can wait a while (months, even years) before trying again. With no overhead or product costs, I can afford to.

To date, I’ve sold two of the typo papers on ebay. One went for $76.55 and the other for $50.00 for a total of $126.55.