Today starts new series on this blog called Domain Of The Day in which a web site or domain name that makes my smile [satirically] is briefly brought to your attention.
We begin with watersweeper.com. If you think it’s simply too difficult sweep the dust off your sidewalk with an ordinary broom and pick up trash by hand, you can purchase this sprinkler-on-wheels for only $179. It’s sold as a “quick & easy” way to clean pavement and “blasts away dirt, … litter, [and] pop cans” using a constant flow of pressurized water. Since it only uses 8 gallons of water per minute, “it saves you money”. The idea to waste water on cleaning sidewalk comes to you not from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” but from the dry desert state of Utah, where it costs $1.00 to use this device to spray water for 21 hours (10,080 gallons). 
At least there’s not a world water crisis going on, and good thing they didn’t make a documentary film called FLOW discussing the world water crisis.
Signs that your company clearly sucks at life:
I was recently taken to a new low looking through this weekend’s newspaper. I am now the shamed owner of a coupon for a product called Potato Finishers. Read More »
It has never occurred to me that I could call the government if I were to run out of gas.
Alan Peterson, Incident Management team leader for the Utah Department of Transportation, has been assisting drivers who have pushed their fuel tanks too far and run out of gasoline. In 2007 the team gave out about 721 gallons of gasoline to stranded people. This year so far, they have already given out about 524 gallons. [...] Last month, the team helped 150 motorists refuel.
If the end of the year sees double the current amount, that equates to 3 gallons of free gas every day. At the current price of $4.15/gallon, Utahns are [collectively] paying $12.45 every day because of a growing number of idiots (as of last month, we’re now up to 5 per day!) who disregard their fuel gauges. Is it really that hard to put gas in a car? Even using the lower 2007 numbers, 721 gallons divided by 52 weeks is 14 gallons/week. Let’s hear that again with gusto: The government is handing out a full tank of gas every week! My car doesn’t even hold 14 gallons, but I’d still like to know how to submit my name into the drawing.
Why do people ask pointless questions? Asking for permission to borrow things is usually pointless; I would call it laughable if this annoyance weren’t so frequent. Since most requests are non-destructive, it doesn’t really make sense to tell someone no when they ask to use something like scissors or a blender. As long as the person borrowing the item returns it in the same condition, why not? This makes asking pointless. The whole idea is undermined, however, by the people who don’t ask and don’t return. These are the people on my hit list because not only do they take your things, they also force us otherwise normal people to ask for unneeded permission. In other words, the kind of people who would steal your blender out from under you aren’t going to ask permission in the first place, so you won’t have the chance to tell them no, while the people that are thoughtful enough to ask are also going to be thoughtful enough to hand you back a clean blender when they’re finished, so there’s no reason to deny them from doing so, yet it is still socially necessary to ask so that you are not assumed to be in the despicable first group. So long as I live I shall fight this injustice; I do not ask for pointless permission, but of course I return borrowed items in their original condition.
