Do you know where your Towel is?

Don't Panic!
It's Towel Day folks, are you carrying your towel?
What is Towel Day you say?

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.

#towelday is trending on Twitter and @towelday is posting.  Hey, I'm a geek in some ways and I'm proud of it. It warms my heart to see so many Douglas Adams fans out there! I have been a fan since I was young, playing the DOS based HHGTTG on the computer. I may have to see if I can download that game and play it tonight.  I enjoy his writing so much, it's fast pace, quirk always makes me laugh. Plus you can always find a quote from him that applies to just about any situation.....

~I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
~I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
~I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.
~A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
~It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
~Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
~For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
~He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
~He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
~Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
~I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
~I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
~I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.
~If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
~If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
~In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
~Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
~It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
~The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
~The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
~The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
~The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
~This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
~Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
~To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
~We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
~You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

I highly recommend that you read Douglas Adams' work. He is a pretty cool frood after all....

Thoughts of a Technocrat: Photo of the Day - War Dog

Thoughts of a Technocrat: Photo of the Day - War Dog

10 commandments of reusable bags

10 commandments of reusable bag use

There's more to using reusable bags than just remembering to take them.

By Robin Shreeves  

I’m surprised that I’ve had so much to say about reusable bags lately. Really, it seems like I should just be able to say, “Reusable bags are good. Use them,” but it turns out there’s a bit more to the story.

When I read all the comments on my post, How important is a nickel?, there were two that surprised me. I wasn’t surprised by people that had reasons — valid or not — for not using them. I’ve heard those reasons before. The comments that surprised me came from supermarket checkers.

GoFaster58 had this to say:

As a bagger for a large grocery store in Texas, all of the reuseable bags are the pits. They are hard to bag, they take longer to bag leading to longer lines and longer times at the checkout. People hand or throw them at the bagger. They're all wadded up inside one bag. They come in so many sizes it's difficult to use them. I've found them with dead bugs, live ants, used condoms, trash and even lost credit cards in them. If people only had respect for those of us who have to put up with their nastiness, it would help. The industry needs to use only one size and one type of bag. Bags the same size as paper bags and that fold out square like a paper bag would be preferred. People think they're doing the world a favor with their recyclable bags but they sure don't do me any favors. 

Audrey added this information:

As a cashier (of a large national grocery chain) I have a quota for how many items I scan per hour. The people who bring in their own bags drive my coworkers and I crazy ! It's time consuming ... people never bring as many reusable bags as they need, and when you tell them youre going to have to use plastic bags for the remaining groceries they freak out like you just killed a baby polar bear and they want you to remove the items and stack them back inside the reusable bag like a game of Tetris to "make it work." Get off your high horse people! Use the plastic bags if need be and bring them back for recycling! EVERY chain store offers plastic bag recycling. 

Seems as if those of us who carry reusable bags need to follow a few rules of etiquette for our own good and to help the cashiers and baggers who fill our bags.

I’ve created the 10 commandments of reusable bag use at the grocery store and elsewhere.

1. Empty bags completely after use.
2. Wash all bags regularly, after every use if necessary.
3. Use bags that are easy for the cashier to fill.
4. Place your reusable bags at the front of your grocery order on the conveyer belt so the cashier knows you have them and want them to be used. Don’t freak when the cashier starts putting your groceries in plastic bags if you haven’t let her know you have reusables.
5. Separate all bags so the cashier can easily grab each one as needed.
6. Open bags that fold up into themselves while you are waiting in line. Don’t make the cashier wait for you to open them or worse, make the cashier open them.
7. Let the cashier know how you want your order handled if you don’t have enough reusable bags. Realize it’s your fault for not bringing enough and politely say something like “I’d like the remaining groceries to be put in paper bags, please.”
8. Remember when you bring reusable bags that many cashiers see you as a representative of all environmentalists. Being on your “high horse” can turn people off wanting to do good.
9. Show respect to your cashier by saying please and thank-you, helping to bag, smiling, and staying off your cell phone while she is waiting on you.
10. Never put a used condom in your reusable bag.

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