You don't *have* to answer the phone

My first stupid rant of the blog: Why do certain people think that they always have to answer their cell phone? They could be in a meeting, in the car, in a class, watching their favorite TV show, or playing thumb war, but when that cell phone rings, they have to drop everything and answer it.

Worse is when it's in a bathroom. Today there was a guy brushing his teeth in the bathroom at work when his cell phone rang. He answered it (his mouth still full of toothpaste) and said that he would call back. More ridiculous is when the person is on the phone while using the toilet. When this happens, it always seems like the person talks softly -- not wanting the others in the bathroom to know he's on the phone, and not wanting the person on the other end of the call to know that he's in the bathroom. This is when I start flushing the toilet repeatedly, pulling the handle harder as if it will make it louder, trying to send the message that YOU DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER THE PHONE ON THE TOILET!

So the message I have to my hypothetical readers is this:

1. Learn how to silence your phone when it rings. Don't be the guy that interrupts the class by walking from the front of the class to the back door, his phone playing some weird song (very loudly) the whole time, and then answering the phone as he walks out the door while everybody stares at him.
2. If you shouldn't answer the phone, don't. This covers everything from the bathroom to meetings with your boss.
3. If you don't want to answer the phone, don't. The call is likely not urgent. Besides, we've all made a few calls where we're hoping the person doesn't answer so that we can just leave a message. Maybe the person calling you is hoping for the same.

Yet Another One of Those Blogs

You have reached Yet Another One of Those Blogs (YAOTB). I guess that should be this blog's name. Speaking of which, when you started your blog, did you try to find a good URL that wasn't already taken? All the cool blog names were taken -- that's how I ended up with this one. Most of the blogs I found had only one or two posts that were several years old. Many of these posts said stuff like "More coming later" and "I'm going to use this blog to _____." Like so many things in life, we often have the best of ambitions, but we get distracted. Obviously, I'm intending for this blog* to be a permanent fixture, but we'll see how it goes.

*Have you ever read Joe Posnanski? Well, you should. He mostly writes about baseball, but his posts are always a good read because of his style. He likes to use Posterisks™ (he also likes to invent words), which is what this paragraph is. Much like a conversation with a good friend, he finds it hard to only discuss one thing at a time. So when he feels the need to go on a tangent, he just puts an asterisk in a paragraph and inserts the tangent in italics below the paragraph. It makes for a very disjointed blog entry, but he makes you feel like an old friend. Anyway, my Posterisk is that my short-lived blog has already been flagged as a spam blog. It's probably because to get things started I created a bunch of posts and saved them as drafts. Somehow that's a flag, I guess. Supposedly, some real person is going to take a look to see my petition to remove the flag. So if you're reading this, Blogger employee, I is a real person!

This blog is a chance for me to practice writing. That's pretty much my main motivation for doing this. The fact that somebody might read these words is motivation enough for me to make an attempt at editing and keeping the quality bar high. A secondary goal is to encourage me to do blog-worthy things. I'm sure you don't want to read about my Super Mario Galaxy adventures. I need to keep my life interesting.

This blog is not a reason you should care about what I have to say. I hope to eventually be able to write well enough that you'll actually read an entire post, but until then, I'll just be doing this for myself.