Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I woke up this morning with a hunger for one thing: a Zaxby’s Kickin’ Chicken sandwich. The juicy-crispy-spicy sandwich is one of my favorites. BUT since the nearest location is somewhere in North Carolina, I tried a new alternative.

And boy was I disappointed.

Unlike Zaxby’s, they don’t do wings. This isn’t too much of a problem since I didn’t want wings, but it means I have one less reason to go back.

Raising Cane’s has a cute dog mascot. Unfortunately for Raising Cane’s though, they don’t even do their chicken fingers well. The little things look good, but they have roughly zero flavor and they’re dry.

Put something tasteless and dry on a bun and you have basically created an overly elaborate bread sandwich. No thanks. There was some special sauce involved in this fiasco. Unfortunately I could barely taste it and probably wouldn’t have known about its existence had I not seen it. Zaxby’s doesn’t use a bun. They use two pieces of buttery Texas Toast and add enough of their spicy Zax sauce that some of it constantly oozes out.

So I’ll say this, Raising Cane’s sucks. Maybe it’s because this location hasn’t been open long. But today’s lunch was a major letdown. That’s what I get for having expectations I suppose.

The undisputed chicken-finger sandwich champion remains Zaxby’s.

I’m not talking about how they give me email addresses with only moderately capable spam blocking packages — even though I am impressed by how the filters always pick up the phishing scams targeted at 5/3rd bank customers but how they won’t pick up any other ones.

No, I’m referring to the mass emails that get sent to the unmoderated listservs. Its rare that they are offensive or particularly funny, but they do tend to make me think that the people at higher levels of the university are about as bright as the

Today, I just found out that changes have been made to several E911 addresses.

First off, I’ve never referred to 911 as E911. William Shatner didn’t host the show “Rescue E911″. I assume that the ‘E’ is for “emergency”. But I thought that most cities used 911 for all incoming calls, even those that aren’t for emergencies. I could be wrong there. Are we supposed to dial E911 now? Or just 911 still?

Anyway, our current E911 and mailing address is 122 Engineer’s Way. That address is funny because from what I can tell, Engineer’s Way is just a broad sidewalk. Engineer’s Way doesn’t even show up on Google Maps.

Our new E911 address is 130 Chemistry Drive. However our mailing address remains the same. Now our single building has two different addresses on two different “streets”. And presumably if any of us have to actually call E911, we’ll be giving them the mailing address.

None of this will create confusion.
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I have a few theories. For one, most teachers are bad at math. For another, most parents are too busy buying plasma TVs and unnecessary toys — both for them and for child — while going into huge debt to think about the value of math skills. In other words, they don’t value math as they should. For one more, math and science teachers are underpaid.

Either way, maybe there’s another explanation: happy students do worse at math.

Do I seem like a happy guy to you?

But he says the U.S. should rethink “the happiness factor,” as he puts it.

Math textbooks in the United States, for example, tend to have colorful photos, charts and stories to please kids, he noted. In other nations, the texts strictly have math.

Fennell said engaging, relevant lessons are important. But he agreed with Loveless that every lesson should be about teaching math, not simply providing a fun class activity.

The author of the recent study, Loveless, is basically suggesting that our schools are more interested in making students believe they are doing well rather than making sure they actually do well. From my point of view, this may explain why so many future business students show up for the first day of engineering school and wonder why the work is so challenging. Yes, I said business students and engineering school. If you got the joke you’re probably an engineer. If you didn’t get the joke, you’re probably not an engineer and we are probably making fun of you.

It also bolsters my belief that most education spending is wasteful. In this case I’m talking about text books. College kids are kinda screwed because we pretty much have to buy them. But I’m fairly confident that the public schools waste a shit-ton of money on books as well. The important part, as I see it, is the quality of the written work. It has little to do with colorful pictures and asides that are usually right next to pointless. I’ve said before — and perhaps I’ll have to do it myself — that someone needs to become the discount publisher of no frills text books. Unfortunately I have little faith in them catching on because I have enormous faith that most teachers are easily distracted by shiny objects, thus they choose the expensive books with the colorful pictures and the online content that no one uses and the cds that stay in their sleeves for ever and ever.

Furthermore, the article suggests, as I postulated, that we just don’t emphasize math enough. Consider test scores on the SAT. Math scores are higher than verbal scores. For all the time spent by high school students reading and writing, shouldn’t it be the other way? My belief is that the math section is way too easy, thus the scores a propped up. It’s made easy because the expectations of our student’s mathematical capabilities is too low.

Math isn’t difficult folks. Making people realize it isn’t difficult is difficult.

Yeah, I’m real happy.

I received a wonderfully inaccurate email recently from the Center for Engineering Career Development. It had a few errors, which is ok, but I also learned about the Diversity Career Day to be held November 2nd. Typically, an “engineering” or “business career day” would focus on people who want to hire engineers or businessmen. So when I think about the diversity career day, I figure that the people who need this are those who can’t find work based on their talents and must rely on their “diverse backgrounds.”

Per the Unversity Career Services website,

Diversity Career Day attracts over 125 corporations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies seeking candidates with diverse backgrounds…

Diversity Career Day is open to all students at colleges and universities throughout Virginia and Washington DC. This regional recruiting event typically attracts more than 1000 students from all majors looking for full-time and internship opportunities. All students are welcome! [emphasis mine]

So maybe my reckoning above is wrong. It appears more likely that the Diversity Career Day is exactly the same thing as Career Day. That is of course unless the regular career days include companies that are specifically anti-diversity.

Although this is not the first time UVa has thrown a meaningless diversity tag around. They have even created and filled the position of Chief Diversity Officer. Here’s a nice commentary from a law student named Evan:

Now, I’ve heard of a Chief Executive Officer. And a Chief Financial Officer. And a Chief Operating Officer. But Diversity? What does this guy even do? Its a good question, and is one that the Cavalier Daily has recently addressed.

I’ll wager that most of you won’t click the article, so I’ll summarize. The CDO says his job is a “work in progress,” and is “consistently evolving.”

Translation: Nobody knew why I was hired, or what the job duties were or are (other than “help out our diversity!”), but I’m figuring it out as I go along.

Earlier he added

That being said, the fact that I’ve benefited from my somewhat diverse background does not prevent me from making fun of how obsessed our society has become with it. Case in point? UVA has a “Chief Diversity Officer.”

I won’t get too angry about this. It’s really not my money being spent. As long as it makes some people at UVA feel all warm and fuzzy then fine by me. My support lies elsewhere. I see my participation as being similar to that of the fraternity in Old School.

Jerry: What will you have to do with the university?
Beanie: Legally speaking there will be a loose affiliation. But, we will give nothing back to the academic community. As well as provide no public service of any kind. This much I promise you.

I can’t remember if I posted this before today, but you can choose to no longer receive credit card applications in the mail. By calling either 1-888-5-OPT-OUT or visiting OptOutPrescreen.com you can slow all those applications to a trickle.

These applications used to bug the crap out of me. CapitalOne was sending me multiple applications per week. Sometimes I even received multiple applications per day. I also despised the packaging and how they tried to make it look like something other than junk mail and maybe even something important.

Fortunately I found out about the Opt-Out process through one of my actual credits cards. I looked into it and jumped at the chance, probably more than a year ago. And as the website says, the offers don’t stop immediately but after a couple months such offers had become pretty rare. In fact, my volume of mail has decreased so much that I get a little sad when I see nothing in my mailbox for days at a time. Ok not really, but you can use the website to Opt-In if you should so choose.

I’m quite pleased. I’ve spread the info to my family and they’re happy. I know I told some of you regular readers about it via email. Your thoughts?

As a final note, because I haven’t tried it, apparently “you can register for the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA’s) Mail Preference Service (MPS)” in order “to receive less national advertising mail.” But it’ll cost you. A dollar.

Utah Department of Commerce Director Francine Giani contends [gasoline] retailers are gouging their neighbors.

I bet Francine has a lot of evidence to back up her claims.

Giani also conceded the investigation was plagued by a lack of data. The state’s refineries and retailers, for the most part, declined to reveal their profit margins or other information deemed critical to the probe.

Well evidence is overrated anyway. Not that she needed evidence to be convinced.

“They’ve been making extremely healthy profits off Utah consumers,” Giani said, reiterating statements she has made over the course of her month-long investigation. “I’d like to see the price of gasoline be a lot lower.”

I can’t tell you how upset I am when I find out that companies are making profits. And not only making healthy profits, but doing so by earning the profits from consumers. Although I’m not exactly sure how you make profits otherwise.

I feel a lot better knowing she’s on our side.

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