Showing posts with label lessons learned. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lessons learned. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2023

How to open the pump on Dove Advanced Care hand wash

Dove Advanced Care Deep Moisture hand wash has been a lifesaver as the eczema on my hands has gotten increasingly sensitive since this past summer. I'm no longer dreading washing my hands! (Although I still do have to be diligent about moisturizing after each and every wash.)

However, I find the pumps nearly impossible to open! I rotate and rotate and rotate them, but they just don't open like every other pump bottle I've ever owned has.

So after extensive trial and error, I've discovered how to actually open these bottles.
 
The pump from a bottle of hand soap being grasped between thumb and forefinger just below the lid
Where to grasp the pump
1. Unscrew the lid and pull the whole pump and tube out of the bottle.
2. Grasp the tube under the lid, where you can see a spring inside the tube.
3. Twist the top of the pump counterclockwise as directed.
4. Once the pump pops up, you can put it back in the bottle and put the lid back on.
 

 

Somehow, with this specific kind of bottle and pump, taking it off the bottle and grasping the part lets it open easily where my usual ways of opening these kinds of bottles don't work.

However, it would be better if the Dove corporation could adjust the kinds of pumps they use so they open like normal bottle pumps.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Turns out the North is actually empty

A while back, I asked "Is the North actually empty?"  I'd seen maps that suggest large swaths of completely uninhabited land, and I was wondering whether they're genuinely empty or just sparsely populated.

Today I stumbled upon this cool map of North America showing a dot for every person reported in the Canada and US censuses.  Based on this map, it appears that large swaths of the North are actually completely devoid of human habitation.  You can zoom in and get a full page of white, with no dots whatsoever.

That's awesome, in both senses of the word.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Buying happiness: attractive exercise clothes

Since I only ever exercise at home where no one can see me, I've always worn truly awful clothes. The sports bras were nearly 10 years old, the clothes themselves were somewhere between 15 and 20 years old, and they had no redeeming qualities except that they're cotton and light and comfortable. They were horrible enough that if, while exercising, I had ever found myself in a situation where a fire alarm rang or I had to call an ambulance, I would have changed clothes into something that at least acknowledged that the 1980s had turned into the 1990s before saving my life. After reading about some emergency or another where people had to flee their apartment building with nothing but the clothes on their backs, I had actually worried about how humiliating it would be if I were stuck in my exercise clothes.

Just recently, on top of all those aesthetic problems, elastics started dying. I was crossing my arms under my breasts and tugging my pants up. So I finally decided to splurge on new exercise clothes.

I got Secrets From Your Sister to fit me with an exercise bra which doesn't let anything move (while still giving me a decent line) and is a very fun shade of purple. And I got a simple black and charcoal yoga outfit with lines that flatter my figure. Even though I shopped well and got everything at significant discounts, that's still about $100 spent on clothes for something I hate.

What I didn't expect is how good these clothes make me feel. I look like I'm aware that the 21st century has started! I look like I have a waist! And a figure! If I were interrupted without a chance to change clothes, I'd look like a perfectly competent, fashion-aware person who happens to have been interrupted while exercising. And, underneath it all, a fun purple bra!

Attractive exercise clothes don't help the tedium or sheer hatefulness of exercise, but they do help mitigate the indignity of it all. My morning feeling of "Blah, ugh, I have to go exercise!" is now accompanied by a tiny little glimmer of "But I get to wear my purple bra!" While it doesn't make the process pleasant, it does make it less unpleasant.

If, like me, you feel utterly disgusting and hideous while exercise, I do recommend getting something attractive and flattering to wear. It does help, more than I would have expected.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

"Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update"

I just installed the latest Windows 7 service pack, and, after I rebooted, my computer gave me a message saying "Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update", and then stayed on that message for quite a long time. I was certain the computer was frozen, but I was in the middle of exercising so I decided to wait until I was done to do anything about it.

It turned out the computer stayed on that message for 15 minutes. Then the screen turned black and, again, stayed there for quite a long time. Again, it seemed frozen, but the mouse moved and the numlock key still worked, so I decided to give it some time. The screen stayed black for about 12 minutes. Then Windows finished booting up as usual.

So the moral of the story is: if your computer appears to freeze on "Setting up personalized settings for: Windows Desktop Update" or on the black screen that comes after, give it a really long time before you decide that it's frozen and interrupt the service pack installation. My computer is only 5 months old, so if your computer is older than that it might take even longer than the 15 minutes. (I guess the other moral of the story is don't install service packs if you're going to need the computer right away - wait until you have some time.)

Dear Windows Update designers: a percentage complete/time remaining progress bar at that point in the installation would be helpful.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

How to introduce resistance into Wii Fit exercises

Wii Fit suggests that for certain strength-training exercises, you might want to introduce resistance once you've gotten used to the exercise.

Problem: it's hard to hold a weight/waterbottle/whatever in your hand while you're holding the Wii controller in your hand, and it won't count your reps if you don't have the controller in your hand. And holding both the controller and the weight in the same hand makes it difficult to maintain your grip on the weight, which is a wee bit unsafe.

Solution: use an elastic to strap the controller to the weight. Hold the weight and do the reps normally. This way the Wii controller will still count the reps, but you don't have to wrap your hand around a controller AND a weight.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

How to get Rogers to realize that there's a network problem in your neighbourhood

My internet's been down for nearly three days with some complicated problem that's maybe three levels more complicated than I can understand. (They were pulling wires out of my walls and testing them, then had to get the supers to let them pull wires out of the building's walls, then had to escalate it one level above that.) The techs who helped me were awesome - communicative, respectful of my need to have my internet service work, accepted my troubleshooting and explained what they were doing when it got above the level I can understand, didn't make me uncomfortable even though I had a cumulative total of three strange men who were bigger than me in my apartment - and made the process as painless as possible. They were carrying extra modems with them, and were fully prepared to just replace my modem on the spot if that ended up being a problem! I'm not happy about 3 days without internet, but I'm very satisfied with the service I received.

But here I just want to share one thing the tech told me, because if everyone knows this it will make life easier for all of us: Rogers only knows there's an outage in a given area if a lot of people call them!

If only one or two people call, they have to start by treating it as an individualized problem, which means walking people through troubleshooting over the phone, and if that doesn't work sending techs to individual households to check the modems and the cabling. They can only start treating it as a macro problem if they get a large number of calls all from the same area or if, as in my case, the techs are dispatched to an individual household and spend an hour painstakingly confirming every single thing that could possibly be causing the problem within the household.

So it turns out our natural reaction - "Meh, I don't want to wait on hold for ages! I'm sure they already know about this, I'll just patiently do something else until they fix it." - are counterproductive, and we need to call in when we're experiencing a network problem.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Culinary tip of the day

If you're out of milk for your coffee, whipped cream will do in a pinch. Cover the surface of the coffee with a layer, let it melt in (stirring helps) then add more as needed. Not the classiest thing ever in the world, but it gets the job done and you can enjoy your coffee without having to run out and buy more milk. My previous back-up plan was adding powdered milk to the coffee, and whipped cream works better than that.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Fashion tips for people with narrow shoulders

If you have narrow shoulders, don't buy a purse with flat shiny straps. The straps will slip off your shoulders far more readily than regular purse straps, which is particularly problematic if both your hands a full of heavy grocery bags and the purse contains several valuable pieces of personal electronics.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Beware of AutoCorrect

The word I am attempting to type: succinct
The typo I accidentally make: succincg
Word's AutoCorrect of said typo: sucking
The result: a sentence implying that people should make sure their presentations suck.