Thursday, July 19, 2007

Back in business?

Maybe. Let's see what the two month summer hiatus did do the readership...

Some randomness:

Joanne & I will commonly pick up a baguette to go along with dinner. Not a big deal, right? Turns out, according to the side panel, each of the 24 servings has 160(!) calories, for a total of a whopping 3,840 calories. Which is more than twice what is in the entire tub of whipped butter that we sometimes use! So my tubbiness is not a result of my need to get jacked up, but it's the bread.
Who knew?

My latest internet distraction is the Comics Curmudgeon, which snarks on the multitude of bad comic strips in the world today. Doing a little research last night, I discovered that one guy, Nicholas P. Dallis, is responsible for the horror that is Judge Parker, Apartment 3-G and Rex Morgan, MD.

I sold our GE shares this week after it hit my $40 target this week. That looked good on Monday, bad on Tuesday, inconsequential yesterday, and bad again today. Let's hear it for randomly chosen sell targets. It's all relative, though. The "loss" of value since the sale is peanuts with the change in Motorola from October to now. Although I do feel guilty about complaining about that when we missed out on the 2000 crash.

Came across The Tyranny of Choice, a short article by Barry Schwartz that appeared in Scientific American around the time his book, Paradox of Choice, was published. You may also remember it being mentioned in my "classic" 3 parter on my no crap philosophy. It includes a 13 question test re if you are a maximizer or a satisficer.

Are you glad I'm back?

4 comments:

jt said...

160 calories for a slice of bread? WTF kind of bread are you buying? I'm skeptical, if it's simply a fresh-baked loaf from one of the grocery-store bakeries. But maybe I'll have to check this out for myself.

I bake bread on occasion, and I can't imagine where that kind of calorie load would come from in a plain loaf.

Katherine Nabity said...

I'd believe it about the bread. So tasty... So caloric...

I seem to be in the middle of the maximizer/satisficer continuum. Of course, ranking how much I agree with "no matter how satisfied I am with my job, it's only right to be on the lookout for better opportunities" is difficult with a non-traditional profession.

Jot said...

There is no reason to question the caloric values on the side of the package, when you can look them up yourself. :)

Bread, french or vienna (includes sourdough) - 100G portion = 289 calories (well, Kcal, but you knew that).

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/


Also the maximizer/satisficer test apparently has no ability to deal with extremes. Of the 13 questions, I think I answered 10 of them as either a 1 or a 7. Only 3 in between, yielding a number which I think is probably pointless. Hm...but isn't that the point of all of these quizzes? :)

Anonymous said...

Well, my test score was 3.54, which was actually higher than I thought it would be. I think my answers to some of the questions weren't reflective of my maximizer/satisficer levels, but involved other factors. For example, I agreed with "When shopping, I find it hard to find clothes I really love" mainly because I don't like shopping that much. So I don't end up going to that many stores, therefore I limit my choices, and often end up with "second best". So my answer scores as a maximizer, but in reality is a satisficer answer.

One interesting side note that I think was remiss from the article (maybe it's in one of the books) was the effect of the Internet on choice. The web affords many more choices for shopping (heck, even for a relationship), and even gives you tons of reviews to search through.

I definitely don't scope out all of my alternatives, and probably am happier for it. My lesson learned from this article is this: it's ok to be lazy. Which makes me happy, cause that's what I am!!

Besides, I have a maximizer husband to do all of the work and worrying for me...