My Recent Trivia Obsession

When I lived in Chicago (until mid-2014), I did bar trivia casually with friends on and off and I've always just sort of accepted that I was bad at it because there were tons of pop culture questions and I was really bad at knowing celebrities, TV shows, movies, and the like. Hell, I began to realize that I'm actually really bad at sports trivia as well. I could do well on post-1990s baseball questions, but was spotty on baseball history and I began to gradually realize that pretty much everything I knew about the other sports amounted to the Chicago Bulls and fantasy football. Bar trivia tends to zero in on those topics because pop culture is well, popular.

A little over a year ago I joined LearnedLeague with a few friends from college, figuring it'd be a fun daily trivia activity that I'd try to compete in but wouldn't take too seriously. As it turns out, there were a LOT more things I knew absolutely nothing about than just the stuff folks do or follow for entertainment. I got stomped. It's head-to-head matches, six questions per day, and you assign points to your opponent based on how likely you think they are to get them right. It took me until the fifth day until I got even a single question right. It was a major relief when I saw the scoring the next day to see that I didn't have the shame of yet another zero.

Still, things did not get dramatically better. By the end of the 25-day season, I had answered 18.7% of the questions correctly, or just over one-per-day. I was in the bottom 3% of all 11,000-ish players in LearnedLeague. It legitimately made me feel dumb. I've felt that way plenty of times before -- just ask me to build something, fix something, or do pretty much any manual task and my mind becomes a blob of goo. But about knowing things? I did well enough in school. I didn't think I could rate this poorly.

However, when I think about the way I've spent much of my life and my general approach to learning, it makes a good deal of sense. In high school and college, unless the topic was math or science related (and sometimes, even if it was), my attitude was to memorize the shit, pass the test, and forget it forever because dammit, there is no way in hell that I am going to need to know anything about the 1938 Munich Agreement for the rest of my life.

Oh give me a break.

Furthermore, I didn't exactly use my free time to immerse myself into the culture. While others explored new TV shows, saw movies, and read books in their spare time, I spent a good deal of time playing video games, often repeating the same ones. Others discovered new music, while I listened to a small crop of songs on repeat, many of which were obscure. For about six years from 2004-2009, I tried to cram as much poker-playing into my life as possible. That made for some fun, interesting experiences, and some good stories, but it didn't do anything for passive absorption of information. Even after quitting poker, it was difficult for me to push myself to experience new things on my time. I'd often opt to watch re-runs of shows or movies rather than trying something new, because God forbid I might not like it and realize I had ::gasp:: wasted my time.

After considering all of this, it's overwhelmingly obvious why I woke up in the year 2017 not knowing anything about anything. I've spent most of my life actively rejecting knowledge except that which I deemed pertinent to my career.

So after my first season of LearnedLeague, I was pretty mad that I performed much worse than people I was friends with and a legion of smart people that I've never met. I can probably count on one hand the number of activities that I both enjoy and am bad at -- golf is probably the only one I can think of off the top of my head (and I am horrid at golf...if you think shooting a 110 is bad, don't talk to me). There were only two options. Either I work to get a LOT better at LearnedLeague or I quit it forever. The problem is that I still had no interest in Da Vinci's paintings, or the Franco-Prussian War, or the states of Australia, or movies made in black-and-white, or TV legal dramas, or boxing, or Shakespeare, or Greek mythology, or the myriad other things that are completely obsolete to my everyday life unless they appear in a trivia question.

So what was going to win out here? My extremely petty level of competitiveness or my honest-to-God apathy toward what I perceive to be useless information? Would it be the gym class hero or the habitual watcher of re-runs?

With me, the gym class hero wins every time.

So I plowed ahead with LearnedLeague and tried to get better. I've tried memorizing new things and reading books on different topics. I now record every episode of Jeopardy!. I began listening to a trivia podcast about a month after making fun of someone in my mind for telling me that they listen to a "trivia podcast". It sounds like a lot of effort, and it is, but there have been some benefits in the form of lifestyle changes. I've basically quit watching TV re-runs and have mostly phased out video gaming. Whenever I'm going to spend my spare time on entertainment, I make the choice to experience something new. Hell, I even sample some old movies now. I watched The Sting the other night and liked it a great deal. Is it all being done due to this stupid push to be competitive at an online trivia competition with no prizes? Yeah, probably. But it's also probably going to make me more well-versed in the culture and such, which is good, I guess.

Make no mistake -- I'm behind the 8-ball here. Trying to rapidly (re)acquire a lifetime's worth of knowledge on the wrong side of 30 is no easy task, as my brain's capacity for memory and learning is no longer what it was. But I have improved...I've since gotten about double the amount of questions right that I did in my first season of LearnedLeague, and while I'm still in the bottom quartile of players on the site, at least I can say good-bye to my days in the bottom 3%. Hopefully this means my learning capabilities aren't quite fried yet.

The Pat Hatter Tries to Use Airbnb

I was looking into renting a house for my family over the summer for a nice long weekend of relaxation. It seems that Airbnb is the way to go these days to do something like this, so I went ahead and tried to book a house.  I got to the step where payment was required, where they posted a link to a cancellation policy. Apparently this house has the "Super Strict 60 Days" policy, which means that there's a 50% refund up to 60 days prior to arrival. My wife's a lawyer and we've had issues with rental agreements for houses in the past, but there was no such rental agreement visible on the website. Actually putting in credit card information and clicking "Book" seemed like committing half the fees without being able to read and sign an agreement. This seemed wrong.

An inquiry into the process yielded this result:

Hi Patrick
You can book this property on this site. The rental agreement will be sent after booking. Please refer to the house rules for additional info. Let us know if you have other questions!

Naturally, this seemed disconcerting because this was the exact order-of-operations that we were trying to avoid. I replied back, trying to elaborate further

Hello,

We reached out yesterday because we would like to book this house, and this
morning we received a text message explaining that we could book on the
website and that the rental agreement would be provided after.  We just
wanted to follow-up because we recently tried to book a house in Wisconsin,
and the owner's rental agreement contained an extremely overbroad
indemnification provision that they were unwilling to modify (my wife's an
attorney).  We just want to make sure that in the event that the rental
agreement contains a provision that we are not comfortable with and so feel
that we cannot sign the rental agreement, that we would get the entire
booking amount back.

If you'd like to discuss over the phone, please let me know.

Thanks!
- Patrick

 After receiving an extremely confusing text message in reply that just said.....

Hi Patrick
We are new to AirBnB, however, we have been in business for many years. I have attached the link to our current r...

I then received the following via e-mail, respondent's name X'd out.

Hi Patrick
We are new to AirBnB, however, we have been in business for many years. I have attached the link to our current rental agreement for you to review. We are in the process of working with AirBnB to update the rental agreement to comply with their regulations as well. (We do not for see any major changes). Please review and let us know if you still have questions. 

XXXX 

(URL HIDDEN)

"URL HIDDEN"? Well that's not super useful, is it......

Hello, 

I received this e-mail, but it appears that the link to the rental agreement was hidden. 

That note also contained a screenshot of what they sent me so that they could understand what was going on. They replied, and it was equally frustrating and comical.

I am assuming certain info is being protected by Airbnb website. I cannot access your email address or see the picture you sent. Give us a call here at (PHONE NUMBER HIDDEN).

Oh for the love of....

Damn it.

Your message appears with "PHONE NUMBER HIDDEN".  I can't see the phone
number.  My e-mail address is xxxxxx@gmail.com  Could you please try to
contact me without going through AirBnB to provide the rental agreement? 

Thanks!
- Patrick

I then recalled what they had said earlier about not being able to see my contact information.  I then checked how my e-mail to them appeared on the messages on the Airbnb website...

Your message appears with "PHONE NUMBER HIDDEN".  I can't see the phone
number.  My e-mail address is (EMAIL HIDDEN)  Could you please try to
contact me without going through AirBnB to provide the rental agreement? 

Thanks!
- Patrick

So this is horrible in both directions. Great.  Let's give this another shot.

Let me try this again. Contact xxxxxx AT gmail DOT com. Maybe that will allow the e-mail to be visible!

After typing that into the message to the host on the Airbnb website, everything looked fine. A minute or two later, I refreshed the page and....

 Let me try this again. Contact (EMAIL HIDDEN) Maybe that will allow the e-mail to be visible!

On second thought, staycations are underrated. 

The Pat Hatter Buys a Microwave

(This week's recap of Better Call Saul will be delayed; I watch it with my wife and she's been working late this week, so we haven't gotten around to it)

The other day, my wife was trying to heat up some butter for garlic bread in the microwave. The microwave began to make an odd sound and there was even some weird smoke-like gas (possibly smoke) emanating from the machine. She stopped it immediately and became resigned to the fact that the microwave was probably cooked (heh).

While my wife may have skipped straight to Acceptance, I don't grieve over broken things in quite that fashion. I enjoy the Denial stage and spend a disproportionately large amount of time in the Anger stage. Usually I replace Bargaining and Depression with Have-A-Beer-And-Forget-About-It, but unfortunately this is still Lent. Point is, I approached the microwave again for some reason and tried once more to heat up the butter. Surely that was a one-off electrical error that wouldn't repeat itself, and hey look! It started up fine again!

::microwave flickers and pops angrily, cut to scene of entire town losing power and blacking out::

Oh.

When you have a 1-year old and are in a situation where both parents work, a microwave is simply not something you can do without. It is the reheater of easy leftovers, the cooker of frozen vegetables, the source of at least part of damn near every meal for my daughter. The microwave is a holy, sacred appliance that makes life do-able.

"I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now." ~ Ellie Sattler, Jurassic Park

I had a naive and simple plan on Monday evening. I would pick up my daughter from day care around 5:00, take her to Home Depot to purchase a microwave, get the microwave up and running in time to heat her up some food, and still wind up putting her to bed at a reasonable time.  It is remarkable just how perfectly every step of that would have had to work out for it to be anything resembling a success, but I convinced myself that things would go in accordance with this schedule.

I am a stupid person.

I picked up my daughter and we made the drive to Home Depot. At this time I realized that I had done little research on the matter in advance. Because I am a millenial and had an upcoming problem involving a physical object, I did what people of this generation usually do and called my parents for advice.  My mom answered and I was relieved to learn that microwaves are simple machines with few complications or necessary specifications. She did, however, remind me that I needed to measure the nook that our microwave sits in before buying one. Shit. I was meaning to do that all day and forgot. I took a detour and headed home to get the measurements: 2 feet wide, 17 inches high, and about 2 feet deep.

When I got to Home Depot, I made haste for the appliance section, understanding my daughter's general level of patience for sitting in a shopping cart for an extended period of time. I looked at the microwaves on display in the appliance section that were hanging above the stoves.  What the hell? These things are all humongous!

Eventually I got to talk to someone that explained that the microwaves on display were "over-the-range" microwaves and that the countertop models were smaller.  Well great, guy! Show me some of those! He takes me over to some sitting on shelves, and I explain the dimensions of the space to him. He tells me that all of the ones on display here should be fine, and sure enough, a tape measure confirmed that. I obviously have no clue what to buy besides wanting stainless steel for the look. There's this one Magic Chef microwave that seemed pretty cheap and another LG microwave that had a better look to it, but was about $50 more expensive.

This is where the power of branding comes into play. I have no history with purchasing products from LG. They might make great products with excellent customer service, or they might make crap that breaks down immediately and outsource their customer service to Comcast. What I do know is that "LG" is the name of a company I've heard of before and "Magic Chef" is most likely a company run out of a basement somewhere that sells its goods on infomercials at three o'clock in the morning, because it is called "Magic Chef". I took pictures of both microwaves and sent them to my wife, but she didn't respond so I just picked the LG one and moved on.

At the checkout register, they rang up the microwave for a price of $179.99. I was about to put in my chip card but I stopped and recalled that this was far in excess of the price on the tag back in the appliance section. I mentioned to the checker that I recalled it being priced closer to $150.  We tracked down the guy that was helping me make the decision and he went to investigate the situation.

Meanwhile, my daughter had been a little antsy during this trip, but no worse than that. Overall, she had been great, and now I had a little down time to play with her a little bit and get her smiling and laughing. The checker was absolutely loving this, and she joined in on the fun. She would tilt her head to the side and my daughter would do the same in reaction while cracking up like it was the funniest game in the world. Eventually, enough time had passed for her to determine that her co-worker had probably reached the Iowa state border by now and would not be returning. She told me that he was "probably going to honor it anyway", so she rang it up for $149.00 because I told her that I thought it was close to $150 but couldn't remember with 100% certainty.  This was a nice gesture.

I then went to the car to text my wife that I had finished the errand. It was at that point that I noticed the picture of the microwave I sent to her earlier. The price tag was in the picture and it was $159.00.

Oh no.

In the grand scheme of things, this was pretty much not a big deal given that I basically told them what price I wanted to be charged and they gave it to me without even checking things out. I thought momentarily about driving away, but I then thought about my Catholic guilt screaming "YOU STOLE $10.00 FROM HOME DEPOT YOU ASSHOLE!!!" at me the rest of the evening.  I walked back in with my daughter and explained to the checker what happened, basically asking her to put $10.00 more on my card.  She said she could not do that and that I would have to take the receipt to the "Returns" line on the other side of the Home Depot.

Okay then.

I head down there and there's one dude in line in front of me. Whatever he's working through with the person behind the counter is taking forever, and I keep making eye contact with the returns person to see if she could squeeze me in during some down time, but to no avail. Meanwhile, my daughter is again the star of the show, smiling and charming everyone waiting around the counter.  This could have been an awful errand and she was making it somehow fun. Eventually, the guy left. I began to explain to the customer service lady what had happened and she said "oh, they called and told me about you. You're good." Neat. You couldn't have just said that to me ten minutes ago?

Finally I take the thing home.  It's 6:45 PM already so all hopes of my daughter getting to bed anywhere close to her 7:15 - 7:30 bedtime are pretty much out the window. Hopefully, though, I could plug in the microwave and get her something hot to eat. When I took it out of the box, it measured at about 21.5 inches wide, so it should fit within the 24-inch wide front of the nook with some wiggle room. Then, I started reading the manual regarding installation. Everything was going swimmingly until I read...

Free air flow around the oven is important. Allow at least 4 inches of space at the top, sides, and back of the oven for proper ventilation.

You have got to be kidding me.

Four inches on each side?

After all that, I don't even have space for this thing??

I immediately called Home Depot back, irate at the fact that the person helping me to pick out a microwave did not care to mention anything about ventilation constraints, while simultaneously stressed that I still was making no progress in getting my progressively impatient 1-year-old any closer to fed, bathed, and put to bed. The kitchen department gave me a response roughly akin to, "Our department employees don't know anything about microwaves." Super!

A part of me began to hope that the four inches thing was just a boilerplate overly conservative instruction put in the manual to cover the manufacturer's ass. I pushed further with the kitchen department and I was transferred to some sort of interior designer over the phone (please do not ask me how the internal phone tree of Home Depot works). I asked this new person whether the instruction was merely a sick joke and she replied that in her capacity as an interior designer that she takes that specific four-inch ventilation specification very seriously when assisting clients with the layout of appliances in the kitchen. At this point, I was losing my mind and having already explained the situation with my daughter to her, pretty much all sense of personal decency had vacated me.

"HOW ARE THE STORE EMPLOYEES NOT EDUCATED ABOUT NECESSARY AIR FLOW REQUIREMENTS OF MICROWAVES WHEN THEY ARE PHYSICALLY THE PEOPLE IN THE STORE TELLING YOU WHAT TO BUY!?!??!?!?!?!!!!11!1!1!!!1!!!"

(I was so out of my mind that I may have actually spoken the "1"s.)

I was told that a store manager would call me back later. In the meantime, my mother-in-law came over and looked at the situation as well. While 24-inches was the clearance for the nook, past the front the width was more like 25.5 inches, so we actually had about two inches of air flow space on each side, half the ventilation requirements shown in the manual. Our family works with a contractor we trust, so she called this gentleman and his point of view was that two inches on each side should be perfectly adequate. Finally having some level of assurance that I'd purchased a product that could actually be used without overheating, I began to breathe a sigh of relief.

All that's left to do is plug the thing in.

The outlet where the plug needs to go is actually behind a drawer below the nook. As this area is otherwise inaccessible, the previous owners drilled a hole into the bottom of the nook so that the plug for the old microwave could pass through it. We tried to pass the new plug through the hole and ran into a little bit of a problem:

OLD PLUG STYLE: STRAIGHT

NEW PLUG STYLE: BENDY-SIDEWAYS-LIKE

....

....

....

....

....

....

....

My Major Minor Streak of Sobriety

I do the whole Lent thing, so this year I tried doing something a little different. For awhile, I had been growing somewhat concerned about the amount of alcohol I'd been consuming. To clarify, I don't have an addiction -- that's a serious chemically-driven situation that requires attention and treatment -- but I had been drinking a lot simply because I felt like it and wanted to.

About a month ago, I had a few friends over one night just to hang out and play some board games. They were all driving home later that night. One of them had a cocktail with me earlier in the evening, but aside from that, none of them drank. So why did I have 4-5 beers over the remainder of the evening? That's not a problematic amount of alcohol to have in a single evening by any means, but this is what I meant by drinking a lot -- having more than just a couple when the situation really doesn't call for it. Doing that one or two times per week in addition to the social situations during which that would be more normal really adds up.

So for Lent, I decided to make a rule for myself. I am not allowed to drink more than the other people I'm spending time with. I was hoping that this would be a good way for me to still enjoy parties and nights out while keeping things in check during nights that are much more chill. When it's just the two of us at home, my wife usually doesn't drink more than two-ish glasses of wine in an evening, so this has helped keep my intake down.

Last weekend, I went to a concert on my Friday night out and didn't want beer because I wanted to avoid bathroom lines. After that, I hung out with my wife for the remainder of the weekend and she was sick. This, therefore, has led to a situation in which I've gone about 13 days without alcohol. 13 days sober didn't sound like a lot to me until I really tried to think about when the last time was that I went 13 straight days without having a drink.

If you don't really go cold-turkey on booze, it gets pretty ingrained into your life even if you don't ingest mass quantities.  Going out after softball or basketball games, bar trivia, an occasional glass of wine with dinner...there's just so many routine situations that could break up a potential such string of 13 days. If I had to guess, I probably haven't done this since winter break during my junior year of college. That was almost a decade ago.

I've read so many articles about people who quit alcohol and immediately notice a bunch of positive changes in their lives. They sleep better. They have more energy. They feel more physically fit. You probably have to go longer than I have to feel a lot of these effects, but I have to say that thus far, I'm not seeing it.  I play basketball twice per week, and if anything I've played worse lately and haven't been able to go as hard on the court. When my wife was sick last weekend, I was a wasteland of lethargy and didn't rise to the occasion the way I could have or should have. Maybe I was coffee deprived or something, but it felt like I had a hangover minus the headache and dehydration.  As for sleep? I guess I've slept fine, but that wasn't really an issue before. I don't miss hangovers, but aside from that, I don't think I've evolved into a higher-functioning person.  Again, one probably needs to go at it for longer than 13 days.

The upside? I'm sure that my body is thanking me for this reprieve, even if I can't directly feel it. Just knowing that I've been able to take it easy and not give in to temptation (quite as often!) has been a load off my mind. Part of me wants to see just how long I can push this out. I probably won't last the weekend, though, and with everyone's favorite Irish holiday coming up on the horizon, that probably won't cut my streak tremendously short. This may have been a temporary experience, but it was a good one for me even if I haven't found it to be all that "rewarding".

The Pat Hatter's Adventures with General Dentistry

This is going to be a quick break from my ongoing The Wire character rankings, just to get into something that's been on my mind.

I'm someone who could probably considered "overly paranoid" about my teeth. As far as their quality, they're generally fine. I won't be showing up in any Colgate commercials anytime soon, but they aren't really a detriment to the way I look either.  I am, however, concerned, that I've been growing more and more apprehensive about biting into hard foods (thicker baby carrots, apples, even some hard cookies, etc). As a kid, I used to actually bite through uncooked spaghetti and popcorn kernels, so I am definitely sensitive to this change. Does this happen to everyone else my age? I don't know.

Anyway, I've had my fair share of cavities and issues over the years. I grind my teeth relentlessly and have to wear a guard at night, and even had one of my teeth knocked out at age 12, so I've had a root canal done and redone. A couple have been chipped and repaired. Basically, even though there's been no irreparable disasters, I will often find out something is wrong after a visit to a dentist.

Of course, that often depends on which dentist I go to see.

Growing up, my parents had a lot of trust in our pediatric dentist, and I shared that trust. I saw him until I actually got out of college and started working, where I picked my own dentist for the first time (using what else, Google). It mostly went okay, but I clashed a bit with them when I went in for a cleaning and one of the two dentists wasn't in. The most important part of a cleaning for me is getting the "A-OK" from an actual licensed dentist, and I wasn't about to leave without getting that experience. It kinda rubbed me the wrong way that they didn't understand my concern.

I moved a few miles away and tried a new dentist, who instantly diagnosed me with six cavities (most of which, to my understanding, were minor). This made me furious. I sent sort some degree of a "WTF" e-mail to my apparently indifferent prior dentist's office, because there's no way all those cropped up in the six months since my prior cleaning. They responded defending their work, but I was convinced that I'd moved on, and for the better.

Then again, I re-thought things over the course of the next two years. My sister used this dentist as well, and we began to feel over time that he saw his patients as walking dollar signs. We felt he "over-treated" based on some basic mantra of "we're all about tooth preservation, here".  I ultimately moved on from Pricey McGougeface (the name really should have tipped me off) because I wanted to make sure that everything he was doing was actually necessary. The next guy I tried seemed good, but I shortly moved far away.

That brings me to my current predicament. I have seen my current dentist, Smiley McBlithe (lots of Irish dentists in this world, there are) three times for cleanings and each time he's told me that absolutely nothing is wrong. That, to me, seemed batshit bonkers, because I can't remember that ever happening before, and it's not like I take better care of my teeth now than I used to. After the third such visit, I decided it was time for a second opinion.

For this, I went to a small dental office that looked like it was basically just part of a residential apartment building. The guy, Energizer Pushyfingers, was a younger dentist but seemed to have a wealth of knowledge. He gave me a complete exam that lasted an hour and a half (doesn't this guy have anything else to do?).  He recommended:

• Two crowns
• Two fillings
• Seeing a specialist regarding an apparent extra tooth under my gums
• Consulting an orthodontist about completely re-working my bite
• Re-thinking my life as I know it

What the hell?

How can two different qualified dentists recommend such vastly different things?  What would you do here?

Me? Welp, time for a third opinion.

The third guy, Rushy Fast-Talker (went along with his wife on hyphenating, very progressive), had blocked off a half hour to speak to me. I discovered the appointment was scheduled as a "meet and greet" when I got there, but to my relief, the guy did actually spend about 5-10 minutes looking at my teeth. Though he didn't seem to have a wealth of time to talk through things with me, he was appalled by the second dentist's diagnosis and recommended mayyyyybbbee one filling but overall it was more of a "wait and see" situation.

He then asked me some questions about the second guy.

Rushy; "Was this guy some sort of corporate dentist?
Me: "I'm not sure."
Rushy: "Well, was he a younger guy?"
Me: "Yeah" Why in the world does that matter?
Rushy: "Well, what was the name of the business? Did the guy have his name on it?"
Me: "Uhhhh....." Come to think of it, it wasn't called 'Pushyfingers Family Dental Care'
Rushy: "See, that's what I thought. These corporate dentists have to meet certain quotas, so they tend to prescribe treatment when the situation doesn't necessitate it."

Wait wait wait....what???

Okay, I'm not totally naive. I understand there are dentists out there in the world, like McGougeface (whose name WAS on the business), that are trying to terrify me into thinking my teeth are dying and are trying to rook me for all me and my insurance are worth, but now you're telling me there's gigantic networks of offices across the country for which treating people like that is corporate policy????

That news is most unsettling. (Is it news? Did everyone else know about this and just wasn't telling me?) Can't we just have universal standards of dental treatment where everyone agrees on what's a problem and what isn't?

Yeah, I understand why that's impossible. The unfortunate truth is that we must choose who we trust to take care of our teeth. The problem is that we're woefully under-qualified to do so.