Alex Bain's Blog

Photo booths

Lisa loves photo booths. It's funny because, it's not like there's any shortage of pictures of us. On my Flickr account alone there's 285 pictures with both of us in them. But she cannot walk past one of the booths without jumping in. And I always think it's silly at the time. And then later I always have to concede that they DO look fun and cute.

We were out the other night at the Good Time Emporium in Somerville, a cheap nearby arcade where we like to play a horse racing game. On our way out, we passed by one of these booths, and took the pics you see on the left. Traditionally, there's 4 shots in each package and we take:

1. A nice one
2. A kissing one
3. A silly face one
4. Something miscellaneous

Well, it seems fitting that, because we have a fun history of diving into these booths, we should have one at our wedding. Some friends of ours mentioned this company that places a temporary booth at your wedding that takes digital pics, and then gives you the images on a CD at the end of the night. I haven't called them yet to see if they're free, but I'm considering do it soon, because I think it could be a really fun touch if we got our guests to all jump in at some point and make funny faces for the camera. Here's the link to the company's site.

The Bain Principle of Parking

Lisa and I wanted to go to Newbury Street in Boston yesterday to get a nice lunch and do a little necessary shopping. The problem with Newbury is that it's wicked hard to get a decent parking spot. We get there and start circling around a few blocks, and finally spot a spot :-)

As we pull slightly past the spot so we can parallel backing-in, someone throws his car into the space from behind us. He can't finish parking, but he can wait there, blocking us, until we leave and he can straighten his car out.

I had one of those "Serenity Now" moments where I realized that the only interaction I could possibly have with this jerk was to get out of the car and scream at him and swear. He wasn't a small man, and I could probably win a fist fight, but I'm (mostly) beyond that phase in my life, and don't want a criminal record.

As we left the scene, we fantasized about returning later to key the jerk's car. I originally thought it'd be funny to write "you know what you did". Lisa liked writing "I steal spots from little girls". Then I thought, maybe we should write "Yankees fan" so that other people will also want to trash his car, and Lisa added, "What about 'I [heart] Jeter'?" I love her.

So we continued to circle, and continued to find zero available spaces. Lisa was growing increasingly anxious, while the situation didn't affect me quite as much. I pointed this out to her, and she reminded me of how mad I've become in the past when I was driving and couldn't find a spot.

And that's how The Bain Principle of Parking was born. The principle works like this:

The frustration associated with searching for parking grows, for the driver, geometrically as a function of the time spent looking, but for the passenger(s), it grows only arithmetically. As a result, the longer two or more people look for a spot, the less rational a decision they will be able to make as a group.

With this principle in mind, the next time you look for a spot in a crowded urban areas with 2 or more people in the car, remember that the anxiety and frustration are not distributed equally, and that the driver must be treated with extreme compassion.

Hopefully, my eponymous principle will soon join the ranks of Pareto, Pythagoras, and Ockham.

How you know your cat likes his new toy

Furio went absolutely crazy for this new cat toy.

On a related note, I'm COMPLETELY becoming the cat owner I promised I wouldn't be. I hope it's not too trouble to skip these posts if they're of no interest to you.

Here's what we'll do: I''ll put up a poll where you can vote (anonymously) on whether or not you are already sick of hearing about Furio. If the vote goes against the little fuzz ball, he'll rarely show up on the blog again.

[I do recommend watching the video before you vote though]

What content format do you prefer?

I've signed up for this service through MajikWidget that allows you to have voting and polls and stuff. We'll see if this works. My guess is that it just highlights how few people read this. If you do like it, you're free to vote more than once, and I've created a category just for the polls, and another one just for the voting, so you can come back to them and vote again and again, or look for other opportunities to vote on stuff.

Here's your first poll: