A company that prior to it's acquisition by Backcountry (around the same time that Amazon bought Woot.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... _by_Amazon which had a similar approach to marketing,) they used to send out emails with these kind of humorous anecdotes and random thoughts. Though the company SteepandCheep.com is still around, none of the hyperlinks in the emails from 2012 go anywhere (though evidently a lot of the images in emails are tied to image servers, so it's not unexpected that they go completely blank, since most of the clicks in emails are used for tracking marketing purposes.) It also reminds me of how many companies completely lose their "soul" once acquired by bigger businesses, just like Northern Brewer (which also had a quirkier side to it and seemed to be aimed at enthusiasts more.)
The target audience seem to be mostly young adults into sports and an alternative lifestyle, though the writer seems to have a fondness for cycling bikes (and once I got around to the earlier writings I felt I could relate to their thinking in many ways.)
Initially the files totaled around 20 pages. . . and that's what I put in spoilers, though it's now 83 pages long. . . But worth it to reflect on what someone was thinking around that time.
I just put it all into a PDF:
Some other ones I think I overlooked
Spoiler
Show
Oct 2009
A Rifle and a Case of Camo
We were arguing about an impending war several years ago, and my friend Rob was on a roll. His stance could be described as 'Pro War' to the point that he advocated the U.S. government scooping him up and dropping him behind enemy lines with nothing but a rifle and a case of Camo. What's interesting about this stance is his request for a case of Camo. At the time, Camo was a new high-gravity malt liquor sold in 16oz cans for about a dollar each. It was very cheap and tasted like a cross between drinkable yogurt and Red Bull. He wouldn't really have any use for a case of malt liquor behind enemy lines, but our argument was so woefully under informed that grasping at the military-sounding malt beverage was about the only thing that made sense.
A Crippling Illness
I live in fear that I have a rare condition that I say everything I think out loud but I don't realize it. Sometimes I'll make sure my vocal cords aren't moving when I'm thinking something really terrible. It's just to double-check that I'm not actually saying it out load. Sometimes I'll think something dirty and then think, "Man, I'm glad I don't say everything out loud." And then I'll wonder, "Did I say that out loud?" That's what's so terrifying about his illness--you never know if you have it. Hell, maybe you have it and this is my roundabout way of telling you.
(2011)
The Japanese Bar
There's a sushi joint not far from my work. They sell cans of saki for $8, but these cans are not listed on the menu. A friend warned me about them, and both times I've visited this restaurant, I've drank two cans. It wasn't until tonight that a friend pointed out the expiration date on the canned saki was in July of 2009. The date on the can is the only thing I understand since the rest is written in Japanese, so for all I know the date listed might be the time that this particular saki becomes drinkable. Maybe we're getting a deal and not actually buying expired saki. That said, this saki is 19% alcohol and comes in 200ml cans. My math on the deal works out like this: 19% alcohol is almost 40 proof, and normal hard liquor is 80 proof. So this saki is about half the strength of straight hard liquor. The can is 200ml, while a normal Coke can is 350ml. After thinking about these variables for about 30 seconds, I'm unable to determine exactly what all this math means, but honestly, I'm pretty sure it all has something to do with the saki being expired.
Animal Rights
During college my friend's hamster died. She noticed it was dead and during the process of cleaning out its cage, she realized she probably hadn't given it any water in a while. It may have died from neglect. It occurred to me at the time, could she go to jail? If the animal was a bit higher on the evolutionary scale -- a dog or cat, she could certainly get into some trouble. I know jails are crowded and they don't like filling them up with citizens in good standing who make mistakes, but I'm almost certain she could have at least gotten fined and banned from ever owning pets again. And if they had sent her to jail, what would she have told people she was in for? They would have torn her apart if they knew it was for hamster cruelty.
Long, Black Hair
I've been finding a lot of long black hairs in odd places lately. I just found a few in my bathroom. One was stuck to my shirt when I arrived at home. And I also found one in the icemaker at work. Neither I nor my wife have long black hair. My conclusion is that this is either a string of unrelated incidents, or I have a dual personality where I spend a lot of time with people with long black hair and bring them to my work and apartment. If that's the case, I really owe my wife a lot of gratitude for being very understanding.
Technology Life
In spite of vowing to make nature as much a part of my life as technology and striving to have a minimal impact on the environment, I'm a huge geek for new phone technology. I rationalize it by telling myself that my phone is the one piece of hardware I carry at all times, and even if I spend a lot of money on it, I know I'll get a lot of use out of it. So Google came out with a brand new phone and the big draw for me is that I can buy this new one and get all the latest cool software right away without waiting several months for my service provider to layer all their interface garbage on top of it and release it. I know logically that buying it will not improve my quality of life even marginally, and yet I still have the irresistible urge to plunge headlong into the latest and greatest. It's times like this that I ponder the seemingly bizarre and maniac obsessions of our predecessors (witch trials in Salem, for example) and feel some kind of connection with their seemingly wild and irrational decisions.
SUV Shopping
Once in a while I'll ponder just what inspires people who will never drive off-road to buy SUVs. Yesterday I hit upon the perfect analogy when I saw a watch commercial on TV. Some watchmaker was selling a watch that runs off solar power. Just a few minutes of light on its face stores enough energy for it to operate for several days. I thought, "That's kind of cool. If I had any need for a watch ever, I'd get that one." And then the thought popped into my mind, "But what if I go to Antarctica...for the winter." With no light for several months on end, that thing would be dead. This same type of logic, applied when car shopping, is the reason so many people who don't need SUVs buy them.
Guy or Gee
I worked for years at a gear shop with a guy named Guy (pronounced "gee," rhymes with "fee"). Then one day his father popped into the shop to say hi, and we all overheard him talking to Guy, except he called him "Guy" (rhymes with "why"). It would seem that Guy's parents had called him by this very American pronunciation all his life, but one day Guy flipped and chose to embrace the French pronunciation. Why is unclear, so we asked his dad about it and he couldn't offer any insight. I would find it annoying to have to constantly correct people whenever they pronounce your name like it's spelled, but Guy was a very educated person, he knew what he was doing. Of course, everyone is free to call themselves whatever they please, but for reasons I can't understand, it feels to me like cheating. The same goes for rIon and Cosmo who I used to work with. It was a liberal workplace.
Cold and Flu Season Questions
There's been a rather abrupt turn from fall to winter where I live. I began getting stuffed up the other day and assured myself that it was allergies. I'm sure a lot of plants pollinate when the temperatures change from 55F to 25F, right? Then came the aches, sore throat, headache, and itchy eyes. The notion of "itchy eyes" is most confusing of all. If you've never felt it, the phrase is inconceivable, but when you do feel it, well, they don't exactly itch, but it's the closest you can get to describing the symptom in your current condition. It baffles me that I get colds when it turns from fall into winter. And it's not just me, it happens to loads of people. Now, I'm no cold scientist, but it occurs to me that the common cold is a virus, so it makes no sense that everyone gets them seasonally. And the same with the flu for that matter. Why is there a flu season? And if it is based on temperature, shouldn't it be flu season somewhere in the world at all times? Then again it also makes no sense that a cure still eludes us for the most common of viruses.
(2012 They did continue writing after 2011) Holiday Stress
A Christmastime gift-shopping incident transported me back to my grade school days. We once had a gift exchange that was almost certainly a topic much discussed by my teacher and classmates in fifth grade. The big day came and everyone sat in class with a wrapped gift for their Secret Santa atop their desk, and I approached my teacher to ask what was going on. She told me it was for the gift exchange, and I told her I'd forgotten it. Wide-eyed, she suggested I run home to grab the gift, and I had to explain, no, I'd forgotten it on a much broader level. A rise of panic swept over me while thinking about my classmate (and who was I supposed to give the gift to anyway?) being the only person who did not receive a gift. I asked to be excused. I called my dad at work and explained the situation, and a couple hours later he dropped off a gift-wrapped something to give to the kid. It was one of the many times my dad bailed me out, for which I'm very thankful. And the experience also brought to mind all of the stress I placed on myself in grade school, and for things that ultimately never mattered. I suspect one day I'll look back on my stresses today with similar feelings.
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So I ended up mass deleting a lot of emails (a quarter of a million unread (mostly random stuff like ancient history archeology, but moreso stuff I should have just unsubscribed earlier) after Yahoo mail went from 1TB storage to 20 GB unless you upgraded (whether this was a calculated move for those who were prone to ignore emails until they piled up, and then pull the rug out to get people to rather pay to not bother with it, I have to wonder,) went down to about 200,000, many of which I'm not sure how to proceed with deleting since I don't know the magic word to find the results of what I feel safe mass deleting. I kind of just needed to clear things up even if I would prefer it if yahoo mail had the option to prevent stuff from showing up on the email search for deletion; you ultimately have to either "select all" and can't unselect certain email to not delete, as the software script is too cumbersome when it shows up with 2000-20,000 emails to delete and placing the emails in folders or archive don't protect it. Alternatively I could spam bomb my other email accounts with stuff I wouldn't mind keeping, but that kind of defeats the purpose.
The few times it might be better to use the app (though I also refused to use the updated Yahoo mail webpage online, so maybe it corrected the antiquated version of the email which seems to lag like crazy?) It's as if the older format of the website has to interpret for a newer version that was rolled out, and somehow glitches all the time (which might explain why Kroger's website crashed but also has issues when interfacing with the app? )
While going through 20 year old emails, I replied to my dad and called him a gaslighitng turd.
