Does Google Hate Christmas?
I don't really know. But going off Google Desktop, it would certainly seem that way.
In case you're unfamiliar with the product, Google Desktop is a very nice app from Google that lets you search your computer in a style similar to Mac's Spotlight. Until recently, I hadn't realised just how much I relied on this useful little program, which lets me get to pretty much any file on my computer with 10 keystrokes or less. Sure it has it's quirks, but it's hard to imagine a faster way of getting around.
Anyway, about 3 weeks before Christmas I found myself designing the cover for my old high school's Christmas Pageant booklets. Part way through I took a break, and closed the document. When I came back later to work on it again, I began typing "Christmas Pageant" into Google Desktop, expecting it to find the document after I'd typed one or two characters. Interestingly, it got as far as "Christma", hung for a moment, then died. Ah well, it had never done this before, I'd just restart Google Desktop and try again. (Sadly, this was a where I realised just how much I'd come to depend on the program - I couldn't just search for "Google Desktop" anymore, I actually had to trawl through my ridiculous 5 panel Start menu...) Anyway, I got it going, and tried again. Same result. And again. I tried just typing "Pageant" - no problems.
Even though I now had the document open, I was still curious - why should it crash on this one specific string, and no others? I tried again, this time typing slowly, and after some careful probing, found that it was the string "christm" that caused it to crash. Um... Why? As far as I'm aware no other string has this effect. From a computer's point of view, there should be nothing special about the string "christm". The only conclusion I can come to is that some Christmas-hating scrooge at Google must've hardcoded this into the program...
If anyone else has noticed this behaviour, feel free to comment.
It's the Thought That Counts
This was what I decided many years ago when thinking about the utter inappropriateness of the gifts the three wise men brought Jesus in the Christmas story. A newborn baby doesn't really have any need for gold (although his parents were probably happy), and I don't know anyone who's ever thought, "Hey, I wish I had some frankincense," or "Gee, I want to embalm my granny, where's the myrrh?" But I realise that these guys were rich, and probably quite out of touch with the lower classes, so I'm willing to let this slide.
Or I was until a week or so ago when I was playing the carol "We Three Kings", and decided to read through the words to all the other verses that no one ever sings. In case you've never done this, the piece actually has quite an interesting structure - the first and last verses are the ones everyone knows, the three in between are supposed to be sung by each of the kings (Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar - who knew they even had names?) in turn, as they explain the gifts they brought.
The fourth verse, sung by Balthazar as he explains why he brought myrrh, goes as follows:
Myrrh is mine, it's bitter perfume,
Breathes a life of gathering gloom.
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
WTF?! What's he trying to do? Traumatise the poor baby? Sorry, but if that was the thought behind his gift, I'd say it was a pretty poorly thought out present.
Oh, and btw, in case you don't know what myrrh is, it's not 'joy' or 'happiness' or whatever other warm, fuzzy concept your primary school teacher told you - it's a plant resin used as an embalming ointment. Nice!
Slo Glo and Slow Fade
Does anyone actually like these settings? In case you don't know what I'm talking about, most multifunction Christmas light sets have two settings called Slo Glo and Slow Fade. Slo Glo (apart from making my inner spelling-Nazi cringe) involves the set slowly cycling through each colour, while Slow Fade involves all the lights fading in and out at an excrutiatingly slow pace. Both of them are slow, boring, and a rather weak attempt by the manufacturers to show off the dimming ability of their lights.
So, you're probably wondering why I don't just put the lights on another setting? I do. But unfortunately they don't come with built in memory, so every time they're turned on, they go straight back to the combination setting, which includes both Slo Glo and Slow Fade.
I guess it's not that bad running round the yard and climbing up on the roof to change settings every night, but the horror doesn't end there. You can also buy multifunction icicle lights, and again my two nemeses turn up, looking worse than ever. For some reason, the icicles are wired into groups of four, so not only do all the normal effects look kinda stupid, but Slo Glo now takes out three-quarters of the set at a time, just leaving these dorky four icicle clumps every metre or so. And because they're generally all one colour, there's none of the nice colour-shifting effect you get with the normal sets.
Anyway, despite my disappointment, I'm still a big fan of putting up Christmas lights, and no doubt I'll be out there again next year with my sister, carefully painting the ones that have faded, and thinking up new ways to commit suicide.
