T.I.L.T. Things I've Learned Thursday XXIX

29 is the magic number for the July edition of Things I've Learned Thursday. Here's some more useless “knowledge” to drop:

* On July 8th, 2009, at 12:34 and 56 seconds, there was a perfectly chronological progression of digits: 12:34:56 7/8/9. I realized the bit with the date early in the day, found out like 10 other people noticed the same thing, and then one of my friends pointed out the time thing.

* If you're a slow worker, your reward is to get other, faster workers to pick up your slack. If you're a fast worker, your reward is more work. I've learned from past experiences to downplay my speed for this reason, but I've noticed the trend with various people at every company I've ever worked at, and I'm not sure it sends the right message to employees.

* If road workers are going to close lanes on roads with a single lane in either direction, they're more than likely to do so between 8AM and 9AM, to maximize the impact on the commute of office workers. If they started at 9AM, most of us would already be at work and it wouldn't be so bad.

* Michael Jackson had an enviable collection. I want to go to there.
Hat Tip: B13.

* In case of a tornado, it's best to seek shelter in a basement or the lowest floor of a house, and stay away from windows. We had one the other night that began as lightening with no thunder, then brought in high winds, and finally pouring rain and huge hailstones. It only lasted 15 minutes but the sounds outside and the big red blotch on weather radar maps over my house were definitely scary.

* Killing ceiling spiders greatly reduces the number of red bite marks one wakes up with.

* Money takes forever to save and minutes to spend. Similarly, you can exercise for months and lose a few pounds, and gain it all back with one snack. Why did my company's lunchtime staff meeting come with so many delicious cookies?

* I learned something unfortunate about the treadmill at my gym. I've been running an hour each day, covering more and more distance. 5.69 miles is the most I've accomplished so far, and I keep setting the bar higher as I improve. During my latest run, after almost 40 minutes I was at 3.33 miles when my left shoelace came undone and flew about madly, threatening to get caught in the belt. I hit the pause button, hating to break my 6.6 MPH pace that I'd reached. I quickly tied my shoe and jumped back up, hitting the pause button again. Unfortunately, hitting it twice ends the session and resets the machine. Apparently I needed to hit the “Quickstart” button to pick up where I'd left off. So I started over from scratch and, either weighted down from the cookies at lunch or tired from my first attempt, only managed to reach 4.56 miles. In the future I'll tie my shoes better and know what button to push if I have to stop. On a cool and coincidental note though, the total distance I ran in my two sessions was 7.89, the same as the date. Weird...