A couple of nights ago I put a buck twenty-five into a soda machine at work, made my selection (Mountain Dew Severe), and the bottle changed positions a little, but didn’t fall.
“What the hell?!” I shouted, in outrage. Then I put my shoulder down, and rammed the machine like De’Cody Fagg.
But, of course, there’s never a positive outcome to such a scenario. Once the vending sequence is completed, successfully or otherwise, there’s no going back. Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, wrote extensively on this subject.
So, I growled like a dog, and moved to another machine. I’d be paying $2.50 for a bottle of soda, which broiled my brisket, but I needed a cold, caffeinated beverage, dammit.
The other machine didn’t have any Mountain Dews in it, so I chose a Lipton iced tea with lemon. And the thing dispensed a solid block of ice in the shape of a bottle. I’m not kidding, I could’ve used that tea to defend myself, in case of attack.
“Am I on Candid Camera?” I shouted inside the break room, to people who couldn’t care if I live or die. What was I going to do with this thing? It was a teaberg! Grrr…
No way was I going to pay $3.75 for a drink, this ain’t San Francisco. So I just sighed and walked back to my desk, with an enlarged, rock-hard blunt instrument in my hand. And I’m talking about the iced tea, just to be clear…
I sat the thing on my desk, underneath a lamp, and wondered how long it would take to thaw out. It was roughly 3:20 pm when I purchased it, and wanted to make a note of when there was no visible ice left inside the bottle.
Anyone care to guess?
At one point I decided to remove the lid, thinking that might speed up the process. But it was a mistake. A column of brown ice kept inching its way upward, then melting down the sides of the bottle. So I had a sticky mess on my hands, as well. Call me a radical, but I’m not really a fan of gloopy, sticky workspaces.
I don’t have any prizes to give away, except bragging rights, I guess. But tell me when you think my plastic bottle of Lipton iced tea was finally ice free. At what time of night, after its purchase at 3:20? Use the comments link below.
And I overslept again today. I’m operating with a severe sleep deficit, and have bags under my eyes that’ll never go away. Yeah, they’re permanent by now…
When I’m working I hit the sack around 3:30 am, and the alarm starts bugging the hell out of me at 9:30. So, I get six hours on a good night. I do get caught-up a little on the weekends, but not enough.
What about you? Do you get much more than six hours per night? I think that’s pretty normal nowadays. And weren’t we supposed to be living a life of leisure by now, with flying-cars and robot maids and whatnot? Wotta rip-off!
So, please guess the melting time of my iced tea, and tell us about your sleep habits, if you wanna. And I’ll be back with something more substantial tomorrow.
See you guys then!
Wow!!! that was onew hell of a ride!
I got nuthin’
10:14 PM
Nummer one?
Never. It thawed at never. Or 3:21.
Bored shitless.
Seems like a trick question… Probably still frozen
I’ll say 8:25pm.
Yea, top 10!!
A guess at the required melting time for the bottle of iced tea: 8 hours, so 11:20 pm.
I woulda stuck with the same machine, and purchased the same product, and maybe two Dews woulda come out, the new one knocking the initial one loose, and both falling. So you wouldn’t have lost any cash in the deal. But then again, there coulda been something permanently wrong with the Dew-delivery mechanism, and you might’ve lost $2.50 with nothing to show for it (not even an enlarged, hard, blunt object).
And my guess is that the tea never melted last night, but you’ll arrive at work this evening to find that it has finally melted.
And six hours sleep per night is not enough. You’re gonna get cancer or heart disease from your body not having enough time to rejuvenate each night. And it’s not possible to make up for it on weekends. You gotta get 8 hours a night, or you’re gonna die an early death, my friend.
I’ll go out on a limb and say the drink took ~8 hours to melt. Difficult to accurately predict without the dimensions of the container, the type of surface it was siting on, wattage of the light etc.
In the future it might interest you to know that it will melt a lot faster if you put it in warm water. Air is not the best thermal conductor, but water is much better.
Jeff says
“I’m operating with a severe sleep deficit, and have bags under my eyes” … if your nose was dick shaped you’d REALLY have something to talk about…
I’m with Swami on this one: I don’t think the tea was completely melted before you left work.
I get eight hours of sleep per night. Sometimes more on the weekends. This is made possible by the fact that we ain’t got no young’ns. .
if this was the Price is Right, I’d be the prick that says 10:15, 8:26 or 11:21
12:18 AM?
I get to bed around 19 PM, wake up at 3:15 AM…it’s never enough.
I’m with Tyrosine but I would venture to say it was completely thawed the moment you were getting ready to leave. About 6 hours for me and I am a light sleeper. And what the hell does San Francisco have to do with the price of a soda? You pay the same amount anywhere in the US so stop picking on SF. Some of my best friends live there. Oh god, I’m back on the commentator board. Must shut up! Comment more people, I am not going to be #1 again.
12:13 AM.
I sleep too much, and then I don’t. I do alright. I’m looking into a permanent no sleep schedule. I might be fixing myself into a yurt type situation for some learnding. A high tech yurt, but yurt-ish none-the-less.
10:17 pm. Mark it, dude.
I sleep like ass. 2 hours, awake for an hour, 2 more, awake, finally really get to sleep and the damn alarm goes off. Got my very own prescription for Ambien just this morning. One more thing to get addicted to, I guess.
But y’all will be the first to know if I do anything ridiculous like drive in my sleep, kill my boss, etc.
Betcha you still had ice floaters by the time you left. Especially if it was hard as a…..blunt object.
Funny you should talk about sleep since last night had to be one of the worst nights I’ve had in a while. My allergies have been going wild and keeping me from a normal life lately. I picked up my Allegra-D from the pharmacy. So…like addict that needed a fix, I took the shit at 8PM last night and was WIDE AWAKE ALL FUCKING NIGHT! I watched three movies from midnight to 6AM. Jumpin’ Jeezum Crow!! My eyes feel like two pee holes in the sand. I don’t have bags…I have luggage.
And by the way…you can never “make up” lost snooze time. What’s gone is gone my friend. Zzzzzzzzzzz….
I aim for 8 hours of sleep every night. Most nights I accomplish that.
I can’t function without at least 6.
And I like to take naps on Saturday. Hell, I like to take naps any day. Now that I have my own office at work, I’m thinking about bringing in a pillow and blanket and taking a siesta at lunchtime.
Mr.Man says once I’m asleep I sleep like I’m dead. Very little will wake me.
I once fell asleep in church and slept like a baby until my head snapped back and I let out a loud “SNORK!”…
My friends said they tried to wake me up but nothing worked.
As for the melting of the tea…I’m going with 10:33 PM.
8 hours whether I need it or not. And I SLEEP, baby. It’s more like Death Lite than sleep, really. Since we got the Tempurpedic, it’s even worse. I don’t think a smoke alarm would wake me up.
My guess is the same as Tryrosine.
And, yeah, why pick on San Francisco, fer chrissakes?! This ain’t Manhattan!
Happy Wednesday, Surfers!
Thaw time = 10:30p.
I’m definitely sleep deprived and feeling it. I hate waking up tired and fantasizing about taking the day off, not to get errands done, or work on my taxes, or just do something fun, etc., but just to sleep. Uninterrupted, drug-induced, coma-like, dreamless sleep.
651 pm
Six hours of sleep is a good night for me on week nights. I always _intend_ to get to bed earlier but it never seems to happen. Once we get the brood off to bed, we like a few hours of “us” time (ie: sitting on the couch on our respective laptops). I sleep like a baby once I hit the pillow though. It practically takes an act of congress to wake my ass up. When given the opportunity, I can snooze for 10 or 12 hours easily. Mr. Saucy doesn’t know how I can do it. He sleeps badly anyway, but never for more than a few hours at a time. Sucks to be him…
As for the lump-o-tea.. I’m guessing about 10 hours which would put it at roughly 1:20 AM.
Just realized it’s national girl scout week. I will not be so crass to suggest I am going to celebrate by eating a brownie.
Boy oh boy, I googled “thaw rate” thinking I could cheat at this little contest. Apparently the big money is in bovine semen thaw rates and its affects on quality and not 20 oz. sodas. So I’ll just say 4:20 since that’s my favorite time of the day. I just wish the lazy bastards would keep my diet Mountain Dew stocked in the effin machine, it’s always sold out.
To quote Trish I also “sleep like ass”. Went to bed last night at 10 pm with a nice little buzz from 4 beers going. I woke up and figured it was 3:30 a.m. because that’s the time I normally wake up in the middle of the night but no it was 1:30, only thing I can think of is that’s about the time the beer wore off. I try to get 7-8 hours but usually will survive with 6. Any less than 6 and I ain’t getting out of bed.
Come on Shiny I liked it when you were leading the board with 400 comments! Actually since you brought it up I wish Jeff would do away with it, it makes me a little self concious and have wondered if it doesn’t do the same to some of the other commentors.
I love the comment board. Makes me feel important.
“Apparently the big money is in bovine semen thaw rates”
I heard you can gamble on it in Vegas.
I am posting here so I can pass Jason’s sorry ass on the Top Commentors listing. Eat my dust Jason!
Hey, I just passed Shiny Rod, too! I only need about 4 or 5 more to pass JCIII….
This is a lot of fun!
The “Iced” tea never melted, did it?
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters…..
I too, like WBinOH, tried to google approximate answers. Didn’t find anything suitable in a short period of time, and certainly didn’t find anything pertaining to frozen bull semen.
My guess the iced tea was fully thawed at 7:55 pm, almost a full 4 hours later. Why 7:55 pm? Why not… I just pulled a random time outta my ass.
As far as sleep patterns go, lately I’ve been getting some quality shut eye. 3 days out of the week I work a 12 hour stint, so when I get home, I’m pretty close to zonking out. Last night as an example; home just after 9pm, drank 2 quick beers and was asleep before 10. Woke this morning right before 7. Almost a complete 9 hours.
Other nights, I’m not so fortunate, especially if I’m playing poker on-line. Time really slips past you then. About a month ago, I got on a winning streak, lost all track of time. Next thing I know, it was quarter til 6 in the morning and I had to be at work at 9. That was not a good day.
Here’s a link to “Relationship between final temperature, thaw rate and quality of bovine semen”. It’s worth a look just for start of the second paragraph, how many times will you ever run across that in an article.
T-storm, come and get me, I got you by 3, and I hope Chapman is half the pitcher everyone who’s jizzing over him thinks he’ll be.
Fuck! http://jds.fass.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/8/1806
4 T-storm
Brought to you by:
Department of Food Science, University of Georgia, Athens – The Georgia BullSemens
Having the lamp on it throws a wrench into the works, but I’m going to say there was 12hours for every last trace of ice to melt. Ice clubs take a remarkably long time to melt.
I usually make do with 7hrs or sleep. When I sleep in I’ll be lucky to get to a full 8hours without ending up wide-eyed awake.
And for Jeff’s next book he should attend this:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/03/09/launch-pad-2010-open-for-um-launch/
Nostrils in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!
WB in OH, t-storm: Wonder who had the job of the Fluffer?
Probably some PhD candidate.
And always check which ice cube tray you get your ice clubs from at that place.
Weird thing is it isn’t a biology PhD candidate. It’s a sociology major doing research and earning a few bucks.
“Bull semen and the human spirit”
10:00 pm
I’ve been working night shift for 20 years working at a 7 on 7 off schedule so my sleep schedule is totally screwed up. Once you lose the sleep you never really ‘catch up’ My guess is 7am
I dont get nearly enough sleep. Being a stay at home home and mother of 5 I am truly lucky if I get 5 hours of sleep a night and that is 7 days a week. I normally wake up totally thinking that after I get the kids to school and ect I Will lay back down and sleep some more but I rarely do. Always way too much to do and never enough time teo do it.
Is when the tea melted.
A bowl of corn motherfuckers!
Tea was melted at 9:23 PM.
7:17pm
Well, the bottle does say, “iced tea”. What were you expecting? Liquid tea? Something you could readily drink? Haha..noob!
I prefer to get a good 8 hours of sleep per night. I’ll agree with a previous poster…those Tempur-pedic mattresses are a dream. I’ve never had a better nights sleep.
I don’t like the top commentators thing either. Through self control I finally managed to drop off the list this week.
Why didn’t you just run the closed bottle under some hot water?
Oh! Everybody get on over to Buzzard Billy’s blog site or FB page and wish her a Happy Birthday or she’ll be around to pick at yer carcus!