50% Chance of Rain

Why do some good raincoats, the ones you wear over suits, have heavy linings?  Besides the fact that you're already wearing a jacket underneath, if it's that cold, it's not raining.  And when you think about it, why do you really need a good raincoat anyway?  Men really don't wear hats anymore other than a baseball cap, which you shouldn't be wearing with a suit unless you invented the internet, or something really goofy that they think is cool but not only isn't cool,  it isn't waterproof.  So if you're not wearing one of those hats they wore in the days of black and white movies, you're going to have to have an umbrella to keep dry, in which case you won't need a raincoat, will you?

I suppose you can get by with a slicker over a sports/suit coat if it's raining, but it's not top choice.  But if it's cold, it's the pompous top coat or shivering with nothing, unless you've got an enormous parka (or worse yet a not enormous parka), in which case you've got other problems.

And about having problems, what about those human oddities that wear too-big raincoats on clear days?  There may be lots of reasons for that, and they're all bad.

And finally, meteorologists, and pretty much everyone else, should not be allowed to make the infamous "50% chance" call.  Just admit that you have no idea.

With Glowing Hearts

Really enjoying the Olympics this year, as I've discovered the secret to do so:  skip the opening and closing ceremonies, and don't watch any figure skating/ice dancing.  Wish I understood the curling rules better though (OK, understood them at all).

Romancing the Stone

Made it past Valentine's Day again.  Is there any man that doesn't hate what is the least romantic day of the year?  Please, just tell us what the minimum requirement is to fulfill this holy day of obligation.

Queue Cues

"We are experiencing abnormally high call volume."  I rarely phone call centers, preferring live chat but often having to send an email to get a "timely response," typically promised in 2-3 business days. But when I do call I seemingly always have the misfortune of encountering the apparently normal abnormal call volume.  Perhaps this is due to how long it takes to navigate the menu in order to get to reach the queue (the word, fittingly, with the longest string of consecutive vowels, if memory serves me).  And when you finally do reach the proper extension, you often get to hear how long the wait will be from there.  I'm told that the software is sophisticated enough to estimate wait times fairly accurately, but I don't know that call centers are using that software, as it really seems that the wait times are often just wild guesses.  I've actually tested this by calling three times within a minute and finding the wait time estimates to vary by up to 300%.

Wait estimates have an interesting psychology.  Restaurants often slightly overestimate them, so that when you're called after waiting an hour having been told the wait is 70 minutes, you're actually happy about it.  Call centers seem to be just pulling the times out of hats, though.

I've heard that typically regardless of the menu, one can press "0" at any point to reach a person.  I've tried it a few times and it's always worked for me. 
  

Your call is important to us

Of course it is.  Why else would you allow me to experience the wonders of technology by having a machine talk to me?  Why else would you allow me the enjoyment of navigating your fascinating and endless menu?   Why else would you understaff the lines to assure that I'll have the maximum time to enjoy your commercials and "music" again and again?  And a seeming fortnight later when I finally do get through, I may well luck out and get to go through the process a second, and maybe even more times. It's great to be important.