Pet Peeves: Cropping out other people for your profile picture

As an amateur photographer, I totally understand retouching photos or enhancing them or manipulating them to make them better. What I don't understand however, are people who upload pictures on facebook with their friends cropped out.

What does this say about them? Here are some of my hypotheses.
-My friends are too ugly and I don't want them ruining the picture.
-My friends are really good-looking and I don't want them to look better than me.
-I think this facial expression of mine is really cool and I think I look great.
-I have no sense of what constitutes the right size for a photograph and I must butcher it.
-I don't want people to know I have friends.

Here are some examples. To avoid hurting peoples' feelings I am only using pictures of myself or random strangers.


here is a perfectly nice (albeit a little blurry) picture of some nice happy girls. I decide - this is a good picture of me, let me use it for facebook!

But instead of using that version on my facebook...

I will instead use a 10x10000 version of the picture, complete with some random hand sticking out of nowhere. Nothing is centered right, but at least I get to be the main focus point.

The best ones are when it's a picture of you and one other person at a special event.

You are my special friend because I came to your graduation and we have a special picture together.

But then when this goes on facebook -

Random hand? - check
Weird picture size? - check
Deciding your friend is not good enough for your profile picture even though you went to their graduation? - check

So yea. Every time I see one of these I just chuckle silently to myself because it's so obvious. Actually I admit, I am also guilty of this. But only once! A cookie if you can figure out which one.

why I don't (like to) compost

Those friendly green compost bins at our dining commons... yea I never really use them. At Crossroads sometimes I get peer-pressured into dumping my excess dinner into the huge bins, but at Cafe 3 I don't bother.

Because if they were really serious about not wasting food, the people working there would actually listen to you when you tell them you only want "A LITTLE BIT." Conversation Exchange I had yesterday at Crossroads:

Dining lady: rice and chicken?
Me: No rice! Just chicken
DL: *dumps rice on plate*
Me: No rice! No rice! ...awww damn it.
DL: *oblivious*

Maybe I should speak louder? Why do they always ask what you want, if they're just going to give you the same amount anyway? They always heap huge portions on my plate, and I can never finish it! Hence the extra food for compost, and hence my disinclination to compost.


stop your scooping movements!! I'm a small person and I don't need to eat moar!

Pet Peeves: Not Being On Time

Since I try my best not to be emo on this blog, I think I should be able to rant. So I'm going to start a series on my pet peeves. Something I'm passionate about, right? First one is

Not Being On Time D:

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, before cell phones and text messaging, people were on time. You tell someone you'll meet them at 1pm, you get there maybe 5-10 minutes before 1pm so you can be there for the whole span from 12:55pm to 1:05pm. Your friend, being a responsible individual who would never want to keep you waiting, will show up in that time interval. People waste hardly any time and everything proceeds on schedule.

I remember in high school, I had two good friends who were ALWAYS ON TIME, if not early. Those were the days. I could always expect these two to show up right on the dot. I remember one time when a group of us were meeting, and when I arrive early, I knew that my on-time friend would be the next to come. And he does, right on time.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT.


Maybe we all need an ominous lizard clock to keep track of time.

Nowadays, with Berkeley time and iPhones and the extinction of watches, I am constantly judging and considering and making sure I show up at the right time, if not on time. No one wants to be the one waiting around. Party starts at 9? Show up at 11. Meet me in 15? For some, that means 30. I'll call you back at 2? No call ever. (actually that's unrelated and a different story)

After a year of people being late, I am late too. This makes me sad. I remember one time when I tried to use my late-time-judgement, but I still ended up waiting 40+ minutes... it was cold too! WTF. Is it so hard to be present at a time you determine without calling or canceling or running late? What happened to the common courtesy that says you shouldn't call last minute to change plans?


Ed from FMA is good at knowing what's important.

I am a very punctual person. I always arrive exactly when I want to arrive. But being at college has screwed me all up! I am actually late sometimes, but then other people are always late-r.

And now I'm going through all the times when someone's kept me waiting. All it says is that you don't consider the other person important enough to be on time and not waste their time. The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. So I'm going to stop.

But remember kids, after five minutes means you're LATE. Not fifteen.