Ice In Soda

Whether you call it soda, pop, or have conversations that flow like this:
"You want a coke?"
"Yup."
"What kind?"
"Dr. Pepper."
Then you know what I'm talking about. Carbonated beverages. Many of us drink them with practically every meal when eating out, and they go hand in hand with the ice within them. Now, when you think about the ice in your soda, you usually think it is there to keep the drink cold or possibly make it ever colder while simultaneously watering it down. In fact, when the soda fountains are self-serve, I occasionally got no ice at all since the drinks were refrigerated in the machine and I drink it too fast for it to get cold.

You see, I drink a lot of fluids. For some reason, my body processes fluids incredibly fast and so I get dehydrated very quickly. I can knock back a gallon of water of day. For the sake of comparison with two of the most recommended amounts of water one should drink, that's 16 glasses compared to 8, or at least 33% more than half my weight in ounces.

Anyway, I discovered that the ice in soda has another purpose.

The fountain machine we have at work has a bit of a problem. It overcarbonates creating massive heads on the soda it puts into your cup. Without ice, I stand there and either stir it or just wait for it to fizz down to put more in. It can take awhile. Now, you may know that interacting with the bubbles makes the head of the soda go down faster. Some people put a finger in there or blow on it to drive the bubbles down and such, and it turns out ice does the same thing.

The existence of ice in the drink helps to drive the head of the drink down much like stirring it or otherwise interacting with the bubbles. I found that interesting.

What Is Success?

When you're growing up, and you think about what you want to do, people say if you work hard enough, you will succeed. So what do you consider yourself if you work that hard your entire life, and despite all your hard work, you still cannot succeed? Are you a failure? Do you just need to work harder? Or is there another factor that no one ever tells you about because it is so discouraging to know how it is to your success that knowing that there is an element you can't control can discourage you.

I am talking, of course, about other people. To make it even more discouraging, it isn't just other people, it is the right people. You can be the top of your field. Better than Einstein. Better than da Vinci. Better than Mozart. Better than Spielberg. You could have ideas and works that could change the world forever. You could run the country better than any leader in its history. But if you don't know the right people, it will never happen.

It is all a matter of pure luck, really. Most of the world's success stories rely just as much on the right place at the right time with the right person as much as they do the hard work and talent of the individual. Some of those stories could have just as easily ended in an arrest as they did in success. Those are the lengths to which people have gone to achieve their goals.

Success is like a chain where one link leads directly to the next but like a chain, where is the first link? People love to have been the first to know something after it gets big, but they never want to go first on something new.

What does this mean for you? Just an acknowledgement. Success is hard work, make no mistake about it. You have to possess the talent to make something of yourself in any field.

But it is just as much finding the right ear to hear you.

Misguided Commercials

It is no secret that commercials seem to forget what happens in the real world. Their depictions of everyday life are often beyond laughable. One that seems to repeat itself is just how much money companies seem to think that the average person has on hand at any given time.

A recent bank commercial that inspired this post depicted someone going to the store and buying a little more than was on their list. How much more? Well, that was the joke as we heard the back up sounds of a large truck backing into their driveway. The implication was that this guy could just go out on a whim and buy a truck load worth of merchandise just like that. Absolutely no one in my circle of friends is capable of spending that much at one time. Not that they would have on hand in their bank account anyway, which was what this commercial implied.

Another recent one has a daughter asking dear old dad for concert tickets, and because dad gets double points or something for each purchase, he offers to take every friend she has, he'll go, and take his friend as well. Nothing in this commercial suggests he is anything above average, yet he apparently has a fortune tucked away somewhere.

When I thought about this further, I realized that businesses do actually think this about their average consumer. Anytime I sat through any class on sales, they always told us that a no answer was not a true no, but just a request for more information. They believed that if you pushed hard enough, the person would see the value in the product and always buy it. They never believe that a no means that they do not have the money.

When I had to deal with collection agencies back when I was really broke, I told one that I was unable to pay, and he made a big point of saying that he noted that I refused to pay. That is what companies think of us. We are all sitting out here with millions of dollars at our disposal and just not buying from them. They believe if they push hard enough they will get us to buy something.

Personally, I am on a limited budget, and I cannot simply spend lots and lots of cash on just anything. And unless my ship really comes in, I can't see me buying a truck load of anything.

Come on. That's just silly.