How about if you bought a new car because it was all you could afford? I have the car I'm driving now because my old car was on its last legs and between the trade-in value and my tax payment, I had enough for a down payment on a new car (or an unreliable used car, which in my line of work isn't going to cut it). Once…

No, but being an overpaid yuppie helps you actually save money, as opposed to scraping by because you are, quite literally, making only slightly more than it takes to cover expenses (mandatory expenses, too, because you've already cut everything else to the bone). I'd get into it further, but you're just going to…

You can't help yourself from fallin'.

Thanks, but did they make it any bigger? 1280x1024 is only suitable for my work desktop. :(

Every 20-30 minutes at home. I forget how often. At work, I just changed it to the K9 one chasing the Doctor Who villains on the desktop. Before that, I had the New Orleans Pelicans logo, and I changed it to that the day they announced the new logo, colors, etc. The work-issued notebook was just some simple black…

Aww, I figured it was something about Adventure Time. "Dog lover" was the dead giveaway, though, that you own the real-life Jake. It's okay. You can admit it.

How much does the awesome hat enhance productivity?

Which is a stupid thing to fake, because American Pickers already pisses off enough people as it is. (I interviewed one of the cast members for a story not long before the show premiered.) I suppose manufacturing that kind of drama is standard reality show operating procedure, though, because that's more controllable…

+more nuts than Delta Airlines

June Jones would've started him at WR. It woulda worked, too.

Jared Lorenzen's only 31. He can still suit up and hand off to Fangupo. They'd eat defenses ALIVE.

No. No, I wasn't. I'll say it again as well: he was in the right place at the right time, took advantage of an opportunity in a creative fashion and made the most of that opportunity. THAT should be the takeaway from this post: do whatever it takes when the opportunity presents itself. Not "buying a stranger pizza…

And so your example wasn't the same situation as his. He was trying to get this guy's attention. You were just being nice. The world could do with more of the latter, but it has nothing to do with buying pizza for an influential person. (Including the rest of the class was a nice move, of course.)

I think Derek kind of missed his own point. It wasn't buying pizza for a stranger (which really wasn't on him, that was Lifehacker's headline) that made the difference. It was seeing an opportunity, pouncing on it in a creative way and then making the most of the ensuing relationship. (Oh, and being in the right place…

The problem is that he was deliberately trying to get in good with the guy. He wasn't just being nice, he was networking. He wasn't giving without worrying about getting anything in return.

When Lifehacker titled the post "How Buying Pizza For a Stranger Changed My Life", not "How Buying Pizza For a Powerful Person and Potential Contact Changed My Life". (The latter headline also wins on alliteration.)

Unfortunately, that lesson seems to have gotten lost through the Lifehacker filter. Absent the context of him deliberately doing this to get his foot in the door, people are assuming he was just being a nice guy and it paid off.

This isn't Consumerist, and the player-hater's ball is down the street. Everyone there already feels superior to you, so you've got to muster up every last ounce of your unwarranted arrogance to catch up.

And would you call that life-changing in any significant way? No. It's a nice thing to do, but unless you literally go around buying every stranger you meet pizza in hopes that one day, you'll do it for someone who has the power to change your life, the opportunity is never going to be there. The last sentence shows…