smoked sausage links

I'm trying to quit smokingcigarettes. Since this is heavily on my mind as of late, I decided to do a smoking search in h2g2.com and discovered many other things popping up besides the obvious.

People smoke everywhere from Perth to Amsterdam to Springfield. Some people have a smoke as early as their first morning coffee. Others may wait until just after a plate of scrambled eggs and smoked sausage links for breakfast.

The spectrum of occupations for smokers range from journalists to driving instructors, but then so are the nonsmokers. Some find smoking a way of relaxation. Others find it a thing that makes their skin crawl. In the final analysis, Sigmund Freud was right: it's not just a cigar... Whether you like smoking or not it's becoming a pain in the ass.

But perhaps of all the pages in h2g2.com that mention smoking, the one which is most inspiring is actually a user page by Researcher 45311 which includes some inspiring advice that's not too far off the mark from what I've been trying to do, with some moderate success. I only hope this Field Researcher saves this advice as a guide entry or a journal entry, so it's not lost the next time he updates his user page. I don't believe it would make approved status, but in its present state there is the possibility it could accidently get deleted, and I for one would find that unfortunate.

Don't worry I haven't resorted to tearing my hair out yet. However I'm sure I will achieve that point by the time you read this. It is not my intent to go cold turkey. I have gone through my 'emergency pack' which means I'm resorting to bumming off friends now. Since few of my friends still smoke, I've almost gone cold turkey but not quite.

I went to my local convenience store on the way home from work today. I asked how much a pack cost now. The guy behind the counter said $3.50. Needless to say I walked out of the convenience store without a pack. The mathematics alone are helping me to quit, which is no doubt why nonsmokers have lobbied the government in this direction.

$3.50 a pack?? And over one third of that US price is sin taxes. Good thing prostitution is illegal. If the government could tax that, people would stop having children.

Anyway, what is my point today?

Sometimes when I use the search function in h2g2.com it bugs me. I mean if I'm looking to see if someone before me has already written an approved guide entry about smoking, I don't want to see all this other crap. However, h2g2.com's search engine gives you not just the direct definition of a certain topic, but it also cross references to reveal any guide entry or forum post that mentions the topic. This can give you an idea not only of the topic itself, but of potentially multiple contexts. It also helps you see how other people use the term and what other topics bring this term to mind.

So the next time you search for something, give the rest of the entries that come up a double take. Maybe read a few of them. This will help you look at a given topic in a new way.

See you next time.