The Curse Jar

As some of you know, I started a curse jar some time ago (Mid-April, I'd guess). The idea was fairly simple: I wanted to swear less (not that I'm cursing like a sailor, but on occasion it becomes rather easy to throw in a few colorful words when they're not particularly needed). So I decided I'd charge myself a quarter for a typical curse word (your standard a/b/s/d variety) and $.50 for the F-bomb. Now, I wasn't physically dropping change into a bucket or anything, but I was keeping a tally.. and then whipped up a pretty snazzy OSX widget/API for keeping track:

So that's hooked up to an API on a home server that's keeping track of total amount, and that is then also used to display that "Curse Jar" item on the left of this site. Nerd!

The good news: I believe I swear less now, and when I do choose to curse, I usually feel it's worth the cost to emphasize a point, yada yada.. So that's good.

The bad news: I've already (actually, just now) hit $50. The bulk of these fees I blame on a few unexpected items:

1. Frequent misplays at shortstop, especially during softball practice.
2. A bout of pretty serious knee pain that lasted at least a week, and resulted in frequent "I will no longer support your weight, but I will activate every pain sensor on this side of your body" performances by both knee joints.
3. Construction projects at my house resulting in more "whoever did this before was retarded" discoveries.
4. Mario Kart Wii

Oh, one quick thing: I decided at the beginning that quoting items doesn't count. That's proven important.