2/25/09
Instant Messaging: Geeks at Work.
Co-worker: So what was wrong?
Me: For some reason the ldap sync didn't have CN in the sametime buddy name field, so no valid buddy names were being populated. I also changed the connection from the ip address of the sametime server to actually be the FQDN of sametime.domain.com. I forced an ldap sync, restarted the service to pick up the ip/name change and that was it.
Co-worker: So simple I should have known.
Me: Well, there was also a slight misalignment in the high frequency electromagnetic field which caused an imbalance in the magnetic eddies induced in the dilithium crystal structure, so it had a problem keeping the charged particles away from the crystal lattice. It was a close one.
Co-worker: Whew, I knew there was more to it.
Yeah. I know. Out of all the people reading this, there's maybe one star trek geek who still lives in his mom's basement who is thinking, "Heh, good one!"
2/22/09
Facing your Fears.
I recently joined FaceBook. I don't know why. One day my buddy Yort asked me, "Are you on Facebook?" and I replied, "No, why?" and he said, "Why not?"
Why not, indeed. I was hesitant at first: I didn't really need another way to waste valuable time that I should be spending on other, more productive things like watching television and surfing the web. It's been interesting getting back in touch with people from my past. There are some bits of Facebook that are kind of goofy, but the overall idea is pretty neat.
The ads though, are something else. The vast majority of them seem to revolve around get-rich-quick schemes, and they alternately creep me out and/or make me laugh at their sheer ridiculousness.
Here are my favorites:
I seriously doubt he makes $1000 a day online. From the picture, I'm guessing he makes ten bucks a day offering hand jobs in the parking garage.
He is not here to make friends, and it's a good thing too, because he looks like a total dick. Regardless of what he says, I don't think he is better than me, even though he also says he makes millions online. My guess? About 5 times a year, he makes $150 a day working as an Andy Samberg impersonator. OK, he still might be better than me.
She wants to hang out at singlesnet, but it's too late. She's already pretty much hanging out everywhere.
"I have four 25-cent ties. Because of this, all the women want me." Totally plausible.
97.6% of what? Blind people? Hamsters? What? And what about that double set of chompers? Apparently, nobody is interested in what percent of something-I-know-not-what is a little skeeved out by that. Why would you click on that ad? I would be afraid of where it would lead me, not to mention the additional damage it might do to my IQ.
He makes more cash than me. In fact, he makes so much money he can afford to go to a car show and get his friend to take his picture while he stands with two booth babes who seriously hate their lives right now.
I am not buying her sales pitch, because she says people like me can earn $50-90/hr online. The truth is, she is not people like me. She is hot people, in short dresses. It's easy for her to make $50-90/hr online. All she needs is a web cam, a domain name, and a VISA merchant account.
I think I can already tell you the steps involved:
1. Move to a gated, residential community.
2. Have countertop sex with a black drug dealer.
3. Set up a grow house and sell Milfweed.
Why not, indeed. I was hesitant at first: I didn't really need another way to waste valuable time that I should be spending on other, more productive things like watching television and surfing the web. It's been interesting getting back in touch with people from my past. There are some bits of Facebook that are kind of goofy, but the overall idea is pretty neat.
The ads though, are something else. The vast majority of them seem to revolve around get-rich-quick schemes, and they alternately creep me out and/or make me laugh at their sheer ridiculousness.
Here are my favorites:
I seriously doubt he makes $1000 a day online. From the picture, I'm guessing he makes ten bucks a day offering hand jobs in the parking garage.
He is not here to make friends, and it's a good thing too, because he looks like a total dick. Regardless of what he says, I don't think he is better than me, even though he also says he makes millions online. My guess? About 5 times a year, he makes $150 a day working as an Andy Samberg impersonator. OK, he still might be better than me.
She wants to hang out at singlesnet, but it's too late. She's already pretty much hanging out everywhere.
"I have four 25-cent ties. Because of this, all the women want me." Totally plausible.
97.6% of what? Blind people? Hamsters? What? And what about that double set of chompers? Apparently, nobody is interested in what percent of something-I-know-not-what is a little skeeved out by that. Why would you click on that ad? I would be afraid of where it would lead me, not to mention the additional damage it might do to my IQ.
He makes more cash than me. In fact, he makes so much money he can afford to go to a car show and get his friend to take his picture while he stands with two booth babes who seriously hate their lives right now.
I am not buying her sales pitch, because she says people like me can earn $50-90/hr online. The truth is, she is not people like me. She is hot people, in short dresses. It's easy for her to make $50-90/hr online. All she needs is a web cam, a domain name, and a VISA merchant account.
I think I can already tell you the steps involved:
1. Move to a gated, residential community.
2. Have countertop sex with a black drug dealer.
3. Set up a grow house and sell Milfweed.
2/18/09
Vampires! Getcher Vampires here!
A while back, my buddy Dave wrote a vampire novel called "Blood Witness" and he's recently converted it into a free audiobook. You can read about it, listen to it and download it at bloodwitness.com.
It's an interesting look into the life of a Jehovah's Witness who gets tangled up with a vampire, and a pretty fun listen. Check it out if you get a chance. Did I mention it's free?
2/17/09
Can You Feel The Love?
It's been a week. Funerals, duty pagers, roof leaks, you name it. So.... a belated Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. I'm not normally a big fan of this holiday, but believe it or not, it was a bright spot in a pretty shitty week. I got to spend some time with my wife, and I actually (wait for it...) cooked dinner. Believe it or not, I made this. I know, even a monkey could make that, but still -- it beats boiled hot dogs, which was my next choice. (Hey, it has meat AND broth.)
When I got to my desk yesterday, there was a pile of mail, and this:
Now, normally on Christmas or my birthday, there will be a little something on my desk from the girls in support, who I spend most of my day assisting. Usually it's a nice card signed by everyone, some candy, maybe some homemade cookies or a small, funny gift. Last Valentine's Day, I think they got me one of those Reese's miniatures foil hearts.
Typical office-type "thank you" stuff.
Sadly, I may have to step up my game, because they're clearly not trying any more.
First off, let's talk about the card. It's not signed, and frankly, I don't blame them for leaving it blank. I wouldn't take credit for it either. It was worse than the cards I got in second grade. Just look at it -- it's a black kid on a three-wheeled, heart-shaped skateboard, and it says "You're Co ol."
Clearly, I'm not black. I'm certainly not cool. I think they may be mocking me. And the single lollipop? At first I thought, "Well, at least I got a lollipop." Then I looked closer to see what flavor it was and saw this:
That's a ten-month old lollipop right there.
I'm hoping that this week will get better. Happy Easter, everyone!
When I got to my desk yesterday, there was a pile of mail, and this:
Now, normally on Christmas or my birthday, there will be a little something on my desk from the girls in support, who I spend most of my day assisting. Usually it's a nice card signed by everyone, some candy, maybe some homemade cookies or a small, funny gift. Last Valentine's Day, I think they got me one of those Reese's miniatures foil hearts.
Typical office-type "thank you" stuff.
Sadly, I may have to step up my game, because they're clearly not trying any more.
First off, let's talk about the card. It's not signed, and frankly, I don't blame them for leaving it blank. I wouldn't take credit for it either. It was worse than the cards I got in second grade. Just look at it -- it's a black kid on a three-wheeled, heart-shaped skateboard, and it says "You're Co ol."
Clearly, I'm not black. I'm certainly not cool. I think they may be mocking me. And the single lollipop? At first I thought, "Well, at least I got a lollipop." Then I looked closer to see what flavor it was and saw this:
That's a ten-month old lollipop right there.
I'm hoping that this week will get better. Happy Easter, everyone!
2/8/09
Us doing Disney. And vice-versa.
After the conference, my wife and I decided to stick around Disney for a while and enjoy the beautiful weather, and take in some of the Disney parks. We've been there quite a few times now, and after the first couple of times you don't feel so obligated to get up at the crack of dawn and do everything there is to do.
The progression goes something like this:
Year One: "Wow! Look at this place! It's amazing! We'll never see it all in 7 days!"
Year Two: "We know our way around this time! We'll spend a day at each park, go to Blizzard Beach, eat dinner at Rain Forest Cafe on Tuesday, Mexico in Epcot on Wednesday, and the House of Blues on Thursday."
Years 3-5: "How 'bout we just hit the roller coasters at each park and catch the fireworks at Epcot? Holy fuck. I just paid $20 for two pretzels and a couple of bottles of water."
By the third time you visit, you've pretty much resigned yourself to the fact that Mickey and Friends are going to give you a major ass-reaming every day you are there. You also realize that every store there sells the same over-priced shit, and traveling around by bus can get very old very quickly. It's ironic really - here you are with all this free bus transportation everywhere you want to go, but two mixed drinks will set you back $24. You can't afford to get drunk in Disney. It's a horrible state of affairs. Although for a second, I thought maybe I was drunk when we walked into a Disney store and the first thing I saw was this very un-disneylike shirt:
Alas, it was just a bad fold, although I think they should give serious consideration to making a shirt like that.
Speaking of un-Disneylike, what about that Minnie mouse? I learned a dirty little secret about her when eating Goofy's Gummies. I know that sounds dirty, but it's really not. These are gummy bears in the shape of Disney characters, and for some reason they are fresher and better tasting than gummies you can get elsewhere. My wife usually stocks up, buying some to eat when we're wandering around, and a bunch to bring home. As I was eating Minnie, (again, not dirty) I noticed something. Here's Minnie:
As I was marveling at her freshness and gummability, I happened to do this:
OK, now that's dirty.
Gummy fun notwithstanding, the only way to get the party started in earnest at Disney is to (1) be very, very rich, (2) leech off some big company's expense account, or (3) have an outside contact. Lucky for us, Shamus was down for the same conference, and he and his family were staying in a condo off the Disney campus. Therefore they had rented a car, and offered to get us out of the Goofy bin for little while. Ah, sweet freedom! They became our window to the outside world, where you could buy things like affordable food, chewing gum, Pepsi products and reasonably priced booze, all without pictures of Disney characters on them. We all decided to have dinner at their place on Saturday night, so we went to the supermarket and bought the fixin's for steak and chicken fajitas, and it was glorious.
That's the thing about 5th time's the charm. After a while, you just decide that it's not so bad to get up at noon and then spend the rest of the day hanging out by the pool with a book and a rum drink. Although in retrospect, I think we could probably go somewhere tropical with way fewer screaming kids for about the same price. I realize Disney is primarily for children, so I can't bitch too much, but I've also noticed that a single kid in the "grown-up" swimming pool is a lot like a single motorboat on a wilderness pond. It has a tendency to wreck the mood, and sometimes you just want to shoot a hole in it and watch it sink.
The reason we were there for an entire week after the conference ended was, oddly enough, because of the state of the economy. We were already staying for an extra 3 days, and in an effort to drum up some business, Disney was offering a "buy four, get three free" deal. We figured that we would stay over one extra night to pick up the 3 extra freebies. Since the park tickets are tiered that same way, (the fourth and fifth days of a park hopper ticket are almost free) we picked up a couple of those too. We figured we wouldn't have to buy anything but food. That sounds good until you realize that the cheapest thing you can buy anywhere in Disney is a 6" miniature frozen pizza (cooked on a chain-driven conveyor belt) that will still set you back seven bucks plus tax. Speaking of taxes, if you go there, be prepared. There's "room tax" and "resort tax" and "late-night Tinkerbell visit" tax and these will add another $40 bucks a night to your room price. OK, I may or may not have volunteered to pay extra for that last one - but the other ones just automatically showed up on the bill.
We stayed at the "moderately priced" hotel -- Port Orleans Riverside -- quite a downgrade from the Swan/Dolphin I stayed at during the conference. The first room we were assigned was horrible. We walked in, and the room was so humid it felt like you couldn't breathe. There was condensation running down the window, and it smelled like a tropical rain forest, if a tropical rain forest could somehow grow bitter ass and dirty feet. It did have one redeeming quality -- it was on the top floor, which is great because then nobody is walking around above you. We called the front desk and got another room that was marginally better, but on the 2nd floor, with a family of 14 in the room above us. I never actually saw them, but I surmised that they were in some sort of horrific accident, and as a result had been fitted with prosthetic legs made of a newly-discovered metal I can only assume is called Stompium. Also, they had bladders the size of dwarf peanuts.
How do I know this? It's all because of the crazy toilets. When you flushed one, you feared for your life. In an effort to avoid plug-ups, the hotel installed jet-assisted flushing mechanisms that would practically pull your clothes off. I was more scared of that toilet than I am of my 3 horsepower table saw. They flushed so violently, and so loudly, that your ears popped if you had the bathroom door closed. Sadly, I am not even exaggerating. Because of the aforementioned peanut bladders, I got to hear this jet noise no less than 14 times a night. I can only hope that we were able to pay them back in some small measure by exposing their 12 children to the raucous sounds of late-night, drunken sex.
In very short intervals, separated by many hours of snoring.
What? I'm not a machine.
On Monday we went to Animal Kingdom with Shamus and the family. We met them there, and he had already thoughtfully grabbed some FastPass tickets for the Everest roller coaster, which is big on scenery and not so big on coaster. I remember the last time I rode it, a giant Yeti made a swipe at you when you went under him. Oddly, he was missing this time. Either he was out getting a fresh Sherpa for breakfast, or he was being repaired. I remember him being pretty close to the cars, so I have a feeling he's been the victim of more than his fair share of vandalism. They probably have to clean the gum out of his fur periodically.
It was a riot to hit the parks with Shamus' kids. At one point I noticed his son walking funny, like he had a load of crap in his pants and cramps in his arms. I asked Shammy's wife what he was doing, and she replied that he was "being a T-Rex" and that she has to periodically tell him to "be a boy" when they go out places. I watched him for a second, then said, "In a way, you're lucky. At least he picked something that walks on two legs." The funny thing is, once you realized what he was doing, I'll be damned if he didn't have it down cold. Their daughter is a year or two older, so as far as I could tell, she stayed a girl the whole time.
If you've been to Animal Kingdom, you know about the Tree of Life, a giant artificial tree that houses the "It's a Bugs Life" attraction. As we were walking around the jungle, we were watching these water birds, and suddenly they all started swimming toward this one tree stump in the middle of the small pond. Apparently, when I had glanced away, this stump spit out a sizable amount of food, and the birds were going nuts. We promptly dubbed it the "Stump of Life."
My wife likes to watch the Silverback Gorillas. I think if I didn't keep an eye on her, she'd climb right in there with them. God only knows what would happen then -- Gorilla queen or silverback sex slave would be my guess. It could go either way.
Me, I was partial to the fruit bats. Was. Now, not so much. If you've never seen a fruit bat, they look like full-sized Chihuahuas with giant, leathery wings. Apparently, along with a 4-6 foot wing span, they also have great eyesight and like to sunbathe. Who knew? Well, I'm sure lots of people knew, but I wasn't one of them.
I learned something else about them that I didn't know before. As Shamus and I were standing there watching them eat lettuce and groom each other, and our wives were standing well back from the open bars, one little guy was looking right at us:
He was really cute and cuddly, and I was about to comment on how I would love to have one as a pet when all those words just stuck in my throat. Why, you ask? Well, he showed us what was behind the curtain:
So it turns out fruit bats have major tackle. I, for one, had no idea. Apparently, they are the Ron Jeremys of the Animal Kingdom. Shamus looks at me and says, "That's some genitalia, right there." As a dozen women covered the eyes of a dozen children, the bat hung there (no pun intended) and gave us the inverted full monty. When finding some pictures for this post, I found out that their testicles are approximately 2% of their body weight. Holy shit. No wonder they have a 4-foot wingspan. They need it to get that thing off the ground.
I don't remember much after that. I may have been in shock. I think we just parted ways in the parking lot and my wife and I went back to the hotel and made some drinks. The alcohol helps me deal with the fact that a bat is hung better than I am.
We came back on the 29th, and it sucked. At 10:00 AM, I was sitting in the sun wearing a T-shirt, and at 10:00 PM I was on hour number three of trying to get the cars into the driveway.
Looking outside, it's like our vacation never happened. Well, except for the batcock. That part sticks with me.
The progression goes something like this:
Year One: "Wow! Look at this place! It's amazing! We'll never see it all in 7 days!"
Year Two: "We know our way around this time! We'll spend a day at each park, go to Blizzard Beach, eat dinner at Rain Forest Cafe on Tuesday, Mexico in Epcot on Wednesday, and the House of Blues on Thursday."
Years 3-5: "How 'bout we just hit the roller coasters at each park and catch the fireworks at Epcot? Holy fuck. I just paid $20 for two pretzels and a couple of bottles of water."
By the third time you visit, you've pretty much resigned yourself to the fact that Mickey and Friends are going to give you a major ass-reaming every day you are there. You also realize that every store there sells the same over-priced shit, and traveling around by bus can get very old very quickly. It's ironic really - here you are with all this free bus transportation everywhere you want to go, but two mixed drinks will set you back $24. You can't afford to get drunk in Disney. It's a horrible state of affairs. Although for a second, I thought maybe I was drunk when we walked into a Disney store and the first thing I saw was this very un-disneylike shirt:
Speaking of un-Disneylike, what about that Minnie mouse? I learned a dirty little secret about her when eating Goofy's Gummies. I know that sounds dirty, but it's really not. These are gummy bears in the shape of Disney characters, and for some reason they are fresher and better tasting than gummies you can get elsewhere. My wife usually stocks up, buying some to eat when we're wandering around, and a bunch to bring home. As I was eating Minnie, (again, not dirty) I noticed something. Here's Minnie:
As I was marveling at her freshness and gummability, I happened to do this:
OK, now that's dirty.
Gummy fun notwithstanding, the only way to get the party started in earnest at Disney is to (1) be very, very rich, (2) leech off some big company's expense account, or (3) have an outside contact. Lucky for us, Shamus was down for the same conference, and he and his family were staying in a condo off the Disney campus. Therefore they had rented a car, and offered to get us out of the Goofy bin for little while. Ah, sweet freedom! They became our window to the outside world, where you could buy things like affordable food, chewing gum, Pepsi products and reasonably priced booze, all without pictures of Disney characters on them. We all decided to have dinner at their place on Saturday night, so we went to the supermarket and bought the fixin's for steak and chicken fajitas, and it was glorious.
Needless to say, we stocked up while we had the chance. Our room had a tiny little refrigerator and we filled every inch of it with munchies and cold drinks. We bought way too much booze, although we only ended up leaving behind an unopened bottle of wine and half a bottle of gin.
That's the thing about 5th time's the charm. After a while, you just decide that it's not so bad to get up at noon and then spend the rest of the day hanging out by the pool with a book and a rum drink. Although in retrospect, I think we could probably go somewhere tropical with way fewer screaming kids for about the same price. I realize Disney is primarily for children, so I can't bitch too much, but I've also noticed that a single kid in the "grown-up" swimming pool is a lot like a single motorboat on a wilderness pond. It has a tendency to wreck the mood, and sometimes you just want to shoot a hole in it and watch it sink.
The reason we were there for an entire week after the conference ended was, oddly enough, because of the state of the economy. We were already staying for an extra 3 days, and in an effort to drum up some business, Disney was offering a "buy four, get three free" deal. We figured that we would stay over one extra night to pick up the 3 extra freebies. Since the park tickets are tiered that same way, (the fourth and fifth days of a park hopper ticket are almost free) we picked up a couple of those too. We figured we wouldn't have to buy anything but food. That sounds good until you realize that the cheapest thing you can buy anywhere in Disney is a 6" miniature frozen pizza (cooked on a chain-driven conveyor belt) that will still set you back seven bucks plus tax. Speaking of taxes, if you go there, be prepared. There's "room tax" and "resort tax" and "late-night Tinkerbell visit" tax and these will add another $40 bucks a night to your room price. OK, I may or may not have volunteered to pay extra for that last one - but the other ones just automatically showed up on the bill.
We stayed at the "moderately priced" hotel -- Port Orleans Riverside -- quite a downgrade from the Swan/Dolphin I stayed at during the conference. The first room we were assigned was horrible. We walked in, and the room was so humid it felt like you couldn't breathe. There was condensation running down the window, and it smelled like a tropical rain forest, if a tropical rain forest could somehow grow bitter ass and dirty feet. It did have one redeeming quality -- it was on the top floor, which is great because then nobody is walking around above you. We called the front desk and got another room that was marginally better, but on the 2nd floor, with a family of 14 in the room above us. I never actually saw them, but I surmised that they were in some sort of horrific accident, and as a result had been fitted with prosthetic legs made of a newly-discovered metal I can only assume is called Stompium. Also, they had bladders the size of dwarf peanuts.
How do I know this? It's all because of the crazy toilets. When you flushed one, you feared for your life. In an effort to avoid plug-ups, the hotel installed jet-assisted flushing mechanisms that would practically pull your clothes off. I was more scared of that toilet than I am of my 3 horsepower table saw. They flushed so violently, and so loudly, that your ears popped if you had the bathroom door closed. Sadly, I am not even exaggerating. Because of the aforementioned peanut bladders, I got to hear this jet noise no less than 14 times a night. I can only hope that we were able to pay them back in some small measure by exposing their 12 children to the raucous sounds of late-night, drunken sex.
In very short intervals, separated by many hours of snoring.
What? I'm not a machine.
On Monday we went to Animal Kingdom with Shamus and the family. We met them there, and he had already thoughtfully grabbed some FastPass tickets for the Everest roller coaster, which is big on scenery and not so big on coaster. I remember the last time I rode it, a giant Yeti made a swipe at you when you went under him. Oddly, he was missing this time. Either he was out getting a fresh Sherpa for breakfast, or he was being repaired. I remember him being pretty close to the cars, so I have a feeling he's been the victim of more than his fair share of vandalism. They probably have to clean the gum out of his fur periodically.
It was a riot to hit the parks with Shamus' kids. At one point I noticed his son walking funny, like he had a load of crap in his pants and cramps in his arms. I asked Shammy's wife what he was doing, and she replied that he was "being a T-Rex" and that she has to periodically tell him to "be a boy" when they go out places. I watched him for a second, then said, "In a way, you're lucky. At least he picked something that walks on two legs." The funny thing is, once you realized what he was doing, I'll be damned if he didn't have it down cold. Their daughter is a year or two older, so as far as I could tell, she stayed a girl the whole time.
If you've been to Animal Kingdom, you know about the Tree of Life, a giant artificial tree that houses the "It's a Bugs Life" attraction. As we were walking around the jungle, we were watching these water birds, and suddenly they all started swimming toward this one tree stump in the middle of the small pond. Apparently, when I had glanced away, this stump spit out a sizable amount of food, and the birds were going nuts. We promptly dubbed it the "Stump of Life."
My wife likes to watch the Silverback Gorillas. I think if I didn't keep an eye on her, she'd climb right in there with them. God only knows what would happen then -- Gorilla queen or silverback sex slave would be my guess. It could go either way.
Me, I was partial to the fruit bats. Was. Now, not so much. If you've never seen a fruit bat, they look like full-sized Chihuahuas with giant, leathery wings. Apparently, along with a 4-6 foot wing span, they also have great eyesight and like to sunbathe. Who knew? Well, I'm sure lots of people knew, but I wasn't one of them.
I learned something else about them that I didn't know before. As Shamus and I were standing there watching them eat lettuce and groom each other, and our wives were standing well back from the open bars, one little guy was looking right at us:
He was really cute and cuddly, and I was about to comment on how I would love to have one as a pet when all those words just stuck in my throat. Why, you ask? Well, he showed us what was behind the curtain:
So it turns out fruit bats have major tackle. I, for one, had no idea. Apparently, they are the Ron Jeremys of the Animal Kingdom. Shamus looks at me and says, "That's some genitalia, right there." As a dozen women covered the eyes of a dozen children, the bat hung there (no pun intended) and gave us the inverted full monty. When finding some pictures for this post, I found out that their testicles are approximately 2% of their body weight. Holy shit. No wonder they have a 4-foot wingspan. They need it to get that thing off the ground.
I don't remember much after that. I may have been in shock. I think we just parted ways in the parking lot and my wife and I went back to the hotel and made some drinks. The alcohol helps me deal with the fact that a bat is hung better than I am.
We came back on the 29th, and it sucked. At 10:00 AM, I was sitting in the sun wearing a T-shirt, and at 10:00 PM I was on hour number three of trying to get the cars into the driveway.
Looking outside, it's like our vacation never happened. Well, except for the batcock. That part sticks with me.
2/5/09
Two things:
(1) What the eff is wrong with people?
(2) Google needs to work on their sponsored links algorithm.
Next up: Disney on a budget, and Animal Kingdom with the O'Drunkahans.
(2) Google needs to work on their sponsored links algorithm.
Next up: Disney on a budget, and Animal Kingdom with the O'Drunkahans.
1/31/09
Too... much... stuff.
This is going to be long, rambling, and probably boring, so be prepared. On January 18th, a day before my wife's birthday (she was so pleased), I sat myself down in a luxurious leather seat aboard a Southwest flight to Orlando, Florida for this tradeshow. If you've ever been on a Southwest flight going anywhere, you know that even if you are having sex with the pilot you have very little chance of getting a good seat, unless you happen to be having sex with him/her en route.
Why are there no good seats? Because in order to make money on an $89 fare, they have to pack three people into the space that would normally be occupied by two. And when half the people on your flight actually take up 1.6 people-worth of space, you are going to be uncomfortable no matter what you do. Luckily, the fat guy I ended up sitting next to actually wanted to sit in the middle so I was only squashed against hairy flesh on the one side.
Here's something else I discovered. There is a serious drawback to leather seats. I realize they are a great thing for the airlines -- they last a long time, they're easy to clean, they sound like they're upscale, and they don't soak up liquid. Unfortunately, there is another thing they don't soak up. Leather seats = zero fart absorption. Give me a nice, upholstered foam-filled seat any day of the week. I don't know what the fuck the guy sitting next to me ate for breakfast, but he singlehandedly polluted 110 feet of airborne aluminum tube. Or maybe he had help, I don't know. Either way, at times it was brutal. I did the only thing I could do: I went into full Unibomber mode and pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, put my sunglasses on, turned toward the shaded window and tried to breath through my mouth. Oh, and I watched a movie on my nano called Wanted. Not bad if you like special effects and/or Angelina Jolie.
The first night of this conference they have a big party. It's usually just an excuse to eat bad food and drink bad beer and wine, so I usually go for a while and then bail out early since I've been awake for 17 hours. The party stretched across a beach between two hotels, and they had different bands spaced out along the way, covering different musical styles. It started with Latin (DJ), went to blues (passable) then to acoustic (bad) and finally to country (so-so). I went to the conference with one of the guys on my team that I never get to see except during our weekly video meeting. I have to say, he's a lot less pixelated in person. We were standing down on the "country end" drinking Coronas and watching two scary girls do some sort of line stomp on a plywood bar when my phone rang.
It was my wife. She was buried in 18" of snow and the snow blower wouldn't run. Actually, it would run just fine -- but it wouldn't blow snow, which means it's no longer a snow blower and is instead just a motor bolted to a hundred and fifty pound pile of shit. As I walked and tried to find a quiet place to talk away from the music, we tried a bunch of things to get it going, and were rewarded with smoke and the smell of burning rubber. At that point I knew the second stage was frozen up. We pointed a kerosene heater at it for ten minutes and even that didn't work. Finally in desperation, I told her to dump a bucket of boiling water down the chute to see if it would melt the frozen up mechanism and, believe it or not, it worked.
Still, by that time I was almost back to my room, so I figured I'd just stay there. When I had first arrived at the hotel, I changed my room to one with a balcony, having grand visions of sitting out there at night, drinking a scotch and maybe doing some writing, but that was not to be.
Due to global warming, Orlando was twenty eight fucking degrees at night for the first three nights I was there. As an added bonus, I had Coughy McCougherson in the room next to me. He was making this sound every five minutes until I couldn't stand it any more and finally had to fall asleep listening to my ipod. I think he may have died a few nights later, because something in his room started ringing at 4 am and wouldn't stop. After about 30 minutes of that, I heard security in the hall and they were banging on his door. I knew they were security because they kept yelling "SECURITY!" in between each hammer-fest. Finally they let themselves in. I guess he was just a party animal because apparently he wasn't even there. Assknob. Unless he really did die, of course. In which case I'd refer to him as the dead assknob.
The first day of the conference, other people almost died, too. There is something called the "General Session" which is basically a big rah-rah session with some famous people. This year it was Blue Man Group and Dan Aykroyd. BMG was great, Dan A, not so much. I mean, he didn't suck, but he started off with Beldar, and went downhill from there. He went for some laughs that didn't happen and that's always a little awkward. I guess you can take the actor out of the SNL, but can't take the SNL out of the actor.
Anyway, from the dining hall to the session was a straight shot up two separate escalators, one from the first floor to the second, and another from the second to the third. Now picture 8,000 people trying to get up these escalators and into the same room at the same time. What happened is obvious in retrospect. There was a traffic jam at the top, and the people riding the escalator had nowhere to go since there was an unending stream of people behind them. When they got to the top and hit bodies, it started a geekalanche. People were screaming, "MOVE! MOVE!" and disaster was narrowly averted by everyone except maybe Dan Aykroyd.
In a different mid-week session, I learned something else. First, I learned that due to a weak dollar, it's cheaper to fly to the states from overseas than ever before. Apparently, Germany got this memo and sent a shitload of people over. A lot of them looked like this. I believe most of them were (and probably still are) named Deiter or Hans. I think of all the whiter nationalities, Germans are the easiest to pick out. They seem very ... precise. I can tell you one thing, however. There is nothing worse than trying to listen to a presentation when two people are talking to each other in the seats behind you, except when the people are talking to each other in German. Or Hebrew. That one is good, too. It's the only language that makes you sound like you are coughing up snails.
I think I am easily annoyed, or more likely I just hate people. At another session I went to, the guy next to me was a major nose-breather. Every breath in and out was through his nose, and with a gusto usually reserved for use by perverts sniffing women's underwear.
I am also not sure they have elevators outside the U.S. I base this theory on what I experienced in the hotel after we were done for the day. I boarded the elevator to the 8th floor, and two other random gentlemen got on with me; one of apparent Chinese descent and one African American. They both pushed their buttons and we were off. At the sixth floor, the doors opened, and nobody moved. The doors started closing again. When they were maybe two feet apart, the Chinese guy ran from the back of the elevator and dove head-first out the door sideways, landing flat out on the carpet. Seriously, it was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. He wasn't wearing a hat, so there was nothing for him to reach back and grab, but the dive itself was priceless. At the point of his dive, the doors were almost contacting him on both sides of his body. That's how close it was. Since his fancy move was so fast, the doors didn't even re-open. The other guy in the elevator just looked at me as the doors shut and said, "That was some serious James Bond shit right there."
The other thing I love about Florida is that when the temperature drops below 60, people who live here lose their minds and start wearing winter clothes. We're talking parkas, gloves and scarves. And when it's 30 degrees out -- everyone who lives here dies a little inside, and goes batshit crazy with the the heater controls. The hallways in the hotel, the shuttle buses, the restaurants -- all had to be pushing 80 degrees. It was like walking towards the seventh level of Hell every time I went back to my room.
The product showcase was an experience as well. The object of the game there is for you is to get free stuff, and the object of the game for the vendors is to scan your badge at all costs so they can later bombard you with junk mail and bulk mail and faxes and phone calls for whatever crap it is that they happen to be selling.
The easiest way to ensnare an unsuspecting geek, of course, is with a hot girl offering a big-screen TV. So some vendors will stoop to this level, and hire models to hand out their literature and scan badges and ask if you'd like to "enter their giveaway." If you are a newbie, you will fall for this every time and before you know it, the 5' 10" hot model will be gone and you will be sharing a moist handshake with the sweaty, balding guy with the bad comb-over and the clip-on tie. As a seasoned professional, your job is to avoid these traps, and get the freebie without any interaction with their sales person. Talk to the model, enter the contest, say you have somewhere to be in 5 minutes and promise to stop back. Done.
Overall the conference was really very good, and some of the sessions were excellent. I did come away with some new ideas on how to tweak our infrastructure, so it was worth it, but by the end of the week you are basically the walking dead. Your head is so crammed full of stuff that you can't possibly absorb one more thing, and you are so tired from the late nights and early mornings that you are asleep on your feet. I was also studying for a certification test that I had to take on Thursday.
The morning of my exam, I had a surreal moment. I went to the dining hall and got breakfast, and sat down at a big round table, all alone because it was early. I had my iPod phones plugged into my ears, and I was doing some last minute cramming for my test. When I finally looked up from my study sheet, there were 11 Japanese guys sitting at the table with me. I must have looked surprised because when I pulled my earbuds out, they were all looking at me and laughing. I stood up, gave them a little bow and left for my exam. I don't know if that was politically correct or not, but they didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes you go a little crazy at these things, I think. It's a shorter drive for some of us than others, I know. Here's a real life example that made me think maybe I was losing it:
The last day of the conference, I was standing in the bathroom taking a leak in one of the disgusting urinals, and I happened to glance down at the valve on the top. The company that manufactured this valve was Zurn. I immediately decided that Zurn was the god of all things urine. Kind of like Thor, but instead of being the god of thunder, he's Zurn, the god of pee. In the space of 30 seconds, he had a costume, a superpower (beams of yellow force he could bend to his will) He wore a yellow suit with a red lightning bolt on it, but then I thought, "No, I just gave the Green Lantern's powers to the Silver Age Flash," and that's when I realized I needed some sleep because everyone knows the Green Lantern has beams of green power. Also, I had finished peeing 20 seconds ago and there was a line.
In my next rambling and incoherent post, I will tell you about the week that followed, whereupon my lovely wife and I had the best weather ever and managed to laugh our asses off, and even got to hang with Shamus and his family for bit, which is an experience in and of itself.
Go watch his Epcot video and try not to laugh.
Why are there no good seats? Because in order to make money on an $89 fare, they have to pack three people into the space that would normally be occupied by two. And when half the people on your flight actually take up 1.6 people-worth of space, you are going to be uncomfortable no matter what you do. Luckily, the fat guy I ended up sitting next to actually wanted to sit in the middle so I was only squashed against hairy flesh on the one side.
Here's something else I discovered. There is a serious drawback to leather seats. I realize they are a great thing for the airlines -- they last a long time, they're easy to clean, they sound like they're upscale, and they don't soak up liquid. Unfortunately, there is another thing they don't soak up. Leather seats = zero fart absorption. Give me a nice, upholstered foam-filled seat any day of the week. I don't know what the fuck the guy sitting next to me ate for breakfast, but he singlehandedly polluted 110 feet of airborne aluminum tube. Or maybe he had help, I don't know. Either way, at times it was brutal. I did the only thing I could do: I went into full Unibomber mode and pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head, put my sunglasses on, turned toward the shaded window and tried to breath through my mouth. Oh, and I watched a movie on my nano called Wanted. Not bad if you like special effects and/or Angelina Jolie.
The first night of this conference they have a big party. It's usually just an excuse to eat bad food and drink bad beer and wine, so I usually go for a while and then bail out early since I've been awake for 17 hours. The party stretched across a beach between two hotels, and they had different bands spaced out along the way, covering different musical styles. It started with Latin (DJ), went to blues (passable) then to acoustic (bad) and finally to country (so-so). I went to the conference with one of the guys on my team that I never get to see except during our weekly video meeting. I have to say, he's a lot less pixelated in person. We were standing down on the "country end" drinking Coronas and watching two scary girls do some sort of line stomp on a plywood bar when my phone rang.
It was my wife. She was buried in 18" of snow and the snow blower wouldn't run. Actually, it would run just fine -- but it wouldn't blow snow, which means it's no longer a snow blower and is instead just a motor bolted to a hundred and fifty pound pile of shit. As I walked and tried to find a quiet place to talk away from the music, we tried a bunch of things to get it going, and were rewarded with smoke and the smell of burning rubber. At that point I knew the second stage was frozen up. We pointed a kerosene heater at it for ten minutes and even that didn't work. Finally in desperation, I told her to dump a bucket of boiling water down the chute to see if it would melt the frozen up mechanism and, believe it or not, it worked.
Still, by that time I was almost back to my room, so I figured I'd just stay there. When I had first arrived at the hotel, I changed my room to one with a balcony, having grand visions of sitting out there at night, drinking a scotch and maybe doing some writing, but that was not to be.
Due to global warming, Orlando was twenty eight fucking degrees at night for the first three nights I was there. As an added bonus, I had Coughy McCougherson in the room next to me. He was making this sound every five minutes until I couldn't stand it any more and finally had to fall asleep listening to my ipod. I think he may have died a few nights later, because something in his room started ringing at 4 am and wouldn't stop. After about 30 minutes of that, I heard security in the hall and they were banging on his door. I knew they were security because they kept yelling "SECURITY!" in between each hammer-fest. Finally they let themselves in. I guess he was just a party animal because apparently he wasn't even there. Assknob. Unless he really did die, of course. In which case I'd refer to him as the dead assknob.
The first day of the conference, other people almost died, too. There is something called the "General Session" which is basically a big rah-rah session with some famous people. This year it was Blue Man Group and Dan Aykroyd. BMG was great, Dan A, not so much. I mean, he didn't suck, but he started off with Beldar, and went downhill from there. He went for some laughs that didn't happen and that's always a little awkward. I guess you can take the actor out of the SNL, but can't take the SNL out of the actor.
Anyway, from the dining hall to the session was a straight shot up two separate escalators, one from the first floor to the second, and another from the second to the third. Now picture 8,000 people trying to get up these escalators and into the same room at the same time. What happened is obvious in retrospect. There was a traffic jam at the top, and the people riding the escalator had nowhere to go since there was an unending stream of people behind them. When they got to the top and hit bodies, it started a geekalanche. People were screaming, "MOVE! MOVE!" and disaster was narrowly averted by everyone except maybe Dan Aykroyd.
In a different mid-week session, I learned something else. First, I learned that due to a weak dollar, it's cheaper to fly to the states from overseas than ever before. Apparently, Germany got this memo and sent a shitload of people over. A lot of them looked like this. I believe most of them were (and probably still are) named Deiter or Hans. I think of all the whiter nationalities, Germans are the easiest to pick out. They seem very ... precise. I can tell you one thing, however. There is nothing worse than trying to listen to a presentation when two people are talking to each other in the seats behind you, except when the people are talking to each other in German. Or Hebrew. That one is good, too. It's the only language that makes you sound like you are coughing up snails.
I think I am easily annoyed, or more likely I just hate people. At another session I went to, the guy next to me was a major nose-breather. Every breath in and out was through his nose, and with a gusto usually reserved for use by perverts sniffing women's underwear.
I am also not sure they have elevators outside the U.S. I base this theory on what I experienced in the hotel after we were done for the day. I boarded the elevator to the 8th floor, and two other random gentlemen got on with me; one of apparent Chinese descent and one African American. They both pushed their buttons and we were off. At the sixth floor, the doors opened, and nobody moved. The doors started closing again. When they were maybe two feet apart, the Chinese guy ran from the back of the elevator and dove head-first out the door sideways, landing flat out on the carpet. Seriously, it was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. He wasn't wearing a hat, so there was nothing for him to reach back and grab, but the dive itself was priceless. At the point of his dive, the doors were almost contacting him on both sides of his body. That's how close it was. Since his fancy move was so fast, the doors didn't even re-open. The other guy in the elevator just looked at me as the doors shut and said, "That was some serious James Bond shit right there."
The other thing I love about Florida is that when the temperature drops below 60, people who live here lose their minds and start wearing winter clothes. We're talking parkas, gloves and scarves. And when it's 30 degrees out -- everyone who lives here dies a little inside, and goes batshit crazy with the the heater controls. The hallways in the hotel, the shuttle buses, the restaurants -- all had to be pushing 80 degrees. It was like walking towards the seventh level of Hell every time I went back to my room.
The product showcase was an experience as well. The object of the game there is for you is to get free stuff, and the object of the game for the vendors is to scan your badge at all costs so they can later bombard you with junk mail and bulk mail and faxes and phone calls for whatever crap it is that they happen to be selling.
The easiest way to ensnare an unsuspecting geek, of course, is with a hot girl offering a big-screen TV. So some vendors will stoop to this level, and hire models to hand out their literature and scan badges and ask if you'd like to "enter their giveaway." If you are a newbie, you will fall for this every time and before you know it, the 5' 10" hot model will be gone and you will be sharing a moist handshake with the sweaty, balding guy with the bad comb-over and the clip-on tie. As a seasoned professional, your job is to avoid these traps, and get the freebie without any interaction with their sales person. Talk to the model, enter the contest, say you have somewhere to be in 5 minutes and promise to stop back. Done.
Overall the conference was really very good, and some of the sessions were excellent. I did come away with some new ideas on how to tweak our infrastructure, so it was worth it, but by the end of the week you are basically the walking dead. Your head is so crammed full of stuff that you can't possibly absorb one more thing, and you are so tired from the late nights and early mornings that you are asleep on your feet. I was also studying for a certification test that I had to take on Thursday.
The morning of my exam, I had a surreal moment. I went to the dining hall and got breakfast, and sat down at a big round table, all alone because it was early. I had my iPod phones plugged into my ears, and I was doing some last minute cramming for my test. When I finally looked up from my study sheet, there were 11 Japanese guys sitting at the table with me. I must have looked surprised because when I pulled my earbuds out, they were all looking at me and laughing. I stood up, gave them a little bow and left for my exam. I don't know if that was politically correct or not, but they didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes you go a little crazy at these things, I think. It's a shorter drive for some of us than others, I know. Here's a real life example that made me think maybe I was losing it:
The last day of the conference, I was standing in the bathroom taking a leak in one of the disgusting urinals, and I happened to glance down at the valve on the top. The company that manufactured this valve was Zurn. I immediately decided that Zurn was the god of all things urine. Kind of like Thor, but instead of being the god of thunder, he's Zurn, the god of pee. In the space of 30 seconds, he had a costume, a superpower (beams of yellow force he could bend to his will) He wore a yellow suit with a red lightning bolt on it, but then I thought, "No, I just gave the Green Lantern's powers to the Silver Age Flash," and that's when I realized I needed some sleep because everyone knows the Green Lantern has beams of green power. Also, I had finished peeing 20 seconds ago and there was a line.
In my next rambling and incoherent post, I will tell you about the week that followed, whereupon my lovely wife and I had the best weather ever and managed to laugh our asses off, and even got to hang with Shamus and his family for bit, which is an experience in and of itself.
Go watch his Epcot video and try not to laugh.
1/30/09
Vacation, all I ever wanted..
Sorry for the Go-Gos reference. I'm back. I am regrouping from a week-long geekfest and a week-long vacation. In the meantime, keep your eyes on your Mazda. I'll be back later tonight.
LAGOS (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.
I didn't even know goat-men could drive. And where the hell does he keep his gun?
LAGOS (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.
I didn't even know goat-men could drive. And where the hell does he keep his gun?
1/29/09
Best Buy can suck it.
I've been shopping at Best Buy for at least a decade. I've purchased televisions, computers, 3 dvd players, monitors, digital cameras, 6 different iPods, wireless routers, computer software, and too many DVDs and CDs to count. Yesterday, I walked into the Wilton Best Buy store with an unopened Rolling Stones DVD box set that I received as a Christmas gift. All I wanted to do was switch it for a different DVD because my wife originally bought the wrong one, and pick up 100' of ethernet cable.
Simple, right?
I waited in line at the returns counter, and presented my return to the counter girl. She asked me for my name and phone number, which I gave her. She punched a few buttons, scanned the DVD, then said "I'm sorry. I can't take this back." I pointed out that it was unopened, and all I wanted to do was trade it for something else.
"Yes, but it's past our 30-day return period, so I can't take it back," she said.
"Even though it's not opened, and you can resell it?"
"Yes."
I politely asked her to make an exception. Talk to a manager if she had to. She told me to hold on a minute, and she went and spoke with her manager. I figured there would be no problem, since the manager at every retail establishment in existence makes exceptions like this all the time.
Incredibly, she comes back and gives me the same story again, saying that her manager refused to allow the return. For a second, I thought about tossing the DVD behind the counter and telling them to keep/shove it, but then I remember that it's worth 30 bucks so I took it and walked away. There's always e-Bay. I left, and on my way home I picked up some raw CAT5 cable at Radio Shack for 25 bucks and threw a couple of ends on it. Saved myself 30 bucks.
I guess it's lesson learned on my part. On their part, I hope not expending the effort to punch a few buttons on their cash register was worth losing me as a customer. And yes, I realize that there are store policies, and the policies are there for many good reasons, but I think in this particular case, it would have been to their benefit to suck it up and let me do the swap instead of just sucking, period.
You'd think that when their sales are in the shitter because of the economy, they'd be a little more accommodating to the good customers that they already have.
I'm sorry it had to end this way, Best Buy. It's not me, it's you.
Simple, right?
I waited in line at the returns counter, and presented my return to the counter girl. She asked me for my name and phone number, which I gave her. She punched a few buttons, scanned the DVD, then said "I'm sorry. I can't take this back." I pointed out that it was unopened, and all I wanted to do was trade it for something else.
"Yes, but it's past our 30-day return period, so I can't take it back," she said.
"Even though it's not opened, and you can resell it?"
"Yes."
I politely asked her to make an exception. Talk to a manager if she had to. She told me to hold on a minute, and she went and spoke with her manager. I figured there would be no problem, since the manager at every retail establishment in existence makes exceptions like this all the time.
Incredibly, she comes back and gives me the same story again, saying that her manager refused to allow the return. For a second, I thought about tossing the DVD behind the counter and telling them to keep/shove it, but then I remember that it's worth 30 bucks so I took it and walked away. There's always e-Bay. I left, and on my way home I picked up some raw CAT5 cable at Radio Shack for 25 bucks and threw a couple of ends on it. Saved myself 30 bucks.
I guess it's lesson learned on my part. On their part, I hope not expending the effort to punch a few buttons on their cash register was worth losing me as a customer. And yes, I realize that there are store policies, and the policies are there for many good reasons, but I think in this particular case, it would have been to their benefit to suck it up and let me do the swap instead of just sucking, period.
You'd think that when their sales are in the shitter because of the economy, they'd be a little more accommodating to the good customers that they already have.
I'm sorry it had to end this way, Best Buy. It's not me, it's you.
1/16/09
Probably not going to win.
I apologize if anyone thinks this post is mean, but this little kid makes me laugh every time I see this ad. He has a look on his face like, "Yeah, I got no shot. Thanks, Mom."
Everyone is the cutest baby to someone, right?
Everyone is the cutest baby to someone, right?
1/13/09
Death and Taxes.
It started a few weeks ago, and it's been getting worse ever since.
Now that the political commercials are finally over, it's time for the tax prep commercials to start rearing their ugly heads. They are airing constantly, and it's really beginning to annoy me.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy getting raped by the federal and local government every year. It makes me feel good about myself; like I'm doing something to help out. Regardless, these twice hourly reminders of my exemplary civic duty do nothing to improve my mood.
There's one commercial in particular that creeps me out a little, for multiple reasons. Maybe I'm the only one. It's the new TurboTax ad, and it stars these guys:
I know the dude in the middle is supposed to be Andrew Jackson, and the one on the right is supposed to be Ben Franklin, and I am pretty sure the guy on the left is supposed to be Ulysses S. Grant.
So the premise is, these three guys show up where you are and give you money and tax advice. They are, ostensibly, money come to life. Or -- more precisely -- the people-who-appear-on-money come to life. However, for some reason they keep their "money-like" coloring when they accomplish this magical feat. I don't know why anyone thought this was a good idea. Maybe it's because if they didn't, they'd just look like three creepy guys dressed up for some kind of historical reenactment.
So the upshot of this decision is that they have a pale green cast to them, which is supposed to remind you that they are straight out of your wallet. There's one problem with that -- they don't look like money that has miraculously come to life. Instead, they look like walking corpses. Zombies, maybe. Somehow-or-other undead, and slightly gone-bad. Probably closing in fast on stinky, in other words.
I was hoping to find the commercial on youtube, but no luck. Instead, I had to take a few stills for your enjoyment.
Here's where Ben is asking the guy who is still alive how something so small can cost so much, and telling him that he can get big deductions for his kid. You can't see the guy's face in this snapshot, but he looks intrigued rather than horrified. I would have tucked that kid under my arm like a football and jumped head-first through the store's plate glass window to get to my car.
In this next picture, Grant tells the stroller guy that it smells like his deduction needs a diaper change, but my theory is that he finally just caught a whiff of his own decaying flesh. Also, I am pretty sure Jackson thinks he's an asshole.
In this next shot, Ben Franklin tries to convince the guy that a handy in the alley behind the store is totally deductible:
No, I'm kidding. I made that part up.
And of course this last frame is right before Ben lunges at stroller guy and tears his throat out, and then gives his fatherless infant a demo of how Turbotax can help you deal with your inheritance tax.
OK, I made that part up too.
Anyway, I've decided I'm going to use Tax Cut this year, even though that slacker guardian angel mascot of theirs is only marginally less annoying than the rotting presidents (and Ben*). Mostly because I don't want a rotting historical figure to be my backup if I get audited.
For a bar fight maybe. That'd be cool. But not for an audit.
*She's persnickety, all right.
Now that the political commercials are finally over, it's time for the tax prep commercials to start rearing their ugly heads. They are airing constantly, and it's really beginning to annoy me.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy getting raped by the federal and local government every year. It makes me feel good about myself; like I'm doing something to help out. Regardless, these twice hourly reminders of my exemplary civic duty do nothing to improve my mood.
There's one commercial in particular that creeps me out a little, for multiple reasons. Maybe I'm the only one. It's the new TurboTax ad, and it stars these guys:
I know the dude in the middle is supposed to be Andrew Jackson, and the one on the right is supposed to be Ben Franklin, and I am pretty sure the guy on the left is supposed to be Ulysses S. Grant.
So the premise is, these three guys show up where you are and give you money and tax advice. They are, ostensibly, money come to life. Or -- more precisely -- the people-who-appear-on-money come to life. However, for some reason they keep their "money-like" coloring when they accomplish this magical feat. I don't know why anyone thought this was a good idea. Maybe it's because if they didn't, they'd just look like three creepy guys dressed up for some kind of historical reenactment.
So the upshot of this decision is that they have a pale green cast to them, which is supposed to remind you that they are straight out of your wallet. There's one problem with that -- they don't look like money that has miraculously come to life. Instead, they look like walking corpses. Zombies, maybe. Somehow-or-other undead, and slightly gone-bad. Probably closing in fast on stinky, in other words.
I was hoping to find the commercial on youtube, but no luck. Instead, I had to take a few stills for your enjoyment.
Here's where Ben is asking the guy who is still alive how something so small can cost so much, and telling him that he can get big deductions for his kid. You can't see the guy's face in this snapshot, but he looks intrigued rather than horrified. I would have tucked that kid under my arm like a football and jumped head-first through the store's plate glass window to get to my car.
In this next picture, Grant tells the stroller guy that it smells like his deduction needs a diaper change, but my theory is that he finally just caught a whiff of his own decaying flesh. Also, I am pretty sure Jackson thinks he's an asshole.
In this next shot, Ben Franklin tries to convince the guy that a handy in the alley behind the store is totally deductible:
No, I'm kidding. I made that part up.
And of course this last frame is right before Ben lunges at stroller guy and tears his throat out, and then gives his fatherless infant a demo of how Turbotax can help you deal with your inheritance tax.
OK, I made that part up too.
Anyway, I've decided I'm going to use Tax Cut this year, even though that slacker guardian angel mascot of theirs is only marginally less annoying than the rotting presidents (and Ben*). Mostly because I don't want a rotting historical figure to be my backup if I get audited.
For a bar fight maybe. That'd be cool. But not for an audit.
*She's persnickety, all right.
1/9/09
Anti-Christ Superstar.
I think I just pissed off a LOT of people.
[update: Payback is a bitch. The morning after I posted this, I was forced to put on pants and answer the doorbell for two jehovah's witnesses who wanted to stand there in the 4- degree air and read me bible passages.]
[update: Payback is a bitch. The morning after I posted this, I was forced to put on pants and answer the doorbell for two jehovah's witnesses who wanted to stand there in the 4- degree air and read me bible passages.]
1/6/09
Crap I drank yesterday.
I know that drinking this stuff is bad for me, but sometimes when I'm sitting at my desk and 2 pm rolls around, it's either drink one of these caffeinated sugar bombs or start stabbing myself repeatedly in the thigh with a ballpoint pen just so my forehead doesn't bounce off my desk. It has almost 200 milligrams of caffeine, and a bunch of other ingredients I can't pronounce and certainly don't need. I buy it because it's only one of two energy drinks they sell in the vending machine, and it has twice the caffeine of the smaller red bull for the same price.There are multiple problems with this stuff, not the least of which is that it costs at least two bucks a can. For two bucks, I can get twenty four 200mg caffeine tablets at the dollar store, and they don't smell like cat pee and make me piss like a racehorse every ten minutes for an hour. Unfortunately, becoming a pill popper brings you face to face with your addiction, and I'm not quite ready to embrace that reality.
So yesterday afternoon, I decided to forgo my Taurine, Ginseng, Guarana, L-Carnitine, L-Arginine-laced poison and go with something healthier. Besides, the irony of an energy drink that is supposed to make you feel good but has a clearly damaged skull as its logo is not lost on me.
I scanned the vending machine and wasn't in the mood for expired milk, so my only other option was this:
Yeah, it looks like a urine sample, but it can't be that bad for you, right? I got about half way through it and decided to look at what was in Dole "100% Juice." I figured it was from concentrate and I wasn't wrong, but I did get a surprise.
After reading that, I didn't finish it. Concentrate from ten different countries? Holy crap. Looking at that list, I probably wouldn't even drink the water from seven out of the ten. Seriously, why would Pepsico need to get apple concentrate from China? Although I suppose it probably is pretty cheap to get juice from apples grown in the composted shit piles of a thousand peasants. Once you chip off the lead coating, I mean.
I also like how Pepsico basically disavows any responsibility for your shriveled kidneys by informing you that it's manufactured by "independent producers" under "license." They're basically telling you that you're on your own here and that they sell the Dole logo to anyone who can put some apple flavored liquid in a bottle and give them their cut of the profits.
From now on I guess I'll just have to stick to vodka.
Also, here's my coolest Christmas present (from my wife) in action:
Groovy.
(No, I didn't drink it, but I like to imagine that it tastes like green apple jolly ranchers.)
1/1/09
Is Christmas over already? Holy crap.
When I was a kid, we lived in a raised ranch style house. If you don't know what that is, here's a description. Basically, it meant that when you walked in the front door, you were on a small landing with a set of stairs going up and another set going down. In our house, the bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and living room were upstairs, and the "family room" was downstairs. In order to keep some heat on the bottom floor, we had a magnetic vinyl accordion door at the bottom of the stairs. In the winter, this was almost always closed. Unfortunately for us, it also made quite a racket when you opened and closed it, due to the metal track and the magnetic latch. Why am I telling you about the layout of our house? Because that door was the only thing separating The Snitch, Houdini and me from our Christmas tree and the glorious treasure Santa brought us on Christmas morning.
For quite a few years, we were forbidden to go down there until our parents were awake. That wasn't really such a good plan on their part, seeing as how all three of us were usually up and out of bed at 4:30 am, and there was no way they were going to sleep through that. Finally, in an effort to get more than two hours sleep, my parents decided to simply pick what seemed to us to be an arbitrary time. It varied, and thinking about it now, I believe it was dependent upon several variables, including our behavior and how late Santa had stayed awake deciphering Korean assembly instructions on Christmas eve.
Most of the time it was 7 or 8 am. If we made giant pains in the asses of ourselves, that could be pushed to 9, with threats of (gasp!) after church, and nobody (except maybe my parents) wanted that. There was some quiet whining, but for the most part we were never better-behaved than we were between the hours of 5 am and 9 am on Christmas morning. I'm still not sure which was worse -- going to church first and trying to sit still for an hour in utter anticipation, or seeing it all first, and then being forced to leave it behind and sit in church for an hour just thinking about the stuff you barely had a chance to play with.
I think there were two main reasons we weren't allowed downstairs -- one, our parents wanted to witness us being surprised and two, Santa, being sort of a slacker, never wrapped anything. I've mentioned before about how we'd search to find the presents my parents had hidden under the stairs, or in the attic, but the ones we found were never from Santa. All Santa's presents appeared magically out of thin air while we slept.
We could never quite figure it out. Apparently, we weren't too bright, and we never questioned why my father always showed up at my grandmother's house a little late on Christmas Eve, after "working late." I am pretty sure the words my father most dreaded to see on that night were "some assembly required" and "batteries not included."
He would get home from work and frantically build stuff until he had to meet us, then, after we got home and went to sleep, he'd finish everything up and put it under the tree. No wonder the poor guy wanted to sleep in a little.
As far as the whole Santa thing went -- I had some suspicions, but, on the other hand, I also believed in magic. I was a firm believer in Santa for a long time after all the kids in school were telling me he was fake. I distinctly remember slipping out of bed late one Christmas eve and eavesdropping on a conversation between my mother and father. They were sneaky and evil. Instead of yelling at me to get back to bed, they pretended they didn't know I was there. The conversation went something like this:
"I'm starting to get a little worried."
"You think he's not coming?"
"I'm not sure. Normally, he'd have been here by now. Maybe he had problems with the reindeer and he's running late."
"That could be. Or maybe someone upstairs isn't really asleep yet. I'd better go check."
To this day, I know from experience that there really is a way to force yourself to go to sleep by sheer willpower, but I seem to have forgotten how it's done.
It's a shame, because it could really come in handy on some Sunday nights when you can't sleep and have to get up for work the next day.
We had no chimney on our house that was bigger than four inches in diameter, and that one went directly into a natural gas furnace in the downstairs hall closet. I knew he wasn't getting in that way, because I had seen that thing with the door off, and unless Santa was fireproof, those solid walls of blue flame looked pretty impenetrable.
I raised that particular concern one year, thinking we should maybe leave the back door unlocked for him, and it turned out that our particular version of Santa just needed a fireplace and he could magically appear. He wasn't picky about it either, because our fireplace looked like this:
Every year, my father inserted tabs into slots, locked them in place with brass-headed fasteners, and paved the way for our magical back-door Santa. Behind the "logs" there was a small orange light bulb and holder for a little pinwheel. The heat from the bulb would cause the pinwheel to rotate, casting weird shadows behind the logs. Voilà ! Ultra-realistic "flames." I remember that it had to be wired to the wall so it didn't fall over when you hung full stockings on it, so it was completely plausible that a 400lb fat guy in a red suit with a giant sack of presents would have no problem at all simply appearing inside of it without so much as popping tab A from slot B.
One Christmas morning, we decided that we'd had enough of the aforementioned iron-clad rule to stay upstairs. Do not go near the accordion door, do not even go down on the landing. Otherwise, your mean parents will take everything Santa gave you and give it to the less fortunate. And while we had nothing against the less fortunate, we knew that the big man usually did pretty good by us, and there was no reason to get carried away.
Plausible deniability was always our game. We tended to follow the letter but not necessarily the spirit of the law. They said we couldn't do that, but they never said we couldn't do this. So, while we couldn't go down on the landing, there were other ways to skin a fat guy in a red suit.
Every year, my father inserted tabs into slots, locked them in place with brass-headed fasteners, and paved the way for our magical back-door Santa. Behind the "logs" there was a small orange light bulb and holder for a little pinwheel. The heat from the bulb would cause the pinwheel to rotate, casting weird shadows behind the logs. Voilà ! Ultra-realistic "flames." I remember that it had to be wired to the wall so it didn't fall over when you hung full stockings on it, so it was completely plausible that a 400lb fat guy in a red suit with a giant sack of presents would have no problem at all simply appearing inside of it without so much as popping tab A from slot B.
One Christmas morning, we decided that we'd had enough of the aforementioned iron-clad rule to stay upstairs. Do not go near the accordion door, do not even go down on the landing. Otherwise, your mean parents will take everything Santa gave you and give it to the less fortunate. And while we had nothing against the less fortunate, we knew that the big man usually did pretty good by us, and there was no reason to get carried away.
Plausible deniability was always our game. We tended to follow the letter but not necessarily the spirit of the law. They said we couldn't do that, but they never said we couldn't do this. So, while we couldn't go down on the landing, there were other ways to skin a fat guy in a red suit. There was one thing our parents didn't count on, and that was Houdini and his really small head. Well, two things actually, since Houdini's small head was of no use to us without this:
I was nothing if not a Ready Ranger. I know, that sounds really gay in retrospect.
"I have an idea," I whispered. "You guys want to to see what we got from Santa?"
"We'll get in trouble," Snitch said. "We can't sneak down. Daddy will hear the door."
"Yeah, but I don't think we have to. Houdini, go in my room and get my Field Pack."
A few moments later, he came back with the kit, and I opened it up. If you're not familiar with this piece of ultra-high tech spy/survival gear, all you need to do is look at that picture up there and figure out what the tall black thing is. I popped it free.
I held the periscope through the railing and tried to angle it to point through one of the little triangular openings in the top of the accordion door, but it wouldn't work. I couldn't get the angle right. If I adjusted it so I could actually look through it, all I could see was the door. In order to tip it so I could to look through the tiny openings in the top of the door,
I was nothing if not a Ready Ranger. I know, that sounds really gay in retrospect.
"I have an idea," I whispered. "You guys want to to see what we got from Santa?"
"We'll get in trouble," Snitch said. "We can't sneak down. Daddy will hear the door."
"Yeah, but I don't think we have to. Houdini, go in my room and get my Field Pack."
A few moments later, he came back with the kit, and I opened it up. If you're not familiar with this piece of ultra-high tech spy/survival gear, all you need to do is look at that picture up there and figure out what the tall black thing is. I popped it free.
I held the periscope through the railing and tried to angle it to point through one of the little triangular openings in the top of the accordion door, but it wouldn't work. I couldn't get the angle right. If I adjusted it so I could actually look through it, all I could see was the door. In order to tip it so I could to look through the tiny openings in the top of the door, I had to hold it out beyond the railing, and then I couldn't get my eye close enough to look through it.
"Houdini," I whispered. "Does your head fit through the railing?"
He immediately tried it, and it popped through like we had buttered the sides. I already knew mine wouldn't fit, mostly due to my fat head and ginormous ears. Also, I still had recurring nightmares about the one time I actually managed to get my head jammed between the balusters on the stairs. I screamed bloody murder for what seemed like an eternity while my mother ran around frantically trying to figure out a way to free me. Eventually, she really did butter my head, and I wasn't going there again.
After he pulled his head back out, I said, "OK, now lay down and stick your head back through, and when you're set, I'm gonna give you the periscope."
He laid down on the floor, stuck his head through the middle two balusters, and put his arms through the openings on either side. I handed him the periscope.
"Don't drop it," I said.
"I'm not gonna," he whispered defensively.
Of course he wouldn't drop it. Why should he drop it? He was only lying on the floor with his head sticking through the railing, barely able to move his arms.
"OK, now hang it down a little bit, and see if you can get it pointed through one of the little openings in the top of the door. Then tell us what you see."
It took him a second to get situated, but then he struck the mother load. "Whoa," he said, breathlessly.
"Jeez, c'mon, tell us! Whattaya see?" I said, desperately hoping for Rock'em Sock'em Robots.
"I see a lot of stuff. A bozo bopper. Battling Tops. I got a big wheel, I think. Snitch, you got a bike!!"
The Snitch did a little dance of joy. "What else?" I asked impatiently.
"Those fighting robots you wanted," he said.
Score! That was all I needed to hear.
"OK, give that to me and come on back through," I said, as I sat on his back and pried the periscope from his hands. He didn't want to give it up, but he was in no position to resist. Luckily, he didn't have an "outer ear" problem like I did, and his head popped back out effortlessly.
"Good job," I said, already deciding in my head that Red Rocker was going to remain undefeated forever. After we packed up the Field Kit, we immediately went back to being the best behaved kids in the world for another 3 hours, secure in the knowledge that our magical back-door Santa hadn't let us down.
A belated Merry Christmas, everyone. Here's to a fantastic 2009!
JV
12/19/08
Flame On.
While I'm on the topic of marketing, I wanted to share this with you.
Flame. By BK.
Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.
Creepy, yet.... I would buy it.
Don't judge me.
Flame. By BK.
Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.
Creepy, yet.... I would buy it.
Don't judge me.
12/15/08
What a day for a daydream.
If you live in any of the states that have the mega millions lottery, you've probably seen the commercial (the one with the bubble following people around the city) at least a hundred times.
The other night I was watching TV and that commercial came on again. I burst out laughing, because it was the first time I noticed this bit:
That's just so random it's awesome.
The other night I was watching TV and that commercial came on again. I burst out laughing, because it was the first time I noticed this bit:
That's just so random it's awesome.
12/9/08
JV Points: December edition
Back in 2005, I decided I was going to randomly start awarding and/or taking away points to or from people I interact with. (wow, has it really been that long?) It's not something I do every day, however. Most of the time, I have very little interaction with anyone, so there are plenty of days where the points just accumulate around me in little piles doing nobody any good, like those rollover minutes on that annoying commercial I'm completely sick of seeing. I've decided to expand my scope, and award points to corporate entities as well as individuals.
Here's today's allotment of JV Points:
-1,000 points to the TV networks that piss me off by making a big deal about the season premiere of your favorite shows only to end the show with a voice-over telling you that that the next episode is a month and a half into the future. It seriously makes me want to call up Jack Bauer (who is probably just getting drunk and tackling Christmas trees while he's waiting for the show to start up again) and give him something constructive to do, like tearing off Rupert Murdoch's dessicated arm and beating the shit out of him with it.
+1000 points to the guys working the Christmas tree lot near my house for being cheerful, helpful, knowledgeable and not too drunk to help me get the tree on top of the car. I never had another man tell me that I had a very nice douglas fir before. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside.
-2000 points to the contractor who shares a common cube wall with me. Every time he's on the phone, his feet go into overdrive. It's like he suddenly becomes Alex Van Halen and the cube wall between us is a pair of 24" Ludwig Bass Drums. Add a raised floor to this mix and it's like sitting in an airplane for 9 hours with a little kid kicking the back of your seat.
-1000 points to the the mainframe guy who spent the last 20 years in the data center, slowly going deaf. Now whenever he's on the phone, he assumes that just because he can't hear the person on the other end of the line, they can't hear him either, so every single one of his phone conversations makes him sound like Billy Mays trying to sell OxyClean to... well, to a deaf mainframe guy. I actually told him to use his "inside voice" today. It didn't help. He has one volume setting, and this is it:
+1000 points to amazon.com's return policy. I know it's not a person, but seriously, could it be any easier to return something to them? Print out the label from their website, slap it on the box and that weird-but-awesome customizable pig-nose tissue dispenser is on the way back to them, and your wife is happy with you again.
-1,000 points to the guy who cut my last roll of charmin just a little too long. The damn thing wouldn't turn in the holder because it was just oversized enough to rub on both sides. Did I chuck it? Of course not. I'm pretty cheap, so I sat there and cranked it turn by turn for a period of about two weeks until it was finally gone. Every time you'd crank it over, TP dust would waft down on the floor next to the toilet. It looked like tiny little snow flurries.
+10,000 points for all the people who voted for me at smallaa.com, assuming that check actually has some money behind it. I am still taking suggestions for a decent charity, because I want to make a donation. A buddy of mine suggested this one, since his company contributes to it, and they researched it pretty well. I'm leaning that way.
Let me know what you think.
Here's today's allotment of JV Points:
-1,000 points to the TV networks that piss me off by making a big deal about the season premiere of your favorite shows only to end the show with a voice-over telling you that that the next episode is a month and a half into the future. It seriously makes me want to call up Jack Bauer (who is probably just getting drunk and tackling Christmas trees while he's waiting for the show to start up again) and give him something constructive to do, like tearing off Rupert Murdoch's dessicated arm and beating the shit out of him with it.
+1000 points to the guys working the Christmas tree lot near my house for being cheerful, helpful, knowledgeable and not too drunk to help me get the tree on top of the car. I never had another man tell me that I had a very nice douglas fir before. It made me all warm and fuzzy inside.
-2000 points to the contractor who shares a common cube wall with me. Every time he's on the phone, his feet go into overdrive. It's like he suddenly becomes Alex Van Halen and the cube wall between us is a pair of 24" Ludwig Bass Drums. Add a raised floor to this mix and it's like sitting in an airplane for 9 hours with a little kid kicking the back of your seat.
-1000 points to the the mainframe guy who spent the last 20 years in the data center, slowly going deaf. Now whenever he's on the phone, he assumes that just because he can't hear the person on the other end of the line, they can't hear him either, so every single one of his phone conversations makes him sound like Billy Mays trying to sell OxyClean to... well, to a deaf mainframe guy. I actually told him to use his "inside voice" today. It didn't help. He has one volume setting, and this is it:
+1000 points to amazon.com's return policy. I know it's not a person, but seriously, could it be any easier to return something to them? Print out the label from their website, slap it on the box and that weird-but-awesome customizable pig-nose tissue dispenser is on the way back to them, and your wife is happy with you again.
-1,000 points to the guy who cut my last roll of charmin just a little too long. The damn thing wouldn't turn in the holder because it was just oversized enough to rub on both sides. Did I chuck it? Of course not. I'm pretty cheap, so I sat there and cranked it turn by turn for a period of about two weeks until it was finally gone. Every time you'd crank it over, TP dust would waft down on the floor next to the toilet. It looked like tiny little snow flurries.
+10,000 points for all the people who voted for me at smallaa.com, assuming that check actually has some money behind it. I am still taking suggestions for a decent charity, because I want to make a donation. A buddy of mine suggested this one, since his company contributes to it, and they researched it pretty well. I'm leaning that way.
Let me know what you think.
The check was in the mail.
Update: I deposited the check today. It looked real. I don't know if it'll clear or not, but I'll keep you posted.
The contest for the next 10K ends tonight. I'm way behind, so vote if you are sick of seeing me debase myself in front of you all.
OK, I'm off to try to write something funny. Wish me luck.
The contest for the next 10K ends tonight. I'm way behind, so vote if you are sick of seeing me debase myself in front of you all.
OK, I'm off to try to write something funny. Wish me luck.
12/3/08
Holy Crap, I may have actually won something!
YOU GUYS ROCK!
If that graphic confuses you, read this and all will be explained.
OK, so it appears this contest might be real after all! Either that, or it's the most elaborate scam I've ever seen. I got an email from the guy who works for smallaa.com and we had a chat about all of the specifics.
Until the check clears, I'll remain skeptical, but for now, I'm a pretty happy guy, and this could be a great Christmas. And, of course, I have all of you to thank, especially all my regular readers and the kind (and crazy!) folks at playa.info, who I am sure did a ton of voting. I know that sounds like some pimperific rap music website, but it's really all about a city on the coast of the Caribbean called Playa del Carmen that I didn't even know about until recently, since I'm geography challenged and probably can't even name all the states on the edges of a U.S. map.
I stumbled on them recently because I noticed a lot of traffic coming from their site, but I never actually went there and checked it out until a few weeks ago. Sadly, I have to report that they all appear to have the same twisted sense of humor that I do. So... I stopped in the other night and asked them to help me out, and they were awesome. Check out the website and visit the forums, -- the whole place is really well done and full of great folks.
So thanks again to you all, and thanks to smallaa.com as well. Since he told me there's no restrictions on winning twice (as long as it's with a different post) I tossed up another couple of my favorites, if you're so inclined, so here's the JC Penny Part II. I figure I'd better get my licks in before someone with real writing chops blows me out of the water!
(I'm partial to "Artist Formerly Known As," myself.)
Whoo hoo!
12/2/08
Keanu Barada Nikto.
Ever since the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure movies, Keanu Reeves has been cast in all sorts of "leading man" roles, and in every single one I found his acting to be wooden and uninspired. It always seemed like he was faking his emotions. His acting chops are right up there with those of Chuck Norris. For some reason though, I still liked him, or maybe just the movies he was in. The Matrix (1-7), The Replacements, The Devil's Advocate, Speed, Constantine, Point Break...I'll admit that I watched and enjoyed them all. (Especially Point Break. I freakin' love surfing movies.)
But when you're casting for a remake of a classic SciFi movie and the main character is an unemotional alien who has zero facial expression and speaks in a monotone, who ya gonna call?
Hell, yeah. Finally! It's Keanu's time to shine.
Am I alone here in smelling an Oscar?
On second thought, that smell is probably my disgusting cat who is sitting on the floor next to my chair right now. He suffers from a bad case of stankass, because he's too fat to clean himself properly.* Every time he leans over far enough to get his tongue within range of his butt, his gut flap covers everything up so he can't get to it. Yeah. Enjoy that visual. You're welcome.
To repay me, go here and click on the stars next to 15 Minute Lunch. Do it from every computer you have. Get your mom to vote. Your co-workers, anyone you can. Whatever you can do, do it for the Johnny and his yet-to-be book. The contest runs until midnight tonight, and if I don't win, then I''ll be bugging you to vote for me next week. Save yourself.
I'm up against a woman with hot flashes. I've heard about the mood swings. On the one hand, the last thing I want to do is piss her off, but on the other hand, I could pay off my roof.
It seems like I might actually have a shot, if the whole thing isn't BS. Thanks!
*His nickname is Orson.
But when you're casting for a remake of a classic SciFi movie and the main character is an unemotional alien who has zero facial expression and speaks in a monotone, who ya gonna call?
Hell, yeah. Finally! It's Keanu's time to shine.
Am I alone here in smelling an Oscar?
On second thought, that smell is probably my disgusting cat who is sitting on the floor next to my chair right now. He suffers from a bad case of stankass, because he's too fat to clean himself properly.* Every time he leans over far enough to get his tongue within range of his butt, his gut flap covers everything up so he can't get to it. Yeah. Enjoy that visual. You're welcome.
To repay me, go here and click on the stars next to 15 Minute Lunch. Do it from every computer you have. Get your mom to vote. Your co-workers, anyone you can. Whatever you can do, do it for the Johnny and his yet-to-be book. The contest runs until midnight tonight, and if I don't win, then I''ll be bugging you to vote for me next week. Save yourself.
I'm up against a woman with hot flashes. I've heard about the mood swings. On the one hand, the last thing I want to do is piss her off, but on the other hand, I could pay off my roof.
It seems like I might actually have a shot, if the whole thing isn't BS. Thanks!
*His nickname is Orson.
11/30/08
Christmas Cards 2008: Card #1
I think I'm going to do a series of these between now and Christmas.
Also, I know you guys are sick of voting for me all over the place, but seriously, 10 grand? Tell ya what -- If I actually win something, I'll put it to a vote here on my blog and donate a bunch of it to the chosen charity. I hope they like giant black olives. Vote for one (or more) of my posts here, but voting for the one with no pic and the title of my blog would be best, since it's got the highest number of the three. This week's votes end on Tuesday night, and there's some woman right on my ass.
I swear, this contest is the last time I'll ask you guys to do anything for me. (Unless I need to be bailed out of jail, of course.)
Also, I know you guys are sick of voting for me all over the place, but seriously, 10 grand? Tell ya what -- If I actually win something, I'll put it to a vote here on my blog and donate a bunch of it to the chosen charity. I hope they like giant black olives. Vote for one (or more) of my posts here, but voting for the one with no pic and the title of my blog would be best, since it's got the highest number of the three. This week's votes end on Tuesday night, and there's some woman right on my ass.
I swear, this contest is the last time I'll ask you guys to do anything for me. (Unless I need to be bailed out of jail, of course.)
11/28/08
Get your Festive Flashing Savior Today!
It's that time of year when we start getting about 20 pounds of catalogs in the mail every day. The sheer amount of paper that I throw out every week is truly disgusting -- I wish there were a good way to get off their mailing lists permanently. I know about the DMA, but that didn't do squat for me.
The sad thing is, if they are even remotely interesting, I actually look at them. God knows why, but I do. I think I'm brainwashed somehow, and I have been subliminally programmed to seek out cheap Chinese crap. There's something for everyone, and every taste.
Say, for instance, you're a devout Christian who would love nothing better than to have a full nativity display on your lawn throughout the Christmas season. Since you can't really afford to pay those nutty people at the church who freeze their asses off putting on that live nativity show to stand around on your lawn from 6-11 every night, you decide you're going to get some plastic fantastic holiness. Your first option is to hit up eBay and do a search on "Blow Mold Jesus.*" You'll get all sorts of hits like this one.
(As an aside, I looked at a bunch of those sets while writing this, and all of them have one thing in common, and that one thing is Mary's wild caterpillar eyebrows. No wonder she was a virgin. Also, judging by the size of the "newborn" baby Jesus in that link, I just have to say: Holy crap, Mary, I'm so sorry.)
At any rate, your only other choice besides new or used blow mold is to go 2D. The problem there is, you can't shove a light bulb up their butts to get that holy 60 watts of glow-power, so you have to go through the added hassle of setting up a spot light in front of them.
Until now.
I present to you, the answer to your 2D prayers:
Not only can you get Mary, Jesus and Joseph, you can also get the manger, the wise men and the animals. All with enough lights to make them look like a casino on the Las Vegas strip.
Oh, and apparently you can make them blink. Can you imagine stumbling on that scene when you're least expecting it? Holy Holy epileptic attack, Batman. You'd probably wake up in the hospital mumbling something about a stroboscopic camel and the next thing you know you'd be living someplace where an orderly peels the tinfoil off your dinner every night during the Wheel of Fortune.
Here's the rest of the set:
Is it just me, or do the wise men look like they have super hero capes?
I also love the ad copy:
Please note: Express delivery is completely out of the question. You're going to have to sit your ass down and wait for quality merchandise like this.
This part made me laugh the most: "Reproduce the entire Nativity Scene (or parts of it)."
Like anyone would really order up some weird combination of holy figures.
"Oh, look! It's Jesus and Joseph!"
"Just Joseph?"
"Yeah, I heard there was a nasty break-up. He's a single dad now. It's kinda sad. I feel sorry for the kid."
p.s. - If you're not doing anything, you're all invited to stop by our place for drinks on Christmas eve. Just look for the house with the blinking baby Jesus and his best pal, donkey.
p.p.s - Check out this new site and vote for two of my posts here. I could win some big bucks. Unless, of course, they're lying, which wouldn't surprise me.
*the name of my next band
The sad thing is, if they are even remotely interesting, I actually look at them. God knows why, but I do. I think I'm brainwashed somehow, and I have been subliminally programmed to seek out cheap Chinese crap. There's something for everyone, and every taste.
Say, for instance, you're a devout Christian who would love nothing better than to have a full nativity display on your lawn throughout the Christmas season. Since you can't really afford to pay those nutty people at the church who freeze their asses off putting on that live nativity show to stand around on your lawn from 6-11 every night, you decide you're going to get some plastic fantastic holiness. Your first option is to hit up eBay and do a search on "Blow Mold Jesus.*" You'll get all sorts of hits like this one.
(As an aside, I looked at a bunch of those sets while writing this, and all of them have one thing in common, and that one thing is Mary's wild caterpillar eyebrows. No wonder she was a virgin. Also, judging by the size of the "newborn" baby Jesus in that link, I just have to say: Holy crap, Mary, I'm so sorry.)
At any rate, your only other choice besides new or used blow mold is to go 2D. The problem there is, you can't shove a light bulb up their butts to get that holy 60 watts of glow-power, so you have to go through the added hassle of setting up a spot light in front of them.
Until now.
I present to you, the answer to your 2D prayers:
Not only can you get Mary, Jesus and Joseph, you can also get the manger, the wise men and the animals. All with enough lights to make them look like a casino on the Las Vegas strip.
Oh, and apparently you can make them blink. Can you imagine stumbling on that scene when you're least expecting it? Holy Holy epileptic attack, Batman. You'd probably wake up in the hospital mumbling something about a stroboscopic camel and the next thing you know you'd be living someplace where an orderly peels the tinfoil off your dinner every night during the Wheel of Fortune.
Here's the rest of the set:
Is it just me, or do the wise men look like they have super hero capes?
I also love the ad copy:
Please note: Express delivery is completely out of the question. You're going to have to sit your ass down and wait for quality merchandise like this.
This part made me laugh the most: "Reproduce the entire Nativity Scene (or parts of it)."
Like anyone would really order up some weird combination of holy figures.
"Oh, look! It's Jesus and Joseph!"
"Just Joseph?"
"Yeah, I heard there was a nasty break-up. He's a single dad now. It's kinda sad. I feel sorry for the kid."
p.s. - If you're not doing anything, you're all invited to stop by our place for drinks on Christmas eve. Just look for the house with the blinking baby Jesus and his best pal, donkey.
p.p.s - Check out this new site and vote for two of my posts here. I could win some big bucks. Unless, of course, they're lying, which wouldn't surprise me.
*the name of my next band
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