Tagged for Five

It appears that I’ve been tagged with the latest of internet fads (some people like to call them memes, but whatever). So, I’m supposed to tell you five things that you might not know about me… damn, I’ve been putting crap on the internet since June of 1998, I think I might be out of stuff to tell… but here goes and forgive me if any of this is a repeat:

  1. After failing 5 out of 9 classes in three quarters at Southern Tech (now Southern Polytechnic), I was invited to leave. I could blame it on the girl. I could blame it on me leaving the girl after she broke my heart. I could blame it on my deciding to take a full time job. I could blame it on the lure of the student center in winter, the 25 cent cups of hot chocolate and the endless loops of Article 99 and other movies. But the truth is, despite having graduated High School with less than a 2.5 GPA, I actually took and passed 2 AP Exams which allowed me to skip several college classes and the ones I took (2 of the 4 classes I passed) first quarter where, for me, repeats of stuff I had to learn for the AP Exams. So I barely went to class and still got A’s. I thought to myself, “This college stuff is easy!” and I continued not going to class because… I didn’t want to go. So yes, my grades were actually 4 A’s (first quarter), 3 F’s (second quarter) and 2 F’s (third quarter). It was at this point my parents stopped paying for school, I was invited to transfer to another (easier) college and finally learned what my parents had known since I started pulling C’s in 8th grade: My grades weren’t bad because I was stupid, my grades were bad because I was lazy. I stopped being lazy and started making the A’s and B’s I should have been getting all along. Some lessons have a price, this one cost me 4 years of tuition out of my own pocket.
  2. I ask people to remind me of things so I will remember them without being reminded. Its really funny because if I try to remember important stuff on my own, I forget. But, if I tell someone, “Hey, remind me later to…” I never forget and don’t need the reminding. So, I’ve taken up the habit of asking people to remind me of anything I want to remember. It used to drive my wife insane until she learned to ignore anything I asked her to remind me of.
  3. My nose has not stopped bleeding since I was 11 years old. And I’m 32 now. I remember the first time it happened. We lived in Pennsylvania at the time, and we were outside clearing the snow off the drive way. I thought my nose was running, but the look on my mother’s face is something I’ll never forget. I actually thought she was looking at something behind me, and I turned around, slipped, and fell into the snow. When I got up, there was a big patch of red snow where I had fallen. There was blood down the front of my face and jacket. Most days it just bleeds a little and is held back with some light sniffling (over 21 years I’ve probably said the phrase “No, I don’t have a cold”, umm, eleventy billion times), other days I have to stuff my nose with a tissue or cotton to help it back up and clot and scab. I’ve had four different doctors look at the problem, which has resulted in two failed attempts to cauterize the inside of my sinuses and my complete and utter loss of faith in the phrase “Just relax, this will only hurt a little bit.” I have been told that I could have surgery, something similar to that which they do for people with a deviated septum or a small skin transplant, but not only do they not guarantee it would solve the problem, I have yet to have an insurance carrier willing to cover it either claiming it is a pre-existing condition or that its elective cosmetic surgery. All in all, the skin inside my nose is thin, and changes in humidity and/or temperature (you know, stuff like turning on the heater in my car or entering an air conditioned building) can cause it to crack and split. On the bright side, I have been instructed not to donate blood since if I were to have a serious nose bleed immediately after getting blood taken there could be serious problems (like passing out and death and stuff).
  4. I keep a list of all the people I’ve promised things to should I ever win the lottery. And before you start asking, I only make promises to people who ask for reasonable stuff that I think they could really benefit from.
  5. I wear both an engagement ring and a wedding ring. When I first met a girl I thought I might marry (see item 1 on this list), I came up with this wacky idea. That relationship didn’t work out. Neither did any of them for the next nine years, then I asked my then girlfriend (now wife) to marry me and explained the idea, which she loved, and we did it (sort of). Now, let me explain… Marriage, to me, has always been about two things, love and the relationship. The wedding ring, traditionally a gold ring, is a symbol of love. Gold doesn’t fade, it doesn’t tarnish, just like love. If you have ever loved someone, you will always love them, they may change and you may not love the person they become, but you will always love the person you fell in love with. Love doesn’t fade, it doesn’t tarnish. The engagement ring, to me, is a symbol of the relationship. This ring is silver. Silver, you see, if left alone, if not cared for, will tarnish, turn ugly. You have to tend to silver, polish it, work with it. Just like a relationship. You have to care for your marriage, you have to talk and work things out. The silver engagement ring is a symbol of our willingness to commit to that work. Commitment and Love, Silver and Gold. Only, it turns out the girl I asked to marry me is allergic to Nickel, which is used in about 99.99999% of gold alloys, so we went with Titanium instead, because it too does not tarnish with the added bonus that if I’m ever on a deep sea mining rig that is flooding, I can use the ring to stop a pressure door from closing. To that end, my wife and I have matching silver engagement bands (right ring finger) and matching titanium wedding rings (left ring finger).

And there you have it… now I’m supposed to tag five people, and I’m going to be mean and introduce this fad (meme) to MySpace. Kevin, Kelly, A.J., T.D., and Jason… Suck it!

Stuff on the Net XV

Christmas Edition!

Proof that Saturday Night Live can be funny: A Special Christmas Box (Not Safe for Work)

Song played on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

The Original Crazy Frog sucked… and so does this… and this.

Some of these are funny… some aren’t.

One of the best Christmas specials ever made… Ziggy’s Gift: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Animated 1971 A Christmas Carol: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4, with voice work by Alastair Sim from the original Scrooge movie (1938).

Claymation Christmas: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Billy Idol put out a Christmas Album this year. You can sample songs and videos on his MySpace page.

… and I’m out. Merry Christmas everyone!

Edit: Removing links as they die.

Casino Royale

This past weekend, I finally found a little free time to get to the theater and see a film. The wife and I picked the new James Bond film Casino Royale.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the legacy of Bond and the history of this particular story… I’ll just cut to the chase. Its a good movie.

First off, just forget everything you know about James Bond, because except for a few inside jokes that is what they are doing. This is Bond just starting out, having previously done some other work for the British (its hinted at that he is former SAS) and is now working for MI6, something he might not be ready for. The ultra-sexy swagger is gone, but he exhibits a predilection for married women because they are “less complicated”. The slapstick from earlier films is also absent. No Bond girls named Pussy Galore, Honey Ryder, Plenty O’Toole, Holly Goodhead, or Christmas Jones, whose names always seemed to be picked for single line jokes, most of which could be seen coming a mile away. Q is gone, so no theatrics with gadgets going wrong as he shows James his new toys. In fact, the toys are gone as well.

The movie isn’t perfect… there are moments when it gets slow, but the action scenes are damn good and left me itching to see more Bond in the future.

And about the new man himself… Daniel Craig might be blond haired and blue eyed, but he makes the role his own, and he has a look about him that really makes you believe he could be a spy: rugged good looks that clean up well in a tuxedo, but rough enough to be a street thug if its needed. The wife gives him the thumbs up.

So, the end result is a film worth seeing. If you haven’t, do so.

Autumn or Fall

Depending on the situation or the frame of mind I am in, I flip-flop on whether I prefer Autumn or Fall as the name of the season that comes between Summer and Winter.

Fall is… well… depressing, but often time so apt. Right now at work it definately feels like Fall. All the projects are coming due, we (the place I’m contracting at) are being bought by another company and heads will roll, and everything just seems like it is approaching an end.

Autumn is how I want to feel. Change is in the air, and change always leads to possibilities.

Despite all this pondering, the new TV season is revving up and is nearly in full swing. Lots to see, some of it is good, some not so good. And some of it I don’t expect to last, but I hope some of it does. I’ll give a rundown on the shows I’m watching and what I think later, for now I’m just happy not to be on anymore conference calls.

2006: Day 1 – The Best Laid Plans

It was simple. I told my boss I’d be off September 1st to the 4th. The wife request off the weekend from work (a year ago). We’d be off, come down to the Con on Friday, get our room first thing and spend four glorious days among the freaks, finally heading back to our regularly scheduled lives on Tuesday.

Wrong.

She didn’t get the day off. So she’s working until 12. Fine, she’ll drive down after work. But then I have work to do in the morning too. So I’ll be a little late. By noon, I’m just finishing up. She comes home instead and we drive down together.

We check in to the room, which is supposed to be right next to the rooms of two friends, we reserved as one and were assured a block of rooms. When we ask if its possible to switch from the two double beds to a single king, we are told that doing so will split us from the group. Well, if we are with the group we can suffer. Only, after we get up to the 28th floor, we learn one group of friends is on 23, and the other is on 35. Back down in the lobby, I complain and get our room switched. We are up on 40 now, much better view, and the king beds are nicer than the doubles for sharing. But… unlike last year’s room we have no fridge and no microwave, and the couch has been replaced by a single comfy chair.

Whatever, its fine. So we head to registration. Its in the Hyatt. There are signs. We follow the signs. At registration we are told that you have to enter from Baker Street, from outside, this is exit only. None of the signs leading us here mentioned that. But we go outside and eventually find the one sign that says it is the registration entrance.

By the time she got home, we load the car, drove downtown, checked in, twice, and registered, its 6. We hooked up with some other friends for a snack and plan to start catching panels at 7. Nothing starts that we want to see until 8:30, at least nothing that we didn’t miss completely. To pass the time until then we go try to find the people we were supposed to be rooming next door to.

They are at Wrestling.

Of all the things you expect to find at a Sci-Fi and Fantasy convension, wrestling isn’t one of them. But its funny. Some of the guys aren’t bad at the acting, some are horrible. Everyone gets into it and is yelling and laughing and screaming.

When that’s done, we stand out in the halls and watch the costumes stroll by. Some people have made excellent costumes, some people… haven’t. Pictures will come eventually.

Pretty much nothing went according to plan the first day, but once we got here it was fun. Hopefully the rest of the weekend will be more of that and less of the other stuff.

I`m got house

So, Friday I bought a house. I then spent Friday night, Saturday and Sunday doing some work around it… putting up ceiling fans, changing the locks, etc etc… if I don’t post much in the coming two weeks or so, it is because I’m too busy with my house.

Stuff on the Net XII

Want to know what really happens in chat rooms? The Parlor. (Not Safe For Work)

One of my favorite Reno 911 sketches.

The Last Saskatchewan Pirate.

Rollin’ with Bob Saget. (Not Safe For Work)

Your ears you keep and I’ll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, “Dear God! What is that thing,” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.

The Home Stretch

Yesterday’s home inspection went well. Nothing is wrong with the house that we didn’t already know about and budget for. The lawyers for HUD finally got their act together and the closing is set for next Friday. So in a week I will officially be a homo… err… home owner.

It feels good to finally get through all the mess. The waiting, the preliminary paperwork, the ninja utility work… yeah, the HUD contractors are complete idiots, so we snuck into the house one night and capped all the open water pipes and gas hoses so that we could turn the utilities on for the inspection. If we hadn’t done that I suspect our inspection might have occurred some time in August with us moving in perhaps before 2007.

This whole experience gives me absolutely no confidence in government institutions. Its not just the triple paperwork, but the sincere lack of job pride that these overpaid overbenefitted slackasses possess. I would be hardpressed to find people outside of cushy government jobs who work so little and manage to make it sound like its hard work.

Anyway, one more week and I’m done with them for good.

Design By Committee

As a programmer, I pride myself on being able to, after the grunt work is done and the program is made functional, make my programs look pleasing, pretty. Usually this involves picking a color scheme using the well known color wheel (paint stores usually provide free ones, they are worth picking up). I start with the company colors and pick others that are complimentary and so on. I pick colors that sharply contrast for things such as alerts, alarms and errors, to make them stand out. I also usually fire up my trusty copy of Paint Shop Pro and craft some graphics to help round out the designs of menus and reports, and I always keep the sizes small so they don’t impede the loading time of the pages.

Then I give the program to the testers and the clients who usually come back with the most idiotic of requests. “Can we make the highlight color a light green text on a purple background? It will be easier to read.” “Can you remove the graphics from the menus? Just leave them blocky tables, we don’t need them to look good.” “Can you make my name appear on the top of every single page in giant 48 point font so that I always know that it is me who is logged in so I don’t use someone else’s account?”

And I have to do them, because my boss thinks that “the customer is always right”. But I know, since it happens every single time, that once the testing phase is done, they are going to ask things like “Why does my name appear in 48 point font on the top of every page?”, “Green on purple is awful, why did you choose those colors?”, and “These menus are so bland, can you jazz them up a bit?”

People wonder why I hesitate to put in my best effort the first time around…

Currently Not Reading

You may have noticed the Currently Reading section over to the right has been empty. Let me tell you, it definately is not from lack of material. I have got a stack of books just waiting. No, I am currently not reading anything because what is usually my reading time, riding the bus to and from work, I have been using as work time.

See, I spend roughly two and a half hours on the bus each day. About an hour going to work, and an hour and a half coming back. Since my work has been so kind as to provide me with a laptop, I have been doing program code while I travel, which in turn allows me to only need to stay in the office about six hours each day.

It is a sweet deal. I mean, if I was driving myself to work, that same amount of time (a little less, the bus takes a longer way, and the transfer from bus to rail can be a time killer) would be just lost. I would be spending is dodging idiots on the highway and trying my best to adhere to an “Arrive Alive” policy.

So anyway… I do have a dozen or so books waiting for me, and there are like another ten or so coming out in the next couple months I plan to pick up, and I’ll get back to reading and reviewing them just as soon as I buy my house. Ha! Yeah, like I’ll have more time once I have a house to work on! I crack me up sometimes.