A Day in the Life

Job loss

2011-07-09T13:10:00.000-04:00

Wow, last post in March?!?

Welcome to reality, I'm unemployed and rather pleased with this fact. But I'm not allowed to say why. Promises that have a sum of money as a penalty attached tend to be good motivators to behave on the internet ;)

That said, I can finally focus on the things that I like to do, to include posting funny things on here.

Sadly I've missed posting a huge amount of weird Calebisms, and I'm sure that Beka will come up with some amusing ones... It's already funny enough for me to give Beka her shut the fuck up juice at night.

2011-07-10 (by Eye-Fi)

2011-07-09T13:01:00.002-04:00

I hate having a dresser and nightstand. Instead I have a couple of steel shelving units with a plastic 3 drawer organizer, as well as some other useful items.

Office Space 2: The remote worker

2011-03-03T01:13:00.000-05:00

So this tale is less exciting than the original... but it's creepy that i'm living this one.

I've had 4-5 bosses at once, but unlike the original movie, mine all want me to do different and often opposing things. CEO wants my work automated. VP guy who is my top boss doesn't want me automating unless there's a dev team so we dont hit net negative productivity, but says to use someone else's code. Competent low level manager of mine said that code wont work, and to just do what i think will work (he at least made sense). Other random person still wont let go of "scripts". Another VP seems to think i'm part of support and do upgrades and deal with other stuff, regardless of how many times i've told him otherwise. Server admin i report to is just happy that i make sure their stuff is not broke going out.

Pull a few 100 hour weeks in a row, and get told i shouldn't have and they were ready to take business losses instead. Quarterly bonus only 75%.

Spend 2 hours of my day helping get an upgrade organized because the PM is out and i get lauded with praise.

Get rewarded for helping upgrade by having someone who a month ago was trying to figure out how to reduce my workload decide to dump something on me that I really can't do, but needs removed from the people who were supposed to be assigned to help me do my work. Circular it is.

Tell off management lots and slow work down to a crawl, and lo and behold... it's been silence for 2 weeks now, no issues at all.

Told they are going to outsource a large percentage of my job this year talking things like "scalability". We know what corporate key phrases in combination with outsourcing means.

There's no superman 3 scheme, but we just got a stock options plan and my initial assessment is that the only way it will succeed is if we get a ton more options, and if the company is suddenly worth 40x what it is now.

Hoping someone gets mad enough to burn the place down. Can't do it myself, the main character doesn't go that far. I learned last time not to return the money under the door. But at least i don't have equipment that fails constantly that i want to destroy. Kind of sad... Shooting range + fax machine... happiness...

World Domination skills

2011-02-15T16:28:00.000-05:00

My son is now trying to hone his world domination skills.

Today his homework assignment was to write a thank you letter. In his letter he said

"Dear Mommy

Thank you for the balls.

Fear Caleb."

He'll i'm sure work his way up to "Thank you for ruler ship of your nation, fear me." But I also wonder if he's really reminding us that someday he will propagate his evil into his spawn, and his testicles are the key.

33 round magazines

2011-01-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

There's a strangeness to this subject of 33 round magazines to me. I own some. And today i loaded mine up with the usual ammo i keep in mine. I was left thinking for only a brief moment that someone with the same items went and murdered a bunch of people. Soon after this I was left wondering why I should really think of things this way.

There's a balance to note here, and a reminder. Every time you handle / fire / carry / clean / load a firearm, you are always handling something that in someone else's hands is a force with which they can do very bad things. This to me should be a reminder of the importance of respecting the responsibility of being a firearms owner.

But at the same time, do we have a moment of silence when we need to use a knife to cut a steak because many people have been killed with knives? Do we have a moment of silence at baseball games because the main tool of that game has been used in so many beatings, murders, and racially loaded incidents? Do we stop at our anniversary dinner with our spouse to mourn over all the people who have died by alcohol consumption or DUI when we responsibly enjoy a glass of wine?

Fuck that. Good reality check.

The events were sad, but quit blaming an object.

New Calebism

2011-01-24T22:52:00.000-05:00

So as Caleb gets older, the insanity of the Calebisms calms down. But they are now more refined. One day my wife is complaining that we ate the last item of something in the house, as i explain to her why, out of the next room I hear him chime in "Get over it mommy, you'll live." I wonder where he gets it from...

Being the one to blame, it took me all of my power to hold her back from going in and tearing into him at the same time as i'm trying to not laugh too much to encourage him... poor little guy. Just wonder what else he's going to get from me.

Balls

2011-01-18T02:48:00.002-05:00

Well, i guess it's just as hard to find a pair of reasonable yet large brass balls on the internet as much as it is in real life.

Back...

2011-01-10T17:24:00.000-05:00

Blogging waxes and wanes here.

Somehow i've been sick more in the past 5-6 months working from home and isolated from most of the world than I ever was working in hospitals for years around where germs congregate.

Shared this with a coworker, he was suffering from food poisoning having eaten a vegan meal a friend had prepared... i thought that vegany stuff is supposed to make you feel BETTER after eating it!

On other fronts, a more serious and useful note, i think i've finally solved my usb drive sync issues. Program called Allway Sync in conjunction with Amazon's AWS S3 simple storage solution leaves me with a very reasonably priced (S3 is for now free to a certain point, and cheap as hell after that, scales based on usage) synchronization to keep my stuff up to date. Just plug a drive and it'll sync it, can manually sync, and have periodic sync's as you work. Finally something that works!

I wish my sex life were that good.

2010-11-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

me: how's the female from last long chat we had?

Azz: my abs are sore from making her a wet mess yesterday

me: nice

Azz: the ax was heavy

I miss the old guild :)

Laundry or Car Payment?!?

2010-10-25T22:48:00.000-04:00

So I went to do laundry today, one of my least preferred tasks. I arrived there at the same time as a woman who had about 10 garbage bags full of stuff. All in all it was probably the same amount of laundry as I was doing with my 5 large and compressed baskets full.

The difference, she was dropping hers off to have the laundry place do it for her. It costs me approximately 3 hours of time and ~40 in cash (including detergent) every 2 weeks for a family of 4. I asked the laundry attendant how much that much laundry would cost to do, she said that it came out to over $160. OMFG talk about profitable business! I have no idea how people can easily throw out $320 a month just to do laundry!

The attendant said that the woman is just really busy. My wife and I both have demanding jobs, a 6 year old and a 10 month old... I fear how much busier people would need to be to justify a full car payment just for laundry! At that rate you could probably even pay for a maid service to come to your house every week and do it for you and get a good bathroom cleaning to boot!

And all the while, I'm having a funny feeling this family will be the first to complain about the taxes out there being too high.

Am I allowed to raise my child?

2010-09-27T01:40:00.000-04:00

Warning: I'm bitching about something... this entry is not fun. skip it if you dont want to hear the whine.

Today we went to the park. I had our 9 month old daughter with me, so was letting our son have a little freedom to roam in the small area of the park that is fenced in for play equipment use.

I was just relaxing with the little one and watching the son off and on when 2 little girls come to their grandmother next to me and claim a boy had thrown sand in their eyes. I asked the girls if the boy was wearing a brown shirt, to which they replied yes. My son was the only boy wearing a brown shirt that day at the park.

I called him over and asked him if he had done that, he said no at first, but immediately corrected himself to yes when he realized the girls were there watching him. I demanded he apologize and he refused. I told him we are leaving either way but that he had better apologize to them. He gave a very half hearted apology, claiming he had no idea how to do so. Another outright lie. The grandmother is actually seeming critical of my anger towards my son, and saying it's alright what he did and his half assed sorry was enough when he was only doing it to get more park time in.

The problem here is a simple one. Society has left me in a damned if I do and damned if I do not situation. I have learned in the past 6 years that no matter how strict you are with a child, if they are that type of child they will do whatever they please without a second thought, as if there were a disconnect between him and the consequences of his actions. There are those people who watch me, and will claim that I am too late in being strict, although this is not the case for those that know me. There are those who say I am being too harsh, however we have found that inches turn into miles with our son. There are those who say I need to go easier on him, however this leads to even worse behavior over time (been there as well).

The reality is, the public has NO idea what dealing with a child like our son is like, and I truly tire of the judgement of others. Save it for people who beat their children into submission.

Sexy poses.

2010-09-24T20:23:00.000-04:00

I always find it funny, people post pics of themselves in sexy poses all over the internet trying to get attention. Then a bunch of people say all sorts of things... I'm getting very tempted to go rogue troll out there and leave my signature line "wow i'd hit that... with a f'ing hammer!" And watch the hate fly.

How did i get here?

2010-09-21T11:41:00.002-04:00

me: yes, it's like keeping your composure after getting your manhood stuck in the door.

yeps

Person 1: haha, ive only had my hand stuck in a car door thankfully, never manhood

me: well, it's not so much getting your manhood caught, nor the looks you get from it

but the realization of the steps that had to have lead up to it

San Francisco Treat?

2010-09-21T11:14:00.000-04:00

Person 1: speaking of which.. i may request (person who does our office work) to stock up on san francisco nutrition if there's such a thing

what's unique to san francisco besides the bread?

me: considering the high gay population, beware of the tube steaks... there's some proteins you dont want to consume.

ricearoni... it's the san francisco treat.

Person 1: eh? recearoni?

ricearoni?

me: http://www.ricearoni.com/

old tv ad's

had the trolly cars

"rice a roni, the sanfrancisco treat..... rice a roni the flavor cant be beat!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD6dHixV5n8&p=FF2739A3519761BF&playnext=1&index=62

Rice A Roni

Sent at 10:12 AM on Tuesday

me: catchy in that omg my ears are bleeding make it stop kind of way

Corporate Phrases 1

2010-09-20T13:53:00.000-04:00

I love teleconferencing! The exchanges that happen in the background are wonderful!

Person 1: lid popping off the box, is that like opening the kimono?
me: that's called we need to nail her coffin down tighter
me: nail it fucking down!
she said it again!
we need a drinking game as remote workers for her phrase stuff
Person 2: we'd be hammered. All.The.Time
me: hammered enough that the box wont pop open!

Religion

2010-09-20T10:38:00.000-04:00

Had a good weekend out camping. Helps the brain work.

Thought a little about religion when my wife mentioned an unusual dream she had.

Keywords / phrases to consider:

Jihad
Conversion
Repentance
Confession
Communion
Born Again
Evangelical
Spreading the good news.
Commandments
Laws
Scripture
Tenants

I want to throw all this shit out the window.

I really feel that even the religion that has formed my beliefs is full of shit. What good do these things in reality provide for anything? If you actually read the books of religions with a critical eye and mind, you will find they are full of things that are totally counter to what is taught by religions, and with no way to prove these things one way or another, they take advantage of the masses claiming "the devil" is saying these things. Then there's the alternative religious movement of modern day, a sad knee jerk of conforming to non conformity, controlled by it's opposition of modern organized religion.

But there's also a reality I am learning. What people make religion out to be and what it really should be are very different things. Resisting religion because others make it shitty is just plain being controlled by them. I've let other people destroy all aspects of good things I feel for what I believe. Only person who can change that is me.

I don't think I can ever stop having a distaste for commercialized holidays... or the sheeple of the world. But I also can rise above that and live my life the right way regardless of them.

I sat to think about this today some while I replied to my son's teacher on some issues he was having at school. We are talking about rewarding him if he's good, and I addressed to her my only concern: how will he be perceived in class by others, being rewarded for being bad but improving whereas they were good to begin with.

It left me challenging every modern day teaching I've heard so far of the garden of eden and the prodigal son. Read them both carefully and one is simply a warning of the life you can expect when you step away from ignorance, and the other that when you stray and come back, there is often more worth to you than someone who was complacent. Reality here shows me that it's actually MORE valuable to wander away and question, yet find yourself in a moral place than it is to follow mindlessly. Yet if churches taught this, a> would their sheeple believe them? b> would their sheeple have the balls to really think and act on these things?

In the end, I hope that my son's constant challenging of my and other's authority pays off in him growing as a person later. Right now that matters far more to me than any esoteric debate on religion and control, and I think God would want us focusing on how we live our lives, not how we waste our time debating and controlling.

Logic fail

2010-08-30T01:36:00.001-04:00

So I was reading an article about knife legalities in NYC area. I'm all about what they are saying, but I really am saddened by the common misuse of statistics just to make a point in an article.

The DA’s office claims homicides and knife use in non-fatal stabbings to be a serious problem in Manhattan. Yet according to the National Safety Council – in your lifetime you have a greater chance [1 in 81,701] of getting killed by lightning than residents of Manhattan had last year of getting killed with a knife [1 in 90,503]. (
http://www.akti.org/action/call-to-action-nyc-manhattan-district-da-confiscates-legal-knives-from-retailers)

Comparing 1 in 81,701 for a LIFETIME vs 1 in 90,503 for a YEAR. An astute reader would realize that you have a far greater chance of being stabbed in Manhattan than getting struck by lightning in one year. The reality here, we need to stop reading to absorb or to reaffirm something we believe, and read with critical thought.

Who do I write like?

2010-08-19T17:17:00.000-04:00

I stumbled upon a site (no, really i really did use stumbleupon for this...) that says it can analyze your writing and see who you write like.

I decided to throw a blog post in, and it showed this:

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Maybe i should comment each of my posts with who they write like for my own silliness.

At least this author seems pretty cool... futuristic-ish. When searched for him william gibson came up too. I can live with that.

Criminal Activity is OK if it's From A Politician?!?

2010-08-18T15:12:00.000-04:00

Ok... so I was reading the New York Times' article on the Blagojevich trials. Something struck me as a serious what the fuck...

Some of the jurors suggested that Mr. Blagojevich and his aides had been “just doing a lot of talking,” he said, but not actually committing crimes, while others felt that the government was too eager to “take him down,” or that his behavior might not be all that different from that of other politicians. Others expressed concern that some witnesses who testified against him had plea agreements or other deals with the government, deals these jurors said made their testimony suspect.

Here's what gets me... Is the jury saying that if he's a politician, there are different standards!?!?

This is a lot like the police... they should be held to a HIGHER standard not a lower one.

I'm very thankful that this was a mistrial, but also scares me to consider the juries in other trials for things of similar importance. Will the ruling of morons claiming "well, everyone else does it" be the controlling factor? Wow I could get away with so much using the new Blagojevich defense.

"But you stabbed someone!" "I did not, but if I did, I was just doing what the other guy did last year across the street."

That really shitty bottle of alcohol in the fridge.

2010-07-12T04:04:00.000-04:00

Ok, so there's this really shitty bottle of alcohol that sits in the fridge.... it's horrible stuff, tried it more than once hoping that it was just the day or the mood that kept you from drinking it....

So what do you do with it?

I say drink it!!! Why you might ask? Well, if you save it for a day when there's nothing better to drink, I pray for the sake of your own happy consumption that day never comes. Given that train of thought, it will sit, just like the last bottle did here, for a LONG time. I think it's been here since the first 6 months of us living in this house. In our case it was Mancini's apple martini premixed... stuff...

If you let the shit collect in your fridge you'll never get to consuming it until it's absolutely the wrong time.

I often have this opinion, and i'm sure you all can agree with me, that often liquors get better as you consume more than the first shot of them... well, over half a bottle later, the stuff still sucked... The only good point is it made the Tres Generationas I had after the 2/3rds bottle of watered down low quality toilet cleaner flavored apple martini mix actually smell like bananas, something I never expected from Tres Generationas Blanco.

Add on i'm now 36 years old... and damn if i still find it funny as hell what it feels like to shake my head from side to side when drunk.

Now, as to the bottle of Divine Droplets sake in the fridge... that's worthy of saving for a good occasion. One of my closer friends has vowed to not drink until his buddy got back from an overseas deployment... The guy is a nut, he drives like an idiot who thinks every road is a racetrack, but he's also important to a close personal friend of mine.... so until he comes back, that sake will stay cold as well, even if i've only met the guy twice.

Just some simple examples of my take on prioritizing alcohol consumption.... good rules to live by.

to blog or not to blog

2010-07-12T03:50:00.001-04:00

In the modern day there's these neet programs and set of setting out there to keep people from posting at certain hours in hopes that they do not send work (or play for that matter) emails as well as blog while consuming alcohol.

Take a look at the last time I posted and I leave you with a question: is it better to post while having consumed alcohol or is it better to not post at all?

I'll let you know my opinion some time after tomorrow morning when my rooster crowing alarm tone on my phone awakes me from slumber (I've set THREE alarms to make sure i'm functional by work time).

Aside from that, lets hope i can post a minimum of 2 posts a week on here, there's not excuse otherwise... At least i am smart enough to add it as a schedule item to my calendar.

This brings up a very valid point that I wonder what other people think... How soon and often is it a good idea to implement changes in life? Many recommend to me to take it slow and make one change a week, many just say get it done with and hit up drastic enough change so that you dont fall into old habits....

Piracy in the Alaskan seas!

2010-06-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

So i was at the bar (the only available seating) at a restaurant in the SFO airport. Just the prospect of the 6+ hour flight ahead had me already bored. And as one's mind wanders, so does one's attention, often to the conversation of others. As most of us in our 30's to 40's tend to do, most were talking about their work as if it was truly a validation of their net worth. A sales person here, a doctor specializing in deliveries there, even a scientist "by trade" who helped in the building of intel's various fabrication and research plants. But these are a dime a dozen. For once, I heard a life tale that was INTERESTING.

A man who made it through art school on scholarships, as well as having started his sculpture work on grants, having spent a lot of hard work on all this, he still for the life of him was unfulfilled. How did he know? Every night he'd sleep, he's never feel rested. After a series of events including a woman, he found himself needing money, so he pitched in his fate to a fishing boat for a run, and for the first time in his life, he found sleep, real deep fulfilling sleep. He still works sculpture in his free time, but his goal now is to buy his own fishing boat and make the real money in catching fish. Even the tales of his attempts to get his own boat were interesting.

So of course I have to ask him "so is there any impact on your work from piracy that's spoken of in the news? And is the news just reporting on something that has always been there in the first place?" This opened up another tale of interest, as he enthusiastically declares "Piracy! We need MORE of it! It's great!" Nowhere near the answer I had expected. He then continues in telling how many fishing boats tend to not respect others' equipment and fishing space and intentionally jump in front of others just to get that perfect haul. And considering that, a lot of fishermen will happily start shooting at said boats with shotguns to make the point and hopefully make the sailing not so smooth there on out for those that dont follow the unspoken rules. Said school poaching often leaves other people's nets tangled and damaged.

The problem is when you deal with these sorts of fishermen who know they have to be awake for a week straight, since the work waits for noone, and decide crystal meth is the best way to survive the sleepless trip. At this point the obvious San Francisco natives are all freaking out just at the mention of drugs, yet the fisherman is unfazed at the reaction, agreeing with them the whole time, knowing that no matter how much they say "drugs bad!" these people will still be doing them. Back to the problem at hand... a boat full of fishermen hopped up on meth, and shotguns. I'm sure you can enjoy a nice game of connect the dots with that one.

In the end the man had to leave for his flight, and for once I had been left with a far more interesting tale than almost any i've heard. Life needs to be more than punching a clock...

Life and Expectations

2010-05-28T21:07:00.000-04:00

Wonderful times these are. Normally i like to be funny or bring up strangeness in these posts... today i've got a serious note to throw out there.

Dreams and goals are funny things. Not sleep dreams, but aspirations, impossible places you want to go.

The question I first would pose on this topic, do you want to fulfill your dreams so badly that you'll become another person, go to extreme lengths and totally change yourself to get there? And what about once you do get there? Will that dream still hold it's sway over the new you? I wonder to myself if this is what true mid life crisis is about, fulfilling your dreams, realizing that the reality of your dreams is underrated, and the mourning of the loss of everything else sacrificed on the way there.

Next question: Is it a bad thing to not have future dreams? I'm getting to a point where I want to plan future realities. I've somewhat gotten where i wanted to be in life in respect to a career, a good job that makes a difference in a software company that isn't so big that it's forgotten where it's come from (yet). And I find that this same job is going to destroy anything else in life that I value.

Problem is, I've put myself in a place in life where I don't have a choice and am forced to stay with this end result for a while. If I walk away I do as much damage if not more than if I stay.

What I have learned is that struggling near the top, struggling near the bottom, and the realization at any point up the hill you can fail, and that failure drops you much farther the higher you climb if you arent ready for it is really too accurate a metaphor to be true. Run out of supplies that high up? Can't get back down? Break a leg along the way because you tried and failed? It's all the same as life.

So now that the problem is laid out, I'm finding that my reading and writings of the past couple of years actually have taught me a lot. These are the lessons i've learned, and they mean nothing to people who have not been there or have not seen them, but I'll state them anyway with hopes that they might stand as a guidepost to others who get to the same place i have.

There's a great value to living a life that is spiritually and mentally sustainable.
You should be able to be who you are and talk about what you like regardless of what you choose to do for a living.
Money and career only can get you so far, your family and friends will be at your funeral, gone are the days your employer would be there. If your employer is there you are either blessed, or neglected the rest of your life for work to a sad extreme.
High school guidance councilors are still FUCKING USELESS. Get a real job instead of duping kids into believing contribution to society through the workforce is the answer.
Even if the people around you drive you insane, learn to value them.

Enough sappy shit. I'm gonna spend my weekend figuring out where i'm going with the rest of my life. Memorial day... remember the past... but learn from it for the future.

Hidden Racism

2010-05-10T22:26:00.000-04:00

I've decided there is a conspiracy. I do laundry at a facility that has a tanning salon, and I never see a black person go into that tanning salon? Are they having secret meetings in there? Is that the secret entrance to the KKK headquarters? Are they making themselves darker to they will fit in to undermine all the black people of America? Beware! They are coming!

Working world

2010-05-07T14:09:00.000-04:00

So amusingly enough, I now have a full time job working for a company that provides specialized hosting services and software for high end clients. This in and of itself is not amusing unless you really know me and really are that mean. Yes you know who you are out there.

The reality is, I had a 30 minute meeting with the person who would be my new manager. This was in essence an interview and informal offer. This was perhaps one of the more successful interviews in that I actually am hired on as of next week. What was the difference this time compared to all the other times? Well, while my circumstances were very different than the normal cold interview, I was outright honest, perhaps even too much so.

I told him my real feelings, my honest displeasure with the problems that were happening with the company's structure, and told him only honest and direct things about myself. Given the conversation I even included something by one of my favorite authors, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "American Scholar". I did not once give the "stock" answer expected in an interview for all of his stock questions. And now instead of a technology ronin, i'm a technology samurai having sworn fealty to a shogunate... Why do i say it like that? Because they better damn well keep me supplied with sake... i'm going to be out after tonight hopefully.

Women's medical health.

2010-05-07T11:26:00.000-04:00

So pink for breast cancer awareness... easy funding thing to back since most men love breasts. Kinda sad that you cant get a color for testicular cancer awareness month? Have Fight Club marathons at your local everywhere, hail Meatloaf as the poster boy? What color or symbol would there be? Have porn stars tie that color of ribbon around their parts to make a statement in the next flick? Yah, I can see why breast cancer awareness jumped to the head of the pack.

Similarly I can finally understand why Einstein Bros. bagels are not taking off like wildfire. Did their product naming/advertising specialists consider women and use of words? They have a product called a Schmear... If i were a woman, just the thought of a pap smear with a bagel would leave me happily skipping breakfast...

White People

2010-05-05T10:55:00.002-04:00

I've heard many people say that all of us white people look alike...

But damn... I make looking alike look GOOD.

Oh neglected blog, how I miss thee!

2010-05-04T09:47:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to come to terms with a new job, and trying to figure out if it's just growing pains or if I need to find better work. To test the chicken or egg idea, time to approach my work from a different perspective and methodology and it should improve. Strangely the fact that i've not posted to the blog for a while set off alarm bells in what's left of my head. Funny/stupid things have not stopped happening, so why should I not blog about them?

I was waiting for my son at the end of his school day listening in on the usual dense housewife banter. This time they were complaining about crazy drivers in our area. The amusing irony is that one of them repeatedly is gabbing on her cell phone and blocking traffic in the parking lot... duh.

My wife had cut some holes in a maternity bra to facilitate pumping milk for the baby. Sadly it did not fit well on me as a luchador's mask. Oh what alcohol consumption will inspire...

Insanity

2010-04-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. Life is crazy. How crazy? Well, I realized how insane it's getting when it's 1 AM, and I'm staring at my computer screens. I reach over and take another swig of a low carb energy drink so I can continue to sit on my ass and continue to do computer work. Energy drinks and doing sit at a desk work to me says fail.

It's even gotten to the point on occasion that drinking an energy drink has put me immediately to sleep. Talk about unexpected results.

I keep telling myself just one more month and I can scale back the insanity, but then, I know I'll find another reason to push more. At least it's not minimum wage.

I was sent an email from above saying "now is your time to shine!" My first statement of the long email that followed "I'm not a light bulb."

I'm tired of hearing "think outside the box!" I think corporate america has forgotten what the box even looks like. Sounds dysfunctional, codependant, just like corporate buzz words. Doesn't it help to understand the box so you know when you are in it and when you arent? Just like zero is a good starting point for numbers.

I see examples of outside the box thinking every day. We have a cat that is going senile, and poops right next to the litter box instead of inside it. Chew on those tootsie rolls for a while there corporate america...

Lost in shorttation

2010-03-09T10:14:00.001-05:00

Twitter is a neat idea... but we all know shortening thoughts to 140 characters doesnt always turn out well in communicating a point...

My first personal experience with this: TwitCause is supporting Mariska's TheJHF. They can win $250k from #PepsiRefresh for survivors of abuse and violence.

Does this mean only people who are abused are eligible to win? Should I go get beaten today?

Tea Party

2010-03-08T08:29:00.000-05:00

So the Tea Party movement I personally declare a fail, these people have no clue.

There hasn't been a tax on tea since the first time they did the tea party, so what's the big deal?

Reminds me of something... Long ago there was the original Tea Party, and it boldly went where no colonist had gone before. They made history in a new frontier.

Now it's the Tea Party: The Next Generation, where they are about all sorts of things, all except for the original reasons. They go everywhere and do everything, but in the end it's the same old overused plot, fighting against being assimilated by big government and corporate interests.

Next thing you know, there'll be Tea Party: Voyager, where Sarah Palin will wander around lost somewhere in the Midwest in a Volkswagon van with her motley crew of whatever kind of family members she picks up along the way... lost with no way to get back to Alaskan territory.

And of course we cannot forget Tea Party: Deep South Nine, where no matter how hard he tries to keep the peace between many different factions, Obama is still hated by all and ends up just being the token black man of the series.

I just got me some of Lipton's Bavarian Wild Berry tea in those neet pyramid bags. I'm going to have some today, does that make me against them? Are they going to get angry and overthrow my office as one more step to taking action?

Women's History Month

2010-03-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

At least black history month has a few catchy theme songs to go with it, Like "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" or the theme from Shaft...

But this month is women's history month... damned apple.

So after a long time, women got to vote... yet why is it that 80% of the women I talk to claim they don't care about it and just have their husbands write down who they want to vote for? Is that why people are so afraid of gay marriage? It gives every dominant person in the relationship an extra vote?

Renewed faith in humanity.

2010-03-05T12:29:00.000-05:00

So today I hit the barber shop I frequent. He remembers me well because I'm the only customer that comes into his shop asking for a high and tight military style haircut but only once per 3 months or so. I really must say that a trip to the barber shop is still to this day a strangely refreshing experience. The stereotypical conversation and atmosphere are not just for some cultures or races, it works for everyone.

The particular barber shop I frequent is located in Aspinwall, PA, called the Wolf's Den. The barber there is not just very particular about getting a haircut right, but is full of more wisdom than almost anyone I know. We've conversed about almost every subject that can come up in a shop like that, and his replies are always well thought and insightful. When I leave that place I'm not left with answers, but instead a new place to look at things from in my mind. He realizes the importance of common discourse, civility, and open mindedness.

In the end I'm more than happy to shed my extra hair, and with a fresh cut find a fresh bit of faith that there ARE some sane people out there not polarizing the world to death. Go try him out, even if you don't agree with him, you'll at least find the conversation interesting.

Silly little things...

2010-03-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

So my son was playing with his DS, and lost the game he was playing. I say to him "you're riding on the noob schoolbus!" To which he enthusiastically replies "Ha ha ha! You can't fool me! You drive me to school, I don't take the bus!" Leaving me wondering, is he implying that I drive the noob schoolbus?

I tell quite a few funnies at home, with very little reaction from my wife. Today I said "she doesn't know shit from Shinola" and she died laughing for no real reason. "My grandfather always used to say that!" I'd be all for the phrase cept honestly I really don't know shit from Shinola. The shit is the easy part, but wtf is Shinola? Come to find out it's an old brand of shoe polish.

Should the modern phrase be Krap from kiwi?

My son produces poop far larger than is humanly healthy. I've never seen things that size come out of me let alone a 5 year old. Today he was in the bathroom producing his waste product, and was singing to himself while he did it. Is this creepy? I'm glad I could not hear the words methinks.

So i was digging around for useful food recipes, particularly ones that work well outdoors or with long term food storage, and I came across a document... it seems normal for the most part, until you get farther down in the list... I guess you gotta make do with what the local market has available! It seems that there are recipes for cooking dogs, cats, rats, and horses. Do they all taste just like chicken?

So I'm getting a USB microphone, a better than the plastic cheapies mic, because I sound like a douche bag when on the cheap ones... not that a better mic will do that much to improve it... having said that, I was left thinking... what does a douche bag sound like? glub glub?

Someone I know likes to say things taste like shit... how does he know? Has he tried it?

So the other day I found my son in the bathroom with his pants and underwear around his ankles and the baby's bottle brush in his hand... I hope he's not learning this from someone else doing it...

Jews Ear?

2010-03-03T20:09:00.002-05:00

But damn... is it kosher?!?

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=47204

I should bring some on a friday night to temple...

Funny memory of a hotel stay

2010-02-16T00:25:00.001-05:00

Today, when I checked into my hotel for work this week, I was rather impressed by the service. For some reason it reminded me of a hotel stay that hadn't gone so well

First, a tip. If you must stay in Dallas, TX, do NOT stay at the Holiday Inn @4500 Harry Hines Blvd. The first day, my work mate had checked into his room, only to find within the next hour they had given keys to and checked in a family into the same room! Now what I want to know, how does that work with a computer system that keeps track of who stays where?

The next morning, which happened to be my birthday, I woke up and went to take a shower, only to find the hot water was non functional. Nothing will piss a man off more than a cold shower on his birthday when anticipating working overtime...

So I address this to the hotel staff. When I get back from work I'm told they talked to engineering people and they had given the answer "the hot water works, you just have to giggle it." Honestly... a man without hot water in the morning will try every trick known to man to get himself hot water. At this point I was furious, and replied: "What do you mean jiggle it? I'm paying you 100 dollars a night for this room, for that much money I could have paid a woman to come up to my room and jiggle it! YOU NEED TO FIX IT." They moved me to a suite after that, one where the room seemed a little more than a little worn out, and the air conditioning unit was leaking more than the drippy sink. Ice buckets can catch only so much water.

Stick to the Candlewood Suites to the north of there, 12525 Greenville Ave, Dallas, TX. Good staff, clean place, stayed there probably a total of almost 3 months, no problems. Friendly people at the counter, free dinner every Wednesday night even.

Calebism: One who honks...

2010-02-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

So my son has been out of school for 2 weeks, between a trip and school cancellations.

I think this is having a degenerative effect on his mind.

"First I had to pick a letter, and " bla bla bla he babbled on for like 5 minutes about school and the kids there. I'm not entirely proud of it, but i tuned him out somewhat in the middle of this while i worked on a website...

"And then I was a honkey!"

This left me wondering where this came from...

"And we walked around the classroom and held our noses like this... and we made HONK sounds..."

"Like the one kid named Josh who has a fat tummy like daddy..."

"And I like Annika, except she likes to tattle on me sometimes..."

"and stuff...."

I think i need a lot of drugs and alcohol to understand my son's world...

North American Currency Union.

2010-02-13T00:29:00.000-05:00

So there's a lot of people out there freaking out claiming we are going to merge money systems with the magical land of Canadia (TM) and the not so magical land of Mexico. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_currency_union for details there)

This was brought up at dinner with one of my wife's bosses in a strange fashion. He is from Canadia (TM) and was mentioning they have a one dollar coin with a bird on it, a loon to be precise. The coin is best known as the "Loonie".

If we arent careful we could find ourselves moving towards this currency union in the future. First step... Put Dubya on his own coin. We now will have a universal Loonie coin.

I even hear they have a 2 dollar coin up there, called the Toonie... Just soooo wrong... but very true...

We could always put Ann Coulter on some form of currency to correctly follow the american pattern of putting aging white males on money.

I did have a friend of mine show me the whole currency union idea, claiming his mother is going by what her church says and is liquidating her 401k and buying up gold. What's she going to do with all that gold? How is she going to protect it? What's she going to use it for in the future when she needs money and all she can do with it is sell it to the "we buy gold" shops out there who only give you like 50% of it's worth? I wonder how many are leaving that gold to the church in their wills... non denominationals trying to compete with the Catholic gold hoard? Good luck with that.

Calebism: Potty Mouth

2010-02-12T19:02:00.000-05:00

So my son was in the bathroom. He was taking a while. I stood outside the door and patiently waited for him to finish his business.
My son is strange like many children in that he talks to himself while doing various activities, today was no exception. Today's conversation with himself was disturbing:

"Oh my gosh! That was soooo big! "
"It's huge!"
"How did that come out of me!?!"
"I made a big poop!"

Our next task was to put him in the shower. Sadly this had to be delayed, because he had made something so large he clogged the toilet... I think i can agree, i have no idea how that came out of him...

Escalators

2010-02-04T23:25:00.000-05:00

How many escalators do you know that need labels that say "No Carts" in a store? In Berkeley area of California i guess they do, they claim that at least 2 carts have gone top to bottom. Granted one section of the escalators was actually designed for carts to work on those parts of the escalator... sad that people couldn't figure out which one is which, they both look extremely different. Wierd that they actually have them both right next to the elevators...

Is the general news viewer smarter than a fifth grader?

2010-01-28T10:04:00.000-05:00

I sat this morning eating breakfast in the hotel this morning watching the news. A revelation came to me, and this applies to almost all news shows/channels. They were discussing the State of the Union Address that had happened the night before. And as I listened and listened some more, I had a flashback of my elementary school days, where we learned about extraneous information.

The exercise was as follows:

The yellow schoolbus came to take all the kids to their various schools.

The bus stops and picks up 2 girls and 3 boys.

The bus driver yelled at two of the boys for fighting.

The bus stops and drops off 1 girl and 1 boy.

The bus stops and picks up 6 boys and 7 girls.

The bus got stuck for 5 minutes in traffic.

The bus driver yelled at Suzie for spitting at another child.

The bus stops at the last location, and lets off all the kids.

What color is the schoolbus?

Does this sound familiar? I think I could even teach my 5 year old son to sort this sort of information. What scares me, is that I have a sad feeling our voting public is not able to do the same thing. ON TELEVISION I have yet to find a factual platform out there which does not fill the time with sensational bullshit. I have amusingly found, as many others have, that you can actually get more information from comedy shows on cable than from actual news outlets.

My new exercise, being in the mind of classroom environment this week, I think I'm going to actually sit with a notebook and pen, and write down what information I actually can pick out from the news. Then I will take the same amount of time, go out on the internet, and see what i can learn in the same amount of time about what's going on given the same situations discussed on the news. I can guarantee I already know what the result of that will be.

My only quandry here is the question of responsibility. Is it the fault of the news outlets? I would love to point my finger at a personless mass of corporate greed... but let's face it. If they didn't have viewers, they would not be in business. If people didn't come back for more, then the outlets would need to change. Instead I personally fully blame the viewers, for it's them who choose to fill their minds with this form of padded rubbish. This media is just a SYMPTOM of the dumbing down of things.

Does this give you a good hint on why our nation is having issues and why it seems you are stuck dealing with idiots on a daily basis?

Calebism: Losing his father...

2010-01-20T22:03:00.000-05:00

So I was talking with Caleb about death and how all people will die someday. And that various things can kill people. I asked him if he would want to see me dead, he said no, because he likes my hair.

Male pig...

2010-01-13T14:40:00.000-05:00

Yes this is what you think... both ways...

I was talking to a friend of mine who was arguing with his long distance girlfriend. Long distance relationships never work... you can't put a cock in her mouth to shut her up... just doesn't work well over the phone, or god forbid to try it with emoticons over the internet...

So the wife went to check on the guinea pigs today, and found one of the males had gotten into the female pen... The male's names are Tony and Turner. My first instinct was correct in that it was Tony who had gotten to the women, he'd just try to get laid, where we'd see bruises on the women had Turner been in the pen... (yah, bad Ike Turner reference... )

Connect the Thoughts? (or was that dots?)

2010-01-08T00:22:00.000-05:00

So i stood there urinating... Scotch made me do this... diuretics.... isn't that like Dianetics? Did Scientology erupt from the bowels of L Ron Hubbard's toilet experiences? Diabetic Diuretics? Were the aliens aversely affected by sugar?

I sat and fed our baby girl a bottle of breast milk (seriously, if you ever get a chance, watch the production... it's better than food network doing a factory tour of the making of ANY food out there...) and sipped my extra large glass of scotch... I put ice in the glass, dumped the bottle in, and realized i had forgotten to leave enough room for any water... 24 oz glass... no problem. So does this mean my daughter and I had our first drink together? (disclaimer: no, i didnt feed a 3 week old baby scotch... i save alcohol for trying to get the wife drunk enough to have fun... i dont sink to the level of underage girls...)

So my wife ranted on during this about how our school district is the last to post their delays... all i could respond with was: "The principal cant be bothered, he's busy masturbating to Jesus porn..."

A good friend of mine left me with this note (Thanks to azz... it rox) Jesus' first miracle: getting past the hymen... That rox better than "What would Jesus do for a klondike (tm) bar?"

So if Jesus saves, was he smart enough to prevent losses in the recent screwball market? I would say that would be proof enough if the Methodists are correct or not on their considerations of the trinity being seperate... if they are seperate, he's not got his daddy to save him with that omniscience... Sounds like an interesting comparison with dubya...

I wonder if Dubya thought himself the second coming of christ? He's white just like the pictures in the church show, but where's the beard? If he holds his blueprints the same direction as his children's books... I doubt he'd make as good a carpenter as he was a president, and that's saying something.

I miss alcohol...

For those who can, Jones in philladelphia has a drink called a "One Fish Two Fish" It's a blue drink with red sweedish fish in it... and even the drink tastes like the sweedish fish. Go get one. Or ten.

I recently researched the costs involved with liquor licenses in Pennsylvania... it's insane... I will never complain about how much one drink costs, let alone ten...

I wonder if anyone has ever came up with a revised song based on "Ten Little Indians" applied to help desk calls. I have heard some of those insane non engrish speaking Indians have taken to american names... I swear to every god there has ever been, even their cows, that if i call tech support and one says in their ever slushie inspiring voices "Helooo dis is Bubba, how can I hep you today..." I swear that poor underpaid cow lover is going to have the rant of his life on his hands... I'll go full blown Rollins on his ass...

Henry Rollins is coming to town, he's making a list, checking it twice... going to find out who is naughty or nice... i pity those who were naughty... maybe he'd make a better Santa than the original... kids would sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up when told for once. Although, I fear my wife might leave me she end up with a half naked sweaty Rollins Clause come down our chimney... or hers...

I'm not connecting that thought to a damn thing... cya next time...

Breastfeeding is way cool!

2010-01-06T21:44:00.000-05:00

No really... there's nothing like coming in from the cold outside, sneaking up on the woman in your household who is breastfeeding, grabbing and yelling: COLD MILK!

I wonder if there's people out there who have made cheese out of breast milk...

Porn has all kinds of things... even golden showers... anyone fear the ivory shower?

Respect the milk... or it will get you.

Talking to my daughter

2010-01-03T03:07:00.000-05:00

So, I'm trying to bond with my new daughter who is 2.5 weeks old... I looked at her today and she seemed rather "talkative", so I looked at her and asked her "So what's your opinion on abortion in the modern day? I figure that it's a subject that is fresh on your mind and I am curious to see what your age group feels about it, being a rather relevant subject at your age." I still don't think i'm hip enough to connect with the youth of today, but I'm trying.

"Gun Safety"

2010-01-02T23:41:00.000-05:00

Time for something serious... I'm tired of seeing something that really makes me wonder what's going on, another simple issue of people turning their brains off in the name of fear.

This time it's Gun Safety (TM).

Let me go with some of the most common issues and explain some realities. I was reading a post on a random site that once again regurgitated the same old ideas as follows:

1. Buy a gun lock and use it.

2. Keep the gun unloaded.

3. Keep the ammunition in a different place than the gun.

4. Keep both the gun and bullets in a hidden place that only you know about.

5. Keep the key for the gun lock hidden as well.

Reality check time.

First, no need to buy a gun lock most of the time, so many stores and organizations give these away in the name of political correctness. When it comes to using it... I say not always.
Keep guns unloaded if you don't have a reason to keep them loaded.
Keep ammunition where it makes sense to keep it. Not always away from the gun.
Keep both the gun and ammunition (NOT BULLETS YOU NOOBS) in intelligent places. Not always hidden where only you know about it...
Keep the key in an intelligent and planned place.

If you follow what i'm saying here, and someone ends up hurt, I will be the first to say that you have obviously done something wrong based on what this post is about. The idea is, you need a PLAN. If you own firearms, there's a number of reasons you might own these firearms. Each of these points CANNOT be generalized this easily.

If you are a collector and never plan on using your firearms aside from a range, even if 20 people come into your house with intent to rob, kill, burn, and/or loot from you and your family, then fine, follow those rules to the T.

For many of us, we own firearms for protection of our families, ourselves and our property. Lets go with the best case scenario. You are awake, as is everyone in your family. You are all in the same room. It is daylight and easy to get around. (sure, i'm probably missing some elements here, but you get the idea) Someone breaks in through a window or door that is farthest away from you and your family. If you had followed all those points, even in the best of situations, you will find yourself sucking Ann Coulter's balls. Lets take the points given this scenario:

Buy a gun lock and use it: So how long does it take for the intruder to get from the window/door to you and your family? How long does it take to get the gun lock off of the gun in a stress situation when your adrenaline is pumping and half the family is screaming, as a potential assailant is within 3-10 seconds from you?
Keep the gun unloaded: This would entirely depend on what kind of firearm you are about to use. Shotgun takes time to load every individual round into the internal magazine. Revolvers and semi-auto pistols have speed loaders and magazines respectively, which you need to put in the gun. a few more seconds lost, with a great chance to fumble or such when adrenaline is kicking and a potential assailant is breathing down your neck after how long it took to get your gun lock off...
Keep the ammunition in a different place than the gun: So you have the gun unlocked, does this leave you going to another room to get the ammo? To another place in the same room? How much time does this take?
Keep the gun and AMMUNITION in a place hidden from others that only you know about: Hope your spouse is trained and knows where it is as well. Hope that place is damn easy to get to from any location of your house and is faster to get to than for the potential assailant to get to you and/or your family.
Keep the key for the gun lock hidden as well: Sure, lets add a potential third location to have to go to between all the time wasted doing all the rest... between point 1 and 2, you are already FUCKED.

I'm no veteran to this stuff, but i've taken intelligence and good advice that others have given me and actually applied them to come up with a plan. Here's what i say:

Decide intelligently what gun(s) can/will potentially be used for home defense, and secure them in a fashion that is useful for as many scenarios as possible. There are some wonderful gun safes that can open based on a combination that requires no eye contact with the buttons, simply a handprint indentation with buttons to push in various combinations of your choosing. Second option. Carry the firearm on you at all times in your home. Check your legalities of this, but anywhere i've ever seen, you are legal to carry them however you want on your own property. Even better, get your conceal permit. This way no matter where you are at, your firearm is, you don't have a need to worry about time to get it unlocked.
Keep your firearms that are for defense purposes either loaded or very close to loaded. A firearm without ammunition is an overglorified club. Perhaps an effective one at that, but not the point to begin with. If you keep them loaded, keep them stored/secured in a manner that is safe and planned! With a shotgun, dont store with one in the chamber, because many criminals only know what they've seen on tv, they may not realize there's more than point and click. If it's a pistol of some sort, you want to plan either having it loaded or the ammunition there and very ready to load. If you are carrying it on you, consider the firearm itself, what safe ways you can carry that firearm to be the most quickly deployed in a time of stress. If there's a 10 step process to this, you WILL screw something up in a time of stress.
Keep a limited amount of ammunition near the firearm that you feel you will need to use should a situation happen. Make sure that this location is secured in some way, be it by carry, by lock in a safe, or if you keep it not locked, make sure it's well hidden (and this better damn well be carefully planned).
Keep the firearms and ammunition in a place that is easy to get to but not obvious. Perhaps even have ways of securing the firearms in each room via a well planned and hidden safe that is easy to access for adults.
Keep a gun safe that has multiple secure ways to get into it... don't rely on a key in the first place, but if your safe does have a key as one of it's methods of entry, then that key shouldnt be accessible to just anyone. PLAN your key location in case of emergency.
EDUCATE your family and yourself.
PRACTICE scenarios in your home so that you are sure you can do this stuff in the dark with minimal light.
Keep a light on you at all times as well as in every location you store your firearms, you cannot defend yourself with a firearm when you cannot identify and aim at the target.

Did you know that there's more children killed by bathtubs than firearms each year? Go check with the CDC and other government agencies about their statistics on this...

Point here is, THINK about your firearms, PLAN how you will use your firearms, EDUCATE yourself and your family, PRACTICE so you get things right if/when something does happen. Firearms are not magic wands that fix problems, they are tools that only work if used properly.

Sadly I'm probably one of many people out there on the internet who says this kind of thing... sadly people out there still aren't thinking about the why and how of their firearms, and leave us having to repeat this kind of thing over and over so that people can get this right. Someone needs to do a quantitive study of actual incidents where people followed the politically correct rules and have found them to hinder things more than anything else as opposed to actually helping protect people.

Calebisms: His new sister

2009-12-29T19:18:00.000-05:00

So this one is rather cliche, yet it is rather funny to me that he's actually said this...

Anyone who is not an anime/manga fan will probably not understand this... but I never expected to see my son have a sister complex.

Yesterday he looked at me and said "I'm going to help with taking care of my sister. Then when we are older we are going to get married."

At least he doesn't dislike having a sister like I had at first expected.

Why Iphones suck.

2009-12-27T14:15:00.000-05:00

Decided to go practical for a change, i've been telling many people that iphones suck, easier to put it somewhere that people can just read it at their leisure.

Centralized software depot. This means apple controls what they will allow on your phone. They have been known to approve or disapprove based on economic and political reasons. A normal windows mobile phone you can install anything you want.

No SD card slot. You have to pay a huge amount extra to get bigger storage, which means phone replacement. You cant just load up a card from another source and put it in the phone.

Internal battery. If the phone locks up you cant remove the battery to hard reset. If the battery dies or has issues, you cant just replace it, it's a full phone replacement

Bluetooth devices: so far all we've ever seen work are headset devices. And these dont tend to stay connected very reliably at least for the wife's phone.

Cost of apps. Some are free, some are not. Those that aren't might just be a buck... but that adds up. Nickel and dime yourself all you want, I can find as much stuff for other phones for free.

Lacking Java support. This is something most people including myself are betting will never be added to an iphone. Just means that some things just wont work with your phone.

Proprietary cable: the connector for your iphone only works with iphones. The phones i've had for the past 3 years have all used mini usb connections. If i lose the cable the phone came with, any old 2 dollar mini usb cable works. For charging AND data.

Support sux: wife had her phone's cable break in a way that it really shouldn't have, the insulator seperated from the plug on the usb end. She called them, they took FOREVER to send a replacement that they claimed would be free, yet they still charged her account 30 bucks for a new cable.

Movie support: finally with the new version of the iphone they can take videos, something that other makers have been able to do for years.

Cold issues: we were recently driving home, and the phone had been left in the vehicle for a little while. It had gotten cold enough that it refused to recognize touches. No way to answer a call, or do really anything cept turn off the phone and change the volume.

On screen keyboard: This thing is clunky and slow, eating up most of your screen real estate. The feedback the UI gives doesn't really do much to help on exactly where the phone was touched.

Finger touch only: gotta do something more precision? You are SOL on that. It only will allow a finger touch. Most touch screen phones can be used with stylus', fingernails, the corner of a pen cap, even a mechanical pencil with the lead retracted. Anything that can make a single point of contact. To some extent I can easily control my phone with fingertips as well. HTC solved this with it's TouchFlo interface, although I find phones with it on run extremely sluggishly.

Accessory expense: you end up paying 2 times the price of something just because of the branding. This does come with a benefit, in that you know it will work with your device if it's labeled as such, or will it? You need to watch to make sure the device works with specific versions of the iphone since things for the original iphone dont work with the iphone 3g, etc... Apple's video converter to connect to a TV costs 40-100 depending on where you look, i think i paid 10 for my HTC.

Screen resolution isnt keeping up with the times. It's not too bad, but considering for a free to 75 refurb non iphone i'm getting 640x480 resolutions... very clear for pics and videos.

Learning curve: it's a flat line. Good in many ways, but the double edged sword here, you cant go far beyond simple with what your phone actually can do... if you are buying a multifunction smart phone, that implies you are looking for something beyond the very simple for the most part.

Cant replace the battery with an extended life version.

The only thing i can say good about the iphone, is that as an actual phone it's good quality sound and signal... but honestly, if you are buying an iphone, you probably are looking for more than phone functionality.

Storage usefulness: In a pinch at work I can use my phone as a USB flash drive to transfer files to people.

MS Office support is lacking. From what i can tell, you can read but not edit these things. Without Excel or other spreadsheet support, your computing ability is that of a basic calculator. Sucktastic! My old Palm IIIx could surpass that in all it's monochrome glory!

Useless main page: In order to get any information or such you need to actually DO something. Most good smart phones out there allow you to customize the main page of the phone so that you have all that you need when you turn the phone on and look. Mine shows me how many messages i have, the forecast, and a few items of my schedule.

Push to talk, for those who are fans of this, is not available on the iphone.

Tethering, a technique where you can set up your phone to put your laptop on the internet, is rather a pain in the butt last i checked, requiring a lot of hacking stuff. It's inherently supported in a LOT of devices out there with little to no effort involved.

If you like to use sync features of a phone, iphones dont support wifi and bluetooth sync last i checked.

No light or flash for the phone. This is a feature that is becoming more and more common with phones. I can use my HTC's light for camera use, as well as add an app to the phone that allows me to use it as a flashlight in a pinch.

Multitasking. This has been around for a long time with windows mobile, and some other phones are doing it well, such as the Palm Pre.

MMS support was only finally added in recent versions... now a null issue.

About the only real good thing i can think of is if you know of a very specific piece of software that only an iphone can use for whatever work equipment you use or such. And even then, do you really want to be even more attached to your work?

I'll add to this post as time goes by if i think of other things wrong with the iPhone as the phone of choice for anyone besides the dummies out there who can buy into the kult of apple.

Stupid people and elevators

2009-12-24T04:21:00.000-05:00

Considering that elevators have been around since B.C. times, it never ceases to amaze me that people still cannot figure out the basics of elevators. Anyone who knows me has probably heard the rant about how dumb people must be to not realize that people are going to be walking out of the elevator when it stops. Because they are too dumb to realize this, they try to jam themselves into the elevator before anyone can get off, thus causing a challenge. My answer to this when I'm around, I get as close to the elevator doors as I can when exiting the elevator and make it a point to not let people on until I've exited. Sadly I have yet to put anyone on the floor doing this, but I will bet it will happen someday.

Yesterday I had an even funnier experience. I was on the first floor of a building that has only one floor below the first floor. The elevator was going down. I get on the elevator to find the only other person on the elevator to be a very hot looking woman with a name badge on that indicated she worked there.

She asks me "What floor do you need?"
To which I reply "The elevator is going down, there's only one floor for me to go to."

At this point one should have figured out I'm not sleep deprived or disoriented, I am aware the elevator is going down, thus it's rather obvious what is needed.

"So which floor do you need?" she asks again.
"Um, we're on the FIRST floor, the elevator is going DOWN, there's only ONE level below this one... obvious right?" with a rather bored and almost impatient tone, I was in no mood to play the game.
She looks at me with some combination of deer in the headlights, inbred dog, and that look that only a trained porn professional can give, that look that seems suprised when a load of sperm is shot all over her face and mouth, as if she didn't know what was going to come out. "Which floor?"

I did everything in my power to not laugh, to not yell, and to just let this strange woman go about her life of work, waiting till she was out of earshot to giggle like a maniac, understanding that there's got to be some underlying reason she's actually able to attain and maintain some form of professional job.

Sadly in today's world there are some people who without any other form of handicap that are too dumb to use an elevator.

No named iced tea

2009-12-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

So I dont have a name for it... but i like it.

Personally I like a good microbrew beer occasionally and such, but I am nowhere near the type that finds any kind of beer "clean and refreshing". Hefeweisen or other unfiltered wheat beers come close with a few pieces of citrus fruit... but they really still don't do it.

Granted, I also don't find carbonated beverages or overly sugared beverages refreshing.

I'd rather have either some ice cold Fiji water, or perhaps Teas' Tea brand teas. Given these preferences, I don't know how others will feel, but I found something I like. It's not going to get you drunk, or probably even buzzed...

Fill one tall glass halfway with ice
Fill ~4/5ths of the way with lipton cold brew iced tea
Add a dash and a shake of Jacquin's Grenadine
Add a dash to taste of your preferred lemon liquor
Serve.

Cool, refreshing, not overly strong of anything. Maybe garnish with a bit of lemon and a cherry?

Marriage changes things

2009-12-17T19:10:00.000-05:00

So when I was young, the number was 69, just like two people facing each other with heads in the opposite direction...

Now after twelve years of marriage, the number is 96, sleeping as far away from the other person as possible...

Daddy meal.

2009-12-17T12:54:00.000-05:00

People never cease to amuse me.

We were waiting at the hospital for a room for about 4 hours the day of the birthing. A group of people came in, seems a woman went into labor and came into the hospital, she didnt even know she was pregnant. I guess she had brought in her extended family, there was a herd of them waiting outside the waiting room.

They must have come extremely unprepared since they were begging people for food. One of them had a backpack and almost got lynched by the rest of the family when it was discovered they had a small amount of candy in it. Correct me if i'm wrong but cant a human survive for 20-40 days without food? May not be comfortable but wow, 3-4 hours and they think the whole world is their welfare check.

After some time, they were finally being taken in to get a room and deal with the baby ejection. The father goes up to the receptionists and begins declaring "Now where the hell's my daddy meal! I know i got rights to be gettin me dat daddy meal! I better be gettin me one or I is gonna be writin my legislator. I'm gonna write my legislator and you gonna be in trouble! I want my damn daddy dinner!"

Today we left the hospital and saw the woman standing outside in 25 degree cold in her hospital attire and her coats on, chain smoking. No suprise.

Birth Control?!?

2009-12-17T11:08:00.002-05:00

So my wife got out of the hospital today, on the way out they gave her prescriptions for various things, to include condoms. During her time there she was asked many times about her birth control plans. I guess the prescription is good because people can often use their insurance to get them for free, but we still giggled a lot on the way home.

My idea: "Birth control? I masturbate."

Her reply: "I suggested Ann Coulter"

"It's like Nancy Reagan. Just say no."

"No, I wouldn't screw you with Ann Coulter's penis. Perhaps if you wore an Ann Coulter latex mask it'd keep me away."

"You know you want another child... "

She replies as always "No" with a glare at me.

"You know, women arent the only ones that can put holes in condoms and substitute sugar pills for your birth control..."

"NO"

It's worth it!

2009-12-02T20:42:00.000-05:00

Reading up on California's insanity of laws, i ran into some hilarious ones, most specifically:

In Chico, CA:

Detonating a nuclear device within the city limits results in a $500 fine.

I'd pay that much to set off a nuke in California! Anyone wanna donate to the cause?

Breastfeeding!

2009-12-02T15:05:00.001-05:00

So the time soon comes when the wife will give birth to our daughter. Luckily we live in Pennsylvania, since the laws here are generally pretty good for most situations.

Occasionally in the news you'll hear about women getting arrested and/or harassed in public places over breast feeding. Like the many people out there say, it's hilarious how it's a-ok to show breasts to sell beer but not to feed a baby, the original use for them in the first place. I also love how they say "do it in the bathroom!" It reminds me of the old Hills department stores... I really am tempted to shove these people into an unclean public stall and force feed them their lunch whilst they sit on an unflushed commode.

Aside from all the issues of morality and other questionables, the nice thing is, in PA it's 100% legal to breast feed in private or public. Period. So feel however you want about it, but it's the LAW. What i'm going to do is print out multiple copies (to include at least one laminated copy) of the law and have them ready for whatever asshat decides it's their moral imperative to clean up the streets of their town of breast feeders while they let their children smoke crack behind their back because they cant deal with the oppressive nature of their parents.

This is the exact thing i do when I carry my firearms, I carry a copy of the laws so that should some idiot decide they want to cause me problems i'm properly armed in that aspect as well. Perhaps the first time it happens we should as a joke pull out her concealed carry permit and say "i am licensed to carry this breast" just to make a funny point. Just what we dont need, they'd next try to say we threatened to shoot them... got a squirt gun for that?

Honestly, I'm looking forward to my first time calling 911 to bring the police and file charges for harassment on the overly pushy idiots that we are forced to share the air with...

Dead bird time.

2009-11-26T20:00:00.000-05:00

Dead bird having been consumed, what better time to reflect on the week than while waiting for the pie to finish baking in the oven? For some strange reason the wife and I are usually reversed, i cook and she carves the bird, this time for once i chopped the thing up and realized why they make the men do it: it's freakin easy and makes one feel like they've accomplished something.

So far the holiday season has been full of the usual non-driving mofo's and such, but other than that, for once people haven't been rude assholes yet. I'm wondering if that will change this year. We have another year of war in the middle east, this time with even more financial woes at home, with much uncertainty about our future, maybe people have gotten off their feeling of high and mighty to realize that no matter what we do, we are affected by our communities and society in general.

Aside from the preachy feel good americanism, the wife keeps having "feelings" kinda like contractions. She keeps hoping and praying that the baby isnt going to be early, for the strangest of reasons. She doesn't want to go through the rest of her life with jokes about the turkey popping out of the oven... Gotta love that female rationality.

Bubblegum drink!

2009-11-24T18:50:00.000-05:00

Well, I've found a yummy drink for parties and other fun:

Ahead of time, get yourself a bottle of vodka of choice. Use it for a few drinks so you have room for the fun. Add a bunch of pieces of double bubble bubble gum. Let this set for a LONG time. The vodka will be very pink. (I hear that is due to the granite powder they use for coloring the gum, no idea if it's true.)

Fill a drink shaker with ice
Add 1oz bubblegum vodka
Add 1oz southern comfort
Add a dash or two of grenadine
Add 1oz cream (i use soymilk, works too)
Shake well
Pour into a cold glass (martini or normal)
Drop in a stick or piece of gum.
Serve with a giggle!

Calebisms: Adolescent mating preventative.

2009-11-22T23:39:00.001-05:00

Everyone should keep a few pictures that might drive away the prospective female that the parent does not approve of when the child is of dating age. Here's one now:

Calebisms: Angry what?!?

2009-11-22T23:31:00.001-05:00

We were at a restaurant and my son was coloring on the given menu/activity book before we ate. I don't know what's scarier, the angry looking penis, or the reaction of the predrawn characters to the left...

Fear of time going by

2009-11-22T01:45:00.000-05:00

So I was talking to some people about movies they had recently watched.
One person says "I saw Star Trek".
"Which one did you see?"
"I dont know, you mean there was more than one?"

Reminds me of one person i know, he needed some travel arrangements made, so he came to me for help. We went to priceline.com and found him a good deal for his trip. At the end of this I said to him "And you can thank William Shatner for this one." To which he replied "Who's William Shatner?"

How do people not know this?!?

Who says people grow up?

2009-11-22T01:42:00.000-05:00

Had an amusing day today. Took the son out to do some shopping not realizing that everyone is doing their dead poultry carcass celebration shopping done today.

What would Jesus do? First he'd cure the blind so that these idiots who wreck everywhere dont have an excuse for their dumbass driving antics. Second, I am left wondering, they probably didnt have turkeys where he came from... and for those of you who dont know history, Thanksgiving holiday didnt even exist back then... I bet Jesus would have had fits of road rage and have turned some tables over, gambling or otherwise in fits of road rage. Soon after he would probably enjoy a klondike bar, having done everything else possible for the day.

After our trip to whole foods to secure cheese and tempeh, I received a call from a friend who was done early with his plans. We gathered for lunch. He was relating to me that his new pistol wasn't feeding ammo properly. After we ate we took a look at it in the vehicle. I popped in a magazine and racked the slide. No problems. I think his new pistol likes me more than him. Perhaps it wants to live with me instead.

So we decided to travel to Ikea next. This place is wonderful if you have never been there, not for it's product, but for the amusement that can be had there. We walk into the place, there's a stand/desk at the entrance with the words "I can help you!" We spent some time trying to figure out where this unknown "I" they are referring to was, loudly making fun of this concept while the yuppie scum look at us like we were sick pigs about to murder their young with our sneezes and coughs.

Next it was up to the showroom, where we also loudly commented how funny it is that people are too dumb to follow the directional arrows on the floor, and how we'd hate to see how people drive on the roads.

After this was the downstairs area of little things with lots of silly names. Ikea has all sorts of sweedish like names for their products which are whacky... extremely whacky. We start with the Toga: a placemat for a table. We deicded to buy some at $1.99 each so we could properly have a Toga party. I let my son carry one of them. When i wasn't paying attention he got an idea. "Daddy look! My pee pee got big!" he says to me with the rolled up mat jutting out from between his legs. The true battle was between discouraging this behavior and dying of laughter. Is this what a real Toga party is?

Next up was the kitchen stuff: a set of skillets, each one with the name "skanka" which one who subscribes to the add an A to anything makes it sound foreign would believe this is the sweedish form of the word "skank". We got a picture of my son displaying his first experience with a skank. Soon after this we found their office desk fixtures section. Interesting that something called a Dokument would be a trash can. Now we know how they get things done so efficiently over there in Europe.

We heckled many many names as we wandered through the store. At the end we found in their food section a soda pop that we found to taste like a cross between pop and beer. It was basically beer flavored pop. Freaky.

With that mission completed, we moved on to Dick's sporting goods. And this was a 2 floor store. Without thinking of course I declare "Wow! Thats a huge Dick's" which left us laughing for a while after. Somehow I think that joke has been used before. We went to the second floor where they have various outdoors sporting goods, and find a big ol fake deer with a hole where it's nether regions should be. The timing was perfect, for I now have a picture with my son's hand wedged up the rear end of a deer. One of the store employees laughed at the sight of what we were doing, at least someone had a sense of humor.

My friend bought a hockey stick, and then we decided to find a men's room. As we roamed the mall seeking the facilities, a child about my son's age who was with his family points at me declaring "look! look! It's a man with a big hockey stick! Wow! he has a hockey stick!" I'm happy to see that someone recognizes the true power of this. Another couple of kids, in their teens saw my Dead Kennedy's hat and gave good props for it. Nice to see the younger generations arent lost to American Idol and other idiot pop music.

Other thing learned for the day, dont leave the cheese you bought earlier in the vehicle expecting it to not stink up the place. Wow it was stronger than my wife's feet. Probably that French Muenster.

Interesting day of all things, hope to have more of those surprise days of fun. Past 30 doesn't mean you cant be silly anymore.

Pregnancy Insanity

2009-11-22T01:16:00.000-05:00

So as most know, the wife is 8 months pregnant right now, she's gonna pop soon.

Tip for the new people out there: Never let a dyslexic count for the rhythm method of birth control...

So I told her today that i'd get a pic of the newborn baby and send it to her people at work with the following message:
"So you predicted that she's probably be pregnant within the first year of working there, since that happened to everyone else. I applaud your idea of creating minions for your plans for world domination, however, wouldn't subliminal messages in your new product be just as effective?"

Outstanding American

2009-11-17T15:44:00.001-05:00

http://www.arktimes.com/articles/articleviewer.aspx?ArticleID=2f5d7a3b-c72a-446b-8d20-3823aa79c021

Now that's one fine example of an American. I think a lot of people forget WHY and WHAT it means to be an American. Rock on big man.

Edit: Damn dead links! That'll teach me to not copy the text inline!

Cornerstone MInistries using public schools

2009-11-17T10:41:00.003-05:00

I was going through my son's daily stack of papers from school, and found a pamphlet for a program for after school homework help. Seems this program is run by the local evangelical church. What made me stop and think was the idea of a church using homework as a foot in the door to indoctrinate our children into their way of life. Think that's a stretch? It pretty much says so in their pamphlet:

The Cornerstone Hope Center is an outreach
organization begun by the well established
Cornerstone Ministries. Our mission is to address the
emotional, physical and material concerns of persons
in need and to begin to transform lives. The initial
areas of service that are provided include this
academic tutoring program for children Kindergarten
through grade six.

"Initial areas of service"? I wonder if this is the prelude where they are going to go next, do they have a plan like Ann Coulter to fix those broken Jews? Wouldn't surprise me.

What bugs me, is that the school is passing this stuff out. I could see if the organization were just doing this normally but the school is actually sanctioning a religious organization's program to "begin to transform lives". Now i'm not one of these freaks who whines when holiday songs are in schools or such, but I dont believe for one moment that an evangelical organization would do this if it werent for the possibility of bringing in new members and by extension new money into their ranks. Reminds me of many third world countries where aid from religious organization is given only when the people convert. Oh wait, that never happens.

One fine day I was doing laundry at a local laundromat. There was a man there on a cell phone trying to work things out with his ex wife to see his kids. He was on the verge of tears. When he was done I struck up a conversation with him, he seemed to need a shoulder. For a few hours he vented his tale to me. He was a hard working person, not always perfect but tried to be there for his family. He had come home one day to find his wife cheating on him in their own bed with a minister from the Cornerstone television network (edit: ok... i did some checking... somewhat different group although the church has a show with the TV network... wonder if it's the same guy being in the same area as the laundromat). Even after having been caught, the minister continued to try to wedge himself inbetween the husband and wife, using his public status and credibility to keep people from believing there would be anything immoral about things he did. Now keep in mind, I do understand it's just a story. Just a random guy with his own point of view. But honestly, few things would bring a grown man to tears like this guy shed that day. Especially in the predominately blue collar area we live in.

What kills me, they are taking advantage of kids at ages where they don't know to nor know how to question certain things when told things by adults. And putting our impressionable kids at the ages of 5-10 years old in the hands of a money generation factory that passes for religion scares the shit out of me. Let alone that the government that we look to for arbitration and at least a facade of fairness to stand up for the interests of it's people is supporting this.

As a Christian, this kinda stuff really shames me.

Disney Brainwashing

2009-11-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

Wow, there's an original subject. We've never heard of this one? Get out from under your rock and see the world if you really haven't. For the rest of us this is no new news.

I post this with fear in my heart that this might inspire those close to me to stifle my words so that I might not get in the way of the global domination plans that Disney has implanted into our families and our lives. I.E. Yah, my wife probably is reading this and will be mean to me for a while.

But seriously, the wife came to me yesterday talking about how walmart sometimes sells very limited edition "Cars" stuff that they just sneak on the shelves with all the normal stuff. She was looking online and saw a car that she almost bought happened to be different than all the rest, but decided not to, since the brat has 9-10 other versions of Lightning Mc(drag)Queen. Come to find out that car she passed up is worth $500 to collectors online. WTF FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a new production plastic toy. We aren't talking antiques. We are talking about semi recent Disney movie toys here.

What scares me isn't just the money involved but the marketing ploy that is now being used to boost sales. They have tapped the Pokemon principle. Now parents want to "catch them all" and realize they now not only have to keep a regular eye on the shelves, but will have to check online to keep knowledge of the product. How many brain cycles, how much time is involved with this? How far are we filling our heads with this process for a basically totally useless item? Now Disney has the world right where they want them with this, people are consistently interested in the product and probably often will even buy a whole bunch of stuff because it might just be that one that's special, but they aren't sure.

Reminds me of the golden ticket in the chocolate bar scheme. Willy Wonka sold how many chocolate bars to people who weren't even eating the chocolate just trying to get the ticket... at least the ticket holders got to see the ooompah loompahs.

In the end, I want to cry brainwashing about this, but more than likely the world would just give me the "somebody ate my brain" look that I got after stating that the wife was going off the deep end filling her mind with this sort of drivel. I guess it does explain why the last 2 presidents were elected, why name brand clothing is so expensive, why people actually watch Glen Beck, how evangelists can still bring in six to eight digit incomes, and why John Edward can make such a good living as well, it's because people WANT to believe in some underlying secret or truth. I wish i were dishonest enough to tap into a resource like that.

Those crazy Mennonites

2009-11-15T00:50:00.002-05:00

One from a long time ago, a guy I worked with and I found this sign and got a good pic of it, it's right next to the Shady Maple Smorgasbord in the East Earl, PA area. I really doubt they realized what the sign was all about. Sadly they've changed it since then. As a note, there's been no editing to this image, this isnt photoshopped, it's the real deal.

Kwanza bonus?

2009-11-10T18:54:00.000-05:00

So as the wife and I talked about finances in the car on the way home, I say to the wife: "Yeah, just wait you'll get a Kwanzaa bonus."

"kwonset bans?" my son attempts to echo from the back seat.

"A Kwanzaa bonus in your pants!" I reply with the usual double dose of sarcasm, to which he replies vigorously:

"GO WIENER GO! GO WEINER GO!"

Seriously folks, you should get one of these, once you have them trained they are set up for hours of insane enjoyment. Kids that is.

Ad Sense (those annoying banners)

2009-11-09T09:54:00.001-05:00

Alright, so I know that many people detest having ads on a blog. People speak of greed when associating that. If anyone wants to know how much I have made on the ads, feel free to kick me an email and I will gladly let you know how much money I haven't made on putting the ads there.

So why do I do it you might ask? Firstly, I wanted to see what happens with the ads with my own eyes compared to what people constantly complain about out there when it comes to "profiteering" webmasters and bloggers. Second, the google algorithms may work for very normal things, but I honestly get quite a hoot out of what kind of ads google seems to think are appropriate for the material I write. Somehow in the beginnings it was throwing ads for sex changes when i would talk about funny things at work or firearms... I fear what kind of parties the people at google have if these things are associated together.

Just to put it into context, for my last blog that I posted to for over a year, I made $0.03. I won't beg, hell, I don't really even care that no one is clicking on the banners, I just like seeing what the advertising world has to say about my insanities. It's nice to see the algorithm is more insane than me.

Back by almost popular demand!

2009-11-09T09:53:00.000-05:00

So between complaints from people that I had stopped, not to mention my itch to write down the insanities of my life to share with others, here we are again. I promise i'll keep this one going.

For those who have not read the older material, I'll go back and repost some of my old stuff for the sake of fun as it gets slow, so that this doesn't stagnate. I'm going to vary serious and funny, so bear with me on some of this. If you are offended by what i post feel free to comment on it, but i expect something constructive if you want a reply and want to see the comments remain, change my mind, i challenge you to try!