It's been a couple months I see... The biggest thing happening in my world is I finally had enough of the duck and I quit. I lined up a contract job in Atlanta while I look for a permanent position (in Orlando!). I would say it's a little scary but I'll be honest, I don't really think about it enough to be scared. I'm happiest in my most oblivious, apathetic state.
So, Monday through Thursdays I drive up to Atlanta and stay at my FIL's farm. It's very quiet up here and only a half-hour drive to work (w/o traffic). I couldn't live in Atlanta all the time, but the farm is nice and quiet at night, quieter than Columbus. Except for when it storms and Jackson, our 100-pound retriever mutt, needs comforting so he jumps up in the bed (a single bed, mind). I didn't get much sleep the first few nights this week because of some storms.
I thought I would do more blogging when I was away from home during the weeks, but I've found that working 10+ hours a day staring at the computer just doesn't make me want to go back to the farm at night and blog. I'm pretty much forcing myself to do this tonight. It's 8pm and I just got home not an hour ago and I'll be asleep in another two and then all over again. The nice thing about my schedule is it's only Monday through Thursday.
When I went home last week, I had to work at my old job on Friday and then Ash and I went to see Knocked Up in the afternoon. Pretty funny movie, and I'd recommend it. Not as LOL funny as I was hoping for, but we liked it.
Two videos to watch (NSFW (not safe for work)):
Bud Light "Swear Jar" commercial
Will Ferrell "Landlord"
And a couple of funny websites a fellow geezer posted up today:
LOLCats
SnorgTees
Bonus points for nested parentheses. Booyah!
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
On a Whole New Level of Sore
So, I've been driving my wife nuts the last three nights...by going to bed at the same time she does. Boy she hates that. Normally I stay up a couple hours later than she does playing xbox, but Friday I had a breakfast meeting and then an all-day charity tennis event sponsored by ... ahem ... my employer, so I thought I'd crash early Thursday night. Friday night I was so dead tired after the tennis thing that I crashed. Saturday morning I had a tennis match, mowed the lawn, then Ash and I went to the ATL for dinner with her family. We got back late Saturday night, so for the 3rd night in a row, I was asleep by 11:00pm.
I have never been so all-over-sore as I have the last 2 days. My quads, ass, back, neck, arms, abs, you name it. Sore as anything. I could barely get up off the couch yesterday, or in and out of my car. I guess there's a downside to having a big ole' SUV. Well, that and $3 a gallon.
Saw the movie Stranger Than Fiction last Friday. Ash and I liked it; I'll pretty much watch anything with Maggie Gyllenhaal or Emma Thompson, let alone both in one movie. It was like Nerd Heaven!
I have never been so all-over-sore as I have the last 2 days. My quads, ass, back, neck, arms, abs, you name it. Sore as anything. I could barely get up off the couch yesterday, or in and out of my car. I guess there's a downside to having a big ole' SUV. Well, that and $3 a gallon.
Saw the movie Stranger Than Fiction last Friday. Ash and I liked it; I'll pretty much watch anything with Maggie Gyllenhaal or Emma Thompson, let alone both in one movie. It was like Nerd Heaven!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
On Vegas, Baby!...and 300
Last week, on Saturday I left for Vegas. I got there about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and I got my first business card for a stripper by 2:30. Bree...$49 Special. I don't know what "special" means, but for $49 I have a good guess. It became normal after a while, seeing all the Mexicans snap the cards as you pass by and pushing them towards you, but the next day I had to do a double-take when I saw a couple of Mexican women snapping the cards.
I was there until eeeeearly Thursday morning. I played a lot of poker with my brother who crashed in my room at the Venetian (rough living, let me tell you).
Last night, I went and saw the movie 300 with SayBN, a fellow geezer. It was actually a pretty good movie. Obviously more of a "guy movie". It was sort of like a chronological prequel to Braveheart. Lots of fighting sequences where the lead characters are nigh-indestructible, long monologues with fist-raising endings, and even the part where the local aristocrat tries to have sex with the protagonist's wife...yeah that was in this one too. But the cinematography and the effects were pretty sweet.
Oh and by the way SayBN, the guy who played Dilios (David Wenham) was Faramir in the LotR The Two Towers.
I was there until eeeeearly Thursday morning. I played a lot of poker with my brother who crashed in my room at the Venetian (rough living, let me tell you).
Last night, I went and saw the movie 300 with SayBN, a fellow geezer. It was actually a pretty good movie. Obviously more of a "guy movie". It was sort of like a chronological prequel to Braveheart. Lots of fighting sequences where the lead characters are nigh-indestructible, long monologues with fist-raising endings, and even the part where the local aristocrat tries to have sex with the protagonist's wife...yeah that was in this one too. But the cinematography and the effects were pretty sweet.
Oh and by the way SayBN, the guy who played Dilios (David Wenham) was Faramir in the LotR The Two Towers.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
On The Last Kiss...
...or as I like to call it - The Last Movie Written By A Man Named Gabriele Muccino That I'll Ever Watch.
Sunday night. The wife and I just finished watching The Last Kiss. I saw it in Blockbuster and it had Zach Braff so I thought "wow, this must be really good." My wife watches literally about one movie a month, so the pressure to always pick a good movie for the both of us to watch together is hunormous. We both like Scrubs, and really liked Garden State. Garden State, this was not.
The movie wasn't awful until you actually got to know the characters. Then you stopped liking them and it wasn't so good anymore. It's about Braff's character being scared of committing to his beautiful pregnant fiancee, so he gets infatuated with an immature Fatal Attraction-esque college student instead. Good move Zach, let me know how that works out!
It was poorly written; at one point I picked up the box just to make sure Braff didn't write it or have any hand in the movie's overhead, so to speak (he didn't, thankfully, which led into an IMDB search on the real writer, the aforementioned Muccino). The special features just raved how this was a movie for people in their 30s. Yet the lead characters all act like they're in high school. Brilliant! There was a vignette on the special features entitled "last thoughts", where all the actors and maybe the director and whatnot got all serious in front of the camera and tried to sum up the movie in one sentence or less using dramatic words and sincere tones. At which point I turned to Ash and said "you know, you can spray a pile of dog shit with perfume, but it's still dog shit."
Sunday night. The wife and I just finished watching The Last Kiss. I saw it in Blockbuster and it had Zach Braff so I thought "wow, this must be really good." My wife watches literally about one movie a month, so the pressure to always pick a good movie for the both of us to watch together is hunormous. We both like Scrubs, and really liked Garden State. Garden State, this was not.
The movie wasn't awful until you actually got to know the characters. Then you stopped liking them and it wasn't so good anymore. It's about Braff's character being scared of committing to his beautiful pregnant fiancee, so he gets infatuated with an immature Fatal Attraction-esque college student instead. Good move Zach, let me know how that works out!
It was poorly written; at one point I picked up the box just to make sure Braff didn't write it or have any hand in the movie's overhead, so to speak (he didn't, thankfully, which led into an IMDB search on the real writer, the aforementioned Muccino). The special features just raved how this was a movie for people in their 30s. Yet the lead characters all act like they're in high school. Brilliant! There was a vignette on the special features entitled "last thoughts", where all the actors and maybe the director and whatnot got all serious in front of the camera and tried to sum up the movie in one sentence or less using dramatic words and sincere tones. At which point I turned to Ash and said "you know, you can spray a pile of dog shit with perfume, but it's still dog shit."
Saturday, February 24, 2007
On This Week
OK, I'm back. Miss me? I was in Dallas for training this week. Good class. But that still doesn't quite make up for the fact that I had to travel.
Traveling for work is like kissing your sister. If I have to fly somewhere, I'd much prefer it not be for work. Don't get me started on flying though, humans have no business being 35k feet in the air in a fiberglass tube. I don't believe in God, but if I did I'm pretty sure He would say " dammit you stupid humans, I made gravity for a reason. Stay...Down...There!"
My wife had to listen to me rant about the men and their baggage. In the airport, all the men have a rolling bag that is literally 2 inches on either side from being called a large suitcase, and a laptop bag that is literally 2 inches on either side from being called a large suitcase. And then they get pissed when it takes a half an hour extra to board the plane. Well, you focktard, let me explain it. You and all your cohorts took up all the overhead space with all your oversized carry-ons. Now the other half of the plane have to play peek-a-boo with all the overhead bins until the flight attendants get red-in-the-face-pissed and make them gate-check their oversized carry-ons. And now we're late. Well, we would have been but God was very mindful of this and he invented the tailwind.
Traveling for work is like kissing your sister. If I have to fly somewhere, I'd much prefer it not be for work. Don't get me started on flying though, humans have no business being 35k feet in the air in a fiberglass tube. I don't believe in God, but if I did I'm pretty sure He would say " dammit you stupid humans, I made gravity for a reason. Stay...Down...There!"
My wife had to listen to me rant about the men and their baggage. In the airport, all the men have a rolling bag that is literally 2 inches on either side from being called a large suitcase, and a laptop bag that is literally 2 inches on either side from being called a large suitcase. And then they get pissed when it takes a half an hour extra to board the plane. Well, you focktard, let me explain it. You and all your cohorts took up all the overhead space with all your oversized carry-ons. Now the other half of the plane have to play peek-a-boo with all the overhead bins until the flight attendants get red-in-the-face-pissed and make them gate-check their oversized carry-ons. And now we're late. Well, we would have been but God was very mindful of this and he invented the tailwind.
Monday, February 12, 2007
On Netflix vs. Blockbuster
I was a loyal, OK somewhat loyal (I took a couple breaks), subscriber to Netflix for 4 years. As time passed, it seemed like their turn-around time was getting worse and worse. I remember being in awe when I signed up, because I had three movies the very next day, I kid you not. In the first year or so, it was almost like a game, to see how many movies I could watch in a month. I had calculated that I needed to watch, on average, about 5 movies a month in order to just break even (as compared to typical new release fees from Blockbuster). I was squeezing them for quite a bit more than that.
After that though, I stopped being so anal about the turnaround time, and we just watched them when we had time and didn't think much of it. We got pretty good delivery time, but we just weren't watching a lot of movies. So, we coasted for a couple years. Then we moved to Columbus, which apparently confused and angered Netflix, because they were consistently forgetting to send us any movies. I would literally drop a movie off at the post office, and get its replacement in about 7-8 weekdays, pretty much just shy of 2 weeks. So my turnaround basically quadrupled. Awesome. Was I being throttled?
A couple months ago I decided to try Blockbuster, and I'm glad I did. They don't have the turnaround issues, they pretty much have the same selection, I get a free game rental each month, it's the same price, and you can take them back to the store and get a free movie in return. The only problem I've had with them so far - three discs have been shipped completely cracked in half. I still think it's amazing that neither of these places use plastic cases to ship DVDs. If anything, it's hard keeping track of all the flipping movies. Let's say you take 2 movies back, now you have one online movie, two in-store rentals. Two days later, the next 2 online movies get shipped, now you have 3 online + 2 in-store. Do we have the time to watch 5 movies? Can I always remember when the 2 in-store ones are due back? No, that's why I joined an online service in the first place, so I didn't have to pay late fees...!
Bottom line: both Netflix and Blockbuster shipped from Atlanta, yet somehow my Netflix turnaround time was 3-4 times longer than Blockbuster. Netflix couldn't either; I asked them once. I did appreciate Netflix's Friends feature, and not to mention the 4 years worth of ratings. But I'm just not that patient. When the wife gets hooked on a show and has to wait almost 2 weeks to watch the next episode...well, they have a saying in the South - "if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy".
After that though, I stopped being so anal about the turnaround time, and we just watched them when we had time and didn't think much of it. We got pretty good delivery time, but we just weren't watching a lot of movies. So, we coasted for a couple years. Then we moved to Columbus, which apparently confused and angered Netflix, because they were consistently forgetting to send us any movies. I would literally drop a movie off at the post office, and get its replacement in about 7-8 weekdays, pretty much just shy of 2 weeks. So my turnaround basically quadrupled. Awesome. Was I being throttled?
A couple months ago I decided to try Blockbuster, and I'm glad I did. They don't have the turnaround issues, they pretty much have the same selection, I get a free game rental each month, it's the same price, and you can take them back to the store and get a free movie in return. The only problem I've had with them so far - three discs have been shipped completely cracked in half. I still think it's amazing that neither of these places use plastic cases to ship DVDs. If anything, it's hard keeping track of all the flipping movies. Let's say you take 2 movies back, now you have one online movie, two in-store rentals. Two days later, the next 2 online movies get shipped, now you have 3 online + 2 in-store. Do we have the time to watch 5 movies? Can I always remember when the 2 in-store ones are due back? No, that's why I joined an online service in the first place, so I didn't have to pay late fees...!
Bottom line: both Netflix and Blockbuster shipped from Atlanta, yet somehow my Netflix turnaround time was 3-4 times longer than Blockbuster. Netflix couldn't either; I asked them once. I did appreciate Netflix's Friends feature, and not to mention the 4 years worth of ratings. But I'm just not that patient. When the wife gets hooked on a show and has to wait almost 2 weeks to watch the next episode...well, they have a saying in the South - "if momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy".
Saturday, February 10, 2007
On an Excessive Amount of Electronics
Currently as I type this, I can look around this game room and see the following electronic devices:
On another single outlet in the living room we can find:
Oh and let's not even get started on all the websites we have to register for. Say what you will, but there's something to be said for Microsoft's Passport idea.
- computer
- speakers
- modem
- router
- printer
- phone
- Vonage router
- xbox
- xbox 360
- lcd tv
On another single outlet in the living room we can find:
- tv
- vcr (what a dinosaur)
- tivo
- wireless adapter
- dvd player
- receiver
- cd player
- and a lamp
Oh and let's not even get started on all the websites we have to register for. Say what you will, but there's something to be said for Microsoft's Passport idea.
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