On my iPod

Can I just tell you something? Something you might find surprising? Maybe not.

I've taken to really liking Eminem. I can disclaim it with not all, but then again I don't like all of The Beatles either. Oh shut it. Nobody actually likes "Revolution #9". If anyone actually believes they do like that one they need a tox screen.

I think I like his stuff because I'm big on free speech and the whole separation of church and state. I like what Carlin said about the church & state, "Either of these institutions screw you up bad enough by themselves, just imagine if they got together!"

Eminem just pushes it. He is offensive. That's the point. I like when other people push the envelope. I don't have time to do it. It's also funny and catchy. 8 Mile was really good as well.

I'm too lazy.

You don't know me. You're too old. Let go. It's over. Nobody listens to techno. -- Eminem

A fun activity

google your license plate. Mine is fun because it ends in a sports acronym, but the numbers don't mean anything. I googled mine in case someone had blogged about me in traffic and called me and ass clown. Luckily no. Crisis averted.

Ah it's a 911 kinda morning

Yes I had to call 911 on the freeway.

I'm cruising down I-405 (Seattle east side) at about 8:45am. I see a kid bouncing up and down in the back of a car. I thought it was a dog. I look to see what breed and it was a homo sapien. A young one. A toddler. Bouncing up and down in the back of the car holding onto AC's head rest. (AC stands for Ass CLOWN) From here on out I will refer to said Ass Clown as "Ass Clown" for short.

I rolled down my window to yell at the fucker but he got ahead of me so I got his tag #. I called 911 got transferred to state patrol and gave up this ass clown's info. I saw him later kid still bouncing away. I hope they got him down in Bellevue. There is no excuse. I even tried to think of one. Nope. None. Ass Clown.

Oh and for the record it was a brown/gold VW hatch back tag# 779-URE. Oh yes if that's your tag number and you're pissed I put it on the internet please drop me a line through email and I'll let you know what I think. Better yet email me your phone number and I'll call you. That'll be fun. Ass Clown.

And it's away...

In this case it's "they're away."

First day of school. Kids on bus. Summer over.

Film at 11...

Poker...

I don't get all this new poker shit. I'm not gonna. I don't wanna. I'd just call it texas fold-em and be done with it....

It's really just some rocks

In 2005 I was in Utah and I shot several rolls of film. It toom me over a year to do anything with them at all. You can click here to see them. I will be adding some more as I have quite a few rolls from that trip.

Last night...

I ate garlic fries.

We (Max, Sam and I) hung out with Mr. Bander (the younger) and Sam (not Sam, Sam)

Notable running gag: I lost the game! Max: What game? Sam: Girls Kick Butt!!!

Much laughter and garlic ensued.

Geeked OUT

I do these meetings with my "mentor" quadriweekly. It's like monthly only it's really every 4 weeks. Usually we talk about management issues. Sometimes we talk tech on the current state of what I or he is working on. Then there was yesterday. Yesterday we mostly talked 6502. Actually come to think of it we barely talked 6502 we mostly talked apple ][. Yes indeed. While I had one when I was a kid I was mostly not exposed to other people who did anything more than talk about the best way to get through a miner 2049er level or which bitch was doing the killing in the "hi rez" adventure game Mystery House. If you click through and look at the picture you'll see what was "high rez" in 1980.

I was the shit with my apple ][. I fucking had not one but two disk drives. I have to admit until my father actually worked at a computer store I was unaware of what intellectual property was and there was some locksmith run on my machine. Hey I had two! Two! TWO disk drives! It would have been a crime not to use them. Wait. um... yeah I was a kid. like 12. I had no idea. Maybe an inkling. I'm clean now. I mean really I actually own photoshop CS. K? I'm just saying. Shut it.

CMF Jon... wait let me explain that's our titles in the CMF society. It's like as close to a holy order as I'll ever get and yes it stand for crazy mutherfucker. I'm CMF JR or JR CMF either works. You can kiss my ring. See Crazy Trips for reference. Hollywood. If you see me in person and have a lot of time you can ask me about the Vegas trip. You might also want a strong stomach or to have not eaten recently when you ask. Just a tip. It was crazy. Tangent.

CMF Jon systematically went through the whole architecture of the apple series (from memory) starting with the plus and ended on the 128k 2e. Of which I did not have. It was great. We had a short tangent (ok not so short) where we glossed over the EE to see how a 555 chip can be made into a one bit analog to digital converter. It was just a lovely afternoon. I learner so much. It's good to learn about one's geek routes.

Karma Cuisine OR "I'm sorry am I to understand there will be no side dishes?"

So I got crazy in the kitchen today. I was supposed to go to a movie with some people and we were going to have a potluck on the lawn whilst watching the holy grail. (As in Python not Indiana Jones) But alas the Yeti cancelled and it dominoed from there to moi. So I went home instead and poked around the kitchen for dinner. When I was a little kid and the food drive came up at school, I'm afraid I was not the best child in the pack for donating food. I can't count the number of times I brought in refried beans and mandarin oranges. Maybe a tomato soup. It's bad you know. I always wondered looking in at all those cans of sweet mandarin oranges and various flavors of pinto beans how these poor people were supposed to actually eat this shit. I mean it was the stuff my parents didn't want or had canned. I mean really.

So tonight I embarked on a culinary adventure. Yes the challenge was to cook dinner with no cholesterol out of my somewhat (now even more) bare cabinets.

What did J.R. come up with? Oh my it was bad. Yes it was. I had garbonzo beans and saffron rice left over from something or other. I also had some tomato and green chili something or other from another occasion. So... I made the rice. Yes that went fine even without the ole rice cooker. I got the tomato goo hot and drained the garbonzo beans (not stupid) and added those. I also added some benign sauces from the fridge to try and cut the spice on the "oh shit I thought those were mild chilies god dammmit" sauce. That worked ok. I mean it wasn't too super nasty hot. Just more of a you're not going to have any allergy problems tonight because you will have nothing left in the sinus region of your head kinda thing. So I poured that over the rice. Looked good. Smelled pretty good. I was excited and I even had grand plans for lunch tomorrow.

Did it eat good? um no.

I can't begin to explain how bad it was. I sucked it up and ate some of it. I then set a goal for 1/2 of it. I mean I'm full now so I gave it a good try. I ate enough and my brain went, "Hello stomach yes this is brain. We spoke to the tongue and it's wanting you to play full so it doesn't have to deal with any more of this shit and the kid will swallow some pride and throw it away." Apparently pride is on the filling side because I swallowed and had the garbage disposal (aptly named as what I fed it was in fact garbage.) deal with it.

So next time I go to donate food to a canned goods drive. I'm gonna give up those garbonzo beans and see what the fuck they can do with them. OK no I won't I'm going to designate the Hope Link as my charity this year for the giving thingy they do at work. They have a great food bank that I imagine has real food.

For now I'm going to go try and make some type of desert out of a can of Mandarin Oranges and a 2 year old thing of rediwhip. Wish me luck!

quotable

This morning on the ride to work I decided to be gross. Gross Pointe that is. I listned to the soundtrack on my beat fm transmitter with my sweet iPod. Either the transmitter or my deck (or most likely both) just suck. So I get a lot of static. It's not that much of a problem for anyone else, but me, it fucking drives me insane. I had to turn it off, but not before getting my morning dose of Faithe No More.

I started quoting the movie in the car. Yes, it was outloud. No, the children weren't with me. I have a question for you. I can think of two very quoteable movies. Which two are your top two quotable movies and what is the number one quote from each one?

OK also I know it's hard to narrow it down so honorable mentions are allowed. Thanks for playing and you'll get a years supply of Rice-A-Roni that San Francisco treat for participating. (Note that I measure a years supply by how much Rice-A-Roni I personally consumed in 2005... you guessed it. None.)

"Ultra" sonic?

I had my teeth cleaned today. Yes I am a big baby. Let's just get that the fuck out the way k? Actually this is something I don't mind usually. Usually I don't have a rear view mirror into it. They use this water shooting pick device now and it's not too terribly unpleasant except it sounds like a fucking drill. I don't need to tell you what the drill sounds like. Do I? No. I'm sure they were at the dental convention going yeah this ultra-sonic thing is great. We can clean more teeth in a faster time with less pain, but could you please add some sound to it? You know something like that great high pitched sound that we added to the drill a few years back? You know we need to have that level of disconcerting that the patient is used to or comfortable with.

So I asked her what it was called she said it was called something like ultrasonicdualcleanerwatershootingfuckupyerhead thing. I said, "Ultra sonic? I think you should get it looked at because I can still hear it, and I'm not a dog."

She laughed. I bled.

Then out came the mirror. Is it bad enough that it hurts? No. Is it bad enough that I can taste the blood? No. Apparently I need to see the blood on the teeth to really let me see what the fuck is up with my retainer. Now we're flossing. We need to show JR how to floss around his retainer. People let's face it. Nobody flosses. OK dental hygienist out there (I know of at least one that reads this. Hi, Kristy.) We don't do it. We nod when you tell us to. We will even lie right up your nose about it. WE DON'T FLOSS. We don't do it. We buy it. We take it in our goody bag. (who came up with the word goody anyways?) We don't use it. OK we might floss the week before the cleaning. That's it. The rest of the floss sits in the drawer til we toss it out because we got ourselves another god-forsaken goody bag...

We got snacks.

Dude brought in some killer carrot cake, yumm.

Odds and ends

So my system is flawed for geocaching. I need to figure out where the failure took place, but we had some bad data. Some of it was even garbled when we got into the field. Bander and I are going to do a few more this week so my total will be over 80.

Today I am stuffy. I know. I know. Alert the media. I'm looking forward to a sneezing fit on the way home while driving. Lovely.

Finally for today a math problem. If you take a standard deck of cards (52 no jokers) in order and shuffle them perfectly 1 for 1 so that you divide the deck in half exactly. You interweave the cards one after the other keeping the top and the bottom card the same through the process. How many "shuffles" (Since the word shuffle implys randomness and this is not random I added the quotes.) does it take to return the deck to its original order? Bonus points: What if you change the top and bottom card with each "shuffle" then how many? Double Secret bonus points: What is this "shuffle" called in the circles in which it is practiced and why is it called that?

Geo Day Today!

I will be updating once in a while from the phone...

6:51 0/0 We haven't even had breakfast yet... we are due at Bander's at 8:00

10:54 6/7 about to have lunch... rocking good.

2:18 pm. 11/14 still trucking!

3:20 Ended up 12/16 but we had some bad data. I need to fix my system I think.

Half of nothing is still nothing?

OK so there is this store. It's actually a chain. It's call 1/2 price pots. So to be fair I have not been in it. Why the fuck would I do that? Let's talk about 1/2 price being in the name. 1/2 of what? Usually a sale refers to the regular price. Granted we all know that's total bullshit too. Whatever. 1/2 of what? I mean if it's 1/2 off your regular price. Wait that is the regular price so jesus we have to take another 1/2 off that. Is it 1/2 off the NYPE? (That would be the New York Pot Exchange) Wait that's something way different. Also can you justify an entire store full of pots? No pan? No plants? (I said it's not that kind of pot, idiot.) I like what they said about pot on South Park: "It's not dangerous. It's just a plant that makes you stupid."

So if we keep taking 1/2 off we end up with free pots. No not free pot you fucktard. (Sorry too much southpark, you cockbite. (Also too much red vs. blue apparently.))

So if you need a pot. Note the non collectiveness of that noun? A pot. Then get your ass to 1/2 price pots. It's right by the liquor store, dog. (Yeah I just watched 8 mile too. Sue me.)

3 mornings in a row

I'm up early and working. By working I don't mean just at my job, but that's part of it. I'm clearing up my email, getting everything re-set.

I can't wait til I get my mobile machine back at work. It was borrowed by another team who was having a problem with that particular model. I should get it back Monday. Of couse it won't be *useful* until late in the day Tuesday.

I've been reading a new book. How to think like Leoardo da Vinci. It has a bunch of exercises in it. The author suggests you read the whole book then go back and do the exercises. I of course got the corresponding "workbook" so I'll do the excercises there. I like to read a chapter of it in the morning over breakfast.

Yes that's right I said breakfast.

What can I say?

Well it took me long enough

Watch out world. I got it. I have no plans to travel... yet.

Guess Who's Back

I'm back from Boston. It was fabulous, actually. Fucking fabulous.

When I was hungry, I ate.
When I was tired, I slept.

I went to Fenway. It's made of lego (Possible photos to follow)
I went to Walden Pond. My companion insisted it's a pond. Yes it is named "pond", but let's face it people, that is a fucking lake. It's big!(Again with the photos.)

Do you think I'm going to post more now that I'm back? Answer: Your guess is just as good as mine. I did get one complaint that I posted during an OOB session. Again:

Get over it. Nobody listens to techno.

Update: Photos

Top five...

Not the top five records. Not the top five foods I could live forever on. No not even the top one food I could live forever on... No sir.

This would be the top five ways to take revenge on the wedding couple who's party kept you up in the hotel til 3:00am. It wasn't even like bed rocking noise that could at least be funny. It would loud idiot drunk fucks in the fucking drunk ass hallway making noise. OK I don't usually call. I just don't. I just deal. Last night, I fucking called. TWICE.

In no real particular order.

5. Rent a great dane. Have the great dane do it's business. Collect said business and put it outside the happy couples door. Have dog bark much. Then beat on door. Run.
4. See number five but get some room service trays and put said business there and knock with the words shouted at the top of one's lungs "Room Service Complimentary Honey Moon breakfast.
3. Watch out the window until the actual complimentary honeymoon room service. Lace any beverage with some sort of laxitive in the amount reccomended by the manufacturer for quick relief times three.
2. Write a letter of apology to the groom for having sex with him repeatedly at his bachelor party. Apologize profusefuly and promise to the destroy the photos. Upon slipping under the door knock very loudly so that you're sure both of them wake up...
1. Hand a sign on the door handle that reads: "The marriage? 6 months. TOPS!"

OK venting over....

OOB

At work we have this thing called OOF Out Of Office. OK yes that's OOO. I know that's what I'm saying. It pisses me off. I've heard some say that it stands for Out of some F'in thing this that or the other. That's bullshit I was there when the feature got added to outlook and we all fucking called it Out Of Office and when I pointed out the whole OOO thing they told me to shut it. It was a common theme.

This is OOB. Out Of Blog.

I'm going to Boston for vacation.

Despite delays, I am hopeful for an on time departure and a slightly early arrival. Shout outs to Jon for his "Mad Pilot" skills in giving me the real dope on what to expect and how things have been going. He also indicated I could expect a healthy tail wind the entire night. Now if I can just sleep...

I have taken steps to not get screwed out of my flight. (I'm leaving early, people.)

If you have an urgent issue I can be reached... oh wait... no I can't.

In short: Don't expect any posting til I get back. (Potential FAQ: Me, or someone else or a dog misses these posts. Will you tell us when you will be back? Answer: no.)

I'm Out Of Blog. No I won't tell you to shut it, I promise.

Making people happy fifteen cents at a time.

Sometimes I don't eat lunch. Sometimes. I know it's a bad habit, but it's just the way my day goes occasionally. On some of those days, (much like today) I'll decide to have a bag of pretzels. No cholesterol just salt, carbs and a wee bit of fat. Almost none to speak of.

They cost eighty five cents. So do Fritos corn chips, but those are even too salty for me. Either way I feed my dollar in. I get a dime and nickel back. As well as my bag of sustenance. Right next to the vending machine is the change machine. The change cups are really close together. So close in face that when one bends over to retrieve one's dime and one's nickel one's hand passes right by the other change cup. You know the one where the only thing the person is looking for is quarters. I can't help but drop my fifteen cents change into the other cup thinking that someone will go to break a dollar and get a dollar eighty five. Do they notice? Probably sometimes because I bet they are about to do something with quarters. Do they thing they got "longed" by the machine? Likely. Do they call the company and give back the fifteen cents. I hope not.

It's the little things that amuse me.

The boy

Erasure Sudoku

So I got a little cocky there. I just had to have Max erase one. Doh. Oh well I'll nail it later. There isn't any "fixing" a sudoku. You just can't tell what went wrong. There is no point, so just erase, shurg and move on.

Sudoku -- Bring it!

Brown belt book, expected to kick ass, is not. So far nothing more than a little more inference between blocks. I'm not saying this to gloat. No really, I'm not. I'm actually disappointed because I know there are harder ones. I just think I picked the wrong series. I don't want to get one that has "mensa" on it because jesus christ on a cracker the last thing I want to do is be associated with that. I appreciate that Feynman disdained any organization that had a main purpose of deciding who could or could not be a member. Fuck them. Should I get the black belt one or work on a new card trick... hmmm.

It's all about getting clean

The carpets are being steam cleaned even as I type this. I vacuumed the house just ahead of the guy as my dirt devil kinda sorta isn't usable right now. That's not a story for right now though. I learned a few things while working with the carpet guy:

1. Steam cleaning involves hot water.
2. Industrial vacuum cleaners work realy well.
3. Hot water even in a hose is hot.
4. When you are having your carpet cleaned the stains really pop out and are noticed.
5. When there is hot water in a hose not only is the water hot, the hose is also hot.
6. If the hose is hot far away from the truck, (i.e. upstairs) then closer to the truck (um downstairs) the hose is hotter.

Situation normal.

If you want to know just how big something is, clean it.

Update: #7 Do not get into a philisophical discussion with the carpet cleaner guy.

The ball wants to go home, happy.

I played pool tonight. With the usual spots that Teague gives me I still only barely squeaked out a tie. 2 matches to 2. He has to win 4 each match and I have to win 2. He drank Jack and Coke and I drank Coke... We had fun and talked shit all night. It was a good evening.

Quote of the evening: "OK, JR, a little girl could run this table."

He was right and I'm certainly not a little girl.

Can anyone please tell me...

PUHLEEEESE.

OK so my iPod is in full sync mode with my home PC. That works. My work machine is authed to play the DRM stuff from iTunes. If it's in full sync mode I can't play from it at work.

No I don't want to copy it. I want to play it. I *want* to play it from inside itunes. If I have to use a different UI, then fine. I just want to be able to play the fucking thing. I know I could get another set of speakers, but I don't really want to do that either. I just want to be able to sync it automatically at home and play the fucking thing at work. That is not too much ask, is it?

Is it?

Ah the library and other tid bits

So I took the kids to see jugglers at the library tonight. It was really fun. Brothers with different Mothers is their name and they were really good. I especially enjoyed the diablo act they did.

Max was too cool to sit up front with the little kids, but was kinda pissed when they didn't call on him to volunteer. Ah well you live and learn.

I did some sudoku before the show and I gotta say the green level doesn't seem any harder than the white. I guess it's time to move on to brown?

I wish I had a south park DVD. South park and sudoku... good times. Oh well I guess I'll not get high, like I do, and listen to floyd til I fall asleep... or not.

Actually I'm going to read anthropology until I fall asleep. Jared Diamond's _Third chimpanzee_ is in order.

Good night...