Category: Life

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And the silken sad uncertain rustling…

Happy Halloween everybody!

I’ve spent the last little bit getting in the Halloween mood with the help of the Simpsons and YouTube. If you have a few minutes to kill, enjoy these halloween vignettes…

In honor of Halloween, I thought I would chronicle some past Halloweens and share them with you folks.

Costumes

I’ve always been a big fan of Halloween. This started very early, back when your costume was the store bought plastic smock and cheap mask. You remember those… the mask with the single rubber band holding it on your head while you proceed so sweat through your face? Lots of fun. I had those for three years that I remember. Casper the friendly ghost… C-3PO… and the Devil. I remember the devil mask scared the hell out of the dogs, so that was always fun.

Then, I graduated into the homemade variety. I hit all the usuals including dracula, the punk rocker, the hobo, etc. In fact, one Halloween, 4th grade I believe, I was sick, but there was no way I was going to miss school on the greatest day of the year. Dressed as dracula, I toughed it out. I was ok until the costume parade, where each class parades around through all the other classes to see the costumes. We were just coming out of the first grade class when the combination of the illness and the cheap ass plastic dracula fangs in my mouth caused me to… uh… hurl. I vividly remember the act, but don’t remember what happened next other than my running into the nearest bathroom. But, by god, I saw the costumes, got my costume seen and had the candy and fun involved with that day. That is all that mattered.

One year, I tried my most ambitious costume to date. The mummy. We had some old curtains in the garage that I could use to cut into strips. I spent hours cutting this stuff. Then, on Halloween, mom spent hours (bless her heart) with me wrapping and safety pinning all of these strips to my sweatsuit. I was pretty stoked as we headed out for the candy. Unfortunately, I was not aware that mummies probably stay wrapped so well because they are DEAD and don’t ever move. I didn’t get 4 houses in before I started unraveling. Much to my friends enjoyment, their favorite game that night became “step-on-the-dangling-strips”. It didn’t take long before I was pretty much a just kid in a grey sweatsuit with grey makeup around my eyes. I was frankly embarrassed to be trick-or-treating in such a pathetic costume that I had to tell people that I WAS a mummy, but it all fell off. Obviously, I was not embarrassed enough to stop getting candy, however.

Later in life, I had other costumes. Including a Jamaican (with a mop dyed black on my head), a soldier, a pig (pink bodysuit with baby bottle nipples sewn on the front). I also did the rental costumes including one of my all time favorites William Wallace from Braveheart. You know, the kilt, the wig, the sword. Good times. Also, read about my adventures as ‘windblown man’ here.

Most recently I’ve been a hockey player (complete with whole uniform), a convict (striped jumpsuit) and the most elaborate as the devil. That was wearing the tux, black shirt, red tie, then painting the face red and black and sticking horns on my head.

I will say, there is nothing worse than going all out on your costume, but not having an event worthy of such a costume. The ultimate “All dressed up with nowhere to go” sort of situation.

Trick or Treating

Obviously, one of my, and every kid’s, favorite parts of Halloween was always the trick-or-treating. I would look forward to that for weeks. The neighbor Scott Bell and I would plan our trick-or-treating route, riding around on our bikes, so long and hard, you would think we were invading Poland. We would plan it every year, but somehow it always remained the same route. Around the block, up the condos across the street, then into the further neighborhoods.

I remember one evening we were out so long that the streets were becoming empty. As we were working back down our street to our houses we thought it must have been like 11:00 or something. Nobody still out except us. I had resorted to carrying my bag in my arms since there was so much candy in it the handles had long since been ripped out. We always had those old school plastic trick or treat bags you used to get at the grocery store… square bags, usually with a haunted house scene on the front, with oval handles cut out of the top. (now you see the same type at trade shows for giveaways) I had so much candy in this bag it was overflowing. Yet, we were still trick-or-treating. I couldn’t even ring the doorbells since I’d lose my grip on the bag. It was so bad, that when the people would put their candy on top of the pile, 3 or 4 other pieces would slide off. I didn’t care! “Thank you!” I’d chime in merrily and be on my way to the next house. When we finally did get home, we were amazed that it was only like 9:15. We thought we were pushing midnight. One of the best nights of my life!

Another time, Kim you might remember this, we were trick-or-treating on the back side of our block. Just getting started when an elderly lady dropped what appeared to be a large saltine cracker (like the size of 8 regular crackers all attached to each other) in the bag. I’ve since learned that it might have been matzo. Either way, to this day I still don’t understand what she might have been thinking. Needless to say, that thing was pounded into crumbs in the bottom of the bag LONG before the night was over. Mom was very pleased when we got home and dumped out the bags on the carpet that evening.

In later elementary school, my friends and I perfected our technique to maximize our efficiency. See, we had a group of 7 or 8 people in our merry band. Each of us in a rubber mask of some sort. With all of you on the porch, it would obviously take time for the people to give out the candy to everyone. So, after the first people got theirs, they duck around the edge out of sight, take the mask off (or just pull it up on top of the head) and go back for a second hit. Then, the later kids swap their masks when the first kids were getting seconds, so on and so forth. Everyone has those times handing out candy when kids keep coming to the door in a stream, so no one was ever the wiser. We essentially hit every house twice, thus doubling our candy intake without doubling our walking! Pure genius!

Candy

The byproduct of a successful Halloween. It was almost as fun dumping out your booty for admiration afterwards as it was to procure it all in the first place. Every kid went about categorizing the candy… or maybe it was just me. The top dog candies… mini candy bars or anything with chocolate came first. The rule in our house was that mom and dad automatically got all of the mounds and almond joys. Worked for me because I didn’t particularly care for those anyway. Second were the step down candies, still good but not chocolate, your life savers, suckers, sweet tarts, pixie sticks, etc. Then, of course, you have the candy you don’t really love, but still eat it simply because it’s candy. Smarties, taffy, candy corn and all those other no-name cheap ass candy that you always got. Then, the final candy that was ALWAYS left in the bottom of the bag were those horrible, peanut butter taffy kisses in the orange or black wrappers. Those things are the WORST and were never eaten. Just terrible.

I was the kid who could ration the Halloween spoils and make it last for months. To my way of thinking, it is the one time of year when you get this whole bag of candy that you were in charge of. You got to decide when to eat it. No one else had control. Back then, you had to ask for everything you wanted. That was life. But Halloween candy was all yours. If you want a piece first thing in the morning? Go for it. Want a piece directly before dinner? You the man. No other time does a kid have that much control, and I loved it. I liked having that option available, and kept it going as long as possible. I could easily push Halloween candy through February. And I’m talking there would be mini snickers and milky way’s left in the bag then… it was such a prized commodity that it had to be hidden in the closet to avoid marauding sisters or fathers…

All in all, Halloween is one of the absolute apexes of the childhood year. October was always so much fun planning and preparing. For me, Halloween kicked off the best part of the year. Next came Thanksgiving (with the extended school break) as well as my birthday (PRESENTS!). From there leads to Christmas (Presents AND extended time off school!). In the two months from Halloween to Christmas, I received 90% of the loot I would get for the whole year! The rest of the year paled in comparison.

So, happy Halloween everybody. I’m on a high until January 2nd…

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Help, I’ve been robbed!

Ok, now I’m not an idiot… at least I don’t think I am. However, I’m forced to face the fact that I am, indeed, not as smart as I thought I was.

Allow me to explain.

Most of you know that I’m lazy. I recognize and fully admit that I’m perhaps not as ‘go-getter’ as I should be. In keeping with this knowledge, I pay people to clean my apartment.

Lord knows, were it up to me, it would be done once a year. Now, I’m pretty good about staying on top of the clutter. The dirty clothes pile only grows so large before it is washed and put away. The dishwasher gets run with regularity. Etcetera. However, I do not own a vacuum (I used to own a vacuum, but I’ll let you use your imagination as to where that thing might have ended up…). I have no desire to dust anything. I especially don’t want to clean a toilet.

Basically, my theory boils down to this point. Why torture yourself doing the things you hate when you can afford to pay other people to do?

Thusly, I pay people to clean my apartment for me, and have for the past few months. Now, when I signed up, I knew it was a little steep in price. This is where my laziness has trumped my intelligence. My apartment is small. One bedroom, one bath. 550 square feet of tiny. I finally got around to hiring a cleaning company, and doing the whole ‘on site consultation’ and all that bullshit. (I conquered my laziness that day) I thought to myself, that I’ll pay once or twice to have them clean, then I’ll get someone else. Well, that once or twice turned into months.

They charge me $100 every visit to clean (every other week). Now, I know this is a lot of money, and it always made me sorta pissed to pay it. Unfortunately, not pissed enough to do anything about it. Again, the laziness bludgeoning my intelligence into submission. I rationalized it by telling myself that I’m paying for a good deep clean every other week. I imagined the two girls who sign the little ‘thank you’ card after every clean were there a couple hours really working hard. I’m always at work when the arrive, so I had no clue.

This morning, I didn’t feel very well, and had it not been for the cleaning ladies coming, I probably would have stayed home from work. But, since they were coming, I came to work and left a note for them to call me when they were finished, so if I still felt bad I could head back home.

I’m always at work before 9. What time they usually arrive, I have no idea. Today, I left for work at 8:50. Again, with my mental image of the washer-woman on the floor scrubbing securely in my head, I expect to hear from them say 11ish. What time do they call me saying they’re finished? 9:56 am! I’m paying over a hundred bucks an hour!?! For the love of god, how freakin stupid am I!?

Please, I’m begging you all for a couple things… First… leave me comments and remind me just how big of a schmuck I am. Seriously. Something has to shock me into action. Second, please oh please recommend someone to me who will clean my place for less than I could pay a lawyer to clean my apartment. Preferably someone who won’t rob me blind or something.

Third… Merry Maids is a racket. I think the government should use the RICO statutes to bring them down.

I think it is perfectly clear that I have more money than sense… and I don’t have that much money. Someone shoot me right now.

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Into the lion’s den, for reals this time

I survived.

For the second time this season, I was venturing into enemy territory. But unlike last time, this was much more interesting. Here is the play by play.

Jess and I got on the road 10:30 on Friday morning. Very uneventful drive. We stopped at Tamarack since neither of us had ever been there. It was very beautiful with the trees changing colors and all. Construction was in HIGH gear. You could not look in any direction and not see full on construction. It was amazing. Pretty much all of Valley County was under construction. I saw more dump trucks, semi loads of lumber, earth movers and the like everywhere. Somehow, we were always behind one of these rigs on the highway. Unbelievable.

Tamarack

We finally made our arrival in the particularly fragrant metropolis of Lewiston-Clarkston. We had to stay in Clarkston due to our late entry into the hotel room sweepstakes for the weekend. Not only were there 2000 bronco fans in the area, but Oregon was visiting Washington State and the thousands of fans the O brought. In our hotel, ye olde Motel 6 had a bunch of Ducks staying there. It actually worked out pretty well staying in Clarkston, other than the smell, that is. Room was far cheaper and the restaurants weren’t super crazy like they were in Moscow.

After check-in, we head on up to Moscow. Jess wanted to put her old campus on display, show me the greek houses, stroll the campus a bit, visit the bookstore. There were a lot of people buying up the merch in the bookstore. It really reminded me of the Blue and Orange store in the mall here on a gameday. Being surrounded by Vandals and their gear didn’t bother me except for one item. They are selling a t-shirt with a soft focus Tiger Beat style headshot of Coach Erickson. This thing is disturbing on many levels. It looks like they pulled this bad boy right out of the Scott Baio silk-screen collection circa 1982. I love Coach Pete as much as the next guy, but I have to think this sort of thing wouldn’t happen here. I can’t even rationally discus it, so I will just move on.

But, Jess was able to stock up to her heart’s delight and we left to go find dinner. We found a little italian joint that was a cross between Olive Garden and Macaroni Grill. Good food. We then headed back ‘home’ and relaxed as we had a big day coming up.

Saturday morning brought game day. We hit Albertsons for tailgating supplies and were on the road. We made it to the Kibbie Dome parking lot about 4 hours to game time. We decided to make a quick loop around the dome to absorb a little atmosphere. We got more than a few odd looks and questions about harmony due to the fact that I was in all orange, and she in her black and gold. And apart from the partially eaten sausage that was lobbed our way, no major incidents happened.

Tailgating

Tailgating was fun. There were a few other Broncos in our area of the parking lot, but we were vastly outnumbered. Jess had a number of friends stop by our spot for a few beers and whatnot, of course, all Vandals. There were the usual collections of anti-Boise State t-shirts (“Boise is not a state”… ho ho ho… hi-lairious. You think that one up all on your own?), not to mention the random “Who do we hate? Boise State!” chants from the large collection of students down the row from us. My comment was, “Personally, I hate Fresno State…”.

See, there is a secret to survival in a hostile environment like that. It is very simple. I like to call it the “Don’t be a Dick” principle. Basically, if you’re not a douche, you’ll probably be ok. I can discuss the game rationally. I know what Idaho has done this season and maintain a conversation about the game beyond, “nuh-uh… YOU suck!” I like to think that I left the various Idaho fans I had spoken to with a positive feeling on Bronco fans. A little self deprecation always helps.

So after a few hours of libations, and becoming properly lubricated, we head into the game. This was the first time I have ever been into the potato barn… er… Kibbie Dome. Jess, this may hurt to hear, but I gotta be truthful… It sucks. Horrible. First of all, indoor football is an abomination that needs to be stricken from the earth. That said, this place is gloomy as hell, especially when all the fans were in black. It was an absolutely glorious autumn day outside. (see the Wazzu v. Oregon game 7 miles away), but we were stuck in the dark, stuffy dome. A perfect waste. The only positive was that the 14,000 Idaho fans could really make some noise in that place. You get some good reverb in there. Of course, on the flip side, the 2,000 Boise State fans could really make some loud noises as well.

Temple of Gloom

The strangest thing happened at this game. I was at the game, but I would be hard pressed to describe what actually happened on the field. It is the weirdest sensation. I don’t know how it happened. My guess is that it had something to do with all of the following factors…

  • Fermented barley and hops intake. Yeah, we had more than a few leading up to game time, but nothing strange there. I’ve certainly done that before.
  • The horrific Kibbie Dome itself (see above)
  • Our seats, being general admission, were… shall we say… less than optimal. We were seated about 5 yards deep in the endzone, second row from the field. Now, you might think, “wow! That close to the field! Great!”, and were this any other sport, you might be correct. But in football it sucks. We were also basically sitting under the video replay board and couldn’t even see that very well. When the play was not within 30 yards of us, I couldn’t tell what was happening. A 6 yard gain looks exactly like a 4 yard loss at that angle. Ugh, sucked. I didn’t know who caught Zabransky’s 2nd touchdown pass until Sunday in the newspaper.
  • Game presentation deficiencies. There were no stats provided. No other scores of the day provided. Audio was terrible, and you couldn’t hear the PA announcer with any regularity.

Basically when I walked out of that game I knew a couple things. a.) Boise State won. b.) Final score of 42-26. c.) Zabransky didn’t play particularly well. and d.) I had a piece of pizza in the 2nd quarter. Thats it. That is all I knew. When we got back to the hotel room after dinner (Zany’s in Lewiston) I turned on ESPN College Gameday Final. They mentioned that Ian Johnson had 183 yards and 4 touchdowns. I was absolutely shocked. I had no idea. I was so totally confused. I was pretty sure I was at the game, but apparently not. Maybe I somehow ended up at the wrong game? Maybe I was caught in a space-time vortex through which reality was jumbled?

So, essentially, what I’m telling you is this… I was at the game, yes. I had a good time. What happened? I have no idea. I have the game recorded and will watch it to try to figure it out.

I do have to say this… We were driving most of the day sunday. Got home late afternoon. My plan was to have a little dinner and watch the Sunday night NFL game. Only, there WAS NO SUNDAY NIGHT NFL GAME. Goddamn World Series. Don’t they get it? No one cares about the World Series, except those in Detroit and St. Louis. Even the gimmicky ESPN college game totally sucked.

Anyway, eight straight. Boise State takes the overall lead back in the series (18-17-1). We are in the drivers seat for the 5th straight WAC championship. Fresno brings their 1-6 record to town next for a national TV tilt.

I still need to make plans for a trip to Reno…

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Smoke detectors

Smoke DetectorEveryone has them. They are one of those things you don’t think about until you really need them. I have lived in many different places, every one of them had smoke detectors. Of course, I’ve never had a house burn down around me yet, thank God, so I’ve never actually used one.

Well, that is not entirely correct. I’ve had to interact with them multiple times. Which brings me to the reason for this post. Why in the hell is it that it is ALWAYS the middle of the friggin night that they start the slow beeping to tell you the battery is dying? WHY!? I have had this happen at least a half a dozen times, including 3:30am this very morning. It is that one-beep-a-minute deal that is just slow enough that you don’t awake fully and rocket out of bed, but just loud and annoying enough to keep you from actually sleeping. Usually, you spend a good hour or two in and out of sleep, not fully registering that something is going on, but knowing you’re not sleeping very well. Maybe that random beep is reflected in your dreams somehow very strangely.

Why does this NEVER happen say 5pm on a Tuesday, or noon on a Saturday… you know, when you could actually do something about it? Who built this hidden clock into the detector, and why did they think it would be funny? I would seriously like an answer to that.

The devious minds at ThinkGeek.com have a device for sale which is designed to replicate this nightmare for your fun and amusement.  Torture your co-workers with the Mind Molester.

Another question I have is why in my tiny ass, 550 sq.ft. apartment do I have two smoke detectors that are not 10 feet apart? You have all heard those things… they could wake the dead. I truly think that one could suffice the whole apartment… but what to do I know? I don’t have the lucrative government smoke detector racket in my pocket.

I have some thoughts on smoke detector design as well. Now, I’m no electrical engineer or anything, but here are my observations. Way back when, smoke detectors ran on battery power. Ok… makes sense. However, every place that I have lived in in the past 8-10 years has the detectors wired to the house current (as well as each other to sound all alarms when one goes off), yet these devices still have battery backup. Ok, I understand that… they will function even if the power is out. Great idea. Of course, in some houses I’ve seen, like my ex-laws house in New Meadows has a smoke detector near the ceiling… all well and good… but that ceiling is some 30 feet off the ground. How in blue blazes are you going to change that battery at 4 in the morning? Better them than me, thats for sure.

So here is my question. Electronic design has come a long ways. If your smoke detector is wired to current anyway, why couldn’t you simply build in a battery charger and a rechargeable battery? Wouldn’t that make sense? So, instead of replacing a regular old 9-volt every 6 months (like anyone really does that anyway… you’re all like me and wait till it start beeping at you at 2 in the morning), you could have a sturdy lithium-ion rechargeable in there that you might have to replace every 5 or 10 years. Sure, it would cost more, but when you’re building/remodeling, you’d never even notice. Besides, isn’t one less thing to worry about remembering to do worth a few extra bucks? You could make it a ‘smart’ charger that could test the current store on the battery and only charge when it gets low (which is probably every 6 months or so). The charger would bring the battery up to full charge and then shut off for the next 6, 8, 10 months. I fail to see the downside here.

Perhaps someone out there can explain to me why this hasn’t happened yet. Maybe there is some quirk of these devices I don’t know about. I fully admit, I’m no expert. I’m just a guy who got dragged out of bed this morning to rip one of these things off my ceiling just so I could attempt to go back to sleep. And frankly, I could happily live the rest of my life not having to do it again.

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In the lion’s den

I’m finally getting around to it, but here is the recap of our adventure last week in Utah.

George and I made the call long ago that we were going to travel down to Salt Lake City for the Boise State vs. University of Utah football game. Perparations were made and tickets bought.

Utah is the easiset away game there is for us as far as travel goes. Just hop on the freeway and in a few hours you’re there. Specifically, 4.5 hours. Living in the west, we’re used to having NOTHING close. Those of you back east don’t realize the distances involved out here. There are no D1 schools closer than Utah and Utah State and they’re 5 hours away. My buddy John lives south of Atlanta, and has about a dozen HUGE schools within 5 hours drive.

So, the plan was to rent some sort of luxury car for a cushy drive down. Since its so close, we’re down and back all in one day, piece of cake.

We rented a Chrysler 300 for the trip. I have to say, I liked it. Then again, I drive a 11 year old car, so at this point, anything less than a couple years old is a serious upgrade. Amazing how far cars have come in that time.

George showed up at the door just after 5 am. We were on the road at 5:30. All things being equal, we might have gotten a little too early a start. But, we made terrific time. Took us right at 4 and a half hours to get down there. I thought we would see a whole caravan of Bronco fans heading down there, but I think we were actually leading that vanguard, so we didn’t see many. However, once we got to Salt Lake City, there was orange EVERYWHERE. Apparently, some 8,000 to 10,000 Boise State fans made the trip down. I believe it.

We found a parking place on campus before 11am, and had a couple hours to kill before game time. So, George had never been downtown (ye olde Temple Square) so we hopped the light rail and rode down there.

We immediately knew something was amis. As we approach the temple, we hear some sort of preaching being played over loud speakers. The whole place was literally crawling with hundreds of guys in shirts and ties and women in skirts. It was downright creepy. We decided to boogie after a short 4 minute visit. Overwhelming. The only saving grace was there was a guy in a kilt playing the bagpipes on the corner. It helped push back the incidious feeling.

George, being the history nerd that he is, said he felt like Saladin. I had to agree.

It got worse. We went into the nearby mall food court to get some food before the game. In said food court, were multiple big screen tv’s also showing some sort of preaching thing. We were well and truly bugged out. (Note, it wasn’t until later that we found out the LDS national conference was happening… at least that helps put everything into context).

Leaving the smiling horde behind us, we head to the game. For those of you who haven’t heard the result, Boise State went in there and took Utah out behind the woodshed for a 36-3 whipping. We were 5.5 point UNDERDOGS in this game. Utah scored the first 3 points of the game (well, after our first three points)… then never scored again. It was quite amusing. Our fans 8,000 fans were louder than their 37,000.

I have to say, when you go into someone else’s house and they’re booing their own team and leaving the game early, you know you’ve really humiliated them.

The downside was our seats in the stadium were in full sun for the whole game. I got absolutely torched. Somehow, I didn’t think about bringing sun screen. The lesson is, as always, I’m a moron.

We were back on the road home at 5pm. Again, I thought we would see a bunch of broncos on the road, but we didn’t. We must have been ahead of everyone. And, just like the trip down, we got home in exactly 4.5 hours.

It was a long day, but was sure worth it. It was ever so amusing to read the columnists from Salt Lake absolutely KILLING their team the next week. Hillarious. That loss of theirs was so bad, the headline of the Associate Press article of their win over TCU mentioned it:Utah shakes off Boise State blowout, steamrolls TCU

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I need help

Ever have a terrific idea that you think could really go places but you have no clue where or how to start making it happen? That’s where I’m at right now.

Some of you know of my idea for a new website. Obviously, I’ve played it close to the vest, not blabbing it all over town. I think, if done correctly, this site could be big. Really big. You know, build-up-a-user-base-for-a-few-years-then-sell-to-Google-for-a-few-mil sort of big. I read these news reports of facebook.com selling for a billion dollars… or youtube.com thinking they’re worth $2 billion. Granted, I don’t think my idea would be that big, but hell… you never know. I read how some sites generate outrageous revenue from Google AdSense. Will mine be that big… probably not, but again, who knows?

I’m facing a number of challenges. First, I have no clue how to get the ball rolling. What should I do to start? A Lawyer? Investors? Plug away in anonymity? I just don’t have any experience with such a thing. How do I protect myself and the idea? I don’t even know what I don’t know. I’m doubly screwed. Second, I’m a developer, but I don’t have anywhere near the amount of skill such an undertaking would require. I would obviously need a developer or two to work with… but how to find them? How to pay them? What do I need to know? Mistakes to avoid? Aaaiiiiggh!

I’m so stymied that I’m paralyzed into inaction. I really think I need to get moving on this. Who knows, maybe this is my key out of the corporate grind and into grinding for myself for a change. Why not me, right?

If anyone out there has created a business site… or even their own business… or perhaps acted as an investor in a fledgling idea has any words of advice, I would GLADLY take them. I’m begging for them. Hell, point me to some books. Some websites. Information of any sort and in any form!

Maybe I can be the next internet millionaire. (keep your fingers crossed)

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CableOne Comes Through

Well, they pulled it off. The impossible. Boise State v. Wyoming is now going to be on digital cable. What an amazing turn of events. I was resigned to not seeing the game at all and living with the radio call.
The good thing is that CableOne is not going to increase rates just for adding this one channel. If I had to pay more per month to watch one game, when the other 364 days of the year this channel will be showing the Colorado State diving team or something, I might be less enthusiastic.

So, the party is at my apartment. Get there early, cause there sure ain’t much seating. There ain’t much food either… ok… NO food… so if you want something, bring it with, plus a little something for the host, huh?

In other news, someone is walking around the office today whistling ‘Jingle Bells’. If I find them, I will strangle them to death with my bare hands. There is no other option.

Speaking of my office, it is actually quiet in here today. See, that large open staging area I’ve mentioned in past posts (where they’ve alternately stored crap and had product faires) has been holding all of the printers being moved in and moved out of the entire site. They have been doing this big printer roll out program latetly, taking all of the personal printers off peoples’ desks and replacing them with the big multi-function laserjets a couple for each team. Well, guess where they were storing all of said printers… 20 feet from my cube.

Well, this week, they had piles and piles of personal printers. Then, for some reason, they removed the walls surrounding their operation which knocked down a little of the noise. From my cube door, I could see clear across the expanse of printers, as well as hear every conversation, every crash, every scrape, everything. My personal favorite was the guy who was pulling the toner cartridges from the printers and literally tossing them into a big container. Just a lovely amout of noise, to which this guy was oblivious that less than 5 yards away were people actually trying to do office business. It was so bad, I had to eject at 10am and spend the day working from home.

Fortunately, today, all is gone. No printers. No workers. No distractions. It’s nice. Of course, a guy came by my cube asking if we had wireless network connection in the building because his team is moving in. I ask him what team that was, and he said it was the PET team (whatever the hell that means) but then threw in this little gem, “Hope you’re prepared, its going to be noisy.”

Oh goody… I can’t wait.

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Overdose

I didn’t think it was possible, but I pulled it off. I think I have actually overdosed on football. Many times I have tried, yet could never reach that saturation point where you just couldn’t take in any more information but this weekend was the clincher. Here’s how it happened.

It all began Thursday evening. As I left work at 3:30 to head down to the Boise State v. Oregon State game on the blue. Granted, I wasn’t technically watching football the entire time, but it is part of the process, so I’m including it. So, from my arrival on campus about 4pm (for a 5:30 kick off) until the game ended at 9:30, it was 5.5 hours of some of the most fun I’ve had in a while. Boise State looked terrific. Ian Johnson was unbelievable. So great was the game, I made the mistake of starting to watch my recording of the game once I got home. I had planned on watching just the first quarter before going to bed, but that didn’t last. So, 3 and a half hours later, I watched the entire game again. That puts me at 9 hours of football, and it wasn’t even Friday yet.

Friday was strangely football free. I had other plans so I didn’t see any of Pittsburgh v. Cincinnatti. If Thrusday was the appetizer, then Friday was the palate-cleansing sorbet before the hearty meal of Saturday and Sunday. A football free day in the middle here might just have saved my sanity.

I awoke early Saturday morning and flipped on ESPN College GameDay before I even put my feet onto the floor. The first games started at 10am local. After an hour of GameDay I was set. I parked on the couch and flipped around between Rutgers killing Illinois, and Va Tech v. NC in high def. As an aside, I can’t wait until that point in the future where EVERY sporting event is in Hi Def. There is nothing worse than wanting to watch a game that is being broadcast in hi def, but you don’t receieve the channel (CableOne & ESPN2HD, I’m looking at you). I simply want every single sporting event, specifically football, in hi def. I will take nothing less. Is that too much to ask?

Anyway, the early games were simply a warmup for the real games to follow. Notre Dame v. Penn State was a huge matchp that I had been looking forward to. Plus, at the same time we had the battle of the Palouse in Idaho v. Wazzu. After last weekend, I thought Idaho might keep this one interesting. Well, they didn’t. In fact, they looked WAY worse than they did last week. Perhaps their heads got a little big after almost beating MSU. Plus, Notre Dame blew out Penn State. I rode through those 2 games going with the ‘picture in picture’ feature on the tube to watch both at the same time. Neither game was close, but I enjoyed each one immensely since I love ND and… uh… Idaho… um… not so much.

Another thing I love doing is watching the ‘crawl’ at the bottom of the screen of scores from around the country. There are always some surprising nuggets in there. Such as San Jose State beating Stanford (I always root for WAC teams vs. other conferences) or even funnier is Colorado losing to Colorado State. Oooo… Coach Hawk. You have some SERIOUS work to do there. Oh for two. Colorado has scored a total of 20 points this season. Worse than that, they have a TOTAL of 363 total yards in 2 games. Mind you, this was at home against a 1-AA team and at a neutral site against a middle of the road Mountain West arch rival. When he was here, we would regularaly roll up 20 points in less than a quarter. It might take an entire half to get to 363 yards. For the record, Ian Johnson alone had 261 total yards and 30 points vs. Oregon State. Any second thoughts there, Hawk?

Following the Notre Dame and Idaho thrashings, it was another flip fest until the big game came around, Ohio State at Texas. Although, a quick dinner trip to Red Robin was thrown in there, there were still multiple TVs showing OSU/TX and LSU/Arizona, so other than the 10 minute drive, I was still mainlining football.

The day didn’t end until Fresno ran out of chances vs. Oregon at about 11:30pm local. If you’re counting, that is 13.5 straight hours of football. Running total of 22.5 hours of football with Opening Sunday of NFL still to come.

The Sunday plan was for George and I to hit somewhere to watch multiple games. We chose Busters, a local sports bar. We arrived just after the first games kickoffs at 11am. We proceded to eat finger steaks and watch 8 games at once. Our heads were on a swivel, always catching events on all the separate games. It’s a skill. Finger steaks, 2 pitchers of beer, countless cokes, a plate of ulitmate nachos, twelve games and 6 hours later, we retired back to my apartment. What did we do? You guessed it, turned on Sunday Night Football and spent the next 3.5 hours watching Giants v. Colts. For the day, thats another 9.5 hours and a grand total of 32 total hours of football. I think I’ve developed a football shaped brain tumor.

However, I’M NOT FINISHED! What is the perfect dessert to such a weekend football meal? That’s right… TWO Monday Night Football games. Might as well finish it off with another 7 or so hours of football. If anyone out there knows of a good doctor to surgically remove the couch from my ass, send them my way. For those of you needing help with the math, that would be damn near 40 hours of football in 5 days, or a full 1 of every 3 hours was spent watching football. even worse, if you remove time spent sleeping, I spent 45% of my last 5 days watching football. And, 3 of those are work days, so if you were to remove those 24 hours from the mix, I actually spent THREE FULL DAYS doing nothing but watching games. I think I might need to seek professional help. I can totally feel my brain turning to a tapioca like consistency and dripping from my ears.
Not to mention, I won my fantasy game as well (unless Lamont Jordan goes off for 30+ points tonight… ain’t gonna happen).

Some of you might be wondering (like one in my office asked), yes, I am single, with no kids, living in an apartment. aka. zero prior commitments of any type. I suppose there are some advantages. I wonder how many of you guys out there would give their right arms to live that weekend. However, I might be willing to concede that that might have been a little too much, even for me. I think the only way I could have ingested more football was if I could have some how jacked a satellite signal directly into my cerebral cortex.

If it came in High Def, I might just concider it.

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Car Update

Finally got a hold of the last honest mechanic in the valley. He can’t get me in until Friday morning. *sigh* What can ya do? Yes, for the record I’m still driving the damn thing. Roll the dice. Go for the gusto. No guts no glory. Damn the torpedeoes. Etc. Etc.

I’ll just carry extra coolant and a oven mitt. What’s life without a little gambling, right?

Hopefully, it will just be a leaky hose or something. But, I really can’t complain. The car is 10 years old (only 91k miles though) and has pretty much been bullet proof for the 7 years I’ve owned it. *knock on wood*

Site update… I’ve had renewed problems with the database. I’ve lost posts and comments when they for some reason re-restored my site from backup about 48 hours after they did it before. Anyway, I think it has re-solidified. No guarantees, but we’ll see what happens.

More football tomorrow. According to USAToday, BSU is favored by 8. I don’t know if I’d agree with that. Seems a little high. But then again, I would be supremely pleased with another 40 point blow out.

My team here at work is having a potluck tomorrow. Actually, the whole call center is (even though we aren’t even in the same building as the call center anymore, we’re doing it too). They’re calling it a ‘Tailgate Potluck’ for the BSU/OSU game. They’re encouraging everyone to wear their blue and orange, giving out prizes and crap like that. I can say with all sincerity that I have no doubt that I am the biggest bronco fan on our team. Just because I don’t paint my face or wear an orange fright wig doesn’t mean I’m not passionate about it. On the other hand, part of me just hates potlucks. I don’t know why.

Site update… I realize I haven’t written a “feature” piece in a while. Mostly been riding on the everyday minutiae of my rather boring life. That will change. I have a couple of ideas I want to get done.

So keep checking back. There will be more to read, I promise.

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By Popular Demand

My day, the finish…

I would have to say the day finished sucessfully, although not exactly smoothly.

I started the wiring and hooking up of the surround sound. Of course, I ran into some snags. First, I had a bunch of speaker wire left over that I was using. Unfortunately, I don’t have a handy dandy wire stripper. I did at one time, but gee… I don’t seem to have it any more. *sigh* So, I’m trying to strip this cheap ass wire with just regular old needle-nose pliers. Needless to say, more often than not, I cut the flimsy little wires as I was stripping them. But, eventually, I got them all hooked up. Wait, check that. I had enough wire to wire all but one of the rear speakers. So, I had to go to target, yet again.

I also bought a new digital optical cable to connect the cable box audio to the receiver, but once I had it connected I finally found my old one. I just love buying crap I don’t actually need. Plus, my receiver is old and cheap, as it only has 2 digital audio inputs. So, I connected the cable box and the DVD player. That leaves the xbox high and dry in just using the TV speakers. Well, we can’t have it all.

It’s also a bummer to have to keep the volume low on the deal. Goddamn apartment living. Oh well.

Other events today. I watched Tiger finish off his fifth tourament win in a row. That guy is a machine.

I whipped up a hamburger caserole for dinner (and had to go out to the grocery store to get the goods too). Amazing how much you use your car when you’re trying not to.

Finished the day by watching ‘Glengarry Glenn Ross’. It was ok. I didn’t love it. Thought it would be better.

So, coming up I have to figure out how in the hell to take care of my car. But, to balance that out, I have a second date tomorrow night.

It’s always something.