Versatile Blogger Award

Apparently I've won an Award of sorts. Or had it bestowed upon me. Same thing, sort of, although this award comes with rules for accepting it.

Like linking back to the Blogger who gave it to me, being Memphis Steve from Steve's Nude Memphis. No, he's not naked, or even a nudist, just read his Blog and you'll get it. Or not.

The second rule is to share seven things about yourself, and the third is to pass the award on to 15...FIFTEEN!!?!? recently discovered Blogs. I think I'll fail that part, but first...

1. If I like you I will deliberately insult you, and the more I like you the more I will insult you. The problem is I'm socially inept so I usually cannot tell when I've gone too far, and what should be a bit of light-hearted teasing among mates often comes across as very offensive.

2. I like to walk places. I once offended my Dad when I said I needed to go into town, he offered to give me a lift, and I said I could just walk. It was only about a half hour walk into town. No big deal, to me. Dad was pretty pissed off though. When I first came to the States I got a job in the local Mall about a mile from the in-laws home (where we lived for the first year or so after we were married...does that count as Number 3? I think so. I'm going to count it.) and the mother-in-law was visibly shocked when I told her I was going to walk to the Mall.

3. After the wife and I were married we lived with her parents for about a year. I told you I was going to count it.

4. I believe in ghosts. I believe we don't see them because we've learned how to close our minds to them, and that children whose minds are still open can still perceive them. I believe that in some cases the crazy homeless people we see having conversations or arguments with thin air are crazy but their minds are no longer closed and so they're actually talking to and arguing with ghosts.

5. (a) In High School I copied an entire book on Ned Kelly for a History assignment. This was before Referencing and Bibliographies were expected. I got an A+.
5. (b) In College, when only one of the girls in our group understood a certain assignment she let four of us rewrite her essay so we could all pass. We all made sure to write it a little differently, use our own words, etc., so the Professor wouldn't suspect us of copying. When we got our grades back the girl whose assignment we copied from got a B, and everyone else got a C, except for me. I got an A. Sometimes cheaters do prosper.

6. Back in High School, I was reading the winning entries for a State-wide short story competition when I came across a very familiar story about a boy and his new bike. At home that afternoon I searched through numerous editions of Reader's Digest until I found the issue with the story about a boy and his new bike. The next day I showed my English Teacher the winning short story, along with the corresponding Reader's Digest. A few weeks later my English Teacher told me that he had learned that the student had been ordered to return his prize. I don't remember what it was. Probably money.

7. I have a genius-level IQ, which doesn't really mean anything other than I'm very good at solving logical puzzles. I do very well in maths-based tests, but anything requiring critical thinking, reading comprehension, etc., I usually fail with flying colors.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for! Or not. My nominees for the Versatile Blogger Award. Of which there most assuredly will not be 15.

1. 6 Inch Move is a Blog written by several table-top wargaming friends. I think this counts for as many extra Blogs as I need to make up my 15 :P

2. The Food In My Beard is, obviously enough, a food Blog. It's written by a guy who loves to cook for himself and his friends, and he appears to be pretty damn good at it, too. Features lots of delicious photos. Do not read while hungry.

3. Carrying A Cat By The Tail stars Spuds, a self-proclaimed "cool guy". If he actually says and does even half the stuff he says and does (and I have no reason to believe that he does not) then he is, indeed, a very cool dude.

4. A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings is written by an Aussie girl who moved from Melbourne to Canberra for work, before regaining her senses and moving back to Melbourne. That's Melbourne, Australia, not Melbourne, Florida.

The following Blogs have been classified by Blogger as Adults-only. Whatever that means.

5. Perception is Everything is written by KittyCat and is probably one of my most favorite, newly discovered Blogs.

6. Fun and Dirty Thoughts is written by a pretty hot guy named Marcus who still seems to have trouble charming the pants off his wife.

7. GoodWill (Bad Will) is written by Good Will, but sometimes he's Bad Will, and as the saying goes, when he's good he is very, very good, but when he's bad he's even better ;)

That's all, folks.

To Spruce Grove, and beyond!!!

That title doesn't look terribly witty. I should probably stick to my day job. Not like I plan to make any money off this Blog anyway...unless I put a Paypal donation button on the side. I wonder...if I did that...would anyone actually use it??? I wouldn't do that anyway, I despise beggars because most of them don't need the money anyway, or if they do, they only need it because they're not making any attempt to actually do anything with their life. That said, I do admire the work ethic of some of downtown L.A.'s perpetually homeless folks. I pass through Union Station at approx. 5:30am and there are already beggars hitting me up for spare change.

I get off the train at Pershing Square and walk a few blocks to the office and the other morning I ran into a woman who could have been my mother. I don't mean she looked like my mum, but she was in her late 50s to 60s, quite well dressed, clean, well groomed, in other words she looked like your typical middle-class elderly woman. When she said "Excuse me" I stopped to hear her out because she did not look like your average beggar, and then she asked me for change, and I said "Sorry" to her and walked on. I had another early riser hit me up one time but as soon as I heard him say, "I live in Santa Ana..." I cut him off. "No change, buddy."

Looking at the title of this entry this was not meant to be a rant on homeless people and I'm pretty sure I've done that already. Oh, I see how I derailed myself, so, back to the actual topic.

This past weekend was supposed to be the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. When my Mum was here this time last year we sat out in the backyard and tried to see some meteors, but we were SOL - too much ambient light - so I promised my son that next year (being now) I'd take him camping and we'd see some meteors for sure. Although apparently the ones you see are really meteorites, if I recall my High School Astronomy correctly. Meteors are in outer space, meteorites are the ones that enter Earth's atmosphere.

So it was this time of year again (isn't that a redundant saying? Isn't it always "That time of year"?) and the annual Perseid Meteor Shower was passing by so I decided the boy and I would head up into the Angeles National Forest and go camping and maybe see some meteors.

I got off work early on Friday, and after dicking around at home getting everything packed (we were going for one fucking night and it still seemed to take forever to get our shit together), plus a trip to the hardware store for a hatchet, followed by a trip to the market for a packet of hotdogs, we were finally off. Fortunately the entrance to the park is not far from home so by 4pm (or so) we were parked at Chantry Flat (in the last freaking space in the lot, at 4pm, on a Friday afternoon. Incredible!) had our packs on our backs and were heading into the wilderness.

I'd come down here a few weeks earlier with the family, and I'd planned to do the 4-mile roundtrip via Camp Hoagee, except we missed our turn off and wound up at Sturtevant Falls instead, which for a family hike was actually a much more pleasant destination than 4 miles of nowhere. I'd also been to the Falls a couple of times before but had never gone any further. Fortunately I had a map, and the trail had decent signs pointing the way, so I was pretty confident we would find the Spruce Grove campsite. However, having never been past Sturtevant Falls before I was not prepared for what was in store for the boy and me.

The boy is 11 now. He does Tae Kwon Do a couple of times a week, plays golf with me (occasionally), and lately has been taking tennis lessons once a week with his uncle. He's not fat, not at all, in fact he's in pretty good shape compared to many of his friends, but he had never been on a hike like what I had planned for us.

We hiked the 1 1/2 miles along the trail to Sturtevant Falls until we came to the Spruce Grove turn-off, and then made our first decision. Did we want to take the "Horse Trail" (so called because the packmules which supply Camp Sturtevant come that way) or did we want to take Upper Falls Trail which took us, obviously enough, above Sturtevant Falls. We went with the Upper Falls Trail and it was...interesting.

And here's a picture. Actually, here's a few. As always, you can click 'em to make 'em bigger.
This is the edge of the pool at the base of the Falls. There are people down there. We're pretty high up. Not like thousands of feet in the air, but definitely vertigo-inducing, if you're susceptible to that sort of thing.

This shot was taken pretty much from the path itself, I just leaned over a tad. There were sections of the path so narrow that you could not put both feet down side-by-side, and the drop-off at those sections was not unlike that in this picture.

And then there were sights like this cave. At least I think it's a cave. We didn't go in there, or even stop to take a closer look; we were in a race with the sun. I knew we were close when I smelled smoke from a campfire, then we crested a hill and although the scenery didn't change, it opened up a little, and the sight that greeted us was very welcoming.

Several of the camp spots were already occupied but the one closest to where we came in was free so we quickly claimed it. For a campground 4 miles into the forest it was actually quite decent. Each site had a cleared area to pitch your tent; a picnic table with bench seats; and two fire places, one a fire pit with a hinged grate (which could be swung onto the fire, or lifted out of the way), and the second an almost enclosed fire place (with a chimney) and a flat piece of griddle-like iron on top.

Dinner that night was beans with hot dogs, grilled the traditional way on a forked stick. The dogs, that is; the beans were heated up in a frying pan that I carried in my pack, along with the tins of beans, hot dogs, bowls, etc. The boy carried his pack but he just had a few bottles of water, his sleeping bag & sleeping mat, spare socks and a warm sweater. I had the same in my pack, too, but I also had the tent. I planned to weigh my pack before we set out, but I forgot, and that's probably a good thing. I know the military do crazy hikes with 60-100 lbs packs but they train for that shit AND they get paid to do it. I was doing this for fun...sort of.

Baked beans and grilled hot dogs. After a 2 1/2-hour hike that simple fare tasted unbe-fucking-lieavable! It was seriously good. The boy ate 1 1/2 dogs and not quite a full tin of beans. I added the remnants of his beans to my own tin along with 2 1/2 dogs. After the dishes were done (washed in the nearby & apparently freezing cold stream) we lay down next to the fire, stared up at the sky, and looked for meteors, while silently berating the City-boys in the next site over who insisted on shining their super bright flashlight all over the place. We lay there looking up at the night sky and saw lots of stars but no meteors.

"Want to keep looking, or go to bed?" I asked the boy.

"Keep looking," he replied. So we did.

A while later I repeated my question and this time he chose "Bed". Not surprisingly. I'm sure even without the food his pack was still pretty heavy. For the next few hours I tossed & turned, dozed off & woke up, until some time after midnight when I finally managed to stay asleep until 6am.

Wanting to get going before it got too hot I woke the boy up, and 45 minutes later we had the tent packed up, had eaten breakfast (granola bars), and were on our way. The return journey was not back out the way we came but further in, past Camp Sturtevant, up Mt. Zion, down the other side, through Camp Hoagee and on to Chantry Flat, being a total distance of approximately 5 1/2 miles.

Again the boy did amazingly well and we were back at the car by 9:30am.

"Want to do something like this again?" I asked him.

"Maybe," he said, "but not quite as long."

I know how you feel, son ;)

Wii Fit

Not really a review. I did that already.

The long face the animated Balance Board has each time I tell it "No, I don't want to hear one of your Fitness Tips" still amuses me.

We have carpeted floors in the new place. Wii Fits aren't entirely that accurate on carpet.

It came with four little rubber extensions (for the feet) for when it's to be used on carpeted floors, but even with them I still don't believe it's as accurate as it would be on a solid wood floor.

I have a piece of chipboard that is just a shade bigger than the Balance Board, although all that does is distribute the weight load over a greater surface area. The carpet still depresses beneath the chipboard so any measurements still have to be taken with a grain of salt.

I deliberately did a Body Test without the chipboard, and without the feet extensions, and I "weighed" 15 pounds lighter than what I know I am. Think the Balance Board with the long face is funny? I found it's flabbergasted reaction to me losing 15 pounds in one day highly amusing.

I'm 41 years old (42 in 2 weeks time), I'm 5'11, 182 lbs (or so), with approx. 15% Body Fat. I am NOT overweight so Fuck You, Wii Fit! Don't go telling me "That's overweight" in your little condescending tone when I take a Body Test.

Having "lost" 15 pounds the Wii Fit now has me in the Normal Range for the archaic BMI and so my Mii has a slender body. Well, not slender, per se, but he's not rotund anymore either.

I'm still working out but I'm not going to take any more Body Tests. My new test is to look in the mirror. Yeah, I'm looking good, but I could look better. That's my Body Test.

What a crock

I've long suspected that my digital BF% Scales are not as accurate as they could be, not for digital scales which, one would assume, should be quite accurate.

Although I don't believe in them yesterday could be considered my "cheat day". Liz drove into downtown to join me for lunch and we ended up at the Eastside Market where I consumed an entire sausage & meatball sandwich. I've been pretty good for the last few weeks and my voluntary commute change means I now walk 2 miles to work and back, plus daily workouts on the Wii Fit, so it's not like I undid the past few weeks work.

This morning, post workout, I weighed 185 lbs. I got dressed, shorts & t-shirt, then weighed myself again. 187 lbs. Really? Okay, I'll take your word for it. I hit the button to measure my Body Fat (allegedly via Bioimpedance) and the scales said I was at 22%.

I'm sorry. 22%? Yesterday, at 182 lbs, you said I was at 20%. Now, I weigh 5 lbs more and you say I'm back up to 22%? I decided to conduct a very simple test, grabbed a 5 lb weight and my two 10 lb dumbbells, and returned to the scales. With 5 lb weight in hand I stepped on and now I weighed 192 lbs. Ok, fair enough. I stepped off, grabbed my two 10 lb weighs and stepped back on.

209 lbs.

I see.

I hit the button to measure my body fat, the scale ran it's alleged bio-impedance test and a few seconds later the number 27 appeared on the screen.

Really?

Because while I might "weigh" 20 lbs more than before, I'm pretty sure that's not an extra 20 lbs of fat, so my body fat percentage should have not changed. In fact, if anything, it should have gone down, because now the fat-to-weight ratio has decreased...or increased, depending on how you look at it.

So the Body Fat Calculator doesn't really calculate your actual body fat via bio-impedance but simply goes off your height and weight. What a fucking crock.

I also know the scales are not entirely accurate either. I can weigh myself prior to using the toilet, then immediately afterward, and the scales will give me the same weight. I can drink a large glass of water between weighings and the scales will tell me no change.

FWIW, this was a Taylor Body Fat Analyzer & Scale, Model #5564, which are no longer available.

If you have a combination Scale & BFA, I'd like to ask you to conduct this simple test and post the results in my Comments section. Weigh yourself and calculate your BF%, then weigh yourself again while holding a heavy item. Does your BF% change? If so, which way?

Wii down! Wii down!!!

A few years ago we got our Wii and while it's not an XBox or a PS3 it's still a lot of fun, and aside from a couple of glitches which never required anything more than a reboot to resolve we never had any problems with it. Until this weekend.

So a few weeks ago my office decided to have a Weight Loss competition.

Wait! Weren't we talking about your Wii?

Yes, we were. We'll get back to that.

So my office weight loss competition is being held over 3 months with a $20/month fee, and the winner & Biggest Loser takes all at the final weigh-in on October 5th.

Last year I lost almost 30 pounds in a couple of months, going from 210 down to 180, simply by watching what I ate (and watching less of it ;), and using my Wii and Wii Fit Boxing. I got down to 180 but then stopped working out as diligently, and my weight slowly crept back up. Fortunately it never went over 190, which is healthy for a 5'11", 41 year old guy who doesn't work out that much, but I could do better. According to my scales I've got approx. 20% Body Fat, so let's do some math, shall we? No? I don't care. My Blog, my rules.

I was 210 lbs with 25% Body Fat. That equates to ~52.5 lbs of fat. Last night I weighed 183 lbs and my scales told me I was at 20% Body Fat. That equates to 36.6 lbs. Doing the math we see that I've lost approx. 16 lbs of fat, but my weight has dropped by 27 lbs. How did I lose that extra weight? Muscle mass. I lost approx. 9 lbs of muscle. But that's okay. I'm a big guy but I don't need to be. I don't play any sports other than golf, and I work in an office, not on a construction site. I don't mind losing a little bit of muscle. However, I don't want to lose too much, either, because muscles burn calories. Even just sitting still, if you're a buff guy, you naturally burn more calories than the flabby guy next to you. The more muscle I shed the less muscle I have to burn calories, which is one of the reasons people hit a plateau when they're trying to lose weight. They don't just lose fat, they lose muscle; lose enough muscle and the calorie deficit you created (aka "diet") has just been negated. Now you need to work out even more to continue losing weight. But unless you know exactly what you're doing and are consuming sufficient protein and carbs and essential fats you're going to lose muscle along with the fat, making it harder & harder to lose more & more weight.

And in order to win this weight loss competition I need to lose weight.

I don't necessarily want to add bulk because muscle, being denser, weighs more than fat. Sure, I can tone up and get lean by working out, shedding fat, and adding muscle, and I'd look great, but I'd still weigh 185 lb, if not more. I'd look great, but I want those Benjamins, so I need to accept that some of the weight I'm going to lose will be muscle. I'll lose fat, sure, but I'm going to lose muscle, too, and if I want the money there's nothing I can do about that.

Our initial weigh-in was 3 weeks ago, on July 6th, being right after July 4th, and the wife had already mentioned that uncle was having a BBQ at his house. So that was a great opportunity to stack the scales in my favor by stuffing my digestive system full of yummy, bbq goodness, then holding onto it until Wednesday. Sorry. TMI?

Watching "The Biggest Loser" a couple of months ago I'd also stumbled across a trick to gain a lot of weight really, really quickly, and in a manner much akin to how you can lose weight really, really fast. H2O aka Water. One 16oz bottle of water weighs 1 lb. Two 16 oz bottles of water weighs? Yes, 2 lbs. And so on.

I weighed 190 lbs. I was 20 lbs lighter than last year, but that's the easy weight to lose. Oh sure, I knew I could get down to 180 fairly easily, but anything past that would require a seriously dedicated effort. What to do? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we diet. And so I did. I ate a lot during the week or so leading up to the weigh-in, and on the morning of the weigh-in? I drank. Of course you can only drink so much water without suffering the natural, foregone conclusion of being sufficiently hydrated, if not overly so. Fortunately my boss got in early so I was able to check in with her and my official starting weight was duly observed by a credible witness. With a bursting bladder I weighed in at a staggering 199.6 lbs. And about 10 minutes later I'd lost my first 3-4 lbs :P

Precisely one week later we had our second weigh-in, and knowing I'd already lost a decent amount of weight I again drank a couple of bottles of water prior to weighing in. Don't want to lose too much too fast and scare off the competition. In one week I "lost" 3.51% of my starting weight. One other guy in the office lost 3.54% and I would later learn that he also waterloaded prior to his first weigh-in. The things people do for money ;)

Just like last year I'd been working out with the Wii and Wii Fit Boxing, but this weekend I hit a snag.

Friday afternoon the boy was playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and when I went to join in the Wii crashed on us. I actually forgot it did that, but as I mentioned earlier it wasn't the first time, and as it was almost time for the boy's swimming lesson I turned the Wii off and thought nothing more about it. I wouldn't use the Wii again until Sunday but when I turned it on and inserted the Wii Fit disc nothing happened. The Wii started up, the Wii Home menu appeared, but the disc refused to load. I tried a couple of other discs to no avail. None of them would load. This did not look good. I know my way around the inside of a PC, but a Wii? Sure, it's a computer, but Nintendo do not make it easy to get into them. And even if I did get it open, it's not like I would have the spare bits & pieces lying around like I do with my PCs.

Nope. A malfunctioning video game console is bad news to all but the most experienced tech geek. Fortunately the Wii did tell me that it couldn't read the disc, and as it couldn't read any of my discs I figured it was either a dirty laser lens reader, or...something more serious :P Also fortunate was that Nintendo sell a Laser Lens Cleaning Kit for $10 plus S&H, which is usually another $10-$15.

Hmm, they must sell these things in Toys R Us though, right?

No, they don't.

Best Buy?

Nope.

Target? Walmart? Gamestop???

Nope.

A few clerks knew what I was talking about but their replies were all the same: We haven't carried them for a few months now.

I see. To this paranoid conspiracy theorist it appeared that Nintendo stopped supplying the brick & stone stores with these Kits in order to maximize their profit on them. Probably because people bought them, used them, then returned them. Which may not be that far from the truth. Now I wouldn't necessarily have done that, not unless it didn't work. But without it being available in my local brick & stone store I didn't even have that opportunity to see if cleaning the laser lens might solve my problem.

We've had the Wii for almost 4 years now, which is a pretty good run for a console, even though our Gamecube works just fine, as does the N64 (after a spot of blowing on the cart and in the slot ;), but that means the Wii is well & truly out of its warranty period. I went online, and initiated a repair request via Nintendo's website. $75 for the repair, plus tax, plus S&H, for a total cost of $92. IF I could buy a new Wii I could probably get one, just the Wii, for approx. $100. But Nintendo don't sell just the Wii. They bundle them with Mario Kart, or Donkey Kong, or Mario Bros., and they retail them for $150. I'm not spending that much on a new Wii, and the wife said "Screw that!" to their $92 repair charge. Instead we borrowed the in-laws Wii and promised to return it for the weekend when the kids come to visit.

In the meantime I went online and started researching Wii problems, specifically how to disassemble a Wii and clean the laser lens. I found a Youtube video where the guy didn't pull his Wii apart, instead, he used an old CD and built a replica Nintendo Lens Cleaning Kit, which is essentially nothing more than a disc with an absorbent pad for applying cleaning solution, and a handle so you can both remove the disc from the Wii's disc slot, but also use the handle to jiggle the disc around to clean the laser lens. That's what Nintendo wanted me to pay $25 for; a plastic disc with a cleaning pad and a handle.

More useful was that the video creator said that a month after he used his homemade lens cleaning disc and got his Wii reading discs again, it stopped working, again, and this time no amount of cleaning got it working. So he put in a ticket to Nintendo and told them he had been playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl when it stopped reading the disc, and Nintendo offered him a free repair inc. free S&H! Now that's a price not even the wife could turn down.

And that's when my son reminded me that the Wii had crashed on us Friday afternoon while he had been playing Brawl.

I went online. I put in a ticket to Nintendo. I reported that the "failure to read disc" error was attributed to Brawl. And this time Nintendo offered me a free repair, inc. free S&H.

The only caveat was that along with the Wii, I had to include our copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I told the boy that Nintendo would repair the Wii for free, but we had to send them our copy of Brawl, as well.

"Will we get it back?" he asked.

"Of course!" I reassured him. "And if we don't, there will be hell to pay!"

On Nintendo's website was a quote from a happy customer who claimed he got his Wii back within a week of sending it in for repairs. Nintendo themselves say to allow up to 8-10 business days. Let's see what happens.

Bloodbowl '11

"Dad, can we play the spiked football game?" the boy said. It took me a few seconds to realize what he meant, because we hadn't played Bloodbowl for quite some time.

I dragged everything out and laid the teams out for him to choose from. He went with the Orcs so I tossed in an unpainted Varag Ghoulchewer, then decided to choose the more completely painted (but no less poncy) Wood Elves and their star player Jordell Freshbreeze, over the hardier but lesser painted Dwarfs.

The Elves won the toss and elected to receive, forcing the boy to set up his Orcs first. Not knowing how to play to their strength he started with his two Black Orcs on the bench, and I took advantage of his inexperience, sending one of my fast & agile Catchers up the left wing on my first Turn, and scoring a touchdown with him on my second.

I scored another quick Touchdown within the next two Turns when I was able to bring down the mighty Varag and strip the ball from him, although the huge Orc's armor prevented me from doing any serious damage. The high Armor Value of the slow but tough Orcs would be a boon to the boy as I brought down Orc after Orc, only to see them get back to their feet on the next turn. Meanwhile, my nimble but far less armored Elves were taking a beating. The low point of the first half was a ball-carrying Jordell being caught by a solitary Thrower mere yards from the end zone. A series of lucky rolls from the boy not only brought my star player down, but took him out of the game permanently.

Meanwhile, back on the line of scrimmage, the rest of my Elves were not faring any better. It was my own fault for teaching the boy the flanking maneuver that begins with the end model Blocking his opponent and freeing himself up to Assist his neighboring team mate with his Block, and so on down the line. The results speak for themselves.
In case it's not readily apparent, of the 9 Wood Elf models in this picture only 4 of them are still standing.

We put up a valiant fight but the Elves are not made for stand-up, knock down fights, not against Orcs. They're good at the second part, but not so good at the first. The boy was able to keep control of the ball and so control the play, and as the first Half drew to a close a lone green Lineman ran into the end zone while his team mates looked on (and probably gave the Elf at their feet a sly kicking for good measure).
The Elf's dugout was a sad and miserable place at halftime. It's hard to inspire the lads when almost half their team are Knocked Out, Seriously Injured, or worse.

Note: This is not the way to coach the Wood Elves to victory. Maybe the Dwarfs could hold on in this position long enough to scrape out a victory, or at least play to a tie. We're three turns into the Second Half, and Varag has the ball again, but this time he's flanked by his team mates as he prepares to stomp his way to victory. Not even the three Elves who ganged up on a prone Orc behind the play were able to slow down the green tide of destruction.

This game is not over yet, but the best I can probably hope for is a draw.

Mini-vacation

My son graduated from 5th Grade & Elementary school last week, which resulted in me having a mini-vacation from Wednesday through Monday, during which I:

• inflated and tied over 100 helium balloons, blistering the side of my finger in the process (something I didn't realize I'd done until the blister burst around the 90th balloon);
• ran security/crowd control on 200+ proud parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., all intent on getting a photo of their little angel receiving his/her "diploma" while being completely oblivious to who they stood in front of to do so;
• co-chaperoned 100+ screaming 10 y/olds at a graduation 10-pin bowling party, where I discovered 10-year old kids not only know the words to Gaga's Poker Face, Taio Cruz's Dynamite, and Katy Perry's Firework but how to dance along to them, too...except for my son. He's a chip off the old block, he is ;)
• helped my 6 y/old daughter finally beat Kirby's Epic Yarn, Lego Batman, and Mario Galaxy. (Note: we only beat them, we didn't complete them. I later returned to Mario Galaxy and collected a few extra Power Stars but turned the game off when the Developers confused "challenging" with "frustrating".)

I don't honk when you're in MY lane

The right-hand lane which I use to enter the bus station's parking lot is not a right turn-only lane, so cars are free to use that right hand lane to continue straight ahead, and most vehicles in that lane do because they prefer to park in the next lot, or they're heading for the Freeway just a little further down. I find this annoying because in California, unless there are signs saying otherwise, you can make a right-hand turn on a red light, and if I don't catch the green light inevitably I find myself stopped behind someone who wants to go straight ahead. But as it's not a right turn-only lane they're doing nothing wrong, so I sit patiently and wait for the green.

Unlike most Southern Californians I always use my turn signal, and sometimes I'll pull up right behind this car, barely inches from their rear bumper, but slightly off center so if their mirrors are angled correctly my blinking turn signal is being reflected in their right-hand mirror. At times like these I'm even tempted to honk my horn at them, as if to say, "Come on, turn already." Except that's rude. They don't have their turn signal on, and if they wanted to turn they would have done so, so I sit there, patiently waiting for the light to turn green. Of course when it does there's always a couple of pedestrians from the parking lot waiting to cross the road to the bus station, so as a courteous driver (for the most part) I now feel compelled to wait for them too.

And the situation I've just described is exactly what happened this morning.

When the light went green the car in front of me drove on, straight ahead, and I pulled forward, turn signal still blinking, just like it had been doing the entire time I sat there waiting patiently for the light to turn green, then I stopped. I stopped because George, the old man who rides my bus, who had a stroke a few years back and so now walks with a pronounced limp/shuffle, good old George had stepped down into the crosswalk and was slowly hobbling across the road into which I wanted to turn.

Now I'll admit that maybe I didn't pull forward quite as much as I could have, but as far as I'm concerned yielding to pedestrians does not mean stopping your car halfway into the crosswalk so they're forced to walk around you. As far as I'm concerned, yielding to pedestrians means coming to a complete stop before your car even enters the crosswalk, and so I did.

For some reason this offended the driver of the car behind me. At first I wasn't sure if he'd flashed his headlights at me, but then he honked his horn, and then he flashed his lights again.

"Hello!" I said to myself with malicious glee. "Yielding to Pedestrians here. FUCKING wait!"

The horn honked again, accompanied by more flashing of head lights.

Now I don't know about you but when I'm being a courteous, considerate driver and yielding to pedestrians in a crosswalk, particularly slightly disabled pedestrians, specifically, slightly disabled pedestrians who I happen to know, and you're a rude, impatient, arrogant prick of a driver behind me honking your horn and flashing your lights, you've just accomplished the complete opposite of what you were trying to achieve; you've just made damn sure I'm going to completely yield to the pedestrian.

Which is what I did.

When there was enough room for me to pull forward, and even drive through behind George as he hobbled across the crosswalk, I didn't. I sat there. I would say I ignored the honking and flashing of lights, but in all truth they amused me as I waited to make sure George was well & truly clear of my path before finally driving through behind him.

Yes, I deliberately pissed this other driver off, but I don't care. I don't honk at drivers blocking my path just because I want to turn and they want to go straight ahead. If you don't want to sit behind me while I yield to pedestrians, don't drive in MY lane. It's that fucking simple.

New monitor

Ok, so it's not new, we've had it for a couple of years now. But it's never really been used as a monitor until recently.

Say hello to my little friend ;)

(If you click it, it gets bigger ;)

IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!

This weekend I dug out two old PCs which I seemed to recall had died on us (several years ago), warranting the purchase of new PCs.

Contemplating making one working PC from the two, I pulled the sides off both boxes and took a look inside. I know my way around the inside of a case, and I'm also pretty efficient at salvaging dead PCs, so one look was all it took for me to realize that I was lacking several critical pieces, like RAM, and hard drives.

Fortunately I'm also a hoarder, so the RAM sticks and hard drives which no longer resided within these cases were still within my possession. As were several old Video Cards which I'd burned out (or so I thought) playing games that were a little bit too graphic intensive for them. I'd need one of those video cards because the mother board of one of those PCs does not have an on-board GPU.

But first on the agenda was upgrading my daughter's PC. She got 50% more Ram and a new (old) video card. Old, but still a two generation upgrade over what she had. I also uninstalled AVG. As much as I like anti-virus programs they tend to bog older systems down (as well as some newer ones). Her computer definitely seemed to run a lot faster with those simple changes. Cost? zero dollars.

Then I turned to the PCs. The first thing I noticed was of the remaining RAM sticks, the two largest were two 512MB sticks and they would only fit one of the MoBos. So it got a full Gig of RAM. I also dropped in one of my two 40GB HDD then, out of sheer curiosity, plugged it in and fired it up. To my amazement not only did it work, but it booted up into Linspire.

ASIDE: Earlier this week at my mate's house we watched United which he'd...er...borrowed(?) from a certain website which let you download...borrow. I did say borrow. So this website lets you borrow all sorts of movies which, if you've got a TV hooked up to your computer, rather than watch these movies on your piddly little computer monitor you can watch them on a much bigger screen (such as that found on a 50" Plasma TV). We already have Netflix, which lets us stream movies through our BluRay player, except that Netflix's 'online' service is sadly lacking. It does have a reasonable selection of some older movies, and some of the newer releases, but for the older or more obscure classics, and the latest releases, you still have to request a physical DVD. I understand what they're doing, but I still think it sucks.

So I hooked up this new PC with Linspire to my 50" Plasma, booted it up, and the POST loading screen came up, followed by the Linspire loading screen, and then? As it booted into Linspire's desktop, my TV screen went dark and the words Invalid Format began floating around the screen. Having encountered this situation before with the BluRay player I knew what was going on so I hooked up a monitor to the Linspire machine to set its resolution to one of the handful of true 16:9 widescreen resolutions. Except Linspire didn't offer any of those particular resolutions to me. Yes, I was using a widescreen monitor, but even when I told it to show me resolutions not supported by my system none of the 16:9 resolutions were listed.

Fortunately I had a second 40GB HDD so I unplugged the Linspire HDD and plugged in the second one. It booted up into Windows XP (as it should; I only have a 98 SE CD, and an XP Pro CD), and XP let me set the resolution to a proper 16:9 resolution. Unplug the monitor, plug in the 50" and the Windows desktop appeared larger than life (that's assuming you're smaller than 50", which I'm not, so technically it's not larger than my life, but I digress).

I unplugged the LAN cable from the BluRay player and hooked it up to the PC, which was good for updating the video drivers, but not so good for the BluRay player. But one of the other gadgets I had in my possession, which I had no idea why, or how long I'd had it (years, I'm guessing), was a 5-port Switch. As I'd gone through my box of PC Bits & Pieces I'd come across the Switch and despite not recalling ever seeing it before and not being 100% sure what it was, in typical Bloke-fashion I'd thought to myself, "I might be able to use this." A quick Google search revealed that indeed I could use it, and for the purpose I'd had in mind, too. Back into the box of Bits & Pieces I went where I extracted two 6' CAT5 cables. Plug the LAN cable into the Uplink port on the Switch, plug in both 6' cables then plug their other ends into the BluRay and the PC, and now both machines were online. Cost? Zero dollars.

Finally I turned to the last PC. This thing is old. It has an Athlon 1.2Ghz CPU. Years ago that was fast. Now? Not so much. It also only takes PC133 RAM. I had, according to their stickers, two 128MB sticks of PC133. I plugged them in, plugged in the Linspire HDD, and one GeForce MX4000, being the fastest of the old video cards I still had. It all booted up, except the Linspire HDD wouldn't boot. Which made me wonder if Linspire was not on the Hard Drive itself, but buried in an EPROM chip on the other PC's Motherboard.

Fortunately I had my XP CDs handy, as well as an old DVD drive which I promptly plugged in. It was then a simple matter of installing XP, and catching up on some reading. Then downloading SP3 while doing some more reading.

The only problem is there's one essential part of a computer which I don't have any spares of, and that would be monitors. The first PC doesn't need one because it's hooked up to the 50" Plasma, but this second PC? It needs a monitor. It also needs a new MoBo, faster CPU, more (& faster) RAM, a faster Video Card, and a bigger power supply to keep all that stuff running. In other words, I need a new computer ;)

"This axe? Why, it's been in the family for generations. Had 4 new handles, and a new blade, but it's just as good as the day my great-grandpappy bought it, all them years ago."

And I thought they were tough

This morning I dragged the wife and kids out of bed at OMFG o'clock to come support me on my 5K Gladiator Rock 'n Run. Actually I didn't need to drag them out of bed. The wife claimed she had trouble sleeping last night (as did I, a little nervous I guess) so when the cat woke me up at my usual workday time of 4:30am and I realized I needed to use the loo, doing so woke up the wife, and she got up, even though there was an hour left on the alarm. I decided I might as well stay up too, and the boy was awake when I stuck my head in his bedroom door. So it was the only the bunny who needed waking up, and unlike a school morning, despite it being almost 2 hours earlier than her usual "wake-up" time, she was out of bed in seconds (vs the typical "I'm tired!" whine followed by rolling over and burying her head in her pillow).

After breakfast, and a 45-min drive we arrived at Irvine's Hidden Valley Park.

We also, eventually, managed to hook up with 4 of my coworkers, all who are a few years (or 10 years) younger than me. The original plan was to run together and help each other out, but when the first obstacle, a balance beam affair, split us up I was now running with a female coworker a few years younger than me, and a male coworker 13 years younger. The guy managed to trip himself up on the second obstacle, a tire run, and sprained his ankle, but he sucked it up like a true Gladiator, ran it off, and we continued the race.

When I noticed that my pace was a little faster than theirs I tried to slow down to stick with them, but eventually my competitive nature said "Fuck it" and I never looked back.

At the obstacle titled "The Fools' Spools" I leaped up onto the first one only to find the competitor ahead of me was slower than I expected. Instead of landing on top of it as he leaped off the other side I was forced to check my momentum or get a face full of arse. As I fell back I grabbed the edge of the spool to hang on and...Oh shit! My right tricep screamed at me that I was the fool! When I pulled myself back up onto the top of the spool I agreed with it, but I was doing this race to test myself, to push myself to the limit, not drop out at the first sign of an Owie! (Definitely a pulled tricep. I rubbed Bengay into it when I got back home but its still pretty sore, and will be for a few days. Meh. I'm a GLADIATOR!!!)

I vaulted over the remaining spools and finally caught up to one of my first two female coworkers (she's 10 years younger than me) at the muddy uphill slope, with a rope if you needed it to ascend, which I did (Ow, said my tricep. Shut up, I replied.) followed by a water slide back down to the cargo net. I managed to generate too much friction on the water slide (don't ask me how) and I found myself slowing down, then stopping 3/4 of the way down. Knowing other competitors were coming down right after me I tried to scoot down to the bottom of the slide but I wasn't quick enough and got nailed from behind by a competitor with a lower coefficient of friction. Fortunately that gave me the boost I needed to complete the slide. Unfortunately it provided me with too much momentum, and when I hit the muddy pool at the bottom I was forced to dive across it and roll out the other side.

It was only while standing in line at the cargo net that I realized I'd acquired a war wound from my spill, but being literally covered in mud from head-to-toe I could't tell how seriously I was hurt. And I do mean literally. My face was covered in mud but I couldn't wipe it off because my hands were covered in mud, and I couldn't wipe them off because every other part of my body was also covered in mud. I figured I was still standing and it wasn't hurting much so it can't have been serious. And it wasn't.

I don't look it there, but I was not the only one a little pissed at waiting in line for the cargo net/container obstacle. I was even more pissed when it was my turn and I finally climbed to the top, only to see scores of competitors running past the cargo container. "Cheaters!" I heard someone call out to them. "That line is too long!" one of them called back. Like that's an excuse. Enjoy your hollow victory, wannabe Gladiators!

Down the other side of the cargo container and on I ran with my female coworker, helping her across the vertical wall (she's considerably shorter than me) then sticking with her as we ran up, up, up the long hill. But when we came down the hill and she started to lag behind it was once again "Every Gladiator For Himself!" and I pulled away and left her behind. I never saw the second girl, but my first two coworkers found her, somewhere, because she finished the race with them, but that was long after I was done.

When I know my final time I'll post it, but for now I think I finished in approx. an hour.

A 5 kilometre race, through mud, over 14 obstacles, and I was the first AND oldest of my coworkers to finish. And I thought they were tough.

OFFICIAL RESULTS

My time: 47m 11.8s

Mens 36-42: 148/306 (I'll be 42 in August)

Mens Overall: 854/1819

Overall: 1367/3715

I'll take royal weddings for $32,000,000, Alex...

The Royal wedding is the talk of the town, in particular the cost to John Q. Public. Apparently the Royal family is picking up the bulk of the tab but you don't have to be an economist to know where they get most of their wealth from. Investments? Yes, okay. But where did they get the money from to invest? More...investments? I see. This could take longer than I thought.

When one of my friends made a comment on FB about the Royal wedding one of his friends referenced the figure $32,000,000, which a little research revealed is the approximate cost (in U.S. dollars) of security for the wedding. Just security. It doesn't include the flowers, or the food, or booking the chapel, or sending out the invitations, or the bridesmaids' dresses, the open bar at the reception (which probably cost a lot more than US$32M). The cost of security alone was estimated at US$32M. So this figure was referenced by my friend's FB friend, along with the comment that "you could feed the world" on US$32M.










The global population is estimated to be approx. 3,915,000,000. Dividing $32M between 3,915,000,000 people comes out to half a cent each. Now I know that two people can eat as cheaply as one, unless one of those two is a pregnant woman. Seriously. Have you seen what they can put away? There's a reason Home Town Buffet tried to ban pregnant women from their restaurants. No, they didn't. I'm kidding. April Fools! What? It's still April. Who says April Fools has to be limited to just the first day of the month? Have you ever tried fooling someone on April Fools Day? Good luck! You can't fool anyone on April Fools' Day because they know it's coming! What idiot thought up "April Fools" then decided to limit it to one, specific day? That guy was the real April Fool. Amiright?

So, back to two people eating as cheaply as one, which we know is a crock. If two people can eat as cheaply as one, then four must be able to eat as cheap as two, right? And because two can eat as cheaply as one, logically that means four can also eat as cheap as one. It makes perfect fucking sense IF two really can eat as cheaply as one. But because four cannot eat as cheaply as one then two cannot eat as cheaply as one so forget this argument because it holds about as much water as Jesus' cupped hands. (I can't believe you went there! I thought you were going to reference the Loaves & Fishes thing!)

So, back to feeding the world on $32M, or 1/2 a cent each. Let me know how that works out for you.

This leads into the real problem with the world today. There is not enough money, not enough food, not enough resources, not enough anything to take care of everyone living on the planet. You can throw all the money you want at the problem but it won't solve a thing. Sure, a few people will live, but many are going to die and nobody can do a damned thing about it because there's just too many of us. Some of us need to die. A lot of us. And the rest of us? We need to let them die.

What's that? I should start by killing myself? Riiiiiiight. I'm a producer (and yes, a consumer). I'm living in a First World Country, with a job, making money, and providing for my family. Other than my employer nobody is giving me money to buy me food, or clothes, or a computer. I've got a daytime job, I'm doing alright.

But all those Third World people sitting on their arses in the dust, just existing (not living, I'm not calling that living because they're alive but they're not living; they're existing) they can die. Because they're not producing. They're not working, or doing anything to sustain themselves, because Karma dealt them a handful of crap and they literally cannot survive without a handout because the land cannot support them. Give them a fish today and what does that accomplish? Nothing! You've fed them for one day. Aah, so teach them to fish, I hear you say. Wise you are, grasshopper, for if we teach them to fish, at least they'll have a hobby to keep them occupied rather than sit on their arse in the dust all day. /sarcasm off

This is the truth: There are far too many people in this world, we cannot help them all, and complaining that the money spent on the Royal Wedding could have been used to feed them is a pipe dream. Okay, maybe just counting all the starving Third Worlders, maybe $32M could have fed them for one day. Maybe. But what do they do for the rest of the year? What about the other 364 days? Anyone got a spare $11,648,000,000 lying around? You do! Excellent! Let's have it. Oh, and if you could come up with $11,680,000,000 by the end of the year...for next year...that would be great, yeah.

People need a hand-up, not a hand-out, but if the country will not sustain them at their current population even a hand-out is pointless. You'd be better off letting them die then plowing them into the soil. If nothing else, at least they'd make good fertilizer. Finally! They're producers! /black_humor off

Don't be offended, accept the truth; the world is grossly overpopulated, millions of people need to die, and we need to let them. It's okay to be a dreamer, but we live in the real world.

/end rant

Blu-Ray, HDMI, and LOTRO @ 50"

As much fun as it is to stream Netflix videos via the Wii and it's Wii-Fii (???) the novelty quickly wears off when the LAN bogs down and the movie needs to buffer every 5 minutes. Watching movies at the Wii's 480p was also not what I'd become accustomed to after watching HD Cable for a few months, so the wife and I decided an upgrade was in order. Queue in a Blu-Ray player with its glorious 1080p, hard-wired into the LAN (no Wii-Fii here). In the Wii's defense it could have been hardwired into the LAN as well, but it would have required the purchase of a $30 "dongle" to plug in the Cat-5e cable, whereas the Blu-Ray comes with a more sensible and LAN-friendly RJ45 port.

So the Blu-Ray arrived last week and the first thing I did, even before plugging anything in, was RTFM. Yes, I did. Which is how I read that Blu-Ray players apparently like the faster, Category2 HDMI cables. So off to Target I went, armed with a $25 Gift Card provided by my thoughtful wife, where I found 3' cables for $30, and 6' cables for considerably more. Best Buy were next door, and while their online store said the brick & stone store did not carry the el cheapo $10 HDMI cables readily available online (& for in-store pick-up, if you want to wait a week), I thought I'd check there anyway. I left empty-handed when I saw their cheapest 3' cable was $40, and made my way across the road to that bastion of the working class man, Walmart, where I picked up a 6' cable for $20. Hooray!

Back home I got everything plugged in, tuned the TV to HDMI#2 and...the words "Invalid Format" appeared and began floating around the screen.

Invalid Format? Whaddayamean Invalid Format???

It took a day and a couple of visits to an online forum for my Blu-Ray player to work out that my 50" Plasma HD TV is not 1080p like I thought, but only 720p (which sucks, but I'm old, so my eyes probably can't tell the difference anyway) and solving my "Invalid Format" problem was as simple as telling the Blu-Ray to output a 720p signal.

That was all it took to get high quality Netflix movies streamed to our HD TV without pauses to buffer every few minutes. A bonus is that the Blu-Ray will also do Pandora, Hulu, and other streaming media sites, including Youtube. I now have the ability to watch Youtube videos on my HD TV, which means when BBC-USA wants to edit & cut episodes of Dr. Who so they can get in more commercials, we can watch Dr. Who on the 50" TV via Youtube. Another bonus is BBC-USA sometimes delays airing certain episodes, sometimes for a week or more, but considerate fans will often record those very same episodes & upload them to Youtube literally the second that episode has aired in the UK.

Getting the Blu-Ray hooked up and streaming Youtube also piqued my curiosity about hooking up one of our PCs (albeit temporarily) to the 50" TV, which I initially thought I could do via DVI. Except even though the HDMI#1 port (for the HD Cable) is labeled HDMI/DVI, the 50" TV doesn't actually have a DVI-in. Curiouser & curiouser. What it does have, however, is an RGB port, being the current industry standard PC video plug. Awesome. Unlike the Blu-Ray, hooking up the PC was as simple as plugging it in and switching to the appropriate Input. Okay, so there was also the issue with turning off & unplugging my son's PC, then dragging it downstairs, then getting it all hooked back up again, including unplugging the Cat5e from the Blu-Ray so I could have wired Internet access on the PC. After that, it was simple :)

And that was how my wife found me, kicking back on the sofa, playing Lord of the Rings Online on our 50" HD TV. Additionally, rather than rest the keyboard on my lap, I'd dragged over our two small side tables and had the keyboard on one and the mouse on the other and had my legs stretched out between them. If you currently have a mental picture of someone piloting a starship a la "Flight of the Navigator" you probably have a good idea of what I looked like.

I was only able to get in a few hours playing like this before the boy was due back home and I wanted his PC back in his room before the in-laws dropped him off (I didn't want him to get any funny ideas...maybe as a special treat, maybe ;) but those few hours of playing LOTRO @ 50" was awesome, and very, very comfortable :)

As for streaming Netflix, I'm in two minds over that. While it's great having a ton of movies-on-demand for a very low price (we have the cheapest 1 physical DVD at-a-time package), the selection of movies that can be streamed is somewhat limited. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of movies you can watch, including some relatively new releases (the bunny was watching Astroboy last night), but many of the movies I'm interested in are only available on DVD, like Clint Eastwood's two classic "Clint & Clyde" movies, Peter Seller's "The Party", and Terrence Hill's obscure but hilarious "Trinity" movies. I'm happy to have streaming Netflix at 720p, but not happy that many of the movies I want to watch are not immediately available.

One fine evening, down at the running track

Among the 20 or so runners/walkers at the local High School running track were:

An elderly Chinese man running the wrong way. No, I'm not saying there was something wrong with his technique. I mean he was running clockwise while everyone else was running or walking counter-clockwise.

One couple strolling along together, side-by-side...hand-in-hand. Nothing wrong with walking on the track, lots of folks do, and at least they weren't walking on the inside couple of lanes (track etiquette dictates that the inside lanes are for runners) but they looked they were out for a casual romantic Sunday afternoon stroll rather than serious walkers getting their laps in at 8 o'clock on a Monday night.

Two ladies walking together. One wearing a faux fur vest (it wasn't that cold), the other with her jacket tied around her waist, a black & white leopard print silk (or faux silk) scarf around her neck, and an umbrella. No, not a compact umbrella. She was walking around the track carrying a full-sized 2 1/2'-long umbrella. Wow!

And me? Why, I was a picture-perfect fashionably-dressed runner, of course. With my grey & black Under Armor t-shirt, my red basketball shorts with black "racing" stripes, and my coordinated white, red & silver Nike runners w/ matching ankle-high white socks.

What?

Fun with Voicemail

For several years our office never had voicemail, except for the receptionist (and maybe our Program Manager). Then we moved to a new office, with new phones, and a new phone system, and we finally entered the 21st century and had personal voicemail. Hooray!

That's actually not as exciting as it sounds. The novelty quickly wore off, and the red LED on our phone's handle signifying we had voicemail quickly became a thing of dread, especially when you handle a lot of problem calls. Some people took to covering the handle of their phone with a sticky note, which was rather obvious if you looked at their desk. I went one better. I discovered the LED was not in the handle but beneath it, and that a clear lens through the entire handle allowed the LED to shine through. One expertly applied piece of paper later, and the red LED disappeared from view. No red LED, no voicemails, right? Yeeeeeeah, it didn't quite work like that.

But out of sight out of mind, did. The problem then was forgetting to check the voicemail for a couple of days, and when you eventually logged in hearing, "You have 56 new message."

O_O

But there was also a trick to handling that. Alternately pressing the 3 & 1 keys quickly reduced that number to zero.

What?

If it's really important, they'll call back.

Besides, if I go on a 2-week vacation and set my phone message to inform any callers to call me back in 2 weeks, or that for immediate assistance they can call "Jack Black" on 555-1234, then I'm not making any promises about returning any messages left during those 2 weeks that I'm gone. Either call Jack Black now, or call me when I get back. That's how it works. I've been gone for 2 weeks. I've got a ton of work to catch up on. How am I supposed to get any work done if I'm returning calls all day?

If it's important, they'll call back.

Then there's those voicemails left on the front desk phone, which the receptionist listens to, then forwards to the appropriate person/section. Except she doesn't. Oh, she listens to them, but she doesn't forward them to the appropriate person.

She forwards them to me.

Even though the caller doesn't actually ask for me, nor do they ask to speak to someone in my section. In fact sometimes the caller doesn't even mention why they're calling at all, but she still forwards the message to me.

Why? Because I get in early o_O

Apparently her sole criteria for deciding who is the correct party to forward a caller/message is based on who is physically present in the office at that time.

I just now slipped out for coffee, got back to my desk, and there's the red LED (I felt guilty about not being able to see it, and you can only delete 56 voicemails so many times without repercussion). I was actually expecting a call because I'd just sent out an email to a couple of folks and I want a response from them, but I want it in writing so I have something solid on which to base my decision. So I check my voicemail and it's not an outside call, well it is, but it's an outside call forwarded from someone else's voicemail box. This is not the voicemail I was looking for. Heh heh. What? That's gold, that is.

I listen to the message, twice, and I have no idea what the caller wants, or why the sender forwarded the message to me. So I hit 4 to reply to the message (which sends it back to the person who forwarded it to me, straight into their voicemail box. Karma, baby.). "Yeeeeeah," I say, in my best Lumbergh voice, "this is your Cap'n speaking. You forwarded the following message to me, and I don't know why. The lady doesn't ask for me, and she doesn't mention my section or what we do. I have no idea what she's even talking about. So if you could just go ahead and call her back, that'd be great. Yeeeeeah."

Two minutes later my phone rings, which is about enough time for someone to notice the red LED on their phone, listen to my message, then call me. I glance at the caller ID and lo! It's the morning receptionist!

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
(You have to say that like Gomer Pyle, otherwise it doesn't work.)

Me and her...let's call her Pyle, shall we? So Pyle and I, we have a good old chat, and she tells me it was her (she?) who forwarded the message to me, as if I didn't know that. (Actually I didn't realize it was her, but I should have) Pyle proceeds to tell me that she listened to the message, twice, before deciding to forward it to me. I tell her I listened to it as well, twice, and that the woman didn't ask about our section, never mentioned what we do, or said anything even remotely related to my job function.

Pyle tells me she knows that, but that she can't call the woman back because she doesn't have a Long Distance-authorization code and the caller is in the next county (We need to enter this code when we dial in order to authorize long-distance call). Actually Pyle does have an LD code, but she says she forgot it.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

And she forwarded the message to me because?

She knew my coworker wasn't in the office.

Surprise! Surprise! Sur...wait. What?

My coworker, who works in my section, who has the same job function as me, and for whom the call would also not be relevant, was not in the office at that time, and Pyle knew that, and so she forwarded the call to me instead???

Surprise! Surprise! Sur...that actually gets old really quickly. The perils of working with a Gomer Pyle, I guess.

I know M is not in yet, Pyle says, so can you call the woman back and ask her what she wants?

Perhaps you should call HR and ask them for your LD code so you can call her, I reply.

Eventually I work out why the caller was calling and she did call the correct office, and Pyle didn't completely screw up because I actually used to work in the Section the caller needs...3 years ago!!!

PYYYYYYYYY-LE!!!

Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?

I'm not terribly fond of beggars, for reasons which I've elaborated on in the past.

I pass a couple of homeless folks on my way to the bus stop each afternoon, and they're always there, every day, and have been for years. When the weather took a turn for the worse a couple of weeks ago they acquired a tent from somewhere (not that a cheap tent will do a lot to protect you from the elements) but for the most part they have their cardboard box bed layered with blankets, and a nearby shopping cart filled with their junk. From my perspective, over the past couple of years they've made no attempt to better their lot in life, other than the acquisition of a tent.

The L.A. Mission is not far away and there the Priests will provide the needy with a warm meal, clean clothes, and a shower, shave, & a haircut. So when you're wearing the same filthy clothes day in & day out and you haven't had a shave or a haircut for months if not years when real help is within walking distance, why should I help you?

My wife will say No to you and not even spare you a second thought. But me? I tend to over-analyze things.

This weekend we were down in San Diego when a guy approached us in the parking lot (for the U.S.S. Midway) asking for help. He was dressed just like the average tourist about to board the Midway. Clean, freshly shaven, polo shirt, bermuda shorts, & sandles. He even had a lanyard around his neck from which appeared to hang a tourist ID badge, although I didn't look terribly closely. And he wanted help. Then came the spiel of your typical, heart string-pulling beggar, laced with the personal touch they all give.

In this guy's case he'd discovered he'd left his wallet in his jean's pocket and now he needed $2.80 for the train to get back to his hotel & his wallet.

Sorry, I can't help you, I told him, while my wife just said, "No".

And off he walked, saying "sorry to have bothered you." And that bothered me. Him saying that. Because now I worried whether he was just a beggar, or if he genuinely needed our help and really did need $2.80 to get back to his hotel.

Except in addition to leaving his wallet in his other pants he'd apparently driven his car to the Midway, because in fleshing out his story he also mentioned locking his keys in his car, thus being unable to drive back to the hotel. Not that we asked. It was just additional information he volunteered.

Now if he drove in, what happened to the people he came in with? Did none of them have $2.80 to loan him? Or did he come by himself?

If he came by himself, how did he pay to park his car without his wallet? Shouldn't that have been the "OMG! I forgot my wallet!" moment?

If he really was a tourist, how did he know the train cost $2.80?

If he'd found out the cost of the fare at the train station, why wasn't he still there? Why did he come back to the Midway parking lot? Surely there were a lot more people at the train station who could have given him the change he needed.

As I said earlier, I tend to over-analyze things, but now that I have there appear to be numerous holes in his story, which all seem to indicate that as clean & well dressed as he was, he was still just a beggar. A beggar with a really good shtick, but a beggar nonetheless.

When he walked away while apologizing for bothering us, that made me feel like crap, because maybe he had genuinely needed my help. But now, having over-analyzed the situation, I don't. He deliberately picked the parking lot to the USS Midway because of the prevalence of people like us, a family of four, being adults more likely to respond positively in front of their children, especially to someone perceived as a fellow tourist.

He didn't look homeless, and he didn't act homeless. He succeeded in passing himself off as someone in genuine need of help, not someone living on the streets trying to bum a quarter. And if he can successfully do that then he's talented enough & smart enough to succeed in a more legitimate line of work. Instead, he chooses to hit up strangers for spare change, and he probably does quite well at it, too. He's not down on his luck. He's right where he wants to be because he's smart enough to recognize when he's on a good wicket. That's his job, tugging on heart strings and playing to people's emotions, and when he realized he was getting nothing from us he immediately cut his losses and walked away.

My wife said No, and went right on with living her life.

I said No, felt like a prick for doing so, then over-analyzed the situation. Eventually I arrived at the same place as my wife, I just needed to put in more work than her. But even now, there's still that niggling speck of doubt that says, "What if you're wrong, and he really did need help?"

Then I'll have to console myself with the thought that someone gave him $2.80 for the train, because he and his cause were believable. If he really was someone in genuine need of help then someone helped him that day, it just wasn't me.

Insert Title Here

I quit WoW (again) almost a year ago but have since been playing the somewhat misleading Free-to-Play Lord of the Rings. While it is possible to play casually for free, if you want to gain access to some of the higher level areas (or just not be nerfed when you get there) you're almost compelled to shell out a few bucks. Which I already did by picking up two copies of the Collector's Edition of the expansion Mines of Moria (on Amazon for $10 each) which granted me & my son VIP-status (& all the associated perks) for one month, then downgraded us to Premium status when I didn't continue our 'subscription'. But the perks of being a Premium member are still slightly better than for Free Player. (The perks listed on the linked page are out-of-date. Premium players actually get a better deal than what's listed, for example, I can have 5 active characters per Server, not 3.)

When I first tried LOTRO (shortly after release) I was not overly impressed, but at the time WoW had just got its hooks into me so even though I liked the mythos of Lord of the Rings, I was not enamored with its translation to MMO. But times change, games improve, and with it now being a mostly F2P game vs. WoW's $15/month that's a hard price to beat for the quality you get. In fact there are several, quite decent F2P MMOs out there.

Like Blizzard, Turbine know how to keep you hooked, and the makers of LOTRO have greatly embraced the concept of Titles & Achievements. Start killing a few critters for a quest and suddenly you "discover" a deed, where if you kill 30 or 50 of these critters you earn an Achievement and a Title to go along with it (Wolf Slayer, Spider Foe, etc.) Continue killing those same critters and you may unlock achievements which in addition to the snazzy Title, can also result in permanent Buffs to your character.

Another Title you can 'earn' is achieved by making it to level 5 without dying, which is not a difficult task by any stretch of the imagination. In fact it's so easy to survive to level 5 that I would even argue that dying before then should be a Title-worthy achievement, especially given that your lvl 5 Title is "...the Wary." Seriously now? I followed a couple of characters through the Tutorial (which you can skip, by the way, and thus probably start playing the game proper at level 4), killed a few bandits, a couple of spiders or other critters, and bam! There I was at level 5, titled Cap'n John the Wary (well I would have been if my in-game name was Cap'n John.)

If you can make it to level 10 without dying you get the more awe-inspiring Title "...the Undefeated." which in my opinion is the wrong way around. Making it from level 5 to 10 without dying, unassisted (as in playing on your own, unaccompanied by a high level friend) is a more daunting task than hitting level 5. In fact I'd hedge my bets that the average player who makes it to level 10 without dying probably played a little more cautiously, and thus "...the Wary" or even "...the Cautious" is a far more appropriate title than "...the Undefeated." Sure, they didn't die, but you know they also didn't take a lot of unnecessary risks. Then there's the lvl 14 Title "...the Indomitable" which I actually rather like, a lot more so than the level 17 Title "...the Unscathed". I've been fighting critters for 17 levels now. No, I didn't die, but I'm not exactly unscathed, either. The final Title for not dying is awarded at level 20 and is, appropriately, "...the Undying". Now that's a Title worthy of making it to level 20. Although I still like "...the Indomitable" and will probably wear it until something better comes along.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya

Things that piss me off

aka Come to the Dark Side.

We all have a dark side (well, most of us) and it's our ability to not give into the dark side which separates us from the Serial Killers (I think). It's the part of us we repress when we encounter displays of sheer arrogance or stupidity which make us want to scream out loud and beat someone to death, preferably with their own bloody arm which we've just torn off at the shoulder.

Like the woman at the check-out ahead of you, who stands there, purse on her shoulder, watching as the clerk rings up all her items, one by one. And it's only when she's finally told the total that she takes her purse off her shoulder and start digging around in it for her wallet. Wait. No. She's taking out...her checkbook?! You're freaking kidding me!!! AAarrghh! Have fun writing out your check...with NO ARM!!!! BITCH!!!

* EDIT - Just to clarify, in case it's not abundantly clear, it's not that she's paying by check which pisses me off. She could be using a credit card, cash, etc. What pisses me off is that she waits to hear the total before she even starts to rummage through her purse looking for her checkbook/wallet.

Then there's the old people who come up to a pedestrian crossing just as it changes from Walk to Don't Walk, and what do they do? Do they walk up to the curb then patiently wait a minute or so for the light to cycle so they can cross? Hell NO!. They run (okay, they're old; it's running to them) those last few metres to the curb, hop down into the road, and then? They resume walking at their doddering old pace across the road, in front of all those cars which are now facing a green light but can't go because there's a fricken' old person crossing in front of them!

I had an old woman do this just last week. I could see the lights from where I was sitting in my car and just as this old woman stepped down into the street the Don't Walk light stopped blinking and went a solid red DON'T WALK. And the traffic light changed to yellow. And what did she do? Did she take two steps back up onto the curb behind her? Yeah right! With 6 lanes of traffic ahead of her she started running. Just as the left-turn lane got their green turn arrow and the first car hit the gas she darted out in front of him, and he slammed on the brakes so hard they locked up and this old woman freaked out at the sudden screeching of tires right beside her, which fortunately caused her to run even faster. And we laughed and yelled (to ourselves) Run! Run, you old bitch! Run! Fall! Break a hip or two! RUN! RUUUUUUNNN!!!

I see teenagers do this sometimes, too, except the arrogant shits don't run, they slowly saunter across in an arrogant "I've got aaaaall day to cross this road." kind of way, and they walk so slowly that even though they started to cross when the light first changed, it changes again on them when they're only halfway through. Do they hurry up when they see the light changing? HELL NO!!! They know nobody is going to willingly hit them, and they continue to stroll across at a snail's pace, but now they're wearing this arrogant, shit-eating grin that makes you clench your steering wheel in a white knuckle death grip and grit your teeth because the Dark Side desperately wants to wipe that grin off their face with your front bumper! Please let us do it! Pleeease!!!

But we don't. We don't tear people's arms off and beat them to death with the wet end (and it has nothing to do with how physically hard that would be to do), and we don't run down old ladies or teenagers crossing against the light, no matter how much they deserve it.

But we do give into the Dark Side and kick the car which didn't stop for us even though we were already in the crosswalk.

We also punch the rear window of the van whose driver waved at us as he almost ran us down in the crosswalk. As if a wave made it okay to risk committing vehicular manslaughter.

And we also stared down the guy in Cheesecake Factory who not only didn't step aside for the wife despite being asked twice, he then got up in her face when she said he was rude. That's when we let the Dark Side come out (but only a little bit) and we stepped up and stared him down. And as he stared back and his eyes twitched from one side of our face to the other, betraying his nervousness, the Dark Side smiled (on the inside, where it couldn't be seen), until finally his teenage son grabbed his arm and dragged him away from an arse-beating. Okay, because the arse-beating never actually happened, to be honest we're not sure whose arse would have ended up being beaten and/or arrested. Which is why we should avoid yielding to the dark side, even if they have cookies.

So, what really pisses you off? What makes you want to give into the Dark Side, tear someone's head off, and shit down their neck?

Coffee House loitering

What's the protocol for loitering at your local coffee house?

Is it acceptable to set up shop as soon as the doors open, snaring a table next to a valuable power outlet, then sit there all day, typing away on your laptop? Or are you just being a jerk?

"But I'm a customer! See my cup? So what if it was a $1.50 cup of coffee and I've been getting free refills every hour since then. HELLO?! CUSTOMER?! We're always right, remember?"

What if you buy a sandwich at lunchtime, and a pastry or three throughout the day when your blood sugar drops? Is that okay, then?

So the wife & I stopped by one of our local Starbucks last week. There's a couple in the neighborhood but this particular one is close to home, and it's on a fairly major road which gets very little foot traffic so for some reason I don't think of it as being very busy, yet it is. It's also kind of small, as far as Starbucks go, with about half a dozen tables w/ chairs, so it doesn't need to be busy to look busy. When we walked in and looked around for a table we quickly realized we'd be getting our coffees 'to go'. Every table was occupied and almost all of them had a laptop sitting on them. Even the obligatory table w/ two armchairs had a laptop on it.

It reminded me an Improv Everywhere stunt at a New York Starbucks where they had several agents each bring in and set up a desktop PC. The thing about IE's stunt which I found most intriguing was despite Starbucks never having provided PCs for their customers (at least not to my knowledge) some customers assumed the PCs were there for their use.

We naturally assume an unattended laptop is someone's private machine, but an unattended desktop PC? That's fair game, right?

Push that button!

People who continually push crosswalk buttons amuse me. Why do they do it? Is it a form of OCD? They stand there repeatedly pushing the button as if it will make the light change sooner. But that's not going to happen, is it?

I walked up to this one crosswalk, hit the button once, and about 10 seconds later a woman walked up and hit it several times. Then she stood there for a few seconds, and when the light didn't immediately change she began pressing that button as if her life depended on it, until finally it changed. I don't know how many times she pressed it though; I lost count.

Hello?! It doesn't change any sooner because you're impatient, and it doesn't keep count. There's no Imp inside saying to himself, "Jeepers! Dat's 28 of 'em! I better change da light!" They don't work that way.

Or do they?