What are your plans?

As Eric and I have mentioned, we have been watching a lot of Six feet under to catch up on this great show! We just rented Season 2 and have been watching everyday.

Anyway, watching this show makes you think about your own death and that you are not immortal. Eric and I have been talking about it and have discussed our own wishes for when we die. It is sad, but most people don't talk about it because they are afraid and so their wishes are never carried out. Look at Terri Schiavo, if she would have taken the time to make out a living will then she would not have had to spend 15 years trapped in her own broken body! How depressing. If you do not have any legal documents, then at least tell all of your family and friends your wishes. If you have that sticker on your license that says that you want to donate your organs or body, it won't happen if one member in your family disagrees. If you don't want to be buried, tell them! It is important. Sure funerals are for the families to get closure, but you should be able to have what you want done with your body.

My wishes are as follows: If possible, donate all of my organs to whoever needs them. I will have an open casket, if the my body is not mangled, so that the family and Eric can see me. Buy a cheap casket for that, it doesn't matter! Then cremate me, please. I think burying people in the ground is so wasteful. Just take my ashes and spread them in Ireland so that I may return to my roots.

I want bagpipes to play "Amazing Grace" at my service, I am not religious, but I love the way it sounds. It truly touches the soul! Maybe 'tis because me Irish/Scotish blood be flowin through me veins. The whole cd at the link above for Amazing Grace is good, actually. I may want "My heart will go on" on bagpipes too... It is a beautiful song.

I also want Dave Matthews "Lie in our Graves" to be blasted at some point during the service. I want everyone to dance like hippies, and to be free! After my funeral, I want everyone to have a party and to celebrate my life, not mourn it! Have a drink, or five, on me!

So, do you have a plan....?

America, F#$k Ya!

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Six Feet Under

Sue posted about this in her "Home crap Home" post, but I had to write my own plug for it. It's that good:

While I realize that Sue and I are probably the last people on the face of this earth to watch it, I have to plug a really great show on HBO: Six Feet Under. The show is absolutely brilliant dark comedy; funny, witty, and insanely poignant in ways that I could only dream about being.

So far we have only been watching season 1, so I can't speak to whether the show gets better or not. But if this any indication, I think Sue and I will be making several trips to Blockbuster over the next several weeks.

Medical Community 1 - Insane Frothing Right Wing Nuts 0

Schiavo Autopsy Finds No Sign of Trauma

Wow, what a freaking surprise. The medical community, with there "science" and "medical knowledge" and all that other voodoo was 100% correct when they pronounced that Terri Schivao had about as much chance of getting out of that bed and eating some delicious chicken nuggets as my car does of driving itself around and getting itself an unlimited number of lube jobs (just wanted an excuse to say lube jobs). From the article:

"He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents' requested...The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain...This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

So there you have it. Vegetable. All the whinings of the parents that she might get out of that bed and walk around were complete and utter crap. This is why we let courts and doctors decide these sorts of things when there is an arguement and why 99.9999999999% of the time we keep the f$%king left and right media whores at bay.

For the record, if I am ever missing half my brain, please please let me die quietly after a nice ground up steak is put through my feeding tube and I get one last blowjob from my sexy nurse wife:)

Home, crap, home...

Oh yes, I have returned from my trip to New York/Michigan. It was pretty cool. I think I took the heat with me though. It was in the 90's that whole time in NY and Michigan and I guess it is cooling off up there now. Of course back here in AL it has been in the mid-90s, feels like over 100, DAMN HOT!! I feel bad for the dogs and ALL of the women that are pregnant here which includes all of the wives at Eric's work and one of the women employees. Must avoid drinking their water...

My weekend in New York kicked ass! I got to be a suprise for my friend Sue at her bridal shower! I like being a suprise! Then I got to see a lot of New York I have never been to before. I did not get to go to the city this trip, but it was very cool to see all of the New York landscape. It is very pretty. I was in Newburgh, NY briefly, Central Valley, NY for the shower, Warwick, NY (The home of Paul), Goshen, NY (The home of Sue O.) and from Warwick, NY to Rochester, NY (4.5 hour drive).

The bridal shower was cool since it was held at a Japenese Hibachi Steakhouse called Gasho. The building was an old farmhouse that was brought over from Japan. They had a beautiful garden in the back. You sat around a cooking surface and the cooks made your food right in front of you. Delicious. I also got to meet all of Paul and Sue's family! A lot of family! After that I got to spend a few days with my good friends Paul and Sue who are great hosts!

Paul and Sue introduced me to the greatness of the HBO series "Six feet under" and let me bring the first season home with me so that Eric and I can enjoy it. What a great show!! We have been watching it everyday. It is just so funny and well written! Lauren Ambrose, Claire on the show, is the best character, I think. She was in the movies Can't hardley wait and Psycho Beach Party, two great films. That is my plug. I think everyone should watch it! There is actually still good tv out there, you just have to have HBO. Screw the damn reality tv shows!

After 4.5 days in NY, I flew off to Michigan. I got to see family and friends. I got to hang out with some of the MSU crew! Woot! I got to hang out with my mom and sisters and some of Eric's family. I rented a car that was just awesome. I got a brand new Pontiac bonneyville. It was luxurious! It had a XM radio! How cool! I just love the techno channel "The Station". It played such awesome hard trance! I left Michigan two days early because I could not deal with my family anymore and I missed Eric and the puppies way to much!!! I am home again with my "family" and happy again, except for the heat!

It was quite the adventure and I learned some things about myself. One, I enjoy living far away from family and two, I am done with Michigan. It is my home state, it will always have a place in my heart and I still have great friends and family there, but I am ready to try a new place to live, preferably a blue state. I have grown a lot being so far away and Eric and I have developed a super strong relationship being down here. I recommend to everyone that you should cut those cords from your parents and move away for a least a few years! You need to go off and be on your own to be able to develop into who you really are! Good luck to my friend Nicole who is considering just this!!

Ramblings of Eric: Part 4 - What if I don't have free will?

In response to my second Ramblings post, Paul asked,

"...I think something like this is jazzed up with something more personal. Why do you care so much at an everyday level about free will? How does free will (or lack thereof) affect Eric today? tomorrow?"

Paul is on his way to becoming a psychologist, and it shows in his question:) But it's a very reasonable question to ask. After all, no point in debating something like this if there is not a reason to at the end of the argument rainbow.

This is not why I believe in free will. These are the results in my mind of a world that truly accepted there is no free will.

Lets assume for a second that determinism really is correct. All of my decisions, all my life choices, were decided a picoseconds after the Big Bang (lets ignore quantum mechanics here. Yeah, I know that quantum mechanics PROVES that true determinism does not exist. But something more complicated takes it place that only clouds what we are talking about here). To me personally, that means a few important things:

1. Our accomplishments in life mean swat. Why feel good about the fact that you got good grades in school, or had that threesome with the twin hotties at camp? You did not make any personal decisions that lead to those accomplishments. They are just a product of the environment. It would be like the Sun being proud of the fact that it shined today, or the Earth being proud that it held 6+ billion people on the ground.
2. There is no such thing as moral superiority. Moral superiority rests firmly on the ability of some individuals to resist temptations that others do not.
3. Our mistakes in life should not be punished. What's the point of punishing someone for choices they really had no control over? What I mean to say is, if I was hypnotized into shooting up a liquor store and could prove it, would you still punish me? In general, the law explicitly denies that people under duress should be held accountable for their actions (within some important limits. You can't go on a shooting spree because someone threatens to make you listen to 80's pop music.).
4. Its very hard to reconcile the lack of free will and a God (especially The God). Why bother creating us if we are just robots? If you really setup the whole universe with perfect knowledge of all our actions, why is there so much evil in the world? (This is most certainly going to be expanded in some future post).

Those are the biggies for me. #1 bothers me a lot more than #2 or #3, because I think I could argue there are other reasons to punish people even if determinism is true. You just can't claim morally superiority for doing it anymore, which does not bother me because I am a relative moralist anyways. #4 is only important if you believe a God (I do, but that is tied into my belief in free will to a large degree. I can't accept one without the other. I'll save that for another argument on another post).

Note that where I see life being utterly pointless in these results, others might see something positive. For one thing, you might feel better that your poor choices were not your fault (although really, that's a small comfort since feeling better in that case is also completely determined by the universe's giant state machine). Also, without free will, you don't need a/the God to explain much of anything (proving this is an exercise left to the reader).

Once again, its after midnight and I need some sleep...

Ramblings of Eric: Part 3 - The All Request Lunch Hour

I was out playing dodge ball with the Huntvegas posse yesterday, and we got to talking about my last rambling post. R (yes, Weapon of Choice R. I've actually see him:)) suggested that I should request topics from my readers, give my rambling opinion on their topic, then see if I can defend said opinion. I instantly liked this idea because (1) I don't have to think up topics to discuss and (2) it's takes a huge ego to think that people give a shit about your opinions. Since I have such an ego, and since I am obviously lazy with coming up with things to blog about, lets give it try and see what the group out there is interested in hearing me ramble on about.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program of pornography music mixed with dancing clowns who look disturbingly like your high school principal...

Ramblings of Eric: Part 2 - Free Will

The first of the rambling posts that isn’t about rambling posts:

I’m an ardent believer in free will. So much so that nearly the whole of my belief system about humanity is based on this one idea. My thoughts on religion, the presence of a soul, abortion, gun control, the death penalty, addiction, love, hate, the presence of evil in our world; all of them tie back to this singular belief in humanity’s ultimately free will. So if I am going to put down any other ramblings about these beliefs, I need to start with this one.

To be precise, I’m speaking about what most would call “true” free will. Philosophy majors would call it “internal” free will, making a distinction between external free (whether others allow me to do what I will) versus internal free will (whether I really decide what my will is), so I guess I will do the same. I’m not interested in external free will (at least not here). What I’m talking about is internal free will. It is defined (at least by me) by the ability of an individual to make choices regardless of current or previous external stimuli. This stands in stark contrast to determinism, in which my brain, and with it my identity, is nothing but a series of very complicated chemical reactions.

The main reason I believe in free will really quite simple. Every thought I have appears to stem from this free will. Every thought I have reinforces the notation that my thoughts are independent. And I’m willing to admit that perhaps this is merely a personal delusion. But, and this is the important part now, so pay attention: I am not the only person who has this feeling. Ask yourself if you believe that you are conscious; if you believe that your choice of actions are your own. Every sane person on planet will agree that, at the very least, they have the same delusion that their choices appear free.

So now we come to the crux of the argument. Imagine that you are looking at a tree in the middle of a great field. You see the tree, no denying that. But perhaps you are mistaken, or your senses are confused. So you ask your friend with you if they also see a tree. He also affirms that, yes, he sees the tree as well. Now you get all your friends to come, and lo and behold, they ALL see the tree. To deny that the tree is their now would simply not be rational. This is identical to the argument for free will. The fact that everyone has the same perception of free will should imply that free will must be real. Otherwise, we have to accept that EVERYTHING we perceive is suspect. That is, we have no more reason to accept that the tree we all see is any more real than the free will we all perceive.

Of course, it is not that easy. If it were, every philosophy major would be out of job pretty quickly. I realize there are all sorts of issues with the above. For one, it is obvious that the physical brain has SOMETHING to do with how my thought process operates. Any Friday night that involves consuming large quantities of alcohol should confirm this. I tend to picture the mind as just another filter through which my conscious views the world. It’s no different from my eyes or ears. Both can be damaged, impaired, etc, and this can have a drastic effect on my perception of the world.

I think that is enough rambling for one night. Next time: Religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin: a thesis of everything.

Ramblings of Eric: Part 1

Warning: I wrote this pretty late on a Sunday night with a LOT of caffeine roaring through my system (thank God for the spell checker). So it may come off as a one of those African bushmen who communicate by clicking their mouths trying to type English using only his left hand to type while reading Penthouse stories. Such are the breaks.

I've had a few posts floating around in mind the last few weeks. All of them are really just the random things that I think about on the way to work, or school, while waiting at the dentist, mowing the yard or whatever. I think a lot about politics, religion, society, people's weird obsessions with what other people think (including my own unhealthily obsession with this topic), free will, philosophy, software, that next great idea; All of these are these little random floating ideas that never really become anything. They never become coherent if you get my meaning. That is to say, they are good ideas, but I never build on them in my head, or I distract myself with computer games or TV or radio or whatever else is taking up space in my life.

Did you ever have run one of those thought experiments in a creative writing class where you take one word and you just start writing whatever comes to your head? I was always amazed at the crazy shit my brain would pour out if I just shut up for a few minutes and let it think.

One thing I have noticed lately is that I no longer listen to the radio in the car. I find that if I turn the radio off, my mind can mull for a longer period of time without getting distracted. Ditto for TV. I'm one of those odd people you see in traffic that appear to be holding animated conversation with the sun visor and you think must be on a cell phone that you just can't see. Except that I am not. I'm debating with myself some of these ideas I have about life. It's odd too, because I will often come up with what I think are excellent concepts, only to spend the next several minutes explaining to myself each of the holes in this newly minted idea.

So my goal here is this: I'm going to start writing these ideas down here in the hopes that the simple act of taking time out to put these ideas online will force me to examine them more fully. I don't know how many of these there will be, and I don't really know what they will be about. Just as fair warning, these are not going to be my usual, "make fun of the news" posts. But perhaps they will be interesting. Heck, you might even agree with one from time to time. And if you don't, maybe you will convince me that I am wrong. Would not be the first time.

Star Wars TIE Fighter Case Mod

Extremetech.com is holding a weekly case mod competition. The picture below is the case mod for the first winner.

Wow... Good lord this is geeky. More geeky than I shall ever attain.

ABC News: Cruise Company Saws Massive Ship in Half

ABC News: Cruise Company Saws Massive Ship in Half

Ok, as a man and as someone who pretends to have an engineering degree ("My classes were in the engineering building! I took physics!") this is just plain cool to me: Royal Caribbean SAWED one of their cruise ships in half, pulled the two pieces apart, and inserted a new 73 foot wide prefabricated section in the middle of the ship.

Let us join together as men and salute this fine use of circular saws and torches! TOOLS! <insert required grunting here>

No Sue

Sue is in New York this weekend for one of our friend's Bridal shower. After that, she is heading to Michigan for a week to enjoy some time with her parents. So I am all alone here at home for the next 10 days or so. Now I know how Sue feels when I am gone. It sucks.

For one thing, I am bored. Really bored. Bored like I want to read the nutritional fact of everything I eat. Bored like the internet does not interest me after 20 minutes or so. Bored like I want to go to work. You get the idea.

Useful Advice Anywhere

Eric Sink (who usually does very technically posts about source code control systems) wrote a good summary of what to do so that you will not piss off folks in a hurry. Read it.

http://software.ericsink.com/entries/airport_madness.html

This post is specifically talking about airports, but I think this sort of logic could be applied anywhere: malls, restaurants, movie theaters, gang bangs, you name it! Oh if only I had the power to zap people with a Tazer when they were moving too slowly in front of me. The world would be a far better place all around.

Condoms get their day!!!

ABC news had a story today about how condom commercials will get to appear on Prime time television tonight for the first time. Trojan condom commercials will appear on the WB after 9 pm and on NBC's 10 pm hour. Instead of "Trojan man" the condom company has decided to use a more serious ad by using sex statistics such as: "40% of people who know they are HIV+ do not tell their partners. Show you care about your partner and yourself. Use a condom everytime." "Trojan, pleasure you want, protection you trust". Go Trojan! You can see the new commercial on the Trojan website before it airs tonight. You can also enter the site and get a free sample! You get to pick the type you want. Girls get Her pleasure or mint tingle! I think most condom company's will send you a free sample. I remeber my first semester at MSU and we got coupon books for various things and one was for 65 free condoms from Adam and Eve. What a fun package. They were different colors, flavors, and textures ;) I was the only one brave enought to get them so people would borrow from me. Plus I worked at Planned Parenthood and got free ones constantly since I was a penis captain and went to safe sex parties all the time! To quote Julia Roberts in Pretty woman: "I'm a safety girl."



Also at Trojan's website there is an ad for their new Mint tingle condoms: "Trojan Mint Tingle condoms feature flavor, fragrance and color for sensual excitement during foreplay and love making." Mmm...tingling sensation. These condoms rule! Well men, now you should have your mint condoms with you at the club and say: "Hey baby, need to freshen your breath? Give me head!" :)

You can also play games on Trojan's web site such as "How far would you go?" and "Trojan Ball buster".

Who knows if Alabama will even allow these commercials since that in Alabama as in several other southern states, it is illegal to teach anything but abstinence in school! Stupid conservative morons!

See...Other Drivers Really are Stupid

CNN.com - Study: 20M licensed drivers may lack basic safety knowledge - May 27, 2005

OK, I got a good laugh out of this one. GMAC recently ran a survey where they gave a test similar to that one you had to take when you first got your license to over 5000 people. The results say that on average, 10% of the people on the road could not pass. Among the scary highlights:

* one out of five drivers doesn't know that a pedestrian in a crosswalk has the right of way

* one out of three drivers speeds up to make a yellow light, even when pedestrians are present.

Funniest was the fact that the dumbest drivers are from the North East (haha Paul, Sue, and Uncle R). "Twenty percent of test-takers failed there." 20%? My faith in the liberal northeast just dropped by a few points. If one in 5 of them can't pass those brain dead tests they give at the DMV, I'm not sure they should be allowed to run government.

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I?

I am Kong. Strong and passionate, I tend to be misunderstood, sometimes even feared. I don't want to fight, I don't want to cause trouble, all I ask is a little love, and a little peace. If I don't get what I want, I get angry, and throw barrels and flaming oil at whatever's stopping me. What Video Game Character Are You?

What Pre-1985 Video Game Character Am I?

I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly. What Video Game Character Are You?

Your Mother Was Right. Keep Doing That And You Will Go Blind.

Pfizer today announced that in rare cases, people using Viagra have gone blind. Hehe. Make me think that they are using it by themselves:)

Also, I have to mock Yahoo a bit on this story. They attached the image below to the story:

Paul Mcerlane/Reuters

The caption read: Pfizer Inc. on Friday acknowledged rare cases of blindness in men taking its impotence drug Viagra and said it is in talks with U.S. regulators to change the drug's label...In this file photo, a young couple kiss in Ringaskiddy, County Cork.

First, I'm sure these folks are just tickled pink that their little public display of affection was captured by a Reuters photographer for all to see. And then associated with male impotence, well that just makes your day don't it?. Yeap, that is all I am thinking about when I am kissing my wife on a park bench.

Yet More Military Stupidity

Warning: This blog is probably only mildly amusing. Its more sad than anything, and it will really only be interesting to engineers. You have been warned.

My boss relayed a just plain sad story to me today that about one of the military software application frameworks we are working with. Lets call the platform CRAP. Obviously, I've changed the name of the program to protect the incompetent.

Anyways, my boss was on a conference call the other day about the quality of the CRAP framework. The conversation went something like the following:

Air force: We've measured the mean time between failures of your CRAP framework at 11 hours. That is pretty low for a platform that we want to classify as mission critical.

CRAP developers (in smug voice): Actually, the Navy's F-(something or other) program has measured the mean time between failures as 108 hours.

Air Force: Yeah, but there definition of mean time between failures is not the same as ours.

CRAP developers: Really? How do they differ?

Navy: Yeah, the Air Force is right. Our definition does not classify the application crashing as a failure...

At this point I think I would have thrown up had I actually been in the meeting. After that, the meeting went downhill really fast. Apparently the Navy's requirements for the CRAP program required it to have X mean time between failure, and they could do no better than Y, where Y << X. So did the Navy's testing unit ask the CRAP developers to fix the issues? Nope. They just changed the definition of failure until the mean time matched the spec. Why you might ask? Because the Navy's testing unit does not get dinged for every bug they allow to be released into the field. What they do get dinged for is spending too much money testing the program. Retesting after asking for fixes obviously takes money, so they are loath to do it unless the program is completely useless.

Some days I am amazed that anything in the military works...

Techno + guitar = odd but memorable

My great friend Paul turned me on to this group called "The Postal Service". They are a strange mix of techno, piano, guitar, and interesting indie vocals. Different from anything I have ever heard, but really great.

You can hear/watch one of their sets in the studio at http://www.kcrw.org/smil/mb030506The_Postal_Service.ram, which I would highly recommend.

More Irony From the Military

I was driving into Redstone Arsenal this morning when I noticed something that really made me laugh. Right before the gate is this sign that reads, "Firearms, ammo, and knifes longer than 3 inches are prohibited from this facility".

Now call me crazy, but I think that on a military installation those things are going to be pretty important to have :)

Weddings are Officially Insane

Ka-ching! Wedding price tag nears $30K

According to this article, the average cost of a wedding in the US is now roughly $26,000, and it is fast approaching $30,000. Jesus fucking Christ! I guess when Sue and I have kids, we will have to set two funds. One to pay for college and another to pay for their weddings (and assuming we have 2 kids and at least one will get divorced, that means we need to have enough for three weddings!).

Taking a larger scale view is even scarier. When I read the following, I knew we as a country were in SERIOUS trouble:

"A total of $125 billion -- about the size of Ireland's GDP -- will be spent on 2.1 million weddings in 2005..." (emphasis is mine).

That's right folks, in our country engaged couples spend on a one day event what other western countries create in total economic output over the course of an entire year. Please just smite us now God. Get it over with. We are doomed. DOOMED I TELL YOU!

I think Sue and I got married for about $8,500 total, not including our honeymoon to Italy (that was paid for with wedding gifts). So at least we are doing good in terms of the average. Still, sometime I wonder if I should not have just taken my father up on his offer to pay to fly us out to Las Vegas to elope. We could have gotten married with Elvis! I mean come on. You can't put a price on an Elvis wedding (Actually you can: $650 at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel).

Star Wars Episode III review

Sue and I saw Star Wars episode III this morning. My entire office more or less cleared out for it. Apparently someone forgot to tell our boss (same thing happened when Matrix Revolution came out). I would have payed really good money to see the look on his face as he wandered from room to room looking for ANYONE to answer his questions.

Let me just get this out of the way: This was the first Star Wars prequel I have seen and not walked out of the theater thinking, "Well that sucked...". My order of greatness for the Star Wars films is now:

1) Empire Strikes Back
2) A New Hope
3) Return of the Sith & Return of the Jedi
4) Attack of the Clones
5) The Phantom Menence

Good thing about this movie:

1) Does an excellent job of tying everything together.
2) Light saber battles, light saber battles, and more light saber battles.
3) Natalie Portman cleavage.
4) More light saber battles
5) Yoda speak. (Old am I, yet speaking well never did I learn).

Bad things (WARNING - SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON):

1) I thought Anakin's conversion to the dark side went WAY too fast. One minute he lements "what have I done?", and not 30 seconds later he is calling Dark Sideous master. Sorry, but that just went too fast to be believable.

2) The biggest bad ass bad guy ever created was a huge pussy. There I said it. He cries like a baby, and when he yells "NOoooooo" at the end in the Vader suit, it really damaged my whole outlook of him.

Questions left unanswered:

1) During the conversation in front of the bubbles show (what the fuck was that?), Sidious makes it sound like his master actually caused Anakin to be concevied. Did anyone else get that? It would make sense given Sidious's comments about Anakin completing his desteny when he switched to the dark side.

2) Why does C-3PO need to get memory wiped? Everyone I talked to mentioned that he needed to be, but I did not understand why. As far as I can remember, Vader never sees C-3PO directly in any of the movies. I guess you could argue that C-3PO might tell others about what he has seen, but then you also should wipe R2-D2.

Sony's New Bat Signal

Sony showed off some pictures of their new Playstation 3 system today. Below is a shot of the new controller:

When did Batman start working for Sony? Cause if that is not a cleverly disguised Batrang, I don't know what is. Holy poor ergonomics Batman!

Congrats are in Order

Sue officially graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing yesterday from the University of Alabama - Huntsville. I'm so very proud of her. Be sure to leave her much love here for her sacrifice and commitment:)

Geek Fantasies

PG-13 link below. But pretty funny for us geeks:

http://www.geekfantasies.com

I especially liked #2 and #5:)

You guessed it, more reviews...

First of all, I got the new Dave Matthews cd Tuesday, Stand up. The Stand up link will let you listen to a bit of it. Of course I had pre-ordered it via the Warehouse, DMB fan club, so that I could get the free extra cd with some live versions of songs and some rare studio recordings! I am a geek when it comes to DMB! Of course I love most of what DMB does and I really do like the new disc. It is different. I hate when people expect bands to stay the exact same forever. These guys have been together for 15 years so you expect some changes. The new album is more hippy with the lyrics and subjects of the tunes. The songs are more R&B this time, but I like the mix of R&B and the unique DMB sound. A lot of the songs make you want to get up and shuffle your feet like Dave and spin in circles like a hippy in your bare feet on the grass! Dance! I have only listened to it a few times so I have not memorized it yet. I will have to memorize the tunes before July 13th since Eric and I have tix to their show in Atlanta! The reason I joined the fan club is that we get tickets first and the more senority you have the better tickets you get. With 8 years senority, we are usually in the center in rows 1-5! I love it. I am not sure how the seating at this venue is but I think that we are in the first few rows again. I am in withdrawl since I have not been to a DMB show in 2 years. I usually go at least once a year. One year Eric and I went 3 times in a year and he said no to the 4th :( I am addicted. This is 12th or 13th time I have seen them!

On to some movie reviews. Since Eric's job sucks and insists on sending him on trip after trip I am here alone and usually end up renting some movies to stave off the boredom at night when I cannot sleep. This last time really angered us since they told him Monday, "By the way, you are going to Ft. Rucker today to fix a project you have never worked on and you have to stay there until you fix it!" Thanks Uncle R. I guess this was one of your old projects. So Eric had to stay until Thursday, our anniversary, and he did not get back until almost 5 pm. Now he has to go back next week again! I am going to a baby shower at Tybrin today so I am going to have to try really hard not to yell at the tools in charge for screwing up our anniversary plans. But I digress... Movie reviews.

I rented Meet the Fockers, Spanglish, and The Phantom of the Opera. First of all, I watched them as I played World of Warcraft so I was distracted at times. That game sucks time!

I rented Meet the Fockers since I knew Eric would never rent it. It was funny. Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand were hilarious and really made the movie good! Watching DeNiro with Hoffman was ecspecially funny. It is a good sequel which follows well with the previous movie.

Spanglish was an pretty good Adam Sandler movie. It was pretty funny since the family is very dysfunctional. It was a little too serious in some parts though for an Adam Sandler movie. Still, I liked it and the story was pretty good.

Phantom of the Opera was ok. Now as a huge fan of the original Andrew Lloyed Weber musical, having listened to the cd over 100 times, replaying the production in my room starring me in every role, and after seeing the real production twice, I must say I was disappointed, particularly with the casting. I hate when Hollywood makes musicals into movies and they cast actors that cannot sing into the roles. It is a musical people!!! Phantom is a very opera sounding musical and the songs are very hard to sing, trust me I have had to sing them for choir. First of all the Phantom they cast, Gerard Butler, sucked. He is a great actor, fine, but he had no singing experience at all before this role and Andrew Lloyd Weber cast him knowing this! He did hire a singing coach and practiced day and night for about 6 months but his singing was only decent with all of the studio modifications. His voice was way to deep for the role. The Phantom is supposed to sing like an "Angel" and it sounded more demon like. Michael Crawford, who played the Phantom for many years and made the role famous is very hard to follow and no one will ever be him, but I saw two great singers play the Phantom in the Broadway versions in Toronto. The Phantom is a very hard role to fill since the songs are written in a big range and it takes a very skilled singer to get notes just right. It angered me, since the Phantom is the main role!! Stupid Hollywood. The thing that really angers me is that they were supposed to make the movie a long time ago with Crawford and Sarah Brightman, original Christine and Weber's ex-wife, but Weber wanted to get as much money off of the Broadway version first. Minnie Driver played Carlota and also sucked. Another woman sang her parts in the movie. Hello, why is she still in the movie when most of it is singing?!?! Emmy Rossum, Christine in the movie, was great. She can really sing and is a trained singer. She did great. Most of the other actors did very well and the chorus did a great job. It is a pretty movie and it is pretty close to the real musical, but they made some of the singing parts into talking parts, which angered me. Oh well.

Celebrate...

Well, today is our fourth anniversary! Yeah! Yes, Eric and I have been married for four wonderful years and I think I love him more than the day I met him if that is possible. Of course we have been together for nine years! We will try to celebrate in between the graduation stuff I have to do. Now I wish I would have just skipped graduation so that we could fly off to NYC for the weekend or something like that.

Our wedding song was the one from Robin Hood because of the words (which we meant) and because of a special moment we shared early on at the end of watching that movie and that song was playing. It was the first time I knew I really loved Mr. Eric Wilson. I still love this song and it will always be ours even though our evil sister in law stole it from us without even warning us and used it in her demon wedding that was not about love at all! (Sorry rant!) Back to love. Eric and I are all about love...

(Everything I Do) I Do It For You
Look into my eyes - you will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart - search your soul
And when you find me there you'll search no more
Don't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
You can't tell me it's not worth dyin' for
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you

Look into my heart - you will find
There's nothin' there to hide
Take me as I am - take my life
I would give it all I would sacrifice
Don't tell me it's not worth fightin' for
I can't help it there's nothin' I want more
Ya know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you

There's no love - like your love
And no other - could give more love
There's nowhere - unless you're there
All the time - all the way

Don't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
I can't help it there's nothin' I want more
I would fight for you - I'd lie for you
Walk the wire for you - Ya I'd die for you

Ya know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you

Written by:
B. Adams
M. Kamen
R.J. Lange

Weekend of Drinking

This weekend was really great. My friends Paul, Sue, and Kien came down for the weekend. There is something really uplifting knowing that there are people in the world that value your company so much that they will travel 600+ miles just for the pleasure of company. Whatever, it kicked ass. I spent most of it either drinking or recovering from drinking. Good times:)

Highlights:

- Kien's Birthday was last week, so we got him a copy of Karaoke Revolution. For the folks who know him, you already know that he loves to sing no matter where he is:) Props to Paul and Sue for thinking up such a good gift. FYI: I think my Sue was the best of the bunch (no she is not mine like,"I'll kill you if you look at her boobs one more time" sort of mine. That's just how Paul and I distinguish our significant others) . And no, I did not sing. I never sing around anyone but Sue and in large arena type areas where no one can actually hear me. Sue can tell you that you are better off not having heard it.

- Munckin games that lasted two days. I thought they were never going to end. And my friends are really good at having zero morals when it comes to that game:)

- Kien showed us what aggressive Texas Holdem play was is supposed to look like and proceeded to mop the floor with us, to the tune of $5 buck a person.

- Paul thinking that I actually don't have any friends and that actually posted as R, Uncle R, and Z-O just to make myself feel better.

- Me realizing that if Paul or Kien lived anywhere near me, I would pretty much play video games with them non stop for weeks at a time.

- 2 gay bars in one night. Just as an FYI for the Huntsville folk, Insomnia looked really cool, but no one, and I mean NO ONE, shows up before 2:30am. We left about then due to boredom.

Alternate Uses for Light Sabers

A little diversion on a Friday:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber5.htm

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber6.htm

Another Porn Stereotype On the Way Out

CNN: Texas House to cheerleaders: Don't shake it

I heard about this the other day on Leno, and I thought he was just joking. But according to the above CNN article, Texas is considering a law that "would forbid sexy cheers and give the Texas Education Agency authority to punish schools that allow "overtly sexually suggestive" routines at football games and other events."

Man that pisses me off. Look, 16 old girls have a lot of pent up sexual frustration. One way they get that out of there system is by shaking their groove thing in a outfit that screams "look please treat as nothing but sexy meat" while flashing their pseudo-underwear at a crowd of mostly men and pretending to encourage others to root for some sporting event that no one cares about (except, ironically, in Texas). To deny them this would remove one of the last safe outlets of teasing. Without it, these girl will have no choice but to become librarians, nurses, doctors, catholic school girls, sorority girls, strippers, or desperate housewives to get that sort of fix (did I miss any porn stereotypes there?).

The irony that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are the sexiest cheerleaders in the world should also not be ignored. How is the girl from Texas supposed to grow up to be one of these fine "athletes" if we don't let them practice in high school? Huh? Answer that!

Doesn't the Texas board of education have anything better to do with their time? Is this really THE most important issue facing the board?

Final Thought: I like sexy cheerleader routines. Don't take them away!

Laura Bush Needs Loven

If Laura Bush's roast of the President at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner is any indication, the first lady needs someone to (in the words of Chef) make sweet love to her down by the fire:

"George always says he's delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney.
He's usually in bed by now. I'm not kidding. I said to him the other day,
'George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to
stay up later.' I am married to the president of the United States, and here's
our typical evening: Nine o'clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep, and I'm
watching 'Desperate Housewives' -- with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife."

She went on to say:

One night, after George went to bed, Lynne Cheney, Condi Rice, Karen Hughes
and I went to Chippendale's. I wouldn't even mention it except Ruth Ginsberg and
Sandra Day O'Connor saw us there. I won't tell you what happened, but Lynne's
Secret Service codename is now "Dollar Bill."

First: If Lynn Cheny only got the name "Dollar Bill", she is one cheapskate. Her husband is the Vice President of the U.S.A. and a former CEO of Haliburton. Can't she afford to slip a five in there sometimes?

Second: The media of course thought it was all very funny. After all, who doesn't like seeing the president getting ripped on? Jay Leno practically built a career doing nothing but.

But I saw it for what it was. A desperate cry for help for all the woman of politicians that they are not getting the sexual satisfaction that they so justly deserve. We have a 2.3+ trillion dollar budget this year. Can't we afford to get each of these women a nice vibrator? Maybe a couple nipple rings? I mean, is that too much to ask? Hell, I'm sure the Secret Service would chip in just so they don't have to go back to another Chippendale's show.

Coming Soon: Star Wars Sucks Posts

I'm trying really hard not to be excited about Star Wars Episode III. Really. I keep telling myself all of the following:

(1) Lucas is directing yet again, so it will suck

(2) Hayden Christensen is in it yet again, so it is going to suck.

(3) Sue read an early review that it was "tear jerker". Sweet lord would that make it suck.

And yet....

Try as I might, I'm getting excited. I know the date it comes out (May 19th). I know that I am going to the midnight showing. I know I will see it the next day with my co-workers. Today starwars.com released "A Hero Falls Music Video", which is really just the theatical trailer set to new music, and I am ashamed to admit that I have watched it three time already today.

sigh...

They should just rename episode III "Star Wars: digital crack for the geeky".

God DAMN IT I am good

Today is a good day. I'm having one of those days where I am so excited by my own brilliance that I really want to run through the halls yelling, "You all suck! Bow to might of my mad coding skillz!!!" (you have to use a "z" there to keep your street cred...wait...I just explained something that gives me street cred...now I have lost it all!... oh how fleeting is the cred of the street!).

Of course, all this ego-mania will most certainly be shattered soon enough by some bizarre coding issue that I will waste a hour trying to solve only to be farther from the solution than when I started. I have to enjoy my power over all electronic bits now while it lasts.

On another note: I'm terribly excited that (in alphabetical order to ensure one does not feel more special than the other) Kien, Paul, and Sue are all visiting this weekend. DDDR (drunken dance dance revolution) at my house on Friday night! w00t!

(Side node to Dana: I am so ready to reclaim my position as the official pace car of this group!)

My new obsession...

Eric has been playing World of Warcraft since the beta came out and I have wanted to play for a long time, but since I was in school I had no free time! Since the semester is winding down (one more final tomorrow!), I have begun to play. I started my elf druid, Erwinn, about 2 weeks ago and now I am a level 18! It is so much fun! I love kicking some arse! My elf is slutty and hella buff. The female elves in the game dance like total whores and I love it! I think everyone should play it and that ecspecially more chicks should play! I warn you, it is so addicting. I am angry that I have to study now and can't play. When Eric was at Ft. Rucker Monday night I played for 6 hours until 2:30 am, with breaks in between of course. You can wash clothes, cook, clean, and still play WoW all at once! Tomorrow I am going to play for a long time!

Update: I love my long pole and my sexy loin cloth;)

Since when did the Pope take over NBC?

I am just wondering... What is up with NBC? They used to be such a good network and now they have this stupid mini series called Revelations. I don't care to see what NBC's interpretation of the Bible is! I don't want to see any versions of it. Now tonight before this dumb series they are having a "Dateline" special called: Does the devil live among us? Supposedly they will show a "real" exorcism. Are you joking? Why don't people get it? They are just doing it to make MONEY! Just like Mel Gibson did. He made that crappy movie just so that he could buy his own private island. I am sure GOD wanted Mel Gibson to be richer than anyone and to have his own island for the greater good. CNBC even had a special a month ago about how much money religion is making and they are keeping it for themselves. A lot of them are not even giving it away to charities and such. What can I say, Christian conservatives love their money and still think they are going to heaven...

Bored, Bored, and Bored

Man I am bored here in my hotel room. I ran out to the mall a bit and read random books in B. Dalton for a while. I almost cried at the number of book with subtitles like, "Why the US is a going to go down in a fiery explosion of death" or "How liberals manage to eat the heads of babies without getting called up for the draft" or some crap like that. I know the idea is to grab your attention and sell books, but blanket statements like that really turn me off to the product you are trying to sell.

I've been listening to The Killers a lot lately. Excellent music. The lyrics are great and interesting, and it has a great sound overall.

Brain Freeze Here I Come!

I'm in Killeen, TX this week. It's amazing how showing up here in the dark and going out a different entrance to the airport made me seriously question if I was in the right city. Nothing looked right at night, and the different hotel made me seriously wonder if I was in the twilight zone.

UPDATE: I'm not in the twilight zone. Apparently for a while there they were diverting air traffic to a small airport they had on the far side of the town while they renovated the main airport. This was the first flight I had ever had to here that actually landed at the Killeen airport. Good thing. I seriously thought I was going crazy.

On the very big plus side, my hotel is right next to a 7-11. I'm probably going to completely ignore my advice about caffeine from last week and drink more than I ever have in a single 5 day period.

Movies Suck

I'm writing a lot of posts lately to say things suck...

The last 3 movies Sue and I have seen over the last two weeks have all sucked. They sucked for different reasons, but ultimately they sucked for us.

1) Sideways: For all the critic/Oscar buzz this movie generated, I was expecting it to actually BE funny. Nope. Way too serious. It was really a pretty deep movie about folks dealing (or not dealing with) the way their life has turned out. Maybe it would have been better for me if I was expecting that. But when you put the word "comedy" on the box, I'm expecting to laugh more than once during the run-time of the movie.

2) Napoleon Dynamite - Slight better, but after about 20 minutes of it I lost interest. It had its moments, but just not enough to make me want to watch it all the way to the end.

3) Sin City - Of all them, I like this one the most. But it still sucked. Its very much like Kill Bill in a lot of ways. I'm also starting to respect directors more and more. I could tell exactly which scenes Quentin Tarantino had his hand in (most of the second story I think). In terms of visuals, the movie is amazing. It really is like watching a comic book that moves. But in the end visuals can't make me like a movie. They can make it hard for me to hate a movie, but they can't make me like it. My biggest problems with this movie were two fold. (1) I counted at least 5 times where a male's genitals where ripped off or shot in this movie. Any movie where that happens once is automatically downgraded. 5 times and you can't do better than a 3 out of 5 for me. (2) WARNING!!! SPOILER AHEAD. Stop reading NOW if you care: The movie is really three different stories, but they never come together in any real way. None of them are good enough on their own to make the movie, and the lack of a connection really makes the end of the movie feel like something is missing.

Work Sucks

FUCK Work Today!

I'm having one of those days where I want to take my monitors and chuck them out the front door of our office, then run them over repeatedly with my car. I keep having a day dream where I am in that scene in Office Space where they are beating the shit out of that fax machine, except in my daydream it is my computer. Woh to the first person who knocks on my door and asks me a stupid question.

While I am on the subject of stupid questions, I have to bitch about this. I know these only apply if you are a technical person. Sorry to all my liberal arts friends:

1) I don't know how many times I've had the following conversation at work:

Dumb Employee: I'm seeing an error when I do such and such.

Me: What does the error message say?

Dumber by the minute Employee: Um, I can't remember.

Me (in my head): Well, HOW THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!?!?!?

Rule 1: DON'T ASK ME TO HELP YOU WITH AN ERROR IF YOU CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO REMEMBER WHAT THE FUCKING ERROR WAS!

2) Don't come ask me a question without having looked into it yourself first. Every time you come in my office to talk about something, you break my "coding zone" (R knows what I am talking about). This is the second most common problem I have:

Dumb Employee: I'm trying to do such and such in my code.

Me: OK, that sounds reasonable.

<Walk to their office and start looking at their code>

Me: What does this function do?

Dumb Employee: I don't know.

Me: Well, ok. What is stored in this variable?

Dumb Employee: I don't know, someone else wrote it (translation: I am not motivated to actually understand the code. I just churn it out by copying and pasting other code.).

Me (In my head): I'M TOO BUSY TO TEACH YOU HOW TO FUCKING CODE YOU USELESS MONKEY. IF YOUR TOO FUCKING LAZY TO LEARN HOW THE CODE WORKS, I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOU!

Ahhhhhh.... Now I feel a little better. Liberal use of the word FUCK in all caps always takes some of my edge off.

I Owe You a Blog

I know it has been a week already since our last post. That is my bad. The worse thing is that I have at least three post ideas floating around in my head, but work is sucking up all my time and preventing me from writing anything. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this quick thought:

- Don't quit drinking Caffenine, start drinking lots of it, then stop again.

I did this the last couple of weeks with all my traveling. I ate a lot of fast food, and for whatever reason I always order soda when I go to a fast food place. Now that I am back I'm not drinking as much and it REALLY HURTS. My brain keeps telling me that it will repeatedly punish me until I get it some of that neactur of the Gods. During those times I have to threaten that I will put the Q-Tip all the way in my ear to get it to shut up.

Pharmacist's should not be allowed to talk...

This has been in the news for a week now and then there was an article in on ABC news again today "Pharmacies Take Up 'Morning-After' Pill Debate". Some pharmacists seem to think that they have the right to refuse to fill prescriptions of birth control pills or morning after pills because they don't "believe" in them. Here is a thought: If you do not believe in birth control pills, don't be a damn pharmacist! How simple! I am so damn sick of people thinking that just because they don't believe in something that they can interfere with someone else's life! F%@# that! If you cannot keep your religious views out of your job, then maybe you do not belong in a job at all! Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. An additional nine states — Arizona, California, Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin — are considering similar legislation. How is this legal??? This is violating a person's right to medical care. If a doctor writes a prescription, you have no right to judge that decision. Women take birth control for other reasons than to prevent pregnancy and they also take the morning after pill to help with complications of a miscarriage. These damn pharmacists are embarassing poor women who just want them to do their job and fill their prescription. God help any pharmacist that tries to refuse me a script! I was so proud of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for issuing a temporary order for pharmacist's to fill every prescription. I am sorry, but why aren't more doing this? It just seems so simple. So many stupid people...if only there was a law to hurt and maim them...

News is officially crazy

WARNING: This post is rant. There is only one funny thing in it, and it is clearly shown below in block quotes so you can find it easily.

Does anyone but me think the 24 hour news channels have officially gone crazy? I mean, its seriously starting to make me think that there is some sort of conspiracy to deprive us of all of any resemblance of news.

First there is the whole Terri Schiavo thing. I never once during the whole thing actually heard someone come on any of the news programs and say anything about the legal decisions that the judges made. I heard people complain about the moral decisions. I heard people complain about the fact that a judge was deciding this woman's fate. I heard complaints that the judiciary in this country is out of control. But no one actually sitting and saying, "the law that applies to this case says such and such." Why can't we have THAT discussion on the news channels? Fuck, FOX had a "legal expert" on nearly every time I saw FOX News some where and they were always talking about everything BUT that. No all I heard was shrill cries of, "WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL HER?!!?!?!" and equally shrill cries of, "WHY ARE YOU PUNISHING HER BY KEEPING HER ALIVE?!?!?!". As if they were in the third grade and volume was counted in the score of who won the debate.

Then there was the Pope. Despite the fact that I am not Catholic, I do understand that this is a big deal. I was even a little sad that he died. But for the love of God the news went F-ing nuts! You would think there were preparing people for the destruction of the entire world. And do I really need updates every 15 minutes on the Pope's urinary tract infection? NO! FOX news in its desire to be the most morbid of all the cable news actually declared that the Pope was dead 26 hours before it happened. Sigh... Hey here's a thought.... maybe we could CHECK our facts before we go on the air. Crazy I know... so crazy it just might work!

Did anyone else keep hearing that old guy from the Holy Grail as they watched the news coverage of the pope?

Media:
Here's one.

Pope:
I'm not dead!

Masses:
What?

News Media:
Nothing. Here's your ninepence.

Pope:
I'm not dead!

Masses:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!

Media:
Yes, he is.

Pope:
I'm not!

Masses:
He isn't?

Media:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.

Pope:
I'm getting better!

Media:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.

And don't get me started on the Michael Jackson thing. DAMN YOU OJ for teaching the media that people will actually listen to the day-to-day happenings of a celebrity's trial (I know, its debatable whether Michael Jackson even is a celebrity any more, but bear with me). Look, just tell me when it is over. I don't care if he shows up to court under an umbrella. I don't care if he shows up in court in pajamas. Hell, I don't care if he shows up in court on a unicycle with his head INSIDE a 5 year old's vagina. I don't care. I DON'T CARE!

Or how about the Sandy Burger story. For those who have not been paying really close attention, he was the Clinton advisor who stole and destroyed some documents from the national archives about terrorism during the 2000 New Years celebrations. I never ONCE heard anyone on the cable news mention that, "oh by the way: He only destroyed some COPIES of the documents. We still have the originals, so its not like he destroyed some vital government information." Nope, can't talk about that. No story there. We wouldn't have that conspiracy edge that we need to beat out the other channels for 0.1 Nielson ratings.

Fun weekend

This weekend was DIGWEED! It was hella fun! We drove to Atlanta Saturday and got there about 6. We checked into our hotel and then went across the street to the sports bar and grill to eat and drink while we watched a little basketball. We hit eleven50 about 10:30pm and DJ Luke Fair opened for Digweed. He was very cool. Eleven 50 is a cool club, a little more high class and main stream then we were used to but the people there were all pretty cool. We met a few fun people. They have a great outdoor area called Eden (which was all in tents since it was cold this weekend) that has these giant square, comfy couches that you can lounge on and several other large couches along the walls that you can sit at and close the curtains to have some privacy ;) We were so bummed that our NY crew(including Kien) could not make it! Paul and Sue would have loved this club! At midnight, John Digweed began his set. It was kick ass! Eric and I drank a lot and danced a lot. We were glad that Uncle R and his lady showed up about 12:30 am or so and we hung out and danced a little. Uncle R got to relive his glory days with our glow rings and our glow sticks :) I took my pink glow sticks that I found at Target and danced the night away. It was a fun night!

Sunday we forgot all about the stupid daylight savings time so we go very little sleep, but we were still able to go and meet up with my best friend from high school for lunch with her husband and 7 mo old. What a cute baby! He was fun! All in all it was a great weekend!

Black Jelly Beans

I was just sitting in my kitchen digging through our jelly bean bag when I thought struck me: Why do they still make black jelly beans? We are getting down to the end of the bag, and those are now the majority of what is left. I swear that I have NEVER met a person you likes black jelly beans. I challenge all four readers of this blog to name me ONE person who does likes black jelly beans!

BBC Radio

I'm listening to the "Radio 1's Dance Anthems with Dave Pearce " stream from the BBC Radio 1's Dance stream list. It's pretty good in terms of music, although it is a little light on the hard trance and hard house that I like. Also, since it is just the recording of the actual transmission it has a lot of random U.K. folks calling in giving shout outs to people I have never met and never will.

But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that while we all know that the ladies of America find the British accent very sexy, I never realized just how sexy that same accent is on a woman. Every time one of the women calling into this show says the word "knickers", it gives me that happy tingle for some reason... :) Anyone else have this feeling? Or am I just a traitor to my own linguistic heritage? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm from the Midwest, an area that is universally recognized as having no accent whatever (Ok, ignoring the UP and Coach Z's home state).

Quizes You'll Enjoy Taking

I am 40% Geek.

You probably work in computers, or a history deptartment at a college. You never really fit in with the "normal" crowd. But you have friends, and this is a good thing.

Take the
Geek Test
@ FualiDotCom

I am 63% Video Game Addict.

Video games are a big portion of my life, maybe too big of a portion. They are not a means of social interaction, despite what I might think. I should just go outside.

Take the
Video Game Addict Test
@ FualiDotCom

Another Political Post

Sorry, but I cannot resist this one, despite the fact that no one ever responds to them.

Bush: U.S. to Sell F-16s to Pakistan

Yet another example of the hypocrisy which is the Bush administration. We strive to promote democracy and freedom throughout the world......but only in countries where it is convenient to do so. Pakistan is headed by a military dictator that has repeatedly reneged on promises to hold free elections. They have developed nuclear weapons. The head of their nuclear development program sold all the knowledge to every third world crackpot on the earth who would pay. They were originally cut off from buying F-16s after the first Bush decided that they may be building nuclear weapons. Now that we are certain that they have them, we let them buy a delivery vehicle? How screwed up is that logic?

Religion, Politics, and the Easter Beagle

A friend of mine at work sent me the following quote today after we had a rather heated debate the day earlier about the state of the judiciary and religious rights:

By Mark Alexander: "However, if atheists have standing because atheism is properly understood as a religion, then why is their demand that it be the only officially permissible public practice not itself a constitutionally banned establishment of atheism as the government's official religion? Either godlessness is or isn't a religious faith. To our way of thinking, either atheists cannot legitimately sue on religious liberty grounds, or atheism itself must be as constrained as other faiths."

This got me thinking about a bunch of things. Atheism is not a religion. The claim that they want atheism to be "the only officially permissible public practice" does not make any sense, because of course Atheism HAS no practices. There are no ceremonies, no religious texts, no anything. Its not a religion any more than, say, everyone you know named Bob or all the registered Democrats are a religion.

By the way, exact text of the First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I read that and it says to me "Congress shall not pass a law that forces me to acknowledge one religion over a another" and "Congress shall not pass a law that forbids me from acknowledging one religion over a another". Both are in accordance with the way the courts have consistently applied the constitution (at least in my mind). School prayer is an excellent example. The courts have always ruled that you can pray in school. What you cannot do is have the teacher lead the prayer, because that would imply that the state somehow acknowledges what God you are praying to more than some other God. Again, they are never saying you cannot have a religion. You just can't have the government (federal or state) imply that one religion is better than the other.

A few reviews

First of all, I bought The Sims 2 University expansion when it first came out about a month ago and I have finally gotten to really play it. It is great! You can send your teenage sims to college and play them without aging. They just proceed through college years as Frosh, soph, etc. They added a few new jobs through the majors which is cool like paranormal and showbiz. I love the Sims. I have been playing Sims since it first came out a few years ago and I love Sims 2. That is something else that Eric did not mention, I love video games and I like to watch him play games too. I was thinking of playing some World of Warcraft soon since that game rocks!

When Eric was in Iowa, I rented Bridget Jones 2: The edge of reason and Finding Neverland. They were pretty good movies. Bridget Jones was hilarious! I love the character of Bridget Jones and Renee Zellweger does a great job playing her. Finding Neverland was a sweet little movie, but interesting too. It is based on the true events of how Peter Pan was first written by the playwrite James Barrie. It is a sweet story about James Barrie teaching some children how to use there imagination when they have had to grow up to soon in their lives. Of course Johnny Depp is in it and he is fun to look at! :) Kate Winslet is in it too and I also like her.

News from Iowa

That's right, I am in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this week. Not quite the same level of excitement as a trip to Vegas. I think my company secretly knew they were going to have to send me here, so they decided to let me go to Vegas last week just to make it not seem so bad. Although actually, their plan failed horribly. Comparing this place to Las Vegas just makes it all the worse.

But I have to give suitable props to the Hampton Inn that I am staying in. First, they give out fresh baked cookies at 6:00pm! They have a hot continental breakfast. They have wireless internet in every room! I mean, if this place was not in Iowa I would seriously consider living here:)

Also, I have to say that I really miss the Midwest. I got off the plane here and it was about 50 degrees. Man did that feel right for some reason. Between that and the horrible roads everywhere, it ALMOST felt like I was home again.

My wife is AWESOME

Today Sue baked cookies, mowed the backyard, weeded, did a load of laundary, and managed to have dinner with me at Olive Garden. What saint did I save from oncoming traffic to get me such a wonderful woman?

News from Vegas: Part 2

Well, as promised almost all of Thursday was a blur of drinking and screaming at the top of my lungs to rock music. Gosh darn it I love Vegas (I would have swore in that sentence, but I was afraid God would smite me if I committed any more sins in relation to all the fun I had on Thursday).

I'm not sure I have EVER been that drunk in my life. We started at about 8pm and I did not stop until 4:30am the next morning. Combine that with basically no dinner and you can see why I was completely toasted by the end of it all. I was so drunk my vision was blurry and even escalators where difficult to navigate (that whole depth perception thing was tough). I was so far ahead as the pace car that I think I lapped several of my co-workers (with the exception of Steve. He drank like a pro).

For those who know Steve, you will never believe just how crazy he was. Yeah that's right, the straight laced, religious conservative father of soon to be two from Alabama was drinking and yelling at the stage like he was still in college at a Smashing Pumpkins concert. He got two free shots from the bartender just because he was having more fun than most of the folks in that bar! I also managed to snag one for myself. I would have had more I am sure but I kept leaving with people I just met in the bar to get fresh air or pee or get some food or whatever.

I meet a bunch of cool people while I was there:

- First, I meet a girl named Ryan. My first thought was that her parents clearly hated her. When I asked her if any guys had ever yelled her name out during sex, she just smiled and told me "yeah, they get used to the fact that they are yelling a guys name I guess":) It probably helped that she had that sexy girl next door look going on.

- Met a guy at the bar from South Dakota who bought me a beer just because I said hello. I've already forgotten his name.

- Met a girl named Joy that changed my opinion of girls named Joy for the better. She was up on the bar more times than anyone else in the bar. Plus I have to respect any woman who demanded we drink a Guinness at midnight on St. Patrick's day.

News from Vegas

So I'm in Vegas this week for the MPUC conference for work. The conference itself is boring as all get out. There aren't even any booth babes! How can you have a conference without booth babes?

- Its next to impossible to describe Las Vegas to someone who has never been here. Some of the hotels here cost upwards of one billion dollars to build. That is more than the yearly GDP of the poorest 24 countries in the world.

- Yesterday we were walking through the Aladdin and we saw a guy with seven show girls in a large box holding a sign that said, "Donate if you like show girls and children". Apparently he had been in there for seven days without food and water.

- Poker has sucked for me thus far. I've been playing Texas Holdem at the Exclaibar because they have the cheapest tables around. So far I am down $103:(

- My collection of stripper/hooker trading cards is growing quite rapidly. I think have the entire Las Vegas team now. We were walking behind some random people the other day and they were talking about the fact that they had collected a lot of pairs. I just had to ask if he meant that statement to have a double meaning.

Since today is St. Patricks day, the plan is to get a LOT of drinking in tonight. Can't wait for the day after:)

"This ain't a love song..." wait, yes it is!

You know how I love to post lyrics. They are my poetry. Since I am in a mushy mood already (see below) I figured why not?

"After her" (original lyrics for satellite)

By:Dave Matthews

sun will shine no matter what I do

sun shines bright now with you

what a wonderful thing for you to do

moon shine bright reflection in your eyes

a finer place he could not find

winter's cold spring erases

and the calm away by the storm is chasing

everything good needs replacing

hope all these changes happen with you

in my life never before have I lover so adored

her eyes her hair everything she says

my delight can tickle me inside

touch my heart touch my mind

no matter what's inside I'll give to her

no need to satisfy my hunger lost in her

and while I spend these hours

five senses reading

with biggest steps I'm running

after her I will run

winter's cold spring erases

and the calm away by the storm is chasen

everything good needs replacing

hope all these changes happen with you

sun will shine no matter what I do

sun shines bright now with you

touch my heart touch me through

no matter what's inside I'll give to her

no need to satisfy my hunger lost in her

and while I spend these hours

five senses reading

with biggest steps I'm running

after her I will run

after her

after her

after her

Late night thoughts...

Hello. It has been a while since I have had a chance to blog. They are keeping me so busy this semester! I am just tired and I cannot wait for spring break next week so I can just rest and do some fun things!

While Eric has been in Vegas this week for work, I rented some movies to watch that Eric didn't want to see. Tonight I watched "The Notebook". What can I say? It was a great movie and I have not seen a movie like it in a long time that has actually touched me. I am not a girly girl, I don't cry at movies. This one got me. It is based on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. It is a love story. Two young people fall in love. They are from different worlds, she's rich, he's a working man. They break up since she is going to college far away and her mom lies to her about his letters he wrote her. Years go by and they meet again and re kindle lost love. They end up together, but they show the man as an old man reading their love story to his old wife who has alzheimers and can't remember their life. It is so beautiful. He reads the story of their love everyday so that she will remember their life for 5 minutes. Then she breaks down and doesn't know who he is and she has to be sedated. It hurts him when he loses her again, but he wants to be with her and so he does the same thing everyday. How sweet! The ending is the best and I won't give it away in case you want to watch it, but that is how it should be. Well, now I will continue listening to romantic music and think about my love so far away until I can sleep.

Boeing CEO Money Shot Not Quite As Expected

CNN: Boeing CEO out in sex scandal

The current CEO of Boeing was forced out yesterday due to a "an improper relationship with a female executive". Makes you wonder how improper it would have to be to get the CEO canned. Boeing had $13 billion in revenue last quarter. When you are raking that kind of dough, I'm thinking a little tryst in a hotel room is not going to be enough to get you fired.

So what is the threshold? I mean, is screwing her on the company jet enough? (its Boeing, so they probably have one for each guy on the board anyways). To quote Kevin Smith, "fucking her in a very uncomfortable place"? I'm thinking it is something less than taking her in reverse cowgirl while she services the entire mechanic union in her mouth, and more than dressing her up in those cute airline stewardess outfits and forgetting to clean the money shot off the apron.

Speaking of money shots, this dude will lose a $2.3 million dollar a year job for this little "relationship". Even if they had a "relationship" every day for 2 years and 4 months he has been running the company, that is an EXPENSIVE woman. Hope she was worth $6,301 a day. Did you know that in the UK, that same service is only $150 a day?

UN is officially Worthless

Man, I love these Republicans...

Bush Nominates UN Critic Bolton as UN Envoy

This is hilarious on a number of levels:

Level 1 - There are 280+ million folks in the U.S.A. Couldn't you find ONE person in that whole group who actually LIKED the UN? Or at least did not publicly say that if the UN "lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference"?

Level 2 - How hypocritical is it to say the above, then go work there and stress your "support for effective multilateral diplomacy"? I feel like we should be doing The Princess Bride: "You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean".

Level 3 - When I first read that title I thought, "Fuck we are doomed! Michael Bolton will have every country in the world after us with those cheesy 80's pop songs of his..."

Favorite Easter Candy

My favorite Easter candy by far are Mini Cadbury Eggs. God damm are they delicious!



What is your favorite Easter treat?

I Love Tech

Today I went to the Post Office to mail a letter for Sue that needed more than the usual 32 cent stamp. As always, the place is packed with at least 10 or so people in line ahead of me because (1) lets face it, the Post Office is a very happening place, and (2) working at the post office seems to sap nearly all will to move from anyone foolish enough to accept employment there.

But then as if a gift from heaven, I spotted a automated US Postal Kiosk in the corner of the building that no was using. A minute later I was out the door, letter mailed, with a line of folks wondering if they too should brave the uncaring machine or the equally uncaring postal employees.

What the f$%k is wrong with people that they are so scared of technology? Seriously? I love that stuff. Anything that means I do not have to wait on the incompetence of others makes me a happy guy.

Temporarily out of service

I'm sick today. I feel like I'm working on 1 hour of sleep. Stupid f$%king flu. I blame Sue and that cest pool of folks she has to care for everyday. What's with all these people who get sick and go to the hospital anyways? :)

Update: I went to the gym today for just 40 minutes or so, and it really did seem to make me feel better.

Picture Worth a Thousand Words

I scanned this off the front page of the Huntsville Times from Thursday. Does anyone but me think there must be a very amused editor somewhere? Ok gang, time to add your favorite captions for this image. I came up with: Who doesn't? With a mouth that can open that wide, I should think so. Add another "o" to that shirt and we can talk. (Trust me that it says "Bob")

Mornings are odd

I had one of those rare mornings today where I'm driving to work, but my brain is not really turned on yet. I blame this on the switch from my usual Chocolate Covered Sugar Bombs cereal to a wholesome English muffin, but that is not the point of this blog.

Its a rather weird feeling in general when my brain is not fully keeping up with the world around me, but this morning it was particularly noticeable for some reason. I had the peculiar (at least to me) feeling that I was seeing the world outside my head a bit different this morning. Its hard to explain. You know that scene at the very end of the first Matrix movie where Reves is fighting Agent Smith in the hallway and everything seems slower to him? It was sort of like that.

I had at least two moments where I realized that I just turned into a lane where traffic might be coming from without actually looking to see if anyone was coming (or at the very least not remembering whether I looked or not). What was odd was I had a sort of disconnected thought of, "wow, I could be dead now if anyone was coming", but without the usual rush of flight or fight hormones that come along with such near misses when driving. And once I realized that I was not getting scared, it dawned on me that perhaps something was not quite right with my world view this morning. Its like I was calm and collected in a way that I am rarely in everyday life. Very weird. I might need to start sleep depriving myself on purpose to see if it can make a big difference to my outlook. Although like nearly every college student I know, I spent most of my time in college as a insomniac and I do not remember it being all that enjoyable. I certainly don't remember being all that calm (competitive N64 Golden Eye play will make you a very angry, bloodthirsty person if you let it).

Reviews

I thought I would review a few things Eric and I have purchased or seen lately.

First of all, we just got an iPod Shuffle as a belated Valentine's gift. It is a smaller version of the iPod for only $99.00! It holds 512 MB of songs. I love it since it is so small and you don't have to worry about a cd skipping if you want to go out walking with it.

Secondly, we saw the movie Constantine. It sucked. We saw all of the previews and thought that it might be good. The idea for the plot was a good idea, they just made it into a bad movie. It was boring and lame. I was glad to see Gavin Rossdale (Bush lead singer) in a movie! What a sexy rocker! Keanu Reeves just was not cool enough to make this movie good.

Chris Rock is my New Hero

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/22/oscars.rock.ap/index.html

According to this article, Chris Rock made the comment, "The (Oscar) awards don't really affect anybody's lives in the crowd," Rock said. "Meanwhile, the Nobel Peace Prize, there's no one there. Nobody cares what the scientists are wearing. What are you wearing Professor Allen? 'Pants!' "

Thank your God (or god, I'm not sure which it should be here. Is it correct to use the proper name here when you are referencing multiple gods? Maybe it should be "deities" or someth... Wait, lets get back to the point I was trying to make. You remember the part before the parentheses right? No. Ok, it said "Thank your God...") there is at least one guy in show biz who realizes that all the hype we as a society lavish on celebrity is a huge F&#KING WASTE OF TIME.

Oh and I liked this quote too: "Don't thank God. God's busy working on the tsunami, so leave him alone." Here here. Like God gives a shit who wins "best supporting animal actor (mammal or bird) in a play about people dealing with the horrors of being unable to afford the REALLY good coffee at Starbucks" or some other useless shit like that. He's got more important things to do, like smiting the wicked and making sure conservatives have something to complain about.

New Slashdot.org Poll shows what geeks really respect

Favorite Hominid Development

Hilarious. Simply Hilarious.

No Hockey

I forgot to blog about this yesterday. The hockey season was officially cancelled yesterday:(

Sigh... I love hockey and I am sad to see the season cancelled. But owners have basically come out and said that they will lose less money if they cancel the season. That's not a good sign for the future of the sport. I remember that it took baseball almost 5 years just to recover to their previous attendance before their strike.

FAT (and not with a PH)

How fat are we as a nation if Amazon.com is selling Defibrillators to individual families?

Movie review

This past weekend Eric and I went to see the new Will Smith Flick Hitch. What a great movie! It was hilarious! Will Smith and Kevin James are very funny in this movie. Any movie that opens with two weiner dogs has to be good:) But really, if you haven't seen it and you like a good comedy then go see it. The very end has a little funny "extra" which you have to just stay and watch.

Valentine's Day

ValentIne's Day is really just an overemphasized card holiday. It is "celebrated" to make men spend tons of money on things that women don't really need but want as a sign that they are loved for at least one day out of the year. The history of it is not that romantic or happy but you can learn more about on the History Channel web site.

Still, I am a romantic at heart and I am in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful man that makes me feel loved everyday. This blog is for Eric. I don't want to make anyone puke, but I believe that Eric and I are truly soul mates. It was strange but when I first met him I knew that he was the one and it was like finding that missing half of your heart. Now I don't NEED a man to make me feel whole, that is not what I am getting at, but I do believe that having that special person in your life just makes life better. I still have to say again that the secret to a good and happy marriage is laughter! We laugh everyday at least once, usually many times.

Here are the lyrics to a beautiful song by Martina McBride that sums up how I feel about my dear Eric:

Born To Give My Love To You

I don't know what brought us here
Something in the stars said you and me
I don't know where this feeling comes from
Surely it was meant to be
For I have known you even in my dreams
My eyes are open, my heart can see

CHORUS:As sure as stars light the midnight sky
As sure as children wonder why
As sure as newborn babies cry
I was born to give my love to you
Born to give my love to you

Heaven must be holding on
To all the love I'm feeling now
Here we are this is the moment
I believe it's our turn somehow
Hearts together, hands across the night
One forever, finally in sight

(REPEAT CHORUS)I was born to give my love to you
(I was born to give my love to you)
I was born to give my love to you
I was born to give my love to you

Travel to the Mountain (Time Zone)

I'm in Phoenix again for a few days this week. All and all a very boring trip, but then again I am a boring guy so that is to be expected.

Thankfully, Boeing's incompetence with their own hardware means that I am going to get to come home two days earlier. They spent about 7 hours today trying to determine why the helicopters software would reboot every minute or so. Boring for me just sitting their hoping it would come back up, but entertaining from the point of view of watching them stand around it scratching their heads and mumbling about how "I've never seen it do this". It was like watching frustrated monkeys trying to get to a banana that was just out reach.

The finally gave up around 6:30 pm tonight. And they did not have high hopes for tomorrow either, so we are heading home rather than waste any more money. Sigh...gotta love this government work.

Superbowl Prediction

The current Vegas line is the Patriots by 7 points. I'm going to put my prediction up right here that the Patriots will win by at least 10 points.