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:)