The Crash

Thanks P-Ziddy, for providing the contents of today's blog post. :)

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I can't respond to any emails today, something has crashed on my computer and the mouse is missing...

Hungry Like The Wolf

Lightyear is an endless source of entertainment. He's just over 60, and he's a delivery driver at work. He stops by between routes at least once a day to chat with us.

Yesterday Lightyear stopped by my desk. "Now Jeff," he said, with one huge finger pointing like he's scolding me, "I'm gonna give you some wisdom, and listen close 'cause this is deep."

"There is an old Polish proverb that says, 'When the wolf is chasing your sleigh, throw him a raisin cookie, but don't stop to bake him a cake.'"

I shared this deep wisdom with icanspell. She brought up two interesting questions. First, What kind of cake do wolves like, anyway? And second, Would a wolf really be happy with a raisin cookie? Wouldn't he be happier with something bacon-ish?

From there, the next logical step was Bacon Cookies. Any fool can see that. And since the discussion happened early in the day, they quickly became Breakfast Bacon Cookies. Then, we talked about what it would take for somebody to actually *buy* such a product.

I dunno... what do you think? Would you buy this product? ;)

Brilliance

Yesterday, out of nowhere, Big Dawg started to cackle. And then he shouted at the top of his lungs, "I *LOVE* Accidental Brilliance!"

It was pretty obvious he was gonna gush about something whether I took the bait or not, so I took it. "What happened?"

I'll spare you the nerdy techie details. Big Dawg was required to make changes to a particular web page he'd put together a month ago. He thought the changes would be difficult, but as it turns out the changes were easy because of some of the code tricks he used in the first place.

"Accidental Brilliance is better than Regular Brilliance," he concluded, "Because it's so unexpected! Well, and I *always* expect Regular Brilliance," he said, with so much mock cockiness that it made me laugh.

I thought briefly about getting Big Dawg a shirt with Accidentally Brilliant on it, but I remembered how that adventure went last time. Cowboy *still* doesn't have his shirt. So, I decided to make do with this:

Raising The (Salad) Bar

I love the salad at Olive Garden. My wife loves the salad at Olive Garden. All God's children love the salad at Olive Garden. But even so, this was a bit ridiculous.

My in-laws took us out to dinner to celebrate my wife's birthday. Her brother and his wife were there also. Waitress-Lady brought us two big bowls of salad.

During the normal course of things, we finished off those bowls of salad and got two more. That was *it*... four bowls of salad for the six of us.

When my father-in-law got the check, he burst out laughing. There was a line item on the ticket that said, "Salad Refill - $0". The line was repeated 14 times.

Somewhere in Olive Garden headquarters there's a bean-counter who hasn't blinked in several days. "Fourteen?!?", he's thinking, "We have GOT to stop giving away the salad!"

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day!



Standard silly nonsense will resume tomorrow. If you can't wait that long, then check out this handy how-to guide for wanna-be actors. It's quite good. :)

The Filter Of Love

Mid-week last week, I had occasion to send some "issue" emails to Cowboy. "This wasn't done right", "This is broken", "This needs to change", that sort of thing. I ended up sending quite a few of those messages throughout the morning. Cowboy never replied to any of them, but I wasn't worried. He's got a reputation as a hinder-kicker... I didn't need to hear from him to know what his reaction was going to be.

And I tried to be good. Really, I tried. But after the second or third message, some of my snarky attitude started to come through a bit. Phrases like, "What was so-and-so thinking?", began to appear. I deleted some of them after typing them, but not quite all.

Early that afternoon, Cowboy called me. "I just wanted you to know that I'm not ignoring your messages," he said. "I'm deleting a few of your words here and there, forwarding the message along, and then I'm going and talking to them directly."

Deleting a few of my words here and there? Ah, my good buddy Cowboy's lookin' out for me. :) "So what you're telling me," I replied with a grin, "is that I can feel free to kick the sarcasm up a notch?"

"Oh yeah," he replied, brimming with bravado. "I'm your editor, baby."

"You're my filter of love?"

I momentarily lost Cowboy to bursts of laughter over that one. "Yes," he sputtered, "I am your filter of love."

"You need that on a t-shirt, man."

Once again, I lost Cowboy to explosive laughter.

I started to think about this, and it just seemed *right*. So, I went to Switch to ask for help. Switch is one of our graphic designers, and he just happens to have his own t-shirt press. Upon hearing the story, Switch enthusiastically agreed to make a "I am Jeff's filter of love" t-shirt for Cowboy.

The next day, Switch made the shirt. And this is where the story ends.

See, for the past FULL WEEK, Switch keeps forgetting to bring the shirt to work so we can present it to Cowboy. By now, I am certain Cowboy has forgotten the joke.

So instead, I have to content myself with blogging about Cowboy's tact and Switch's forgetfulness.

Ah, well. At least I finally made Cowboy laugh uncontrollably. I can cross that off my life's to-do list.

Frogger

One recent evening, my wife and I were out front looking at our cute little porch lights that line the walkway.



One of them needed adjustment, so I bent down to take a closer look. As I reached for the light, a frog jumped out at me.

I was surprised, so naturally I fell backwards on my hinder. But the part that really made my wife and I laugh was the phrase that came out of my mouth next:

"Desperately out of his element, the Urban Nerd faces *danger!* on all sides..."

If I were ever the subject of a nature show, it would have to air on Comedy Central. It would last exactly one episode, and it would end with a scream.

Scuz Bucket

Late last week, Lightyear stopped by with a welcome gift... he brought a Dark Chocolate candy bar for each of us.

"Thanks Lightyear," I said. "You're wonderful."

Without hesitation, he chastised me. "Don't even start those rumors," he scolded. "That's how I ended up married. Some woman said, 'You're wonderful', and *now* look at me."

It's hard to argue with that kind of logic. I decided to try a different approach. "Well, how about I call you Scuz Bucket, and you and I both know what I *really* mean?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

Some days its very difficult to keep a straight face.

Sign Here

This past weekend, my wife and I were invited to a friend's baby shower. These friends are also friends of Scruffy's, but Scruffy wasn't able to attend.

We took Scruffy shopping with us, and he bought some lovely shower gifts for the happy duo. On the way home, he asked me if my wife and I could bring his presents to the shower. He also mentioned that he didn't have any wrapping paper.

I started to realize where this was going. "Scruffy," I asked, "It's cool, but could you please get them a card and sign your own name?"

Scruffy agreed. A week passed. No card. So, my wife and I put a scrap of paper on his shower gifts, and then I had a bit of revenge. :)



Don't cross me, or I'll mock you in public. ;)

Anniversary

Today is my seventh wedding anniversary.



I love you, Sweetheart. Putting up with me for seven years is probably a lot bigger job than you thought it would be, but somehow you've done it and I love you more each day you do.

God bless you, Sweetheart. You're better than the very best.

Party Of Five

Waiting for your name to be called at a restaurant can get dull pretty quick. Nothing to do but wait and listen to the names being called...

"Cheddars would like to welcome John, party of 4, John, party of 4..."

...and wave vaguely to each other because you can't hear each other very well...

"Cheddars would like to welcome Mary, party of 3, Mary, party of 3..."

...and BOOM!, elbow to the side as a pushy dork muscles his way through the crowd, a cute small child steps on my foot...

"Cheddars would like to welcome Butter, party of 5, Butter, party of 5..."

[blink] [blink] [blink]

Wha? Did I hallucinate that?

A quick check with the other members of my party confirms it. The magic voice clearly said, "Butter, party of 5."

I never thought about giving a random noun instead of my name. Next time we go there, I'm gonna put us under the name "Steam Locomotive".

Techie Treasures

Moving can be a wonderful excuse to go through your junk and pitch a bunch of it. What follows is a collection of some of the "treasures" I found while cleaning out boxes of stuff from my office.

Up first is a deck of playing cards from my old job. I guess it was supposed to be a cute marketing tool, but looking back on it all I can think of is Saddam's face on the Ace of Spades. That's probably not the effect they were going for.

Up next is this helpful how-to on one of the trickier aspects of computing. Ah, keyboard, my old foe... we meet again.

The text on this one says, "HP Copier/Printer Bags n' Stuff". Now, I know I tend to be a bit *ahem* "retentive", but this even surprised me. Not only did I keep all the plastic bags from my Copier/Printer, but I also helpfully labeled them. And then, I didn't use a single one of them when we moved. But at least I wasn't hauling around random pieces of plastic (which would have been nutty). No, I was carrying around *specifically labeled* pieces of plastic.

I love this one... I have most of my old MS-DOS installation disks. How do I know that I have *most*, but not *all*? Because I'm a nerd, that's why. Notice that this is a DOS 6.2 Upgrade... the base installation disks are lost to the sands of time.

However, I still have the manual! So if I can ever find the base install disks, then I can relive the glory days! And wowie, this thing was *thick*. There must have been an art to writing tech manuals back then, is all I can figure.

I also have my old Windows 3.1 installation disks, as well as the instruction manual. It's just a tiny bit thinner than the DOS manual.

For reasons I'm not sure I can fathom, I kept the old DOS and Windows 3.1 stuff. :)

Paddy Wagon

Friday, May the second, a small group of us gathered at the corner just outside our building to await the shuttle bus. This is an end-of-day ritual... the shuttle bus takes us out to the parking lot so we can go home from work.

This particular day, there was a Prisoner Transport parked near where our bus usually waits. Then, the hippies came.

One was an older man in cowboys boots and a tie-dyed shirt, the other was a youngish lady. Looking like a couple of vacationing tourists, they laughed and pointed at the police vehicle. Then, the man stood in front of it as if it were a national monument, and the young lady took his picture. The two of them found great amusement in this.

A few minutes later, riding the bus to our parking lot, we passed by a crowd of demonstrators. This is a pretty rare sight for Tulsa. It was also a pretty pathetic sight, as there were only about a dozen or so people hanging around. They had signs that read "Impeach Cheney" and whatnot. That's when we realized what the "crowd" was for... see, Vice-Pres Cheney came to Tulsa May the 2nd to glad-hand a local group of Tulsa Republicans. The event was at the Crowne Plaza hotel, which is pretty much across the street from where I work.

That had to be where the two hippies came from, methinks. It was also the source of much amusement on the bus as we drove by. Regardless of your political affiliation, you have to admit the tiny group of 12-15 protesters probably didn't worry the Vice-Pres much. Somehow I get the feeling he's faced tougher crowds.

Face Plant

Last weekend, we took a trip down to Tulsa for some shoppin' n' such. We took Scruffy with us.

My wife and I drove over to Scruffy's house. I walked inside to let him know we were ready to go. Scruffy said, "Let me go grab something real quick," and ran off toward his bedroom. This is where it got weird.

I heard a massive Slide-THUD-Crash! noise. I thought maybe Scruffy had opened up his hall closet and had stuff fall down on him. I rounded the corner to find him on the floor in his hallway, holding his head. There was a "Scruffy's face"-shaped mark on the wall in front of him.

He'd tripped and ran face-first into the wall. There was a huge red mark on his forehead. He actually stayed down for almost a full minute before he felt stable enough to stand up.

We spent most of the day with him. I kept looking at his forehead and forcing myself not to giggle. At one point we were waiting for our names to be called at a restaurant. I took out my cell phone to check the time, and the thought occurred to me... "There's a camera on this thing. Scruffy's not paying attention to me. I could take a pic and post it on my blog..."

I decided not to be that mean. After all, he *did* mildly concuss himself in his own domicile. That has to hurt in more ways than one.

Hope you're feeling better, Scruffy!

Kickin' It Old School

When we moved, I got out my old Nintendo. That's right, baby... the 8-bit wonder. Super Mario Brothers, Legend Of Zelda... aw yeah.

I hooked it up to our bedroom TV. I fired it up, and it all still works. Heck, even the "Saved Games" from the old Legend Of Zelda game are still there. I played Super Mario Brothers with a big silly grin on my face.

My wife saw this and sighed. "You're a nerd, you know that, right?" "Yup!", I gleefully acknowledged.

Later that night, while walking toward the bedroom, I could hear the familiar Mario theme. My wife had started up a new game. She offered the second controller to me, saying "Here... I started up a two-player game for us. Sit down."

I may still be a nerd. But I know I'm not alone. :)

A Late(ish) Photoshop Jeff!

I got a late-ish Photoshop Jeff pic that I have to share. It's on the theme of "Jeff the new Homeowner"... it's me and my castle. :)

Thanks, Queen and King Spoo! It's awesome! And you all should know... there's no such thing as a "Late" Photoshop Jeff pic. Send them in anytime. :)

Also on the theme of "New House", here's the Wine Gift Basket we put together for our Realtor. The wine was a red called "Firesteed". I'm not a wine guy, but I'm told it's quite good. Our realtor is not known to be terribly picky, so it went over just fine. :)

Jedi Mind Trick

Lately, my boss (The Golfer) has developed a new super-power: The precognitive ability to know when Captain Silver Lining is looking for him. It's sorta like a very specific Spidey-sense. Golfer leaves the office. Within 2 minutes, Captain Silver Lining comes by looking for him.

This has gone on for the past two weeks. Every time Captain Silver Lining has come looking for the Golfer, he's just left.

He has to walk past all three of our desks (myself, the Leggy Blonde Wanna-Be, and Big Dawg) before he gets to the Golfer's office. Generally, we just let him walk on through. We know Golfer's not there... we could easily spare him the trouble. But that just wouldn't be as much fun.

Sometimes, instead of silence we'll give him vague answers. This is even more fun, because it gives him false hope. "He was in there earlier,..." or "I think he *might* be gone..." Just a hint of uncertainty in your voice is all it takes, and Captain Silver feels compelled to go look, just in case we're wrong.

Captain Silver has gone so far as to say that the Golfer has Jedi mind powers, a claim which none of us have denied.

Late last week, a true oddity occurred... Captain Silver came by looking for the Golfer, and he'd been gone for the past hour. I told him, "The Golfer knew you were coming. He's been planning your disappointment hours in advance."

Who knows? It might be true. I just know I've got a one-on-one training session with him today. Something about making rocks hover in the air...

New Hire!

Way back when Farmer left this job, Lightyear started in on the Golfer to hire a woman to replace him. His exact words were something along the lines of, "This is your chance! You gotta find you a tall leggy blonde! It don't matter if she can work the keyboard or not!"

Well, we have new positions open now. Two are waiting to be hired, but two have been filled by He-Without-A-Nickname-Yet, and She-Without-A-Nickname-Yet. Yes, that's right... she's not a blonde, but she's a "she".

Lightyear nearly wept with joy. He walked in to say hi, and saw She-Without-A-Nickname-Yet sitting near my desk. Lightyear displayed his usual cool discretion. Eyes wide, he pointed a finger directly at She-Without-A-Nickname-Yet and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Golfer, you did it! You hired a woman! Good for you!"

She-Without-A-Nickname-Yet nearly fell out of her chair laughing.

The next day, Lightyear confided in me, "I do wish Golfer had gotten a blonde."

I guess you can't make everybody happy all the time. :)

Carpet Choice

A new office area is being created for us down on the second floor (we're on the third floor currently). It's going to be pretty nice. We'll have a big open area, lots of desks, and some big windows. I'm especially happy about being able to see outside again.

The bigwigs came by our current office last week with a couple of squares of carpet. They plopped them down on the Leggy Blonde Wanna-Be's desk, and asked us our opinion.

Big Dawg leaned over and pointed at one of the samples, saying "This one looks less like somebody bled all over it." After a group chuckle, I chimed in. "I like the other one."

All eyes turned to the Leggy Blonde Wanna-Be (I need to think up a new nickname for him!). "What do you think, Leggy?"

Leggy got nervous and non-committal. "Either is fine, really!" The bigwigs pressed him a bit. "Aw, are you sure you don't have some opinion on this?"

A kind man would have bailed out Leggy at this point. A kind man would have changed his vote, so as to remove the spotlight from an uncomfortable friend. I was not kind... I couldn't resist.

"Your word is law on this one, Leggy," I said. "No pressure."

It was clear that there was, indeed, pressure. I pressed onward. "Your vote will decide whether Big Dawg is wrong [dramatic pause], or I am."

"Choose wisely."

I have never seen a man's eyes go quite so wide.

As of this writing, there is still no decision on which carpet we'll have in our new office. :)

Beach Music

Friday, Lightyear was talking to me about music. He has a great love of music from the 50's, especially "beach" music (The Beach Boys are an easy, obvious example). It's not exactly my bread and butter, but I have enjoyed that music on occasion, so we have a little common ground.

Later in the afternoon, I guess he decided to step it up a notch. He brought in some of his old LP's (that's "records", for you young pups) for me to see.

"Now Jeff," he drawled, "These are the *original* Compact Disks! You've never seen these big 'ole things, have you?"

"Actually yes," I replied. "I know what those are."

This stopped him for a moment. He blinked, trying to process the fact that I'm not *quite* as young as he thinks I am. Half a second later he decided to ignore that fact, and surged onward.

"See, the way these used to work, is you'd put them on a record player and they'd spin, and ..."

"I know how that works, yeah." I interrupted. "I even had a record player when I was kid."

I didn't intend to be a kill-joy, but I had just eliminated half or more of Lightyear's story. He looked shocked. Then, as always, he rallied.

"Well, have you ever heard of *this* group?" I hadn't. Suddenly, Lightyear was in his element again. "See, they're a lot like the Beach Boys..."

And on it went. :)

Bee Story

So... remember how much I like bees?

There's some landscaping on the front side of our house, between the garage and the front door. A smallish tree-thing, some bushes, lots of mulch. Yeah, I know, I'm a regular horticulturist.

Anyway, Wednesday all was clear. Thursday, about 10-15 unhappy bees moved in. Very unhappy bees.

My wife and I went for a walk in our new neighborhood. The bees were unhappy when we left. They were downright aggressive when we got back. Swooping, buzzing by my head, chasing me down the sidewalk... it was ungood.

We're hoping the aggression was because of the change in weather that was coming (we got big storms last night). A hive in my garage would be ungood. I took some wasp spray and tried to paint the bricks a bit, to encourage them to take their pollen and run. At least I was smart enough (barely) to stand upwind of where I was spraying. It didn't do my house much good, but my neighbors in Arkansas are prolly OK now.

I Saw The Light

My wife and I have learned something about the previous home-owners' preference in light bulbs. They had none.

One evening, I turned on the light in the kitchen and my wife started to sweat. The light fixture has 5 bulbs in it. There were two 60-watt bulbs, a 75, a 100, and one that was so bleached we couldn't tell what it was.

We started looking around at the other light fixtures in the house. Most of them have either four or five bulbs in them. None of the bulbs match, and none are less than 60-watt. At least half are 75 or higher.

If you happen to notice a lack of 40-watt bulbs at your local store, it's probably because we're buying them all up.

On a somewhat-related note, my parents were baby-sitting my youngest nephew (2 years old) the day we closed on our house. I called Dad to let him know that closing was done. He shouted to Mom, "They got the house!"

In the background, I could hear Mom shout "Woo-Hoo!" Then, while Dad chuckled, I could hear her saying something to Little Nephew. Then, just barely, I heard a tiny voice shout, "Woo! Hoo!"

I have the cutest nephews. In. The. World!