A Dusty Fan

At work a few days ago I reached over to turn on my small desk fan. I noticed that the top-most fan blade had a LOT of dust on it.

This realization was followed by a quick feeling of Deja-Vu. That blade was really dusty the last time I looked, too. Like the true Mensa candidate I am, I pondered... "Wow... the fan always seems to stop with that one dusty blade pointing up. I wonder why?"

Then I had a sinking feeling. I looked at the other fan blades. What I saw was distressing.

Sometimes the punchlines are just easier than others, you know?

I cleaned the fan blades. For the first time in years, I am able to cool myself at work without blowing allergens directly up my nose. Without the constant dusty haze, my computer monitors seem brighter. I haven't sneezed in *hours*!

I listed it as an accomplishment for the day.

My mastery over tiny tasks is impressive. My grasp of the obvious is improving.

Any day now I'm gonna switch from Velcro to shoes that tie!

I am giddy with joy.

Woodworking Elite

This is an odd intro, but here we go: I was at a funeral last week. The gentleman we said goodbye to is worthy of many stories. I won't tell those stories here, but I will tell you a story about a conversation I overheard from the audience.

The crowd was much bigger than anticipated, and we ran out of seats. The service was delayed a few minutes while the stragglers set up folding chairs over by the restrooms (literally!). People in the crowd started to chat.

Casual funeral conversation is, by definition, a bit odd. Anything you discuss feels just a little out of place. As voices started to murmur around us, I could hear about half of a conversation nearby.

"You know, I've always been interested in wood," said a voice from the row behind us.

I couldn't see either of the participants, but I got a good mental picture of the guy being talked to... he was probably staring open-mouthed at the speaker, horrified to be discussing something so randomly casual at a somber event. The primary voice continued, undaunted.

"Not woodworking, exactly, finish work, but rough carpentry, you know?" The brief pause suggested that the dumbstruck chat target had nodded. "When I was little I always liked putting nails into wood."

I would like to note, for the record, that the joy of hitting things repeatedly with blunt objects is not exactly uncommon among young males.

The voices continued, and I didn't catch everything that was said. I did hear some laughter and a few odd phrases...

"I'd be a carpentry master!"
"No, better than a master... "
"Yeah, I'd be a Wood Jedi!"

"Wood Jedi" brings so many fun images to mind. Luke Skywalker chopping down Ewok trees with his mind. A chainsaw artist carving Obi-Wan into a tree stump. A huge bearded TimberSports man in coveralls raising a hand and magically throwing an amusement park Log Flume ride at an approaching AT-AT.

Honestly, it took real effort not to laugh out loud.

So, here's an assignment for those with the talent and the time to burn. Photoshop a "Wood Jedi" for me. I'll post your pics, or links to your pics, or whatever.

Oh, and make sure you hug somebody you love today. It matters.

Desperation, Comfort

I don't have much for you this Friday. Here's what I do have.

Desperation

Possible caption for this picture include:

"Hope springs eternal"
"Fortune favors the bold"



Or perhaps simply, "Yeah. Good luck with that, Kid."

Comfort

Quite possibly the cutest LOLCat I've ever seen.



Appropriately, that picture went up last Sunday. Happy belated Father's Day, and have a good weekend everybody!

Saw

I got a new circular saw.



Yes, new. My old one had died from neglect. This one is all shiny and new!



Generally, there is no need to test a new carbide blade for sharpness.



As long as you avoid obvious safety hazards, a circular saw is a wonderful and useful tool.



Yes, I am an obvious safety hazard. And yes, "Obvious Safety Hazard" would make a rockin' band name.

The Truth Is Out There

Check this out. A family in Virginia has reported an apparent UFO sighting at an amusement park.

It has to be true. I can't think of any other reason you'd see lights in the sky at an amusement park.

"Aliens in an Amusement Park." Sounds like a really bad Roger Corman movie, doesn't it?

The aliens weren't planning on landing at the amusement park, but a couple of rednecks mistook their ship for a clay pigeon and shot them down.

The little green men first made contact with a group of Republicans. They demanded, "Take me to your leader." They spent the next 6 hours in spirited debate over who the Republican leader is.

Tempers did flare at one point, and a focused laser blaster was drawn. The alien thought he was going to strike down his mighty enemies, but he wound up knocking over four little duckies and winning a prize for his girlfriend.

At the end, all of the invaders died from a human disease. It was just like "War of the Worlds, except they didn't die of the common cold. It was a funnel-cake overdose.

Come to think of it, a funnel-cake overdose might explain the family who thought they saw a UFO.

Finding Solutions

Early last week, I ran into a problem at work. A co-worker and I had spent 2 and a half weeks writing a program for our current project. It was finally working, finally flawless. I put that program out on one of our company servers, and it stopped working.

This was an unpleasant turn of events, to say the least. I worked on troubleshooting the program for a solid day and a half. After many failed attempts and stressful moments, the program suddenly started working with no apparent change on my part.

Now, I can update / modify / change the program however I want. It refuses to break. It just started magically working, and I have no idea why.

Middle of last week, I was working on a "delete" function to remove some data. The silly thing would only delete about half of what I wanted. I couldn't figure out why.

I spent a solid day and a half troubleshooting my "delete" function. Suddenly, with no apparent change from me, it started working.

I don't know if I actually produced anything of value last week, or if valuable stuff just kinda "appeared" around me. Am I a producer, or merely a conduit? Hard to say.

I do know this, however. The next time I come up against a screwy problem at work, I'm just gonna take a nap. I have confidence that my incubation time for a solution is about 36 hours.

If you see me asleep at my desk, I'm actually hard at work.

BONUS: The polar opposite of what I've just described...

Photoshop Jeff! - Happyness - Results!

You guys really came through for me on this one. I love all the goodies! Let's get right to it.

First up is this gem from LadyPatsFan who wrote, "The second I saw the theme I knew exactly what would make you happy." Indeed... happiness is not having hail damage on my Vibe.



My buddy Shorts took a slightly different approach, thinking, "What would make any good little nerd happy?" I think he hit the mark.



V gave me a simple but wonderful one.



The idea for this one came from my wife! She listed off a number of things that make me happy... music, my Vibe, Tigger, my laptop, our first house... and of course, her. :)



OoRah went completely nuts on this one, giving me THREE pictures and some insights into how his mind works. First, there's...



And if conservative policies don't help, you can always resort to violence...



And this is just TMI, dude.



Not to be outdone, P-Ziddy gladly accepted the three-picture gauntlet with some horrors of his own. There's the ever-popular Motivational Poster...



And of course, the obvious...



And then the second picture inspired by my hail post from a few days ago. He said he couldn't get the idea of "Romance Novel Cover Jeff" out of his head.



Finally, there's this one from me. It's inspired by my littlest Nephew's amusing name for Curious George. If you haven't read that one, go back and read it. Seriously. It's a classic.



Many thanks for all the good-natured fun at my expense! You can still send in pics if you want, I'll always post them. :)

Corporate Slogans

For no real reason, here's some company logo's n' such with new slogans attached to them.

Roller Coaster

Photoshop Jeff Reminder! Early next week I'll unveil the entries I've gotten. There's still time for more! The ones I've gotten so far are a lot of fun. :)

=================

A conversation with iCanSpell somehow led up to this. She was discussing roller coasters, which caused me to remember my first (and ONLY) experience on the famous Disney roller coaster, Space Mountain. I don't remember how old I was... probably somewhere around 10.

The seats were two-by-two. Some Space Mountains are (or were) set up with single-file seats, or so I'm told. I'm happy to take folk's word for it.

My dad and my little sister were thrilled to be on the ride. I was hoping I could sit next to one of them, because I was scared out of my mind. Instead, I wound up in front of them, sitting next to a large Spanish-speaking woman who was also scared out of her mind.

So, adding to the general terror of a violent roller coaster + coaster wimp was the joy of being screamed at in terrified Spanish by a woman who looked like she could easily slide over into my seat and crush the life out of my tiny, tiny frame.

Those with the courage of legend say that Space Mountain really doesn't do much other than whiz you around in the dark and make you think you're going to hit your head on rouge planets. I wasn't aware of any planets during my ride. I was mostly aware of the terrified foreign death object wailing next to me.

My sister nearly hyperventilated from laughing at my soul-wrenching screams. She and Dad begged me to go on it again so they could sit behind me again and laugh their hinders off at me again.

I declined.

I hate roller coasters.

Curious

This is quite possibly the funniest "Nephew" story ever. It stars my littlest nephew, who is three years old.

It seems Little Nephew was at Gramma's house and needed a band-aid. Grandpa (my dad) showed him several different boxes of cartoony band-aids, and asked him which one he wanted.

"George Bush," he said without hesitation. He was pointing at the Curious George band-aids.

Grandpa was stunned. "George Bush?" "Yah," said Little Nephew. Grandpa pointed at Curious George and asked, "Who's that?"

"George Bush's monkey."

Amazingly, it gets better.

A week later, Little Nephew pushed his sister into a bird bath and scratched up her leg. Sensing that he was about to get into trouble, he became Mr. Helpful. He followed Grandpa into the bathroom to help with the First Aid.

"Here," he said, shoving some band-aid packages at his sister. "Do you want Spongebob or George Bush?"

Remember, he's only three! He doesn't watch Bill O'Reilly, he's never called Rush Limbaugh, and he's not one of Sarah Palin's kids. Heck, he probably wouldn't notice if Bob the Builder was president.

A few days later my wife and I got to visit everybody. Dad showed me the Curad box that Little Nephew had been so faithfully mis-identifying. As Little Nephew ran through the room Dad stopped him and pointed at the box. "Who's this?"

"George Bush," said Little Nephew.

I have absolutely no punchline that can top that.

======================

Finally, I leave you with a couple of random thoughts.

1) Look at that Curad box again. It says, "Collect all 26 unique designs". Now, maybe I'm behind the times a bit on this one, but do people actually collect band-aids?

2) "George Bush's Monkey" would make an excellent rock band name.

Photoshop Jeff! - Happyness

Yeah, it's that time again. Photoshop Jeff! This time the theme is, "What is Jeff so happy about?"

How it works: Click into that pic for a bigger version. Whine at Jeff about the lack of a truly solid-colored background (I do my best!). Create comedy. Email that comedy to me at jeff.w.mcclung AT gmail.com.

As you all know, I have a strict posting policy. If you send me I picture, I will post it. Just try to keep it PG-ish, is all I ask.

Past Photoshop Glory:
Captain Danger Pants!
Inaugural Jeff!
Jeff's Book Cover!
Hip-Hop Jeff!
Christmas!
Halloween!
What Am I Afraid Of?
Motivational Posters!
The Original!

Drowned Rat

Friday stank.

Friday morning thunderstorms came blazing across the state. We heard from Stillwater that there was large hail. All the panicky local weather warning wazzits predicted up to golf ball sized hail.

At work, my car sits 5 blocks away in an uncovered parking lot.

I decided to do something I've never done before (and am unlikely to do again). I ran out to move my car from the free lot to a parking garage.

The heavy rain started as I hit the door.

Half-way to the car, the wind was bad enough that I had to fold up the umbrella and run for it.

I did get the car moved, at least. But I looked like I'd jumped in a swimming pool. Water poured out of my shoes when I took them off. I pointed my desk fan at my shoes and socks... it took all day for the socks to dry, and the shoes were still soggy.

(dramatization)

For a while I had my shirt open, trying to help it dry out. I was barefoot, open-shirted, and dripping wet. I looked like the cover of a romance novel.

My jeans never did dry out. All day it was like sitting in a tub of ice water, with an icepack placed over the main attraction. I don't recommend it.

iCanSpell suggested I cuddle up in the Popcorn Machine, which I seriously considered.

Oh, and I'm sure you can guess the last punchline. It doesn't take much imagination, really.

We had no hail. Naturally.

(Non-Injury) Stories From Work

Twinkies

The other day Merik and Big Dawg showed up to work wearing the same shirt. I was amused, so I snuck in a photo. Neither of them know about this photo (well... they might have some idea about it now).

I must have missed the "Jailhouse Striped Shirt" memo that day. Two people thinking with the same brain! I hope they don't think they can both fit in that chair.

A Big Payday

One of my duties recently involved moving some data. I'd collect it from one place, "transform" it a bit, and pass it along. The data I was moving included some job postings from another company. The "transformation" involved some very bad math on my part.

I knew my test had gone awry when I saw a job posting come up with a 494 Million dollar annual salary. Did I mention I included some very bad math in my program? I turned to my boss and said, "If this is true, then this is my two-week's notice." He just smiled and said, "Not if I get there first."

Meeting Time

We were going to have a meeting, but since we couldn't book a conference room everybody was going to just call in from their desks. I got some popcorn and a drink, and sat down at my desk to await the fun.

At the last minute, word came down that a conference room had opened up for us. In a semi-panic, I jumped up and ran for it.

When I arrived, I realized how out of place I looked. Everybody else had notepads and pens. I was carrying my popcorn and drink. I had nothing to write with, and nothing to write on.

I used the opportunity to practice my very attentive look. I'm not sure I ever blinked. My popcorn got cold. :(

Stadium Seating

I'll often work with my headphones on, which obviously means I don't hear what's going on around me. The other day I looked up and saw the tops of a couple of chairs protruding over my cubical wall. I walked around to the other side and saw this:



I'm not sure how I feel about having a small theater installed near my desk. I doubt if it would be much louder than the freight elevator, and the chairs do look comfy. I guess I'm OK with it as long as they never show any movies starring Madonna or Paris Hilton.

The Suspicious Pink Bag

A foreign object appeared on my desk yesterday.



I didn't trust it at first. But when I opened it up...



Yes, that card says "Beware of flying poo". It would appear that V remembered my birthday. :) On the inside it says...



Ahem. Allow me to translate. "If it's not the end of the world, AND Jeff is sane..."

I'm thinkin' that second condition is rare. Check out the lunchpail, though!



The back of it says "Code Monkey Emergency Survival Kit". And inside...



Non-Lipton Tea! Hot Choco! Cheek-bite enablers! AWESOME!

You should really check out V's blog to see how she brought that awesome monkey to life.

I'm pretty sure I'm not worthy of a gift this cool. Many thanks, V!