Friday Waster

waster lite

2011-05-13T17:05:00.000-04:00

I've got nothing to say. Actually, I might have too much to say, and can't figure out how to prioritize it all. Some various ramblings...

Joe, Celeste, and baby Maddie are doing just fine down in KY. Maddie is 3mo old now, and growing like a weed!

Samantha just finished her freshman year of college with a 3.414 GPA! She's been working as a nanny while taking classes, and just been busting her tail all around.

Ethan is planning his summer vacations ... he's got trips w/ us, his dad, and his grandma down in FL. He's pretty much booked the whole way thru. Lucky dog.

Megan is still a freshman, but she already lettered in the ColorGuard. They had a really cool performance this year, set to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."

Missy has been even busier than I've been. She took a new position at work, but still has a lot of the old responsibilities, too. So everyone in the office knows what a superstar she is, but it's a heckuva a load to carry.

I've already done two races this year. I ran the Monument Rock n Roll 10k down in Richmond in April. It's called the rock n roll bc they have bands playing all up and down the course while people are running. Totally cool. It was my first run-only race, so it was really weird to start with my feet on the ground. I didn't even know how to warm up. I did OK, but def could have done better: total time 1:00:14.

The second race wasn't much of a race, but actually more of a party disguised as a race. A couple friends, my sister, and I were on a team of 4 for the Rock Creek Park RunAmuck. Beer, sunshine, friends, exercise, and a hellacious amount of mud made this a excellent day. Check out the pics here. (When you get to the video of the finish line, give it a minute to load. It's totally worth the wait.)

I'm planning to make next year's RunAmuck a big event, w/ fam, friends, and even the kids. Be ready.

The rest of my race schedule is rather quiet thru for a few months. There's a 5k in Herndon on June 5, then nothing else scheduled until Aug & Sept, when I've got 4 triathlons on deck. The season is capped with the Tough Mudder in October. That one scares me a little bit.

Mud racing done wrong. Or right. Depends on your point of view.

That's the update. Dunno if I'll be back next week, or if I'll be writing once per season.

It's kinda interesting to look at the links I collected over the past while, though. They span from the tail end of the cold weather to the bright sunshine of spring. I even had a couple of Cince de Mayo bits to share:

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Osama bin Laden flash games.

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Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.....!

There I was. Mother of God, there I am!

I was hoping for just one more snowstorm before springtime rolls around.

OK, nevermind winter. Kate Upton is jiggling me full-steam into bikini season!

I started a new business.

No, really, I started a new school. Karate school.

AntiVaxxers continue to breakdown herd immunity in the US. We're on track for the most cases of measles in a decade. Click to see the JennyMcCarthyBodyCount.

GraveDigger* pulls an effing monster-truck backflip!

*I do understand this isn't GraveDigger I, but don't really care enough to learn the whole Digger family tree. And since I haven't found time to blog in months, I didn't want to waste any more.

An educational look at Cinco de Mayo.

Scarily true. Even the hair-dryer guy.

Finally, a couple quickies from Mighty Optical Illusions (Caution, clicking the pic for full screen may help, but will also potentially mess with your head.)

If either your screen or your brain start melting, don't say I didn't warn you.

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call me pops

2011-02-18T21:27:00.000-05:00

First thing every post, I apologize for not writing more often. So just go re-read last post, and I'll be sorry again.

This time, I'm actually more sorry about the timing. I had a few items to share that were rather time sensitive. I've still got 'em copied below, but it's on your shoulders to do a bit of time travel while reading. If the posts aren't funny, it's your own damn fault for not trying hard enough.

Now that our regularly scheduled apologies are out of the way, on to the good stuff...

My new name is Pops. I got to choose it myself.

I'm actually writing this update from the mountains of West-by-God Virginia. We're somewhere on I-64 between Nothingsburg and Emptyville. Missy's taking a turn driving the truck, Mom & Tam are half dozing in the back seat, and I'm letting my mind wander a bit.

We're checking off the road-trip requirements of PretzelNacho Combos, beef jerky, and Long John Silvers. Those hush puppies are sitting in the bottom of my gut like a rock.

Pops; my new name. We're road-tripping to KY to see Joe, his wife, and their new baby, Madison Nicole. They call her Maddy. Yep, my kid has a kid, makes me a grandfather. If that doesn't make you roll your eyes and giggle a bit, you need to cut back on the self-medication.

Maddy was born 3 weeks ago at only 4lbs 7oz, but totally healthy. No time in the NICU, and home from the hospital in just two days. Momma and baby are doing juuuuust fine. In fact, Maddy is already over 5lbs and steady growing; earning gold stars and double prizes from all the baby docs.

I've only seen pics so far, but she's the cutest thing EVER. So far, I've only seen pics (the camera, in this case, did NOT add 10lbs). I'm totally wired to meet her this weekend, and to give everyone hugs all around.

I've caught some teasing about the whole grandfather thing, and it's just so off target. I haven't felt my age since I was about 13, so the 'getting older' part doesn't stress me in the least. I'm loving every minute of this. I couldn't be happier for Joe & Celeste. Nobody's confused that they've got a lot of challenges in front of them, but the core of it all is that they've brought a beautiful perfect little girl into our world.

It doesn't get any better than that.

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AngryBirds + a lumberjack axe = ChickenHouse.

Just point and klikwerk.

Multitasking. Starts easy, then rips your brain in pieces.

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Look what I got for Christmas!

Football season is over. As a die-hard Redskins fan, I'm telling myself that our Elfin owner is done throwing barrels of money on big names that have exceeded their shelf-life. May we never see another Haynesworthless or McDrabb.

Shmitten Kitten - know what I hate/like? Click this. Seriously. Do it. Now. The page is too big for me to copy here, but it's effing classic.

US History observation:

Stoners always know what time it is, and that the Price is Right.

Do ya feel lucky, punk? Well? Do ya?

Steve Jobs' New Year's resolutions:

Olga Korbut in the 1972 Olympics. Inhuman skillz!

Gone with the Wind, the never-before-released director's cut:

Barstool Sports' 2010 Sex Scandal Teacher starting line-up.

Don't push me, you little two-legged brat.

Special K sent me an EggsBox 360! Can it get any more stupider?

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quick and dirty for the holidays

2010-12-25T10:12:00.000-05:00

School's out, I'm on vacation til January, and the family is all in town. Start the holidays!!!

Joe and Celeste drove up from Kentucky on Tuesday. Long drive, but safe trip though. They've done birthdays with his mom's fam, and they're doing Christmas stuff with her mom's fam tomorrow. They're meeting up with us on the afternoon of Christmas day. This is their first year trying to balance so many houses, so I'm sure it'll be a challenge.

We have the shared-holiday down to a science though. Since the actual holiday is always a jumble of super-hectic activity, we just do Christmas early. Regardless of the date on the calendar, it's good family time without all the time constraints.

Missy and the kids started Friday night by baking and decorating a whole rack of cookies. These were FoodChannel quality cookies, too. Win-me-ten-thousand-dollars cookies.

The adventure didn't stop when the cookies were finished. Sam and her bf got in a car wreck late that night. They're both OK, he got a couple stitches and they both got a whole rack of bruises, but nothing permanent. I did have the pleasure of answering that 1am phone call telling me she was in a car wreck. We spent the whole night in the ER, but sadly I missed watching when they dug this piece of glass out of his face:

Saturday was still fun, but thankfully with a lot less excitement. We had reallllly tasty dinner down in Alexandria at Columbia Firehouse. It's a top-notch restaurant built into what used to be a for-real fire station. The original building dates from 1883, and it's still got the classic feel to it.

After dinner, we went across the river to the National Harbor for a bit. They've got a lot of holiday stuff to check out: light shows, giant Christmas trees, dancing fountains... it's all really fun freebie stuff. Not enough to fill an entire evening, or to do year-after-year, but definitely worth the trip at least once. (We didn't do the ICE! displays, bc $30 each, times the size of my crew, gets a bit expensive. Just didn't seem worth the reward.)

Once we finished all the running around, we had a late night gift exchange back at the house. Everybody in the fam really gets into gift-giving; finding the right present to deliver a big smile. As a result, I think we all made out like bandits. :)

Over the coming days, we've got a whole rack of Christmases to celebrate. We'll be running around the DC area doing the holidays with all the different branches of a big ol' family tree.

Have a safe and happy holiday!

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Bloons, Christmatized.

The best part about the 12 Holes of Christmas (besides the Tiger Woods jokes) is being able to color your balls.

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Pam says have a classy Christmas.

Jess sent in the 1811 version of the Urban Dictionary. Captain Grose's "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue." I'm happy that sort of buckish language has progressed, bc I'd have a heckuva a time not giggling whenever I mention my twiddle-diddles.

The classic: Drowning Pool "Bodies (Let the Bodies Hit the Floor)"

The remix: TouchCat gives us Lolita the Parrot rocking a spot-on cover.

Um, I'm not sure how Gina's doing things in TX, but I'm not up for much of mobile-anything in the back of a white van.

Everything but secks.

Simple and accurate. Worst part is, I don't even offer one. Missy has to deal with me in fractions.

I've had this in my inbox for a while, and I'm not sure exactly why I think it's so awesome. Maybe she reminds me of someone. Maybe it's just really cool. Maybe this is how Penthouse Forums appear in my head.

Closing this week with my all time favorite Christmas image. To me, nothing says Christmas more than watching the presents open their children by the tree.

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done done done done DONE

2010-12-17T22:52:00.000-05:00

I've been gone for a while. I've been getting whipped by my schoolwork this entire semester. Whipped hard, too, with no SafeWord to loosen the straps when things got a little out of control.

It was worth it though. Last weekend, I finished my senior project. 103 pages of tension, sweat, and bloody keyboarding. Earlier this week, I completed my final final. Say that with me: "final final." No more exams, EVAR! I am one-hundred-per-cent, now and forever, i's dotted and t's crossed, DONE with my degree requirements.

Once I get my grades back and do all the formalities, I'll have:
(assuming that I passed of course)

Diploma in Homeland Security
Associate's degree in Computer Information Systems
Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, focus on Programming

I feel more smarticles already.

Besides schoolwork, we've had the typical whirlwind of family stuff happening around the house. I have a few dozen topics dancing with the sugar plums in my head. I really need to flush my brain and start over, though. Kinda like coming back from vacation and deleting the email inbox. If it's important, it'll come back.

Megan lettered for doing her 3rd season of color guard in the marching band. She's just now a freshman, so she got credit for the years she was in middle school, but spinning flags w the high school band. She's kicking tail in her classes too. Missed straight A's the first semester by one class: B in violin class.

Sam is home from Radford. For keepsies. Before you jump to conclusions, her return is by choice. She earned solid A's and B's her first semester, but decided to switch schools. She's already registered for the spring semester at NOVA, and will be transferring to JMU either sophomore or junior year.

Ethan just finished a really cool science project. He built models of three different bridges, and tested how much they flexed under different weight loads. His project looked like the projects you see in the movies, 1000x better than anything we ever did in school.

Joe and Celeste are doing their thing down in Kentucky still. My mom and I took a road trip a while back, checking out their apartment and delivering furniture. The apartment is super cute in a nice neighborhood, just up the road from where he's working. They're coming into town for Christmas, so I'm looking forward to getting caught up on all the latest.

Christmas for us is actually starting tomorrow. Since the kids have so much family, step-family, and extended family, December 25 is insanely busy. We do our famstuff on a different day, so we can relax a bit and enjoy the time together without dealing with a high-pressure schedule. We're going to dinner in Alexandria at Columbia Firehouse. I know it sounds like a bingo hall, but it's actually a really cool restaurant built into the shell of an 1800's firehouse. After dinner, we're heading down to the National Harbor to check out the lights and shows, before heading home to exchange gifts.

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Balls. Not like that. These are balls in a Christmas, as well as a use your brain, kinda way.

This game kick's some Christmas ass! You'll soooo wind up on the naughty list, though. Super Santa Kicker!
(Why is Santa so jolly? 'Cuz he knows where all the naughty girls live.)

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Send submissions!!!!

Five ways to let your Facebook password get stolen. (Side note: it drives me effing crazy when people say "I was hacked!" After a decade in IT, I've only seen one instance when the user hadn't done something boneheaded first.)

Gawker's password database was compromised. Here's a graph of the most common passwords in that data spill. If your password is on the list, maybe you should be a little more creative...

Der-duh-derrr.

Dog people are infinitely funnier than cat people.

Dogs don't need people to be funny: "I made food! I'm magical!"

Candy is my favorite part of Halloween.

The 1985 John Riggins limited edition Ford F-150.

Only in West Virginia.

CrifDogs NYC!

All I need is the little box of 8 Crayolas.

I just got free of my BlackBerry. I can vouch for accuracy of the dinosaur picture.
(btw - Verizon, which caught a lot of my venom over the summer, backed off of their stupid "pay extra for nothing" policy. We renewed the contract and got three new phones, including my Droid X. I'm still irritated at Verizon, but I LOVE MY DROID.)

CHOMP!

Dammitall. I knew it was them.

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nothin

2010-10-29T18:23:00.000-04:00

This is just too funny to bury at the end of the Waster. (via TotalProSports)

Been crazy effing busy for the past couple weeks. This may be the shortest Waster ever.

I'm working on my senior project for school. Cool that I'm getting closer to the end. Sucks that it's whipping my tail.

Work has been nuts, too. We have a delivery to the gov due on Monday, so everybody has been spinning in circles trying to get things wrapped up on time.

Halloween is here... best holiday EVAR! We have a small costume party tonight, then a bigger sillier one tomorrow. I haven't had time to build the anticipation, but now that I'm off work for the weekend, the jitters are rising!

Enjoy the holiday!

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Monster Truck NIIIIIII-TROOOOOO!

Tetravalanche. Looks pretty cool, but I just can't quite figure it out.

Jerseylicious. Not playable, but totally funny. Thanks, TouchCat!

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xkcd is right on point. again.

Ranker's 10 hottest girls with bad teeth.

Doggie parkour.

I love me some Jack.

I love me some pirates and Jamaicans, too.

Kat swears this wasn't her. I'm confirming that denial with her sister.

Put some John Lee Hooker into your head for the weekend. Boom Boom.

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up from the hole

2010-10-17T16:26:00.000-04:00

I've been stupid busy with school and work this week. 4-day week, but I had 6 days of work to try to squeeze into it. I'm just scratching out a couple thoughts here during the football games.

I'm doing my 'senior seminar' this semester at school. It's pissing me off something fierce. I burned 11 hours on this project yesterday instead of running around in the sunshine. Something sucks; it may be the professor, may be the curriculum, or it may be me.

I've spent a few years studying IT stuff; software architecture, programming languages, other geekstuff like that. The problem I'm having with this class is that the project is decidedly less-than-geeky. 12% of my grade is based on a huge proposal document, intended to sell my project to a business. It's a heavy dose of creative writing (I'm soooo not an ENG major) paired with a boatload of business writing (again, not a BUS major). Bleh.

So school jammed my weekend so far. Not happy. 10 more weeks before I get this class behind me, and I'll be a very happy boy. Hopefully, the prof will have us getting geeky soon.

I'm taking off work Mon & Tues, and heading down to KY to see Joe & Celeste at their new apartment. For both of them, it's their first time living on their own. They've got a lot of learning ahead of 'em. I've got a truckload of furniture & other stuff to help get 'em started. I'm pretty excited to see the place and visit with the kids for a bit.

Go check out my buddy Jon's 'Friday for the Foodies'. He writes for Glide Magazine's HiddenTrack every week. This edition is all about a top-notch butcher shop near Alexandria. The shop is called "Let's Meat on the Avenue", and can hook you up with all sorts of fun stuff. They carry buffalo, true kobe beef, wild boar, and even kangaroo! I'll be grilling the whole wild kingdom soon.

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Dom is the source of all our shoot-em-up fun. TropicalDragonSlaughter!

Rescue the miners! (timely, but sucks)
Be a miner! (playable)
Miner 2049er! (old school)
Protect the minors! (best of the lot)

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(Credit to BarstoolSports)

Guys, pay attention. She will judge you based on your email provider and your ability to drive a stick shift.

I worked software dev w/ Eddi for a while, but back then he didn't have computer skills like this!

Kat's Dueling Banjos redux, with fire.

Stop!

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selling my soul for my friends

2010-10-08T18:04:00.000-04:00

Another post starting without direction... I'll just ramble for a moment until something catches my fancy. The latest kidstuff:

A while back, I'm pretty sure I shared the info that Joe bailed on college. He and his gf had been staying down in KY with his grandma (mother's side) for the past few months. They had a JoP wedding a couple months back, and just this past weekend got their very first apartment together! I'll be making the drive to KY in a couple of weeks to check it out and deliver some furniture.

We visited Samantha down at Radford last weekend. She arranged for some beautiful weather, and we had a really nice tour of the place. It was 'Family Weekend' along with 'Highlander Festival' so most of the buildings were open and showing demonstrations, and all the courtyards were packed with vendors and fairground foods.

Ethan and Megan are midway through their first semester already. Interims came out, and we have mixed results. Some really good news, and some not-so-good. That's all I'm saying at this point.

Got a couple bits of advertising to squeeze into this action-packed post...

Augur is playing the gazebo stage 3pm, Saturday at SterlingFest. I've been a fan of these guys for a couple years now; great rockin' music, lots of fun, and they continually support the community. (Get to SterlingFest early, and you can catch the belly-dancers at 1:15.)

BYRN, roots reggae rock, is one of my new favorites. Old friends, but hadn't heard them play until recently. I'm really liking the sound. They're kicking off a whole Sunday night of music at Jimmy's Old Town for the 10.10.10 Vet Aide event. Good music, great cause!

One more ad, then I'm done for the week. This is some good shiznit. Tasty and uber-healthy. Dark energy in a bottle!
(imagination credits go to Hell's Newsstand.)

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Tangerines are deadly? WTF?

Roller coasters, video games, puzzles, and wasting time. Perfect.

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Huh? What? I wasn't listening.

Mustard with attitude.

What? You didn't hear that? Lemme drop the F-bomb once again:

High speed, mid-air dolphin collision! Maybe they're not as smart as I think they are...

Who uses phonebooks? Seriously, paper phonebooks are one of the biggest, dumbest waste of resources I know. Please please please use this link to get off of multiple phone book distributions.

Yeah, that's exactly how I'd use my magic powers, too.

A map of high-school sexual relationships. I think it's legit: the chains look realistic enough, and I recognize similar patterns from my school. I've even have names for a few of the dots...

The banjo scene from Deliverance. Classic. Bobby was still untainted.

I hadn't laughed at Sarah Palin in a few weeks. Consider the streak broken.

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put it on hold

2010-09-17T15:33:00.025-04:00

I'd planned on using this week's Waster to vent about recent escapades at the courthouse. Nope, still no resolutions...more delays and silliness. My venting is shelved until sometime this winter, then maybe I'll tell you all about it.

So instead of having a topic of discussion here, I'm just rambling. Dunno where the ramble will take me yet. I'm sure it'll be disjointed and boring.

On my mind recently: Verizon Wireless. We have a total of 5 phones, with a bunch of different call/text/data packages. For years and years, I've loved Verizon, and told anyone and everyone how awesome they are. They have a lot of my money already, and I was trying to give them a lot more (1 new droid + 2 new phones + 3x2 year contract extensions). Instead...

Fuck Verizon Wireless.

They've introduced a new contractual requirement for some of their phones: forced data plan purchase on mid-level phones. I'm not talking about smart-phones like droid or crackberry, but the regular call/text/games/music/ringtone type camera phones.

These phones can optionally connect to the web for things like facebook, VCast, or downloading more media files. Optionally is the key word. The phones do not NEED the data connection to operate. We have data comms blocked on all the kids' phones.

Those greedy Verizon bastards don't like the way we use our phones, so they force a data purchase now, even if you don't want/need/use it. If you phone simply HAS THE POTENTIAL to make a data connection, the charge is $10 per phone, per month. Some quick math:

(4 of our phones are not using data)
x($10 each)
$40 per month
x(24 month contract)
$960 !!!

Read that number out loud, slowly ... nine ... hundred ... sixty ... dollars.

Fuck Verizon Wireless.

Seriously, nearly $1000 in forced additional charges, for nothing. Even though we have data comms completely blocked, we're still required to pay up for any phone that we buy with the POTENTIAL to make a connection.

Can you imagine if other companies did this?
Have an HD TV? Oh, you're required to purchase HD cable now.
Drive a GM? We're making you purchase the OnStar service now.
Have a TomTom? You're forced to pay for monthly map updates.
And you have to subscribe to HBO, whether you like vampires or not.

I called my way up the customer support chain to no effect. The phone monkeys only know what they've been told, and they've been told that "These phones need a data connection to operate." Close. More accurately: "These phones need a data connection before Verizon will allow them to operate on their network."

As soon as this contract is over, we're gone. Eat my gummi nads, you greedy Verizon bastards.

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Robichai reminds me a little of the original Pitfall game.

Tron + LineRider + some old-school motorbike game = Neon Rider.

My favorite Mario game EVER!

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A different perspective.
(source, and cited references)

I miss you, Batman, the Animated Series

Butt-lift surgery gone wrong.

Daddy, I want a miniature giraffe, and I want it now!

I'm not scared of a lot of things. Some think I'm brave, some think I'm stupid, some think I'm reckless. I just enjoy the adrenaline jolts. That said, this video literally made my palms sweat and my heart race. Fuuuuuuuuck this tower-climbing job.

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i'm your aunt flo

2010-08-08T08:43:00.026-04:00

I don't know how many times I have to admit to sucking at this 'weekly post' thing. I know it's been at least a month since I logged in here and scratched out anything worth reading. Heck, even this post might not be worth reading... won't know 'til I'm done yammering.

I have many excuses for not writing, but basically excuses are just reasons for failure. Seriously, every Friday for the past too-many-to-count weeks has been whipping my tail. I've got lots & lots of stories in my head, but I won't do any one of them justice. This is definitely the McD of blog posts today... quantity trumps quality today.

Here we go, in no particular order. I can't keep the weekends or events straight in my head, so I won't even attempt to write down the sequence.

Happy (not) 60th birthday to Uncle Kirk! Yasha planned a surprise party for him. To avoid the extra attention of partying on a landmark year, she scheduled it a whole year early. Who has a 59th birthday party with all sorts of family and old friends? KIRK! It was lots of fun chatting with all of his ex-roommates and hearing redacted versions of their stories.

There are a few redacted stories from my trip to OBX, too. James & Affie planned their wedding on Manteo, so a bunch of us guys went down early and rented a beach house for the week. 5 guys, no burgers or fries, just lots of sunshine & partying. It's probably been 10 years since I had that much free time. I did have to teach the young'uns a thing or two... I was down there 4 nights, and they each took a turn trying to keep up.

Having free time in the morning was pretty cool, too. I got out for a swim/bike/run every single day, without having to worry about getting stuff done at the office. Very niiice.

After spending Sunday-Wednesday at the beach house, I drove back to VA on Thursday. Samantha got all of her stuff packed up in the truck, and we set off for Radford Friday morning. Move-in went pretty well, she already knew her roommate, and the weather was beautiful. She's been down there a couple weeks now, and seems to be chugging right along. She told me last night she's got an oh-point-four GPA, which is a good thing, right?

Back home from Radford move-in on Friday night, so Missy, Megan, and I could drive back down to OBX Saturday morning for the wedding. We got into town early, and had enough time to run around a bit. We jumped the dunes at Jockey's Ridge, spent some money at Kitty Hawk Kites, bought some fudge, splashed in the ocean, and saw some guy get rescued by the real-life Baywatch people.

The wedding was really really cool. Services and reception were both at the Manteo Aquarium. They have a park overlooking the sound. The wedding was held on the shore of the park with the sunsetting in the background. Afterwards, we went inside for a few private hours in the aquarium, plus catered dinner. The family's tables were under the curving arch of a million-gallon shark tank. I've been to a lot of weddings, and this was one of the most memorable. Big love to James & Affie!

While running all over the east coast, I got the message the my Uncle Bill had passed up in OH. I made drive up there on Monday morning. Bill was definitely one-of-a-kind. He worked concrete construction for the county 'til he was at least 70. After he retired, he went around town helping all the old people! He took care of their recycling, brought 'em meals & snacks, but mostly shared time and attention with folks. Aunt Nova said it best when we were at the viewing, "I knew Bill had a lot of friends, but this is ridiculous... I didn't know there were this many!"

Labor Day weekend was packed with the traditional celebrations: Buffett all day on Saturday, Block Party on Sunday, and a relaxed neighborhood BBQ on Monday.

I was nervous about Buffett bc of the change from Nissan Pavilion to JiffyLube Live. The venue has a lot of 'official' rules, but they've always looked away when Buffett comes to town. We weren't sure if JiffyLube would be so relaxed. It all worked out well. The show was at 8pm, the lot opened at 6, but by 1pm we were done setting up furniture, doing decorations, and had the grill lit. Other than a slow parking experience, JiffyLube gets 4 stars for the day.

Block Party on Sunday was a mad scramble. I was completely unprepared for the day. Mostly, preparations included telling people to come out and play, then letting it happen. So many people helped with so many aspects of the day, it really did go very well. The over/under on a police presence was 330 in the afternoon; Deputy McGruff and her trainee were there an hour before. You pays your money and you takes your chances. They saw we were all responsible adults, so they let the party roll on.

Big shout outs and lots of love to this year's musical guests: The 300-Proof Band, Byrn, Augur, and The Pocket Band (at least Big-T and Matt). Without these guys, the whole atmosphere would have been so much weaker. There's just something perfect about good grooving live music to make the day sparkle.

Yes, we did break out the wizard sticks again this year. See for yourselves:

Last Sunday morning, I ran my first Olympic-distance triathlon. It was also my first open-water swim and my first 10k run, too. It was cold and rainy all morning, but once I was wet it didn't really matter too much anymore. My target was 3 hours, which I barely missed at 3:04:14. What I learned... Reston's Lake Audubon was dark, dirty, crowded, choppy, and hard to swim in. The rain didn't slow down my bike nearly as much as my fear of the 10k. I didn't want to blow out my legs before the run started. A 10k is a long way to run; not so much meaning I was worn out, but that I just seemed to be running and running and running and the rowers keep on rowing but there's really no way of knowing when the damn run would ever end.

Next tri - this coming Sunday! It's my third time running the Taylor Love race in Worldgate. It's a shorter distance tri, with a pool swim instead of the lake. I'm totally stoked for this race... after surviving the Reston Tri last weekend I'm ready to slam this one. If I stay motivated and write again next Friday, I'll tell ya all about it.

One new toy to tell ya about before I finish scrambling this mess. Twitter's FastFollow lets you follow my ramblings, without having to register an account. Text "follow pj_haas" to 40404, and you'll have direct access to the inner workings of my brain.

Have a great weekend, and I hope to be here with you next week!

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Game credit to Dom, again. I'm starting to think I should just give him an admin password to the Waster. Spin the Circle.

Hue Shift ... takes a minute to understand the functions, then it gets good.

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Manage your own data, issue 1
QuickenOnline data was destroyed on 29 August. No workaround. Everyone was effed.

Manage your own data, issue 2
Napster DRM data destroyed on 1 Sept 2010 - All wma files purchased thru Napster are no longer supported. They have DRM encoding, which proves your Napster account paid for the music. Napster no longer supports DRM, so there's no proof of ownership. (Note: does NOT affect mp3s purchased after 2008.)
"Napster, a part of BestBuy"... just great.

Manage your own data, issue 3
If you use Bloglines as your RSS reader, get off now. Bloglines is shutting down on 1 October. Your config and all backed up links will be gone. At least their website provides directions to export your settings to another RSS reader.

It's football season!

I really hate the music industry. Thanks for calling them out, Rolling Stone.

Amurricans are stupid. Really really stupid.

List of the bazillion records held by Jerry Rice.

Fingerprints? What?

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reminiscing

2010-08-06T09:24:00.012-04:00

December 1984 - I was 14 years old, and nervous as hell, sitting in the breakroom of the McDonald's on Elden Street. Me & a couple other teenage boneheads were there for our first-day paperwork & orientation. That's where I met my friend, Brad.

The Herndon McD employed a lot of teenagers, but at 14 we were two of the youngest. The managers abused the crap out of the lot of us, but we were too young, dumb, & inexperienced to know any better. We spent 20-25 hours every weekend cracking eggs & flipping burgers. (Guys worked in the kitchen, girls worked the counter & drive thru. We had to try really hard to flirt bc the girls were kept 10' away at all times.)

Like every restaurant, there was a bunch of turnover. For whatever reason, Brad & I never left. A year later, we'd trained a lot of the staff (older teens, adults on work-release, immigrants, etc.) We were only 15, but we ran that effing kitchen on the weekends.

We started hanging out with a third guy, Gerald, who followed the same progression on the night shift. He was maybe 1/2 year older, but a grade ahead in school.

When we finally got old enough to drive, we bought way too many cars, mostly Mustangs. Gerald had a '68 Fastback 302 and a '69 Grande 351. I had a '71 & '73 Grandes, both 302s, and a '73 Thunderbird (with a 460ci Police Interceptor!) Brad had a '65 Coupe 6-cyl and a '73 Grande 351. He also had the coolest ride of all: 1956 DeSoto with a push-button transmission on the dash.

Gerald was 17 when his parents were getting ready to move. He was trying to finish his senior year in Herndon. Brad's mom's basement was set up like a private apt: bedroom, bath, living room, private entrance, closed door to the rest of the house. Brad already lived down there. Gerald moved in when his parents left. I wound up there a short while later after some typical teenage stress at home.

The bedroom had a queen-size waterbed + a lazy-boy. We took turns sleeping in the chair.

So we're too young, we're out on our own, we have too much money, too many cars, lots of freedom at work, and a constant rotation of fresh cashiers to chase after. Life, as we knew it, was pretty damn good. :)

Obviously, not all of the stories from that era can or will be made public. Here are a couple quick-hitters...

Rafi & Safi, the Afghani brothers, worked at McD in the morning & 7-11 in the evening. They were happy to give us suitcases of beer from the cooler. When they weren't working, we just stole it from Dave's back porch.

Brad was the first person I ever saw puke thru his nose. We were bonging beers in Paul's kitchen out of a stupid-large funnel. He did 3 cans in one shot. Straight down the funnel to his belly, straight back up thru his nose into the kitchen sink. If I hadn't seen it, I never would have believed it was possible.

There was a cute little runaway chick living with us for a while. The cops came to the house looking for her. We knew she was upstairs, the cops searched, but never found her. She was hiding under the fiberglass insulation in the attic. Balls.

Driving to King's Dominion, in the rain, somewhere on I-95 southbound. Brad's in the lead, driving a rack of people in his mom's wood-paneled station wagon. I'm right behind with just as many in the thunderbird. Rounding a curve at about 90mph, the rear of the station wagon breaks loose. He's sliding sideways down the interstate; I'm face-to-face with the peeling vinyl wood of the passenger door. A couple of fishtails later, he got it back under control. The weather cleared, and we had a great day at the park.

Waiting for Pink Floyd tickets to go on sale at Fair Oaks Mall. We camped in the parking lot for three straight days, and we weren't even the first people there. We were #3, 4, and 5 in line. It was a hella good party with lots of fun people. We didn't want to hold cash in that situation, so on TicketMorning, I had to make a run to the bank. Stupid move. I was beyond tired. I crashed in super-slo-mo; I saw it happening but my reactions had taken a nap (like I should have done).

I smashed my head into the glass, my face into the steering wheel, and my car all to hell. I regained conscious thought standing in the middle of the road talking to the paramedic. My mouth was full of gravel, so I spit it into my hand. The rocks were my teeth. I threw 'em somewhere on Rt 50.

After spending 3 days with the same group of people, everyone was pretty tight. Somebody spotted my car all smashed up, and reported it to Brad & Gerald. They bailed out of their place in line to track me down. After an ambulance ride, a face full of stitches, and a hospital call to my mom, I found them back in Herndon. I tried to smile at their concern, but my face wasn't working right.

(We eventually got tix to the show later, at a much higher price.)

Brad & I double-dated with sisters, except we were each with the sister that the other wanted to hook up with. I think he succeeded later; I got close but didn't seal the deal.

Brad & I, two high-schoolers, crashing in Gerald's college dorm for the weekend.

Trick-or-treating the Herndon cops, drunk out of my skull, dressed as Father Guido Sarducci.

So why the random babbling about all the memories? Brad's 16yo son, Zach, passed away a couple weeks ago in a car crash. I can't even pretend to understand the feeling.

Brad and I had fallen out of touch. Too many miles between, too much work, too many distractions, not enough effort. The first time we'd talked in ~5 years was at Zach's services.

Friendships try to fade away. Don't let it happen. Continue to share the good times and everyday life. Otherwise, tragedies will be the only reason you get back together.

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Dom's saving my a$$ once again. You all know that I've been slacking with the game shares lately. Here are a couple quick-hitters that are totally worth it... Snake Game - It's a snake game. Eat mice, grow bigger. Don't bite yourself.

Drench - Change all the blocks to the same color in the least number of clicks. Easy, huh?

Adverputt - More challenging than the other games, but still rather brainless fun. You should be good at it.

And a little tasteless entertainment from Jacob...watch the movie trailer first. Finish throwing up. Now enjoy the game.

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Say hello to my little dancing disney friend...

What kinna engine you got in there? A diesel?

Emily sent me this old vid a while back, but it's still right on point.

Eddi's dad was a bit crazy in his youth. I heard rumors about getting plastered and breaking into the zoo to chase the animals. He caught one of the peacocks and did very unnatural things to the poor bird. Eddi's wondering if this is his sister...

If you haven't seen this vid yet, get out of your cave.

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didja miss me?

2010-05-25T08:16:00.023-04:00

Yes, it's been a long while since I've written. No no no no, stop sniffling now. It's not you, it's me. I stopped writing to everyone, not just you.

I sincerely apologize to those of you who live for my once-weekly updates. I laugh at you a little bit, too, bc I really don't feel as if my writing is anything special. It's actually not much more than a translation of some of the incessant chatter bouncing between the insides of my skull.

Where have I been these past few weeks? Nunya. Nunya Bidniss.

Seriously, lemme do a quick recap to get you all up to speed.

FOUR Fridays ago, we bounced up to Ohio for a family wedding. My cuz Dana got hitched. It was a beautiful ceremony (with all the required Catholic aerobics) and a great party afterwards. It also just happened to be Ohio Bike Week. :) Pics here.

THREE Fridays ago, Samantha graduated high school. I'm not sure why, but the school decided to do the ceremony in the football stadium, instead of at the Patriot Center. Mother Nature decided to make it about 140 degrees and 140% humidity that afternoon. Once the sun went down, it turned out to be a really nice event. Sam's on her way to Radford in the fall, and totally stoked about it. She's already got her roommate (another girl from her HS) and I've already sent money.

I'm really proud of my baby girl.

TWO Fridays ago, I hit the road with a couple friends from my office. We bike together during the week, and have done a few triathlons together. This time we were on the way to a much much MUCH bigger race: The Gran Fondo Fab Fifty. We camped Friday night near Deep Creek, before hitting the race Saturday morning. My pics here.

The Fondo is a road-bike race, starting at the top of Wisp Ski Resort, and running up down and around all the mountains at Deep Creek. It is by far the most challenging ride I've ever done. Taller, steeper, farther, and faster than ever before. I had to resist making SteveAustin sound effects. The killer? The last two miles of the course are spent riding back to the top of Wisp Mountain.

Fondo Stats

Linear distance: 50.76 miles
Total climb: 5,800'
Elapsed time: 4:01:23
Best part: INSANE TOP SPEEDS!!!!

After the race completed Saturday, me & the guys high-tailed it back to NoVA to celebrate Seth & Susan's wedding. It was a blast - hanging out with old friends and meeting a lot of new ones. Of course, smashing the glass and dancing the Hora were included. Tony spotted the chairs on the dance floor first, but we may have tied in the sprint to grab a leg. I guarantee that if the chandelier was a tiny bit lower, we would have had an incident.

ONE Friday ago was the holiday weekend, which also coincided with Samantha's 18th birthday. I left work early, and left all of you in the lurch. Sorry again. I didn't want to distract anyone, and extend your workday any longer than it needed to be.

Anyway, thru the weekend we spent a lot of time with fam & friends & neighbors. Multiple BBQs, multiple fireworks displays, and way too much food. Sam wanted to get some top-shelf steaks to celebrate her birthday dinner. Ray's the Steaks in Arlington was perfect. I'd been to Ray's HellBurger before, and the Steaks had an equally impressive reputation, and they didn't disappoint. Capital Grille quality at Outback prices, and zero pretentiousness. Do it.

Sam made her own birthday cake:

This weekend is looking to be another good celebration of summertime. One housewarming, one (dual) birthday party, and a BBQ with some old friends. Screw Michelob. Weekends were made for grillin'!

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Finally. A TRUE time waster! This one is so easy, but so addictive at the same time. Two button controls: left arrow, right arrow. Rotate.

Six Degrees of Black Sabbath. Pick two musicians, and see how they're connected. Just like the Kevin Bacon game, without the Bacon.

TheSmokingGun has a contest, built from the game Clue: identify which criminal used which weapon when they were arrested for assault. Hurry, though, the contest ends at 6pm EDT!

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Boston's Barstool Sports has the best salute to the 4th of July and the good ol' US of A. I wish I could come up with stuff like this.

My kind of party.

Not-so-much my kind of Capt. America burrito party.

I kissed a lot of girls these past couple weeks. Or imagined so, at least.

Child stars and how they've (not?) changed.

Lots of reasons for non-soccer fans to watch the World Cup (for real).

One more reason to cheer for soccer:

I'll fess to it though, here's the real reason why I've been watching the World Cup.

Cool optical illusion in real-life:

Now I understand!

Final thought ... your weekend may start when this cycle completes...

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bike season! wabbit season!

2010-05-22T19:48:00.015-04:00

It's full-on bike season now. I have the W&OD trail to myself most days thru the winter, but once the warm weather comes around I have to learn to share again.

Sharing the trail isn't all bad. Things are more interesting with more activity around. Dog walkers, joggers, stroller moms. I enjoy seeing chubbies out there, who have been hibernating on the sofa thru the cold months, and are trying to get things turned around. And I looooooove ponytail season!

Of course, there's a whole collection of idiots out there, too. Here's how to NOT piss me off:

On the trail and on the streets...

PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!
Don't stop in the middle of the trail.
Pushing a stroller does not excuse you from common sense.
If it's dark, carry a friggin' light. Your momma lied; you're not that bright.
And your little dog needs a light, too.
Clean up after that mongrel.
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!
A 30' leash is invisible to everyone who's not holding it.
Matching bike jerseys with your friends looks dumb.
Empty gelpacks go back in your pocket.
Riding on the sidewalk is dangerous and illegal.
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!
Your head may be hard, but it's not harder than asphalt. Wear a brain bucket.
Pull the pretty little white cords out of your ears. Zone out somewhere that you don't share.
Keep right except to pass, and don't crowd the centerline, either. Your 15mph plus my 35mph generates a closing speed of 50mph. Think about it for a sec. Zippy reaction time, and that sht would hurt.
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!
Road signs are for everyone (including you).
Cars are bigger than you.
Cars are bigger than me, too. I don't want to be on the streets with drivers that you've pissed off.
Do not not NOT thank that friendly soccermom in the grey minivan when she waves you across the road in conflict with the road signs. The 'nice' drivers need to be trained to be 'safe' drivers instead. (see below)
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!

Now for the drivers in the 4-wheeled road cages...

PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT! (funny how that rule keeps coming back)
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT! (oh, did I say that twice?) When my strobe lights, day-glo colors, reflective material, and hand signals aren't enough, I think maybe you're not doing your part.
Relax. There is plenty of room for a bike and your car in that lane.
Don't crowd the shoulder.
Don't go 8' into the other lane to avoid a bicycle. *Crestview Rd, 2009. AssClown in a Miata switches to the left lane to pass a 17" wide bike. Oncoming Z3 switches to his left lane to avoid the Miadiot, each passing the other on the wrong side of the road. I had to wash my shorts after that one.
Your car has turn signals for a reason.
Pedestrians & bicyclists in a crosswalk have the right-away. Pedestrians and bicyclists not in the crosswalk yet, do not have the right-away.
It's a moving violation, and points on my driver's license if I'm older than 16 and riding on the sidewalk. Quit asking.
Don't be nice. Instead, be smart and safe. Smart and safe are wayyyyy more important that being nice. Don't effing wave me across Whiele Ave like you have any control over the drivers in the other 5 lanes. I appreciate the offer, but until your telekinetic skills improve, a 16.67% chance of survival is not a gamble I'm taking.
PAY ATTENTION, DAMMIT!

Other than the assclowns, summertime bike season is going great. A couple of us took a 1/2 day vacation this week to go out for a big ride. Drove out to BFE, to the base of Mt. Weather, then did the ride up & over the top of Blueridge Mountain Rd. Uphill sucks; downhill = 45mph and big stupid grins! Check out the ride details here: Garmin link.

I've got a bigger mountain ride in the works. June 26 (relax, I'll be back in time for the wedding that night) there's a 50mile road race out at Deep Creek Lake, that courses down, around, and back up Wisp Mountain. The race is longer and higher than any I've done before, so it's a little intimidating, but I'm feeling ready for it.

I've got two triathlons scheduled for September, the Reston Tri and the Taylor Love sprint. I'm still looking for another one to do over the summer, but a lot of our time is already scheduled w/ famstuff.

Speaking of famstuff, Samantha is only an RCH away from being done with high school. As a senior with excellent grades, she gets to bail on the last week or so of classes, and all final exams. She's only got like 8 days of class remaining, then she's done done done. She's got a summer job already lined up to fill the time before she goes away to Radford.

Megan's done with middle school this year, too. Next year, everyone is in high school or college. It's a lot easier to deal w/ HS teachers; they just seem to have a different attitude toward the job and the students. Almost like they're there to get the job done and not do so much babysitting. The kids need to step things up and take care of their own business.

I just registered for my second-to-last semester at Strayer. Summer school has the same awful feeling now that it did when we were in high school. The possibility of summer school was the worst possible thought as the rest of the class was getting excited over playing kickball all day and flashlight tag all night. So even though taking class all summer brings me closer to the end, I'd really rather sit on the back deck, sipping a beer in the sunshine.

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I'm calling this a game. Figure it out.

A week of celebration! Bill found the 30th anniversary update of Missle Command!

Google posted their coolest doodle ever. It celebrated the 30th anniversary of Japanese Pac-Man, and was playable right from the home page. Find backup copies of the game here or here.

Celebrating Dom's dumbest submission EVER. TimeSnail.

But he also sent Celebrity Kung-Fu, which makes up for it a bit.

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Big big BIG love to Joe for finding the exact pic I was looking for, the pic of the RatPack sharing a bottle of Jack. It's available framed from SignedRock.com. No price listed...and I haven't had the nads to call and ask yet.

The Rat Pack's 10 rules of style. Jack Daniels, always Jack Daniels.

Facebook has been screwing up all over the place recently. FB apps have access to all your data; click here to learn how to clean up that mess. Then click here to scan your current privacy settings, and lock 'em down. Even has an option to lock things down automatically.

Seth sent yet another reason to be happy about not smoking any more. This stuff is harsh.

Josh has great gift ideas, just in time for Father's Day! (btw, that sh!t is real.)

Yash is rockin' out, Rube Goldberg style:

The Playmate of the Year gets a free car each year. Here's the full collection, from 1964 right up to 2010.

I didn't get it, until Amanda splained it to me...

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clearing my plate

2010-04-14T12:38:00.028-04:00

Things have been pretty busy in Wasterland over the past few months. As a result, I've been slacking pretty bad on getting this thing posted on any sort of a regular schedule. I'm sorry for sucking.

I realized today, that writing is more difficult when I do it less often. When I do a weekly post, there's generally been one main activity to write about. It's pretty easy to select the subject matter when the choice is limited to one. Plus, it's totally fresh in my mind so I don't have to fictionalize my memories.

Last time I scribbled anything was right after the cruise, which was a full month ago. I've got a skull full of a month's worth of topics trying to get out, but no gentle and orderly way to release the jam.

So I'll just ramble on, in no particular order.

All the young'uns skipped school and spent the day with me on Take Your Kid and Make Them Work Day. Sam, Ethan, and Megan, plus Sam's bf helped me around the office for a few hours. They really did earn their lunch, too. They cleaned my whiteboards (and drew new pics), hung some corkboards, did some software installs, and helped with a bunch of inventory tasks. Then we took a walk up to Moe's for lunch.

btw - Moe's in Herndon has $2 beers all day every day. Welcome to Moe's!

I scraped all the Christopher Newport University stickers off the truck last weekend. When Joe first dropped out, I held on to the hope that he'd have a revelation. He'd get his act together and go back to school. My "CNU Dad" stickers would be legit again. Now he's been out for nearly a year, got married, and moved out of state, so I've accepted the fact that it'll probably be a long while before he focuses on education again.

A good friend of mine just recently started working with University of Phoenix (not in AZ, right here in NoVA) He's the guy that can help you get back on track with your own derailed education. They cater to working adults who have to balance jobs and schoolwork, so they really do understand your situation. Touch base w/ Brandon here: brandon.bonnette@phoenix.edu

Sam applied early-admission to both Radford and Longwood. She got accepted to both, so the admissions process ended rather quickly. She decided on Radford, did the dorm paperwork, and already had me sign the first check. I've got a lot of space on the truck windows to put up new stickers.

My school has been a struggle this semester. I've been putting off my final ENG class, "Writing for the Business Professional" for a long time, and finally had to hunker down and do it. It's kicking my tail. I can take a full load of senior tech classes without any troubles, but this stupid sophomore-level writing class just isn't what I'm cut out for. Midterms were this week, so I'll be done with ENG in 6 more weeks.

Work sucks. Way too busy, being pulled in way too many directions. It's still better than not working, but some of these sunshiney spring days makes me wonder how true that is.

I've already registered for two triathlons this year, and I'm looking into a third. Plus there's an open-water swim coming up at the end of the month that I might go after, too. My workouts have started to extend recently, and I'm just feeling good. It's pretty rewarding being 40 years old and feeling better now than I have in a long long time.

Besides, biking makes me smile.

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I seriously have dozens of submissions for the Waster sitting in my inbox. I've only got a few items here. Keep sending stuff, I promise it's not going into a black hole.

Geek out with this space/gravity/orbiting java app. Play with the presets for a bit before trying to monkey with the custom settings.

Bill had a slow week a while back. He must have sent 1/2 dozen games. The first to share: Starmaggedon!

Graphics suck. Music awful. Gameplay meh. But tossing a fat kid with a catapult overrides all the fails of this game.

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VA State Attorney Ken Cuccinelli is a moron and a prude.

Drunk-ass Jerry Jones talking smack about Bill Parcells and Tim Tebow.

Dan Snyder, defending his Redskins and yammering about the other sports teams he wants to buy.

I'm the other one. Plus, I can ride my bike with no handlebars.

Congrats from the Simpsons -> SouthPark.

Some old Sublime (like there's any legitimate new?) I love the double-hedgehog-cameo by Ron Jeremy.

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oooooh wheeee oooooh wheeee baby

2010-04-05T15:08:00.011-04:00

Cliff's Notes version: our first cruise excellent! It exceeded all expectations, and we already put a deposit down on the next one. Seriously.

Full story, so you can pass the exam: We were sailing from Miami, but flying into Ft. Lauderdale. We were a day ahead of schedule, so we took the roundabout way. Flew from Dulles into Ft. Lauderdale airport. Hopped a shuttle bus to the TriRail, which we rode to the Miami station. Another shuttle bus took us to the Miami airport, where we caught yet another shuttle bus to the hotel. One final shuttle took us to the port the following morning.

Our travel agent hooked us up with "VIP boarding". At first, we didn't realize we had anything different from anybody else. Then we bypassed the lines at the security checkpoint. We had access to the VIP lounge while they handled all of our boarding docs, then were ushered up a super-secret side elevator and wound up on a catwalk over the hundreds of NVIPs who were now waiting in a second line to get their boarding passes.

I don't know what portion of our costs covered VIP boarding, but it was worth every single penny.

The Carnival Liberty is freaking amazing. At one point, it was the largest in the world, but has been surpassed since. It carries 3,000 passengers + 1,200 crew. 950' is longer than 3 football fields. It's got 3 swimming pools, a handful of jacuzzis, a water slide, mini-golf, basketball & volleyball courts, and a jogging track. Buffets, bars, and full-service restaurants all over the place, too.

Full-service doesn't come close to describing the quality they delivered. We had a dedicated room steward, drink service guy, and 3-person waitstaff team. They all knew our names BEFORE any introductions were made, and were totally on top of their game. Raoul, the room steward, earned bonus points for keeping my leftover bucket of beers freshly iced, day or night. I think they were all Philippino, and they all greeted us "Hello, Mr. Patrick! Hello Mee-lissa!"

The first couple of days we spent sailing from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico, taking full advantage of all those bars. I found a foolproof way of not getting lost trying to make my way back to the cabin. 100x better than breadcrumbs any day of the week:

Once in Cozumel, we hopped a ferry to the mainland, then went on a tour of the Mayan ruins in Tulum. Excellent trip, great experience, and it was actually rather educational. It's really cool to walk around the buildings that were constructed hundreds of years ago, and still see the detail in the construction. After the tour, we had lunch at a total dive Mexican restaurant, serving real tacos (without the bell and that stupid Chihuahua).

We got back to Cozumel with plenty of time for some shopping and a drink or 10. The Tequilaria is a liquor store, specializing in (guess!) all sorts of tasty tequilas. But the kicker is that they have free samples; game on! I spent a bit of the afternoon there, before heading to dinner at Pancho's Backyard. We hung out the rest of the evening at some other port-side bar, then made it back to the ship just in time to collapse from the day.

Next on the itinerary was Grand Cayman. This is a tiny little piece of nothing island just south of Cuba. We were lucky that it was so small. There wasn't any pier, so we were taking ferries to get on land. The waves were rolling a bit, so the ferries weren't able to hook up to the ship. Our captain packed it in, steamed to the other side of the island in about 30 minutes, and found much calmer water. The ferries were able to do their thing.

Once on the island, we took another boat 2mi out to sea, to a big sandbar in the middle of the ocean. The water was only about 4' deep, beautiful blue, and full of stingrays! We jumped from the ship and got to play with the rays in the water, just like the Crocodile Hunter (minus the barb-in-the-heart thing).

Afterwards, we headed to a private park at Rum Point for lunch and drinks on the beach. I went out for a swim and found a deep rocky area 1/4 mile off-shore that was full of literally thousands of fish. It was like somebody had hijacked a PetSmart and hid the fish department in this hole. I went back and got the camera, but found there's a lot more work involved in underwater photography when the currents are swirling. Only a few of the pics do any justice to the number of fish and the rainbow of colors that I saw.

The following day, we were docked at Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The entire ship seemed to be going to Dunn's River Falls, which we'd visited on our honeymoon. Our Jamaica excursion was going to be horseback riding on the beach. This had the potential of either being really cool or really cheesey. The guides from Chukka Cove were top-notch, and made the trip a total blast.

Halfway thru the day, we hitched our horses and jumped on different ones that weren't saddled. We rode these straight out into the effing ocean. We were 100yds from shore, on the backs of horses that were swimming in the waves. No kidding. I wouldn't have even guessed that horses could swim, much less with my clumsy a$$ clinging on the back.

We left Jamaica, sailed between Cuba and Haiti on our way back to Miami. The days at sea were just as much fun as the days in port. There was something scheduled for all age groups and interests thru the entire day. Old folks, partiers, teens, and little kids each had different activities planned. The option to kick back and relax in the sun was always there, too. The bars were maybe a little too convenient, and the food was maybe a bit too tasty, bc we overindulged at every chance. ("Can we order three desserts after dinner?" "Of course you can, Mr. Patrick!")

The ship got into Miami early on Saturday morning. Disembarking (that's cruise-talk for jumping ship) sounded like it was going to be a clusterfck. I'm certain that our VIP passes saved the day again. Our departure was labeled 'Zone 1' and we were directed to be downstairs at way-too-early in the morning. We were walking off the ship while the announcements were telling passengers NOT to come down yet bc they didn't have harbor permission to go ashore yet. We had our luggage and had zipped thru customs before the rest of the 3,000 had a chance to create a bottleneck.

After another pair of shuttle buses, we arrived at our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale. We spent the remainder of the day putzing around town, riding the water-taxi tour through the hyper-ritzy Lauderdale Harbours and Las Olas Isles. After asking the boat crew for advice, we wound up on Las Olas Blvd, which was a neat thoroughfare of shopping and sidewalk dining. It took a while to decide on dinner, but when we settled on the Greek place it worked out perfectly. Again, excellent food, but this time we were able to watch the parade of cars passing our table. I'm not sure if the owners of Rolls, Maybachs, Lambos, and Ferraris call it "cruising the strip" but that's exactly what they were doing.

Verdict: absolutely wonderful. I can't wait for the next one.

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Dom is saving my tail with a few games this week. Usually I don't post until I've played at least for a minute, but I'm doing these blind...

First-Person Tetris
Record Tripping
Tuper Tario Tros.

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Old school Atari; twisted by Matt.

Todd sent this a while back, and I'm just now getting around to posting it. I wanted to make sure none of my immediate family was involved. He pointed out the key phrase: makeshift helmet. That's enough of an intro right there.

I haven't put together much of a collection this week, so I'm calling on an old favorite that always makes me smile. Calvin & Hobbes, forever young.

What do I do right?

Piece.

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it's all a blur

2010-03-01T10:30:00.028-05:00

Skipping the weekly update has started to become a bad habit. I've been living in a swirl of activity for the past few months, and really haven't paid enough attention to the more important things in life. Like the Waster.

Every time I do actually write, I spend the entire update describing why I've been slacking and disappointing your entertainment expectations. This is no time to break a good pattern. Here goes...

I turned 40 a few weeks back. Lots of people weren't so sure I'd make it this far, including me. I've done a lot of stupid & abusive things to myself in 40 years, and really haven't suffered as much permanent damage as I should have. I've got a full set of replacement teeth in my head, plus a shoulder comprised of scar tissue, but not too much beyond that. I'm putting 'limited damages' under the 'win' column.

40 feels a lot better to me than 30, actually. Or 25, even. I stressed a bit at 25, kinna went through my mid-life crisis. By that time, I was married w mortgage and multiple car payments, and my third kid was on the way. Smoking this, smoking that, drinking, working way too many hours at a crappy restaurant job, and I was running my body into the ground.

40 finds me in a soooo much better position. Change of careers for the better, change of wives for the better, quit smoking nearly two years, exercising like a fool, and just feeling good. I honestly feel better now than I have in a long long time. If turning 40 feels this awesome, 50 better hurry up and get here, dammit.

(I'm wondering how Missy's gonna react to that 'change of wives' comment. I'll let you know.)

There's still stress in PJ-land, of course. My grandma passed on my birthday, actually. She lived an amazing life, and touched countless people. She had a dozen kids, for real, and grandkids were all over the place. I just found out that the actual count was exactly 100 grand, great-grand, and great-great-grandkids. Wow.

Grandma was old-school. Generous, hard-working, full of faith and spunk and smiles. (Thanks for letting me hijack your grandma, Becky, your words were so much more eloquent than mine would have been.)

Grandma took a new job sometime in her EIGHTIES, taking care of the priests at St. Mary's. The priest who presided over her mass was one of those that she took care of. He called her mom during the services, and it fit perfectly. If you were near her, you were under her wing. Years ago, she was a founding member of the Women's Funeral Choir at the church, and the current choir was there to sing when it was her turn.

Her kids (my aunts & uncles) gave her a wonderful service. The flowers were beautiful; bouquets representing each of her kids & their spouses, and a huge one with one flower for each of us 100 grandkids, too. They had pictures & murals & videos of all the past family reunions & just soooo many happy memories. Listening to the voices of the fam singing 'In the Garden' is simply magical.

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Sexy billiards is a bit confusing. The 'billiards' part of the game is pretty good. The 'sexy' part isn't anything more than choosing your opponent at the beginning of the match. *yawn*

The cupcakes game of games. Creative, challenging, and tasty! I only wish it had a scoring mechanism, bc I'd kick all y'all's tails!

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All day, listening to Rancid, keeping this gif dancing on my desk...

My new favorite word, and my new favorite art project, vajazzling!

Original Jennifer Love Hewitt vajazzling discussion on the Lopez show:

Never would have guessed it category. Ozzy. Writing a book. Discussing it on NPR. Riiiiight...

Olympic Symphony: What hundredths of a second really sounds like.

Ummm, what????

Juvenile humor towing vid:

Just how big is a million? Or a billion? This article does a good job of relating massive numbers to concepts you can understand, like football stadiums. For those of you who can't handle intellectual reading, here's a simple pic of a million dots:

(click to supersize)

Amanda can make EasyMac, regardless of what drug you're on!

F you, F you, you're cool, F you, and I'm out!

Finally, I'll close with some Kid Rock. The music player I use on my desktop (amarok) displays the lyrics to whatever track is playing. You can't fake quality lyricism like this...
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up drop the boogie.
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up drop the boogie.
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up drop the boogie.
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up drop the boogie.
My name is Kid... Kid Rock!
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie.
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-bang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up jump the boogie
Bawitdaba-da bang-da-dang-diggy-diggy-diggy
Said the boogie-said up drop the boogie.

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olympic bacon

2010-02-19T19:17:00.020-05:00

Two weeks in a row! Two Fridays in a row! I'm calling this a streak! Not just a Ray Stevens streak, but a for-real winning streak, dammit.

I'll admit, I'm a bit lucky to get this posted. My brain has checked out for the weekend already. Megan asked if we could go skiing for her birthday. After a lot of arm twisting, puppy-dog-eyes, and bribery, I grudgingly caved in.

Actually, my answer was a lot closer to "HELLS YES!!!!" when she asked, but that makes me seem like a pushover.

We're heading up Liberty tomorrow to hit the slopes and donate blood. Hoping for some snowfall, just bc it's cool, but also hoping this wind eases off a bit. I'm not looking forward to 50mph winds pushing us UP the hill.

I'm totally stoked about the trip. The kids have only been once before, but got hooked. My sis is coming along for her first trip ever. I'm placing money that the kids will totally smoke her in the morning, but she'll put 'em in their place by the end of the day. She's got enough coordination and competitiveness that she won't let the rats embarrass her for an entire day.

Other kid news: Samantha applied early admission to two colleges. She got her acceptance to both, one of which was her "top choice dream school". I'm pretty sure we'll be filling out the admissions paperwork and signing checks this weekend. There are no real worries about senioritis causing trouble, either. The high schools have a great final-semester policy for seniors: carry a B average and don't miss more than 2 classes, and they're excused from taking final exams. It's a very convincing policy.

Finally, I've been struggling all week with which of the following images to include as a lead story in this week's Waster: Birthday StonerDog or Hilary Duff's engagement?

StonerDog's owners must have baked some very special birthday biscuits. He's in a very happy place.

Ms. Duff (1) received a proposal from Mike Comrie (2) cried a little bit (3) sent cell-pics of the ring to her friends and (4) thanked Mr. Comrie accordingly....

Then I received the best lead-item of the week BY FAR. You get to start your weekend with Hilary StonerDog Comrie, and a full understanding of just why he's in that happy place.

Thanks, Juan_Solo!
(btw, the reddit comments are effing awesome.)

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Good ol' redneck demolition derby fun!

Dom's sent a good car game, but it's not a driver. More of a puzzle / coordination thing that lets you control the traffic. Pretty cool, actually.

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Olympic curling hotties.

Iiiiiiiiit's OLYMPIC BACON! ! ! !

Good job, eh?

MagicJack, the device, works well. MagicJack, as a company though, is just another scam. Oh what, you thought any different? I want to show you something. It's my shocked face.

The problem with legitimate DVDs...

Movie industry problems, continued...

Amelia Bedelia, you owe Mr. Rogers some lovin'.

Don't turn your back on that Mr. Roger's though...

If you stop staring for longer than a minute, beauty pageant contestants say some really dumb things. Here is a collection of some of the dumbest.

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back to the grind

2010-02-01T17:11:00.028-05:00

I know I make excuses every Friday. Some are real, some are imagined. (A sleestak really did eat my homework though.)

Things are mostly back to a manageable level of chaos now. Work was nuts bc we had two different installations going live at the same time. School was nuts, but now I'm thru midterms and finished my term paper. Multiple blizzards have been out of control. Finally, I've been taking an all-day class every Friday since the beginning of the year. That class is completed now, too.

Result? I'll have a FridayWaster actually delivered on a Friday!

The rest of this post is rather scattershot. There's a bit about Gary Coleman, some pic from the Superbowl, and even a bit of Taylor $wift that I found after the Grammys. NO TIGER WOODS. Totally annoying.

So, a few tidbits from the past couple of weeks...

The blizzard rolled in, effectively shutting down the government for a full week. We were snowed in, this time all the kids were at their other-parents. I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed being snowbound more than other people did. We had a big ol' fire going for a week straight, good neighbors to hang out with, and no stupid job to interfere with the fun. It was a bit of a challenge to keep paths to the hot tub and firewood cleared, but overall not to crazy difficult.

The Superbowl was right in the middle of the snowstorms, and we were lucky to have friends in the neighborhood hosting a party. They won a contest from FIOS, which was little more than a good excuse and a bunch of advertising trinkets. It was good to hang out w/ everyone, and extra nice that we were all close enough to walk to the party. Nobody had to deal with the post-game drunks on the road.

The kids are all back in school this week, although they had delayed-opening every single day. We'll be seeing their mid-term report cards in a couple days. I don't think anybody has bad news, but won't know for sure until they actually bring home the papers.

I finally finally finally got back on the bike this week. It's hard to ride to work when both the office and the roads to the office are closed. I only turned about 50 miles, and I can definitely feel the difference. I'm hurting a bit, but it's worth it. The past two winters have interfered with my exercise, causing springtime to be rough. I've been trying hard to stay on track all thru this season, and was doing very well for a while. Blizzards don't play nice with bikes. The W&OD trail is still closed, and it looks like it will stay that way for a long while to come.

I failed big-time this year in relation to Mardi Gras. It totally snuck up on me (for all the same reasons that I haven't been writing Wasters). It wasn't until Tuesday morning, sitting in a conference room on a boring-ass telecon, that I realized I was doing a crap job of celebrating one of the best holidays of the year.

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The game selection this week is weak. I've got a few submissions in my inbox, but I just haven't tested anything out yet. Keep sending stuff, I'll get caught up soon, honest.

One Button Bob. Holy crap, this is the most challenging easy-game I've seen in a long time. BOSS is a pain in the a$$!

(btw One Button Bob sounds a lot like B.O.B. Bob. I keep giggling.)

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Feeling rough around the edges? Feels great to trim the hedges!

Hoodlum boys and hoodlum girls - the lesson of the day is "Respect Your Elders". Especially 67-year-old VietNam vets wearing "I am a MotherEffer" t-shirts. Dumbass follows the old guy to the front of the bus, throws the first punch, then gets his tail spanked and starts crying for an ambulance. Best part is his goofball gf's chattering commentary while getting the whole thing on video.

Please, everyone take a moment to learn something. National Geographic has a serious article about wild birds. Trust me (and Jess) on this one. It's an easy read, and so totally worth it.

Hugging dudes is gay.

The idiots of the world provide endless entertainment, and Lamebook shines the spotlight right on 'em!
(click to enbig)

Live webcast accidentally learns all about recursion. OH MY GOD!

oops.

Run to the Hills (RockBand drums, impossible!!!!!) Yellow bars = bass pedal. This vid is just insane.

A special kind of (geek) hell...

Awesome time-lapse video extracting the downed airplane from the Hudson River last year.

Sarah Palin's cheat sheet. On her hand like a 9th grader cheating on a test.

If you don't understand, have your kids explain.

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17 degrees is effing cold

2010-01-21T12:56:00.023-05:00

Summer of 2008, I started a regular exercise routine, and it felt pretty good. I started biking to work, running when I got home, and did my first sprint triathlon. When the cold weather came around, I fell out. I really wasn't prepared with a winter exercise plan.

Spring 2009, I came out of hibernation, but felt like I was starting over from scratch. Couple people that I ride with had ridden indoors over the winter, and they were whipping my tail. I had to work like crazy just to get back to where I was just a few months prior. I got back into the groove, and ran two tri's by the end of the year.

I mapped out a plan to avoid falling into the same hole during Winter of 2009/10. I got cold-weather gear, and even-colder-weather gear, and continued to ride daily right up til the holidays.

Then Mother Nature totally whipped me. She can be a real mother sometimes. The blizzard back in December started it, followed by a couple weeks of insanely cold temperatures. My daily riding habit was broken. Add the lack of exercise to a very heavy workload in the office, and throw in lots of tasty holiday foods, and I turned into a fat-bellied-sloth in just a short couple of weeks.

The weather and my schedules started easing up last week, so I got back on the bike with a vengeance. I'm twice as dedicated to keeping up with the routine now that I've already been de-railed once this season. I'm already registered for two triathlons this year, one of which is bigger than anything I've done before. I need to be prepared and stay in focus.

Which brings me to the title of this week's Waster. It was 17 degrees when I left the house this morning. SEVENTEEN EFFING DEGREES. I had no idea just how ridiculous that number is until about 6am this morning.

I've got the cold-weather gear, and have ridden in some pretty bad weather, so I really didn't give it too much thought. 30's, even 20's, haven't been much of an issue. I wore an extra layer both top and bottom, threw on my balaclava, and figured it would be all good.

Boy, was I wrong.

Leaving the house on the bike in the winter always starts with a chill. Nothing awful, just like going out to play in the snow when you were a kid. You know it's cold, but with enough layers and bundles, you only get the exposed parts of your face frostbitten. ("I can't put my arms down!" "You can put them down when you get to school, dear.")

I made it most of the way to the office, only about a mile left, when my covered-up parts started going numb. I left the house with 20 fingers and toes, but must have dropped 'em by the side of the road along the way. For lack of hands, I stopped shifting and stopped braking; running traffic lights and stop signs like the bicyclists that everyone hates. No worries in my mind though, bc getting run over wouldn't hurt until sometime after I'd thawed out in the ambulance later.

My stubbornness and dedication are easily forgotten at 17 degrees. Never again.

('til next time, of course.)

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My buddy Jon tells about his tour of the Pontarlier absinthe distillery in his Friday4theFoodies report.

Tetris, with a twist. I'm still not all the way sure how to play, score, or win, but it's worth a bit of your time.

Use the Force, young Jedi. Here is your Jedi Trainer.
("I see your Schwartz is as big as mine!")

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Brett Fav-ruh's off-season daily planner.

I used to have a Troll pen for a long long time. My absolute favorite. Now I'm all insecure about what that said about me...
(click to enlarge)

Ow! Quit it! Ow! Quit it! Ow! Quit it!

Hundreds of uses around the home!

Whatchu talkin bout Officer Willis?
TMZ will tell you all about it...

Lamebook continues to find the idiots who make my day.
(btw, ( . )( . ) make my day, too.)

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Godfather-in-chief?

From Moronail. (Best site name ever, btw. I'll giggle every time I think of that stupid train at Disney forever.)

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over my head. again.

2010-01-02T09:00:00.025-05:00

Yeah, I haven't done such a great job writing this year. First week was late, second week non-existent, this one's late, too. Excuses are like a.holes; everybody has one. I've got a couple. (Couple excuses, only on a.hole. Thanks for the disturbing image.)

At work, we've got two separate installations both going live at the same time. One in MD, another in FL, both are a pain in the tail. "Hectic" is a nice way to describe the crazy mega-hour hells that we've been living recently. We've faced overnights, weekends, and artificially created emergencies spawned from gloriously poor planning. Things are moving forward successfully, but only because individual heroics have overcome management's best efforts to screw things up.

On top of all the activity in the office, I've got an all-day Java certification class every Friday for the next month. The class itself is very good and very focused, but sitting in the classroom for 8 hours doesn't erase 8 hours from my existing workload.

The winter semester at Strayer started this past Monday too. I'm registered in two 400-level classes that both have a lot of writing assignments. I'm not excited, but there's only 11 weeks til spring break. I'll survive.

This weekend has been a mixed bag. Little bit of relaxing, little too much tension, a couple hours of office-work, additional hours of yard-work, and a nice dose of football. All the kids were running around on Fri night, so Missy and I got out for a simple DinnerAndMovie evening. Saigon Cafe was tasty, Avatar 3D was definitely worth it, and we were still home before the Mustang turned into a pumpkin at 10pm.

We went up to the 'Hole to watch the games yesterday. Wound up having a rather lengthy conversation about growing older. I've started noticing a lot people around me slipping away. I'm not talking about age. Attitude. No fun anymore. I don't understand what causes it, but it's happening. It brings me down when I hear about it, and it makes me cringe when I'm around it.

If you have to ask whether or not I'm talking about you, then you already know the answer. Shut up and enjoy life already.
(click to enlarge)

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Mice and drugs and education, all in the same game!

BrowserPong; not what you expect, trust me.

Tiger may be old news, but this game is still worth a play or two.

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Haiti swore a pact with the devil to break out from under French rule. As a result, bad things happen to their half of the island. Like earthquakes. Pat Robertson, you are an effing nutbag.

Dom is a poet! Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

The word "FAIL" is often overused on the interwebs. Here, it's overused in 100 different clips:

The Boise State cowbell girl is real-life blind, a-holes. Lay off now.

Do NOT go to IKEA.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Fark's best headlines.

Wax Lips. These guys split their time between NC and NoVA, and they bring a damn good show. When they're here, go see 'em dammit! Web site MySpace Video (Holly Holly Holly Holly would.)

Most useless machine ever:

I feel like I have blown myself up, and I am getting my virgins!

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who defines normal?

2009-12-28T07:16:00.015-05:00

Slowly, things are getting back to normal around here.

The kids were all running around the country over the holidays. Ethan was down in VaBeach with his dad. He just came home a couple days ago on Amtrak. I picked him up from Union Station which was a huge crowded mess. Traffic to and from DC wasn't bad, just the inside of the station was a madhouse. I think Amtrak's target audience is rookie travelers. Thousands of people, all looking confused, trying to read the map, can't find their gate, and clumsy with their luggage. Auntie Anne's pretzels erased a lot of the stress though.

Joe and the girls went down to Kentucky right after Christmas to see their grandma. The girls are driving home today with the fam, but Joe's staying an extra day and driving home solo tomorrow. Odd, but I'm rather used to dealing with the unexplained by now.

We took the day yesterday to disassemble all the decorations in the house. It's done. All 100% completed. The tree is out at the curb, the outside lights are down from the house, and everything is boxed and back in the attic. The end of the holiday is always a bit depressing, but I'm happy to get back to a more normal schedule.

New Year's Eve was a good time with neighbors and friends. Nothing too crazy, just hanging out around the block for dinner and drinks. Maybe a few too many drinks, or so they tell me. I firmly believe that I partied happy all night, then simply teleported home to bed sometime around 3am.

(Missy - thanks again for not leaving me to sleep in the truck all night.)

I'm thankful that I wasn't wearing flip-flops that night. I would have had all sorts of wardrobe malfunctions and wound up like this guy:

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The holidays are over, but this game is a good reminder of just how annoying Christmas lights can be.

Save Santa!

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Review your Facebook config here, to see what FB apps you've granted access to your personal details. I'm sure some of you will be quite shocked at how generous you've been.

Happy Christmas pic of the presents opening their children:

The TSA full of naked idiots.

Apple is full of idiots, too. They're just not naked.

ten ten TEN TEN EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING!!!!

I'm thinking this was not a happy house over the holidays. Ouch. (click to enlarge.)

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a very special holiday waster

2009-12-13T22:39:00.035-05:00

Between the holidays and the crazy blizzard, I was slacking a bit this past week. I caught flak from those of you who can't entertain yourselves. You can consider this waster either really late from last week, but I'm calling it the very early and extra special holiday edition. Just remember, though, calling it special doesn't necessarily make it good.

A month or so back I shared the news that Joe was engaged. The fam likes his fiancée, and they're really happy together, so there's not much stress there. The fact that they've only been dating since the summer was a bit of a shock, but they're planning a 2yr engagement so that pacifies the "rushing into things" concerns. They're even starting to look into buying a home.

Last week I started bugging him for his semester grades. If you remember, he's on the reimbursement plan, where I pay 100% for his classes after he shows me results. He avoids the questions, doesn't respond to email or text, and I start getting the idea that I'm not going to have a very large check to write.

I actually don't have ANY check to write. Genius dropped out back at midterms then hid the fact until finally confessing a couple days ago.

Good news? I learned a year ago not to front him any money. He didn't put a single one of my dollars in the trashcan.

What stresses me? Not the fact that he dropped out of school. If he's not ready to grow up yet, that's cool with me. I'm a bit jealous, actually. I don't want to grow up either. I want to be able to drop out of school when things get too hard. I don't want to pay a mortgage. I want to sleep late.

What stresses me is the mismatch and conflicts between his actions. "We're getting married." "We're trying to buy a house." "I'm going to keep working at the ice cream shop." "I dropped out of school." It's gonna make my brain explode.

So for now, he's crashing at his gf's parent's house, bc she doesn't have a place to live either. He's still scooping at Ben & Jerry's. The shop owner is trying hard to help Joe forget that education BS and become an IceCreamManager instead. They just lost their previous manager, so the owner is in full recruitment mode to fill the slot.

I learned all this information at the end of last week, right before our main Christmas plans. It made the weekend a little tense, but there was enough distraction to keep the subject buried.

Yes, Christmas. Since we've got multiple split-families to coordinate, Missy and I scheduled our Christmas with the kids this past Saturday. We had all sorts of stuff on deck to fill the day, too: DC all day, doing the tourism thing at Union Station, the Botanical Gardens, and the National Christmas Tree. The day was going to end with a dinner cruise on the Odyssey, viewing the lights & sights up and down the Potomac.

Mother Nature had her own plans. The blizzard shut down the entire region and canceled everything on our schedule. Instead, Missy and I were snowed in with 4 kids, 1 fiancée, Missy's mom. Plus lots & lots of dogs: Missy (2) + fiancée (1) + mother-in-law (3) = two hundred and thirteen effing dogs in the house.

Even though the original plans were jammed, the holiday was rescued. We filled the time with lots of playing in the snow, caroling over at Grandma's house, running around the neighborhood, sledding at the Gorge, opening our gifts, and burning the fireplace all weekend long. Instead of a cruise in the city, Missy whipped up a big fondue dinner, punctuated by chocolate fondue for dessert.

Next topic... my schooling. Strayer, consistently boneheaded, came up with a semester schedule that ended during the week between Christmas and NewYears. They tweaked the semester to end a week early. That left the professors with two weeks' worth of lessons to complete in one week. Last week, I burned at least 18 hours on schoolwork and final exams. I'm done til January now, but wow was I crying for a few days. Sometimes I wish I got credit for writing the Waster.

Final thought before I check out this week: Go visit 15minute lunch. I like them. They like me. I won a weird and useless prize for my limited drinking skillz. For reals.

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Dom found a simple but addictive basketball shooter. Competition between others online, you can even form private leagues to play in the office!

Shopping Cart Hero!

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Quite possibly somebody has a legitimate explanation for that freaky, no-offensive-line fake kick that the Redskins tried to run last week. It actually makes sense to me now. A little.

Why we should eat horses.

Kristin's friends are hard-core:

Add an eye-patch, Matt is an instant bad-ass!

Mikey found out that Bumbles do more than bounce...

Go 'head; sing the song. You'll get it.

News of the past year, sorted by topic. Click for full size interactive zoomable pic:

Cracked's list of the 15 worst prn ideas ever.

Now let the Charlie Brown Metal Christmas take you thru the holiday...

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hey there mister shintoist

2009-12-07T13:44:00.018-05:00

The annual day of Christmas tree cutting and decorating was straight storybook! Actually, more comic book than storybook, but it was still a good day.

We all got up early to get a good start on the day. During breakfast, there wasn't much going on outside other than a really dreary yucky drizzle. Then the flakes started drifting down. Jumbo floaty snowflakes like they show in cartoons. By the time we were loaded in the truck and heading toward the tree farm, the roads were already getting some coverage.

Twenty minutes later, I'm driving a truckload of excited kids, and hauling a flatbed trailer, down a muddy unpaved road on the way to the farm. The 'parking lot' was even worse off, as parts of it was simply deep mud, muck, and slush covered with straw. No worries, the truck plays nicely in the snow, but I was definitely avoiding the bad parts of the drive. Digging anything out of the mud was NOT in my plans.

We grabbed one of the bow saws from the rack, and headed out to the fields. It was cold, but beautiful... all the trees were dusted with snow in their branches, and all the fields had a good 2" blanket by now. We didn't realize for a minute that the pretty snow was simply hiding the mud and puddles underneath. So we're marching the field in wet socks. Reminded me of spilling beers at GDays, actually.

The kids picked out a really nice looking tree rather quickly. Sometimes, this part is a bit of a challenge, but Ethan stepped up and made a very good find. It was shaped nicely, with real full branches, and had a good point on top. Consider it done!

I worked my face into the bottom branches so I can start cutting the trunk of the tree. This is where the fun began to fade a bit.... the needles were scratching my face, the mud was soaking thru my jeans, and every single giant snowflake was able to find the bare part of my lower back where my jacket had crept upwards. And the saw wasn't working.

One by one, the kids bailed to hide from the weather in the barn. They took turns pretending to check on me, but I think the message was more "are you done yet? are you done yet?". After a bit of fighting with the bad equipment, Missy went back to the lot and grabbed a different saw from the rack. This one had a much better bite, and we PaulBunyan'd that thing to the ground in short order.

Now we had to fight our way out past the legions of retards in the parking lot. The problems were compounded because there were people who a) didn't know how to load things on a roof b) didn't know how to drive in snow, and c) didn't know how to avoid getting stuck in the mud. I could feel the stupid attacking my sanity, so we completely bypassed the loading area, and just carried the tree all the way back to the truck.

This is where we found challenge #2. Imagine following a big-ass truck (a big ass-truck?) down a muddy dirt road. Now throw some salt, snow, and slush into your mental picture. All this mess is flying around behind me over a 30 minute drive, and if you were following, you just caught it all on your windshield. But wait! The trailer caught it instead! I was towing a huge pile of tasty muck, and had nowhere to load the tree.

After a bit of brainwork (made more difficult by all the stupid in the vicinity) we figured a way to wrap the tree before loading it. The farm was selling plastic "tree disposal bags" for getting it out of your house after the holidays without showering your carpet with dry needles. We bought an extra one, and used it to keep the tree clean and dry on the trip home.

After a grabbing lunch at Arby's, and resisting all temptations to spin donuts in the snow while towing a trailer, we got home successfully. I took our prize up to the back deck to do some more trimming and get it ready to bring in the house. Things were going great until I got ready to attach our 7" diameter base to the 9" diameter trunk of the tree. Uhhhhh, great job, genius. Measuring fail.

So now I had to get creative with the chainsaw. Leatherface what?!

Last year's tree was the fattest tree ever. 8' tall and 7' wide. That tree left us many good stories. This year's tree didn't break tradition. It was a fun, challenging, crazy, pain in the tail, and it turned out perfect!

Final thought for the week... Later in the evening, Megan made this snowman in the front yard, and I can't get over how much awesome it has!

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Paper Cannon - Kill the Bunnies!

Dodge. That's the name, the description, and the directions.

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Jess figured me out. The sole reason I started writing this blog to lay the cornerstone of my social media guru EMPIRE!!!!! (In layman's terms, that means I'm super effing awesome, and you should probably just start writing big checks right now and never stop.)

Sketchy Santas!
"Ridgemont High" meets "A Christmas Story":

Take a second look before you decide Santa isn't creepy.

The secret to world peace.

Joe & I geek out together sometimes. Create and register a scannable logo with BeeTagg. Use it for business cards, t-shirts, avatar, whatever. Phones that can scan tags will get automatically linked back to your e-content on BeeTagg.

My weekly installment of adolescent humor:

Yep. More lamebook. I can't feed my addiction fast enough.

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december already???

2009-11-23T08:42:00.032-05:00

This vid of Beaker from the Muppets unexpectedly fired up my holiday spirit:

All this freaky weather has really interfered with my internal calendar. Last week, I'm riding the bike to work in beautiful sunshine weather. I rode Monday and nearly froze my nads off in the 30s. Yesterday, sunshine & 60. Tomorrow, snow. WTF???

I'd reallllllly like to see some flakes tomorrow. Bright & early in the morning, we're loading the truck with the whole crew of kids. The new kid, Joe's fiancée, is coming, too. Heading out to Ticonderoga Farms to cut down our own Christmas tree. We've been going there for the past couple years. It's a fun, silly, Rockwell family kinna thing to do. If we can add just a dusting of snow to the picture, I'll be a happy boy.

After we get the tree in the morning, the rest of the weekend is set aside for decorating the tree and the house. I'm planning a big ol' fire in the woodstove, lots of holiday music, cocoa & marshmallows, and munching all the broken candy canes that we find mixed in the bottom of the decoration storage bins.

My little bro has already won the Spirit Award. Doesn't matter what we do to our place, he's in the major leagues. He may have started his install back in August sometime, but the results are worth it. He's got the synchronized lights dancing to recorded music. Not just any music, though, he's broadcasting it through the FM on your car stereo. For real. I feel like I should win concert tickets by being the 7th caller on his cell phone.

Enjoy the weekend, get your holiday spirit cranked up, and think of me tomorrow! (Happy thoughts if it snows, wet & muddy thoughts if it rains.)

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Help Tiger escape the angry Elin!

The game that's fun even if you lose, Guess the Chest. (Safe at work, and includes both M & F Hollywood contestants!)

You only think you know how the Mixed Memories brain game works. It'll stretch your brain a bit before you figure it out.

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(giggle)

(I can't help that my brain is still only 13 years old.)

Five things to know about climate change.

Legaliiize it:

Google is twisted. So is Dom.

The Chinese uncovered the truth about Tiger:

Video Professor is a scam. Well, duh. Almost every one of those work-at-home, learn-at-home, anything-without-effort things are some sort of sneaky. I had no idea it was this bad.

The Muppets sing Bohemian Rhapsody. Best version ever; they kick Wayne & Garth's A55!

Vampires suck.

FoxNews = GoodMaths

Star Wars Facebook

More SWFBs on CollegeHumor.

Bing is a rip-off, too.

Crazy infographic map of human space exploration for my fellow geeks...

Here's a dynamic & interactive version of the same pic, from National Geographic.

Lamebook of the week:

(You're still singing Peter Tosh now, huh? It's been in my head since I wrote that comment days ago. Don't criticiiiiiize it. Legaliiiiize it, I'll advertise it.
Take that to your weekend.)

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narwhals & unicorns

2009-11-16T07:09:00.019-05:00

I really have nothing to report on this week. No big news, no drastic stressors, simple & lightweight plans for the weekend, and nothing of any value rattling around in my brain.

That's not to say life isn't busy, just steady rollin'. We got our project all certified at the office, so now we have time to get caught up on all the little tasks that were skipped for a few weeks.

All of us are chugging thru the middle of our various school semesters. Midterms are over, report cards are completed, nobody is on my bad list, and we all just cruise the school scheds from here thru to the holidays.

I failed on riding the bike to work every single day this week. Each day was for a different reason, and all reasons were legitimate, but I'm still feeling a bit guilty over the whole situation. There's only another week til Thanksgiving, and I really don't want to jack up my exercise routine right before I start shoveling stuffing & gravy into my face.

Holiday plans are starting to come together. It's easy when a majority of the fam is local. A few people from my office are traveling up and down the I-95 corridor next week, and I'm sooooo not jealous. We hit NYC a few years back over Thanksgiving; it was the first & last time I'll ever do that drive over the holiday weekend.

So we're keeping it simple, and staying in town & hanging out with the fam. Nice n easy....

(Yes it's a re-run pic, but it still makes me smile. And you know I just do this blog-thing to entertain myself.)

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Narwhal vs Unicorn kinna makes me horny.

Best "not-intended-to-be-a-game" game.... Translate the Joseph Ducreux bad-ass self-portraits! (I'll give you the first one: Jay-Z / 99 Problems)

Tired of the innuendo? Then get rid of your balls.

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Leslie thinks I'm easily amused. She's right.

"Often feared and grossly misunderstood." A beginner's guide to PedoBear.

Who would want Charlie in the Box? Or this?

BaconNails are fierce! (click it... whatever you're expecting, you're wrong.)

HULKAMANIA!

Time keeps scrolling by. Take a look; you'll understand.

Sometimes it's better if you put a little more thought into your choice of words.

Um, no thanks.

My momma used to have a dalmatian. Dumbest dog ever. Totally cute, very very lovable, but dumb as an effing rock. I never paid attention to his shadow though.

Yep. Still easily amused.

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big big big news!!!!

2009-11-09T09:09:00.017-05:00

Got a big announcement to share this week; totally totally crazy news!

Samantha is starting work tonight at her very first paycheck-job. Not a babysitting / walk-your-dog / water-the-plants-while-you're-on-vacation job, but a for-real job that requires her to have ID and pay taxes.

She went up to the mall yesterday afternoon for an interview at Claire's. She had the right combination of responsibility, availability, and English-speaking skills to get the job. She also correctly answered the question "Can you start work tomorrow afternoon?"

So she's up there now, making very good cash and helping to Accessorize the World.

But that's not the big news. You're gonna flip when you hear this...

Joe & his girlfriend got engaged last week!

They've been dating a while now, but maybe not as long as you'd expect for a move like this. They're working toward a long engagement, actually making plans for the end of summer 2011.

It was definitely a surprise when they broke the news. I'm not sure anyone was expecting a move like this at this stage in their lives. Although he's working steady and attending classes, he hasn't completed his schooling yet. The long engagement gives them a bit of time to figure out a lot of things between now and then.

She's totally cool though, and they're very happy together. There's still a big dose of puppy-love in the mix, but underneath things seem to be pretty solid between 'em too. It's very rewarding to see your kids smile they way they are.

(And get this: they're not even embarazadas!, which doesn't happen in this family all that often.)

All the rest of the news this week is rather pale by comparison. I took my midterms, got good grades. All the kids got their report cards, got excellent grades. We're all working way too many hours, but there are people out there who don't even have a job to complain about.

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Phytrix starts out really easy, but it'll piss you off before you know it.

Dammit, just lemme sleep!

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Prank War 8!!!!! "Right now, I'm just happy to not be dead."

180 of the best (and drunkiest) beer pong tables!

FML? No. FMSL.

Is over-glossed music production and infinite editing the death of rock n roll? I've always hated drum machines and 'computer music' bc it grates my nerves. I never really understood why it bothered me so much. Well, now I know. (still hate it though)

Caption Obvious. (clicpic to embiggen)

Super slo-mo of a tattoo needle:

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