05/02/2004: Earlier today I had a brief encounter with a female co-worker of mine. We were right next to each other within the confines of a very small hallway at our company, she with a mug of coffee in her hand and myself with a Rubik's Cube. This is an enclosed hallway in between several security doors and we entered this space from opposite directions to pass.

In this chance encounter we had a brief encounter that went something like this:

Me: Wouldn't it suck if I tipped over that coffee mug?
Her: Well, YEA.
Me: The coffee would get all over you and you would be all pissed and it would ruin your day, but I'd have a good hearty laugh.
Her: $%*@#$^@*!!! (Expression and posture of indignation)

(Not that I would ever purposely dump hot, scalding coffee randomly on anybody just for the sake of my own mirth, but just bear with me.)

I'm not someone to be called a superstitious person by any stretch, but in that ever so brief moment in Time perhaps the cosmic energies aligned and the seventh son of the seventh son was born, or perhaps a billygoat somewhere in Macon County, Georgia cut a smelly fart. In that fraction of an instant the powers that be chose to mete out their ironic justice and the Rubik's Cube in my hand headed for the tile floor and didn't bounce as usual, but instead scattered into its component parts when it hit the deck. It did not just fly apart, but the inner mechanism was broken, rendering the puzzle (which had just been restickered so as to look new) useless except as scrap plastic.

I was so struck by the incident that all I could do was laugh at the irony of the situation as I gathered up the loose pieces that were strewn here and there. My beliefs are still intact, but for just that one instant I did have to entertain the brief notion that if there is a god out there, he certainly does have a twisted sense of humor.

In case you were wondering, the Cube was repairable. The break was clean and a proper application of super glue was sufficient to restore it to 100%. It's good, too, because the puzzle in question is one that has been with me for well over 15 years. Yep, someone has a sense of humor.

01/05/2004: I went down and purchased several Godzilla DVDs, movies that deserved a proper anamorphic widescreen and subtitle treatment. I can finally get rid of the last of my VHS tapes of monster movies with crappy hand scribbled labels on them. A tear came to my eye as I beheld the spectacle of Godzilla vs. "The Cosmic Monster" as it was meant to be. Ok maybe I didn't shed any tears, but my rejoiced. I can hardly wait to get my hands on Godzilla: Final Wars.

Ever notice how around the end of the holidays the only movie ads you hear on the radio are the ones with shameless self promotion? Do we really need to hear yet again how every major critic really loves and adores Sideways or Ray or some other picture? It's almost as bad as when I realized that brand name drugs were being pitched on TV, as though someone needs to go to their doctor and tell their doc what drug they want to take.

Remember that guy with the exploding intestine (11/2004)? Apparently he's going in for a final pre-op checkout tomorrow. Good luck to him and I hope him the best and speedy recovery. Actually I couldn't really care less how fast his recovery is, but his condition is putting my superbowl plans in serious jeopardy. Sonovabitch...

12/30/2004: So last night I'm on a phone with a friend and he wants me to take some online psych test. As if he needs any further confirmation of my mental state...

I decided to indulge him anyway as I'm always curious to see how inaccurate these tests can be. Turns out that the test in question was an ink blot test. The first thought that crossed my mind was of course the well known Rorschach ink blot test of years past. Alright, so maybe I was a bit interested.

The final inkblot that was on the test was this gem, shrunken down for easier consumption:

As soon as I saw the ink blot the mental image of what it represented was fixed in my head and I couldn't help but laugh. Click on the ink blot above to see if you can guess what I saw.

11/04/2004: I found out today that someone I work with ended up becoming a temporary resident at a hospital. Apparently the doctors had to perform surgery to remove his appendix. It also seems that he has a perforated intestine. That's the part that most of the people here at work are wondering about. How do you go from a possibly burst appendix to a perforated intestine?

Being his immediate supervisor I will be covering his shift for the next several weeks while he recovers. I hope he enjoys his little bedrest chasing nurses in short skirts, because I'll be sure to make him miserable when he comes back for making me work his hours.

I did managed to come up with a couple of theories to explain his condition. I believe both of these to be the most plausible explanations for his injuries.

1. He swallowed a live hand grenade on a dare with alot at stake, either a buck oh-five or maybe a bar tab. The pin somehow managed to snag on his intestine and exploded, perforating the intestine and destroying his appendix.

2. At his favorite local watering hole he got into a heated argument and defended his favorite football team, the Miami Hurricanes. A frustrated opponent, unable to properly answer the insurmountable logic he is capable of, either shanked him in the gut or shot him. The resulting damage shattered his appendix and poked holes into his intestine.

10/29/2004: For the past several weeks I have spent the better part of my evenings repairing one of my cars or the other. As I lay there on my back on top of the seat, with a flashlight in my teeth, trying to work two hands under the driver's side dashboard, with the clutch and brake pedals banging me on the top of the head, I wonder to myself if it's been a blessing or a curse to have my own garage and is it really worth the extra $700+ I pay a month for the pleasure of getting covered in grime almost every evening for weeks. I still undecided on that one.

And to think that next weekend I will be driving for hours just for the priviledge of helping some club members perform an engine swap in a car. I am definitely getting too old for this shit...

Nah...

04/08/2004: My car got broken into while I was working today. Suffice to say that the situation had a lot of unlikely variables for this to happen. The thieves walked (or ran) away with the head unit, the CD changer, and about $25 in cash from my ashtray.

It's probably a good thing they got away clean or otherwise I might be the one going to jail right now. Am I upset? Sure. But stuff like this happens to (almost) everyone at one Time or another. I guess I just wasn't expecting it to happen where it did, although why not. A clean getaway with my six+ year old Clarion head unit with a broken power button and accompanying CD changer. Almost makes me wish I left the doors open so they wouldn't bust out my window.

And it just so happened to be the window with my SCPOC club sticker. Sonovabitch...

04/05/2004: I just saw a commercial for the "improved" McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. It's about damn Time. Let me tell you a little story about why I haven't touched a McNugget since 1996.

Where I used to work there was a McDonald's not 50 yards away. Very convenient for meals. On this particular occasion I bought a 20 nugget box to share with some buds at work. Ok, it was mostly for me. I guess I really liked those damn things. What the hell was I thinking. Certainly not nutrition. But I digress...

Anyway, about 2/3 of the way through the box I came across a strange nugget. Actually, half of a strange nugget, as I had already taken a bite and a swallow. Inside this nugget was some mysterious spongy gray matter masquerading as chicken. The more I tried to concentrate on what exactly this meat was, the more confused I became. It literaly was Mystery Meat. I couldn't even identify it as meat.

And that was it. Immediately I lost my appetite, although it could have been caused by the 14 or so I already ate. Holy Crap...

Since that incident I have not touched a Chicken McNugget. Now that they've "improved" the damn things will I eat them once again? Are you kidding? All that fried food isn't good for you.

The commercial specifically states "Now made with white meat." What the hell was in the nugget before!!!

03/30/2004: Yet another reason that Bill Gates is the fucking anti-christ. I tested Microsoft's Outlook 2003 today and of course the first apparent annoyance is its garish appearance. Worst feature of all is their "groups" concept.

So if you don't like it, why not disable it instead of bitching? Simple. First, I can bitch if I want, this is my home page. Second, you can't turn off the feature globally. You have to disable it individually per folder. Sounds trivial until you're faced with 50 or more mail folders that require disabling. And yes, I've looked for a global disable function. There isn't one. At least not officially.

Are these fucktard developers insane? Of course they are. They're a fucking monopoly. They can ramrod whatever feature they want without giving you any option to turn it off globally yet there is a simple way to enable it globally. Why the fuck not the reverse? Instead I am forced to go into each individual mail folder and navigate several menus in order to disable the feature. I guess it makes too much sense to include a feature to turn off this completely idiotic extra layer of fussiness, as if these fucking options aren't nested and hidden away enough.

Am I a little upset? Damn right I am. Fuck you, Microsoft you fucking pricks.

02/29/2004: On Wednesday the 25th my mom's dog gave birth to three puppies. On the 27th I noticed that the biggest of the three appeared to have some kind of infection in the right rear paw. The infection was such that one of the toes was completely blackened and the top of the paw itself had an open greenish sore and frankly the whole leg appeared discolored. That night my sister stopped by and took the mother and puppies to a vet.

The veterinarian examined the two day old puppy and determined that its right rear paw was broken. Unfortunately due to the frailty of a puppy at such a tender young age (and from a toy breed of dog, no less. Barely larger than two Chicken MgNuggets) the vet stated that there was little he could actually do that wouldn't traumatize the animal and probably kill it. Leaving it alone would eventually result in a slow agonizing death as the obvious infection spread. If somehow the little fellow even survived having its leg amputated, it would of course remain a cripple forever. My sister chose to leave the puppy at the vet's office.

Life can be a cruel mistress. Even having survived the trauma of birth, the puppy was doomed from the start. It's not as if it had been spontaneous miscarried by its mother, but rather made it all the way before meeting its end. I suppose there's a lesson to be learned in there somewhere, about life, death, birth, abortion, appreciating every moment, seizing the day, not wasting Time, etc etc etc...

For me, the lesson learned is that I have several very sharp tools that I could have used and saved my mother $77 and still had given the poor pup better odds of survival than leaving it to die at the vet's office. Mommy dog and two remaining puppies are quite healthy for now. Sharp cutters at the ready, certainly hoping that it won't come to that again.

02/11/2004: I work for a Data Center. If you don't know what that is, basically it's a big building where companies rent space to keep their servers, usually because they don't have the type of air conditioned, 24 hour monitored, always guarded facility that a big name company has.

Ok so what's the point? One of our customers' T1 data lines went down (imagine an expensive high speed internet connection) so I contacted the upstream provider (... never mind) and opened a trouble ticket. About half an hour later someone called me at work. At first I thought it was a wrong number call but it wasn't. Here was a hottie on the phone talking smartjacks, throwing up loops, CSU/DSU's, etc... NETWORK support for an ISP no less.

Let me be clear on this. Not only did she have a very sweet, hot, young voice with a "valley girl" style, but she also knew her technical mojo. I was blown away and needed a few moments to recover. I'm a pretty jaded sonovabitch but this was very much unexpected. I think it's fair to say that I was quite smitten by the voice at the other end.

If you happen to be this individual whom I speak of and somehow happen to read this (yea, like what are the odds), I hope you can take this as a compliment. You are certainly a rare breed among the circles I work in and it was my rare privilege to speak with you.

02/10/2004: My version of a blog. What prompted me to write a blog page? I've been meaning to for a while, but only now have gotten around to it because of the reason above. If you don't like what I have to say here, stay the hell out.