September 2002 Archives

Because everyone needs to see this, President Bush (please please PLEASE don't let him be re-elected), dispenses a wise old saying at a press conference:

Full clip w/ Jon Stewart MPEG format (8 megs) - should work on everyone's computer.

Full clip w/ Jon Stewart WMV format(2megs) - will work on windows, may work on macs.

Just bush WMV format (1meg) - same as above.

I are the leader of the free world. *shudder*

Scott and Jeni, Aimee and I are in a race. Scott and Jeni are driving his honda, Aimee is riding with me in my old truck. We run from Safeway to Safeway as fast as we can trying to visit as many stores as possible in a 60 hour period - no sleep. You see if you buy certain items you collect points, whoever has the most points at the end of the 60 hours wins some terrific prize. I've got a little inside knowledge so know that the bacon and chopped onion sandwiches in the deli (the unwrapped ones only) are worth hundreds of points along with the smoked gouda and chedder bricks. Goldmine! Aimee finds the book isle which - in this store - also has the pastel colored butane camping stoves. I climb up onto the top shelf to find the best books, find the first Harry Potter book which scott manages to grab before I get to it, but also stumble across the complete diaries of C.S. Lewis - score! we'll win for sure. Mad dash through the checkout where the stupid wraught iron check stands slow us down. Pile into the truck and off to the next Safeway.

This is of course all a dream, and partly the reason I'm exhausted today (not much sleep). No more low quality enchilladas followed by insomnia inducing BBQ chicken pizza for me.

I got asked the other day what "A-R-R the Kraken" meant (arr was spelled out). I told them it was "'arr', like pirates say", as for what it meant... I wasn't really sure. I told them it was a phrase my friends and I had tossed around since the first year of college, but I couldn't actually remember how it got started. I settled on describing it as "an inside joke that no one remembers what the original joke was". I honestly have no idea why we latched onto this particular phase (as opposed to "porn!" or "zhwub zhwub zhwub") but at least this one makes for a good domain name.

I decided to play CD Roulette the other day. CD Roulette is where I cram my hand into my CD carrying case at random, grab one of the 8 CDs on those pages at random and pop it in without looking at what I got.

Round 1: I got Micheal Jackson's "Dangerous" album. Hmm, the sound is really tinny and hollow, I didn't think CDs degraded over time. Oh right, the album is just crap, now I remember.

Round 2: Ambient noise CD - thunder storms. Good for putting you to sleep. Not so good for driving too.

Round 3: Chubby Checker does the twist. I CD I got for the equivalent of 99 cents in germany 7 years ago.

Thuroughly beaten by the cosmos, I give up and pick out some Blumchen and go along my merry way.

My company is cool.

Boss walks in, says, "here are those cables. Oh, would you be interested in an overnight to London?"

"What?" I say.

"Mark needs a courier to london, he asked me if I wanted to do it but I'd have to bring my wife. You'd fly out tonight, drop off whatever tomorrow morning and fly back tomorrow. you could probably convince him to let you stay another day."

"Um, I could probably do that"

of course as I'm typing this he walks back in and says, "Turns out they don't need it there until sunday, so a regular courier service will work, sorry".

But it was there man, I was almost an international business man... sort of.

Salon.com has a piece up now about "forbidden thoughts" following september 11th of last year. Basically they had people write in with the thoughts they had that day/shortly thereafter that they hadn't shared with anyone. Most were along the lines of hoping people had died/wondering if they could get a better phone number or apartment now/black humor, but it was still an interesting read. My forbidden thought:

I remember wanting to buy a nice flag for my house for months/years before september 11th. I never got around to it because I'm generally kind of lazy, but my grandfather flew a flag and my father does on occasion so I thought it would be a nice tradition. Then the planes hit and everyone all of sudden flew flags and loved america and all that and my thought was, "well I'm not going to buy a flag now and be lumped in with these people". 'Fair weather patriots' as it were.

They're the people that say "I love america so much that we must get rid of our 1st, 2nd and 4th ammendment rights because only terrorists have something to hide/don't want people listening in". 53% - more than half damnit - of a poll of people recently thought the 1st amendment went to far and we should be policing religious groups to make sure there aren't more terrorists around every corner. God damn people, do you even remember why this is called the land of the free?

addendum: To whoever wrote that stupid "pop quiz" multiple choice email where every question is about an attack and every answer has "young islamic males between 18 and 24", you make me ashamed to be white and male since now I'm going to be lumped in with you.

End Rant.

Dave Mathews was fun. Unfortunately the memories most strongly associated with that concert aren't going to be the music but rather watching a car roll over on the drive over (on the corresponding wait to give a police statement). That and the conversations of drunk spectators. It was kind of interesting to watch actually. There were these two girls who wanted to stand up and sway/dance over where we were sitting. Lots of people in the center portion of the Gorge were doing that but basically everyone over where we were was lying down or sitting in ultra-low-rise chairs. A large man behind them could not see on so started screaming for them to sit the hell down. They refused saying "look, 90% of the people here are standing" (closer to 60 but still) and he would counter with "yeah and they're all over there". So all of that wasn't really interesting, but watching the conversations ripple outward through the crowd was. It started with a few people near them and progressed to about a 100 foot radius of people debating whether they should be allowed to stand or should move to join the other standers. Infighting amungst friends. It seemed a little surreal for a concert. But the music was good if a little short by DMB standards.

Which brought me through the weekend to today with a bit of ill timing. The company that manages this building sent out an email saying it's time for them to do their regular testing of the fire alarm system. This week. Wednesday. September 11th. About a half hour after that they sent out another email saying that due to "several" emails they are reconsidering having warning sirens go off randomly on the aniversery of the a less than spiffy day. It just reminded me of that "Starting tomorrow all employees will require ID badges to enter the building. Photos for badges will be taken next week" memo often quoted on the internet.

And now back to work, soon to be back to super mario sunshin. mmm, crack

It doesn't happen very often but occasionally I'm caught off guard and amused by my own thoughts. Example; Yesterday I had to drive up to my folks place to pick up some appliances and I'm caught behind two cars in both lanes driving very slowly. I can't get around them so it's a choice between being stuck behind a slow moving coupe in the left lane (fast lane, ha!) and an equally slow moving land barge cadillac driven by a blue haired couple in the right lane. In the left I pull over into the right lane and think to myself "If I'm going to be stuck driving slow I'm at least going to be stuck behind old people", realized what I thought and had a good chuckle.

Eh, I guess you had to be there.