November 2002 Archives

Well everything has fallen into place (almost, one final approval required) for me to move out of the house I rent. I really like having a whole house to my self - the ability to have unconditional control of the remote is kind of nice :) But paying triple the rent I did before just isn't going to cut it anymore. So come the end of december I'll be back in the house I was in before. At least this time there will only be 3 other people living there so perhaps there will be a little more space, we'll see. Regardless since I will likely "have to" (it was so hard last time) take another 3 months off, this will allow me to save and/or travel more.

mmm, travel. I'm trying to find a time to visit both London and Korea (they go together naturally, don't they). I figure while pat's over in korea teaching I really should go visit. I can visit london any time, but there aren't many opportunities - or at least I'm not presented with many - for visiting a relatively exotic land and having one of your friends be an experienced local "tour guide".

It's really all just about money, damn root of all evil, why can't travel be free? :)

Shamelessly stolen from Jabber01 off of slashdot, a joke that's not too techie related that others may enjoy. I laughed at least :)

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"

But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

Anyway. I've got pictures of my Robotic Barney discection I really need to put up, but they deserve a little commentary so it can't just be a filmstrip. The shiney black robotic core of barney is pretty disturbing actually, once all of the fluff is gone. This black box with a non-descript spherical head and tiny arm protrusions wiggling about as it sings "I love you, you love me..". I'm probably going straight to hell, or at least purgatory for a while, for exposing this particular hideousness to the world. Oh well, it was fun, plus I've now got a flayed barney skin to do something with.

Boss's Boss leaves town for a month and a half in a few days - at last a chance to clean off my "tasks" list without someone continually adding more. At least that's what I like to tell myself, in reality I know it'll never happen. Previous experience has told me that there's always someone hiding in a corner, waiting for him to leave to pop out and say "AHA! Yooou need to help me create this fleeb tracking system with no discernable business justification."

*chuckle*, go get your own dirt, I like that.

Well I didn't actually lose my job - I'm still employed, and still have a contract to run through august - but the full time posisition I was going to be offered disappeared. I can't really tell what I feel about the whole thing. I was wary of the FTE position because it meant a massive curtail on the amount of time I was capable of taking off during any given year - and it also meant no more three month vacations - but it did mean I didn't have to save up enough to live with no job for three months. I may have ultimately not taken the job, but I liked it better when it was my decision as to whether or not I took it. To have had that decision made for me, by having the position just disappear from under me, kind of - as the french say - sucks. I suppose it just means I have to actually start saving money once I finish paying off the trip to australia :)

When composing that little rant in my head yesterday I remember there was some other point I wanted to mention - completely unreleated to the rant - which escapes me at the moment. Could it be about scuba? addie? disecting the robotic barney? who knows. Damn you TV! you've ruined my short term memory, just like you've ruined my ability to.. to, um... uh...

I got to see Mitch Hedberg on saturday, it was a blast. I've listened to quite a bit of his routine before and it was nice that well 2/3 of it was new material to me ("I don't have a microwave oven, but I do have a clock that occasionally cooks things", man my sides actually hurt). So that portion of giggles lineup was great - but there's always the opening acts.

I've got nothing against opening acts in general, everyone starts small and opens for someone else, but I swear it seems like all of the comics out there have had "SEX = FUNNY" branded on their brain. It's usually funny in the beginning but after a while I just start to wonder if that's all they could come up with to talk about. The first sex toy joke makes me laugh, second one I chuckle at, but by the 8th I'm just bored.

But thankfully Mitch closed us out and reminded us all that dogs are always in the pushup position and that if you tear the legs off of ants they look like little snowmen.

edited of course mitchhedberg.com would be a porn site when I enter a link without checking first. Poor mitch, relegated to .net land.

There's a link to this site on it, but I may as well toss a link back from this site. Cockeyed.com did another experiment - How much is inside a keg - with pseudo sponsorship from me. Whee, I'm featured on the self proclaimed 6th best website ever. This actually got started about a year ago when Rob from cockeyed was doing a "how much is inside an ink cartridge" feature. He set up an amazon donation thingy as well as a mailing address. Well both myself and another fellow put in enough to buy an ink cartridge and since he only needed one (and the other guy put in first) he promised to do something else with my donation. The idea for How much was inside a keg was put forth and I was all for it. As months went by I assumed the money just went into the abyss that is web hosting costs and thought nothing more about it. Then the other day I got, amidst the sea of spam, an actual email to me at my university account. It was Rob, wanting to know if this was still the right address to contact me at and to let me know they were finally doing the Keg experiment.

So yay. Enjoy all that cockeyed has to offer - it's a great way to kill a day or two at work - but especially enjoy the kraken sponsored keggy goodness.

I started watching The West Wing this season, it's one of a couple of shows I really enjoy and make sure my Tivo has on hand for me. It's really well written and the characters - while all a little neurotic - have a fair amount of depth to them. It didn't take me long to come up to speed on the story lines either. All in all, I enjoy the show, but it has one unfortunate side effect.

Namely, I wish Martin Sheen (or President Bartlet I guess would be more accurate) were running for president in 2004. The character is *gasp* intelligent, has some character flaws but nothing everyone else doesn't has, and actually strikes me as a good leader. It's really sad when the ACTUAL leader of our country is so easily outshined by a television character. I'd trade bush for Bartlet in a second. I'd trade him for Morgan Freeman from deep impact (there was a president with a soul), I'd trade him for Andy Sherman from an american president - hell I'd trade him for an actor pretending to be a president in Dave. At least all of them can speak clearly without making up words ("criminables" indeed) or looking like a chimp in a suit.

This all came to my attention last night because that's when I watched the episode in which they had a presidential debate. Two well reasoned opponents (though obviously the star of the show won) exchanging actual ideas instead of sound bites. Yes I realize it's just television and the actors have the benefit of a script, but man do we need a good crop of candidates this next time around - it's embarrasing.

Either that or I'll just do a write in for Martin Sheen.