Skrubb it Out

Big Toe vs. Nail Gun...

2008-06-24T08:14:00.002-05:00

My phone rings at about 7:15 this morning and it's my father. He says something to the effect of "I feel that I have to tell you I had a small accident. I spent yesterday evening at the hospital being laughed at by the nurses and doctors who couldn't figure out how to get a nail out of my big toe."

Apparently my father wasn't paying enough attention and was using hit foot to hold a decking board in place. As he bent to nail the board down he lost his balance a bit and ended up putting a nail through the fleshy part of his big toe. Not very bright, my father. Luckily it is only a flesh wound; the bone wasn't hit and the nail didn't hit his toenail either (which would just be plain annoying as it healed).

I was surprised to hear, however, that the medical staff he was being treated by said they had never seen this injury before. I would have thought that living on the MS Gulf Coast, with all the post Katrina construction, this type of injury would be more common. Then again, there's probably not to many clumsy old men who would end up going to the Air Force hospital.

Good news is they gave him a few shots, patched him up, and sent him on his way with a few minor pain meds. He's up and about, though he promises he's going to "take it easy" today. Basically he's only going to build have a mansion today instead of the whole thing I bet.

Be safe dad!

Carlin...

2008-06-23T08:34:00.002-05:00

George,

Your humor, wit, and insight will be missed. I hope you've found peace.

P.S. I hope the sun isn't as hot as it looks from here..

edit: fat fingered the title.....

New job.....

2008-05-19T01:01:00.002-05:00

Well, it's official. I am leaving my current company and position for a new opportunity. I've spent three years at the old job and overall it has been a very positive experience. Yet, I've been presented a new path that I can't in good conscience ignore.

One good aspect is that I won't have to constantly fight the whole friend/boss thing anymore. While Big'J and I remain good friends, it's been a pretty tough road to follow. There are so many twists, turns, and sudden cliffs to continue the metaphor to encounter and stumble over. The last of which is having to face him and tell him that I'm going elsewhere.

Things went suprisingly well. I think I was more nervous about the whole ordeal than he was. That might have been because he had several weeks warning (from a little birdie apparently) to kind of come to grips with it, while I had about two hours.

I did do something a little selfish, though. I made sure that I took some time off between jobs for me. The only real vacations I've had over the past three years were for family deaths and Pat's wedding, none of which I would consider time just for me. Crazy thing is that I don't really know what to do with myself during this vacation.

One thing I'm 90% sure I'll do is go to Atlanta and hit the aquarium. Something I've wanted to do for a long time. I've also been tossing around the idea of doing something semi-random/purposeless. For example, drive to Memphis for ribs, or go eat breakfast in Savanah. Maybe.

I'm not sure if it's related to the job thing or just a fluke, but I've started painting again (and once more I realize that I need to just buy a freaking camera). Been working on 2 Carnifex's, 5 Ravenors, 3 winged & 3 normal Warriors all in the brown/red scheme. Also branched into the WARMACHINE and HORDES mini's as well. Been working on Vlad and The Butcher for Khador; just have the faces and weapons to finish.

Most strange of all, the Nephilim (Hordes, Legion of Everblight) has seen a bit of attention. Originally I had started a grey skin color and stopped there. I bought some Vallejo blue ink and decided to hit him with that. Didn't quite have the effect I wanted but it hit a chord in me so I continued on with it. Did some lighter blue highlights for all the skin and wing areas. The carapace/bone pieces where hit with black then a grey drybrush. The little amount of armor he's wearing will get a chainmail coat tomorrow. Two things left to decide on him, the cloth pieces and the blade.

Maybe I'll be able to afford a camera with the new job. Oh and I'll have to remember to get BJD to tell me the model of his as I know it will take decent pictures of mini's.....

A Find Grain of Sand....

2008-04-09T09:42:00.001-05:00

Wood sanders........seem simple.....just buy sand paper and your off. Of course, like everything else I do, I "needs" to know more. So that I can access this info later (when I most need it) and to share with you, I give the following mini-blurb about wood sanding and sanders. Please note that I am not a professional woodworker and the following only represents my opinions and experience.

Safety
Sanding is often considered a safe task relative to a number of other tasks that are done around the woodshop. It doesn’t give the feel of danger as say using an 8000 rpm spinning metal toothed blade of death (read table saw) to destroy some type of material. But safety is just as important when sanding as many other tasks. Two areas of concern are self-sanding and dust.

Self-sanding just basically qualifies as taking the sander/paper to your body. While you may want to remove your fingerprints so you can be a master thief (sanding would do this for you but I could think of easier/less dangerous ways), dropping a running power sander on bare skin can do some serious damage. Between friction and the rough nature of the sanding materials, you can quite inadvertently remove flesh.

Dust is the subtle killer of sanding. Since we can’t see it (for small particles) or often don’t notice it (for larger particles) because it’s not as big as the material we are working on, it’s easy to forget that this stuff is around until you go to clean up at the end of the day. Keep the laws of mass and energy conservation in mind here. Sanding produces heat and dust that are directly proportional to the amount of sanding done. The material being removed doesn’t magically disappear into the ether. It most often floats in the space you inhabit and then you go and do some bone-headed thing like breathing and this dust gets in your lungs. I don’t know if they’ve created the phenomenon of Wood Lung (vs. Black Lung), but I’d rather not give them an excuse. Also keep in mind that dust can jack up your eyes as well.

Uses – things to accomplish
Shaping is basically the act of taking a piece of stock/wood and changing its shape. For example, standard wood from Lowes tends to be rectangular in shape. Sanding the hard corners of this standard stock to produce softer edges would qualify as shaping. Of course shaping can be much more drastic, for example, taking a square piece of plywood and sanding it into a circle (Note: there are better ways to do this, but that’s another story).

Cleaning would constitute using a sanding material to remove unwanted “stuff” from your work piece. This could include things like paint, varnish, crayon/pencil marks. This use for sanding can require some pretty dedicated focus to do correctly. If you’re re-finishing your cabinets and not paying enough attention to the sanding, you can easily gouge or otherwise mar your very expensive material.

Smoothing (or finishing) can be considered a hybrid of shaping and cleaning. The purpose is to remove any “roughness” to the material being worked on. Most often this is done to prepare a material/surface for finishing (painting, staining, varnish, etc.). Smoothing is often the most delicate use of sanding as it’s often one of the last things done to raw material and can have numerous effects on how a follow up process behaves (for example, staining often looks better when the wood surface isn’t glass smooth, rougher surfaces tend to accept stain better and provide more depth of color and visual texture)

Sandpaper
Sandpaper comes in many styles. Examples include square sheets, sanding blocks, round sheets, continuous loops or belts, discs, sticks, and probably many others. The basics here are to pick the style that fits the tool in use (see the instruction manual for whatever power tool you are using). When in doubt, square sheets will get you by as long as you are willing to put in the elbow grease to hand sand everything.

Grit
Sand paper is often categorized by grit. The rule of thumb here is the higher the number, the smoother the resulting surface should be AND the less material removed per pass. For cleaning and shaping, you’ll often want low grit numbers (between 60 and 120, though for really good gouging you could go with 30). For smoothing, often it’s best to start low and do multiple passes with increasing grit counts. I have heard this referred to as “going through the grits”. Three passes tends to be the standard recommendation (say a 60, 120, then say a 180 or more for a very smooth finish).

Sandpaper can often “clog”. This phrase means that material being removed from the wood is getting stuck between the individual rough pieces of the sandpaper. This causes the surface of the paper to become smooth (exact opposite of what you want) and produces more heat (which we often want to avoid). Be sure to shake or blow some compressed air on the sandpaper to keep the paper unclogged.

Grit Material
The rough junk on the sandpaper can be made of a number of different materials. For most simple jobs aluminum oxide will work fine and works on both common woods and most metals. For exotic woods (rosewood, maple, redwood, Sitka spruce, or a wood that is just plain hard to pronounce) or unusual applications (wet-sanding or high-pressure sanding), you might want to do additional research on alternative materials (like garnet for example).

More info: WoodZone and Wikipedia

Power Sanders
Types
Belt sanders remind me of tank treads. A continuous loop of one-sided sandpaper is rotated to produce a continuously moving sanding surface. Belt sanders excel at removing large amounts of material without breaking your arm. So if you want to clean a surface, a belt sander would be the way to go.

Disc sanders spin (like a car tire) a circular pad to produce the sanding motion. For non-commercial usage, disc sanders tend be bench mounted, though you can buy portable power versions. Disc sanders excel at removing materials like belt sanders (though IMHO, I prefer belt over a disc for striping) and also provide better control for shaping (turning that square piece of plywood into a circle).

Orbital and random orbital sanders move the sanding surface in an orbit (think “wax-on, wax-off” from The Karate Kid); there is generally no spin involved (though you can find spinning orbital sanders). These types of sanders excel at finishing/smoothing work.

Bench sanders are fixed machines that are designed to be stationary (as in “stuck to the workbench). It is common to find one device that provides both a belt sander and a disc sander, though you can also purchase single purpose bench models.

More Info: Wikipedia, Essortment (quick belt vs. disc discussion), Extreme How-To

Snow shoes.....

2008-02-27T16:11:00.002-06:00

It was freaking snowing this morning. That makes a Skrubb record of 4 times this season for here. Global warming my backside! ;)

Nothing to treacherous on the commute to work. After sunrise this morning the snow wasn't sticking to anything, just left-overs on the roof. But it was a little fun to drive with the white flakes floating about.

Bad thing was that my neighbors (W&E, they're good people if you don't know them) left their garage door open all last night. Right above the garage is the master bedroom (at least it's that way in my house), which probably meant that they had a very cold night last night. Brrrrr....

Twinkie Effect....

2008-02-20T14:23:00.002-06:00

I was participating in an employee CORE values session for work today and a discussion started about "Meaningful Work" as a value. During this discussion there was a statement something like, "Everything we do has value, it's important and we don't just do it because. It's not like we're making twinkies here...." Don't know about you, but any time a discussion involves twinkies ("Tell him about the twinkie" - Ghostbusters), I try to pay some attention.

We talked about many other values that we think we have and those that we should have. Yet, I find myself mostly intigued with the Twinkie Effect........

Snow....

2008-02-13T16:34:00.002-06:00

It snowed a little today, itty bitty flakes that mostly did't last long once they hit something. This marks the third snow event for the year. Also the third snow event that I've been a party to since moving "up north". It's pretty cool, I always said I liked snow. It is pretty cold in comparrison to what I grew up with, but I prefer cold over hot any day.

I just need to learn how to use this "real" snow and make 38mm snowmen with it....

Restructionate.....

2008-01-04T18:04:00.001-06:00

As I value my life, I must provide a correction to a previous post. It was BJD who provided the initial inspiration for the sausage-like round objects in the previous post. For clarification purposes, it was the Tamminator that handed me the physical/printed recipe and that was what I was crediting.

I formally apologize for any Feeling Gnomes that were damaged in the making of this and any previous posts.

Skrubby's Not-So-Schwetty-But-Baconny Sausage Like Balls...

2008-01-04T10:10:00.000-06:00

Based on a recipe from the Tamminator (again....I seem to steal a lot of food ideas from her and BJD)...

1 egg
1/4 cup milk
8 oz turkey sausage
1/2 cup shredded sharp chedder
1 1/2 cup shredded montery jack (pepperjack should be tasty too)
1 1/2 cup bisquick
some Bacon Salt (Original or Hickory)

Mix the egg and milk, pour into bowl with remaining ingredients. Mix. Make little 1 to 2 inch balls out of the mixture and back for 15-ish minutes at 375 degrees F. Check on golden brown status.

As I make mine a little larger (closer to the 2 inch range), I reduce the heat after 15ish minutes to about 300 and just keep en eye on them. The idea is that they will need to cook through (get the sausage in the middle of the balls) but I don't want to burn the crap out of them.

I made two batches of this last night, one original bacon salt, garlic powder, and some red pepper, the other just hickory bacon salt. Brought some in to work and the heathens seem to like them. I figured one flavor or the other would be a clear winner but I've found that there is about a 50/50 split between the original being the favorite and the hickory. Either way, I'm going to consider this a win.

The bacon flavor doesn't slap you upside the face, but it subtle and it's there. This combination would probably go well as a side item for some Bacon Thunder. Maybe squish the balls to more of a cracker like shape (1/4 to 1/2 inch thick disks maybe) and then spread some Bacon Thunder on it........

Loaded Tater Soop.....

2008-01-03T14:57:00.000-06:00

1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup flour
1/2 gallon Half-and-Half (might try it with 2% milk next time, 1/2 & 1/2 is a bit rich)
3+ lbs potatoes (I used Yukon Gold instead of Red b/c Yukon Gold is the best potato ever discovered)
16 oz Velveeta cheese
Bacon (the more the merrier)
Salt, Pepper, Other spices

Melt butter, add flour, stir until smooth. Add 1/2 & 1/2 over low to med heat until thickened. Add melted Velveeta, Spices, and potatoes (pre-boile and cut into bite size pieces). Cover on low heat and cook for about 30 more mintues to get everything to temperature and let the spices add flavor. The bacon is optional if you are a little girlie-man, but it can be used as a topping with shredded cheese and chives for example, or crumble it up and put it directly in the soup to add additional bacony flavor.

The Tamminator (BJD's wife) suggested mashing a portion of the potatoes before adding to the soup to add more starch (thereby thickening the liquids to a very chowder like consistency). If I were to use red potatoes I would do that, but the Yukon's seem to be a bit more desolvable (is that a word?) and seem to do a decent job without mashing.

I don't think my soup is as tasty as the Tamminator's, but I'm pretty happy with the results. It could be that I used Bacon Salt instead of normal salt though......mmmmmm.....bacon!

New Yearz....

2008-01-02T09:05:00.001-06:00

Welcome to the New Year! May it be full of things that bring you baconny joy!

Happy Bacon New Year!

Holiday...

2007-12-25T23:16:00.000-06:00

Merry Bacon Christmas!!!

Coming to theatres everywhere...."We Is Stupid"...

2007-12-17T08:21:00.000-06:00

Went to see "I Am Legend" this weekend. I liked it better than most of the critics did. It struck me as a more cerebral movie than I had anticipated and a little more jumpy-horror than expected. Thought Will Smith did a good job playing the last man on earth and the dog did well too. If any of you go and see it, you should know that the movie doesn't completely answer all the questions you might have. They leave a number of things open for your interpretation (or possible sequels/prequels).

Unfortunately, my movie experience wasn't that great. A couple sits down one seat over from me and I notice they have a 1 - 1.5 year child with them. Did they not see the previews and know that this movie is a horror/creature film? Who in their right mind brings their 1 year old child to a film like this? Not only do you have the child screaming and bothering other theatre goers, but you risk giving the little beastie nightmares on top of no 1 year old who is just discovering their voice is going to shut the hell up for almost two hours straight. Strangely enough, my neighboring couple weren't the only ones to bring a young child. I think there were at least three more under the age of 6 floating around the theatre.

And then, there is the couple that sat in the row behind me. The woman must have been about the dumbest person on the planet. Every three seconds, "What's going on? What is he doing? I don't understand!" Now I'm not one to sit in complete silence through a movie, but come on. When BJD runs the country, I'm going to ask him to put mandatory IQ tests in place so that stupid people aren't allowed in.

So in summation, $7 spent for a good movie and further indication that humans are just about the dumbest, most annoying creatures in existence.

Gift baskets online.....

2007-12-03T09:49:00.000-06:00

A co-worker and I were talking about gifts for the people we like but don't know real well. The idea for a gift basket seemed to be the consensus on showing that you like the person enough to give them a gift and generic enough to not piss them off by getting something completely stupid. At first we were thinking something along the lines of a sausage and cheese basket, but then a spouse suggested Wine Country Gift Baskets (http://www.winecountrygiftbaskets.com/), which seems to have more treat baskets than meat and cheese (though the gourmet food selection has some interesting items). The recommender has used the site before and gives it her approval so I think I might be making use of it this year.

Of course, as per my luck there are no baskets that are diabetic friendly, so there is nothing I can send to my family. Bah, can't have it all I guess.

Databases Pain....

2007-11-20T23:27:00.000-06:00

In case you are wondering, I pretty much hate Oracle and PostgreSQL. Mostly for childish reasons, ex. Postgres mainly because it's spelled funny. Oracle is just a beast. And I mean that in every sense of the word. A true beast.

Mucho respecto to the guys and gals who make Oracle their beyotch for a living. I'd rather be calculating eigenvectors for the rest of my life than be stuck having to bend to the will of the Oracle gods.

Scary thing happened to me. I was in the midst of filling out the info required to download WinSQL yesterday and realized that I have learned to deal with 7 of of the 10 database products listed. For a CS guy, that pretty much sucks.

SELECT TOP 10(*) FROM table
SELECT * FROM table WHERE ROWNUM<10
SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 10
SELECT * FROM table WHERE ROWID(table)<10

K-sa-de-a....

2007-11-20T23:12:00.000-06:00

K-sa-de-a:
Tuna (flavored preferred, Hickory smoked works like a champ)
Chopped bell pepper (red, orange, yellow, green...pick your favorite colors)
Chopped onion (could replace with Onion Powder if you're not going to saute or sweat the veggies)
Shredded cheese (mexican mix)
Tortillas (flour)
Pinch of salt
Black Pepper
Thyme
Parsley
Garlic Powder

Mix everything but the tortillas together. General ratios is 1 package tuna to 1 cup peppers to 1/2 cup onions to 2 cups cheese. Spices to flavor. Heat skillet to medium, place a tortillas in the skillet, spread mixture liberally onto tortillas, top with second tortilla. Brown (approx 2 to 5 minutes depending on temp.), flip, brown, serve. Easy, very little fuss and reasonably tasty......

Strange Man and his Safety Cone.....

2007-11-06T15:13:00.000-06:00

I went to lunch today and decided I didn't want a huge hassle so I'd just go fast food (BK for $4.57, which is half of what lunch seems to cost when I go with coworkers). So I'm eating my burger (no onion thank you) and watch the cars drive by. I notice that someone is pulling into their parking space backwards.

This is kind of interesting because it seems like a bad idea to stop and go in reverse when you are in the parking lot of a pretty busy fast food joint during lunch hour. Car parks, no incidents. The driver gets out, and begins to walk to the rear of his vehicle. This is kind of odd as the rear of the vehicle is the opposite direction from the building.

It is at this point that I notice a logo on the door of his white four door sedan. The logo is for a company that used to just do long distance and now is the "sole" service that will work with a certain "popular" (yet recently unlocked) phone. The guy opens his trunk and pulls out an orange cone. He then proceeds to place it in the parking lot right in front of his bumper and walk inside to purchase some food.

Now this seems kind of odd to me......is the guy trying to make sure no one mistakes his car for an empty space and tries to park on it? It's a freaking car parked in a full parking lot of other cars.....if anyone was to "mistake" it....the stupid little cone isn't going to help....."Oh...a spot.......wonder what that orange cone means......maybe I shouldn't ram into the car that's in 'my' spot because the cone might get angry...."

Is he trying to make sure other cars don't come near it because his company car might bite? "Your honor....I was just driving along looking forward to a good burger and fries when my car was bit by the defendants car......that thing is a menace....it could have given my car bad gas mileage...."

Maybe, as his vehicle could have been a company car, he is required by the vehicle's owner to place a cone by it wherever it goes? This lead to a funny thought of seeing a large parking lot full of cars from said company all with little cones placed in front of them. They'd be different colors or decorated so that each person would be able to recognize their own personal safety cone. There'd be at least one with stripes, probably one with a birthday hat, maybe one painted like it's wearing a tuxedo......what would your cone look like?

So no point......no moral.....just this guy and his little safety cone

Post this.....

2007-10-23T10:11:00.000-05:00

HA!! STEALTH POST!!! Didn't see it coming...did ya!?!?

Successful Foodage...

2007-01-11T13:21:00.000-06:00

For whatever odd reason, I wanted to putter in the kitchen last night. I made two dishes and I brought some to work today for a few people to try. Feedback has been really positive (though it could just be that everyone is afraid of me).

Dish 1: Skrubby Masherd Pertaters

1) 2.5 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes cut into quarters, leave skin on, boil until fork tender
2) 1 to 1.5 cups Chicken Broth (the low sodium kind if you can) with some black pepper, thyme and parsley - bring to almost a rolling boil, basically want to get the temp to 200+ F
3) Add hot broth and 1/2 stick butter (I'm thinking this is to much butter, I'm going to try to cut back on this next time) to drained potatoes.
4) Mash until you get the consistency you want.

I've had one person that didn't touch these, but the other three people who have tried them love them and said they would replace their normal mashed potatoes with these. I like them because they are tasty, they don't require milk, and they are EASY TO MAKE!!!

Dish 2: Skrubberd Chiken Salerd

1) 2 large chicken breast cooked on the George Foreman type grill, cut into small pieces
2) 1 cup celery finely chopped, 3/4 cup bell pepper finely chopped, 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic, 1 to 2 tablespoons evoo - sweat in a pan with some salt and thyme or other herbs you like
3) Add some lemon juice (about 1 tablespoon or so), some mayo (aprox. 1 cup), diced chicken, fresh ground pepper, and the sweated items into a bowl for mixing
4) Mix
5) Chill in the refrigerator overnight. Good with lightly toasted bread.

Two people raved about this, and the third said it was better than most. I was a little hesitant about the garlic (I actually don't like garlic at all), but I think it gives the whole thing a unique flavor. Again I find this to be REALLY easy to make. No fancy techniques required; minimal cost (the chicken is the most expensive); minimal hardware. Also could replace the chicken with crab meat and make a pretty tasty crab salad (which I did, but I haven't shared it with anyone yet).

If you happen to try either of these, let me know if you like or hate them.

Smokers...

2007-01-06T21:15:00.000-06:00

I've been reflecting on an incident that occured several weeks ago, but haven't formally blogged about. I have been unable to properly formulate or put words to an impression/thought I had, but as I don't want to lose that thought, I'll put down what I can.

I was driving home one day and as I pulled out onto the road home, there was a rather large amount of space between myself and the car in front of me (I'm gueesing about 100 yards). The road I'm on is rather busy in both directions at this time of day. I notice that at the road next to my place of business is a vehicle that wants to turn left (across my directions of travel). The driver has plenty of space and is clear from both directions, it's the perfect time to make his left yet he doesn't.

Instead of making the left, the guy had to light his cigarette. This bothers me. Smoking bothers me in its own right, but the fact that this guy was to busy trying to kill himself than take a left turn and get on with his life kind of stuck me as very odd.

Smoking is bad, m'kay. You'd have to be a complete and utter f*cking idiot not to get that little fact. Year's of study and empiricall evidence abound as to what smoking can do to the human body. There's no "maybe". There's no "not me". There's no "I'll only smoke a little it won't hurt". And it's not just bad for the smoker, it's bad for those of us around the smoker.

Now, I'm not one to tell someone else how to live their life. You want to smoke knock yourself out, but I sure as hell don't have to appreciate it or desire to be around you. That's me looking out for me. I have enough medical problems in my family to kill myself seven times over. I don't want to add lung cancer to them.

So anyway, back to my left turn smoker. I'm thinking about this guy and trying to get in his head. Of course I don't know this guy from Adam, but I start to think of all the little things this guy might be prioritizing behind lighting his one way ticket to death.

Ex. showing a bright smile to a neigbor; saying thanks to someone for helping him; being near the phone for when a friend needs someone to talk to; saying "I love you" to his wife; hugging his son/daughter

We all have vices that aren't healthy for us (mine is I eat to much). We are all controlled more by our psychosis than just about anything else. We're hurtful to both ourselve and others. We're uncaring and self-absorbed to some degree. How we made it this far along and survive in the world around us is just boggling. So take a moment the next time you bow to your vice and think about how it can really effect your world.

The Anti-Business....

2007-01-06T20:44:00.000-06:00

This post is about Wal-Mart....I'll pause a few seconds to let you get your focus back....

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Several people I know despise this chain. I however have been a fan of it for a very long time. However, I'm presently downgrading Wal-Mart's status.

For years while I was in Mobile, I really liked Wal-mart. The Schilenger's Rd store was one of my prefered shopping locations. While I don't begin to hope that that store remains the same as my memory of it, the store up here in B'ham really exemplifies the negative comments I hear.

It's painfule to go there. It's like a wild-magic zone, in which all magic becomes stupidity. It even stretches slightly beyond the bounds of the store and it's parking lot. It also seem like it is one of those bug zappers, but without the zap (or maybe it's IQ or civility or cutlture that it zaps instead of people). A good portion of the demographic that visits this place would easly be classifyed as either white trash or complete redneck hick.

Ex. On my way out I was waiting at the stop light to leave the parking lot and look over at the car next to me. I see an older guy (60's) and two early 20ish girls. The girl in the back produces a pack of cigarettes and a lighter to hook up the old man and the girl up front. At this point I see that the girl up front is missing at least 1 if not more teeth and grandpa is missing an eye and some teeth. All of this in a beat up falling apart car.

While I won't boycott the place and I won't profess never to go, I definately will be arranging my life such that I minimize my visits. Wal-mart has good prices for somethings that I really don't want to go looking for elsewhere, but thank the lord they are open 24 hours so I can go at 2 or 3 am and dodge the jacked up-inbred-toothless-58 kids-I'm on welfare-they had to get a crane to get me out of my house-I can't read prices and like to argue-I can't count so I have 64 items in the 20 item express lane-assholes that are generally in attendance.

Why Santa should exist...

2007-01-06T20:31:00.000-06:00

Went down the the Gulf Coast for Christmas. Enjoyed most of my weekend over in Mobile with Porter and Horst, followed by the BJD Eve Orderves. Christmas day I made it to my dad's place for our untraditional traditional Christmas event.

Things went splendid most of the day. The step-skank (SS) (step-mother, but only when I'm to drunk to deny it) had done most of her cooking ahead of time and for once wasn't whining like a 400 lb two point five legged pig. Dad and I worked in the garage and deep fried three turkeys.

Two pairs of Dad and SS's friend arrive for dinner as well as SS's son, daughter-in-law and grand "will be white trash soon enough" spawn. We eat and everyone has a good time. After food, we start to open presents (keep in mind the guests are all still in attendance). When the SS gets to the big present dad bought here, she opens it up and says (slight paraphrase), "What is this? I didn't want this.........I thought you said this was junk."

At first I thought, "There's no way she said that." Yet one look at my dad's face and I knew she had. Dad's only response was a polite, "Well, we can take it back and get you something you like." After all the guests left (about 1 to 2 hours later) my dad just sort of disappears. I help SS clean up a bit (it's Christmas so I'm REALLY trying not to drop kick her to the hypothalimus) then go looking for dad. I find him and can tell he's really upset. Just the kind of crap my family is known for on Christmas.

Other than the SS is total scum, I had a great Christmas and had the chance to spend good quality time with some good quality people.

Who blogs anymore...

2006-12-17T21:22:00.000-06:00

Been a bit, but for whatever reason blogging isn't really on my mind much these days. Interesting things since the last one.....uh.....well.....I had some tasty cheese grits......

But for real:

TV/HD/XBox - I'm still diggin the 360. Picked up a boxing game (which apparently I super-suck at, see below), Fight Night Round 3. It's pretty good, but the all the loading gets old pretty quick. Still playing Viva Pinata....I know, very sad.

The TV rocks, especially with HD. I've now been exposed to it long enough to appreciate the difference between normal and HD. What I didn't expect was the full-frontal no-holds-bar'd whoopin my wallet was going to see trying to buy an HDMI cable. Damn things are nasty expensive.

BJD and I made it to BEST Regionals in Auburn. On arrival there was nothing for us to do, so we made plans to attempt to sit in all the major seating locations in the arena, which I believe we managed to do. It always amazes me how completely unorganized the regional event is. They pull it off every year (so far), but like Robin, I always leave thinking how it could be so much better if they would actually plan things out ahead of time. Unfortunately, I spoke with one of the directors and he wants to push for a hub centered in B'ham. Guess who's name is on the top of the list to help run it......doh!!!

Mid-last week I caught a cold. Sucks, but I was due. Luckily the worst part was on Friday, so I could enjoy the rest of the weekend to some degree. Porter came with his girlfriend (who has a VERY nice car, btw) for a party at Rich & Laure's (a party recap post, if I indeed make one, will be done at a later date). Friday night they stayed at my place where I unfortunately introduce Porter to the boxing game. After about two fights (in the game), he proceeded to whip the ever living dog snot out of me for the rest of the weekend. Only time I had a chance was if I played Ali. I hold my head in shame...

Had a chance to see Ellis and RaR this weekend too. Was great to catch up with Ellis and had a blast watching RaR be naughty (hopefully Santa was watching as well). It surprises me just how gay (and I don't mean happy) RaR acts/dresses when he's been (or going to be) drinking. Makes me wonder if California is doing it to him or if he's really thinking of coming out of the closet. It's ok RaR, don't be ashamed of who you are. ;)

HD, TV, XBox

2006-11-27T15:45:00.002-06:00

Ok, so I've kept this a secret for a little bit. Gotta get my quality nerd time before I go and share with the world. I purchased an XBox 360 a little over a week ago. While I'm glad I waited past the "crazy" release of last year, I'm glad to have it now. Games purchased: Gears of War (because if you have a 360 and don't have this game, you should just give your 360 to charity, loser!), Madden NFL 07 (to play with the locals), Burnout: Revenge (to play when we've been drinking...it increases the fun factor by at least 3 times), and Viva Pinata (b/c Daryl and BJD SUCK!).

The xbox was a sudden departarture; pretty much unplanned. I came into work one day and received an email reminding me of our company's holiday bonus. The amount of the bonus was only $19 shy of what it would cost to purchase the xbox setup I wanted. So happy holidays to me from my company!

Around the same time I was already budgeting for an HDTV. I was looking at the Olevia 532H (32 in) from ZipZoomFly. I decided to wait a week because Black Friday was only a week away. After a few days of further research, I found the Olevia 537H (37 in) and an online coupon for target.com that brought the price difference to less than $100. After a visit to the local Comp USA for a sales floor view and a "you're not getting screwed" thumbs up from Big'J, I ordered the 537h.

The TV arrived today before lunch. Big'J helped me get it into my apartment (wanted two sets of hands so I didn't drop it on the stairs) and of course I was immediately ordered to set it up and test it. So we did. I've only had the chance to mess with it for about an hour, but I'm already very happy with the purchase. Back at work now I've called my local cable company and added HDTV channels to my current package (and the DVR as well, since it can record HD content...that's right, LOST, Heroes, and Prison Break in HD beyotches!!!) which should be set up on Sat.

So Happy Holidays to me, from me. Hope yours turns out as well as mine has so far.

100

2006-11-27T15:45:00.001-06:00

100th post

Application "Who am I?"

2006-11-16T15:14:00.000-06:00

For a while I've been thinking about trying to determine a few usefull pieces of information about a progam and the machine it is running on via code (C#).

EXE directory:
Because of the nature of the programs we write where I work, there is a VERY large amount of directory changing and file manipulation. One thing that has bit me in the butt, is not paying attention to what directory the program is using when it creates a file (specifically a config file that is written as the program terminates). Generally we can get away using absolute pathing, but in this case, we want the file to be placed directly in the directory containing the exe.

Unfortunately I rarely ever use logic and look in the right place for this information, but I've finally took the time to think about it and write it down:

string appPath = Application.StartupPath;
string fullPath = Application.ExecutablePath;
string appName = fullPath.Substring(appPath.Length + 1);
string appVersion = Application.ProductVersion;

MAC Address:
Another piece of information that I've been looking for is how to determine the mac and ip address of the machine a program is running on. I discovered that there are several network adapters on most machines but only one or two that are actually active. The following code (C#) grabs the mac & ip addressses for each ip active adapter:

//add System.Management to the project references first
query = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT MacAddress,IPAddress FROM Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration where IPEnabled = TRUE");
queryCollection = query.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject mo in queryCollection){
if (mo["MacAddress"] != null){
ipAdd = ((string[])mo["IPAddress"])[0];
macAdd = mo["MacAddress"].ToString();
break;
}
}

No fool proof and it only returns the first adapter, but good enough for what I need done. I also understand that this is much easier to do using vb script, but that's not in my bag of tricks.

15 Things I Learned at BEST

2006-11-16T12:44:00.000-06:00

15 things I learned while in Mobile helping with BEST this year:

1. The right shoe makes for the right end of day result.
2. Cool people like crab rangoons.
3. Ryan vs. 4 year old girl and retarded little boy = Ryan loses, poor guy
4. Enzo should never be given an air horn.
5. Never let politicians announce things that you have tried to plan.....it just doesn't work.
6. Yankee's are funny.
7. There is really no such thing as a "fun competition". An event can be fun or it can be a competition. Never both.
8. Be aware of the "Curse of the Monkey" trap.
9. Sometimes it's not such much about what you roll, as it is how many hands you need to roll all the dice at once.
10. BJD was never a sailor, though he may have once owned a sailor hat.
11. Cover is a very nice thing to have during a firefight.
12. The Pinata Doc is expensive.
13. Buses can make for GREAT anologies.
14. No matter how impossible it may seem, a kid's robot can (and now will) jump over whatever obstacle it is NOT supposed to jump over.
15. Always put your trust in people that get things done, not the people who say they will.

Turle shell nerd powers activate....

2006-11-01T08:57:00.000-06:00

Finaly Fantasy XII was released to the U.S. market yesterday. I intentionally did not pre-order because I knew it was going to arrive right in the middle of high-streess super-panic time for B.E.S.T. However, I just so happen to be near an EB Games in the course of my regular errand running, so I figured maybe I'd see if they had a copy. Mistake....

Needless to say, I'm now in "Super Skrubby Ninja Stealth" mode as I battle the evil forces besieging Ivalice (the world in FF12). So if I happen to not answer my phone, check my emails, or arrive at an appointment in the evenings, please understand I'm getting my inner nerd on.

Get your physics nerd on....

2006-10-18T09:30:00.000-05:00

I admit it; I'm kinda of a closet physics nerd. If you look at my grades in college you might disagree though. I blame Monkey Boy, he was there....it's his fault we drank beer instead of doing homework. Besides, I still think it was unfair to ask us how fast all the people on earth would have to run on the equator in order to stop the Earth from spinning. I don't do Doomsday Equations!!

However, I really dig shows on the Discovery Channel that are about physics. I've also been known to watch hour long videos from google videos on physics topics. I also read physics for game programmers books in my spare time. And I've been known to re-open my college physics book to entertain myself. I'm a nerd, I know!!

Well, to help cover my obsession with nerdiness, I found a new blog about physics. I figured I would share, physicsbuzz.blogspot.com. It's a new blog that can provide a good kick-off site for other more hardcore locations. Enjoy!!

Bad PC guy...bad...

2006-10-16T23:04:00.000-05:00

Apparently it's that time of year that I do something stupid with my PC. This year it was typing/clicking to fast while on a site I know I should be careful on (my usual bit torrent site). I didn't see it coming, I'm just looking at a collection of links, and I click on what I think is whitespace to my window gets focus and the scroll button will work. I guess it wasn't "whitespace" I clicked on. Before I knew it I heard about 17 to 20 clicks and the adware/spyware was already hard at work.

I froze for about 5 seconds with the "wtf" face then reached over to my router and yanked the WAN connection. I'm guessing the connection was live for about 15 to 20 seconds between when I "clicked" and when I cut the connection. This was plenty of time to d/l at least 5 major installers of addware (gotta love that 5 mb connection).

So I've spent the majority of evening uninstalling all my software. Next stage is to migrate my save games and other data files off the machine. Which should take about 6 hours of transfering (2 drives @ approx 80gb each). Hopefully that will be done before I go to bed and I can reinstall my os after work tomorrow.

So I hang my head in shame. I know I did it. I know I make fun of the people that do it. But when you're on the net or playing in the "dirty" side of life, you have to expect to get mugged every once in a while, right?

On an unrelated note: I freakin hate the weather channel. For whatever reason, at all the times of the day I want to get the weather forcast, with exception to pre-9 am, there some show on talking about weather patterns or events from years past. "Thanks, I really needed to see a 1 hour show on firefighters helping with the clean up of hurricane Katrina. I honestly didn't want to see what the weather was currently like in my area. Go ahead and put on a show about cows in tornadoes next." Silly bastards.

Bed Chinese?

2006-10-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

Just some advice:

If you happen to find yourself in Gardendale, AL ( a quiet little town north of Birmingham), reseit any urges you might have to eat "Chinese buffet". There's only one and it's on main street near the Blockbuster. It's a nice looking joint and is run by a truly asian family (I admit I'm not very up on my "tell one culture from another" training for asians). Unfortunately, it suffers from small-town-itis. There was only about 6 different types of food up for grabs and even those, while edible, were not spectacular. It's definitely worth driving down to Lakeshore Dr. to hit Mr. Wang's instead.

Accessed Denied!!!

2006-10-13T13:49:00.000-05:00

Dear blog,
You suck! Why have you been unable to recognize my account for so long? For over a year I faithfully visited you and shared tidbits of life and philosophy. I was beginning to think we were friends, and now you treat me this way. Where's the love? WHERE'S THE DAMN LOVE I SAY!!!!?!?!?! Given this current predicament, I must hereby deny you any future fish-biscuits and you will be receiving coal in your stocking this December.

Hetero-Love
Skrubby

P.S. We're still friends, right?

Don't think and type...it's bad for you!

2006-09-13T07:56:00.000-05:00

So I shouldn't be alloed to think and type after 8 pm. Sort of like gremlins......don't expose them to bright lights, don't get them wet, and don't allow them to think after 8.....

At any rate, I posted previously that my father is scheduled for a biopsy, this is incorrect. He is schedule for partial hand amputation. I believe they are just going to remove the affected region (about the size of a nickel I'm told). I'm going to ask the doctor if he will go ahead and remove at least the index finger and get it replaced by IBM's "Bionic Finger". You know, one finger with the power of twelve! That way dad doesn't have to work so hard to scratch that itchy place on his bum.

If that doesn't work out, maybe we can replace the pointer finger (not to be confused with the pointer sisters) with a green laser. He would finally have a true "pointer" finger then. For Christmas we could buy him little attachments that make the laser into a star, or tree, or Baby Jesus, or Tom Cruise's god. Interchangable "pointer" finger modules......it's a whole new market to explore.....

....the sun.....

2006-09-12T22:48:00.000-05:00

My father informed me, o-so-casually, that he has been diagnosed with skin cancer. They (whoever "they" are) claim that it's not melanoma. He has a biopsy scheduled for later this month. Hopefully this will turn out to be a minor thing. Not really sure if I'm ready to watch cancer take my father, even if his nickname should be Darth Ass.

The stench of humanity...

2006-09-12T22:39:00.000-05:00

With a coolly measured demeanor and adaptive thinking, you enforce your will on others using your multitude of abilities

Do you hear that, Mister Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.

He hit me in the eye.....

2006-09-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

I broke an acoustic string and almost lost a finger in the process.....

Ryan and Khan interviewed this week at my company. Both interviews went exceptionally well. I'm pretty sure (like 98%) Khan will be getting a very positive offer sometime in the near future (2 weeks hopefully). Monkey Boy seems to be very excited about this turn of events as well. If only we could convince Big Jon to come with Khan......that would be supper f'n role-playing goodness sweet!

Ryan's visit started out very nicely. As soon as he arrived a beer was made available to him. Within 10 minutes of arrival, a Yuengling marinated ribeye steak (med. rare) was put on a plate for him with potatoe salad, baked beans, and other tasty goodness. At the same time the Florida State game was made available on the main TV. Don't think it is possible to have made his arrival any better. His interview went stellar as well. He was not going to be able to interview for the job I was hoping he would get originally, instead he was interviewing for a less fancified position. However, he impressed the panel so well that they are reconsidering him for the original (better) position. Mad props to Ryan for uber-interview skillz.

Big'J's wife is recovering from surgery VERY slowly (poor girl). They had one or two scares with a low red blood count and low oxygen levels. I'm told that she is getting better and is up and around some now (which is a good sign). Lil'J is very unhappy that mommy will not pick him up and play with him.....spoiled child.....

I discovered that a friend of mine (Gusty, he's a best-friend of my neighbor) is both a mortgage guy and a realtor. He and I have been discussing possible housing plans for my near future. I'm pretty stoked as I don't think he'll try to screw me as bad as a stranger. Better to be screwed by a friend, right?

Monkey Boy will be getting married in Feb. The wedding is on a cruise to the Bahamas. I have been asked to be his Best Man. As such, I will definitely be attending the wedding. Our friend Narcosleepy (old roommates of MB that could go to sleep on command...for real....I ain't lieing) will be my roomy for the trip, which "F'n A rocks, Cotton!" Khan will be in attendance as well I'm told. So, I need to start the process of getting a passport starting with the super-duper birth certificate. Gah!! I hate paperwork, hehe.

Kinda-sorta met this girl who has a smile that lights up the room. Wasn't brave enough (or sober enough) to introduce myself. Mental note, must at least say hi next time.

As always Rich & Laura's party was a blast! I think Cheese Girl (MB's fiance) is mad at me for bringing MB. She's going to have to get over it. Nothing to crazy happened this time, but we had a wonderful evening. Thanks to them for hosting and the steak & chicken skewers were over the top excellent!

Shameless blog plug

2006-08-20T23:52:00.000-05:00

I stumbled upon a blog that I though I would share called The Fanatic Cook. For those of you who use RSS feeds I'm shamelessly pluggin the site. :)

ON A PLAAAANNNNEEEE.....

2006-08-20T22:54:00.000-05:00

Keep meaning to get around to this.....

On Aug 12th R&L called and invited me over to help celebrate (read "help drink all the beer") the graduation of L's brother from Bama. I didn't make it on time so by the time I arrived everyone present was thoroughly blasted. I drank some beer, sat on the deck (my favorite thing to do over there beside talk with R&L), and met a number of L's family members. The best part was that L's grandfather was present.

This guy is like 108 years old. He sat on the deck most of the night knocking back beer as if he were a different animal that could only extract oxygen from the bubbly contents of a good brewsky. He put all us youngins to shame. Somewhere around 1:30 or 2:00, he decides it's time to go to bed. He gets up, shakes my hand, and gives R a hug. During the hug (and it was one of those manly-over-a-handshake kind of hug) I hear this sound. A few minutes later, while R and I are just standing around, R looks over to me and says something to the effect of, "Was it me, or did he just fart when he hugged me?" I think I just about broke a funny bone laughing at that.

Took two days off work to go down to Mobile for another BJD Rib Extravaganza. Had a chance to hit the picklefish for old times sake on Thursday night (and visit Jan, which is always nice). The great Porter and I were up until sometime after 4am jamming on the 6 string. Spent most of the day Friday grinding working with MS Money and making a budget (thanks Mr. Porter!!) and had a visit with Dewitt. Saturday, I was back on the guitar and decided that I was so into practicing that I needed to bring the guitar to BJD to play. Porter decides that if I bring mine he must bring his and we have to play in public.

We get there early, hang out have a few beers. People show up, food is ready and we have a good time. It took me a long while to get the nerve up to break out the guitars, but finally I do around 9:30ish. Doug and I put on a little show to which Doug received two...that's right!!! TWO.... rounds applause (you go boy!!!)... for his solo performances. I was really nervous at first but after three or four songs, I calmed down and played pretty good for me. Bringing the guitars was a great idea in my opinion and I think Doug and I should start doing it more often. I know that I'll be bringing mine down to Mobile on every trip from now on.

After our concert (I called us "Doug and his trained Monkey"), Mr. Davis hooked us up with a private showing of "Snakes on a Plane". Free admission, free popcorn (garbage bag full), 12 people in the theater.......that man deserves mad props!

After returning to B'ham on Sunday, I immediately took a little trip to Gardendale to visit Monkey Boy. Found his apartment, it's about 30 to 40 minutes away depending on traffic. Had the chance to hang out a bit with him and made sure he was available as my heavy gunner for the potential beer-fest that may be at someone's house next weekend.

Gallbladder madness...

2006-08-09T20:14:00.000-05:00

I discovered today that our Support Manager has had her gallbladder removed. She did not have a stone like I did, but instead had a malfunction of the organ. The symptoms are pretty much the same between the two cases, with the exception that a stone generally involves more pain that is induced more rapidly. As sick as it may sound, I'm kind of happy that I found another gallbladderless individual. If for nothing else than and understanding soul.

What brought this discovery on though, was that Big'J's wife was told today that her gallbladder was only performing at a whopping 11%. The doctors suggested removal. Big'J and I spoke about it a little and it seems that his wife sees it not as a matter of if, but when. So, it looks like my gallbladderless support group will be growing to a size of three.

It sounds sort of sick, but I wonder if this might provide a common ground between me and Mrs. Big'J? Over the past year or so I've been slowly becoming a little more comfortable around her, but still miles away from what I would consider normal. We'll just have to wait and see. My search for the perfect get well gift begins. Wonder if they make a gallbladder stuffed animal......

Home grown goodness..

2006-08-09T08:25:00.000-05:00

Big'J's father apparently has started a "small" garden on their new land. It's so small that he barely has enough room to grow just about every vegetable (and some fruits) known to mankind. Yesterday, Big'J brought me nine ears of corn from this garden. Being has to how I am more experience in the consumption of corn vs. the preparation, I contact my resident food crazy, BJD.

After asking BJD how best to prepare fresh corn, he suggested I try fried corn and then we discussed proper prep and cooking. It was pretty darn tasty, though I think I should have added a bit more black pepper near the middle to end of the cooking process. Along with the corn, I had cut up some white gold potatoes in to small (< 1 inch) pieces in prep for boiling. I happen to re-consult BJD at this point in which he pointed out that I'm dumb and decided to school me on the following equalities:

Corn == Starch
Potato == Starch
Meal = Meat + Vegi + Starch
Meal != Meat + Starch + Starch

Having already semi-prepared the potatoes, I couldn't just throw them away. Instead, after some more discussion with BJD, I added about 1 to 1.5 ounces of EVOO, salt, pepper, Thyme (because you always need more thyme....get it......thyme.....time.....bah!!), 12 gazillion shakes of garlic powder (b/c I don't like to deal with real garlic yet) and coated the potato pieces. Dumped this mixture into a backing dish, top with parsley, cover and bake at 400 until fork tender, then remove cover and broil until you get a crispiness that you like. I must say that was damn fine eatin (or better yet, it was "Good Eats" - one of the best food shows EVER!!!). For meat I procured some butterfly cut pork chops. Tasty!

So be impressed by my culinary kung fu!

Nothing else really going on lately. I haven't heard any news about BEST in five or six days (which is sort of odd, but I'm not going to complain). A group of us from the office are going to see Talladega Nights on Thursday after work. Supposedly I'll laugh so hard I pee my pants. Big'J set up a Teamspeak server on one of his home PC's so we can chat and play Titan Quest without hugging the phone, though Titan Quest has been a beeyatch as of late and not let us establish a stable multiplayer session. I also added a new mod to X3: Reunion which adds something like 48 ships, new missions, new AI, new stations, and some other goodness. Given the mass amount of new digital crack, I've started a new game and am suffering withdrawals from being poor (that's what happens when you go from a thriving galatic empire making 3 million bucks an hour to broke).

Insert funny title here....

2006-08-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

OK recap: Monkey Boy will be moving up here in the next week or so (today is his last day at Crapicus), Big'J's wife hasn't been feeling well and we've been worried about her, BJD is a database backing up master chief, I've been a movie watching fool, and there's a spider in my office that is smarter (and faster) than I am.

First the spider...(and if you hear me screaming in the middle of this post, blame the spider)....I noticed the little savage this morning. He jumped off the ceiling onto my desk as soon as I walked in. He (or she, but I'll stick to "he" for the sake of simplicity) is about the size of a quarter and all black/dark brown. At first I was jumpy because he came out of nowhere, but now he's all hiding in the cracks and crevices of the "Americana Office Furniture" (i.e. standard modular craptastic cube furniture). He's pretty stinkin fast, like the Lieberman/Clinton bashing on the next Grand Theft Auto game (official title "GTA 4: In Space with my Bitches"....ok not really). Of course for the last hour he's been hiding (like a Scientologists common sense....morons) and so I'm more paranoid than anything else.....what's that sound?????......Oh God, something is hunting me.........

Big'J's wife has been having some upper abdominal pain on her right side. Her description reminds me a lot of the suffering I endured when I discovered an alien growing in my gallbladder. The pain started on Tuesday, she went in to the hospital and they couldn't tell her anything conclusive. She's back at the hospital this morning for an ultra-sound appointment. As such, I'm hoping they'll definitively tell us if she has a gall stone.

Haven't heard from Monkey Boy to much. He's still wrestling with where to live around here. He and his fiancee (Cheese Girl) came up last weekend on a suicide drive (left work at 5pm and drove 10 hours up, arriving at 3am) to check out a few areas to live. Cheese Girl just about went into shock as she realized they were moving to "the country" (i.e. the region between B'ham and Cullman). Somewhere near Cullman she asked a local "Where's the mall?" to which the response was, "Ain't no mall here. We goes to Birminham or Huntsvul for dat kinds of stuff." Poor girl! Saturday night we met up at Chili's (eat your heart out Espen!!!!) for a few beers. After sitting with them for awhile and catching up I have to say that I haven't been fair in my opinion of Cheese Girl. My first impression of her wasn't very positive, but now that we're both a little more comfortable with the situation and each other, I've discovered that I was way to harsh in my original assessment.

This week has been a heavy movie week for me. I've watched Ultraviolet, Munich, 16 Blocks, Underworld Evolution, Firewall, and V for Vendetta. Ultraviolet gets categorized with the movie Elektra (i.e. the shit-pile), the effects were horrendous, story was ripped off, dialogue was almost a lesson in blithering, and the cinematography was done by a two year old. The only positive thing I can say is that I saw a lot of Milla's belly button.

16 Blocks (Bruce Willis and Mos Def) and Firewall (Harrison Ford and Paul Bettany) I would classify as good quality movies. I didn't find either one over the top or genre defining. They were both just solid movies that were enjoyable. I'll watch them again when they hit HBO.

I understand why Munich (Eric Bana) was considered for so many awards. I won't classify it as a fantastic movie, but I was enthralled (i.e. engrossed, couldn't look away) with the movie as soon as it started. It was definitely up to Speildburg's standards.

V for Vendetta (Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman) was good as well, though not as revolutionary as the original Matrix. Lots of good dialogue, up to par visual effects, Ms. Portman did a great job (she proved that she is a great actress after the Star Wars crap). I wasn't grabbed by the political statement of the movie that other people exclaim about. It hit me as more of a "man becomes monster and gets revenge" story.

Underworld Evolution was ok. The visual effects, story locations, and continuity with the first movie were very good. But I think this one suffered even more from the problems of the first movie: bad acting by key players, even worse casting, and crap writing. The fictional world they have to play in could be SOO much better, it just feels uninspired to me. My biggest beef is still with the actor (Scott Speedman) that plays Michael (the hybrid from the first movie). I'm not sure if this guy would know a personality if it bombed him Hiroshima-style. He (the character) just seems like some dumb jerk who is still too high to make sentences. Kate, however, is still looking scrumptious in the tight leather and when she takes it off for the "love scene" ...... well .... you don't see much of anything (except in profile), but she is definitely a fine specimen of the female gender.

Alright, I've been at work for several hours and haven't done a single productive thing. Back to the grind...

Happy Birthday to blog....Happy Birthday to blo...

2006-08-01T07:58:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday to bloooooooooog.......Happy Bithday to blog..

{sing to the tune of the "Happy Birthday" song, duh}

One year today!

sigh

2006-07-27T02:56:00.000-05:00

It was a no show.......

I think what disappoints me most (and what I'm angry about) is the lack of respect these people have. For the third time in the past couple of weeks I've mustered the courage to approach someone, braced myself for rejection (which I'm pretty good at dealing with btw), received a positive response, only to have the young lady completely disappear afterwards. If she didn't want to go, she should have said no in the first place or had the common human decency to step up and at least inform me of her intent to dodge.

This type of stuff happens at work a lot too. Granted I saw more of it as a college professor than I do now, but it still amazes me how customers/potential dates/students/people in general are getting in the mindset of now wanting to "hurt your feelings" to your face, but rather give a positive response to whatever first advances you make (be it asking on a date, signing a service agreement, or what have you) then completely ignoring any further communications (or attempts at communication). This type of behavior is quickly becoming my number two reason for why America is heading towards trouble (the number one reason being the "I deserve it just because I'm me and I shouldn't have to work for anything" attitude).

Big'J's birthday appears to have gone well. He laughed at the decorations we put in his office so that started the day on a positive note. I spent a good deal of last night (3+ hours) running all over the Hoover area looking for a decent birthday card. It took so long because for his birthday last year, I gave Big'J a card with a monkey theme. For my last birthday, he gave me a card with a monkey theme. So I figured, why not keep the theme going? Make it sort of a challenge to surprise each other every year. What I have determined from this experiment, is that there are not enough birthday card makers using the full potential of the monkey theme. After visiting Target, Walmart, Publix, Brunos, and Amy's Hallmark, I only found a grand total of about 6 monkey cards (two of which we've already used). Somewhat surprisingly, Walmart had the largest collection of monkey cards at 3.

The card I decided on said something to the effect of "Hope your birthday is as fun as a barrel full of monkeys>" On the inside it had a monkey talking about life inside the barrel with other monkeys. Given that I messed up and ordered Big'J's present late, I figured it would be cool to step up the monkey them one more notch and actually buy him a barrel of monkeys (the little plastic barrel with plastic monkeys, remember?). So with the help of Mr. Porter, I set out on a quest to find this elusive beast.

After pretty much draining my cell battery on the phone with Porter (who was MOST gracious enough to provide me intel on possible store locations via his "enter-net" connection) I found what I was looking for at Target for $4.14. What I didn't know until last night is that you can get different colors of barrels. They had blue, green, classic red, and I've seen yellow on the Internet. In case you feel the need to share in the monkey madness, make sure you look in the board games section of your toy store for the Barrel of Monkeys.

It's a little after 3 a.m. I was tired after work and decided to take a nap starting around 7, and just woke up about an hour ago. Don't think I can go back to sleep, so instead I'm going to do something that I've wanted to do since I moved into my apartment. I'm going to go get a waffle and some bacon from the local Waffle House. Be jealous BJD!!!!

My new best friend....

2006-07-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday evening, I'm sitting on the couch planning my activities for the evening (i.e. getting Big'J a card, which then led to a barrel of monkeys.....the MADNESS...) and my phone rings. I grab it and take a look at the caller ID and it's Big'J's cell number. Heh, wonder what's up? I answer it, "Sup J?", and hear some generic clicking. It was the kind of clicking you hear when only one side of the cell conversation is fully connected. No biggie, cell technology isn't 100%, so I hang up and wait for him to call back. After two or three minutes and no call, I dial up his number.

Two rings and Big'J answers. "You called me, beeyatch?", I say. Big'J replies, "Actually, I think it was Jacob [a.k.a. Lil'J] that called you. He was playing with my phone....I didn't think he had hit the send key, but I guess he did." That's right folks, Lil'J, who is a little bit over 1 year old, already knows my number and is calling his boy. Guess the next step is to actually get him to talk! At any rate, I'm damn proud of the midget and honored for the phone call.

Flanking the Anti-hermit....

2006-07-25T18:07:00.000-05:00

So just about the worst (or best if you're an optomist) thing has happened. I have a phone call to make in a few hours in order to tell a young lady what she and I are doing tomorrow night. I have a plan, with a few alternatives in case things change (like it rains for example). I feel that I'm about as prepared as I'll ever be and still maintain some semblance of calm. Hopefully said calm will remain for the next 36 hours (don't hold your breathe).

Tomorrow is Big'J's birthday, he turns Old - 2. We decorated his office with some crap that a lady from work bought. I have to remember to go out tonight and get him a monkey card. For his present, which won't be here until Thursday unfortunately, I picked him up 2 less than 18db blue LED case fans to replace the gaudy multi-colored ones that came default on his new PC case.

Anti-hermit action....

2006-07-20T23:59:00.000-05:00

So I call her earlier tonight, around 5:30 or 6. No answer but I get voicemail. It's the generic voicemail that the cell phone companies provide where you say your name, but everything else is in the "pleseant" female voice.............

[ side note ]
Wednesday, at the beginning of lunch, I make up some excuse as to why I haven't called her since the first time she gave me her number (actually I did call and got voice mail, left a message saying I was still out of town and wouldn't have the chance to hang out with her, then never called her since). She tells me it's ok, because she has a new phone number and that would explain why I couldn't get a hold of her. She then asks for my number at the table, dials it directly into her phone so that mine rings, and says, "there now you have my number" while I hit all the correct buttons to save said number.
[ end side note ]

.....except that during the part where I should hear her name, I instead hear a guy say "Randy" .......

Heh, must have dialed wrong.......dial again......

"Randy"..........wtf!?!?!

So I didn't leave a message, who the hell is this Randy person (I'm guessing the guy she was trading spit with)? Why does God love me so much to have this much fun with me? Do I continue to call "Randy" looking for the girl until I get a human not voice mail? I know I'm dialing the right number, I literally watched her call me and I used the exact number that came up. I even went back to the incoming phone calls list and triple checked it (hell Mayhall even called it and got the same "Randy" voice mail).

The Hermit lifestyle is looking SOOOOOO much less complicated......feel free to laugh amongst yourselves and point at the weirdo nerd freak who couldn't get a date with 2 girls that asked him to call them.......

Open the monkey cage...

2006-07-19T18:14:00.000-05:00

The last two weeks or so have been both hi and low. The low part was that my mother's birthday was a bit ago and while the actual anniversary of her death didn't really bug me, her birthday was a little rough. I didn't expect it so for the two days of "funk" leading up to her birthday, I was just an irratable jerk, then I on the actual day I spoke with my sister and she was feeling the same. It hit both of us that we were just mourning her. My sister spoke with a bereavement shrink and he said that it's common to feel these types of emotions on a birthday instead of a deathday. Strange stuff. I'm slowly making it back my normal self.

The high point (which has been helping me get back to normal) is that Monkey Boy will be making a triumphant return to B'ham. He accepted a position in our Cullman office as a java programmer. The pay is pretty stinking good in comparrison to his education and the pay most other intro-level people that I know are getting (like > $10k than what I've heard). He should be getting the paperwork from my company tomorrow and he'll do the "Monkey Boy Dance" and tell his current crappy company. It was suggested to him by a mutual friend of ours to find his father's resignation letter (his father used to work for the same company he is working for now), cross out the date and his father's name, write the correct date and his own name in crayon, and use that as his official resignation letter. In my opinion, that would be just about the best ersignation I've ever heard of.

At at Wing's today and ran into the young lady that I think I busted trading spit with some other guy. She put the pressure on pretty hardcore today for me to ask her out, but I'm not sure if I can get the image of her (or someone that looks kind of like her) trading oral fluids with some 19/20 year-old chode out of my head. Mayhall at work told me to forget about the "incident" and call her. All of this is really messing with my hermit-till-death outlook.

Starch this job and shove it....

2006-07-07T21:54:00.000-05:00

Had my first official meeting in the new department today. It was scheduled for one hour, took three and a half and I discovered that our oldest department member is just about the bitchiest and negative person I've ever had the pleasure to work with. No worries, 90% of the meeting didn't have much to do with development (we were organized and said our peace in 10 minutes). I continue to learn about the existing programs we have running (did I mention that Big'J and I have about 160 or 170 programs we have to maintain as well as write new ones?). Our product manager is going to be out pretty much until the end of the month and while he is gone, Big'J is the man in charge. I'm pretty stoked about that, very very proud of him.

Consumed the rest of the chili today, as a leftover it was still decent. It had lost some of it's spice kick but I boiled up some white potatos as a base and put the chili over them. As such the meal as a whole was mighty tasty for the amount of effort I had to expend to make it (i.e. boil water).

Hoping to get started on the PoW and the KGV tomorrow. At least get the basic priming finished. No photoetch, I'm not psychotic (yet).

If it's not quite cold, it might be chili.....

2006-07-06T20:21:00.000-05:00

Made chili tonight for the first time. Didn't try anything crazy. It wasn't to bad: 1 lb ground turkey (browned), 1 can diced tomatoes with peppers, 1/2 cup water (forgot to buy chicken stock/broth), 1 package McCormick chili seasoning. I have a long way to go in order to compete with McAlister's chili.

Had another walk, kept my time from yesterday (actually 2 seconds slower).

Modified/wrote my first MFC program today.....EVER......... I MUCH prefer C# (never though I would say that) or old school Win32 to MFC.

Caaashew......oops, didn't mean to sneeze....

2006-07-05T20:23:00.000-05:00

Works going well. I feel more confident about what I'm doing everyday. I started a new project today and made a lot more progress than I thought I would. Should be able to finish it up by Friday. Big'j has been working on this intermediary program that is supposed to provide a consistent UI for our customers and allow us to develop plugins to convert certain types of data. He's been tweaking it for a few months now, and I'm hoping to get to use it soon (if for no other reason than to give him some uninvested feadback for it). As of now though, for each project I have to start from psuedo-scratch so things take a little longer than I would like.

I say psuedo-scratch because I'm being mildly smart with my development. I'm trying to keep my projects as modular as I can while short development time is still priority. So far it seems to be working in my favor as I now have a UI template that is pretty much set to go from the start and a few output templates that I can just kinda drop in my new projects. These two particular pieces allowed me to bring together a product that is about 60% complete, in about 4 hours. Compared to my first project which took about 12 hours to get to the same spot.

The holiday weekend was great. Had the chance to hangout with a few peeps, have a few beers (responsibly of course), had two excellent meals (the Blu Bistro and Robin cooked delicious steaks), had the chance to play through Blazing Angels on Daryl's XBox 360 (I enjoyed it, but I don't think I'd be able to play through it again), picked up my inherited firearms, and had a safe return drive to B'ham. Tuesday I was supposed to go hang with Big'J's family but I was restricted to a limited deployment area centralized to the biological waste evacuation facility so I missed it. He said he had a great time (though it was extremely hot) and he looked tired as all get out today at work.

Took my walk Tuesday at around 4ish, which was a mistake. It's amazing how the ambient heat can drain a person (especially a person with a high mass). I was so tired after my walk that I pretty much just passed out straight on the floor (which was not comfortable). Today I went at a more reasonable time and cut an entire minute off my last week 1/2 mile average. Made it down to 10:47 (estimate a 2.78 mph speed) per 1/2 mile, which I'm pretty happy about. Hope to keep that same time (or close to it) the rest of the week.

I experimented with some spaghetti sauce last night.

1 jar Mushroom and Pepper sauce
1 lb ground turkey (browned with some mild seasoning)
1 tablespoon thyme (double if fresh)
1 tablespoon parsley (double if fresh)
1 cup Cashews
Souther Flavor spice to taste
1/2 box noodels

Don't know what exactly possessed me to throw cashews in the sauce...maybe because I was snacking on some while cooking. It turned out pretty good, the nutty flavor sat well with the turkey and sauce, imo.

I also picked up some materials to make chili. Don't think I'm going to throw cashews in it though. I'm just going to try for a plain-jane chili since I've never made it before. Sort of create a base line for further experimentation. I harbor NO hopes of ever taking on Gene and his Slap Your Momma chili team, though.

Get your walk on.....

2006-06-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

Work has been steady if not more towards busy the past week. It's so strange to actually have a job that I constantly have to work at. I've been spoiled the past six years. Being a professor was never this much constant work (though many would argue if it was work at all, but take my word for it, being a good teacher IS a lot harder than you think) and the last year at my other position (upstairs) never challeneged me this much. I'm finding that the current job is providing a great balance between the grunt work of development and the creative work. Once I master a particular system (file format, database, index record file format, whatever) there's usually another one on the horizon that I need to tackle. And in the rare times that there is not another to tackle right away, I get to spend some time improving on the things that I just wasn't quite smart enough to do right the first time.

I pretty much finished up the SMS Rodney this week. All the major painting is done, though there's a few spots that could use a little more love. I haven't attached the main super strucutre yet because as soon as I do, it won't fit in it's box anymore. I'm debating on which to start on next. I'm thinking either the Prince of Wales or the King George V (they are both very similar).

Big'J and I picked up a new game this week. It's called Titan Quest, and if you liked Diablo II you'll probably like it to. There are a few things that are missing, the two major ones at the moment are the stash and the closed battle'net style games. The multiplayer is strictly open (i.e. your character is stored on your HD so one can cheat if one chooses too), so there's not quite the total feel of what I would consider true multiplayer for this style game in our current age. One of the things I really do like about it though is the setting, Ancient Greece, Egypt and China. It's not a ful historically accurate interpretation, but you do get the feel of the time period. Monkey Boy also picked it up and plans to host our MP games.

Speaking of Monkey Boy, I was told by a little birdie that the Product Manager of the department MOnkey Boy interviewed for is supposed to be calling said Monkey with a job offer. I don't know if it will be the position here in B'ham or in the Cullman office, nor do I know if the job offer would be considered sufficient for the move. I'm just excited that there is a chance Moneky Boy will move to within an hour or so of me. Strange how life works out.

I never called the waitress who's number I acquired last week. I had made preliminary plans with her (i.e. let's go out Monday, I'll call you Friday with specifics) and then later that day, I busted her trading oral fluids with some guy. Needless to say I wasn't overly thrilled about the situtaion and just decided to not bother calling. Life is messed up sometimes.

I started walking this week. Yes, actually on purpose. I've been telling myself that I need to be more active because I come home from work (where I pretty much sit in a chair all day) and then sit around the house. I'm not ready for a marathon yet, but I've been walking about 1 mile every evening. It's not much, but 1 mile is better than me sitting on my fat butt. Right now I'm walking at about 2.5 mph and I make it back to the appartment sweating like a pig and breathing slightly hard. My short term goal is to get my speed up to at least 3 mph if not 3.5 and then start working towards 2 miles. I could probably make 1.5 miles now, but I'd never make it up the 1.5 flights of stairs into my apartment when I'm done.

Ok, time to log some Titan Quest!

Super fly pimptastic.....

2006-06-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

Week recap: Crazy at work, but I'm off the support calls and on to development. Crazy girl called me Thursday night late and wanted to hang out (no hanky panky). Tuesday night, went out for drinks as a pseudo-bachelor party, was almost vomitted on. Thursday at lunch, got a chic's phone number. Saturday night went to the Askew's wedding (was very nice), found out the woman I'm in love with is single, got drunk enough to ask her to dance (4 times btw) and then asked her out, she said yes, we'll see if she was to drunk to remember.

Tuesday night, we brought Askew out to the local Wing's to have a few beers and some dinner in order to celebrate his upcoming wedding (Sat.). Him being the groom a few of us egg him along to drinking to much and he ends up vomitting at the table (not so much gross at the time, but utter hilarious). At the time I was sitting right next to him and was about to sign my check. When he blew, it refilled his 25 oz beer mug and then overflow (streaming style) onto the table and cover my receipt (just barely missing my hand). Our cute waitress (who's number I got two days later btw) was in shock like the rest of us at first, then said, "I'll get you another receipt and some towels." At that point I busted out laughing. Wednesday morning at work, I drew up a PowerPoint slide of "the crime scene" and spammed most of the people in his (my old) department (Askew works with me). We had a good time with that one.

Plum tired....

2006-06-17T20:44:00.000-05:00

Week recap: Got pissed off at work, realized that I'd rather be pissed off than pissed on (i.e. rather be mad in current dept. than happy in the last), had dinner with a female (granted she's a freakin lunatic), had the chance to hang out with a buddy I don't get to see enough (Monkey Boy), had a chance to hit the hobby store (bought spray paints mostly), and spent a little over half a day with one of my "brothers" and the closest thing to a child I'll ever have. So over all, I'm ahead of the curve I think.

Monkey Boy Morton drove, yes I said drove, from the Orlando area to B'ham on Thursday. Took him most of the day. He made it to my place around 4:15 or 4:30. We went to outback and had some 22oz beers. He had a chance to go visit another friend of his who lives up here. Friday was the big day, he had two inteviews which both went well according to both the interviewee and the interviewers. We just have to wait and see what they can offer him. I have a feeling he'll get an offer to work with the developers (don't know if he'll actually be a developer or not) which means he'll end up living in Gardendale. Not my personal favorite outcome, but if the money and the job is better, then I can't blame a monkey for doing what's right for him. He left this morning and made it safely back to the Orlando area.

Went over to Big'J's place and helped him to slay some chaotic evil plums with my paring knife +2, +5 vs. fruit. It's the time of year for him to start the wine making process. We pitted about 30ish pounds of plums which should make about 10 gallons of wine in about a year (maybe a little less). I have to say, I really enjoyed my day. It was great to see Lil'J. He has such a great "happy baby" aura around him. He didn't even cry when I came to near him, though I didn't dare try to hold him. His birthday is coming up, July 9th. I never thought I would be trying to find a b-day gift for a 1 year old. It was also great to sit and just kinda talk "life" with Big'J. We sat on his back deck pitting the plums and just talked about things on our minds; how great is was to see Monkey Boy, houses, Monkey Boy's wedding, Askew's (my neighbor) wedding, family (both living and dead), the yard, just about whatever came into our heads. It has been a long while since he and I have had the chance to kind of "bond" as it were.

As I write this, I realize how much he and his family mean to me, and how lucky I am to call them my friends/family (and Rich and Laura, Doug and Casey/KC, Dwyer and Tammy, Kenny, the other Casey/KC, Pat, Dewitt, Big John, Espen and Julie, Brian, the other Brian, the Fentons, just to name a few). Crap, I think I'm getting all emotional. However, I'm coming to the point in my life where, though I love my father dearly, family is no longer about blood. It's about those people I look to with great respect. People who enrich my life day after day. People that no matter how senile or sad I may get, are there to help put a smile back on my face and warmth in my heart. People who I don't say thank you to enough but still go the extra mile and say, "Hey, it's nothing. Don't worry about it." Just in case I haven't told you lately, thanks and I love ya'll.

Tomorrow, I'm going to drive up to Gadsden, AL to visist my father for Farther's Day. I'm not really stoked about having to drive to some odd city just to visit my father. I think I might even be a little bitter about it, considering he has as of yet to visit me here in B'ham even though he's been with 3 miles of me at least 6 times in the past year. But it's Father's Day, and it just wouldn't be right for me not to go see him. Besides, it'll cost me a lot less in gas money to see him an hour away instead of 5 ;)

Painting/Modeling this week has been pretty much at a standstill. My evenings have been pretty much taken up with www.TitanQuest.com on Mon, the Aksew's on Tues (Mike said he really liked the deck coloring on the SMS Hornet btw), dinner with very pretty lunatic girl on Wed, and Monkey Boy Thurs and Fri. I'm looking over at the SMS Rodney right now and thinking I need to get it done soon.

With forces that can span the globe....

2006-06-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

I hate to say it, but I have the distinct feeling that posts are going to be a little fewer and farther between than usual (if possible) due to the extended amount of brain power I have to spend at work now. The new job is not, as of yet, as exciting as I had hoped. The grass is always greener. However, I do find it much more fulfilling on a bad day than my old position on a good day. So, I can't and won't complain (yet). Congrats to BJD, by the way!

There was another person (Jason - no relation to Big'J/ Lil'J, or BJD) from my old department that was interviewing with my new department at the same time. Before all my stuff was straightened out, Jason had negotiated his price and everyone involved had agreed upon the terms. Thus, Jason was all set to move. Two weeks ago, during my announcement to the dept. that I was leaving, Jason also had to make his announcement. Last week, however, the world almost turned upside down.

Jason was thrilled for his new job for several reasons. The main reason in relevance to this story is that he was getting an $8k salary increase. He had asked for a specific amount, let's call it K, and the hiring manager came back with K+c where c>2,000. Needless to say Jason was beyond words. Now I don't have the best business sense, but my pappy always said, "Drinking beer is good for you." Which, when translated really means "If it's too good to be true, then you're stupid." Or something like that ;). So last week the hiring manager discovers he made an error (go figure) and tells Jason that there is no way in hell that agreed upon salary can be met.

In the end they came to a new agreement, but the interim was sort of scary. I couldn't imagine what I would do if I had already pissed off my old job, quit my second job (b/c I'm going to make so much more at the new job), and then suddenly found myself in a position not to have any job. The practical side of me says that Jason was dumb. I mean come on, no manager in his/her right mind would ever offer more than you asked (extreme circumstances not withstanding). He should have known that something was amiss. The whole dynamic of managers vs. employees during hiring is the entire tradeoff between skill and desire on the employee's side counterbalanced by lowest cost and need to fill the position on the manager's side. It's a generalization, but I think it's still close enough to the truth to lend some guidance in the future.

On another work related note, "Monkey Boy" Morton will be visiting B'ham this Thursday through Saturday. He has been asked to make an appearance on the premises to an in person interview. I am most excited by this turn of events. I do hope my company and Monkey Boy can come to a mutually aggreeable arrangement.

The Skrubbtilla continues to grow. Along with the SMS Hood, a British E-class destroyer (unnamed until her sea trials are complete), and the SMS Hornet (Tamiya USS Hornet CV-8) now plow the waves. I'm actually very happy with the way the Hornet turned out. Her waterline dazzle along with her bridge dazzle really look nice. With the addition of the aircraft carrier (Hornet) my lethal forces of plastic can reach anywhere in the world! Fear my awe inspiring military power!!! The Rodney is up next at the shipyard, and has already received one coat of paint (though she'll need more).

I'm retiring bitches......

2006-06-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

Two days on the new job and I must say that I'm still tickled pink about it. First day wasn't much in the morning (i.e. set up laptop and desk area mostly), though I worked a little on the 10k project. One of my co-workers was trying to talk my boss into buying me Copper Grille for lunch (supposed to be expensive, Big'J took his wife there for their anniversary), but no love. However, after lunch Big'J gave me a project, code named Sausage. The rest of the afternoon I spent poking around the data for project Sausage just to get a feel of what I was supposed to do.

Today, I went in early (30 min.) to get a jump start on the project and I ended up building the entire conversion tool by 4:30ish. Go me! I told Big'J, "That's it. I'm retiring on top!" I have a feeling he doesn't believe me. While I'm not totally slammed at the new job now, I have almost no time to surf the web or post.

Kyra's computer is done and out of the house (damn thing tied up my Internet connection for 2 days d/l windows update). Glad to get rid of that PoS. Apparently, handing the PC back to her doesn't get me off the punishment list. She insists on taking me to Macaroni Grill tomorrow night.

The SMS Hornett has as of yet to be completed. I am close to finishing one of the E-class destroyers. I did some research on 700th scale WWII planes and found 2 sets for the Japanese (one "early" war and one "late") and one set for the U.S. They run about $3 to $4 online so I'm probablly going to pick a few boxes of each up while BJD works on the rules for "BJD Pacific" (get to work you f'n slacker!!!).

I did find time to initiate "the chair" to it's new home. Dear Lord of Chair, it's comfy. I spent about 1.5 hours on the porch readying a book in the chair today. If it had wheels on it, I would bring it to work as my work chair.....hey, thats an idea.......wheels.......mmmmmmmmmm.......

Buh Bye Beyotches......

2006-06-01T19:15:00.000-05:00

Buh Bye old job! Hello Crawfish and Ribs!! Today was my last day in the office working for bosses B & bosses D. Unsurprisingly all hell broke loose (and boss B just left around 10am, no PTO, no informing us, just left). The R&D dept. for my (old) product made the decision that for their 2006 release they would upgrade their database to MS SQL 2000. This might seem like a good idea, especially considering we were using Foxpro. However, what the geniuses thought was unimportant was actuall training for their developers and support staff on MS SQL 2000. But who cares if we have no clue how to do anything with the new system. Let's go ahead and install it on 9 different live environments for customers.

Well yesterday a customer called and said something is wrong. We dial in and find this 130 GIGABYTE ldf file. None of us has any idea what it is, so people start freaking out and calling other departments, the library, domino's pizza, and the Geek Squad all trying to figure out what this file is. Apparently these super brainiacs can't use google. So I get there, load up google, 20 seconds later I know what it is, why it's so large, and what we need to do to fix it. Now because the customer's HD is only 140 GB, we don't have enough space to do what we need to do. So they degrade our software from the 2k6 version to the 2k5 version (takes about 1 hour) then upgrade them back to 2k6 (4 hours). Had we caught this issue earlier (i.e. when we had sufficienty HD space), the degrade then upgrade could have been avoided.

Now I tell all three of my bosses that we are going to have problems with this particular feature, so it might be a good idea to go ahead and contact our other customers to fix the issue before it gets out of control. Did they listen? Do they ever? So 4pm rolls around, I start packing up my stuff to move, and all 8 remaining banks call just about at the same time and guess what? The transaction log files for SQL server are over 125 GB each, their systems are freaking out, and the only way we can fix it at this point is the degrade then upgrade option (5+ hours * 8 customers = 40 hours of work that we could have avoided if they could only have made a damn decision). Morons! Thank the Geeks that I'm out of there.

The SMS (SkrubbMS....get it? instead of HMS? gah!!!) Hood is complete. I finished her up last night around 7:30 then promptly fell asleep and didn't have a chance to post. I think she looks pretty nice, though nowhere near perfect. Having finished this prelim project, I have decided that while photoetched stuff looks awesome, I will NOT be suffering through it all again. So mad props to those people who do photoetch on the 700th scale!

My order from www.roocousa.com arrived today. The USS Hornet was apparently removed from my order (I guess she was backordered, I didn't get charged for her though so I don't really care too much) and the Scharnhorst was absent (I was charged for her though). In the Scharnhorst's place was the Tamiya Light Vessel Ordinance Set, which is not anywhere near the same thing. I called up the business, told them what happened and they said they'll mail me the right ship, BUT I have to mail them the Light Vessel Ordinance Set back. This thing cost a little over $6 to me, so I'm sure they paid like $3 or $4. What, they can't spot me a coupld bucks because they messed up? Now I have to shell out prorbably $6 to $10 bucks just to ship this stupid thing back to them. Bastages. I don't think I'll be ordering from them again (their in Miami so you can imagine what they sound like on the phone), even though they offer the models at a 35% discount. I think I'd rather pay www.TowerHobbies.com the extra few bucks to get better service.

Unsinking the HMS Hood....

2006-05-31T08:33:00.000-05:00

Apparently BJD psycicly project his insomnia to me last night. I couldn't get to sleep until 2:30. So I made good use of time for once and watched Dark Water via Starz On Demand (it wasn't that great imo) and kept working on the HMS Hood. All the life boats (that historically speaking were a waste of space since only 3 people survived her sinking), main armaments (four dual 15in. turrets), secondary armaments, and aft tower (behind the mainmast) are in place and just need some more touch-up painting. Pretty much all that is left is the mainmast, which is very delicate so I didn't want to attempt it so late at night. Looks like I'll hit my deadline of Thursday night for the finish and I might even have some time to finish up the WARMACHINE stuff.

Seeing as how I royally screwed up the paint job and the photoetching isn't all that spectacular, I ordered a second Tamiya waterline HMS Hood box (also means I get a second E-class destroyer hehe). Since I was ordering and there is a minimum purchase from the site I used (www.rocousa.com), I went ahead and added a couple of other ships to my roster; HMS Nelson (sister ship to the Rodney), Gneisenau & Scharnhorst (German battle cruisers, they jacked up some shipping until they were put out of action), and my first aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8 version I believe).

Unrelated:
I noticed in Publix the other day that Coca-Cola is cashing in on their "zero" line of products by producing Sprite Zero. Intrigued, I purchased some and discovered that I find it pretty tasty. How, the whole point I thought of the "zero" line of products was for them to be 0 calories and 0 carbs, thus effectively a diet beverage. However, I was struck by the odd site of "Diet Sprite Zero". Uh.....so you made a beverage that already had no calories and no carbs diet? Would that be anything like making a rice-cake out of a 3D render of a rice cake? WTF? I was disinclined to purchase said "diet" flavor since it appeared that the regualr Sprite Zero was sufficiently without substances.

Skrubbtilla is plowing the waves again......

2006-05-30T23:08:00.000-05:00

Given that I want to bring at least one 700th ship down to Mobile this weekend, I've had to cut my time with the WARMACHINE stuff short. Good news is I'm making progress on the HMS Hood. So far, I have the main hull painted, the deck plates on, the forecastle and both funnels assembled, painted and attached to the hull. The bad news is that the colors are all wrong. The conversion chart that Vallejo Acrylics provides to convert from the Tamiya brand was made by a five legged, three eye blinded, half-midget laprachaun dancing, hyperglycemic sugar junkie after consuming sixty seven pounds of raw suger cane. As such any "true" enthusiasts would "laugh in my general direction" if I even hinted that this was a true scale replica. I hold my head in shame.

Someone recently asked why I don't post pictures of my crappy artwork. Two reasons: One, my artwork is the suck (at least to me). Two my camera is a piece of shit. Three I'm to lazy to bother to buy a camera. 1+1 = 3

To prove # 2 from above, here is the best picture I could get with my stupid camera. Notice the amazing detail and sharp color correction....NOT!

As for the WARMACHINE stuff, I have the MoW seargent assembled and just need to finish the basics of his face and halberd. The other two MoW are assembled except for their halberds, which also need painting. The Destroyer just needs final assembly and his axe painted. Once I've finished those items, I need to hit all four models with the super-BJD-washomatic. Then glue them to a base......viola.....finished. I might get to them this week, but most likely, I'll finish them up next week.

Kyra came by tonight to borrow my Internet connection. She's been calling my freakin phone of the hook to get her PC fixed (thanks Ellis ,,,, ;) ). I finally answered it b/c I was tired of it ringing. As such I was suckered into taking a look at her PC, which is total fubar, i.e. reformat time if not hardware replace time. She has two interviews for real jobs tomorrow and wanted to research the companies, thus the use of my internet. What!?!?!?! She caught me at a weak moment!

I had a meeting with the Prod. Mng. of our Yellowhammer product today. He wanted to ask me what I knew about one P. "Monkey Boy" Morton. Told him that Monkey Boy was his prefered named and that he is the bomb diggity (I know, I'm going to hell for lieing). Here's hoping that they can give a decent offer of $$$$$ to P so he can move back up here and out of his current crappy company.

Showdown at the party corral....

2006-05-28T15:53:00.000-05:00

Rob was in town this past week. In honor of his visit, a party was thrown. I, of course, was in attendance. Good beer, great company, and excellent food......for real...I'm so there! Party started early for me. I offered to donate my tap for the keg and as such I needed/wanted to be there early (at 5pm) such that no one had to wait on me for the sweet nectar. The keg arrives, we get it loaded into it's customary spot, but when I am tasked with tapping the thing, disaster strikes.

To all visible appearances, my tap looked to be in tip top shape. Unfortunately, there was no way I could really test the internal seal, which turns out was unable to performs it's duties. So I'm in a bad spot, I'd promised a tap, it's around 6 pm, people are starting to show up for beer, and no tap. Rob and I jump in the car and go searching for a tap which we find at Vulcan Beverages near UAB. We get back, tap the keg, and all is right with the world.

The party was a blast for the most part. Beer pong was played and lots of Flip Cup was played. I was actually decent at Flip Cup to my surprise. Everything was going groovy until all of a sudden I hear shouting inside the house. Ruh roh raggy!

Apparently a young man was seen making kissy face with another man's woman. The boyfriend goes berserk, the accused flees the scene (to outside the house), and just about every other male in the house runs to either play interference with the boyfriend (vouching for the accused, that he wouldn't do that sort of thing) or provide general security. The females gather the girl in question (who is ....well...."blasted" just isn't a strong enough word to describe her state of inebriation).

So the accused is in a bad spot, because the boyfriend could most likely break most of us in half, but the boyfriend, while remaining visibly angry, keeps enough cool not to start throwing punches. Now half of the guys are inside talking with the boyfriend, I'm on door security trying to make sure everyone is separated, and the girlfriend is outside. This girl couldn't even stand up, she had two other young ladies holder her up. Since I was sort of in the middle of the conversations I was in a position to hear all sides of it.

While at first it seemed the accused was guilty of "extracurricular spit swapping", I'm pretty sure he wasn't at fault. The primary evidence I have for this is that after the incident, the girlfriend was trying to kiss/tongue just about anything that moved. The two girls holding her up, me, Rob, the lamp post, all while her boyfriend is threatening murder on a guy who, in his semi-drunken stupor, wasn't fast enough to get out of the girlfriend's tongue exploration way. What a mess.

The thing that hit me (intellectually speaking) was that, to a number of observers, it was crystal clear that the accused was a victim of a drive by slutting (i.e. the situation was clearly the girlfriend's doing and she was at fault) yet the boyfriend in his "love" for her couldn't see it. To him it appeared as if she was honestly minding her own business when this punk-playa tried to bust a move on his woman. Tis a shame, because the boyfriend seems under normal circumstances to be a really great guy.

Bottom line though, is that this incident was just another example of how we, as faultable humans, can be so blind when it comes to things close to us. We all have our faults, things we rationalize, excuses to make. Far be it for me to deny that I'm just as guilty as the rest of mankind.

Inspirationalizationalism......

2006-05-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a very (very, very) long time, I actually stayed late working on something (the "Acquire" project for my new job). Almost an entire hour. I probably would have stayed later but I was on the phone with Big'J (he worked from home today) and he told me to go home. It was weird to actually want to work again. Hope this doesn't start a trend with the new job.

Still playing with the water effects. For the fifth day in a row, I've put a layer of "goo" on my trash surfaces trying to build up some depth and play with different surface textures. Think I found one with a brush that I like.

Pat called me today to let me know he had a phone interview with someone from my company (different product than either of mine). He said it went well, though nothing technically specific. I'll probably "drop in" on the person he talked to just to get an insiders scoop.

Almost done reading the HORDES rulebook (the fluff sections). I'm getting closer to choosing a faction. Alright, getting sleepy.

Mmmmmmm...turkey is good....

2006-05-25T00:12:00.000-05:00

Life has been a mix of hectic and quiet. Erin is still here. She'll be leaving Friday afternoon. I'm glad she visited, but I'll be most pleased to get my personal space back to skrubb-normal. Doug's visit was a blast, played lots of Halo 2 co-op and had many many beers with Rich & Laura, Ellis, Rob, and Crazy Socks Shaw. Looking forward to having many more beers with the same peeps on Saturday night.

Work is pretty calm. My boss (B) and her boss (D) pretty much don't talk to me anymore. I found out that June 2 will be my last day with my product (I happened to take this day off too hehe). This piece of information, which some people would consider important, was provided to me by the guy who is pathetically trying to replace me. Weak! Tuesday at around 4pm I was jump started on a project for my new department. It's both exciting and painful. I was getting real nervous this afternoon working on it because none of it makes sense, but then I spoke with Big'J who told me not to sweat it. None of them have figured out this particular product and it is the hardest (maybe second hardest) project they've run across. I think I'm picking it up pretty fast considering I have no documentation or experience dealing with this particular type of stuff.

Paints and stuff came in on Monday. HORDES Prime has some GREAT artwork. The entire book is in color (suck on that GW!!!) and the flavor text is pretty good, not the best I've ever read, but pretty good. My paints arrived with one extra soldier (I paid for 19 but 20 arrived). To bad it's a color that I won't be using (chocolate). AS of yet, I've either been unable to paint at all in the evenings (sick, dinner with Erin, Lost, etc..) or when I do paint a little it's been on the 28 WARMACHINE pieces sitting in my paint area (Destroyer <5>, 3 MoW Shocktroopers <6>, Adraza, Severous, Vlad <2>, and Kardov). No time for boats, though I'm not in a huge rush to get back to the ships until I figure out the water stuff.

Big'J and I ate lunch at the apartment today and played with (well I played some more with) the Vallejo Water Effects. It's pretty stinking cool, though I still haven't figured out how to get the results I want and my online searches aren't helping much. The stuff has this baby blue color to it and is the consistency of room temperature butter. So far Big'J and I have just finger painted it onto scrap pieces of plastic just to see what it does. I've also been trying to texture some of it with a brush, but I honestly don't think I'm skilled enough in the fine arts to whip this stuff into shape. None the less, I should be able to make something "acceptable" though nowhere near "good".

I apologize for the dryness of this entry. I'm just not feeling like my usual (funny ?) self tonight.

Had turkey sandwiches for lunch.......

Garden of Skrubbzen

2006-05-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

I managed to survive a full day in my zen state. Bossman G also never bothered to come up to the second floor of our building. What a stooge.

In the end, though, it matters not. Around 3ish this afternoon I noticed Big J's boss walking towards the stairs. He looked at me and said, "Just keep smiling the rest of this afternoon. It's a done deal." It took another 45 minutes before my two current bosses made it around to me, but they broke the news. I'll work in my current position for another 2 or 3 weeks while training another guy to try to fill my shoes (which he can't). Then I move downstairs and work "part-time on-demand" for my current department, and the rest of the time I work for Big'J (guess I have to refer to him as boss J from now on).

The announcement is supposed to be made early next week, though apparently a few people in my department were told today (I was congratulated by someone who I didn't tell). The transition doesn't offer much in the way of monetary gain (something like 2% increase), same benefits, new management, new series of products, and no more long stretches of ultimate boredom. The main thing is I'll no longer be a Code Janitor. I'll have the chance to be a full member of the development team and from discussions I've had recently with Big'J ....... er...... boss J, I will be the lead developer on the COLD project, which represents about 60% of the department's revenue stream.

So YEAH ME and HOORAY BEER! Glad it's over with and double glad that it worked out in my favor.

God made the universe in 7 days......can my boss make a decision in 14?

2006-05-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

Job News:
Today was "supposed" to be the day. My boss's boss's boss (we'll call him G) is in town and we were "supposed" to have a sit down this afternoon. To recap: I needed to ask for my boss's (B) permission to apply for a different position within the same company. The position is in Big'J's department and is open immediately (err last friday actually). She's pretty useless when it comes to decisions so she dumps the decision up to her boss (D) . D in turn pretty much is a chatter so we talk. But, D is about as usefull at decision making as a seventh toe on a footless mongoose. SO he in turns bumps it up to his boss G. G wants to talk to me in person but it will be another 7 days until he gets in town (today is the 7th day).

G wasn't due in until noon, so I just sort of spent the morning in my cube focusing on attaining the Skubbith level of Super-galactic Zen-oneness (it's the level right above terracota belt). Went to lunch with Big'J and he tells me that G is going to lunch at 1 with someone else in the building. No biggie, means I won't see him until at least 2. Around 3 D sends me an IM, "I just left a message with [G]. He's pretty busy today so he might not have time to meet with us. Maybe tomorrow morning". Leave it to the beaver to give me that warm fuzzy fealing.

Therefore, I'm still stuck in freaking limbo. I'm starting to polymorph into a githzerai (MM v3.5 pg129, Programmer/Wizard 8/1 HD 12d6+12 Init -2 Spd 20ft AC 18 Base Atk +2 NG CR 6). What the heck am I going to do with pointy ears?

On the Skubbtilla (Flotilla + Skrubb = Skrubbtilla, don't confuse it with Skrubbzilla) front, I'm still on pause. Apparently my "in stock" items from the warstore were actually "back ordered". Just received notice that my shipment went out today (3 days late) and will be here on Monday. Guess I just have to keep painting my WARMACHINE stuff. I have a basecoat of terra on the destroyer, all 3 MoW Shocktroopers, Vlad, and The Butcher. Tonight I'm working on the red accents (in no way is that a communist joke).

Not weekend....but lazyend....

2006-05-14T20:48:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty lazy this weekend (thus lazyend), but did manage to do a few things here and there. Most of Sunday was spent rearranging a few things around the apartment and cleaning up a bit. Irish Erin is coming to stay for two weeks (she should be here late tonight), so I'm both nervous and excited.

In ship news I've hit a big bump. First, I brought the Skrubby Roger up to work on Friday (I went in early) and put it on the little shelf in my cube. Most people are impressed by it. I think that just shows how hobby-lame some of the people I work with are. I started working on the HMS Hood. This was the first waterline kit (Tamiya) I bought and I'm pretty impressed with the detail in it. I started putting on the photoetched railings...........dear lord grant me patience!! The photoetched parts are REALLY REALLY small, like imagine parts smaller than a human hair. Yet, the parts I've added really look nice on the ship and make it look a lot more authentic.

I finished adding the main deck railings and started to work on the main conning tower (bridge). As I finished the first (of four) levels, I decided that I needed to paint this things as I build it. The pieces above will make it really hard to paint afterwards. To my horror I discovered that the Tamiya paints SUCK. First off, they are acrylic paints that I think use an alcohol base instead of a water base (means they STINK, as in smelly). Second, they don't coat worth a crap, I found that I had to do a 2:1 paint to thinner ratio to even get close to a usable paint (means I have to mix every batch of paint, which is a total pain in the patuie). As a result, I've packed them away and put in a replacement order to The WarStore, for about 20 Vallejo equivalents (Vallejo paints are the bomb-diggity yo!). So, I'm at a stopping point with the ships until my paint arrives. ,Side note: I hate BJD! I hope you (BJD) took a few pictures of that 1/72 ship at the D-Day museum. If not, I'm going to boycott 1 rib at the next rib party as punishment!)

I did switch gears and went back to my WARMACHINE models just to keep active. I finished the two Devouts I had about 80% completed. I also did a little more work on my 2 Protectorate warcasters (Adraza and Severous). I think I'm going to switch over and start working on my three Man-o-War Shocktroopers though.

Work is still in limbo, so no news as of yet.

Avast ye lazies...

2006-05-10T19:01:00.000-05:00

Two Fridays ago, I get a call from Big'J that the other developer in his department turned in his two week notice. Big'J's boss, let's call him K, then tracks me down and says he wants me as the replacement. SWEET!!!!!!! This was the job that I was originally trying to get a year ago. The following week (Mon-Thurs actually) K is out of town so we don't get much discussed. Friday, K is back in town early so we talk business and come to terms.

My company currently has a minimum two year placement policy unless you get your manager's permission. Basically, once you take a job, you can't apply for another job in the company for 24 months without your manager's approval. As I have been here for no longer than 11 months, I kinda need my bosses permission to change jobs/departments.

Diet Dr Pepper is pretty good.

Last Friday after I talk to K, I then make the trip to my boss's boss (let's call my boss B and her boss D). I tell D that there's this position I want and that it's good for my future. He then wants to discuss "why" the position is better for me than my current. After about an hour and a half, he seems to disagree with what is good for me but says, "I'm not in the business of holding people back. So, let me think about it for a bit." I, having no other choice, say okay. As I leave his (D's) office, my boss (B) comes stolling into D's office. Within 38 seconds, the door is closed and I know what they are talking about.

"I love lamp."

So K (my hopefully new boss) wants me to start work pretty darn quick, especially given the fact that I have exactly NO WORK to do in my current job. D & B however, seem to think I'm EXTREMELY busy and am indispensable to our product. BAH! WHATEVER! Now it appears that D & B won't make a decision, they want to pass the decision up to D's boss, our general manager.

"Lost" is new tonight.

Now I (and K) have to wait for another seven days (while I do nothing but surf the net during the day) to sit down and meet with the General Manager. I've never met this guy. I wouldn't know him from Adam, as the expression goes. But somehow, suddenly I am important enough for this guy to want to sit down with me in a week's time to talk about what I want to do in the company. Let's just ignore the fact that I've already told them what I want to do.

The moral of all this (and I didn't think I would ramble on about this particular topic) is that I'm in a very crappy mood and have been drinking beer all week. Now, on to other things....

My Tower Hobbies order cam in today. 12 paints from Tamiya for the ships I already have (each at about a 40-50% discount from MSRP), 1 700th scale waterline Bismarck produced by Trumpeter, a book on German Heavy Cruisers of WW2, and a book on German Battleships of WW2. The Trumpeter kit looks decent, but seems to be inferior in quality to the Tamiya ones. I haven't had examples of each kit side by side yet, so it may just be my imagination. All I'm waiting for now my copy of Basics of Ship Modeling by Mike Ashey before I begin the frustrating task of building the "Chase of the Bismarck" ships.

I still haven't brought the Skrubby Roger to the office yet, though I want to put it in my cube (wherever it may be). I don't really want to walk in at 8 am with 30 other people looking at my like I'm a complete and utter dork walking in with this stupid ship. Best idea I've had so far is to put the thing in a box (if I can find one big enough) and bring the box in, sans stares.

The tv show Scrubs, should be renamed to Skrubbs.

Weekend ju ju.....

2006-05-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

Saturday, apparently was Laura's birthday (Happy Brithday again!). Rich called me Friday night and invited me over to celebrate. I was stoked!! So I get up after sleeping in on Sat. and decide to go looking for an outdoor chair (The Bicycle Shop in Modile has the one I want dammit) and just some general shopping.

My first stop is the Hobbytown USA in Trussville (about a 25 min drive from here). I was very impressed with this location. The store was clean and orderly (at least as far as hobby shops go), and had a very nice collection of things I was interested in: about eight 1/700 waterline ww2 ships by Tamiya, another 5 or 6 full-hull or waterline ships by Trumpeter, the Tamiya paint line (I bought some spray primer and paint thiner), and a growing collection of games workshop stuff (good to look at, but not buy). I also took a gander at their books section, but didn't find anything worth buying. BJD calls me in the middle of my visit to tell me he's also in Hobbytown, so we compare the stock of the Mobile location and the Trussville one. Pretty funny, if you ask me.

I then head back to my area of town, eat some lunch and hit Lowes, Walmart, & Home Depot looking for an acceptable chair. No luck at all three places. At around 2:30 or 3:00 I get a migraine. SUCK! I almost never get migraines. I lay down for a bit, then decide to call Rich and Laura and tell them I can't make it. After several hours of suffering I decide that I really would like to wish Laura a happy birthday in person, so I dope up on pain medication and head over to their place.

R&L's gathering was quite enjoyable (even with the headache). Brian was actually in attendance, which was a huge shocker. It was great to see him, even though he apparently is a gimp from falling off a rock or something. I stayed pretty late (Laura kept threating me not to leave, I was scared....) and had a chance to talk to Rich about my interview with his company. What I did not expect was Laura chewing me out about the interview. She was slapping me around for not calling Rich before I showed up to the interview to at least let him know it was happening (my bad) and for asking my one question (which was, "So, what exactly does InterMark do?" HA!). Funny stuff!

Sunday was pretty boring, just work on the ship (see below) and run to Publix (I needed some more tea and generic vanilla wafers). I really should have started cleaning the place up for Erin. The great Irish jewel will be staying with me while she does oen of her clinical rotations up here at UAB. Oh well, I clean this week.

Sail the high seas.....

2006-05-07T22:08:00.000-05:00

It's done. Seven days of work and more than seventy thousand four lettered words have been spent. The picture above was taken with my camera phone to it's really crappy. The good part is that because the pic is crappy, you can't see how completely untalented I am at building models.

I told myself that I was going to do any rigging, but four of the sails didn't have supports and required attaching to the rigging. As such, I needed a little bit of rigging at least, which in turn became more rigging and before I knew it, I needed to add more just to balance things out. The rigging is NOT accurate in regards to real ships, but I think the pattern looks kinda neat and sort of "simulates" real rigging.

The lower hull is a darkish borwn to represent aged wood, while the main hull is black (it's a pirate ship, why would it be all bright and shiney?). You can't see in the pucture the gold details on the captain's cabin or the bow. The sails were painted with Light Parchment acrylic paint (Americana brand) which I discovered at the art store Michael's. I really like the color on the sails. It reminds me of slightly aged canvas.

I guess the model isn't truly finished, as I need to find a permanent mounting and add the pirate flag on the stern flag stand. But the major pain work is complete, so I'm going to call her done.

It's a floater....

2006-05-04T16:50:00.000-05:00

Phew.....the hull is together. That sucked, there was so much surface area that had to be held together while trying to maintain slight curves on multiple surfaces. Thanks go to the man/men/women that invented rubber bands. I spent the rest of the night working on the little parts that are mounted to the very front of the ship and remounting some of the things I broke when putting the hull together (6 or so cannons).

Tonight should be more work on the outter pieces of the ship like the cannon doors, ladders, bulkheads, etc. I'm also going to start prepping the masts though those might have to wait for tomorrow night, as I want to get some detail painting down on the main body before all the sails get in the way.

My British 1/700 fleet arrived today: HMS Prince of Wales, HMS King George V, and the HMS Rodney. The Prinz Eugen also arrived. These ships look really nice, so lets hope I don't screw them up.

Life-long sorority...

2006-05-03T18:06:00.000-05:00

I reached my goal and then some on the ship last night. I added several coats to all the upper decking items and they have been secured in place. Tee gun deck and the upper deck have been attached to each other (I even managed to get the curve of the decking right). The outer hull was given 2 coats of brown over the white giving the ship a wood like color below the waterline. I also added a second coat of black to the sections above the waterline. While most of this was drying from paint or glue, I started working on some of the subassemblies that will be placed around the ship (like the 2 little boats that are stored away on the deck, the anchors, the rudder, etc.). Most of these items where given a basecoat (or 2 of white as well).

Tonight I should get the decking and the hull assembled (I made sure to get some rubber bands from work today to help holder everything together while it dries).

I would have made more progress, but I went out to Zapata's (a south mexican style restaurant) to have "dinner" with by neighbor Sara and her fiance (dinner turned out to be 2 beers). On arrival I notice there is an additional person at the table. I think, "cool, I get to meet somebody new and make fun of them". So I am introduced to Tessa. Apparently Tessa and Sara were in a sorority together and are now thicker than thieves, as it were.

Tessa has a nasty Southern accent, imagine someone who grew up in the deep woods of AL and you might get close, and I'm pretty much put on my guard right there. Girls with Southern accent's can easily be upgraded to snooty beyatches. But I get ahead of myself......so, I try to be polite and kinda sit back and enjoy my beer. Sara is apparently on the verge of a breakdown (all tearing up) because there's some other girl at her work that "hates" her. Of course, Tessa agrees that this other girl at Sara's work is an evil bigot whore.

So after about 45 minutes of the screech fest, the fiance and I try to politely inform these two girls that life is just unfair. Merry Christmas, it sucks. You don't have to give people a reason to be nasty or hateful. Dear lord what a mistake that was. Sara pretty much tears up and starts to go on and on how she can't get over the fact that someone doesn't like her. "OMG, like how could someone, like not like me??!?! I'm, like, the nicest person!" GTFU!!!!!!!! (its like STFU but grow not shut)

Then Tessa chimes in how she can't believe it and it wasn't like this in the sorority.............................this would be the point in the evening where I just about pull a Terry Tate Office Linebacker move. WTF do you mean, "It wasn't like this in the sorority?" Dear lord of the mighty cheeto! This is followed up by me commenting on how these two girls just aren't very prepared for the real world. To which BOTH of them respond, "We were in [insert sorority letters here]! It did prepare us for the real world!"

My response: "I'd like to call in the parents police and have your parents hauled away for improper use of a prophylactic with intent to damage the future intellectual capacity of the human species!"

Say it!!!! Say it!!!!

2006-05-02T17:59:00.000-05:00

I spent 3+ hours running around town last night. Have I mentioned how much I REALLY don't like the hobby stores in this country? So I visited 1 Hobbytown, 2 Michael's, and 2 Hobby Lobby (which isn't very hobby and would make a stupid lobby). I ended up with some basic acrylic paints, a set of new golden nylon brushes, and a 1/700 waterline pair of ships (HMS Hood and a E class Escort).

So back to the Jolly Roger.......touched up the paint on the lower/gun deck, applied the basecoat color to the pieces for the upper deck, gave the hull 2 coats of white below the waterline and 1 coat of black above, and managed to get about half of the upper deck pieces in place. All of this while watching the Last of the Mohicans on HBO (great movie).

Today at work I've pretty much spent my free time researching the sinking of the Bismarck (german battleship), specifically looking for the major ships involved. I found the Prinz Eugen, Prince of Wales, Rodney, and King George V in the 1/700 waterline format (all by Tamiya), but can't freaking find the payoff. What the hell? How you going to make all the other ships and not make the FREAKING BISMARK!!!?!?!?!? What's the point? It would be like making a PBJ sandwich without the stupid sandwich...all you have is the PBJ (which is tasty mind you but hard to eat from a sandwich bag........don't ask).

Looks like there is one plastic kit out there for the Bismarck in the right scale that "says" it can be assembled in either full hull or waterline (by Trumpeter). Looks like Tower Hobbies has it for less than $20 too.....goodie!! I also spent a few bucks on a photo-etch thingie. I've never heard of these (I'm sure BJD and the crew know all about it, but I don't...yet), but supposedly they are supposed to be extras for the model ships that make it look more accurate and bring out the detail.

The photo-etch thing I found was from Gold Metal Models and is for the HMS Hood, King George V, and the Rodney. I'm thinking this might be over kill for me, because I'm not so concerned so much with the physical/historical accuracy of the models and there's a lot of things on this sprue that I don't have a clue about (like which of the radar antennas I'm supposed to use). Anyway, it was only $18 and it goes with 3 of the ships I plan on getting.

So back to the Jolly Roger, tonight I'm hoping to finish out the upper deck pieces and get the gun deck and upper deck glued together. I'd also like to get some brown below the waterline on the hull too.

Yarrrrrrrrrrr........rrrrrrr.......

2006-05-01T18:54:00.000-05:00

After sitting in painful silence as BJD constructs another group of finely detailed models, followed by a 4 hour drive home, I somehow decided to not be a utter jerkoff and just be a total jerkoff. Last night I began the construction of the Jolly Roger (by Lindberg).

I'm not so sure about the final rigging, the stupid instructions aren't very clear and I'm not the brightest on "real" ships, but at any rate I started the damn thing. I have no idea the what scale the thing is in and I really don't care that much. I don't plan to keep it for long once I'm done (it only cost me like $6). I am however hoping that it will inspire me to move on to some more interesting things (like 1/700 scale waterline WWII ships).

After one night of watching 2 episodes of Entourage, 1 new Sopranos, and 1 new Big Love, I had all 30 guns painted and assembled, the lower decking was cleaned and the supports were in place, and then the guns put in place. If nothing else, at this stage all those cannons pointed out look pretty impressive.

Tonight I'll gather the upper decking pieces (which are more varied than the lower), get them painted, and hopefully started assembly. Of course, all of this after I go to a couple hobby shops (of which most SUCK THE BIG ONE he in B'ham) and get some bulk acrylic paints (black, white, brown), some larger brushes, and some more stupid freaking glue. Why the hell would you put a viscous material that melts plastic and bonds the melted pieces together inside a PLASTIC FREAKIN container!?!?!? Do you enjoy having the damn bottom fuse shut after two uses!??!?!?! JERKS!

Thank you Easter Bunny....BOCK BOCK....

2006-04-15T13:02:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Easter!

I'm going to go find one of those hollow chocolate bunnies and maul it.....no two options allowed.

How dost the Lord smite me...

2006-04-10T18:33:00.000-05:00

Friday night we had this real big nasty storm up here in the B'ham. People were freaking out! Schools let out at 1 pm and a number of businesses (including mine) let their employees go at 12:45. If you were from the coast, you would swear that a cat 4 hurricane was about to hit.

Of course this storm was a puss in my area. I know it was nasty up in TN and even some of the area north of B'ham saw some tornadoes. But here, it was pretty calm. I had, however, in my paranoid state unplugged my entertainment center and all my PCs. Thank the Lord that I'm paranoid.

Saturday morning, I wake up and go to check email. Turn the UPS back on..........POP.....smoke......uh oh........mmmm.....ozone smells goooooooood....... So a trip to Best Buy is in order. Run up to BB purchase a new UPS, get home, power back up, sweet! Hit gmail.....no ip.....a network cable could be unplugged......nope......why doesn't my router have blinking lights on it? Son of a biscuit maker!!!!! I didn't unplug my router (though it was on a power strip). Odd. So I replace the router with a spare I have and still no Internet. PC connects to router fine, but router to cable modem is a no go. Dog doo!!!

Of course I don't know the number for Charter (I'd generally just look it up on the Internet, doh!). Soooo....I survive the weekend without Internet. I get the number while at work and prepare to make the dreaded call. Hey....why don't I get a dial tone.......mother mary of oranges!!!! The stupid phone is jacked up to.....there goes my new cordless with answering machine......piece of crap! So I get my 30 cent spare corded phone and plug it up. Thankfully it works.

Dear God do I hate talking to tech support. HELLO!!!!! I'M NOT STUPID!!!!! So after reseting the modem 12 (no lie) times, rebooting 5 times, and trying 8 different cables I get the tech to admit that the modem is fubar. 57 minutes on the phone for the tech to tell me something I knew 3 days ago. Bastages!

So guess I have a trip to Charter coming this week. As well as another trip to Best Buy for a new cordless phone and a replacement Linksys router.

If you are wondering how I wrote this (good catch). I got sneaky and borrowed a USB cable to hook my laptop up to the modem. Appears the RJ-45 jack is bombed but the rest works fine.

Ah.....the great adventures of life! Even with all that I can't be in a bad mood. I'll post on the "good" event later....stay tuned!

Flushing B.E.S.T.

2006-03-31T15:27:00.000-06:00

So, BEST in Mobile is over. I can finally put the continuing problems of Azalea City behind me. A lot of my friends came to help out and to them I say "Thank you, you did a great job!" But now that I am no longer obligated in any way to deal with it (or more specifically a certain group of individuals) I have this great sense of freedom.

The drama of ACB, however, is far from over. There is officially a new hub director (which is good), but some key personnel are missing (primarily a technical director). While the local university has not been completely removed from the picture, it should participate at a much reduced level. There is the possibility that another department at the university might step up and support the program, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Money is going to be a problem for ACB. I seriously doubt the new director will be able to collect any funds that remain from the previous years (guess the university can buy more legos). The new director did make some good contact with Mudbrick Media, Degussa, Gulf Power, Alabama Power, and a few other companies. Let's just hope that plays out well.

Speaking of money, the ex-ex-director (he quit twice in writing), within 48 hours of the event, sent an email asking why he did not get the checks for the electronic kits that were purchased by the schools. Apparently he thinks he still gets to call the shots or that the new director is too timid to remove the university's involvement. To him I say, "Go ahead.....push her buttons. I DARE YOU, YOU RETARDED BASTARD!"

So, again I say thank you to all the people who gave of their time and money to make BEST happen. May your generosity be returned to you ten-fold. May your children grow and have the educational opportunities we never had. May you never end up smelling like three day old taco bell chili cheese burritos left in direct sunlight inside a burned out yugo parked on a mound of human feces.

See...I'm evil...for real....

2006-03-19T14:55:00.000-06:00

So I found some dumb little blog thingies and was REALLY bored so here are a few of my results for your enjoyment.

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous

People will stop and watch you when you appear

Even though you're capable of random violence

You are best known for: your power

Your dominant state: performing

What Type of Weather Are You?

You Are 76% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care.

Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

You Are Mr. Burns

Okay, so you're evil...

You have big plans to rule the world, and you'll destroy it in the process if necessary!

You will be remembered for: the exploitation of the masses

Life philosophy: "One dollar for eternal happiness? I'd be happier with the dollar."

The Simpsons Personality Test

You Are The Godfather Ice Cream

Someone crosses you, and they'll end up with a scoop of this in their bed

What Flavor Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Are You?

Triple Word Score.....

2006-03-12T11:07:00.000-06:00

Phew.....I'm pooped. This weekend heralded the "Because Christian said so" party. Friends (BJD, Porter, & Casey) from Mobile came up and a good time was had by all. The primary source of inebriation was two kegs of Yuengling (we floated the first one Friday night). I was very impressed with the quality of said brew, for I had never experience the beery goodness of this brand before.

The house we were parting at was amazing, the kitchen was huge in comparison to most kitchen's I've seen. The back deck was pretty nice too. Saturday night it was a little cooler outside and a slight breeze picked up. Twas very nice.

Some pretty big events occurred all weekend at said party. First, their was a Big'J sighting. I was able to take him with us the first night and get him to drink some beer (Objective #1). I think we might have freaked him out a bit though. Within five minutes of arriving someone shouted at him across the room, "You're last name is <>". Apparently, Big'J's 7th grade teacher's daughter was at the party and remembered him. We also discovered that our hostess is the B'ham area President (?) of Big'J's wife's sorority. So he was grilled about that too. Pretty amazing.

Second, Kyra AND Erin came out with us on Saturday night. Originally Erin was supposed to be studying for her realtors license and wouldn't come, so we figured Kyra would bail too. Fate denied the "supposed to's" and both came (Objective #2). They seemed to have a good time and we even talked them into going to Shoney's with us for breakfast the next morning (Bonus Objective).

Brian somehow defied his inner nature and made it as well (Objective # 3). I actually lost money because he appeared (I had bet he wouldn't.....I owe somebody a coke now). Strangely enough he eventually talked his roommate/friend Jeremy to show up with girlfriend (Bonus Objective). It was great to see them, and Brian (with a little coaxing from me) collected a young ladies phone number (Double Bonus Objective with Triple Word Score).

So to recap:

BJD, Porter, & Casey in B'ham - 1 Victory P (VP)

Big'J out and about - 4 VP

Kyra out and about - 2 VP

Erin out and about - 5 VP

Brian out and about - 5 VP

Jeremy appearing - 3 VP

Brian getting the digits of a model that yields victory points - 3 VP

Having all three of my best friends in one place at the same time - 3 VP

Having everyone meet Rich and Laura - 8 VP

Being asked by Kyra and Erin to not be a stranger and hang out more - 3 VP

Getting to see Rich and Laura (and their home) - 2 VP

Eating Shoney's breakfast - 1 VP

Total Victory Points scored for this battle: 40 VP

Any way you look at it, that's a battle won!

Friends of the Ham....

2006-03-01T10:56:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a great friend's/acquaintance's day here in B'ham. I received an IM yesterday from one of the guys who works in my department asking me what apartment complex I lived in. No big deal, I think t myself, so I tell him. His response was "Excellent! My fiance is moving in there tomorrow. It will be nice knowing that there is someone close by."

Now my first response (and probably yours) to this type of statement would generally be something along the lines of "sucker.....", but I couldn't bring myself to crush his enthusiasm. The amazing thing (at least to me) is that her/their apartment is in my building one floor down and one apartment over. So it appears that I will have them as a neighbor (I know....someone should call them and tell them how dumb they were to move next to me).

Another amazing event happened yesterday as well. When I made it home I found a brand new fresh and shiny copy of PC Gamer (with a decent little article on Warhammer Online by Mythic), so I sit down and begin to read (ok, ok....I just look at the pictures). Somewhere around 6ish my phone rings and of all surprises it's Kyra on the phone. I figured I accidentlly mauled her favorite pet or something and I would never hear from her again. Miracles happen every day ;). At any rate, she wanted to someone to go with her to The Cheesecake Factory. Not being the type to ever pass up good food, I of course volunteered (I had the Chicken Picatta and the Dutch Apple Caramel Streusel cheesecake, both very tasty).

Heh.....I'm a social whirlwind! Ok....not really....but a guy can dream, can't he?

New day, fresh goodbyes....

2006-03-01T01:31:00.000-06:00

The past month has been kinda crazy. This coming weekend will be the first weekend in five weeks that I've been able to just hang around the apartment and chill. Five weeks ago was Cat and Carson's wedding in Atlanta, four weeks Dwyer came up and we went to Newnon (right outside Atlanta), three weeks ago was Azalea City BEST's kickoff in Mobile, two weeks ago (was my fault) I took a mini vacation to Mobile for a little WARMACHINE and Mardi Gras action, this past weekend I was in Mobile for Dwyer and Cat. Phew....it will be good to sleep in late in my own bed. Though I have to say, looking back over the past month or so, I've had a great time when the time was supposed to be great (ex. watching Dewitt fall out of a chair) and exceeded all obligations with gusto (ex. I didn't punch my old boss straight in the face at BEST kickoff).

One big highlight from the past two Mobile trips was experiencing the culinary delight of the Blu Bistro (at the corner of Bit & Spur and Old Shell). Two Fridays ago BJD treated me to lunch there where I had the shrimp pasta and discovered that I am pretty much an apostle (def: an ardent supporter) of this restaurant. This past weekend we went for dinner and had gumbo, veal, and creme brulee (wow was my tummy happy!). Now don't expect to pay McDonald's prices, because this isn't the type of place you can get by just ordering bread and water. However, for a treat yourself special type of event, a romantic event with a loved one (please, no pets), or a special treat for a family member, Blu Bistro is worth every red cent, you commie!

Don't forget to tip your waiter/waitress...

Mirrormask...

2006-02-15T16:35:00.000-06:00

I have to say I'm quite lucky in that I have the hardware available to have a movie running while I code away here at work. My laptop has a DVD drive and I have an external monitor so I run VStudio (C# projects mostly as of late) on the external monitor and the move on the laptop LCD. Pop in some headphones and I can work and watch at the same time.

My boss seems ok with it, since I'm never really idle for more than a few minutes at a time and I don't tend to let the movie take over my work. As of late it has been slow (I would like to think Skinner and I have fixed 90% of the major PC bugs), so nothing I'm working on has anything beyond the lowest priority. As such, I tend to have a movie (or two) playing during the day.

Also, there is a coworker who moonlights as a movie rental employee just so he can get free rentals and DVDs a week before the new movies are released on the market. So he "rents" the movies from work and brings them up here when he's done but before he returns them. I grab one or two and watch them during the day. It's a pretty awesome situation. He also takes request for obscure movies or oldies if his rental store has a copy.

So the point of all this, besides to say that being a code janitor can sometimes be slow and I get to watch movies I didn't see in theaters or own already, is that I had a chance to watch the movie Mirromask. I was told that if I liked the 1986 movie Labyrinth with David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly, I would find Mirrormask enjoyable. While the story itself was nothing special, the old "child comes of age" bit, the visual style was very unique and artistic in my opinion. It definitely shows the Jim Henson flare (did I mention the movie was a Henson production?). At any rate, I enjoyed watching the film and seeing the world in presented. I don't expect it to be nominated for Film of the Year or anything it would be nice to see a nomination in the Best Art Direction or maybe an honorable mention. I also thought the soundtrack fit well with the visual style. All in all, for the price I paid to see it, I think I can easily say it was WELL worth the price of admission.

Celebrating a friend.....

2006-02-09T20:18:00.000-06:00

I find it strange how much the weather seems (if not actually is) different up here. I'm 250 miles north of the latitude I'm used to. During the summer I was hoping that the humidity would be drastically less, which it's not. It could be classified as slightly less. During the winter, though, it seems the humidity can be called drastically less.

As a result of low humidity, I've noticed some dry skin areas on my knuckles and elbows. Nothing unsightly, I'm just afraid that if I don't take measures to remedy the situation, then I'll end up like the black knight in Holy Grail and suffer a flesh wound. So, it seems I need to purchase some skin lotion.

Now I despise skin lotion, there's a few people at work that use MASSIVE amounts of skin lotion and it smells like six month old bacon wrapped around a head of cauliflower with two and a half teaspoons of spicy Italian sauted on the salt flats of Utah. It makes me sick. So what's a guy gunna do?

So I took a few minutes (well...ok...hours) this afternoon to ponder this very delima. And low and behold the clouds split open and a sliver of light shone down from the heavens, the angels sang ("The Red" by Chevelle of course), the world was still, peace entered man's heart if only for a brief moment and it came to me.......

It's the Norwegian Formula.........how the hell am I supposed to ignore that kind of sign!! I mean come on! Created by the people who share the honors of happiest place to live on earth as well as the most expensive place to live on earth.......have you ever known a Norwegian to do you any wrong? F'n A, Cotton! F'n A!

Game Dev Blogs.....

2006-02-03T09:37:00.000-06:00

I've added a section of links for game dev blogs...so those of you who like to read my blog (all 1 of you) by RSS feed, be sure to hit the actual webpage and browse the links.

Yet another way to exercise the brain muscle...

2006-01-27T10:30:00.000-06:00

I found a little game on Miniclip that keeps me from being totally bored at work. It's called Sudoku (Yiddish for "damn that makes me think too freakin hard"......not really). Three different difficulty levels and there is a new puzzle for each difficulty each day; any good CS major should be able to do easy in less than 15 min.

Competition update...

2006-01-27T10:26:00.000-06:00

The competition I support is still in somewhat of a grey area. One of the instructors (let's call him S) has actually been doing a good job keeping his end of the bargain up. He's delivered (or soon will) the kits for the kiddies to use. Supposedly the other faculty members have actually put in three days worth of work and did get a few things straightened out. My sources are still very doubtful as to the quality of the final product.

Is "I told you so" wrong....

2006-01-24T20:51:00.000-06:00

Rumor has it (well it's not really rumor when it's true, right?), that a certain 4-year school has dropped the ball like a 10-ton piece of granite in dealing with a competition that was near and dear to my heart. Apparently, a certain collection of terminally-degreed individuals couldn't seem to make it happen (or get off their butts). No need to identify the heart of the now defunct operation. What a friggin shame....

The good news is that my non-genetic mother is still on top of things and the great people at Davidson High School are going to pull together something and make the competition happen. It is currently unclear if I am to be involved in any formal or informal manner. Though I have no doubt that I will be involved in one way or another now that "the witch is dead".

King of the crossfire...

2006-01-24T16:31:00.000-06:00

Today at lunch, the Dread Pirate Big'J (not his official pirate name) and I met once again in glorious battle. A timid Pirate Scooty Sides was seen plying the high seas as well, but he remained on the fringes for fear of the massive cannon displays the rest of us were toting.

The blood flowed freely as I suckered the Dread Pirate Big'J into a crossfire of my two main warships (a 5 mast battleship and a 4 mast cruiser). In a dizzying display of cannon fire (12 shots in total with cannoneer's, captains, & musketeers) the enemy's flagship/battleship was decimated. In retaliation, (Big'J)'s frigate (2 masts) rammed (and was boarded by) my cruiser, causing the only mast loss of the battle for me (cruiser down 1 mast to 3). Of course this left his frigate right in the firing lane for my battleship and cruiser, so add one frigate to Davy Jones's locker.

After the total slaughter of Dread Pirate (Big'J)'s combat fleet, my flagship continued to dominate the combat and eliminated two of the Pirate Scooty's destroyers (3 masts) in one volley a piece. This left my two remaining ships (a cruiser missing 1 mast and a frigate) to collect the remaining treasure and win the game, both morally and economically.

YARRRRRR!!!!!!!!

Beer, the ultimate opportunity maker....

2006-01-18T10:32:00.000-06:00

Anyone want my job? I'm thinking about pursuing an opportunity that has presented itself. I took a work-related trip out to Allen, TX last week. I was out there for "training" on our next product release (though there was very little "training" and a lot of me asking questions getting a response of "I/we don't know."). My boss's boss went and a few other people from our office. Their trip was to sit down with a bunch of other "supposedly" smart people and start hashing out a new, from scratch version of our product.

Well, after many beers (and a few flammable beverages), the R&D manager (also the guy who started this "let's make a product that doesn't suck" process) begins to talk to his new project architect about how he envisions this new development team. During this conversation it dawns on me that the guy (R&D manager) is referring to me as one of the primary (though not lead, thank the heavens) developers. So I kinda freak out, but we talk a little bit more about it.

Next day, I'm a lot more sober and I ask the R&D manager if he was serious about the previous night's discussion. His response was, "I am very serious about it." Now nothing is firm (so I can't give my job away just yet) and it will be a couple of months before anything comes of it, but I'm pretty darn sure that if the guy offers, I'll be searching for housing in Texas. If this were to happen, I'd really like to find someone that doesn't suck to replace me here in B'ham.

On a side note, I sure do like green dresses at the Golden Globe awards! ;)

Shoe squish....

2006-01-05T15:38:00.000-06:00

Today's Foxpro lesson: it is better to have one large file filled with data, than 1.21jigawatts worth of files with just a tinsie bit of data in them. The cost grabs you in the opening and closing of connections to each file, not to mention the FAT entries.

Life lesson: It is even funnier the second time you put mayonaise (about 3 packets worth) in someone's shoe and they put the shoe on. What can I say, they didn't get the hint that they had smelly feet the first time.....

Today's lessons....

2006-01-04T14:45:00.000-06:00

Big'J sent me a link to a series of free webcasts from Microsoft on building games using C#. The series begins Jan. 16, 2006. Looks like they run Mon-Wed from noon to 1pm CST. If you're interested here's a link.

When using the Foxpro ODBC driver to insert data into your tables (of which each table is represented as a file and the collection of files are all in the same directory representing a "database"), the driver automatically forces the cdx files to update. A cdx file represents the index(ices) used for it's same-named table/file. So reindexing is not neccessary unless you actually want to change the structure of your index(ices).

Welcome....bitches.....

2006-01-02T10:47:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the new year everyone!!

New Year's resolutions:
1) Not to buy an XBox 360 - they are WAY to expensive
2) Stop running with scissors - they might be sharp and I like my eye's to be unpunctured
3) Defeat the Dread Pirate Big'J at least once - I'll use overwhelming odds if I have to!!
4) Become an advocate for selective breeding practices in the U.S. - there are WAY too many stupid people in this country
5) Play more guitar - chic's dig guitars
6) Use the word "flugenhopper" in a constructive sentence - everyone needs a challenge!!!

Hope your resolutions are as well thought out as mine ;)

Get her the nice jacket...with the long arms and tie downs....

2005-12-27T17:10:00.000-06:00

Christmas is over, thank whatever powers that be!!! All the stores and stupid traffic should be calming down soon, which is nice because I'm tired of having to go to Walmart at 2 am just to get some darn socks.

I happily had the chance to visit with the Mobile crowd a bit on my way to the family. It was great to see most of you (though I hate one person in particular...you know who you are Ke...err...yeah, you know who you are). I was a little disappointed that I missed the P'fish staff, the McKinney's, Daryl, Irish Erin, Brian, Teddy and T-anne (hope you guys/gals had a great holiday and safe travels).

Holidays generally go on my suck list. The major reason is my family was specifically designed to "not play well" with others. As soon as I get to my dad's house, I walk in ready for a quiet little break and some food, and I notice that the spare bedroom has an occupant. My step-aunt-in-law-thingie Carol (step-mother's sister) has "moved in" for the weekend. This would be the point at which the obscenities begin.

Many people are "crazy". I've been called that quite often and am proud to be labeled in such a manner (hey, it's about attention....not good or bad ;) ). Carol is c-r-a-z-y. I'm talking wear the nice white leather jack with long arms and straps, be put in the padded room, here's your narcotics, don't let the insanity spread to the general populace kind of crazy. This lady needs to be put down for the good of humanity. I cannot express using words in this or any other language the level to which this lady has brought the very notion/concept of crazy. It has to be expressed as a subliminal guttural sound originating from the lower intestines.

So to not rant and rave, this was a very bad development. End result is that I almost had to muderate someone and my father was pissed most of the weekend because Carol wouldn't shut her shit mouth or mind her own f'n business. Add this on top of the step-mother being pissed because her neanderthal child (Rodney) is getting married to his already pregnant trailer-living no-education having "I'll be a waitress all my life" "words with more than two vowels scare me" girlfriend. Oh and yeah.....80% of the city was a wasteland of trash (thanks Hurricane Katrina). So there's a painting of the perfect holiday setting. ;)

Good news is dad and I had a chance to kind of hang out and talk about nothing important (good father-son bonding time), an eleven pound turkey was cooked specifically for me to bring home (best present ever!!!!), and dad bought me window rain guards for my truck and installed them.

So, if you've read this far, I apologize for not being overly funny this post (needed to vent a little). Hope you've had a much better holiday than mine and that Santa "pimped-your-presents". Merry Christmas and I hope to get to see you for New Years!

What are you some kind of freak....

2005-12-16T11:32:00.000-06:00

I admit it.....I'm probably becoming a tea snob, not British, but a tea snob. I never really thought about the phenomenon of tea here in the South and how people are affected by it. Sweet tea is a staple.....accept it....it's a fact of Southern life. Now you might not drink it, but woe to ye that dareth defy it!!

I was raised along the gulf coast, and while my parents are going to win many parenting awards, there are a few things I'm glad they did. My father is to blame for my current tea addiction. I can easily remember him drinking sweet tea at meals and when we went out to eat. So as I aged (like a fine wine I might add) and occasionally dodged the "soda" craving and had a sweet tea or two. Then in college, Los Arcos, brought my inner tea-lover out by offering free sweet tea to students in HUGE glasses and the phenomenon known as "cheese dip" (which is another story). A few years later McAlister's arrived and by that point, I didn't have a chance.

Now when I moved up to B'ham, I kinda thought to myself to try to reduce my "sugar" intake just a little. Also with it being colder up here, I thought it might be nice to occasionally have a glass of hot tea (which I attribute to my mother drinking hot-tea a lot while she was fighting the cancer). So I started to do a little research on tea, try a few flavors, see what is "out there" on the tea scene. And surprisingly found tea to my liking (though I'm sure my kidney's give me the finger daily).

Ok, so the point of all that build up. For the second time in the last five days, I've been charged as being a "Yankee" (not to be confused with "yanker" or "wanker"). Last Friday night, after having several beers (well pitchers actually) at the department Christmas gathering, we hit a Buffalo Wild Wings to grab the after beer grub. And while there, I figured I'd drink some tea to help hydrate a little. The waitress brought back unsweet tea and was apologizing profusely at the fact that they didn't have any more sweet. My reaction was simple "Bah unsweet is the bomb yo, bring that shit on!". Which of course had all the females at the table immediately stop their fiddling of the boy-friends and stare at the "unsweet tea freak". One was so shocked she gasped and asked, "I thought you grew up in the South, how can you drink that?" Now I had two answers to that, the Skrubby one (which you'll have to email me to hear because I won't post that type of language on the Internet) and the one I said which was, "I find that the bitterness of tea without the suger tends to cleanse my pallet better than sweet and the no sugar is better for me".

The second occurence of "everyone stare at the unsweet tea freak" happened this morning at Panera bread. I was getting my usual (plain bagel Sliced and toasted, with a coke - if you say iced tea most of the clerks think you want the iced green tea, which is goo.....horrible) and walked my merry way to the beverage station. There I had to wait on this lady who took about 40.9576 hours to make herself a glass of tea (she bought the large). She filled her glass with ice, then unsweet tea, and finally put 3 f'n lemons (lemons are the devil's droppings) and about 69x10^45632 packets of equal in her tea. I jumped in, filled my glass with unsweet and started to drink it right there in front of all these people. The lady looks at me like I just stealthed, sapped her companion, cheap shotted her bagel, and hit her with a 5 point cold blood eviscerate. And she said, "You know you're drinking unsweet tea, right?". She came a pubic hair's breadth away from getting the Skrubby answer.......

Time for a trip to the Amazon.....

2005-12-16T10:35:00.000-06:00

A few days ago I posted a call for help to get "Into the West" DVD's. Matt stepped up and informed me that Amazon.com had 9 in stock. So of course I pounced. I bought gift wrap, made a note, and had it shipped directly to the step-mother. That way if it was one or two days late, it'd be like a little surprise. So I finalize the order and Amazon informs me that it should arrive 2 days BEFORE Christmas. Phew.....just in time.

Well this morning I check my email and there's a note from Amazon. And I can tell, just by the way the bolded letters seem to be timid like the new kid raising his hand in class, that something about the email is gunna suck. Lo and behold, Amazon would like to inform me that they've had a little problem and would like me to approve it. Now when I ordered this stupid DVD they had 9 "In Stock", but they must have dropped them in the toilet water or something because they are all mysteriously missing. The earliest they can get the damn thing back in stock is January 14th.......now I ordered on the 12th of December.......that kinda seems like a long time to wait for a DVD that was IN F'N STOCK!!!!!!!

Now I generally am a big fan of online shopping. It can be done any time of the day, no lines, generally cheaper, access to global product lines, and I don't have to deal with the clerk that can't figure out how much change I should get back on a $4.73 when I give him a $10 (this happened to me yesterday). I don't make a habit of shopping at "unknown" or "untrusted" websites/online retailers for my own protection and piece of mind, but nothing pisses me off more than retailers telling me an item is in stock, letting me order it, damn well charging my credit card, then suddenly coming back with, "Oops....yeah we uh... have your money but uh.... your 'in stock' item happens to be in stock in Outer Mongolia and is being shipped on the back of a lesbian leper mule with three legs and only one good eye".

Yeah, the rutabega design pattern....what that's not a word?

2005-12-14T12:53:00.000-06:00

The other day, I was involved in a conversation that I feel I must share. I was talking to someone who used the phrase "agnostic" as a descriptor for some of the code I have to deal with. My response was,"eh?? that doesn't really make sense....agnostic code, that seems um.... uncomplimentary..". So we had a quick discussion of the phrase's use, followed by a quick meriam-webster online dictionary lookup, some head scratching, then just a short laugh at how strange it was.

The originator of this phrase (who I'll name as Bob (to protect the innocent)) and the guy who I had the conversation with originally (who I'll call Goliath) apparently revisited the discussion the following day and sent me their IM chain.

Goliath says: Hey you've used the word "agnostic" in reference to code, right?
Bob says: hmm....sorta
Bob says: platform agnostic
Goliath says: yeah
Bob says: so yeah
Goliath says: that's what I told my guys yesterday
Goliath says: but now we think that doesn't make sense
Bob says: really
Goliath says: well, it makes vague sense
Goliath says: but only barely
Bob says: it should
Bob says: see - most people just like the way it sounds
Bob says: don't really think about it
Goliath says: the non-religious-related definition is "one who is doubtful or noncommittal"
Goliath says: oh yeah - I like the way it sounds
Goliath says: but then I got called out on it
Goliath says: which, you know, is what I pay my guys to do
Bob says: it's doubtful code
Bob says: surely they'd buy that
Goliath says: they would if they knew us
Bob says: we've demonstrated our ability to cause concern/doubt
Goliath says: well now it fits PERFECTLY
Goliath says: thank you for clearing it up for me
Bob says: no problem

So this made me laugh...pretty hard. Let me know if you find it funny too.

3...2...1....MS Launch.....

2005-12-14T10:46:00.000-06:00

I should get a hat that says, "I survived being launched by Microsoft". I attended the MS Launch Best of event yesterday here in B'ham. I also attended the main launch event in Atlanta a few weeks ago. I didn't blog much or say too much about the Atlanta .... um ...... debacle ..... because, well, it really kinda sucked. There were a large number of people there and free software is nice, but most of the demo's sucked (read "didn't work") and the speakers weren't really that great. I can't say they sucked, they did the best they could when speaking to 2k people, but I wasn't impressed.

Now yesterday here in B'ham the morning started off a little bit better. While I couldn't really get into the groove for the morning session on SQL 2k5 (the speaker had a cool accent, but wasn't really "pumped Langan-style" or for those non-Southers "excited" about the talk), the afternoon session turned me totally around on MS events. The afternoon speaker was Glen Gordan (http://blogs.msdn.com/glengordon/) and he seemed a little more into Visual Studio than I expected.

He demo'd a few new cool features of VS2k5, like code snippets (common chunks of code that you write can be tagged and quickly pasted into a project, no more searching for the files and copy/paste), some cool new intellisense features, the architecture designer (for those project designers/managers), and my favorite ClickOnce deployment for Smart Clients. The smart client thing is something I wasn't familiar with (of course Mr. Porter was, freakin Doug knows everything!!!), but I'm almost inspired by it. Quick and dirty Skrubby version: a smart client is an application that is at it's heart a full-bore windows app, but is deployed and can be used like a straight web application. It's some pretty neat stuff imho. Hopefully I'll post more about them (since I don't know much at the moment) because I bought a book (or 30) on developing smart client applications in VS 2k5.

A secondary implication of the day is that I'm starting to think about certifications (curse you Porter, may you have many bouncy bubbly children!!!!!!). I took a look at the new MS certifications and I'm twirling with the idea of starting the MCAD (Applications Developer) line. Only thing that really bothers me about them these days is that they are all C# and VB based. What happened to the core language, C/C++? There are a number of books on Managed C++ (MC++) and of course compiler support isn't disappearing, but it seems that even MS is basically saying that pure OOP is the only way to go (not that a HUGE percentage of the tech industry isn't already spouting it). It might just as well be me turning into a tech dinosaur, clinging to the "old" ways, unable to cope with the newbies (they people that came 2 years later than I did, lol).

Wow....this post is turning depressing........ ok Skrubby.....think of good things....like cornbread......hmmmm.....cornbread.......goooood.....ok, I'm better.

For those of you who like a little brain exercise, I found http://planarity.net/. It's really simple in principle, yet for some reason I find it pseudo-relaxing. It may be the only game in which I can do better than my toothbrush these days........

A little help here....

2005-12-12T00:50:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to purchase a mini-series on DVD for my step-mother as her Christmas gift, but I habeen unable to procure it either online or locally. If anyone happens to go by Best Buy, Suncoast or any other store that sells DVDs would you mind checking to see if they have "Into the West" (2005). If so please give my cell a ring and I'll gladly make arrangements with you.

My best game of bowling at the department Christmas party was a 138. Thought that was pretty good since I haven't bowled in 10+ years.

UPDATE: Thanks to a tip from Matt, Amazon changed their tune on getting me this item. Somehow they "magically" found 9 copies of this hanging around and they swear it will arrive in time for Christmas. So we'll see! Thanks again Matt!!!!

What I want to be like when I grow up....

2005-12-06T07:54:00.000-06:00

Just found this, can't believe I didn't see it before, but its FRIGGIN AWESOME. Old Grandma Hardcore. Now, I know what you're thinking.....Skrubby's trying to get us to look at old poot pr0n......while in general you're making a safe and wise decision, in this particular case, you're wrong!

This lady is true inspiration. As I get older and suffer through the tragedies and bull of adult life I begin to wonder how my inner gamer/child will cope or will "it" be mired in responsi....responsi.....bility.......(I'm begining to hate that word). This chic paves the way, shows us how its done, and most likely would even beat your ass in a good game of Battlefront 2!

Welcome to Frustrationland...err Hapland 2...

2005-12-05T16:25:00.000-06:00

Found this game online, thought it was pretty spiffy. Wasted many hours (at work) trying to solve it. It goes on my short list of little crappy flash games that ROCK.

http://www.addictinggames.com/hapland2.html

Skrubby's Thanksgiving goodness....

2005-11-25T00:00:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone ate well and laughed to tears visiting friends and family today. This was the first time I ever tried to "cook" a holiday meal by myself so I'm going to document how to cook skrubb-a-style Thanksgiving feast.

Items:
1 box Stove Top stuffing (pick your favorite flavor)
1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix ( + some milk and an egg)
1 small package of frozen fresh vegitables (get your favorite)
1 small can cranberry sauce (real cranberries suck)
1 uncut hickory smoked turkey breast from the meat department
1 bottle Yellow Tail Merlot ;) (1/2 to be used during the cooking process, 1/2 for after dinner contemplation)
1 gallon unsweet tea (substitute sweet tea if you like)

Not much actual "cooking" required, but I have to admit, I am very proud of the results. I had enough food (and wine) easily for two people so now I have dinner and probably breakfast tomorrow too. It's definately a bachelor's feast, but it worked out great.

What didn't work out great is the TV. Jimminy jebus TV SUCKS!!!!!! Not a single thing on to entertain. Only good thing was Finding Nemo, which I missed the first half of.

Big'J and I took the day off tomorrow and J's wife and child will be out visiting. So we're probably going to do something nerdy and play WoW or some other game most of the day. Doug is coming up late to visit with Rob-Rob and Pat is also driving in Cheese Girl. Somehow I'm going to have to juggle all this at once. Should lead to some interesting jokes.

When exactly does Christmas start these days? Is it actually at midnight tonight? Most stores have been putting Christmas stuff out on the shelfs for a good week or two. People bitch about it all the time, yet it still happens. Guess that's why it's great to live in the U.S. of A.

Hugs to everyone! God bless America!

Playing ketchup......

2005-11-23T09:37:00.000-06:00

Saw the new Harry Potter this weekend. I liked it. Dragons were cool. I had hoped for a little more screen time dealing with the World Cup, but the rest of the movie was great. Though I'm beginning to hate the 60's hair styles....everyone with long crap hair. Still like the original Dumbledore better. The current one is doing a great job, but he just doesn't seem to capture the grandfatherly aspect I have always seen in D's character. Lots of reviewers mentioned Emma Watson's performance as being less than expected. Honestly, I didn't notice until I read the reviews AFTER I saw the movie. I agree with them, but she's still in character and does a better job than a lot of adult actors/actresses (read yes Ben Stiller still SUCKS).

X3 is still the bomb, the more I play it though, the more apparent its current issues become (like every other game). It seems that X3 is very balanced with a dynamic economy and attentive AI in the beginning of the game. But after a few in-game days, all these things take a dive. The economy starts to slow down as Free Traders (read NPC goods transports) are killed off by pirates or being run over and for some reason they never seem to respawn or be replaced. So after awhile, the universe gets this real empty feeling and goods start to back up or not get made at all.

Found me a new money sinkhole. Not going to talk about it yet, as I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Received a wedding invitation from T-ed, was very happy of that. With the cold coming on rats are starting to nest in my attic, so I was in desperate need of something to scare the rats away with.

Everyone have a great thanksgiving, send me some leftovers please! Be safe as the stupid-crazy shopping season opens.

X3 Reunion

2005-11-11T19:44:00.000-06:00

Big'J happned to look at Target and find X3 Reunion on the shelf. Needless to say, I'm being a total junkie and geeking out over the game. Therefore, do not expect me to post for a while, since I will be cracking out on the digital goodness that is the X Universe.