Up periscope!

Well I am going to share a story with you that may make you want to never read this blog again for fear. Let me start as always with a little back story. Did you know that March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness month? Well it truly is and to commemorate the festivities I have signed up to have a live action movie shot in my colon! Okay that’s not exactly true but almost. I am going for a colonoscopy on Wednesday, talk about fun. Speaking of here is a fun fact “Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, second only to lung cancer. In 2005, an estimated 104,950 new cases will be diagnosed, and an estimated 56,290 patients will die of the disease” that’s a happy thought isn’t it?
Now before I get you all worked up to the best of my knowledge I am perfectly healthy (for someone who’s overweight and gets virtually no physical exercise), but I think you might be coming down with something serious. The reason for the roto-rooter action is that my father had colon cancer in his early thirties and subsequently had all but a small section of his large intestine removed. Fortunately for us he survived a harrowing experience with the big “C” and will likely live to be a very old (and mean too). Because of this family history I am considered “at risk” and must ensure that I am checked regularly to ensure that I am able to grow old enough to be a burden to my children. I spoke with my doctor who sent up my exam and told him that I have my head up there most of the time as it is and would be happy to look around and tell him what I see but he was insistent that a professional butt doc must perform the exam. Hey I am just trying to do my part to keep medical cost down.
I am not really that concerned about the procedure itself, I am more preoccupied with the preparations. First I am to have no solid food for the entire day tomorrow (which is enough to make a guy like me bite someone’s arm off because it looked kinda like a Snickers bar through the fog of starvation) and secondly I have to take laxatives to expedite the evacuation of the brown bombers. Nothing sounds more appealing than bringing on what amounts to an intentional case of Montezuma’s revenge. So if you see me walking quickly down the hall with a panicked look on my face, for the love of all that is clean and good don’t try to stop and chat me up!

Burnt bean juice story goes on!

I want to give a quick thanks to Monkistan and Freddy for their recommendation that I purchase a French Press to satiate my coffee jones. The Mrs. and I have made use of it every day and find the minimal labor involved produces a much better product than a conventional America coffee maker. I think I would like to discover the finer points of making really strong coffee as mine has given me the impression that I am making weak coffee. That may because it lacks the rancid acidity and crude oil consistency of the institutional mud provided free of charge by my employer in a thinly veiled effort to make the hamsters turn the wheel faster. If you have any suggestions about reasonably priced whole bean coffees please let me know.

Ahhhhhhhhhh

What an awesome week! Well I guess any week where you only go to work for two days and get paid for five is bound to compare favorably to others that aside I did have a good week. I accomplished most of the things on my “to do” list on my days off. Funny how people think any time off of work is “Vacation”. My boss put a very fine point on this last week for me when she returned from three days off, where she had taken a “Trip”. Simply put Vacation is where you go somewhere with your spouse (or significant other for the sake of political correctness) and you relax and have fun. A Trip is when you go somewhere and take your children with you, note the distinct difference and the conspicuous absents of FUN and Relaxation. And further “Time Off” is where you are not at your place of employment but are getting paid. Each of these has a diminishing allure but still remain much more appealing that any day at work, I don’t care if you have casual Fridays or not. Alas I digress, my point is that I had three days off that were both productive as I was able to accomplish everything on my list of chores that the weather would permit, and relaxing to the point that I was spending a greater volume of time with the people I love that the other sheep on the cube farm.

An indignant father

My wife and I took our youngest son to the doctor during my time off work this week. He has a condition called Ptosis (pronounced TOE-sis) this is a medical term for drooping eyelid. This is not a life threatening condition but unchecked could lead to degraded or even loss of vision. This is a kind of shocking thought, that your child could conceivably loose sight in one of his eyes. We have been instructed to begin therapy to strengthen his weaker eye by covering his “good” eye for an hour a day with a patch and return for a follow up visit in a month. The visit with the doctor left me with the distinct impression (though not the confirmed diagnosis) that my son will end up needing surgery to correct this, but his physician prefers to pursue this kind of treatment when a child is closer to two years old. Ethan will be a year old in May. I am grateful that this doctor would rather evaluate his development for a while before putting my boy under the knife this makes me feel some comfort that this is neither irreversible nor so urgent that drastic steps must be taken immediately to reverse the current course of his condition. Frankly my feelings are a little mixed up about this entire thing, on one hand I know this is not a horrible thing and with proper care could be corrected, but on the other hand no one wants their child to be burdened with anything remotely negative let alone something that could be considered a health issue. Though I know this is not possible for anyone who walks the same earth that you and I do. I feel a little selfish too, knowing that there are parents in the world at this very second who have no idea where their child will get their next meal and the last thing they did eat was not likely to qualify as a meal by our standards. But at the same time I am upset that my child has to overcome this at all even though he is far too young to understand or even perceive my indignation. I don’t know were I to go with this and can only assume that I needed simply get this off my chest. If you pray, or even if you don’t please think of my little boy and all the other little defenseless sprouts that need us to look out for them and when you do, wish them well. Maybe it will do you and I some good to take our minds off the petty little issues that clutter up our lives for a moment or two and think of someone else.

iPod update!

Okay so here is the latest update on my free iPod effort. I spoke to my brother in Dallas and he has signed up for the Block Buster offer, so now I have three of the four referrals needed. I was hoping to have all the requirements completed and have my new toy in hand by now, but alas this not the case. If you are a kind hearted soul who would like to help me get a very expensive toy without having to pay for it or if you are interested in getting your very own iPod for free check out my original posting for more info.

It pays to be resourceful

I recently spoke to a co-worker who had the break pads replaced on the front of his car and the rotors turned and it only cost him $130.00 or so. I replaced the pads on mine, and put on new rotors (the old ones were scored beyond correction) and bought a new small floor jack and jack stands for $100. I got the job done and only spent $60 on the job and the rest on boy toys. So I am feeling pretty full of myself this evening! I would be gloating even more except I have to do the rears tomorrow, which I was not expecting. I mentioned that I am off job numbero uno for the first three days this week but I am about to leave for job part duex. But three chores on the list are done; garage cleaned (good enough for credit anyway), jeep breaks fixed (the part that was planned), and door handle replaced (this one only took me a year to get to). Hopefully tomorrow will be as productive. I am sure it will, because we take our youngest Ethan to the doctor in the morning then, we are going to swing by and get our French Press. Caffeine always helps with productivity!

Holy Cow!

What a week, I have been unable to post anything of substance all week! I am so glad that it is Friday, not that my week is over I still have Job Part Deux tonight and tomorrow. I am taking the first three days off next week from Job Numero Uno. Not that I have a special event or anything this will be the last of my carry over vacation from last year, so it’s use it or loose it by the end of March. I plan on being a productive boy around the homestead; Break job on Honey bunny’s car, Yard work getting the lawn ready, cleaning the garage, repairing some of the window screens and a gate, plus a couple of other handyman projects. I am going to make a list so I make sure and get some stuff done while I am off. If I don’t plan it out I am likely to just flop around the house and sleep a on every available piece of furniture, not that I want to, just because I am so good at it and feel obligated. I can’t promise that I am going to be blogging much in the next five days but you never know. So if you don’t come back for a couple of days you never know what your going to miss.

I have been on blogabout

Okay so I figure I need to throw out some explanation for my lack of productivity this week on the blog. I am not attempting to make excuses but there are a number of mitigating factors, first I have been busy at work (attempting to salvage a month that was all but written off in the first three days), second am still in a kind of funk, I wouldn’t consider myself grumpy any longer but I am not in my normal state of mine, and finally much related to the second point my creative juices have not been so juicy this week. I like it when I have a funny story or can write about something that I feel I can lend a unique perspective, and this week I have neither fell funny or had any perspective at all just going through the motions like the Duncan doughnuts guy (you know “time to make the doughnuts”). I have been spending a lot of time reading other peoples blogs, and frankly that has just made my blog feel even more insignificant. If you check out the volume and depth of material some people are able to put into daily postings you have to wonder why you were not told before now that you are a potato head! Anyway I can feel my stride coming back, so check back for more dribble from my leaky brain. In the mean time check out some of these blogs that I just found, you may have already seen them but if you haven’t you should. americanwarmonger, View from the Pew, Sigmund Carl Alfred, the Anchoress. And when you have cleaned you plate of that you can have some pudding, but not until. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

Warning pass at your own risk

I am in a nasty mood today, earlier I would have said that I was “feeling grumpy”. At this point I would have to say this mood has only managed to fester and turn me into the equivalent of the mean old man who lived on the neighborhood corner in your childhood. You know the one I am talking about that man who kept, and most certainly destroyed any toy that had the misfortune of wandering into his yard. I have no idea what manifest this foul attitude in me today, I am generally a pretty pleasant guy. I had a pretty good weekend (maybe too short, but when are they not) and nothing of note has occurred that would have set my emotional rudder on a course for Oscars can, but who knows. At this point all I can say is, Stay off my freaking grass you punks! I’ll call the cops on you; don’t think I don’t know where you live. Your parents know you are out of the house dressed like that? Mumble mumble grrr rrrr.

I could not comment on your blog today

So Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to my blog. Sorry your previous comments do not show. I am too lazy to copy and paste them over but I hope you will like the functionality of Haloscan better than what you were getting before.

What's with Blogger?

Yesterday I had to fight to get my own posting up and today I am not able to post comments on other peoples blogs. Now how am I gonna waste a bunch of time at work on a Friday afternoon!

I just learned something funny. I normally write my postings in MS word because I can't spell; as some of you may have noticed by my debt free posting where I wrote debit everytime I meant debit, that posting has since been revised(thanks Eddie). Anyway I compose a post in MS Word then copy it into Blogger,edit the HTML there, and post it. For this posting I just started typing away in blogger because it was going to be just the short two liner above. Then I think to myself "better spell check dummy" so I hit the spell check button on the tool bar. Now here is the funny part, the spell check utility did not recognize "Blogger" or "blogs" ha ha, woo hoo man that's good stuff. What? Well maybe I don't care if you don't think it's all that funny! I thought it was.

You ever wake up with a song in your head?

I wake up with some obscure song in my head pretty frequently. I don't realize it’s there until I am in the shower, and I find my self humming a song out loud or in my head while scrubbing away at my noggin. It’s always some odd song too, not one that I may have heard the day before on the radio or in a movie and most certainly nothing that is in my CD collection. This morning’s selection was “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, and of course I did not know all the correct lyrics so I end up making large parts of them up as I play the tune in my head. So when I get to work I am compelled to look up the lyrics online. I was not surprised to find no less than five sites with incorrect lyrics listed above the official site. I have no idea what caused this particular tune to peculate up from the nether regions of my mind today but let us contemplate the lyrics that the Boss laid down.

Blinded by the light
Revved up like a Deuce
Another runner in the night
[repeat to fade]

Madman drummers bummers Indians in the summer with a teenage
diplomat In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way in to his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder feeling kinda' older I tripped the merry go round
With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground

The calliope crashed to the ground and she was blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

Blinded by the light
Revved up like a Deuce
Another runner in the night
[repeat to fade]

Some silicone sister with her manager mister told me I got what it takes
She said I'll turn you on sonny to something strong play the song with the funky break
And go kart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart see if it was safe outside
And little Early Pearly came by in his curly wurly and asked me if I needed a ride

Asked me if I needed a ride
And she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night

Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tight
She's gonna make it through the night
She's gonna make it through the night

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun, but mama
That's where the fun is

Some brimstone baritone anti cyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
Says Dethrone the Dictaphone hit it in his funny bone and that's where they expect it least
And some new mown chaperone was standing in
The corner watching the young girls dance
And some fresh sewn moonstone was messing with his frozen zone reminding him of romance

The calliope crashed to the ground
And she was blinded by the light
revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night

Blinded by the light
Revved up like a Deuce
Another runner in the night
[repeat to fade]

Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
and some bloodshot forget me not his daddy's within earshot save the buckshot turn up the band.

She got down but she never got tight she's gonna' make it through the night.


If you don’t know what a deuce is (or you though he was singing something else) it becomes clear when you read this. I don’t know if this page conveys a true story but it sounds believable. If you find yourself humming “Blinded by the Light” later today it’s just because you have succumb to my Jedi mind powers, come over to the dark side and feel the power!

Late night fun and games

If you can believe my luck I am working right now. If you check the time on this post you will see that it is a ridiculous hour to be doing anything but sleeping. We have some blah blah blah critical upgrade that requires several people to be involved in testing the effected applications. Fortunately for most of the people involved they work at this hour and this will not interfere with their vampire friendly sleep schedules. Once again I am so freaking important to this operation that I get to be on two conference calls where my input is rarely needed. Basically all I am doing is functioning as a relay. Someone on the tech bridge says “everything is back up, can we have the users test?” and I say to the user bridge “everything is back up, can we have the users test?” In fact if the participants from one call were allowed to join the other I could be sleeping! But we can’t allow the techs and the normal users to mingle. You understand how easy it is to pass nerd from one group to another these days. My only consolation is that thanks to the modern conviences I am working from home. I am able to access the company network from my laptop, over a high speed cable internet connection and I have no land line phone so I am using three different cellular phones to connect to ten or fifteen different people in several cities.

Free iPod, the saga continues

Okay so here is the update on my free iPod. So far I have only one person signed up who has completed the offer, a most excellent co-worker (not just for signing up to help me get a free iPod) she signed up for Block Buster online for $10 the first month and you can cancel after that. I have three people that I don’t know, have never heard of or from for that matter, that signed up and have not completed the offer, Cotton picking “lookie lews”. My step-mom signed up the other day but could not get to the offer page. I think this is because she is on AOL (AOSMELL) and it acts weird when you are trying to get outside their virtual amusement park to visit sites on the true internet not owned by AOL/Time Warner. That is an entire discussion for another posting. I intend to start calling my family members to start applying high pressure sales tactics on them this week. Was hoping that I would not have to resort to such drastic measures, I already tried bribery and that didn’t result in any help. I so desperately want this stupid toy that I check the status of my account as many times as I check my home email. And before you go there, No I will not just go out and buy one that defeats the entire idea! I want it and I want it for free! So if I have finally worn you down with my whining here is the link to my referral site.

If you want more information before you sign up here is the link to my posting which includes some details of the offer.

Big Fat Fatty Fatso

Why are people so lazy? I have noticed that a lot of my co-workers will frequently take the elevator to go from one floor to the next rather than take the stairs. I can understand if you have a disability or any other condition that makes it uncomfortable to take the stairs, unless your condition is that your just plain fat. Now don’t get me wrong I am not fitness nut I am well above my “target” weight (as my physician likes to remind me) and in fact I am kinda lazy myself. But when the elevator and the stairs are ten feet apart and I am going DOWN I am going to opt for the stairs. Why would you stand there and wait for the elevator to go down one floor? I noticed this because the building I work in is engineered with our sedentary job lives in mind; parking lots are all at lease one hundred yards away, two sets of wide, gradually sloped stairs for every set elevator, and rumor has it that the elevators have been intentionally slowed to encourage people to take the stairs. This could be true because I have emerged on the second floor from the stairs to witness others emerge from the elevator who I noted entering on the first at the same time I entered the stair well. Don’t we realize that we are killing ourselves slowly? Oh I guess not in a society that would sue a fast food chain for selling food that was not good for us, rather than take responsibility ourselves. On another note, Man I could go for a Twinkie right now!

Burnt Bean Juice

Man I love coffee! I don’t know why but I felt like declaring that. I prefer good coffee but I will drink institutional coffee too. I am not a “Hardcore” coffee drinker though; I only drink one cup a day, I don’t like black coffee (artificial sweeteners and half and half is my favorite) and generally only have coffee on weekdays. My wife broke the carafe for our coffee maker more than a year ago and we just sold the maker in a garage sale instead of buying a new carafe because it was ugly and could only made two cups badly at one time. I sometimes want to buy a good coffee maker for home, but then I think about the fact that I will not settle for a cheap piece of junk that makes mud, and so I am too cheap to spend the money for what I really want. Plus when I want a caffeinated drink at home I will generally just have hot tea (Earl Gray) with honey and milk!

I am going to pee on my laptop.

Okay I admit that is a crude thought not to mention an ugly mental image but let me explain. Bare with me, this requires a little bit of set up.
My job function affords me little personal space because of the large area necessary to accommodate the number of computers and monitors required for my assigned responsibilities. In addition my position is so freakin crucial that when I go to lunch or even take a break for biological accommodations, another person must come in and basically keep my chair warm so that it appears my position is covered. Therefore my work space is more of a public domain than the rest of my neighbors in the cube farm. My one consolation for this is that I have a laptop PC (because I am frequently on call) where most of the people who sub for me have a desktop pc and share a community laptop when they are required to be on call. Although this is a childish thing it is a highly coveted status symbol in this environment. Now I should clarify that I do have a cubical assigned but rarely am able to make use of it with the exception of an occasional lunch consumed there in order to work through my break. What normally happens when someone comes in to cover my lunch is I will undock my laptop and replace it with the on call laptop and take mine to my cube so that I can check my email and post to my blog during my lunch, because I only do this sort of thing on lunch(sure). This week however several others in the group needed to use the on call laptop from a conference room where they were doing an intensive after action review to report on last months performance short comings. This created a situation where the person who came to cover for me did not have access to a PC when I left for lunch. Now the obvious solution was for me to leave my PC behind for them to use, but for some reason this did not sit well with me. It was as if my last foothold on personal space was forced from my cold steal grip, like a bone from a growling pit-bull.
After some discussion with another male peer he conveyed that he had similar feelings about people coming into his work area while he worked the night shift. During the day this same area was occupied by several people but by night he was the entire staffing requirement. He stated that he would be working there alone and someone would enter the area with a completely legitimate reason in order to perform some job related function in the domain where he reined supreme by night and he could feel the hairs on his neck bristle. And thoughts of suspicion would invade his mind, not real malice but more of a cowardly lion glare would manifest. This reminded me of my own feelings in a similar evening job situation. Therefore this must be some male disposition a manifestation of the primal male who lays dormant in all men, and when called upon by will or outside influence can never be completely suppressed. These feelings must be excised from same gene that draws us inexorably to sports like the simulated combat in paintball or rugby. I refuse to immaculate my self for the sake of political correctness and will embrace the caveman in me. I have come to the conclusion that the only way to properly reclaim my rite to dominion over personal space as a male is to mark my territory! Do you think the IT department will service my PC if it is damaged in the process?

The End of a Dream

I don’t know if you have heard of this but HGTV has an annual contest where they give away a “Dream Home”. Each year they produce a television program that tours the home and gives a short history on the build and features. This year the home was built on Lake Tyler near Tyler Texas. I think it’s an awesome home and I would move back to Texas at the drop of a hat. I don’t think I would have designed it the same way if I were building my own dream home because it’s just not designed for a family with young children. My wife absolutely loved it from the lay of the property and design of the home even down to the color of the furnishings within. Alas we were not meant to win the contest, the winning family from the Chicago area was notified on Tuesday and there is a short video on the web site. Oh well maybe the one for next year will be even better and it was fun to imagine ourselves the winner at least we were able to enjoy that. Just curious, what is the most extravagant, or interesting thing you have ever won?

Stupid Groundhog!.

This morning as I pressed the garage door opener revealing a crisp thirty-something degree morning, and I found my thoughts conjuring Spring. It is most certainly around the corner, and will arrive none too late in order to thaw my slumbering will to play in the dirt. As I gander out at the trees and wooded areas on my commute to work I can feel them ready to burst forth with little green shoots and blooms of color aching to shed their dull brown winter coats. I can hear them tell me that they too look forward to the next page in the book of seasons as much as I. This morning I went so far to indulge myself that I envisioned myself plodding along behind my trusty mower providing my lawn the first in a season of manicuring. Then I began making a list of things to be done in the out of doors in order to preen my little plot of ground into oasis of peaceful green in my otherwise synthetic world

Debt Free!

I have been working on a plan the last few months to get completely out of debt! I know some will read this and dismiss the idea right off, but it is possible and I no longer believe that “debt is a tool” as the consumer machine would have us all believe. I came across this guy Dave Ramsey a few months ago and read his book “Financial Peace” which has been revised since the edition I read. I started listening to some of his radio shows which are archived online and the ideas he presents are simple but totally make sence. Then a family member gave is a copy of "The Total Money Makeover” for Christmas. I have been slow to read it due to a lack of spare time, but I am about half way into it and I am getting very excited! Don’t get the wrong idea this is not a get rich scheme, it’s simply a plan for financial freedom. I am not going to go into any details because if you are interested you can check out his site. I have been working on our written budget and a spreadsheet to help us manage everything, and hope to sit down with the Mrs tonight so we can discuss it and start putting a plan into action. I never though I could get excited about paying bills. Just though I would share this with you, Back to the funny business tomorrow I promise.