My apologies to those who might be easily offended. Saw this posting of an "oldie but a goodie" on a favorite mailing list. Summarizes this winter....and no, I do *not* really feel this way!

December 8: 6:00 PM. It started to snow. The first snow of the season and my wife and I took our cocktails and sat for hours by the window watching the huge soft flakes drift down from heaven. It looked like a Grandma Moses. So romantic, we felt like newlyweds again. I love snow!

December 9: We woke to a beautiful blanket of crystal white snow now covering every inch of the landscape. What a fantastic sight! Can there be a lovelier place in the Whole World? Moving here was the best idea I've ever had. Shoveled for the first time in years, felt like a boy again. I did both our driveway and the sidewalks. This afternoon the snowplow came along and covered up the sidewalks and closed in the driveway, so I got to shovel again. What a perfect life.

December 12: The sun has melted all our lovely snow, such a disappointment. My neighbor tells me not to worry; we'll definitely have a white Christmas. No snow on Christmas would be awful! Bob says we'll have so much snow by the end of winter that I'll never want to see snow again. I don't think that's possible. Bob is such a nice man, I'm glad he's our neighbor.

December 14: Snow, lovely snow! Eight more inches last night. The temperature dropped to -20. The cold makes everything sparkle so. The wind took my breath away, but I warmed up by shoveling the driveway and sidewalks. This is the life! The snowplow came back this afternoon and buried everything again. I didn't realize I would have to do quite this much shoveling, but I'll certainly get back in shape this way. I wish I wouldn't huff and puff so.

December 15: 20 inches forecast. Sold my van and bought a 4x4 Blazer. Bought snow tires for the wife's car and two extra shovels. Stocked the freezer. The wife wants a wood stove in case the electricity goes out. I think that's silly. We aren't in Alaska, after all.

December 16: Ice storm this morning. Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway putting down salt. Hurt like hell. The wife laughed for an hour, which I think was very cruel.

December 17: Still way below freezing. Roads are too icy to go anywhere. Electricity was off for five hours. I had to pile the blankets on to stay warm. Nothing to do now but stare at the wife and try not to irritate her. Guess I should've bought a wood stove, but won't admit it to her. God I hate it when she's right. I can't believe I'm freezing to death in my own living room.

December 20: Electricity's back on, but had another 14" of the damn stuff last night. More shoveling. Took all day. Goddamn snowplow came by twice. Tried to find a neighbor kid to shovel, but they said they're too busy playing hockey. I think they're lying. Called the only hardware store around to see about buying a snow blower, and they're out. Might have another shipment in March. I think they're lying. Bob says I have to shovel or the city will have it done and bill me. I think he's lying.

December 22: Bob was right about a white Christmas, because 13 more inches of the white shit fell today, and it's so cold it probably won't melt 'till August. Took me 45 minutes to get all dressed up to go out to shovel, and then I had to piss. By the time I got undressed, pissed and dressed again, I was too tired to shovel! Tried to hire Bob, who has a plow on his truck, for the rest of the winter; but he says he's too busy. I think the ass hole is lying.

December 23: Only 2" of snow today, and it warmed up to "0". The wife wanted me to decorate the front of the house this morning. What, is she nuts!!! Why didn't she tell me to do that a month ago? She says she did, but I think she's lying.

December 24: 6". Snow packed so hard by snowplow, I broke the shovel. Thought I was having a heart attack. If I ever catch the son-of-a-bitch who drives that snowplow, I'll drag him through the snow by his balls and beat him to death with my broken shovel. I know he hides around the corner and waits for me finish shoveling and then he comes down the street at 100 miles an hour and throws snow all over everywhere I've just been! Tonight the wife wants me to sing Christmas carols with her and open our presents, but I am too busy watching for the Goddamn snowplow.

December 25: Merry freaking Christmas. 20 more inches of the @%$* slop tonight. Snowed in. The idea of shoveling makes my blood boil. God, I hate the snow! Then the snowplow driver came by asking for a donation and I hit him over the head with my shovel. The wife says I have a bad attitude. I think she's a fricking idiot. If I have to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" one more time, I'm going to stuff her into the microwave.

December 26: Still snowed in. Why the hell did I ever move here? It was all HER idea. She's really getting on my nerves.

December 27: Temperature dropped to minus 50, and the pipes froze. Plumber came after 14 hours of waiting for him; he only charged me $1,400 to replace all my pipes.

December 28: Warmed up to above -30. Still snowed in. The BITCH is driving me crazy!!!!!

December 29: Ten more inches. Bob says I have to shovel the roof or it could cave in. That's the silliest thing I ever heard. How dumb does he think I am?

December 30: Roof caved in. I beat up the snowplow driver. He is now suing me for a million dollars; not for only the beating I gave him, but also for trying to shove the broken snow shovel up his ass. The wife went home to her mother. Trudged through the snow to the post office to mail letterbomb to Bob. 9" of snow predicted tonight.

December 31: I set fire to what's left of the house. No more shoveling.

January 8: Feel so good. I just love those little white pills they keep giving me. Why am I tied to the bed?

Tags: Humor, Weather, Snow

I got an interesting piece of Nigerian 419 spam today. For those of you who don't know what Nigerian 419 spam is, this is the spam that you get asking for assistance to transfer a large sum of money out of some overseas company where you are promised a percentage of the money for helping - aka "Advance Fee Fraud".

This particular message was interesting because of the intro. I paste it verbatim below:

Hello,

I am Mrs. Annette E. Jenkins, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside in District of Columbia 20534. My residential address is as follows 320 First Street, NW Washington, District of Columbia 20534, United States, am thinking of moving since I am now wealthy.

I wondered what this particular address was. So I ran it through Google. Here's the search link.

Should be pretty obvious from the search what's located there.

You have to believe this is deliberate....

Tags: Humor

I have to say, I have never really been interested in any of the talent competition shows. But I'm at least becoming a closet fan of Dancing with the Stars because of one guy - Woz.

Steve Wozniak is better known as one of the co-founders of Apple. After this, he might become better known as the rallying point for geeks around the world for his performance in Dancing with the Stars. Despite physical limitations (not just his size, but injured foot and hamstring), he's survived for week 4. And the judges' comments along with his comments have been just putting me in stitches. From the judges the first week: "It was like a Teletubby going mad in a gay pride parade." Last night's comment from Steve about being declared safe (and in the top 4): "I don't think I've ever been so surprised by anything in my life except for when I got served with divorce papers."

These are great. You can't script these comments!

Even more interesting was an article in CNN yesterday. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/24/wozniak.dancing.stars/index.html?iref=mpstoryview. Geeks of the world appear to be rallying behind Woz. And it's funny. It'll end probably sooner than later, but until then, it's great entertainment. If not for the dancing.

Geeks of the World! Unite!

Tags: Humor

One of the research engineers at Sun just made this interesting discovery.

Original posting originated here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/shouty_sun_engineer/

An excellent example of useful telemetry you can gain from the latest Sun storage software....

Tags: Humor

I have been amused by the postings today that many 30GB Zune players died today. The cause is apparently, Microsoft forgot that there are leap years which have 366 days per year.

I love the item on the www.zune.net webpage. "Trouble with your Zune 30? The fix is simple." If you click on the link, it essentially tells you to let the batteries run out, and wait until January 1st to restart it.

I wonder if Zune owners can get compensated for the fact that they can't use their players on December 31st.

On the good side, Microsoft has promised a fix before 2012....

Tags: Humor

Saturday, we went for a tour of the White House and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the public parts of the White House in full Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, no pictures as cameras were not allowed inside (you had to pretty much leave everything in your car). Our gracious guide was a patient of Zandra's. She is one of the handful of permanent staff at the White House that serves regardless of the administration in office. So she told us of lots of interesting little stories.

A funny moment came right off the bat - we were having our identities checked at the entrance (you must submit your names and social security numbers in advance for screening). Turned out, the person checking our IDs and names had the same name as Andrew! We were thinking, gosh, wish Andrew could have borrowed his ID....

Lots of interesting history and sometimes humorous information behind what you see. Coming in, we saw a portrait of Hillary Clinton in the hallway. We were told that that location is always reserved for a portrait of the immediately preceeding First Lady. So when Obama is sworn in, the picture of Hillary will come down and up will go the portrait of Laura Bush. This tradition, though, did lead to the awkward occurrence of George W. having to take down the picture of his own mother and put up Hillary's portrait in its place. Wow!

There's also a portrait of George Washington that she told us Dolly Madison saved when the British burned the White House. Dolly Madison was just finishing a chocolate cake when the British arrived (so much for advanced intelligence gathering in those days), so she ordered the staff to break the frame and she rolled up the portrait and took it with her. There's often a portrait of Dolly Madison hanging around nearby so "she can keep an eye on the portrait".

We were told about the Christmas trees inside and the Nativity scenes, and learned of the "private" dining room that is a much more intimate setting with "only" about 25-30 seats. Hmmmph!

We also heard an interesting story involving the Presidential Motorcade. For security reasons, President Bush had to take a motorcade from the White House across the lawn to light the National Christmas Tree. We were told there was too much empty space around to make a walk to the tree safe. The Presidential Motorcade has 27 cars (by the way, we found you can tell how important someone is by the number of vehicles in their motorocade - it's all set by protocol...). It's so long that to the Tree Lighting Ceremony, half the motorcade was still in the White House driveway. A cat chasing its tail moment....

No Oval Office tour. No Lincoln Bedroom tour (those are all off limits). That said, still a great tour with insider insight into the day-to-day operations of the White House!

Tags: Humor

I just got off the phone with Southwest Airlines because I needed to cancel a flight. They were very busy this evening handling flight cancellations due to bad weather, so I got the very unusual opportunity to listen to their "hold music".

I have to tell you, I was laughing so hard when the agent picked up, I almost couldn't talk to ask her to cancel my flight. They've got a lot of great one liners - like "The Captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign. You are now free to move about the cabin. Of course, unless you're calling from your car." Then there was the "Pirate Song" which I didn't get to hear all of, but started off with an intro of "It's always more fun to say Caaaaarrrrgo if you're a pirate, so here's a pirate song..." or something like that.

More businesses really need to approach things this way.

Good work Southwest. You made my evening.

Tags: Humor

And another good one from the Simpsons:

Tags: Humor

Found on an internal mailing list today.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/11/10/how-we-know-that-matrix-doesnt-run-on-windows-xp/

This is a good one, in my opinion.

Tags: Humor

Was sent this picture today:



I need to get one of these....

Tags: Humor

After upgrading my iPhone to the new 2.1 version of firmware, the first picture the camera took was, well, bizarre. You can click on the picture for the full size version....



It’s not just bizarre because of the bumper sticker I was taking a picture of (that was just funny), but it has to do with the way this picture is broken up. Also realize that that soccer ball on top was part of the bumper and this bumper sticker was on the tailgate. So the camera took a picture, put the bottom half of the picture on the top half, vice versa, and then offset the last 1/3 of the picture by a bunch of pixels...

The camera appears to have been fine since.

Hmmph!

Tags: Humor

(I struggled for a bit to decide whether or not to tag this as “humor” or not....we’ll give it a shot)

So one of the things we did when in Boston was visit the Coop at Kendall Square so Zandra could load up on a few items from her alma mater. The Coop at MIT is more interesting than most typical college bookstores, simply because of the intellectual culture that exists there.

Here are a few items we did not buy, but that I found pretty interesting.

First - the childrens’ books:



Next - an explanation of light (could I have gotten away with this in physics?):



Finally, something that came close to making the list home:

Tags: Humor

Someone sent me the following two links as overpackaging demonstrations by HP.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/23/enormouse/

Ayup....items definitely overpacked. Must be that oversized European A4 paper....

Tags: Humor, Technology

A couple of entries ago, I noted that my sister had a blog. Since then, she's made more than a few references to me that I just feel compelled to respond to. So I will. In *my* blog.

In the entry Momma' Night Musings, the question about censorship "...I realize I have passed this blog info to my big brother....hmmmm, maybe censorship is good,." Big brother says...."write what you want." I'm probably not the one you need to worry about reading your blog. There's always the future employers, etc., who will find the blog and wonder about the person they're considering hiring....there's no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Not with Google around.

In the entries Suds, Glorious Suds! and Work, glorious work!, my sister makes a reference to the recent Thomas the Tank Engine release "Mud, Glorious Mud". I'm disappointed that my sister fails to cite the correct reference to the (noun), Glorious (noun) phrase to the lyrics of "Food, Glorious Food!" from the musical Oliver! based loosely on the great work Oliver Twist by none other than the beloved Charles Dickens. However, the fact that it shows her total dedication with her kids (because everything is now referenced from the starting point of something related to her children) indicates that she is doing great as a parent. Or at least fully immersed with being a parent....

Sis also notes I probably have all the tunes memorized since I have a 6 year head start. That's actually probably not true since with a 6 year head start, I've learned to start filtering out children's music in my head. It's on, but it's more like white noise than anything else. Nothing really sinks in. Except Barney. Which is why Barney is banned in our house. Sis should learn in another few years this little trick to successfully tolerating parenthood.

As far as the question, "Was I like this to my mother? Is this payback?" Hmmm....well, we were both prone to doing things like that, so payback? Probably. I have Declan (who by the way, just broke another dish in the time it has taken me to write the last 8 lines of text - but he was trying to be helpful by throwing the dish (literally) into the sink). You have your Asha and Aisha. Oh, and your ever-so-articulate Nate.

Finally, as I've been reading my sister's blog, I'm having great fun with each entry clicking on her "Location". It appears that in her blog, what location she types in gets fed into Google Maps. It leads to some very interesting results. "Padded room" sent me to the Excalibur Hotel in Vegas of all places. Interesting what those pidgeons pecking at the keyboard come up with at Google....

Are you wishing you'd never told me about your blog yet, sis?

I love you!

Tags: Humor, Sister

With all the hype surrounding the "imminent" announcement of the new iPhone, perhaps we can hope that Steve's announcement will go smoother than some of these moments.



This made my day.

Tags: Technology, Humor

Set aside about 20 minutes total to watch both of these videos if you are so inclined. And be prepared for a major mood swing between the two.

The first one is called Treeless Squirrel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k22oHm0O3Sg The squirrel in this video is the son of a good friend of mine (who also does other advertising design when he's not busy being nuts (sic)). This one is funny.

The second one is one you may have seen. http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw Randy Pausch is a CMU professor dying of pancreatic cancer. Given I've lost a couple of friends to this disease and know currently of two others with it, it's a very interesting view on living life. http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/ is his website which folks should visit for more information. This video may lead you to tears. The full length video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo .

Tags: Humor

I was just on hold with Verizon discussing a phone bill issue. There was a little bit of a wait for the agent (about 4 minutes) but what got me was the elevator music. It was playing the James Bond theme "You Only Live Twice".

Hmmmm.....appropriate for hold music I guess.

Tags: Humor

When traveling anywhere, you often notice things that not only do you not see at home, but really draw your attention as being interesting, or worthy of mention at the least. Especially true when going overseas.

On my last trip the following items kind of stood out in my mind:





Package of Kleenex from Hungary with a Ratatouille theme. Just kind of cute. And the package is interestingly square instead of rectangular.




Our taxi which had an ominous telephone number...




This is most interesting - this is the switching control panel from the Hungarian Railroad station that we visited. One of the members of the group from our partner company had a big interest in trains, so our assembly plant staff arranged for a "Behind the Scenes" tour of the local train station. This was "State of the Art" when it was installed in the mid 1970's. And is still in use today. I wonder if it even has solid state technology...




Finally, a picture from the Duty Free shop at the Vienna Airport. We put these tiny little warning labels on our cigarettes. These are nice, big, simple, easy to read labels. Love them. Wish we could have them here. But interestingly, you see a lot more smoking in Vienna. I came out feeling a bit like an ashtray every time I went indoors to a restaurant or some other public place. Wonder why this is? Maybe they should have the warnings in German/Hungarian/local language? Or is it in English because the cigarettes are American?

Tags: Humor, Travel

Every year, I wait until the weekend after New Years to go calendar shopping for a calendar for my office. I kind of started this tradition years ago for a number of reasons.

First was that some years, I received calendars and didn't have to go out and buy one. Whereas, if I bought one before Christmas, sometimes I'd end up with an extra calendar.

Second, the calendars are always dirt cheap (at least 50% off) after New Year.

The bad part, of course, is that you are stuck with the selection of calendars that no one else wanted.

Last year, I ended up with the "Dubious Saying of George W" calendar which contained all sorts of humorous quotes from our President. Even die hard right-wing supporters usually see the humor in George W's choice for words.

This year was more challenging. No, I really didn't want an Obama or Hillary calendar. I've long since tired of Far Side calendars, and I have to put up with too much of Zack and Cody to want one of their calendars. We have a Thomas Kinkade calendar in our bedroom.

The verdict was the "GTV Garfield Television 2008" calendar. A bunch of drawings of Garfield making his favorite editorial comments about today's TV shows and commercials.

It tells the date and is at least mildly tolerable.

Tags: Humor

Yesterday (Oct 26) was the official "release" day of Mac OS X 10.5 or "Leopard". Highly anticipated and awaited by the Apple faithful.

The "bleeding edge" folks were trading comments back and forth on several Mac mailing lists I'm on about when their copies would/did arrive. I found one particular comment amusing. One person reported that their package arrived in the late afternoon, and that the UPS driver said it took so long because the number of deliveries of this "iPod" (sic) nearly doubled her route and the routes of all drivers in San Francisco.

Makes me wonder what Harry Potter did to UPS....

Tags: Humor

My friend Fourth Breakfast posted this link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=D9bMM3prOFo which is an, um, "interpretation" of Brokeback Mountain. Absolutely hilarious!

Tags: Humor

Seen on a church announcement board near our house marking the last day of school last Friday:

Students: YIPPEE!
Teachers: WHEW!
Parents: HELP!

Tags: Humor