Biggie Lives!

As we were headed from Giordano's to the Briar Street Theater to catch the show this weekend, we hopped in a cab for the journey. Much to my surprise, it was being driven by Biggie Smalls himself. Yes I know.. he's dead. His ghost however is driving a cab in Chicago.



Granted.. he didn't have a crown on as in this picture, but I *know* it was him. It was tought to stop myself from seeing if he would do a few bars from 'Hypnotize' for us as he was driving.

While he wasn't doing any of his hits.. he was doing many other things like:

-Talking to a woman in the passenger seat who I think he might have been 'training'
-Talking to us about losing large sums of money on Keno in vegas
-Talking to his wife on his cell phone
-Listening to some R&B on his ipod with one headphone earbud in
-Singing along with said R&B whenever the mood struck.. even mid conversation
-Ignoring any and all traffic signs, right of way, speed limits and some laws of physics

This kept him pretty busy, therefore I was not surprised when he had to dodge in and out of traffic like a nascar drive to avoid putting someone into a wall. Those pesky cars can sneak up on you when you are tied up with all that other stuff. The three point turn using the sidewalk and the middle of an intersection was a nice touch towards the end of the drive. That was necessary as we couldn't wait 15 seconds for the truck that was backing up down the one way street to move. Clearly that would be slower. So we drove several blocks around a different way. We did this at speeds just short of Warp 9 in order to make sure it was actually faster than waiting for the truck.

Towards the end I just chose to pretend I was on space mountain. I just closed my eyes, held on to the door handle, and hoped that we weren't going to die in a fiery wreck. It was raining so at least we wouldn't have burned for long. I realize that as a ghost Biggie had nothing to lose, but those of us not yet in the afterlife were quite glad to be out of his cab. He did get us to our destination in one piece and on time though so I guess I really shouldn't complain too much.

As we exited the cab I whispered under my breath..

Biggie, Biggie, Biggie.. can't you see?
Sometimes your words just hypnotize me...

As he drove off and his ghost cab faded into the rainy mist .. I swear I saw him look back at me. He pounded his fist to his chest twice and then gave me the peace sign. The Notorious B.I.G. Gone, but not forgotten.

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4-day weekend!

Im off tomorrow for a nice 4-day weekend. So all you people that have to work tomorrow and Monday, I would like to just give you a nice sympathetic HA! Get Owned! :P

Im headed to Chicago to spend the weekend hanging out with some good friends. Hopefully the weather isn't as rainy as its supposed to be, but there is plenty to do indoors as well. Like start drinking earlier in the day! Mmmmm Beer.

Saturday we are going to see Blue Man Group which I am excited to see again. If you don't know who / what they are.. here you go.



Catcha all next week. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

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Randomness..

I got sent this movie via email, but I managed to find it on youtube so I could share with you all. I can't stop laughing at it..






On other random notes, I am pretty sure that Denise Richards is not of this planet. You remember in Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones is listing famous people that are actually aliens .. she should be added to that list. There is something wierd with her mouth.. like an alien civilization tried to copy the look of a human to blend in, but didn't quite get it..





I went to see Watchmen .. and it was one thing above all else. Long. Not like Lord of the Rings long where you want it to keep going as you are so involved in the story you need to know whats going to happen next long. More like the "OMG is this thing STILL going?" long. It had a few moments of enjoyable cinema. A couple of good lines. Really though, you could have condensed the movie down to those 5 minutes out of 2 and a half hours. It felt disjointed and lacked a real flow to the story. But hey.. at least it was really LONG.

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No.

I went to the gym saturday morning which was uneventful until I was on my way out. I go to a Snap Fitness, which in case you haven't heard of it is a 24/7 gym. It is only staffed a few hours a day during the week. All members are given a badge that has a chip in it that allows you access to the building when no staff is present.

I love it as a lot of the time it will be just me.. or me and one or two other people in there. As long as you avoid the 5-7pm time on weekdays, its usually quiet in there. I get to turn the TVs to whatever I want.. usually the Discovery channel. I enjoy a gym full of top end equipment without dealing with bad top 40s music and an over crowding of people on the machines.

As I am grabbing my stuff, there is a guy tapping on the glass door with his car keys. I look at him and go back to getting my stuff together. He didn't have any kind of "OMG .. ZOMBIES CHASING ME.. WANT TO EAT MY HEAD... LET ME IN PLEASE!" kinda look so I didn't let him in. Its not allowed. There are signs posted everywhere and you sign an agreement when you join that you don't allow anyone else to enter when staff is not there if they don't have their own passcard. This guy didn't have one and since I didn't see a dinosaur about to disembowl him or anything, I was not letting him in.

As I go out the door, he says to me that he lost his card. I said politely that I was sorry to hear that, but if he's a member he knows the rules and I can't let him in. I have myself positioned so that he can't get in without going through me at this point. He says that he is going in anyway and starts to try to push through me. All 5'7", buck 25 of him. I don't move and tell him I am not letting him in. I go to push the door closed so it locks and he gets aggressive and grabs the handle and tries to fling it open and tells me again his IS going in.

Well now you have made it a challenge and he was being a dick on top of it all. I was trying to be polite and explain I wasn't going to chance losing my membership just so he could get inside. I blocked his way in and pushed the door shut until it locked on him. He starts fuming.. stomping his feet at me. Like a 3 year old. This guy had to be mid 40s or older.

I calmly started walking to my car and he started shouting at me..

"I LOST MY CARD.. CAN I USE YOURS?"

After all that.. now he wants to ask if he can use my card to get in? Wasn't it obvious already that I wasn't comfortable doing that anyway? I kept walking. Then I hear:

"THIS IS BULLSHIT. I HAVE PROBABLY BEEN A MEMBER HERE LONGER THAN YOU!"

I reacted with lightning speed! I dashed for the door.. threw myself on the ground at his feet and begged forgiveness for slighting him. I couldn't give my badge to him fast enough. I just asked that he not tell the gym's management of my rude behavior to such a VIP client in hopes they wouldn't reject my membership.

As if... What I really did was open the back of my car and got out my trusty shovel. I looked at him and started moving towards him.. swinging the shovel like a bat. Getting warmed up for some cranium smashing action. I put on my deranged psychopath look which I have been working hard on as I made my way back to where he was still standing and stomping his feet. At some point during my slow-mo journey towards him he realized that he was now in over his head and ran away screaming like a little girl.

Well ok.. neither happened actually. I just turned and laughed at him when he made his comment about being a gym member longer than I have and said "Well then you should be well aware of the security policies that don't allow me to let you in without your key card." I got in my car and left and had a good laugh about it on the way home.

Some people.. I just don't get. All that excitement when all he had to do was come back the next day when staff was there and get a new card.

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Floored

AIG .. seriously... W. T. F. For those of you not familiar with the term and don't have the imagination to figure it out, it stands for WHAT THE FUCK. AIG executives just got some big bonuses. BONUSES. A company that is requiring huge amounts of our taxpayer money to just keep afloat and has financially ruined many people who had their life savings tied up in AIG, gave their executives BONUSES. See these excerpts from news stories:

Fresh details, meanwhile, pushed AIG outrage ever higher: New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reported that 73 separate company employees received bonus checks of $1 million or more last Friday. This at a company that was failing so spectacularly the government felt the need to prop it up with a $170 billion bailout.

Cuomo said AIG last week paid bonuses of $1 million or more to 73 employees, including 11 who no longer work there.


So the people that were responsible for adding language to the bill are now saying that they had to do it for fear the government was going to get lawsuits over not paying the bonuses. How about you pull your head out of your ass already? If AIG sues the government then pull their bailout package. Its that simple. I, as a taxpayer, am outraged that my money tax dollars are going to bailout a company that is making one bad decision after another, has run the company into the ground, and now continues to make horrible decisions.

1 million dollars. Think about that for a minute. I know its hard not to get desensitized to multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses and sports contracts and actors fees for movies, but really think about it. Lets say the average Joe and his wife each earn 35K per year. 70K per year before taxes for the couple. It would take them over 14 years to earn 1 million dollars. Thats two people, 14 years each. So 28 years worth of labor for them to earn that same 1 million that was just handed to AIG "execs" that have destroyed the company. They ran AIG so poorly that they needed 170 BILLION to get out of the mess they were in and that may not even be enough.

They don't deserve bonuses. They deserve to be put on a game show. We'll call it Quarters. What we do is we take that 73 million in bonuses .. and put all that money into quarters. The show then travels around the country with those execs in cage cars like an old circus train. Whenever it stops and sets up camp, taxpayers are allowed to come and use various devices to fling quarters at high velocity at the exec of their choice. Put helmets on them of course so they don't die, but imagine the satisfaction as your quarter slams into their helmet and causes their head to ring!

After a year or so of this, I would imagine they would be like a heavyweight boxer that was pummeled in the head and neck area too much. Which is the level of intelligence they have been using to make decisions all along, so its fitting.

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A Fun Evening..

There was a movie that I remember watching growing up. I don't know the name of it, so if someone does, please let me know. The plot was basically about these kids that were stuck inside all the time as it constantly rains. Like torrential downpour rain. One day out of the year, for one hour, the rain stops. The sun comes out, everything blooms and turns green. The kids get to go outside for this hour and live life and be free in nature. In the movie, one of the kids that gets picked on gets locked in a closet and left there and misses the chance to go out for this "hour in the sun". I don't remember why or much else about the movie, but that has stuck with me since childhood for some reason.

On my way home yesterday, I kind of felt like those kids. I had my windows down on the car... warm breeze blowing through.. enjoying the warm sun. As I pulled on to my street, which has a cul-de-sac at the end of it and also has a park, it was like the floodgates had opened and every parent said "Go! Go out and play!". There were kids everywhere and not one of them was complaining about being outside. They were laughing and running and playing, glad that a nice spring day had arrived.

Since it was so nice and it was St. Patty's day, I invited my brother and SIL over for some grilling. I had some awesome venison steaks in the freezer waiting for a nice grilling day. We grilled those up and I made my semi-famous mustard dill roasted potatoes. It was a great evening.. everyone chillin outside with drinks and enjoying the warm weather. The boys were playing soccer even though the ground was a bit wet yet.

After dinner I got to enjoy my first cigar since the fall as we sat out back with our beers. I went with a Partagas Black Label.. and it was fabulous. Our beers we were enjoying weren't green, but I was drinking Guinness so I think that counts. My brother was drinking Heineken, which was in a green bottle so we counted it. My SIL was drinking some purple Jack Daniel concoction.. so she failed the St. Patty's day thing. She had 3 of them and started slurring words already. She got up to use the restroom and when she came back she was laughing as she sat back down.

There are some things that when no one is there to see, you can just keep to yourself and probably should. Well she probably knew it was a bad idea to say anything, but she was also unable to keep quiet. So she answered our inquisitive looks at her laughing with "I fell off the toilet trying to get up!"

To which she followed up with "You aren't going to blog about this are you?"

Of course not. /cheers!

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How hot is it?

Last night the boys and I joined my brother and SIL at Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. I enjoy going there as they have good food and they have lots of beers on tap and tons of big screen TVs. Its just a fun place.

This was the first time there for the boys. G having been sick that day was under orders to stick with mild stuff and take it easy. B however is my more adventurous eater and he was quickly sizing up the sauces he was going to order. They have 14 listed in order of spicyness / hotness. The left being mild .. the far right one you actually have to sign a waiver to order. Yes.. you have to release them from liability if you want them to serve you the Blazin sauce on your wings.

B smartly decides to stay away from the sauce that they will put your picture on the wall if you manage to choke down 12 wings with that on them. He is however a fan of the spicy and hot stuff so he decides Hot (2 notches down from Blazin) is what he wants to try. My brother and I both tried to warn him about just how hot it was going to be. I know you like the "hot" sauce at Taco Bell and all.. but his is a different level. He said he understood and would be fine. I made him order half of his 12 wings with a milder sauce though.. just in case.

His wings arive and he digs in. He downs the first one and gives me that look like "I told you I would be fine" and says to everyone at the table that it really wasn't THAT bad.

Then it hit him.

And continued to hit him and get worse.

Shortly he was suckin down diet pepsi like it was the nectar of the gods and his one hope for saving the interior of his mouth from burning completely off. It was vastly amusing. Of course we started mocking him so he promptly tosses the gauntlet. My brother has tried them already and declined. My SIL is a wuss and didn't want to try them. G was under orders to take it easy. That left me. So I tried one and went through the same thing.

It's not that bad.

Hmm... thats starting to tingle a bit.

I think I need something to drink!

Holy shit, the skin is peeling off the roof of my mouth.. dear lord what do they put in here? Battery acid?

B and I are both sweating a bit and sucking down every drink at the table. Thankfully our waitress was very good and was bringing us one soda after another. I managed to get past the one I had and went back to the mid range ones I enjoy. B however was determined. He managed to finish off the other 4 of the hot ones.

All in all it was a fun evening. I think next time B will stick with something not quite so hot. Today I am looking forward to an evening in the high 60s. Some grilling. A cold beer out back on the deck. Welcome spring!

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Road Ragin

As Theory of a Deadman put so eloquently in one of their recent songs:

"Bitch you better get our of my way before I lose my mind!"

I was actually up on time this morning. Out the door on time. I was going to be a few minutes EARLY to work even. Then I ran into a truck driver that had me wanting to pull him out of his cab and go all LAPD on his ass.

Speed limit = 65
Truck 1 in right lane is doing 61 tops.
Truck 2 who pulls in front of me is doing 61.079 mph.

Truck 2 proceeds to pull off a 7.2 mile pass of truck 1. I only wish I were exaggerating. Over 7 miles this jacktard is not even doing the speed limit to try and pass someone that is essentially going the same speed he is. I was having a nice discussion about his driving skills with him even if he couldn't hear me. It was not the way I wanted to start my morning. Usually I have to be at work for at least 15 minutes before I want to pummel someone. Not so this morning.

I had visions of car mounted rockets. I was hoping a small tornado would show up and toss the truck out of my way. I imagined the road collapsing right under the truck so that it falls and gets stuck and I just floor it and use the top of the truck like a ramp and jump the gap. (Yes I probably watched too much Dukes of Hazzard as a kid)

Needless to say, I needed to calm the hell down after finally getting that anal ranger out of my way. Luckily .. I had just the music in my car for it. I ripped the sound off this youtube video to take with me. Good timing I suppose. This is one of the guys from Slightly Stoopid just messin around with an acoustic guitar.

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Really?

Sometimes things people choose to do just boggle my mind. They are so out there with their logic that I just can't seem to wrap my head around it. Case in point, one of the departments here at work made a new printer purchase that they wanted installed and setup. They currently have a standalone fax machine and a networked printer. They wanted one unit that would both fax and print for them. Easy enough.. as there are a ton of multi-functions out there that can do both. Right? Easy.. right?

One of our techs was working with them to get this setup and was calling for my assistance to get it setup server side. We got the basics going, IPs assigned, drivers installed etc. Then the conversation got interesting.

Tech: Well they are replacing a fax down here too and they want this unit to be able to fax.

Me: Well, are there fax drivers for that unit? Does it have fax capabilities?

Tech: No fax option on it. It has some digital scan to email function they want to use. They keep telling me that they should be able to email-fax from this thing, but you have to setup the internal email server on it for it to work.

Me: Wait.. so they are replacing a fax machine, they want to be able to fax still.. and they bought a unit without faxing capabilities?

Tech: Yes, because they thought they could email stuff through this unit instead.

Me: They already have email. If they could just email it in the first place they wouldn't need to fax. You can set them up to scan to a file with that unit and they can use our email to send the scanned attachments if they want to do that.

Tech: No, that isn't what they want to do. They insist that they were told that they could "fax" through this unit if we setup some kind of internal mail server on it.

Me: Well they are pretty much SOL if they are thinking we are going to put secondary proprietary mail servers on our network just so a few people who opted not to buy a multifunction with fax capabilities to replace a fax machine can "email fax" documents. Its one extra step to attach it to a regular email through our system.

Tech: They aren't going to like that.

Me: Tell them its a better option than me coming down there with a shovel and a crotch punching midget ninja and going medieval on their asses!




As if that weren't enough, we had Genius2 come up to work on the air handler for the server room. We have two units. One main one and a smaller backup for use when we have problems or need to to maintenance on the main unit. G2 decides he needs both shut off to do his work. He shuts them both off.. opens up the main unit to start work and promptly dissapears. Doesn't notify anyone as to what he is doing. Doesn't tell anyone where he is going. No ETA on downtime.

Well shortly the datacenter climbs from a chilly 55 degrees to an Arizona-like 105+. If you know anything about computers, you will know that heat is your biggest enemy. The equipment we have stacked up in the server room puts out tremendous amounts of heat and requires a lot of cooling. It wasn't long before the servers sensors started shutting things down due to overheating issues.

First server to go down? Our Websense server which filters internet access. If thats offline, everyone is blocked. No one would bother calling for a while if any other server went offline, but when that one went down we had about 12 people call in a panic because the interwebz was broken! Fix it! I was in the middle of a bid on ebay! I can't check my fantasy league! OMG .. I needz my interwebz. My preciousssssss!

It was a long day yesterday and I wanted desperately to punch a few key people in the face. Lets hope today is a good day. I had a breakfast with no hog.. and I don't think I will have to use my AK .. so maybe today will be a good day.


Note: Total readership that might get above reference: 2

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He's here!

I got a text from my sister yesterday. Despite having her c-section scheduled for next Friday.. the 13th.. her water had broke and they were on their way to the hospital! After hours of waiting a picture came through on my phone from my brother-in-law. The baby had arrived and he is beautiful.

Zane Rylan was born at 12:11pm AZ time. He weighed in the ballpark of a small sack of potatoes and is about as long as those newborn onesies outfits. Yes.. I have the real measurements, however they are quite irrelevant and thus I am too lazy to look them up in the email my mother sent out. :P

So big congratulations go out to my sister and brother-in-law! And a big welcome goes out to my new nephew that I am anxious to get to see. Since they named him Zane, I shall dub him 'Z' for short. I think I will then buy him swords and then teach him to carve flashy 'Zs' into the walls of the house to mark his territory. I can see it now...




On another note.. someone told me the new season of American Idol started last night.. or the night before I don't really remember. The first few weeks always have the worst performances .. so I decided to see if they had any on youtube this morning. I didn't find anything from the US version.. but I am STILL alternating laughter and outright shock at this:

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I sang what?

The number one rule to drinking is make sure you leave no witnesses alive. Hmm.. maybe that is the rule for murder. Ahh .. that's right. The rule for drinking is make sure the witnesses are all as drunk as you are so they don't remember anything either!

In these days of strict drunk driving laws, I am always careful when I am having a drink while out. If I am going to do serious drinking, then I make sure we have a DD or are doing it at home where we don't have to go anywhere. That was what we decided to do this past weeked. We stocked up at the house. We went out for dinner and skipped drinks there and just waited til we got back to my friends house. Once there, we proceded to see just how inebriated we could get.

All of us were drinking, so the rule was being followed. Nothing could come back to haunt us right? That would be the case if it were not for the technology of today. We use this thing called Ventrilo for voice chat while gaming online. It allows up to 100 people to connect and chat. At some point during the evening we decided that it would be a good idea to get on and start talking with everyone. I don't remember much about what we were talking about or how we got on the topic, but I was told after the fact that I sang this song on vent:



I don't remember singing it.. but apparently it was a good rendition. Or at least amusing enough for those lucky enough to hear that they were asking for repeat performances the next day. At least no one recorded it and made a sound board from it which happened to one of our other friends who made a long drunken appearence on vent one night.

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The Cost of Justice?

There is an article on CNN today talking about how several states are trying to push through legislation to end the death penalty in their states. I know this is the kind of thing that happens all the time as many people are very opposed to the death penalty. The difference this time is the reasoning. Its not for moral reasons. Its simply about money. The states are broke and they are saying it costs considerably more to pursue cases where the death penalty is involved than it does in a normal trial. The article is HERE if you are interested.

The article cites states that are claiming it costs anywhere from 500K to almost 2 million dollars more to prosecute a death penalty case. These costs stem from: "Extra safeguards in place to ensure a fair verdict, including additional investigators and defense attorneys certified to handle death cases, who spend more time researching and litigating the case, also drive up costs."

This article bothers me in several ways. First off, what kind of message does this send to criminals out there? We'll pursue justice.. as long as it fits in the budget? Just hire a lawyer that knows how to tie things up and drive up the costs so that the state can't afford to prosecute you? How does this play in to the costs of keeping the person incarcerated? I just did a quick search on the cost of incarceration and an article about the costs for 2008 in California were quite shocking. They budgeted 50K per year for each inmate in a prison. That adds up fast when you are talking about life sentences and people that are being sentenced to those terms at a young age.

What about the families of those victims? If someone decides to rape and murder 5 people, is it not worth the extra time and money and effort to make sure this person is convicted properly? I would rather see an extra 500K go into the trial and execution of someone like that than to pay to keep him in prison for the rest of his life.

What really scares me though is the way the article says that it costs more on the death penalty cases because of the extra time and effort it takes "to ensure a fair verdict". Umm.. shouldn't we be doing this anyway? Even if you take the death penalty out of the picture, putting someone behind bars for a decade is something you should be sure of. So you didn't kill him or her, but isn't taking them away from their family, their life, and putting them in prison for a long time worth "being sure" on? They are alive, but if they spend their entire adult lives in prison you have still taken away the life that they knew and would come to know.

I know its not a perfect system. I just find it scary that budgets may end up deciding how far we go to pursue justice. I suppose thats always the case though. People who can afford high priced attorneys are going to fair better than the guy who has no money and is relying on whatever overloaded public defender that gets his case. Just because that is the way it is, doesn't mean I have to like the situation.

My idea? Legalize pot. Tax the hell out of it. Save all the money spent fighting and prosecuting the marajuana 'problem' in the US and use that to help support the judicial system. Give them the funds they need to run the cases properly. To 'ensure a fair verdict' every time, not just when the death penalty is involved.

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