A tragedy.

My brother and I decided to watch a movie when we were both off on Monday. After starting to watch a movie that was so bad we turned it off after less than 10 minutes, we decided to watch 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People'. The movie stars Simon Pegg (from Shaun of the Dead), Meagan Fox (as G would say Haaawt!), and Kirsten Dunst (seriously.. how is she STILL getting movie roles?).

Now normally I would have to skip the movie on general principal since she was in it but it started off ok. She was an ugly, stuck-up bitch who no one liked and I had a feeling she was going to die a horrible death in this movie. I had this glimmer of home that Simon Pegg would treat her like a Zombie from Shaun of the Dead and decapitate that fugly troll. Then throw in the fact that you have Megan Fox there as the hot chick that he is pursuing to counter-balance said hideous harpy's negative impact on the film, and I was actually optomistic. Key word being WAS.

*Spoiler Alert*

How this movie unfolded however was nothing as glorious as it should have been. Quite the opposite. This film turned into a tragedy the likes of which I have never seen. Its a good thing we were watching this at my brothers house for a couple of reasons. First off, I didn't throw anything at the screen as I didn't want to break his TV and second, I didn't get us kicked out of a theater from yelling my disgust at the sheer retardedness of the movies plot.

To be fair, its not the plot that was really the problem. The plot was decent even if a bit on the predictable side. The problem was, the plot was ruined when IT was cast to play the other female lead. See the problem was that in the end, Pegg's character realizes that fame and money aren't everything and that he doesn't really want Megan Fox. He decides that he wants that billy-goat-eating, lives-under-the-bridge, soul-sucking-hideous-hosebeast of a woman.

This plot would have worked fine had hosebeast's role been filled with pretty much anyone else. Eliza Dushku would have been an excellent choice for example. I would have certainly bought that he gave up a chance to have sex with Megan Fox to chase after her instead. But Nooooo! He is going after .. that... thing. WTF? How am I supposed to buy into this movie? I'm all for suspending belief at the movies, but even I have my limits. C'mon!

You could have put in the monster from Alien in Dunst's role and I would have had less of a struggle with it. It still wouldn't have made much sense to skip sex with Fox, but it still would have made more sense than him chasing after Dunst. If you put me in a room with Dunst and the Alien, with her acidic skin desolving saliva, razor sharp teeth and claws, huge chip on her shoulder and all and told me I had to try to have sex with one of them, I would tell Alien to pucker up buttercup. I would rather have my unit disolved off with acidic spit as she disembowled me than have to interact with that other hosebeast.

Everyone knows JarJar Binks is the most annoying character on the planet and everyone wants to see him killed violently, but I would even rather have him wandering around the movie and Pegg's character trying to hook up with him than pursuing Dunst.

Overall I felt what could have been a decent movie was ruined completely by one bad casting call. Really.. HOW is she still getting roles? HOW? Was Babe the Pig not available? Barney the dinosaur? Shaq in his Shazzam outfit? Any of those would still have been far superior choices.

Really.. we are supposed to believe he went after:



instead of:




Maybe the real hero of this story is Simon Pegg because it is a testament to his incredible acting ability to pull off that role. I mean he was able, with a straight face and only a few dry heaves, act like he wanted to leave Megan to go slay the beast after Dunst. Kudos to you Simon. You have conquered your Everest. You have proven your versitality and ability to act even under the harshest of conditions. Next time though.. do me a favor and demand a different actress to work with. She will eat your soul when you aren't looking!

Read more...

Say what?

So we were all set to grill up some venison steaks for dinner last night with my brother and SIL when my son reminded me that we had promised that the next time we were all together, we would go to Buffalo Wild Wings and split an order of the 'Blazin' wings. This is the very top of their hotness scale and has this warning on it: "Keep away from eyes, pets and children." Now we had tried their 'Hot' a while back and that was pretty intense itself. Blazin is another 3 notches above that.

As we were heading into the restaurant, my younger son turns to show me how one of his adult teeth was coming in faster than another. His older brother asks him how he remembers when the second one was lost to know that its coming in faster. The converstaion at this point was:

G: "Don't you remember when Mom punched me in the balls and I lost this tooth?"

B: "Oh yeah! I remember that!"

Me: "Wait.. what?!?"


No, you concerned people do not need to call child protective services. The story was that G had picked up a big excercise ball and had been carrying it around asking if anyone thought it was weird that one of his balls was bigger than the other. Typical shennanigans from him and then mom apparently dropped down to 5th grade level (as I would have) and punched the big 'ball'. This somehow coincided with his tooth coming out.. or at least close enough that G has the ability now to tell the story about mom punching him in the balls and causing a tooth to come out. Mom packs quite a wallop!

So after that story.. I am already laughing as we head in and get out table. Brandon has this ring that he wears which my SIL noticed and commented on. Now B wears it on his right ring finger as he knows it signifies marriage on the left. It was also fairly loud in there, so I think he missed part of the question asked of him. This led to the following very amusing exchange:

SIL: Thats a cool ring B. Looks like its made of Tungsten. Same as J's wedding ring.

J: Heh.. who are you married to B?

B: It's my right hand!

It took a lot of effort not to make a new distance record for shooting soda out of a nasal passage. In clarifying .. B was trying to say that the ring was ON his right hand and thus didn't signify marriage. But the way it all went down.. well that is just priceless. SIL was quite proud that she got the joke this time right away though and for once, I was surprised in that it went over both my boys' heads. Nowadays I am usually shocked how all those little innuendos don't go over their head and the two of them are giggling away.

The big adventure for the night was splitting an order of those wings. 2 each for B, J and I. We had extra drinks on hand. Ranch to dip them in. We were set. We ate them quick before the first one completely hit and we had a chance to rethink things. It wasn't bad at first, but about 60 seconds later the burn started. The back of the throat felt much like battery acid was slowly burning a hole right through to the outside. We tried out best to quench things, but it was a good 10-15 minutes of sweating, red faces, watery eyes, runny noses and burning in the mouth and throat.

We managed to complete our little challenge although I doubt we will ever do that again. The waitress was telling us about the challenge they have with those wings that will get you a picture up on the board. You have to eat 12 of them. By yourself. In under 6 minutes. With NO drinks or other food inbetween. Insanity IMO. On top of that, while they will take your picture for free and put it up on the board, you still have to pay for the wings and if you want the T-shirt proving you did it.. you have to pay for that too. What kind of crazy food challenge is that? I'm going to skip the whole paying to torture myself bit thanks. Paying for the 6 we split between us was bad enough. :P

Read more...

Happy Mother's Day!

To all the mothers out there who do amazing things for their children, I just want to wish you a happy mother's day.

I wish I could be there to celebrate with you today Mom, but I am glad I was there a week ago to see you. You will be in my thoughts today!

Love you Mom.

Read more...

And the stupidity continues..

People never cease to amaze me. Recently we have had users whining or in a panic about the fact that their new computer.. built all shiny and fresh in 2009, doesn't have a floppy drive in it. A FLOPPY disk drive. That is like saying I won't take that new stereo system with the 100 disk CD changer, digital tuner with HDMI ports and 5.1 surround sound because it lacks an 8-track player. Or walking into the store and trying to pick up a cellular phone, but telling them you will only take it if you can get one with a rotary dialer. Wake up and join the rest of us in the digital age.

For this desktop transition I made a temporary server for users to copy their music too. Technically speaking, if its not business related, its not supposed to be on a work PC. However, because we are nice, we try to accomodate people and let them have those little things that makes the day go bye fast, like their music. As long as the music is stored locally and not on the server, we allow it. So to help people transition to their new PCs without losing their music I created a temporary server for them to use as a storage point instead of everyone trying to copy music out to their user directories and overloading our file and print servers. I sent out directions and an explination of what was allowed and how to do it all. Step by step. Every click and every thing you needed to type was in there. I am fairly certain any toddler that has mastered the use of his hands and fingers and can read the instructions could have handled it.

Here, however, we have grown adults pulling in good salaries that apparently can't. We had a user copy her music out to this temp server like she was supposed to. However, when it came time to copy it back to her local C: drive, she failed. On an epic level. Instead of selecting her music folder from the temp server, she managed to select EVERYONES folder. And then, instead of copying it to her C: drive, she attempted to copy it to her user folder. So instead of a couple hundered MP3s ending up on her local drive, she attempted to copy upwards of 13,000 of them to her home directory. Essentially managing to single handedly do exactly what we were trying to avoid in the first place. Filling up and overloading the file server. /sigh

Just goes to show you.. try to make something idiot proof and along comes a better idiot. Have a great plan in place? No problem. They will find a way to fuck it up. As they say, where there is a will, there is an moron that is going to screw the pooch there is a way!

But enough of that.. here's some Jim Gaffigan to take you into the weekend!

Read more...

Some people...

Most of you that read this know that we are in the process of upgrading all of our desktops at work. This means for the last two months, we have been constantly reminding everyone to make SURE they have all their important files stored on their home directory. These directories are on our file servers, which means they are backed up and will also still be available to them when their desktop is replaced. Simple concept right? Apparently not.

So far we have had at least 3 people suddenly need their old desktop back because they forgot files on that machine. After repeated emails and our techs asking them point blank when they are swapping out machines "Did you get all your files moved to the network?" .. they still didn't get it done. This requires us digging through piles of old machines to find their. Time consuming and pointless. But hey.. we are a 'service' department and we live to please! Or at least thats what I think we are supposed to believe.

Yesterday however, took the cake. I had a frantic user call up because he wanted to make sure that somehow, someway, he got a machine with a floppy drive in it. You know, those little 3.5" square things that people used to use before the invention of the CD Drive, DVD Drive and USB drives? Yeah.. those things. Why did he need one? He is still storing important business data on floppies. Never mind the fact that he has access to both his personal network share as well as several departmental ones to store it on. Never mind the fact that floppies have a high failure rate. Never mind that floppy drives were NOT purchased for the new machines on purpose. Never mind that their massive 1.4MB of storage is about as useful as a talented musician would be to a Rascall Flats concert.

I tried to patiently explain that he should copy the data off those floppies to the network share and he was concerned that it would "Take up too much space on the network". I told him to do it anyway, that living on the edge was life was all about! He wasn't convinced. I then told him to do it anyway because when those floppies broke, I was going to go down to his desk with the midget rodeo clown I am going to hire for the sole purpose of taunting him for being a moron.

After about 20 minutes of dealing with this rocket surgeon, I finally get him off the phone with his assurances that he is backing up his files and whatnot. 10 minutes after that I get a call from him saying that after he deleted some files off his hard drive, that some of the files on the network share for his department aren't working. I figured he accidentally deleted some of the network files, so I set about tracking them down to restore them. Only all I found was shortcuts on the network share.

Instead of actually copying or moving the files to the network share, he just copied shortcuts to them. Then of course, he proceeded to delete them from his hard drive. Oh, and these were not files he backed up to his almighty floppies. Now I realize that not everyone is a 'computer' person. But c'mon. It says "Shortcut to blahblah". The options when you drag a file over to a location like that are: Copy Here, Move Here or Create Shortcut Here. Two of those options would have worked fine for him. But he managed to pick the third and entirely useless option.

Needless to say, he was rather upset when he was informed by me that he was SOL on those files. He was also upset when he called every other person in my department and got the same answer about his files and his stupidity.

I suppose I should be thanking him though. Its people like him that make me want to hit him in the face with a shovel keep me employed. So I salute you Mr. ChampionOfTheFloppyDrive. Party on!

Read more...

Aaaand we're back!

I know you all missed me terribly and while I had my laptop with me in AZ, I just didn't find the motivation to blog. It was much more fun to hang out with my nephews, play rock band or chill outside with a book, a beer and a cigar.

But I'm back now. Vacation was awesome and I had a fabulous time visiting with my immediate and extended family that made the journey to AZ for Zane's baptism. We ate too much, drank too much and just had a great time all around.

My nephew Caden, who didn't want water on his head and was very happy that it was Zane's turn and not his, decided halfway through the proceedings that he wanted to be up with with mom and dad and so he walks up to the baptismal font. Well halfway anyway. He then stops on the second step and proceeds to lounge there looking like Cleopatra waiting for someone to feed him grapes and fan him. It was adorable. I snapped a good picture of it, just have to have my sister send it to me.

I got to visit and catch up with some friends from high school days as well while I was there which was good times. Did I mention beer? Had lots of good beer while I was there, but far and away the best I had was at a brewpub called BJ's. If there is one near you.. go try their Jeremaih Red. It's absolutely fantastic. Check it out HERE.

Read more...

D I A F.

You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a news story about the economy these days. Everywhere around the country and around the world people are struggling to make ends meet. People are losing their jobs. Families who had no financial worries a few years ago are suddenly finding themselves struggling to make ends meet and just keep a roof over their heads.

I realize the rich in the world live in some kind of alternate reality, but read this and tell me to do not want to literally set this guy and his stupid fucking dog on fire. LINK-TO-OMG-WTF

There are stories all the time about the excesses of the rich, but to spend 4.2mil on a tiara for a 8lb dog? That is just a whole different realm of excess. Maybe he shouldn't die in a fire though. That would be too quick and wouldn't really get the point across. What would be really awesome is if we could pull of some kind of 'Trading Places' situation like they did with Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy in the movie. Take that pompus idiot and strip away all his money and houses and make him work at McD's for minimum wage. Make him go home to a 1 bedroom apartment and live off top ramen. Give the fucker some perspective because obviously someone who can drop 4mil on dog bling has ZERO contact with reality.

If you haven't seen the Lewis Black bit where he talks about rich people and the stupid shit they do, check it out.



"I don't believe you one-up someone just by buying something bigger.. if you really want to shake someone up and fuck with them, what you do is use that money in a way they never imagine. You know what I would have done with that money? I would hire a young woman in her 20's and pay her an amazing salary .. give her the best pension and health insurance.. and she would be my personal ball washer."

As outrageous as that sounds, at least he would be employing someone with the money he is spending. Watch the whole video though as he talks about the excesses of the overly rich and the idiots that stole all that money from their companies like Adelphia and Enron. Lewis Black is a riot. I would love to go drinking with him.

Maltese dogs are lame to begin with.. but now with that tiara, I really want to have someone dangle a treat in the air so the dog is standing on his back legs like he is tee'd up and then punt his ugly little ass through the uprights on a football field. His tiara would of course fall off and I would take it, sell it and use the money to pay a whole mass of people to do nothing but follow that tool around and call him and idiot non-stop til he goes insane and checks into an asylum. Look at this picture and tell me you don't have an overwhelming urge to drop kick his smug little tiara-wearing ass.

Read more...