Devil Vision!

As we all now know from previous posts of mine, webcams are the work of the Devil himself and will immediately begin to corrupt the innocent and pure minds of those that use them. Fortunately, my mind is neither innocent nor pure, so its effect has yet to take hold.

I hopped on my Devil Cam and connected with my sister in AZ. My parents were there as well and so I got to see all of my family and even my new nephew Zane for about an hour. We had a good time chatting, seeing each other, and making plans for when I come visit in a couple of weeks. I do feel bad about exposing poor baby Zane to the Devil Cam this early in his life. He is DOOOOOOOOMED!

My family is insisting we have some kind of contest to tackle the Vermonster while I am there. Yes.. 20 scoops of icecream + toppings. I get my nephew Caden on my team though.. and I have seen that kid put away some serious icecream despite his size, so I think we have a good shot at winning!

I am not looking forward to the 100+ temps in AZ, but then again, I am not enjoying the forecast of snow today either. Maybe that move to San Diego isn't such a crazy idea after all! :P

Oh and here's a bit of humor for your day. This guy, Gary Gulman cracks me up.

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Wow... just wow.

How people can design things and not just step back and take a real good look at what they have created is beyond me. Or did this person know full well what he/she was making? If that's the case, it's even more disturbing. This is supposed to be a slide. For kids.

To be fair.. there are kids. And they are sliding. So I suppose in a way, it met its goals. But how.. HOW.. does this get made. How does a parent walk up to his and go, "Yes, go ahead little Billy.. go play on the giant penis and slide right on out of it!"?

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Happy Easter or something.

So I'm a few days late. Sue me.

The boys and I had a great, if non-traditional, easter. While I did have a ham ready to cook, I didn't feel like cooking it and my brother doesn't really like ham. He also doesn't like bacon and neither does my SIL. Which I am pretty sure makes them communists, but I am still checking on that.

So instead of ham and scalloped potatoes and finding eggs around the yard, we skipped all that noise and went and had Mongolian grill for lunch. It was fabulous. Even my picky eater enjoyed it. You get to pick your meats and seafoods, noodles, veggies and the type of sauce you want. Then you take all your ingredients up to the big grill and the entertaining guys there grill it all up for you while you watch. We all ate with chopsticks too, which was also very amusing. I think we all go the hang of it towards the end though.

The boys had brought their baskets over from my Ex's house where they celebrated easter last year. They made many, no-so-subtle reminders to the 'easter bunny' that they wanted stuff put in said baskets. So I got them lots of candy, including the sweet tart jellybeans they were requesting. The funny part is.. Gabe had his first orthodontial stuff put on yesterday and was reminded that you can't have any 'sticky' food. Like Jellybeans for example as the orthodontist mentioned. The look of dissapointment on his face when he heard that news was quite entertaining. So now they get to look at the jellybeans every day.. but not actually eat them. My older son decided he is going to try to sell them at school instead. Always thinking that one.

My brother hadn't seen the movie Dogma yet, so I took that over to watch with him yesterday. I love that movie. So many great lines in there and a ton of amazing actors. Yes, many great actors and actresses.. and also Ben Affleck. One thing he is not is even a good actor, much less great or amazing. He is like the male counter part to Kirsten Dunst. He is just not good at acting. Its a good thing he is friends with Mat Damon so that he still gets parts in movies otherwise he would be showing up on the next Celebrity Rehab reality show.

Well anyway.. happy belated Easter everyone!

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Oh.. and WTF

Read THIS

Well more specifically .. the comments below the question. I'm more than a tad bit disturbed. Do they have a support group for these people? I think they need some help. If nothing else, they could do some multi-group outings with the support group for "People who still eat elementary school paste" and the support group for "Janitors that snack on urnial cakes because they have the word 'Cake' in their name".

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Shouldn't you know?

I don't know why I am still floored by some of the things that go on around here at work. Today was supposed to be a nice easy day. Half day with nothing major pending and most people just ease into a holiday weekend so they don't call us to start anything major. Then I get an email which wants a bunch of information to put together in a report... well crap.

The thing is though, this email is very, VERY vague as to what they are looking for. So I ask for clarification from the person that sent the email. What I get back for an answer was basically:

"Well the person that requested this from me was vague too.. so I'm not sure."

Umm.. so you didn't think to ask for clarification? What was I thinking.. of course you didn't. That would make sense. This individual is supposed to be using his technical knowledge as well as his people skills to provide a bridge so to speak between the non-technical departments and management and the technical world. This is his position now. It's what he wanted to do. Yet when asked for a report, he is unable to even determine if he needs to ask more questions.

Helloooooo.. if you want to be a liaison .. then get to liaising already. Hmm.. not sure thats even a word, but I like it. Nothing irritates me more than a person who wants a job, gets said job and then chooses to not make any kind of effort to do that job. Really, we had ambiguous, pointless requests before. We don't need a middle man that just repeats that crap. We can get that directly from the source and at least they have a reason for it. You are supposed to understand. You are supposed to be able to speak both languages. Apparently you just haven't figured out the mythology of that yet.

Yes, I mean to use the term mythology there. Yes, I know the term methodology would be a better fit, but who am I to judge or question the choice of terms used by the master liaison? Clearly he must know what he is about and I am just a simpleton.

Today's email request was the equivalent of calling up your neighboor and saying, "Hey.. my boss is asking me questions and I need you to give me a report on grass."

Now your reaction to that would be something along the lines of .. "WTF does that mean? Are you talking grass like in your front yard? Or grass as in weed? Do you want to know how to grow it? Do you want to know the different kinds out there? Do you want to know the best kinds of fertilizers and weed killers for your lawn? Do you want to find someone to maintain your lawn? Really.. can you be more specific on what you are looking for so I can get you the information you are looking for?"

Legitimate questions... to which he replies, "I don't know.. he just wants a report on grass."

How the hell do you not ask more questions. Get clarification. Forge some kind of understanding between their world and ours. That is what you signed up for and claimed you are good at. This is an epic failure and is most likely going to be a giant waste of time for all involved.

It is very tempting to just make a crappy report with random facts that are just as useless and unhelpful as the instruction were that they gave us. But my brain doesn't work that way. I need to know. I need to understand what you want. I need it to come out organized and structured. Why must you piss me off so?

Happy hour can't come soon enough. Must drink away the stupid and annoying that is quickly taking up too much of my relaxing half day at work.

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Guest post!

Hi there! Let me introduce myself. I am the night auditor for the hotel and convention center where the author of this blog works. He gracefully switched on-call weeks with a peer when asked so that he is covering her week right now. Why am I writing this morning instead of him? Well he is a little tired and cranky so I thought I would help him out with a guest post.

See I had a problem with the hotel system this morning when running my night audit. I tried and couldn't fix it. So, following our procedures, I contacted security who then called the on-call number to let the engineer know that we were having problems. I needed him to come in and fix the as/400 so that I could finish the backup and the rest of the night audit procedures in order to roll the day so we could start up again.

Here's the thing though. Even though I called him... and even though he called back within 60 seconds of getting the call from CSC, I was jonsing and couldn't possibly hold out for even 2 more minutes. I HAD to go take a cigarette break. Sure I knew I was waking someone out of a dead sleep to help me and that I should really be a the phone for the call, but I didn't think he would mind too much. I'm sure it was perfectly ok with him having to be on hold for over 10 minutes while I finished my cig and wandered back in.

In fact.. I see him coming now. See.. everything is all good. He's smiling. Well maybe evil grin is a better description, but I don't know him that well. He seems happy to see me at any rate. There is a horrible scraping noise though and its getting louder as he get closer. Ahh.. I see the source of the sound now. For some reason he is dragging a metal shovel behind him along the stone tiles of the lobby floor. That's kind of odd. Wonder if I didn't wake him up after all. Maybe he was out gardening at 4am this morning. Im sure that's probably it.

Ahh.. the noise stopped. He picked the thing up finally. Now he is coming towards me with it held like a broadsword. Should I be concerned? Nah.. he is still smiling. Maybe he is going to beat the AS/400 into submission with it.

"Hey.. how's it goinnnOWWWW... GAhhhhhhh... dear lord why did you hit me in the face with that shovAHHHHHHHHHsttoppPLeAse!!"

"HHHHEllllpp.. meeeeee.. please...make the bad man stop"




Hey all.. Blade here. Ms. DumbassNightAuditBitch is .. well .. indisposed and unable to finish her post. She really wanted to finish, but she is kind of just lying there twitching a bit and drooling at the moment. I am dissapointed in the lack of commitment she made to this guest post. I suppose that's the downside of working with outside parties. The upside is that I am feeling awake now after swinging the shovel around for a bit which is exactly what I needed!

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It's raining .. whale?

I was talking with some friends the other day about the strangest and funniest videos we had come across over the years. Some of the best get mailed around over and over again. So I was quite surprised to hear they had not yet seen the video of the Oregon Highway Division using some creative techniques to dispose of a beached whale.

So, for your viewing pleasure.. here it is:


There is just something magical that happens when you mix a group of people who definitely rode the short bus to school with 20 cases of TNT and a 45 foot long, 8 ton whale. I was in awe when the Highway Division guy gets on camera and starts trying to be all serious in explaining their plan of attack for the impending explosion. You know his buddies were all off screen jumping up and down doing shots of moonshine, brimming with anticipation at yet another completely unecessary use of explosives.

For those of you having hard time understanding the Highway Division guy due to the accent, I have translated it for you.

Highway Guy: mummblemmmble.. DYNAMITE .. mmmblmmmble.. DEAD WHALE.. mmbllmm..BEEN DRINKING SINCE NOON .. mmmbl.. HEY GUYS! WATCH THIS!!

The new guy has some great comments in there as well such as:

"Where the blast blasted blubber beyond all reasonable bounds"

and

"Everyone at the scene was covered with chunk of dead whale."

Honestly.. it just doesn't get much better than that. Sure, there are lots of videos of uneducated rednecks and explosives on the net, but its usually a backyard thing that involves them removing their eyebrows and other facial hair or maybe a possum if they are feeling adventurous. This was epic. A rotting, 8 ton whale carcass. 20 Cases of TNT. The smart supervisor on vacation. A news team there to capture it all. Priceless.

The announcer at the end says that he hope the next time a whale washes up in that county that they will know what not to do. Screw that. Let's make a reality TV show out of that group of rocket surgeons touring around the country blowing up other dead animals. Cmon.. as much as you hate to admit it, you would watch that show. How can you not?

Based on the microphone the guy is holding and the general look of him, I'm guessing that film is from a couple of decades ago. Its quite possible those highway division guys are still sitting around the bar on a Friday night drinking and saying to each other, "Hey you guys member when we blowded up that whale?"

It takes a special person to mastermind a plan to cover 50+ people in chunks of rotting whale flesh. Kudos to you Mr. OregonHighwayDepartmentEngineer guy! Let's all have another round and salute "The real men of genius"!

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