Random Access

I forgot to add the Quote of the Day from yesterday’s excursion:

:Swap meet. it’s like… Cro-Magnon eBay.

Nine Hells.

We took some things from work to one of the local swap meets this morning. Early this morning. VERY early this morning. (So, yes , I was working when you messaged me this morning.) Some of the people and things that we saw there…. *jawdrop* It was more than a lesson in culture studies, it was an experience. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hot. Well, it wasn’t too hot to me; , on the other hand… She took on a little more sun than planned. I do, however, have a rather distinctive tan line.

Some of the highlights (or maybe “lowlights”):

• Mullets galore.
• Fashion don’ts. LOTs of them.
• “Apex of Apathy”
• in a hat.
• Rewriting The Muppet Show theme as The Mullet Show

Getting up at 0630 (hereafter referred to as “Oh-dark-thirty”) was not fun. I wasn’t tired until I got home. I started nodding off around 5:30. I decided to take a nap. A thirty-to-forty-five minute nap. I woke up a couple of times, but didn’t get up until shortly before 7:30. Oy.

And now the weekend can begin.

Quote of the Day
: I had one cheek on the crack.

Namaste.

Just after leaving the apartment complex this morning, I realized that I had left my phone at home. So… I flipped a U and headed back. As I approached the entrance to the complex, I saw a vehicle waiting to get out. Due to the uneven grade between the complex pavement and the newly paved road, the vehicle was taking up about 3/4 of the available space of the entrance. Under normal conditions, this wouldn’t have bothered me – it’s understandable that a driver wouldn’t want to scrape the undercarriage of her or is car. This was an SUV, however. PLENTY of ground clearance. Idiotstick.

The yawning girl at the bus stop. Wide-mouthed and unashamed. It made me grin.

Another Utah driver moment: A woman passes – two lanes to my left – to get in front of a double-trailered semi… cut back across two lanes of traffic…. and make a right-lane exit. In less than a quarter of a mile. Oh yeah, she almost cut off another truck in the process. Idiotstick.

For : Conscience. Jar. Pantry.
I just saw that she quoted me earlier. *amused*

If you haven’t taken a crack at the poll that I posted last night, take a look and weigh in.

Lake smell. The Harbor back home never smelled this bad.
Dead brine shrimp + wind blowing from the northwest = *ACK*

::: addendum :::
Some of our customers…. *sigh*
Some of the questions that they ask…. *sigh*
How much is the shipping to… Address X? As with 99.954387% of all eBay auctions, the shipping information is at the bottom of the auction text! SCROLL DOWN!
General questions about a given item? You’re already online. Access to the answers to most (95%+) of the questions are at your bloody fingertips, you gits! You can look it up on the manufacturer’s site or on any of a bazillion review/opinion sites.

Thursday
Another day comes to a close.

Song of the Day
Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt

Stray Toasters

• Driving back to the office from the FedEx center, we passed a building where a young man was driving a forklift. The forklift manufacturer was Clark. On the rear of the forklift, next to the Clark name, someone had painted “Kent.” It made me laugh.
• Mark Hamill (best known for his role in Corvette Summer the Star Wars trilogy) has stayed rather busy doing voice work in a lot cartoons and videogames. He did the voice of Wolverine for X2: Wolverine’s Revenge… which also features the voice talents of Patrick Stewart and Mayim Bialik (whom you may remember from NBC’s Blossom).
• Oreo Cookie Shake. Mmmmmm.
• BBC News article about “the financial impact on game developers of the next generation of consoles”
• In tonight’s “David vs. Goliath” news: “Small Webcasters Sue RIAA”

I think that pretty much covers it for now.

Namaste.

Wednesday
Mid-week and all is well.

We opted out of coffee/beer night. Instead, I had a quiet evening of L&O and anime. Life is good. I even got a call from my friend, Joe… as he was driving through Alabama. Poor guy.

Song of the Day
Ave Maria by Charles Gounod

Stray Toasters

• Thanks to for pointing out the following: this and this.
• Disney has a walking animatronic dinosaur.
• Wait ’til Micro$oft and SCO hear about this.
• BratStreet. Read it and laugh.
• Yet more about Florida’s plan to tax LANs.

And now, off for a drive and to look at the closest-that-it-will-be-for-60,000+-years Mars.

Namaste.

Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries is another song that should be enjoyed at high volume. It’s also rather good driving music.

Last week, while looking over the Lego website I found something that surprised me: The U.S.S. Constellation has been replicated in a Lego set! Something that latches on to both my Lego affinity and hometown pride. Not a bad two-for-one. Not bad at all.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
It makes a nice change of pace from the standard morning coffee.

Question for cat owners: Does anyone else have a cat that likes to play with Q-Tips®?

Tuesday
Another day done. Nothing major to speak of work-wise. And it was a quiet evening. I cooked dinner, watched TV and tried to grok a little bit of Linux lore so that I can better understand how to use it effectively.

Song of the Day
The Mission by John Williams (the composer, not the guitar player)

Stray Toasters

• I emailed my uncle a request for suggestions of CDs that I should get since I want to start a classical music selection. He’s a Beethoven man, but I trust his knowledge of the genre. I caught him online a couple of hours later and chatted with him about it. He gave me a few suggestions (including a Beethoven selection). What made me laugh was his closing:
  

  [14:01] (My Uncle): let me know…but…GET BEETHOVEN FIRST!!!

• On the drive home, I was listening to a tape that I’d made many moons ago of John Williams. Olympic Fanfare is a song to be enjoyed at high volume.
• Seen on Amazon.com while I was looking up some item information:
  

  1049 Action Figures…… 25716 poses.
  Toys ‘R’ Us
  teamed with Amazon.com
  We take FUN seriously.

  Well, it’s good to know that some things never change. Or, at least, they don’t change too much.

• Nominally work safe… but damn funny. Oh, what has the Green Lantern Corps come to…?
• Item #1 from the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” File: Nature’s Harmonic Simultaneous 4-Day Time Cube
• Item #2: Activists defacing SUVs on dealership lots… in an effort to save the environment. There was a story on this on Fox News Channel earlier this evening.
• Samurai Jack Episode XXIV: Jack… in a warped permutation of Alice in Wonderland. VERY amusing.
• After watching that ep of Samurai Jack, I decided to look up the voice talents on IMDb. Phil Lamarr does Jack’s voice. Then I noticed all of the other things that he is doing/has done. That is one busy man. VERY busy. And very talented. I watch… *counts*… three of the shows on which he is currently working. Had I not previously known that he did John Stewart’s voice on Justice League and Virgil Hawkins/Static’s voice on Static Shock, I would have never known that he worked on both. AND…. he was Marvin (the kid whom Vincent shot in the back of Jule’s car) in Pulp Fiction.
• I’m not sure if Craig McCracken is an X-fan or not, but the Powerpuff Girls just used the phrase “Fastball Special.” And they set it up just like Colossus and Wolverine used to. It made me smile.
• I am not a fan of stereotypes – and I’m not sure if this qualifies as one – but this made me laugh: A young man in his Jeep-like vehicle passed me on the way home. On the back of his car was a bumper sticker: Got Rice. The thing that made me laugh about the situation was that the young man was of Asian descent.
• “Curse you, man-bird! You’ll pay for this!”
  (taken from an old Hawkman cartoon that I saw – and forced to watch along with me – on Boomerang tonight)

• Bad pick-up lines? We’ve all heard them. But this made me laugh.
• Spike Spiegel. *nod*
• AOL for Broadband commercial. *sigh* The spin doctors at AOHell are making it sound like having any other broadband connection automatically means that you are leaving your computer – and personal information – open to attack. And ONLY AOHell for Broadband can keep you safe.

Quote of the Day

Jet: I never did understand you… right to the very end!
Spike: I don’t understand either.

And with that…

Namaste.

There are TONS of baby dragonflies on the walls of the building this morning. I missed them when I walked in… and I have no idea HOW I could have missed that many. I went out to get the mail and noticed them on by way back.

[11:23] : Hoi chummerette
[11:23] : What’s the good word?
[11:24] : a good one. let me pick one out of a hat, ummm, donut. donut is good.
[11:24] : Nice.
[11:24] : what’s your good word? 🙂
[11:24] : bandersnatch
[11:25] : oh, sounds naughty.
[11:25] : Indeed.

(Almost) Nothing makes ya wanna wiggle yer bum in your office chair like Copacabana.
::: bounce and wiggle mode :::

Monday
Started off all right… had a couple of snags in the middle of the day… got better.

Came home, ate and watched

-vs-

Song of the Day
Cristofori’s Dream by David Lanz

Stray Toasters

• On the way home, I passed a young lady driving down I-215 who had a small fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers (I think that they were the ones that Hallmark sell) hanging in her back window. It made me laugh.
• Hummingbirds and bio-mechanica.
• They’re Pinky and the Brain
  Yes, Pinky and the Brain
  One is a genius
  The other’s insane…

• MIT robot walks on water
• And, in “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” news: Florida Proposes Taxing Local LANs
• Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
• Sci-Fi Movies and ‘Bad Science’
• Greg Rucka will soon be the new scribe for DC Comics’ Adventures of Superman. *nod* I was reading an interview that Comic Book Resources had with him. At one point, discussing Lois Lane, he made a very interesting point:
  

  The biggest thing that gets me, and one of the reasons that Lois gets tarred with the ‘bitch’ appellation, is that we assume rightly that Clark would be attracted to a woman who is strong, passionate and capable. But those very positive traits can be portrayed – if you’re not careful – as very negative things, especially when issues of gender get involved. It’s very easy to go from strong and outspoken woman to ‘bitch.’ A lot of that’s societal, there’s a sexism involved that allows that kind of self-confidence can be read as arrogance.

  I thought that it was very well-stated. If you get a chance, read the entire article.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.

Namaste.

Sunday
Today was another relatively lazy day… which started a little earlier than I had planned. We left the windows open last night as it was a pleasant temperature out. I got to bed somewhere around 3:00 – not too late. At 9:00 I was awake.

• Not because emergency bladder voiding was necessary.
• Not because one of the cats thought that I needed to be up.
• Not because someone called with urgent news.

I was awake because it was windy… and the blinds were rattling. Yay. I was agitated enough that I couldn’t get back to sleep and thus decided to start the day. I was lazy until roughly 10:30 when I started getting ready to head to Borders.

Borders was good. I did more work on the Cindy Turlington drawing. I looked at a couple of magazines for reference material on poses and hairstyles. I talked with the ladies whom I met a couple of months ago. put in an appearance and we chatted a while.

I came home and since no one had come up with a good idea of something to do this evening (all of this weekend’s movie options were… not good), I set up a dinner gathering at one of the local Olive Garden restaurants. Dinner GOOOD!!! ::: gesture ::: After that, we headed to Greenhouse Effect for dinner and conversation.

And now, it’s nearly time for MacGuyver in Space Stargate SG-1. Yeah, it may not be the greatest piece of sci-fi out there, but I like it. *shrug* Stop laughing. No, really…. stop laughing.

Stray Toaster
Answer: Aunt Fannie’s Bloomers.
Question: What is the unusual, but appropriate, name of a florist in South Salt Lake?

Namaste.

Saturday
So far, my day has consisted of:

• Watching my morning toonage.
• Doing some honest-to-goodness cleaning.
• And lots of sittin’ on my butt.

In other words: It was a good day off.

Stray Toasters

• I caught the tail end of MTV’s Big Urban Myth. Hmm. That’s pretty much all that I can say about that. Afterwards, I managed to catch a couple of episodes of MTV’s Spider-Man. Interesting animation. Not bad… I was expecting more traditional animation and not CGI. But, it’s a Mainframe show, so it’s to be expected.
• It seems that my Palm Pilot wasn’t quite as terminal as I had feared. I gave it a week off… as in I drained the battery and let it sit for a week before recharging/resynching it. It looks like the digitizer is still a little off, but I can reset it daily if need be.
• Cats + Laser Pointer = Comedy.
• Last night’s coffee gathering was pretty good. even put in a guest appearance. And, and did a couple of collaborative drawings. (See their respective journals for the pieces.)
• I’ve been clearing out my various email inboxes. I came across a comment to a post that I made a few months ago, re: IMDb’s Date Search – it tells who was born on what day. Something that I didn’t notice (and something that I’m sure that will get a kick out of): I share a birthday with Lauren Tewes who played “Julie, the Cruise Director” on The Love Boat.
• For : “Whoa… I know Shakespeare.”

Doot doot doot.

Namaste.

Bopping around to a song while you’re trying to shave your head isn’t the best idea in the world.

You tend to stop shaving.

Which doesn’t help in the “getting ready for work” department.

But, damn it’s fun! 🙂

Thursday
Work. It didn’t suck. No, really. It didn’t. And, I even figured out why the guy at the Post Office looks so familiar: He used to work at the station near the place where I used to live.

After work, I spent a pretty quiet evening around the homestead. CSI. Tech TV. FLCL. And… the thunder and lightning storm! It reminded me of the storms back home. *sigh*

Song of the Day

• Suspicious Minds
• A Little Less Conversation
• Jailhouse Rock

by… that’s right… “The King,” Elvis Presley.

Stray Toasters

• posted a link to this in her journal earlier this evening. After reading that, I went to the Parents Television Council website. I was flabbergasted. Stunned, I tell you! The PTC is up-in-arms about shows that kids shouldn’t be watching. Um… last time I checked, most kids had these people around them called “parents” and/or “guardians.” And, I seem to remember hearing something about these people being responsible for what the kids around them saw/heard/etc. And….and… the last time that I checked, every television that I have seen have this amazing feature called “the On/Off Switch” or “the Power Button.” *braincramp* I find the lyrics to Rush’ song Witch Hunt very apt in this case:
  

  They say there is strangeness too dangerous
  In our theaters and bookstore shelves.
  That those who know what’s best for us
  Must rise and save us from ourselves.

• Hand signals. (Work safe and rather amusing)
• The People’s Crotch Attack!
• “Does IM Make U Dum?”
• I just saw the Foot Locker commercial. It was set in a movie theatre. During a kung fu movie. I laughed.
• posted a link to this earlier. Some peoples’ children… *bristle* They need someone to do the same thing to them. On a busy freeway. At high speed.
• Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood. Two of a kind. Nothing alike.
• More about the MSN Messenger “mandatory upgrade.”
• RIAA and MPAA against the world….

Idiotsticks of the Day
More “Adventures with Utah Drivers.” Today we saw two – yes TWO – different people driving in reverse… in the midst of traffic. ::: boggle :::

Quote of the Day
From tonight’s episode of Trigun: After arriving in May City, workmen are unloading passengers’ luggage from the bus. Three of the men lift Wolfwood’s cross from the top of the bus and toss it down to him:

Men: Damn! That thing is heavy!

Wolfwood catches it, easily…
Wolfwood: That, my friend, is because it is so full of mercy.

Namaste.