Random Access

Sunday – 10 February 2008
It’s been a quiet day here in Lake Wobegon Salt Lake City.

The morning started with comics in bed, but changed to breakfast, coffee and yesterday’s toonage in the living room – Legion was (yet again) a rerun, but The Batman was new.

Then there was Pro Bowl and dinner with SaraRules’ parents and brother.

Now, I’m back in Paragon City with the Hand of Nefer-Tem while SaraRules quilts some more. Maybe I’ll hit 42 before the night – and Double XP – ends.

Human of the Day (weekend)
This weekend, it was a tie: and :

• for the gift card to the Garden of Sweden, which went towards this (1, 2).
• for her repairs to my Batman and Morpheus statues.

Stray Toasters

• There was… something that was going here. I don’t remember what, so it will keep until later, I’m sure.

By the way…. Security Level 42. 🙂

Namaste.

Saturday – 09 February 2008
Today has been fairly low-key but good:

• Breakfast with Kate, Perry and the kids.
• Shopping and errand-running.
• Back home so that…
  • SaraRules could do some quilting
  • I could take part in Double XP Weekend in CoH.
    (The Hand of Nefer-Tem is now Level 41.)
• We decided to be lazy and ordered pizza for dinner.
• Headed over to spend hang out with SaraRules’ folks for a bit.
• Made a pilgrimage to the Garden of Sweden
  • I now have a display case for my statues and some of my action figures.

And now, it’s time for breakfast.

Namaste.

BF, one of our QA managers, came over to IT to ask – who is currently out of the office – a question. He looked at ‘s desk (and empty chair), but kept walking closer. Granted, BF was on the phone, but it was pretty obvious that no one was there.

I watched this with amusement.

When BF turned around to walk away, I looked at him and said:

You know… walking closer to [his] desk isn’t going to make him magically appear.

BF looked at me and said:

Well, I can hope, can’t I?!

Friday – 08 February 2008
The weekend steadily approaches. Selah.

I was up on-time this morning. “On-time” meaning that I didn’t ignore the alarm (multiple times). This doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t have a leisurely time getting ready… but I was awake and mobile, at least. And, I was still in the office by 8:15… with frozen mocha goodness and a bagel omelette sandwich, no less!

I took a few pictures of the mountains at sunrise. I made the gallery using iWeb, rather than iPhoto. It wasn’t quite as automatically intuitive as iPhoto, but it was still rather easy.

Chew on This: Food for Thought
Coffee, in its various forms, is not something that you buy.
You rent it.

The same holds true for alcohol.

Stray Toasters

• brought in the Dragonlance DVD for me to borrow. This should be… interesting… if not entertaining.
• Thanks to for making sure that I saw Super LEGO Mario.
• By way of Drive Thru RPG: Xpress Core System
• Eric mentioned that Top Gear did a show where the hosts drove a charity “rally” through the southeastern states. Part of the race was through Alabama. Click here to see what they did for this part of the race.
• 72 Tips for Safer Computing
• Martin Scorsese is gearing up to do a Bob Marley documentary.
• 
• At the beginning of A Show of Hands, Rush used The Three Stooges’ “Hello… Hello… Hello… HELLO!” as their introduction. Now, no matter when I hear it, I expect to hear The Big Money immediately afterwards. Every time.
• Millions of peaches, peaches for me
  Millions of peaches, peaches for free
• Compubeaver
• Seeing the root domain name of the Compubeaver site reminded me of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.

Namaste.

As promised, more pictures of Grace

Weight: 6 pounds, 4½ ounces
Length: 20 inches.

Thursday – 07 February 2008
I talked with briefly this morning; Bot and Bit are both doing well.

I started my morning in the SLC office, but was due to be in the AF office today. The commute was relatively uneventful… except for the snow that I ran into at Point of the Mountain.

Things have been fairly quiet around the office today. I consider this a good thing.

Workout
Today’s workout varied from Tuesday’s workout, with more of a focus on upper back:

• Leg Raises: 3 sets/20 reps
• Pull-ups: 3 sets/10 reps (2 sets unassisted; 1 set assisted @ 80 lbs)
• Bench Press: 3 sets/10 reps, 205 lbs (third set broken up into 5-and-5)
• Pull-downs (wide-grip, behind the head): 3 sets/15 reps, 100 lbs
• Reverse Deltoid Fly: 3 sets/10 reps, 75 lbs
• Dips: 3 sets/10 reps

Today’s weight: 172.6 lbs.

Stray Toasters

• I tried a couple of new-to-me tech items yesterday; I think that I like them both:
  • iGoogle
  • Spaces
• Mitt Romney is bowing out of the 2008 Republican race. It will be interesting to see how things shake out.
• New iPhone and iPod Touch Safari exploit discovered
• How much of a toy geek am I? I present Exhibit A: Action Theatre: Colossus vs. Train

  

  

  

  I actually powered up the train… and Piotr did keep it from moving.
  Colossus: 1
  Train: 0

• Speed & Angels: fighter pilot documentary
• I need to go to the Garden of Sweden soon.
• TANSTAAFL… or is there?
  I had one.
  Granted, it was left over from a manager meeting that was held here, but it was free.
• 

Namaste.

I have a niece: Grace Anya.

Weight: 6 pounds, 4 ounces
Time of birth: 10:36 PM EST

I don’t have the exact details of length (but the thought is about 16″), but according to (and my father… and my stepmother…), both Bot and Bit are doing well.

More details and pictures as they become available.

As I was finishing up my work day, I was thinking about the fact that Rana, whom and I occasionally refer to as “Bot,” is about to give birth to her first child.

Which led to the following hastily-sent text message:

You are aware that if we keep referring to Rana as Bot, the baby is inevitably going to be referred to as Bit, aren’t you?

A few minutes later, I received the following message from :

HAHAHA!!! That is better than Ecru!

I just got a message from : Sib-1 is in labor.
Naturally, I followed this up with a quick phone call.

Updates as they become available.

Wednesday – 06 February 2008
Jason called a little bit ago to ask how the roads on the way to the office looked.
Odd, but okay…
I told him that I thought that they were fine.

His “Uhhm…” gave me a little pause.

I went to the window.

It’s snowing.
Yet again.

Stray Toaster
For some reason, I had a couple of The Metric Marvels, NBC’s attempt to teach kids the metric system by way of a knock-off version of ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock!, running through my head this morning.

Namaste.

I’ve been tooling around the Topless Robot site for the past couple of days.  I’ve been highly amused by a few things, including:

• The 10 Most Disturbing Smurfs (and there are a plethoric buttload of them).
• The 10 Star Wars Toys That Unintentionally Look Like Celebrities
• They even have spaceships!
  • The 15 Greatest Spaceships of All Time
  • The 10 Worst Spaceships of All Time
• The Greatest Story Ever Told… in Manga
• Know Your Drunken Damage: Iron Man or Robert Downey, Jr.?

Yeah.  Madness.

Tuesday – 05 February 2008
So far, it’s been a rather decent day. Nothing really out of the ordinary to report… other than Deacon Derek brought me a tub of spun sugar confectionery goodness as recompense for letting him jump-seat to Cedar City with me this past weekend.

Workout
Today’s workout was… abbreviated, but still decent:

• Leg Raises: 3 sets/20 reps
• Pull-ups: 3 sets/10 reps (3rd set done with 80 lbs. assistance)
• Bench press: 3 sets/10 reps, 205 lbs.
• Lateral Raises (standing, dumbbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 10 lbs.
• Curls (standing, barbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 60 lbs.

Today’s weight: 169.6 lbs.
Stray Toasters

• I stumbled upon a new-to-me site today: Top Secret Recipes.
• The name – and buy-out – game!
  • MicroHoo!
  • Yahoogle or Goohoo!

  Round and round and round it goes! Where it stops… nobody knows!

• Sam Adams: Patriot. Brewer. Homeboy.
  Jackie Chan: Martial artist. Actor. Tea maker…? When did this happen?!
• …and, speaking of beer, as seen in Cedar City, UT this past weekend:

  
  That’s right… they are passing on that whole 1¢ savings on to YOU!
  (Don’t spend it all in one place!)

• History of conjoined twins
• I have replenished my stores of Twix and Butterfinger in the AF office!
• 
• Is the GameBoy the toughest product ever made?
• What is – or was – your favorite console gaming unit?
  I love my 360, but the Sega Genesis still has a warm place in my heart…
• “Honey, have you seen my super-suit itch-free pajamas?!”

And tonight: Scion.

Namaste.

This afternoon, John F. and I were talking about the naming of the new President of the LDS Church. It wasn’t Jesse Jackson. Or Al Sharpton. Or Reverend Ike. Or even Jimmy Swaggart. It was Thomas Monson. But, from our digression, we were led to wonder just what became of our good friend, The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart. A quick look on Wikipedia led to this article… which, in turn, pointed us to JSM.org. Oh, my. The good reverend is looking a little rough around the gills.

After work, I stopped at the store to get some milk and then home. I unpacked, started dinner and just… unwound. I flipped back and forth between Star Trek: Enterprise, a couple of the Law & Order shows and… something else. At 9:00, I flipped over to Boomerang to watch Justice League Unlimited. Tonight’s ep was “Double Date,” featuring Black Canary, Green Arrow, The Huntress and The Question. I hadn’t seen it before, so that was an added bonus. Damn fine episode. As the review said:

If I had to pick one episode of Justice League Unlimited to show to someone to try and get them into the show, this would be one of the high-ranking possibilities on the list. There’s an intense amount of action present, as well as great dialogue, character interaction and great animation to back it up.

None of the “big guns” were in the episode and it was still a solid story. That’s what I loved about that show. Too bad they took it off the air.

Next up, a trip to Paragon City. Security Level 40 or bust! It took a while to find a team, but I did. We ran assorted missions.

Stray Toasters

• Can a Lightsaber Cut Through Superman?
• , would you point ‘bot in the direction of this: The Truth Behind the V Franchise
• Top Five High-Tech Lairs of Evil Masterminds (OK, a Few Good Masterminds, too)
• For my various WoW-playing friends:

  

• Early 20th Century charts of biblical teachings

And guess who made it to Security Level 40.
Mm-hmm, that’s right.
Now, I just need to figure out what my new costume will be…

Namaste.

Monday – 04 February 2008
Another week begins…

…but it’s one daycloser to the 14th, which is not only Valentine’s Day (or Single Awareness Day, as some would say) but also the day that SaraRules and I head on another long weekend vacation.

Destination: Baltimore.

We’re heading home to see the miracle of the new little grey (or zebra-striped or polka-dotted) addition to the family. I’m still hoping that is able to convince Sib -1 that “Ercu Latte” is a good name for a baby.

The commute this morning wasn’t hellish. UDoT took care of most of I-15 with their usual aplomb. Of course, the areas just south and just north of Beaver were a little lacking in attention to detail, but them’s the breaks. For the most part, the other drivers were decent and courteous… although there were a couple of monkey-riffic ones, including a semi driver whom I had to fight my way past in Cove Fort.

SaraRules had mentioned something last weekend, while she was up here: About 6 miles south of Nephi, on the east side of the highway, is a sign for a Super 8 Motel. But… there’s a problem with the sign. See if you can figure out what it is:

For those of you who don’t see anything wrong, let me help you:

The name of the town is Nephi, pronounced “knee-fie.”
As spelled on that sign, it would be pronounced: “neh-pee” or “neh-pie.”

That sign had to go through, at least, two or three levels of quality control before it made it to the roadside. You would think that someone – the motel owners, the graphic designer or even the printer – would have caught the error before clearing the sign for use.

Oh, Schoolhouse Rock! , how we miss you…

Namaste.

Sunday – 03 February 2008
Last night, SaraRules, Tink, Vince, Steve and I went to see Steph dance in Sleeping Beauty. It was staged by the Cedar City Junior Ballet; Steph danced the lead role as Princess Aurora. It was held in the Heritage Theater, which was a rather nice venue. The production was very good… and it included some adorable kids (as in under 10 years old) in a few roles. Steph gave an amazing performance, as did the rest of the corps. Even the kids, I’m happy to report.

Last night’s sleep was horrible. Between 2 AM and 8:30 AM, I think that I was up at least five (5) times. At 8:30, I’d had enough and went into the living room to watch TV and nerd. Unfortunately, at that time of the morning, there isn’t much to see on TV and there wasn’t really anything on the Internet that held my interest for very long. So, around 9:30, I went back to bed. I was able to eke out another couple hours’ broken sleep, but it was sleep. The weird dreams I had, though… those I could have done without.

This afternoon, I played a little CoH with Corvus Nox. Members of my SG were on, playing their mid-level characters and invited me to join the team. Vazhilok. In the sewers. It was a good run and, by the time we had finished, I got Nox up to Security Level 18.

SaraRules and I headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things for tonight’s Super Bowl gathering. Aside from assorted snack stuff, I decided to pick up shrimp and some (relatively) cheap beer in which to cook the shrimp. It was, according to group consensus, tasty. SaraRules made a rather delicious queso dip and jalapeno poppers.

People started showing up around 4:00. It was a lot of fun. Equal measures of trash-talking and educating people about the game were parts of the conversation. The game was a LOT better than I expected it to be, as well, which made for a rather… boisterous… evening.

Congratulations to the New York Giants for their win.

Likewise, congratulations to the New England Patriots for their (otherwise) perfect season.

This year’s Super Bowl commercials were decent – the hands-down favorite of the night: Doritos Mouse Trap.

Tonight, we’re watching a movie; I’m not sure “what” yet.

Tomorrow, it’s the long commute. Hopefully, UDoT will have allocated sufficient resources to deal with today’s snow.

Namaste.