If you want to have a swell life, be aware of what you're doing. Here's a help: Think of your life as a power tool, maybe a saw, a saw with a 10 inch ripping blade - without a blade guard!, and it's torquey, powerful and torquey and dangerous. When you operate that saw, if you aren't aware, you could do some terrible damage. Well that`s your life! Ok sure, given, there are some people living life as a block plane, shaving a little sliver at a time, trying to make the thing as smooth and perfect as possible, honing it, squaring it, but they too should be aware. Why, splinters, silly! Ok then, did any of that make sense?
December 2, 2010
A dog that can walk on water! Could it be His return, as a Saint Bernard?
Spent an inordinate amount of time with a very nice, but completely incompetent salesperson. She was just awful. After hearing things I knew weren't true, I asked her how long she had been working there, expecting it to be a short period, which would explain her unfamiliarity with the products and her lies about them, but she said six years. You've been here for six years! I blurted, shocked that she had managed to retain the job. She smiled and said, "I know! I walked in one day and married the store manager two weeks later! Been here ever since!" Ah, so that explains why she hadn't been fired. But what explains her incompetence?
December 4, 2010
December 5, 2010
Who knew that Larry the Cable Guy was funny outside Alabama?
I need to learn more about palm reading primarily due to the friend of a friend who, after asking if he could read my palm, looks at it and says, "Oh my god!" I'm like, what? What does that mean? But before he can answer his cell phone rings and he drifts away to take the call. We never reconnected, so I'm left to wonder what is so Oh my god! about my palm lines.
December 7, 2010
I love to read me some tech manuals. Isn't that something? Regardless of the product, I'm a sponge for information about what capabilities and features have been implemented, what's likely to break the product, tips, tricks, etc. Sure, it's great to get a new thing and play around with it and discover stuff on your own, but I want to know mooooore. As you can probably tell, I'm pretty excited right now. Sitting on my desktop is a 374 page PDF user guide from a well known tech giant, for a product I love and want to know better, and I'm about to dig in. Oh boy.
December 8, 2010
I'm walking through the parking lot of a grocery store when something catches my eye. It's a burnt orange Dell laptop sitting on the hood of a car. No one is in the car and no one is around the car. I'm struck by two things: 1.) I wonder why anybody would buy an orange computer, and, 2.) what to do next is tricky. Leave it and it will probably be stolen. But the second I pick it up to find its owner in the store, I could be construed as stealing it. So I left the laptop on the car and continued into the grocery, to the manager's office, where I told him what was what. He made an announcement over the loudspeaker and seconds later a woman went flying out of the store. The owner, we surmised. It was a beautiful ending, I saved the day, was given the key to the city, a new Jaguar sports car, and there is even talk of a statue in the park, but some are pooh poohing that as too much. The jealous, they always ruin it for the rest of us.
December 9, 2010
Reading all about this financial wheeler dealer and how he's made his money off other people's misfortunes and how he's a genius and a laudable human and I'm thinking that this guy is a scumbag through and through. The entire article is based on the transparent and utterly gak inducing notion that because this schmuck has lots of money, we're supposed to envy his shallow self. Yeesh.
December 10, 2010
Everybody has an opinion. The fact that we can agree on anything at all seems miracle-like, yet we do, and pretty easily at that. For instance, I believe we can all agree that the Beatles were a pretty good group, and that Wayne Gretzky could play himself some hockey, and that if this current crop of ignorant, self-serving politicians are to be perceived as more than the shills and pimps they appear to be, they have a long way to go. See, easy.
December 11, 2010
All right lad, if you want to be a proper football fan you have to despise the other team, be the scourge of their supporters, and the bane of match officials. Let's practice. We play Nottingham this week. Let me know how much you detest those Nottingham rotters. Now there you go, boy. That's football!
For all you geekoids going home for the holidays, happy computer fixing! Because isn't that what ends up happening? When you walk in the door, your family isn't acting like they're glad to see you, they genuinely are. Because you can fix their computers! So go on, spread some cheer.
December 13, 2010
The world is a microcosm. At one intersection I see three people waiting on a bus stop bench. Behind them is a grocery store and through the window I see people waiting in line at the checkouts. Across the street at the bank there are five people standing in line waiting for a teller, and two more in another line waiting to use the ATM. In the street the intersection is a 3 way stop and there are cars lined up at all three, drivers waiting. Everyone, everywhere, just waiting for a chance to go.
December 14, 2010
What? My horoscope for the day suggests I redecorate the house. Nothing minor will do it says, only a major redefinition of my living quarters are acceptable. Don't be afraid of spending lots of money, pull out all the stops, go for broke it says, and then finishes with, if you don't like it, you can change it back to the way it was tomorrow! What?! Do a major home redecoration in a day, blow a wad of money on it, spend all your waking moments planning, designing, shopping and executing it, and then the following day chuck it all to go back to what you had before? I should check the URL, I must have surfed into the Astrologers On Crack by mistake.
Marta was about to find out if her idea of a good time was Sven's idea of a good time.
December 16, 2010
Put electro in front of anything and you've just turbocharged it. Why buy a regular coffee maker when you could have an Electro! Coffee Maker, or an Electro Weed Whacker, or even an Electro Push Broom! - it's still manual, but it just feels faster! Of course, you can oomph up the electro factor even more by putting the power of X in front it. The X3 Electro Push Broom - the future was here yesterday! Heck, I've probably saved some marketing guy's job today.
December 17, 2010
Had to do a factory reset on Susan's smartphone after an SD card glitch wiped everything off her phone. I spent 5 hours restoring all the applications and data, settings and logins, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, files, updates, network connections, e-mails, photos, videos, messages, music, etc. Now it hums. It better.
December 18, 2010
She was taciturn, shallow and mean, with a tattoo across her neck that said either I love pickles or Die Pig! depending on which way you looked at it. A real pottymouth, dressed all in black, hated and cursed by everyone she ever met, dated or saved. That's right, saved. As in the world, and all of it by the end of the 3rd act. She was the fictional anti-heroine of another screenwriter's imagination and the movie he wrote around her was just as lurid and sensational and dark and creepy. It'll probably make billions. Me, I'm still trying to build a rocket that will fly high. This world and the things people do.
December 19, 2010
Whether there by protest, loneliness, or stinky bad karma, Darla was in deep doo doo.
Just a quick note to the Windows Phone 7 dev team. This rocket ride I speak of in these 2010 posts, this social platform we're building, would be about the perfect complement to your nifty product. It's almost 2011, Microsoft doesn't have a social network of its own, and ours is based on the attributes of a smartphone. I'm writing you because last night I saw a WP7 commercial where my e-mail address was used in a close up (different domain). I even said, Whoa, outloud. That was enough of a call to give you guys a shout out today.
December 22, 2010
Not many species pull off red as well as the cardinal.
I have a buddy who drives a snow plow for the city. He told me that when he found out his girlfriend was cheating, he went loco and dumped 4 cubic yards of snow onto her driveway. She was effectively sealed in for three days. She hasn't spoken to him since. He doesn't know if she is now his ex-girlfriend, though I could tell from the tone in his voice and the look in his eyes that he suspects it.
December 24, 2010
A couple who own a house powered entirely by solar said they have never been happier or feel more connected to the earth than they do in that house. They said it took them months to stop feeling guilty about using their stereos, TVs, and computers. Now they leave everything on because they are not wasting energy, it's continually being produced free of charge. They said that the best thing, which is often the least touted benefit of a solar house, is the positive psychological effects engendered by living in one.
I got a letter from a gal in South America who actually referred to the Internet as the Information Superhighway. I had to look at the postmark to see if it was 1980. It wasn't even quaint, just anachronistic. One of the dumbest monikers ever?
December 28, 2010
Yesterday, a flock of about 20 grosbeaks came into the bird feeder and spent about 15 social minutes there. When they were finished, the group flew off en masse. Except for one. One grosbeak stayed in the apple tree by the feeder, and amazingly enough, was still there when I got up this morning. That's 18 hours! It wasn't a territorial food source thing because numerous other bird species came and went from the feeder without an objection. So why would one bird stay behind when the flock leaves? Injured? Stubborn? Addled?
December 29, 2010
You're throwing an all guys dinner party, you have everybody and anybody's phone number, you get to invite whomever you'd like to meet. Me, I'm ringing up Billy Connelly, Sir Richard Branson, Albert Brooks, Steve Jobs, Deepak Chopra, Prince Charles and Christopher Walken. And to double the fun, each of them gets being along someone they think is interesting. We start out with drinks on the veranda...
December 30, 2010
Ok, so here we are with one day left in the year and my rocket ride has yet to transpire. But wait, could it still be launched by tomorrow? Could we just be pulling everyone's leg and to the world's surprise and wonder we will send aloft our powerful and amazing new rocket on the very last day of the year flat out frying everyone's brain with marvelment at its ingenuity, bravado and beauty? Uh, no. While it's true that we are still building it and have full intentions of shooting it into the stratosphere in 2011, it has been especially disappointing for me as I have not gotten to wear my groovy all-new rocket riding space suit that I spent a lot of time designing and sewing and stuff. I will be soooo protected, if we ever get this fireball off the ground. Sigh.