Wednesday, April 26, 2006

faux pas du jour

in a meeting this morning i was discussing potential technological upgrades to some of our business systems when i began lamenting the luddite-like resistence to change exhibited by many of the "decision makers." while searching for the proper diction to illustrate my point, i resorted to an age-old metaphor: "...falls upon deaf ears..." which i proceded to state directly to a woman equipped with two hearing aids. brilliant.

she did a remarkable job of suppressing her surprise, but i caught a brief flash of it in her eyes. it was SOOOOO freudian, 'cause i had spotted the devices when we were introduced and mentally-noted the clear tubes and how much cooler and smaller they were than my grandfather's. oh well, i'm sure she doesn't think i'm too much of an idiot...

Monday, April 24, 2006

nintendorks, unite

I knew a local nerd that helped me.
I got 4/16 on the 8-Bit Gamer test.
Take the test!

Friday, April 21, 2006

press check> exit



now i'm back in ORD, savoring the rewards due the conquering hero: stella artois. in other news, nerds are already lining up for our plane.

in closing, 40-somethings joking out loud in an airport chili's about ordering small bras and large panties from victoria's secret creep me out entirely.

disclaimer: this post is being posted post-exposition due to technical difficulties accessing the SSID: "concourse" wireless network in chicago o'hare international airport at the original time of entry.

addendum: on the last leg home there was observed a taxicab driving on the freeway at 9:45pm without headlights, but never fear! he had his hazard lights on...

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

week of tshirts i guess

dude, you ever wanna get some double-takes, come to wisconsin with a shirt vaguely related to the oakland raiders. they are frickin SERIOUS about the pack up here.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

wisconsin, smell the dairy air!

big up to my mom for providing this post's title, she found it on a shirt at target.

yes, back in fabulous hartford, wisconsin for yet another fabulous press check. couldn't be bothered to write anything at the airport as i was fully engrossed in syphon filter: dark mirror. the lady next to me on the way to ORD had a psp and her daughter had a nintendo ds. row 14 was gamer central, we held it down for the whole dang plane!

the next flight got cancelled and they never explained why... it was pretty rad, the screen that shows what flight is departing at the gate suddenly switched to something weird like roanoke and everyone was atwitter with consternation, so i went to the departure board out in the hall and discovered our flight was CANCELLED. i returned to double-check this with the gate agent who was engaged in hushed, frantic phone calls trying to sort things out. i mentioned to a few fellow travellers in my vicinity that the board said we were cancelled and one gentleman made that "don't listen to this f*@#ing idiot" face, shook his head and declared, "no, no way. they can't cancel milwaukee. pfff!" he said it, like, five times as if repetition enforced reality... anyway, it was shortly thereafter officially announced cancelled on the p.a. and we were told to go to customer service at F2, but everyone else went to the gate instead of the huge desk labeled CUSTOMER SERVICE, so i was first in line and got an aisle seat on the next flight. take that, invincible flights to milwaukee guy!

in closing, drunk people talking loudly about their 20-year high school reunion creep everyone around them out.

Friday, April 14, 2006

smash and... just smash

a little while back, steph's acura started spewing forth great volumes of noxious smoke from under the hood. thankfully, her dad is very handy with those car things and he volunteered to venture north and assess the damage.

upon his arrival, he and steph discovered the driverside window had been destroyed. nothing appeared to have been taken, but the gas tank cover had been popped open. aaahhh, we collectively assumed, someone was rather adamant about siphoning the fuel... but to our surprise, once started, the vehicle displayed a full tank. steph's dad formulated a new theory: someone was pissed at us for leaving it parked in one spot for a couple weeks and expressed their frustration on the window. that seems just a touch too obsessive for me. i bet they were trying to get in the trunk and yanked the gas tank cover lever before finding the trunk one. i'm sure they were rather disappointed to discover little more than some cardboard and, like, steph's rain boots back there.

here's an odd little intersection between 80s pop and dubstep.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

music, music, music, will not last!

just got back from witnessing jamie lidell live in concert at the great american music hall. man. words can't possibly describe the brilliance. that guy needs to release a DVD, his recordings (which are utterly fantastic in their own right) just simply can not live up to the live show. unreal. adjective, adjective, superlative, noun.

the beardstrokers were out in force, so jarrett would've been at home, but just for the first half. once everyone got used to his live remixing and vocal layering and looping and general mayhem, they got to shakin' their booties along with the rest of us that had the wiggle in 'em from the get-go.

yeah, i bought the tee shirt.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

i hate posts like this one

if you are lame enough to read this semi-regular crapfest but cool enough to not have a blogger account but weird enough to want to comment, i have changed the settings to allow comments from anyone. how democratic.

in honor of this non-event, if any of you nerds have accounts at digg.com, post your digg username in the comments for this post, so i can add you as a friend over there and see what you're digg-diggity-diggilatin. game. set. match.

for a healthier mouth... use listerine

o, bay area rapid transit, how many urban sociological wonders hast thou revealed unto us?

...boarded my train this morning, cruised to my favored "spot" for standing - in the middle of the car where the seats back up to each other so i feel fewer people will be looking RIGHT at me (hey, i'm something of an introvert, fairly guarded regarding personal space). that exact spot was filled so i stopped and stood in the aisle, one row down from preferred center. the train seemed strangely full of high schoolers, until i remembered this was spring break week. they had all the earmarks of a church youth group: a fair share of chaperones, none of the kids getting too loud and a general division of subgroups along gender lines within the traveling superstructure. just minutes into the journey, my olfactory sense was tickled with the minty tingle of listerine brand mouthwash. curious, i scanned the area for the source of this contextually unusual scent. in the window, i caught the reflection of a somewhat disheveled man taking polite sips from a bottle of, yes, cool mint® listerine® in the seat behind and to my right. at first it seemed certain he was drinking it, but he was then observed to be "swishing" it around, in the manner demonstrated by the television advertising for cool mint® listerine®. he did this for much longer than the suggested 30 seconds and i concluded that he was a bit "off" and was merely performing the sort of ritual behavior observed in sufferers of asperger syndrome.

that conclusion was thoroughly refuted several seconds later when he vomited in dramatic fashion on the seatback ahead of him and consequently on its unsuspecting teenaged female occupant who then evacuated the soiled seat with some urgency. apparently the "swishing" was a cover for his true intentions, namely the consumption of the 21.6% of the solution that is alcohol. i'd heard of people finding use for this inactive ingredient before but had always marked it down to urban legend.

of course, several in her party helped to comfort the poor girl and attempted to extract apology or explanation from he-who-has-healthy-gums, but he was obviously trashed and not exactly forthcoming verbally. the story, however, does not end here. no, a couple stops later, an older gentlewoman boarded the train and made a beeline for the only available seat, somehow completely missing the discernible cues of shiny wetness all over it. as she began to seat herself, she was warned by the youth around her of the seat's condition but was not convinced by their pleas and, with an air of disdainful resolution not to be run off by these young whippersnappers, sat in spite of them. it was not until a rather surprised-looking older gentleman across the aisle tapped her arm and confirmed the frightful tale that she took keener stock of her surroundings and quickly left the clean-smelling but visibly muddied seat. i daresay it's a blessing she wore her raincoat today...

i think it shall be quite some time before i add listerine twice daily to my oral care routine in hopes of reducing significantly more plaque than brushing and flossing alone... in unrelated news, i think someone in the finance group has the pirates of the caribbean movie theme song set as their ringtone.

Friday, April 07, 2006

i seek knowledge

can't... stop... playing... this

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

re: hell freezing over

someone i know who shall remain nameTIMless was rather put off by apple supporting windoze dual-booting in the new macintels. i am an ardent mac cultist (i even have the book) but i just don't get the fear of unholy doom erupting through the galaxy if apple starts playing nice with the microserfs. think about all the normal humans that were on the fence about plunking down the cash for a dead-sexy apple rig, now they can safely foray into the world of mac and take the occasional hit from XP crack if it gets too scary. anyone that already switched knows that as the dualies get used to OS X, they'll eventually forget all about the nearly senseless file system that is windows and fall in love with the total lack of malware (as of this weblogging) here in happyfunmacland.

yyyyeeeaaaah... today has been pretty boring since the brief hellfrost... so you can look at my post-it note:



and then listen to kid606 covering Annie.

two things

one: hell froze over.

two: the dimwit in the corner office that is using speakerphone at full volume, leaning back in his chair with hands behind head, yelling back at it, underlings gathered around to bear witness to his imagined brilliance and authority had better close the monkeyhugging door the next time he performs this spectacle or i will, as they say in england, go completely mental.

three: aha! there was no three! but we all knew that from the title.

Monday, April 03, 2006

sad

i think the guy that works at the burrito shop i go to about once a week has started using crystal meth. he was real twitchy and pretty spacey today and he had the stereotypical scabs on his arms... that really bums me out. of course, this is only my assumption, but i've seen it up close before and even the possibility that he might be using that stuff pretty much ends my patronage, watching what it did to ryan was enough. i pray someone close to him notices and tries to help.