Odds and Ends

So I'm not entirely sure how I'm supposed to feel about "The Boondocks" that's now playing on Adult Swim. I really dig the introduction (song and animation) and I generally find it humorous but I'm not really sure if me being the white/cracker/honkey person that I am SHOULD be laughing. I mean can I laugh at humor that is all about a people and culture that I have no real perspective on other than what I see on T.V.? What I do know is that whenever ANYONE talks about themselves in the third person, that shit cracks me up, like for example in the "Guess Hoes Coming To Dinner" episode "A pimp called slickback" had a line that was just priceless.

"Let us pray the pimp's prayer. Lord, please pray for the soul of this bitch. And guide my pimp hand and make it strong, Lord that she might know a ho's place. Amen."

On to other odds and ends, whenever I'm doing boring monotonous chores around the house (like ironing button down shirts that look like someone else wore them and then had the wildest most crazy romp fest) I start to think about an episode from "Millenium". The one where these demons are all sitting around a card table playing poker talking about how humans are kind of dumb in that if we are indeed God's choosen why is it that we are always doing such monotonous tasks. As they are talking about this they keep showing different scenes of people going to the laundrymat, buying groceries, cleaning their houses, ironing etc, etc. Now the really strange thing is why would I even THINK about a show that I watched like eight years ago and remember parts of an episode that wasn't even typical of the show (It wasn't typical because it was a light hearted parody). Really the episode that keep remembering bits of that freaks me out is the one where Frank is chasing some demonic serial killer and his boss somehow gets caught up in it and ends up with a giant Bowie knife stuck in his chest. I dunno something about giant Bowie knives stuck in chests that always gives me the willies.

Stinky poo.

This is a little late as it happened yesterday but seeing as I walked into the bathroom and again it stunk made me remember yesterday's destruction. Yesterday I walked into the bathroom and for some reason it didn't just smell like crap so much as it smelled like Mexican food passed directly through whoever had just been there. It was the strangest thing, I mean by the smell I could almost pick out what the person ate.... eww I said "pick" that's really gross.

A Hans Christian Anderson Bachelor Party

I have been initiated in another one of life's little mysteries, what a Christian bachelor party is like. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against good wholesome clean fun, I prefer it in a way, and no it isn't because I'm a prude, well maybe. I'd be really curious to find out why some men enjoy strip clubs while others don't care or down right hate them. My theory on this used to be that people that grew up in the country or were a little more (ahem) "simple" liked strip clubs. I have to admit this was in part because I am neither from the country nor do I think myself stupid, and I'm kind of a snob and assume people from the country aren't as smart. This BTW is a completely wrong belief, I realize it and I'm trying to overcome my snobbery.

My theory hasn't really held up all that well though, I know people that grew up in cities and suburbs and quite enjoy a visit to the strip club, though now that I think about it I've not met or talked to someone from the country that does not like strip clubs, so maybe my country theory may hold out. As far as inteligence goes, I don't think that holds water either, it seems being stupid or smart has no effect on whether or not you want to see some tities. So I'm not really sure where that leaves me, and I'm not sure if it's nature or nurture though I'd lean more towards nurture. I'd also say that it's probably more your friends then your parents that determine whether or not you enjoy going to strip clubs..... wait a second this has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

As I said there were no strippers, no sex, no drugs and no one to really talk too. I mean you can only talk and answer the question "What have you been up too?" so much before there is nothing else to say, especially when the first time you are asked your response is "Nothing much". I know, I know I'm retarded when it comes to small talk, I know it's supposed to be small talk but I don't see the point in wasting time on it with people that don't really care anyway. Wow did I say that? I'm kind of an ass. Actually it's just that I don't have too much in common with them, I'm not involved with a church and I don't have kids and really for these guys that's the sphere of interests that they have.

The bachelor party consisted of paintball in the afternoon followed by booze, cards, pool, foosball and eating at one of the guys families house at Apple Valley. I call it a house but when it has about 3000 sq/ft of space, six bedrooms, three full baths, a boat house, two T.V.'s enough room in the basement for foosball and a full size pool table, house doesn't really cover it. The paintball that we did up at Splatterpark was quite a bit of fun compared to what I thought it was going to be. I assumed that half the people there were going to have their own guns which meant that I was going to get pelted with guns that shoot six paint balls a second with an un-arching accuracy more like a real gun then the muskets they rent you. I also assumed that the cold and snow on the ground were going to freeze me into a human popscicle target. Really it was none of those things, almost everyone was renting, the cold wasn't that bad and the snow actually made it really easy to dive around. Diving BTW is one of my more favorite tactics in paintball, John Woo baby!

The best and worst part about paintball was a game we played called "Civil War". There is nothing quite like taking forty people, splitting them up into two teams. Then have each time line up shoulder to shoulder and then have each team take turns firing one shot per person at the other team until one team has no players left. The catch here is that unlike normal paintball rules where a hit anywhere (even on your gun) constitutes a kill you had to hit someone in the head or torso to "kill" them. A hit in the arm meant that you could no longer use that arm, a hit on the leg meant that you had to go down on your knees, and a hit on your gun meant that you could not use it to shoot when it was your turn. On top of this due to the cold and all the clothes people wear when it's cold the paintballs tended to not break the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh (you get the picture) time they hit which meant that you might get hit a dozen times before you were killed. You may be thinking "Well if you are wearing a bunch of clothes it can't possibly hurt", you'd be wrong thinking that though. Imagine standing 30-40 feet apart firing guns with medium sized gum ball ammo at 285 ft/sec and suddenly you realize what you are up against. It seems silly talking about it but even thought it was just paintballs I still found it really terrible waiting for the shot to come.

After paintball there was card games to be played, Jack Daniels to be drunk, pizza to be eaten, pool to be played and foosball to be foos'd (Foos'd damn straight). I'm not a noob to poker so I suppose I should have realized the alure of Texas Holdem but Saturday night really made me realize something. Texas Holdem in a way is about the most pure poker game you can play, it's the essence of poker. Unlike normal five or seven card stud there are never any wilds and someone folding never affects the cards that you will get.

Let me explain this further, in five card stud you get dealt five cards, each person gets dealt five cards but they are dealt one at a time with a round of betting after each card is dealt. If a person decides to fold, that has an affect on the odds of you getting or not getting the card you need. In Texas Holdem each player is dealt two cards, then they need to make a decision on those two cards whether or not they are going to match the opening bet or if they are going to fold. From that point on no more cards are dealt to individual players, instead the rest of the five cards are communal and so anyone folding has no affect on the odds of a card appearing. Next the betting system in Texas Holdem really lends itself to making people think about whether or not they should be in. This is because you can't just bet the smallest currency (five cents if you are playing nickel, dime, quarter) you have, you have to bet at least the maximum bet determined by the big blind. On top of that every so often the small and big blinds increase which means that someone who never bets will eventually run out of money if they never play/win, which is nice because it keeps the game from becoming stagnant. Last but not least there are no wilds, I don't know how many times I've been playing a game where there were 4-8 wilds and I hit a natural full house and realized that I might as well fold because the only thing that was going to win was a high four of a kind (or a five of a kind of you are so unlikely as to play in a house that accepts that) and really that just stinks.

All and all it was a pretty a-ok time, I actually won one of the games of Texas Holdem, was forced into playing a game called "Tonk" (never again), had a fine cigar, played some pool and enjoyed myself quite a bit. Just remember if someone ever asks you to play a tournament of "Tonk" cross yourself and walk away being sure not to turn your back on them.

Kanshasai Day

When I went to Japan in college to study for three months part of our experience was that we had to pick some american topic and present this to Japanese elementary school children in Japanese. Kanshasai I think means "Thanksgiving Day" though I have a feeling this isn't the Thanksgiving day we think of.

This year Thanksgiving was at SG's uncle's house which is just a mile or so north of us. We had turkey, mashed potatoes with leeks and thyme, green beens, a cranberry relish, rolls, cornbread stuffing with three kinds of peppers and of course pumpkin pie. I think this may actually have been the first year since we have been married where we actually were at just one families house for Thanksgiving. I didn't have a problem with this but at the same time it just didn't feel like Thanksgiving to me, it more felt like an evening of family getting together and eating tasty food. Don't ask why this any different than what Thanksgiving is however it just didn't "feel" like Thanksgiving. I like eating with my family though I do have to admit my wife's family is much more entertaining, they tend to talk and poke fun at each other, actually that may not be it either. My family is really very quiet around the table and my wife's is boisterous, boisterous in my mind goes much better with Thanksgiving. Really what I would prefer is to take our two families and merge them together for the holidays. This kills the issue of where we are going for Thanksgiving, and creates the big family holiday that I've always wanted. Don't ask, for whatever reason and I lay the blame solidly on Hollywood I feel that a holiday with a big family is just the way things should be.

It couldn't be Thanksgiving without alcohol and well err um I drank my fair share. I wanted to get a bottle of Calvados to try but didn't get around to go to the market to find it, luckily though uncle T had some for me to try. The Calvados (apple brandy) was tasty but suprisingly rough, when I mean rough I mean that the alcohol was very apparent and not all that subdued. Now that I think about it hard cider really isn't all that mellow either, maybe there is an issue with alcohol and apple juice not parring all that well. Anyway I also had the opportunity to try a couple of different scotches that my uncle T had brought back from scotland, and they unlike the scotch were both very tasty and smooth by comparison to the Calvados.

Today was spent down at SG's family cabin in Vinton county which was very nice as all I did was eat some food sleep in front of a wood burning stove and fire off about twelve clips of .22 ammo. Strangely no one seems to want to bring anything of any larger calibur for me to fire ;). There's just something about being out in the woods and not having anything else to do but relax and sleep off the turkey.

Tomorrow is a friend of mine's bachelor party, no strippers, or drugged mule's just some good clean paintball followed by some poker and booze. It should all and all be very interesting in that I haven't talked to this friend all that much since I got married. Some of this is my fault in that I created a little rift between us when I mentioned to certain people that he was having a psuedo girlfriend over a lot. That got around and eventually got back to him which then led to him telling me to mind my own business. Which truthfully it wasn't any of my own business, and didn't have anything to do with him or his "girlfriend". It all really goes back to my time honored practice of complaining about whoever is living with me. The complaints usually go like so, they (roomates) aren't as clean, too loud, etc, etc, etc, and so then I complain about them when really I'm just a neurotic, marterish bitch. I'm getting better which is good as my roomate now is my wife and well the marriage would be a little unpleasent if I kept that up. Tomorrow I will try to avoid freezing to death, getting into fights with ref's and not drinking too much and offending some Christians.

Beer and insomnia.

I can't sleep, it's 1:19am and I cannot sleep, oh believe me I tried. I laid in bed from from about 10pm till 10:30 listening to my wife breath her sleepy breaths. As I read/heard from somewhere that you should not lay in bed for hours and hours trying to fall asleep because after awhile you start to associate your bed with insomnia. Anyway, I then went downstairs and was reading some Wheel of Time till about 12:50pm at which point I started yawning so I figured, time for bed right? Wrong, after laying in bed again for twenty minutes and not feeling any of the tiredness that I felt downstairs and realized maybe I needed to get it out of my system..

Saturday night instead of going out I choose to stay in and catch up on my Tivo. Terry (Tivo) really does get annoyed with me when I don't spend enough one on one time with her. Terry had recorded an episode on Modern Marvels which just happened to be about brewing. In order for me to attempt to remember what I saw I'm going to try to give a summary of what I thought was interesting.

Apparently the earliest evidence of beer (barley based beverage) dated from 3500BC in an area that is currently Iran. It was in Egypt however where beer was king, apparently everyone drank it, people were paid with it, the dead were prepared with it and the wealthy were buried with minature breweries to insure that they would always have beer in the afterlife.

As the domestication of grains traveled to Europe beer started to be brewed. The beer first brewed in Europe however differed from more modern beers in that it was based on a combination of barley and something called gruit. As time went on hops replaced the use of gruit in beer as it had the abiltity to stabilize the beer from bacteria (before the only way was to brew beer with really high alcoholic content) and added bitterness to the beer that balanced the sweetness of barley. Hops if you ever wanted to know are actually a flower found on a vining perenial (blooms once a year) plant. Hops became so important that in bavaria in the 16 century a law called the "Reinheitsgebot" (German Purity Law) was inacted whereby the only ingredients that could be used to make beer is malt(barley), hops, and water (Actually yeast was eventually added once it was understood what it did).

To continue on with the evolution of beer the next step in the evolutionary chain of beer was Lager. Lagers were first created when German breweries started storing their beer in cold caves and basements (called lagering). They noticed that over time their beer would get a smoother taste which was caused by the lager yeast which unlike the yeast used in ale worked at cooler than room temperatures (40 degrees fahrenheit). Pilsners are a further improvement on lagers where due to fact that breweries gained an even finer tuned control of the temperatures needed to brew beer. On a side note, though Porter may not be considered a technologically advanced beer it is however one of the only beers that has an American origin. Actually according to Wiki and a number of other websites Porter was not of American origin, it actually came out of England in the 17th century). Regardless of that, it was George Washingtons favorite and if you are so inclined you can even brew his own recipe as he left it in the New York public library.

Take a large siffer full of bran hops to your taste-boil these 3 hours. Then strain our 30 gall[o]n into a cooler put in 3 gall[o]n molasses while the beer is scalding hot or rather draw the molasses into the cooler. Strain the beer on it while boiling hot, let this stand till it is little more than blood warm. Then put in a quart of ye[a]st if the weather is very cold cover it over with a blank[et] let it work in the cask-Leave the bung open till it is almost done working-Bottle it that day week it was brewed.

Something that I remember a tour guide told me in Philadelphia (you know those stupid tour buses that roll around Phila, well maybe you don't) was that George Washington was never hit by a bullet in battle due to the fact that the beer that he brewed was so potent (get it he was swaying drunk in the saddle most of the time).

Back to the topic at hand, during the late 19th century American breweries were making some of the best beers in the world. However between World War I, Prohibition and the grain rations of World War II the number of American breweries went from 2300 in 1880 to 160 in 1933 and by 1983 there were only 60 breweries left. On top of that the watery taste you have come to associate with the large breweries is most likely due to the grain rationings that occured during World War II. The breweries had less barley to brew beer and had to make up for this fact by using corn, rice and sugar which led to a lighter beer, both in color and taste.

The good thing to note though is that in the last twenty years or so the growth of microbreweries is on the rise seen by the fact that there are currently around 1400 registered breweries in the United States.

Ugh why is it that a post that was supposed to help me sleep take hours to compose, and WHY GOD why is this cat licking my arm! Oh right she wants me to pet her and I keep typing, well how rude of me.

The show often interviewed some of the "microbreweries" around the country, of which there were two that are brewing something I'd really like to try.

The first was Dogfish Head Breweries that makes a beer called "Midas Touch" which is based on the residue found in the drinking dishes that dated back 2700 years ago. Apparently archaelogists from Unniversity of Pennsylvania were able to determine the ingredients that this barley based (beer) beverage was made from and then went to the Dogfish Head Breweries and had them brew it. They named it "Midas Touch" because they found these drinking dishes of a king that dated from the same time period and area that the historical King Midas lived.

The other beer that caught my interest was a beer that Samuel Adams Breweries makes and called "Utopias". "Utopias" is the strongest barley based fermented beverage ever produced and reigns in at 27% alcohol by volume. This is impressive because the yeast that digests sugar and produces alcohol (and carbon dioxide) in beer and wine normally dies when the alcohol level reaches 12%. Samuel Adams was able to get around this by creating some sort of "ninja yeast" (Ninja, I kid you not, as much as I would love to take credit for coining the term "ninja yeast" I can't) that does not die when alcohol levels reach the death zone of 12%. That combined with a hyper sugary barley mixture and 3 years of aging in barrels is what gets the level of "Utopias" to 29%. The only bummer of this whole deal is that apparently because of it's alcohol content it is not sold in Ohio.... .

I think I am actually going to go to bed, nothing says bed time like a perculating cat that is farting. Hopefully work won't kill me and I can add links and images to this post.

Good times

Tonight we had a happy hour/good luck send of for jail bait. Before I get to far into this let me explain that the "jail bait" nickname is not supposed to be mean it's just that for the longest time we assumed she was young enough to be jail bait. Anyway she is taking a job with company called ADL Technologies which should offer her some better pay but more importantly some opportunities in Latin America. She's one of those international types that has spent her life in different areas of the world. Her parents are both Korean but she was born and raised in Argentina, and went to a private school where they spoke Itallian and English. Lets keep track of this here, Korean.. check, Itallian... check, Spanish... check, oh and of course she speaks English too. She then came to C-bus to go to school at OSU (I refuse to call it "The" Ohio State University, mainly because I'm irritating like that), graduated and was working at my company part time while trying to decide where to go for graduate school.

Tonight was pretty alright though I got to hang out with Bentley and jail bait (co-worker who is leaving) and get some good hanging out time, which for me is really important. I think in some way I really feed off of that kind of time, need it in a way. I have found I am most happy when I am just hanging out and having a good time, talking and getting to know people. Strangely as I get older I start to find that it gets harder and harder to do that, I'm not sure if it's because of the walls I throw up around myself or if I just don't bother to try most of the time. We turned out to stay at pockets a bit longer than we thought mainly because at about 7:50pm or so we realized happy hour was about to finish up and JB hadn't had her desired 10+ drinks yet. Bentley and I went up to the bar and decided to order 6 more beers however due to a mis-understanding with the bartender we got 8 instead of 6.

Fast forward an hour and a half later and I get a slightly grumpy call from my Surly Girl asking if we are getting food tonight. Apparently I did not communicate properly with her and she had assumed that we were getting pizza. Being as my co-workers were a little too tipsy to drive anywhere and because JB really likes Hound Dogs, we all went over to Hound Dogs for some tasty pizza, more good conversation and then back to our house to hang out and watch a little Initial D.

Initial D BTW is turning out to have some pretty decent production value, and is actually a pretty good movie. Actually I take it back it's not just decent it's really fantastic, I'm watching a sequence of five hair pin turns, no CG in site and it's just fantastic to watch.

Bunch of gorillaz.

Today at work I got fed up with the way our break/snack room looked. There had been a tupperware container in the sink for about 4 days, and then there were coffee mugs that had been to the side of the sink for at least two months. Then there were the ice cream scoops from yesterday that were there for the November birthdays. I am... well borderline neurotic so I washed all the dishes there and I put them away. Really what bothers me about the company I work for is that like the break room and the server room people just don't take any effort to clean up their own mess. We keep buying new screw drivers and tools because people take them and never put them back. The build room gets cleaned up and for about a day or so it's fine and then people start to shit it up, on top of that we keep EVERYTHING. Old ISDN modems, crappy hubs, broken wireless keyboards, broken monitors, and office furniture of such high quality that even the state wouldn't want it. We actually got another storage container to store all the crappy office equipment that we keep buying and refusing to get rid of, I'm pretty sure if TLC's "Clean Sweep" team came to clean up our crap they would just give up and run away screaming.

So here's to me and my rant, oh and to my neurotic-ness,ness, I'll write about the happy hour we had for jail bait next.

One of the many mysteries.

At work I have been reading about javascript in an effort to start to understand how to use it and write more complex scripts that use the document object model (DOM). If that sounded like greek well... it still sounds like greek to me however if you have seen some bells and whistles on the web and there wasn't a plugin required then it was most likely javascript mixed with cascading style sheets (The two mixed together = DHTML, D might stand for difficult, or demanding, but really it means "dynamic").

All this time I knew that IE did not seem to render web pages correctly when it came to the spacing (margin, padding, border). I didn't know why so much as Mozilla seemed to do it right and IE was close and well me being me close is what usually caused me to work on something to the wee hours of morning in college or late into the evening at work. The other day however I read a paragraph in my O'Reilly "Javascript the Definitive Guide" book that at least explained things a little bit.

IE renders spacing incorrectly because when you tell it a width and a height of an object (lets call it a widget), part of the width and height isn't just the area on the widget where the text appears but it is also the border and margin around the text (even if the border and margin is set to 0). So if you set the width to be 300 and the height to be 500 with a border of 5 pixels and a margin of 10 pixels the area on the widget where the text appears would be something more like 270px W X 470px H. This is a problem is because when you specify a width and a height that is width and height WITHOUT the margin and border.

Now to make IE behave (sit Uboo sit) all you have to do is add this line (meta tag) to the top of your HTML file:

DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Strict//EN"

Haza! I wish I would have known that 5 years ago.

Brrrrrr.... Sayonara Fall.

Keep in mind that the picture you see was taken on Saturday with a high of 64 and a low of 41, hell last night it was so warm I went to the gym in just shorts and a t-shirt and I was perfectly comfortable. Now lets step forward to today with a high of 64 but a low of 18, I mean come on weather I was sitting outside a coffee shop on the cap (the store fronts on high street that sit above 670) quite enjoying myself.... tonight I'm freezing. Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder, high of 33 low of 19. Unbelieveable...

The only postive thing really is that I finished Metroid, which was as I mentioned a really, really great game. Work was irritating mainly as I was trying to research a bug that happened before I made it in, the bug irritatingly enough was one that even when I knew what the user did, could not reproduce it. ARG! (Not ARRR!!!! though with a bit more rum in me matey I just might say it). What else, I got owned in counter-strike, which is about par for the course with me these days. I did however enjoy a nice glass of Dalmore scotch while playing, smooth and yet scotchy (yes that is a wonderful description).

Today I picked up a copy of Initial D from Edaymovie along with a copy of Seven Swords. Sometimes when I buy Asian movies I really love them and then sometimes I buy them and I feel like someone punched me in the belly and then stepped on my pinky just to do it. The jury is still out on whether either one is good, hopefully I'll get time to watch at least one of them tomorrow.

If boredom was trees I'd be Alaska.

Right, so I feel like I haven't had much to do at work for about two or three weeks now. Mainly it has been because two weeks ago rolled out a bunch of new code into production and then well my caca touch started turning everything into caca. Then there was our favorite client threatening use our product in a volume that we were unsure could be done, which again meant more scrambling around.

Which leads me to Metroid, last night a bug cropped up at about 5pm or so, after determining that it wasn't my process I waited around until a coworker of mine fixed it. During this time I logged about an hour and a half playing Metroid Zero Mission. I bought this game because Super Ghouls N' Ghosts on the Game Boy Advance was so hard that after owning the game for 5 months I've only cleared three levels. I think it might actually take me a month to finish a level, and the whole time I'm playing it I am wondering what evil thing I've done to inflict this game on myself. It's a classic game and should be remembered as one of the great classics, however that doesn't change the fact that the game is impossible. The control of your character is abysmal, on top of that the life meter is ridiculously small. You start out wearing armor, then when you get hit you lose your armor and are running around in your boxers, if you get hit again you are dead. On top of that there are only save points halfway between each level which is an improvement over the original as I believe it didn't even have that. The Maximo games on PS2 are fantastic games, I love them and played the bejesus out of them, however Ghost and Gouls is just pain.

Back to Metroid, this game has got everything right, game control, character design, level design, music, cut scenes, difficulty level, etc, etc. I initially started playing weeks ago when I bought it and Katamari Damacy, however I was playing it pretty infrequently. Now however I am in the throws of fighting off Metroids, Mother Brain and the irritating Space Pirates. Since last night I think I have logged 3-4 hours on it, which is more than the last month that I've owned the game. I even tried to play and watch the latest episode of Full Metal Alchemist, and all I know is that I don't remember any of the Full Metal Alchemist.

Called my Dad today to wish him a happy birthday, we will be going to a Greek restaurant called Spiros over on Riverside Drive for his birthday this Saturday. I'm really looking forward to going as I am a big fan of Greek food and from my understanding Spiros is an old family owned place that used to be on Trabue Rd right after you crossed the railroad tracks.

Tonight I'm meeting SG out for dinner at the Elevator Bar and Brewery for dinner before she goes to Stitch and Bitch and I get to go home and curl up on the couch and watch some much needed Tivo. Once again Tivo has recorded too many SG-1 episodes so now I have to power through them before my wife start complaining about the terrible acting and stupid stories (I do realize the acting isn't ALL that great).

Calvados

Thanksgiving is coming up and Epicurious had an article on a type of apple brandy called "Calvados". Me being me and always on the lookout for festive drinks around the holidays felt the need to read about it. The summary of the article was as follows, "Calvados" is a apple brandy produced in a region of France called "Calvados". They started distilling cider in the 19th century because there was a grape blight that destroyed the vines in that region and as they had lots of apple trees and a desire to keep boozing they started distilling cider.

Something else that I found out from Wiki is that the term "brandy" refers to a alocoholic beverage that is distilled from grapes. For whatever reason my mind was lumping brandy in with bourbon, and whiskey when in fact those are distilled from barley and rye. Interestingly enough (for me, which means it's probably not interesting for anyone else) is that Cognac and Armagnac are brands of brandy, which may be why I thought brandy was a rye/barley based alcohol, I dunno "Hennessy" just screams whiskey to me. One last thing that I thought was neat about the differences between the different brandies are that fruit brandies (like Calvados) are generally clear as they tend not to age them, however when they do it is at that time when they gain some color. So now all I need to do is run over to Andersons and see if I can acquire a bottle of this tasty sounding beverage called "Calvados", so that it can "make a hole" during our dinner at Thanksgiving.

Conspicous consumption....

Easton, me and Easton (the newest, largest and most ridiculous shopping area in C-bus) have a sort of love hate relationship, well actually I think I'm just starting to downright dislike it. I've noticed that I have these tendencies where I know I don't like a place/thing/movie (fill in the blank) yet I go and experience it again. I first realized I had such tendencies with the Big Mac when I was in highschool. I think I would get one once every 6 months or so, I knew they were nasty, and yet I thought maybe they weren't that nasty.... and well they were. So Easton is much the same way, that place is just ridiculous, I mean it is really interesting for the one reason that unlike other shopping areas they tried to add venues for people to do stuff after the stores close. They also have concerts, fountains, and it's actually kind of pleasent walking around at night when they have it all lit up, that is if you can ignore all the hummers, SUV's and misc cars that keep trying to run you over.

I went to Easton today mainly because I wanted to get another laundry hamper for our basement so that we can half all our clothes organized and sorted and ready to be washed, I know, I know border line neurotic. Then again I really like to organized stuff, I'd actually like the container store if it wasn't such a joke. Here's an example of what I mean, they had a plastic organizer where they were showing how you could store Matchbox toy cars. This particular case held 12 such cars, now how much would you think said container would cost. The sane person would say I dunno, 3 dollars or so, however this was six dollars. Dazamn, I mean come on it's just plastic, I'm sure I can go over to Lowe's or Target and it's half the price. I did buy that laundry hamper though, I checked around and didn't see anything else like it and the price was right, expensive but really can you put a price on organization (Did I mention that I am anal?).

After that I went to Crate and Barrel as I have had an itch to go there for awhile and I keep trying to find a lamp for my bedside table. Why again I even bothered going, first of all they had maybe a tenth of the lamps on their website. On top of that the store is organized in such a way that if I was trying to find some particular frame or accessory on their website I would have to break out my Dr Watson magnifying class and search underneath every piece of furniture and behind ever wall.

Easton in general is just retarded, regardless of the season most of the stores leave their doors open as if closed doors is uninviting. Abercrombie and Fitch is the worst, I swear that place just causes homicidal tendencies to blossom in my head. They always have a brigade of athletic people (probably one from each sport that a suburban school can have) standing in the doorway talking, oh and sometimes they welcome you to the store. Ugh.

Other than that I got my screens back from the hardware store, hopefully I can avoid slashing them again. Today was pretty laid back all and all, I have to apply a paint of coat to the one side of the screens then let it set for a couple of days then flip them over, prime and paint that side. After that we will finally be able to winterize our sunroom, which is nice since that thing leaks heat like it's nobodys business.

Last night was nice, I got to introduce some of my friends to Carcassonne, and it actually seemed like they liked it. There was a point at which I did something nice to a friend of mine who was losing which in turn allowed him to get 33 points and go on to win the game. Meh it's just a game though, and besides I won the second one, take that suckaz.

Tomorrow is work, ugh, it has not been the most enthralling of days at work lately. Lots of waiting and reading, I really should enjoy the time I have had to read up on Javascript and really learn how to use the DOM object, but really all it does is make me sleepy, it's just something about O'Reilly books.

No rest of the wicked.

I choose to play hooky this past Friday, the main reason being that my concrete contractor called on Thursday and said that he was coming to pour my driveway on Friday. That normally shouldn't have mattered, but there was this whole "I haven't raked all season problem" and the fact that the contractor kept loosing his tools in the blowing leaves earlier this week. An added plus was Olaf (a friend of mine) suggested that we grab some tasty three alarm Hound Dogs pizza at 6am. Hound Dogs has some really tasty pizza, one of the draws for me has always been the odd toppings (the weirdest ones are feta, saurkraut, garlic, err well believe me they have som weird toppings), the three choices of sauces (regular, spicy, howlin hot) and best of all is the garlic crust. Some may be horrified of the thought of pizza for breakfast, however for me when I was growing up cold pizza on a Saturday morning was common (Friday night we got pizza and there was always leftovers). I should have known that 6am wasn't going to happen, I have a hard enough time getting into work by 9:30am somedays, so it's really no suprise that I overslept, though miracuously made it to Hound Dogs by 6:30am. So I'm on this board game kick and was talking about it Olaf about this zombie board game called "Zombie!!", oh and of course I had to mention Carcassonne. See I had to tell Olaf about this Zombie game as he is all about the Zombies, loves the movies, video games, stuffed animals you name it.

Back to the leaves,... you still may be wondering why I had to rake leaves before the the driveway was poured, well the reason was that I had so many leaves that the guys would have been picking leaves out of the driveway constantly while trying to do the driveway, apparently I had so many leaves that when they came to remove the driveway the workers kept losing their tools underneath the blowing leaves. Twenty one bags later (3 1/2 hours) I was finished, I was even able to get fifteen of those bags on the the street for Rumpke to pick up for recycling. Normally Rumpke's in-ability to pick up leaves on Thursday (The day the pick up all the other recycling) would have mildly irritated me, however for a change this worked out for me.

The guy that I choose to do the driveway is named Mark Rodgers, and if you ever need to have someone pour your concrete I'd go with him every time. He is one of those people that don't just do a job and do it well (though he does), he has suggests things before you think to ask about. The example would be the curve of our pad in the back of the house, so that it better matches our patio and flower beds. Another thing, and this is actually more important, was that he had ideas on what to do about this tiny little wall that seperates our driveway from or neighbors (our driveways lay side by side). His initial idea before he started was to redo it for her, but after tearing out our driveway he determined that it would just be better to pour more gravel on our driveway to raise our driveway up closer to theirs. This actually took care of another set of problems, this wall caused us to ding our doors and our neighbor has said that she has almost driven off of her driveway on several occassions. The point being, if you want a driveway poured, call Mark, he was really really great.

About 4:15pm or so I had to leave to go pick up SG at the airport (remember tree hugging, green building conference in Atlanta) at which time I had to swallow the pill which was the bill for the driveway. Suprisingly getting to the airport wasn't too bad even though I was driving over there at rush hour, SG's plane was late but it was thankfully only a little late. The only really, REALLY irritating thing was that on the arrival list the gate never ever showed up for her plane. This left me to wander around waiting for her to hopefully call me (I say hopefully because she has a record of forgetting to charge her phone), thankfully her phone was charged and I got a slightly irritated SG asking me "Why I wasn't at the concourse that she thought I should be at". I was debating what course of action I was going to take on telling her what was done on the driveway in the backyard. See I made the previous post because I needed to post pictures of this elusive curve that was occuring in the backyard. Well Jess had said that she did not want anymore of the backyard concreted than must be, which I could understand but well.... I really like curves and roundedness. So when Mark came out to prep the driveway I was supposed to tell him to straighten it out, well I decided to tell him to leave it as it was, on top of that I told him to cut out the fence post as I did not see how we could have used that to put a new fence back in. These were two things SG kind of wanted to leave in, so the delimna was how and when I was going to tell her. Generally history has shown telling her stuff right after she has landed/sober/hungry can potentially be a bad thing, and as I had two out of the three I was a little worried.

World be damned! I decided to tell her right after we got in the car, and suprisingly she didn't really care, even better was that once she got home she really liked the driveway in the back. So bonus, I took judicial control of the... er decision making I guess and for once it paid off.

The only other slightly eventful things was that I got chastised by a traffic cop, and almost got rear ended while going to the airport... ugh I really dislike cars.

New Driveway

Alright so we are having a new driveway done at my house. The reason for said driveway was because we had a new garage built in August and now there is a pretty large gap between the current driveway and the concrete slab that the garage is on. We could have done something really ghetto, maybe what Red would do on the "Red Green Show" and use duct tape in some fashion. This however seemed like a bad idea, also because the driveway is about 50 years old, cracking and generally in a hopeless state we figured why not add a nice new concrete driveway to match our nice new garage. I mean come on, concrete can't be THAT expensive can it? Wrong!So I find a concrete contractor to do the driveway, I like him because he doesn't wait for me to ask about something but beats me to it and suggests ideas that could look nice, and for me I like that as I'm not all that creative (hence blogger). I signed a contract and he said it wouldn't be till mid November when he could start, and so on Monday having not heard from him I decided to call him. I left a message with his administrative assistant and about lunch time he calls me back. So keep in mind I haven't heard from him since mid September and the first thing he says is, "Well I'm thinking about tearing up your driveway tomorrow, is that alright with you?". Me being easy going and really looking forward to having this done is alright with that, now comes the reason for this post. He has everything set to pour the concrete tomorrow however there is one thing in the back of the house that I'm not sure if SG likes. The only problem with this is that she happens to be in Atlanta for a EPA tree hugging contest, err conference.

So after a rousing conversation where she tells me that she cannot possibly imagine what I am talking about, which truthfully I can understand. I decide that I should just take some pictures and then find a place to store said pictures and link them from the blog. So this is the first post with me trying to use Picasa/Bloggerbot, so here goes SG, I hope these pictures help you to see what I was talking about.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for TIVO.

I wonder if we are getting closer and closer to a times where technology controls us more than we control it. I mention this because I think I may be getting anxiety attacks due to the fact that my Tivo is telling me that it is going to start deleting some of my shows it has recorded. I've only had the thing for little over a month now so I guess this was bound to happen, truthfully the culprit is my wife's (Surly Girl, aka SG) addition to the "to do list" where it is recording all movies that Catherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant have appeared in. This is causing a problem because each movie is about two hours long and seems to take up anywhere from 2-4 gigs of space depending on how long it is, so if each movie is that large and TCM (Turner Movie Classics) records 4 of them in a day = trouble. I just find it so disconcerting when I tell Tivo to save something until I delete it, and then it talks back to me saying "Fine sucka but these programs which you also care about could be deleted earlier". "Could", it's the could that really gets me, you know when a person starts to consider not coming into work because a machine is telling them that it will delete certain programs if you don't watch them, there may be a problem.

Last night for whatever reason I was feeling completely exhausted, and for some reason depressed . Depression is not all that common in Ohio I think, I mean, HOW CAN YOU NOT be depresssed by the weather we have here. So I did a little search in the interskank and found a page called
Weather Underground which just happens to have a page that displays historical information. Columbus is awfully close to Seattle as far as the percentage of days in a month that has sunshine. We are within +/- 2-3% of Seattle for seven months out of the year and we actually have LESS sun in July than Seattle does. I really wish I could find historical data on how many overcast days different cities in the US have in one year, because I just bet we aren't too far from the top.

Enough of that rant, so I went to the grocery store and after that I decided I should go lift as I didn't do it in the morning (keep in mind this is all on Tuesday night). This turned out to be a good thing, I know that when you excercise your body realeases endorphins but it's one thing to know and another to experience it. After that I came home and made some soup (I love soup it just might be one of my more favorite things to eat) and then sat down to watch "North By Northwest". I have this strange draw to Cary Grant movies, it may be because I was named because of him, but I don't think that's entirely it. Cary Grant has something about him, he delivers all of his lines so naturally, the way he carries himself seems almost otherworldly, he is unlike any other current actor I can think of. Hugh Grant in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" reminds me in some ways of Cary Grant, but I just don't think anyone has such an effortless way that Cary Grant does when he delivers his lines.


I was able to finish "North by Northwest" however by this time it was 12:30 and well aware that Tivo was staring at me, reminding me that I had more T.V. to watch I decided I will watch an episode of "Full Metal Alchemist". I know, I know grown men shouldn't watch cartoons but I don't much consider myself grown in many ways, so BAH! I know I shouldn't like the show, it is formulaic, kind of kiddish, and the animation isn't all that great, however I really like the world it creates.

Tivo.... I really need to stop watching so much Tivo, I have the newest book by Robert Jordan and I haven't even had time to read it. So far I am really liking it but then again I just really like reading the Wheel of Time books, or as my wife likes to call them "Thing of Thing" books. I was going to buy the next "Thing of Thing" books from George R.R. Martin but I read that it was mainly filler for the next one, so I will get it from the library. Something I should do anyway since I already don't have room for the books I currently own, so why buy more.


Tonight I have got to do about three metric shit tons of laundry, (3 metric shit tons?) yes three, not one, and most deffinatly not two. This all part of the woes of SG being out of town for a convention in Atlanta, which is not to say that I am helpless without her, it's just that she is the laundry queen. She has this whole process where she might actually do some kind of laundry dance, while flipping the laundry detergent, bleach and fabric softner bottles in much the same way that Tom Cruise flipped those alcohol bottles in "Cocktail". Thankfully I'm saved as she created me a "Laundry for Dummies" sheet (complete with a dummies picture on it) so that I will do laundry following all 22 steps to insure that the clothes are cleaned correctly. Now if I only I could read something completely.

So here is something completely unrelated, sometimes in hip-hop songs there is a guy that either repeats what the man MC says, I was thinking that he HAS to have a name, and according to a friend of mine that name is a "Hype-man". Hmm I need to do more research on that, there has got to be a better name for that.

On another side note the Final Fantasy VII "Advent Children" movie is awsome. I mean it has enough ass rock to choke a horse, actually every time you hear heavenly guitar riffs driving beats and thumping bass realize that another action sequence is happening. The great thing about it all is that this is almost the whole movie. Ass rock, I love it.

Gridlock on a Saturday night.

You'd think that if I said something like gridlock on a Saturday night that I would be talking about ohhhh Washington D.C. No, no not really it just happened to be a Saturday night after the bucks have played. I think it's my fate that I constantly get stuck in traffic from either people going to a Buckeyes game or people leaving one, HATE is the only word I have for the congestion caused by those games. Truthfully I get the love of college football, you have memories associated with a college, and many great weekends getting drunk, passing out and having a "ritual cleansing" in the morning/afternoon/evening or whenever you have consumed too much. It's just the traffic, I hate getting stuck in traffic especially when it isn't during the week. The thing that drove me the craziest is the fact that they routed us from going north on Kenny Rd unto Kinnear. Why this makes no sense is that they routed us from a street that was going to a four lane road onto a street that is a two lane road that dumps you into a suburban area with no real arteries to handle the traffic. Idiocy, pure idiocy... however the police did have really nifty traffic baton things.

BTW here is a map of where they routed us onto Kinnear, "A" is a florist shop where we turned left instead of going straight.

Other than that I got my screens to the local hardware store to get re-screened as I slashed the screens by accident right after I finished the last coat of paint. The slashing occured as I was trying to make sure that whe I pulled the tape off I wasn't going to remove any paint with it. No worry of that now though.... weeeeee!

Checked out a chair at the La-Z Boy furniture at Mill Run but truthfully after seeing it, I am started to realize that it's kind of over stuffed and pug like.. PUG LIKE I said! BTW here's a link to the chair, keep in mind that the fabric that appears by default isn't the fabric that we like. BUT it's really a moot point because I don't think we like it.

So after that we went to Larsons, a local toy store to see if they have a game called Carcassonne. Carcassone is a board game where you have to lay these tiles and decide whether or not you want lay one of your game pieces on it. It's all about trying to get more points than anyone else and it ends when you have no more tiles to lay. You get points by laying your "meeples" on the tile you lay down. What your meeples are is determined by what you lay your meeple on. A meeple placed on a city tile becomes a knight, a meeple laid on a cloister becomes a monk, a meeple laid on a road becomes a thief and a meeple laid on the grass is a farmer. For all meeple types but farmers you get points when you complete whatever it is they are laid on. Farmers gain points when the game ends and you see who has the most farmers supporting a single city, a player with the most meeples per city gains four points per completed city. It may not seem like a lot of fun but it is.

After we picked up Carcassonne and all the expansions Larsons had, we then went over to a furniture store in Grandview called Global Living. Global Living is kind of cool because it is a furniture store that carries all kinds of styles of furniture. It has modern furniture, furniture influenced by asia, contemporary funiture, etc etc. On top of that they display and sell artwork on the wall which I believe may be semi local, they have a indian rug dealer, a cafe that serves wine and then the sell all kinds of decorative pieces for your home too. Why I mention this is mainly because we found a chair there that we liked also made by a company called Mitchell Gold.

After that was fated meeting with after game traffic followed by a rousing game of Carcassonne where I lost by over 100 points (Jess cheats!) and dinner at Aladdins, can you say "Mudjadara Pocket"?

Leaves are falling, Buckeyes are a playing....

So the leaves are falling which means one and only one thing in my house; I'm a gonna be a raking. Strangely as monotonous a task as raking is I don't actually mind it. There is something that I enjoy about it, maybe it's because I'm outside and I'm smelling the cool brisk air and the a hint of woodsmoke. Maybe it's because I don't break much of a sweat, or maybe it's because I only have to do it so much before the trees have no leaves left.

Grass is another story (calm down slow breathing) and we will save that till another summer.

Back to the post, so OSU is playing today which means life as I once knew it, the natural laws by which this world follows, goes crazy. It means that I have to sit here huddled in my home not venturing more than a few blocks in any one direction. Let me explain, in Columbus, Ohio we have no professional football, no professional baseball, and no professional basketball. Some of you may be going, "Wait wait SFB (Sad Faced boy) you have the blue jackets", true but that's hockey, and you know what, it's just hockey. Keep in mind here that I'm not a big sports guy, I like to PLAY sports but watching them by my lonesome just doesn't really do it for me, but really back to the topic at hand; the buckeyes.

Hoards of fans clog my little area of Columbus making it practically impossible to go anywhere or do anything without running into detours, or a plethora of stopped cars (Can you say "Plethora" heffe?). Since I am not such a big sports fan I ALWAYS forget when the Buckeyes (Hence forth known as the bucks) are playing. Which means I will find myself on I-315 S trying to run an errand then I run smack dab into gridlock on a Saturday afternoon for no reason other than the Bucks are playing. Nuts, drives me completely bat crazy, red rage, homicidal, t-bone (driving ones car into another perpendiculary), nuts... which is why I am here blogging.

Which reminds me, I need to go out and run an errand, need to pick out a chair for our bedroom. "A chair" you may ask, why yes a chair because well the bedroom needs one and maybe @3:30 when the bucks kick off things may not be so crazy.

So first post, a little long a little rambling but thats the Sad Faced Boy for you.I may not make any sense sometimes, I may cause English teachers around the world to pull out their hair in great lumps if they read this, but you know what f-that because this is my blog so english teachers and critics can bend over and let me stick my foot up their candy asses.