I'm going through one of my phases, it's not you it's me.

If it were possible for me to scowl myself into a better mood I might have actually done it. I thought this was just passing and then it never passed. I'm on an all time record long bitchy marathon, I mean the President of IKEA could apparate right into my office and give me the money to start my own franchise here in the land of eternal grey and I think I would just say "Eat a dick, I'm not in the mood." I was reading the ever so brief online brochure on IKEA's website that talked about franchising and after reading the Swedish prefab furniture credo I am not sure if I could ever back that kind of thing. They are all about "belief in the IKEA vision", "well designed furniture for one nation indivisible", "quality this, pretty that" and all I'm about is "Where's my benjamins bitches cause poppa needs a vintage 1957 356a Porsche Speedster".

I've always had a penchant for the grumpy, I can remember growing up my father used to tell me that "No one likes to be around a negative person" I think I might have been ten or so at the time. Enough of this grumpy, I'm done with grumpy for today, I think I will shoot for petulant. I went and saw "V for Vendetta", I liked it but that's not what we are going to talk about. What we are here to talk about is the steaming pile of shit that I saw a preview for. I would like to call this movie "Big Fucking Wave" (aka: Poseidon) because a big fucking wave hundreds of feet tall capsizes a giant cruise ship. After that it's a rip roaring good adrenaline ride as our passengers try to get out of this ship. I know you are thinking that this is brilliant, how could they have come up with such an original idea. And here's the kicker, it's a remake. Who approves this stuff:

Movie Exec 1: We need a summer thriller, something with waves, water, a perfect storm, something that I can really throw a ton of money on, but what could we do?

Movie Exec 2: Wait that sounds familiar.... I know I've heard of something like that... "The Perfect Sto" no that's been done already. AH! I got it "The Poseidon Adventure", we don't even have to write anything we will just call it "Poseidon" to avoid the curse that all movies with "The" in front of them will bomb.

Movie Exec 1: Fabulous, I was worried that we wouldn't find an idea to spend 90 million dollars on.

So yes the original movie "The Poseidon Adventure" had a cast of 15 academy award winners, 15!. What were these people thinking? What was it about this movie that 15 academy award winners think "A big fucking wave capsizes this boat and then we have to get out, this will be my greatest moment in cinema." I'm thinking it was the movie's tagline "Hell, Upside Down" because you know EVERYONE is all about the hell upside down. So lets sum this all up "Big Fucking Wave II" is a remake of "Big Fucking Wave" which also spawned "Return to Big Fucking Wave", "Big Fucking Wave the TV Movie", "Big Fucking Wave and the Toxic Avenger go to Washington" and lastly "Big Fucking Wave and Gamera do the electric boogaloo." Hollywood wonders why they keep making less and less money every year and blame the EVIL bootleggers instead of the fact that they keep spending an amount equal to the GDP of a small country on a remake of an already mediocre movie.

Percolating babies, screaming zombies and a Korean myth.

Over the weekend I found some time to watch a zombie movie that I had recorded on the new Tivo. Bliss is two Tivo's and never having to delete. Who knows why in Gods name I do it, I like Zombie movies but then they freak me out, make me all paranoid. Let's do a poll here what's more frightening a zombie apocalypse or some sort of super virus apocalypse? I say zombie apocalypse hands down and so what if there is no such thing as zombies.

Here's how ma logic goes:

A. It's awfully hard to make a virus seem menacing, it's faceless, stink less, and while it will kill you but it won't chase you down with a never ending thirst for blood and brains.

B. Watching someone you love die would be terrible, having to KILL someone you love to prevent them from turning you into a zombie is a billion and one times worse.

C. Viruses will run their course and go away once everyone is dead. Zombies are dead and never go away never get tired and they don't get bored of eating your brain.

D. Zombies are just fucking scary.

Back to this movie thing, I'm not sure if I ever wondered what it would be like if we took the combination of a zombie apocalypse and a viral apocalypse but now because of "28 Days Later" I have another potential apocoalyptic set of events to mull over. This movie was like a sort of east meets west apocalyptic type thing, you catch a virus that turns you into this mindless ass kicking 100 meter track star who can't stop vomiting blood. The "infected" don't even want your brains, the just want to fucking kick your ass plus they are fast. How fast? I'm telling you man like Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and the Incredible Flash fast. There's no running away from something that goes 0-60 in 3 seconds. I finished this movie right before going to get some Korean thinking that I was really ok with this new breed of fast pseudo zombies. It wasn't until I went to bed and woke up at 5am with a feeling of dread that one of these fast Zombies were going to come blasting through my doors like a battalion of linebackers on steroids. Seriously, I just laid in bed for 45 minutes thinking about this.

Anyway I'm thinking if faced with the same sort of event sunglasses and preferably goggles of some kind would be required along with some sort of HEPA filter mask to get the blood and saliva from infecting me while providing a good zombie ass kicking. I'd also have to make a jaunt to a sporting good store and get me to nice mean pair Easton metal bats and jerry rig up a sheath like system for my back. Some sort of cross harness thing with some sort of streatchy opening where you hang the bat handles pointed towards the ground that way you can still pull them out nice and fast when some zombie pounding is required.

Enough of the zombies, I'm over them. Sunday SG and I went over to see a friend of mine and his family. The nice thing about us going to see him and his family are that if there was ever a thought in my head that I wanted kids it dissipates like the morning mist with a blow torch put on it. It's not that his kids are terrible, they aren't they are well behaved cute kids unlike the monsters that mine I'm sure will be. Let me give you a little story about when I was a kid and my mother used to take me to this one barbershop. Brothers being brothers he and I were fighting to see who would get the nice one barber. See there was the one who was nice who didn't scare me and then there was the one who did. I really can't remember why I thought he was scary, maybe it was a beard, I dunno he was evil and I wanted nothing to do with him. So when my brother got the "Good Barber" I hid under the chairs and wouldn't get my haircut until I got the one I wanted. See what I mean they'll be monsters. Anyway with kids it seems like everything you do takes three times as long, let me provide for you some examples.

Dinner (Just eating mind you)
US: 10 minutes.
THEM: 30 minutes of constantly getting up.

Going to bed
US: Whenever we want.
THEM: 45 minutes of putting on pajamas, and reading stories just for the kids followed by all the stuff that you do when you go to bed after you put the kids to bed.

I'm not saying kids are bad or that I wouldn't want one someday I'm just saying you know pretty big life change. I had my first baby encounter last night, SG at one point got tired of holding their 4 month old baby boy and plopped him down on me. He then sat on me and gripping my fingers while gurgling like a coffee maker with it's last bit of water for the next 15 minutes. Sweating bullets man, babies are all small and breakable and stuff. If I break something in the house I can usually fix it... somehow, if you break a child that's a bit harder, makes a person think you know. Kids gurgling like coffee machines is also very disconcerting, the whole "oh God please don't let this child drown in his on spittle while sitting on me" crossed my mind a number of times.

Last of all your moment of Zen:

Korean people believe that if when you break your chopsticks and you don't do it cleanly that your children will be stupid and/or ugly.

Conversations in the mens locker room.

I'm trying to figure out if older people came from a time when men could stand around naked and feel perfectly comfortable holding a conversation with another naked man or if by being older they have stopped giving a fuck. Either way it's disconcerting. My personal rule of thumb, DO NOT make eye contact with any animate object (this includes cats, you never know what those fury bastards will do) until there is some fabric between your unmentionables and everything else. I'm not saying that I wear a swim suit when I shower or that when confronted with one of those high school locker room prison pound you in the ass no privacy showers that I choose to stink than to shower. I'm just saying to say. This reminds me of my Freshman year dorm where the shower area was a 20' X 30' area with three shower heads on either wall and no curtains. Later they added shower curtains creating six little happy semi private showering areas. Good right? Well no. Imagine if you will a rectangle bisected the long way and then the short way divided into three different regions and you will see the problem. No way to travel from one point in the land of showertown to another without going through another shower area. If you were in the shower furthest from the entrance and two people walked in and started using the front two shower areas then you either had to stay in there until they finished or make what might just be the single greatest batroom faux pa none to man. Enter another naked man's showering area. This has to be a billion times worse than using the urinal right next to another man and then start holding a conversation with them. Call me shower McPruny feet because I never tested that bathroom rule. The second nasty thing about this shower 'system' was that the shower curtains created a potential environment where any number of pyscho knife weilding clowns or brain hungry zombies could lay in wait for you.

Where was I?

Oh yes the locker room. There was this guy sitting in the locker room talking about how he had figured out this plan to make himself a "lean, mean, fighting machine" with the final goal of losing 45 pounds by July 4th. I wonder if he has a masters in business, worthless fuck. Apparently his plan involved doing some mad crazy two a day workouts on Tuesday and Thursday along with doing some real intensive Billy Blanks tai bo cardio stretching on the days he is at work. I call it "tai bo cardio stretching" because the way he talked about it made it sound like he was actually expecting to burn some significant number of calories in doing this. Working out is good right, could help you loose weight right? Being a fat ass is more fun right? Yes. So his theory almost made sense until he said "Last night I went home after working out and had myself some chocolate cake, popcorn, a steak and some potatoes then sat down in my lazy boy, cat sat on me and I watched a marathon." Maybe he has one of those T.V.'s where by simply watching some sort of athletic event you burn calories.

Which reminds me my other money making invention. It will be a car that you can plug your body into and it will burn off your unwanted love handles and leggy flab. I fucking hate love handles they are my numero uno, ichi ban na nemisis. Seriously I think I have a real good idea, real good but I'm not really sure how one would plug their body into this Calorie Burner 1000, or how it would burn calories and not by accident burn through all your fat and then start burning through your muscles. How sweet would that be though, drive to work and burn 500 calories the same as running for 30 minutes all the while listening to listening to the crazy thugish airwaves of NPR.

"The Mission" Huh? Dinero as a Scottish guy, oh wait he's Spanish.

Three bars later and more Jack Daniels than I willingly want to remember St. Patricks day is over and gone. There's something about an evening that starts at 4pm with your boss calling from the bar telling you that you have finished all your work for the day. Then later getting a call from your wife telling you that she was going to need you to pick her up at some bar at some point and it just so happens that this bar just happens to be one that you have never been too. Good times. Actually the bar she was at was really alright, had this neighborhood feel to it kind of reminded me of the bar in "Boondock Saints" where the Russian Mafia guys pick a fight on St. Patricks day. Except it wasn't in Boston, didn't have Irish people in it, and is filled with all kinds of Buckeye paraphernalia. The next day SG and I went to get some lunch with a coworker of mine and his girlfriend before we went to the Columbus Car show. The restaurant had these margaritas on tap which I could not pass up trying, one sip however and I broke out in an immediate sweat and started shaking. Not saying I didn't finish it just saying.

Saturday SG and I decided to watch our over due copy of David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr". 38 minutes into the movie it suddenly stopped in mid stride let out a couple of asthmatic rattling coughs and restarted. At this point you may be wondering why we didn't try to go to the next chapter and then back up to the point where the skipping occurred or why we didn't try to fast forward past the skipping spot. As for the first question:

The Region 1 DVD of the movie does not feature "chapters"; attempting to "skip" to the next scene or chapter takes you to the "DVD" logo animation at the very end of the movie after all the credits and ratings and so forth. Director David Lynch requested this himself, as he has done on previous releases, such as The Straight Story (1999). By allowing the film to be on one chapter, Lynch believes people will be more inclined to view the feature in one sitting, as intended. Robert Zemeckis also used this idea on his laserdisc release of Forrest Gump (1994). -- IMDB

So no chapters all pressing the chapter button got was SG and I snatching the remote out of each others hands repeatedly pressing the next chapter button and swearing profusely when it didn't work and fast forwarding had no affect other than wasting five minutes of my life. At this point SG got this "I am a pregnant woman find me this rare and exotic food at 11pm" look in her eye and out I went into the wide blue yonder up to the Best Buy at Hellaris.

Me and this Best Buy have a little bit of history together every time I go there looking for something they never have it. NEVER, not even once. I have no idea how a store the size California can have a stock so lacking but it's true. I know I know, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. At some point after trying to find the movie myself I gave up and started hunting for a clerk. How is it when you are trying to find something there is no one around and when you are browsing every clerk in the store asks if they can help you. I finally found a clerk and asked him if they had "Mulholland Dr" and instead of using one of these new fangled things called "computers" he goes and looks on the shelf I was just at. While crouched down and looking at the bottom shelf for a minute or so he picks up the movie "The Mission" and says "Dinero as a Scottish guy, oh wait he's Spanish."

A. I didn't ask him about the movie "The Mission" and

B. Who the fuck cares about "The Mission", I mean I'm sure it could be a lovely movie but not the one I was looking for.

At one point I think I said "I guess you don't have it, thanks for your help" and walked up to the cash registers. 1 hour, 37.2 miles, a McDonald's Coke and cheese burger later I arrive back home to start watching "Mulholland Dr" again. After all that was it worth it, yes and no yes and no. It was good but I thought overly confusing for the sake of being confusing.

Connect the five point harness because NASA we are go for rectal rocket launch.

Have you ever had someone make you a drink the exact way you asked for it? Normally I'm thinking having someone make a drink just the way you want it is a good thing unless that drink is a Jack Daniels with a splash of Coke. Last night I went up to the bar and asked the bartender for two PBR's and a Jack with a splash of Coke. He gets me the two beers and then grabs a double shot glass pours a smallish shot of Jack Daniels into the glass and adds a teensy weensy bit of Coke. Then looks at me and says "Is that enough Coke?" All I could say was "Yes".

After shooting some pool we decided that we would try intestinal fate with the rectal rockets that I affectionately call White Castles across the street. And no I wasn't drunk, actually like White Castles. When I got home I was rocking out to some Guitar Heros when I felt the first bowel cramping signs of impending doom. The only problem was that SG just started to take one of her marathon hair washing, leg shaving, napping 20 minute showers and we only have one bathroom. At one point while bent over standing up sweating profusely I almost gave into the idea of grabbing a roll of toilet paper and taking a crap in my back yard. I can just imagine the neighbors looking out and seeing me sighing with relief in the brisk night air as I finish my deed in the backyard. This is this isn't the first time this has happened it's almost like my intestines and my brain or playing some sort of sick game of Russian Poop Roulette. So far the brain has won out every time but let me tell you friends last night was a close one. WHEW!

I want to paint animal faces on our kids and watch them run around ROARing and MEOWing.

I mean come on who actually says that to someone else, does someone actually read a statement like this and go "WOW this guy sounds really wonderful, I want to meet him so that we can paint animal faces on our kids and watch them growl and meow at each other." That statement is so ridiculous that I am having a hard time believing that someone would actually write it in an attempt to hook up. Go back to stalking psycho. Lets back up here, at last one of my favorite web-blog-journalist Amy Blair is writing again at her new home "Animal New York" and it couldn't have come at a better time. Funny story about making meowing and growling noises. When I was a sophomore on college I think I might have been the top of my irritating asshole game. This was the year of the 3 hour "There is nothing in Parkersburg" argument, the setting my roommates clock ahead one minute every day, and the shooting my roommate from a third floor window in the ass with a beebee gun while smoking period (among other things). My roommate and I along with a few other people thought it was funny to go to this stairway that was right next to our dorm room and stick our hands through the bars of the window and make animal noises as if we were tigers stuck in cages at the circus at people who walked by. I am trying, trying so very hard to understand why I thought this was funny I blame.... actually I can't blame anything this was all my doing. Relevance? None.

Last night our new light fixture arrived to replace the current wretched light fixture that is currently in our entryway. Along with this light was a antiqued bronze face plate that we got for the outlet that is most visible in our living room that we wanted to replace to match all the other light switch face plate covers thingys. To replace a faceplate one usually needs nothing more than a screw driver and about 60 seconds but this is my house. I went downstairs got a screw driver and came back upstairs and attempted to take off the face plate and put the new one on. You notice I said "attempted" because that's as far as I got. I started unscrewing, and then I unscrewed some more, and a little bit more. Then the cursing started. It started out quiet and built to opera like volume at which SG stomped over making her irritated face and snatched the screw driver out of my hands. A power drill, pliers and ten minutes later it was decided that the screw was somehow stuck in the outlet. I then sat on the floor and glared at the socket in the hopes that it would feel the concentrated waves of hatred and just fall out. No such luck. It has challenged me, challenged my manly handiness and I have come up short. I think my only solution is to shut off the power and rip the electrical socket out with my teeth followed by a good shaking to guarantee that I break it's neck.

"I want to tell you to take a big deep breath after you have your sixth orgasm of the night."

Yeah. I've got nothing more to say.

My newest favorite neurosis.

Monday night I was attempting to fall asleep after a bawdy rowdy evening of what I like to call SFB's neurotic reorganizing of the basement for the Nth time. How much can you organize something? Well see you first start out putting your stuff into plastic tubs. Then you label the tubs because you can't find anything, then you take the items inside the tubs and you put them in their own smaller tubs to better organize them and keep them from breaking. Soon you realize that you have something that resembles a Rubbermade matryoshka doll, you know but without the doll. Finally you come to the conclusion that you have too much stuff, or that you could give some things away to Salvation Army and then you are left with half full bins. You then take those tubs and recombine them and the whole merry neurotic cycle continues, like the seasons but much more neurotic.

This isn't my new favorite neurosis it's actually an old one I really love to organize things. What can I say I'm special. The new neurosis is that I have this irrational fear that the one section of basement wall that is slightly bowed will bow a little more and snap the copper pipes that lead to the utility sink. This rupturing will then lead to the filling our basement with water and destroying everything. It nearly brings me to tears just thinking about it well tears and neurotic worrying. I'm not really that bad I just like to organize, it's not like I have to go wash my hands three times every time someone drops something on the ground. Anyway while laying in bed I saw the basement fill up, the power to the house short out and then me wondering what that big pop was, and wandering downstairs to find my basement flooding from within. I then go diving into the water in an heroic attempt to shut off the main water valve. The only problem is that there is no lights and the main shut off water valve will be in eight feet of water. Even if I find it the chance that I could get stuck and drown is always there. SG tells me that this is completely neurotic but just like my fear of Psycho Serial Killer clowns waiting at the bottom of my stairs or an Zombie Apocalypse you have to prepare your mind for all possible catastrophe's.

SFBLLCF, I didn't raise you to be a hater Linux.

Me and Linux have this very delicate relationship, I try not to pry into it's inner workings or what it's been up to and it lets me use it. However every once and awhile it likes to go get hoped up on some Meth and then we have to have a little talk. Usually this "talk" involves Linux sticking it's digital boot straight up my candy ass like the Peoples Champ. I might actually be able to deal with being fucked by a computer if before fucking me it would say "I'm going to lay the smackdown on your roody poo candy ass". How did Linux fuck me this time? A coworker sent me a link with instructions on how to get Firefox and mplayer to work so that you can view pages that have QuickTime movies for those, ahem, important QuickTime tutorials on programming.

So I meander on down and open up a little typey window thing we like to call a terminal (Like opening a window in DOS) and type:

"yum -y install mplayer mplayer-skins mplayer-fonts"

Only to be greeted by this gobblygook of witch craft mumbo jumbo:

There was a problem importing one of the Python modules
required to run Yum. The error leading to this problem was:

No module named cElementTree

Please install a package which provides this module, or
verify that the module is installed correctly.

It's possible that the above module doesn't match the
current version of Python, which is:
2.4.1 (#1, Jun 21 2005, 02:38:47)
[GCC 3.4.3 20050227 (Red Hat 3.4.3-22.fc3)]

Did that make any sense to you? It didn't to me, more like textual diarrhea on my screen finger painted by a small child. Linux has all these handy dandy tools that basically take all the work out of keeping your programs and libraries reasonably up to date. However if you haven't properly cleansed yourself, killed the sacrificial lamb, and sprinkled it's blood on your keyboard the God of Linux Linus Torvalds may just reach out and grab you by nut sack and grab, squeeze, twist and pull.

Two hours of my life have passed and I have determined that when I ran an update on my machine last Friday it most likely installed a new version of Yum (Think windows update but for Linux), installed a new version of Python (programming language that Yum uses) or installed a new version of some important Python libraries. Take your pick, personally I'd much rather believed that I was cursed by a voodoo Witch Doctor, seems much more plausible to me. I like to call this SFB's Linux Luddite Cluster Fuck, lets just call it SFBLLCF for short. Yum seems to be working now however that was after I had to uninstall newer versions of the Python libraries python-urlgrabber and python-elementtree with older probably more stable versions that have been sanctified by a licensed Linux voodoo Witch Doctor. "I saw the Witch Doctor he gave me this advice".

If you needed another example of why Linux is a hater let me tell you of a little story about my home Linux machine. I installed the stupid thing and then have just been too busy working on the house, spending quality time with Terry the Tivo, and Guitar Heros to configure it. Last week I turned it on so that I could keep watch on some auctions on Ebay in between being killed in Counter-Strike. I turn it on and switch back to the Windows machine and play for awhile. After a bit I switched back to the Linux machine only to find it sitting at a blank screen. Confused I turned off the Linux machine and turned it back on this time watching it boot. It started booting and then stopped saying it couldn't find some very important areas on my file system. I won't go into the details but what happened would be like if you turned on your Windows machine and it couldn't determine what was your C drive, D drive, or E drive which means it doesn't know where Windows lives so it can't boot. The not so strange thing is that this isn't new, this has already happened once which is what led me to reinstall the last time. So how does a machine that you never touch suddenly get a lobotomy? Because Linux is a hater.

Dear God holy hell in heaven shoot me now lest I kill someone.

Currently a coworker who will remain nameless but we shall call he/she/it the "Avalanche" is doing a conference call with two if not three or four people who just happen to be all around me. In most cases using the speaker phone is not a reason to freak out and start holding ones head while rocking back and forth whispering holy verses to oneself. I can hear Avalanche's voice, I can hear it inside my head bouncing off of the walls of my skull. I can then can hear his voice in the speaker phones which feel like they are all pointed towards shiny reflective echo friendly surfaces. It sounds like Avalanche is yelling down a tunnel or is leading morning calisthenics for automobile plant workers like in the movie Gung Ho. GOD kill me. It's a conference call between Avalanche and Mega Deuce, maybe if I ate my Cheerios Deuce will hack up a hair ball while on speaker phone spit it into his trash can and then make a disgusted noise. GAAAAAH! Mega Deuce just unleashed a frighteningly melodic "Oh Cru~de" which sounded much like a bunch of Tibetan monks chanting praying that the Golden Child will come back to them. Maybe Deuce can sing "I, I, I, want the kni~fe".

I actually have read "The Golden Child" book, I'm not sure if it was a script turned into a movie or if it was book turned into a script. My guess by reading the book was that it was a script turned into a movie. I used to read parts of it over and over again when I was in the fifth grade, I didn't have anything else to do. Where I went to school you could have a traditional form of classes, you know read books take tests, do school work, or you could be in an "informal" class. In "informal" class the desks weren't setup in straight perfect lines, our class more resembled a coffee shop for elementary school kids than a classroom. We had a loft where you could go up to and listen to lectures but all that generally happened was that you would fall asleep. I somehow lucked out and was able to position my desk underneath the stairs of the loft and so became in a way a loft troll. What other stuff did we do? Um did I mention I read the Golden Child book over and over again? Oh for awhile this other guy and myself tried to make a wind tunnel using a box fan, some cardboard and paper airplanes, that was rockin. One of the best things about the whole experience was that at the end of the year I remember my mom being all grumpy because the folder of work that my teacher gave to her was so small as to be laugh worthy. It wasn't that I didn't do anything, seriously we just didn't do anything.

Where was I? Right conference call from hell. The worst thing about this whole deal is that everything goes silent for awhile, lulls me into a sense of false security the calm before the storm if you will. I think it is over and then BOOM! the conference sneaks around the corner and gooses me with a raucousness to match a provincial market in China. I practically loose control of my bawls every time it happens. Chatter chatter chatter, SQUAK!, chatter, chatter chatter, SPIT, SNEEEZE, CLINK, CLINK chatter, chatter.................SILENCE..................... Chatter chatter chatter, SQUAK!, chatter, chatter chatter, SPIT, SNEEEZE, CLINK, CLINK chatter, chatter.

Step up and lick the Apple dick.

Against my better judgment I have finally broken down and purchased an Ipod Shuffle. I want to hate Apple products, I do, I really do. I want to hate them for their cult like following, their elitist groupies wearing their black rimmed glasses speaking in their German accents but it all boils down to one thing; they make cool shit. They make really cool shit and the fact that I just dropped $100 for a player that has no screen, no cradle and no accessories doesn't bother me . I still feel dirty, like I caved on some fundamental belief, like I was a priest or minister who just realized they don't believe in God. I didn't bend over and take it full on like one does when they buy one of the dual core hyper innercooled neural network processor towers that Apple sells but I still feel like this could be THE gateway product. You know the one that starts my Apple addiction.

What started this? Well about two months ago while working out I noticed that the music from my Creative Zen Micro kept cutting in and out. Thinking that it was just my headphones I swapped them out with another pair and noticed the same problem. I then thought maybe the contacts in the headphone jack were worn out but after a little more experimentation I realized that wasn't it either. A hop skip and a jump later on the interweb and I find out that the problem I am having is a known manufacturing defect on the Zen Micros. It seems I was one of the lucky ones as my Micro has lasted me over a year most peoples have been dying after a couple of months. The problem in a nut shell is that the solder points that connect the headphone jack to one of the boards isn't sturdy enough. When too much pressure is placed on the jack the solder points loosen and bada bing bada bang bada no sound. It appears that this is all fixable if you happen to be (A) little handy, (B) have experience with a soldering gun and (C) potentially a degree in electric engineering, all of which I DON'T HAVE.

This reminds me of a story. I had a friend of mine attempt to mod the PS2 that I had just received for Christmas. He happened to be an EE major at Ohio State University (OSU) and was son to a EE Professor at OSU. I figured, shit this guy probably has been soldering from the womb. So he sits down and takes the mod chip and attempts to solder it onto the board. It wasn't 2 minutes before I hear him say "Ooops that wasn't good." So we put it back together attempt to turn it on and nothing. Saddened by the fact that I was one less PS2 I came up with a not so original plan, buy a new one put the old one in the box and return it. I won't say if I ever got it fixed or if I attempted the plan mentioned but I will say two hours later after nearly sweating myself to death from stress I was again back in business with a working PS2. Did I attempt to get that PS2 modded again? FU~CK NO.

When I told SG that I was going to open up my player and attempt to re-solder the points myself she exploded in a fury, something about "You've never soldered anything bla bla bla, You'll break it, yada yada". So my current solution is to position my Micro in a way that places the minimum amount of pressure on the headphone jack and only use it while exercising on cardio machines that have a minimum amount of arm movement and use my new gateway drug... err mp3 player for running.

Grey fucking, gray Monday.

Silly me I thought that gray was spelled grey serves me right. Hot damn I need to start giving myself personal spelling bees as I am officially retarded when it comes to English. As if this blog weren't the single best example of my complete lack of a clue when it comes to English. Monday is drawing to a close and I finally gave up and opened the blinds in my office. I'm not sure what is worse not having a window and having no idea what it is like out or having a window and knowing the truth (You can't handle the truth!). Oh look even the weather gave into the heinously gray day, it can't even muster up the will to choose between snow and rain. Without a window one could imagine just about any type of weather, fields of daisies, giant Ents ho humming in the sunshine with hobbits skipping around singing "the fields are alive with the sound of Ent-ing."

This boring lack luster weather reminds me of this show I caught on the History Channel. Terry Tivo the Monster caught another show on Egyptology in it's jaws and laid it at my feet like a proud cat. I pretty much felt like a person feels when a cat carries a dead thing in it's jaws up to you and plops it down as if to say "I feel so sorry for you because you can't hunt, have my dead thing." Normally I would have patted Terry on the his Tivo icon for continuing my education on the history of Egypt. Normally. This time Terry recorded the show "Digging for the Truth" which I found to be the single most worthless program that I have ever watched on the History Channel. The title of the show makes you think that they might actually dig up the truth, but you'd be wrong. This show was about our host Indiana Bernstein traipsing around Egypt in every form of transportation but a camel. Now that I think about it why didn't they have him riding a camel, would have been dramatic, about as dramatic as flying over the Valley of the Kings in a hot air balloon.... oh wait they did that. The goal of this episode I think was to try to find where the mummy of Nefertiti was buried. You know digging up the truth and all. The not so short answer.... no one knows. Hurray that was enlightening.

Realizations about ones parentage.

Today was one of those days where I couldn't be happy sitting around doing nothing and I wasn't in any sort of mood to actually go do something. SG which among having no irritating habits, the ability to fall asleep almost instantly also has the ability to keep her self completely occupied and content with doing nothing. Nothing drives me NUTS, bonkers, bananas, ape shit, the only other thing that I loath more than nothing might just be painting my kitchen and breakfast nook.

I've come to the conclusion about me and home improvement. No matter how good the intentions I have when I start a project by doing one thing it always leads me to something else that I NEVER wanted to do. Example: While prepping a section of trim I decided that I would put tape on the walls around the trim to protect the wall from overly enthusiastic sanding. I thought this was a great idea, a fantastic idea however when I pulled the tape off it turned out to be a rotten FUCKING idea. Why rotten you ask? The breakfast nook used to be have wallpaper and as I find wallpaper to be one of the single greatest cardinal sins in a home it was the first thing we did after we moved in. This being the first room and we not being used to the cluster fuck that our house is didn't think to prime our pristine virginal plaster walls. So take a guess what happened when I pulled the tape off.... YUP fucking took the paint with it. GAH! So right we were planning on painting the nook a different color I just didn't intent to have to do some light sanding and prepping before painting. Painting the walls will be the next cluster as I am almost positive that if I was to tape the trim I would remove the paint off the newly painted trim thereby making me have to rinse wash and repeat the whole process again. It's a conspiracy a damned conspiracy I tell you.

So why am I painting the trim in the breakfast nook and the whole entire kitchen? Previous owners, may the God of Easton smite them with a glowing hot baseball bat, painted over oil based paint with a latex paint and choose not to do any light sanding or priming. Our entire kitchen and breakfast nook looks much like I do three days after a bad sun burn, ohhh the peeling and the horror, THE HORROR. Oh and the realizations about my parentage? That I have got to get used to doing nothing otherwise SG is going to pierce me through the eye with a knitting needle as I have my Fathers issues with doing nothing. Nothing used to drive my Dad more nuts then seeing my brother or I doing nothing on a Saturday.

Don't make me think!

So last night I started reading one of the user interface/user experience books that work bought me "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. At Sprockets the our moto is "We are UN-professional grade," we try hard, we have good intentions but as one great sage said "We either do things on the cheap or we spend copious amounts of cash, results always the same ghetto." Anyway I'm retarded I've had this book for oh three months or so at least and am finally getting around to reading it. I'm not sure why I was holding off as it reads with the speed of a children's book, reminds me of the days when I used to read Curious George. Fuck who am I kidding SG claims that she can remember the moment she was born, ME? I can't even remember when I last took a crap. The point being is that this book is a quick read so quick that I am embarrassed that I put off reading it. Last night in between sketching ideas for the product I work on I finished three chapters. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has issues designing a website, it's short and after you read a chapter you can't imagine why you would have ever done something the way you did.

Lets step back even further last night shall we? SG and I went to the local library branch, this might be the first time I have stepped into a library in years, not because I don't like to read it's just that I have a six year old fine at the Upper Arlington library and am afraid that a librarian hit has been placed on me. Which reminds me, read this chicks website it's good stuff. At some point in time when I was younger and poorer and my salary was based on how often the grass needed mowing the library and me were good friends. Once I started making the big bucks I all of a sudden swore off the library and choose to start buying my books. Why in Gods name I did this I'm not sure, I mean books have to be the HEAVIEST, LARGEST things that you will rarely ever go back and look at. My final realization that the house that SFB made needs no more books combined with the ability to reserve and have your items brought to your closest library combined with the fact that it's free culminated in getting a library card.

I have been thinking about going backpacking in the Great Smokey Mountains as it is supposed to be really beautiful and I have yet to do any backpacking in that region. So instead of buying a book that I would only need once I had this great idea to reserve some books from the Columbus Public Library. In using the Columbus libraries website I realized that what the book "Don't Make Me Think" said about how people browse the web is true. People don't read carefully, and they don't weigh their options they just pick the first reasonable choice and then muddle their way through it. The libraries site might have just provided me with the best example of muddling which caused me in a fit of rage to call SG and rant about. When I see something that says "book bag" I instantly think shopping cart and when I think shopping cart I think "I will add multiple things to this 'bag' and then I will reserve them all at once." HA HAAAAAAAAA! Fooolishness! Attached to this post are indeed how the "book bag" concept works. You add this too your book bag which will appear to show up however if you cosmos tips slightly your books will fall out of this virtual bag and you will have to start over. You think I'm kidding don't you.. I dare you to use this system, I DOUBLE DOG dare you. I finally was able to get my two backpacking books and my one "thing of thing" (fantasy book) in my "book bag". I then carefully read the instructions and then click "Place Reserves" whereby I am greeted with a page that says "fuck you very much your books will be ready in 2-5 days." HUH? Did I give you a library card number or tell you where I wanted to pick them up you mother fucking system? No I didn't. SG tells me she's never used this system she just clicks the reserve button, she tells me that I have to transcend the "book bag" and "place reserves" system but I can't. My hopes that are in writing this that I may be able to calm down enough to actually work, I doubt this will work as I am going to keep trying to use this system if it takes me having to stick my hands into my monitors and twiddle the bits with my fingers.

Oh and the final and last straw? Try searching for "george rr martin" in their search engine using an author search. Alright do "a feast for crows" as a keyword search. Ha-za at last a match, why a library has a search engine that works like a retarded shelty that only has a brain stem for a brain is beyond me. I mean it's not like they deal in information or anything.