Hard News

This is awesome.

phalliclogoawards/

I need to come up with my own awards to give. This is incredibly funny.

Thar She Blows (not in the good way)

Yikes. I am sick. Woke up Sunday morning at about 6:00am and just made it in time to pray to the ceramic god.

I guess I should start at the beginning, which is always an appropriate place to start.

Had all the kids over thanksgiving. Alison and Ella were sweethearts, though Ella had been sick the day before and was just getting back to speed. Didn’t think much of it, because kids get sick. Particularly school kids. All was well Thursday, but then Saturday, Alison was acting sluggish, and spent a couple hours in the bathroom with her head where only a bottom should rest. I held her hair back, wiped her mouth, and stroked her back. All you can do in that situation, I’m afraid.

Ali was feeling badly Friday night, so I called Cindy, and she came and picked her up, let her sleep in her mom’s bed for the night, which I’m sure made Ali feel better.

Saturday morning, Ali was unceremoniously dropped off. Not real sure why a phone call would have been hard, but that’s a whole different story.

Saturday evening, Dani washed everything from our bedroom, Lysol’d the house, and washed all the cups and glasses. Trying to break the cycle of sick.

Didn’t work. Valiant effort, but I must have already gotten it, cause Sunday morning, about 6:00am, I was in the bathroom, facing the wrong direction. Ugh. I wish I could say “Puke Free, since ‘93” but that simply aint even close to being the case. Still, puking from being sick, I can’t remember the last time I did that. Well, now I can.

The trouble with this sickness is that it was liquid coming fast and furious from both ends. Occasionally at the same time. Kholer hasn’t yet invented a porcelain fixture to accommodate that sort of action. I began to sit in the hall bathroom, and kneel in my bathroom, so as to not have to kneel where I just sat. That would be bad. I was successful for a while, though I was wearing out a path in the carpet with my bare feet scurrying back and forth.

There were hour long pauses in the action, where I could lay on the bed or the couch and moan from the pain of stomach cramps, sore throat, and general malaise. I felt drained. Like I had been placed on a giant orange juicer and squeezed by the hands of Goliath. From eyewitness accounts, I was as pale as great Caesar’s ghost, and clammy like New England Chowder.

After many hours of this, repeated over and over, I felt and looked worse. I needed help. I asked Dani to take me to the hospital so I could get some IV fluids. All during this time I tries Juice, Ginger Ale, Water, by the glass down to the teaspoonful. Every bit came back up with the force of a firehose. (I really felt compelled to say Mount Vesuvius right there, but I’m glad I didn’t.) I wanted to drink anything and everything in as massive a quantity as the world contained. I wanted Coke over ice, I wanted Mountain Dew in a bottle, Gatorade , water, anything, everything, right now. But I couldn’t even keep down a dropper of room temperature water. I was dehydrated and my body and mind began to suffer for it.

While attentive and sweet up to this point, when I mentioned I wanted medical attention, Dani snapped into a next higher gear I hadn’t seen before. In the four years we have been in each other’s company, she has seen me hung over, and with a cold. Not exactly extreme maladies. I have accompanied her to the hospital several times, from supposed strokes that were severe opthamalic migraines, to kidney stones, to new human life-forms emitting from her belly. It was her turn to take care of ME, and she relished the chance.

She was attentive, sweet, caring and selfless the whole time while I took IV fluids, anti-nausea meds, and a realm of other brightly colored bags of stuff. I think something was an anti-acid med since I had been puking battery acid for the better part of the last 4 hours. Not sure. She was right there by my side, holding my hand. The only negative thing Dani had to say the whole time was making fun of me for taking the needle with difficulty, and I probably actually deserved it, since I did jump and squirm like they were putting a knitting needle in my urethra. (it did feel bad, though.) So, all in all, Dani gets a 101 out of 100. Highest score ever.

After a couple hours of two bags of fluids, and something or another that actually allowed me to get a short nap, they kicked me to the literal curb. Dani drove me home, and about 3/4ths of the way there, I puked again. Wonderful. So much for hospital work “fixing” me. I felt as disoriented, dizzy, and exhausted as ever. I came home, and literally fell asleep.

I woke up several hours later, thirsty as ever. But, my stomach was hardly any better, so I only dared try a sip of water. It stayed down, and I fell back asleep.

Hours and hours passed, sleeping, taking sips of water, occasional visits to the bathroom for more diarrhea, once in a while downstairs for a couple minutes of TV or saying hello to the family.

Monday night I ate most of a bowl of Vegetable soup, (Campbell’s Old Fashioned is the only soup in the world for me. Well, that and Olive Garden’s Pasta Figoile.) and a half a bottle of grape Frost Gatorade.

So, now here it is Tuesday afternoon. I have slept more than been awake. I drank two or three bottles of water, and can now walk down then back up the stairs in one time. I need to lay down if I do much more than that, but this is progress, though slow.

I will go back to work on Wednesday, hopefully stronger than I feel today. Good thing I don’t actually lift or carry anything for my job. I simply push a mouse and tap a keyboard. Even a sickly weakling can do that, right?

Dani is not feeling well. I fear it is her turn to go through this. I hope it isn’t as severe with her. But if it is, I will be right there by her side, holding her hand.

Shit.

God dammit, I hate the fucking bulldogs.

Hiding my eyes

I can't watch. I never can.

Georgia Tech is playing UGA right now, as I type, and I can't bring myself to go downstairs, where Dani is watching. Nor to check a score on ESPN. I have no idea what the status of the game is. I don't know the score, the game time, injuries, nothing. I can't.

I'm recording it on my DVR, and will watch every tackle, every kick, listen to every comment from the annoucing team. Eventually. Probably tomorrow. Maybe tonight, if the game ends in our favor.

Please, Tech. Look good. Play hard. And beat those lousy 'dogs' and humiliate their arrogant, redneck, know-nothing fans.

Please.

Nike Must Die

I guess it isn’t nice to wish for the death of any human, good nor evil, but one of the most evil people in the world is in a life-threatening situation right now.

Nike Jet to Attempt Emergency Landing

I don't know who is aboard or even if the subject of my ire is one individual, but in the case all things have fallen in place...

I hope the damned idiot responsible for Nike taking over and ruining nearly every sport it equips with uniforms is on board that flight and it ends with a spectacular fireball, killing him or her after minutes of terror, panic, and smelling their own burning flesh.

Nike has ruined sports as we know it, with their standard-issue-bowling shoe designs for most countries in the (soccer) World Cup to their one-shoulder college football atrocities as seen on among other teams, Miami in their sound parental-quality spanking by Georgia Tech.

Nike needs to stop. Immediately. If it takes the death of an executive, so be it.

I demand it.

More ups and downs than a Paris Hilton video.

Georgia Tech beat #3 Miami. Wow. Holy COW that’s a big win! Now, I curse our damn team for losing to NC State and Virginia. If we had beaten EITHER we'd be in the mix for the ACC Coastal championship. Bah. To live in the moment of being the great upsettor! (Pretty sure that isn’t a word, but it fits, right?)

OK, enough living in the moment. Can we beat Georgia? Can we do what every man in a gold helmet must? Can we do what thousands of people with small yellow GTs on their license plates urge our warriors to do? Can we defeat our bitter in-state rivals? Can out collection of smart one and two start recruits cast down their roster of paid 4 and 5 star athletes? Can our gentlemen. Perusing degrees that will take them fare in life outscore at the end of 60 minutes their mostly professional club of gifted players who major in worthless majors such as “Grounds Maintenance” and “Building Construction”?

Dammit, I’d rather go 1-10 with a win against UGA than 10-1 with a loss. I hate those puppies. Grind them and their raucous, holier-than-thou, braggart asses in the ground, Golden Tornado.

I love my Tech team today, after beating #3. I’ll be in heaven if we can pull off the 3-pack of top-ten team defeats and beat UGA.

Simply heaven.

What’s the good word? To HELL with Georgia.

How ‘bout them dogs? Piss on ‘em.

Panda Knowledge

So, I've been listening to Pandora recently.

If you don't know what that is, skip tot he bottom, then come back and join me here.

So, in its infinate wisdom, it tells me about bands I have never heard of. I get a LOT of stuff I never heard of. A list of what I'm digging right now can be found here:
JR's Pandora Favorites

I am only adding songs to that list from band I dont know. I'm gonna go through and find albums form them, so if you have one, let me know. This list should updates as I listen to Pandora more and more, so check back with it.

The last three tracks I really loved, here is why Pandora says I like them"

"Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electic instrumentation, major key tonality, and electric guitar riffs"

"Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, mixed acoustic and electic instrumentation, and major key tonality."

"Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features hard rock roots, punk influences, mild rhythmic syncopation, major key tonality, and electric guitar riffs"

Apparently I'm easy to nail down. I like a lot of the same thing, I guess. I didnt know that.

__
Pandora is an online streaming music service. Similar to LaunchCast, but different in a very meaningfull way. They take bands you give them as your "favorite" and match up songs. You tell it what songs you like as it plays them, and it narrows down on what you really like in music.

Like Pandora says...

Pandora is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you'll love. It's powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Just tell us one of your favorite songs, we will play music like it.We take your input (artists, songs) and feedback ("I like this", "I don't like this") and use the Music Genome Project to create stations that play songs that are musically similar to what you've told us. That's it; only the music counts. We don't care how popular the artist is, who's backing them, and we don't care which genre bin they usually belong in. Only the music matters.

To learn more about what it is doing, check out the
Music Genome Project.

Do the stair roll! Do the stair roll!

My sister got married last night. It was the end of a crazy week of busting ass. OK, so it was much more my mom's doing, but Dani and I helped a lot, too.

Got hardly any sleep, working on scanning, cropping, and printing old photos of them, then putting them into spray-painted dollar-store frames. That was my primary duty.

Well, that and the programs. Mom typed them up on me computer, in Word. The problem was, I don’t know Word all that well to be printing out of it, and she didn’t do the paging correctly. I’ll give her some slack, she was working on about 4 hours of sleep in the previous 4 days, and for chrissake she’s 62. Just being able to use the computer is awesome enough. She overall very kick ass awesome. I hope to be that cool and with it when I’m rocking my sixties. 2035 I turn 60.

Goddam.

Ok, back to the subject at hand. The wedding was fun. Well, I take that back, the ceremony was a full church service. That was… OK. The reception was a lot of fun. The decorations looked cool. I can’t get too excited, cause I’m a guy, right? Right.

There was a DJ, and open bar, and dinner buffet. Better than Phoebe Buffet. Well, maybe the Friend is funnier, but the one here was tastier. Well… …nevermind.

We were supposed to have rented a 15-person van for the entire wedding party to take form the church to the reception. (It was kind of a drive.) But some brother of hers messed that up. Wait, what? I’m her only brother? Dammit. I didn’t remember they closed at noon on Saturday. It was their stupid fault for having horrible business hours.

Anyway, so my mom calls me and says she has it taken care of, and boy did she! We came out of the church to a super-stretch Excursion totally done up inside. TVs everywhere, a huge chrome and mirrors bar. Coolers full of beer. Neon lights all across the ceiling, slowly changing form one color to another. It was very nice.

So, we get to the reception hall, and being to throw down. They started by introducing the whole wedding party. That was neat. Made me very glad I was paired up with Dani, it would have been weird to be intro’d with someone else.

After the first dance, eating, that bit, it was time to hit the bar in earnest! And we did.

I had been to the reception hall before with Wittne and Mom. They have a once-a-quarter open house for folks who have the place booked, so you can learn about the food, and become comfortable with the place. In my previous visit, I got to talking with the bartender. He was a cool guy, plus he was serving me well-poured drinks, so it made me talkative. (like I need help.)

So, for my first drink, I ask for a whiskey and coke. (what I tend to drink when not rocking beer. This was a liquor event, I could just feel it.) I was offered Jack or Canadian Mist… or Crown, can’t remember. Is there a difference? No, I’d guess. But I went with the Canadian. After about 3 or four of these, I ask the bartender (Joel was his name. In my life, a name of a good guy in most cases.) “Hey, didn’t you have Maker’s Mark last time I was here?” He explains briefly that Makers is part of the ultra-premium pack, one step up from what we ordered. (Goddam. There is a step ABOVE $28 a person? Christ.) Oh. OK. I guess Canadian will do.

Joel glances left, then right, like we were in a spy movie. He leans in, and says to me in a hushed tone, “But YOU can get Makers if you want.” I pause, wondering what the catch is. Assuming (hoping) there is none, I respond with an affirmative, “Sure.” He reached down below the bar back, and pulls out a bottle of Makers, rips apart the wax, and pours me a healthy drink. Wonderful. Drinking what I like to drink is excellent.

So, through the night, I am asking him for, “that special mix of whatever it was you gave me before,” and he nods knowingly, and pulls out my secret bottle of the good stuff. Knowing a bartender and having it work out in your favor is a think of the past in this day's corporate, count the level in liquor bottles environment, but I just hooked up. Joel is a good man.

We had the facility for 4 hours. At the end of hour 3, it is obvious that the party is just getting nice and cranking, and we need more time. My mom actually brings this to my attention. I wholeheartedly agree, and tell her I’m happy to take care of business. I ask how much she has in mind to pay for more time, and she gives me $400 to work with. I start with the DJ, just cause I ran into him first. Goes simply, I ask, he says $100. Done. The facility conversation takes a bit longer. I find the wedding planner-organizer-person and ask her how much for another hour. She goes to the back, comes back, and tells me “$695” Whoa.

I say to her, with a chuckle, “OK, so that means you really don’t want to be here another hour. Do you guys have a movie to make?” She gets that I’m mostly full of shit most of the time, and chuckles back.

“No, that’s just our hourly rate for the bar and the service people.” To be fair, the service has been impeccable. I give them credit for being attentive, and keeping serving containers full, and drink glasses bussed. But $695? I ask her if she can do any better than that, cause that’s out of our budget. “Let me go ask the owner.”

She comes back out from about 45 seconds in the back and tells us they can do $400. In fact, the owner comes out. I shake her hand, thank her for working with us, and confirm that we do, in fact want to take her up on her offer.

One hour left? There is an open bar! I must get our $400 worth! (Screw the DJ’s time, other people like dancing way more than me, let them get his money’s worth.)

Jermel and Matt and I spend some time talking with Lance, right by the bar. I realize that time is getting too short, and I negotiated way to soundly with the reception hall, so I needed to get my drink on.

I go to the bar and ask Joel now for a glass of Makers and a glass of coke. I’m doing my own shooters. This, in case you were not sure, is a bad idea. Well, bad in the aspect of that I cannot walk after my second glass. In between glasses, I go out to the dance floor where Dani, Toni, and Wittne (in decreasing order of drunkenness) are dancing with many folks I don’t recognize. I dance a bit, and then return to the bar, where the men are, and order up a second glass of makers.

Here is where the evening gets a little cloudy. OK, so the evening wasn’t cloudy, but my memories of it sure are. When ordering my second glass of Makers, Joel tilts the bottle all the way over, and the last of it drains into my glass. He tells me I finished it, and I’ll have to be on Canadian from thereon. (I don’t need another drink it turns out.)

At some point, we realize Wittne and Matt have left. We didn’t get to blow bubbles (but somehow I have a vial of bubble solution in my pocket the next morning. I don’t know how.) We decide it is time to call the cab, so we can get to the hotel where we plan to crash.

Mom rented two rooms for the bridesmaids to stay in, and checked out of one by 11am Saturday, but didn’t want to check out of the other till wedding time, and they wouldn’t allow a late check out, so it was available. Why not use it?

Waiting for the cab, I go outside. There are about 6 stairs down to the pull-through in front of the place. I go to sit, which I do. But I don’t stop moving downward, and end up slowly rolling down the stairs. At no point did I achieve much velocity, but I also didn’t come to a stop till the bottom. Drunk and relaxed, I really didn’t hurt myself too much. I had a bruise on the outside of my left arm, and another in the inside of my right knee. Odd places, but that’s all I found in the shower. I never saw my back, but can only assume Dani would have told me if I had anything purple back there.

Finally at rest at the bottom of the stairs, I decide in my hazy logic that horizontal is comfy. So, I don’t get up. I just lay there in my tuxedo, jacket and all. I vaguely remember Toni walking out, going by, and fertilizing the bushes. Though, I’d imagine this process should more accurately be described as killing the weeds, because I can’t imagine this toxic mix would be found to be very friendly by any growing thing.

It is a rare instance that Jermel, Toni, Dani and I are all drunk at the same time. Knowing you have a taxi and a hotel allows you to party more freely. It also allows at least half of your party to “sell fords,” “commit Technicolor yawns” or “reverse swallow.” After hearing Toni engage in the “excretion of nutrients” I didn’t feel so good either.

This concludes my explicit memories of the evening. Later, I find that I apparently rolled down the window of the cab and “exposed my evening’s dinner and drinks consumption” down the side of the cab and onto the road. We also apparently brought a 5th person with us, and dropped him off at a bar that his buddy was supposedly at. Apparently this was a kind-hearted gesture to help prevent a former co-worker of Matt's from committing an act that could perhaps result in his 3rd DUI in under a year. We are nice people. He apparently paid for almost all of our cab ride, though Jermel tipped the guy heavy since I left partially digested ravioli alfredo down the side of his door.

Woke up in the hotel bed, in my underwear and t-shirt at 6am to Dani going to the bathroom. Wow. I drank a lot last night.

There I go, with my talent for understatement again.

PC Deals

So... have I told you about my crazy computer deal?

Office Max PC Deal

I saw this linked on Digg (a great 'cool links' site) and clicked it to see if it was too good to be true. It turned out to be for real, and in my local flyer, so I went to check it out.

Ends up, what the deal is, they don’t actually HAVE any PCs, they have a kiosk where you ORDER the PC. This was a baseline, bottom choice on everything PC. It rings up $599 on the kiosk, and they take $200 off at the register, and you get $50 mail in rebate on the PC, and $50 mail in on the monitor. It also gives you a free upgrade form a 17" CRT to a 15" LCD flat panel. So, I can't see ANY reason not to go with this deal. So I do.

Here are the stats:
HP Pavilion a1110y Desktop with Intel Pentium 4 516 (2.93GHz, 533MHz FSB)
256MB DDR2-400MHz SDRAM (1x256)
40GB 7200 rpm SATA Hard Drive
48x max. CD-ROM Drive
FREE Upgrade to 15" LCD Flat Panel from a 17" CRT, a $130 Value

OK, so it isn’t a screamer, and it doesn't have the greatest stuff inside, but it’s not bad at all for a second (well, 2nd ranked, its actually the household's 5th PC) computer to put in the kitchen to keep my wife and kids off the real machine upstairs.

When going through the process on the kiosk, the sales girl (who was very cool, and kind of half-cute) is asking about upgrades at every step of the way. I actually sucker into the RAM upgrade, because 256 just isn’t very much. (Though as a side note, my buddy David just bought a 512 sim of ram at best buy with an instant rebate for $49. I may need to go get a couple of those.) They pu tin one 512 rather than two 256s, so I got it, even though the price wasn't super awesome.

So, I've doubled the RAM, and the total price on the kiosk comes up $579. Odd, its $20 cheaper, rather than $60 more expensive. Oh well, no one else seems to care, so I don’t either. We get to the register; she takes off the $200.

Right about the time she's about to submit the sale, she’s telling me it will arrive at my house in about two weeks. I ask, "Hey, which monitor did I end up with? The 15 or the 17?"

She looks, and seems surprised she doesn’t see the monitor. She calls the manager and says, "Hey, Jim* (names changed to protect the fact I can't remember names) I entered the computer in on the kiosk, but I don’t see it here on the sheet.” She listens for a moment, then replies with, “Yeah, it had a free upgrade from a 15” LCD to a 17” LCD.

I heard the mistake, did you? It was supposed to be an upgrade from a 17” CRT to a 15” LCD. In other words, a standard, big/clunky as all hell monitor upgraded to a slightly smaller, but cooler super-flat panel screen. But she has her manager thinking they owe me a 17” LCD. I’m smart. I stayed quiet.

“OK, so should I just penny one out? …that’s alright? I just don’t want anyone yelling at me later about a $300 item going for a penny. …alright, will do.”

She says to me, off the phone now, “Don’t know why it didn’t show up, but we will get one on here, for .01”

“Alright, whatever you need to do,” I say out loud. “Yee-freakin-ha” I say to myself, “Free upgrade!”

All goes well, she finalizes the transaction, we pay, and leave.

Two days later my phone rings, “Mr. Francis? This is Jim at OfficeMax.” Oh crap, here it comes. “Corporate does random audits on tickets we complete…” Damn, I knew it. They found it. “This is about the monitor we sold you.” Double damn it. You know what, I’m not gonna go quietly, I didn’t do this on purpose. It was their fault. They should honor what they sold me, right? “See, the thing is… we sold you that monitor out of delivery, but they don’t have any to send, so I need you to come down, so I can refund it and resell it, so you can pick it up today.” Holy Crap! They aren’t taking it away; in fact, they are giving it to me sooner, rather than later! Cool.

I was on my way home, so I go home, and eat dinner, then head out to the store, pretty close to closing time. I walk in, find the manager, and he begins to tell me all about how the Compaq monitor that is part of that pack normally isn’t very good, and how much better View Sonic and Samsung are, and how much better off I will be. Then he asks for my receipt. “Uhm, I don’t have my receipt. You called me, so I figured that meant you had my info pulled up.” Well, he tells me I need my receipt to do the return. “OK, well, if I have to, I’ll come back tomorrow night after I get out of work.” He tells me that he’s off Wednesday, and I need to come back Thursday or Friday. “Alright, then. See you Thursday.”

Thursday comes, I search through my receipts, find a yellow sheet, with OfficeMax and computer stuff on it. I load up the boy and my mom into the car, and head down, about 20 minutes from the house. I get there, go in, and find the manager. I hand him the yellow receipt, and he asks, “Do you have the white one?” Huh? The white one? Was there a white one? What’s wrong with this one?” He starts to go on about some miniscule differences between the white and the yellow. I tune him out. “OK, I’ll go see if I have the white one in the car or something.” As it turns out, my mom had the white one. (She was gonna send off for the rebates for me. It’s nice to be treated like a 12 year old occasionally. OK, so I deserve it. Not the point.) So, I go back in, toss the white receipt on the counter, and they process the return. He then takes me over to the monitor display, and is telling me again how nice ViewSonic and Samsung monitors are. He points at a 17” ViewSonic for $329 and a 17” Samsung for $369. I let him go on a little bit, then ask him if my two extra visits are worth an upgrade, and point at the 19” ViewSonic. He hesitates only for a moment, and relents. He mentions that the monitor is actually $469 with a $100 mail in rebate, and I’d have to pay the 100 today, and get it back in rebate. “No problem.”

So, at the end of the day, I’m setting up a $469 19” ViewSonic LCD monitor, waiting on a Pentium 4, almost 3gig processor with 512k RAM to show up in a couple days. All for $279.

Not a bad day browsing dig, huh?

UPDATE: There is more!