"Its like the sound of a poured drink to an alcoholic"
    One of my co-workers

Arrgh!!! They've set up a half dozen Xboxes in the Atrium right outside my office! Mmm... four player Fusion Frenzy... Halo death match...

Urge to work fading...
fading...
fading...

...gone.

"Kyrie Eleison down the road that I must travel
 Kyrie Eleison through the darkness of the night
 Kyrie Eleison where I'm going. Will you follow?
 Kyrie Eleison on a highway in the light"
    Mr. Mister, Kyrie

So this is interesting. I've set all the titles of my pages to various smart-ass little quips. This means that as you go from place to place on my site the name of the page (at the top of your browser window) changes to the various titles. One of these titles has caused me a little bit of trouble. The title of my photoalbum page is "Naked Pictures of Me". Well I thought it was funny. I used to, anyway.

You see I've recently learned that some search engine somewhere will link to my page when you search for these words. I learned this when someone contacted me because they were interested in seeing said pictures. They were very polite about it, and I've since explained that this was meant as a joke. However, I think I'm going to change that title as soon as I get a chance. So the moral of the story is: be careful what you put on the net.

Hmm... I guess its been a while since I posted anything new. There's not much to tell really. My roommies and I threw a rather successful Halloween party on Sunday. Homemade pizzas and pumpkin carving. I started a (short lived) initiative on to kickstart the economy on Saturday buy purchasing just about every type of media I could: books, music, software, and DVD. I got a copy of The Fellowship of The Ring in preparation for the Lord of The Rings movie due out soon, and I snagged the DVD of Star Wars: Episode I. Now there are some people will say that this movie is not worth owning. There are also some people who eat pickled pigs feet. I really don't lend much credibility to the opinions of either group.

If, like me, you've always wondered about Colin Powell's career as a Calypso singer then you really need to see THIS!

"Every gal in Constantinople
 Lives in Istanbul (not Constantinople)
 So if you've a date in Constantinople
 She'll be waiting in Istanbul..."
    They Might Be Giants, Istanbul

(*HACK*) (*WHEEZ*) Ugh... Nothing like that first cup o' dirt in the morning to get you going.

I bought this really kick ass-vaccuum cleaner* when I first moved in as part of my contribution to the General Domestic Welfare of our house. I got one of those bagless uprights that let's you actually see all the dirt its picking up. While this does seem impressive at first, the novelty is quickly lost when you realize that you have to empty this Dirt Cup after you're done.

According to the directions you simply pop out the cup and empty the dirt into a trash receptical with a Donna Reed like flick of your wrist. Right. The truth is that as soon as you start trying to get the dirt out of the cup it leaps into the air like a swarm of bees and starts attacking whatever is nearby (read: me). When this is happening outside in a light drizzle. It also tends to cling all over your slightly damp person. Maybe next week I'll just take a shower with my clothes on and then roll around on the carpet. It would probably save me a lot of time.

I guess another solution would be to preform the entire operation in one of those big white hazmat suits, but then I'm pretty sure our neighbors would call the FBI and tell them we're making biological weapons over here. They're just bitter because that they can't order Cocaine by mail anymore without it getting tested for Anthrax.

And in OTHER news... Go Mariners!**

*: I think getting excited about the purchase of a small home appliance is a sign that I have truly left my college years behind me and started my career in earnest.

**: To be honest with you I don't really give a rip about baseball. I've never watched a Mariner's game in my life before the playoffs, and the only reason I've seen any of those is because they're all shown on the big projection screen right outside my office. However, I do love Seattle, and I feel the need to defend my cyber-space from deranged Yankee fans. :-)

"Began Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airlines
 Ayatolahs in Iran, Russians in Afganistan."
    Billy Joel, We Didn't Start The Fire

Heard that in the car today. I wonder if Billy ever thinks about adding a couple more verses.

Shauna asked how you write a add a link to your blog. Its simple:

    <a href="http://www.website.moo">Text to link</a>

The result will look like this: Text to link

So the Mariners were humbled by the Yankees today. To my Yankee-loving friends I say congratulations, but remember that nothing's been won yet :-)

"I'm in a hurry to get things done, oh I
 Rush and rush until life's no fun
 All I really gotta do is live and die,
 But I'm in a hurry and don't know why"
    Alabama, I'm in a Hurry

My average day:

Working:	11 Colorful hours
Sleeping:	8 Perfect hours
Personal Hygine:	1 Efficient hour
Dancing:	1 Wonderful hour
Eating:	1 Pleasant hour
Driving:	1 Frustrating hour
Reading:	1 All too short hour

"I wish... that... I knew what I know now
 When I was younger"
    Rod Stewart, Ooh La La

So there's this former world champion who teaches at out studio once a week. During the day she teaches the instructors, but at night she teaches all these little kids. Like 8-13 year olds. Its really funny to watch and of coarse all their parents are sitting on the edge of floor providing a running commenatary to anyone who cares. The wild part is some of them are REALLY good. If only I had started when I was their age.

So it seems that the girl I met last week in my swing class and invited to lunch has not only bailed out on lunch, but also dropped the class. This would not seem suspicious to me 'cept that she still goes to the class immediatly afterwards. This hasn't gotten her onto my Top Ten People I Hope Get Anthrax List, but she's definitly on the rise.

I'd like to thank the four very special people who collaborated on a message that I had on my voicemail this morning. I haven't laughed that hard in quite some time. I promise to get in touch with all of you as soon as I can.

"I heard you on my wireless back in '52
 Lying awake intent of tuning in on you
 If I was young it didn't stop you coming through..."
    The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Start

Well '52 is a bit before my time, but I did listen to the radio in my room late at night when I was a kid. Some local station used to have this thing at 11:00 or midnight called where people could call in and say anything they felt like over the air, and I do mean anything. There was this big disclaimer at the beginning of the segment stating that the views voiced during this segment were not blah, blah, blah. No one ever said anything poingant, but it was still fun.

Music has really helped me in many parts of my life. It used to get me through long training runs and high-pressure races. Now it gets me through marathon coding binges. Furthermore, I really need a good musical kick in the morning to get going properly. Sadly, the tape player in my car stereo has gone the way of the Dodo, and I'm just too lazy to get it fixed. This is very bad. It seems to me that the programming directors at most radio stations have their heads so far up their butts they can see out their mouths. I mean really... traffic reports with car horns as part of the background music (that's helpful to commuters), entertainment news every five minutes (like I care), the same four songs all day long.

So the result is that I'm slowly becoming a NPR listener on the ride to work. Sigh... There's nothing wrong with NPR, but not hearing some good tunes in the morning is a lot like missing breakfast: it makes it hard to tackle the day with a good attitude.

"Life long friend of the deadly cancer sticks,
 thinks AIDS is the fault of the people it inflicts.
 Racist f*** who supports segregation,
 foe of the people friend of the corporation."
    MC Hawking, Why Won't Jesse Helms Just Hurry Up And Die?

My friend Vic told me about this really cool site that's completely devoted to Stephen Hawking's career as a gangster rapper: www.mchawking.com. I highly recomend visitng it if you meet the following criteria:

1. You're not offended by vulgarity
   
2. You've got a sense of humor about the creation vs. evolution argument
   
3. You're on a reasonably fast internet connection
   
4. You've taken physics

"YOU'RE A WINNER!"
    A little tag I pulled off my Medium Soft Drink from Burger King. What I won was a Free Meat Flavored Sandwitch, but I found it uplifting to hear that I was a winner in all capital letters.

Speaking of winners, here's a story that illustrates that even the brightest of people have they're off days. At Microsoft we all have these ID cards that are used primarily for getting into buildings, but can also be used as a debt card, bus pass, shoe horn, projectile, etc. One of the cool things about these cards is that they don't have to be swiped through a scanners. All you have to do is hold them near a reader and POOF! Its read. For this reason many employees keep these cards in their wallets. You come to work in the morning, bump your hip against the reader and you're in.

Yesterday at lunch someone I work with was trying to pay for his lunch with his card. He get's to the front of the rather large cashier line and waves his wallet in front of the reader. Nothing. Tries again. Nothing. People behind him look annoyed. Cashier looks annoyed. He tries again and still no luck. Well his wallet is about the size of a leather brick. so he figuers that maybe it just can't read through all the... uh, insulation. Well it would take a decade to search through everything in his wallet so he starts pulling out little wads of paper and cards and waving them in front of the reader. No dice.

Finally he gives up on the card an pulls out some cash. All he has is a $100 bill. So the cashier takes his hundred and gives him over ninety dollars change which he crams into his already bloated wallet. Realizing that he's likely to get lynched if he holds up the line any more while trying to stuff his wallet back into his pocket he puts it down on his tray... right next to his ID card.

Moral: Its good to work with people you find amusing.

"Hey I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especialy since I Rule."
    Randal, Clerks

Do you know what I accomplished today. I MADE THE LITTLE BUTTON APPEAR!!!! Ahem... you'll have to excuse me. This is a very emotional moment for me. I'm starting my second big project at work, and in a nutshell it involves making little buttons appear on things in Access. When you click the little buttons you get a little drop down menu with various options based on the scenario. I did not write the code that makes the buttons work, nor did I write the code that makes the stuff the buttons appear on. However, I'm making the buttons appear so whenever someone's using Access.NET and above and little buttons start popping up all over the place it will be because of my code, MINE, MWAHAHAHAHA.

Ahhh.... I think someone needs a nap, and I think that someone might be me :-). But first I'm going to try and install ReBlogger. Yay Angie for introducing it too the rest of us. You have my respect as a Computer Nerd for discovering and installing it.