294 – A crappy weekend, what with being sick and all. I’m back at work, and although I feel better, I’m still really tired. So, what do I do as soon as I get back to work? I start a fight. It’s my job. It’s what I do.
I’m gonna go pretend to take some sort of caffeinated substance, and pretend to be awake.
I love having a title that doesn’t relate at all to the content of the post that follows. I’m home sick now after actually attempting to make it through the morning and having my boss come over and tell me I looked like hell and to just go home. I was planning on working on a redesign of this site, but hey, I feel as bad as I look. Maybe later tonight if I wake up and the rocks are removed from my head.
Oh, and I just passed the 900 post mark… yowza.
I mentioned Chappelle’s Show last week in my epic list of good tv, especially that I’d only seen the first episode and am reserving judgement BUT that it looks like it will be amazing. Well, folks, after watching last night’s episode, I can honestly say I want to have Dave Chapelle’s babies. The crackhead talking to school kids was almost as funny as the black white power sketch from last week. And the opening bit with the “pretty white girl” was just plain brilliant. Catch a repeat. Do whatever you have to to watch this show. You won’t be sorry.
295 – Over at A Small Victory, there’s a discussion of the best cover songs out there. I came up with a pretty good list that I posted to the comments, but the list is SO good, I wanted to share it here too.
In other exciting family news, my little sister has won yet another award!! She is now easily the most famous of the Lawvers. I have some catching up to do. As the oldest, I feel it is my place to be more famous than the rest of them. Ok, not really, but that sounds really catty, doesn’t it?
My cold is still messing with me. It’s decided that waking me up choking on throat and nose goblins at the crack of dawn, then subjecting me to chills and a rampaging headache until at least 10:30am. For the rest of the day, it’s sore throat, stuffy head and dulled senses until I collapse again at night. Work isn’t helping. This huge thing I still can’t tell you about is about to be something I can actually show you, on top of lots of new projects and other craziness (can you say \$100 billion loss… I can’t. It makes me cry), I’ve been working way too long every day. In before 8:30, home after 7. It’s a wonderful life, I tell you.
Yeah, I know everyone’s going to talk about it. I think that’s a fine thing. Let’s all talk about it. Get it all out there in the open so they know what we think. We’re not some poll or a line in a graph. We’re real people talking about the stuff that matters to us. I’m a real person – a voter – with opinions and one vote to cast in the next election. I’m a tax payer, consumer, producer, capital creator, service provider, head of household (on my tax form anyway), middle class white male. I’m in a highly sought after demographic. I watch too much television and actually purchase my music. Wait, I had a point here… oh yeah, the State of the Union speech from last night. I watched the whole thing, the Democratic response, and some CNN coverage afterwards. I changed the channel as soon as Judy Woodruff mentioned that Larry King was coming up next.
The first half of the speech sounded good for the most part. Conservation, hydrogen cars and a clean air program sound good. But, I don’t believe he means it. I guess I’m cynical, but I don’t believe him. Without the details of the plan, I have no idea if the “Clean Air” program is really a “Funnel more money to people who gave me money and have them make token changes so we can make it look like we’re doing something” program. Couching the Dividend tax cut as double-taxation is hilarious. Ummm, we’re double-taxed all the time!! There are payroll taxes my employer pays. I then pay income taxes on that same money (or what’s left of it). I get taxed on the same income by the state I live in. Double taxation is The American Way™. If you want to remove one instance of tax double-dipping for the top 2% (or whatever it is, it’s close to 2%), then you should remove all double taxation and then I might go along with it. Right now, it’s just showing middle class folks like me that you really don’t care about us.
The Terrorism/Iraq stuff was better, well, at least it sounded better. The line about terrorists being “otherwise dealt with” was delivered too smug. It sounded like he got off on having them “whacked” and their lives were worthless. They may have been, and may have deserved to die, but none of the executed were given a trial, and that bothers me. It bothers me that the President admitted as much in front of the world. We all know dirty things happen that we’ll never know about. There’s something about a country admitting them that bothers me to no end. The talk about Iraq was solid. The list of things Saddam hasn’t divulged was illuminating, and it went a long way to convincing me that going into Iraq and forcefully removing Saddam is the right thing to do. While the list he gave was a great first step, and it’s what I think I needed to make an informed decision, I still want the supporting evidence. The good news is that we’ll probably get that evidence on the fifth when Colin Powell addresses the Security Council. If good evidence is presented there, then I’m on the bandwagon and support action. If not, well, I’m still on the fence. I support the folks in uniform no matter where our Government sends them. I grew up an Air Force brat and watched my dad ship off to all kinds of crazy places and know what it feels like to wonder if he’d come back (my brother and I never made our toy planes crash when we were little). Supporting the Government who sends them out is a different story, and the two can be mutually exclusive.
On the domestic and economy front, I think the President was in a no-win situation. There was nothing he could say that would overshadow the things he had to say about Iraq, no matter how much people are worried about the economy. That part of the speech fell flat for me as all I really wanted to hear was whether or not we’re going to war. The last half of the speech was much better and more powerful. He sounded resolute, and left no doubt where he stands, which may or may not be a good thing. We’ll have to see on the fifth.
The Democratic response was solid. In the time given, they didn’t really have time to go into details, but it left a good impression on me even if I can’t remember the details. The choice of a governor faced with a deficit partly caused by federally mandated but unfunded mandates was a good one. Using his grandfather as an example of the American Dream™© was masterful, and a great way to subtly show the Democratic opposition to the Republican views on Affirmative Action. Ok, I remember more than I thought…
In completely (and I mean completely) unrelated news, I have cheekbones!! I had NO idea they were under all that face-pudge. They started peeking through yesterday, and today, I can really see them. Jen says I should take a picture to show my progress and I think I’ll do that tonight if I’m not too tired after my eleven hour workday today.
296.5 – I finally got a new belt last night and not a moment too soon. I was on the last hole and my pants were hanging precariously from my hips. I went ahead and got two the next two sizes down to save the hassle of going out again in six months to get a new one (the power of positive thinking, eh?).
I’m still in training, but I missed so much yesterday with work interruptions that I’m a little behind. This morning has been no better. What a scheduling mess. A big project in QA, another big one going into QA on Friday and a new Giganto Project in the requirements phase, all with due dates this week. Oh, and I have a cold. Yes!! The perfect week.
I actually sat down and watched the second half of Joe Millionaire last night. Ok, I get it. It’s horribly mean-spirited and “poor” Evan has to keep this deep dark secret. Watching the girls get all catty, and ruining Zora’s date was pretty funny. But, when you get down to it, it’s capitalizing on their greed and Evan’s willingness to play the bait in this awful farce. When you think about it, it’s pretty despicable even though it makes for great TV. I don’t think I’ll watch it next week.
You can ask Jen. I told her the Buc’s would win yesterday morning when all the pundits were still calling for the Raiders. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
My cold is back. I swear this is my fifth cold of the season, and I’m sick and tired of them. Winter, go away, please. I’m done with you. I’m done with it being twelve degrees when I leave the house in the morning, and it taking a good half hour once I get to work for my fingers to warm up.
And to keep up with the snappy transitions of the last two thoughts – we watched movies this weekend. I rented The Good Girl and Windtalkers for us to watch Friday night. All I can say is one out of two ain’t all that bad.
And speaking of Jake, if you haven’t seen Donnie Darko yet, go rent it. Why do I like this movie so much? I’m not exactly sure why, but I do. It holds up under repeated viewings as well, which to me is a sign of a great film. The movie has its flaws, but it does other things so well as to make up for anything blemishes it might have.
This is my middle-of-January-don’t-wanna-talk-about-a-war Entertainment Review. I think this will end up being my favorite TV Shows of the past year or so (since I have an awful time-based memory, Silver Spoons might show up along side Buck Rogers). You may also accidentally get a restaurant review sprinkled in. Here they are in the order I think of them:
Whew… that was fun. Next time, movies?
You know how I was all eloquent before? Well, this is the second half – what really happened. So, after being stuck at work until after seven (when I was going to take the day off), I get home with a splitting headache and took my lovely and unbelievably understanding wife to Sweetwater Tavern, where my diet took a short vacation while I down half a bowl of spinach and artichoke dip, half a sixteen-ounce prime rib and half a deep-dish apple pie. Yum. Did you realize it’s 15 degrees outside? My fingers are still cold… After all that food creaing an oh-so-comfy lump in my gut, and almost a week of Icelandic weather creating cold-like symptoms… I’m feeling sexy with a capital whoopie, I tell you what. So, I’m sitting here surfing while Jen watches Felicity.
You know what? All of this is OK because we’re sitting here together on the couch in the basement in our warmest sweats, feet touching and stealing little glances at each other. Our marriage rocks because it’s so unlike those horrible contentious things on TV that seem like so little fun. We have fun just sitting next to each other, cracking little jokes, getting giddy laughing at each others laughs, or the silly stuff Max did that day. My wife is the best.
Do you use multiple computers? Are they all running different OS’es? Do you use different text editors on each one? Does that piss you off? You’re in luck, my friend!! Go download jEdit today. It’s a full-functioned text editor written in Java and delivered as an executable jar file. So, any platform that can run Java can run jEdit. Problem of the text editor collection – SOLVED!! It also has an impressive array of plug-ins which are awesome. Go get the latest stable build and check it out. You’ll love it.