With the temperature being so oppressively hot, it's hard to work upstairs in the library where the majority of my work needs to be done. So, I've been relegated to carrying things downstairs in pieces. So, I've had the TV on in the background, but again tonight I found something on that I had meant to see, but never managed to find the time for. I think most things happen for a purpose and when things like this happen it only confirms it more.
For those of you that haven't seen the movie I won't spoil the plot but one of the main themes is memory loss.
My Project Manager at work sent an e-mail inviting me to join her team to walk in support of research for Alzheimer's. Her step-father is in the very early stages and having read quite a bit about this disease, I know she's in for quite a few painful times in her life. So, Terri and I are signed up to walk with her and her family and help raise money. So, although more details will be forthcoming, if you'd like to donate send me an e-mail. The address is to the right if you just want to click on it.
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."-Walt Whitman

I've noticed that blogger added a photo icon to my post window so maybe the next time I have a disk handy, I'll see if I can put up a picture of the little one so those of you that are out of town can see how he's growing.
So a car flew by me right at the end of the exit ramp on my way home. The first thing I noticed was that the license plate was askew, possibly on purpose. It was an Ohio plate that read "AHED OF U". The second thing I noticed was the spoiler. It was probably two feet high. That was really all I had time to notice before it was out of my sight. However, it got stopped at the first red light and as I pulled up behind it, I noticed two other things. The ground effect lighting and the fact that the car was a Saturn. A freakin' Saturn! There were probably more accessories on the car than the car cost. Ah well, MMTB.
Just one more day at work before I get a nice break of 4 days. Although there will be a lot crammed into those 4 days, but it will still be a nice break from work.

One would think that after 30 years of attempting to put myself to sleep and realizing that it doesn't work til I am completely ready, that having Gage go to sleep at a scheduled time just ain't gonna work. He's been fussing and crying for about 8 minutes now and this is already the second round of bedtime. It would be nice if he would have inherited Terri's ability to be asleep approximately 30 seconds after her head hits the pillow. Occasionally she's asleep before her head hits the pillow. Gage, however, has declared war on his crib. He can sense when you walk near the damn thing. And now he's back in the living room. Round 3 will probably commence in about 20 minutes. Life is never dull.
I'm currently watching this movie. At one point Julie Andrews begins to sing. I wonder if she's finally gotten back the use of her vocal cords. That would be phenomenal. Usually the world only loses a talent like that when someone passes on. To have her still among the population but to lose her singular talent was a sad day.
My parents originally wanted to take Gage here on Friday. Since Terri is on call this weekend she has Friday off. So, I tried investigating our vacation policy at work. According to the handbook there's a six month probation period after which you receive 5 vacation days and 3 sick days. However it never really specifies when the vacation time is awarded. So, I asked my used to be manager/supervisor who now is still a small part of the group, but not really attached to us anymore so she really has no authority over me whatsoever but still knows a crapload about the company since she's been there for a long time. So, according to her the handbook is kind of correct. After the probation period you get 5 days which is half of the normal vacation time. Then on your year anniversary you get your normal two weeks of vacation. Which must make it extremely difficult to keep track of everyone's time since everyone started on different days. So, this was the illusion that I labored under while I decided whether or not I wanted to burn my last vacation day going to an amusement park. In the end I decided to take the day, but now apparently there's a split sanction, apparently according to some managers on January 1st I got a full two weeks of vacation to use by the end of 05. Which makes the probation period completely useless. So, I can spend all day Friday trying to figure out if I have 0 vacation days til the middle of November or 5 vacation days til the end of the year. Having 5 would be nice. It would give us the opportunity to have a day for my family reunion, and some to visit some good friends and have a spare day or two in case something random pops up in the next six months. Oh well, such is life. Perhaps next week I'll actually find out the correct answer to the vacation saga. And thanks again to someone that I spoke to today for that much needed bump of support. It's always good to know that you don't exist in a vaccum and there are safety nets hanging around in case you accidentally, or accidently on purpose, stumble.

So I spent the majority of the weekend thinking that this guy was actually this guy. Which is odd considering he died last year. Oh well, I would say that if there are any remaining cast members left from Winnie the Pooh they might want to take out some extra life insurance. First Tigger and now Piglet, it's a 100 Acre massacre. Christopher Robin must be on Ritalin, whoops now Tom Cruise is going to be on my ass. Well Tom, I may not know the history of psychiatry, but my wife does. Care to play 20 questions? I'd put her education up against your lack of, anyday.
Anyway, enough of that crap and enough of this crap.

Swiped from elsewhere...Burning Question #1 Why does the Kool-Aid man have to wear pants now? Is a naked pitcher of kool-aid really such a big problem?
When I was a youngster in SDC Buggy an older respected member of the organization sat me down and gave me the new mechanic's speech. He could see that I was hooked and wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. He tried to tell me that the higher I went in the organization, the less fun it would be. I'll be honest, at the time I didn't understand what he was talking about. I couldn't see how it was possible. Having more responsibility in an organization that was such fun couldn't possibly be a bad thing. Then came my senior year. It was my least favorite year in buggy. When I watched the last buggy roll successfully up over the hill to our catcher and the tears started to roll down my cheeks, I had a moment of clarity. Not an epiphany, just clarity. It's common sense that the higher you go, the more responsibility you get, the less enjoyable that it could become due to all the red-tape, etc. It's just something that you forget every once in a while. However, what happens when just the illusion of being in a high place causes you overt grief?
I bring this up to explain something that's being going on for over a decade now. Somehow I've earned the illusion that I'm some sort of whiz at games. Board games, card games, some minor sporting events (bowling, pool, darts, things like that). I'm only about half sure where this reputation came from. Of course my ego perpetuated half of it, but I manage to keep fairly accurate tabs on different gaming things. And, the tally is...I lose a lot more than I win. And that is fairly standard across the board. I've had my ass kicked a lot more often than I'd care to admit, and by opponents far and wide not just one person or a small group. Nowadays since my friends have been scattered here and there, I certainly don't play as much as I used to. But when I do play I like to play things that I enjoy (hey I am human). And my enjoyment for gaming stems from skill and knowledge since I have no luck whatsoever. So while I enjoy most trivia games, I don't hold well with things like poker and scrabble which depend largely on the luck of the draw. However, due to unknown reasons rarely can I get anyone to play a trivia related game and if I do, it's certainly not one that I would prefer, just one that I end up settling for. Which means that win or lose it turns into a big competition. Terri and I used to play frequent games with the same set of friends and somehow it always degraded into some sort of argument and I usually ended up handicapped in some way. For example, I've played a number of rounds of trivial pursuit where it's been me as a solo player against one or more teams. And the results have been typical, 50/50 at best. I'm sure this sounds like a big whiny bitchfest, but I had another moment of clarity playing Scrabble this evening. Games aren't any fun for me anymore. Regardless of what we're playing, who's playing, when we're playing, or where we're playing it just hasn't been fun for me for a long time. This isn't a knock on anyone I've played against, it's just a personal decision that has been a long time in coming. So, I'm announcing my retirement. I've made the decision that I'll be the permanent babysitter for Gage and whatever other children are present so that everyone will have fun. So now maybe the illusion will go away.

Well aren't I just up on things. Looking back I guess I said once a day seven days a week not once every seven days or so. Anyway, due to my OCD with listening to my CD's, for the past couple of weeks I've been listening to things like this, this, and this. If you want to ask I'll explain but it would take too much space right at the moment. So after listening to various people sing various holiday tunes for the majority of the morning I decided it was time to get up and walk around. Now that's not too unusual, Mark and I usually make a circuit of Oakland around 2ish every day. However, Mark had the day off today. So, I decided to walk out on my own.
I realized something on my walk. When you're walking with someone else, there's usually some type of conversation going on. Mark and I talk about everything from work to family to news and back again. However, when I walk alone I find that I tend to be very introspective. Which for me is never good. Instead of walking alone, I find that I walk with all my assorted demons. There's the little yappy one who does circles around me asking why I haven't dropped the number of pounds that I'd like to lose. There's the one who springs out of the rational part of my mind asking why I haven't investigated a mortgage/house yet. There's the one that's constantly reminding me that I'm currently 3 tests and one assignment behind in my Managerial Accounting class. There's the one sitting on my left shoulder reminding me about housework that needs to be done. Of course, his partner on my right shoulder reminds me of all the yardwork that needs to be done as well. There are the twins that bellow "Are you being the best dad you can be?" "Are you being the best husband you can be?" in an alarming cacophony of caterwauling (which is redundant I know, but they're demons). And that doesn't even speak to the thousands of lesser demons all screeching their own little personal message of hell.
Then there's my personal favorite, the one that hangs around my neck on what feels like a 3,000 lb weight swinging back and forth asking why I can't put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, or voice to tape. That's the one that I hit out against today. Metaphysically I wanted to know why the demon hadn't given me a good concept to work with or a bit of story to develop. What did I get back? Lord Byron.
Now, for those of you that don't quite get that, you might want to read this. For a long time (and even to some degree more recently) every time I went into a restaurant or bar I'd inevitably end up scribbling down a few sentences or snippets about "She". I suppose "She" was born three-fold. Part every woman that I'd ever run across, an amalgam of beauty you might say, part Byron and part this.
"She" started out cliched and stayed there. The various napkins, placemats, scraps of paper, and matchbooks reside in a box filled with other assorted "writings" as well as several poems that this guy hated beyond all belief. So, I'm back to arguing with the demon. It's damn near impossible to to develop a concept that at it's core is cliche, at least to the point of selling it to other people. Thankfully the demon didn't win, I arrived back at the office and the majority of the argument was over. However, that nagging residual feeling still remains, so hopefully I can excise one demon by posting this. But I doubt it.

Happy Birthday Nathan! Gage can't wait to see you again. With the two of you being mobile, all the mommies and daddies involved will have their hands full.
It's hard to believe that a year has gone by. Terri and I were having dinner last night at the same restaurant where we found out that Matt and Alison told us that Alison was pregnant with Nathan. Seems like just a month or so ago that we were passing each other on the mall or in the UC. Now we're supposedly all "adults" and some of us have families to be responsible for. Scary.
And since I won't spoil Nathan's day with any negativity I'll just say Happy Birthday once again.

Tomorrow will be someone's first birthday. And, since I'm posting this so late, I'm guessing that most of you will be reading this tomorrow anyway. Any idea who it might be?
Terri thinks I should blog about the weeble rant that I had in the care on the way home. However, I refuse to give space to the imposter pieces of crap that they are churning out nowadays.
I finally got my new toy today, but without the proper time to explore and set up, I think I'll wait for the first post tomorrow.

Okay, I have two days to get all the negativity out since the 16th is a special day for some people.
Wal-mart has fallen to a distant fourth on my corporate hate list. Want to know who managed to bump the House of Satan not one spot but two and who managed to catapult over my other #1? No, you probably don't, but since it's my blog I'm going to tell you anyway. This company and this company are tied for first although I believe the former is going to claim the number one slot solo.
I'm sure the full story will follow but for now if you have a few minutes, call 1-800-833-9943, run the gauntlet til you get a live operator and then lodge a complaint for poor service against the San Antonio call center and Derrick Perry.
Oh and for an entirely different reason Damn you Joe Wright!

In 1791 a statute was written in a small town in Massachusetts to protect the newly finished town building from the little kids who used a "stick" and a "ball" to play on the lawn. It wouldn't be for almost another 50 years that the shape of the game was laid out by a man in a small New York town.
You know the names, probably a whole hell of a lot better than I do since I'm a confessed non-fan. Why am I a non-fan when there are people like Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Heinie Manush, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, Roberto Clemente, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey, Jr., and numerous other storied players? I'm a non-fan because baseball (yes I hope you gleaned the subject was baseball by now) isn't baseball anymore. At least not in the same way it was played when Bill Mazeroski stepped onto Forbes Field. Not in the same way movies like Major League, The Natural, A League Of Their Own, Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Necessary Roughness (I know that was a football movie, but it was such a bad football movie it made you want to watch baseball) depicted the hallowed sport of America's pasttime. It's not the same game that Chabon glorified in his children's book, Summerland. A book, I might add, that almost made me a fan.
So, why the hatred? Why now? Well I'll tell those of you that are left (I'm assuming everyone else has given up and left by now).
The headline from this article. Not the actual story, just the headline. 1960. 45 years since the Pittsburgh Pirates have played baseball in Yankee Stadium. That's approximately 7,300 games that the Pirates OR the Yankees have played. 7,300 is more games than BOTH the Penguins and the Flyers have played since they joined the National Hockey League. And yet in that 162 game schedule with only 30 teams in the league they can't find the time to schedule 1 lousy stinkin' game against every team.
One theory postulated by a fan says that the league's don't play the same kind of baseball. Between the different rule set, the DH, and long ball vs. short ball it would never work. I'm sorry, don't all 30 teams play baseball? The Western Conference vs. the Eastern Conference in hockey play very different styles of the same game, but it makes the game that much more entertaining watching the team, coaches and players alike, try to adapt to the other's style. Now I'm sorry I keep comparing baseball to hockey when football is just as flawed schedule wise, but football at least has the excuse of a very limited schedule. Baseball at it's very heart is a simple game. Stand by the plate, swing the bat, hit the ball, run for the base. You're either safe or you're out. It's so simple, it's usually the first sport that little children play. From T-ball to little league to pony to mustang little kids are fed a steady diet of baseball. So why is the sport so out of whack?
Why is one of the most hotly debated sports topics for baseball a scandal ridden blotch on the sport? Why are player's salaries and contracts more than the GNP for several countries (most not even the impoverished third world). Baseball just barely ranks above hockey in the ratings and that's not saying much. When you're outwatched by a fake sport, and a bunch of guys going left what does that say about the shape of your sport?
If you read my last post you know I was subjected to the Pirates game. I watched a "professional" athlete make the same mistake that the third graders my dad used to coach during their first couple games. The difference, the third graders stopped making the mistake and they were only paid a hot dog and a can of pop per game. Back then that was less than $1.00. All told the entire team probably cleared about $100.00 on paper. Of course since most of the pop was donated, it was simply on paper. This guy is making at least $300,000 probably more. That's almost 2 grand per game. That's a lot of hot dogs and pop. The funny thing is, the series against the Yankees is going to end up being the season series for both teams. The Yankees aren't playing as well as they could and the Pirates are playing better than expected. That will change once they play each other. The Yankees will beat on the Pirates and rally their season, while the Pirates will attempt to bounce back from the beating by going to Boston only to be beat again and slump for the rest of the season.
Steroids, inter-league play, scandals, Barry Bonds, A-Rod's outrageous salary, bored fans, and even more boring games. The days of watching the underdog come back to turn the mythical double play and beat the first place team have long since fallen by the wayside. Teams that are near the bottom usually stay there and owners simply spend more money to try and entice them to play the game that they used to play for free in their childhood. Hell, more than once I've heard fans (actual fans) say that they were just going to grab a cheap ticket, go into the park, grab the giveaway, and then head out to do something better. And these people are the fans. I think it's time to start over. Level the league for a year, take a step back, look at the bigger picture, and find some people who care...if you can. And while you're on that hiatus, donate a fraction of the league's salaries to a charity. I'll bet they can cure a disease with all that money. Just one non-fan's opinion (though oddly enough I'm not alone on this one).

Like I said, not much going on today. We did end up going to Terri's Uncle's house. I had to watch the last seven innings of the Pirates game only to have them lose anyway. Typical.
Now I'm trying to fill out the Physical Unit Flow so that I can compute the Equivalent Units of Production so that I'm able to compute Unit Production Costs so that I can fill out a damn Cost Production Report which is what my assignment is in the first place. Good fun for a Sunday night I tell you.

I think I'm going to attempt the seven day a week posting again, we'll see how long that lasts. I usually don't have enough interesting things to fill one post a week let alone seven. But hey, most of this blog hasn't been interesting so far, why start now?
I was saddened to hear of Dana Elcar's passing. MacGyver was one of my favorite TV shows and I can't even tell you how many trivia questions I've been able to answer because of all the science on that show. See, watching TV can make you smarter. I had a lot of respect for him because he didn't let his disability stop him from acting. He started going blind while he was working on MacGyver and they just turned around and made it part of his character. Nowadays they try and hush it up and start plotting your character's demise.
Anyway, I guess that means there won't be any commentary on future DVD releases.
Not much else is going on today. We took the opportunity to get stuff done around the house and get some yardwork done. We managed to get most of the grass cut and even some of it raked. Maybe we'll accomplish more tomorrow, but I doubt it. We're tentatively scheduled to go see Terri's uncle tomorrow and I'm sure that will take precedence over getting actual work done.

Okay, I now seem to have everything under control thanks to a little bit of programming help. After embarking on a few new tasks at work, a web course, and just general stubbornness on my part I've realized that code (be it HTML, Flash, Java, whatever) is no different than learning a foreign language. There are rules, exceptions, a vocabulary set, and various other familiarities, but it's basically the same. And since I had gotten good grades in five languages I figured with a little persistance I'd master this crap too.

Alright, I solved one problem but created another.
If anyone has any ideas as to why the text gets mind-numbingly small halfway down the page, let me know. I installed a new comment system, but I can't find anything wrong with the code...yet. Hopefully I'll get it figured out soon. I have a couple things I haven't tried yet.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Well there's a lot rattling around in my head, but not a lot of time to get it out. Gage's party went fairly well and I have a lot of observations about the party and the whole first year of parenthood thing and the passage of time. I also had a bunch of links to things that I thought were fairly funny at the time but now have kind of dimmed. Such as the Viagra linked to blindness articles. Those simply screamed "Masturbation Joke" when I first read them, but now with a week's perspective...well they still scream the same thing, just not quite as loud.
Anyway, hopefully over the course of the next couple days, I'll have some time on my hands at home to get everything up and keep everyone up to date on the oh-so exciting things going on in case de us.