My voice is in my sword

June 26, at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ.

Three tickets, first row, almost dead center. Woohoo!

Please feel thanked by our Government Representatives that they were able to make millions of dollars for themselves this past week while playing games with the press.

Nancy Pelosi gives a chiding speech on Monday, the press eats up the "fact" that GOP reps dropped out of supporting the bill because of her vitriol. Yeah right. Not only was the whole thing a ploy, those same GOP reps probably helped her to write the speech so that it looked realistic.

The Senate puts in a bunch of pork and agonizes over whether or not the House will pass it. Yeah right. The vote was 263-171. Gosh darn, that was close. I wonder if they set a threshold, like they won't vote for the bill until each Congressperson has made at least $5M on the stock market?

Congressman after congressman got on the camera saying what an OUTRAGE the extra money is and HOW DARE the Senate put in an additional $100B of pork at a time like this. Yeah right. I'm wondering how they all kept a straight face. Let me repeat that vote again: 263-171.

Learn, grasshoppers.

>>>Vinny

So say you're a Congressperson in the House. The Senators have spent a week yelling at each other and finally announced that they have a consensus on the "bailout package", and it will be sent to the House on Monday. During the week, you have observed that every time the bailout seemed to be winning the market went up hundreds of points and everytime it seemed to be failing, the market went down hundreds of points.

Now if you're reading this, you might have high standards. But for the most part, our Congresspeople do not. Put yourself into THEIR shoes, and choose one of the following options:

1) I will vote to pass this bailout package so that we can save the country immediately.
2) I will ensure that enough people believe that the bailout package is in trouble for a day because I KNOW that's gonna send the market down hundreds of points. I will then buy thousands of shares of stocks at rock-bottom prices because I KNOW that when we vote the bailout package into place, the market will recover hundreds of points and I'll have made quite a lot of money.

It is rare that Congress can indulge in Insider Trading on this scale and get away with it - they were handed this crisis by the Bush Administration and OF COURSE they are going to capitalize on it.

Watch - that bailout package will go through just fine, but only AFTER enough Representatives (republicans and dems alike) make a bunch of money from poor people who sold millions of shares yesterday because they didn't know they were being manipulated. The smart money knows what's going on. They're having a good laugh at the whole situation.

I posted a comment today in answer to jetwolf, who asked about getting a new phone, and I thought the info was valuable for others also considering a new purchase:

Here is the real scoop on the three leading contenders for phones. I say "three" because as far as I am concerned, Windows Mobile is one of the worst ideas ever conceived by Microsoft; it is absurd, and anyone who says it works well has spent approximately 400 hours retraining their brain to accommodate their phone. No thanks.

1) The Blackberry. There is only ONE way the Blackberry actually works, and that is if it is connected to an Enterprise Server with Exchange. If you are not part of a corporation, DO NOT BUY A BLACKBERRY. RIM itself guarantees at best 90% eMail delivery. I'm NOT kidding; this comes straight from high-level techs at RIM. The reason for this is that the Blackberry does NOT have its own pop/imap client built in; it relies on RIM's back-end server to filter your eMail, and it is NOT reliable. RIM's answer? "Connect it to a BES".

For the record, even if you DO have it connected to a BES, RIM decided in their infinite wisdom to mush all of your email and messages in one giant pool which becomes a nightmare to sort out as soon as you get more than say, 100 messages. There is no separate inbox, sent mail items, nothing. The interface is horrible. And 8 years later, there are still only 6 or so web sites that actually support the Blackberry's functionally crippled web browser.

2) The iPhone. Apple has recently been working on killer projects which should be earth shattering and getting them to about 90% completion before abandoning them and moving on to the next thing. Leopard Server is one such disaster (even though it works well enough for me to roll it out at my primary client, it took hundreds of hours of work to actually customize it to actual functionality). The iPhone is another such project. I'm reminded of the summer of 1986 when Apple unveiled two ground-breaking technologies at MacWorld - Multifinder (which allowed multiple programs to run simultaneously) and Hypercard (to this day, the greatest database program ever invented) - only to then announce that they weren't compatible with each other.

Well, Apple did it again. The iPhone is sleek and gorgeous and actually IS ready for prime time with its latest software update (any day now). Unfortunately, it is not compatible with Leopard Server. Or any other server, actually, except (drum roll please) Exchange. Let me just yell this out because it always makes me feel better. MORONS! Ok, thanks. Here, Apple has a potential Microsoft Exchange/BES killer ready to go, and they can't figure out how to get the whole thing to work properly.

As a phone, the iPhone is a pleasure to use - until it gets down to serious typing. The touch screen keyboard is just NOT as user-friendly as the built-in keyboards of the Blackberry or the Treo/Centro, and it is not a great tool for speed typing. And if you DO train yourself to use it properly, get ready for the natural degradation of the touch screen which happens to EVERY touch screen device. I would say that for its bells and whistles, the iPhone is the BEST phone available. But it is 10% away from being THE choice, so it only marginally beats out its competitors.

3) The Treo/Centro. My advice, unfortunately, is to stick with the Treo or its little brother, the Centro. This MAY change next year if Apple gets its act together, but for now, the venerable Palm OS is still king for its functionality and flexibility. You can add just about anything to it, and the OS has been fine tuned so that it actually acts like it was meant for a small handheld device. The keyboard on the Treo is MUCH better than the one on the Centro, but that's a personal preference that you need to decide is worth the extra $200 you'd pay for the larger unit.

The Treo/Centro is not without its quirks, and one bad thing about it is that it freezes when the signal is low, and can sometimes be frustrating. And the Palm desktop software continues to SUCK LARGE WANG, both for Macs and Windows. But for keeping up with modern web technologies and for its killer web browser (it has the ONLY hand-held web browser that actually WORKS like the real thing), it is still the choice of 2008 for actual multi-function phone usage.

1) Salvius is a name that I came up with for the SCA. Originally I wanted it to be a form of my last name (which is obvious) and then I actually came across a real name of a 12th century monk.

2) Ever since I started using that name (I was 19), it has become the main character of any adventure game I play.

3) My father gave me my first real computer in 1982 when I was 16; the Atari 800. It was waiting for me when I came home from school one day, and I stayed home the entire next day, teaching myself basic.

4) Within two weeks, I had written a comprehensive MONOPOLY game in basic which served as an opponent.

5) I got a 300 baud modem for the computer about a year later, and I was well known on pirate boards around the country as Mr. Roboto. I wanted to run my own BBS (bulletin board system), but I hated the few BBS programs that were available - so I wrote my own in basic. a month later, I launched the Styx BBS.

6) The first role playing game I ever learned to play was Champions. I was 16, and I learned it from classmates at Bronx Science - we played it every day at lunch. I learned AD&D a few months afterwards.

7) Growing up in an italian neighborhood in the Bronx, I first went out to "play on the street" when I was 9. It took a while for me to be accepted by the kids on the block, for various reasons, including the fact that I refused to curse at all under any circumstances. I was also the only Mets fan while they all rooted for the Yankees.

8) I have terrible balance, and I never learned to ride a bicycle or to ride roller skates or any number of other things the other kids took for granted.

9) By the time I was 10-11, I was pretty much the cerebral leader of the block, mostly because I wasn't very athletic. Referring back to #6, within 2 months of learning AD&D, I had convinced an entire block of kids ages ranged 12-17 to sit and play AD&D while I DMed. And we did it for hours on end. I don't think that's typical for a Bronx street :-)

10) When I was 12, in my senior year of elementary school, I took over the production and direction of our senior play, Star Wars. I wrote it, a staged it, I even engineered all of the props and effects we used. At my insistence, we spent a month trying to build a full-size X-Wing fighter out of cardboard for the final scene of Luke blowing up the Death Star (no, I'm not kidding). I struggled hard trying to figure out how to prop the wings up, and we finally gave up and ran the scene with two people on stage holding the upper wings.

11) My first foray into conventions were Creation Conventions, comic book conventions run in Manhattan. There, I met a guy named Mike Sargent, who convinced me that I should sell buttons. So I made an arrangement with the management of Creation that I would run AD&D games for them as part of their programming in exchange for table space to sell buttons. This lasted a year or so (they ran monthly conventions in the early 80s).

12) When I was 18 I went to my first science fiction convention, Lunacon (1984). I stayed over with the group from Bronx Science who had taught me to game. That year, I also went down to Disclave near Washington D.C. with Mike and his crew, and met Paul Birnbaum for the first time at my first fannish poker game. Birnbaum and I laugh a lot about the fact that we had to travel to D.C. to meet.

13) After meeting Paul, I became involved quickly in fannish politics, hanging out a lot at The Inwood Home for Wayward Fen, where Paul lived with three other smofs. For the next 2 years I travelled up and down the east coast going to science fiction conventions. Usually I would be selling buttons at a dealers table as "The Button Factory".

14) I am singlehandedly responsible for destroying the maryland science fiction convention known as Unicon. In 1985, I went to Unicon with the intent of running numerous parties (including a toga party) from two hotel rooms filled with 21 people. This was also the convention where I met Martha (she drove me down). Everything that went wrong at that convention ended up revolved around me. The hotel had to do a lockdown and room count because things were so out of control. Those were fun times.

15) My first real job was at a local Carvel. i worked there in the summer when I was 14. I was terrible at most things having to do with the job, including cake writing (impossible), cone swirling (I never got them to be straight) and mopping the floor (I'm a lover, not a cleaner). I was making something like $100/week. And I insisted on giving mom $25.00 a week towards the rent we were paying at the time. At the end of that summer, she handed me an envelope with all the collected money with a smile.

16) My earliest memories of television include watching the very first Sesame Street episode that was ever broadcast as well as the very first Electric Company episode. Saturday morning television was a religion for me, and the new September fall lineup was a sacred day. I would spend the entire week leading up to it planning my Saturday morning watching schedule, and Sid & Marty Kroft series were always a big part of that.

17) The first color televisions we got were free gifts from a bank for opening new CDs. The larger one went into my parent's room and the smaller one went into my aunt's room. I inherited her black & white set and shortly thereafter hooked up my first video game system, the Atari VCS. I remember what a thrill everything was in color, where even the commercials were fascinating to watch. I also remember playing all of my VCS cartridge games in black & white, and being shocked when I saw them in color at someone else's house.

18) At age 12 or so, I was learning to play chess. Like most things, I figured it out quickly but never quite mastered it. I was very eager at the time, though, and my parents certainly encouraged me. I even got them to sign me up for a local chess championship. I was all set to go, and then I got sick - fever, chills, everything, and although I insisted, they would not let me go. I was very, very disappointed.

19) At age 13 or 14, I remember my fondest Christmas. I had very much wanted a chess challenger (a standalone game that played chess with you) valued at about $100 at the time (they were pretty new). During that Christmas, I got all sorts of fantastic toys and games, and then after I had given up hope, mom brought out one more box that wasn't under the tree and it was the chess challenger! I remember holing myself in my room for the entire weekend playing with that and my other games (including a special lego set that allowed the building of a race car).

20) Speaking of Lego, they played a very important part in my childhood. After having seen Star Wars when I was 11, I was obsessed with spaceship combat and would build scores of ships with my legos, then have big battles on my bedroom floor.

21) The following year my aunt took me to see Jaws and Alien on the same day. I had nightmares that whole night. Not a very good idea.

22) During my "senior" year in elementary school (6th grade), I took a test for the Hunter College scholarship program. The idea was that one would enter Hunter High School two years early (9th grade) and go on to Hunter College. My score was ranked in the top 10 of NYC, so needless to say I qualified. However, my parents and I discussed it at length and we decided that the experience of being in the proper grades at the proper age was more important, and I was set to move on to 7th grade.

23) That lead to angst over the local Middle School, which did not have a very good reputation (note: today, it is in total lockdown mode). So my parents applied to the local catholic private school, which they felt was safer for me. The problem was, in order to attend that school, it was mandatory to take religious instruction. Forget it. I went to the local Middle School.

24) I was quite nervous going to that school in 7th grade. The second day I was there, a senior (9th grader) pretended to rob me in the bathroom. He was just playing a joke, but I was really shaken up and when I came out of the bathroom, the principal of the school saw me shaking. He took me into his office and asked me if I was scared to travel to the bathroom by myself and when I told him I was, he told me that from now on, I could use his personal bathroom. i continued doing that for the entire time I went to that school.

25) When I was in 8th grade, I had the opportunity to take the test for the "elite" high schools of NYC, Styvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. I delcined, because while I had thought I wanted to get out of that school as quickly as possible when I first went into it, I came to love it enough that I wanted to take 9th grade there. The following year, I took the test and passed in with flying colors, and was ready to enter Bronx Science.

26) When I was in 7th grade, I joined the "band", and decided to learn to play the tuba (which i never did very well).

27) As a sophomore (10th grader) at Bronx Science, I joined the debate team, where I was partnered with Scott Minkoff (the one who later taught me AD&D). I was a decent debater, but I hated the work that had to go into preparation, and I hated the faculty guy who ran it, so I dropped out after 10th grade.

28) During my senior year of Bronx Science, I barely did any actual school work. For example, after having taken Italian for 6 years, I still never got past "che questa", and the only reason I passed that class was that the teacher liked me a lot and the regents exam was cancelled that year. Instead, my time was spent playing spades in the cafeteria, and forming the Bronx Science Gaming Society, where I would run elaborate Killer games during the school day (even got teachers to play).

29) When Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan came out, I and a bunch of friends from Bronx Science camped out in the middle of Times Square to see the first showing the following morning. That was a very fond memory. A year later, we did that same thing for Return of the Jedi. For those of you who might be too young to remember this, in 1983 it was still possible to keep a hollywood secret, and NOBODY knew the actual answers to the riddles of The Empire Strikes Back. It was a very special day to sit in a PACKED audience seeing the very first showing of Return of the Jedi and learning all of the answers for the first time with a group of rabid fans. To this day, I get teary thinking about what is arguably the most significant space battle scene ever created; where Lucas showed us a 70mm panoramic view of the rebel fleet coming out of hyperspace and being attacked by hundreds of ships all at the same time - imagine being in a theater with a thousand people all blown away at the same time by that 5-second unprecedented scene. And of course, every single person was on his feet cheering when Luke pounded Vader down at the end. Say what you will about Lucas, but I don't think any movie experience can ever top that.

30) I was always a lover of movie scores, even pre-dating Star Wars. Some of that was because I was always blasted with classical music, but hated Opera. Movie music was a more modern approach to classical music. I came to know all about the composers of the era (John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Wendy Carlos, etc.) and had a very good collection of music.

31) There were several authors who shaped my view of the world. Hugh Lofting was the first; his Dr. Doolittle books gave me a crucial perspective on the creative aspect of adventuring. Piers Anthony was the one who taught me the spiritual side of things, and taught me strategy.

32) During the Rubik's Cube fad, I decided to teach it to myself, and I used to amaze people when I could solve it in front of large groups of people in under a minute. I don't remember any of it now :-)

33) From the time I was 4 or 5 I had decided that I wanted to be an astronomer. I was fascinated by the planets and the universe. I wish I had more time to spend thinking about the great mysteries of cosmology today, because I am still just as fascinated.

34) I watched every episode of Cosmos as it was first broadcast on PBS; in addition to Carl Sagan becoming a personal hero for me, I was also taken with Vagelis' music (as were many other people), and became a strong Vangelis fan ever since. For those of you who pay attention, Vangelis' "Voices" is the majority of the soundtrack of SUGARFEST (played after the Boston intro).

35) Just in case there is anyone left who doesn't know (or realize) this: I came out of High School and went looking for my first job after a relaxing summer. I decided at that time not to go to college, because I just didn't see the point. I am self-taught in every bit of computer knowledge I have, and worked my way up corporate ladders until finally taking the reigns with my own business (Double Exposure Technology Consulting).

36) The final VinnyFact: There are two ways to empower me to create miracles. One, inspire me by showing me one of your fondest dreams and I'll make it a reality. Two, tell me emphatically that it is impossible for me to do something I want to do. You know who you are.

Republicans use Windows PCs; Democrats use Macs.

I realize this is going to sound very odd, but there is a significant problem with two-slice toasters and type A personalities (which, as most of you know, I am). I believe that this may very well be one of the major reasons for the amount of violence in the world.

Type A personalities generally have a backwards approach to things they enjoy. Here's an example - put a kid into a candy store, and give him a huge variety of things, and generally, he will make a beeline to the thing he enjoys most (maybe a certain type of candy bar). Put a type A person into a candy store and tell him he can have anything he wants, and he immediately does what we call a "backwards calculation", which consists of figuring out which candies he likes, how much he likes each one, and how much candy he can actually eat during the foreseeable future. Then he begins by eating the LEAST favorite thing on that list, so that he "saves the best for last", and will sometimes even get mad at himself for miscalculating how much he can eat because by the time he gets to his favorite, he's already full.

Does this sound crazy? It gets worse. Give a normal person a 2-scoop ice cream cone, and he will generally do one of two things: A) not care which order two flavors go on the cone, or B) ask that his favorite go on top so he can begin enjoying it right away. A type A will ALWAYS insist that his favorite go on the bottom, making the top flavor almost a "punishment" before he can get to the good stuff. Like having to eat all your vegetables before having dessert. Yeah, we're crazy.

Anyway, back to toast. See, many times, I like to have 4 slices of toast in the mornings that I'm home and not at work (at least those when I'm not having eggs or something else). And in order to "enjoy" 4 slices of toast, I need (NEED, mind you) to have the following information swirling around my brain:

1) The effective warmth of fresh toast lasts 2 minutes at best.
2) The toaster only has two slots.
3) I do not want to eat two slices of toast and then go back to the toaster, because once I've made my breakfast and settled down to eat, I don't want to get up until I'm finished.

Ok, so why is this a problem? Simple. I pop two slices of toast into the toaster, which takes 2 minutes to toast the bread. They pop out. I immediately pop two more slices into the toaster and butter the two that just came out. Two minutes later, I take the other two out and butter them. I then bring the entire plate to wherever I'm going to eat the toast, and two of the slices are now cooled down (three minutes later) and two of the slices are now fresh and warm (one minute later).

And then I freeze. What my stupid type A brain is TELLING me to do is to eat the cooled-down slices first so that I can save the (better) warm slices for after. And then the logic kicks in of the fact that if I take two minutes to eat the cooled-down slices, the other two slices will have cooled down to the exact same temperature, meaning that I don't get to eat EITHER set of toast at the GOOD temperature. And then Mr. Irrational-type A brain screams at me that it doesn't care if I lose out, I cannot possibly eat the GOOD toast first.

And this mental battle rages on for two minutes, until it is a moot point which set of toast gets eaten first because now all four slices are the same temperature.

This explains a lot, doesn't it?

So there we were in Best Buy this past Saturday, and my girl randomactsofkat told me that she was going to show off her Guitar Hero skills by creaming some of the local kids. I love watching her take on the really tough competition!

OK, so I knew there was gonna be trouble last night. randomactsofkat was restless, mostly because she had taken a nap earlier in the day. So I settle down to read, and I feel a pin prick on my shoulder. The girl is apparently picking at a hair.

Now let me take a moment to explain this phenomenon: She seems to be obsessed with hairs the size of paramecium which, according to her, are ingrown, meaning that they bury themselves back into the skin close to where they grew. MY theory is that they look around them, hear that Bush is still president, and quickly bury their heads back into my skin to hide.

But, Kate has a need, a true need to ensure that these little buggers come back screaming into the world so that they can be free and blow in the wind at appropriate times. So she's using her fingernails to pinch and groom me, but that isn't good enough. Suddenly there is a whirlwind and she manages to snap a tweezers from a drawer. I try to object, but I'm fairly certain that she grew about 16 more arms, each picking at theoretical little frightened hairs across my chest. And she's climbing on me to get to the other side.

At some point, I asked her "don't you have some sleep to catch up on?" at which point she grunted something and pinched extra hard. i don't think that particular hair is going to blowing in the wind so much as cowering in fear for the rest of its life.

Sigh.

gm_avie finally gave her a raised eyebrow and Kate snapped back to reality, quickly put the tweezers away and fell asleep next to me with a smile on her face. Somehow I felt like Indiana Jones after the Ark was closed again.

I love her very much, but I wonder about her sometimes...

OK, sorry to say that I am very, very disappointed in the last ten minutes. Everything was great and squeeworthy(tm) until then, but two major plot holes really led to a big letdown.



Ah well, time to get on with the summer.

Ok, now those of you who know me, know I am a Mac consultant. In fact, I'm one of the best Mac consultants in NYC. So I have a natural bias towards the Mac. It is a superior operating system in every way, shape and form to anything Microsoft has ever created. However, since my main client uses a bunch of PCs, I've learned enough about Windows to be an expert in XP as well. I hate it, but I can use it well and support it well.

Today, we had a new employee start, and he decided to bring in his own laptop to use on our network, with...you guessed it...Vista.

I had not yet seen Vista prior to this morning. But despite my bias, I figured, "no big deal"; all I really needed to do was to connect him to our eMail, our printers and our server.

Now, first impression (meaning 10 seconds in), it's pretty. I like the status bar fades, the shiny window bars are nice, etc. And then came its actual operation. Please skip a paragraph if you are sensitive.

WHAT ARE THEY FUCKING KIDDING ME???

Ahem. It would appear that Microsoft spent 4 years purposely taking every single item that Windows users spent their time learning and simply...put them in different places. No matter what I reached for, it was in a place completely unlike where it had been before. Add a printer? Well, Windows XP needed 2 windows to do that. Vista needs 5. Change a network address? XP needed 3 windows to do that. Vista needs 6. And the funny part is that the ROOT window, the one where you actually make the change, is the exact same thing from XP. Yeah, that's progress. PLUS, unlike XP, which actually understood its own windows, everytime you go back to a system window you need from a shortcut, it opens a new window instead of bringing the existing one to the front for you. So you end up with like 7 copies of the same window just trying to find the right command.

Oh, but wait, this gets better. The coup de grace was trying to connect a server. Go look at the Network "pane". Nothing. Go to Microsoft's help and type in "Connect to Server". 60 items pop up, NONE of them helpful in telling you how to connect to a server. It took me a half hour to figure this out - there is NO DIRECT MENU OPTION the way there is in XP - you have to right click in the "COMPUTER" section - NOT the NETWORK section, and then with 3 additional windows open, you get to a box that looks remarkably like what used to be easy in XP.

I'm an IT person, and this stuff was ridiculously hard to find. I can only imagine what a home user who barely knows how to type in Word is supposed to do. Please, people, for your own sanity, go throw your PCs out a window before you are forced to use Vista, and get a real computer with a real operating system. You will extend your lifespan by 10 years!!!

...to my wonderful, beautiful Kate :-)

Gather round, children, and to your ears I will bring
The (almost) midnight adventure of the Lone Vegetable Dumpling.
It was a dark night after witnessing a movie with Jim Carrey
And getting home after the storm was treacherous and scary.

As we exited the vehicle and made our way through the back
I was the one chosen to carry the fateful sack.
Within was contained the remnants of our feast
The Chinese food that we had saved for a Sunday snack, at least.

So there I was, facing the cold and the icy ground
As I made my way carefully through the total lack of sound.
And I swear, i didn't see the frozen puddle attack
But as I felt my body travel sideways, I screamed, "The sack! The sack!"

Yet I needn't have worried, cause a miraculous thing did occur
As I neared the completion of my triple lutz, it was all a blur.
My savior, the dumpling, had lept out of the bag
And caught me with the strength of a fashion accessory tag!

I was put gently on the ground in a daze from the feat
Wanting nothing more than to get inside where there would be heat.
As I got up to leave, to the ground I did bend
And I said to the Lone Vegetable Dumpling, "Thank you, my friend!"

Discuss Pimientos and Olives.

That is all.

When your girl tells you she found a particular perfume she likes, your job as "the boy" is to go get it for her. I know this rule, it's like one of the basic tenets of boydom. Unfortunately, I've had a very busy week at work, and didn't get a chance to go out Tuesday or Wednesday.


I called randomactsofkat and told her to ask me why I was soaked when we got home. She said "huh?" and I said "I'll tell you the story later". Needless to say, she really, really, appreciated the perfume :-)

Next time, Kate, ask me for something easy, like a water buffalo?

Last night I had a long, frank discussion with Griffin. Ok, I admit it, HE did most of the talking. But he had a few things to get off his chest, so I certainly made sure I gave him the time to do so.

Some of the less critical topics included his contention that he is getting fed approximately 22 times less per day than he'd contracted for, but I managed to illustrate (with PowerPoint charts) that his math was a bit fuzzy, and fortunately, he was never very good at math. Also touched on was the subject of litter box cleaning, because apparently his aim isn't as good as it used to be and he somehow he blames me personally for this. After a few heated words and some serious tummy rubbing, he calmed down about that topic and we moved on.

The one point that truly prompted the conversation was the trauma of an unexpected visitor we had a few weeks ago at our Super Bowl party, a member of the canine persuasion. Now, Griffin has generally been fairly laid back about visitors, and most people who come into Central find him to be calm and cheerful about allowing them to pet him (of course, at some point he gets usually gets fed up with company and walks around muttering about when they should all leave and get out of his house). But the dog, uh-uh. I've seen him upset before, but this time around, he was threatening legal action.

He launched into a very angry monologue about the state of the world, and why dogs have completely ruined everything (he wanted me to send a letter to the president explaining that dogs are responsible for Global Warming). I would like to present Griffin's words here so that all of you might understand where he was coming from on the subject, but I will put it behind the cut so that I spare the friends list people:



So in order to maintain peace, I had to promise him that I would begin in earnest this morning to propose a new business initiative, which we have tentatively titled "Dogs Suck" (or DS for short). The objective of this endeavor would be the complete elimination of not just dogs, but all canines. Now I'm not sure how we're going to go about furthering this utopia, but I hereby present its formation, for the satisfaction of Griffin and to further household peace.

More info to come...

Everything you didn't want to know about me :-)


Create your own Friend Test here

Chocolate, Sex and Frogs.

(not necessarily in that order)

So I'm standing there struggling to get a computer out of a box when the mailroom guy sneaks up behind me and says "these came for you". I look at him blankly while he walks away with a silly grin on his face. I open up three beautiful roses and an adorable bear, sent to me by randomactsofkat. I've been sitting here kinda twirling the vase ever since, somewhat teary.

Thank you, baby.

Hmmm. Silly program seems to have eaten my valentines :(