mindless drivel
Monday, January 31, 2005
  i think i broke something
I am a bad, awful, evil person. I did something I am not proud of. I accidentally knocked over my computer at work. You'd think big top-heavy computer equipment would be manufactured to be able to sustain this kind of abuse, whether intentional or accidental, but you'd be wrong. It seems that knocking a computer from its normal upright position to a sideways formation on office-grade carpeting causes fairly severe problems. Let's revisit the fateful event.

It was Friday afternoon, just before 5:00 in fact. I was innocently turning my chair when disaster struck. One small nudge from my foot was all that it took. Crash! Peeking out above the walls of my cubicle, I looked around to make sure no one else saw what happened. No luck. Everyone was now laughing at my clumsiness.

I picked everything back up and things were working fine. Disaster averted. For about five minutes. Then the Blue Screen of Death appeared. I froze. The blue screen stared back at me, mocking me with its blueness. Help desk was no help. They only assured me that they would get someone down here as soon as they could. But I work for a company with something like 300 million employees, and some guy out in Texas with a knocked-over computer does not get top priority.

So here it is now, Monday morning. The computer is still telling me that there is a non-system disk error. The help desk guys tell me it's the hard drive. Nothing works. I am at someone else's computer until 10:00. I'm scared, lonely, and confused. The people here are strange and unusual. I'm only 20 or 30 feet from the comforting walls of my normal location, but it feels like I'm in a different world. And once 10:00 gets here I will be thrust out into the unknown, no home, no computer, no phone, and I'm afraid of what might happen to me out there.
 
Thursday, January 27, 2005
  me and my house
Well, folks, I have big news, and it's not that I was nominated for an Academy Award. I just knew I shouldn't have taken myself out of the documentary category. Oh well, you live and you learn. Nope, my big news is that I am now officially a homeowner. And it only took me 28 1/2 years. Yep, the wife and I have a little thing going where we move every ten months. It's like clockwork, ten months passes, time to move.

Well, it's been ten months, so here we go. Only this time we're moving to a house. And we own it. Well, okay, the mortgage company owns it, and we just throw money at them every once in a while so we can stay there. So I will officially use this as an excuse for having neglected the blog over the past week. That, and I've been busy at work. Hey, give me a break, I have to pay for the house somehow!

Please contact me and I will tell you where to send the lavish housewarming gifts.
 
Friday, January 21, 2005
  close your eyes at bush
I was thinking about the "Turn Your Back on Bush" thing that I heard about, where people were going to turn around at Bush's inauguration to show people that they didn't like him or something. By the way, did this happen? Did anybody care? Did Bush cry when he saw people standing backwards? Probably not, because he's the President and you're not.

The guy standing backwards just looks like a confused person who doesn't seem to know where the action is. And to make matters worse for him, he has to look right at the people who are facing the right way. And the people who are facing the right way probably don't even know about the whole "Turn Your Back on Bush" thing because only Internet nerds know about these types of things, and Internet nerds don't go to Presidential inaugurations, normal people do. So instead of saying to backwards man, "You go, dude, stick it to the man, brutha! Fight the power!" the normal people are probably thinking, "What the heck is this creepy guy doing? Stop looking at me, I'm trying to enjoy the parade."

Anyway, I decided that since I am in Dallas, and the inauguration was in Washington, D.C., I would not participate in the "Turn Your Back on Bush" thing. Instead, I decided to turn my back on the TV when they showed hours upon hours of coverage of the inauguration. And by "turn" I mean "change," and by "back" I mean "the channel." Not because I hate Bush or anything. Just because it's pretty boring, really.

But being the considerate person that I am, I came up with a new way to protest for all you protestor types. You know, if that's your thing. It's called "Close Your Eyes at Bush." Instead of turning your back, you close your eyes when you see Bush. But you can't really close your eyes completely, because you wouldn't be able to see where you're going, and you'd just be fumbling along like an idiot. So you just kind of blink a lot. This one has an interesting dual-protest effect. A lot of people will come up to you and ask why you're blinking so much, if it's because you have something in your eye. Then you say, "No, it's out of protest! Because of Bush! I'm protesting, see? I'm a protestor! Woo-hoo, protest, yeah!!" And if Bush himself asks you if you have something in your eye, you'd probably be too nervous to say anything.
 
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
  ask monger day
I recently got my shiny new Weblog Review. I am so happy I could cry. So go read it. Then come back. I'll wait...

As you can see, according to my review, the only thing separating me from that elusive perfect score is my private nature, which to this point has kept me from revealing too much information about myself. If you've read everything in this blog, you already know a lot about me. But if you just click on the "about me" link, all you'll get is a Deep Thought that I stole. But apparently when people want to know about me, they want to know more than just that mankind is a mystery. But I like to make people work for their information. You get what you give. I'll continue to slip in bits of information in future posts so that you can learn more about the real monger.

But not today. Today is a freebie. That's right, as a pathetic attempt to pacify those people who need all the details, I grant you one post's worth of free question asking. So go ahead, ask anything about me that you like. Put your question in the comments, so everyone can enjoy this free day of question-asking and answer-giving.
 
Friday, January 14, 2005
  lava java
Every so often it actually gets cold down here in Texas. And by cold, I mean below 50. I celebrate the cold weather the same way everybody else does, by going to Starbucks and getting me a nice cup of coffee. Because I loooove coffee. But I celebrate not with a hot cup of coffee, but with a nice frosty cup of Mocha Frappuccino, topped with several inches of whipped cream. Yes, a cold beverage. You see, to us non-natives, 49 degrees is not all that cold, and it's certainly not so cold that I can't enjoy a cold beverage when I'm inside the heated walls of my neighborhood Starbucks. Or one of my neighborhood Starbucks. There are like fifty within a three mile radius.

But I always hear the same thing when I walk into Starbucks to order my Mocha Frappuccino. "What, are you frickin' crazy?!? It's frickin' freezing out there!!!" Actually, they never say this, but I know they're thinking it. The thing that I do hear goes something like this: "I'll have a venti double mocha decaf espresso white chocolate latte, extra hot." Extra hot?! What's that all about? Did somebody not tell these people that coffee is already hot? Making it any hotter would only render the beverage undrinkable. And then I start to wonder, if these people need an "extra hot" beverage when it's 49 degrees, what would they order if it was actually cold outside? "Yeah, I'll take a double shot of molten lava mixed with crushed hot coal, sprinkled with burning embers."

I really don't understand why the coffee needs to be this hot. A normal cup of Starbucks coffee is already heated to the point where it is too hot to drink, but will cool to a drinkable level within about three minutes. It's a great system, and that's why Starbucks succeeded and their competition, whoever that might have been, failed. But extra hot coffee? Perhaps the searing pain of the third degree burns lining every exposed area of your mouth helps take your mind off of the intense 49 degree weather that's just a double-paned window away.

Can somebody please explain this to me?
 
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
  the evil toyota camry people
Why is it that when I'm driving to work and back, I always get stuck behind some moron who drives about 10 miles per hour below the speed limit, or takes 10 seconds to react to a green light? And they seem to take the term "stop sign" a little too literally. You are supposed to stop, but after you stop, you're supposed to go again. Maybe the sign people need to redesign the stop sign so that it reads "STOP, then go again."

My point here is not to complain about my commute. Lord knows, If you want to read about my drive to and from work, I've written plenty of blog posts to fill you in on that. My reason for writing is that I have noticed something strange, almost eerie, about the people who get in my way: they all drive Toyota Camrys. Without fail, every person who gets in my way, preventing me from getting to the parking garage with enough time to navigate through the maze of parking spaces, prefers the Toyota Camry as their vehicle of choice. Even the lady that ran the red light and tried to hit me yesterday was driving a Toyota Camry.

I do not intend to offend all Toyota Camry drivers out there. I realize that the odds are approximately one in eight that if you are reading this, you yourself drive a Toyota Camry. There's some good people who drive Toyota Camrys, including Eddie Van Halen, Bette Midler, and Nelson Mandela. No, I believe the cause of my problems goes much deeper than the simple fact that Toyota Camry people can't drive.

The obvious answer is that there is some sinister group of evil people whose sole mission in life is to make me spend more time in my car. For whatever reason, they want me to be late for work in the morning and late for dinner in the evening.

I have not yet determined with any certainty who is behind this group or what purpose they have in delaying my traveling activities. My best guess is that it is the Blue Man Group. I should have never called them a "natural disaster." I was wrong. There is nothing natural about a group of men who paint themselves blue and bang on stuff.

Whoever is behind this, one thing is certain: they got a nice bulk discount on all those Camrys.
 
Monday, January 10, 2005
  i wrote this down
I finally figured out why I needed a blog. It's for one reason, and one reason alone. But I can't remember the reason. Actually, the reason is that I forget things very quickly. If I don't write things down, I forget them. I need to make a grocery list when I buy more than two things, because I can't remember three things. I come up with a good variety of strange observations and ideas, but if I don't tell someone or write it down, it's gone in 15 minutes. I forget things so quickly that many times I don't even have a chance to write it down. By the time I get to the computer it's already forgotten. And to make matters worse, I can usually remember that I had a really good idea, but I can't remember what it was.

I believe that there is a direct correlation between the amount of odd things I notice and my lack of ability to remember them. Here's how it works. Every time I perceive something new or have a new idea, I need to find a place for it in my head. And in order to make that room I need to get rid of something else. Fortunately my brain works well enough that my email passwords and shoelace-tying ability have not yet been displaced. Usually it's just the last thing that I was going to write down.

So this blog is my way to document the things I won't remember otherwise. If you've noticed that it's kind of a mixed bag, well that's what you get with me. I'm what you might call "human." Sometimes my thoughts are funny, sometimes they are profound (not very often), sometimes they are unsettling, and sometimes you may not agree with me. But hey, if you didn't like it, you probably wouldn't be here. Unless you are on BlogExplosion, in which case you stopped reading after the first 17 words anyway.
 
Thursday, January 06, 2005
  dress code advice needed
I have an interview for a position at the company I already work for. Tie or no tie???
 
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
  seinfeld, reprise
Well, I finally remembered the thing I was going to say about Seinfeld. It initially came to me when I almost ran over a squirrel in my car. Then I forgot about it. But another squirrel started giving me that look the other day. You know the look, the one that says "You'd better watch it, Bub, I'll dart out in front of you and make you slam on your brakes. I'm not afraid to do it, I swear I'm serious. I'll do it! I'll freakin' do it!!!!!" Then I remembered again.

The Seinfeld episode in question is that one where George runs over the squirrel. His girlfriend makes him spend thousands of dollars nursing it back to life, and he goes on a tirade about how we have a deal with the squirrels. It's been a while since I saw the episode, and the only thing I remember for certain is that there are "tiny instruments shipped in from El Paso" involved, but I believe "the deal" was basically that squirrels instinctively get out of the way of approaching cars, so that we don't have to watch out for them, they watch out for us. In my experience with these "squirrelly" little fellas, there is nothing further from the truth. If anything, these ratty little furballs seem to crave death, not avoid it. Or perhaps they just get a thrill out of seeing us freak out and slam on our brakes, taking out mailboxes, flowerbeds, and pedestrians in a desperate attempt to spare the life of a suicidal rodent. If anything, that Geico commercial with the high-fiving squirrels has got it right. George is dead wrong.

Of course, there are times when the squirrels succeed at achieving death and all of your swerving, brake-slamming, and pedestrian-maiming are in vain. And you hear that sickening "thump-thump" as your front tire lays on the hurt, followed by the back tire putting the little guy out of his split-second of misery. Then you look in your rear-view mirror to see the twitching, writhing remains of the former squirrel. That sure was a funny episode. "We have no deal with you!!!"
 
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
  my fantasy football team was called the unmentionables
I finished 6-9 in my fantasy football league this year, missing the playoffs and ending the season in misery and shame. Below are some lessons I've taken away from my 2004 fantasy football misfortunes:

1) Don't trust anything they say about Chris Brown. If they say he's healthy, he will sit out with a career-threatening injury, like turf toe or something. If they say he's injured, he will rush for 150 yards and two touchdowns. This happened to me several times this year, and I did not like it.

2) PICK PEYTON MANNING!

3) Don't ask your wife to join your league, as she will surely win the league even though she has never played before, humiliating you and your "years of fantasy football knowledge and experience." I think this applies to girlfriends, too.

4) No matter who my opponent has on his team, they will always have career days when they play against me. It could be a backup offensive lineman, and he will still somehow end up with 200 rushing yards and three touchdowns.

5) Strive for mediocrity, it's less disappointing when you don't win.

6) All of my best players will have horrific season-ending injuries in the first quarter of the first game of the season.

7) Michael Vick is overrated. I learned this from my friend Greg, whose team also sucked.
 
  i been busy lately
Foreclosures in Texas take place on the first Tuesday of every month. So naturally, mortgage company guys in Texas have lots of foreclosure-related stuff to do in the days before the first Tuesday of every month. I just happen to be a mortgage company guy in Texas. Therefore, I been really busy lately! So don't bother me, I'm busy taking people's homes away...well, okay, I'm desperately trying to avoid taking people's homes away, but that's a story for another day. Or not.
 

Observations from a guy who no longer lives in Texas and really doesn't have very much free time.


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