/bill's House O Insomnia : Humor, Me

And you thought I just some moron

William — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:37:36 GMT

Many folks north of Miami-Dade county have never heard of El Chupacabra. And if you try tipping them off to it, they laugh at you like your some kind of moron. At least that's what they did when I told them. I've been warning people of the dangers posed by the old Chupa and I typically got responses like "Yah Bill, well, next time I get a pet goat, I'll make really sure that I don't accidentally let it outside at night." Because of how I was often treated, I can truly sympathize with our former vice president who was horribly mistreated for trying to warn the world about ManBearPig . Well, for those of you that laughed at me, thought I was a moron, all of the above, Who is the moron now?

Business Travel Sucks

William — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:09:32 GMT

I don't remember the details exactly, but at some point in my very early childhood, me and the folks were flying to Pittsburgh for the holidays. I remember pop being really adamant about "flying 1st class so we don't have to put up with all the B__S___". I had already flown a few times with my mom and didn't know the difference but it sounded cool. Until we got on the plane. I remember thinking "This is it?" and wondering what the big deal was. Business travel has been the same sort of anti-climactic event. Except unlike flying first class, business travel actually sucks.

I don't mean when you're 22 and out of college that it sucks. Going places and meeting different people is cool. Until you've done it 20000000 times. Then it sucks. Actually, by the time you hit 4 digits on your travels, business travel will have long been sucking. Jobs involving travel sound cool and important, but seriously, unless you're young and out of school, it sucks.

In case you doubt me, I'm going to explain why in terms I don't think *anyone* can argue with:

1- Airports suck. Going to them sucks. Leaving them sucks. Waiting around for your baggage sucks. Standing in line sucks. Going through security sucks. Airline personnel are largely union which for some reason, makes them hate everyone. Assuming the union doesn't make them bitter, dealing with unappreciative obnoxious a-holes all day does them in every time. Until they make kid|idiot|slow people|complainer free airports, they will continue to suck (trust me, if you're reading this you won't see the day that this will happen)

2- Business travel isn't the same as recreational travel. Unless you don't matter, your home office is going to want you back as soon as possible. So when you leave, you have to come back, quickly. B/c of the travel time, in the 300000 I've been to Seattle, I've only got to hang out with friends about 10 of them. Only twice, and that was when I was self-employed, did I get to go to Portland and hang out with my homie + his lovely better 1/2. You call up friends, say "Hey, I'll be in town" and quickly come to realize unless you can squeeze in lunch or something, chances are you won't get to see them. When you don't, you always look like a douche for not stopping by

3- The only people that drive worse than the people in your city, are those that drive in other cities. Growing up in Miami, it really took a lot to impress me here. Most people had little problem doing 8 lane changes on I-95 and using your turn signal will get you arrested or killed. But you don't sit in traffic all freaking day. In fact, you can't even drive slow in Miami. In Seattle, it's great as long as you don't battle rush hour or get lost downtown. If you do, you'll end up around a bunch of crazed Scientologists, tranvestite prostitutes, drug addicts, vegan homeless kids with laptops and cell phones. It's awful. Pittsburgh, you'll end up going through a tunnel and never seeing daylight until the next day. Boston, well, my good buddy Michael is from Boston so I can't really advocate blowing it up and starting over - but it's not an argument without merit. Minneapolis? Hmmm, I ended up in the hood (scary even by Miami and Atlanta standards) WITH a GPS in the car, got lost every time I tried to get to our office, and got to ride in a taxi with the guy who was voted "Most likely to wage jihad against infidels via his taxi cab". You know it's a bad trip whenever you ask the cabbie "So, you had any famous people in your cab" and he responds "Sure, Keith Ellison and Ibrahim Hooper". "Yah, I was thinking something more along the lines of actors, athletes, models, hot chicks..." and I could just tell by his look and silence that none of those were coversation topics he enjoyed engaging.

More than that though, you have to navigate places you probably haven't been and you're in a hurry. If you do know you're way around, you can't stay anywhere long enough to enjoy it. Ick!

4- Time zones. My family goes to sleep between 9-10:00. I dont' sleep unless it's chemically enhanced by Ambien CR. So getting out of work at 6:00 means it's bed time for the folks at home. 7 makes it late and after that it's getting rude. Well, by the time you get back to your hotel or whatever it's usually too late to call. To make up for it, your loved ones may try to call you first thing in the morning. Which is usually around 4:00 AM

5- Flight delays, cancellations etc are non-billable in most contracts and most companies consider those in the non-billable hour pool meaning you aren't getting much for it. So even in benevolent companies like mine, flight delays get balanced on your free time. I mean, they need me back Monday to be at the client. If my plane is a day late, the client still needs me there. On seasoned engagements, if you can find a way to be billable (usually called VPN + Broadband) than that mitigates it if the client is cool, but the problem still remains.

6- The more you pack the less likely you'll be to get caught without something important. But the more you pack, the more you lug around, the more you have to wait for at Baggage and the more likely something will be broken or damaged. So you'll make tradeoffs and if you're like me, they'll always be the wrong ones.

7- Kids. Ok, if you *have* to fly with your kid, I hereby, just like my Catholic forefathers did, offer you a Indulgence (except mine's free). I'm not talking about the people that fly here and there with their kids. I mean the regular road warriors. And everyone else, all the new age parents with kids with annoying names like "Dakota, Cody, Madison, Taylor" [why are they all lame throwbacks to the wild west or distilled of gender to the point they are completely androgonous?] yes, that's who I'm talking about. I want you to have happy kids. I want your kids to have self-esteem. I really want the best for all of you. But can you do it without your stupid kid yelling and throwing tantrums the whole time right? If not, how about an apology? I know you have to have some pretty powerful sedatives on you, so how about sharing? No, no such luck. Instead, Trevor will kick the back of the seat the whole time b/c of his ADD and mom can't tell him to stop b/c of his self-esteem.

8-Rental Cars - it's hit or miss here. But in the terminals like DFW or San Fran, where you have to drive to another state on a bus before you get to the rental car terminal - yuck.

9- Unhot stewardesses. Ok, the hot comment is childish and infantile but I'm old enough to remember those days. Anyway, they get crapped on. They deal with the world's biggest a-holes at their worst so obviously these people are almost saintly just to be able to make it through a shift. Except the ones that aren't so nice. The ones that are bitter. The ones that - well, like the ones on my flight last night.

10 - Expense reports. REmember to always ask for a receipt. Make sure you got Neat Receipts or you better be orgainzed. Make sure you rush right home and do your reports. Even at places that are fast, the turnaround time is usually at least one pay period. Go racking up 3800k every two weeks like I did, and you can't miss too many of those before people start wondering if you're developing a drug or gambling problem. But you'll forget reciepts. You'll lose them. You'll throw some out by accident. That's when the fun starts.

I'm already funning twice as long as I wanted and I just got started. So trust me on this, Business Travel sucks.

Truer words have not been spoken

William — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:55:13 GMT

Raymond Lewallen posted the following on his Twitter page.

if i get one more vampire bite thingy whatever from facebook, i'm going to kick @CalebJenkins in the nuts! Its seems to have started there. about 8 hours ago from Witty

I know I'm out of the mainstream on this, but having signed up for Facebook a few months ago, I truly don't get it. A lot of times there's stuff I don't like but I can see what the allure is for other people. Facebook isn't one of these though. The little interaction I've had with it was mainly b/c I had no clue what the feature was and just wanted to see what it did. But overall, there's a lot of annoying stuff that doesn't seem to have much value. And unlike MySpace, most Faceboook pages aren't so tacky and laden with piss poor grammar that they provide a good laugh. All the cool kids love facebook so my disdain for it seems to be yet another indication of my unadulterated dorkiness. But a kick square in the nuts from a dork still hurts, so keep that in mind before sending out any more vampire bites.

If Brian Madsen is really a friend, then he'll...............................

William — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:12:00 GMT

Sahil and I have been friends for a long time since then, but to this day, he's yet to give me the Cobra, Turbin and Flute that I've been hitting him up for. Yes, I'm still salty about it.

Well, I just saw this piece on how bad a55 Dingos are. . Well, since Brianis in Australia, if he and Rob Farley are as cool as I think, I'll have a Dingo arriving in the mail by the end of the week.

Fighting the Bull

William — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:15:28 GMT

A few years ago, I read a truly excellent book called Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide . I really liked it b/c I was working at a place with a whole lot of people who were really into talking in business speak and thought they were really cool for doing it. Little by little, they all battled with each other to outdo the other ones. At the same time, they all started to think that talking ambiguously, meaning answering questions by not answering the question was some kind of holy virtue. Meetings were bad enough, but this idiocy makes them unbearable. Because talking in business speak is all about trying to convince people you're smart and hip, it turns into a pissing battle. You only need one of these people in a meeting to really make it so painful it hurts, but G*d help you if you get three or more b/c they will spend the whole time trying to outdo each other. And that's when they aren't battling to be the first to say 'That's a great point" every time a boss says something. They think it makes them sound important and I have yet to find anyone that seriously respects this style of communication. When i read the Bullfighter's Guide, it was really liberating in the same way it's always liberating to find out that not only aren't you alone, that there are many others that agree with you out there.

Purely for therapeutic value, I'd like to describe the phenomenon in a little more detail. The crux of this post is about a tool that's been around for a while and a book that's been around for a while. The book is mentioned above and is an in depth look at the annoying phenomenon known as Business Speak and how to avoid it. There is a Word Add-In that you can use to analyze documents and help you remove Bull as well as let you compute a Bull Index. Better yet, you can create your own lists and add your own words, so this tool can adapt to fight this evil phenomenon.

Here's what it looks like:

You can run the tool (the left hand icon) which works like Word's Spell Checker, or you can compute the Bull Index:

So why is this necessary? Well, because not only do many people think talking in Business Speak is cool, many people now it's stupid and pretentious, yet are uncomfortable saying so out loud b/c it will invariably anger at least a few coworkers. It's a classic case of the Emperor having no clothes. And today, at least in my experience, talking like this is the defacto standard. For example, a few years ago, I was talking with a few of my former coworkers (we all worked for the same Big X Consulting firm where talking like this was mandatory). A competitor of ours actually made Bullfighter. We'd run it on our documents (which were called Deliverables - can you ever imagine talking to your wife or kid and use Deliverable in a sentence? Can you imagine using the term Deliverables ANYWHERE other than work without causing confusion and laughter?) and try to remove all the bull we could find. We'd send it up the chain to the project manager and then to the managing partner, and what we got back was our document, except with Bull words added back in. Just to put it in perspective, this was back in the day when we were still called Resources. Again, imagine telling your wife "Honey, I'm going to be at work pretty late tonight, would you mind running by the school and picking up our resources and making sure our resources get their homework done?) I think the current word is Asset but I hear Resources still lingering around. Is Asset the most up to date one, or is there something newer?

In high school, you have the kids that are teacher's pets. They are the kids who love lecturing you about how 'immature' you are for laughing at potty humor. In a classroom discussion, they always figure out what the teacher's opinion is and spout it out as though it was their long held belief. Then they head off to college. The second week into school when few students know what they really want to do and are busy trying to get drunk and find easy freshman, you often hear these folks at the lunch table or on the sideline of the intramural fields raping people's ears. You hear some poor chap ask them "So what are you majoring in?" and it's all over. They haven't finished a single course or even taken their first test and you hear "Well, I'm going to double major in Poli-Sci and English. You know, 98% of lawyers at the nation's top firms were English majors. So I'm going to go to school on summers and take my LSAT's in my 3rd year. If I score over 190, then I'll be heading off to UVA or Princeton. If I score between 160 and 189, I'll shoot for Penn or Columbia. but i may take the dual MBA/JD program because there are so many MBAs and JDs, that you really need both to distinguish themselves." Then your senior year it turns into "Well, I'm going to work for a few years to get experience and find a company that will pay for my MBA. You know, you can't really get into a MBA program without work experience" They torture their first few sets of coworkers with this nonsense and say really smart sounding things like "You know, the market is going to close up today" every freaking day as though they were the only people in the world that know that the futures markets and market open often indicate the overall mood the traders that day. They start to see that no one likes their ideas and that they offer very little. Then they think "If only I was in management...." At that point, it fully takes over and what you get is a platitude generating Dilbertesque robot that induces vomit on a regular basis.

What happens usually is that someone in your office, usually a younger person on the verge of making management, starts it. These folks spot them and try to copy everything they do. All of a sudden you're in a meeting and they are asked a question and they reply "I'll be glad to take this off-line with you." At that point, you can see the eyes of all the kiss asses and management wannabes light up and you can almost hear them thinking "ooooh, impressive, I need to use that." Two days later, everyone is taking things offline instead of talking to you after the meeting. In another meeting you hear the trendoid say "Well, I have concerns that you may not have the bandwidth..." The same folks mentioned before perk up and take note. Bandwidth, oooh, now that sounds impressive. And then they discover the wonders of ambiguity. Next thing you know everyone is talking about bandwidth and everyone with some pathological agenda is talking about their concerns or telling you that so and so manager has concerns about something {something almost always directly related to their own agenda}. By using concerns, every petty tyrant in empowered to wreak havoc on their coworkers. You see, if you tell people "Well, John said Mr Whoever is pissed off about the network downtime" and John gets called on it, He'll just hide behind the ambiguity "Well, Mr Whoever did have concerns, hugh amounts of downtime is not good for business {all such people also love to slip in completely obvious truisms and state them like it's something profound}, but that's all I was saying. But when they said it in the meetings, they emphasized it in such a way that said "If this isn't fixed, heads are going to roll". The ambiguity is perfect for them because they can get people worked up or hide behind someone else's name and then have complete deniability if they get called out. In short order, they'll start using "We" all the time, so they can take credit if management agrees with their point, but pawn it off on others if management doesn't. This all starts creeping in, just like the business platitudes. These people then start freestyling with each of these techniques:

Bill: "Hey, John, the full database backup didn't run last night nor did the incrementals. I looked into it and the job wasn't enabled. Did someone disable it after you enabled it or did you not enable it before you left?"

John: "Well Bill, we have to do everything possible to take care of customer data. We might be staff here but we are customers at many places and we certainly want our data handled as carefully as possible. It's critical that we leverage each of our core competencies to strategically manage our client's data, even if we're running low on bandwidth or getting pushback about it"

Bill: "Uhh, ok, but I didn't have a chance to look at the error logs, I just want to know if it was left disabled for a reason, or it was an oversight, and if there was a reason, can we re-enable it now, it's been 8 hours since we've had a backup."

John: "Well, we look at our business model as the key to our success and you have to do what's best for the customer and do things that make sense. Right now, I don't have a comfort level with the backup strategy and we may need to have a meeting. I understand you have a concern about it and we totally share your concern. Maybe you could google it and see what comes up and then you can call a meeting and share your findings."

As stupid as this sounds, it's not far from a real conversation I've had and ones I've overheard. I know I'm really long on this rant which is slightly ironic b/c what I'm complaining about is poor communication, but it's because this nonsense is so prevalent that I often wish things were different. the thing is that if you talk to people individually, everyone will tell you they hate this sort of stuff. Depending on the guilt level, you'll typically hear some level of apologetics for their own sins. On the other hand, you just know that there are some people you could never even bring the subject up with, b/c for them, talking like this is absolutely critical to their existence. And if you look deep, you'll find that the more someone talks like this, the less technical skills they have. There are a few exceptions of talented people that speak like this, but the folks with talent are doing it b/c they think it's expected. For the rest, they literally depend on this sort of stuff.

Why do I mention all of this? because I'm going to bet that every single person that reads this works with someone like this. In fact, I bet they work with more than a few people that talk and behave like this, and have worked with many in the past. And these people have driven you nuts. And you've wanted to call Bullsh*t as loudly as possible. At one point, you actually fell for it, thinking that they speak so confidently and sounds so sophisticated that they have to really know what they are talking about. Then you realize that every morning on the ride into work, they hear about the futures markets and that alone is what dictates their daily market predictions. You realize taht without the fancy lingo, they have nothing to offer. And it drives you nuts. If you've felt this and want a good laugh, pull a sample of about 20 of their emails or memos. One day, in a meeting, bring in your notebook and just type in as many phrases as you can without attracting attention. Then run the Bullfighter (yes, it works on everything from Word 97 to 2007) and laugh at the results. Then look at their Bull Index. When you see their pathetic Bull Score, sit back and laugh to yourself knowing they are absolutely full of it as measured by a good objective standard. And run it on your own work just to make sure you never go over to the dark side (the lowest I've scored is a 5.5 and the highest is an 8. I usually score in the 7.0s. The more I use it, the more I 'get it' and hopefully I can improve that.

If you have any really good examples of Business speak (I know I've asked before but figured there are some new good ones based on what I"ve been hearing lately) or memos, Please please please post them or send them to me. I'll keep them confidential unless you tell me it's ok to mention it. For some reason, I find this quite amusing.

I can almost hear Jeff Foxworthy saying...If you write blog posts at 5:00 AM about how much you like running writing analyzers on office memos, you might be a DORK.

Passenger's bill of duties

William — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:39:00 GMT

Athough it's been relatively slow in the past few months, I typically have to engage in a good bit of air travel and it seems that many developers/consultants I know are in the same boat.. TSA and similar concerns have made air travel more frustrating over the years, but nothing, nothing compares to some of the obnoxious Pain in the a55e5 that have gotten much worse over the years. So when I read The Passenger's Bill of Duties , I got a real kick out of it. #s 1 & 5 should be passed into law immediately. I think one other one needs added - People who's chairs get kicked repeatedly by bratty kid should be given $10.00 a pop by the brat's parents and People who's kids cry for more than 15 minutes should reimburse everyone disturbed by the kids. None of this will ever happen but it's nice to dream.

Better keep my day job

William — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 02:44:00 GMT

I got this from Brian's - it's been around a while but always interesting to re-check.

My blog is worth $10,161.72.
How much is your blog worth?

Looks like i better keep my day job...

C Ya at the LARP

William — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:28:00 GMT

One of the new things I started doing in the mornings was going to the Gym. I live a few blocks away from a LA Fitness that opens up at 5:00 AM. So if possible, I try to get over there at 5:00, work out, do my morning routine and head to work. As I was telling my co-workers though, I decided that it would be nice of me to call Kim up before i head over and make sure she's doing well. So it goes something like this:

Phone ringing, ringing , ringing:

Kim: (1/2 asleep) Waaaaattt do you want?

Me: Sweety is that you?

Kim: Yes, what do you want.

Me: Well, it's 4:50 in the morning and i just wanted to call and say hi.

Kim: You woke up the dog and he'll be barking all morning. You woke me up. You're going to pay for this

Me: Cool, talk to ya later. Love ya sweety.

-----

So she'll wise up and turn off the ringer for a few days, then she'll slip. So this morning as I was headed to the gym I realized that although it was supposed to be snowing this morning, it was only sleeting. Figured I should call her up and give her the heads up. However try as I could, I think she suspected that I would try something like this so I just got voicemail. I started heading out to the gym and realized it was way too cold to go walking around. As I went back upstairs to get the car, I realized it was too cold for anyone sane to be out and about. Might as well update my blog.

This weekend, I'll be back in good old Greenville. My homie Chris Williams opened up a game shop called Reality Check Games. I've been over there a few times and the Williams family has it hooked up. Being the recluse that I am, I don't get out much and sort of missed the whole D & D and game thing. Chris and family have managed to turn Coffee and games into a pretty rocking business. A few weeks ago while I was there, I was introduced to the concept of a LARP. If you aren't familar with LARPs, let me see if I can explain it. You have Vampires on the one side. You have Werecreatures on the other. (I don't know if they have WereCuckooz yet, but if they do it would be very very cool). They meet up at the LARP, get their instructions, head out and well, as they say in Southpark, "It's on". I'm too much of a Dork to participate in the LARP, but I can head there and take pictures so as to justify the digital dust collector.

I had a lot of trouble understanding the concept until I remembered this post by Shawn Wildermuth . Well, Chris still remains friends with me despite my social ineptness and cluelessness about many things. Then it happend... I was rapping with Chris last night and he invited me to the LARP. 6:00 PM Saturday. I'm cheering for the Vampires at this point. Pictures will follow (however if I remember my Vampire lore correctly, you can't photograph them and they aren't visible in Mirrors, so my pictures of the LARP may be one sided favoring the Werecreatures)

The AngryPharmacist and the Drug Monkey

William — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:07:00 GMT

Every day we go about out lives and we interact with people who we probably don't even think twice about. Many of us interact with pharmacists and never think twice about it, or what they think of us. I know mr 375lb bench press aka 'the lower cased one' interacts with a phramacist all the time although he's been completely remiss in posting pictures of her any more. Anyway, I came across to absolutely hillarious blogs, the DrugMonkey (formerly the Drug Nazi) and The Angry Pharmacist. With site descriptors like "Your Pharmacist may hate you" you know the site is going to be classic. In short, these are two pharmacists who blog about annoying customers and annoying doctors.

When I first came by http://www.theangrypharmacist.com/ site, I started to think, what a pr***. The DEA has many doctors terrified of writing scripts for many substances and a lot of people go under treated for pain and other maladies. So I started reading try to understand where this guy is coming from and it all became clear.

When I was in undergrad, a good majority of my friends were pharmacy majors. I never thought of being a pharmacist as being a real job (after all, you don't hear mothers advising their daughters to marry a doctor, laywer, engineer , accountant OR pharmacist) but saw how unbelievably hard it was to be a pharmacist. And I'm no spring chicken. I graduated right about the time when you could be a pharmacist with only 5 year's education. Now you need a Pharm D (with the exception of Education, getting a Ph. D is a real honor and a lot of work, some a lot harder to earn than others with Pharm D being at the top of the food chain). Anyway, I really learned how hard it is to get through pharmacy (and I also learned that eating more than 5 Percocets at a time will make you itchy).

As I read through these guy's blogs though, I started to laugh out loud quite a bit. I've been waiting for my scripts many times and repeatedly heard someone giving the pharmacist some rap about getting their scripts early. The AP has a pretty funny post about SOMA and yep, I've heard people more than a few times trying to hit the pharmacist up for SOMA. In fact, since I usually wait around for my scripts, I've heard all sorts of stuff. And for some reason, I never thought twice about it. I guess it's b/c the pharmacists just never let on that it's annoying them. But after reading these guys blogs, I thought, they must hear more BS than any profession other than motorcycle cops.

These two blogs have quickly become two of my favorites. Listening to really smart grumpy guys complain about morons is just hysterical. If you like that sort of thing, I highly recommend both of them...

The wrong side of a Meme

William — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:42:00 GMT

I remember a long time ago, I saw some very scarry looking dude with a "I'd rather see my sister in a whorehouse than my brother riding a riceburner" t-shirt. I don't have a sister and would prefer Japanese motorcycles if I rode bikes, so I can't really empathize. However I guess the point of dude's t-shirt was given two crappy choices, one is clearly better than the other From that perspective, I think I got the "brother riding a riceburner" option in that it could have been worse. But that doesn't mean this still doesn't suck:

Which Programming Language are You?

I guess I need to go find some friends that *know* Microsoft is evil and sucks but can't give a single reason why.

UPDATE: When I noticed this meme in my blogreader for the lower cased one , I immediately thought WTF? He's the last person i would have sent this thing too b/c I know it would trigger a humorous and snarkly comment about such things. he never disappoints

Back with a bang

William — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 03:41:00 GMT

I've taken a hiatus from blogging but am going to try to get back on track full speed. I've been tech editing a great Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) book titled Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Communication Foundation . But more on that later... I'm chock full of good stuff and since I'm flying out to Redmond for some top secret work for a few days, I can finally get back into the swing of things.

So I work in the Perimeter area and live in a place called The Place. I know, that's a lame name but it's pretty cool to live here. I live on the penthouse floor which is largely unoccupied. So there's only about 6 people and there's about 60 units (the building is huge) One of the people is a fellow Miami alum. One day, I was testing my GPS to see how it would resond as I drove down from my floor to the ground, I wanted to see how it detected depth. Not so good. Well, other than my buddies at Magenic, I don't know anyone here and in general, I'm quite bored when I'm not drowning in work. To entertain myself, I started going late night speed trials up the parking garage. This reminded me of old school Miami Vice episodes except I don't have a mullet or a Ferrari. Anyway, my neighbor saw me doing this and thought it was a cool idea. So he started doing them to. I think a few others saw us racing up the parking lot and decided the idea was cool. (Now, if anyone from the management of the place is reading this, I'm making this up. There's two different guys from Miami on the top floor that do this, not me and Carlos).

Fast forward until today. I'm driving home and see something I can't really believe. A truck has a Honda Accord embedded in it in the parking lot. The Honda has a mustang embedded into it. Another car was embedded into the Mustang, but he decided to get his sober girlfriend to get them out of there.

From the concierge downstairs, this appears to be what happened: So apparently, three guys decided to race. The guy in the Accord pulled out really fast and hit the truck. The guy in the Mustang hit the guy in the Accord, (I guess Mustangs have tighter turning radiuses). Another guy hit the mustang. Now that guy decided "Wow, we're really screwed up, I'm getting my girlfriend and getting out of here, we can take care of it tomorrow." So he leaves. The other two get into a fight over who's fault it was. The one guy decides to call the cops. The cops start asking what happened and the whole thing about the cars comes up. They tell the cops it was 20 minutes ago and the like. The cops realize the dudes were piss drunk and just implicated themselves. So they got a free night's stay in Dekalb County Jail. The owner of the Ranger isn't home, it's his utility vehicle but I'm sure he'll be pissed. And the amazing thing is that they were home free. They could have just handled it themselves, paid the guy in the Ranger a few extra bucks and been done with it. But no, they needed to call the cops. Morons.

Wally, if you're reading this, that is a Georgia Tech tag on the Accord, who by all accounts was the lead Dumb A55 ;-)

Is this a joke?

William — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 20:19:00 GMT

I got the following phishing/spam yesterday and didn't think much about it.

Dear Greater Atlantic Bank Cardholder,

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the Greater Atlantic Bank system. We recently contacted you after noticing an issue on your account. We requested information from you for the following reason:

Our system requires further account verification.

Case ID-Number: GAB7896CUO

This is the final reminder to log in to Greater Atlantic Bank Online Account immediately.

To get started, please click here.

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However a friend of mine shot me an IM asking if I'd seen it so I clicked on it and viola'.

Could it be any more obvious.

Phil Hendrie starts to redeem himself

William — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 02:20:00 GMT

Ever since Phil decided that he was going to leave radio, life just hasn't been the same. However Phil http://www.philhendrieshow.com/ . He's got a new site. He's got a ton of new clips. He's got a ton of vintage clips. Yep, even stuff from Miami.

Chris Norton's "Bringing back the Speedo Tour"? Yep
Pastor William Renick's "Yo Islam"? Yep
Raj Faneen's "Stupid American ***"? Yep
Clara Bingham's "All you can eat Negro"? Yep

And sooooo much more. At least there's enough vintage content to keep me occupied for a while ;-)

"Toe"

William — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:45:00 GMT

I can almost feel the hate mail accruing before I even post this, but it's too funny not to post. Do you remember a group called 20 Fingers? They had two songs that were quite popular in most of the dance clubs like 10 years ago. Anyway, I've had a discussion with a few acquaintences (names left out to protect the innocent) regarding Camel Toe . I wasn't sure if it was safe to post or not, but check, if Toe has an entry on it, it's got to be safe right? So I noticed an inordinately high occurence of Toe in Bellevue, WA and was thinking Bellevue might be the Toe capital of the world. Greenville and Augusta had a fairly high instance, but nothing like Bellevue. Fast forward to Atlanta. I've seen 12 zingers since 6:30 tonight which is pretty high by any measure. So I was heading over to the movie theatre to see the Black Dahlia when low and behold, some punks in front of me came to a complete stop to rap with their homies. Their homies were 10000% emo and were on skateboards (Why we haven't instituted the death penalty for skateboarders is beyond me) which really annoyed me. So as I sat there waiting, i started to get annoyed. I rolled my window down b/c I wanted to politely ask if they'd consider getting the **** out of the way when I heard this music that sounded like 20 Fingers. So I thought 'maybe they're cool after all." Then the chorus kicked in "Blah blah blah - She had a Camel toe". I couldn't believe my ears or the irony. Less than an hour before this I had just emailed a friend discussing the Toe phenomenon. And then I find out there's actually a Camel Toe song. So I hit the horn and the kids thought I was honking to tell them to move (which I was originally). One of the emo dudes looks over at me (sort of, he looked in my direction, flipped his hair, stared at the ground while looking my way) and said "Sorry dude". So I yelled out, No, I'm not asking you to move, can you ask your friend who sings this song? So the driver turns around apparently surprised and yells out, "It's Fanny Pack". The Emo dude repeats it to me. So I was like, screw the movie, I've got to go find out what this is all about. If you find Camel Toe as funny as i do - here are the lyrics. If you are in the mood for a good laugh or 10, hit You Tube and search for Camel Toe - there's actually quite a few great songs...

Toe Videos

Fanny Pack - Camel Toe
um hmm thats right uh huh uh huh
um hmm thats right uh huh uh huh

walking down the street
something caught my eye
a growing epidemic that really ain't fly
a middle aged lady
i gotta be blunt
her spandex biker shorts were creepin up the front

I could see her uterus her pants were too tight
She must've owned panties that were not in sight
She walked right by the poor woman didn't know
She had a frontal wedgie a Camel Toe

[Chorus]
um hmm thats right uh huh
oh no
fix yourself girl
you got a
Camel Toe
um hmm thats right uh huh
oh no
fix yourself girl
you got a
Camel Toe

girl thats gotta hurt
take some time and adjust can't you see people staring
and making a fuss
could not believe my eyes had to take a second glance
is your crotch hungry girl
cause its eating your pants
do you enjoy the comotion and attenetion it brings
the only lips i wanna see are the ones that sing
in public putting on an x rated show grossin people out
with your Camel Toe

[Repeat Chorus]

first day of spring and by the looks of things these girls have forgot how to dress
a little quick to wearin
wearin pum pum shorts
and its causin me much distress
whoomp there it is
yeha right in the front
everybody come and get a good look
i can see everything through the panty cling every cranny
and every nook
you better take a quick minute
before you step outside
and check the area thats pubic
or you'll get your panties all up in a bunch all twisted up
like rubic
take these words of advice
cause its not very nice
i wanna put you al in the know
girls don't sleep
don't let your pants creep
watch out for
The Camel Toe

Finally a candidate I can really get behind.

William — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:15:00 GMT

I just came across this and it made my night. Not only is Herb Sewell running for President, but Walter Bellhaven is his first pick for VP.

The Move to Atlanta

William — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:41:00 GMT

I doubt there is anyone that hates moving as much as I do, but for someone that hates moving, I sure do it a lot. Actually, I don't hate moving in the sense of going somewhere new, in fact I'm quite fond of that. But the physical process of moving just plain sucks.

For those that don't already know, I recently took a job with Magenic in Atlanta office . I was pretty much living in Redmond/Bellevue right before coming here and I could definitely get used to Redmond. About the only thing not to like about Redmond is the traffic. Miami had pretty bad traffic, but I lived downtown and it didn't confront me much. As bad as it got though, it seemed nothing compared to Redmond. Seattle traffic seems to pale in comparison to Atlanta traffic. However to some extent I suspect that which is most proximate makes the strongest impression on you. I was commuting for a while but the good folks at Magenic helped me get situated and for now I got a apartment in the Perimeter/Dunwoody area. It's working out pretty nice b/c it's 1/10th of a mile away from my current gig located at the King and Queen .

I pretty much finalized the move last weekend and it was the worst move I've ever had. I got out of work really late on Friday which means that you effectively sit in a parking lot for a few hours trying to get out of the city. I wanted to make up some of the lost time so I got a little happy with the accelerator. I stopped to get gas and got a little lost and low and behold, the 55mph zone magically turned into a 35mph zone with a cop sitting right at the edge of it. So I got a ticket. That took up time which I really didn't have.

Saturday I got cracking first thing in the morning. It was a comedy of errors. I have a Select Comfort mattress which caused a lot of my issues. If you don't have one, you won't understand. They are made in such a way that you can deflate and disassemble them and stick one in the trunk of your car. I forgot about the fact that they deflate when the pump isn't plugged in. So although I tied it down, it flew out of the back of the truck. I got to Atlanta and noticed something was missing. So Kim and I hurried up and unpacked and drove back to Augusta to find it. Low and behold, we found it. The compressor disintegrated on impact but other than that, it was laying on the side of the road unscathed. Now, a Select Comfort matress without the pump is like, in the words of the illustrious Orange Juice Jones, "Kone flake widdout da milk". Fortunately, I live right across the street from Perimeter mall which had a select comfort store. They didn't have a pump but they ordered me one and get this - they actually let me borrow one until it got here. If you don't have a Select Comfort mattress, you don't know what you're missing.

But alas I forgot about the most critical detail of Friday. We don't have to take out or own garbage here, we actually have Valet garbage pickup. Being that the bin is three doors down I usually just take it out myself but figured, what the heck, I'll let the Valet pick it up. Big mistake. When I got home, I got a Door notice with the following highlighted:

All Trash Bagged and Tied Securely/Placed in container
No Loose Trash
Boxes tapen and flat in bundles
Newspaper and magazines taped in small bundles

I was like, WTF? I had one magazine, three styrofoam takeout boxes , and an empty bottle of Diet Coke in the thing. I could have taken the crap to the garbage shoot in 1/2 the time it took the guy to write me hate note. I know, this sounds so insipid it strains credulity but believe it or not, they actually have a Garbage Valet . Ok, understand that I'm a little biased here after getting my ego crushed by the Garbage Valet but this has to be the stupidest business idea on earth. There's a 12 item checklist, 8 of which I got right without intending to. But if you have to go through a f**cking checklist to save yourself 30 steps, it's counterproductive. So I guess it's a status thing to have a garbage valet but being that I can't bring myself to say "I have a garbage valet" without bursting into laughter, I'm not sure it's going to impress anyone other than people with a garbage fetish. There roof of the building is an entertainment area, tennis courts, barbecues and a bunch of crap like that. I wonder if there's a law against firing water balloons off of the top of buildings in an attempt to get even with the cocky garbage valet.

Anyway, I'm about to go on a few serious tirades about why Access should be outlawed, why using SQL Keywords as object names is a stupid idea and a whole lot of other database snobbery so I wanted to at least make mention of the mess that is my life. If anyone knows where I can get a water ballon launcher, please email me!

How screwed up are you?

William — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 01:58:00 GMT

I was listening to some old Phil Hendrie episodes and Vernon Dozier was on. This woman calls with a strong Southern Accent and as always, it reminds Vernon of 'mother'. He tells her "it's the kind of thing that makes you want to sit in a room with no furniture and cut the eyes out of pictures." (Strangely enough, I'm starting to truly understand where Vernon is coming from...) If you aren't hip to Phil Hendrie then you won't understand... So I came across the following meme and decided to post it. We've been getting killed with blog spam and the server's been having trouble, looks like I can post again though ;-)

You are 94% messed up.

You are excessively messed up. Presumably your mother dropped you on the head several times when you were younger which lead you to a life of erratic behavior. You are likely to go crazy at the drop of a hat. A Davey Crocket hat, that is.

'How messed up are you?' at QuizGalaxy.com

10 Ten Things that piss you off

William — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 22:55:00 GMT

A thread started over at Sweet Feathery Jesus about Top 10 things that piss you off .

Here's mine (other than the first one, there's no particular order).

1 - Public Service Announcements on XM Radio (In particular, the Hurricane survivial, everything by Earth Share, the Online Predator and anything sponsored by _____ and the Ad Council)
2- Cheesy Morning Shows (Where they sing songs and laugh in the background, laugh at all of their own jokes, steal Howard Stern's material ).
3- People that don't put buggies back at the grocery store
4- Not parking in between the lines (Especially jackasses that insist of backing their cars in the space but can't get it between the lines and end up dinging my car door)
5- Blinged up cars/ Lowrider pickup trucks/ Racing spoilers on cheesy crappy cars
6- People that talk the whole way through a movie
7- Overusing the "CC:", email sigs with that "this message is confidential crap" , setting Priority to High or Read Reciepts on every frigging email (And please don't try telling me how this is 'necessary'.
8- Traffic caused by Rubberneckers
9- Undisciplined kids and their annoying parents, especially in restaurants
10- Homeless people who hassle the crap out of you and particularly ones that say "God Bless you " piously if you don't give them money.

Will there by an XBOX 360 Version?

William — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 14:22:00 GMT

First off, I came across this over at Sweet Feathery Jesus but heard it first mentioned by LLoyd Bonafide and it sounded great. I know Lloyd hates video games, Genxrs and most everything else but it still looks fun. Don't accidentally blow off your head and don't let the pedophile get you.

70-536 Moving Quickly

William — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 02:44:00 GMT

Well, we've got some pretty stiff stiff competition -- Ann's book is getting all the glory but our 70-536 MCTS Guide is already kicking some butt. We moved up 1,000 points since yesterday overall on Amazon's rankings and have just broken #60 in Computers...(read more)