Thursday, October 29, 2009

Simple Pleasures (Or "Its 1:30 am, what else is there to do?")

So it happened again. I dragged my tired body to bed before 11:00, fell asleep for a grand total of about 15 minutes, and woke up. Great. NOW what?

It's just about 1:30 in the morning as I write this, perched on the edge of my bed, in the dark, watching Nicktoons and eating a bowl (my second) of BooBerry cereal. Hey, don't knock the Boo, when I was a kid I used to LOVE those "monster" cereals... FrankenBerry, Count Chocula, and in a pinch, BooBerry. I think they had a wolfman-based fruit cereal for a while, but if I remember correctly, it was like eating crunchy Juicy-Fruit gum. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. Oh yeah, that's it! Fruit Brute! But I digress, those other three are the classics, they are pop-culture cereal ICONS, or at least they were. Nowadays, they only appear on the shelves in most stores in October. If you see 'em, stock up, they won't be getting more. (Until next year anyway.) For my international readers out there that may not have a freakin' clue as to what I'm talking about, check HERE.

No, I'm not turning into a shill for General Mills fine line of delicious and nutritious breakfast cereals. Part of this balanced breakfast, when served with milk, juice and toast. No no, nothing like that. The point I'm making is that... well, I kinda forget the point, but that's not important right now. What is important is that I am now out of cereal and it's 1:45. Kappa Mikey is on Nicktoons and anything close to an idea that I had for this post is now lost in a sugar-coated fog of caffeine-induced insomnia.

Oh yeah, I remember now. Duh... "Simple Pleasures"

I am a firm believer in growing older, but not up. Every once in a while it is important to do something just for the hell of it. Be a kid again. Take yourself back to the time when your biggest worry was that you forgot to do your science project over the weekend and you'll have to throw something together during lunch. Right now, I'm sitting on the edge of my bed in my house in Minnesota. In my mind, I'm on the floor in my parent's living room on a Saturday morning, back in Mundelein. The good cartoons are on, I'm full of cereal and I got the big pillow on the floor. Life is good.

I think I'll just snuggle in and enjoy it for a while. *yawn*

goodnight.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

More random thoughts, this time with a topic.

The day before Halloween is my birthday. This year, the 30th of October will mark the start of my 44th year on this planet. No, this isn't a "mid-life crisis" freakout post, my freakout year was 30, when I realized I wasn't going to be 20-anything anymore.  No, this is just a little reflection as the clock keeps on tickin'.

I don't know how many teenagers/twentysomethings read this, but I'll throw this out there just in case. Getting older is nothing to be afraid of. When I was younger, getting old scared the hell out of me. I hated the thought. Wanted no part of it, thankyouverymuch. Obviously, I wasn't so against it as to not continue aging, but I wasn't looking forward to it at all. Turns out, its not so bad. However, there are a few things to keep in mind as you travel onward through life's journey.

Take out a sheet of paper and write down everything that annoys the piss out of you about old people. I'm not talking about the stuff that can't be helped, I'm talking about habits, moods, opinions, attitudes. Write an actual letter to yourself about how you hope to act, about your current political thoughts and feelings and WHY they are important to you. Tell yourself what kind of old person you want to be. Fold it up, put it someplace safe. Keep it. Read it once in a while. Remind yourself of who you want to be. Sounds dumb, but it's real easy to become conservative, resentful of change and yes, scared of young people as you get further down the road. I lost mine in one of my moves. Do a better job of keeping track of yours than I did.

Technology will start leaving you behind at some point. Deal with it. You will pause when one day you catch yourself saying something like "When I was your age, we had to actually TYPE our messages on our cellphones." .. to which the kid you are talking to will undoubtedly ask, "What's a cellphone?" - At that moment, congrats, you are behind the curve.

Fashion will start leaving you behind at some point. Somewhere along the line you will find a "look" that works for you and that's pretty much where you will get off the fashion train. People who wear shorts, black socks and sandals were never on the fashion train in the first place so don't worry about turning into a disaster.

All your favorite music will be on a "classic" station someday. Your kids will criticize your favorite songs. You'll browse the CDs at some super-mega store, or be looking at downloads on some music service and realize that you have no idea who most of these singers/bands are.

Now, none of that sounds particularly wonderful, right? Here's the good stuff you get to look forward to.

At 35, you're officially old enough to run for President of the US. After that? Age-wise, there's nothing you can't do, except collect social security.

When Steve Martin was a comedian, he said it best. "When you get older, you get prejudiced. Not against race, but against THINGS.  You can just close the door. Someone comes up to you and says 'Hey! Let's go try this NEW THING!' *slam* Sorry, we're closed." I did some stupid shit in the name of fun new things back in the day, now I'm a little more selective. Less abrasions and brushes with death this way.

Probably the best webcomic ever, xkcd got it right with this one: http://xkcd.com/166/ - This guy probably had NO IDEA how right he was. Way more fun than it should be. Do it for the LULZ. Oh that was right? That's ok... it immediately un-cools a saying when old people start using it. 

Wanna really make the young-un's twitch? (not too young, mind you.) Start talking about sex. Make a big deal over it. If they try to cover their ears and drown you out, talk louder. Don't go into gross detail about it, just enough to be cringe-worthy. Let their imaginations run with it. Creeps 'em out every time.

You get more comfortable in your own skin. Oh sure, you want to look good, but the point is that you don't care who sees you in what state of dress anymore. Whatever. Don't like me running around the house in my boxers? Go away. My house, my rules. I used to be pretty uptight about being shirtless in public, etc. Now I just go with it. Life's too short to worry about what others think. Ok, I still put on pants when I answer the door. What a hypocrite.

If you get carded somewhere, it's a compliment. Ok, it's probably just store policy, but you're still more than happy to pull out that ID.

You get to see and play with all the cool, new shit. Sure I loved my high school years, but then a home computer was a Commodore Vic-20. The Atari 2600 was THE gaming system to have. Internet? Yeah, sorta. More likely if you were in college. I took a Basic programming class in high school using a green-screen dumb terminal attached to the school's slow-ass mainframe. Handheld games sucked. Cell phones were suitcase-sized and mounted in your car. The handset had a cord. You had to be rich to have one. (I didn't) Stuff in general is soooo much cooler today. Twenty years from now, you'll say something similar.

No matter how old you are or how old you feel, someone older will happily call you an asshole and say something like "I wish I were still your age!" Surprisingly, that helps.

And finally...

Your clothes will come back in style. So will those looks that you were glad to see go away. You'll wonder what the hell those kids are thinking, but it will provide a great source for humor. Run with it.

So yeah... 44 coming in about a week. I'll raise my glass and make a toast to all my friends and family that couldn't make the trip with me, then just keep on keepin' on. Hopefully, there's still a long way to go. Like Jimmy Buffett said "I'm growing older, but not up."

Saturday, October 17, 2009

When you least expect it...

Sometimes things happen for a reason, I guess.

     Yesterday, I looked at a calendar and had a realization. That this morning was going to be 15 years since my father passed away. I cannot believe for  a moment that it has been 15 years already. It hit me hard, it always does. Every year at this time, I suffer selective amnesia and wonder why I'm suddenly feeling moody and irritable. Sad and kinda depressed. Then I look at a calendar and check the date. Yep. Shit.
     It was 15 years ago this morning that I walked into my father's hospital room, to find him alone, mouth agape and stone-dead. We had gotten the call from the hospital that he had taken a turn and that we should get there as soon as possible. We weren't fast enough.

I love my dad and I still think about him almost every day. This time of year is usually pretty lonely, miserable and sad for me.

    Something happened yesterday that really helped pull me out of my annual funk. Funny thing is, it happened on Twitter... the very service I was bitching about in my last post. Yesterday, there was a social media fundraiser for cancer research. If you saw people tweeting, blogging and FaceBooking about #beatcancer, that's what it was all about. Every mention of #beatcancer netted another penny donation. It was a 24-hour online love-in to help one another and those that we care about. Loripop put it much more eloquently than I ever could, so I'll let you go read her account of events. Go ahead, I'll wait.

.... ok, long enough.

     It was amazing. The whole atmosphere of that thing was completely opposite of everything I had bitched about here the other day. I felt good, I had fun and hopefully, I helped some people who really need it. When it ended this morning at 9:00 am, I was tired (not as tired as Lori mind you, but tired nonetheless.) but I felt good.

Thing is, I'm still feeling good. Cancer didn't take my dad, it was a heart attack and misdiagnosis that took him from us, but knowing my dad and the kind of person he was, I'm sure he felt better too. That instead of sitting around in a bitter funk, I used the time to help someone else, even by doing something simple like tweeting the night away, brought him some peace. I know it did me.

Today, that good feeling from this morning is still with me. I spent the day celebrating my dad's life, not mourning his death. I think that phase is finally over. I guess #beatcancer helped me too.

Thanks to all who participated, it really was a special time.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Social Media Gone Bad. #balloonboy

    I'm really doing this one off the cuff here, so please bear with me. I feel a need to rant.

    I had just started using Twitter when the whole "election" controversy sparked up in Iran. Thousands of folks showed up, made their avatars green in one way or another and helped spread information to each other. I witnessed all kinds of support being offered in any way possible. It was amazing.
    And today it is repulsive and vile. Earlier today, a 6 year old boy by the name of Falcon Henne reportedly climbed into a basket (meant for batteries and equipment) on his family's experimental Mylar weather balloon. (They are storm-chasers) The balloon became untethered and it took off. Helicopters eventually caught up with the balloon and tracked it for 2 hours until it finally came down in a farmers field. What they didn’t know was that the basket was missing and the boy was not inside the compartment that was present on the balloon. They are now starting a search along the flight path. (presumably from before the helicopters caught up to it, since none of them recorded anything other than what came down in the field, there was no other basket attached.)
    My heart goes out to this family. Young boys are always getting into stuff they shouldn’t and I see this as nothing other than a horrible accident. As of this writing, there is no word as to his location or condition, but I’m hoping for the best while expecting the worst.
    I’m also hoping the family isn’t following the #balloonboy hash tag on Twitter. Sure there is an outpouring of support and concern, but it is being drowned out by insensitive bastards that see this as a golden opportunity to crack lame jokes, spam for videos… someone has reportedly already designed and is trying to sell t-shirts. This is a 6 year old CHILD, people. A 6 year old child who undoubtedly was scared out of his mind, cold and, sad to say, most likely dead now after a fall of a couple of thousand feet. (as I said, I don’t know. Nobody does right now.) Shut the hell up with your retweets of a paraphrased Kanye West talking about Amelia Earhart. Seriously. Grow up. One day you will have children of your own and realize that shit like this just isn’t funny.

/Rant.

Thanks for reading/following. The next one will be more entertaining, I promise.


UPDATE:

It appears that 6 year old Falcon Henne was not in the balloon after all and has been found at home, hiding in a box in the attic of their garage.

I'm so glad to hear that.

Now it's time for the professional talking heads to beat this story to death. Changing channels to the cartoon network.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The Social Web We Weave

Two in one day? Yikes. I must be feeling better.

Back in the day when "social web" meant "MySpace" I avoided it like the plague. I've gone to school, got a degree in web design and e-commerce (just in time for the bubble to burst) and MySpace was the anti-thesis of any kind of coherent web design. Craptastic backgrounds, annoying animations, unreadable text, pages that didn't scale so you had to side-scroll because of some big-ass image the user posted. Don't get me started on the music that would start blasting. (thanks for sharing, where's the pause button?) MySpace was just horrible on all counts.
Others followed. Classmates.com, Facebook, Twitter.... Suddenly, "The Social Web" was really taking off and everybody was doing it. I begrudgingly started to dip my toes in, mainly because I was searching for some old high school friends. The ones I didn't find on MySpace (gag) found me on Facebook. I'm still not real big on either of those sites, but I pop in from time to time just to keep in touch.
Twitter, on the other hand, has me hooked. It's not just Twitter, its all the mash-ups that go with it. twitpic.com, 12seconds.tv, blip.fm - they all help complete the experience. Twitter by itself is kind of an exercise in patience. First off, there's the spam. You get followers that want to tell you how to get whiter teeth. You get followers that want to help you get laid in your own home town. You get followers that want to send you to their "naughty" pics. Then you get followers that want to tell you how you can make money on Twitter by being a spammer. (Tip number one, present yourself as a female and include a picture of a cute girl. no kidding.) Twitter by itself tends to turn into a pissing contest as to who has the most "followers." People will follow you at random, thinking that you will return the favor and help boost their count. I don't auto-follow anybody. First, I make sure you're not a spam-bot of some sort. Then I check your tweet history. Some people have nothing better to do than tweet every 2 minutes. Sorry, but if I log into Twitter and I see nothing but 3 pages of YOUR tweets, I'm unfollowing you just as fast as I can get to that button. If you're doing nothing but tweeting links to stories from digg.com or fark.com, I already have those sites open, so goodbye. If you have nothing but your own agenda in mind and won't take the time to reply to a message I sent to you, then we're done.
Of course there is a lot of intolerance out there too. Recently, I had been following (and had been followed by) a woman and her brother. I never really knew the brother very well, but, I'll call her "Blondie" and I talked quite often. It wasn't anything other than innocent chat between a couple of people that had some things in common. Then one day I dared to make a tweet that exposed my more-centrist-than-liberal Democratic viewpoint. The brother tweeted me and told me that I was a "FUCKING MORON!" and had unfollowed me within an hour. About a week or so later, I realized that "Blondie" wasn't replying to me at all... I asked her what was up and she eventually got around to telling me that her husband didn't want her messaging other men, that "she is married." Well duh. I knew that already and as I said earlier, our conversations were nothing but innocent. I figured she (as a full-on right-wing, red-state, Glen Beck following) Republican didn't want to associate with me anymore. That had to be it because her husband's wishes sure weren't keeping her from talking with the other men who were following her. Whatever. Life's too short. I waved goodbye in a tweet and pulled the plug.

But then, there are some good people that come along. Recently, I met someone named loripop326 on blip.fm. She's refreshing to say the least. Someone else who believes that Twitter is a place to play and actually interact with other people. I started reading her blog (shesawake.blogspot.com) and others that she follows, and that got my writing bug started again. She's fun, she's honest, she's not judgmental. Ok, she's judgmental but she's fun and honest about it. Through her, I am starting to meet other people who want to have fun and actually socialize on Twitter. I've only got about 60 followers on Twitter and most of them are strictly informational. Others are just part of the constant, random stream of consciousness that is Twitter. Because of her, I have actually started to make friends on Twitter, (hi drdon911) and started losing some of the cynicism that was creeping up about the service. For that, Lori is teh awesome. (Even though she's Canadian. LOL) Thank you Lori.

Now if I could just get a couple more followers here. LOL

Maytag Repair Man Has Nothing on Me!

Ummm. except it wasn't a Maytag appliance. Nor was it a washer or dryer. Other than that, I'm the man.

Ok, so last night I thought it would be a good idea to bake up a quick pan of brownies. There were only two problems with that:

1) There was nothing quick about it.
2) It wasn't a stellar idea.

ok, three problems.

3) They wound up costing me $47.50

They actually turned out to be not bad - a little underdone, or "extra fudgy" as I like to call 'em.

So here's how it went. I already had the batter mixed and poured into the pan and was waiting for the oven to heat up. I waited. I waited some more. Why isn't this thing beeping to let me know it's hot yet? Ok, sometimes I get a little impatient waiting for the oven so I left the kitchen for a little bit. An HOUR later I checked the oven and it had crept up to about 275 of the required 375 degrees. That let me know that we did indeed have a problem, Houston. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

I threw the pan in the oven anyway and hoped for the best. It took about another hour and fifteen minutes, but I finally had my "extra fudgy" brownies.

Today I marched into the kitchen, tools in hand, ready to take on the not-so Hotpoint range. After about 15 minutes I had it narrowed down to two possible culprits. The control unit (retails for anywhere between $130-$200) and the heating element. (Retails for about $45) I called a local appliance parts store and talked to one of the guys there. (Dey Appliance Parts in Saint Paul) I got directions and made my way out there with the element.

Anyone who knows me knows my luck always trends towards the greater of two evils when it comes to stuff like this. I almost never get off cheap. Thus, I was actually talking to the heating element all the way to the store... "You better not work, you S.O.B." and "Come on, just be bad." were the most common.

I got there, he tested the part and whaddia know about that? It WAS bad. Turns out the little heat I was getting from the oven was coming from the broiler element, which "assists" in keeping the heat even. I was never so happy to spend $45 on a part for anything. It was all I could do to keep from doing a little happy dance right there at the counter.

I came home, put the whole thing back together, plugged it in, didn't die, and tested it out. It lives! It LIIIIIIIIVVVVEEESSS!

I think I'll make a pan of regular brownies now.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Observations from being sick.

Monday, I woke up with that feeling. You know the one... the start of what will be a cold that you are certain has no other purpose other than to kill you. Death by mucous. Oh yeah, baby... we're talking hardcore here. Luckily, this isn't the H1N1 plague that has everyone in a tizzy, it's just a plain-jane cold. I did the flu earlier this year, that was fun too.
So yeah, after spending a couple days/nights in a mucous and cold medicine-induced fog, I've come up with a few things that I feel need to be said.

  • I will never forgive them for neutering NyQuill just so they can keep it on the shelves. When you took the pseudoephedrine out, the drug addicts won! NyQuil blows now, the drug addicts found a way to make meth in smaller batches (with less PE) and I'm still looking for a good replacement. Thanks for nothing.
  • God Bless Proctor & Gamble for making Puffs tissues infused with Vicks VapoRub. Pure genius.
  • Someone needs to make facial tissues for MEN. Make 'em big. Make 'em strong, yet soft. Add some lotion to it so our manly noses don't get all red. (P&G if you're listening, Vicks would work too.) Put 'em on a paper towel roll. Put a guy like Brawny on the package. Us guys who use 2-3 tissues at a time will buy them. In the meantime, I'll keep using my Puffs and wait patiently for my check. Million dollar idea here, I better get a cut.
Ok, so maybe they didn't need to be said, oh well. Too late now.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Introduction.

Hello and thanks for stopping by. Consider this your welcome warning because I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with this blog or how long I will be doing it. Tried blogging before but realized that spilling my guts all over the internet for everyone to see wasn't exactly my cuppa tea. Still isn't, but since my last attempt, I've actually gotten on a couple of social networks and have kept up with them for the most part, so I guess we'll see?

Maybe, if absolutely nothing else comes of this, it will force me to learn how to write in complete sentences again. Damn you, Twitter! 140 chars. whn U he a lot 2 say makes U look like a fking idiot. I no its cool & all, but srsly, 2 have to keep it undr 140 sux smtimes! LOL Every time I am forced to write something like that, I can hear my high school English teacher. No doubt, he would have hated this. Sorry, Mr. McNally.

But then, I suppose I should save my Twitter rant for another post. Yeah, that'll work. LOL ROFL

If you want to read a blog by someone who is actually good at blogging, be sure to check out http://shesawake.blogspot.com/ - I hope to be as interesting someday.

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon.