Month: August 2008

Happy Bird-day

Yesterday was Donna’s birthday, but today was our bird day.

While I snapped a photo of the Pineville, SC Post Office I noticed a large flock (a colony) of egrets in the background. I couldn’t help myself, so I walked around back hoping to snag a photo of the lot of them taking off as they saw me. And I got kind of lucky, but I don’t think National Geographic magazine will be knocking on my door with a job offer.

Earlier I didn’t have the camera at the ready because I was driving and missed a similar fly off. This one wasn’t a flock of egrets though. We could see a set of large flapping wings a little ways down the road off in the grass and knew exactly what it was, a turkey vulture. Not much is scarier when you are driving a bitty convertible with the top down than a bird with a 6 foot wing span that has trouble getting to altitude. So I slowed down to let the bird get airborne, and when he did, he took his friends with him. There must have been 2 dozen of them hidden it the tall grass. I had to slow to nearly a stop to let them clear out of my way and we still chased two of them down the road for about a eighth of a mile before they found a spot to veer off.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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Poster Boy For Wearing Pants

Looks like measles, but it’s not. Memo to self — always wear long pants, not shorts, when using a string trimmer to edge your lawn. The other leg doesn’t look quite as bad because it was a little farther away from the action…

Started down, went up, still up.
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Pot Calling the Kettle Black

I don’t read People magazine or watch Entertainment Tonight, so I don’t know what the root of all this is. Neither am I sure if this particular story from this morning’s newspaper is being reported with breathless excitement or stunned amusement because I didn’t read it.

Headline:
Lindsay Lohan lashes out at father on blog.

Pull quote:
“If you have something to say to me, say it to my face — that’s what I have believed my whole life — don’t be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world.”

WTF? Do you think Lindsay told that to dear ol’ dad before posting it on her blog?

1,000,000 Microseconds

I use AutoCAD at work and ever since they upgraded me to version 2007 a couple of months ago I routinely have to attempt starting it a half dozen times before it will load. I will invariably report that it can’t find a license sever. I hit ‘Cancel’ and instead of just shutting off it will pop up a ‘Warning’ box that informs me I’m not authorized to use that application. I have to hit an ‘OK’ button to clear the screen allowing me another attempt. I am not the only one either, every AutoCAD user has the same issue.

Turns out our licensing server resides not on a box in our computer room, but in one at our company HQ, 700 miles away in New Jersey, so AutoCAD wasn’t getting a response in a timely manner. To fix the problem and environment variable had to be added to everyone’s PC — FLEXLM_TIMEOUT=1000000.

I know the speed of light is fast, but apparently on our network it can’t routinely make a 1400 mile round trip in under a second.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
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Watch Me If You Want To Live

T3: Rise of the Machines is on FX and I’m watching it. Even though #3 was the weakest of the series so far, I can’t help myself it is just one of those movies that no matter where I come into it I have to stay and finish it. (I think somewhere here on the blog I came up with a name for these kind of movies, but seem to find it right now.)

I’m stoked because they are making #4 right now for release in May of 2009. I hope it turns out good in spite of all the naysayers who think it will suck just based of casting and leaked plot lines. I’m sure I will like it no matter what, after all, I even enjoyed Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show last season on FOX. Which by the way, the second season of starts on Monday, September 8th.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
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Can’t Really Blog Right Now

The FRS are on the tube playing the Evil Empire, so I can’t pay attention enough to write a coherent post (whether anything I write here is coherent is open for interpretation), so I am going to pretend I have a Twitter account and recap the last 7 posts in twitterese.

Even though I know it is home in the garage, I can’t help thinking, “Dude, where’s my car?” several times today. – Wednesday, August 20th

To get ready for the upcoming season five of Lost, I think I’m going to watch the first four Memento Style, AKA, in reverse order. – Thursday, August 21st

Cancer Sucks! – Friday, August 22nd

Dick Weber I’m not, as I miss a 300 game by 8 strikes. – Saturday, August 23rd

From certain angles, Donna’s gynecologist looks remarkably like Emily Deschanel. – Sunday, August 24th

“In the navy, come on, protect the motherland. In the navy, come on and join your fellow man.” Chairman Mao? Nope, Village People. – Monday, August 25th

Oreo Cakesters are the greatest invention since, well, Oreos. – Tuesday, August 26th

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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Jackpot!

Every day I get a snack for morning break, traditionally it is 4 or 5 cookies (Nutterbutters, Oreos,etc.), but every once in a while I will push the envelope. This is one of those times, this week I have Nilla Caksters, and here is why:

I wasn’t interested in Oreo Cakesters after the first commercial I saw, something to do with a boarding school lunch table and a rumor has it style wordplay. But when I first saw that little kid looking in his lunch box and shouting “Jackpot!” I was intrigued. The Nilla Cakesters are surprisingly pretty good. I have even tried the Oreo version and they are not that bad either. They will probably both get added into the normal snack rotation.

While searching for the Nilla Cakester commercial I found a post on a SFGate.com blog for parents of babies and toddlers call Poop about kids providing catchphrases for families with their malapropisms. The commercial is mentioned in one of the comments. If you have the time, give the post and the plethora of comments a read, very amusing. My favorite is “Holy Trap!” which is not funny at all until get the setup and the phrase uttered right after it.

We also use the phrase “holy trap!” because one year our youngest looked in his trick or treat bag and proclaimed, “Holy trap! There’s tons and tons of tandy torn!”

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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