The Philadelphia Zoo

We went to the Philadelphia Zoo this past Saturday. The gorillas weren't gettin' it on this time, but the Galapagos Tortoises were! I don't think that I've ever seen 500 pound tortoises gettin' puddin'. OK, I never seen any tortoises or turtles party before. I'd like to say that it was impressive, but there wasn't much going on in the movement department (...sounds like my wedding night!). It looked like some vandals pranked two statues...funny, but not exciting. So, I checked out the hippos, the okapi, and the elephants. I looked back and he was still inspecting her shell. I guess if you live for 150 years, what's the rush?

Anyway. The crowd was pretty excited to see this event. And that's when I overheard this gem:

"Daddy? What are they doing?"
"They're going to the bathroom. Come on, let's look at the hippos."

Good job jackass. Sex doesn't exist.

When we were looking at the ring-tailed lemurs, a woman walked up and asked if they were raccoons. I must be a magnet for stupid.

In the how-the-fuck-do-you-wipe-your-ass department: We saw a woman with six-inch fingers nails. They looked just like they do in the Guinness Book of World Records, curled, brownish-yellow, and disgusting.

9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Sweet Tea sent me this interesting link. If you like conspiracy theories, you'll love this. Apparently whatever crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 wasn't a plane, and the FBI isn't talking about it.

Tippy Toes

I was at the pool the other day with the kids. I don't understand why they do this. Each of my children feel the need to report the water depth relative to their own height. They all use the same terminology and they assume that I know what they are talking about, which of course I do. Whenever we move to different location in the pool I'm inundated with reports on the water depth:

(any child): Dad. This is flat-footed. Did you see that? Ok, this is tippy-toe. See? And finally this is tippy-top-toe.

Their amount of pride is directly related to the amount that their heads are submerged during their demonstrations. Fascinating.

I'm still not connecting with Charlie

me: That'll do pig. That'll do.

Charlie: (confused look)

me: I'm not calling you a pig. It's a literary reference.

Charlie: ...what book is that from?

me (caught in filter):
You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.

me: It's from the movie Babe. At the end of the movie...

Charlie: Was Babe ever a book?

me: No, but someone had to write the screenplay.

Charlie: I figured you'd say something like that.

New Job: 2.2

I played the Destroy All Humans game for the PS2 game last night. It's interesting and kind of funny. You play the role of the alien and it your job to ... err ... destroy all the humans. To progress through the game there are various missions that must be completed. There is also a GTA feel. You can roam around instead of completing the current mission. If you are a distracted kind of person this...Hey let's ride bikes. If you want, you can just run around jukin' people in various ways. There are two weapons so far: The zap-o-matic, and the Anal Probe. I was immediately drawn to the Anal Probe...OK it's the only weapon that I used. Needless to say, I never completed a mission. I just went around...probing people. The Anal Probe is extremely powerful when used properly. I had to some trouble at first. I guess I didn't know where to stick it. It was the first time that I used a weapon like this...I swear! After I got the hang of it, I was probing people so hard that heads exploded. So, I just did that for an hour instead of completing the mission.

I bought myself some candy at Giant the other day. Six candy bars for 2 dollars. God! I can't imagine what it must be like to pay 50 cent for one candy bar!

Forget about ping pong ball cannons, check this out. Oh yeah, that's laser sight on there.

Apple came out with their new iBooks today. I think we are buying one tonight.

So, it's a 'no' on the LAN party? I didn't get any responses. I guess you guys are just afraid...

New Job: week 2

Charlie feels bad about Sailer. Bookmark on Sailer: Yes it's Charlie now. Everyone (all 4 of them) here calls him Charlie. If you think calling someone Charles is awkward, you should try Charlie. Anyway, back to Sailer. Apparently, Charlie (shudder) and Sailer were in middle of some political argument when Sailer got called into Chuck's (one of the owners.) office. Chuck laid-off Sailer and, I guess, Sailer left shortly after that. I think that anyone that is a founding member of an extremist group automatically gets an escort out of the building. Charlie was left feeling bad about the unresolved argument. I get the feeling that this haunts Charlie to this day. Maybe if I give him an inappropriately long hug he'll feel better about it.

We'll it's official. I'm not going to QuakeCon. If anyone (lurker?) would like my reserved spot, let me know by Wednesday. If you are interested in going there is a group of gamers from the Harrisburg area that are renting a RV to go to QuakeCon. If you are looking to save some cash you might want to contact them.

In related news: Charlie wants to sell me his Nvidia 6600GT card for 125.00 USD or 152.00 Canadian. Is anyone (lurker?) interested? Slim Shady, this a video card. People in the gaming community like to improve their...never mind, you're hopeless.

Well, I've applied the perfect amount of smack. When is the next LAN party? I'm so tied of 100.arQon.

Uncle Gary let me drive his backhoe loader tractor. Why am I software developer, when I could be doing that for a living? Oh right, the money...and all those wonderful stock options.

New Job: day 4

Charles isn't here today. Maybe I'll use this opportunity to clean my monitor.

I had an awkward moment yesterday when someone used the word "Mechanicsburg" in a conversation that I was not a part of. I, of course, uncontrollably said "huh!?". They paused their conversation and looked at me, but I solved by problem by never looking away from computer screen, which was smudged with fingerprints. I still got it...

These guys like to play darts (well isn't that a lightning rod).

n : a game in which darts are thrown at a dartboard

It's pretty interesting, they have various types of games that...hey look the grass is growing.

My personal space senses (or my Spidy-Senses as I like to call them) are now set to defcon 1. Charles did the Gettle Chair Hump yesterday. Instead of saying anything, I just bit my lip until it bled. God I'm good. I'm just waiting for him to compulsively jingle six dollars of pocket change.

My son has his last (I'm hoping) Little League All-Star game tonight. Maybe it will be as interesting as the Tuesday night game. After the game had ended (I think that we won), the police were called in to break up a fight between the Shippensburg coaching staff and the umpires.

Friday is "Dress Down Day". I'm so excited that I think I'll play a game of darts.

New Job: day 3

I was getting into some serious coding this morning. Here is how it went.

StringIndexOutOfBounds exception in Huh.java line 5. OK, lets have a look at this file. Where is it? Open a command window.

cd /projects.

Error. Right. Windows.

cd projects
find . -name "Huh.java"

Oops, Windows. Close command window. Open File Explorer. Click on My Computer. Click on Local Disk (C:). Ctrl-F. Type Huh.java and click the "Search Now" button. Searching. Hummm...this may take a while. I know, I'll check my mail! I'll just switch over to Firefox. Hummm...still waiting for Windows to respond...looks like the search is consuming alot of resources. Ah, Firefox is ready. I'll just click the "Check Mail" link. And Firefox has crashed. Oh, but my search is finished. Excellent the file was found. I'll just double click on it. Nothing. Hummm. I'll just double click on it. Nothing. There appears to be an excessive amount of disk activity. Ctrl-Alt-Del and click "Task Manager" button, and click on the CPU field to sort by that. Oh it appears that I'm trying to launch two instances of Oracle JDeveloper. I'll just right click -> End Process. And waiting..."Process is not responding. End now?"...yes. Oh look at that. It's lunch time.

Puppies and kittens.
Puppies and kittens.
Puppies and kittens.

New Job: day 2

I'm settling in at my new job. Here are my observations in no particular order.

I work with a guy named Charles. You don't meet too many Charles these days. Charles likes to touch my monitor. I'm not sure how to approach this topic.

The building spells like body odor in some places.

I got my new cellphone. It's nice. I'm having fun with the VoiceDial feature. BTW, my old cellphone (you know, the one that went through the washing machine) is working again. Apparently it just needed a new battery.

There is a sofa here...ummm...nap time.

The soda is free. No cookies though.

The microwave is small and under-powered. I'll have to compensate for the longer cooking time by starting my lunch a few minutes early.

I'm using a Windows box. Ouch. Websphere Application Developer took 4 minutes to start up. Maybe that is what the sofa is for.

I haven't been called a twit. I'm liking that.

The perfect present

I've started a Christmas list for my wife.

Katie Holmes, welcome to Crazytown

Katie Holmes has lost her mind. We still have time. We can save her.

Soapbox? What soapbox?

This is not a soapbox. I have created this blog to keep in-touch with my friends at my former employer...who shall remain nameless.

So to all of my friends at Payment Technologies (shit...I've gone and done it), this is for you.