Schadenfreude

When I was a kid, between the ages of 10 to 18, I had a bully who conveniently lived three houses down from me.

My mom liked to say, "People like that always cook their own goose."

I never believed her. It's hard for a kid to think that way especially when you're in a headlock.

mom:	“Where is your Halloween candy?”
me:	“Yeah, um, David Fleming stole it.”
mom:	“People like that always cook their own goose.”
me:	“Right, but I still don't have my Halloween candy or my dignity.”
mom:	“Here, take some of your sister's candy. She won't mind.”
mom:	“Where is your new bike?”
me:	“Yeah, um, David Fleming stole it.”
mom:	“People like that always cook their own goose.”
me:	“Right, but I still don't have my bike or my dignity.”
mom:	“Here, use your sister's bike. She won't mind.”

So, you can imagine my glee when I heard the news that a cop shot and killed David Fleming.

"It's my life and I'll do what I want!" -- you certainly did...until the policeman shot you.

Good call, Mom!

The goose is cooked. Cooking time? 36 years.

Car Show Daycare

I was helping my kids' school raise money by parking cars for one of the numerous car shows in our town. This car show, "Corvettes at Carlisle", was one of the bigger ones, drawing about 65,000 visitors.

My shift started at 6:00AM on Saturday. Even though the show didn't officially open until 7:00AM, people arrived early.

A man was parking his truck just as I was starting my shift. At about 8:30AM, his anti-theft alarm starting going off. It was annoying, so we went to the truck to try to figure out how to turn the alarm off. That's when we noticed what had set the alarm off. The man's 8-year-old daughter had opened the door from the inside.

She was asleep when Mr. Responsible left her, so she was a little confused. We babysat her while she eagerly awaited her father's return. About 30 minutes later the man returned to his truck.

The man thought it was OK to leave his 8-year-old daughter alone for 3 hours at an event with 65,000 people.

guy #1: "Hey, we've got our apartment. We ripped up the floors, pipes, wiring, and having everything completely redone."

guy #2: "You're renting, right?"

guy #1: "Yeah."

I don't feel so bad now for letting my kids explore the world of books.

Anonymous Cowards Rejoice!

OK, the doors are open again.

It appears that WordPress has pretty good splog control. So, I've changed my comment settings to:

• Anyone can comment.


• Anyone can register.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up regretting this, but it's worth a try. Right?

Pink

daughter:	“Dad, I made a PowerPoint presentation today.”
(head):	“fuckin' Microsoft.”
me:	“Wow, that's impressive. Did you have any trouble?”
daughter:	“No, not really. OK, I had little trouble Googling for pink.”
me:	“Why was that hard. Didn't you go to google and type 'pink'?”
daughter:	“Yeah, I did, but it only found things about Pink. You know, the artist?”
(head):	“This conversation is going last much longer than it should.”
me:	“OK”
daughter:	“She sings the song, 'Stupid Girls'”
me:	“Yeah, I know.”
daughter (singing):	“Stupid girl, stupid girls, stupid girls...”
(head):	“OMG.”
me:	“Yes. I know the song.”
daughter:	“I think she was married to that motocross guy.”
(head):	“Faster please.”
me:	“Right. Carey Hart. Got it. Where are you going with this?”
daughter:	“Oh, well I wanted to have pink as my background.”
me:	“So, what was the trouble?”
daughter:	“I told you, I only got things about Pink the artist.”
me:	“Right, we've been through this.”
daughter:	“Well, I wanted pink the color.”
me:	“You're kidding right?”
daughter:	“No, for real, I wanted a pink background but it wouldn't let me pick the color, so I thought I would go get a pink picture from the internet.”
me:	“A picture of the color pink.”
daughter:	“Right, but I couldn't find any.”
(head):	“...don't say anything JC, you'll just hurt her feelings...”
me:	“What else did you do today?”

Comcastic

I just want to take a moment and reflect on our wonderful Comcast customer sevice experience.

We had some minor problems with our internet connection. It was mostly during the day, so I didn't really care.

My wife called Comcast customer service and reported the problem on Friday. The next morning (yes, a Saturday) a friendly service technician fixed our problem. And, this is the best part, my wife managed to get $20 off our August bill. I don't know how she does it, maybe she offered to dry hump a few people.

In related news: The dirty laundry was magically washed and folded again.

I'm Back

Hi. I'm back. I'm sorry about that. I had a nasty run-in with a group of Brazilian hackers. Two months, a few defaced web pages, new blogging software, and I'm finally back online. I think I'm going to be more diligent about backups (Skinny, a "backup" is something that is used by system administrators to recover from catastrophic failures such as a disk crash).

The old blogging software I was using had some problems. I've switched to Wordpress. This is what I like about Wordpress so far:

• categories -- I can assign more than one category to a post.


• list management -- You know, that stuff on the right sidebar. Links, blogs, movies, etc.


• cool administrative interface -- You'll see it if you have a user id.


• more secure...I think.


• easier to install/administrate


• better comment/splog filtering

<geek>

I'm having a problem with the RSS feeds. It looks like some of the characters are not encoded properly.  Stay tuned.

2006.08.21, update: If you want an RSS feed, use the link in the sidebar.

</geek>

I'm not sure if I like the new look...so that may be changing.

All the user ids have been migrated, but the passwords will have to be reset. Send me an email to get your new password.