Tuesday, December 21, 2004

 
Best … Christmas … EVAR!

Since I have only recently become married, this makes the first Holiday season with my wife. Not only that, but I have never really had a “significant other” during this time of year. And although I always thought my Holliday’s were a wonderful time of year for me, I had never had anything very different to compare it to.

Going through this Holiday season has been so much better than any previous experience that I am having troubles comparing the 2. I guess it would be like only ever having eaten Chips A’Hoy cookies for your whole life, and then suddenly being offered fresh from the oven Chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and a plethora of other cookies.

Life is so much better when you have someone special to share it with.

posted by Jason 2:47 PM |

Monday, November 15, 2004

 
Left Foot first?

Do you have a set habitual way to do certain things? You know there are better ways, but you still do it the same way you always have because maybe you think it is better, or you just are to lazy to change? Well I have a lot of those things. Being married, I am realizing how many things I have always done my way without questioning it. A couple relevant examples:

I always bought X brand sliced bread. Why? I have no idea, but if you asked me to pick a different type, I would probably stare at you with the same blank look I gave my wife a few weeks ago when she suggested a change. I think the exact thought running through my head as a response was “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………” (Although it was probably longer than that.)

If I need something from the grocery store I will go get it. That may mean I make 3 to 7 trips to the store in a week, but also means I don’t have to plan ahead.

So yesterday I needed something to make dinner, and I told my wife I was going to go get it from the store. She said well we have to get a bunch of other stuff too, so do you just want to go get it all right now. Well I had already planned on going just to get the 1 thing I needed, so I stuck to my plan. Off I went to get my 1 thing I needed for dinner.

So when I got home with my 1 thing, in a record amount of time, I was pretty happy with my decision to have gone, despite my wife’s suggestion that we get other stuff too. Well that was short lived. I had forgotten a different ingredient that was needed for my dinner. Had I taken my wife’s advice and looked through everything and made a list and gone to get everything at once, I would have had everything I needed, but no, I had to stick to my old habit, and now was faced with the need to go to the store again, within 15 minutes.

When someone comes up to you and says that there was a better way of doing something it is always easy to pass that off as hindsight and continue on your merry way, but when the realization slaps you in the face within 3 minutes of making that choice it is hard to ignore.

So what other things do I do in habit that I should consider alternatives to? . . . . . . . I always put my right shoe on first; I wonder what the advantages to the “left first” school of thought would be?

posted by Jason 3:29 PM |

Monday, November 08, 2004

 
Designated Existence

In a recent trip to the grocery store, I had a very interesting experience that got me thinking. First I went to purchase some things and on my way out to the car, I got a call from my wife, and she needed me to go back in and pick up some soup that she needed to prepare dinner for the night. So I turned around and went back in to get the soup. $.98 for my entire purchase.

Picture this, I am standing in the express lane with A can of soup, and a dollar (In Oregon we have no sales tax). The nice lady behind the register takes my can of soup, and scans it. Then sets it on the counter behind her, and as far away from me as she can get it. Then she takes my dollar.

Now I hate pennies, and although that is a discussion for another time, I would have left the 2 pennies of change had I had the opportunity.

But she had set my soup so far away that I couldn’t really get to it in the position I was at, so I ended up getting my change. I said thank you and slid down the isle to better reach my soup, now I was kind of annoyed that the lady didn’t just hand my 1 can of soup back to me right away, but I was willing to let that slide with no further thought. Until her next move.

As far as I can tell, she was getting ready to help the next person in line, so she wanted to make sure that she had enough space on the counter behind her that she could stack the next person’s products in a clean space. Apparently I hadn’t moved quite fast enough removing my soup from her counter (Which I think was literally 3 seconds) that she felt it was in the way. So she moved it. I was already reaching for it, and she picked it up, and moved it about 5 feet down the counter and again as far from my side of the isle as she could get it, all without even so much as looking at me. So I slid down the isle and giving her an annoyed look (which she didn’t see) I picked up my 1 can of soup and left.

I know this story has gotten a little long and the payoff so far hasn’t really been worth it, but this whole issue got me thinking a little. Not so much about how rude the lady was for moving my soup, but more for how I had my little defined time of existence in her world as it related to her job. As soon as that time was over, I was erased from that world, no-longer to be paid attention to, or given extra brain cycles of consideration for. Not that I hold this against her personally, but more of a direction we as a whole of society are moving.

It wasn’t that she was trying to be rude to me, but more the fact that I no longer existed in her world of stimuli. On the other hand my soup did exist in the fact that it was in her way and preventing her from continuing on with her defined tasks. So she moved it, no-longer associating the soup to the purchaser, but dealing with the soup as a single point of focus.

Has the interaction of people deteriorated to the point of only interacting with people when they directly interfere with our pre-defined world of existence? Or has this always been the case and my perception has changed due to a change in lifestyle and/or age?

Have I become one of those old people that thinks of the “Glory Days” of my youth where everything was utopian, and today’s state of affairs is terrible, but in reality nothing has really changed but my mental projection of the world in which I reside?

posted by Jason 2:01 PM |

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

 
Hiatus over

Sorry to all of you who have been regularly visiting to see if I have made updates. My life became a little hectic for a while with getting married and all that sort of stuff. I almost decided to bag the whole blog thing a few times during my away time, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to continue to have a grave site on the web that was mine.

But now my life has calmed a bit and I would like to get back to writing here daily. I think doing so perked me up a bit, and I hope the comments make you laugh a few times too.

So welcome back to the site for all those still sticking around, I hope you enjoy the revised me (now that I am married, my view on things may have changed a bit.)

posted by Jason 3:06 PM |

Friday, August 20, 2004

 

What the?!?!?

So I am browsing around CNN.com today and there are banner ads on the page. This is normal. I have seen all kinds of ads of all different shapes sizes and content. But most of the times these things are recognizable as something. I have seen boxing kangaroos, flying saucers, Trees, falling Money, and all sorts of other things. But this one I am not so sure about:



It was for mortgage rates, and these apples with “rates” on them supposedly “falling” from the top of the picture, and just before they would fall this large yellow thing would convulse and gyrate until all the “rates” had fallen.

Is it a sex toy? Maybe a large deformed yellow apple tree? I think (and this is really a stretch) that they where going for a banana wearing a fruit hat like the old commercials with the chakita (sp?) banana woman, and the apples are falling from her hat, but is that really what you see? What marketing genius came up with this gyrating sexually suggestive yellow blob wearing a skirt? Whoever it was should be placed in that skirt, and stuck in an internet video like the Star Wars kid!

posted by Jason 11:53 AM |

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

 
Green Spree

Ok so Taco Bell is running this new promotion for Mountain Dew, and they have an “Exclusive” flavor of Mt Dew to serve to us regular Taco Bell goers. Well me being an avid Dew drinker (Everyday) I thought I would give this latest flavor a try. I have tried the other Dew flavors and here is my Rundown assuming Regular Mt Dew is Grade A:

Code Red – Interesting, but don’t really like. Tastes like they added Fruit Punch to Mt Dew and then upped the Caffeine to make up for the difference. Overall Grade C

Live Wire – I actually really like this flavor of Dew. It reminds me of carbonated Tang. It makes for a good soda to drink right out of Bed. (If your into that sort of thing.) Overall Grade B+

New Flavor “Baja Blast” – I don’t like this one. It tasted like a liquid Green Spree Candy. You know those little round candies sold in rolls as “Sweet and Tangy” or something like that. Well this tastes just like they meant to make a green one but it never solidified. Way too over powering for a soda, and way too sweet. Overall Grade D

Along this topic though, Does Pepsi really gain any customers by offering these odd flavor versions of their Mt Dew Line? Of all the people I know only those that drink Dew on a regular basis ever really even try the new flavors. And in my mind there isn’t really a competitor with similar flavors out there that they might be trying to lure, except for maybe Orange Crush Soda drinkers, but really how many of those people are out there?

posted by Jason 4:05 PM |

Thursday, July 29, 2004

 
Las Vegas or Bust!

Tonight I leave for a drive to Las Vegas.  I am leaving at 10:00 at night and embarking on a 12 hour drive.  I am leaving late at night, so that I can drive while that Blazing Hot sun is on the other side of the planet.  It has regularly been 99 degrees or above around here, and I don’t really want to drive in that through the Nevada desert.

I am going on the drive with my fiancé and I hope we still love each other by the time we get back.  This will be the first 12 hour drive with just the 2 of us we have ever done, although I am not sure how many 12 hour drives are required to pass the prerequisites to getting married.  Hopefully it is only one.

Of course to stay awake while driving we have all kinds of caffeinated beverages, so I am pretty sure we will be stopping roughly every 50’ to go pee.  So our 12 hour trip will be 12 hours of actual driving, separated by 15 hours of potty breaks.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that it will be Guinevere requiring all those stops, but between us both I think there will be quite a few.

posted by Jason 1:15 PM |

Monday, July 26, 2004

 
Stir that Bees Nest
 
Have you ever had the desire to throw a rock at a Bees Hive and run away just to watch the confused bees swarm around?  Or is that just me?

Anyway I inadvertently did a similar thing in my company today, and when looked at from the outside it appears as though I ran into the sales department stirred up all kinds of controversy and then ran away laughing.

That isn’t exactly what happened and I had fully intended from the start to see the thing through but, ok, I will admit that maybe I shouldn’t have started laughing as I was walking away from the issue.  That incident aside though, I think I was justified in my intent, I was just not prepared for the hailstorm of emotion that I was about to stir up.  And once it got to that point I couldn’t come up with a better option than retreat, well at least not a better option that wouldn’t send me to jail.

Now I am silently waiting for the department to collectively calm down, and then I might build up the courage to go attempt to get my answer from them.  Of course it might just be like throwing pebbles at an already angry animal.

posted by Jason 2:44 PM |

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

 
The Destruction has Begun

So I haven’t updated in a little while. Well my life has been a little busy and I didn’t have the time, but an interesting situation occurred a week or so ago that I wanted to post.

So I am engaged to this beautiful and kind woman, and she is so kind that she allowed me to borrow her car while mine was in the shop getting new brakes put on. Wasn’t that nice of her? I thought it was so nice that I figured I would repay the kindness by breaking her engine. That’s right the morning I drove her car to work I seized the engine! Locked it up tight, and it just wouldn’t start again. After towing the car all over town (a different story) we finally are having the engine replaced completely, and she still doesn’t have her car back.

So for borrowing her car for 1 day, I have kept it from her for more than a week, and cost her a lot of money. Don’t I feel like a Jack Ass!

posted by Jason 4:16 PM |

Monday, May 24, 2004

 
King of the house

Guinevere and I decided it was time to make another attempt at getting her cat, and my dog to get along. We thought this would be a better time to have them introduced then just after we get married. The last time they met the house was hit by an indiscriminant tornado, lives were lost and casualties were high. A TV was almost lost as well.

So we tried to be a little more studious in the attempt this time, and we took the cat to my house, and then let the 70 Lb dog in. There was some hissing and some growling sound that I never would have guessed was coming from the cat, but other than verbal interactions from the cat, the meeting went decently to start with.

After a couple of hours the cat started to warm up to the house and started exploring the immediate room, then stopped under the coffee table. The dog came in on one of his regular premises patrols and found the cat on the floor. This more than bothered him since the cat was once again making all kinds of noises although not running. The dog then spent the rest of the night trying to hide from the cat, by climbing on every house guest he could find, and then peering over them at the cat.

The confidence I have in my dog to protect the house on a scale of 1 to 10 has gone in to the negatives. A 70 lb dog has become the submissive animal to a 7 lb cat with no claws.

Way to protect your master there buddy!

posted by Jason 3:13 PM |

Thursday, May 20, 2004

 
What did I just do?

I just sent a link to my fiancé that points to this page. I wasn’t sure if I was going to tell her about this or not, and now that I have told her, I am somewhat worried about what she might learn about me.

I made a post to an Onion article a while aback about your mom finding out about your blog, and at the time I wasn’t concerned about that, well I am still not concerned about it, but I hope she enjoys it, and we will see what she has to say about what she reads. Especially since she didn’t know what a weblog was last night when I told her about it.

Since I made this post before she clicked my link, I would like to say Welcom to my fiancé, and I hope you enjoy reading the random things that cross my mind. Henceforth in this blog, you will be refered by name as Guinevere.
posted by Jason 11:45 AM |

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

 
Birthday

I turned a year older yesterday.

Well actually I guess it was 2 days ago, see that is the first thing to go when you get older. . . . . Wait what was I talking about.....

Anyway, it was a good birthday, I got some camping stuff and a back scratcher, and declined on a loan, and a rabies shot and tested for worms, no wait the last two were actually my dog.

So I took the day off for my birthday and spent the entire day running errands, which made it not so great, but my lovely fiancé took me to dinner for a nice big steak, which pretty much made up for the earlier part of the day.

So in conclusion stay in school.

Wait that wasn’t my point.....

posted by Jason 4:52 PM |

Friday, May 14, 2004

 
Motivational Drain

This phenomenon has been a major inconvenience for me for the last few weeks. Some days I am highly productive in the morning, and then after lunch not so much, and then others I can’t get anything done all day. Take today for instance, I was highly productive when I got in, and was working well. Got lots of things done. Then while I was away at lunch, some motivation stealing elves or something-or-other snuck into my office and stole all of my motivation, so now I can’t seem to get anything done.

Someone needs to let me know where this goes, but my guess is it is the same place single socks go in the dryer, so I will never know. My currently working theory is that it goes to some parallel dimension where there is an entire race that converts stolen motivation into yawns and then passes them back to our dimension through some highly sophisticated random picking process.

posted by Jason 2:40 PM |

Thursday, May 13, 2004

 
Where did Grade School Go?

So I had a problem and I needed all of the computer users in the company to run through 3 simple steps in order to fix the problem. Now I could have run around to each computer individually, or send out the instructions for each person to follow themselves. I erroneously chose the later process.

Flashback with me now to about 4th or 5th grade when you went through the “Following Instructions” portion of Grade School. I am pretty sure all grade schools have this exact exercise that they teach their students. The creator of this exercise is now a millionaire no doubt, but he is probably rolling over in his grave at where this teaching has gone. The exercise is the one where there are 20 different instructions on the page a truncated version follows:

1. Please read all instructions and then go back and follow them step by step.
2. Write your name at the top of this page.
3. Poke three holes in the paper
4. Tear off the top-left corner of the page.
5. Light the paper on fire while hollering at the top of your lungs
.
.
.
20. Follow only instructions 1 and 2 on this page, and ignore all the rest.

And you only pass the exercise if you only complete the first 2 instructions. I am sure that you have done this same thing at some point in your life. Well I think everyone needs to go back through that exercise at least 1 to 2 times a year.

So anyway back to my problem, I tested different ways of writing these instructions, and sent them to 5 different people Of the 5, 1 person read the first instruction, and made it no further, due to the first instruction telling them to close the program that was displaying the instructions. So I changed my instructions, and tactics, and 3 different people followed the very last instruction before even reading the instructions. The 5th person read the first instruction and followed it but when a question popped up they didn’t know what to do, even though the third step was "Answer all questions asked by clicking ‘Yes’".

So out of 5 different people 0 of them followed 3 easy steps correctly. So I say back to grade school with all of you!

posted by Jason 4:28 PM |

Thursday, May 06, 2004

 
I probably could have answered that better

So my boss is in a meeting all day, and the projector is having a problem, so he fiddled with it for a while, and couldn’t get it to go away. After messing with it for quite a while he gave up and came to me for help. I fixed the problem in less than a minute, in fact I had it fixed before he got back into the meeting. I let him know it was fixed as I was exiting the room and he was coming in, and he asked how I fixed it and here was my reply:

“I like to think it’s just because I am the man!” And walked back to my office.

Now after thinking about this conversation more, I think there might be some smidgen of a possibility that I could have answered that better.

posted by Jason 10:48 AM |

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

 
Successfully driving away potential money

There is a trend picking up steam on the internet that irritates me and should be stopped. I blame marketing geniuses for this trend and we should never follow those peoples ideas. Marketer’s ideas about the internet should be taken seriously on the same level that you would take a mass murderer’s advice on raising a child. It might be good for an uncomfortable laugh or 2 but nothing more than that.

I compare this trend with the top 5 stupidest marketing decisions I have personally been witness to:

Number 5: Warranty Registration Cards
Number 4: Running a preview for Van Helsing prior to The Passion of the Christ
Number 3: Playing a feminine product commercial in the middle of Monday night football
Number 2: The Taco Bell Chihuahua
And Number 1: The removal of Jack from Jack in the Box

Now I know there are other advertising campaigns that may even have been worse, but I can contribute all of the previous 5 directly to marketing decisions made within a company, because someone thought they would make more money be squeezing just a little bit more out of the consumers.

This new trend that is bothering me so much has recently prevented me from reading Dave Barry from the Miami Herald website. The trend is the idea that requiring people to register on your site for free will give you better marketing information without losing your customers so you can still advertise to them. Well this just isn’t the case.

Now I do work in a company with a marketing department and I am in quite a few meetings where these ideas are hatched, and if logical thinking people are not present the marketing department will run with an idea solely off of the concept brought up by someone in their group, without testing it at all. On the other hand if the design department comes up with an improvement committees must be formed, focus groups convened, consumer opinions polled, and God and Satan must be consulted to determine who has the larger of the core market. A recent example within my own company of a runaway marketing idea was the idea that a picture of a giant shark with its teeth replaced by power tools, saying “Sharp Attack” would sell more of our power tool product. No one in the company new about this except for Marketing until the thousands of displays showed up at the dock. Now if a rational person had been present this idea could have easily been killed by asking a few simple questions, but apparently none could be found so the idea went ahead.

Now back to my original beef, consumers no longer want to give out their personal information, especially e-mail address. Back in the Dot Com boon of 2000 so many companies were offering tons of free stuff just to get your marketing information, they turned around and sold that info to hundreds of companies, and then went out of business. Yet all of those poor consumers are still getting Spam by the thousands, junk mail, and enough telemarketing calls that most have unplugged their land lines to stop the onslaught.

The Miami Herald asks for this registration info now with the guise that it will enhance my experience on their site by having directed advertising, news stories, and traffic/weather reports. Well I hate to break it to the Herald but I don’t live in Miami, I don’t care about their weather or their traffic. All I want is to read their news columnist Dave Barry, who is syndicated around the globe. But no, in order to get to it now, I have to give them my name, e-mail address and zip code for now. Soon after marketing at the Herald finds out that thousands of people were willing to give up that information, then they will start asking for street address, and phone number.

Now some of you are saying to yourself, why not just lie about your information then it won’t bother you. Well I used to employ this tactic, but they are getting smarter, now they send you confirmation emails to make sure the address is valid, and they run Zip code checks to make sure you typed a Zip code that is legitimate. Plus why should I have to lie, when what do they get out of it? If they check with their IT department they can get a relatively accurate guess as to what country and even approximately where in that country I am visiting the site from due to the information that Internet Explorer gives out freely. I am going to add any emails from their site to my Spam filter so I am never going to read any of that. And now I have to remember another stupid login / password to another site.

In reality what happened was I went to a different site that reproduces Dave’s column to the web. So now they don’t have me looking at any advertising on their site at all. Now, one could say that I am no longer using up their bandwidth so they win, but if that is the case why do they have the information on the web anyway? They could significantly lower their cost of operating on the web by removing the content they want exclusive to registered users, and only send it to them in their daily newspapers.

In closing, is my email address and zip code worth annoying the crap out of your readers? Cause for now I will go other places to get my Dave Barry.

posted by Jason 4:09 PM |

Monday, April 26, 2004

 
So it turns out we are all babies

So I survived my hike and didn’t get lost, or starve. On the other hand I did freeze my butt off! The whole concept of saving on weight by skimping on the sleeping bag was a very bad idea. And also the man (or woman I don’t care which) that invented the Hammock should be burned at the stake upside down!

We walked through some beautiful countryside, even though some of it was burred pretty badly a few years ago in a large forest fire. The amount of re-growth was amazing. I took lots of pictures with a Digital camera that I borrowed from work. I think I am going to have to go get me one of those here soon. I really like the idea of being able to take as many pictures as I want and then just deleting the ones that didn’t turn out quite right.

Overall I did have fun on the trip, I just need to take a better sleeping bag next time.

posted by Jason 2:46 PM |

Thursday, April 22, 2004

 
Lost and Dead

This may be were I am at come Monday.

I have made plans with some friends of mine to go on a hiking/camping trip this weekend. Now I wouldn’t go if I really thought I would get killed, but the friends I am going with are not known for their ability to plan. In fact I have heard stories from some of them relating to trips like this gone bad in their past, including no food, no water, or no place to sleep except in a puddle next to the dog. Now these are three separate occasions not just a single bad trip. So my confidence is not really high that this is going to be one of the most wonderful trips ever, but I should come out with some good stories nonetheless.

I have packed most of my gear I think I will need, and I am sure there will be other stuff I will wish I had brought, but I do have to carry all this stuff for 3 days while hiking, so I am trying to go light.

I also am well aware that hiking by myself and not getting lost is much easier than hiking with three other people that all have their own ideas on how not to get lost.

Should be fun.

posted by Jason 11:19 AM |

Monday, April 19, 2004

 
Egotistical Pettiness

So I worked all this last weekend doing an upgrade to one of the servers at work. Now I won’t go into detail about this, because that would put you all to sleep, but I will say that I worked very hard to get everything done perfectly, so that there would be no problems this morning. Well that never actually happens and I hadn’t really planned on no problems today. So it came as no surprise when I got a voicemail from my boss explaining that something wasn’t right.

Well I spent most of my morning fixing minor errors and such from the work over the weekend. But there were also larger problems occurring that weren’t related to my work, but nonetheless still something I needed to fix. So as I was working on this, there were a few people that came into my office with minor problems, ranging from not receiving an e-mail through not being able to open excel. Little things like this that an intelligent person would think weren’t life threatening to the company. So I worked on the bigger picture, like no one in the company being able to make long distance phone calls. For an international company this is somewhat important right?

Well I was amazed at how many people thought that their inability to receive an e-mail from home was far more important than anything I could have been working on at the time. In fact so much more important that when I told them I could not get to their problem right now because I was working on something else, that they went to my boss and told him that I was refusing to help them. Then they went to the president of the company and told him that the IT department was unwilling to solve their problem!!?!?!

If you need to talk to your wife CALL HER you IDIOT!!!!!


Sorry that may have been a little unnecessary.

posted by Jason 4:15 PM |

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

 
Handing over the finances

Ok, some of you know me, most of you don’t, so here is a quick preview of how I handle my check book.

…

There you have it. I don’t handle my check book. I have gotten almost every bill I pay to accept on-line payments, and almost everywhere I go I use debit. I would never use cash again if fast food places would take debit. I pay bills on-line, debit card groceries, and pay friends via pay-pal. So I actually write 2 check per month. 1 to my city garbage, and 1 to my city water company. Why neither of these companies take on-line payments is beyond me, well neither even have web pages so that might have something to do with it.

None of that is really my point, my point is, that I don’t ever balance my checkbook. I don’t keep receipts, and I don’t record transactions anywhere other than in my brain. Now granted this has cost me a few times in overdraft fees and the like, but really it hasn’t been that bad. I just make a mental note of approximately how much a bill was and know that within a day it will be removed from my account, so I only need to remember it for about a day and a half, and then I can access my account balance on-line. This gives me the amount I have to spend.

Well my new fiancé is a little more meticulous with her finances, and every time I wad up a receipt I can see her recoil in horror. I can tell that she has made the surgical appointment already to have my debit card removed from my person. I really don’t think this will bother me that much, and I am looking forward to not having to worry about my bills being paid or that I forgot them. Because I am sure she will want to take over all of that just to be sure I don’t forget to tell her that I spent money.

So it is looking like I will be on the spousal allowance plan after October.
posted by Jason 2:51 PM |

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

 
Tanning

So my new fiancé and I are going to get professional pictures taken next weekend. Neither of us have any good pictures of the other person, so we though having some done would be a good idea. Well she wants to look her best for the pictures so she is going to go tanning. Now she doesn’t want to be all tan and good looking standing next to a pasty white guy, so what options do we have.

It looks like only one. She wants me to go tanning with her. This seems like kind of a bad idea to me, but I can’t help but think I would look better. I have always given those people that go tanning regularly a bad time, and called it Fake’n’Baking. Now it looks like I get to join the ranks of those. She says this new tan she does takes out the UV rays all together so it isn’t bad for your skin at all and won’t cause wrinkles, but when fake’n’bake was first on the scene did they really think that it caused cancer? So what creepy disease am I going to get 30 years down the road that no one thought would be caused by this new type of tanning???

Wait what am I saying, 30 years, like I am going to live that long.

posted by Jason 1:37 PM |

Monday, April 12, 2004

 
Girlie Stuff

Well on Saturday I ended up doing “Girlie Stuff” with my new fiancé. Now I call them girlie because none of them are things you would normally see men doing by themselves. But that doesn’t mean men don’t want to do them, or don’t enjoy doing them, they just either 1 don’t ever cross men’s mind as something needing to be done, or 2 they are afraid of looking gay. Well when you are doing those things with your fiancé you pretty much make the second point moot, and the first one is easily taken care of by the woman thinking they need to be done. So anyway, we went to the book store and purchased a Wedding Planner book.

Wow, ok now I don’t know how many of you women know what a guy thinks of these things, but when I saw 5 different huge books, all listing the crap that needs to be done for a wedding I was kind of overwhelmed. Well that wasn’t then end of it, now we had to pick which book we liked the best! So off she went through the books to find the best of all of them. I think she picked the one we ended up purchasing because it had a section with lots of pictures of flowers. I agreed to it because it had colored Tabs to tell you were the important sections were.

After we had that dilemma figured out now she needed a wedding magazine. I am not quite sure why a magazine was necessary, but then again who am I to argue? So we looked through a few, and holy Cow! Why does there need to be a quarterly periodical strictly about wedding flowers!? Wouldn’t 1 for each season pretty much cut it? And then you can re-use the same one year to year like an encyclopedia? Apparently not.

After that we went and looked at wedding bands. I had already picked out her engagement ring with the help of my little sister, but I did not select the band/wrap. I figured she could pick that one out in case she didn’t really like what I had picked as a ring, she could always hide it among other diamonds that she liked with the wrap. She ended up picking the one I was thinking was the best anyway, granted I am not sure how much of that was her own opinion or wanting to pick something that I liked, but I assume if she was willing to wear it for the rest of her life she must like something about it. As you may have guessed I have no confidence in my own ability to pick out jewelry.

Anyway we then sat around and filled out some of the pages in the Wedding Planner that we could. Overall I had a fun day even though it is not something I would have thought was fun before the day started.

posted by Jason 4:06 PM |

Thursday, April 08, 2004

 
Engaged!

So I am now engaged. Some of you probably have noticed that I haven’t updated in a while. Well the reason behind that was this wonderful woman that I have been dating. I have been spending so much time with her that I didn’t have time to be making any updates. I will try once again to get back into the swing of things around here, and get some more updates done. More to come.

posted by Jason 12:04 PM |

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

 
Should I Dual or Single?

So as I have mentioned recently, I purchased a new HDTV receiver. I got it all hooked up and programmed, and working correctly, but I have a problem. The remote that the Zenith Receiver comes with uses an overpowered IR LED to compensate for a weak IR receiver in the unit. The problem is that my HK Universal remote does not have a powerful enough LED to work the Zenith receiver.

Side note: I LOVE my HK universal remote. It is the most compact, easily learned, and easily programmed universal remote I have ever come in contact with. (And I have come across a lot of them.) I got the HK u-remote by purchasing a Harmon/Kardon AVR320 Audio receiver, which I also like a lot. This Universal remote has successfully been programmed to take the place of every remote I have, so I only ever use it, and it works beautifully, but . . . this new device wont work.

So here is my dilemma. Do I stick with the cheaper Zenith HDTV receiver (which as I have stated previously gives me about 4 hours of viewing on one 1 station, and it’s not a station I watch that often.) Or do I take back the Zenith and spend almost $150 more to upgrade to the Samsung. Now I have no other complaints about the Zenith at this point, so the sole reason for returning it would be programmability of my u-remote.

So I am torn by my cheapness, and my laziness. Which one will win? Stay Tuned.

posted by Jason 3:42 PM |

Monday, February 02, 2004

 
HDTV for the Masses!

Ummm, No apparently we are not there yet.

So yesterday I had a Superbowl party. I decided to invite a bunch of friends over to watch the game on my big screen. Well I have a widescreen TV 16:9 (The only right sized TV.) so for me to watch standard cable I have a few options. 1. I can watch it at the standard 4:3 ration, which means I get letterboxes on the left and right side of the screen. It’s kind of annoying, and bad for the creen, so on to option 2. I can watch ion Zoom mode. This is my standard, it just enlarges the picture as if my screen was 4:30 at the same width, which means my TV cuts off the bottom and top of the picture. Well for most shows this isn’t too bad, nothing ever happens there anyway. In fact in this mode all the new adds that the networks keep showing us after our shows start get pushed off the bottom so I don’t seem them. I like this about this mode. But it does have a drawback, this is also the same place that they put the score, clock, and other important information about sports games, so On to option number 3. Full Mode. This mode just stretches the width of the 4:3 aspect to make it fill the screen. This cause everyone to get short and fat. After a while of viewing this mode you forget about the difference, and everyone in real life seems to be skinny for some reason. But for those that haven’t watched shows this way, it tends to be distracting. (There is a fourth mode but it is just stupid so we won’t go there.)

So I decided that I would fix the problem by going down and buying an HD receiver, so that I could receive the football game in High Definition! Well I got the receiver and set it up, and found out that only 1 station in my town is broadcasting HD, luckily for me it happened to be the station carrying the game. So almost $300 into this, I can now watch HDTV for approximately 4 hours a Day during primetime on 1 station. WooHoo! But I would get the game in HD so I was OK with the purchase.

So I have everyone over and we start watching the game. Let me tell you it was spectacular! It looked so good, I can’t even tell you. I even got the infamous boob shot in HD! Anyway back on topic, the story doesn’t end quite so well. Just after the 2 minute warning for the end of the game, the panthers go for a touchdown pass, and half way through the pass the screen freezes, and then goes black. (When HD can’t get through a good enough signal to decode, it stops displaying anything. Unlike standard broadcast that just becomes less clear.) There was an uproar at my house as people started scrambling for the family room where the other TV was on, and receiving normal broadcast. Well the reception of HD was botched pretty much for the remainder of the day, and we had to watch the final few minutes of the game in standard format (which after seeing the crystal clear HD, was just ugly.)

So hopefully cable companies can get with the program here soon and start sending out HD along with normal cable. Until then, HD will have to sit on the back burner.

posted by Jason 3:50 PM |

 
Poor Guy

I know that everyone has been talking about the now infamous Janet boob shot. Infact an entire web site has been created in its honor. www.janetsboob.com OK so maybe not an entire website, more of just a single picture. But anyway, I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the Streaker.

I know this guy had to have been planning this little excursion for quite a while, and it couldn’t have been easy to get through all of the security, and then to make it out on to the field, and everything before being caught. My hat is off to such a well laid plan, except it didn’t go that well. The streaker had not taken into consideration the power of Janet’s boob. The all encompassing, overshadowing effect that a 300 nanosecond clip of a 40 year old boob on national television could have had. Had he taken this into account he might have done his deed just after 1st quarter. Which given the boringness of that quarter, would have given us all something to talk about until both teams realized they were actually playing in the Superbowl not just at practice. Anyway, then he could have literally had his 15 minutes of fame. Now I don’t even think he got 2 minutes. The following scenario is what I like to think of:

Fellow Jailmate: “I am in for driving my SUV into a crowd of people, what er you in for?”
Streaker: “I performed the river dance naked on the 50 yard line during the Superbowl!”
Jailmate: “No way, if that was the case I would have heard about it.”
Streaker: “Really I did, I ran out just before the kickoff for the second half.”
Jailmate: “Really? Just after half-time? Did you get to see Janet’s boob while you where out there?”
Streaker: “….”

I also found out that what we didn't see was the Streaker was tackled by a NE Linebacker, and then Hogtied and carried off the field! That had to of hurt!
posted by Jason 2:43 PM |

Thursday, January 29, 2004

 
More Stupid People with Stupid Lawsuits

Man Threatening to Sue Cable company

I swear we need to clorinate this gene pool.
posted by Jason 9:24 AM |

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

 
Must be a slow News day at cnn.com

CNN is my home page when I open my browser at work, and today here is an exact quote of one of the "Front Page" highly important Premium service news related links:

"'Whiplash' the cowboy monkey rides a border collie" Watch Video

Yes that's right, for $9.95 a month, you can watch such world changing News as it is happening around the world, like watching a Monkey ride a Dog. Is this really what the type of people that read cnn.com are really looking for from a news site?
posted by Jason 2:57 PM |

 
Back from Vacation.

OK I really haven’t been on vacation this long, but ever since my vacation back in December my life has been very busy, so Blogging kinda fell to the side. My apologies. Now that things have kind o settled down around here I hope to get back to making at least a few updates per week.

Some of the things I have been up to: Well definitely the most important is I met the most wonderful woman in my life, and we have been spending quite a bit of time together. She has been consuming most of my idle thoughts as of late, and it has made me less likely to spend idle time writing here. I hope to at least make some time to make updates around here. Other than that, I made a trip for New Years that was lots of fun, and spent quite a bit of time with family around the holidays.

I will be making at least one more update to the page later today. Look forward to it.

posted by Jason 2:52 PM |