While You Were Out

While I was out last week "The Wife" re-decorated the master bedroom at Frick's World.
The best part was I didn't have to paint, at all, nothing, nada..... I did have to move the bed, I may not be smart but I am strong.

Last Sunday the walls were an ugly yellow/beige institutional color. When we bought this house we believe the previous owners painted everything this yellow/beige color. I mean everything light plates, switches, baseboards, doors and hinges. The walls are now "Summer Rapture" or as I like to call it green and all the trim is a fresh white.

If you change the paint color in a room it automatically means that everything else has to be replaced. The paint may have only cost you $20.00 but that's just the beginning. You can see from the photo above we now have a bedspread that contains the color "Summer Rapture" or as I like to call it green.

Here is a panoramic of the room. The right side came out kind of yellow but I'm to lazy to turnout the light and retake the picture. I can assure you that all four walls are "Summer Rapture" or as I like to call it green.
All in all "The Wife" did an excellent job in color selection and application. Next month it's the bathroom.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

Found this at "I'm Bored". Don't know if it's real or not but it is funny.

Mr. "Stunt Baby"

Our "Godson" decided to test the irrefutable laws of gravity the other day and took a tumble off of some kind of a play structure. Now when I was a wee lad we didn't have anything that remotely resembled a play structure we had slides, see-saws, merry-go-rounds. When someone said "lets go play on the slide" we knew what it meant and what life threatening dangers were associated with it. These days when someone says "lets go outside and get on the play structure" I don't know whether to give my kids a swim suit, a sandwich or their bike, no wonder our kids are so damn confused, it's our fault.
Well, at 18 months "Mr. Godson Stunt Baby" has ended up in a cast. Nothing quite like a toddler running around with a cast, bouncing it off of walls, doors and various pets skulls.
I was adding my John Hancock to this orthopedic work of art when I thought to myself casts would be a great way of advertising just about anything. A walking talking billboard, a very short term advertising commitment and most casts are off in 4-6 weeks plus if the kid is real clumsy he'll be back in one in no time at all and you can re-launch you add campaign at a reduced rate.
I negotiated with my godson and structured deal. We erased everyone else's signature and he's now pimping for "Fricks World" the whole add campaign cost me a dozen Pepperidge Farms goldfish.

Sign In London

Sign posted in the London Tube, "look a bit foreign" now thats funny . Thanks to "Boortz"

New Idea

After a brutal storm laden trip home from Newark I have a new idea.
This one involves luggage. No more Fricking roll-aboard luggage is allowed to be stored in the overhead bin. You get to bring your purse or laptop bag that's it, eveything else gets checked.
Every trip I take there a multitudes of people crashing down the isle of the plane with a laptop bag and dragging roll-aboards. Once they find their seat they now have to place their laptop bag and hoist their behemoth piece of luggage into the overhead bin. Shoving the these over stuffed roll-aboards into the overhead bin is similar to shoving 10 lbs of crap into a 5 lb bag. While passengers attempt to pull off this engineering feat everyone else is required to wait, and the line to board the plane comes to a complete stop. By the time the poor sucker in row 35 gets to his seat there is now more overhead bin space left. Now this poor sap has to give his roll-aboard to the flight attendant (not the stewardess) who has to make it back upstream against all the passengers to check the poor saps roll-aboard. This whole up stream procedure is repeated several times as we now get to hear over the speaker "There is no overhead space left, please leave your luggage at the front door of the airline so we can check it" but do the passengers listen to this, not NO but "Hell No". They all figure that they can find some secret hidden overhead space that was left just for them. That's right buddy you are special, just like everyone else. This whole painful process delays our departure time. We all know the reason to carry on luggage, it's so you don't have to wait at baggage claim, but I bet as much time is wasted waiting for people to cram luggage into the overhead bins as you would waste waiting for your luggage at baggage claim.

ICE Could Save You Life

Here is one for all the road warriors "LINK".
Program emergency information under the contact ICE in your cell phone. ICE "In Case of Emergency" how simple. We all have our home number programmed in our phone it may be listed under home, house or even "The Wife" and not always easy to find, this would give emergency crews a standardized way to help you in case your unconscious.

Your Safety Is Our Number One Concern

Look at the door bar lock below and you will see half of it is missing.
No little ball thingy to hold the bar.

I checked into my hotel late Sunday night dreary, from an evening of travel. When I finally hit my room and closed the door I found half of my hotel bar lock lying on the floor. Being after midnight I figured that maintenance was at home doing one of 2 things that I wasn't, either spending time with their family or better yet sleeping, so there was no need to give them a call.

When I left the room in the morning I left the broken part of the lock lying on the stained and tattered carpet just knowing that housekeeping would trip over it, regain their balance and then alert maintenance to the security breach in my room. When I arrived back at my room that night, the busted portion of my lock was no longer lying in the middle of the floor, it was now lying against the wall, and my lock had still not been repaired. I didn't give it much thought figuring they would replace the next day. No dice, the next 2 evenings when I arrived back at my room I found that my busted lock was still lying against the wall. Guess what happened this evening? I arrived back at my room to find my busted lock was gone (I looks like someone was finally on the ball after 3 days) but the remaining busted part of the lock was still attached to the back of the door.
Now here is the best part, there is a "Safety and Security Procedure" flyer sitting next to the TV. The second item on the flyer addresses "Double locking and chaining your door". They made damn sure the flyer was in my room, but couldn't get around to making sure that there was some way for me to double lock my door.

Should I as the customer be expected to bring this to the hotel managements attention when for 4 days their employee's were in my room cleaning up my un-godly mess? "NO".
Then to make matters worse someone actually removed the broken piece but didn't have enough brains to see that it was repaired. That's an example of someone doing a half-assed job.

My hotel bill alone was over $400.00. There were four of us staying here this week, and we all come to New Jersey twice a year, that's $3200.00 per year, ( I have always been good at math) and we always stay at this hotel, but no longer.

The hotel had enough sense to make sure I had a 5 cent piece of paper offering me safety tips, but didn't have enough sense to spend $10.00 on a new door lock.
So it looks like a $10.00 lock will cost them $3200.00 in lost revenue, maybe they can use that in their next marketing campaign.

Mozilla Extensions

You just gotta love the extensions for "Mozilla". Here is a rundown of my statusbar...

1. Beer o'Clock - It's a countdown till Friday at 5:00
2. TickerFox - Real time count of the number of Mozillia downloads
3. Forcast Fox - Get the weather forecast and radar map for your area
4. StockerTicker - Keep an eye on your stocks as they scroll by. XM radio is up
5. AutoCopy - No more Ctrl + C, just highlight a section and copy it to your clipboard
   

A Manly Man’s Night

The whole Southeast regionional contingency has spent the last few days in New Jersey. The other evening we pilled into our rent-a-wreck for a night on the town. We started with a 5-alarm gut burning meal at the local Mexican joint, served to us by one of the local senoritas. Afterward we loaded or bloated bodies back into the rent-a-wreck and motored up the interstate to "JR’s cigar" and good time emporium. JR’s has a walk-in humidor that stands 30 feet high and takes up half a football field of New Jersey scenic real estate. Giant clouds of mist spewed from the ceiling mounted humidifiers every minute or so, leaving you with the feeling that you were standing in a rain forest. I have had maybe 3 or 4 real cigars in my life and with that I will gladly admit that I know nothing about cigars except that Clint Eastwood and The Sopranos have been known to partake on occasion. Well let me tell you this place is sensory overload, racks and racks, tables and tables of cigars littered the room as the smell of freshly cured tobacco freely roamed around us. After the gents made their cigar purchases we sauntered our way into the cigar bar where we consumed pints of "Guinness" and ice laden glasses filled with "Wordford Reserve" (Kentucky Best sippin whiskey). The evening grew late, and as the lights dimmed our conversations turned to honor and world affairs. All in all it was a Manly Man’s Night.

Linux On A USB Drive

Found a cool site that has a small distribution of Linux. So small that I loaded it on a 512Meg USB drive and then used Virtual PC to run it. If your BIOS supports booting from USB you can leave out the Virtual PC part and save yourself $100.00. I guess when our MIS department was specking out laptops they failed to consider booting from a USB might be handy since our ThinkPads don't have floppy drives.


Love the "Half Gigger"

Loading.......

We are in and running. There is also a small distribution of "Open Office" that will fit on a USB drive as well.
The credit for the idea goes to "PC Stats" because as everyone knows I've never had an original idea in my life.

40 Goats In The Hand Is Worth 1 Kid

Godwin Kipkemoi Chepkurgor of Nairobi has offered Bill Clinton 40 goats & 20 heads of cattle for his daughter Chelsea's hand in marriage "LINK".
Chepkurgor said "I learnt a lot about the Clintons through the media and was impressed about their staunch Christian values and their down-to-earth attitude,"
Christian values doesn't Nairobi have CNN, Fox News or for crying out loud the National Enquirer, has this cat been living on the Serengeti for the last 7 years, oh wait a second, never mind.

Be Your Own Google

Create your own "Google" style header

Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment - NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM

Is this the answer to spam??????????
LINK

Seven

Congratulations Lance. A champion 7 times in a row and a champion for beating cancer, and now a man on a mission.
I think I'll go and buy a bike.

Cart Design Continues

The boys have been working late into the night tweeking their carts.
This one looks too painful for me to ride, something about sitting on a spiked dishwasher rack. They claim this one reaches such high speeds that the streamers appear to be flames ripping out of the back.

They think they have solved the flipping issue with this cart by installing curtain rod stabilizers. I just know that when I go inside the living room curtains will be in a giant pile in the corner of the room.

Getting Lucky In Kentucky

"“Goose"” has returned safely from Camp Robinson. The 3 hour ride to pick her up was divided between listening to the Mommycast and quality husband/wife conversation.
The wife asking such questions as "If I died would you get married again?" and me asking "Does anyone need to stop and go to the bathroom?"
The conversation (as it always does) eventually got around to the differences between men and women. As always we both were passionate about our points.
The Wife - Women are more focused.
Me - Men are better at multi-tasking.
The Wife - Women stick with a proven thing.
Me - Men are willing to try and accept different things.
ect.... etc...
Being the fair and accommodating husband that I am I decided to do some internet research and I was able to come up with examples to support both of our points.
Believe it or not it all comes back to food and the food pyramid.

FEMALE FOOD PYRAMID

MALE FOOD PYRAMID

Summer Is Winding Down

We are picking up "Goose" from camp this afternoon. Since she is in the older group of campers she was able to go horseback riding this year (Whoopee). She did phone last night with some lame-ass excuse that the camp director had sprained ankle and could not drive the camp bus to the drop off point. This turned out to be a weak attempt at staying for camps second session.

Go Speed Racer

After a hearty week of traveling, I rolled the sled into the driveway this evening and was accosted by 3 pesky youngsters atop these human powered carts. "H" and his buds had broke into the Frick's World workshop and created, I don't know what to call them except carts. "H" was rolling in a modified "Radio Flyer" wagon. His buds stretched the creative boundary's with their creations. The one below consisted of plywood, lots of glue, electrical tape, the back of an old chair, file cabinet drawer and did I mention lots of glue.


It looked like some kind of a Salt Flats rocket powered one man jet car. This thing twisted as it rolled down the driveway. Despite it hovering just inches above the pavement they managed to flip this craft.


After they were done in the pits the races began.


Pictured above is "Mr. Blue Shirt's" chariot. It consisted of an skateboard protected by a piece of 1/2 plywood with the rack from an old dishwasher acting as the combination seat and roll cage. As of 9:00pm they were back in the pits tweaking for tomorrows races.

Pet Warning

Here is why you don't give your pitbull a porcupine as a pet.

5 Years

My company sent me a clock for 5 years worth of service. It looks nice, but did require rearranging pictures on the wall before I was able to hang it up.

Tattooed Fruit

It's been all over the news, there is talk about replacing the stickers that identify fruit types with a tattoo. "The Wife" was at the store stocking up on the Frick's World weekly potassium supply when she brought home this gem. How long before the produce farms start selling ad space on these tattoos. There might be grapes pimping www.google.com, you never know.

10:00 PM

It's still hot out.

Late Night Last Night

Taken late last night. At least I had a room with a decent desk.

Bad Jokes? Good Jokes?

Q: What time is it when an elephant sits on a fence?
A: Time to buy a new fence.

Q: Why are robots never afraid?
A: Because they have nerves of steel.

Q: What does a fish smoke?
A: Sea weed.

Q: What did the snail say when it caught a ride on the back of the turtle as it was crossing the road?
A: "WWWEEEEeeeeeeee..."

Q: How does a pig get to the hospital?
A: In a hambulance.

Q: What's dangerous and swings from trees?
A: A monkey with a chainsaw.

Q: What do you get when you cross an octopus with a cow?
A: An animal that can milk itself.

Q: What do you call a poodle with no legs?
A: A sponge.

Q: What is a fish's favorite game show?
A: Name that Tuna.

Q: What do you call a blind dinosaur?
A: Do-you-think-he-saur-us.

Q: Did you hear about the shoe factory that burnt down?
A: Two hundred soles were lost.

Q: Why did Smokey the Bear never have children?
A: Because every time his wife got hot, he hit her with a shovel.

Q: What does D.A.M stand for?
A: Mothers Against Dyslexia.

Q: What another word for a gay farmer?
A: A jolly rancher.

Stolen from blog-thegoose.com

Latest read

Just finished "Fishing On The Edge" the "Mike Iaconelli" story while waiting 3 1/2 hours for a plane to be repaired, and after the repair I still took the flight, I must be nuts.
Iaconelli won the 2003 Bassmasters Classic. He set the fishing world on its head, just as John Daly did to the golf world several years ago. This Jersey born, tattoo sporting, break-dancing fishing addict has an interesting story to tell, and takes the old Bassmasters regime to task on several fronts. Not a hard-core instructional fishing book but a great adventure.

A Vending Treat

The lobby of the Raleigh Hampton Inn holds a handy treat, condoms. Now I have seen this kind of a set up in the past in Greenville SC "LINK", but at least there was a brand name on the condom box. This one looks to be pure luck as to what you get.

At My Age I Should Know Better

Last night we loaded up the members of Frick's World (minus one) and headed to "SD's" for a good old fashioned cook out. Kabobs & ribs there's nothing better. "SD" opened his humidor and broke out an Arturo Fuente for him to enjoy as he manned the 60,000 BTU powered grill. While he was cooking I immediately became fascinated with his cigar torch lighter (fire, fire, fire), remember the word torch it will become important in just a moment. This lighter was "Mack Daddy", it had lights that blinked when you used it, in other words it was designed to appeal to my type. Anyway I remembered an old trick I used to perform (it always used to impress the ladies, if you know what I mean) where you would cup your hand, barely press the tab on the lighter and fill your hand with butane then firmly press the tab to create a spark and your hand would ignite for just a second till the butane burned up. Kind of like a poor mans David Copperfield. I decided to break this trick out once again. I filled my hand with butane and pressed the ignition tab and now back into the picture comes the torch part of this scenario. I never really got the chance to see if my hand filled with a flame because I immediately began to smell burning flesh, my flesh. It seems that torch part of the lighter decided that my finger was just as good as any cigar and that's where it decided to plant it blue flame of destruction. Several moments latter I saw what you see above. Yeah I know Mom this was pretty stupid and I don't think it impressed any of the ladies.

Public Enemy #1 Around Frick's World

This little 8oz. bundle of joy is responsible for the consumption of approximately 2lbs. of birdseed per week. Hey squirrel it's called birdseed not squirrelseed.

Oral Hygiene

"The Wife" and I had a kid free night last night so we decided to go to a movie. The last time we had a movie night alone was around 10 years ago and "H" is around 10 years old so you do the math and you'll get the picture. We decided to go and see "Mr & Mrs Smith". Not a bad movie, my favorite scene is when the Smith's are interrogating "The Tank" and he is wearing a "Fight Club" tshirt. Vince Vaughn has a bunch of great lines in this flick. After a hearty dinner at "Famous Dave's" we were off to the multiplex.
After downing 2 or 3 sodas at dinner and nature being what it is I needed to find a bathroom. Men's bathrooms, believe it or not, sell some great stuff. You can buy aspirins, combs, cologne and other personal care products.


The multiplexes bathroom happened to sell chewable toothbrushes, huh, what's a chewable toothbrush. Well 75 cents later I was about to find out. Once I saw the package I was starting to think that it contained a breath mint and a note that said "You've been owned", but scroll down.


It did not contain a breathmint but what appeared to be a small, no wait make that a very small plastic toilet brush which was laced with a powdery minty substance. The package displayed the Warning of "Do Not Swallow". I guess not, unless you want to clean your intestines. Turns out this is a legit product, they even have a web site "Fuzzy Brush".
You never know what you'll find in a men's bathroom.

The End Is Near

Spent some time watching ESPN this morning and noticed that cialis is now a major sponsor for Bassmaster and their tournaments. Now it was one thing when Viagra started endorsing Mark Martin. We could all hear the announcer "The Viagra car hits the wall hard" or "The Viagra car is running straight today".
But come on now we are dealing with fishermen. These guys are up at 4:30am out to the lake focused on nothing but fishing. They don't need any kind of a pill that could compromise that focus. The last thing you want is to be stuck in a boat with some guy that has downed 4 or 5 of these pills and wants nothing more than to get back to the dock, or worse he turns his affection towards you. One of the possible side effects is having trouble seeing the difference between the colors blue and green. For a fisherman this is no good how can they tell the difference between a bluegill and a bass, after all it is a bass tournament. There is also that whole 4 hour side effect (priapism) to take into account.

Note For The Mayor Of Wussville

Here is a magazine just for you. No need to be ashamed, we all need help with our problems and now there is a magazine just for you.

Name That Tune

Have you ever heard a song on the radio but can't recall the name. This service claims that you can hold your phone up to the radio and it will text you the name of the song and artist (for a fee) 411-SONG.

There Are Two Types Of Vacations For Me

The first type is when you go someplace, anyplace but you do not stay at home. Then you come rushing back into town the night before you have to be back at work and you see a weeks worth of grass growth and all the newly sprouted weeds and realize that there's no time to tend to any of it.
The second type follows the same basic guidelines except you get back into town a few days before you have to be back at work. This gives you time to get caught up on all the small things you need to do around the house but never have time while you are at work.
This is the type of vacation we are having at Frick's World this week.
This allowed me time this afternoon to inspect the infrastructure around here. One of the inspections was to go to the grocery store with "The Wife" today. Now to be fair "The Wife" did try to talk me out of this, but insisted. I have not really been to the grocery store on a full fledged "stock the house full of food" trip since we were first married. On that trip I filled the cart with beer and snacks (2 basic food groups)and had not really been invited back since.
Shopping with "The Wife" is basic project management in it's rawest form. First she has a list that is itemized isle by isle, that way she does not have to re-trace any steps. Then correct spacial management comes into play as she stacks each item in the cart, you must contain all purchases in one and only one cart. No just dumping your purchases into the bottom of the cart. Here comes the hard part (for me) "No Impulse Purchases" as I stare at all the cool foods we never seem to buy.
The women in the store were in full tilt "Hunt and Gather" mode, I had one lady pass my cart (I guess I was shopping to slowly) and clip my heel with the front of her cart, sorry bitch.
The last part is jockeying the cart into the shortest line. These women turn on their competitive edge for this part, no weak "Where is my Dr. Phil" women present here.
I had one lady jump in front of me, "No cuts" I muttered under my breath, well she must of heard me because she said "What are you in 3rd grade".
Man I'm glad I get to work in the yard tomorrow.

The Rain Has Taken its Toll

Here's a picture of some "Shrooms" that have taken up residence in the backyard.
Maybe I'll open a mushroom farm.

Odd Shot

This is a picture of the water steps at Triangle Park in downtown Lexington KY.
I saw a bunch of water during vacation.


"H" and I ate an executive (director) style businessman's lunch yesterday at Sawyer's. In other words big juicy hamburgers with dripping grease bouncing off of our shirts, it was delicious. When "H" asked about the spattered grease spots, I explained to him that all good executives have a clean extra shirt and matching tie stashed in their executive office just for this reason.

Software Engineering Glossary
or
Defining Computer Terms From a "Marketing" Point of View

ALL NEW -- The software is not compatible with previous versions.

ADVANCED DESIGN -- Upper management doesn't understand it.

BREAKTHROUGH -- It nearly booted on the first try.

NEW -- It comes in different colors from the previous version.

DESIGN SIMPLICITY -- It was developed on a shoe-string budget.

EXCLUSIVE -- We're the only ones who have the documentation.

FIELD TESTED -- Manufacturing doesn't have a test system.

FOOLPROOF OPERATION -- All parameters are hard coded.

FUTURISTIC -- It only runs on the next-generation supercomputer.

HIGH ACCURACY -- All the directories compare.

IT'S HERE AT LAST -- We've released a 26-week project in 48 weeks.

MAINTENANCE FREE -- It's impossible to fix.

MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS -- It compiles without errors.

PERFORMANCE PROVEN -- It works through beta test.

REVOLUTIONARY -- The disk drives go round and round.

SATISFACTION GUARANTEED -- We'll send you another copy if it fails.

STOCK ITEM -- We shipped it once before, and we can do it again, probably.

UNMATCHED -- It's almost as good as the competition.

UNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE -- Nothing ever ran this slow before.

YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT -- We finally got one to work.

Rain Rain Go Away

The World Vacation Tour 2005 has come to an end. We spent most of the day driving through the driving rain, but as always it's good to be home. 800 mile in 5 days, it was almost like a week at work.

Sunday we sauntered over to Angliana Avenue for the "Loose Leaf Antique Show". They have converted 4 acres worth of an old tobacco warehouse into an antique flea market with over 100 dealers. Walking through the isles you can find almost anything, there was even half of a log cabin assembled and ready for sale.
More pictures posted at Flickr.

Close up of a cannas leaf.

Same Post New Picture

My first choice in pictures was not received very well so we had everyone get re-dressed and recreate that special moment and snapped a new picture.

"The Girls" all loaded up for an estrogen filled lunch at "The Glitz". From the looks of the above picture someone was not notified as to the color scheme for the day. I am sure that the lunch involved sandwiches that had the crust surgically removed before it hits your table, and I am also sure that the tuna fish salad contained raisins, walnuts and apples, but of course that's just a males perspective. Yes, I am sure it was one of those types of places.

The Dress Code Must Be Adhered To

"The Girls" all loaded up for an estrogen filled lunch at "The Glitz". From the looks of the above picture someone was not notified as to the color scheme for the day. I am sure that the lunch involved sandwiches that had the crust surgically removed before it hits your table, and I am also sure that the tuna fish salad contained raisins, walnuts and apples, but of course that's just a males perspective. Yes, I am sure it was one of those types of places.