Saturday, December 29, 2007

This entire universe seems to work in steps. Even Life doesn't appear to happen gradually. Take for instance your aging body. You go to bed one night feeling great, and you wake up the next morning and your back is in complete pain. There was nothing gradual about that. You went to bed, you were feeling good, you woke up unable to bend over. Sure you were sleeping, but take it from me, your back did not gradually get worse.

Okay, so maybe that was a bad example. The weather has been a good example of this lately. With global warming becoming more and more apparent, we have seen quite the change in seasonal weather over the years. It wasn't too long ago that PA winters were cold and snow was plentiful. Then one year, it became warm and rainy. There was no gradualness about it. One winter there was snow the next winter there wasn't.

Gradualness has it's own scales. Sometimes the step is more noticeable than others. Even on the smallest of all scales, time and even matter itself are not gradual. Planck units estimate the the smallest length to be about 1.62 x 10-35 meters and the smallest unit of time to be around 5.39 x 10-44 seconds. This means that our entire universe, including all its mass, energy (those are actually the same thing, but you should know that by now), and time is a step function. Sure the steps are infinitesimally small, but they are steps nonetheless and since the universe often times acts as an immense fractal, these steps are not only multiplied, but magnified. So it only makes sense that the macro-world we experience be perceived in steps. Our brains sort of work that way. The emotions, sensations and ideas we experience, they all just happen. They aren't really gradual at all. So next time you decided to sit back, take it all in and wonder why things aren't happening very gradually, just remember, nothing really happens gradually at all. Ever.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Twenty seven. I guess that's the magic number this year. Once again I can't say I'm thrilled about my birthday. In fact I'm pretty sure I can say that I would just prefer to not even acknowledge my birthday ever again. But alas this could never be the case. Mainly because The Parents seem almost obsessed with making a big deal about it every year. But since I will be alive for 852,055,200 seconds (using the approximation of 365.25 days in one year), I figure I'd tell you some of the great things that have happened in that time.

Of course one of my biggest achievements is the acquirement of my Wii over a year ago. I camped out, and stood in-line for nearly 8 hours in freezing temperatures with a bunch of rowdy college students. Not really my idea of fun, but the end result was well worth it!

Another fabulous achievement is my graduation from college with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. While I'm sure there are more difficult things to major in, there aren't too many that are more fun. At least in my opinion. I mean honestly how many degrees teach you how to practically build a computer and interface anything you darn well please to it?

Next on this unordered list is my job at The Workplace. Sure sometimes it can be a real pain in my rear, and the politics of it all makes me want to leave at least twice a week. But lets face it, there isn't really a job where this wouldn't be the case. Plus it lets me put my college degree to good use.

Skydiving! Yeah that was awesome. I have a list of things I want to do before I die and this, so far, is the only thing I've been able to cross off. Was it a thrill? Oh you better believe it! Will I ever do it again? Heck yeah! What else do I have on the list? Well that's a completely other list obviously.

My two year Christmas Party luck streak has been a pretty nice achievement I like to think. When people that don't even work at The Workplace hear that someone has won a TV two years in a row at the Christmas Party, well, you know you've accomplished something.

Of course the biggest achievement in my life has been all the amazing relationships I have formed with people. From very close friends, to family, it's these people that are probably the most important thing in my life (even more than my Wii). Since this achievement could have never been accomplished on my own, I send a thank you out to all those that have influenced my life and made it what it is. The best thing about this achievement is that it only gets better in time!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

With the Christmas of 2007 just around the corner, I'm sure you've been getting Christmas cards in the mail like nobody's business! Unless of course you have crappy friends that don't give Christmas cards, all your friends are single guys, and your entire family is dead. For you to be reading this post and all three of those assumptions be true; well I find that hard to believe. Mainly because you wouldn't read this blog if you had crappy and single guy friends and no family. It just wouldn't be funny. So let's get back to my topic of point here. Christmas cards.

My first gripe about Christmas cards this year is that it seems like glitter is slapped on cards like ugly is slapped on Rosie O'Donnell face! I can't even search thru my local Hallmark selection without getting glitter everywhere! Don't me get wrong, I think glitter is very festive and can be quite glamorous, but frankly I only like those features on cards and women. I don't want to look glamorous after finding the perfect card for The Mom to make her sob until the cows come home, just because there was glitter on the front of the card and then I got an inch on my face. Not cool! It is apparently mandatory too for all Grandmother cards to have some form of glitter, whether it be pink, blue, green, or ugly. And that stuff does NOT come off the fingers (except on your face)!

My second gripe is paying for postage. Most people within the age of the first 7 prime numbers (by the way, 1 is NOT prime) probably don't even realize that real mail works because you pay for it. In today's world of emails and IMs you don't pay a cent (except of course for your internet connection) for the message you send. You can even send e-Christmas-cards for free! And they sing and dance! Of course there isn't a grandma around that wouldn't love to see a dancing elf and pooping reindeer in motion on her Christmas card. Unfortunately Grandma needs a computer and internet connection to view that cute little scene. So in the snail mail world we are left with glitter and cheesy, high pitched, obnoxious sound clips of Jingle Bells and Santa Baby (which is entirely inappropriate for Grandma you sickos!). Now to make matters worse we like to send big cards that require "extra postage." At least that's what it says on the envelope. But with the Forever Stamp now, how does one apply extra postage without going to the Post Office? Can one stick two Forever Stamps on a card? Does that even mean anything other than, "Look at me, I'm a giant idiot!?" Is just one Forever Stamp good for "extra postage?" What I do know is this, two $0.41 stamps is NOT enough for extra postage. How do I know this? Well The Dad got me a very nice Christmas card this year, that was "big" and required extra postage. To my surprise, there was a written note on the envelope next to the two $0.41 stamps that read, "Requires extra $0.15!" Does that mean I owe the Post Office $0.15? What a fantastic Christmas surprise! "Merry Christmas Boy! You now owe the Post Office $0.15!" I think I may stick with e-cards next year. Merry Christmas indeed!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Luck smiles upon me one night a year apparently; at the The Workplace Christmas Party. If you recall last year, I took home the grand prize after trading tags with Mr. Horseshoe-Up-His-A** himself. Well apparently we didn't just exchange tags that year, but it was indeed Luck. You'll never believe it, but I won the grand prize once again at this year's party! Last year's gift was a TV with built in DVD and VHS player. This year's gift was a 19 inch, LCD HDTV with built in DVD player. It's funny because I probably have only used last year's gift a maximum of 5 times since then. Of course when my Christmas tag was called I thrust my arms in the air and rode an invisible horse all the way past the tables of people and to the podium. Okay, so the riding the horse part isn't true but I did feel sort of bad winning the grad prize two years in a row. People were slightly irritated as well I think, which, honestly I would be too if I were in their shoes. Luckily and ironically I am not. Although Luck's brilliant shine was extremely short lived because I caught every single red light from the time I left the party until the time I got home. Who the flip gets stuck at a red light for 2 minutes at 1AM in the morning? Your's Truly that's who.

Friday, December 07, 2007

My new obsession? The semi-new Espresso Bar at Sheetz. If you don't live in Central PA, or other Sheetz location, or you've never heard of the gasoline/mini-mart chain, then you might as well just move on to your next blog post because you're not going to want to hear what I'm about to say out of shear jealousy.

Now I'm not sure how long Sheetz has had this Espresso Bar because when I go to Sheetz (which is on average at least 2 times a week [3 if you're counting gasoline stops]) I usually just get an MTO. Usually an Italian sub, sausage sandwich biscuit or hamburger. Sometimes I get the chili dogs too. Or a chicken sub. The meatball subs are great as well! Anywho, I'm drifting here. Focus Jimmy! Espresso Bar. It's awesome and here's why.

Unlike their regular coffees which are made by Yours Truly, drinks from the Espresso Bar are made by Sheetz employees right in front of my eyes (but behind the tall wall of candy bar displays and electronic ordering computers of course). I use the same computers I do when ordering my MTOs to select the type of drink and any extras I may or may not want. Extras such as cinnamon, nutmeg, even a whipped cream topping. Oh yeah! I have my selection of what type of milk, skim, 2% or whole and whether I want regular or decaf (I do not recommend regular at 1100PM at night unless you want to sleep poorly because these puppies are indeed high in caffeine)! My favorites right this very moment? Raspberry-Vanilla latte, and Chai lattes both of course with whipped cream on top. Other flavors of lattes include Banana, Caramel, Hazelnut, Raspberry, Vanilla, Caramel & Vanilla, Caramel & Hazelnut and Very Vanilla (with a few sugar free versions of some of those too). But I'm not just limited to lattes. Oh no my friend. I have my choice of lattes, mochas, espressos, hot chocolate, steamers, iced lattes, and iced mochas. Shall I go on? There are frozen lattes, frozen mochas, frozen creamers and even fruit smoothies! Can there be a more heavenly place on Earth (probably, places such as New Zealand, St. Thomas, The Galapagos Islands and The Rocky Mountains may physically be more heavenly, but there are no Sheetz there)?

Now I know what you're thinking, "What's the big deal? Starbucks has been serving up those drinks for years you crackpot!" While this may be true (and I don't care for you calling me names), Starbucks is no Sheetz! Also with Sheetz Coffeez you can order without human interaction! That means no ear straining to understand the person waiting on you, and no smelling bad breath and looking at unkept, dirty high-schoolers. No worrying either whether or not the employee wrote your order down properly. Just touch your finger to what you want, and you're done. What could be more marvelous? If you want a full menu of Sheetz' new Espresso Bar, check out this link here. Oh did I mention the prices? And you thought the prices for electronics were cheep these days. It's almost more expensive to buy a soda than an iced mocha. Eat, err drink, that Star-flippin'-bucks!

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

People are frustrated out the whazoo this Christmas season because they can’t find a Wii in any store. They search online, they search in the mall. They ask their friends and other family members and have half the people they know ready to buy one if they would ever come across one. I know you’ve had your ups and downs. After searching for hours online you come across a link that reads, “Nintendo Wii’s in Stock!” Wide eyed and excitingly tense you click the phrase only to be disappointed with either a broken link, or a page that reads the now disgusted idiom, “Out of Stock.”

You’ve been to Circuit City, Walmart, Best Buy, K-Mart, Toys R Us, Sears, Sam’s Club, and not just in your city, but in all other neighboring cities as well. You even checked that little no-named electronic store around the corner that reeks of wet dog and cigarettes that you said you’d never ever walk into after that time the “swanky” cashier with five teeth hit on you and you lost your left show in a loose wooden floor joint. Any and every place you go, nothing.

Sure you can get the deal where you pay over $600 and get 6 games of your choice, but if you’re going to front that sort of money, you might as well buy a PS3 and if you’re going to buy a PS3 you might as well not bother because it’s just a glorified Blu-Ray disc player. All you want is the low budget, basic unit: One controller and nunchuck, one Wii, and Wii Sports.

If you’ve only gone as far as the last two tactics you’re never going to get one! Here’s some useful information to help you a little more. You need more contacts! And ones at the stores at that. While I did hear that Circuit City employees are no longer able to purchase Wiis, it helps if you know someone working in these stores that can buy one for you as soon as they come in. Because the Wiis were never NOT in demand since last November, stores have been completely unable to stock any in their warehouses, leaving Christmas shelves completely void of the video game console and its peripherals. Leaving you, Mrs (or Mr) Irritated Christmas Shopper more high and dry than a nerd on prom night.

Now, Nintendo Wiis are only shipped via UPS. So don’t waste your time waiting for the Best Buy or Walmart truck to come around. It won’t have any Wiis. This brings me to my next contact; make friends with as many UPS truck drivers as possible! Word is the drivers have been checking their inventory looking specifically for Wiis and when they find them, they call their friends to have them meet them at the store. Call your local stores and find out when Mr. UPS makes his weekly or daily deliveries. If you don’t get them off the truck, you don’t get them period! Stalk your local retailers. Make a schedule as to when deliveries come each day and how many units the store is expecting. Make the stores with the highest unit counts top priority and visit your stores on a daily basis if possible. Forget work because what is really really important is that you get your kids (or parents) a Wii for Christmas.

Finally be willing to pay! You can find Wiis on eBay no problem but they are selling for over $500! My suggestion is this. If you really want a Wii before Christmas for little Tommy, buy off eBay to guarantee your Wii and then continue to look in your local stores until you find one (either before or after Christmas) and then sell it on eBay to recoup your losses. While Nintendo has increased production from 1 million to 1.8 million units a month, the company is still unable to keep up to demand. And unfortunately your best bet at finding a Wii in the stores is to just be lucky. If your luck is like mine, you’re better off camping out in the cold when they first come out because in my opinion, you can never rely on Luck! Especially around Christmas. You also can’t rely on the state snow removal trucks to actually plow the roads when it snows. I mean seriously why should the government actually do something beneficial for us?

Thursday, November 29, 2007

I always feel like such a retard when I order apple juice at a restaurant. I'm just waiting for the day when the waitress looks at me like I have two heads and utters," Seriously? How old are you?" And that's so ridiculous too. Why should I feel idiotic when I order that drink? For some reason it just seems like a children's drink. Why don't I just say, "And can you throw in some Gerber smashed peas in a jar to go with that!" Why should I be forced into humiliation when I order something healthy to drink?

What's more, this country claims that it is very concerned with the growing rate of obesity, however just about every restaurant will give you refills of soda for free! What's the calorie intake on a single can of non-diet soda? 160 calories maybe? And that's just a can! Those giant plastic cups that are large enough to quench the thirst of Attila The Hun have to be capable of holding at least 3 cans! Okay, so you drink diet soda. Oh that is so much better for you! I mean there is no real sugar in that I suppose. Just cancerous artificial sweetener and the addictive, yet underrated drug caffeine. Rarely is a restaurant willing to give me a refill of juice for free. Plus typically a glass of juice costs on average $0.20 more[1]. I guess one could argue that most juices contain just as much sugars and calories as soda, if not more-so. But I doubt that you would find a doctor that would tell his patients to drink more soda and less juice. Unless of course his name was Dr. Pepper.

1My averages are based solely on the fact that I may or may not accurately remember the last 5 menus I've looked at and their restaurant's prices for juices and sodas. In other words, I just picked a number at the top of my head to make me appear like I know what I'm talking about like the rest of the world does.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Remember all those times you got your change in Canadian currency instead of U.S. currency? Well, obviously I don't mean all of your change. But I'm sure you've gotten the Canadian quarter or penny from time to time. And there was always that sense of disappointment you know? Because that Canadian quarter wasn't quite worth the U.S. quarter you should have received. You kind of felt that was the store's way of screwing you over like an intern for the president. Well, that day is no longer my friends! Thanks to our country's failing economy the Canadian dollar is now worth more than the U.S. dollar. So last week, when I purchased some coffee at Sheetz and I got a Canadian penny for change, I felt like saying for the first time, "That's right! In your face America!" I know, it's not like I made out with a free hundred dollars or anything. I mean really it was more like .05 cents or something I'm sure, but for the first time ever I actually enjoyed receiving my Canadian change and I didn't mind using it later in the week when I purchased another cup of coffee. This one was at Dunkin Donuts though. And as long as the vending machines still take Canadian quarters, I'll be screwing over the vending machine companies next! Boo yah!

Monday, November 19, 2007

I've been waiting months and months and months! Finally I have it! I am the proud owner of a brand spankin' new Cannondale bicycle! This is the story about how I finally acquired it, and why my new jeans are now ripped.

Way back in the warm summer months I decided I wanted to start saving some gas money and start riding a bike to work. The only problem at the time was I didn't have a bike. Not one worthy of riding to work anyway. So I started to search around and learn about bicycles. I never owned a real bike before. And by real bike I mean not a K-Mart, or Toys R Us special. A good bike costs money apparently. Name brands like Giant, Trek and Cannnondale are good bikes. Huffy, well not so much. Okay, so enough about bikes, I finally decided what I wanted based off of what I would be using the bike for. So back in the summer I put my order in for a large, bright orange, Cannondale Road Warrior 800. Ooh, I was so excited! So the summer was almost over and I was told that my bike had finally come in! Only there was a problem. It wasn't a large, but a medium. That wasn't going to work. The medium was just too small (good bikes have sizes apparently and need to be fitted. How cool is that?!). The error was the factory's fault so they were willing to take the bike back and give me a new one. Only there was another problem. The 2007 models were all out and the 2008 models wouldn't be available until November. So I had to wait. Another problem was that the 2008 wouldn't come in the same color. I really liked the bright orange! At one point Cannondale said they would do a special paint job for me since they botched up the size, but that fell thru when someone higher up in the company found out and nixed that.

So time went by and I waited. In the meantime, I was out on location one day for work and wound up catching my jeans on a screw and ripping a small hole on the leg. So that weekend I went out to the mall to buy myself a replacement pair (as I only have two decent pairs of jeans and I just alternate between wearing them at The Workplace). I like Gap jeans, so that's where I went. I know they are expensive, but I like them anyway. So I tried on a couple pairs and decided on a darker blue, Boot Cut jean. I stayed with my usual size, 32-34, which seemed to fit pretty nice in the dressing room. They seemed a little longer than usual but I figured they'd shrink once they got washed. Apparently I was wrong. The first day I wore them to the Workplace I noticed that I started walking on the bottom, heal of the pant leg after a few steps. Well that obviously wasn't going to work so I cuffed them about an inch to keep that from happening. Of course all of this could have been avoided had I went with the Relaxed Fit instead of the Boot. But, well, what's another bad decision on my part? So after about two weeks of wearing cuffed jeans I noticed that my brand new jeans had acquired a nice little rip along the fold. I would have returned the little bugger, but they were too long anyway, and my grandma had been nagging me for years to hem my pants a little shorter for me. I figured I'd finally take her up on her offer. So I gave her the ripped pants and she fixed them up all nice and they fit perfectly. But it still irked me that these pants were causing me a lot of issues when at the price I paid, they shouldn't have.

So a few more weeks went by and I got a call that my new bike was finally ready, fresh from the factory. And it was the right one this time. So I borrowed a van to go pick it up. The bike was beautiful! They changed the model numbers a little in the 2008 models, so now I own a Cannondale Road Warrior 2. And actually the 2008 models were cheaper than the 2007 models due to some change in the manufacturing process. At least that was one good thing that happened. So the weather was pretty nasty when I picked my bike up. It was cold, windy, a little snowy, a little rainy. But I got the bike home safely and returned the borrowed van. I wanted to ride the bike more than anything because I'm a big 8 year old, so when I got back home, I threw a sweatshirt on, turned on my house flood lights and took the bike for a little ride down the lane adjacent to my house. Now if you haven't guessed already I was wearing the jeans that had given me so much trouble the past few weeks. And as I was checking out the awesome gear changing smoothness of the Road Warrior, I felt my pant leg catch on the gear at the pedals. "Oooh!" I thought. I figured if I didn't tone it down I was going to rip my pant leg. Well, I had barely finished that thought when I felt the jeans catch again only this time I heard a loud SCRATCH! That was it. My pants had caught on the gear and ripped a nice three inch tear from above my ankle down to the bottom of the leg (don't worry, the flesh on the leg was completely untouched!).

Now most people would probably be pretty upset at that. Me however, well I just started laughing. I mean honestly, I had a brand new bicycle that was flippin' amazing (weighing in at a brilliant 24 pounds by the way) and I now had a pair of jeans that were not going to be giving me any issues anymore because they were going to get pitched. Sure I was out $60 or something but to be honest, I could hardly care. Will I buy a pair of Gap jeans again? Probably. Will I make sure they last me a little longer? Most likely. Will I rip another pair of pants some day riding my new bike? Oh I'm sure I will!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Who doesn't one?AI, or artificial intelligence, in your home is still a far cry from happening. Don't get me wrong though, it will happen whether you like the idea or not. And to be honest, I think you're going to like it once it happens. Most people associate AI with robots and androids and I know a lot of people that wouldn't want a robot in their homes. But really, all AI is is the ability for a computer to learn. And whether you want to admit it or not, computers are EVERYWHERE! Even in your home. Your TV, Cable/Satellite box, vacuum cleaner, even your coffee maker, they are all micro computers. Basically these days, anything that is electronic is a computer.

Let's take a closer look at your coffee pot shall we. What do you do to make coffee? You measure the water out, put it in the back of the pot, put the grounded up coffee in, and turn that bad boy on. The coffee pot does the rest. Inside that little coffee pot is a microprocessor that turns the water pump on, turns the burner on and then shuts the water pump off when all the water is gone from the reservoir. In a sense, the coffee pot is programmed to do its thing when you tell it to go. It abides by its original program and will never deviate (unless of course something mechanical breaks, but even then the coffee pot will continue to execute its program, it just appears it's not working). I bet your coffee pot even has a timer so you can set it all up the night before and have fresh coffee waiting for you the next morning. Ooooh I love when that happens.

But what if your coffee pot was an AI coffee pot? Probably named the AICP3000, this motha trucka would truly be the most fantastic coffee maker ever! Like I said be before, the whole concept of AI is a learning computer. The AICP3000 would study your coffee drinking habits and change its internal programming, all by its mechanical, err computational little self, to better serve you. Maybe it would learn that on the weekends it needs to make the coffee two hours later than normal to allow for you and the hubby to have your weekend morning "romp." Maybe it would then learn that it also needs to make coffee when there is company over for dinner. It can learn that you usually let the pot sit for hours with the heat still on and a quarter of an inch of coffee still in the pot so it turns the heat off and flushes more water into the pot to keep that disgusting layer of tar from building up, especially since you don't actually wash the thing you just rinse it out. Heck it can even learn how many times to fill the pot up before you stop drinking for the day.

And AI doesn't have to stop with the coffee pot. How fantastic would it be if everything electronic could learn? Your car could start itself and warm up during the cold days, and learn what your favorite radio stations are at certain times of the day and switch to them automatically. Your TV could learn what types of TV shows you like to watch. Your shower could know what time to turn the water on each day and to what temperature. It's not just for robots and science fiction anymore. Computer code that modifies computer code. It's a reality! A world of AI is just around the corner and my guess is that it will be just like the Internet, once we have it for a little while we'll never know how we ever survived without it! I guess potentially this blog could write itself too . . . I don't like that.

Friday, November 09, 2007

At the risk of sounding extremely girlie and/or possibly stereotypically gay (which my track record can prove is not the case), I'm still going to write about this topic. Why? Simply because, while reading it may sound girlie, I still know just about all 3 of my male readers think this too, but just choose not to discuss it at the risk of sounding, well, not manly. I just figure, screw it!

So with the advent of the cooler weather I decided to check out my sweater collection. Of course I really only delve into that drawer during the cold season because, well, only women wear sweaters in the summer. Upon opening the drawer I gazed in at my stash and was suddenly in sheer amazement. There, on the top of the pile, was my all-time favorite sweater! It shone like a brilliant light was cast upon it from On High at which time a chorus of Angels sang a single note that was the most beautiful sound ever known to Man! The sweater was less than a year old and was a birthday gift from The Sister (or so I seem to think. This little tidbit could be entirely not factual) last Christmas. Frankly the sweater isn't that impressive looking. It's a single shade of brown and looks like it is turned inside out all the time with the stitching and whatnot on the outside. I know, nothing to gawk at, but it could just be the single, most comfortable long sleeve shirt in existence today since the dawn of Long-Sleeve-Shirt time (or since year 0 LSSE [Long Sleeve Shirt Era]). In fact, I encourage any of you reading this to find a sweater that is more comfortable! Of course it ultimately would be my decision as to whether yours was more comfortable or not and to be honest, I would always pick mine just to prove that I was right. Because that's the kind of person I am, or so I try to project I am anyway.

So back to my point. I grabbed my brown sweater and threw it on, and headed off to work smiling like Steve Carrell who just told a joke only he thought was funny. How is it even possible that I forgot that this garment existed?! And now that I know I have such a thing, I'll be wearing it as much as possible while attempting to not allow my work colleagues to think I only own two articles of clothing, which frankly is much harder than it should be. People at The Workplace are way to perceptive when it comes to clothing.

Seriously (and I know you all think it), isn't it great when you find some article of clothing you completely forgot you had?! It's even better when it's your favorite piece of clothing. It's a feeling about as good as when you find a rolled up 10 dollar bill in your winter jacket that you haven't worn for 8 months. Although it is sort of the same thing really. I mean who doesn't love finding 10 dollar bills? Frankly I'd love to find 20 or 50 dollar bills, but I'm lucky to even have one of those in my wallet, let alone find one in a pocket somewhere. I'd also like to someday find a magic genie bottle and possibly even a giant vat of free Papa John's pizza, but preferably not in a pocket.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

I've had a fair amount of things on my mind for the past few days. Some are rather important, other's are just things that pop into my head because I am some kind of erotic turbo-charged organic thought machine. While you don't get to know the important things, I will share with you my pointless thoughts. Aren't you just so darn lucky!
  • Do blind people turn on the lights when they walk into a dark room at night? I mean it's just habit for me.
  • Do cops get irritated when they get stuck behind someone that is driving exactly the speed limit? I do when I'm behind a cop.
  • Will I ever pay less than $3 a gallon for gasoline ever again? Maybe when water becomes less than $1 a bottle.
  • I've had my bedroom furniture for over 4 years now and I have never once changed the drawers my clothes are in. How is it that I still get confused between which drawer has my white t-shirts and which drawer has my gym shorts?
  • Why does Scientific American charge you $35 to renew your magazine subscription, but only charges you $25 to get a new, gift subscription? Why would I ever renew when I can get myself a gift for $10 less? Stinks for those of you that already renewed this year I guess.
  • Why are toilets in the over-sized handicap stalls always elevated, but sometimes the toilet paper dispenser is not? This only benefits the handicapped if they have freakishly long arms and/or extreme flexibility.
  • Why doesn't Jay Leno just write his own monologue? Didn't he used to be a stand-up comedian? Oh what?? He still is???
  • Does anybody other than myself actually say the term properly? It's Daylight Saving Time people! Not Savings!
I guess that's it for now. It's apparent that my thoughts get more and more lame as I continue to list them. Might as well stop there before I start listing stuff that just makes you think I'm a complete wacko. Mmmm, too late.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Ever plan on going to a Penn State football game? I'm sure you have. But were you ever curious what to expect when you got there for the tailgate? Well be curious no longer. The Captain is back with his list of what to expect at a PSU tailgating extravaganza! Of course this comes from personal experience so any opinions and/or views that may conflict with yours is just tough. Suck it up and quit being a baby about it. Here it comes, in your face! It's Captain Jimmy's Top 10 Ways to Get Jiggy Tailgating at PSU.

10. Make sure you bring your earplugs because if all the generators aren't loud enough, the music from the amps that they are supplying power for will surely make you think Beethoven had flippin' dog-like hearing!

9. Forget your 6-pack of beer? No worries. Just walk up to some stranger's cooler and grab one for yourself and your friends. They'll be too drunk to care. If the strangers do happen to ask, just say you were looking for some shots. Oh, and if you say that, you'll be expected to do some.

8. Forget your crazy, drunk friends that you don't like to hang out with because they are crazy drunks? No worries. There are at least two every 20 feet.

7. You'll definitely want to make sure you brush up on your Flip Cup skills. Or maybe your Beer Pong skills. Okay, maybe just your drinking skills.

6. Three words, Dizzy Bat Relay. Race your friends (or complete strangers). Spin around a Wiffle bat 10 times with your head down, sprint 20 feet, down a cup of beer, sprint back, next in line goes! Oops. Wiffle bat break? No worries, now you can fill it up with beer and drink from it!

5. Don't ever, ever, ever wear the opposing team's colors. Unless of course you enjoy getting the finger and obscenities yelled at you no matter where you are. I hope you like hearing the F word!

4. Make sure you have plenty of gas in your tailgate vehicle. Not so much for while you're tailgating, but for when the game is over and you're attempting to leave the parking lot. If you're one of the lucky 10,000 that get stuck in the middle of the lot, you're looking at a minimum of 2 hours before getting the heck out of there. I hope you like the smell of exhaust and getting high!

3. If you have a small bladder, you might as well forget about going tailgating all together. After you wait in line for 45 minutes you'll have peed your pants twice and gone thru 3 beers. By the time you get in and out of the crap-filled portipottie, you might as well get back in the line so you don't wet yourself when you have to go again.

2. Are you an attractive chick looking for a nice guy? Are you an ugly chick looking for the love of your life? Are you a chick that's drunk off her crapper looking for a dude that's the same so you can make out? What's the difference? They're all the same when you're a drunk chick.

1. Don't bother bringing petty foods like bags of chips and pretzels. What will most likely happen is some drunk guy that you just met will end up tripping over himself at some point and come crashing down on the chips, or he may just deliberately jump on your bag of pretzels, because, well when you're drunk that's fun apparently. In fact you're much better off meeting sober people in the other parking lots and being invited to kick-a** food tents with all the hot dogs and sausage you could possibly dream of! If that doesn't get your juicy intestinal track gurgling and leaking, I don't know what will!

If you really want to have a fun time, just bring your fun hat and join in the festivities. It'll be an indescribable experience and if you ever embarrass yourself just remember; nobody else will likely remember. Oh yeah, don't forget to scream, "WE ARE! PENN STATE!" "Thank you!"

Friday, October 26, 2007

I saw these guys! In person!Go ahead and guess who was at Marzoni's (apparently known as Marz to the locals???) in Duncansville last night. You know what, just stop guessing because you'll never get it right. The USC Men's Volleyball Team! That's right, I'm talking about the University of Southern California's NCAA men's volleyball team right here in central Pennsylvania. At first when the host at Marzoni's said that the USC volleyball team was going to be there I thought he said USAV because honestly, why would USC come to Altoona, PA? I was obviously proven to be mistaken though when The Trojans walked thru the restaurant doors and sat down at their reserved tables. So of course since we were within touching distance of the team we decided to listen in on some of their conversations. Not surprisingly they were not impressed with the Altoona area or Harrisburg International Airport, the airport they flew into. Seriously though, what are the odds? Oh and their reason form meandering The Railroad City? A pre-season game with PSU. How nice must it be to fly cross-country, skip a day and a half of classes and play volleyball for a day? If I would have had a camera with me, I would have taken a picture. Of course I would have been in it, wearing a Trojan's sweatshirt and hoisted above the other players like a set of dumbbells!

Monday, October 22, 2007

How do they move it?I'm not a huge fan of the food stores changing around their inventory from time to time. I mean, I guess I can see their little gimmick going on there. They figure that if they just suddenly mix up and re-organize their products, they can catch those product shoppers that know-exactly-what-they-want-and-go-right-to-their-spot off guard, and force them to look at, and pass by products that they otherwise would not. And frankly, I guess I'm okay with that. I mean I am one of those shoppers, but really this only gripes me a couple times a year. Usually I'm more irritated by the grocery store no longer carrying the exact product I desire. What I'm really curious about though, is when in the heck do the stores have time to do this? At night during closed hours obviously but in my opinion this would take much longer than a single night shift. Think about it. There are isles upon isles of items counting easily into the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, that need moved from one side of the store to the other. Of course some isles cannot change like the refrigerated, fruit and freezer sections, but usually everything else will get completely re-routed. Somehow I doubt the workers are just filling up cart after cart pushing this stuff around the store all night long. Then as if that doesn't take long enough, all the price tags need to be moved around too. You know, those plastic tags on on the shelves that, as a little kid, you used to queue up and slide all the way down to the end of the isle with your index finger. Oooh, my mom would go ballistic when she caught me doing that! Secretly though I think the stores have "isle movers" that just lift the whole blasted shelving unit high to the ceiling, then maneuver it to the the other side of the store and lower it back down. Because seriously, that would be flippin' awesome! And of course who wouldn't want to see something go wrong and suddenly there is the domino effect going on with the shelves in the entire store!

On a completely separate note, I love pumpkin flavor! Pumpkin pie, pumpkin oatmeal, pumpkin fluff, pumpkin bread, I love it all! So why do we only have it during this time of year? I'm pretty sure if we can grow apples and oranges all year long, we can do the same with pumpkins. Why do we have seasonal foods at all really? If I want a delicious soft ice cream cone in the middle of the winter, then I should be able to get one! As long as it's not pumpkin flavor. Pumpkin ice cream just doesn't sound like something I'd like to stuff into my mouth. Not while I'm conscious and breathing anyway.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

It's that time of year again. The time when waves of new, unseen and ridiculously awful horror flix skip the big screen and head right to DVD and Blu-ray. The time when the air starts to get a little colder, then a little warmer, then a little colder, then crazy hot! The time when the entire outdoors smells like that time your college toilet backed up for three days. The time when bad Christmas movie previews start making their way to prime time. Yep, you guessed it, it's Autumn once again, or Fall as some people may have you believe. So what is there to do this time of year? Not too much, but I'm sure if we brainstorm long enough, we can come up with something.

How about watching butt loads of TV? Why not check out the new Fall lineup? I might recommend new episodes of The Office, House, and even the new sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Shows to avoid: Life, and really anything that comes on ABC. If the temperature ever gets colder outside you could go out and play some football with your friends. I'd recommend playing in the rain and mud (especially if you can get some chicks to play). Why not go for a drive, check out the changing leaves, however you might want to avoid all those construction zones. Don't confuse the orange road work signs for oak tree canopies though. Hey how about checking out some Homecoming dances? Can't find your own? Nothing like crashing one with a buddy, or chaperoning a high school one. Might I suggest avoiding the wall of stank leading to the teenage dance floor. Finally how about checking out the latest in clothing and personal apparel and gear. That's shopping for those of you that don't understand the words that I type. While I don't condone such behavior, if you're looking for a break from your way-to-clingy girlfriend, it can be a great suggestion. Need more ideas? Here's a final idea. Think for yourself and go have some fun you sexy trunk monkeys!

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

What do Halloween and Winnie the Pooh have in common? While I may not know, it appears that department stores around the area have some kind of demented clue. Today, in my car I past a giant inflatable Tigger dressed as a vampire. Of course it was Tigger so I wasn't really that scared, but still, who ever came up with that? Heck why not dress Lisa Simpson up as a jumbo turkey and put her on your lawn for Thanksgiving? Or better yet, let's stick a beard on Bugs Bunny and give him a tall, top hat and inflate his gray, hairy little body up for Presidents Day? I think these holidays and giant inflatable objects are getting out of hand. Do you really need cartoon vampire tigers with capes in front of your houses? Do you really think you are amusing people that much that you feel the need to purchase such a thing to put it on display? I'm waiting for the day I see the inflatable Halloween Playboy Bunny! Apparently tis the season for all women to dress up as sluts and hookers anyway. Might as well promote it as much as costume shops, the Internet and Hugh Hefner. I still don't understand why the majority of women dress up like that for Halloween. What am I missing? Is there a day when I can dress up as a Chippendale's performer without anybody judging me? Because if there is, I don't want to know about it, nor do I want to even entertain that thought. I'd much rather have a day where I can dress up as my favorite Star Wars character without the world thinking I'm some crazed nerfherder. Although people do seem to get used to it after a few months . . .

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Into gaming as much as I am? Probably not if you're reading this blog, but in any event I'm going to tell you all about the great new Nintendo Wii games coming out in the next couple months. You'll find me owning probably all of these games as soon as I can get my trigger happy fingers on them. Heck, since this is going to be a list, I might as well make it, Captain Jimmy's Upcoming Kickass Wii Game List! (oh yeah . . .)

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Yes ladies and gents, Samus Aran is back and that spicy little fox is rapping up her final a** kicking for the end of the the Prime series. While this is the firstMetroid game to utilize the Wii-mote, I'm informed that the first-person shooter style is nothing but simple and uber fun to use. If you have a Wii, be sure to download the video demos of the game in the Wii Shop. It's nothing but pure, jaw dropping, eye watering, brow sweating (and possible spandex wearing) action! Any chick that shoots aliens with plasma guns and wears an armor suit that can become a magnified ball is okay in my book.
Release date: August 27, 2007 (I know, that was over a month ago, but I haven't gotten a chance yet to go buy it).

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - You knew it was coming. As if I wasn't addicted to GH2 enough, once this puppy comes out I might as well submit my two week notice because I won't be leaving the house anymore. Luckily Activision decided to release this baby for about every system out there: PS2, PS3, XBox 360, Wii, even PC and Mac versions. With an awesome new battle mode and a co-op career mode, GH3 should just about rock out everybody's world! Jam out to many more songs by the original artists such as "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, "Sabotage" by Beastie Boys and even "One" by Metallica. So much for all that cover crap. I also hear the push ups and pull downs are even easier in this version. I might as well start making my YouTube videos now of me rocking out like a crazy mo-fo, or 8-year old boy!
Release date: October 28, 2007.

Super Mario Galaxy - Let's face it; the last great Mario game that came jumping into this world was Super Mario 64 for the N64. Sure Super Mario Sunshine was fun, but what the flip was going on with that animated water hose backpack?Anywho , Super Mario Galaxy promises to have all the the great world artistry we have come to expect from the Mario Bros. series. Only, if you haven't gathered, this is galaxy, not world. Prepare for a planet hopping, spherical rotating extravaganza! This time you'll be collecting star fragments and even have a few new jump techniques in your plumber pants. Remember that thing you called sleep? Well you won't be doing it once you start playing this game. Oh yeah, the auto-camera is supposed to be a bazillion times better than the manual ones you're used to. Oops, I just wet my pants.
Release date: November 12, 2007.

Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 - Who knows when this precious gem will find its way to stocked store shelves but be prepared for a frenzy when it does. With completely re-engineered multi-player action and a random Story Mode that will give you new games each time you play, the latest coke sniffing developers of this crazy who-haw should not disappoint you. Fact! Screaming, gurgling babies sound a lot like Rabbids. If only I could beat them and throw plungers in their faces, I'd be one happy gamer.
Release date: November 13, 2007 (provided the bunnies don't take over before that).

Super Smash Bros. Brawl - Possibly the most anticipated game for the Wii ever! Remember the last version; Melee? I do. It kept me up all night during finals week at college forcing me to partake in a weeks worth of tests without a lick of studying. Did I pass all my courses? Of course. Was it way better than stressing out over some crappy tests and study habits? Hell yes! Will I be doing something like this again when Brawl gets released? Probably. Although instead of skipping study time for finals I'm thinking more about getting to The Workplace late and leaving The Workplace early. As a plus, it looks like this game can be played with the Wii-mote, or the virtual console controller, or even an old-school GameCube controller. New characters such as Diddy Kong, Zero Suit Samus and Wario promise to make this action packed game more fun than a room full of River Dancing chimpanzees, or giving your little brother a swirly. Maybe even more fun than giving that little weird nerd with the goofy clothes at school a swirly. Let's hope so anyway. The Captain still resents you for that.
Release date: December 3, 2007.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

The American people are hypocrites I think. More exact, the people of Central Pennsylvania are hypocrites. Of course I'm just making a generalization here. Forgive me if I have incorrectly included you in my generalization, but for now you'll have to deal with it. Why do I think this way? It's simple really. People complain until the cows come home about energy costs and pollution, but when given the option of switching to clean, renewable energy, these same people go ape poop! Let me give you an example. Within the last few years Wind Power has become quite popular here in Central PA. We're in a prime location for it! Thanks to our geographic location, The Appalachian mountains, and U.S. weather patterns, the wind nearly blows constantly at many locations in this Commonwealth. Why not harness that naturally generated power? Years ago 6 giant wind turbines were built in Somerset County to generate power for countless people across this state (and possibly other states). In fact, one of my college professors paid extra per month to get that power pumped out to his home in Grantham, PA (because, unlike even Heaven, you know you can pick your energy provider here in PA, at least that's what the commercials used to portray) simply because it was clean, renewable energy. Within the last year, nearly 100 wind turbines were constructed on a mountain ridge not more than 20 miles from my home. In fact, on a clear, crisp evening you can see their tiny, distant silhouettes against the bright orange sky. It's really quite a site to see

In case you're new to this term, Renewable Energy, I'll explain it because it's simple really. Renewable Energy is energy that can be generated without harmful emissions, and frankly, will never cease to be generated by losing its source. Current energy technologies such as burning coal, and nuclear power all have ends in site. When we run out of nuclear fuels, or fossil fuels, we are out of power and out of luck. Who knows how many years we have left of that stuff, but I can tell you, it ain't long. Sure maybe our kids' kids will still use that power, but probably not much further than that. Enter Renewable Energy! Like its name states, it's renewable. Examples of this type of energy are solar cells, wind turbines, and water turbines. Obviously even these sources of energy have an end too, but the human race won't be around anymore to see the end of our Sun or water. Water turbines have been used for decades to generate electricity. The best example of these are dams like the Hoover Dam. There the natural flow of water turns giant turbines, generating electric current. Newer hydro-electric generation technologies are coming in the form of harnessing the power of oceanic waves, and hi-tech (and so far highly expensive) hydrogen extraction of water. Solar cells have also been around for years, but are still pretty expensive and rather inefficient. This brings us to wind energy. Pressure differences across the planet will aways exist causing the phenomenon we have all come to know as wind. Using the natural occurrence of atmospheric pressure differentials, we are able to spin giant turbines, some of which the wings easily stretch the length of an entire football field, to generate a whole crap load of electricity. The cost of these units is quite minuscule compared to a giant electric plant, and maintenance costs to keep the turbines functional are minimal as well.

So what do people have against these renewable forms of energy? Really stupid stuff like appearance, damage to the surrounding environment, and possible noise solution. In reality what it is coming down to is people not knowing enough about renewable energies in our environment, yet still trying to make decisions. Sort of sounds like your workplaces doesn't it? Well guess what, the whole country seems to operate this way! Unfortunately decisions aren't made based off fact, education and long term benefits, but are "more importantly" based off money, personal interest, and possibilities of instant gratifications. Thanks to the American people's decision making process wind turbine farm proposals across Bedford and Blair counties are being shut down because of our inability to base decisions off of fact. We just assume that since these are big machines, and near crucial water supplies that they will destroy said water supplies. So we hire expensive environmental engineers and consultants only to refuse to listen to them because of what they know is too different than what we think we know.

What point am I trying to make here? Support any local renewable energy plans that are proposed to your communities. Okay, so maybe a 100 wind turbine farm does not express beauty the same way as trees do, but they are quiet, and sort of have their own beauty. Plus if the government wants to build them on your property, they'll pay you for many many years to come. More importantly though is the fact that you'll be involved in the generation of clean, renewable energy that even your kids' kids' kids will be able to experience (that's your great grand kids by the way, and if you plan on being around to see them, you better start thinking of how to make this planet better for them and not how you, yourself can profit from it).

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

So here I am in a place called Reston, VA. What am I here for? Training. .NET training to be exact. So let's start at the top shall we?

The Boss and I signed up for this quite some time ago. The place where we go for the training is made for training. It's their job. They train people in technology for like two grand a week; stuff like databases, code, wireless, networks, all that good, fancy stuff. This company has training locations all over the world: Virginia, Maryland, even Paris and Tokyo. Now, less than a block from this learning center is a Hyatt hotel. And of course that is where the learning center recommends staying. Because then, you know, you can just walk yourself across the street and go to class. Like college but without the hangover. Well, The Boss had stayed in that Hyatt in the past and said it was too fancy for him. So instead, he signed us up for the "comparative," most cost effective Comfort Inn! Now if you've ever stayed in both hotel chains before you know that they really don't compare. Take these personal examples for instance. Hyatt - friendly concierge and helpful staff members: Comfort Inn - Ms. Personality at the front desk doesn't have a clue where you should eat or why the treadmill isn't working. Hyatt - big bathrooms with luxurious showers: Comfort Inn - the shower head dribbles water out slower than a tortoise onBenadrel . Hyatt - floors stacked so high with properly engineered integrity you don't even know there are 15 more floors above you: Comfort Inn - the foreign guests in the room above yours don't know how to use the shower curtain properly when they bathe, turning your bathroom door into a waterfall.

But sorry, I got off topic a little here. What I wanted to talk about was the city of Reston, VA. Let me tell you a little about this supposed "city." Now I thought if something was classified as a city that it had to have a certain population? That's how it was on SimCity anyway (remember that game? I loved building huge metropolises then demolishing them with a Godzilla attack!). Let's see, how can I describe Reston, VA? It's like a modern day ghost town. Picture, if you will, New York City: huge buildings and skyscrapers, little restaurants and shops everywhere, skinny little streets, parking garages, more high rises and construction. Yeah! That's Reston! Except NYC has PEOPLE!!! I'm missing something here because I find no people in this city! The streets are completely bare, there is no one shopping, no one eating, no one driving, heck I don't even see people working! I don't see people! Where are the people?! Before we get to the learning center, we park in a free parking garage. The garage is filled; filled with cars! Where are the people driving them!? Maybe at 5 o' clock the streets become packed with people leaving work and whatnot, but not during the hours of 9AM-4PM. I have no idea how this place employees anybody. In fact, if you can picture this, I literally walk down the streets and yell, "Where are the people!!" Of course after not seeing any speed limit signs either I made the assumption that most of this city must exists on some parallel plane of existence r dimension. Maybe if I can find the door that connects this Reston Dimension with my dimension I may find some housing property back in The Cove that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to purchase.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

I am literally able to bend light! Okay, so maybe it's really not as cool as it sounds. I mean really anybody can bend light. All you need is a lens, or prism, or water, or mirror, or the list could go on and on. I guess really even inanimate objects can bend light. Objects such as black holes, stars and even planets have enough mass to literally bend a ray of light like it were a piece of rubber. What makes me able to do it in a much cooler fashion is the fact that I can only bend blue light and I can do it simply by moving my head and keeping my eyes still. Freaky huh? Here's what's going on.

As you can tell from my pictures, I wear eye-glasses to help me see. I cling to them like a child would a blanket. I'm not sure what your vision has to be for a person to be considered legally blind but I've got to be close. I mean I can't even read the big E on the eye doctor's chart. I'm pretty sure in order to check my vision without glasses would require an entire billboard with letters approximately the size of OJ Simpson's lies. Anywho, since my eye site is so bad, I pay a little extra to have special poly-something-or-other lenses that will not be half an inch thick when cut. These lenses are actually stronger and lighter than the typical plastic lens. Now, if you own a pair of glasses you've probably realized that around the edges of the lenses the lens gets a little thicker. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it is definitely the case with mine. To top things off, my glasses are more of a rounded rectangle than circular. Put all these things together and my glasses end up bending the blue portion of the visible light spectrum towards the outside of the lenses. This can be most noticeable when staring at purple light made from blue and red light.

Basically what happens is as I look at this type of purple light thru the edges of my glasses the blue and red light will split apart and I'll be able to easily identify both colors. It sort of looks like those red/blue images do before you put the 3D glasses on to make the image pop out at you. Even some halogen white light will magically have the blue light bent away from it. While I'm not entirely thrilled with this effect, it is sort of neat. What's really weird is when staring at pure blue light, such as a blue LED, by merely moving my head I can bend the light right off the emitter so the emitter appears dark and a bright spot of blue light appears floating a couple inches away. Just one more reason why people think I'm a loon and could really care less about reading this blog.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Email forwards. We all get them. Everything from Saving Baby John from Cancer, to raunchy jokes, to hilarious videos to "valuable" information regarding giant-sized Mars in the sky and poisonous spiders. On average I say I get about 5 emails per week that I'd classify as "Stupid Email Forwards." Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of these. I love watching the funny videos! Did you see the one with the people on the ginormous slingshot? HAHAHA! That was a riot. Some of these, I don't really care for. Now it's well known that I'm very skeptical of "what I hear." I've debunked such stupid things as prune juice in Dr. Pepper, poisonous Daddy Long Legs and balancing eggs on their tips during an equinox. Heck I'm a regular Myth Buster if you ask me.

In fact, just a few weeks ago I had a co-worker forward me an email forward because she knows that I'm skeptical of them and she wanted to know if it was true. The forward stated that in just a few days Mars would be the closest it has been to Earth in the last bajillion years and if you looked outside during the evening the planet would appear in the sky larger than the Moon!! "Wow!" I thought. That's pretty impressive and frankly pretty darn scary. For if Mars actually appeared that size in the sky, our planet would be in serious jeopardy! After some careful research I discovered that just a few years ago Mars was indeed the closest to our globe than it would be for hundreds of years to come, but that was a few years ago (which meant the circulating forward had been forwarding since nearly the dawn of forwards!) and while I'm sure Mars would have looked fantastic in a telescope, to the naked eye, the observer would have noticed nothing more than a puny increase in the planet's magnitude, nothing more.

Then last night I had a friend forward me one about a super-poisonous spider biting people on the caboose after camping out on the underside of toilet seats in a Floridian Olive Garden. A few things spiked my interest on this email. One, the only really poisonous spiders found in The States are the Black Widow and Brown Recluse, and even those would have a hard time killing an adult human. In fact I think the most poisonous spiders, the Brazilian Wandering Spider and the Six Eyed-Sand Spider, reside in Brazil and South Africa respectively, without either one really being small enough to hide under a toilet seat. So you can image I had a hard time even remotely believing the email. I took off on the Internet highway and discovered this email had been started back in 2002 , and it actually mimicked an email dating from 1999! Upon wiping the sweat from my brow I thought, "Whew, another stupid myth debunked."

Really my point here I want to make to my readers is to stop believing everything you hear, er read! Even if it comes from the mouth of your closest friend. Be skeptical of the world! I'm not saying everyone lies, but just put a little thought into what you listen to. If it seems a little far-fetched, it probably is. Don't be afraid to question and investigate! Regardless of what you hear about Wikipedia (pronounced wikee/pee/dee/ah, trust me, I know all about wiki, what it is, how to program with it and how it is pronounced), it is a fantastic tool (go figure huh?). Ask your other friends what they think of the matter. If all your friends believe one thing and you another, odds are you're wrong. Sorry to say that, but it's true. Finally don't trust any email forward! No matter how sympathetic, or pathetic it may sound, or appear, don't have a blind trust in what it says.

Of course I could really say the same goes for blogs and webpages, but then I'd have to make an amendment if the speaker, writer or forwarder is a genius and already a skeptic, like me. Well, let's just make that amendment anyway shall we?

Friday, September 07, 2007

I saw a Bald Eagle while driving to work today. It's been four years since I've seen one of those. Which got me thinking, "Wow! The last time I saw one of those was in Alaska, four years ago." Which then got me thinking to how many of those flippin' things I saw in Alaska. Which then got me thinking about how at that time I thought the Bald Eagle shouldn't be on the Endangered Species List because it was everywhere! Which then got me thinking as to whether the great bird actually is on the Endangered Species List. Which finally made me take some action and check it the heck out!

Here's what I found (just in case you've been curious about our national bird): As of 1992 the Bald Eagle was estimated to number between 110,000 and 115,000 in North America. Of course the bird can only be found in North America (with a few exceptions in Ireland and somewhere else).1 Alaska's population alone numbers in the fifty to seventy thousands.2 Which would explain why they seemed to liter the cities of Juneau and Ketchikan. Anywho, the Bald Eagle was actually removed from the U.S. government's list of endangered species on July 12, 1995 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was at that time reclassified as a "Threatened" species instead of an "Endangered" one.1 Don't ask me how they do their classifications. I guess that's another investigation all together. Finally as recently as June 28, 2007 the bird was removed from the "Threatened" status all together with an estimated number of nearly 10,000 pairs thriving in the lower 48 states. This up from just over 400 in 1963.2

So what's in store for the Bald Eagle in the future? Hopefully their population will continue to grow because to be quite honest, seeing one of these bad boys (or girls) soaring above the trees could be one of the most impressive sites in the animal kingdom. Can you imagine a bird with an 80 inch wingspan swooping down to grab a small meal of an animal? That wingspan is bigger than me! Even more impressive is the "mating flight" between two birds. As Hitchcock might say, "Bring on the birds!"

1. Bald Eagle. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_eagle.
2. Bald Eagle Soars Off Endangered Species List. U.S. Department of the Interior. http://www.doi.gov/news/07_News_Releases/070628.html.

Friday, August 31, 2007

I try to stay current on the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the hips and hops. But where in the heck did this High School Musical come from? That was all my campers would talk about a month ago at camp. I felt like a retard because I never even heard of the blasted thing before. To top it off, it's a musical, so all my campers were singing it all day long. All . . . day . . . long. Then just a few weeks ago I heard that High School Musical 2 was premiering. Still, never heard of the first one! My curiosity was truly peeked when I heard what a hugely gigantic foobar this was going to be when it premiered. What was it, like the largest audience ever for a cable TV show? Something like that. I just don't understand the hype. What I do understand is this:
  • Kids are like one ginormous cult. Once the leader gets into something, so will all the rest of the little buggers.
  • TV shows can be addicting. Shoot I'm addicted to The Office and can just about quote every episode.
  • Kids love TV shows about kids. Remember Saved By The Bell? Yeah you do! Only one of the best TV shows ever. And as a plus, there was no singing, and a dude name Screech!
So in the end, I guess I can understand why this High School Musical is so popular. I may not understand the musical aspect of it (mainly because the whole musical thing is just down right weird. I mean honestly, when was the last time you were at a grocery store and burst into song and dance because you couldn't find where they moved to cereal to?) but hey, if kids these days prefer watching that over Sex in the City and Sponge Bob Poopie Pants, then hey, whatever floats their boats. Although just keep the singing down. Especially if you're a 13 year old girl. Honestly I've said this before but screaming is is no way, shape or form singing.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

In one hand we hold our lives as they are now. And in the other we hold a possible future. If we decide to continue living our current lives we can, yet if we dare to unlock the doors of the unknown with the key in our other hand, we can do that as well. But we eventually have to choose one or the other; and once we choose there is no going back. For once we pick the life uncharted, we become strangers in a foreign land and the only hope we have to return, is to become at peace with our new destination. And at that point, our old lives have vanished behind our new selves.

It's a hard choice sometimes. A choice consisting of more that one right answer. Of course the easy choice is to always pick the hand that holds the most happiness. But sometimes the happiness is unknown within the hand that lies the keys. So we drop the keys and opt to continue living our current lives. But sometimes we need to take that step of faith. We need to be curious and find out what Life potentially has in store for us. In the end, can we truly be happy with a hand that holds certainty, contingency, and apathy? There are times in our lives when I think we can, yes. But there are also times when we need to venture out of our comfort zones and into the shadows of ambivalence. And guaranteed, down that road lies turmoil, emotion, hesitation, zeal, fear and utter confusion and discontentment. But ultimately is that not what makes our lives real? Is that not what makes our lives worth living?

What hand will you pick? What hand will I pick??

Monday, August 20, 2007

It was the best baseball game ever!! Saturday evening I went out to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Philadelphia Phillies at PNC Park. First of all, let me start by saying that if you haven't been to PNC Park in Pittsburgh, PA you should really get out there. It is probably one of the nicest major league ball parks in the MLB. It's also one of the smallest so you won't feel overwhelmed. Now I usually go to at least one Pirates game a year at PNC. And it has been about 10 years since I've been to a game where the Buccos actually won. So I've gotten into the habit of not really expecting much. Especially this game since the Phils are about 1.5 games behind the leader in their division. Now The Brother-In-Law was one of the people that went to the game with me and he's a bigPhillies fan. I don't hold that against him though. He's still a good guy. I knew there would be a fair amount of Phillies fans there at the game though. There are always a decent amount of non-Pirates fans at Pirates game. Good luck finding a non-Steelers at a Steelers football game, but not the case for Pittsburgh baseball. In fact one time I went to a St. Louis-Pittsburgh game and there was more red in the stadium than black and gold.Anywho, we all got our food and made it to our seats just a few batters into the game. With two outs down, the Phillies just started cranking shot after shot into the outfield. Suddenly it was 4-0 in the top of the 1st and the crowd was going crazy! Why were they going crazy? Because like The Brother-In-Law, they were allPhillies fans! We're sitting in flippin' season ticket seats and there are Phillies fans all around us! I was jacked! I peered to my left to stare down at the other 3 people that had gone with me to the game and told them we were leaving. I wasn't sticking around for a game like that. Of course I was kidding because I'm a sarcastic fellow. Finally a half bucket of chicken wings later the top of the inning was over, and the damage was done. Honestly, when had I ever seen a 0-4 comeback by theBucs ? Never that's when. I had seen them blow a 7-2 lead before to lose the game, but not the other way around. At least not since the early 90s anyway.

Suddenly, in the bottom of the 1st (yes I said 1st) it was hit after hit! Before I knew it, the Pirates had tied the game at 4 and wentthru their entire lineup in just one inning. I was standing, I was cheering, I was doing the pelvic thrust in The Brother-In-Law's face. Okay, so I wasn't quite doing that, but I was terrifically impressed as suddenly the Pirates fans came to life in a presentation rarely seen atPNC Park, even during bobble head night. Even more rare was the sellout crowd there that day. I have never ever been to a sellout crowd since the park was built years ago and the stadium only seats about 38,500 people. Try fitting Cubs fans into a stadium that size. Yeah, ain't gonna happen.

The events that followed can only be described as shear miraculous and joyous. After another two runs by the Phillies in a later inning, the Bucs responded with another 7 runs. On top of that, 2 strike outs were dealt to the 2006 home derby winner, Ryan Howard. Whatever Maholm ate after the second inning worked like talking marriage on a date. The Pirates pitcher effectively shut down the Phillies offense for the rest of the game. Come the 9th inning, the game was over; Pirates win 11-6.

The icing on the cake came after the game because in the mists of the shouting and excitement during the game, we discovered that there was going to be fireworks after the game. Not because the Pirates won a game (although that right there was worth fireworks), but because that was what was on the schedule. So while the grounds crew was hauling out gear at the end of the game we learned that not only were there fireworks, but there was also a freakin' concert! Insert here the Poverty Neck Hillbillies. Never heard of them an ounce before in my life. But buddy could they rock the country socks off a dead canine! And after every song, a gigantically large fireworks show. It was like a grand finale ever 5 minutes. Crap we even left because we thought it was over, but oh no. As we were leaving the stadium, KAA BOOOOM!! Another round of fireworks. Flippin' awesome! Flippin' awesome. Like I said, "Best baseball game ever!!"

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Wondering what the weather is going to be like tomorrow? Well fear not my little paranoid meteorological psychopath. I've got that forecast for you right here, right now. Mostly sunny with a 30% chance of thunderstorms. BAM!! Wondering how I knew that? Oh it's simple my friends. That has been the weather forecast every day for last month and a half! Every flippin' day! And does it actually ever storm? No! Well, okay, maybe 30% of the time. But honestly why even bother to tell me the day-by-day forecast? Why not just give me a monthly forecast instead?

For the month of August, the days will be mostly sunny with 30% of those days having thunderstorms.

Done. No more attempts at weather needed. I mean being a weather person in PA right now has got to be about as easy as it comes. Except of course for the weather people in San Diego, CA. Honestly how can that even be a real job? All you need to do is have some dope stand in front of a blank map of California and say, "The weather today; 70 degrees and nice." I guarantee no matter who they are they'll get the weather correct way more than 30% of the time.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Love it, or hate it? That's the name of this game. Care to read on? Yeah you do.

HDTV - Love it! Even after months and months of viewing the same movies over and over, HDTV never gets tired, ugly, or old! Shoot I even watched In Her Shoes just because it was in HD.

Sirius Radio - Love it! My only complaint: when driving thru a wooded road in the summer, I lose the signal a lot. That and I also wish the music was less compressed. But hey, those are two small things a universe of greatness!

The Singing Bee - Hate it! The show has such great potential, but fails because it contains about 4 seconds worth of pure thought. The set looks like it took about 2 hours to put together and the way they chose contestants is just plain ridiculous. Good idea, bad planning. And honestly, can Mr. Backstreet be any more fake as a host?

The Weather - Hate it! It's hot, humid, and just down right miserable. If you're trying to get me to move south, you better come up with more of a conversation starter than, "Wow it's really hot here!" I'll take the mountains any day.

Guitar Hero - Love it! I haven't tried Rockin' the 80's yet mainly because the set list didn't look that great to me, but even after a month of playing Hard and still not being able to get thru all the songs, I'm still rockin' it like your parent's honeymoon night.

Lindsay Lohan's Arrest - Hate it! What truly baffles me is why Lindsay Lohan continues to drink her life away out in California when she could do the same here, with less consequences and be with me. It's just one of those things that will never make sense to me.

Campbell Brown's Move to CNN - Hate it! NBC really screwed up when they failed to make her the co-anchor on the weekday Today show. She's 10 times the news lady Katie Couric ever was and 10 times what Meredith Vieria ever will be. I wouldn't re-sign if I were her either. The up side here is that CNN may be giving Campbell her own show. Could this potentially be what gets me to watch CNN? The magic 8 ball says, "You know it bi-atch."

Possible X-Files 2 Movie - Love it! Come on now. Scully and Mulder back again on the big screen? What isn't to love there? So maybe it wouldn't be about The Conspiracy, but frankly I've been waiting for this since that last movie came out in 1998. I can't get enough of that show. Thank goodness it comes on everyday at 5PM. The only thing that could possibly be better is a Stargate 2 movie. But it would have to star Amanda Tapping as Samantha Carter and MacGyver or else it's not really worth watching.

Monday, August 06, 2007

So I was getting all excited a few months ago because the spam in my email inbox had all but disappeared. Ironically it seemed to coincide with the arrest of Robert 'King of Spam' Soloway just a few months ago. But now, my spam count is back up, and climbing like a tape worm gasping for air. The biggest culprit of the spam? A phisher! Someone apparently thinks they are just too cleaver. Well guess what, they are not, and it will never be Jimmy Season.

For those of you who don't know what phishing is, it's when someone sends you an email asking for information or luring you to a website, pretending to be a legit company. My current phishermen love to pretend they are from an online greeting company.

So far I have received emails from 123greeting.com, greetingCard.org, VintagePostcards.com, 2000greetings.com, freewebcards.com and Greeting-Cards.com. Sadly the subjects are all quite lame. "You received an ecard from a Neighbor," "You received a postcard from a Class mate," "You received an ecard from a Mate," "from a Family member," "from a Partner," "a School friend." Wow! Clever clever! This has got to be the equivalent of dangling a rubber ball in front of a fish. Entertaining, a little. Luring? Definitely not. Highly annoying? Absolutely!

Monday, July 30, 2007

I gave blood again today as the American Red Cross was at The Workplace again. Today's gift for giving; a tiny cooler which looks like it's made for a six-pack. Two things that make me go "huh" here. The first is that the American Red Cross is providing you, the blood giver, a means to keep your six pack of beer cold when you go out. This is sort of like how public schools give out condoms to students I suppose. While the school does not condone sexual activity among students, it does want the students to be safe if they are going to have sex. So while the American Red Cross does not condone drinking, it will give you a cooler to keep your drinks cold in case you do happen to drink. The second thing here is where does one even obtain a six-pack of alcohol here in PA? A bar I suppose, but if you're getting your beer at a distributor like most Pennsylvanians then you are buying a whole case of the stuff and not just six cans. And a whole case ain't coming close to fitting in this cooler. I guess really if you're going to use the cooler for soda and not beer then this is really a moot point. But come on now, who honestly does that?

I guess it could also be used to transport an organ like a heart or something like that. Gotta keep those things cool you know?

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I still stand by the claim that I'll never be a city boy. I've never been a fan of the big cities and I never will. After spending an evening in New York City the other weekend I remembered why I never cared to venture into those places just for "something to do." As if the ridiculously bad service at the Film Center Cafe wasn't awful enough, the sheer prices of everything in the city would just make me never want to spend money period. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed spending time with my friends, it was a great time, but if I didn't have friends that lived there, I wouldn't have gone. Chasing down a train by rushing thru Time Square and sprinting thru the station to catch the 1140PM departure so we wouldn't be stuck at Penn Station until 140AM ain't my idea of a good time. Although it does give me good stories to tell.

Now, my friends say where I live now stinks. No, they literally say it stinks, as in smells bad. Sure there is poop all over the place (farm land people, not in my house) and a paper mill just miles away, but frankly the smell of poop is a fresh scent. When they get the liquid stuff out and start spraying the fields it's a little nauseating, but aside from that, you know you're not breathing in any toxic fumes. Now the big city smell; wow I don't even know what the ef that is! It's some bizarre combination of urine, exhaust and B.O. all wrapped into one scent. Yummy! Why pay $7 for a beer or $10 for a Margarita when I can get $1.50 drafts at Big Dogz (not to be confused with Big Guns) and free shots down at The Creekside? Also, when sodas come out in little 6 inch glass bottles, you know you have just forfeited your right to free refills and paid $3 for a Coke. And the people! My word the people! They are everywhere! What in the heck are mobs, gigantically large mobs mind you, of people doing wondering the streets at 1130PM? In Altoona you'd be hard pressed to even find a single soul meandering around at that time, let alone a single bar open at that time. The roads are practically bare!

So kudos to all you rich people out there that enjoy the city life. As for me, I'll continue to enjoy my much less stressful life here in The Cove. So you have giant skyscrapers, Lexuses and tons of things to do. I live in a two story house, drive a Chevy, and need to travel thirty minutes at 70MPH to get to the nearest mall. Sure it may not sound like much, but that's what volleyball and The Office are for. And boats too. Those are really fun!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

You know what I find truly amazing about this world? It's the fact that we can populate this globe with over 6 billion people and not a single one of us look the same. That is unless of course one has an identical twin or some freakish cousin that looks identical and looses control when eating hot dogs. Now I know what you're thinking, "Come on Jimmy. I see people all the time that look like somebody else." Oh you are too smart for me Mr. Thinker. Okay fine, let's assume that every person within an 8000 miles radius has another person that they look identical too. This is completely unrealistic I think, but I'm doing this just to humor you. So we now all have an identical twin somewhere, we just just don't know where, causing this planet to now contain over 3 billion unique faces. Let me give you some examples as to what 3 billion looks like. If all three billion of these people were to make a line, stretch their arms out and touch one another (in a non Madonna way of course) they would rap around the planet 114 times. That is of course assuming that the average wing span is 5 feet, we are on a major circle of the Earth and we can stand on water and permeate matter (I'm not really sure what the average wingspan is, this is just a guess factoring in babies, children and the ridiculously giant Chinese mutants). A pile of one dollar bills, stacked 3 billion tall, would measure more than 189 miles into the atmosphere, or if stacked horizontal would nearly stretch from Pittsburgh, PA to my hometown of Lancaster, PA. And if you ever wanted to count to 3 billion at the rate of one number per second, well you better start young because it will take you 93 years to complete. This is would be quite impossible though because honestly you can't even say numbers like one hundred thirty million three hundred and fifteen thousand nine hundred and ninety seven in less than a second.

Okay, I'm straying from my point here. What I wanted to get across was how amazing people's uniqueness is. Knowing that there are over 3 billion different people out there and each and every person could be identified simply by looking at his or her face is just nuts. Honestly can you even fathom that? I mean how many different combinations of Nintendo Miis do you think you could create? 3 billion? Maybe because you could put eyes on some one's chin or a nose on the forehead. But for our DNA to be so incredibly similar and each and every one of us look so completely different, well I just find it pretty darn slick. I mean think about it. How many ants or grasshoppers could you look at in a line and identify each one by their face? I figure 100 maybe. Two hundred if you have really good eyes (or can hear voices).

Special thanks to a colleague at work who took time out of his/her extremely busy day (extreme sarcasm) to find me information on one billion statistics. The arm stretch thing, I just did my own calculations, because I'm weird like that.

Monday, July 16, 2007

The past few weeks I've had some time to hang out with friends, coach volleyball, and as if you couldn't believe it, play video games. With this year's 2 weeks of camp now over, I figured I'd give my readers what they want since I haven't posted in a while. So I shall stall no longer. Here it comes, Captain Jimmy's Top Lessons Learned Being At Camp This Year:

10. In order to master Guitar Hero on the hard level one must rest his hand so that his pinkie finger is on the orange fret key and then use the index finger to get both the green and the red frets. Of course one must also master that art of sliding the index finger across all the fret keys and be able to quickly improvise when note combinations come quickly that are completely unnatural for the hand to be it. Also it would be a lot easier too if one's hand did not cramp up while playing and sitting down.

9. When playing Marvel's Ultimate Alliance for the Wii tap A quickly most of the time and make sure you throw in a few B + A attacks and Hold A attacks as well. Also make sure your character is NOT punching the air with no enemies around at the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

8. Mama's Kitchen for the Wii absolutely Sucks and, oh yes, that is with a capitol S.

7. Applebees has 2-Fer Weeknights after 10PM where you can get appetizers for half price and 2 beers for the price of one. Unless of course your beer of choice is Fosters which is on the 2-Fer menu, but not carried at any Applebees location. Also for some reason if you order wings, Applebees puts the celery and carrots underneath all the wings and hot sauce. Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

6. New York City is not as exciting when you have to speed walk 15 blocks at 1115PM in order to catch your train by 1140PM so you aren't stuck in Penn Station until 140AM when the next train comes.

5. British name takers at IHOP seem to remember the last name Barley quite easily for some reason. Although that may have something to do with going there five times within two weeks.

4. Fourteen year old girls don't sing, they scream at the top of their lungs in an ear piecing shriek that could only be appreciated by the deaf and other fourteen year old girls.

3. Having giant 20 person sword fights at night in the dark, with PVC pipes in the shape of swords can only lead to one thing: a left eye nearly being gouged out and eight stitches. Huh, I didn't see that coming at all!

2. Season 3 of The Office is just as funny the second, third and fourth times around. Fact. Bears eat beats! Bears, beats, Battlestar Galactica.

1. After watching Season 3 of The Office two, three or even four times, it becomes quite easy to quote the TV show in normal conversation without even knowing that you're doing it. It's just down right spectacular! That's what she said.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I am really not a fan of diet sodas. In fact I just flat out don't like them. If that's all there is to drink, yeah I'll thrown one back, but heck I'd even do that with cheese and that isn't really saying much at all (just to point out I would never just eat cheese. That's gross. If someone put it on food not knowing [or evening knowing because they are evil] that I didn't eat it, I would eat it). So when I heard about this new Coke Zero thing I thought, "Yeah right, it's going to taste just like all the other low-cal, no-cal soft drinks; like diet."

Finally today, there was nothing in our fridge at The Workplace except for a few cans of this Coke Zero. I figured, "What the hey!" Now my boss has been telling me for months now (maybe even years, it's hard to tell) about how this stuff doesn't taste like diet. I just brush him off when he makes comments like that because he says Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi doesn't taste like diet and it sure as heck does!

So anywho I pop the can and take a swig. Aside from the slightest, and I do mean slightest, aftertaste of something not like regular Coca-Cola, I could not for the life of me tell that this had no calories in it. That's right my friends. No diet taste. Not even a hint! I was simply amazed that such a feat had taken place.

Now if only Pepsi would come out with Pepsi Zero (I know they have Pepsi One, but guess what, it tastes like diet) that tasted like regular Pepsi, I might just drop The Dew. Okay, forget that, that's not happening. Love The Dew!

Friday, June 22, 2007

' I've decided that my typical work day could 
be devised into a single computer application that
would be able to mimic me being at work. For those
of you that can read Visual Basic code, here is the
program for my new android, Jimmy Workday (greatly
simplified of course).
Public Class JimmyWorkday

Private codeLikeAMoFo As New Threading.Thread

Private Sub Work()

' sleep until the alarm goes off
While Not alarmActive
Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000)
End While

' get a** to work
MorningRoutine.Shower()
MorningRoutine.GetDressed()
MorningRoutine.DriveToWork("Cavalier")

' do work
alreadyEatenBreakfast = False
alreadyEatenLunch = False
While workToDo And DateTime.Now <= quittingTime

' check emails
For Each email In Outlook.Inbox.Emails
ReadEmail(email)
If email.ConstitutesResponse Then
Outlook.ReplyAll()
WriteSemiCoherentResponse()
Outlook.Send()
End If
Next email

' answer phone (if necessary)
If Phone.IsRinging Then
For i As Int32 = 0 To knownPhoneNumbers.Count - 1
If knownPhoneNumbers(i).Number = Phone.Number Then
If knownPhoneNumbers(i).ShouldNotIgnor Then
Phone.Answer()
End If
End If
Next i
End If

' get bowl of cereal for breakfast
If DateTime.Now.Equals(breakfastTime) And Not alreadyEatenBreakfast Then
FrostedMiniWheats.PourIntoBowl()
EatBreakfast(FrostedMiniWheats)
alreadyEatenBreakfast = True
End If

' use the bathroom if gotta go
If natureIsCalling Then
GetToBathroom()
sitAndWaitTimer = 0
While noReleif Or sitAndWaitTimer < TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)
TryForReleif()
Threading.Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1))
sitAndWaitTimer += 1
End While
ReturnToDesk()
End If

' eat lunch
If DateTime.Now >= lunchTime And Not alreadyEatenLunch Then
Lunch.Devour()
alreadyEatenLunch = True
End If

' code like a mo-fo in a mindless state while doing everything else
If codeLikeAMoFo.ThreadState = Threading.ThreadState.Unstarted Then
codeLikeAMoFo.Start()
End If

' take a break every now and then to stay sane
If gettingBored Then
If Not tiredOfSurfingNet And feelingLuckyToNotGetNannied Then
SurfTheNet()
ElseIf Not tiredOfTalkingToPeople Then
GoTalkToPeople()
Else
WasteTimeDoingStupidStuffLikeCodingMyDay()
End If
End If
End While

' when home from work, exercise and eat
EveningRoutine.DriveHome("Cavalier")
EveningRoutine.Exercise()
If GoogleCalendar.VolleyballEventExists Then
GoPlayVolleyball()
End If
EveningRoutine.EatDinner()

' watch tv or whatever else
Select Case DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek
Case DayOfWeek.Monday
TV.Watch("HowIMetYourMother")
Case DayOfWeek.Tuesday
Movie.Watch(netflixMovie, neighbor)
Case DayOfWeek.Thursday
TV.Watch("TheOffice")
Case Else
DoStuff()
End Select

' get ready to do it all over again
EveningRoutine.Read()
EveningRoutine.GoToBed()
End Sub

End Class