Category Archives: Confessions

Things about me you probably never wanted or don’t need to know.

What Realy Happened Today for Work

In real life I worked hard to get a project done, I will continue to work hard on that project tonight after the girls go to bed.  But in fantasy land…

I worked on a super-cool video game, and in one afternoon I singlehandedly created the most brilliant first level ever conceived.  And then showed it off to the world via a video on youtube that got more hits than any other video has ever gotten.  While I waited the approximate 10 minutes that the viral video took to garner the worldwide attention it deserved I recorded one of the songs for the album I’m making this year.  It was the most fruitful 10 minutes in recording history.

The fantastic world that I live in is way more exciting than real life.  The meticulous project I’m working on is going to have to be produced in stages.  Not stages for acting, but sequential layers of completion.  Completion that seems far off, even if the requirement is that it is done in only a few weeks.  Fortunately I’m working with a group of other coders who have their stuff together so we’re making great headway.

ET Would Be So Jealous!

So Apple announced the iPhone yesterday.  Its not much of a phone, in fact more than anything its a mini-computer that happens to do telephony.  Its the most amazing device – I predict that soon it will work as a remote control for my Apple TV device.  And by ‘my’ I mean the one that I lustfully wish that I would own.  Some day maybe.  But I think that the new iPhone is truly one of the most innovative devices because it does integrate so much more than any other phone, it has an interface that blows me away, and frankly, for the power that it offers, is worth the $499.00 price tag (or $599.00 if you get more storage capacity).

If Apple lets developers write applications (and I think they will) then we’re going to see people doing amazing things on that phone.  My inner-geek is on overdrive.  Jessica is tired of hearing me talk about it.  I want to be able to surf the net, chat on the phone, text message and listen to music all on the same device – and have the interface look good, too.  RIM (who makes the blackberry) is really probably dreading June when the device will be available on the market.

We Missed the Apprentice Season Premier

And boy are we sad.  We were really hoping to catch the sappy intro wherein the Hair Flair Scare gets greeted by his super-model wife and child who has more hair than him and then he tells us about how the apprentice is going to finally be selected from a group of cannibals who have no qualms eating their opponents for breakfast, lunch and dinner [and if Taco Bell sponsors it again, “fourth meal”].  Can you believe we missed that?

I would have loved to have seen the opponents get briefly introed as successful business people, brilliant students and quadrillionaires.  Which leads me to my next point: why doesn’t Donald Trumpt do an ‘Apprentless’ show where people compete to work in the mail room.  Normal people.  People like you and I?  What?  You don’t want to filter through Donald Trump’s email?  Me neither, but it would be a good candidate for the Discover channel’s Dirty Jobs show 🙂

Prepare for the Deluge

I’m going to be rather busy for the next several months.  This is common for this time of the year and about 2 years ago I worked insane hours for three months – last year I worked insane hours for about a month.  Usually I think I will blog less, but I find that I probably blog the same or more.  This means that you will probably not notice anything different or care about the change in things posted here, but I like to communicate with you the readers.  It makes me feel like a good personal blogger.

I also have some extra complications because I have several development jobs going at once so I’m going to be even busier than normal plus more busy which can be equated to busy, busy.  Or, in mathematical formala-like expressions:

Busy1 + Busy2 = Insanity3.

I find blogging to be a solace.  Not quite like the Scott Joplin song, but it still helps me to relaxe.  Music does, too, but blogging is faster to complete (thus the typos and the bad grammar).

New Years Resolution

So this year’s resolution is to write, record and produce an album by the time I’m thirty.  Sure, that gives me one quarter of the year to do nothing, but since my birthday is at the end of September (the 25th for those who have to know the exact date) that actually moves the deadline up.  I’m working on creating a website for my musical outlet (it is make believe at present) but you can keep your eyes out and (plug your) ears at music.randypeterman.com.  As I record things I will post them there, then, when all of the songs are recorded I will have to figure out what else to do with my pseudonym, “Scream Apparatus.”  I don’t see touring in my future.

Good-Bye CNN

I used to subscribe to the CNN RSS feed.  That was until this morning.  But since their news tactic is to report very little useful in the headline, but sensationalize it to get reader attention, I’m done.  For example take the twenty-eight inches they reported in Denver.  And by Denver they don’t mean Denver, they mean up in the foothills.  Because in Denver proper it was much less snow than that.  After subscribing to the feed for some time now I’m determined to find another news source, temporarily I’ve subscribed to the BBC’s feed.  Are there other alternative news sources online worth keeping up with?  I don’t trust the local Denver Post because they’re just in-line with CNN with their business and reporting practices.

Illegal Information That Should Not Be Posted to the Internet

Illegal information such as my sister’s recipe for peppermint marshmallows.  I don’t know where she keeps it stashed, but just like the Colonel’s chicken recipe it should be locked up and forever banned from being published.  Unless of course the military made it in large batches and delivered it to the middle east.  I’m pretty sure it would take care of most of the problems there because people would be stuffing their faces with peppermint marshmallows instead of planning taliban terrorist things.

They’re great, but I think you just need to register with the state if you carry them on your person.  And maybe you need a prescription to acquire them.  Thanks, Becky 🙂

I Think I Really Screwed Up

We took Abby to go see the ‘Nutcracker’.  It was Jessica’s idea, but I consented.  I think I’ve violated my girl’s sense of decency.  The moral failure I have now committed is something I apologize for.  Some of you may be thinking about men dancing in tights as being the problem.  And you’d be right.  But I’m not upset about their fronts, they wore cups or some sort of male-front-part-ambiguizer.  But their bums were totally and completely emphasized by the tights.  One dancer’s bum was so completely overly-emphasized that I thought it was possible that the crack of his mass went all the way to the other side.  Fortunately it did not because I would have had difficulty explaining that to Abby.  “Daddy, why does his bottom go all the way through to his front?”  They could have called it, “The Buttcracker.”  It was wrong.

However, Abby was amazed by some non-anatomical things (and actually didn’t mention the tights) like the Christmas tree growing.  She loved the mice dancing around.  She liked some of the dances a lot.  I just hope that she doesn’t want to go again with me.  I can’t watch another round of men in tights.  I just can’t.

Whipped Up to a Froth

If you go into a service oriented food supplier (AKA Starbucks) and you order something should the employees question you on your order?  If I went into Burger King and ordered a squirt of chocolate milkshake on top of my fries and was fully willing to pay for a small milkshake to achieve the nasty sugar-salty-soggy conglomeration I’m after… then squirt the stinking milkshake on top of a basket of fries and send me to my grave.  Quietly.  Once I leave your whole store can roll on the floor laughing at the weirdo.  But wait until I’m gone.

This morning as a treat to my bride I went to Starbucks and called her from there to ask what she wanted.  She told me that she wanted a Pumpkin Spice Mocha.  Which, as you may know, involves a large quantity of chocolate syrup, and a smaller quantity of  Pumplin Spice syrup followed by a smaller quantity of coffee.  Its kind of like a coffee beverage, but more like a sugar beverage.  This is the drink my wife requested and so with confidence and certainty I ordered one.  And the gal who took my order was shocked.  How dare I order my wife a booger and scotch coffee drink.  Was I sure?  Yes, I did want a pumpkin spice mocha.  But what she heard sounded like the worst coffee choice possible.  Begrudgingly she wrote on the side of the cup the order.

So I’m pouring in heart stopping amounts of half & half into my large plain coffee and hear, “Mocha… pumpkin spice?!”  As if someone had ordered that the froth be generated by beating the dairy with a used rag.  For goodness sakes, this is Starbucks.   The place took off as a national chain because consumers discovered that they could have what felt like infinite customization over something as simple as a coffee.  And they coudl feel snobby and proud of it.  They liked their fat-free-decaf-sugar-free-vanilla-latte and Starbucks was proud to charge them $4.53 for it.  But I guess that’s changing now.  Soon I will have to go in with a bag over my head, and once the employees calm down from thinking its a robbery and realize that I’m embarrassed by their conjectures and so I hide my face like the Phantom of the Coffra.

Mens Dress Shoes

To continue on my series of ‘Randy pretends he has fashion sense’ type posts tonight I went to buy black mens dress shoes.  Who designs these things?  I swear to you that almost every shoes less than $100.00 they soles are made from recycled iron maidens.  That is to say they’re incredibly uncomfortable.  Considering I don’t wear them very often I can’t justify that sort of expenditure.  Worse, the designs were very weird to me.  I guess I didn’t expect to be as opinionated as I was, but some of the shoes literally looked like the bill of Scrooge McDuck from the Disney Ducktails cartoon.  Done in black of course (or brown).  Then there were some shoes that looked like they’d been cleaved in half by a random hatchet murdered, but then carefully and professionally stitched up so as to fake you out into thinking they were supposed to look like that.

To Jessica’s credit she has somewhere between 10 and 20 black shoes.  I don’t think that 7 of them look any different to the other shoes, but she identifies small nuances that make the shoes unique.  Tonight I learned about nuance.  With multiple manufacturers making the same shoe styles I was able to pick out small curves that were cut differently, different lace types, and of course various types of ‘cushion’ inside of the shoes.  I prefer shoes that feel like my Vans: soft, cushiony, and sporty.  That way when some thug asks me to play a pick-up game while I’m dressed up I can easily get schooled in my comfortable shoes and sweat out a perfectly nice shirt and pants.

I guess I just expect to get schooled in style and comfort instead of looking like I killed a cartoon duck and then tried to implement the Spanish inquisition on myself.