Category Archives: Confessions

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

Kerry Ahead in Exit Polls

Or Maybe not. Maybe George Bush is.

No one will say since the media really screwed up in 2000 .

One Florida voter was reported as saying, “I don’t know how I messed up on my ballot. My vision is better than 20% of the drivers in this state and I can spot a car I’m about to hit from within 3 feet of hitting it. My reaction time isn’t so bad, I usually have applied the breaks by the time of impact…
“What was the question again?”

Swing states like Colorado have reported that usage of swings in parks in Denver have gone down since the cold weather and yesterday’s snow make the park uninviting for voters. Teeter-Totter states like California (where the building go up, and earthquakes bring them down so they can be built back up again) have reportedly just voted Democrat because they want Arnold in the Whitehouse.

John Kerry, if his bid for the presidency fails, has been invited by George Lucas to act in any upcoming Star Wars sequel he may choose. “Kerry, is an emotional powerhouse, between his expressive face, dynamic speaking skills and the CGI that Industrial Light and Magic can create he’s ready to play an important role in one of my next movies, Star Wars: The Botoxine Battles,” said Lucas.

Profanity

Sometimes words race through my mind that are less than flattering, and are all-together unwholesome. This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen sometimes. Most commonly when I get comment spam I think, “Those 57Up1d 84574rd5!” And then I cool off, pray for the Lord to purify my thoughts, and delete the spam. However, what really bothers me is that if the comment spammers are from Asia, there is nothing I can (or ICANN) do about it. That is the real source of the frustration. If I could shut people down (I’ve already shut down one source of spam thanks to the help of the ISP that was hosting the goober) I’d feel a little better. Even if I could just get ISPs to block computers that were contaminated with whatever program was being the relay I’d be happy.

However, some fool in Asia, who keeps using profanities for his comment spam posts, is hitting my server over and over again. I’ve gotten hundreds of posts from this ‘person’ (which sounds like too high a ranking for such slime) within the last three and a half days. Each one is almost completely identical and would really not help his search engine ranking anyway. I know Phil reported some comment spam, and in chatting with Trint I learned that he got hit with some, too, but has anyone else gotten these sorts of ‘treats?’

I’m using Moo-Kitty’s Comment Spam blocker to prevent it from being published, but I still have to remove it from the WordPress database.

I can say Spam tastes OK when wrapped in rice (not ricin!) and sea weed ! My aunt made some for me back in the day. Yummy!

While writing this three comment spams were blocked by my filters, but had to be removed.

Sweet. Potatoes.

Tonight at dinner I was taking a bite of potato when I coughed. In a really bizaare moment a piece of that potato came shooting out of my nose. This was a little awkward and made everyone at the table laugh. However, this was not enough. Nope. I had a large piece of potato lodged in my nasal passage. I had to blow and blow to get those pieces out. Jessica was not impressed and threatened to uneat her dinner if I brought it up again.

So, dinner was good, I enjoyed it, but I was stuck with roots in my nose and a semi-nausious wife all due to coughing. Has this happened to anyone else?

Life of Crime

When I was a kid my cousin Jenny was one of my most-favorite cousins [apologies to my other cousins for a youth’s favoritism], whatever she liked was cool. She wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and so I would let her do my hair up all ‘cool’ so I could look like whatever the cool guy’s name was (I don’t even remember the actor’s name). Jenny really liked MacGyver. If you don’t know what MacGyver is (there are readers of this blog who are younger than Mr. Swiss Army Knife) he was a guy who could get himself into tough situations where evil people were going to kill him and he’d always use science or ingenuity to get out of the bind. In one particular episode MacGyver opened a car door with his knife (or so I thought). This little bit of influence leads me to my story…

I, a six or seven year old boy, wanting to be like MacGyver got into my dad’s toolchest and got out his rather large buck knife and opened it up. I knew I couldn’t whittle anything with it because my whittling skills were pretty poor (mostly because I wasn’t allowed to have knives). I knew that I wasn’t supposed to have the knife, but I was a big boy in my mind so my parents needn’t know about the knife until I could prove to them how good I was with it. Well, after thinking a bit I thought about opening up my neighbor’s son’s car door. He was home for the weekend from college. Ms. W. (his mom) gave me my first drum set because her son Brian didn’t use it anymore. I really respected her as a single mom and as a large black woman who probably could have killed me with a look.

So I inconspicuously walked over to the driver’s side door and tried to fit the giant tip of the buck knife into the lock slot. It didn’t fit well, but MacGyver’s knife took a while to unlock the door, almost up to the time he would have been caught. My luck ran out sooner than his did because Brian came out and said, “Hey, what are you doing to my brother’s car?” I told him of my plan to use the knife to get into the car and he said, “I’m going to go tell my mom!” I argued that he shouldn’t but he didn’t listen.

I ran (note to self: don’t run with sharp objects) with the open knife to the garage, and threw it into the drawer because there was no way I was going to undo the lock that held the blade open. I hid behind the trash can and breathed so slowly that I almost passed out. If there was one thing I had learned from the episodes of G. I. Joe it was that when the enemy was near you needed to stop breathing and keep yourself quietly hidden away. I heard Ms. W. open her door and listened to her spout statements like, “What sort of boy tries to break into their neighbor’s car?” I also admire her for not swearing when she probably would have been at least moderately justified for calling me several creative names my parents had not picked. Ms. W. arrived at our front door where my mom was equally shocked to find out what I had attempted. She looked and looked for me.

My mom never found me until I turned myself in. She then marched me over to Ms. W.’s house where I appologized with great tears in my eyes. She forgave me and I learned an important lesson: Buck knives don’t fit in car locks. I also learned that if I was going to be a ‘smooth criminal’ I was going to have to take lessons. They didn’t offer those at the local rec center. So much for my life of crime.

Back in CO

Now that I’ve gotten back into Colorado I’ve got to readjust to Mountain Time as well as not staying up too late. However, that won’t be too hard because the jet lag made me tired.

Jessica told me a funny story regarding Abigail that I just have to share: Abby was on the potty and asked if I had an ‘agina.’ Jessica told her I did not. She then asked if Ice Cream had an ‘agina.’ I don’t know that I’ll be able to eat ice cream again 🙂 Of course Abby comes by it honestly because at about 5 or so I got to watch a steer (castrated bull) get butchered and I asked my mom if every single piece of cow they removed from the carcass was a uterus.

Gloves

Between watching the excellent movie Bourne Supremacy and watching The Original Avengers I don’t trust people with gloves anymore. Since winter is coming up and I’m in Denver I’ve decided to stay inside my apartment until Spring arrives and warms things up. If someone comes to my door and knocks whilst wearing gloves I suppose they’ll just have to think I’m not home. The reason the gloves bother me is the fact that nine and a half out of ten killers in either of the fantastical sources mentioned above are wearing gloves or have a glove on at least one hand.

One episode of Avengers had a guy in leather work gloves that were unmatched! Therefore if I see someone wearing unmatched gloves I shall have to just knock them out before they get me. You may be laughing right now but I know they’re coming. One day I’ll be coding, looking towards the outside of my office and snap – I’ll have my head twisted, neck broken or worse, Jessica will bring me more wheat-free desserts!

I should also clarify that black leather gloves give me the hibijibi’s much more than most other gloves. Thinsulated skiing gloves only effect me slightly and thumb only mittens don’t cause me any fear whatsoever. Thank you for not wearing any gloves around me. Also, thank you for not wearing gloves while surfing my site.

Weekend Report

This last weekend for our 6th anniversary (yes, it is a wee early given that the actual date is October 3rd) we drove down to Colorado Springs. We stayed at a bed and breakfast there and really enjoyed ourselves. I’ll attempt to give a general replay of most of the events as they happened.

Continue reading →

Why I Ordered Over Night Shipping

I ordered a camera, and with that camera I asked for two-day air. Right now you’re thinking, “Randy, there’s something in your teeth.” and, “Randy, you said ‘over-night.'” I did. But on Monday when I ordered the camera I ordered it two-day so it would be here on Thursday so I could have it charged and ready to go today when I leave for my romantic Anniversay/Birthday weekend. Well, Tuesday rolled around and I hadn’t gotten a tracking number in an email so I called and they told me that there was a billing issue (they recorded my credit card number wrong) so they would send it out next day air the following day (shipments had already gone out). Thursday rolled around and I anxiously awated the arrival of my package, Jessica was slightly irritated by my super happy anxiety. Noon reared its ugly head and I still had no package (morning delivery is what DHL had on their site for the shipping method). Well, to make a short story longer I called DHL and after going through the labrynth of automated customer service I actually talked to a human being. She told me that my package had apparently not made it onto the truck, but would be out the next day. OK, Friday will be the day I get my camera.

It’s Friday and DHL’s site has no new information about the whereabouts of my package and I’m leaving later this afternoon to go to Colorado Springs. I sent an email to customer service this time hoping that email might be a good method since I didn’t want to be pressing more phone buttons if at all possible. I got an auto-responder message warning me that it may be up to two business days before I get an answer to my email asking for information regarding my package which was guaranteed over-night. Since when did over-night equate to a week’s waiting?

Last night I heard a commercial on TV (it was on in the other room) proclaiming the wonders of the new DHL delivery service. That just might be an overstatement. I just wonder where my camera is. In the end I will be patient, this camera is not critical to my existence, it would have been nice to have for a weekend full of digital memories, but I’ll just use the one we’ve got, it’s just like driving a Yugo in a Viper race.

First Time Bungee Jumping

The first thing you should know about Bungee jumping is that your first time should be from lower heights to get you aclimated to the free fall. Fortunately for me I tried bungee jumping from a mere five feet. You see at five years old I was playing it safe because I couldn’t climb any of the taller trees and I wasn’t sure how to make things go. In fact I wasn’t trying to bungee jump at all, I was trying to parachute. I had taken a plastic bag from the grocery store and placed my arms through the handle holes and then wrapped a small bungee chord around the branch of the tree and then affixed the other end to my belt buckle loop.

I braced myself for the wonderful feeling of being suspended in the air (due to the ‘parachute’) and then lept out into the wide open space below me (wide open was a relative term because I had about a one square foot area upon which I could land without destroying some of my grandmother’s garden). To my surprise the grocery bag did not open up in a wide parachute but instead, blocked by my body the opening of the bag did nothing, much like the Vice President of the United States. Fortunately I had a backup plan, the bungee chord. This chord, measuring approximately 18 inches in length had lost at least eight or nine inches to the branch and so the 10 inches of elastic bands stretched to their limit quickly and I found my male parts severely restricted as my pants strained at the belt loop to be free.

I quickly bounced up. OK, not really, instead I hung their by my belt loop in pain until the sheer weight of my five year old body pulled the belt loop off of my pants and I fell well beyond the one foot area. Of course I was going to have to explain to my mother why my pants were missing a loop but what delight and joy I experienced once the blood flowed into my legs… I had invented a new sport.

Camping Story

Well, a brief summary of the camping, but not so brief as last time.

Friday evening we left Denver late enough that we stopped to eat dinner at Chipotle. This was mistake number one. Don’t eat beans while sleeping in a tent with your wife. Don’t eat beans while sleeping in a camp ground where others might hear you reap the rewards of bean eating. Don’t put two bean eating tents together lest those tents produce a ‘call and response’ sort of passing wind festival of beans.

Mistake number two was that I left the air mattress at home because the car was full. I should have left home the three pounds of trailmix I bought. My back was incredibly sore that night. I was also incredibly not sleeping. Abby didn’t sleep well either, which means that Jessica and I didn’t sleep well on top of anything else that might have caused us to not sleep well [rocks].

Mistake number three was not bringing matches or a flashlight. Fortunately we had a small flashlight in the glove compartment of our car (we never have gloves in there!). That flashlight lasted all weekend long… which was amazing. The Kaes and the Doyle’s brought plenty of camping supplies that made up for our lack, but I still felt silly.

Note to self:
Make a checklist next time and don’t forget the hatchet.
Second note to self:
Buy a hatchet. You read the book in Jr. High, you know that with a hatchet you could rule the world.

We had a great time and on Saturday, since the Doyle’s had to leave the our family and the Kaes family went for a hike. What fun it was. Craig ripped down a tree with his bare hands (and a little help from me). Smokey the bear shortly thereafter hunted him down and ripped him down with his bear hands. OK, not really, but if you’re an environmentalist pretend you didn’t read that. OH, and seriously, the tree was already dead, Craig just uprooted it.

That night we ate a feast of various things the ladies had brought and also sang songs around the campfire (I wedged my guitar into the car, but not the air mattress). The Lord blessed us because we also got to sleep on an air mattress Saturday night since Mike Doyle left us his and promised to come up on Monday to help us pack up. Mike left us his sleeping bag liners as well, Donna left Jessica her water retardant coat.

If we hadn’t had the air mattress we’d have been uncomfortable. If we hadn’t had the sleeping bag liners we’d have been in worse shape than without the air mattress since the cold weather swept in and mad a mess of our camp with its windy cohort.

Sunday morning we woke up and I crawled out of the tent into snow blowing onto my jacket. Fortunately it didn’t accumulate much, but it was a surprise. I walked over to the Kaes’ tents and discovered that they too thought leaving for dryer, warmer and friendlier climates was a good idea. We packed up, came home and then basked in the sun all the way home. Serious. It was as if Denver was having summer break while just 50 miles away snow was having its way with the mountains and the people in the campsite near ours who drank way too much Coors (you can’t drink anything else in the Rocky mountains) the night before.

Oh, and there’s pictures of the good part of the trip.