Slang Spelling Bee

OK, so if you’re reading someone else’s slang writing, can you judge the spelling as incorrect? I’d like to think so. Particularly, I’d like to set forth that the term ‘Homies’ (short for homeboys or boys from the neighborhood I am from) should in no way, or ever, be spelled ‘hommies.’ I think this violates all of the rules of ‘Hooked on Phoenix.’

OK, Class dismissed.

Women of McDonalds

Playboy.com launches “Women of McDonald’s” Yup, because we needed more pornography. Here’s what I don’t get: they stoop from Enron, to Walmart, to Home Depot. And now, McDonalds?

I wonder if there will be any law suits. Kelis may be all upset if other milkshakes start attracting boys away from her yard.

All joking aside, I find pornography disqusting and dissapointing. I am sorry that people will probably come to this site looking for more content from Playboy and the rest. Return to your wives for satifaction guys – it’s better for you, and its better for them.

I’ve Really Screwed Up Now

I really messed up this noon, Abby asked for a vitamin and I told her, “No, you need to eat some more cookie.”

My only defense is that I was trying to take my vitamins and I was trying to buy some time.

This is a sad day in the Peterman household 🙂

X-Weekend

It was an intense weekend. It was like a marathon without any actual running. It was like swimming a 200 meter sprint where the only water was showering. It was like climbing Mount Everest without ever leaving the mall. It was like yet another stupid comparison that it was not like. Actually, we did a lot Saturday and Sunday and we had to be around a lot of people a lot of the time without the break that makes socializing OK. I suppose I should clarify that it was the time with people we didn’t know that made it so intense.

Saturday the holiday shopping had already started and so when we went out to do a few errands we were overwhelmed by the number of morons in the parking lots and the number of people in the shops. Twice I parked next to people who probably shouldn’t have parked at a 15 degree angle in the spaces aloted for 90 degree parkers only. And we were trying to leave the mall parking lot and two older people (I assume they were a couple) were just walking along right down the lane I was in. Slowly. But. Surely. “Oh, Herald, there’s a car behind us. With cars behind it. Should we get out of the road?” Apparently Helga was more alert than Herald. Eventually they moved and we were able to go wait our turn for the exit at the mall.

Sunday we enjoyed church (a brief note from the service) and then there was a potluck to celebrate the new-born Jenkins’ baby Lauryn Karis (which is Greek for Grace). That was fun but we came home and I was so tired I took a nap. The problem was that I had to wake up from the nap. I was so groggy that it took me a while to get awake enough to get ready for family pictures. Once I was ready I plugged in my clippers (I had a lot of hair to trim off of my face). They didn’t work. They would not respond to the ‘on/off’ switch. So I had to resort to a free razor that came in the mail. Wow! That thing worked. All four blades worked in harmonious action to raze the forest on my face. I may switch back to a wet shave if that razor does that wonderful. My electric razor hasn’t been functioning correctly lately anyway (battery memory).

Anyway, we arrived at the photo studio in time to wait for an hour behind the others who were also waiting behind those they were waiting behind. Abby was good natured about it and endured many bad stories I made up. She posed well when we had our turn and delivered wonderful pictures. If only I could get her to pose for me that way! We ate when we got home and then put Abby to bed. Then we put her to bed again. Then again two more times. She’s been doing that lately and I’m afraid sleep will be less around here for the parents.

Oh, well. I know next week will be an X-weekend, too. We’re driving down to Texas on Friday. We’ll be there for 9 days so it should be fun, busy and involve a reasonably large amount of turkey.

Movie Marm

A list of questions that is slowly, but surely, spreading like gangrene across the internut.

Movie That Made Me Laugh The Hardest The First Time I Saw It:
Mr. Bean, the Movie – my face hurt so bad. The second time I saw it, I was bored stiff.
Movie That Makes Me Laugh The Hardest After Seeing It 100 Times:
Rocket Man
Favorite Movie Ever:
Gladiator
Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen In The Theater:
Sleepless in Seattle
Most Disappointing Movie:
Master and Commander
First Movie I Ever Saw Without My Parents:
Back to the Future II
Movie I Saw On My Very First Date Ever:
Lion King
First Movie I Ever Made Out During:
N/A
Favorite ’80s Movie That’s Totally ’80s:
The Wedding Singer
Most Embarrassing Movie I’ve Ever Seen Alone In The Theater:
N/A
Last Movie That Actually Scared Me:
13 going on 30
Movie That Gets Me The Most Excited When It Comes On On A Sunday Afternoon:
Beetlejuice
Movie That I Embrassingly Liked The First Time I Saw It:
Ann of Green Bagles
Last Movie I Saw That I Really Enjoyed:
The Incredibles
Last Movie I Saw That I Didn’t Enjoy At All, Despite The Fact It Stars A Midget:
Um, I don’t remember
Favorite Movie That I’ll Casually Mention I’ve Never Seen:
Bambi
Girly Movie That I Proudly Own On DVD:
Miss Congeniality
Movie That In Some Ways, Changed My Life:
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. First movie I watched with Jessica
Movie That I Say Is My ‘Favorite Movie’ Around Arty People:
Wallace & Grommet

Last Movie To Make Me Cry:
Gladiator
Movie that others liked that made me want to spew
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragontails

Via Apropos of Something

Now, this reminds me of a ‘date’ experience I once had. In highschool I was in this band. We played really mediocre adult contemporary music (music that I wasn’t proud of). We played a show for a local youth group and one of the girls in the youth group apparently found me talented and attractive. So, my buddy Nate (whom I’ll refer to heretofore as ‘Natey-pooh’) hooked me up on this blind-double-date. They set a time and they would meet me at the theater. So I showed up early, not wanting to look like the ‘late date’ guy. And then I waited. I walked into the theater, looked around at all of the faces, hoping to see Natey-pooh’s familiar face, but he was not to be found. So I went back outside and waited some more. Finally, they pull up and say, “Get in, we’ll go see the movie at theater X because we’re late.” I told them I had spent my hard earned minimum-wage money and that they could buy tickets, too.

So they parked, met me at the front and introduced me to a girl I’ll call ‘danger.’ She seemed nice enough and as a teenage boy thinking with hormones, her appearance didn’t scare me off. We went into the theater and started to watch the movie. And that’s when danger started doing things that made me really nervous: she started to ask me questions. That’s right, we were watching the movie (It could Happen to You) and she asks, “So, I saw you in the band, you were great. Have you been playing long?”

I’ll pause now to point out that chick-flicks are not very fun for me, but I try to give movies half a chance. This movie became far more engrossing immediately because I wanted to avoid what was clearly a person who was not interested in social appropriateness. Namely, talking during a movie.

After the movie, which was interrupted many times, and at least once while Natey-pooh went to comb his hair in the bathroom while his girlfriend freshened up, we went out to the parking lot. Danger was ready to go to Denny’s and have some more time together, but Natey-pooh and his girl saw the situation in disrepair and came up with lame excuses as to why that wouldn’t work.

Natey-pooh, I don’t owe you for the date, but I do owe you for the save.

New Section of RandyPeterman.com

I’ve created a new section of this site, it’s a Bible blog, dedicated to things I’m learning in God’s word. This is basically to give me a focused area for theological and Christianity related things. I’ll soon be making a development section as well. The new URL for the Bible blog is bible.randypeterman.com. This will allow for several things, but you’ll have to go over and check it out (even though it’s young and only has a few posts at this date). I’m excited for some interaction. I’m sure that some readers will be slightly shocked, moderately disturbed or generally disgusted 🙂 However, everyone is welcome to comment, so please feel free to do so!

The Technically Amazing ‘Incredibles’

Tonight my parents watched the Abigator while Jess and I went to see the Incredibles. This movie wowed me on technical levels, but left me wanting in the humor department. As always Pixar does a top notch job of making computer rendered ‘cartoons’ the absolute best available (Shrek 2 has absolutely nothing on this). I honestly couldn’t tell you what the movie was about in some senses. I kept staring at the images and being Mr. Geek rather than slowly but surely taking in the story. There were some really cool parts of the movie that were funny, but I don’t remember the hysterical laughter of Aladdin (which was the funniest kids movie of all time in my opinion.. but I awate Sponge Bob’s movie). There weren’t touching moments like in Nemo, either.

Overall this was a darker movie, but without the comedic line-up that some of the pixar movies have had, I didn’t expect it to be so. Since Pixar is obviously branching into a new direction I am impressed and look forward to future movies, and hope to have this one in our ‘fold’ once the DVD is released.

Go see it, it’s worth $20.00 or less dollars for two people 🙂

Mozilla Firefox Start Page

If you haven’t seen the new Firefox browser, give it a whirl, it’s stable as it ever has been, but it also is loaded with happy Googleness: Mozilla Firefox Start Page. What it immediately made me think, which I don’t know as fact (rumor reports are not normally part of this site): Mozilla.org could be getting funds from Google search ads. And you bet I hope that’s the case. If Google is sharing its income with those who will host ads on their sites, then why not with mozilla.org? Sure, it’s only a guess, but I hope so, because it would be a nice way to support mozilla.org.

Interdepartmental Handicap

I just paid off my Honda Civic, which feels good. However, the process for doing so was uber-retarded. I went online to Chase.com and logged into my account by typing in my username 530… Hey, don’t try to trick me into giving away sensitive information! Anyway, I logged in, and clicked on the (finally present) ‘Pay off my car’ link. There I was presented with a really old address that I lived at over two years ago. I happened to live there when I bought the car 4 years ago. The instructions on the web site were to call an 800 number and change my address information to make the payoff.

So I called.

I did the rigamaroll of automated touch tone systems and then waited online with a 30 second loop telling me how important I was but that I’d have to wait my turn. I waited for not very long, which was nice. Then the gal on the other end of the line (which is a bad term since I was on my cell phone) asked for security reasons for me to confirm my address. I did. She told me that was wrong. I chuckled and thought, “Silly people have our old Ash lane address.” I was wrong. Turns out they have our old, old Ash lane address from when we first moved onto Ash lane (we moved downt he street later). The problem is that I haven’t used that address in years and so I had to look it up in my files. So I finally got her approval with the ancient address and then she wanted to change my address. Which I appreciate. Except that she then wanted to send me out new monthly payment coupons.

I explained again that I just wanted to pay off my car. She said I couldn’t do that over the phone, but I could do it online and via mail. The problem is that the mail system works poorly because if my envelope with check enclosed arrives one day late, they’ll charge me 43 cents for that day. Which means I could literally almost own my car. I could have a loan on my car for 43 cents and sit waiting, wondering what the heck was going on because the mail took a day too long. So I logged in (while on the phone) to my account again and got told by the server that their was an error!. There was an error all right! My car loan was through Chase-Manhatten. That was the error. Ford Credit, who handled my Stratus load, was outstanding. They were the best financial organization I’ve worked with as far as online information, telephone support and prompt handling of payments.

In the end, I let the chase.com site do its thing and finally it stopped having the error and I was able to initialize the payment. I’m hoping that the electricity doesn’t mess up my transaction and I can just breathe easier knowing I’m getting to a place where I can just have one huge payment per month for my house.

The other thing that irritated me is that I had called to change my address on the phone at Chase a long time ago (before I moved to CO) and then I’d changed it online with their ‘online address changing form.’ That apparently is not related to the ‘We have your account under a really old address’ database that they handle things with for the phone department. Why have the same set of information, related to the same account, related to the same customer, stored in many databases, not accessible to the different departments and not manageable by the customer on your online account editing page? Why do that? Because you can. Because you’ve got your customers locked into your system and they can’t do a thing about it. Nice, huh?

[Note: I can’t wait to hear Trint‘s story about what he had happen to him that makes my story seem like a graceful financial transaction.]