Boring training notes:
8:00 – Start. Already bored
8:10- falling asleep.
8:25 – ripped out hang nail. Now awake.
8:45 – inatructor says semper gumby. I laugh much louder than appropriate.
8:50 – Bored
8:55 – joke no one got.
9:00 – diatribe on the role of the district
9:15 – good presentation. Yea!
10:00 – guy with flipchart does presentation. Everyone in awe of fact that guy still uses flipchart. He points out that chart never runs out of battery and then marker dies.
10:30 – long line of characteristics of the form “is (adjective)” with the last item being “can empathize”. Is empathetic too uncommon a word?
10:45 – made “a preposition is a horrible thing to end a sentence with” joke to which everyone just nodded and said yes.
1:00 – “I love roleplaying” “no that kind”. “oh”
Month: September 2008
Reinfused Soda Fail
I purchased a few cans of dusting agent to, well dust and thought to use the remains of the can in an attempt to add effervescence back into my then flat Diet Mountain Dew. I grabbed a paper towel to wipe the soda from screen after spitting out one of the foulest fluids I’ve ever tasted (beats both windshield washer fluid and fake stool). Then I look to see on the can: “For the safety of your children, a strong bittering agent has been added to this product to stop inhalant abuse. www.inhalants.org”. Once again, kids abusing the kindness of companies has destroyed another one of amazing ideas. One day I’ll finish my cocaine-powered flashlight.
Microsoft Commercial Makes No F#$@ing sense
I love non-sequitors. But this a bit much:
Thoughts?
Moving Up to the Typographic Big Leagues
I felt a bit cocky after yesterday’s form triumph so I figure I’d try to enter the big leagues by using Adobe InDesign from CS3. I’m not normally intimidated by software but after the first prompt asked “would you like to manually adjust the font kerning defaults for finer display control” I clicked yes and I think somewhere a house exploded. I tried importing a document I had previously done in publisher and this cartoon expresses what happened.
The Form of the Chosen One
I’m slowly becoming more active in Playwicki District and was tapped to head up a Webelos weekend. It’s a bit of a weak weekend which lasts less than 18 hours, but hey they’re kids.
I’m reasonably good with Publisher and combined with Google image search one can create a reasonably snazzy form with a little knowledge of fonts. So, I made a form for the event and passed it out at the district committee meeting and the response was stunning. I had no less than three people go “this is good”. The professional was impressed it was in color. This is from the man who sent me a form by printing it out in color, scanning it to black and white, and sending me the pdf of the original publisher document. At the end of the meeting someone said to me “you’re doing a great job”. How!? I just made a fucking form and people are using it as a proxy for the success of the event. I have almost no service corps, I don’t have a budget and the patch won’t be in by then but I have an awesome form that apparently covers that. This is the equivalent of judging the fiscal soundness of a nation by how nice its money is. Which, if it were the case, Zimbabwe would be in a lot better shape.
Duckets of security
Quantum Cello Piece on Radiolab
Radiolab is probably my favorite “arts” podcast despite it doing science most of the time. Normally I wouldn’t post about an episode but their latest interseason bit is absolutely wonderful. If you like cello music, I strongly recommend you hear this. Quantum Cello
SimStapler destroys a friendship
SimStapler is quite possibly one of the dumbest applications for the iPhone. You press the stapler on screen, and it plays an animation of someone using a red swingline stapler. Every 10 presses, a woman’s voice says “splendid!” I’ve currently pressed it about 4000 times and everyone who sees it call me an idiot; until they try to see how fast they can use it.
Teejay Green challenged Sam Lodise to a friendly competition of who could get to 50 first. Teejay got 50 presses in 22.23 seconds where Sam beat him out narrowly at 22.18 seconds. Teejay had knocked back a few beers at this point and what I assumed was a friendly competition was not: Upon learning of his loss at an utterly pointless game Teejay said the following: “You cock-sucking mother-fucking Chinese bastard”.
This is why I don’t drink. In other news, Teejay stated to me that he’d pay me 10 dollars if by 2018 he didn’t have a personal fusion generator in his basement. With God and the blogosphere as my witness, I will have my 10 dollars.
Florida, ole!
Why I volunteered to help Kyle move from Florida is beyond me. Our trip to Penn State still stands out as my worst trip ever. We left at 7:30 in a GMC Sierra and 27 hours of podcasts for 42 hours of driving. The trip down was marked by false hope:
I thought this was the furthest south Wawa and shed a tear leaving it, until I saw signs for the next 3. Boo…
At about 1 AM we encountered an “I-95 South Closed” sign. Hm…. So we took a detour around
CAPE FUCKING FEAR!!! I want to become a dentist in this plaza and knock out the light behind “Cape” so I can be the dentist at Fear Plaza. Later, there was another delay.
A jack-knifed trailer. I’ve always been stunned by the jack knifed trailer on an on-ramp. LIke some how one thinks that throwing the wheel will magically fix your truck once you realize you’re going the wrong way.
I was hell-bent on going to a Waffle House after reading a review in Maxim that they were superior to IHOP. This died in my chest after Kyle pointed out to me that the car was being cased by four separate people and I spotted two pimps. Go Carolina! We switched after 11 hours and in Georgia I noticed a sign where the design was identical to the Brass Ring Cafe in Hopewell/Pennington.
We arrived in Florida and began Operation:Packupkyleslife. I wanted to pack-up and return to PA the same day, but biology interfered. I met Kyle’s cat Dunyazad. A cat that fits into the category of animals with awesome names that are abbreviated to something retarded, in this case “dunners” or “duny” or something equally dumb.
I had an idea to increase our efficiency on the way back:
BED SAIL!
Packing was an ordeal with the ultimate goal of “protect the suade couch and queen sized bed”. I was angry at Kyle for dragging his feet until I realized he was leaving his life behind, frown. We departed the next day after packing in the rain which only stoked the fires of my determination.
The drive back was awesome in that I got to drive 1100 miles at a maximum speed of 63 MPH, w00t. Our overnight stop involve Dunderella nearly becoming potty trained.
We had to pull over about 6 times because something was about to bounce out and kill someone. I ran out of podcasts around Fredericksburg, Va and was reduced to listening to old episodes of Security Now! and listening to PC security problems from 2005. Anyway, observations:
Virginia had signs that said “Overheight Vehicle Detector ahead”. Isn’t that just a bridge? Virginia also had the best custom plates: “LRIGTAB”, “Uh huh”, “W00K1EE”, “Nerdc4rt” and “FLAMING”. The last was on a Hummer H3, no idea. Finally, Virginia had many illuminated signs that said “DUI Crackdown In Effect” with metal signs beneath that said “CRUSH CRIME”. Best crimefighting initiative name ever.
Please note that Hell is in comic sans.
Salvation came when we did find the furthest south (on I-95) Wawa. It was glorious. Most rest stations had hand blow-dryers. I much prefer a paper towel but this Wawa had retrofitted a jet engine as a hand dryer. I was nearly knocked over initially by its force.
I have more pictures available on my Flickr Feed of this trip.
I’m glad I made the 2200 mile trip alive. The 800 mile trip to Glen Ellyn will be a cakewalk. Go 5-Color Worlds!