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The brownie as a tool of office diplomacy has long been in my arsenal.  I missed two days of work without appropriately notifying my bosses and the last hints of angst were dismissed over a week-old brownie created during the Great Guest Exodus of New Years Eve.  But the brownie can be used for a more sinister purpose, intimidation.

Me: Would you like a piece?
Coworker: Sure, I’ll take a piece.
Me: Oh, that’s it.  I thought you’d said you’d take a piece. Not a crumb.
Coworker: Hey, I just had lunch.
Me: And you need a quality confection to top it off.  The portion you took is like a shot of beer, insulting to the drinker and the bartender.
Coworker:  Ok…. I’ll be back later to get the rest.
Me: No! You’ll be back now to get the rest.  Get in there, and take a slice.

Me: Would you like a piece?
Coworker: Yes, I’d love some, thank you.  I really like brownies.
Me: Oh, so that’s how you show your love?  With what appears to be a portion the size of mice leavings?
Coworker: I just started a new diet.
Me:  The first three letters tell you all you need to know “DIE”.  Are you trying to kill your tastebuds?
Coworker: I’ll try more.
Me:  Try?  Do or do not.  There is no try.
Coworker: Ok…. *cuts larger slice*
Me: I’m going to check back with you later to see if you finished it.

Who new baked goods could be such precise tools of demasculation?  Next week: Decimating self image with coffee crumb lemon bars.

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You can now comment through both Disqus and Facebook Connect, meaning you need no other logins to post a comment besides Facebook.  As previously, you may still post anonymously but now your comments will appear in Facebook along with your picture and such appearing in posts if you use Facebook Connect.

by ·0 Comments

You can now comment through both Disqus and Facebook Connect, meaning you need no other logins to post a comment besides Facebook.  As previously, you may still post anonymously but now your comments will appear in Facebook along with your picture and such appearing in posts if you use Facebook Connect.

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I waddled into work for my triumphant return and no one really noticed that I was gone.   I was gone for two days and the greatest response I got from either of my bosses were “I was curious where you were”.  Just curious?  I thought I was important enough to at least anger or annoy them.  I’ve either got to become more important or set up deadman triggers to break the printers if I’ve not been in for three days.  Then they’ll know when I’m gone.  On the plus side, someone did comment that the room seemed less witty.

by ·6 Comments

So, I’ve clocked some quality time staring at the ceiling and wanted to venture forth.  I went from supine to upright in a mere 45 minutes and back to sitting in 30 seconds because of the wicked splinter I got doing foot rotation on a wooden floor.  Having not eaten for a day or so I got to the kitchen and fell into a chair.  Not wanting to get up again I restricted myself to things I could get while sitting.  Lunch consisted of two spoonfuls of chili, six clementine oranges and a fistful of Oreos that required navigating a flagstone floor in a rolling chair.  I think I’ll go back to work tomorrow, I just need to figure out where I can hide a floor mat to stretch out on every few hours.  All my previous sleeping spots have been discovered.

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The 5-Color event went well and Mike and I got to show off our wicked pimp challies including the gayest toast imaginable.

200901030195-Color That’s John Jones in the background getting in on the coolness of the moment.

The whole ordeal was improved by Mike’s pimp shirt:

Bling Bling

Bling Bling

I don’t know if it’s correlated but, today I woke up to terrible back pain.  Sitting hurts, and negotiating a shower requires a kibuki-like dance to cover everything without muscle pain.  Apparently I 5-colored harder than I thought.  Alternatively, I was attacked by ninjas in my sleep.  Based on the lack of damage to my home I fended them off successfully but at some personal cost.

by ·8 Comments

New Years Eve held the Coke/Pepsi 3-shot challenge pitting the discerning palettes of my guests against a gauntlet of samples.  The preponderance of guests stated they’d be able to tell them apart at a statistically significant level.

Purpose: Determine if a tester can accurately identify samples of Coke or Pepsi when presented in lots of three.  Success will be defined as properly identifying all samples in six of nine lots of three.

Protocol:

  1. A pseudorandom sequence of ones and zeros were generated as the seed data.  Zeros were Coke samples and ones were Pepsi samples.
  2. Cups were numbered sequentially and filled with approximately 1-2 oz of the appropriate beverage as listed.
  3. Testers were allowed to take calibration samples of each beverage from a control bottle.
  4. Each tester received 3 sequential cups and after sampling, received a data sheet requesting the cup number and the corresponding observation.
  5. To be statistically significant, each tester had to consume 9 sets, but after much bitching and complaining, we stopped at 7.

Results: After 108 samples tested, approximately 50 samples were properly identified breaking the Colobus Barrier.  Of the 36 lots tested, only 3 went 3 for 3 correctly identifying samples, once again doing worse than chance.  No tester was able to identify samples at a level above chance.

Considerations/Stuff People Bitched About: The soda was flat; each specimen was poured from a bottle that had been open within the previous 30 minutes.  The soda was warm; this was done specifically at the request of Pat Toye and may have partially caused the previous accusation of flatness.

Interlab Repeatability: If anyone would like to stage a repeat under similar conditions with a changed variable of temperature, brands, specimen (cup) size, participants or tester, please contact me.

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Item by item review of 2008 Resolutions

1) Pass another actuarial exam – Fail
2) Complete new Ockanickon page – Win
3) Learn how to make a yule log (food, not combustible) – Win
4) Remove all dead skin from feet – Win
5) Find job as actuary that doesn’t involve moving to Pittsburgh – Fail
6) Re-arrange room and set-up new treadmill arrangement – Epic Win
7) “Box” assistant camp director knowledge – Slow Fail
8 ) Scan important documents and old photos – Photo Fail, Documents Win

Site specific goals:
1) Cover a logical fallacy every-other week, Fail but my end game’s changed with the fork between suburbanadventure.com and logicwarrior.net
2) Post Daily Highlights within 48 hours 80% of the time – Win, even through camp
3) Complete 5 Projects or Joe Baloke trips – Fail, I’ve moved away from using a fake person.  I’ve embraced transparency on the web and use terryrobinson as my username for just about every new service I join with exception of games
4) Add back-log of pictures to Flickr – Abandoned, Flickr no longer my photo backup solution

2009 Resolutions

  1. Pass another actuarial exam
  2. Run a rippin’ Klondike Derby
  3. Get an actuarial job that doesn’t involve moving to Pittsburg
  4. Scan family photos
  5. Create online version of at least 3 merit badges
  6. Drop a hobby
  7. Get Logicwarrior.net up and running (vague, I know, but I’m not sure how to detail this)
  8. Learn PHP, MySQL, CSS or develop competence in a programming language

Maintained Goals

  1. Continue posting here near daily
  2. Continue treadmilling 10-12 miles a week
  3. Continue keeping up with world news
  4. Continue pursuing value

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32 invites, 21 respondants, 11 cancelled same day, 5 cancelled within an hour.  So, gradually the sex imbalance went through the successive stages of nidged, unbalanced, sausage fest, sausage convention, International Congress of Sausagists.

The event of the evening was the making of the pimp chalice as seen here, because nothing says party like arts and crafts.

-15 

These pimp challies were best used to inebriate our former family scion:

-7

We also learned that the Spanish word for bling, is bling.

-3 

The bounty of the evening was rich and cost a mere $60.00 a person.  Needless to say, I have leftovers including 1/3 square yard of brownies.

-2 

The countdown was properly spent as all should, by watching a score of attractive women sing “La Cucaracha” on Spanish television.

So now I have many bags of chips and about 12 unused pimp chalice blanks.  Looks like I’m holding a party for when by brother moves out.

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My credit rating jumped 40 points from last month to this month.  I think someone stole my identity and started making prudent saving decisions.

I picture some sort of counterpoint to organized crime that steals passwords and sets spending limits on teenagers or alerts people when their interest rate changes.