Monthly Archives: January 2008

20 Words for the New Year

  • 2 day complete thaw of all snow. 10+ weather for 4-5 days started Jan 3rd
  • Jan 22 – snow is back again. 4th time using the snowblower (remember my computer programmer = laziness?)
  • Christmas #3 with OG. Lots of excitement. Typical perschooler exuberance. Major gift items: Black and Decker workbench (from sister), kitchen (pre-christmas from us), little people stuff (brother), wooden cradle for dolls (mom), old fashioned sled (grandma/nonno), hockey nets (Joey/Angel), and endless amounts of toys and books and puzzles. For me: books, wallet, tickets to the fateful Bills/Dolphins game, and a kitchen digital scale
  • annual repainting of room in house. This time it’s a redo of the kitchen and living room which was done when we first moved in. It’s not as satisfying redoing your own work as it makes the previous efforts ‘seem’ like a waste of time (although that’s not true)
  • discussions over if/when/where to go for a winter getaway. with friends to Dominican? visit brother in Bermuda? Somewhere else?
  • starting the next swimming session with OG. Is this session #5 or #6. Hardly have to hold her now. Won’t be long until she’s swimming on own with/without water wings. Loves to jump into water, float on back and do ‘dunk dunk’s.
  • preparing for Wonderboy It’s a tough conditioning regimen
  • debating whether should spend $20/hr to hit golf balls in the new dome (that was the old SPortsworld Dome) at closest driving range. Will the urge to golf outweigh the madness to pay $20?
  • contemplation: new irons this year?
  • Will the Wii invade my home? Looks possible but will never supplant the classic MAME. I would now consider myself the master of Robotron: 2084 and would challenge ANYONE on this earth to supplant my claim for dominance
  • OG started ‘Yabba Dabba Dance’ with Grandma. Can’t wait for the dance recital in March.
  • Pre-school transition went smoothly but can’t wait for summer: what an additional effort to suit up OG for outdoor play.
    Hindsight 20/20 – would have won the NFL pool if only had went with gut instinct. Lesson learned and am pleased about how soon I was able to recover and shake off the funk.
  • Oh yeah, last thing: OG has a ‘Betta’ fish (a.k.a siamese fighting fish). Feed it every morning together. Swims in the tank, don’t have to regularly change the water. Nice and cheap. And in my opinion, just as good as a dog without the ‘joy’ of having to care for it.
  • Sonia starts Yoga class. Ohm. Ohm. Ohm.
  • 2008 – the year of the Democrats, $2.00 gas, power shortages in the summer, and time to renew the mortgage – should I opt out now or wait until the fall?

OG and the Great Masters of our Times

I have continued my committment to exposing Olivia to the great music Juggernauts of our time (and just before my time). During her existance she has absorbed the likes of Queen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (not a huge fan but I’m working on it), ABBA and more. Currently we are absorbing the power of Yes. Thanks to the mp3/USB capabilities of my car deck, I have the entire Yes anthology literally at my fingertips. She is now working her way through these great musicians and has become very fond of ‘Abiline’ and ‘Run with the Fox’. After a few listens she can keep up with the lyrics and hum to the guitar solos.

Now I’m looking for the next great band to expose her to. Any suggestions.

At home, she has become a massive Julie Andrews fan. She loves to emulate her by whirling and twirling through the Sound Of Music. Particularly the ‘Do-Ra-Mi’ song. She loves the pose at the end of the song where ‘Maria’ points her finger in the air a la Saturday Night Fever.

Welcome to Lemming Nation

About a year ago, there was a car in the parking lot at work that always had the wiper blades sticking vertically up off of the windshield during the winter days. Now, if you visit the parking lot you will see close to or even more than a 1/3rd of the cars with their blades upright in similar fashion. It is embarrassingly amusing to see all the wipersin this prone position ready for some hooligan to run around and snap them off.

The obvious ‘reason’ that people do this is that they don’t want their wipers to become fused against the windshield if/when the weather calls for freezing rain or some level of precipitation. But people are doing this EVERY day regardless of the forecast. Working at a tech company and being able to relate to the ‘common’ personality of the people that work there, here are the plausible reasons why there’s a plethora of ‘wiper salutations’ in the parking lot:

– effort avoidance: computer programmers/developers typically seek the least effort path to existance. Which is what makes them great programmers. In their disdain for having to manually repeat steps and work efforts a developer will automate or seek effiencies so that they never have to revisit the problem again. The wiper thing is their attempt to forgo the minimal effort required to unstick the wiper blades when the rare occurrence comes up. I wonder though if they evaluated the effort they spend each morning lifting up the blades and then placing them down in the evening vs. the one or two times they would actually need to unstick the blades. Unless these people simply lift them in December and lower them in April which explains the increased # of reported traffic accidents
– Lemming-itis. We’re all Lemmings to some degree, let’s admit it. But I wonder if the tech industry has a higher occurrence of Lemming behaviour. I asked a colleague a couple offices down why he raises his blades to the car each morning. And his response, and I’m not making this up, was: “Because I saw other people doing it”. I wonder, do these people lift their blades up in their driveways at home or have they been brow-beaten by some obscene form of peer pressure?

So, I am really interested in knowing if other parking lots exhibit this behaviour. I have NEVER seen this behaviour beyond 1 or 2 cars in ANY other parking lot I’ve loitered. Have you seen mass wiper-lifting anywhere?

Is there a benefit to failing a drug test because of marijuana usage?

In the USA, maybe! I’ll let you decide. Here’s the scenario:

Say I was charged with oh, I don’t know, say running an organized dog-fighting racket. And then say I was charged with 2 yrs prison sentence.

Now, say I failed an official drug test due to usage of Marijuana. Then, instead of serving the ‘hard time’, I would be eligible to enroll in a drug rehab plan that takes place in a minimum security facility. This program lasts about 6 – 12 months after which I would be eligible for early release even though my conviction was NOT drug related. Sounds pretty sweet, huh?

Now, say I was a professional athlete and this early release allowed me to play my sport again while still in my prime. If I’m a really good athlete I could probably turn that 12 months or so I avoided in prison into several million dollars. Sounds really sweet, huh?

Let’s go one step further: I would never have qualified for the drug rehab program had I not previously failed a required drug test. Therefore, that failure can more or less be attributed to the potential millions I could earn should things go as planned.

Summary: failing a drug test made me my millions! Now, do you think it’s worth botching a drug test so that you can put that failure to good use down the road? You never know when you might need to use it to your advantage.