Archive for category nerd

Satan’s Not In A Guitar Pick, He’s Inside All Of Us

With ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ out of heavy rotation on the various movie channels, I’ve luckily found another movie I have to watch everytime it’s on

Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny (imdb)

I’m only slightly embarassed to admit I’m currently watching it for the 7th time since last Saturday.

I’ll spare the total rundown as there’s so many great little moments in this one that listing them all would be futile. Just know I’m a big fan of Tim Robbins playing “The Stranger” – easily some of the funniest moments in the movie come courtesy of his character.

I was never a Tenacious D fan back when they had the HBO show and I’ve always wanted to hate Jack Black, but this one is full of stupid humor that’s actually a lot more subtle and intelligent than it lets on.

The First One Is Free, Then You Gotta Buy

I’m not a coffee person. I hate coffee. I really, really dislike coffee. I just don’t get it.

With that said it should come as no surprise that I just don’t get Starbucks. I don’t understand the allure, I don’t understand the big deal about the whole coffee scene.

Maybe I should say “didn’t” rather than “don’t” …

Last night we stopped by Barnes & Noble. The kids like to check out books and I find a great (admittedly egotistical) joy in finding books that have my photos in them lying in bookstores.

Since we’re there my wife wants to hit the cafe and score a Double Chocolate Chip thingy that she always gets from Starbucks. The kids each wanted a Hot Chocolate. I passed. It’s fucking Starbucks and I don’t do coffee based drinks.

So the kids working the counter are just WAY too personable and friendly. While they’re getting the drinks, they’re making conversation and just being cooler than kids working Starbucks should be. All the while I’m just sizing things up. One of the things that caught my eye was the collection of flavors (are they syrups?) that they use. One was Cinnamon. I dig cinnamon…a lot.

So everyone gets their drinks and the kid making them asks, “Are you sure I can’t get anything for you, Sir?”

I don’t know why I didn’t give him my usual shitty attitude (probably because they were so friendly), but I asked innocently enough what they made with that cinnamon. Still at this point just being curious – not wanting anything. He named something or other and I made with a half-interested, “Oh.”

The kid followed up with, “Can I get you one?” and I passed but he persisted, “Are you sure. Come on, they’re really great” or something to that effect. So in a totally uncharacteristic moment I gave it.

The kid makes me a Cinnamon Spice Mocha and gives me a tall. (which in Starbucks-land is actually a small) To make matters worse, he gives it to me on the house.

What can I say? It was pretty fucking good. So good in fact, that I actively sought another one for myself today – making it Venti (large to us English speaking, non-coffee drinking types).

It was indeed good…again.

I think I’m hooked and the bastards at Starbucks did it drug dealer style – they gave me the first one for free knowing damn well they’d sell me a gazillion more. Arrrrgggh!

I’m now one of the mindless masses paying way too much for warm milk mixed with coffee and a squirt or two of cinnamon flavor with some whipped cream on top – at least I think that’s what it is. I don’t care if it’s boiled horse piss with snot on top…it’s good.

I suck and I hang my head in shame…but only to take another sip of my Cinnamon Spice Mocha.

Chocolate Rain Redeux

I told you I couldn’t get this damn song outta my head! I had to do something about it and the only logical answer was to dive head in and listen to it so much that I became immune. What better way to force yourself to repeatedly listen to something than to add your own music under it. (remix?)

Here’s what I wasted the last two hours of my life on:

Chocolate Rain (LG Redeux)

So should I sync it up to the video and add it as a reply on YouTube or just leave well enough alone and hope it’s finally out of my system?

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*This is the first music thing I’ve done in quite a while that wasn’t meant to eventually be a tune for some coaster video

Weird Al

I more than a little embarassed to admit we got tickets to see Weird Al at Kings Island. But we did.

Section 3, Row L

Thus completes my descent into complete dorkdom. It’s a dark day here at the bottom of the totem pole.

I Rolled My Camera

Everytime I get a new camera the first thing I do (and presumably most people do as well) is get into the menus and set it up to my liking. Among those settings is always some method for file numbering.

I always set mine to continuous. This means the first photo I take is numbered 0001, the second photo is 0002 and so on until 9999. Then it rolls back around to 0000 like an odometer.

Today I officially ‘rolled’ my camera. That means I’ve taken over 10,000 pictures with it. I’ve had the this one a little over two years now (27 months to be slightly more precise) and as of today have taken 10,037 photos. That works out to 371 photos each month since I bought it.

I might have a problem.

Amazing the way digital has changed the way we shoot.

I Am The Devil…and I Am Here To Do The Devil’s Work

Every year or so my wife and I happen to catch a movie that’s made it’s way to TV and get hooked. Usually the dumber, the better. And it’s a requirement that the movie channels play it ad naseum so that it’s hard not to catch it.

Just to get you into the right place here’s some past movies that have received this greatest of honors from us:

Road Trip
The Replacements
Rock Star
That Thing You Do
Mean Girls

The list goes on and on…and on, but those should set the bar appropriately.

The latest on the list to receive the “Have to watch it everytime it’s on” honor?

The Devil’s Rejects

It’s so ridiculously fucking great.

I have a weird sense of humor and horrible taste in entertainment in general, but The Devil’s Rejects is easily one of the best ‘horror’ films ever. It destroys House Of 1000 Corpses and by the end of ‘rejects’ – even though I know they’re going down – once Freebird plays and they charge the roadblock, I’m rooting for them to make it this time. (some stuff is lost in type – that last bit is really good in person with a little body language and a mock teary-eyed “If I leee-eave here tomorrow” thrown in, but in text it’s not so I’ll just stop there)

At any rate, if you asked me today who I want to be when I grow up – it’s certainly Otis B. Driftwood. He’s just so damn cool it’s ridiculous. Kudos to Bill Moseley.

Too many great little moments to list individually (but if you do watch it and don’t at least chuckle a few times, then you know you don’t share my sense of humor), but any movie that also features Brian Posehn (metal nerd/comedian), Diamond Dallas Page (former pro-wrestler who was cool because he was so pathetically uncool) and Priscilla Barnes (Terri from Three’s Company) has to be worthy of such honor.

At the very least catch the scene where Otis takes Adam and Roy out to dig up the guns. It’s where the line I used for the title of this post comes from and when it’s followed by the bashing in of Roy’s skull – it’s badass stuff.

A Camera & A Flashlight

One bored guy, one newly neatened garage space, one camera and one flashlight. Mix and you get this:


I’m sure this will go a long way towards improving my coaster photography.

Happy Birthday To Me

No super introspective thoughts or crap like that. I’m not sentimental about the birthday thing at all. If anything it’s a chance to look ahead, not back.

I’m cool with the age thing too. I don’t have a problem with getting older. I’m still closer to my 20′s than my 40′s anyway.

The only thing I’ve noticed more and more lately is the fact that time just seems to keep going faster and faster. But I even have a theory on that.

It’s obviously not time moving faster, but rather my perception of time changing. For example, my daughter turns 10 this year. One year is 1/10th of her life. That’s a big chunk. For me a year is just 1/34th of my life. There’s a big difference there. Does that make sense? I mean 1/10th of my life would be almost 3 1/2 years. In comparison, the last 3 1/2 years seem to have gone by about as quickly as a year seemed to when I was in 4th grade.

I dunno. I think I’m onto something there.

Wrestling Dork

Before I was a coaster dork, I was a pro-wrestling dork. We watched all the time, bought pay-per-views and even went a little out of our way to attend events. For a while in the mid 90′s I even worked the indy circuit in western PA until I blew my knee out. (but that’s a story for a different day)

I don’t really keep up with it much anymore. If I’m flipping through the channels, I might stop and watch for a few minutes, but I’m not up on who’s who and what’s going on story-wise.

Tonight the WWE is in town for the live RAW show the night after Wrestlemania – which is traditionally a big TV show. Being as it was happening at the Nutter Center (a stone’s throw away from where I currently sit typing this) and we were just there two weeks ago for the BMG show, I wanted to remember to check some of it out on TV this evening.

Today my wife calls and tells me that four or five of the guys are staying at the hotel and the lobby is full of wrestling dorks going nuts when one of these guys walk through the lobby. She even said there were a bunch of non-guests just hanging around outside hoping to catch a wrestler coming or going.(imagine everything wrong with coaster geeks, but add the trait of still being starstruck)

Then almost in passing she mentions some music producer guy was staying tonight too and everybody was trying to get his autograph. I’m like whatever.

So we’re watching RAW tonight and they cut to the audience & a shot of Timbaland along with the announcement that he’s in attendance and they do a little ringside interview with him. My wife goes, “That’s the music guy that’s staying at the hotel. He’s actually a really nice guy.”

Friggin’ Timbaland!

My wife is so out of touch with pop culture sometimes.

Titanium Potato Masher

I want (no, I need) a $40 Titanium Masher.

Check It

My Weekend

I had one of those weekends where I really didn’t do much, but somehow felt busy. Those are the worst because it feels so unproductive.

Jamie left work early on Friday with the news that the last ‘class’ she has to complete for work is available either in May in Chicago or June in Dallas. First thought was a chance to check out the Texas parks by piggybacking onto her work requirements. (a situation we’ve taken advantage of many times in the past) So I spent a bit of Friday trying to figure how viable it was to think I could get all four of us to Texas for a week. Two days later and we’re still pretty undecided, but I’m really liking the idea of a ‘surprise’ trip to Texas falling into my lap. At this point as I already have much of (ok, pretty much all of) our travel plans set through the first week of July and Texas would require both a restructuring of time and money. I might even be willing to give up the trip to Tennessee (Dollywood & Ghost Town) to make Texas happen. We’ll see, I guess.

Friday night no one felt like cooking so we did Chinese take-out. Mongolian Beef is good. Then my daughter and I ran out in search of a new Wii game for little man. He had to have a tooth pulled Saturday morning (long story) and a spacer put in. So being as this was his first ‘big’ dentist visit I wanted to be able to hook him up with a little sumpin-sumpin if he did well – and he did ridiculously well with the whole thing. Especially given that we had to be up and on the road by 7am to make his 8am appointment at the dentist 47 miles away. (another long story)

They didn’t put him under to pull the tooth, but rather gave him what I refer to as ‘silly juice’ when we got there and we had to sit in the waiting room for about 45 minutes for it to totally kick in. The kid rewarded me with 20 minutes of the funniest action I’d ever seen performed by a 5 year old in my life. I’d try to describe it but it won’t be nearly as funny in words, if you weren’t there and if you don’t know my kids. Three strikes there for almost everyone who’ll read this. But those few moments when he started getting silly until he got called back had us in tears from laughing.

So he was a champ and we left the office with his tooth and a plethora of ‘prizes’ fom the dentist and I gave him the game for doing so well. We ended up deciding on Wii Play just because it was the short, simple, multiple game type of title that we could all dig and it hooked us up with another Wiimote. We spent a little time playing when we got home. Good stuff. A little shallow. Ok, a lot shallow, but considering the $40 remote is included the other $10 for 9 mini games was an ok value. Nothing groundbreaking and it even feels more shallow than Wii Sports, but it’ll be fun to pop it in every once in a while and screw around. Plus, it includes a tank game that feels an awful lot like a 2007 version of the old Combat game on the Atari 2600. That alone makes it worth it to me.

I crashed for a couple of hours in the afternoon (I’m not a 6am kind of guy) and after dinner we watched “Stranger Than Fiction” – decent enough movie but with the obvious happy ending. Whatever. The kids crashed and the wife and I decided the catch up on a bunch of episodes of Desperate Houswives that had accumulated on the DVR. (no snide comments from the peanut gallery please)

So it turns out we haven’t seen it since before Thanksgiving. We had 7 unwatched shows. At 11:30 we started the first one and in typical lame-ass fashion got interested and kept saying, “Just one more” until…well…we finished the last one around 5:30am. Man, that’s so lame. But at least I’m caught up on my Housewives. (rolleyes here)

Late start for all on Sunday. We dragged our asses to Meijer around 1pm to pick up some things. Stupid crowded and the closest I’ve ever come to physically attacking morons in a store. We were glad to leave, but spent way too much on way too little.

On the way home as we turned into our little subdivision, we noticed a sign for an open house relatively close to our place. (why we’d be interested is another ‘too long’ story for this post, but we were) So on a whim we went to check it out. Decent enough place. Not something I’d buy in the end. A few things we liked a few things that wouldn’t work for us. Still our first hands-on look at what the money (this was listed at $225,000) buys you in this section of the world. I still have no idea of our long-term plans in regards to the area, so scoring another house isn’t exactly priority until we have a better idea. It blew a half hour, what can I say?

Spent the afternoon/evening getting some house stuff done. Everyone crashed in the living room watching TV, so around 9pm I got them all to bed. Did the podcast (just Jeff & myself this week) and headed on over here to finally add this entry. Plan on either catching some TV tonight before I get around to bed or hitting shuffle on Winamp and working on the website for a little while…or both.

That was pretty much my weekend*.

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*I hate telling stories like this because I either get too long winded and essentially too boring or I try to keep it short and leave out all the details that make reading something like this worth it and it becomes boring. I’d really love to find that balance between telling a good story and telling a short one. Clearly, I’m not there yet.

Crapalog Update

The first of the crapalogs has arrived.

Sadly, they’re not the total crapfest catalogs that started the whole thing, they’re more ‘reasonable’ choices that I came across along the way. (‘reasonable’ is totally subjective in this case)

First out of the mailbox was the art.com catalog. Actually not too bad a choice as I dig the website and check it out now and again. No idea why I’d need a catalog when the site is always there and shows more. But whatever.

Tied for first place in turnaround is the Sayersbrook American Gourmet catalog. Now this is a fun one. 16 pages of…bison meat. Uh-huh. I have to admit it’s kind of making me hungry looking at it. I don’t think I’ve ever had bison. I’m so deprived.

The best part is that there are other ‘exotic’ meats included in seemingly random fashion. For example on page 4, I can buy Ostrich Filet Steaks. Four 4 oz. steaks would run a person $46.95. I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten an ostrich either. I suck.

So there you have it. The first two crapalogs to make it here – artwork and bison meat. Now we know who really is eager to get my patronage.

Can’t wait until more roll in.

Late Night TV (I’m A Dave Man)

I don’t really consider 11:30am or 12:30am to be late night, but I suppose that definition differs for everyone. I’m an all-night person, so for me, it’s not late night, per se.

At any rate I’ve always been a fan of the late night talk shows. I can remember watching Carson as a young kid. I think I even dug Arsenio back in the day. (and remember watching Pat Sajak, Bob Costas and even Chevy Chase)

My all time favorite though (by a long shot) is Letterman. I’ve been watching Dave since I was something like 12. (20 years, give or take)

I just think the guy is great. I dig his humor. I finally got around to seeing the show live in June 1998 and I’m somewhere between the arrows near the front in this audience shot:

Letterman Audience

It was a suck-ass show guest-wise, but it was cool for me. I’m actually so lame that I have pictures around here somewhere of myself with Felicia from the band, Rupert from Hello Deli and Sirajul & Mujibur from Rock America. (yeah, I’ll spare myself the indignity of scanning those and sharing)

But sometime around 1999 or 2000, I found myself getting way into Conan O’Brien. I’d still watch Letterman at 11:30, but 12:30 was where it was at. That phase took us to NYC again and in April of 2002 (for my B-Day) we hit up Late Night:

Conan Audience

This time I’m more than a figure in a darkened crowd. It was a good time.

So what’s the point? Well, in the past year or two I’ve found my interest in Conan waning and my love of Letterman at near all-time-high levels. The humor has evolved from the days of the Velcro Suit, Monkey Cam and Chris Elliot eating catfood, but that’s not bad. In fact, I find my general sense of humor moving in the same direction.

Dave’s the shit, plain and simple. He’ll be around until at least 2010, but with Conan moving to the 11:30 spot in 2009 – well, who knows what will happen beyond that point. At least I can look forward to three more years of Letterman laughs.

Mail Order Crapalogs

Ever have something stupid just pop into your head? Last week, I suddenly (out of nowhere) remembered all the lame-ass mail order catalogs (or crapalogs as I’ve affectionately dubbed them) that used to come to the house when I was a kid. Catalogs with items ranging from novelty (‘Old Fart” T-Shirt’s and Trucker Hats) to the supposedly useful (those pill organizer/reminders with several compartments each labeled with a day of the week) – stuff that only the totally clueless or elderly probably buy. I remember looking through those religiously as a kid and was wondering how many are still available these days.

The only one that I could remember offhand was Harriet Carter. So I dial up the website on the ol’ look-a-tron and surfed the site for a bit. But I found it very unsatisfying. I needed the catalog in my hands, flipping the pages for the next “got-to-have” gem to catch my eye. Plus, they make for great bathroom reading. (or so I seem to remember)

Using a combination of cognitive skills and dumb luck I stumbled onto a few more – Miles Kimball and a few others. I was on a mission now.

Later I was talking to my mom and asked her for the names of some mail order catalogs and she delivered. So I sat there on the phone going from website to website requesting crapalog after crapalog like a man possessed. I must’ve ended up requesting somewhere between 20 and 30 ranging from craptastic to mildly useful.

Sadly, some seem to have changed a bit, many now offer mostly ‘seen on TV’ stuff, but a few are still as shitty as ever. Now the fun becomes the race to see who can get me a catalog first. I see it as a Tour de France of mail order catalogs.

I let you know who gets here first…

Man, I can’t wait.

Movies & Stuff

In the same spirit as adding my recent songs list, I now offer the last 5 movies Netflix sent me under the “Eyes” header on the sidebar.

I don’t necessarily personally watch all of those movies though, it’s just what’s coming into our home. Sometimes the kids watch something and we don’t, sometimes my wife watches alone, sometimes I watch a movie and no one else does – whatever.

At any rate these are the DVD’s being thrown my way.

Sexy Click

I just noticed that the word ‘click’ in the sidebar looks really sexy in that font. Nice.

Music & Stuff

Since I decided to start a blog I figure why not go balls out and become one of those people who shares mundane life details with complete strangers. So in the spirit of passing along info that no one cares about, I direct your attention to the sidebar on the left and a bit down the page to a header titled, “Ears.”

I went ahead and hooked up with a last.fm account and that section of the page updates with the last 9 songs I’ve listened to. If you’re really a hardcore stalker kind of visitor to my little personal slice of cyberspace, you can click on it and find out way too much about my listening habits. At the very least you’ll find them varied and lame.

I usually don’t have a real pattern when it comes to listening to music. I simply don’t have the time to invest in loving music like I used to and while it sucks, life goes on. I currently have 9,746 individual mp3′s on my external hard drive. I usually just hit shuffle and off I go.

Yes, almost 10,000 songs sounds like a lot, but the vast majority of it comes from ripping my old CD collection that I spent nearly 10 years building (92-02) and those were they days when the enjoyment of one song meant you bought a whole CD (and the dozen other songs that came with it). So what my collection of nearly 10,000 songs is really more like 700 songs I like and 9000 that came with the package.

That’s not entirely the case though, I do have a good bit of à la carte stuff too – but even that is less than current. Finding current stuff I dig happens few and far between.

At any rate, the info is there for those that care.

Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging (INTJ)

You may or may not be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I’ll spare the history and just pass along that it’s a personality type test. I find that if you’re able to be very honest with your answers, then it can be pretty accurate at breaking you down into one of 16 personality types.

I’ve done this test a few times and always score as an INTJ. So I guess it’s true…and actually upon reading through the various descriptions of what an INTJ is – I’d have to say it seems to describe me pretty well.

There are plenty of online versions of the test if you just do a search and numerous sites that offer various profiles of the 16 personality types as well.

Here’s some links to profiles of an INTJ:

typelogic.com
personalitypage
fuzzy.snakeden.org (some plain-english INTJ FAQ’s)

And if you’re not the type to follow those links and just want the rundown. Here you go:

10 Tips For Dealing With INTJ’s

1) Be willing to back up your statements with facts – or at least some pretty sound reasoning.

2) Expect debate. INTJs like to tear ideas apart and prove their worthiness. They will even argue a point they don’t actually support for the sake of argument.

3) Don’t expect them to respect you or your viewpoints just because you say so. INTJ respect must be earned.

4) Be willing to concede when you are wrong. The average INTJ respects the truth over being “right”. Withdraw your erroneous comment and admit your mistake and they will see you as a very reasonable person. Stick to erroneous comments and they will think you are an irrational idiot and treat everything you say as being questionable.

5) Try not to be repetitive. It annoys them.

6) Do not feed them a line of bull.

7) Do not mistake the strength of your conviction with the strength of your argument. INTJs do not need to believe in a position to argue it or argue it well. Therefore, it will take more than fervor to sway them.

8) Do not be surprised at sarcasm.

9) Remember that INTJs believe in workable solutions. They are extremely open-minded to possibilities, but they will quickly discard any idea that is unfeasible. INTJ open-mindedness means that they are willing to have a go at an idea by trying to pull it apart. This horrifies people who expect oohs and ahhs and reverence. The ultimate INTJ insult to an idea is to ignore it, because that means it’s not even interesting enough to deconstruct. This also means that they will not just accept any viewpoint that is presented to them. The bottom line is “Does it work?” – end discussion.

10) Do not expect INTJs to actually care about how you view them. They already know that they are arrogant bastards with a morbid sense of humor. Telling them the obvious accomplishes nothing.

That pretty much sums me up.

No Wonder I Feel Poor

Maybe it has to do with how much we seem to move from place to place, but I’ve always been interested in population and demographics data. As much as stereotypes should be avoided, the collection and analysis of cold, hard data is often surprisngly accurate when it comes to trying to get a feel for what a community is like without ever being there.

I use all the online tools I can every time we move and so far I’m doing pretty good at with my virtual scouting reports.

One great site to score a quick community snapshot (in numbers, of course) is Sperling’s Best Places. The site seems to be pretty good about keeping the info relevant and accurate. Of course nothing is 100%. According to their info for my neck of the woods, the median home value is $183,900. I suppose that it could be accurate, but as someone who’s just beginning to look at the housing market in the area – that number seems a little on the low side.

They list the median household income around here as more than $77,000 – no wonder I feel poor. Other than that, the info seems pretty spot on.

But I digress, digging up info like this is fun to me for some odd reason and with as much as we’ve tended to bounce around the country the last few years, it can be quite useful too. Some other sites I like to nose around:

Claritas – pop your zip code in there and see how quickly your community is broken down into a handful of stereotypes. The info is dated, but I still find it to be one of the funnest of these types of sites to blow time with.

City Data – often seems like dated info, but there are forums. Nice current, human takes on various communities around the United States.

ePodunk – little unique info, but a great resource for pointing you towards tons of external info.

There are lots of others, but those four cover all the essential bases – useful, entertaining, real world feedback and resources. Good for wasting time, being nosy or planning a move…we all win.