I think that I may be turning into a redneck...

Take a look at my boots.  These are actually the boots that I wore out of my house today:

Yes, those are duct taped within an inch of their lives.  However, before I tell you what actually happened, lemme share with you a few other facts, and you tell me if you think that I'm coming closer to redneck status:

1. I worked at the state fair all night.
2. My job was mostly explaining gun safety.
3. I had a choice of what to do when the boot started falling apart, and I decided that this was the best possible solution.
4. All in all, I wasn't all that embarrassed.

Yeah....  I think that I may need to turn in my Yankee Card.  :-)

So... here's the story.  Every Autumn, the Raleigh Jaycees (the community service group of which I am part.) runs a few fundraisers.  I've fallen in love with one of them - the Haunted House, but I really dig the other - the Turkey Shoot at the State Fair.  Generally, I work the Haunted House more since they generally need more people day to day.  This year, the Haunted House was canceled since we could not find a place.  So, I picked up a few shifts at the turkey shoot.  Woo-hoo!

I worked on Wednesday night, wearing the boots above, sans duct tape since they were in mint condition.  No problem.  Tonight, Saturday, I was getting ready for the fair and I put on the boots.  I kept feeling like there was something wrong in the padding or something in the right boot until I left.  Then, I stopped for gas and noticed that there was a tiny crack in my boot.  Ah - the padding problem was that the sole was starting to come off.   No worries, it would last for one shift.  Boy was I wrong...

Since it was a Saturday night that I was going to the fair, I had to park out in the boonies.  By the time that I got to the gate, half of the sole had come off.  So, I was faced with a decision:  go back to my house and change or tough it out.  Then, I remembered that there's a role of duct tape at the turkey shoot.  So, I decided to keep going...  Long story short(er) is that I barely got the turkey shoot before 3/4 of the sole was off. So, I taped it back up.  Looked good, and held for the entire shift.  (OK, it looked lousy, but it was functional....)

Why was the left boot taped too?  It held for most of the shift.  But right at the end I noticed that just the front and back of the left sole was still attached.  And it held!  Well, it held until I started heading back to my car.  Then, the whole freaking thing fell off.  And I headed back to the turkey shoot to get the tape.

I'm still a bit confused as to what happened to the boots.  Granted, they are about 10 years old, but they just went downhill so fast.  I'm actually thinking that some of the hay at the turkey shoot got into the boots and started to dry out the glue holding things together?  I dunno.   I just know that now I need a new pair of hiking boots...

Phil's trip to court....

So, I hope that I'm not burning myself out with back to back blog posts, but I was planning on blogging about this topic and I wanted to get it on paper while it was still fresh.  However, I figured that it was bad form to just ignore the last month that I took off.  So when I started to write the intro of my previous post of "Sorry for being gone so longer", it just kinda spun outta control.  So, I made an executive decision to split the "Sorry for the lack of updates" post and the "court" post.

Anyways, today I went to court for the first time in my adult life.  Technically, I went to court once when I was a kid for when my parents were taken to court since they didn't pay some parking tickets that they got.  (The story goes that they had their car at a mechanic's garage for repairs.  Being in a city, parking space is at a premium.  When the garage ran out of room, they just started parking illegally.  When the tickets starting being issued, the mechanic just threw them away.  So the cops then sent a court date to my parents.  Since Mom was stay at home was too young to either be in school or stay by myself, I went to court with them.)**

Today, I was unjustly (read:  justly) convicted of a crime that I did not commit (read:  did commit, and kinda got off light).  So, the facts are that I was driving too fast, and I passed someone (in a turn lane) when they were going really slow and making a right turn.  This wouldn't have been a big deal, but I did it right in front of a cop.  D'oh!  I definitely deserved this ticket since I violated two of the three rules on driving that my dad gave me when he was teaching me to drive:
1 - Never be the fastest one on the road (which I clearly was).
2 - Don't be the asshole / let the asshole be right (the guy did cut in front of me and was going really slowly, but it was definitely an asshole move for me to pass in the turning lane).

(The last rule of course being if you shake more than twice then you are just having a good time.  A bit of explanation on this - we had a pee jar.)

So, I did my research on what to expect, I spoke to a few of my lawyer friends (and one that just has had a few brushes with the speeding tickets in the past), and was all prepared for my court date today.  Now, let's do a brief exercise on what happens when Phil's imagination has 6 weeks to run wild.

Here's what I had imagined to happen:
I was expecting to check in and then agree to plead guilty and then head over to the judge to make it nice and official.  Of course, this would be the epic showdown of the century, the DA would be a Jack McCoy type - I would be defending myself.  However, far from being a foolish client, I would ring of Atticus Finch, with truth and justice on my side.  Let's say that the judge would be a cross between Bowser (From Sha Na Na) and Chuck Norris.  (And while we're at it, let's throw in a pinch of Ang Lee's Incredible Hulk).  I would put the whole system on trial.  "You want the truth?  You want the Truth???  I'm out of order?  *You're* out of order!!!  The whole stinking SYSTEM is out of order!!"  The end result would be that I would get the ticket knocked down to 9 MPH over, so that my insurance wouldn't go up.  Then, I would have a nice scotch with the hottie prosecutor, who would throw herself at me.  Then, I would dramatically walk away saying "Sorry, baby doll.  I'm already spoken for", while twirling my wedding band.  Then, the honorable Chuck Hulk Na Na would come and sweep the hot prosecutor off her feet and they would proceed to have a torrid love affair, knowing that if this ever came out then they would surely have to revisit all of the cases where they were both involved.

Now, what actually happened:
So, I got up in the morning and suited up.  I was advised that if I did that, then people would probably just think that I was a lawyer.  But I figured that there were worse things to be.  I  headed over to the courthouse (which, BTW, their websites list two different addresses on two different streets, but I think that this was that the building is wide enough to span the whole block.. but I didn't check...).  First thing was that I had to go through a metal detector.  I guess that makes sense, but just kinda threw me off.  Then, I wandered around a bit until I found courtroom 1A, which is where I was told to go.    There were a few lines, but not a lot of people, so I picked one and hoped for the best.  Good news is that I chose properly.

When I'm called up, they ask my name, which I give.  Then I start handing them my official driving record, plus my ID and start to ask if we can get this ticket knocked down.  The lady looks up and smirks a little, and says that I should actually talk to a District Attorney about that.  I said "Oh, where do I do that?"  She pointed at a line with a sign over it that said "DA Line".  That made sense so I thanked her and headed over to that line.

(Funny side note... OK *I* think that it's funny, but that may or may not mean much...  When I had initially saw the sign, I read it as "da line."  As in - "Where should I go?"  "Go over there and stand in da line."  Putting periods after each letter may have made it easier to read, like so:  "D.A. Line.")

Anyway, I  head over to the line and I wait to see a kid, who's probably 5 years my junior, looking throughly bored.  He asks what I want to do about it, and I say that I'll pay it, but can we knock it down a bit.  Without thinking, he says "Sure.  No problem." and knocks it down to 5 MPH over the limit.  Even better, think I.  Though I still haven't handed my ID or my official driving record to anyone (I only mention this since it's clean and I paid $11 for it).  He makes a note and asks me to wait in a line around the corner.

So, I head over to the line and see that it's the place to pay tickets and not actually a courtroom. O well, I guess that the $11 (for the official driving report) is well wasted, but hey no problems, I got what I wanted.  So I'm waiting in the line and eventually it's my turn.  The lady behind the counter looks at me and asks what I'm here for.  I tell her to pay a ticket.  She looks at a piece of paper thoroughly confused and says "Margaret?  Are you Margaret?"  I tell her no, and she says that she doesn't have the paperwork, so I should go back to the DA to see where it is.

I head back and start to poke around, but the DA that I talked with like 2 minutes ago was not there.  So, I turn around and he's *right* there behind me.  He asks if there is a problem and I tell him that the lady doesn't have my paperwork.  He asks who he talked with.  Awkwardly, I say that it was him.  (You've gotta remember, I kinda stick out.  I'm 6'4", 230, full beard, and in a suit - BTW the advice that I got was pretty sound - pretty much the only ones there wearing ties were official types.)  So, he fiddles around for a few minutes, finds the paperwork and we head back to the pay line.

I wait until I get to the head of the line and this time, I actually pay.  So, all is good.  And thus ends my very boring trip to pay my speeding ticket.

A few things that I learned from this experience:
1 - Dad was right.  Don't be an asshole driver.  (Especially true when you are entering into a speed trap.)
2 - The court is ridiculously efficient.  Including walking to and from the parking deck, the whole experience took 34 minutes.  How do I know it was 34 minutes?
3 - I parked in a parking deck since I figured that it would be a little time.  The deck cost a buck every half hour, rounded up.  So, I just barely was pushed to the second half hour.  (And if I hadn't had to go back to get the paperwork squared - I would have made it!  Damn.)
4 - The court is really serious about proper attire inside.  On the courtroom door, there are no less than three signs explaining no hats, you have to tuck in your shirt, etc.
5 - No, I mean really serious.  There is an armed police officer, whose job seemed to be almost exclusively to tell people that if they didn't tuck their shirt in, then they would be held in contempt.
6 - The difference between a 14 MPH over ticket and a 5 MPH ticket is about $20.
7 - That doesn't really matter since the court costs pretty much screw you.  After I paid, there was an itemized breakdown of the court costs.  I glanced briefly and from what I remember, it read something along the lines of:
Screw you Cost:  $23
Piss Off Fee:  $36
Thank you, sir may I have another surcharge:  $17
Yes, of course you can:   $53
8 - As soon as you get a ticket, you will get flooded get mail from lawyers.  Holy cow, there was a lot of it.  Granted, my infraction was pretty slight, but I can't figure out exactly what a lawyer (who would have essentially doubled (or more) my costs) would have done differently.

All in all, not a bad experience.  Painful enough that will definitely discourage me from speeding any time soon, but not so painful as to piss me off for being too excessive.

**This is the official story that my parents told the very young child version of me.  I'm assuming that the real, real story is that my parents were running a meth lab/white slavery ring from our basement.

A little bit meta (No, Phil hasn't gone on sabbatical.)

Well, shiza!  Looks like I fell straight into a a nasty case of new-blogitis.  You know what I'm talking about. A dude gets a new blog, gets all excited and throws out a bunch of posts all at once and then all of the sudden te updates just stop for like a month.   Then, that dude is all like "I'm so sorry, I've been super busy, I'll do better, blah blah blah..."

Well, I can't exactly say that I've been all the busy - i'm just a lazy, lazy man.  However, I will try to update more frequently.  I'm doing this for two reasons:
1 - So that Ben and I will stop having this conversation:
Ben:  "So, is the blog dead yet?"
Phil:  "Fuck you."
Ben:  "Cuz you know, it would be ironic since I was the last update."
Phil::  "Fuck you."
2 - Actually, you know what?  That's really the only reason I want to update more.  Not so much to give back to the world, or even to have the same repetitive, expletive-laden conversation.  Mostly, I just want to spite Ben.

So, there you go.  I will beat back my laziness with spite.  And if that isn't the American way, then I just don't know why I even watch Fox News.

PS - I don't foresee my updates coming that much more frequently in the coming months.  Work is promising to be nasty until Thanksgiving and I'm the commissioner of a Fantasy Football league.  I do a write up once a week or so, and that takes a good deal of my creativity. (I mean really.  How many different ways can I bitch about random picks doing random things?)
PPS - Don't let that stop you from keeping your eyes there though!  The quantity may be going down, but that just means that the quality is going way up!!

cheap ploys

i refuse to fall into phil's trap...trying to get me to post by inciting me....

oh.

damnit.

well now that i'm here, i just want to note that my weekend was also awesome...why? Because i didn't get up before 10am either day, did not attend any performances aimed at small children, and didn't spend any time trying to direct 2 year old penises into porcelain bowls. All in all a very successful weekend. Though i didn't get to beat up any 2 year olds either, so i guess you've got me on that..

(and for when my future employers find this on google, yes i'm kidding about the beating up 2 year olds part. by which i mean kidding about it being a good thing, not kidding about not having done it. i haven't. honest. unless you pay extra for that.)

I realize this post isn't nearly as long or interesting as phil's, so please spend the next 5 minutes pretending to read what i haven't bothered to write below, and chuckling to yourself occasionally. thanks.

One heckuva weekend!

OK so I promised not to make this a mom-blog (OK Dad-blog) right outta the gate.  But this weekend has been such a whirlwind that I've decided to bend this rule a bit.  (Plus with the lack of updates to the blog, I find myself looking for things to keep the the readership appeased.  Readership is a two handed bitch-goddess. She gives with one hand with the higher self-esteem that comes with a complement from a good blog post and takes with the other - always demanding more more more!!)  So, I'll say this:  This is not a blog for Ben.  (Though if there were more updates recently, perhaps, I wouldn't have to go the easy route and blog about my fantastic kid.  I'm just sayin' Mr. Contributor....)

Now that Ben's gone, let's have a frank discussion about him behind his back.  That guy is a jerk.  A real knee biter.  Man, that felt so good that I may need to get a little more off my chest later in the blog.  Anyway, this weekend....

So, this last week, I decided to have a play date with some of Sam's friends from school.  Since it was going to be crazy hot and I am crazy cheap, I decided just to have a sprinkler party in our back yard.  Only one of his friends RSVPed, so it was going to be a really nice and small gathering.  Good news is that we should be able to get through this on the cheap.  Bad news is that we had to spend pretty much every spare moment cleaning to get the house ready.  (We kinda let it go in the past few months.)

Fast forward to Saturday morning.  Everything was ready; house was cleaned, Sam was super-stoked, I even got a new sprinkler cuz I thought that my old sprinkler was dying.  (Turns out that I just needed to clean it out with the tool that comes with every sprinkler that I just didn't know was there.  O well - two sprinklers!  you know that it was going to be a good party there.)  So, I just changed Sam upstairs and he was happily started butt-scooting down the stairs himself.  (He's been very good about the stairs for about 8 months, so I've been getting more and more lax while watching him go down.)  So, I look at him playing about half way down the stairs with one of his toys and he is bending down to play with the toy.  I'm guessing that everyone can guess where this is going.  About 3 seconds later he is all way way down the stairs on his face.  No serious injury, but plenty of tears and it looks like he's got a bloody lip.  We get his a snack (since it was snack time) and he's still crying.  Two minutes later, his friend shows up and all of the tears go away. I think that we need to have more play dates with his friend.

Lemme say that this play date was great!  The kids had an absolute blast with the sprinklers.  Then, I put a hose nossle on and they had a hoot shooting each other, the grass, and me with the water. They shared fantastically.  Then, it was on to hot dogs at lunch.  Again, went really well.  Each of the kids had two (2!!) hotdogs, and a good selection of fruit without too much fuss.  Sadly, we had to cut it off after lunch since it was nap time.  I'm not sure about his friend, but Sam slept about as well as I have seen this year.  Woot! 

Rest of the day was pretty uneventful, outside of a little potty training.  After Sam went down for bed that night, I watched "Better off Dead" for the first time straight through.  Since I  had Comedy Central for the past 15 years, I  had naturally seen parts here and there, but this was the first time straight through.  I didn't realize just how 80s that movie was.  But in a good way.  (Also, side note.  I caught a bit of Predator on Spike the other night.  *MAN* that was very 80s too.  Special effects, dialog, everything.  Never really hit me before just how dated that movie was. Still a great movie, But all they needed as a John Hughes cameo for me to have an 80s-gasm right then and there.)

And since we have a lull in the story time, let's talk about Ben again.  I mean, really?  Your initials spell out a file extension on an OS that you don't even like?  Nerd!  *AND* you wear glasses sometimes and contacts other times?  Make up your mind, sir.  We're at war...

And now we come to Sunday...  Now, *this* was a long day.  Started out with Sam staying quiet until about 7:45, so we got to sleep in a bit.  Then, I decided to really get in good with the potty training that morning.  I spent about 2 hours trying to get him to pee on the potty, but he wasn't having any of it....  I was getting more and more frustrated and then he said that he just wanted to wear a diaper.  Now, all of the books say to let them guide the process, so that's cool, except that I feel like I wasted the morning.  So, I change him into the diaper and excuse myself to cool out a little.

When I come back, Sam notices me, drops his markers than he's coloring with, shouts "Daddy!" and comes running at me.  This isn't all that uncommon and not cause for alarm.  Except this time, I am standing right next to the corner of the ottoman.  And Sam is so excited that he runs up, jumps into the legs and then just falls to the floor.  In the process, he knocks his cheek into the corner of the ottoman and now has a really nice shiner.  Ugh... I'm just hoping that CPS isn't called tomorrow when he goes to school.

So, we get Sam an early lunch and try to do an early nap since we're going to see the Wiggles in concert at 4 (and sometimes Sam will sleep right past 4).  He does a great job with lunch, but sadly really isn't interested in napping until about 2 or so.  Namely, about an hour before we need to leave...  So, it turned out to be a short nap that I  had to wake him from (it took about a minute of rubbing his back to wake him...) and he was all sleepy going into the Wiggles.  But the good news is that he was super-excited to be there and had a great time.

Now, let me say this...  The Wiggles were freaking amazing.  They were on-stage, high energy for a little over 90 minutes.  (Obviously, they changed out actors so everyone would have a rest throughout.)  But they are professionals, so what's the big deal?  Three things:
1 - They had a show earlier in the day.
2 - They had just come from Atlanta last night (where they also presumably had two shows in the same day).
3 - Most of the Wiggles proper are over 50.

Lemme 'splain about that last point.  One of the Wiggles, Jeff, is 57 years old. He on stage hanging on monkey bars upside down, climbing human pyramids, doing handstands, and just having a great time doing it.  Also, at one point, he pulled up his pant legs to do some silly thing with a hula hoop.  All that I can say is that dude's got stronger legs at 57, than I  have ever had.  It's like that episode of Scrubs where Kelso shows off his legs. 

And speaking of Scrubs, don't take my word for it that the Wiggles are Awesome.  Take Dr. Cox's.  For us, they only opened with Big Red Car.  They closed with "Hot Potato".  (Though, of course, they pronounced it "Po -TAH - to."  Aussies!)

And one other fun story about the concert.  On the ticket, Joy noticed that it said something along the lines of the cast can be changed out without notice.  We giggled.  I mean it's not like you can really replace one of the Wiggles.  They are kinda playing themselves.  (OK, you can't do that *again*.  Sam Wiggle replaced Greg Wiggle a few years ago due to medical problems.)  Sure enough, 2 minutes to curtain, an announcement goes out that Ringo Zawergfasdfsiewnce was going to be filling in for Murray Wiggle.  Son of a ....  The one Wiggle that Sam always goes on an on about is Murray.  Dammit.  O well.   The cool thing is that the Wiggles acknowledged that Ringo was different and kinda played at it a bit.  They started off with handstands and Ringo's timing wasn't quite right, as he was the last one to break the handstand by like 5 seconds.  So, after the song, Greg (who was sporting a shaved head look) comes over to him and says "Ringo, I know that it's your first day on the job, but you can't just hold the handstand longer than the guys who have been doing this for 20  years." 

All in all, *great* experience.  Well, outside of the whole $30 in "convenience" fees.  Freaking Ticketmaster BS.  I'd definitely recommend the live Wiggles show to anyone.  Well, anyone with kids.  But not creeps.  Creeps like Ben.  To whom I would steadfastly *not* recommend The Wiggles.  (Either live or on DVD...)

So, though this weekend was filled with a few downs, the ups definitely balanced them out.  Now, on to Monday!

New Dell Inspiron

Long time readers of the blog (read: like a month) know that a few weeks back the house got smacked with an electrical surge and knocked out a bunch of my electronics.  TV should be back online early this week and the router's been replaced.  The only thing remaining was the computer.  It was *probably* OK, but the fan was sounding a bit messed up.  So, it could have been a processor fan, the power source fan, the entire power souce, or a blown heat dector.  Since this computer was a cheapo desktop that I bought about 5 years ago, I figured that now would be a good time to do an upgrade.  The fact that this weekend was tax free weekend sealed the deal.

So, I headed over to best buy on Saturday night.  Apparentely *everyone* else in the greater Raleigh area did too.  They had the computer secrion fortified and you had to wait in line so that you could get an employee one on one.  Not exactly what I was looking for, but whatever.  Turns out it was kinda worth the wait.  I defeinitely appreciated the sales guy narrowing it down and then being able to answer a few technical questions.  (Sadly, still wasn't able to open the machine, but I wouldn't have been able to do that on my own anyways.)

So, tonight, I unboxed it just to take a look.  Now, as a heads up, this is the third desktop that I've owned, and they've all been Dells.  So I've got a bit of basline.  (I wasn't actually even trying to necessarily to buy a Dell... just kinda happened into it.)

So, here's the goods:
4 RAM slots on the motherboard (and they eacch have a port soldered in - for some freaking reason, my last Dell had 4 slots on the board, but only two ports soldered in - WTF?)
Can go up to 8 GB of RAM.
DVD RW Drive.
An Extra 5.25" drive.
Comes with extra ports on the motherboard (PCI, PCI Express, and PCI Express 16x)
Front, Side, And Rear Speaker outputs..  (I'm certainly not going to use them, but I guess that they are nice to have...)
Integrated Card Reader.

And the bad:
It comes with 4 1 GB chips of RAM.  I would have perferred two 2 GB, but we takes what we can gets.)
No more PS2 ports  Everything's USB these days...
The cover is screwed on.  (Damn, Dell, you guys used to do that in the 90s.  I thought that you had gotten past this - just a level would do fine...)
Only 1 Extra PCI port.

So, all in all ... a pretty good deal.  Now all that I have to do is get used to freaking Windows 7.  Which apparently was created by a bunch of jackasses, if their commmercials are to be beleived.

OK...  I just reread this post and it's high on the geek and not so much on the funny.  So, to correct this situation, lemme slip you one of my favorite jokes of all time.  (OF ALL TIME)  Ahem:

How do titillate an ocelote?
You oscillate its tit a lot.

OF ALL TIME.

Another College Joke? Isn't this getting a bit derivative?

Oh man..I set this post up with a good math pun, but I can't really think of how to play off "derivative".  O well, that's what the comments are for, I reckon.  Anyway, another college joke (well, not quite so much a joke as an insight in to who I am and what I do).

There were two college students, sharing a dorm room.  The first was basket-weaving major and the second a computer science major.  One fine day, in the wee hours of the morn, just before sunrise, they meet each other just getting back to the room.
 "Man, I was at a great party today.  Whole lot of fun.  Got *wasted*!  How about you?" asks the basket-weaving student.
"No, party for me, man.  I was at the lab all night." replies the comp sci major.
"What?  That sucks!  It's a Saturday night!"  says the basket weaver.
"Oh... it's not that bad... all of the comp sci students were there."
"How can you say it's not that bad?  That sounds horrible."
"Actually, I'm pretty happy with the night."
"What?  You've been up all night doing homework.  How can you be so positive?"
"Because it feels so good when it's done," says the comp sci major as he collapses into bed.

So, like I said... not the funniest joke in the world.  However, I do remember one of my buddies from college telling me it back in college and getting a kick out of it.  But that's definitely how I find myself operating these days.  Generally, I hate doing something while I'm doing it, but when it's done yay rah!  (That one there is for you, Skoot.)

Lemme give you an example.  Last week, a really nasty thunderstorm rolled through.  Hit so hard that I shot straight up in bed, which I haven't done since high school.  (I'm a pretty deep sleeper; just ask my college roommates, I actually slept through a fire drill once...  Ooops.)  So, the storm was really bad.  In the morning, all networking was out, phone didn't work (we have Vonage), my desktop was out of commission, and the TV kept rebooting.  (The TV that we had just hooked up like a week and a half prior?  That's the one!)

So, I had to spend the *entire* weekend getting things back up and running.  The networking was a pain in the ass, but finally we got out one the other end with a few new pieces of hardware to replace things that were blown out, a newer faster streamlined wireless network, and maybe a few repairs on the TV.  All in all, not too bad.  However, Friday - Saturday - Sunday were all pretty much crap.  (Just take a look at my FB update on Friday.  It was full of bad juju.)  However, come Monday morning, where all of my issues were pretty much at an end (save the TV, but we've got a plan for that), I'm happy as a cucumber.

So, while the process sucks, it feels so good when it's done.  And I wouldn't have it any other way...