Week in Email #3
Once again the email made it to new highs this week. I moved it to a Google Group so that I wasn’t filling up the inboxes of people who have better things to do but still want to keep up with the discussion. This move may have contributed to most of the emails being blocked for everyone at LM. We are currently up to 24 members. The group is always expanding so let me know if you or someone you know would like to be added.
Monday - Slowly Walking Down the Hall, Faster Than a Cannonball (Oasis - Champagne Supernova)
I love Presidents Day. This is a new development. I didn’t care for it that last few years because I didn’t get off from school, and if you don’t get off from school its not a real holiday. Of course I’m working today, we only have 5 holidays and I’m not using one of my 22 other days off today. Maybe I should have, Presidents Day always seems to have good mattress sales, wonder why that is. There was a point to this, oh yea… traffic. There was no traffic on 422 this morning, meaning no backup onto Trooper. That’s really all it takes now to make it a good day, less traffic. Problem is now I know how quickly I can get here with no traffic. I waste almost 10 minutes trying to get over the river everyday. At some point I’m going to build another bridge over the Schuylkill.
**Aju: I think Presidents day was created cause “They” where too cheap to give us both Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s Birthday as a holiday. So by making it “president’s day” we should reflect on ALL the presidents, even the lesser known ones. I think we should celebrate by buying a mattress. I personally bought 2 mattresses, on non-consecutive occasions, to commemorate Grover Cleveland.** (Raise your hand if you caught the Simpsons reference.)
**Dave: I found a presidents day mattress sale that allowed me to buy 1 mattress, and get another mattress of equal or lesser value free. Soon after, however, the second mattress shot me in the face while hunting quail.** (If you are clueless, Dave was hinting at the 2nd mattress being a ‘Vice-Mattress.’
This Weekend …
Friday night I watched the dentists’ kids. What is this, the 5th weekend in a row I’ve babysat them or the neighbors? I’m just too good. If I send one of their kids to the hospital maybe I won’t get asked back. Or I could just retire. Its good money though (I realize I make good money now at, ya know, my job). But this is what I got paid to do on Friday: Take the kids to Chick-fil-a, then to the movies to see The Pink Panther, then watch TV for an hour until their parents got home. I could get a social life I guess, but my friends don’t pay me to hang out with them, and don’t think I haven’t thought about asking you all. I’m so worth it.
Chick-fil-a was nuts. There was a birthday party going on. The cow (complete with an ‘eat more chikin’ shirt) was running around with a bunch of 6 year olds behind him. The boys asked why would anyone want to have a birthday party at Chick-fil-a? I of course said I would have loved to have had a bday party at a Chick-fil-a but then were only in food courts when I was young enough to have a bday party there. Actually, check that, my bday, Oct 27th, Chick-fil-a in Trooper. Be There!
**Aju had a good point: I think celebrating your birthday at Chick-fil-a is a great idea…unless your birthday falls on a Sunday, then you are out of luck. **
As for The Pink Panther I had very low expectations going in. Steve Martin is always great, but The Pink Panther, that’s a classic. You really shouldn’t even try to top the original. I think those low expectations helped to enjoy the movie and I laughed quite a few times. I’d say it was good and you could pick worse things to watch. But if you haven’t seen the original (or the sequels, which I haven’t seen all of them) see them now. Right now, leave work.
It was NBA All-Star weekend. I did not watch the Rookie-Sophomore game. AI2 tore it up though. I watched all of All-Star Saturday, including 3-ball or whatever you call it. The highlight of the whole night was AI2’s behind the backboard dunk. He wound up not winning because apparently you get bonus points for being short (I think its 1 point/inch). This is the problem with the dunk contest. You really should just score your top dunk. This seems to happen every year where the best dunk of the night is in the first round and then the finals aren’t terribly exciting. They shouldn’t even score them until the end. When you start out by giving straight 9s to an average dunk it screws up the rest of the scoring. End Rant. I watched the first half of the game last night before I decided to go to bed. When it comes to the all-star game the 1st quarter they are trying to show off so you’ll see all the good stuff and a lot of ally-oops going into the crowd. The 2nd and 3rd quarters are dull and then the 4th quarter they actually try. If I had stayed up to watch the 4th quarter I would have seen the comeback and would also be passed out on this keyboard right now. I do enjoy NBA All-Star weekend. Its second only to baseball’s break with the derby and game, but that’s because its baseball and they can do anything and I’d watch. The basketball one is just fun, the players seem to be having a good time and what makes it a great TV event is the announcers are having a good time. I greatly enjoyed the coverage with the announcers making fun of each other but also the players. One last question, did anyone figure out why Josh Smith but that tape down? Barkely only asked about 20 times “Whatd he put da tape down for?”
I’m hooked on curling. With my new fantastic sleep schedule I was up around 8am both Saturday and Sunday. Both mornings curling was on. Score! No need to go back to bed. The men are playing outstanding and are into the medal round. The women seemed to be having some problems. They were taking care of business Sunday going into the 10th end they were up 2. Then, my cable went out, meaning internet too. It finally came back and it was over. I went online to find out they had lost by 1. Losing the cable was Comcast’s fault. The rest of the coverage I blame on NBC. I don’t just care about the US. I want them to win but I’d like to see some of the competition. All the matches go on at the same time. When the US finished and one of the top teams is in a tight match could they take 10 minutes and show the end of that one?
Thoughts for today …
I’m one day past the day I should have clipped my finger nails. One day is manageable. You notice them but they aren’t on your mind constantly if you are busy. Problem with one day is that if I go home and am occupied all night then I’ll forget and tomorrow will be two days past and I won’t make it through the day, they will drive me nuts. I will not, repeat, will not clip my finger nails at work under any circumstance. I can’t stand when you are sitting in your cube and hear clipping and think “What is that sound? It sounds like someone clipping their nails, but no one does that at work.” But yeah, they do. Its slightly better if you at least do it in the rest room but I’m not really a fan of that either. Another time I’ll have to discuss people who essentially shower in the sink. Just to be clear this applies to finger nails only, I have no problem clipping toe nails at work or while driving.
Its new hire day. All the orientation is done in the conference room in the room I’m in (I’d draw a map cause that makes no sense, but you can figure it out). All morning they are coming in and out and all the mangers come down here and see us surfing the web, I always feel good about that. In the afternoon if they have no place to go (like me) they hang out here for a few days (or weeks/months/years). I’m not saying we are going to make new friends here, but its another distraction. And here, distractions are always welcome.
You have no idea how excited I am about the new Emerald Nuts commercials. Actually, Matt knows exactly how excited I am. The original commercials ran during the 2004 World Series, they were ridiculously weird. These are even stranger. The first new one came on during the Super Bowl and now they are showing them during the Olympics. My favorite so far: Engrossed Manicurists Eventually Relay Advice Like Do Not Untie That String. You can watch all the new (and old) ones at http://emeraldnuts.com/ and I highly recommend that you do.
I probably don’t need to mention this but you should watch Charlie Rose today. I know you’re saying, “Mike, what nights don’t I watch Charlie Rose!” Tonight his guest is Joe Paterno. Heard of him? Good. Apparently it was only supposed to be a half hour segment. It went so well they decided to do the whole hour with him.
Tuesday - Don’t Hate Me Forever, I’m Better Late Than Never, I Failed You, I’m Sorry (MxPx - My Life Story)
Some Thoughts and Things To Keep You Busy Today …
Yesterday I watched Grey’s Anatomy from Sunday. I’m always at least a day behind with TV. It will continue to be this way until I get HD in my room and will actually probably still continue since I won’t want to watch commercials. Actually the DVR let us down on this on and I had to find an alternate method of obtaining the show. Anyway I think with this week’s they have crossed the line into full blown soap opera. You may say its always been like this but I think they’ve finally gone insane. It already wasn’t a good idea for me to watch the show. But I’m not going to stop watching, but they are on notice that things are starting to get out of hand. I know I’m not the only one who’s a little upset about what’s going on.
Last night before I went to bed I did some channel surfing. Ice Dancing was on so I didn’t stick to the Olympics. I came across bowling on ESPN2 and was hooked. Maybe it has something to do with all the curling I’ve been watching recently. Bowling is usually on Sunday afternoons and I never watch. I think Sunday afternoon isn’t the best time to have it on. If its on at night before I go to bed I’ll be more interested in watching. It might give you some excitement or it might put you to sleep. Works for me.
I know you were wondering, yes, I did remember to clip my finger nails last night. This morning I saw they sell nail clippers in the employee store. Other items on sale so that you never have to leave the building include razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, Listerine, nail files, combs, and Tide to Go.
http://www.onebillionmazes.com/
Print them all out and have some fun. Better yet, enlarge them so you can actually walk around in the maze to figure it out.
If you were a dictator what would you want to be called?
Something I’ve thought about before that I brought up yesterday. I’d go with Emperor. There really isn’t any contest. I think its powerful but not too evil. I also like Archduke, although I’d fear my death could lead to a world war. I found a list if you want some hints: http://www.hostkingdom.net/glossary.html Its worth reading to brush up on your titles anyway. Pick whatever you like, don’t worry what the rest of the world will think. One discussion we had yesterday was if you should go with President just to give the illusion of a democratic government, ignore those types of thoughts.
This morning I came up with my latest invention that is so flawed in its execution that it should not even be discussed. So I’ll discuss it. It’s a combination bed and shower. Haven’t named it yet, maybe a Showbed (you have to say it like the show in shower, not the show in tv show), I know Dave will be all over naming it. The shower part is really just an alarm clock. When its time to get up the shower just turns on, while you are sleeping. It will accomplish the major goal of an alarm clock, waking you up. Being sprayed with water may in fact be more effective than your simple everyday alarm clock (unless you get one of those cool flying alarm clocks). The beauty of the Showbed is that you don’t waste any time getting out of bed and to the shower, saving crucial minutes in the morning. Now there are some issues to work out. Namely you get your sheets and mattress soaking wet every day. I really have no solution for this so unless someone fixes this problem its going to have to go on the
shelf.
**Stef: The Showbed would be a terrible idea, first of all you’d have to sleep naked, and second of all you would have to install water pipe-lines into every bedroom, and finally who really would want to wakeup to water spraying on them.. that would be worse than that horrid buzz sound that ruins your whole day, and makes your skin crawl if you hear it at any other point in life besides the morning. Also, did you think about the length of the spray? Would it just go on for a min or 2, or would it continue till you turned it off? This could cause drowning if someone were to ignore the alarm, cause I imagine the drainage system has not been perfected, and there would have to be some type of tub like walls or something to keep the rest of the room from becoming saturated. My final thought on this is would there be a snooze function? I suggest you invent something more like the shower/dryer/dresser contraption that George Jetson had, that would save you the time you need.**
**Dave: I suggest the new bed/shower combo be named “The Wet Dream.” **
**Jess: I think having an attractive person of your preferred gender come in and give you a sponge bath would be a much better way to wake up than having water violently spray down on you. **
**Evan (the next day): I posed the shower/bed idea to my second period. Stephon said he would call it the “spray n’ suck”. I’m not really sure what he meant by that and I thought best not to investigate further.**
Since Google scans the messages so they can do target advertising I’m going to try and keep track of what it selects. Yesterday started with vacations and wound up with mattress ads. Just an observation, I don’t get a cut of those ads. I’ll have to write my own group system to do that, and don’t think I haven’t thought about it already.
Wednesday - I’ve been waiting for a good day, I’ve been holding back long enough (New Found Glory - Head On Collision)
I watched JoePa on Charlie Rose last night. I’m not sure what’s up with the video on Google. I have it on my Replay so I will see what I can do with that. It was an excellent interview. Charlie Rose cracks me up. He seems like he enjoys football and knows what’s going on but he doesn’t know the right terms and talks about it as if it’s a gentleman’s game. JoePa was an excellent interview.
**Forgot to mention how Charlie Rose kept saying Pennsylvania State University, abbreviations are below him.**
When I accepted my job way back and was told I had the option of a 4/10 work week. I started thinking which day would I take off if I did this? Friday is the obvious choice or maybe Monday. However if I don’t need the three day weekend I think I would want Wednesday off. I think it would be great to have a day off in the middle of the week. At think point a day off could be used. I need to get some things done. My hair is going to be out of control very soon and my car wants and oil change. Other options would be to work a 2/20 or 1/40 (there is much debate that a 1/40 isn’t possible, but it’s the best name I can come up with, 24/16 doesn’t work for me). For fun you could also do a 3/13 1/3. What would you choose?
**Evan: I would take monday or wednesday off. Taking friday off is the most idiotic thing i’ve ever heard. Think about it, who minds being at work on a friday? I never hear anyone complaining because it’s always like “well hell, its friday, so i’m not gonna worry about anything”, plus you get to fantasize about what you are going to do all weekend, which is a good time killer. Nobody wants to be at work on a monday, no one is happy, so this would be my choice. The only problem with that is that most bars close early on sunday nights, so you can’t take full advantage.**
**Ahad: I would take Wednesday off. It would provide a good break in the middle of the week and make my job seem just a little bit more bearable. Since I worked 14 hrs yesterday, one would think that I would get out early sometime this week. A logical person would make this assumption, but since my job sucks, I will get to stay late for the rest of the week.**
**Matt: I enjoyed thinking about this 4/10 idea when it was proposed to me that I could do that, and since I practically worked 10 hour days over the summer, I didn’t seem to mind it too much. Some guy here works 4/10’s and he takes Wednesday off. I kinda liked the idea cause now your year is basically broken down into roughly 104 two day work weeks. That sounds a lot better to me.**
Sponsored Links for yesterday included software to analysis pipe flow and ecards. I assume for Stef’s mention of having pipes running to every bedroom. Not sure where the ecards come in to play.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0217062contract1.html
Contract of Wifely Expectations.
**I actually saw this on Rita Crosby the next night. They had the lawyers from each side. Problem was it was on Rita Crosby so I changed the channel.**
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/sports/colleges/13920979.htm
Zach Mills coaching at Temple. The Zack Attack is Back.
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=3378916195894649777
Take the Chuck Norris Worthiness Test
I scored 75.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/13928806.htm
Trade in your guns for Sixers tickets.
**
Wednesday also featured this exchange:
Dave: Matt, I noticed your email signature says you work for “The Boeing
Company.” What is this…are you trying to be like “THE Ohio State
University” or something?
Matt: No, but I should…
Valerie: Sorry, but I had to step in on this one
NO ONE should try to be more like Ohio State!!!!
The thought sickens me…and I just got back from lunch…
Me: For real. Matt, have you lost you mind? I’m hoping you just responded
to the wrong email.
Matt: Wow, calm down people….by no means do I want to be more like Ohio
State…it was an innocent, kidding comment. For the record Dave, that
is the official company name.
Dave: Wow, I had no idea I would set off such a chain of vicious attacks!!!!
Sorry buddy!
Matt: I know seriously…its ok, i forgive you.
**
Thursday - She totally confused all the passing pihranas (The Presidents of the United States of America - Lump)
STUFF!
Yesterday Chris and I went down to the cafeteria for lunch and the place was mobbed. Turns out it was the Engineering Feud. That’s right, Family Feud for engineers. You might say that could go either way, it could be regular family feud with engineers competing or it could also be nerdy engineer type questions. If you guessed the second on you win, we certainly didn’t. First off we didn’t know it was going on so we missed the beginning, we had an ever exciting conference call yesterday (I think I dozed off when I heard F-22). I sat down as a game was wrapping up and the next team stepped up. Aju was on that team. He didn’t tell us he was competing. In fact he usually works from home on Wednesdays and said he was coming in because he had a ‘meeting.’ He actually did have a meeting and the Feud was last minute, but we are still suspicious that he was hiding it. The game we saw his team got shut out. Some of the categories I remember were “What video game have you dreamt about?”, “Name female LM VPs”, I can’t even think of the others. Chris and Aju can probably help.
In the afternoon for some reason Chuck Norris was brought up again, I doubt anyone will claim responsibility. We came up with some of our own, they seemed much funnier yesterday. Someone must have been talking about weddings around the same time.
- Chuck Norris was his own best man at his wedding. Chuck Norris is always the best man.
- Chuck Norris doesn’t ask a father’s permission before proposing. Chuck Norris always has permission.
Jess wants to know where the Flyers and Wings got their names. I should know this, at least the Flyers, but haven’t looked it up. I’m posing it to the group before I go do some research.
**Hello? No responses to this?**
Some of yesterdays adds included insurance, Ohio State, ice skating, and all sorts of religious ads, not sure what that’s about. Maybe when we attacked Matt Google thought we needed to be kinder.
Evan was the first one to correctly guess the song yesterday.
LINKS!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1588683407789857763&q=tvshow…
JoePa video is finally up. I’d say its worth $.99.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_closet
The other day I was telling Mike some of the various questions that seem to not have answers. He did some research on ‘why is it called coming out of the closet?’
http://people.aol.com/people/articles/0,19736,1162116,00.html
Lindsay IMed me this one last night. I know a number of people on this list follow Tom Cavanagh’s every move.
http://www.putting-edge.com/
For today’s trivia we had to find golf courses close to LM locations. Check this one out in San Jose.
**Crazy thing, the next day I listened to one of the Preston & Steve’s from this week and they were talking about mini-golf courses. Someone called in to say there was a black light one at Franklin Mills. Need to look into this.**
I did have one thought yesterday in the car driving home, actually first lets discuss my afternoon/evening in the car. Here are some of the songs I heard: Cornershop - Brimful of Asha, Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, Butthole Surfers - Pepper (trying to avoid the filter, they should give us a list), LFO - Summer Girls (still reigning champ for best song lyric ever: ‘I’ll steal your honey like I stole your bike.’). I also heard a Panic! At the Disco song on BBC Radio, which is awesome, the 3rd Panic! song I’ve heard on Sirius. Finally, I have nominated Korn - Blind for the best opening ever to a song that really isn’t all that good the rest of the way (sorry Matt).
**Matt expanded it to any song opening, Evan had this to say: The Who - “Baba O’Reilly” - best opening to a song. It serves multiple purposes, it’s quality in a movie soundtrack and can also double for an excellent in between-innings/home run hitter coming to the plate/pre-tip off song. It’s also bred for its skills in magic. I put U2’s “where the streets have no name” as a close second.**
Ok, back to my original point. I heard Somewhere I Belong on the ride home from work and thought I could really go for hanging out with about 110,000 friends.
Friday - I don’t know how much I can take, Girl, give me something I can break (Ben Folds - Rockin’ the Suburbs)
Early email today. Why? I’m leaving an hour early so the email should be at least an hour early. Plus the rest of you are either leaving early or need something to do. I can take care of all of that for you.
First, lets take a look at yesterday. It was Thursday and I again assisted the IT Apprentices with their Egg Drop preparation. In summary, I climbed a really old ladder (I think it predates Lockeed and Martin) and dropped their contraptions. This week there were very few breaks. One such break did not seem all that bad. They started to carry it back to their area when yoke started leaking out the holes of their carton. They ran back toward the trash can and it exploded, mostly on the tarp. A whole lot of yoke. I started to clean it up off the tarp while the kid was trying to salvage his carton in the trash can. There was a balloon squeezed tightly inside the carton which he pulled out. It didn’t come out easy and when it did it sprayed stuff all over the place. I was on the front line but people a few feet behind me still got hit. I checked my clothes but there was nothing I could see so I figured I had survived. Later, in the afternoon, I noticed in the mirror there was something in my hair. I check closer and there were little pieces of yellow stuck to my hair. I had not been spared and I’d been walking around all afternoon with egg in my hair and no one bothered to tell me. Either they didn’t notice or were hoping other people would laugh at me.
Yesterday’s song lyric winner: Janos. For today’s song I had to pick it but it was terribly difficult to pick a line that did not contain the title and get through the filter.
http://www.techdigest.tv/2006/02/the_ipod_tie.html
Winner of Today’s “Its so Simple and Obvious Why Didn’t I Think of It” Award winner.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/13949241.htm
Well, it is Jersey.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?entryDate=20060223&na…
Sports Guy Reader Mail about the Knicks trading for Steve Francis.
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/10/movieid_puzzle_name_.html
This occupied hours of our time yesterday. And now it will fill your day.
There were about 5 people working on it so we had an advantage. We got 47 of 72 correct. The ones we didn’t get: 3,4,6,11,13,14,17,19,20,22,23,26,27,29,36,37,41,45,48,50,52,55,56,60,69
The Answers are also linked on that page. I apologize in advance for any injuries you sustain from kicking yourself.