Walkin' in a winter...thunderland?

I woke up to almost 2" of snow on the ground this morning, which is really beautiful. It's even nicer since it means a work at home day for me. What woke me up was the LOUD clap of thunder that rattled the entire house. About 5 minutes later there was another bright flash and half a second later another clap almost as loud as the first. I've never seen it snow with thunder/lightning before. It's definitely interesting. It's still coming down right now but I'm guessing it will taper off and stop soon.

Jayson braved the roads and drove to work. Anthony went out to wait for the bus only to find out that it wasn't running today due to snow, so he turned around and came back home. I'm assuming that since I didn't hear anything from Jayson that he made it to work OK. I probably could have driven in but I have the option of working from home, and I really didn't feel like getting out the scrape all the snow off the truck. There's a lot of windshield and window area to clean off. I'm much happier sitting at home looking at the snow, plus I think I'll get out into with the dog in a little while.

Jinger awr the way

I had the pleasure of having lunch today with a good friend at a local phở restaurant. Phở makes for a nice warm cheap lunch on a cold winter day. However, the restaurant made the unfortunate decision to play an all-Asian selection of christmas carols. They were recorded by, apparently, the same Asian singers who re-do the latest pop hits which are then sold in street markets all over Asia. I heard music very much like this in markets throughout Hong Kong and Bangkok. It sounds like four or five Asian women all singing together, no harmony, over a monotonous continuous beat that sounds as if it's being played on a Windows 3.1 MIDI keyboard. Who needs Madonna singing Madonna when we can have Asian singers pretending it's karaoke night singing Madonna?

In any event, we were first treated to a 25 minute-long medley of every single christmas carol ever written, including some that I didn't know were christmas carols (who knew that Happy Days Are Here Again had anything to do with christmas?). Several song later - although who could tell where one song ended and the next began - the highlight of our lunch: Jingle Bells. Sadly it came out sounding like "Jinger bewrs, jinger bewrs, jinger awr the way". And all this to the same monotonous beat. If nothing else it made for entertaining background noise, but I wish it had been slightly further in the background.

Because smelling like ground meat just screams sexuality

There are so many things wrong with this, and so many jokes about "whoppers" and "where's the beef" that just don't even need to be said, but WTF? Who wants to walk around smelling like a piece of ground up meat-like food product?

This is a serious marketing fail if you ask me. What kind of person would buy this? I guess it's not enough these days to smell freshly showered and clean. Apparently one is only really truly seductive when he smells as if he's been standing near the dumpsters of the nearest BK, downwind of the flame broiler exhaust pipe. Just watch out for stray dogs.

Who knew the term "gag gift" was meant to be taken literally!?

Christianists love McCain to death

From Pam's site, there's this disturbing story. Be sure to check out the source story here. What kind of real christian prays for the death of another person? I'm sure the justification is that praying for McCain's death would allow Palin to lead the country into new and prosperous directions. Asking their god for the death of one person would , in their minds, improve the lives of millions of people. But in the end, it's really just using religion for selfish political gain. Truly sick. And very frightening that these people have any power at all in our country.

I desperately hope that Palin is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012. Think of how easy it would be for Obama to get re-elected against that mess.

Snowy morning coffee

Yes, I said coffee, not tea. With Anthony working at Starbucks and bringing home free coffee, I'm not only having a little tea in the morning but also a little coffee. So, I've joined the ranks of the coffee-swilling masses in Seattle. It feels good to belong to a group.

And yes I said snowy. It snowed about 2" here at home overnight. It started around 20:00 and probably snowed off and on all night. It's really pretty, especially since we don't see snow on the ground that often in Seattle. The problem is that for the first couple of hours of snow, the ground was too warm so it melted when it hit. As the temp dropped it of course turned to ice so there's 2" of pretty snow with about 1/4" of ice underneath.

I'm kind of hoping the snow and ice hangs around for a couple of days so I have an excuse to work at home. The sun is breaking through the clouds and I see some melt happening on some of the roofs but not much. It's supposed to not get out of the 20's tomorrow so we'll definitely have more ice. I would really enjoy a work at home day!

Luckily I don't have to go anywhere in the truck today. I think our plans today are all home-based: we still need to finish decorating the x-mas tree; we're trying to organize a load of items to give away before the end of the year; we've got to fix breakfast still; and we need to straighten up the house. Sounds like a busy day, but it should be OK. If we have to go anywhere out of the house, we'll walk.

My big project lately is that I have spent the last several weeks, off and on, ripping all of my CDs to MP3. I figure I've done about 475 discs and a total of about 7167 songs. I know that's not a lot compared to some peoples' collections, but it took a lot of time to go through every CD. It's actually nice to finally have everything digital. Now I'm thinking of ideas to be able to get rid of the CD player in the living room and use a laptop connected wirelessly to my server in order to play the music on the stereo. I think it would be pretty easy, and pretty user friendly. Sadly the sub-woofer on the stereo decided to die the other day, so there's no point in doing anything until I get that replaced. It's always something...

My other big project has been organizing the files on my PC at home. Jayson and I used to share the PC so there was stuff scattered everywhere. I've been organizing it all between the five hard drives I've got and trying to make the folder structure make sense. One of the biggest reasons is that I've got a backup job that copies everything to the large external drive and I want to make sure that it's grabbing everything I want. But, I also got tired of multiple copies of things in three different locations, all with different names. Folders named "New Folder 5" don't do any good when trying to find something! I've gained back at least 40 gigs of space across all the drives, which is pretty good! Now I just need to add more RAM to my PC to help it run better. Like I said, it's always something...

I pretty much have my x-mas shopping done this year. We all three agreed to a strict spending limit this year. None of us really NEEDS anything and money is tight all around. So, we'll each have a nice selection of things to open x-mas day without having gone into debt to do it. We always do fun things in stockings so I've got to pick up a few things for that. We're going to be spending the day at home that day which will be nice.

Well, time to get working here. Plus we still need breakfast and it's almost 10:00. And maybe we'll even go see if we can scrape together a snowball!

Just plain funny

This doesn't require much of an explanation. At least the guy was honest.

The things people throw away

Walking back to my building after lunch today I happened to casually throw a piece of paper into the garbage, only to look down and see this:


Talk about doing a double-take. I remember when Seattle used to be such a nice city. You could walk past trash cans in almost any area and not be accosted by hardcore porn. What is this city coming to...? I was so offended that I had to stop and take a couple of pictures with my mobile phone.

I did like the dichotomy of the Whole Foods container (not recycled I might add!) next to the "Beautiful Slut Mothers" DVD cover.

I no longer recognize marriage

I ran across this piece a couple of weeks ago and am just now getting around to posting it. It's a very interesting idea and it's not so far out there. The only reason same-sex marriage is being debated is because "some people" don't believe in it and don't recognize it and feel that they should deprive others of it. The issue over whether or not it's a right is really just a cover for their desire to force their beliefs on others. Most polls show that "some people" isn't even a majority of the country anymore. What if we all decided that anything that doesn't fit our idea of "right" just doesn't exist? And even further, what if we all decided to outlaw what we didn't believe in?

Our situation in Washington state is different than that in CA with Prop 8; it wasn't voters here who struck down marriage equality. But, our Supreme Court did rule against marriage equality saying that the purpose of marriage is procreation and same-sex couples can't naturally procreate. No reason the same logic that Tom Ackerman uses couldn't be applied to marriages here: "I don't recognize your marriage because you haven't created children. Your marriage is invalid." Would be interesting to see what reactions that got.

This post from Kos nicely sums up what I would like to see put before voters to see if they really would vote like they claim they believe. It's convenient to use the christian bible to keep others from having rights, but would they use the same bible to keep from giving themselves rights? I seriously doubt it. More often than not their faith only goes so far.

The Evolution of Beards (well, sort of)

Via BoingBoing, the "hierarchy of beards". Sadly, it's a rather inaccurate hierarchy since many of the styles are not called in reality what the poster calls them. It's obvious that the poster is only designed to look like it's from the Victorian times as many of the names are made up and many popular styles are missing completely. Still, it's interesting to compare some of the styles and see different iterations of them.

I wear the "Hyneman", apparently named after Jamie Hyneman (popular 19th century TV star), although my moustache isn't as long as in the drawing.

Speaking of beards, the best beard site on the internets is still All About Beards. There's lots of good information, and eye candy, for beard aficionados.

Hello again

I've been actively avoiding posting anything here recently. I just didn't feel like I had anything I wanted to say, or that what I had to say wasn't worth passing along. Life the past month or so has been the status quo, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. Since I returned from my trip to Oregon (late September) it's been pretty much just home and work and back home again. My big excitement at work is that I moved to a new disk with a very large window. I gave up some privacy (okay, really just a semblance of privacy) for light and a view. It's been a good trade-off so far.

There hasn't been any real excitement since my trip to OR. That was just a plain old good trip. I love spending time with my mother; we always have a good time, we think very much alike, and we enjoy the same things. The trip was a great break for me. We would sit at home and talk, go visit small towns, wander through old cemeteries, shop some, and were always on the lookout for food. I miss having her closer so that we can do those things on a regular basis. I know it's kind of late to be saying so, but I'm very grateful for her letting me go down there and for all the nice things she did while I was there.

Back at home, Thanksgiving kicked off the holidays. We were invited to our friends Jim and Doug's...actually it's Doug's house but they shared the hosting chores. There were about 10 people total and it was a nice way to spend the afternoon/evening. Plus, they cooked everything. Well, everything except for the vegetarian alternatives I ended up cooking for Jayson. And now that Thanksgiving is done we're putting up all the Christmas crap...er, I mean decorations. I'm not big on Christmas decorations, and as a whole the holiday has lost most of its meaning for me since I was a kid. The holiday was a big deal for my family when I was growing up. It was always secular in nature, but my parents made sure it was a special time for my sisters and me, and it was a very special time. After growing up and the death of the grandparents it wasn't as special. As I've gotten older, it's become even less so, especially with the fact that the holiday seems to start in August, at least if you go by the displays in the stores. So, I guess I have Christmas burnout. I do enjoy the time spent with friends and family, but I guess I'm not sure why that can't happen any other day of the year. I'm also not sure why we're supposed to buy gifts for people just because it's December 25th. If I see something I think someone will like, I prefer to give them that gift any other day of the year. Oh well...end of rant!

Just in time to bring out the Christmas clutter we had started getting the closets and spaces here at home organized. We're got a lot of clutter to get rid of and the closets have become messy. It's surprisingly rewarding to get rid of things and get spaces cleaned out. We're talking about getting rid of the larger dining chairs that seem to be taking up too much space and putting our antique chairs back in place. And, I want to change the red we have on the walls to a brighter red. So, more projects...

So, you can probably see why I haven't posted much here recently. I don't have much to say!