Tone Parsons

Welcome to the wonderful world of Friday!

Today, I got to ride the bus to work. Mass transit is an experience that you must have from time to time. The sights, the sounds, and the smells… all memorable.

Yesterday, we woke up to an inch or so of snow. Unfortunately, it was the light fluffy stuff that makes for really nasty ice on the roads. She narrowly avoided one accident (some moron didn’t use their turn signal and my wife narrowly avoided hitting them), but hit some black ice and hit the curb…. hard! She was only going about 10mph (16kph) when it happened.

The Jeep Liberty she drives is a fairly good sized vehicle and has quite a bit of mass. When she hit the curb with the rear passenger tire, it bent the drive axle and scuffed up the chrome wheel (bending it at the edge of the rim). I called the dealer and they were able to get it in right away, but the parts need to be ordered, and it’ll take up to 2 weeks to get it repaired.

So… she’s taking my car and I’m riding the bus.

This makes perfect sense… I go to work, sit in my cubicle, and then go home. Her job requires that she drive from site to site. That’s not exactly bus friendly (while my job is). Thankfully, the holidays are upon us and we aren’t working all that much during the next two weeks… so it’s really no big deal for me.

And speaking of the holidays…

Gather ’round little children and read Scott Christensen’s holiday classic: “I Was Santa’s Rubber Clad Love Slave: An Elf’s Story” (I’ve posed this every year since 1996… so this is the 10th time… Scott should pay me for this!)

And finally… watch me dance like a monkey.  The server this is on is stupid busy.  If it gives you an error (“page not found” or “server busy”, hit the refresh button until it works).

Big thanks to JC for that one!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Monday!

Well, Monday may not be so wonderful, but I did have a good weekend! My wife and I attended the 2006 holiday party for my company on Saturday night… and they threw one hell of a party! For the first time in a long time, there was plenty of parking, the food was served hot (and it was good), and the band didn’t:

1. Suck
2. Play nothing but Jimmy Buffet tunes

Though seeing the lead singer’s pink thong didn’t do much for me… she must have weighed about 300 pounds (133 kg)…. but man, could she sing!

On Sunday, we finally decided on the Christmas^tm gift that we would get for each other. The JVC TH-C60 DVD Digital Theater System. I’m sure there are much better systems out there, but we’re not rabid audiophiles, so this should work just fine for our needs (it better… it’s 1,200 watts total… 200 watts per channel). The 5 disk DVD system is pretty spiffy too…. it plays just about everything you can put on a CD or DVD with your computer. It’s also got a USB port on the front to read MP3’s from my thumb drive.

Spiffy!

Of course, we ordered it from Newegg…. so it will most likely be here by the end of the week (yes indeed… I do love them!). If you’re planning on getting me the Samsung 46″ LCD HDTV (LN-S4695D) I posted here, it would go perfect with this system! (Please, please, PLEASE get me that!!)

This morning, of course, sucked. Yup… Monday with a vengeance. It was a tropical 17° (-8.3° c) when I left the house and they’re forecasting a blistering 30° (-1° c) for a high today. Sure… it may be colder someplace else, but last nights fog froze into a nearly impenetrable sheet of icey goodness on all the glass in my car. Good times scraping that crap off!! 🙂

Yes indeedy, I haven’t posted since last week, and I don’t have anything to write about, so it’s time again for a “filler” post.

But fear not, gentle reader, for I am the master of pulling a post directly outa my ass.

We’re doing Secret Santa at work this week. The objective: give a few small gifts (4 – 5) in a week and a half period (inexpensive items, in the $1 – $5 range), then a large gift at a luncheon at the end. The goal: don’t let them figure out who you are.

So… you become a cubicle ninja. Sneak in silently, leave presents, vanish without a trace.

So far, so good for me. My Secret Victim hasn’t a clue who I am. Of course, it helps that she’s in training all week and isn’t in her cubicle most of the day.

My cubicle got hit this morning. My Secret Santa left me a paper mailbox full of pistachios and chocolate.

Pistachios are roasted in the shell and delicious. The reason they’re roasted and sold in the shell: to burn off calories while you open them. If they came without shells, we’d all be fat bastards in a hurry (because you’d just shovel them into your yap… they’re soooooo damn good!)

But I digress….

I purchased all the small gifts for my Secret Victim over the weekend and will strike her cubicle again tomorrow. I’m also planning another sojourn into the shopping madness that is the mall to attempt to find the perfect “final” gift. Hopefully I’ll locate something quickly as to minimize my proximity to the unwashed masses.

Oh… and in totally unrelated news: the Clan [PXLTHG] website is nearly complete. I have a CSS tweaks to do yet, but I’m pretty happy about how it looks. If you play Battlefield 2142, look for us online!

And there you go… I made a post (which is better than some people are doing).