Can Someone Explain This to Me?

I'm amazed that Americans are as good-natured as they are. Every day when I'm driving to and from work I see thousands of cars on the opposite side of the road, just stopped. People abide sitting in stopped traffic every single day, twice a day. I would buy a gun. I …

Last Day in Colorado

Everybody woke up within four hours of each other yesterday, and kind of fired off in random directions. Some stayed in bed for a comfortable hung-over lie-in, while one sizable group headed into town to wander around and browse shops filled with useless crap. I was in …

Sprungs Wrapup

The trip is basically over. We had an excellent time, though it's a shame that I wasn't able to ski more. The group wasn't as interested as I'd hoped in going out, so we spent a good deal more time holed up in the condo than I'd have liked. That said, it's amazing how …

Steamboat Sprungs

I just spent my first day on the slopes at Steamboat, and it's quite clear to me that I am shamefully out of condition. I celebrated my ridiculous deficiency by going to a bar.

I'm Sorry

I'm leaving work at 4pm. That's an hour from now. I will drive home via the grocery store, the hardware store, and the ATM. When I get home I'll pack up a duffel with underpants, socks, t-shirts, overshirts, long underwear, swimming trunks, a power strip, various …

IRS Update

I got home on Thursday and started digging around. I logged into my account on H&R Block's website and saw that the returns they had for me only go back as far as 2005, and the paper ones I have are only for 2001 and 2002. I began to get worried, even though it doesn't …

Son of a Bitch

Okay, so I had a nice little post about my upcoming trips and how lovely life is right now, and then I logged into my online banking website to see if my 2007 tax refund had been deposited yet by the IRS, and it had not yet.

So, I logged into the H&R Block tax website to …

Open Vacation

It's with a heavy heart that I have canceled my trip to the American Southeast. The planned departure is only a month away, and still nobody has been able to commit to joining me for any portion of it. So, as much as I'd like to do the whole trip by myself, I just don't …

Album Cover

Curtis told me about making your own album covers, so I decided to try my hand. I'm very pleased, except with my own ineptitude with image manipulation software. Here is my freshman attempt.

Maintenance and Computers

I'm sorry. I haven't really written anything on here lately, because I haven't really had anything interesting to say. I've been kind of consumed lately with Lord of the Rings Online, just like I knew I would be if I ever got into it. I've reached kind of a slow point …

Kansas City Weekend

I had a fun weekend. My association, that means next weekend will be terrible. That stands to reason, because I will be the secondary oncall, and I will be working the biggest maintenance window I've ever worked. There will be an absence of fun. A void of …

Mayor Funkhouser

The Downtown Neighborhood Association hosted a townhall forum on Wednesday night at the Clubhouse on Baltimore. As a member of the 2008 executive board of said organization, I was kinda sorta obliged to attend, but I would have gone anyway. First, I have to call …

Cable Modem

It's always an alarming thing to watch your internet connection degrade. For the last month or so, we've had periodic outages and times of spotty service. Fortunately, it's never happened while I've been on call. I know a lot of people have a lot of "needs," regarding …

Splutschnik 3

Hello again! I just thought I'd give you a heads-up that Splutschnik, once again, was an unmitigated success. Sixteen people arrived almost on time at the Quaff to test their mettle on Saturday, and I arbitrarily sorted everyone into teams that I think worked out well. …

Money

In the past couple of years, a couple of factors have led to me having significant amounts due for my income taxes after filing my return every year. Chief among these factors is the fact that I had my W4 worked out to withhold as little of my check as possible, to …

Uniform Length

I got my hair cut over lunch today. Scott, my barber, seems to labor under the idea that I still somehow think I might not be losing my hair. Indeed, the bulk of the hair loss is actually behind me. I might not have a shiny slick scalp onto which people can stick …

The End of the World

Today, for the first time ever, I took out my headphones, and the right and left phones were in my right and left hands.

VPN and BECBs

WARNING: The following post contains technical jargon and light profanity.

I'm on call again. I got home with a hot pager at the normal time last night, and set about making a Parellels virtual machine on my home PC to facilitate my oncall duties. We use the Cisco VPN …

Self-imposed Hops Shortage

If you know me, you know that I'm a big fan of beer. I travel for beer. I organize events around beer. Beer is the tie that binds. Almost every culture in history has held an affection for beer, many having discovered its unlikely composition completely independently of …

LOTRO

Everybody has been slow to reconverge after the holidays. It's been pretty boring lately. To cope, I've taken up Lord of the Rings Online, and for real this time. Nick and I have been playing and patiently crossing paths as I work my way up through the levels. But what …