That’s right - another one thrown into the hopper.  Enjoy!

First, a moment of self-disclosure:  I am not a morning person.  Not even remotely.  Getting me awake under the best of circumstances involves an Act of Congress, a 21-gun salute, and enough coffee to fund a small South American insurrection.  This made college interesting; my freshman year was a near-disaster due to me discovering that “not a morning person” and “Calculus at 8 in the morning” simply do not mix. After that year, I quickly adjusted my schedule to make sure no class started before 10 a.m.  Since then, however, I’ve recognized that, though I may naturally wake up around 9 or so in the morning, the rest of the world doesn’t, and, until I get high enough in my field to work at a place with flextime or that at least allows telecommuting, I better learn to find some way to adjust against this particular weakness.

This journey has led to something of a small war between myself and my subconscious.  At first, I started with something simple - I turned up the volume of my alarm.  My subconscious adapted by learning how to turn off my alarm in my sleep.  I then asked my former roommate, who woke up a little before I did, to wake me up in the morning.  My subconscious adapted first by talking in my sleep, then following it up with grabbing limbs in my sleep, which ultimately led to me starting to hit people in my sleep - this sufficiently discouraged that roommate enough to nix that idea.  Talking to others like me, I picked up another trick - I moved the alarm clock to the other side of the bedroom from my bed.  That was the most successful measure, for, by the time I got out of bed and walked to the alarm clock to turn it off, my mind was usually awake enough for me to stay awake once I killed the alarm.

The key word in that last sentence, of course, was usually, which brings me to where I am today.  At this point, I literally sleepwalk to the alarm, turn it off, then sleepwalk back to bed and go to sleep.  This, needless to say, has done absolutely wonderful things to my work schedule.  Consequently, I need to come up with another countermeasure.  The catch, though, is that the ESO, though also difficult to wake up in the mornings, hasn’t quite reached the level of sheer and utter malevolence between herself and her sleepy subconscious; if I get too creative, I risk turning her into collateral damage.  That would not bode well for my ability to continue sleeping next to her.

Here are my thoughts:

• I could get another baby monitor, place it next to the alarm clock, which would be relocated to the opposite end of the apartment, and put the other side of it in the bedroom.  This would make it necessary for me to walk all the way to the other end of the apartment in order to turn it off.  Of course, this could be countered by my subconscious simply turning off the baby monitor.  Until that point, of course, the ESO would probably be rather miffed that it took the better part of five minutes for me to wander over to the alarm clock.
• I could do what I did during finals week in college - plug in a set of computer speakers into the alarm clock and turn the volume to maximum.  Thus, when the alarm went off, I’d wake up due to about 90 dB of morning talk radio blasting through my ears.  Of course, when I did this in college, my entire dorm floor was ready to kill me, and, in fact, had begun to organize a small posse to find out whose alarm clock was going off - it didn’t help I had a final at 7 in the morning and that it took me about 15 minutes to realize that was my alarm clock going off like a jet engine, so I should probably turn it off.  Yeah… I wasn’t very popular in college.
• Put the alarm clock in the kid’s room.  This would wake the kid up, waking me up, and waking everyone else in the house up.  Of course, this would result in the instant loss of genitalia as soon as the ESO discovered what I did.

So, I’m submitting to all of you - how do you wake up in the morning?  What tricks do you have up your sleeve to make sure that, when that alarm goes off, you get out and start your day?

I’ve got another Car Lust up, folks.  Behold - my words are being read by thousands!

One of the fascinating aspects of living with an infant that people rarely nail down is what an infant does to the time you have during a day.  Most people will tell you that infants require tons of time and tons of attention - believe it or not, this really isn’t true.  Always remember that, when dealing with infants, they behave very similarly to dogs; they’ll sleep through most of the day, being awake at various random parts to eat, poop, and occasionally snuggle.  That’s all an infant does.  In many ways, you can treat an infant similarly to a dog - if you feed it, talk to it, occasionally take it outside, and bathe it from time to time, you’re meeting its needs for the next few months.

There’s one hitch, though.

A seldom-discussed fact of infant life is that, strange as it might sound, they actually sleep more than adults.  A lot more.  Infants will actually sleep up to 14 hours each day.  What they won’t do, at least not for a few months, is actually do enough of that in a single block to be remotely useful for an adult sleep cycle.  This wrecks complete and total havoc on the sanity of the parents.

What this means, at least in my experience, is that you still have nearly as much time as you ever had to get things done, but a lot less energy to do them with.  Everything just kind of feels like you’re pushing through molasses, making everything take longer than it used to in order to get things done.  It’s not that the kid has really affected your time schedule much - he’s barely awake half the day, after all, and it’s not like children aren’t portable - he’s just completely nuked your ability to actually use your time with any efficiency.

This, coincidentally, is my cop-out on why my blog has suffered a minor meltdown.  The good news is that work has been increasingly quiet as of late, which tends to help my energy levels a little.  The bad news is that my ability to maintain a coherent thought worth writing about is directly proportional to the amount of sleep I’m able to get during the night, and, at this point, we’re in “How the hell am I not babbling random Broadway showtunes?” territory.  I’m not kidding.  During a work meeting tonight, I caught myself humming the Canadian National Anthem. No idea why.  Not sure what the point of it was, or what its relevance was.  My brain just decided it was time to hum it, so I did.  Thankfully, I did it quietly, so I doubt it was noticed, but, even so, it’s a little disconcerting.

Things on the list for the near future:

• I haven’t given up on the “Stuff Nerds Like” feature around here.  I have a few posts started, believe it or not.  The trouble is actually coming up with something interesting to say about them - I mean, you can only write, “Nerds really like X.  It helps them escape the cold, harsh nature of reality,” so many times before you feel you’re not only repeating yourself but not really providing anything useful to the conversation.  Yeah, I get it - Science Fiction, LARPing, etc. is all an attempt to escape reality.  So is Burning Man.  Surely, in the wild, twisted maze that is my brain at this point, is some insight that digs just a wee bit deeper than that.  I mean, if you need me to state the obvious, well, I can do that, but c’mon…
• At some point this week, I will find a way to check out some Hot August Nights action.  Then, I shall blog about it… but not here.  I shall blog about it there.

When Aiden was born, my traffic numbers, according to Sitemeter, went into the toilet.  I couldn’t understand why, or what had happened.  Then, I noticed I was getting no referrals, except for a couple from Google - what was going on, I wondered?  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and decided it was high time to find out what happened.

The answer?  I’m an idiot.  That’s what happened.  Apparently, sometime close to when Aiden was born, I wiped out the Sitemeter code.  Brilliant. What I was getting was my hit counter on the old Blogspot blog.

Oy.  Sleep deprivation is a bitch, people.  I’m not kidding.

Today’s special:  The Suzuki Samurai.

I’m hoping that my schedule becomes more sane next week, which will help alleviate the dearth of decent posts around here.  It took effort to throw together a Car Lust post for the week, and it’s not like they need to be terribly long or frequent.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  There is, unfortunately, a reason for that:

I have an infant at home.

For reasons that clearly only make sense in the female mind, the ESO would much rather I focus my energies when I’m home on helping her with the kid than with more important pursuits, such as furthering my campaign for global domination through blog.  Consequently, things are going to be a little lean around here for a little while.  That’s not to say I’ve given up blogging entirely, mind you, though, with the hit numbers I’m getting lately, I would not be insane to do so.  I mean, at this point, shutting this thing down would disappoint a whopping five people.  Why on God’s green earth would I dare to do that?

I will guarantee that, unless something truly catastrophic happens, I should be able to pull out at least one posting a week out of my ass.  Since I don’t get any revenue from people visiting here, if you only visit once a week, it won’t hurt my feelings.

In the meantime, here are some fun thoughts to pass the time:

• Linux Hater’s Blog is now my new favorite blog.  I’ve been using Ubuntu for almost two years now, and the Evolution of an Ubuntu User article nailed my experiences better than none other.
• Don’t work for people who think this sort of thing is a good idea.
• It’s official:  Obama has become the douche.  Waiting for confirmation on McCain becoming the turd sandwich.
• This is still the funniest and strangest music video I have ever seen.  Ever.

My first Car Lust posting has finally been approved and published.  Enjoy it - Chris Hafner didn’t edit much of it.

No, this one doesn’t have to do with the kid.

I’ve been accepted as a guest blogger for Amazon’s Car Lust Blog.  This means that the readership for my writings will go from a dozen or so people a day to more like thousands upon thousands of people a day.  Needless to say, I’m absolutely thrilled.

For today, and hopefully today only, this blog is going to suffer as a result.  No post beyond this for today, for I have to go cut my teeth on my new home.  I’m still going to have regular new content here, though, so don’t panic… and, yes, as my posts get approved and submitted at Car Lust, I’ll have links to them here, too.

Victory is mine!

Yep, I know - it’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here.  Much of that stems to the new child in the house; for some reason, having an infant in the house is not conducive towards any sort of coherent thought.  To help drive that point home, today’s blog is going to be about why I shouldn’t be allowed within a nautical mile of a kitchen.

Due to financial and logistical constraints, we’re eating out a lot less these days in the Colborne house.  This, of course, means we have to cook our meals; unfortunately, the ESO is mildly fearful of the kitchen, so I’m the one that does the bulk of the cooking.  Throw in that she’s technically supposed to be resting (something about pushing out a seven pound object through a 12 centimeter opening, and the process of that opening growing to be 12 centimeters in the first place), and you’ve got a set of circumstances that just about guarantees that I’m manning the kitchen, for better or worse.  This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.  I’m not a bad cook, as long as I stay within myself.  When I start getting desperately creative, though…

One of the gifts we received from the ESO’s parents was a giant bag of frozen teriyaki chicken.  On paper, this sound great - it’s a good excuse to engage in a little Hawaiian-style cuisine, which eventually must lead to the use of Spam in something.  I like Spam.  I even wrote an ill-advised poem about it when I was 13.  Unfortunately, the ESO neither enjoys teriyaki nor Spam, to say nothing of my spiced ham-themed poetry, so my dreams of homemade Spam musubi are dashed against the rocks like so many other ill-fated dreams.  Even so, though, there is a giant bag of teriyaki chicken sitting in the freezer, taking up valuable space.  So, I decided I would try to counter the teriyaki flavor with something else and thus salvage the free protein source.

At first, my experiments went fairly well.  I used Thai peanut sauce in one dish, which went well.  Putting it in curry in another dish was also non-objectionable; the coconut milk did a wonderful job of drowning out the worst of the teriyaki flavor.  Then I thought I would step it up a notch - I was going to use eggplant.  Just one problem:  The ESO doesn’t like eggplant.  It’s too squishy.

Strrrrrrrrrrike one!

No problem, I thought to myself.  I’ll just cut the eggplant into slices and fry it with the chicken - it’ll work out some of the teriyaki flavor and, with a little time, crispify the eggplant.  Of course, to make a crispy fried product, it frequently helps to have a batter around, which I didn’t…

Strrrrrrrrrrike two!

No worries.  It’s frying, it’s browning a little, things are going well.  Then, I get the idea that the frying process won’t get enough of the teriyaki out.  It’ll just make the eggplant taste like teriyaki.  That’s not a good thing.  I need to throw something else in there to counter the taste… something like… fish sauce.

Strrrrrrrrrrike three!  You’re outta here!

After about five minutes of letting the eggplant and teriyaki chicken stew in a brew of a 1/4 cup of fish sauce and a non-inconsequential amount of olive oil, I opened the lid to see what I had.  What I had possessed a rather familiar odor - an odor so familiar that, upon smelling it, the ESO remarked, “Huh… it smells like when I’m on the rag.”  Being the wonderful, kind man that I am, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

I’d tell you how it tasted, but I wasn’t that brave - we just chucked the whole thing in the trash can, threw it out as fast as possible, then I ran down to Jack ‘N The Box and got some drive-thru.  It smelled better than what I was cooking.  Naturally, I remarked that we were going to have to “eat out” after that cooking fiasco.

Again, somehow, I still have functional reproductive organs.

For the record, the “Stuff Nerds Like” series isn’t over.  I have another one that I’m working on and, with any luck, will post tomorrow.  You’ve been warned.  We’re getting back on that train with gusto.  Besides, as long as I keep agreeing that my cooking smells like the ESO’s reproductive organs, I’m probably not going to be seeing them for a while, so I’m going to have nothing but time on my hands.

I apologize for my absence around here - yesterday (Friday), the ESO finally gave birth to little Aiden Lukas Zayac - all 7 lbs, 3 oz of him.  For various personal reasons, I generally try to avoid having blatantly public pictures of my family (trying to keep the wall between the real world and the online one, if that makes any sense), but, if you know me, you know how to get pictures from me.

I’m probably taking the rest of the weekend off from blogging.  I’ll be back in limited duty starting on Monday.

The Malibu has returned, having been reassembled by a crack team of mechanics at Greg’s Garage.  Needless to say, the world may now witness the power of a fully operational Chevy Malibu.

(Something something dark side… something something something complete.)

The final tally, as luck had it, was $808.  Still not a pretty chunk of change, but marginally cheaper than I was expecting.  They were nice and comped an hour and a half of time, which was nice… I mean, I comp time all the time, so it was kind of nice to get on the right side of that for once.  This also worked out quite well for other fortuitious reasons - the ESO and I have been trying to find another mechanic to take her car to for quite a while.  My usual mechanic, who does a wonderful job on everything I drive, could never seem to fix anything on the Malibu without some serious mishap occuring.  Very frustrating, that.

The important thing, of course, is that I have my truck back, which means that I no longer need to serenade myself to sleep whilst pondering the natures of driving a truck that’s almost as old as my mother and gets a gas war era 8 miles per gallon.  That, needless to say, is not something I’ll miss.  Sure, my Dakota only averages double that after factoring in city mileage… but double is still a decent factor.

With any luck, now that I’m not breathing fumes from the fuel system and the “what smog laws?” emissions system as they leak into the cab, I might be able to actually get a little coherent posting done.  It’s also nice that I can finally hear again… a 15-year-old Dakota may not sound particularly quiet to the modern ear, but, after driving that old Chevy around everywhere, the Dakota sounds, drives, and feels like a Rolls Royce.  I’m not even remotely kidding about that.

We’ve come a loooooong way… and I couldn’t be happier.

Got it towed to a mechanic who was willing to look at it, even though it was half disassembled (harder than you’d think, actually).  Final verdict:  Can fix the holes that the rocker arm bolts go into, willing to put it back together, and there’s a leaking oil pump gasket that’s a little farther down.  Final tally?  About $900. Also, the mechanic had a number of unkind things to say about the engine in our Malibu (not the car specifically - the make and model), indicating that they’re prone to “engine fatigue”.

When every mechanic you talk to about your car says that it’s a pile of crap, well, that’s not particularly encouraging.

Meanwhile, the old truck continues its duties, at least until tomorrow, when the Malibu should be done.  Then I finally get my Dakota back and can live in the land of 18 MPG “bliss” for a while longer.  I’m also hitting up car ads, car auctions, whatever I can find to get us out from under the car.  It gets decent gas mileage, and it would meet our needs nicely if it wasn’t a horribly engineered pile of putrescence. One thing is certain - I have a very clear understanding of why a lot of people stopped buying GM.  Lord knows I’m never buying their products if I can help it.

This post will be written in the style of a Car Disgust article on Car Lust Blog.  For whatever it may be worth, I hereby openly and gladly authorize the reproduction of this article in its entirety on said blog without condition.  I’ll be forwarding this to Mr. Hafner as soon as I’m done writing this.

The ESO, love of my life that she is, drives a 2003 Chevrolet Malibu.  It was originally a rental car, like so many Malibus of this era; this would be surprising if there was a single redeeming feature of this car and its ilk.  To better understanding the failings of this particular vehicle, it’s important to understand where it came from.

The ESO’s Malibu is a Fourth Generation Malibu.  GM sold the exact same car for about 10 years, either as a Malibu or as a “Malibu Classic”.  When it first came out in 1997, it was a well-received car - it was relatively handsome and had some decent power from the V-6, at least for the time.  As far as family mid-sizes in 1997, it wasn’t a bad car.  At the very least, it was better than the Ford Taurus and it’s 75,000 mile transmission of the time, and definitely better than the Dodge Intrepid of that year.  By 2003, however, the Malibu was one of so many cars that GM produced for way too long without a refresh, which, like so many cars before it, led it either to rental fleets around the country or to discount used car lots, selling for less than half of its “original sticker price”.

Thus, the ESO’s father thought he found himself a bargain when he picked this particular Malibu up for his daughter.  It was two years old and cost only $9000.  It was a steal, or so it seemed at the time.

Since the fateful day that her father purchased that car, we’ve dealt with the following mechanical difficulties:

• The rear driver side window stopped working.  Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the cable responsible for moving the window had inexplicably tangled itself.
• Numerous brake jobs, all of which involving warped rotors for some reason.
• After a year of ownership, the flasher in the car began to make intermittent clicking noises without provocation.  The result is that, after driving the car for a little while, it will begin clicking over and over again.  The best part, though, is that the chime that lets the driver know that the turn signal is still on will also go off after a short amount of time since it thinks the turn signal is on.  This has still not been fixed.
• The driver’s side door opens with a popping noise, rubbing against the front left fender.
• One day, while driving home, the ESO hit the horn on the freeway.  It never turned off; we eventually pulled off to the side of the road, at which point I pulled the fuse responsible for it.  The horn hasn’t worked since, even when the fuse was replaced with a new fuse.
• Smoke periodically comes out from the steering wheel.  Nobody knows why.
• The latest gem:  After an oil change, I submitted the oil to Blackstone Laboratories to get it analyzed.  End result?  Antifreeze in the oil, which means the intake manifold gasket is leaking.  Apparently, I’m not the only one - there’s a class-action lawsuit that was recently settled about this very thing.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get it fixed quite soon enough, so, alas, it doesn’t look like I get to cash in on it.

Due to the impending birth of my second son, money is a little tight, so, when I found out about the intake manifold gasket, I realized that, if it was going to get fixed (and bad things happen to engines that mix coolant and oil - very bad things), it was probably going to have to get fixed by myself.  Thankfully, I have a coworker who is both generous and extremely willing to help out with endeavours such as these, and he has both a garage and a decent set of tools, so, last weekend, I took it there.

Sadly, I did not think to take a picture of the engine before I got started - I did, however, take a picture of it after I was done…

So, is it done?  Oh hell no.  Of course it’s not done.  See, GM thought it would be fun to put too much torque into the rocker arm bolts, so, when I tried to put them back in, I discovered the hard way that a couple of them had been stripped at some point.  Removing them removed the threading from inside the head.  Tap the hole?  Yeah, already tried that.  No dice.  I’m now looking to get it to a machinist… which brings me to the next stage of this highly unpleasant adventure.

Due to my failure to repair this “wonderful” bastion of American automotive engineering, I’m letting the ESO borrow my truck, which means I have to use the backup ride.  See, my job requires me to get to a customer’s site in short order, which pretty well rules out bikes and the bus system.  So, instead of driving my truck and letting the ESO drive her car, I get to drive this:

That’s right - a 1964 Chevrolet C-10 1/2 Ton truck, armed with a 283 CID V8 that, when it was new, was rated for about 175 HP.  That would be 1964 horsepower, so, in the real world, that translates to roughly 120 HP, all trying desperately to pull a truck that is made out of nothing but steel and pressed wood.

Wait - pressed wood, did I say?  Yes I did - that would be the truck bed.  It was built that way.

Now, you may also notice the coloring scheme.  See, due to it being big, heavy, and almost as old as my mother (born in ‘60!), it gets about 8-10 MPG, so I drive it as little as possible.  The entire reason I have the truck, in fact, is to take it to tailgating at University of Nevada football games.  A friend of mine and I bought the thing together, spraypainted it with an appropriate color scheme (you read that right), and do our absolute best to furlough the thing as much as humanly possible.  The only time it’s ever driven to somewhere that isn’t Mackay Stadium is when one of our vehicles break down… which is why I’m now driving a vehicle that costs about $0.50/mile to run.

Ah… I know what you’re thinking.  Rental car, right?  Nyet - rental cars would run about $25/day.  That’s 50 miles.  I can get to work and back in under 30.  It’s a close call, though, I admit that.

Long story short… that stupid maroon pile of Lansing, Michigan assembled crap has reduced me to driving a truck that is nearly 20 years my senior.  Thanks.  That is why today’s Car Disgust from yours truly is the 2003 Chevrolet Malibu.  May it burn in hell… just as soon as I replace it with something else.  Maybe there’s a used Fiat for sale or something.

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday - I just couldn’t come up with anything worth writing about. I’m not kidding. Here were some of the ideas rolling around in my head:

1. Deconstructing the lyrics of a Styx song, interpreting how ridiculous it is. Styx?
2. Some random technical crap.
3. That was it.

Yeah, I know, Hillary quit, Obama’s the official Democratic nominee… and I just don’t care. I’m sorry. To be perfectly honest, I was mildly surprised that Hillary got as far as she did; considering how many people she pissed off over the years, if you stop and think about it, it was almost insane that she was considered a front-runner in the first place. That’s part of the reason, I suspect, that Obama became so popular to begin with - he’s charismatic enough to get some attention, he’s the first realistic minority presidential candidate (Jesse Jackson doesn’t count), and he was smart enough to keep his positions really vague for a while. Of course, Hillary did a wonderful job of showing many of Obama’s weaknesses, which, to be fair, was really quite generous of her, but it doesn’t change the fact that, if there was an actual, real, credible candidate that the Democratic Party was willing to support, neither Clinton or Obama would have had a prayer this year. That said, from a personal perspective, it wouldn’t matter much to me - as long as the Democratic Party encourages candidates that talk about universal health care (because, as we all know, imposing more bureaucracy on our health care system is exactly the cure to what ails us) or adding any other entitlements at a time when our expenditures are already greater than our tax revenues, I’m not going to vote for them. It’s as simple as that. This is also why I’m extremely pissed at the Republican Party at the moment and why I think “compassionate conservatism” is a joke - lower taxes are great, but expenditures have to match revenues, at least in the long term. Long story short, before I go any further on this tangent, that’s why I’m not really blogging much about Obama, what his wife may or may not have said, or any of the rest of it - I wasn’t going to vote for him anyways. That said, in the near future, I might get into why so many people are having troubles with Obama’s racial issues. Here’s a sneak preview:

It’s not about racism. Just ask Mitt Romney’s dad.

Past that…

• Work is starting to mellow out a little, which means my post count might go up. No promises on quality.
• My personal life will be getting increasingly interesting. The ESO is due next month, so, once the kid is born, that’s pretty much going to nuke my personal time from orbit. In the meantime, I’m going to be fairly busy cleaning and fixing things, like that pesky intake manifold gasket on the ESO’s Malibu. I’m going to get into that at some point, too - that American car makers create cars with weaknesses that go out after 100,000 miles, require hours of labor to fix, and, if they fail, will turn the engine into a useless block of goo pretty much sums up why everyone buys imports. Seeing as the Malibu is a 2003, it’s clearly still an issue. More on this later. Much more.

That’s it for now.

UPDATE:  No it’s not!  I just remembered what I was originally going to write about here… see, I haven’t been getting much sleep lately (mostly self-induced), so I’ve been needing increased quantities of caffeine to function halfway normally (this probably isn’t helping the lack of sleep issue - I’m smart enough to know that).  Today, I discovered something glorious… the 32 oz can of Rock Star.  It only contains 320 mg of caffeine in a can (the equivalent of a little over ten cans of soda, or three cups of really strong coffee), which, according to Wikipedia, should be enough to induce caffeine intoxication.  The rambling flow of thought and speech is the part you should most look forward to - if I can get some of that going in blog form, this place is going to become really interesting.  Plus, there’s also a ton of other stimulants swimming around in there, so I should be in a really fun mood here pretty shortly.

Let’s see here…

March:  849
April:  1,407
May:  867

That would be my hit counter for each of those months.  I’m actually reasonably happy with the results - April’s numbers were skewed by me kissing Rachel’s ass rather vigorously.  Since then, I decided to kind of back off on that.  It was great from a “Rachel links to me and I get some hits” perspective, but I noticed I wasn’t keeping much of that traffic; part of the problem, I suspect, was that my blog was getting lost in the “Rachel’s echo chamber” zone that I was slipping into.  Though I enjoy Rachel’s blog as much as anyone, I needed to find my own voice, y’know?  Consequently, I’m not feeling too bad about my traffic numbers - I got better numbers than March with fewer plugs from Rachel.  That’s a step in the right direction.

Proof, of course, is in the pudding - I’ve even discovered other blogs linking to me, like A Gator in the Desert - it’s always nice to see a fellow IT guy blogging in the desert, even if it is one that’s more flush with cactus than sagebrush.  Yeah, sagebrush might be a little boring, but, hey, it doesn’t require 100+ degree temperatures to grow, and, at least to me, that’s all that matters.

The few regulars I might have around here have probably noticed that the quality of my writing and sense of humor have gone down dramatically.  There’s a reason for that - I haven’t been getting much sleep.  Most of it is self-induced, though there was a fair amount of work-related nonsense last week.  Throw in a visit to my morning person son over the weekend (who broke his arm, by the way - good times, that) and some random personal asshattery over this week and you’ve got a recipe for me running on 5 hours of sleep a night for the past few days.

Not good.

Needless to say, my ability to maintain a coherent thought longer than a short sentence has suffered dramatically, as has my wit and vigor.  I wish I could say I have a trough of fresh material to plow through once I get some sleep, but one of the nasty side effects of sleep deprivation is that my motivation is nearly nil and my creativity is even lower.

I’m going to get some sleep tonight, rest assured.  I’m still going to post and limp along here through the rest of the week; I’m hoping to get enough rest this weekend to not go completely insane and actually get some stuff done.  After that… world, watch out.

When you’re tipping a contractor that shows up to your house, after you hand the contractor the cash, never, ever unbuckle your belt buckle, unbutton your pants, and start zipping down your fly… to tuck your shirt in.  Seriously, if you need to tuck in your shirt, wait a minute or two for the contractor to leave.  Handing someone money in your house and following that up with anything involving your pants is liable to send the wrong message.  I cannot begin to stress this enough.

(Yes, this happened to me today.  That’s how my work day ended.  At least I got some dinner money out of it, though… and, to the guy’s credit, he did tuck in his shirt, and he did stop there.  Thank goodness - that almost became the first time I would have ever used my steel toed boots for defense.)

As some of you have probably guessed, I’ve been a little busy lately.  Yesterday, I had a nice server migration from hell.  Today, I got to finish that up - I got the tip not because I inspired someone to play with their pants but because I worked my ass off and got the job done.  Did it take about twice as long as it should?  Yes.  Did pretty much everything that could go wrong go wrong?  No - both servers stayed up, which is better than some of the nastier migrations I’ve been a part of - but it still wasn’t a lot of fun.

While I’m bitching about work, let’s talk about spam.  Everybody gets it.  Everybody is annoyed by it.  Simple enough.  What’s kind of fun about it, though, is that, when you’re managing a mail server, you get to experience how different people handle spam.  Some will want the spam to be segregated to a separate folder so that, if a legitimate e-mail is trapped by the spam filter, they can check the folder later and find it.  Others are mortally offended that, somewhere, even in a folder labeled “Junk E-Mail” there could be an e-mail in there that mentions (the horror!) improperly sized penises, and will immediately freak out, raining death and hysteria upon you, upon discovering that e-mail.  What’s really fun is when somebody decides they want both.  Y’know, because, if you’re going to host your e-mail on an operating system that exemplifies the wacky nature of quantum physics, the least it can do is violate said laws while hosting your e-mail, right?

Right.

While I’m here, a quick heads up - I’m visiting my son (first one) this weekend, so posting may be a little sparse.

Secondly, the ESO asked me how I felt about a middle name of “Lucas” for impending son #2.  Needless to say, I smiled a little.  Heh heh heh… if she only knew… if she only knew…

(Rachel says she wants more personal stuff - all right, ask and ye shall receive…)

Relax, folks, no pictures… not unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case, oh yes, I’m more than happy to put up bloody, nasty pictures.  Maybe I’ll put a hat on my toe or something… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

For the past five years, I’ve had a recurring ingrown toenail - it has always been on my big toe, right foot, inside corner.  Extremely painful, and, though I’m not exactly motivated to exercise anyways, it certainly has done nothing to encourage me to, say, take a walk or something.  I let the University health center poke and prod at it while I was there, which always led to it feeling better for a week or two, then it would grow back.

Last year, I had enough.

I went to an urgent care center near my apartment and told them to remove it - it being the entire toenail.  I was done.  I had enough.  They were very accommodating; they removed the entire toenail, applied some acid to the matrix, wrapped it in some gauze, and gave me a prescription for Vicodin.  Everything looked good, and I learned that the only thing Vicodin does is completely remove the block between my brain and my mouth (which, by the way, was never much to begin with), which led to conversations sort of like this:

Me: Wow!  That girl is cute!

The ESO: <glare>

Me: Well, not as cute as you, of course.  I mean, her legs are all flabby.  Yours aren’t.  But, yeah, she’s pretty cute!

The ESO: Are you going to shut up now?

Me: Wha… well, yeah, of course… I’m just saying, that girl over there is cute.  That’s all.  Not as cute as you.  Just cute.

The ESO: I cannot believe you do not shut up!

Me: All right, I’ll shut up… she is cute, though.  You have to admit that.

The ESO: Do you want to eat that burrito through your mouth, or through your ass?  Either can be arranged.

Me: I’ll shut up now.

– Five minutes later –

Me: Huh!  That girl is fat!

– Repeat –

Seriously, the ESO is a saint.  Unfortunately, the vicodin didn’t do much for the pain - I just cared about it a little less.

Then, a few months later… the toenail grew back.  Oh yes, it was ingrown again.  Great.  So, I toughed it out for a while longer, not being particularly motivated to go down this road again, until, last week, I finally had enough and went back to the urgent care.

They sent me to a podiatrist.

Now, I’m a little perplexed how it’s possible for a doctor to specialize in feet and foot care.  To be honest, I didn’t realize feet were that complicated; this would be similar to someone in my line of work specializing in printers.  Yeah, some printers can get rather complicated, but are you seriously going to make a living working on $30 inkjet printers?  I doubt it.  But, there I was today, sitting in the office of a podiatrist, waiting patiently (as a patient - ha!) for someone else to hack apart my toe.

Things I learned:

1. The doctor knew about Rev. Wright, and wanted my opinion on him.  I pointed out that the same people that routinely believe the government isn’t capable of paving a road without screwing it up are the same ones that believe it’s possible for the government to engineer a deadly virus and fly planes into tall buildings without anybody knowing for sure that it’s them.  The doctor thought that was rather insightful and gave me an extra dose of marcaine for my wisdom.  I was thankful.
2. Specialists actually do know what they’re doing - this doctor did not mess around.  I think the toenail will finally be healed this time around; he even used a tourniquet on my toe so my blood wouldn’t wash away the acid before it did its work.  Very nice.  Best of all, I didn’t feel a thing.
3. The doctor said that I was “an affable young man”.  Well, perhaps I am… or, perhaps I’m an affable little serial killer that’s going to eat his children.  He’ll never know until it’s too late, now will he?  (Muahahaha!)

Okay, no, I won’t eat his children - he did really good work, after all, and I prefer to encourage that sort of behavior.  That said, I’m really happy that my toenail has finally been taken care of.

In a week - no more excuses.  I’ll finally be able to go on long hikes again.  Sweet.

Okay, here’s the deal: I recognize that just about anybody can grab random stuff off of HotAir, Instapundit, and Rachel Lucas and comment on it. That’s easy, and there’s only, oh, 2,532,143 blogs out there that do this on a daily basis.

Therein lies the rub.

Now, I enjoy writing about politics and the like, but I’m certainly not married to the idea. Consequently, I’m throwing down a couple of poll questions. This serves a couple of purposes:

1. I get to play with the new polls widget I just installed.
2. You get to tell me what you want to see more of around here.

I’m fairly open-ended, and, to be honest, this won’t necessarily be binding; if 30 people write in “My Little Pony” or something like that, don’t expect me to actually spend time writing about (Vishnu forbid) My Little Pony. Seriously, that show was just wrong. That said, I want to see what brings people here, and, more importantly, what will encourage people to stay here and keep coming back.

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BREAKING NEWS: The much more highly regarded Frank J. of IMAO fame has declared his candidacy for the office of President of the United States in 2016:

I’m going to campaign on getting the federal government back to the basics. That means focusing on having it only do what citizens can’t do for themselves: Kill bad people in foreign lands. Also, nuking the moon.

Though I agree with my esteemed opponent’s view on killing bad people in foreign lands, I disagree with his policy on deploying nuclear weapons to the moon.  I also believe that the federal government still has a useful role in killing bad people in native lands.  Fortunately, I have almost a year of semi-solid (colloidal?) campaigning under my belt, acquiring support from all corners of the country (well, some corners, at least), so I believe that, though I do not have the level of infamy of my opponent, I still possess a strong enough campaign machine to overcome this challenge.

Until 2016!