Just Plain Chips

As I mentioned, last night went very well, from my point of view. I was feeling surprisingly un-nervous as I got there, which was nice. I walked in and the next open spot happened to be next the girl I had met a little over a month ago, so that’s where I sat. That made it easier since I actually knew her a tiny, tiny bit. And it helped that she and the guy right across from me, who works with her, were very outgoing and were able to keep people engaged with many interesting conversations. My difficulty usually lies with introducing myself out of the blue and starting up a conversations. If I’m thrown in and there’s conversations going on around me, I can join right it with no problem. Oh, and maybe the tall Guinness right off the bat helped lube the ol’ socializing joints as well.

About 15 people showed up over all through the evening, with some people not staying for very long. Maybe 10 people were there for most of the time and about 6-7 people went out to another bar in Uptown after Champps.

Like I said, I had a great time. We’re all planning on getting together again in about a month so I’m already looking forward to that.

What a night. Thanks for all the luck–it worked. I had a great time tonight and yes, it is 2:50am.

A gentleman doesn’t tell tales, but a certain lady and I hit it off quite nicely indeed. What it all means, I don’t know. But I had a fun time tonight.

Good night, all.

Wish me luck for tonight.

I’ll be entering in what may be my most uncomfortable social situation: meeting a group of people where I know nobody. I have been invited to a “Singles Networking Event”. A couple of friends invited all of these single people that they know or met to get together and have a few drinks and talk about work and whatever else. I am one of the people that they met, so I’m not even friends with the coordinators like I’m sure some people are. Sure, the girl who invited me is cute and she did compliment my new glasses, but that won’t make it any easier.

Here’s hoping for a pleasant evening.

My dad and I headed to the mall after work tonight to see Batman Begins. In short, it was awesome. We both loved it. Nearly everything worked and all of the actors were really good. I especially liked Liam Neeson, it was fun to see him in a different sort of role than the last couple of things I’ve seen him in: The Phantom Menace and Love Actually. If you haven’t seen it, you really need to get going.

Another fun part of the evening was my choice of fare tonight. I made the kind of culinary choices that harkened back to my days living with Steve. He can tell you of a special night when I made myself some waffles (whether they were Eggos or Bisquik, I cannot remember, maybe he does) for the main course. Slathered in peanut butter and maple syrup. Yes, that’s right, peanut butter and maple syrup. Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. And then after having my fill of delicious waffles I finished off with a huge bowl of ice cream for desert. It was a very sweet night.

Tonight was not much better. What else are you going to have for “dinner” when going to a 6:15pm movie? Why, a large popcorn of course. And that’s what I had, along with a large Sprite. And then when I got home, I decided that to balance out the salty, butteriness of my dinner I needed some ice cream. And that’s what I had.

Well, maybe not Germans, but German automobiles. On my way back to the office from lunch at Culvers (I love their concrete frozen custard malts) I stopped at a stop light. Instead of noticing a Japanese car trying to be German I noticed a fine German vehicle in front of me. Nothing like the Maybach Steve, Linzy, and I saw at the theater, but a respectable Mercedes Benz S55 AMG, I’m thinking about a 2002 model year. “Wow”, I thought, “Those are quite nice, and likely expensive.” Though not as expensive as a brand new one. Indeed, while $55K-$60K isn’t necessarily the most exhorbitant car price around, it’s on the upper end of the scale. When the light turned green I glanced up in my rearview mirror and what should I notice? But a shiny Porsche! The Germans had me surrounded. (I didn’t look to my right to see if there was a VW or Audi over there) Once we got on the free way I was able to discern that the Porsche in my sights was a 2003 911 Turbo, still worth a hefty $95-$100K. To be sure, that’s less than the $130K you’d pay for a brand new one, but still a lot. My little black Honda was feeling very inadequate for a little bit. But I cranked the stereo and peeled around a corner when I got closer to work to make it feel better.

This morning on my way to work I pulled up behind a Honda Accord at a stop light. Like many cars it had a little sticker telling where it had been purchased. The funny thing was that this Honda had been purchased at the Honda Motorwërks.

This struck me as odd for a couple of reasons, which I will now describe. To me, there is no obvious reason for spelling your company’s name like that, because it is stupid. I can only imagine that the owner or founder wanted a more German looking name, because the German’s make good cars.

Umlauts are diacratic marks used in the German language (and others). And “motorwerks” is basically somewhere where engines or cars are made, specifically in Germany, as it is a German word. Umlauts have long been used as a “special effect”, mainly in the names of heavy metal bands, to make the name look “tougher”.

Here is where the problems arise. First of all, there are no umlauts over e’s in German, only a’s, o’s, and u’s. So there is no such word as “motorwërks” and it doesn’t really have a pronunciation. Second, the owner must have seen other car dealerships that had “Motorwerks” in their names and thought it was cool. Unfortunately they were probably BMW dealerships. Which was okay for them because “Motorwerks” is an English-ized version of “Motoren Werke” which is what the MW in BMW stands for (the B stands for Bayerische, ie Bavarian).

Oh, and last, but certainly not least, Hondas are Japanese cars. I won’t mention the most famous historical partnership Japan and Germany share, but it isn’t cars and it isn’t language.

Anyway, I always laugh at rediculous marketing rïdiculous markëting (thanks boys).

I had a couple of “interesting” things to post about. But as I was writing them up, they struck me as exceedingly boring and stupid, even for me. So you get nothing.

Edit: After reading Steve’s comment and re-reading my post, I guess this does come off a bit more bitter than I would have liked. When I wrote “So you get nothing” I was saying it in my head like Sgt. Schultz says “I know nothing” on Hogan’s Heroes, so in more of a light hearted tone.

While writing about Casablanca just a moment ago I noticed something interesting while getting a couple of links from IMDB. I got the links for Mr. Bogart and Ms. Bergman and I noticed that his link ended in “/name/nm0000007/” and her link ended in “/name/nm0000005/”

Hmmm, two famous actors that were in one of the most famous movies of all time together looked like they were put into the IMDB’s database right after each other. I then had to check out who else was in the “top 10″.

Here they are from /name/nm0000001/ to /name/nm0000010/

01 Fred Astaire
02 Lauren Bacall
03 Brigitte Bardot
04 John Belushi
05 Ingmar Bergman
06 Ingrid Bergman
07 Humphrey Bogart
08 Marlon Brando
09 Richard Burton
10 James Cagney

A few things jump out at me. First, there seems to be a high percentage of Bergmans from Sweden. Second, it is quite a group of high quality actors. Except for one. One of these names is not like the other. I would never say that John Belushi isn’t a funny man, because he is. But he is in odd company here at the beginning of the IMBD’s list.

Oh well, I found it interesting.

It’s Ingrid Bergman month on Turner Classic Movies. (thanks Ted) And tonight I finally got to see one of the classics tonight, Casablanca.

It’s not my favorite movie, but I really enjoyed it. To me nothing was spectacular, though the sets seemed pretty nice for 1943. Even though ol’ Humphrey Bogart is in it, along with his 5 or so very famous lines, I didn’t think that the acting was anything great. And I suppose that some of the characters seemed a little familiar because so many movies and stories have copied this very movie in the last 60 years. But it all went together well and it just worked. There were some funny parts and the pacing was pretty good for being so old, the movie never felt like it was dragging. Most of the effects aged even better than a few I had seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the day before.

Oh, and no one ever says “Play it again, Sam.” The main characters each ask Sam to play their song a couple of times, but never with those exact words.

I was glad I finally got to see it.

It is storming outside.

Severe thunderstorms and flash flood warnings are in effect. This radar picture from the Strib is what we’re looking forward to for the next hour or so.

Hopefully it won’t hail or cut all the power from our building. I can’t wait to see what the rainfall total is going to be.

I love big storms. Have I mentioned that it’s great to be back in Minnesota?

Happy Father’s Day to all of the fathers out there.

I got to spend today with two fathers; my dad, a father of three, and my brother, a father of two. Not to mention my mom, my sister-in-law, my nephew, and my neice.

It was a beautiful day today. Sunny, high of about 90, a slight breeze. Our day mainly consisted of eating and being outside, two of my favorite activities.

When we arrived at Matt’s house I started up the grill threw on the marinated steaks. Corn on the cob was being prepared and we had potato chips and bread with olive oil for appetizers. Holy cow was that bread good. I was in danger of eating my fill of that before even touching anything else. When the steaks came off we dished up the potato salad, the cantalope, and the watermelon. Everything was delicious and there was definitely enough to be filling.

Very soon after finishing eating we slathered on the sunscreen (fair skinned Norweigians tend to burn in the sun fairly easily) and changed into our swimming suits. You really can’t imagine a more perfect day for swimming. Matt and Jenny were fortunate enough to find a house with a pretty good sized in-ground pool. At least it was fortunate for their extended family! We spent the next two hours playing in and around the pool. (sorry ladies, no pictures) Luke was out with us and mostly sat on the side but jumped into the pool into people’s arms a number of times. He liked to count “1-2-3″ to tell people to jump or dive in.

A couple of toys we played with were the “aquadisc” and the underwater torpedo. The torpedo is pretty cool in that you can throw it underwater and for the most part it goes pretty straight so you can play catch underwater. The aquadisc doesn’t work so well underwater but we think it is supposed to be like a frisbee that skips along the top of the water. In actuality it is like a deadly decapitation device. The thing consists of a round core of hard plastic with a couple of holes in it and then an outer rim that is made of thick but slightly flexible plastic. It is very good at what it does, too good. If you aren’t paying attention the spinning plastic razor could cause some serious damage to anyone standing out of the water. I learned that very quickly after throwing it straight to Jenny and she had to duck under the water very quickly before getting slammed in the face. After that I would throw to the side of anyone.

After swimming we had some fudge marble cake with cream cheese frosting. Mmmm. It was so very good. I probably didn’t need two peices, but they were just too good to pass up. After that we all went to the front yard for a rousing game of croquet. It turns out I’m not very good at it. I’d like to say that I let my brother and dad beat me because it was Father’s Day, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. It was still a lot of fun.

We then were planning on ending the party but it was nearly time for dinner so we ordered some pizza and ate some dinner. All in all a good day!

I had to grow a little today, I did something I didn’t think I could do. I hate getting anything close to my eyes. I’ve never been good with eye drops and I really wish I could wear contacts, but I could never do that whole thing with the touching my eyes.

Well, today I was eating a little lunch. I was having some tortilla chips (just plain, of course) and as I took a bite a little piece flew up right into the corner of my eye. This was not good. I held my eye open and ran to the bathroom. Sure enough, below my lid was a nice chuck of corn tortilla. Well, there was nothing to do but try and force it out.

I reached right in there and started moving it around to try and force it out. It turns out that one’s eyes are pretty well lubricated. The chunk of tortilla soon turned into a lump of mushy tortilla that slid around on my eye very nicely. It moved up, it moved down, it moved across, even going over my iris a couple of times (but not my pupil, that would have freaked me out), but it didn’t move out.

Finally, it got caught on my bottom lid and I could take it off. Of course there was a little bit that broke off and stayed in my eye. I was luckily able to get that bit out without too much trouble.

Phew! It was a traumatic experience, but I was able to pull through.

(Holy crap–two in one day? What’s going on?)

I enjoy video games. I enjoy funny things. I enjoy movies.

I also happen to enjoy funny movies with a video game theme. The boys at Mega64.com have put together a bunch of videos reenacting scenes from video games out in real life. I had seen their Shenmue and Metal Gear Solid videos and I just watched their tetris video, they’re all hilarious. Though maybe not as hilarious if you don’t know what the particular game is about.

I bought new glasses earlier this week. I’m not feeling ultra photogenic but I thought I’d at least give you a glimpse at what the new setup looks like. They’re way different than my old glasses and I like them. (For comparison look at the head shot to the right–if it’s not a good comparison picture either reload the page for a new shot or click on the picture for a mosaic of all of the head shots)

So here they are; my new eyes. I did get a compliment on them from a girl I don’t even know the other night, so they can’t be that bad.

Probability is an interesting subject to me. Nearly anything you can think of can happen, it’s just that most outrageous things are not likely to happen. One way to measure probability is how many times would something likely have to happen for a specific behaviour to appear. Like throwing a die. One could expect to roll a 6 one out of every six tosses, or 1 in 6 (1/6); because you are waiting for a specific outcome (6) out of a possible six outcomes (1,2,3,4,5,6) and each outcome is equally likely to happen on each throw. What about rolling a six two times in a row? That would be 1/6 * 1/6 or 1/36. So if you threw a die twice 36 times–on average one of those pairs of tosses would both be six.

I want to share something very unlikely that happened the other night. My dad and I were playing backgammon. Under most circumstances the best roll in backgammon is double 6’s and the worst is a 1 and a 2. Imagine my dad’s consternation when he rolled a 1 and 2 at a critical time near the end of the game. Imagine his feelings when he rolled another 1 and 2 two turns later, and then his horror when he rolled a 1 and 2 on the very next roll! That was two in a row and 3 out of 4. He could hardly believe his luck. His next toss was something different but then he rattled off four (1,2) pairs in a row! Four in a row! We stared at each other in disbelief with each toss and as I marched to victory. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.
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How coincidental that after seeing something online and thinking about writing a little about it, newplanet should make a comment about losing weight while (or whilst) at work.

For those of us who work all day and are too lazy for the gym: Voila! A researcher at the world famous Mayo Clinic in beautiful Rochester, Minnesota has invented a cubicle at work where you are walking while working burning about 100 calories/hour. How sweet would that be? Of course one would need to be able to switch between walking and normal sitting modes in case you wanted a rest or needed to sit down for whatever reason. Though I’m guessing this kind of setup doesn’t come cheaply.

My dad and I went on a delivery yesterday afternoon. It was from about 1:30 to 3pm, so right in the heat of the day. I think the official temperature yesterday was 93 degrees, but it got hotter in a number of places. And it was very humid. The cabinets we delivered were basically 96″ tall by 24″ wide boxes with doors on the front.

The procedure was as follows: we had to carry them up about 10 stairs to get from the street to the front door. Then through the porch, the family room, and the dining room. Then we stood it on the floor and tipped it down so as to get it under a door way. Then we pushed it (while I held it tipped) through the door and partly through another door so we could tip it back up in a hallway. We then had to push the cabinet back down the hallway so we could tip it over again (in a different direction) to get it under the doorway leading to the stairs to the upper level where the cabinets had to go. Then we carried it up about 15 stairs to the upper level.

We did that with five separate cabinets each weighing about 60 lbs without doors. Plus we carried the shelves and doors up separately.

We both probably lost about 5 pounds of water-weight from sweating.

Do you ever get annoying emails? Not the ones that have annoying content, but the ones that come from people who don’t seems to know anything about email etiquette?

Granted, most of the “anit-suggestions” I found today on Open Loops are most important in a professional setting, but I have been known to throw a couple of them into personal emails as well.

The one that probably is common enough to get on my nerves is the ALL CAPS. The times I’ve seen this the most were at my last job where CAD drafters would have CAPS LOCK on all day long while drafting and couldn’t be bothered to hit that extra key before typing an email. From the earliest days of the internet ALL CAPS have been used to denote anger and/or yelling, which is not what you want to send across when asking a person to fix their printer setup.

I’m not the biggest Mac guy on the planet, but then again I’m not the biggest PC guy on the planet, either. But this is pretty cool. A partially integrated dual monitor set up with a PC on one monitor and a Mac on the other. The mouse and keyboard act just as they would in a normal dual setup and you can copy/paste between the two, but you can’t drag windows from one monitor to the next.

Tons-o-fun.

As Steve has mentioned before, CEO is a good job, if you can get it.

The outgoing head of Sony and a few other executives are going to collect a nice retirement bonus. Of course, $7 million between four guys really isn’t that much. Not when an old president got $14 million himself or when you consider some of the crazy numbers American companies throw out there.

The lesson, as always, is that if you are a high school student or recent college grad the job you should be looking for is “CEO of Large Multinational Corporation”.