Writing Writing Writing
I was getting prepared to move, and it just so happened that it was Jeff's birthday and his old dog (I think it's name was Clementine) had passed away so he had gotten a puggle that looked more like a pug than beagle. For Jeff's birthday I wrote him a message that I believe said "I'm Coming JEFF!!!" on the roof of a building, and felt that that was a good birthday message to him. Then I was at Lowes with Andy Sandberg from SNL and we were shopping for stuff for his house. Apparently he'd been having some issues in the bathroom with it getting foggy and things not clearing out so he was going to build in a big elaborate contraption to dry the room after each shower. I suggested getting a wall fan and he wanted nothing to do with it. It was as if to put in a wall fan would have been evil and he went on about how bad they were at their jobs. Except that they aren't. And when we got trapped in Lowe's fish-room's Lizard Display, I woke up.
It was a weird, weird dream.
-Jon
Have you ever thought…
Have you ever thought that instead of the slow-moving harbingers of death from the movies zombies may...
- have exelent singing voices?
- be just severely constipated?
- have blisters on their feet the size of Kansas?
- have sensitive souls and just watched the end of Armageddon but just the part where Bruno dies and Liv Tyler (and everyone else) crys?
- be really hung over?
- just need a hug?
- just be trying to play (with your brain)?
- be kinda like Stephen Hawking -- brilliant, but with a physical disability?
- just want to know where Waldo is?
- just be in the middle of an extremely long stretch?
Got any of your own? Lemme know
-Jon
Update One:
Jon being left home alone with a kitchen is a dangerous thing for his diet... ... when he has a computer he's fixing... and no one else is home... and the dog is happy playing with his new Owl... and there's no more remote for the TV...
Yeah. I cooked. More than I needed, but then I got bored waiting for hte computer and my lunch for tomorrow became my late-night-snack for today. Whoops. I guess I gotta get up early and take the dog for a run-walk. Maybe I'll call it a ralk. Or perhaps a wun... or a wan? Oh! A rulk. That's it, the dog and I are going on a rulk.
Posts like this are also the danger of leaving Jon home alone. In addition to lots of talking about Jon in the third person.
-Jon
Weird…
Worse things have happened with me and computers beyond having to reinstall my system. It was weird though, I have a "Previous System" folder with all my user data, but all my applications are all where they were... but anything that had been run before is acting like it's brand new. So I deleted a ton of stuff and I'm going to pretend that it doesn't exist until I need it and reinstall it the right way as opposed to letting it be some sad remnant of an old system that isn't.
-Jon
P.S. Re-setting all the system settings that I'm so very used to is a pain in the ass.
Well Punch Me in the Face and Call Me Betty
So. This morning I was installing a security update on my lappy. All was well in the world. Except, apparently not. When B hit the "The System Needs to be Restarted" button my computer's little brain went *Pop!*
Now, after an hour on the line with AppleCare, I get to reinstall the whole motherfucker. The only good thing that comes out of this is that I don't loose all my schtuff. I only get to restart my users, find the files hidden away in a archive folder and move everything around back to the way it was. Damnit.
And I was going to spend my time this weekend packing (I still will, but my computer will piss me off for a while).
-Jon
Uh, Random…
I routinely read Dooce.com. I do, it's true. I read a "Mommyblog." I also read Wil Wheaton's blog, so my geek cred is intact. Anyways, in perusing Dooce today, I ran into this post on her site. Reading it, as I do, through Google Reader it wasn't all nice and formatted like it is on her site, but I don't think it would've made a difference. I read the title and instead of reading "Julia Rothman," I read "John Ratzenberger." I immediately made all sorts of prejudgements on the contents of the post and was absolutely astounded when I read that Johnny boy (yes, I was still reading the name wrong) was an artist in addition to being a voice actor, Cliff Clavin and host of TV's Made in America. I mean, an artist too? Can you say Renaissance Man? Seriously, Made in America and MUG ART!!! Then I looked at the picture. Literally thought to myself, "That couldn't possibly be painted by Cliff Clavin," and re-read the article feeling very, very stupid.
So what random thoughts has the internet inspired in you? Hrrrmmm? Seriously, let me know, I'm curious.
-Jon
Hockey… Seriously.
So, I don't get any channels that get the game. I don't have a radio in this house and hate play-by-play radio broadcasts for hockey anyway. I do, however, get Wil Wheaton's twitter feed on my phone. Which. Is. Genius.
Seriously. Thank you, Mr. Wheaton, for being my score board. Thank you for being my hero. Mr. Wheaton. I think I might love you, but just a little, and in a completely appropriate way that in which one man loves another man, not in the way one man loves little Westley Crusher. Because that would be wrong.
Oh. So wrong.
-Jon
P.S. By the way, the score is 1-0 Detroit. Word.
Seriously, What the Fuck?
This is a USA Today article about how some schools are rounding up an F from whatever the score is to a 50% automatically. In other words, they're taking someone who signs their name to a test and hands it in blank a 50%, because if they got a 0% it could become mathematically impossible to pass the class. Well no shit. This is the kind of bullshit teaching/life-preparation that has allowed people to get to young adulthood without half a clue as to what is required to, you know, live.
Now, more than anything else, there's one part of this article that really just pisses me off.
"It's a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F," says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic. "The statistical tweak of saying the F is now 50 instead of zero is a tiny part of how we can have better grading practices to encourage student performance."
Seriously? Ok, so you, Mr. Douglas Reeves, obviously have no clue as to how grading is handled at an elementary school level. To get an F, you do not need to get a 0. Believe me, I know. I've gotten them. You need to get a 59%. Or a 49%, or whatever other percentile that is less than or equal to 59%. Sure there is a greater than average chance that they'll fail... ... if their teacher grades by chaos theory. Yes. That's right, if I were a teacher, labeled my steps with 0-100 in intervals of 5, then threw my kids names onto the stairs and that was their grade, sure... they'd have a better chance of failing. If, however, I work with them and they, you know, are capable of thought they have a better than average chance of passing. Why? Because people aren't governed by laws of statistics, it's not random and teachers are capable of turning the most bassackwards thinking kid into someone who can at least pass some standardized tests so s/he won't be "left behind."
I will say if my kid gets a 45% on a test, I want them to get a 45% F, not a 50% F. It was good enough for me... .... ...... yes. I am that crotchety.
-Jon
Open Windows
So, I'm not quiet in my support of the Mac OS, or my distaste for Windows. It's not that I hate Windows, I mean hell... I've never run either of the worst versions from the last 10 years (M.E. and Vista if you were curious). It's just that it's bloated, slow, annoying, unstable and just not that darned good at doing much of anything. It'll do it, it's just not good at it. It's like... .... ...... It's like a hamburger from McDonald's vs a hamburger that you get at a fine restaurant. The thing is, sometimes, McDonald's is what you need. Sometimes you need that greasy, McBeef to slide down into your gut and give you heartburn. Those times are like, for example, when you need to run VBA Macros in Excel. That's right. I have, in fact, found a reason to run Windows. I'm going to try to find alternatives, however, to see how it can work. OpenOffice.org might work, but it doesn't run either of the demo-worksheets that I downloaded to try to learn how to write the VBA, so we'll see.
So. Yeah. I'm a freaky-geeky. I want to play with Excel.
-Jon
Just a Dreamer
So, I was having a dream last night right before I woke up and I wanted to share what I can remember...
It started off during the presidential campaign '08, and John McCain and George W. were fighting over who got to be with Laura Bush... like, duking it out in the street fighting, then when that didn't work they decided to take their fight to the Rosie O'Donnell show to settle things like men... At the Rosie show they were on stage talking then, right in the middle of the story of how the two gentlemen had gotten their panties all in a bunch, Rosie gets up from behind her desk and walks into the audience where Ellen and Portia de Rossi were sitting, both wearing white, and Rosie started asking if they were excited that they were going to get married, and how it felt like to be a groom.
They were both excited and right as they started to talk about it, Rosie apparently had an A.D.D. attack and turned towards the camera and introduced John Mayer, who is apparently now a tall black man that resembles a mix between Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard.
When Black John Mayer got on stage he started yelling like a psycho about how he could air clap, and just kept yelling about it clapping his hands with no rhyme, reason, or rhythm. As the camera started panning around stage showing the great majestic shots of the theater he was in, alone, dancing around like a lunatic, suddenly it came around and there were tons of people on stage with him, he had 3 ladies in sequin dresses clapping (in rhythm) and he was singing the theme from the Love Boat with all the passion he could.
That's about when I woke up, looked at the dog and said to myself, "Huh... .... ..."
-Jon