obamacon

I don't always whine and complain about life, kids, work, and politics. Sometimes, I just want to be nice.

A friend of mine lost her grandma over the holidays. Gram suffered from Parkinson's for a long time before passing. Kristin is doing a fundraiser walk in NY to raise money to find a cure. This edition of the waster is NOT free, please click the link and make a donation. (btw - gram was a bit of a hottie in her day.)

OK, done with the niceties now. This week has been HELL.

The big snowstorm in the middle of the week would normally have put a smile on my face. I skipped work for two days, but filled the time by working on a huge side job that I fell into. I also did a bit of stuff around my house, and my momma's house too. I think I worked more playing hookie for two days than I would have if I just took my monkey-ass into the office. Plus, I got a flat tire on my truck in the ice on WED. Ugh.

Side job info - me and a couple friends are setting up the entire network infrastructure for a 150 student private school up the road. Give me a holler if you want to hire us to come wreck your computers, too. For real.

Kid1 is still down at school. He told me he registered for a couple more classes, enough to be considered full time, and be allowed to keep his FinAid and dorm room. I haven't seen the records yet, so I'm not sure how all the money shook out for him. All I can do is wait and watch.

Kids2,3,and4 are all doing well in school and at home. None of them are on my fighting side at the moment. Kinda cool that I'm not mad at any of 'em right now. It makes me wonder what they've done that I don't know about yet. Anyway, report cards come out next Friday... we'll see who stays on my good side after that.

The weekend is looking pretty laid back. A couple of the kids are gone tonight and tomorrow, so we've only got #4 for dinner tonight - we'll find something cool to do. Sunday is my nephew's 16th bday party, so we're making a trip to hang out with the fam for the day. Sunday night, we'll be hanging w/ the neighbors for a bit of superbowl festivities.

Happy Weekend!

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Obamacon Me! The galleries are awesome, plus you can make your own!

Mikey found a little bit of Superbowl spirit in this game.

And this one came from a couple of people, but I couldn't get it to load. See if you have better luck here.

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Hacking highway signs: Zombies ahead!

Google helps you find out if your ISP is interfering with your traffic. Test your connections to the tubes of the interwebs here.

I totally understand the iPhone now.


Mikey is gonna burn for this one. (sorry for giggling. I really am 12 years old sometimes.)

Finally, WTF? Eric's friends are WEIRD. It gets good after the first minute.


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one amazing week

heh-heh-heh
(click the pic to view)


Read the headlines... all 400 of em!

Whooooohoooo this has been an amazing week. We took off to PA for the weekend to take the kids skiing for their first time. We were a little nervous b/c of the frigid temps on THU and FRI, but things worked out perfectly for the weekend. It snowed on both SAT and MON, but the temps were just barely below freezing. We spent the entire day SUN up on the mountain, and really didn't suffer the cold at all.

The kids took to the sport like naturals. They're all relatively coordinated already, but after the single intro lesson every one of 'em surpassed my expectations. They were zigging and zagging like they'd been there 100 times before. I'm not so old that they can dust me yet, but another couple of years, I'll have to spend the day in the lodge with the rest of the fogies.

All the rats are in love with skiing now, and asking when we'll go back. I'm already entertaining thoughts of a kid-friendly day trip before the end of this season. Gimme a holler if you're interested in tagging along.

We got home Monday, in time to share the Inauguration events with a few friends. I don't know what I can say to describe how amazing it was. Happy times shared with family and good people.

President Obama is busily tearing apart all of the violations of the Constitution that King George fostered. I'm sure it scares some people, and I'm sure it disappoints others, but it's the right thing to do.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

Now it's Friday of a short week, and I'm busting tail to get out the door as soon as I can. I've had 5 days of work crammed into 2.5 days of being here, and I'm toast. We've got nothing big on the scheds for this weekend, and I'm rather looking forward to keeping it that way.

Happy Friday!

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Checkers has never been such a pain in the ass before. Move the mouse to stack chips of the same color, then click to take the score. Taller towers = more points. Clear the screen to move to the next level.

WINNER! ! ! ! Abuse the rag dolls, fire cannons, and experiment with logic AND physics. This game will steal your afternoon.

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Respect. Thank you, Jess.

Differences between men and women - the flowcharts.

Bush drops the bush-shit, no more ranch.

Superbowl = all new beer commercials.

Wiiiiiiiii... wii...wii...wii.wii.wii.wiiwiiwiiwiiwiiwiiwii...wiiiiiiiiiiiiii:


Tattoos to avoid. I may be guilty, and I'm not going to mention all the tramp-stamps on the people reading this blog right now....

How to make your resume not suck. You know the job market is skinny now; don't pretend like you're not concerned.

MetalliCat plays the coda for us this week:
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just a few more days...

Things seem to have been rolling from one focus to another, with not a lot of down time in the middle. Thanksgiving -> Christmas -> New Years -> Back to School -> now, which is a long weekend culminating with Obama's inauguration on Tuesday. It just makes the time seem to zip past, without much savoring of the experience.

I'm in the middle of another busy week again. I know everyone's tired of hearing me whine about it all, so I'll keep the details to myself. Basically, day job is really busy. Side job is really really busy. (Me & a few friends are upgrading the network for a private school). Kids are making me crazy, especially now b/c of midterms. Kid1 still has plans to head back to school tomorrow evening.

Now for the fun and not-so-busy stuff: we went to the Metallica show last night. I hadn't seen them in many many years, and they put on a hella good show. We didn't have floor tix, although my buddy and his girl knew one of the security guys and got access. The stage was set in the middle of the arena, and the band was hooked up wireless so they could work all around. Lars' drum kit was on circular riser right in the center of the stage; the riser rotated between each set.

Overall score: 9.5 out of 10. They lost .5 from my judging b/c they played "One" too early in the evening. I'm sure James knows it's my favorite, and should have waited to bring it out in the closing set.

I took vaca today, recovering from the show last night and leading into the long weekend. I've got Mon & Tues off next week, too. We're heading up to PA for a couple of days skiing with the kids. They've never been, and I've only done it a couple of times, so I'm expecting at least one trip to the First Aid Station. It'll be a good time, and I'm totally stoked to make my first faceplant in the snow.

We'll be back home in time to watch the Inauguration. I thought for a while about heading downtown, and just couldn't really justify it. Things are going to be way crazy, and the weather is going to be balls-out cold, so we decided to have a few friends over during the day and just watch the show on TV. Good times, good people, and just a few more days to good riddance to bad rubbish.

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Donations have been really weak lately... get out there and find me some goodies, dammit!

Scriball is annoyingly easy, until you realize that it's so effing difficult.

Why do cute little kittens have to turn into cats?

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Jules sent this one... she found a site that is collecting all the tards for us in one place. It's much easier to laugh at 'em when they're in bunches. You Suck at Craig's List.

Oh, look! Another tard!

Not a tard at all. I don't care a lick if we missed the holiday or if the season has passed; I'm jealous of the creativity here. Wow. Just wow.

Duh of fortune:


One more thought before I go.... please be safe. Don't play with fire, don't run with scissors, and definitely:
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