olympic bacon

Two weeks in a row! Two Fridays in a row! I'm calling this a streak! Not just a Ray Stevens streak, but a for-real winning streak, dammit.

I'll admit, I'm a bit lucky to get this posted. My brain has checked out for the weekend already. Megan asked if we could go skiing for her birthday. After a lot of arm twisting, puppy-dog-eyes, and bribery, I grudgingly caved in.

Actually, my answer was a lot closer to "HELLS YES!!!!" when she asked, but that makes me seem like a pushover.

We're heading up Liberty tomorrow to hit the slopes and donate blood. Hoping for some snowfall, just bc it's cool, but also hoping this wind eases off a bit. I'm not looking forward to 50mph winds pushing us UP the hill.

I'm totally stoked about the trip. The kids have only been once before, but got hooked. My sis is coming along for her first trip ever. I'm placing money that the kids will totally smoke her in the morning, but she'll put 'em in their place by the end of the day. She's got enough coordination and competitiveness that she won't let the rats embarrass her for an entire day.

Other kid news: Samantha applied early admission to two colleges. She got her acceptance to both, one of which was her "top choice dream school". I'm pretty sure we'll be filling out the admissions paperwork and signing checks this weekend. There are no real worries about senioritis causing trouble, either. The high schools have a great final-semester policy for seniors: carry a B average and don't miss more than 2 classes, and they're excused from taking final exams. It's a very convincing policy.

Finally, I've been struggling all week with which of the following images to include as a lead story in this week's Waster: Birthday StonerDog or Hilary Duff's engagement?

StonerDog's owners must have baked some very special birthday biscuits. He's in a very happy place.


Ms. Duff (1) received a proposal from Mike Comrie (2) cried a little bit (3) sent cell-pics of the ring to her friends and (4) thanked Mr. Comrie accordingly....





Then I received the best lead-item of the week BY FAR. You get to start your weekend with Hilary StonerDog Comrie, and a full understanding of just why he's in that happy place.

Thanks, Juan_Solo!
(btw, the reddit comments are effing awesome.)

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Good ol' redneck demolition derby fun!

Dom's sent a good car game, but it's not a driver. More of a puzzle / coordination thing that lets you control the traffic. Pretty cool, actually.

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Olympic curling hotties.

Iiiiiiiiit's OLYMPIC BACON! ! ! !


Good job, eh?


MagicJack, the device, works well. MagicJack, as a company though, is just another scam. Oh what, you thought any different? I want to show you something. It's my shocked face.

The problem with legitimate DVDs...


Movie industry problems, continued...

Amelia Bedelia, you owe Mr. Rogers some lovin'.


Don't turn your back on that Mr. Roger's though...


If you stop staring for longer than a minute, beauty pageant contestants say some really dumb things. Here is a collection of some of the dumbest.

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back to the grind

I know I make excuses every Friday. Some are real, some are imagined. (A sleestak really did eat my homework though.)

Things are mostly back to a manageable level of chaos now. Work was nuts bc we had two different installations going live at the same time. School was nuts, but now I'm thru midterms and finished my term paper. Multiple blizzards have been out of control. Finally, I've been taking an all-day class every Friday since the beginning of the year. That class is completed now, too.

Result? I'll have a FridayWaster actually delivered on a Friday!

The rest of this post is rather scattershot. There's a bit about Gary Coleman, some pic from the Superbowl, and even a bit of Taylor $wift that I found after the Grammys. NO TIGER WOODS. Totally annoying.

So, a few tidbits from the past couple of weeks...

The blizzard rolled in, effectively shutting down the government for a full week. We were snowed in, this time all the kids were at their other-parents. I'm pretty sure that I enjoyed being snowbound more than other people did. We had a big ol' fire going for a week straight, good neighbors to hang out with, and no stupid job to interfere with the fun. It was a bit of a challenge to keep paths to the hot tub and firewood cleared, but overall not to crazy difficult.

The Superbowl was right in the middle of the snowstorms, and we were lucky to have friends in the neighborhood hosting a party. They won a contest from FIOS, which was little more than a good excuse and a bunch of advertising trinkets. It was good to hang out w/ everyone, and extra nice that we were all close enough to walk to the party. Nobody had to deal with the post-game drunks on the road.

The kids are all back in school this week, although they had delayed-opening every single day. We'll be seeing their mid-term report cards in a couple days. I don't think anybody has bad news, but won't know for sure until they actually bring home the papers.

I finally finally finally got back on the bike this week. It's hard to ride to work when both the office and the roads to the office are closed. I only turned about 50 miles, and I can definitely feel the difference. I'm hurting a bit, but it's worth it. The past two winters have interfered with my exercise, causing springtime to be rough. I've been trying hard to stay on track all thru this season, and was doing very well for a while. Blizzards don't play nice with bikes. The W&OD trail is still closed, and it looks like it will stay that way for a long while to come.

I failed big-time this year in relation to Mardi Gras. It totally snuck up on me (for all the same reasons that I haven't been writing Wasters). It wasn't until Tuesday morning, sitting in a conference room on a boring-ass telecon, that I realized I was doing a crap job of celebrating one of the best holidays of the year.


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The game selection this week is weak. I've got a few submissions in my inbox, but I just haven't tested anything out yet. Keep sending stuff, I'll get caught up soon, honest.

One Button Bob. Holy crap, this is the most challenging easy-game I've seen in a long time. BOSS is a pain in the a$$!

(btw One Button Bob sounds a lot like B.O.B. Bob. I keep giggling.)

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Feeling rough around the edges? Feels great to trim the hedges!


Hoodlum boys and hoodlum girls - the lesson of the day is "Respect Your Elders". Especially 67-year-old VietNam vets wearing "I am a MotherEffer" t-shirts. Dumbass follows the old guy to the front of the bus, throws the first punch, then gets his tail spanked and starts crying for an ambulance. Best part is his goofball gf's chattering commentary while getting the whole thing on video.


Please, everyone take a moment to learn something. National Geographic has a serious article about wild birds. Trust me (and Jess) on this one. It's an easy read, and so totally worth it.

Hugging dudes is gay.


The idiots of the world provide endless entertainment, and Lamebook shines the spotlight right on 'em!
(click to enbig)


Live webcast accidentally learns all about recursion. OH MY GOD!


oops.




Run to the Hills (RockBand drums, impossible!!!!!) Yellow bars = bass pedal. This vid is just insane.


A special kind of (geek) hell...


Awesome time-lapse video extracting the downed airplane from the Hudson River last year.


Sarah Palin's cheat sheet. On her hand like a 9th grader cheating on a test.


If you don't understand, have your kids explain.


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