Another TV appearance

Friday night I will be appearing on the show Deadline on HD Net. HD Net is a national all high definition network. You can check here to see if your service provider carries it.

Engagement

If you look at the picture of the happy couple above you'll notice there is a ring on the beautiful lady's finger. Yup, that's an engagement ring. I'm getting married. Planning is already in full swing and we're looking at fall of 2006 for the wedding.

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Friday I woke up to my cell phone ringing. I got to it just in time to see that it was my boss trying to call me before it went to voice mail. It's never good to be woken up by a phone call from your boss, but fortunately she wasn't calling to find out why I wasn't at work since I had arranged to work from home due to the fact that my car needed to go in to have the transmission replaced. She was calling to let me know that instead of going to Pennsylvania tomorrow I'm going to be flying to Iowa instead.

One of our clients there has been having sporadic issues for the last couple of weeks since we did an upgrade to their system. No one has been able to nail down what's causing the problems so the plan is for me to go on site and figure it out. (I don't call myself a problem solver extraordinaire for no reason.)

It's certainly head-swelling to be the person they send in when all else has failed, but what happens if I fail too? My biggest issue is that I'm going to be dealing with things that are outside of my area of expertise and in fact outside of my job description. I love a challenge and I'm not afraid of learning new things but this is a job that belongs squarely to another department and I'm quite unfamiliar with.

I'm sure everything will work out fine and I might even get to look like the hero. Heroes have pretty good job security don't they? Alright, that will be my plan then. Go there and get everything working so I can be the hero and I'll put my cape on and fly straight home, without having to go through the airport rigamarole, into the waiting arms of my lovely bride-to-be. I've never seen Superman carry a suitcase though. Does he hide it under his cape?

My Busy Life

I guess it's rude to not be around much with no explanation. The simple fact is that I've been spending a tremendous amount of time with my new girlfriend. I'm a very happy guy! Thanks to those that left comments to let me know that I've been missed. I really appreciate it. I refuses to make promises about being around more or apologies for not having been, but I don't have any plans to abandon my post here.

Finally!

I just checked tvguide.com and it shows that my episode of Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge will be airing next Sunday, April 24th.

Mitch Hedberg Passed Away

I found out today that my favorite comedian, Mitch Hedberg has passed away. I'm generally not a big fan of many entertainers but I was certainly a fan of his. I know when I go I'd prefer people to be able to celebrate the life that I had instead of being saddened by the ending of it. In that vein here a few of my favorite jokes that he told:

"When I go to shave I figure someone else in the world is shaving at the same time so I like to say, 'I'm going to shave... too.'"

"I wake up in the morning and make myself some instant oatmeal and then I don't do shit for an hour. Makes me wonder why I need the instant oatmeal. I could make regular oatmeal and feel productive."

"One time a guy handed me a picture and said, 'This is a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger."

"I think Pringles initial intention was to make tennis balls. But the day the rubber was supposed to show up they got a bunch of potatoes instead. Pringles is a laid back company. They said, 'Fuck it. Cut em up.'"

"I have two straws in here in case one breaks down. You know those crazy straws they go all over the place? These fucking straws are sane. They never lost their mind. They said, 'We're going straight to the mouth. That fucker that takes a while to get there. He's crazy.'"

"One time when I move I want to get a really easy number to remember. Something like 22222222. Then when people ask how to get ahold of me I can just say, 'Just press 2 for awhile. When I answer you will know you have pressed 2 enough.'"

"If you find yourself lost in the woods, fuck it, build a house. 'I used to be lost but now I live here. I have severely improved my predicament.'"

"I'm a mumbler. When I'm walking with a friend he won't hear me and say, 'What?'. I'll say it again but he still won't hear me so he says, 'What?'. And really it's just some insignificant shit that I'm saying but next thing you know I'm yelling, 'That tree is far away.'"

"I remixed a remix. It was back to normal."

"When you go to a restaurant over the weekend they'll call out the names, 'Dufrene party of two.' If no one answers they'll say it again, 'Dufrene party of two.' If still no one answers they go onto the next name, 'Bush part of three'. Yeah, what happened to the Dufrenes? They're in somebody's trunk with duck tape over their mouths... and they're hungry. That's a double whammy. 'Bush, search party of three. You can eat once you find the Dufrenes.'"

More quotes from wikipedia.com

Silly Kids, Birthday's Aren't for Screen Names

You may notice that my pictures aren't showing up today. The reason is because my daily bandwidth has been exceeded on my web hosting plan. Apparently alot of people are watching my silly videos because this happened yesterday too. Not sure how I'm gonna handle it yet. It sure is nice to be getting attention.

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---Start Rant---
Have you noticed that kids like to use their birthdays in their screen names? Do they not realize that is way more information than they should be handing out over the internet? Why do they do that?
Well, alot of times to have a unique screen name you end up having to use numbers at the end of it. Why use random numbers when you have a perfectly good set that you carry around your whole life? Tack that birthday at the end of a name and your chances of having a unique name are pretty good.
Of course this is a really bad idea because there are nasty evil people out there and you just never know when you're going to end up talking to one of them. Do you really want them to know that you're 13 years old? No. Would you tell them if the asked? Probably not. If your birthday is in your screen name they know as soon as you start talking to them. Bad idea. Don't do it.

---End Rant---

Tolls

Tolls are really annoying.

I had to drive down to New Jersey this week for work and these are the annoying things I noticed about tolls from the trip.

Alot of times you only get hit up going one direction. You can take 95S through New York without having to fork over any cash, but there are two toll stops when you're northbound.

The signs telling you that you're going to have to stop and pay a toll are too close to the actual toll stop. Do they not realize that some people need to scrounge around on the passenger side floor to get enough change for their $1 toll? Here's a tip if you need some extra time. Get in the lane with a big truck. One truck takes longer than three cars.

It costs more to go over one bridge into NYC (but only if you're headed north) than to drive through the entire state of NJ.

One last unrelated observation. While I was stopped because of traffic on a bridge I saw a sign that said, "No stopping on bridge." I swear the sign placers are messing with people.

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I just noticed that I forgot to post the possible vacation locations for voting on Sunday. I will put them up tomorrow.