Category: General Carnage and Bloodshed

Quotes from work…

I don’t talk about work much…. but here are some out of context quotes from this week that hopefully you too drop on your coworkers

“We’re saving lives here man, were not rolling out grass and planting trees”

“When your space shuttle is going 19,000 miles an hour and 1 inch off the launch pad, you best make sure your shit is working like it should”

“Dan read your monitor” (As Dan is trying to figure out if a character is a “5” or a “S” on a 6 foot projected image)

Q – “Why do you guys have such big monitors?”
A – “Easier to look at porn on”

Like Suicide (Acoustic Version)

I’m a pretty big Soundgarden fan.

Now I’m not the worlds greatest Soundgarden fan, I’m not a “back in the day before they blew up Soundgarden fan”, I’m not “crazy about Chris Cornell like some people I know are about Kurt Cobain Soundgarden fan”

I’m just a pretty big Soundgarden fan. To the point that of the 90’s rock bands that came from Seattle Soundgarden is my favorite of these bands (though Pearl Jam does rock Eddie and CO can’t hold a candle to Soundgarden).

So you now have my thoughts on Soundgarden and how they rock.

The only people who rock harder then Soundgarden is Tenacious D.

So for whatever reasons I was looking through iTunes this evening and found an acoustic song of my favorite Soundgarden song.

“Like Suicide”

It was never released as a single and is 7+ minutes long. If you’ve known me for any amount of time then you know that a song must be at least 7 minutes and feature generous amounts of high minded guitar playing (thank you Kim Thayll)

And yes “Like Suicide (Acoustic Version)” I would highly recommend it for anyone who has ever listened to music.

Except for Curtis, he doesn’t like Chris Cornell…

And before you say I should get some newer music I would like to point out that there has been no real music of note that has come out in the last 10 years that I haven’t already talked about.

The one where I feel a kinship with Cody

On a business/training trip to Milwaukee.. you know it’s not like I haven’t been here before but my god man couldn’t I go someplace different for a change?

Traveling is always a endurance race for me… I don’t really like flying, actually the term I would use is I loathe flying. And in my book loathing is one step above sheer contempt. My biggest problem with flying is my lack of control over the situation. You know I’m driving in my truck if I choose to run in into the median and cut over 6 lanes of traffic that is my thing. If the pilot decides to take us to the scene of the crash before the paramedics show up that’s not cool. And as always when I fly I have to ask the following question. If the seats turn into flotation devices how come the plane doesn’t turn into a boat!

Other random observations from my travels… BSOD on a pay phone (that’s a first for me) and people literally kicking their luggage down the aisle at security. I dislike my luggage but I don’t kick it through security dislike it. I only check my bags in at the counter dislike my luggage. And the only reason I did that was because I don’t have a printer at home to print out my boarding pass.

Anyway flying from Phoenix to Milwaukee is much like flying from Las Vegas to Milwaukee. Not eventful at all, however the two hour time difference is kind of screwing with me… I had a cup of coffee and a bagel for breakfast at the airport. That was at 7am Arizona time… the next thing I had to eat was a brownie that Kristina made at 3pm (5pm WI time) (thanks again Kristina).

So on the hunt for sustanance I decided to check out the mall that is across the street from the hotel. I don’t remember if it was Cody or someone else but I’m going to chalk this on up to Cody. “When I’m in someplace new I always try to eat at someplace local and avoid the big national restaurant’s” I’m in WI I’m going to do like the locals at the mall…. well if the mall is like a mall in Phoenix that is what I got. Ok the mall was a no go. Well there is a bar in the hotel that has a full dinner menu I will check it out. Really all I want is a beer and a burger. So I belly up to the bar order my dinner and have one of the better fruity ales that I’ve had in a long while (it’s called “Spotted Cow” look to the beer blog for additional information).

I’m sitting there drinking my beer eating my burger watching ESPN on the bar TV thinking to myself how many nights has Cody done something like this. I start thinking about it more and more and decide. Cody has a much better go at it now.

Other things I have learned… I now understand why Cody likes his Marriott so much. And HBO on the road is a nice perk since I’m to cheap to pay for it at home.

Are you there Beer? It’s me Tom…

Inspiration level… still not there…. But I’ve had two things pop up in the last 24 hours that have spiked my built in inspiration level. So come with me if you will down that deep and dark path that is my head and I’m sure along the way we will find a couple pounds poo or so.

Nine Inch Nails has a new album coming out….

Yes I know I checked the calender too it’s not 2010 it’s 2007. I don’t know what’s up with Trent but he must have become inspired or something like that. Normally it’s 5 years (give or take) between NIN albums…

1989 Pretty Little Hate Machine…

1994 Downward Spiral….

1999 The Fragile (Great Album can’t tell you how many times I listened to it)

2005 With Teeth.

Now this is just the new material this is not including the live stuff or reissues anything like that. So with that list you can see why I’m a bit concerned…. This new album is coming much to soon. I have great hope and great fear for it.

The second thing that I came to my attention was actually posted by Brandi… and well since Brandi keeps her blog password protected, locked, DNA sampled, and Voiced ID’ed behind serveral layers of barbed wire and a helliacious mine field I will just give you a link and you can read it your self.

Recruiting the self centered

I saw a blurb on CNN earlier this week about the college students of today being more self centered then previous generations but I hadn’t read it… I read this article. You know I got to say that I’m just about offended that I’m apart of this generation after reading this article.

Not because there is anything wrong with the article, but because it is so dead on and it pisses me off that people who have no reason think that they are the greatest thing since Moses or at the very least Joan of Arc (you know the first woman to get a job outside of the home). I really see it in people my own age and it pisses me off. Of the people in my age group I know some that are work workaholics… some that are students (still)….. some that skate by…. and still others that are so wrapped up in their own lives they can’t see past themselves.

Where did this come from? I’m going to pick on the one cultural touchstone that everyone has been through… School… school taught you that you were a unique snowflake… just like everyone else. When schools started coddling children instead of teaching them that is where the trouble began. Yes I know there are things like no child left behind and insufficient funding for school and lord forbid we use corporal punishment to discipline children.. hell teenagers even. Because giving them a couple of good swift kicks to the ass might hurt their feelings and we can’t do that now can we?

While we are at it… I need take down my parents generation a notch or two also… but I need to work on that one… those old people are wily.

The musings of a back porch….

You know I think I can really get used to this whole back porch thing… It’s February and I’m sitting on my back porch with a beer, laptop, and iPod. Just taking in the whole serenity of the evening.

I find that having a bit of alone time is good every now and again. I’m talking serious alone time 24 to 36 hours of the stuff. It’s good for finding a center of your being, it’s almost zen like. Well as zen as one can be with out being either a Buddhist monk or a Novel Netware Admin.

I live in the East valley… now I’m not that far out in the East valley, but it’s only 10 minutes in 2 diffrent directions to hit open deseret. (south and south east by freeway). I never noticed before but the clouds at night absorb the light of the city and glow reddish. It’s kind of strange but at the same time cool.

The album of choice is “Mezzanine” by Massive Attack. Everyone should check it out.

So with the brief winter that Phoenix experinces now over we are into the part of year that I like to call “Why we live here weather”. Let’s face it folks no one in their right mind lives in a place where it gets 120 in the summer and has 100+ days of 100+ degree heat. No I don’t count I moved here willingly and love it. I’m also a PACS administrator. If you ever meet another PACS administrator they will tell you anybody who does that job willingly is either stupid or crazy. I’m going to have to go with crazy people for $100 Alex.

I’ve come to the realization that everyone is beautiful on myspace. Which is why I use a comic for my picture (and here too). It’s not what the author looks like it’s what they have to say. Now I’m fine with the fact that this is page is a cesspool of incessant rambling and talking about things only I care about (for the record I haven’t talked about Linux in like 3 months). Myspace just feels like the sewer system of internet. Everyone goes there, but no one I know freely admits to going there on a regular basis. Actually let me rephrase that… people I call my friends admit they go there, they however have mostly moved to becoming flickr and blogger whores (welcome my brothers and sisters). So why have the myspace? I don’t know… part of me wants to be able to reconnect with my past… the other part of me doesn’t want to look back. I keep the myspace to keep the part of me that wants to look back happy. I keep this to keep the part of me that wants to look forward happy.

You play with our world like it’s your little world…

A.K.A the one with multiple posts part duex….

IT’S LIKE SCHOOL ONLY THERE IS NO RECESS….

I don’t know how this conversation came about today but it was somehow telling because the whole time I was flashing to a Myspace post that Kristina made.

So I’m at work today, like I am ~5 days a week. I’m upstairs talking with the consultant Mr.Smith about building some table in one of the systems I work on. Out of the blue I break from my conversation with Mr. Smith and start looking around the “new” (also known as newly remodeled) office that is the technical group upstairs. I’m taking a intrest because next week my happy butt gets moved into a similar office across the hall. Anyway I’m looking at this office and I start talking to one of our database guys and he just out of the blue (well what to me is out of the blue) about how my current cube has no personal effects in it. No pictures, no knick knacks, nothing.

Well thats not entierly true I did have a shipping crate that contained a ultrasound unit for 6 months but that is beside the point.

The database guy starts showing me the stuff in his cube… now I will say this he is one the cooler people that I have met in my time at my current position. Mean while I’m flashing onto what Kristina wrote…

“So far I have the essential office junk of pen cup, folder sorters of varying sizes, phone, computer, printer and a spot for all the office’s reference binders. Beyond that, BORING. I have in queue to bring; more pictures of loved ones, bamboo chute (a plant to make office life bearable—heck it may even show responsibility if I don’t kill it with florescent lighting!), a fake plant to disguise the fact I killed the living plant in a few months, a wind chime that was a present of past…what else could be fun and reflect some personality?!? Respond and give me some tips…looking forward to it!”

Kristina is speaking of her cube at her work… and this is all I’m thinking about.

I’m sitting here thinking about it almost 12 hours later… my cube at work looks alot like my office at home… alot of junk and alot of computers.

Anyone know where I can find a pirate flag?

How can I do Quantitative study on something that is very Qualitative?

On the subject of traffic… yes it sucks… I know. I knew that moving down here.

Once again Mr. Smith at work suggests a path home that I had never previously considered. Ok I have nothing to lose but 20 minutes of my life. What the hell.

It’s exactly the same time home as the way I would normally take. Now I don’t have a problem with this what I have a problem with is there is no way for me accurately measure traffic on routes A and B. Then make a comparison between the two mean while factoring in things like special events (Barrett Jackson 2 weeks ago and the FBR open this week) or the weather (anyone who’s ever driven in Phoenix knows that the locals have no clue what to do when it starts raining down here).

Nothing pisses me off more then having two things to compare and not having a solid way to compare them.

Of course I have never done anything like that before so why start now?

I’m feeling in between

Logging into blogger this evening I notice that it is no longer in “beta” status… I think that this is a first for a Google application. Even more importantly I think that this is the first time that a product from google has gone through a entire life cycle. What will happen next? Gmail will actually become stable and not lose 50 messages out of the 5 trillion a day it receives? Oh MY! Google products will work across multiple platforms and web browsers and it will all work exactly the same!

I mean it’s like someone came along and created a set of standards and then someone else came along and followed those standards and didn’t try to create their own.

Of course I’ve been under the weather this weekend and broke from my normal no meds policy and did shot of nyQuill at midnight two nights ago… so that may be influencing this post. Then again so may the have drunk high ball of CC&7 sitting next to me.

What Tom’s not drinking beer? First Google brings a product out of beta and then Tom isn’t drinking a beer when he posts? The next thing I will be telling you is I found a woman!

Sadly somethings just don’t change with me.

So with it being the new year I’m supposed to make a new years resolution. Why do I need to make it on January 1? Why can’t I make it on April 1? Other then it being on April Fools? Yes it would still count. Anyway my point is you shouldn’t use the first of the year as a excuse to make a resolution to do something. Take me for instance. I swore off soda at home in March! I resolved to leave Kingman in April!! I vowed to start going to the gym in August!!! OK two out of three aint bad… Gosh I miss coke at home.

Ok now that I’ve beaten that horse .

I wish all of my loyal readers, which the latest nielsen ratings have come in and it says that my readership is up to 3.4 people with a .00000000000000000000001 market share! A happy and healthy new year and may my little corner of the intertube bring some light into your day at one point or another. And who knows maybe just maybe you will be apart of some tale of mine that gets it’s own movie like name.

And unto thee they said… let there be great fire and wookiees


Once again the whole having friends who blog thing has brought out the envious side in me. Not that it’s that hard to do. I’m forever compensating for something… You flaunt your married-ness with home life and either kids / pets / or lack there of. I flaunt my single-ness and my general lack of attachments to anyone or thing.

So really it’s pretty much all aspects of my life.

My latest place where I feel a need to compensate… Cody and his damn blog pictures. And it’s not just his blog it’s his damn myspace too!

I pick the oddest things to get worked up about… I really need to find a way to relax… Oh look a fridge full of Guinness.

OK so getting back to object of tonight’s angst… Take a look at those pictures. I think the guy has talent his pictures are how I see my pictures in my head. Use of shadows almost all of them off the cuff and “natural”.

Really I think that is what drives me up the wall most about photography is that so much of it is unnatural and posed.

Now I realize that alot of photographs are posed for artistic reasons or because there is a large group but I look at so many and there always things that seem a little to perfect.

And don’t get me started on advertising. I may be in the coveted 18-49 male demographic but I resist 99.9% of that advertising

YES LORD JOBS I WILL NOT REVEAL THAT YOU ARE THE .00001% THAT GETS TO ME

That was weird I blacked out there for a second.

Anyway… I am envious of Cody and his pictures… Or maybe I’m envious of Cody and his mad iLife skills. And Eve’s ability to do the ninja camera thing.

Ok so the married people have me on that one. In order to get my “natural” shot and be in said shot it can no longer be “natural” and must be posed in some way shape or form.

And the pictures I have posted here? Well I worked from home today which means I finished working a hour early since I didn’t drive in and was already here and didn’t have to drive home. So I took a couple of pictures at lunch. I even did the faux iPhoto thing to them in Picasa and well look at mine compared to Cody’s “nature” shots…

I need to go compensate some more.

The crickets outside….

I think this is the first time I’ve ever sat on my back porch…. ever.

Not in all the years I lived in Kingman the time in flag ever… this is the first time I’ve come back here and just sat and did my own version of meditation.

My neighbor to the east of me is doing something I could hear him in my office with the music and video game going it really sounds like he’s cleaning or putting stuff in the trash. And now he’s done.

There is a house behind me it’s two stories none of the lights are on. If I didn’t know where to look for the pitch of the roof I would say that there was nothing there. It’s really kind of shocking that you could lose a house like that.

crickets that is what amazes me the most down here… I didn’t expect to hear crickets in mesa…I don’t really hear crickets when I’m in high country at night like I’m hearing them right now. I know that neighbors on 2 of 3 sides have a backyard like mine pretty green and lots of plants.

This is the first place that I’ve lived that feels like a “home” to me. Not a cave with carpeted floors and a TV. Granted it’s still pretty sparse in the “Better homes and gardens” sense of cluttered but I like it. I truly think the best part of my house is the backyard.

Growing up we had a huge backyard I never liked it… the grass was short… there was no shade dog crap all over the place (a certain sibling was tasked to clean up said crap and never did on a regular basis) I’m pretty sure that is why I’m a cat person. I like dogs I just don’t like them enough to own one. Cat’s are cool you can have a convesation with a cat and they will just look at you like “WTF foool”.

You talk to a dog and they think that everything that comes out of your mouth is pure gold.

Anyone else ever notice how a harley sounds like a prop airplane when it’s going down the road?