Category: WTF?

Inertia keeps… Moving up slowly

Every now and again some of my comrades in blogging will comment “Tom, I’m decided to listen to you about not blogging about work. XYZ happened and I’m glad I didn’t write about that shit”. Actually it’s been one person who has said it to me multiple times and it makes me feel good about my decision. Even if it does cut down on the amount of material I write about. Granted I have broken that rule from time to time some times worse then others but by and far I tend to stick to it.

The nice thing about about have the proverbial MAC(s) to my PC blog is that they have interesting links and seeing as how links to blogs came up at dinner on Saturday night. Granted the topic lasted all of 45 seconds but it was enough to send me to re-examine what I thought were previously static link tables.

Yep they are all pretty static except for one additional link. I’m trying to figure out how Cody came upon this person and decided to link to their very nicely done blog actually this is the sort of blog that gives me blog envy. Actually for the record it doesn’t take much to give me blog envy these days a few nicely placed pictures and a link table or two and I’m yours.

Damn if you had a C++ gui programming manual I would so be your friend.

OK so where I was going before I decided to head to tangent-ville, this blogger the “dooce” was fired from a job for blogging about work. I present to you know a excerpt from her “FAQ” section….

“I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET. If you are the boss, however, please don’t be a bitch and talk with your hands. And when you order Prada online, please don’t talk about it out loud, you rotten whore.”

So there you go kids… that is a good enough reason to not talk about work. Well that and it’s not very intersting, no one cares, and it’s really not that professional.

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.

Festivus Celebration!


The Kern household never one to mock sacred traditions of old. I present to you now a very Kern Festivus celebration!

So to the left we have your blogger extradoinare truly, kicking off Festivus with the traditional metal pole adorned with nothing. We did splurge this year and get a rusted pipe.

And here we have lil brother just before his “Airing of Grievances”. It really wasn’t pretty once he let loose with the golf club.

To the left here we have my father “Big” Tom airing his grievances in the form of a black t-shirt.

Some days my father and I so alike it’s almost scary.


And now for the feats of strength… This was the most impressive one of the day.

And finally we have the traditional wrestling of the head of house hold. I am happy to say that I was able to pin my mother in under 30 seconds. I will say this she is very scrappy.

So there you have it folks a very very Festivus!!

This broken wheel is coming undone…

It’s the middle of December and I just realized it. What’s more it’s just over a week to X-mas. wow…

I always use December as a time to reflect on the last year… was it good? Did I accomplish anything? What did I do set the world ablaze?

Yes it was a good year, I accomplished the things I wanted to and few extra, did I set the world ablaze? Only in my pants…

Sorry…

Ok moving on. Happy Birthday to ye-blog. On December 1, 2000 I wrote the first entry in what became the “semi-journal” my orginal intent was just catalog what was going on in my life that last semester of college and my finding my way to be a “real adult” well 6 years later. College is becoming a more distant memory and I still haven’t found my way to being a real adult. But I gotta say I’m having fun 🙂

So what is in store for 2007? Probally more fun, and hopefully a few more stories that I can regail my friends with.

I’m trying to read your mind…

So the next time your in Missoula Montana you really need to pick up some “Moose Drool Beer” it’s a brown ale so those of you who aren’t into beers that aren’t bud, miller, or coors keep on walking. Or if your Nancy and don’t drink beer… well I can’t help that your Nancy. So for those of you who are not Nancy and aren’t afraid to be adventurous with your beer drinking then I highly suggest the Moose Drool. And if you don’t make it back to Canada Jr. that often just do what I do… Watch C/E’s cat and they bring your beer!

I’m simple really I am… beer and food and I’m a happy camper… that probally explains why certain friends can’t seem to get rid of me.

So with it being less then 2 weeks to Xmas 2006 (gentlemen start your engines!!!) I’m starting to receive Xmas cards. I always enjoy them simply because I look to see who actually address them to “Tom” or “You and your family” or some such plural thing. Pretty consistently the same 3 people send me a card addressed to “Tom” the rest do the plural thing….

Right now Kristi is wondering if she addressed the card to “Tom” or to a plural of people… Kristi I’m happy to report that you addressed the card correctly.

I’m keeping my eye on the rest of you.

Speaking of Xmas cards… every year at about December 20th I think I should really send out cards. However 2 things stop me from this every year.
1. I can’t find the card of Santa taking a shit down the chimney with a caption that says “How you know you’ve been really bad this year”. To much happiness needs to be tempered with some smart assness every now and again.

2. Everyone I would send a card to I actually see over the holidays except for like 2 people. And honestly I don’t think that they would care.

My toilet keeps filling… I just discovered two things…

1. The bleach tablet is getting in the way of the valve.

2. I have a big brick in there. (How did I not notice that beforehand?)

Now I know I live in a desert but I don’t think I’m conserving water if it takes me two sometimes three flushes to to get the toilet completely cleared.

Speaking of things in the toilet…

At some point on Friday the conversation with the file room girls, or as Eve (the woman not the game) calls them “file room wenches”, to my personal life and my lack of a s/o which to me is not a huge deal. When I started my tale the tall file room wench (Laura) “yes we know that you hate women and we’ve heard this story before”. Which tells me 2 things (damn what is it with the 2 thing tonight?)

1. I need to not tell that story any more.

2. How come after three years I still bring her up?

I mean honestly it’s been 3 damn years. Why she still comes up I don’t know. So from here on out I will not bring what’s her face up in conversation because according to Laura (the tall one) and Izzy (the hot one) of the file room wenchdom “yes we know you hate women”

I don’t hate women… they just never give me a chance to show them how much I can love them 😉

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.

It’s a mad world…

So after 18 months of relative stagnation in terms of overall storage capacity. You know the storage capacity that you have available to you at any given time that is not dedicated on Hard Disks that also contain a OS. I seem to have gone a bit a nuts…

In the last month I went from ~400GB of Storage to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.1TB of usable storage (The number is closer to 1.5TB of raw storage). Holy hard disk batman what are you going to do with all of that storage? Honestly I don’t know. Partially I’m fairly paranoid about losing data and insist on having multiple copies of everything. You know backups of backups of backups.

Yes in my world there is fantastic data redundancy but data continuity (being able to continue to use that data for something useful) sucks.

At least I’ve had the good sense to get a couple of external hard drives so I can put anything I want in a off line long term storage sitting in a closet someplace. I mean really though 1.1TB of storage?

I don’t care who you are there is only so much music/video/tv/porn/writing/games you can put onto a computer before it fills up.

A PSA…

Just a word of note… Don’t fuck with the security guards at Maricopa County Hospital… They are packing heat and aren’t afraid to use it.