July 2005 Archives

that was lame, I've removed it. For something to fill the space, addie with her frisbee:

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Apparently Angry gnome was missed. It went something like this:

There was a new addition to the roadragers that accompany me on the drive to work today. Mr 60-in-a-school-zone and Ms. Death-by-SUV joined up with the angry gnome. Angry gnome is a man perpetually trapped behind slow moving traffic. He's hunched over in his little beat up civic, white hair sticking straight out from his head, wearing blue blockers. He's obviously in a hurry because he'll try and get around a semi only to be trapped by a delivery truck. What's amusing though is that every time this happens he lets out a piercing cry, "Nooooooo!". He's got his windows down too so it carries for quite some distance, the first time I heard it I was about three cars back I think.

tailgate, taligate, swerve, vrooom, slam on the breaks, NOOOOOO.

They had a "firesale" today at work, getting rid of all of the old "crappy" standard TVs since all of the game developers now apparently require High Def TVs. Fine, waste of money but good for me, right? Lots of people show up, big line, I end up not getting anything. A couple people near me talk of maybe getting one for their kid to play games on. Good idea, I think, and minimal cost when they break it. I'm not surprised that the good ones went quickly but there was one fellow, one of the first few in line, who swooped in and bought 30% of the flat TVs. The guy seriously carts away a half dozen flat TVs and a few normal ones. There are now mutinous talks of murder in the ranks around me. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, so a few options exist in my mind.

1. He really likes TV, a lot, and wants to have a whole wall of TVs. This does not seem likely given the wide variety of shapes and sizes he got.
2. He's buying gifts for all of his family. Who don't like to talk to eachother so each require their own TV.
3. He's planning on just selling them all in the classifieds since, working at microsoft, he's obviously hard up for cash.

I sure hope it's #1.

I got an object lesson in flirting today. I went to the KEXP Bar-B-Que/concert/garage sale thingy with a girl I took to a concert earlier. She's incredibly cute and heavy into her art but there's just not a lot of chemistry. Anyway. As she's getting slightly drunk I keep running in to women there that I would definately like to stop and flirt with and it's the most exruciating feeling to let them pass. They're dancing to hip hop and wearing glasses, what's not to like?

So it's settled. I'm taking Ed, the wingman extrodinare, with me to all outdoor music festivals from now on.

I went to an interview the other day, see about not working for the soul crushing monstrosity that I currently work for. I spent about 50% of the time wondering if I really wanted this job, and generally coming to the conclusion "no". I got done with it and they contacted me later that evening to say that they didn't want to offer me that job but they were happy to offer me a very similar - but techically different - job. Still not sure what to do. Just start my own company, that's probably the best route.

Then I met up with Martin last night so he could work on his review and I could peruse the local Barnes and Nobel, only we happend to be there on the night that Harry Potter was being released. All of the employees had to wear little fake round black glasses and a lot of them had lightning bolts stamped to their heads. They instituted a wrist band scheme so as to control the rioting. I think J.K. Rowling is secretly building herself an army, the uniform seems to be a hit. The college women mixed with the hyper developed highschoolers, confusing martin to no end.

When camping with geeks be prepared for oddities. We love to prepare. Need a tent? We've got more tents than people. Thermarest? No spares, but we do have a full size queen inflatable bed.

Eggs? 11.5 dozen. 138 eggs for 14 people. You could say there was a miscommunication. The seven pounds of bacon was about right. the dozen forks for 3 days was not. Tarp coverings with secondary tension wires to ensure it didn't move in the wind. Rearranging the firepit for optimal thermal distribution. You really have to love geeks.

National park nazis though, those I could have lived without. I see you've got a dog there. Even though you're surrounded by thousands of miles of forest filled with bears and yetis and whatever you're going to need to keep her on a leash. At all times. Or tie her to a tree when you're sleeping. Obviously a little civil disobediance was in order, thankfully no ticket. Quiet hours were also apparently 10 pm even though we occupied nearly the entire camp ground. But it's cool.

The drive home brough crazy women jumping from slowly moving cars to pet my dog, underpriced cherries and overpriced buffalo jerky, a band so god awful that it stopped and backed up traffic for 4 miles. Seriously, if you're going to sing irish drinking songs at an open air concert it helps to have 1) an irish accent, 2) a sense of rythm 3) tone. well maybe not that last one.

I saw tank girl sing the blues on saturday. Her stage name is Esthero, I have no idea what her real name is, but she looks quite a bit and sounds nearly exactly like Lori Petty - aka Tank Girl. She's up on the stage singing great upbeat caribbean funk fusion and I'm loving it and the crowd is too. Then she goes more soulful, all smooth and jazzy and it's nice too, but then she slips into kind of a deep depressing sound and never comes back out for the next hour. I don't think I would have minded had she not gotten us all going with the faster fun stuff early on.

Ed was with too and we spent about 50% of our time trying to determine which of the clusters of girls were lesbian couples and which were just there together - capital hill after all. The other 50% of the time was devoted to fending away the gay men. Maybe it's the fact that I was dancing, something most straight men don't apparently do at that club, but I would be quite content to go the rest of my life and never see a look that could be described as "smoldering" in another guys eyes. But I'm happy I only had to deal with eyes, Ed is apparently quite pinchable.

A smallish 4th party at mikes with no snakes or tanks so sadly no Miles screaming like a little girl.