Charismatic Dog

Futurama!

Read Billy's (Fry) post (2nd from top).

My hair now comes close to being as long as in my lj pic again. That makes me happy.

My weekend has been a keeper, so I thought I'd share a bit of it.

Thursday Night:

That's right Thursday. The U gives it's employees two floating holidays. One around x-mas the other the Friday of Spring Break. So Thursday at 5, I left work…

… and met up with my co-workers at the Dinkytowner for Happy Hour. We drank good whiskey and played free pool until around 8pm. My lovely wife made an appearance and Dan showed up as well to shoot a few rounds. Dan, Amber and I then made a run over to Casper's to get Dan his birthday steak. Mmm steak! Dan and I then played a game of chess which my drunk ass somehow won. I think Mess would've wupped us both and shouted “stupid,” had he been there to see it. That was pretty much my evening.

Friday:

Started the day right by sleeping in. Then I walked to Chipotle for lunch and read the paper. Grabbed some quarters from Cherokee State and went home to do some laundry. Amber and then high-tailed it down to Redwing for dinner with her folks before rolling out to Miesville to catch a cover band fronted by one of Amber's high school friends. She has a helluva voice. Backing band was alright. Rolled home and called it a day.

Saturday:

Went out to breakfast with Amber's folks at the Jenny Lynn Bakery in Redwing. Drove to the river for some Bald Eagle watching and then grabbed a sub from the excellent Sub House (one of my “Wish They Were Here” lunch spots from here) before heading for home. Saturday night involved hanging with Jon Barry who was in town to visit his future in-laws and his little brother down at Olaf. It was a good time and much like seeing any of my old friends is an event that is far too rare these days. We shot the shit like we were still in high school with the addition of a couple of beers. All-in-all a great end to the day. Amber was working an overnight at the Children's Museum, so I watched the South Park movie on Comedy Central and went to bed.

Today I got up to get Amber from work, went back to bed and then got up for Lunch with Amber and Ms. Sarah Craig. This was a fun time as we don't see Sarah all that often. We then took in the 5PM service at church reheated some left over za and I will hereby mark this post as the end of a fabulous spring break. Who knew I'd get any more of them after graduating college.

Caffeine is not always your friend…

I've been jittery like now one's business today. In any event what I really wanted to say was this related to this. If Google sold their eamil/calendar systems to instituions the same way they sold their search appliance, it would be a whole different game out there. Seriously! Exchange/Notes/Groupwise/Oracle Collaboration Suite would all be blown away by this stuff. It would change the game. Zimbra is maybe the only thing that comes close to being as good from a user standpoint, but I still think goolges web interfaces are just unbeatable from a usability standpoint and their back end has to scale so massively it would make a ton of sense for a place like the U with 100k+ users between all the different campuses. Just my two cents on the subject.

I filled out Dan's latest whosit:

A White Bishop You scored 1 Power-Finesse, 3 Leader-Follower, 3 Unique-Ordinary, and 3 Offense-Defense!

Despite your unusual talents, you are often overlooked by your opponent. You are content to stay off to one side, allowing the bloodbath to ensue. Occasionally however, you end up in the scrum yourself, slaughtering the unbelievers. You don't last long when you do that, though. After all, what are the sheep for if not to be shorn? One unfortunate fact: No matter how hard you try, you can only reach half the squares on the board.

I'm also somewhat frustrated because I've been playing The Settlers II: Veni Vidi Vicci or however you spell it, but I'm not having much luck on level V. It's also starting to get boring so maybe that's OK.

Other folks are posting up a storm lately. What can I say… hrmm Ben doesn't know it yet, but he's pretty much out the band. Actually he probably has figured it out by now. Something about him not liking the music or particularly caring. To be fair I was trying to shuffle him up to guitar and finally get us a drummer with the rhythms. Oh well, life's tough. Pete and I are going to record two tracks using sampled live drums up at Integral some time in the next month or two. How much of that involves cash money and how much is compensation for intern time is up for grabs at this point and that will need to be ironed out. The hope is that it lets us explain better what we're looking for when we talk to folks. We'll see what comes of it. At this point two newer tracks are likely to be the winners, but (Almost) A Lullaby is waiting in the wings.

This was damn funny, although it looses something if you don't have your sound on.

I'm waiting patiently now for an iBook replacement to come out of Apple. They've released Intel powered 15″ laptops, iMacs, and today they announced a Mac Mini. I would really like my next computer to be a tough as nails little plastic beast. I stood on the iBook that is still chugging along for Amber. I had my laptop in a bag at Shawn's bachelor party and it hit the floor and has never been quite the same. Aluminum does not compete with materials they use in body armor.

In general life is good. I'm close to migrating work to doing all of our guides and knowledge base articles in a wiki (twiki.org's engine for any that care) which we will then publish to a new unified tech services page. It's going to be awesome and I'm feeling really good about the work and what it could do for my career someday.

Amber spiffied the house up today something fierce after recovering from a morning malaise that left her too knocked out for the work. Man has too work, and woman as well, but she's felt sick for the last couple of days so it was time for a little rest. Having said that, this afternoon she perked up real nice and I came home to a shiny happy home and I have to say it was a wonderful surprise!

Shaw: I was in Marshalltown for a funeral (Amber's less healthy Great Grandma) and afterwards we saw her living Great Grandma Lovig. It was too hectic to sneak in a hello, but I wish I could've seen you Megan the little one. Not to mention finally check out your house. Such is life. We promised Grandma Lovig we'd drop in with Amber's folks in the late spring-early summer time frame. I'm already asking for time to head your way if its at all possible.

Dan: Man has to work, but man also has to live while he can. Even if you can't caravan across this great land, save a little time for travel this summer. I'm not sure what my vacation time is going to look like, but I wouldn't mind squeezing in a long weekend this summer. I understand that might realistically limit us to the Duluth and places northward, but I think a four-day run on the north shore could be a good time. I dunno. Luke? John?

Oh, in case anyone missed it the title is about the video not Ben…