This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse.

*warning* only my fellow World of Warcraft-ers will get this, but I definitely just had a sign of the apocalypse.

I'm not going to get into my inner nerd-dom and get into the details of what happened. Let's just say that in the engineering world, getting it perfectly laid out from your customer EXACTLY what he wants, EXACTLY what he thinks he's paying for - is paramount!

In a discussion today with an instrument vendor, my instrument technicians, my main customer, his subcontractors overseeing fabrication of the vessel where the instrument in question is installed, and our purchasing agents - I said, and I quote:

"No, no, it is working as intended."


Blizzard, are you hiring in your customer service or GM departments? I've already got the response down. You save on training!

You're a nerd. Yep.

This Post Is Brought To You By:

Hey guys and gals.

Sorry for the 6 day posting hiatus. I had that travel down to ATL watch 'bama beat up my beloved Hokies, then an extended holiday weekend, then back to work - and 6 other excuses that you don't care about. Anyways, I'm back and I'll be putting out my week 1 NFL newsletter here later today or tomorrow.

In the mean time, I have to wax on something that you must try. I'm not going to turn this site into an advertising blog - unless it's just something that is flat out amazing and I like it and think you should try it. I have no affiliation nor make any kickback from any of this. Unless of course a representative from management from a company I highlight happens to see it and wants to mail me some....

But anyways.......I guess I'm going to occasionally write on a certain product, and I will not get crazy about it. It will be a solid description of the product and I'll try and keep the emotion out of it too much. I'll try and be calm about this, when I do feel the need to comment on a product.

YOU HAVE TO FRIGGIN TRY SIMPLY ORANGE - ORANGE JUICE WITH THE MANGO. OMGWTFBBQ IT IS SO FRIGGIN GOOD. IT IS SO FULL OF WIN. GET SOME, NOW!

That is all.

I got peed on this morning.

Short quickie post this morning, I gotta run! Driving to Hot-lanta today for the VT/’bama game tomorrow! Woot woot, it’s college football season!

If you’d believe that when I got up this morning, my running to-do and priority list in my head was churning. What did I have to get done before work, at work, and prepare right after work – to get out of town and on the road? When I first got up and started to have these to-do and priority list thoughts, writing to you all on here came up. First, yes, I’m that much of a nerd bomb, I do make little to-do lists all the time. He does. Second, yes, shed a tear, whatever, I did think about how I’d be posting over the weekend and if I wanted to pre-write and post things for you reader(s). Don’t be sappy. I’m not, I’m just saying that when I got up this morning, I was trying to think how I’d get a post on before I left town, and what a good short one would be about.

And wouldn’t you know it. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways. I didn’t have any good topics on my running list of writing topics that would make a good short post. I feared I wouldn’t have any time before leaving for Atlanta to hit you all up with a good post. And bam, sometimes life just works out, and I was handed a great short post for you (all). And, and, and it’s going to fulfill to a tee, the blog’s title and let’s tread that TMI line.

Everyone has a morning routine. Work mornings are typically hectic for everyone. My house is not any different. We’ve got the two idiot huskies to take care of, the pool to care for (it’s labor day, put the cover on! No more chlorine hands at work!), and of course we’ve got the boy. He’s not a “terrible”-two by any means. But he’s……let’s just say……a handful. Well said, politically correct and all. And when I’m half asleep and trying to pry the gunk out of my own eyes, I’m not always ready to handle full-two-year-old-boy parenting at the butt crack of dawn.

Sometimes, based on a simple ratio of time available to get ready : snooze bar hits : morning meetings at work for me or the misses : did my son have a bath the night before – sometimes we throw the boy in the shower with one of us to save time.

If you remember my noun-ified verbs from the other day, you know I’m a Long Shower-er. DO NOT UPDATE THIS STORY’s DETAILS! No no, still innocently. Meaning, I just simply like to take long showers, and sit on the built in seat in my home’s shower.

So this morning, I’m sitting on my seat, relaxing, just thinking about nothing and generally enjoying the hot shower. It’s decided that based on the timing of the morning and our busy-ness, we’re going to throw the boy in the shower with me.

I wash his hair, “close your eyes, don’t want to get soap in it”.

“Ok, now wash your body. Wash your armpits, like daddy.”

“Now wash your knees. No, that’s your elbows silly. Wash your knees. Here. Good job.”

Everything is going well, we’re going to rinse and get out.


Jay…... Jay! JAY!!!!!!!! Extra stream……….. Extra stream!!!!!!! Right foot. 98.6 degree stream. Yellow, hitting your right foot!!!!!!! JAY, move your foot!!!!!!!!!

Things That Bug Me - That Little Red Squiggly

You guys are going to really start thinking there’s a lot of good planning going on in this here head. They’d be wrong. I know. Can you be quiet for a second and let me talk to the reader(s)?

You can at least maybe believe it, that there’s some forethought and good general writing practice going on, right? You see, in yesterday’s post, I joked about Bill Gates’ little red squiggly on my line about my own retardedness. He and his cronies at Microsoft Word – Department of Red Squigglies and Suggested Replacement Words – or the DRSSR as I like to call them – thought I should have been talking about my own beardedness. Things I find funny: Squiggly is a word according to the DRSSR, Squigglies is not. You just typed Squigglies, again. Yeah, well, what the hell is the correct word for more than one Squiggly? Squiggli? Nope, red squiggly. Squigglys? Nope, red squiggly. Squiggles? Whoa, that passed. So, more than one squiggly is correctly typed (spoken?) as squiggles……in fact, if you right click on Squigglies, Squiggli, or Squigglys – it lists other proper tenses/conjugations of Squiggly for you. The gerund, the nounified verb of doing a squiggly – squiggling. Hey, look, Bobby is good at squiggling. The action of currently making a squiggly? Squiggles. Hey, look at Bobby, he squiggles with his left hand.

Wait a minute! Yeah, I saw it too. Dammit. Squiggles isn’t the plural of Squiggly. It’s the present tense verb for the act of making a squiggly. He squiggles. Bah humbug! So there isn’t a proper plural version of the word Squiggly…..I shake my fist with vigor at you, Bill Gates.

Wow, stellar opening Jay, and look, only took 10 little red squigglies. Ha! You wrote it too. Dammit! I curse you Bill Gates! You just made my day. You know I can make you stab your own eyes out with your pen, right? Yeah. You know I can make you involuntarily shit your pants at work right? Yeah. Then shut it. Fine.

Before I get into the main point of today’s verbal diarrhea, I think the word “Squiggly” is actually an adjective. The line is squiggly. I think the noun would be squiggle. It is a wavy line, it is a squiggle. Or the verb would be squiggle. I will squiggle on this paper. So that plural would be correct at squiggles, or the present tense would be that same squiggles. But don’t rain on this parade Microsoft! Don’t do it. You’re an absolute idiot. Yep. Your point today? Oh yeah….

My accidental tie to yesterday’s post, where I was maybe trying to get an inkling of credit for having some forethought, was to be about things that bug me again. Things That Bug Me – That Little Red Squiggly.

The DRSSR is a funny group. And they’re not very consistent. It’s bothersome. It’s bothersome for someone who types a lot – both for pleasure and employment.

You can’t quote me here, because I forget the misspelling I did actually type, but the other day I was trying to type the word “glue”. It went something like this. Apparently my right hand was placed one key off on the keyboard….so when I went to the “L” key, I hit the “K” key. And subsequently next hit the “Y” key instead of the “U” key. So I started typing “glue” by typing “gky”. Noticing my mistake, I reached up with my pinky to the “backspace” key, but again, with the hand misplaced by a key, I reached up and hit the “=” key instead, twice, one for the “K” and one for the “Y”. At this point, if I remember correctly, I had typed, “gky==”. Thinking of course that I’d backspaced properly, it was time to restart typing “glue”. I start in with the “GL”, only to then see on the screen, “gky==gl”. At this point, flustered, my fingers bounce on or near the remainder of the word and I’ll fix it. So I ended up with something along the lines of “gky==glaue”. And?

Well I’ve got two things to say about this. 1. one of the suggestions for “gky==glaue”, for the correct word, is “glue”. What the fuck? You know I was trying to type “glue” out of that. You can’t tell me that the computers at Microsoft have preprogrammed misspelled words based on the incorrect placement of hands, just off to the left, to include the backspacing, rather “=”, and then the reattempt at the word. You can’t tell me that. No way. Yet, somehow, it knew I was trying to type “glue”. Of course, 2. Copy and paste that “gky==glaue” into your Word. Right click it. It also thought I could have been meaning to type “gay glaze”. Gross, what the hell Jay? I don’t even want to know what that is. I know, I know, only added for gratuitous humor. The point was, I was amazed that it knew, from that, that I was trying to type the word “glue”.

Bringing me to what pisses me off about That Little Red Squiggly. The DRSSR is so friggin smart, it knows that “gky==glaue” is glue – but it can’t decipher other mistakenly typed words. For example, from recent typing of my own, that caused me to start a list for this post.

“unfortunatley” ---- WHAT?? Big brain on Bill Gates. You can’t tell that’s supposed to be “unfortunately”????

“Satruday” ---- Seriously? What the hell other word could I have been meaning to type there?

“comppleted” ---- Yeah, I could see how you maybe didn’t see what I meant there. That’s clearly NOT the word “completed”. In fact, you’re right Bill, I meant to type “bearded”.

[that's not me]

Things That Amuse Me

And maybe only me. Ha, it should say, “Things That Amuse Me, because I’m immature”. So what? There’s simple stuff that I find funny. And that’s all. No hidden agendas, just another mini-confessional about stupid stuff I find amusing. They are:

*My Own Retardedness. Ok, wow. While typing this here little blog for you reader(s), I just found a funny. According to Bill Gates’ little red line, “retardedness” is not a word. Irony is ironic sometimes. Wow, how funny is that, on so many levels? In an effort to make fun of something about myself, I tried to insinuate my own stupidity, and in this case, my inability to learn from making a previous mistake. So I totally tried to use something that’s not a word? Idiot. Yep, that’s funny. And on top of that, right click retardedness, and Bill Gates’ thinks I should have said, “my own beardedness”. Well thanks Bill. I did mean to go into a monologue about my Fu Manchu.

*Take 2. My Own Idiocy. Yeah, get on with it. Ok, inability to learn from a previous mistake. And this one, yes, I admit, happens EVERY time. At work, in my office, we have one of those fancy workstation printer/scanner/copier/fax/tie your shoes/general do anything machines. Like the big ones from the commercials. It pretty much rocks. And with my MBA, it only took admin like 4 weeks to teach me to use it. So anyways, when you want to use it as a scanner, you can set it up to scan your document and you can program it to e-mail it directly to you. And since it’s on the office intranet/LAN/[insert correct compu-nerd term here], it’s pretty much an instant e-mail. Like, the scanned document is on my computer before I can walk the ~30 feet back to my desk. And it never fails, every time, EVERY time I get back to my desk, I’m like, “ooooh, I have new mail!”…..Oh wait, it’s from me, from the scanner. Sad panda. Ok, maybe retardedness was the right word. Ha! See! Somehow, between choosing my scan settings, hitting scan, and walking back to my desk, WITH the subject document IN HAND – I forgot that I just sent myself mail. EVERY TIME.

*Dick and Fart Jokes. See, because you’re immature. Again, so what. I’m an American male below the age of 80. Dick jokes and farts are funny. I’m at the point in my life where I might have to actually start watching my mouth and the volume of the visits from my friend Gaseous Clay – as I don’t want to force this humor onto my toddler son. He must learn dick and fart humor on his own. But I have to admit, in my early 30’s, there’s no slowing of the humor in cock-n-ball jokes, innuendos misinterpreted, or just a good ol’ fashioned fart. Wow Jay, just wow. Shut up. Case in point. There’s a new commercial out for Gas-X. Dude is being interviewed for a job. He’s got tummy rumbles and for the commercial’s sake, let’s just say, to borrow a line from my 5-year-old niece, he’s a little gassy. He’s tossing and turning uncomfortably in the chair, and his interviewer leads in with, (what he hears) “oh I see you graduated at the top of your gas, and you’re flatulent in three languages.” His interviewer’s assistant comes in, distracting her for a second, so he turns and leans and takes a Gas-X. The assistant, “sorry to disturb ma’am, your son Rip is on line toot.” HAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry people, that’s funny shit. Jon Stewart’s got nothing on Gas-X writers!

*Stupid TV. Huh? Other than Gas-X commercials? Yes, like specific shows that amuse me – that probably shouldn’t. Like, I just used the demographic that I’m a male below the age of 80. That whole logic is thrown out the window, when I sit down every Sunday night and watch, with great amusement, Randy Jackson’s America’s Best Dance Crew. You’re apparently a 13 year old girl. Hey, you sit and watch it too. Because I have to! I can’t exactly just leave this dome piece of a head and go do something else. I mean, you don’t have to remember or admit to watching it, yet here you help me type. Touché. Another show that I like, and I admit to near hernia-style laughing, is the ABC show “Wipeout!”, based on the Japanese show “Most Extreme Challenge” or something like that. If you haven’t seen it, contestants are put to a basically impossible obstacle course, always situated over water or mud, and they attempt to get through it. Roughly 0.008% of contestants can successfully do the course. The hilarity that ensues seeing out of shape people throwing themselves into horribly painful looking wipeouts, is well, funny to me.

*Bad Jokes. Perhaps you’re too easily amused. Nah, but I admit to loving some bad, corny jokes in my time. I can’t explain it. Maybe it has to do with the state I was in when I heard the joke. Like, Nebraska? No, you moron, your retardedness is amazing. Like, was I drunk at a party when I heard it, and laughed until I puked, so it just has this overly funny association? Who knows. Example? Don’t do it Jay, not the toaster oven. Sorry, have to now.

So there’s these two muffins in a toaster oven. One of them looks over at the other one, “man, it is HOT in here.” The other one looks up, “HOLY SHIT! A talking muffin!”

Sorry everyone, sorry. Aw, quit being a scrooge, that’s funny.

Noun-ifying Verbs

So this is Borderline TMI, right? Well I guess it’s time for a mini-confessional. Be careful Jay. No no, nothing too crazy – just some self deprecating humor. I won’t let this get too far in today with you having to wonder what the hell “nounifying verbs” means. Well, I totally made it up. In my pretty little head, it’s a way to explain my urge to add “-er” to any word to name someone based on an action.

I’m not the only one. I do have one very very funny avid memory of a drunken spill and bed bouncing, while imitating an Olympic gymnast, that I apparently flung my wife off said bed and into the nightstand, and she exclaimed that I was a “fat lip-er maker”. She didn’t exactly use the “-er” in the right place, but you get my point. She’s going to kill you. Hope not. She’s probably my only reader anyways so she doesn’t have to fear that a bunch of other people will learn that story.

Without any more delays from the peanut gallery……
I’m a long shower-er. Wow, right off the bat with a big embarrassing-alone-time-story? No no, don’t get too excited. Not like that. I mean, I innocently just take long showers. Well, innocently if you’re not so much of an earth lover that you’re mad at me for wasting water. But then you’d be an overreact-er. I can’t explain it. Although I would consider myself not deeply spiritual, maybe it’s my little way of meditating. Because, I don’t really think about anything. There’s no plan, no routine. My shower stall at home has a seat in it, built in. I sit on it. The water runs over me. I do nothing. Nothing. And it’s so nice.

I’m a flatulate-er. Really, straight to this? Well, it is mini-confessional time. Actually, you’re male right? Um, yeah. Then this isn’t a big story. You just aligned yourself with every XY chromosome in the world. Congrats. Feisty today huh? Well, your “confessions” started with naked time and farts. Good point.

I’m a push-er. And now to drugs? No, no. I drive a large truck. It’s big, it’s loud. Long showers and gas guzzling Hemi’s, Al Gore just called, it’s for you. I drive with a simple rule. I think it was Newton’s or Darwin’s forgotten law. The Law of Gross Tonnage. I am bigger, heavier, and traveling at a high rate of speed. You will move / let me in / yield. And you will like it. You’re an asshole-er. I prefer push-er. My first car was a doo-doo brown Volkswagen Rabbit. I’ve been the push-ee. And I didn’t like it.

I’m a last-name-call-er. I guess I hope it doesn’t annoy people. I have the tendency to call people by their last names only. It’s more of a sign of friendship, as I only do it to friends. But either way, I call people, especially those with one- or two-syllable last names, by only their last name. And if their last name is three or more syllables, I come up with a snazzy abbreviated last name for them. Or even at a minimum, I call them their first AND last names, or maybe some fancy mixture of the two. Like, all the time. Not randomly, all the time. That becomes their calling name to me. I should make sure it doesn’t bug people.

I’m a reply-er. Like, always the last word. Not like every e-mail exchange is an argument or debate. But for some reason, I seem to always have just one more reply to an e-mail chain. Even if it’s just one more e-mail to say, “ok, see you there”, after we’ve both had two e-mails each solidifying the time and place and saying something along the lines of “ok, see you there”. I always just have this urge to send just one more, just to make sure they know I got the last one and we’re good. OCD much? Shut up.

I’m a wrong-lyrics-er. Huh? You know, when we don’t know, i.e. you don’t help me remember the real lyrics to a song. We just say what we think they are, or close. Sometimes it’s funny.

I’m a holler-er. Speaking of song lyrics, I’ve been known to latch on to a certain phrase from a song or two, and run with it. Like, really run with it, dead horse style. Fellow attendees of mine to a recent friend’s bachelor party up in NYC got treated to a double whammy. [a] wrong-lyrics-er and [b] holler-er, at the same time! Yeah, it was funny the first 200 times. The last 200 were too much? Lil John’s “Now stop! Oh! Then wiggle wit, yeah!” was over-volumized many many many times to the tune of “Stop now! Get it, get it, yeah!” Loser. Hey, that’s close. And when drunkenly yelled in the streets or clubs, it’s cool man. Eminem’s “shake, that ass, for me – I said, shake, that ass for me” was correctly lyricized, but again, probably over used and definitely by a holler-er. The point is, a combination wrong-lyrics-er, and holler-er, when under the influence of alcohol – not pretty.

I’m a menace, a dentist, an oral hygienist. Wha? Some people just got that. Man I’m funny. Right, you’re funny. Or you’re not. It’s one or the other.

I’m not an innocent nightstand-er. Speaking of alcohol. I’ve been known……..over-imbibing : nightstand : me : 4:00am. You do the math. I’ll get some Clorox wipes. Nightstands are not toilets.