Illuminatea

On my drive into work this morning, one of the local radio stations played ''November Rain'' (Guns n Roses) ''Rock Me Amadeus'' (Falco) back to back. That's some serious musical whiplash. That's like having bacon-caramel pie. I like bacon, and I like caramel, but not together.

Over time, any group of people and friends starts to develop its own set of euphemisms and textual substitutions. Here are some of ours. home friendship appliance -- a sex toy. I forget where we ran across this one -- somebody in the blogosphere was saying it sounded like a fine example of Japanese-produced English -- but we like it and made ...

On a break this afternoon with co-workers Jon, Kevin, and Ryan, the idea for a new reality show was born. I hate ''reality'' TV -- but I might watch this one. It all started with Jon suggesting that it would probably be very entertaining to follow Wesley Snipes around prison, as he'd be likely to be jumping over tables and kicking drug dealers in ...

Dear iPod, Over the years that I've had you (as your second owner), we've had our rocky times. You've worked well with both my Windows and Mac workstations -- that's a plus. Your battery life is damn near useless (and I understand that's not really your fault), but with the appropriate adapter therapy we've been able to work around that. I hardly ...

All Hell is breaking loose in the Seattle area today because it's snowing. Hello, people. We get a lot of rain here. This is the Pacific Northwest. There are real, honest-to-goodness volcanic mountains here (remember that lovely ''view'' thing you keep talking about to jack up your real estate?). Part of this means that during what is nominally ...

We found out today that Alaric has a second set of armpits. No, it's true. You and I would call them ''elbow joints'' but in Alaric's world, they're ''second armpits.'' Bet you didn't know that.

The speaker just said, and I quote, ''regular expressions, which are fairly straightforward.'' That's, um, well, interesting. And wrong.

...so very, very true.

Alaric has a few close female friends at school. In fact, he's got so many we were slightly teasing him tonight about his harem. Then we had to explain to him what a harem was and assure him that we were not in fact accusing him of having multiple (or even one) sex slaves. Then I told him that of course he wasn't like that, because he was a ...

I'm down at the Seattle Convention Center today for day one of a four-day training conference I'm attending for work. One of the gentlemen in the registration line behind me looks just like Arvin Sloane (a character from the TV show Alias, for those who don't get the name). I'm keeping a close eye out now for weird artifacts, ...

I buy and read more than a few technical books. Big shock, I know, but what can you do? I have a local bookstore I like to visit, but I'll often use Amazon as well when I'm not in a tearing hurry to get a particular book in my hands. One of Amazon's value-added features is that they'll send you recommendations on books you might ...

Stephanie told me about this posting on Craig's List Seattle. I didn't believe her that it was real, so I had to go find it for myself. Posting here because who knows how long the entry will be active, and I want this sucker immortalized. Live in infamy forever, thanks to the power of the Internet! Anybody out there interested in hiking ...

I just discovered an amusing typo in a technical document. Instead of a section on prerequisites, it has a section on perquisites. Okay, so it's not earth-shaking, but I got a much-needed chuckle. Now off to brew a pot of peppermint herbal tea to share with my office mate. 

Actual conversation I just had with an actual, live co-worker: Co-worker: Think of a million monkeys with typewriters. Devin: <pause> ... why do I want to think about Harry Potter slashfic, again?