Frogs aren’t really all that uncommon in Florida, especially this time of year, but finding one that’s patient enough to sit still until I’ve got just the right shot? Slightly less uncommon…
If this frog could talk, he would’ve likely responded, “What the hell’s with all of the flash photography?! It’s 4:00am – shouldn’t you be in bed or something?!”
If this doesn’t get thrown out of court faster than our non-existent bullet train, our legal system drops yet another notch in my eyes of actually being intelligent purveyors of justice in America…
Woman Suing Green Iguana For ‘Flaming Shot’ Injuries
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jul/16/woman-suing-green-iguana-flaming-shot-injuries/
Basically, this woman goes into a bar in St. Petersburg, orders a shot of Bacardi 151 on fire, then spit it out and caught herself on fire because she got scared of the flames. She ended up being rushed to the hospital and couldn’t work for two months due to the burns, so she’s suing the bar. Oh yeah, but one other thing – she was underage at the time that this happened…
“I’m suing because I should not have been let in,” Shannon said today. “If I weren’t let in, none of the events would have happened.”
Are you f’ing kidding me?! If you would’ve caught me trying to drink underage, none of this would’ve happened! The manager is even quoted earlier in the article that someone had told her that others were buying the girl drinks all evening, presumably because she couldn’t actually do so herself. You’ve just got to love the level of personal responsibility of today’s youth – I mean, my generation has had its dumb moments, but come on?! What are the chances that the judge will turn the tables and not only dismiss the lawsuit against the bar, but also add in some jail time for underage drinking?
And the biggest kicker of them all? Apparently she’s currently enrolled in college under a criminal justice major…
Who Made It July Already?!
My, my, how time flies… July is already half over, in a little more than a month will be my birthday, and in about two and a half months, we’ll be getting married! What are the chances of time slowing down just a bit after that so I can get a much-needed break?
I’m Marrying a Smarty Pants!
We just got Sara’s report card for her first semester of nursing school over the weekend and I’ll be damned if my woman didn’t get straight As! Mind you, it was a rough couple of months for both of us, for me just getting used to all of the changes in our dynamic, and I still don’t know how she’s going to keep it up while actually increasing the number of classes that she’s taking, but if anybody can do it, she can. Can you tell that I’m a little proud of her?! 🙂
Movietime Fun
Most of our free time lately has been spent going to the movies – this last weekend, we went and saw Get Smart, which was hilarious even if Sara won’t admit that she was laughing through most of the flick, too! The weekend before that, we saw Hancock on the 4th of July in an attempt to avoid stray bottlerockets and mortar shells out on the trecherous streets of Downtown Tampa. That one was pretty good, too, although we both agreed that it got progressively worse as the plot “thickened” and the very ending was kinda lame. Of course, it didn’t matter beause it starred Will Smith and Will Smith is awesome, so there!
We still haven’t seen Wall-E yet, which I feel kinda bad about because I’ve heard lots of great things about it, and I’m still not even sure when we’ll fit that one in because I think we’re going to try to catch the opening of The Dark Knight on IMAX this coming weekend. It sucks that it’s such a bank-buster to try to do, but we almost need to throw in a double-feature here somewhere just so we can get ourselves caught up! I can’t remember if there’s anything else still coming out this summer that we’ll want to go check out, but I’m sure there’s something or other still floating out there…
Wedding Update
RSVPs are starting to trickle in a little better, and we’re officially up to 19 guests attending our little get together here in a few months. Sandals have officially been purchased for all of the guys, so with the exception of one pair of the ladies’ sandals that need to be replaced already due to an oops, footwear is officially off of our official to-do list! Also, not nearly as officially as the others, as of this evening, hotel rooms for the night before and even the wedding night itself, *wink* *wink*, have been booked, our engagement book for signing on the wedding night has been ordered, and I believe that Sara’s planning to order some other miscellaneous wedding junk later on this week. Keep this up and we’re going to have ourselves a wedding on our hands!
Write, Write, Write
I may be more than a month beyond my initial June 1st deadline for getting ye ‘old website back up and running at this point, but my spirits are still up because I really feel like I’m actually making progress behind the scenes for a change. I ended up deciding to give WordPress another try simply because I think it would take so much longer for me to try to code all of the basic features from scratch, and there are some that I frankly just haven’t been able to figure out, and although there’s still a few weeks worth of work to do, there are several pages at this point that look and feel like a real website again, which is cool because it’s something that I haven’t done in a long time. The columns are coming along ok – still trying to play a little bit of catch-up while staying current with the weekly and monthly gigs going forward, and I’m even a good start into a new, little project that I don’t dare announce just yet for fear of completely annihilating my motivation! The new goal is officially the end of summer (i.e. Sept. 1st), although I honestly think that there’s a good chance of being up and running earlier than that.
Exercise
Just worked out this evening for the first time in, errr, a long time. I won’t even bother elaborating at this point due to past performance, but hopefully I’ll check back with you in four-to-six weeks when I’ve lost fifty pounds and have to go clothes shopping…
Statistical Funny
And lastly, my inner geekiness has been having a hoot with this site. Maybe it’s because I work with this kind of stuff all day, maybe it’s because there’s simply no arguing that the 3D pie chart is clearly the best way to explain What is lost when the radar is “Jammed”…
http://graphjam.com/
This was amusing – a guy waiting in line stands up to the jackass reporter sent out by a local tv station to basically make fun of all the geeks and dorks lined up to get the new iPhone. I’m actually kind of surprised that the live feed didn’t get cut-off when the guy first called him a jackass … perhaps somebody in the control room agreed and knew the reporter would continue to dig his hole deeper and deeper if given the chance?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/14/iphone-linewaiter-st.html
Just read a couple of good articles from Newsweek remembering George Carlin…
A God Who Cussed, by Kevin Smith
http://www.newsweek.com/id/142975
In the Words of George Carlin…, by Jessica Bloustein
http://www.newsweek.com/id/142969
Ladies, am I right in thinking that this would be creepy as all get-out??? I can hear the screams erupting from afar already…
Teen Finds Baby Bat in Her Bra
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2266900/Teenager-finds-baby-bat-in-her-bra.html
Also, some of the comments from the BoingBoing mention are pretty funny, too:
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/08/teen-discovers-bat-h.html
As Price of Fuel Soars, So Does a Drigible Renaissance?
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/05/as-fuel-prices-soar.html
Ever since my early days of Final Fantasy and The Rocketeer, I’ve thought that it would be the coolest thing to have a zeppelin or an airship of sorts – truly the ultimate mobile home!
Will it happen in my lifetime??? That would be one hefty thing to cross off my bucket list… 🙂
Krispy Kreme Bacon Cheddar Cheeseburgers
Why, God, why???
I had hoped to spend this evening writing up code for a website that I want to try to rebuild over the holiday weekend, or at least part of a website, but instead I spent pretty much the whole darned thing playing computer updates … and I’m still not done! My desktop PC is the one that really needs the most attention – figure I built it in the fall of 2004, if my memory serves me, and I’ve yet to reinstall Windows once. It’s gotten really bogged down and downright buggy, but we certainly don’t have the cash to replace it right now, so I spent this evening downloading driver updates and a BIOS update and all of that fun stuff. I’m even turning Automatic Updates back on for Windows … clearly I’m desperate here!!!
Although that attempt is probably a waste of time, I figure anything to speed things up at least for a couple of weeks. I found a nice, small (160 GB) hard drive on newegg for only $45, which I think would be a good investment because the hard drive in this one has gotten really loud! If I can just replace that and the fan for the CPU (should be cheap, too), and then put a fresh install of everything on the new drive, I think we should be able to limp by for a while longer. That, and I want to add another 1 GB of RAM because I learned while playing in the BIOS that it hasn’t been running on Dual Channel for the memory since I added a new 1 GB stick who knows when (I first started with 2x 512 MB modules). The memory probably won’t provide a huge performance increase, but I do like to have lots of different stuff open at once so who knows.
I still need to get the wi-fi working so that the laptop picks up a signal better than 30% twenty feet away, but that’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Happy ID4!!!
Just got the following e-mail from Netflix this evening…
It appears that the people still have a voice after all! This is fantastic news – I really didn’t want to switch over to Blockbuster and ultimately it’s just great to see the company step up and openly admit that they made a mistake and are willing to suck it up and do what’s right to fix it. As long as they stay true to that, Netflix will keep my business just as long as renting DVDs is still something that we do!
Now if only Disney would send out something stating that they changed their mind about Pleasure Island*…
* Although just for the record, I did notice something in a “Community Leaders” e-mail that I get from Disney occasionally – the verbiage was much better than what was conveyed by the press, citing “…extraordinary new shopping, dining, and other experiences, including a completely re-imagined Pleasure Island.” That said, I’d bet money at this point that a couple of the clubs – namely the Comedy Warehouse and the Adventurer’s Club – will still be a part of “the new Pleasure Island,” along with at least some kind of dance club for the adults. It might just be all wishful thinking on my part, but I’m picturing a transformation that will just make the walk from the Marketplace to the West Side less imposing for families while still offering something for the bigger kids. We’ll see…