Sunday
Today, we got to go see #1GF!’s cute-as-a-button niece who is just crossing the age where children are wary of me. She’s still in that “pick me up and hold me” age where #1GF! is more appealing than climbing on the jungle jon. Soon, she will cross into the age of of “chuck me around the room” where Jon will dominate. Enjoy it now, auntie. The End is neigh.

I then somehow developed a motherfucker of a migraine and spent 4 hours hiding from light and sound, recovering just enough to go to a cookout with some of my friends. Even though I’ve known them for at least 15 years, no one hit me in the nuts once. That shouldn’t have to be counted as a benefit for a cookout, should it?

Friday
We went kayaking with my parents and I accidentally swamped my kayak while goofing off. A dry hold is where you store all the stuff you want to stay dry when you swamp your kayak. The air pocket that it creates also stabilizes the kayak while you get back to normal. When you treat a regular hold like a dry hold, you will have to drag all your wet stuff to shore before you can even think about emptying it out.

Thursday
We went to the beach all day. While walking around…
#1GF!: “Jon!”
Jon: “Huh?”
#1GF!: “You look like you’re going to kick someone’s ass.”
Jon: “Me? [guy sidesteps me] I think it’s just the way my face is.”

It’s that time of year again when I do the batch buy of pants. In the old days, I’d walk into the Gap, point at Khaki and buy six pairs. Done. Now, every fucking store that sells khakis either eliminates or changes the name of the style as soon as I buy them, leaving me so confused that I eventually end up walking up to clerks pointing at my pants like a moron asking, “Do you have pants that look like these?”

But, I had to buy pants, and I had to start somewhere, so I started at the Gap. Within 10 feet of the entrance, I couldn’t see any khakis at all. While listening to the thump of the house music in a sea of pink shirts, I noticed a manequin across the store which was wearing the only pants that I could see. As I got closer, I realized that although the manequin was in the mens’ section, the legs looked like thin, little lady legs. And the pants looked like something a girl trying to be boyish would wear rather than a stock set of “these are comfortable and they match anything, so don’t worry about it” pants. I thought that I either entered the wrong store or that they must’ve dropped the P in GAP in favor of a Y.

Lost, and a good 15 minutes into my 20 minutes of annual shopping, I left the store confused.

I had the same luck in all the Gap clones like Eddie Bauer and some other ones, and there was one that I can distinctly say that I actually said “No way” out loud instead of going in because the store was dimly lit enough to be a romantic hideawy and was coated with black and white pictures of topless dudes pouting.

I thought that a tight pink top and form fitting pants might project the wrong image for me. I think what I’m going for is more “These clothes might not be stylin’, but they match and you can’t see my naughty bits” rather than “These clothes are velcro, and insert your naughty bits when I’m not paying attention.”

After wasting my annual 20 shoping minutes in this manner, I left the mall, pissed and irritated.

Sure that I was going to be forced to follow this new trend, I headed to the outlet mall so that at least my new effeminate look wouldn’t cost me full price. But, because I’m not the most knowledgable fashion shopper, what didn’t I think of? (The ladies know, don’t you, ladies?) Yea. When the new effeminate fashion overlords took over, where did they ship all the basic man clothes to sell off to the fashion unconscious? They were shipped to the outlet mall.

I think it took a mere 20 minutes and 200 dollars to buy another full wardrobe of Garanimal like man fashion that didn’t involve the color pink, the letter “y” or anything vaguely stylish. And to top it all off, I got a new pair of Vans.

I have to say it was the best shopping day that I ever had in my life because I had finally lucked the fuck out and will happily live style free for yet another year.

Friday
I was supposed to have the day off, and ended up working from home all day. At what point did work take highest rating spot in my life? When will what I enjoy get more time than that which I don’t?

Saturday
I was thinking that it was odd and slightly cool that a carload of girls was so into Star Wars that they yelled, “3P0!” out the window at the #1GF! and me. “Oh that’s nice” the #1GF! said sarcastically. Knowing that the #1GF! doesn’t like Star Wars, but doesn’t hate it enough to get offended by the mere mention of C3P0, I asked “Wait, what did they yell?”

“Eat Me Out. What did you think they said?”

Sunday
I went out on my porch to read the housing section and I somehow started talking to the woman downstairs. As a pretty anti-social guy, I found it pretty interesting that we talked for an hour. Even more amazing was that the #1GF! came out and we all talked for another 2. You have no idea how much people will tell me about their lives, and how little I will provide them about myself.

Monday
Jerry Springer presented me with this point to ponder: What will the woman do for a face when the dog calls to get his ass back? I guess only Jerry and the dog know for sure.

I’ve been trying to move this blog to WordPress for about 6 months now, but every time I sat down and thought about the work involved, I would stare off into space until it was time to go to bed.

Today, I bit the bullet, accepted the default template, and migrated the blog to the new system so that I could add categories and comments and other useless shit. It was supposed to have a famous 5 minute install, but I found that my careless side forced me into doing database edits and other things that a careful user would not be forced to do just to get this thing up and running. If you’re going to be careless, being an admin has its advantages.

Now, Mr. T. is on Hiatus, Beard shaving 101 and 102 are somewhere out there in cyberspace, and I have this plain, yet calming template staring at me.

Saturday
Went to the beach with the #1 GF’s sister and nieces on an oppressively hot day. I realized 2 things: 1.) Short of putting up an invisible child shocking fence, there is no way to keep a child from tracking enough sand on a beach blanket to render it useless, and 2.) Some parents will hand off their children to strangers as long as they have children themselves. It’s like free baby sitting. We were minding an extra kid named “Bella” for about 3 hours.

Sunday
I bought 7 CDs for $50 used online. I was mostly replacing stuff I had already owned. All I really wanted was “Walk Among Us” and a couple of old slayer albums that I used to have on tape, but they were just too much to buy used. The delivery is supposed to be 1-4 weeks, so we’ll see if they ever show up.

Jon Dyer, Master Curator
#1 GF: My sister is coming down and we’re all going to the beach.
Me: Ok.
#1 GF: We’ve got a lot of cleaning to do.
Me: But aren’t we all going to be at the beach?
#1 GF: They’ve never been here before.
Me: [Staring]
#1 GF: [Better staring]
Me: Fine. I’ll clean the toilet, but I’m not cleaning my desk. No way. Just cordon off that whole area with a velvet rope and we’ll say that the Nerdology exhibit is closed for restoration.

Worst
The first thing I saw today after leaving the house was a man standing in front of a large truck in business casual attire shielding his eyes from the hot morning sun. He seemed to be looking around frantically as if he were one of those guys in the movies that see a spaceship fly overhead. When I got closer, I heard him calling out “Helloooooo?” to a row of sleepy houses, and saw the puppy, it’s coat slick, lying in a pool of blood large enough to indicate that there probably wasn’t much left on the inside. I can’t really remember thinking anything about the dog, but I can remember feeling really, really badly for the guy. Killing someone’s puppy is just no way to start a hot summer day.

Pretty Bad
20 minutes later, while still on my way to work, I saw a red Lancer Evolution sitting in traffic going the other way. Like meeting another American in a foreign country, I got really excited about seeing another Evo on the road. Before I could stop myself, I waved at what appeared to be the angriest Asian man I had ever seen outside of a Jet Li movie. By the time my hand was up, I felt bad about it. This type of loss of motor control is one of the reasons that I will never be cool.

Pretty Good
While taking a walk down the beach in the early evening, we came across a kid standing outside his car. “You into hip hop?” he asked. The GF sort of sidestepped him and pointed to me. I was wearing one of my favorite metal t-shirts, and usually have veeeery little time for people that feel like talking to me, but for some reason I said, “Yea, sure. Why?”

The kid was selling a rap CD that he had made and was playing on his car stereo. I couldn’t really hear due to the bad speakers and almost polite volume level, but I didn’t really care. We spent a few minutes talking about where he was from, where he recorded the album, and who was on it.

Because he must get hassled by people about the lack of a “hood” in Plymouth in which to hone his rap skills, he made sure to tell me (a few times) that there was guy from Brooklyn on the CD and that it was sold in Newbury Comics. I guess this was supposed to bump up his street credibility in some way, but that’s the way musicians are. They never tell you that they grew up a big fucking nerd in a bumblefuck town south of Hanson. They usually just bury that bumpkin persona under a bunch of tattoos and a shitty apartment in Allston, becoming the image of cool that no kid raised in the city ever seems to be.

That’s most musicians. This kid was a little too polite for that, and even though he might use the words “gat” and “ho” on his CD, you could see that his mama takes no crap from him at all. The kid wanted $5 for the CD, but I didn’t really care about the cost. I fished out a wadded up five dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it to him. I wasn’t buying a rap CD. I was spending $5 on a little encouragement for what seemed like a nice kid.

While walking away, I opened the CD half expecting to find a CD-r or no CD at all, which probably would’ve given me a laugh, but found a real live CD in there. Go figure.

Best
On the return trip from of the walk, we came across 2 nerds down on the beach. I would guess that they were around 16 years old, meaning that they were past the age that they should’ve traded in the comic book t-shirts that they were wearing for either some sort of “goth black” or “punk plaid,” but they hadn’t. They were still living the comic book life well past the expiration date, which is rare, but no reason to put them in a “Best” section of a post.

No. These nerds were on the beach, in their comic book t-shirts, wielding wooden practice swords. And not only were they wielding them, but they were sword fighting. And they weren’t sword fighting in that 2 minute, goofing around, clack-clack, throw down the sticks and go get some cheese fries and stare at some girls sort of way. They were practically having a 2 person bad sword fighting convention down there. The complete lack of grace and purpose of motion conveyed to me that they learned everything that they needed to do a public sword fighting exhibition by watching Lord of the Rings and Star Wars multiple times in their basement rumpus room. And today was their big day. They were dueling with such focus that I really believe that they were figuring on being rushed by swarms of teenage women for their skill.

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that teenage chicks go for 3 things: Teenage dudes with bad moustaches and killer bongs, Teenage dudes with cool cars, and teenage dudes that make killer mix tapes. Nowhere in the previous sentence does it mention comic books, star wars, or public sword fighting displays. It’s just a fact.

And although I have little right to make fun of the socially retarded among us, I couldn’t help but watch them for a good 15 minutes, trying not to stare, laugh, or do anything that might jeopardize the demonstration. I was entranced. It was then that I noticed that everyone walking along the boardwalk was sharing smiles and looks of complete bewilderment with each other. Meat heads, hos, foreign guys, townies (all people who really wouldn’t say word one to each other) were sharing smiles over the these two kids.

At one point, some foreign guys actually looked at the nerds, looked at me, and said something like “Ga goulajiba!” as if I was from Karjakistan and understood what the fuck they were saying. It was one time that I wished I had a video camera and a direct wireless link to the web. OK, it wasn’t the one time, but it was the best way I could’ve ended the day.

Full Circle
While typing this post, lightning struck the local power station, killing the power before I had a chance to save it, making this post a lost digital blip that I would have to try to recapture and retype the next day.

Friday
Borrowed Katamari Damacy, a game with no killing and nearly no violence. I expected it to be a crappy kiddy game, but was pretty fun. You are this little tiny guy who has a ball that he rolls around. As the ball touches objects, they stick to the ball. As the ball gets bigger it is able to pick up bigger and bigger objects. You start so small that thumb tacks are up to your knees, while you might end a round big enough to pick up a building. It sounds stupid, but I was laughing like a little kid a lot of the time.

Saturday
I spent 1/2 the day waiting for the Mitsubishi dealer to do an oil change on my car, proving that “free” service isn’t really free. After leaving at 3:30 from a 1PM oil change, we went to the mall looking for nothing. I figured that picking up a pair of Vans would kill enough time until dinner, but once I got into the mall I completely lost the urge to purchase. I did go into Radio Shack to see if I could find the one piece that I needed for the laser communicator that I’ve been meaning to build. After making several trips to 3 other radio shacks, I started the conversation with the kid behind the counter with, “I’m going to ask you for a part that you’re not going to have…” which is how I should start all conversations with parts people from now on. Not only did the kid have the part, but he knew where it was AND was nerdy enough to be thoroughly interested in discussing what I was building. He was the proof to the GF that I am not the only nerd on Earth, and I am certainly not the biggest.

When leaving the mall, we came across a kid whose age could still be measured in months, who would jump, then scream, then jump again, then scream again. He was so excited about the jumping that neither I nor the GF could control our laughter. The father was walking behind laughing, too, which was so much better than having him turn a kid’s shear joy into a stressful situation.

Sunday
We packed up our chairs and walked to the beach, grabbing a bagel sandwich and a couple of iced coffees at the Dunky’s on the way. The beach seems to be shrinking, and at high tide the waves crash on the sea wall hard enough to shoot waves up 10 feet onto the pavement. The only spots left were coated with stones, surfers, and kids with elevated hormonal levels. I think there were at least 30 surfers in the water.

Once my skin was adequately irritated with me, we left to hit an overpriced open house, and then went to the bookstore to dump $70 on books. I think the GF’s books are all medical in nature, meant to keep her tear ducts thoroughly moist. Mine were the usual: conspiracy theory and books about loners. When we got home, some movies.

Monday
I Put together the T-shirt transfers for the new Swedish baby and her parents, put them in a shoe box with the tiny vans, and even got them mailed. I can spend hours just picking colors for the simplest of graphics work, so it was slow going. Hopefully, they’ll use some of the designs and send pictures back.

As I was driving home from the post office, I approached a pretty normal looking older guy sitting by himself on a on a bench. If I had the windows up as I approached, I never would’ve heard him yelling to the seagulls about not having any cigars and other unrelated matters.

Friday
I read Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson. It was neither good nor bad.

Saturday
I tried to build a crystal radio and failed oh so miserably.
I washed my car in the rain because it needed it so badly.
I walked for 4 hours looking at houses around town.
I ate a wrap that tasted good, but made my ear and jaw hurt.

Sunday
Slow roll to Hyannis and walked around.
I bought a bunch of dollar store crap and the Zeke’s Dirty Sanchez, which is 17 songs and 21 minutes of pure punk bliss.

Monday
3 hours and 8 miles of walking
Attended an open house and answered more questions about my car than I had about the house
Saw a for sale by owner on a house, and stopped to ask the guy how much it was. He quoted me a range of $540,000 to $3 million. When pressed if he had any idea of a range that he might set, he said that “he had to be reasonable” but I could have it tomorrow for a cool million. I told him that he should sell it to me in the next 2 weeks for $25,000 before it accidentally burns the fuck down. Ok I didn’t say that, but he was a fucking prick. All I can hope for is that he waits too long and the market tanks on him…which doesn’t look like an impossibility these days.

I may not have any kids or any blood nieces and nephews, but I’ll be damned if little Hailey Cormier grows up wearing those weird European sneakers that American kids with bad haircuts wear. Not her. No way. From birth until she’s 3 months, she be rocking the Vans like her daddy and adopted American uncle. Unlike, said uncle, she’ll be cool long before she can say even say the word.

Now, if I could only take the time to finish her tiny Black Sabbath t-shirt…

Today, I took a three hour walk in the rain before the GF had to run off and babysit. During the walk, a guy popped up out of the marsh with a pony tail and a trash bag and said “Do you want to help us clean up the marsh?”

My thoughts on the subject were as follows: 1. Get Fucked. 2. Does it come with a blowjob, pony tail boy? 3. How ’bout I just give you $5 and you work over time.

These responses were buried with a smile and a nice, “Not today, thanks!” as we walked off in the rain.

That led me to say something to the GF like, see this is what I mean. I see the value of community, but it’s not what I’m all about. I want people to like me, of course, but I want them to just get the fuck away from me. I’m relatively misanthropic, yet I feel the need to provide people with something to make their lives easier. I’d like to help, but I don’t want to hang out with people I don’t know, knee-deep in shit cleaning out a marsh, I don’t give a fuck about whipporwills, and if you stand within 3 feet of me, I’m going on the defensive. I’d rather be the guy who figures out a way to hook you up with free, legal internet access, or builds a community radio station. I like being that guy sitting in the DJ booth. You smile and wave, I smile and wave, and a big sheet of sound proof glass keeps us apart. That’s the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh.”

A very social and sensitive type, she said, “I really don’t think I understand you at all.”

All I could reply with was, “Opposites attract, baby. Opposites attract.”

Bad: Yak Shaving
Yak Shaving: Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you’re working on.

For example: You need patch your server. One of the patch’s requirements is that you upgrade to a new version of some application. The application upgrade requires that you upgrade your video card, which requires that you go to the store. The trip to the store requires that you get gas, and that requires finding your wallet. Finding your wallet means that you have to clean your apartment, which requires that you fix the belt on the vacuum, which requires finding that tiny screwdriver set…

I have been doing this at work for 3 days with limited time and even more limited success.

Good: New Baby
Today, somewhere in or around Eskistuna, Sweden, Jay and his beautiful Swedish wife, Jenny just had a baby girl today. I am slated with the task of buying the baby tiny, little Vans, and making her tiny, little, pink Slayer T-shirts.

Points to ponder: 1.) American maternity leave is 13 weeks. Swedish maternity leave is 96. 2.) They say that children are payback for all the stupid things you’ve done. 3.) The mother walked 4 miles a day throughout the pregnancy. 4.) The baby is yet unnamed, meaning that there still is a chance for the names Mercedes, Porsche, Jasmine, Skyler, Tyler, and Jonathena.

Every day, on the way home from work I pass an auction house. On Mondays, there is a 67% chance that I will have to either slam on the brakes or swerve around the brain-dead morons who prefer to spend a larger portion of what little attention they have on the items on the lawn of the auction house than on the traffic on the road. Usually, I get slightly irritated and decently exhilarated testing the limits of my cars braking and handling abilities.

Today, I was completely sucked in with the rest of them. While passing the auction house at a healthy 35, out of the corner of my eye, I swear that I saw a dismantled pinball machine lying in the grass. Visualize, if you will, one of those movies where a woman loses her husband and she thinks she hears his ghost in the house. You know, the ones where she gets all hopeful and confused at the same time and says something like, “Jimmy? Jimmy, is that you?” Now imagine me with that same tone and expression, and actually saying aloud, “Gor-Gar? Gor-Gar?”

At a time when I wore work boots full time and my hair in what is now affectionately known as a mullet, one of my friends had, in his basement, a pinball machine. As one of the coolest things that a kid could possibly have in his house, it occupied a serious amount of time for us in that pre-18, pre-car period where getting some junk food and playing pinball was the norm. If one of your friends has his own pinball machine, that’s pretty cool in itself, but this one was beyond cool. This pinball machine was GorGar. Not only did it have scantily clad amazons and skulls all over it, but GorGar was a giant Devil, which really fit in nicely with the whole Led zeppelin / Judas Priest /work boots / mullet theme of my youth. Oh, and to make him cooler? He talked. Fucking talked! Back in those days, this was huge. His devil voice would announce “GORGAR! BEAT! ME!” at the start of every game. Fuck Pong. Fuck Hockey. Fuck Squash, tennis, NoFriendo, and you too, Sega. GorGar was the new sheriff in town, and that sheriff not only inherently liked to listen to Judas Priest, but he talked to us on our level.

And all those good memories with Gor-Gar that were once locked away in some corner of my brain came flooding back in a two second period, completely disrupting my ability to drive, leaving me in good company with the other morons on the road.

As I drove away, I began to think that there was no way that it could’ve been GorGar on the basis of several irrational points: 1.) Because I had only seen one GorGar machine, there must’ve been only one GorGar machine ever produced in Massachusetts and quite possibly the United States, and 2.) Because Gorgar obviously had Satanic power, there was no way GorGar could break, AND 3.) There is no way that someone would sell GorGar in perfect working condition in an auction. Perfectly logical. I was in a full on coma for the rest of the ride home, dreaming of triumphantly out-bidding everyone for GorGar, setting it up in my apartment, and tracking down all my old friends and tricking them into coming over with something inanely grown-up for some GorGar and Judas Priest.

Thanks for the memories Gor-Gar. Hopefully, you have better friends than me. I don’t write. I don’t call. I don’t put on a copy of Judas Priest: Live and live after midnight with you anymore. I barely even remembered that you existed.

Feel the Power that is GorGar

I think the whole black smoke white smoke thing is pretty cool, but I really wish for the sake of ratings that papal elections had followed a more “Survivor” style voting system, where each cardinal was voted out of conclave one at a time until there was only one cardinal left: The Papal Survivor.

I can picture the cardinals approaching the camera and nervously looking around before holding up the piece of paper showing who they were voting out and saying their piece. Just like Survivor, you know the voting would get nasty toward the end…

“I’m voting off Bennito. Three words: Pope Michael Jackson.”

“Ingatius should be gone. He makes peanut butter sandwiches with the freakin’ BODY OF CHRIST when the kitchen runs out of Ritzes. I’m not even Catholic and I know that’s wrong. Oh Fuck. I mean Oh Fuck, my son. Oh, Double Fuck. Nevermind, I’ll just let myself out.”

“I voted off Giovani. I’m not directly saying that he is swiping alter boys from the storage pantry, but his robe is pretty friggin’ billowy…”

“Buh Bye, Claudio. I mean I’m a cardinal that likes to party, but Claudio lost our last team challenge because he hits the incense way too hard. Plus, he’s always talking about turning the Vatican into ‘the world’s most giant bong’ which makes me pretty goddamned nervous.”

“I admit that after 2000 years we should be able to look back on all this and laugh, but I’m skeptical that the Christian world is ready to accept a Pope Pontius.”

“Gregory should be voted off. I know for a fact that he doesn’t fit the suit.”

“I voted off Godfried. I mean the guy has no idea that we are one of the richest corporations in the world, and WE call the shots. Plus, he still believes in god, which is just plain sill…whoops. Time to poison the camera man.”

Oral
Today, I got my teeth cleaned, and it took over an hour because I had a really nice talk with a 48 year old hygenist who had her husband leave her after being married through 25 years and 2 kids.

I didn’t know this hygenist before today, she seemed completely stable, and you really have no idea how many people open up to me with their life stories for no reason whatsoever.

I also found out that I grind my teeth enough to have worn them down to nubs, and how Sensodyne works.

Manual
Him: Hey, so how’d the tests go?
Her: Everything looks perfect.
Him: Did your mom go with you?
Her: Yea she’s right here.
Him: So, if someday we weren’t able to have kids, I’d have to go get m’ boys tested, then.
Her: We don’t need to worry about that, right now.
Him: Well, do you think your Mom will come along if I have to go in for testing?
Her: [muffled talking] She says she’ll hold your hand.
Him: [Silence]
Her: [Silence]
Him: I hope she means either before or after.
Her: She really has no idea what she just said.

Today is my birthday. If you want to make me feel cool, wish me well via e-mail (link on left). Cool points are doubled if send one and have never actually met me, and tripled for female nudist exhibitionists living outside of North America.

Cool Points have no cash value and canot be redeemed for cash and/or prizes, hitherto, wheretofor, subgum omnibus.

Someone came up to my desk today and asked

Do you ever write anymore?

And I knew exactly what he meant. I don’t. I crank out these retarded little movie reviews that are as boring to read as they are to write, but make me feel like I’ve written something. I haven’t, and I’m wasting both your and my time. And I think I may know why.

Last week, even though Friday was a holiday, I still managed to put in 45 hours, and it’s getting to be the norm. I know other people do that sort of time standing on their heads, but I don’t. I’ve worked nearly every weekend, never eat lunch, and rarely get out of work on time. By the time I get home, I really don’t give enough of a shit about anything to move my ass out from in front of the idiot box, nevermind getting my mind clear enough to sit down and pour something coherent out.

I suppose if all of our jobs were these wondrous hours where we dedicated ourselves to projects that bring out the best in us and the world, rather than just whoring ourselves, selling the only commodity that giant corporations haven’t figured out how to undersell us on (our labor), then when we got home, we wouldn’t even need to spend time unwinding, or shutting down our brains. We could scrutinize our time, and not be faced with the reality that for a good portion of our time, we’re completely wasting our lives (You can accuse me of being overly dramatic on this if you can think back to the last meeting that you were in, and tell me that you couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend your time.) And even when I look at a maximum lifetime of 100 years, it just doesn’t seem like enough time to figure things out, nevermind get anything done.

And this week, this has been bothering me. It’s not just the job. It’s everything: The TV and the radio always seem to be on, derailing any ability that I have to sit and think clearly. I’m not sure if I’m living the life that I want to lead, and I don’t know if the life that I want to lead is made up of my own desires or desires manufactured from a well-targeted marketing scheme. And I really have this nagging feeling that I will never be president.

Today, as if timing were everything, a friend asked me if I could’ve be doing anything at that moment, what would it have been? Because I had just completely wasted 2 hours in a meeting trying to listen to a very knowledeable security expert speak while an audience member consistently derailed his presentation by trying to make themselves the focus of the meeting, and I had messages from two local, and two global sites that needed my help to get them back on track, all while trying to keep my own corporate-wide initiatives moving along, I went just the slightest bit

blank.

I imagine that the purpose of the question was to unconsciously unleash the direction of my true calling in life, but all it did was provide me with an image of myself laying on my back, on the floor in my apartment, simply listening to myself breathe.

And if that is the best dream that I can muster, then something is wrong. Laying on my back should be some sort of recovery from climbing Everest, not the Everest itself.

Today, I returned to the gym after two months away. Returning to the gym after a long stint of inactivity is always dificult for me, mostly because I have to wait for several women to finish their workouts to get at the weights that I need to complete mine.

In a matter of weeks, I will surely graduate into much more macho purple dumbbells.

Bad Brains I
Last night I dreamed that my forearm was achy so I slid all the meat off only to find that part of my bone was made of rock candy. It seemed to be rotting, so I broke it off and slid the meat back on to the good portion of the bone. I think I was in a bowling alley.

The only thing that seemed to concern me about the situation was that the meat on my arm was no longer very even and I wasn’t sure if I should stitch it up or just leave it as it was.

Jon.Virus.b
After being told of increased IRC traffic on our network, I set out to try to figure out what was wrong. I tracked the issue to a file called SecureAntiVirus.exe that held port 6667 open on the infected machines. As McAfee had no pattern file to detect the virus available, I submitted the file to them for review.

Normally, if McAfee knows about the virus but hasn’t included it in a pattern file, they return a previously created pattern file within 5 minutes. For the file that I sent, it took them about 45 minutes, making me think that I might have been the first person to submit the file to them. I’m not saying that I’m the first person in the world to discover this infection, but it seems likely that I was the first to submit it to McAfee. This may or may not be true, but this virus description page didn’t exist before my submission. Because it’s only the second unknown virus that I’ve “discovered,” I’m taking it.

It’s boring, but who cares: W32/Spybot.worm.gen.f

Bad Brains II
Even though my job has kept me very busy over the last week, throwing problems at me that were taking days of research to resolve, I find myself overly tired, but not disgruntled. After dealing with two particularly trying issues simultaneously, I found myself deep in thought. In a brief, but very serious moment, I thought,

“This would all work out faster if I just had two brains.”

When you view yourself as needing a processor upgrade, you might need a little time away from the computer.

Shoes…
After going to dinner and being seated by an attractively compact, Sarah Jessica Parker-esque hostess that looked more like she belonged more in NY than the small town that we were in, I felt the need to mention her to my GF. I could only describe her as “interesting, but a woman who probably really likes boots.”

Then, thinking that I was conveying my image of the woman as some leather-bound, sex-starved, cat woman in boots, I had to make sure she understood my interpretation by sputteringly adding, “You know, like $400 shoes. High maintenance. Hidden Costs.”

She understood my original assessment without the explanation.

And Boots
Ladies, when you look in the mirror admiring those special black pants that come to mid-calf and only hint at your partially hidden, tall, black boots, you may think “De-licious.”

But, when you walk by a table full of geeks, your unnerving resemblance to Captain Kirk will completely overshadow any sexiness that you may have tried for.