If you can hear the Super Mario theme and feel like you’re home, then two things are true: you’re old and you’re a geek. Yesterday, while watching Attack of the Show, I saw a video of a radio controlled car playing the Super Mario Brothers Theme and thought it was awesome enough to add to my list of 44 Ways to Enjoy the Super Mario Theme.

After watching it a few times, I’m not so sure that I should’ve included it. The tones of the bottles during the test runs at the beginning of the video really don’t match with the tones when the theme is playing, making it seem like it might be a hoax.

What do you think? Is this a fake?

May will be the twelfth edition of FineTune Friday, and while I think it has been a fun ride, I’m sorry to say that this will be the last edition of Finetune Friday. The theme is completely open ended, allowing you to finally showcase that clever playlist idea that you’ve been kicking around for a while. I’m sort of psyched to hear what you come up with, as long as you aren’t including Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. Doodlooo dooooo. Doodloot doot dooooo… Gah crap.

Information on how to join in on the fun can be found on my FineTune Friday Page. If you haven’t joined in yet, this is your last chance.

Recently, I made a special trip up to Evergreen Cemetery in Leominster, Massachusetts to see the grave of Joseph Palmer, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a member of the short-lived Utopian community “the Fruitlands”. I’m not much of a history buff, so why would I drive halfway across the state to seek out the grave of a man who died a century before I was born? It was too interesting of a story not to investigate.

The “Crime”

He was described as a kind and tolerant man, but life was not easy for Joseph Palmer after he moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1830. People would openly insult him, throw rocks at him, regularly break the windows of his home, and even cross the street so as not to be near him when he passed by. Even though he was deeply religious man who regularly attended church services, Palmer was publicly denounced during sermons by his pastor, Rev. George Trask, and even refused communion.

What awful thing had this small town butcher done to warrant such persecution? Joseph Palmer’s crime was that he was the only citizen in Fitchburg, Massachusetts who chose to wear a full beard, which (contrary to my vision of the 1800’s being a beard grower’s paradise) had been out of fashion in the United States since the time of the Pilgrims.

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 308): Wasted the Day With My Lady Friend

We wasted the morning watching TV, including a documentary about girls who were in the play, Annie. you would expect that if someone went through the trouble of making a documentary about Annie, it would be interesting and full of strange stories. It wasn’t. The only thing I learned was that a lot of famous people have been in the play and a lot of non-famous people can’t let go of it.

Somewhere in the mid afternoon, we went over to check on the house. Fifteen minutes later, we were safely back at home doing nothing again. I made chicken, broccoli and ziti alfredo for #1GF! and we watched My Best Friend, which made me feel like I was running out of friends. I’m not sure if that’s normal for someone my age.

Monday (Day 309): Picked Cabinets

After #1GF! left for work, I watched TV for an hour until an ex co-worker called. She has two kids and became a stay at home Mom, while I have zero kids and became a stay at home blogger. My life is filled with finding things to occupy my time, and hers is wishing she had a spare moment that wasn’t filled. It was an interesting conversation.

The World’s Hardest Game: All you have to do is move the red square from one green zone to another while picking up yellow dots and avoiding blue dots.

While I can’t say that this is truly the world’s hardest game, I will say that it’s certainly a lot harder than it looks.

Enjoy!

You want more traffic? Of course you do! If you’re ready to learn the top five mind-blowing secrets that will help you to generate more traffic and achieve your dreams, then read on.

1. Pick a subject that people are drawn to but have no expertise in like “How To Score a Porn Star Girlfriend In 5 minutes” or “5 Ways To Rake In Easy Money On The Web”. Who’s going to dispute you? Tommy Lee? Darren Rowse? Fuck no. Those guys are too busy banging porn stars and stuffing mattresses full of money to find the time to debunk your claims. And the average person wouldn’t be reading your list if they had any idea if you were right or wrong, so picking that obscure but interesting subject will allow you to kick back and snort a line of that ever increasing pile of stats that are at the heart of your very existence.

2. Make sure that your points are very general. Research and testing are for scientists and nerds. Do you have a lab coat or a twelve sided die there, Bilbo? Hell no. Being ambiguous will make it seem like you know what you’re talking about, while letting you spend less time writing, and more time compulsively checking your stats. The trick is to make statements that seem like good advice, but are really nothing more than logical generalities like “write good content” and “don’t forget to breathe”.

Valient Thorr will be postponing all activities April 15th through June 10th because the lead singer is donating a kidney to his ailing father. They are going public with what would normally be a private family matter to help give some publicity to The National Kidney Foundation’s media outreach program.

“If I can go from a hospital bed to playing in front of a crowd of 75,000 at the UK’s Download Festival in just eight weeks, people out there might consider becoming organ donors as well. If they have family members who need a kidney, it’s definitely something to think about; and if not, they can still learn about designating themselves as organ donors on their driver’s license.”
-Valient Himself

I’ve been a fan of Valient Thorr’s driving rock and badass beards for a while now, but as someone who asks for donations to the PKD Foundation in lieu of gifts every year, this news makes Valient Thorr rock a whole lot more.

Read the full press release or get your face rocked off at Valient Thorr’s Myspace Page.

And if you’re feeling charitable, consider making a donation to National Kidney Foundation or The PKD Foundation.

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 301): Nothing To See Here

After I cooked breakfast, I started looking up info on green technologies while #1GF! cleaned the house. I didn’t even realize she was cleaning until the vacuum was on, and by then it was too late to help out. We had nothing pressing to do, so we eventually went out to a furniture store to browse. We ended the day by hitting a local restaurant for dinner and watching a really crappy sci-fi movie called Sunshine.

Monday (Day 302): Taxes and Fish Cakes

Attempted to watch The Simpson’s Movie first thing in the morning, but found that the disc was cracked and had to order another copy. Once #1GF! got out the door, I assembled the taxes. Because I was pretty sure that there wasn’t a local place that did photocopying, I decided to scan and print all the documents myself. Scanners are not a fast way to photocopy, so it took me a half hour just to get #1GF!’s taxes printed. Just as the last page came out, I ran out of ink and staples, so I ended up having to make the drive up to a local office supply store anyway.

Once I got home, I finished scanning and printing my own taxes, and then used Eraser to wipe the files from my drive with 35 passes of random data. Call me paranoid, but I didn’t even like the idea of having the scans temporarily on my drive. You can take the man out of data security job, but you can’t take data security job out of the man. When I was done, I went to the post office and physically handed the envelopes to a postal worker. At least I think it was a postal worker.

I went over to the house to check on the progress, and by then it was 3:30, so there was no way that I was going to fight the traffic to get to the market considering #1GF! wasn’t coming home for dinner. Once I saw the progress, I headed home and wrote the Life of Riley. I made some fish cakes at 8PM so #1GF! wouldn’t come home and think that I was incapable of fending for myself.

Tuesday (Day 303): April Fool’s, Bitches

I nailed everybody with my So Long And Thanks For All The Fish Post. I thought it was pretty funny that people who know me fell for it hardest, while only the ladies from Chi-town firmly refused to buy into the lie. Every time I started feeling bad and thinking about adding a comment that would expose the post as a hoax, another person got sucked in.

I actually went so far as to make sure that I published #1GF!’s prank of karmic justice after midnight so that anyone getting the RSS feed would have an equal opportunity to fall for the prank. I was really psyched that I was able to pull one over on my readers, and even more psyched at all the people who came out of the woodwork to in opposition to my resignation. That was pretty cool for me. Thanks, folks.

Here’s a quick summary of the top 10 posts from dyers.org in March 2008. Did you have a favorite?

1. Every Movie Available From Netflix On Demand
   This was a runaway favorite, because I don’t think there’s any other way out there to get an easy to read list of Netflix’s On-demand offerings.
2. Got Cowbell Fever? Here’s The 180+ Track Cure
   I have a cowbell addiction. So what? It’s a very common ailment in my family. This was a labor of love to compile this FineTune playlist, so if you have the fever, tune in for your prescription.
3. Better Blogroll Widget For Wordpress
   This plugin is easily the most popular one that I’ve written, and this update added more flexibility to which categories are displayed or hidden.
4. The Quest For Every Beard Type
   Beards are always popular around here (with me, anyway), and my quest to complete every beard type has been going on for years. Here are 19 of 33 types that I’ve completed and photographed because there’s probably something wrong with me.
5. Good Netflix Watch Now Additions For March 5
   Every few weeks I compile a list of good additions to the Netflix Watch Instantly service. I don’t know why this particular one was so popular, but maybe I can thank Kevin Smith.
6. What Would You Do If You Didn’t Have To Work?
   Everyone came up with some good ideas on what they’d do if they didn’t have to work, and I really need to compile the list to see if we can get some of you to your goals. If you didn’t throw in your two cents, there’s still time.
7. Please Don’t Try To Hump The Virtual Assistant A friend of mine works in speech recognition, and he sometimes sends me robots to mess with. And mess with them I do.
8. LOLWars and LOLTrek
   I was looking at some LOLCats, and really wished that there were LOLCreatures themed around Star Wars, so I made one. Then I got carried away and added one for Star Trek. Luckily #1GF! came home and stopped me from going any further.
9. Life of Riley Week 42 I have no idea why this particular Life of Riley post was so popular, other than the fact that it was the week that #1GF! forbid me from getting a job. The comment has since been retracted and even denied by said #1GF!. I smell a conspiracy.
10. FineTune Friday: Science Fiction Edition All the geeks rallied and squeezed this post into the top 10 this month. And why shouldn’t they? Who wouldn’t want to listen to a bunch of free science fiction based playlists? Probably the Jocks.

Breaker one nine, this is Baron Badass Von Kickass and I’m southbound with freightshaker full of trucker tracks. If smokey is riding your back door today, get in this convoy and let the King of the Road edition of Finetune Friday help keep your hammer down until you reach the weekend. 10-4?

Quiz

Think you know the lingo of the road? Why not take a quick quiz and put your green stamps where your mouth is? Answers can be found at the end of the post.

1. What is considered the truckers’ CB channel?
2. If someone is stuck in the chicken coop, where are they?
3. If you hear that there’s a smokey in a plain brown wrapper on your back door, what should you do?
4. If there’s a 10-33 ahead of your 20, what’s going on?
5. If you’re deadheading from BeanTown to Hog Town, how high are you, dude?

It looks like Netflix has added around 130 movies to the Watch Instantly service in the last couple of weeks, putting the total number of titles at around 3800 movies. I’ve listed 9 that stand out, and the other 129 additions and 19 deletions are listed below.

I’m not going to pretend to understand why Mannequin or Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey were added, but there is certainly something for everyone in this batch. There are exercise videos, bad 80’s movies, Anime, horror classics, and more Wiggles videos than any child should be allowed to watch.

I pulled out some below that I thought might be worth a watch. If you only have time for one of these, check out Weeds. It’s a well-written TV series about a suburban mom who deals drugs to support her family after her husband dies. #1GF! and I watched the first two seasons a few months back and really, really liked them. It’s not half as gritty as I had expected, but I can’t recommend it enough.

Recommended Netflix Watch Now New Additions (9)

Breaker one nine, breaker one nine, this is the Snowman comin’ atcha. This month’s theme, King of the Road, will be rolling into your back door on Friday, April 4.

Grab your free FineTune account and create a 45 song playlist around the songs of the open road, and we’ll release them on April 4 in a rolling roadblock of road music. If you can have your list prepped and ready by noon on April 3, that would sure help me when I’m checking your log books and getting the stats in order.

More information on how to join this convoy can be found in the April theme announcement or on the FineTune Friday page.

The Snowman is back quiet.

I have to admit that I was feeling pretty good that so many people got sucked in by yesterday’s farewell prank, but take comfort that there is justice in the world.

When I was young, I put a rubber band around the spray attachment on my parents’ kitchen sink and got a good laugh when my unsuspecting father ruined a good tie when he turned on the water. In the 20 years since then, I’ve pulled that trick out every few years on April Fools’.

This year, #1GF! busted out my trick, so when I emerged from the computer cave at lunch time and turned on the water, a stream of water shot past me and soaked the other side of the kitchen. Rather than take the rubber band off, I left it in place in hopes that #1GF! would forget about it and inadvertently soak herself with her own prank when she got home.

When #1GF! got home, I had forgotten that I was trying to prank the prankster, and I absent- mindedly turned on the water while standing in front of the sink. Not only did my double cross fail in epic proportions, but #1GF! got the bonus of seeing her prank in action.

You can thank her for serving me a cold plate of justice.

A lot of you might not want to hear this, but I’ve finally given up. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to extract enough money from the web, and I find it draining to constantly have to think of things to work on. It has taken almost a year, but I finally want someone else to tell me what to work on for a change. I’m tired of having to work on things all day that are interesting but not profitable. I want to have a slow day, and drink coffee while avoiding the boss. I want to take long lunches and shake hands with people who can advance my career.

Call me a sell out if you want, but I accepted an offer for a mid-level management job at a local institutional investment company.

No more hobo life. No more rebellion. No more avoiding people in nice suits just because they seem as if they’re dead from the neck up. I’m older and I know the rules of the game. You dress nice, you play nice, you get ahead. You work hard, you get more hard work. That’s just the way it is. If kissing ass and wearing a tie is going to get me a better title and a little more money, that’s what’s going to happen.

Unfortunately, this means that this is pretty much the end of the road for this blog. It was a difficult decision, but I have to call it quits because this blogging thing has the potential to come back to bite me in the ass when I least expect it.

Thanks for reading along for the last six years and I wish you all the best of luck.

-Jon

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 294): Easter

We toted two quiches, an apple cake, and two pans of French toast over to my parents’ house for Easter. I set up my mom’s new phone because she refuses to read directions. I didn’t read the directions either. My Dad and I started taking turns at shooting a ping pong ball out of the air with an Airzooka in some sort of impromptu skeet shooting match. We talked about my learning experience on the web and how it doesn’t seem to amount to much of a living. My parents asked when I was shaving my beard off, so it must look a little nuts.

We got home around 4PM and I noticed that my beard cast a distinct shadow, which made me feel pretty good. Later, #1GF! prepared a plate of Anginetti cream puffs that her mother had given us the ingredients for. I don’t know how many people she thought were coming over, but she made a plate up as if there were a legion of them. I ended up scarfing down about a dozen of them while we watched a crappy Vigo Mortensen movie.

You know that I have a fondness for cover songs (see my FineTune Friday Covers Playlist and you know I have much love for heavy metal, but while reading Mixx the other day, I came across one of the most aptly named bands that I have found in a long time.

The band is called Tragedy, and they do all-metal covers of Bee Gees songs. I’m sitting here laughing and shaking my head at the sheer amount of wrong that is packed into this band’s very existence, yet I listened to nearly every song on their myspace page.

Just so you can feel the evil, here’s a sample of their work. It’s just. So. Wrong. If this is the kind of thing that you can’t get enough of, the band is hosting their CD release party at Bill’s Bar in Boston tonight.

Tragedy: A Metal Tribute To The Bee Gees

It’s getting up on spring folks, and you know what that means: my five month old beard is getting closer and closer to it’s annual shearing. While contemplating what fate holds for my poor beard this year, I decided to see just how many of the beard types that I could personally check off from my Chart of Facial Hair Types.

I really thought that I had nothing left but a Mr. T style beard / Mohawk combo, so I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to find that I still have a ways to go before I will be wandering the streets pitying fools.

If you want to check out all nineteen (out of thirty-four) of my recorded facial hair types, head on over to my newly dedicated Beard Type Quest Page.

Then, come back and let me know if you have a favorite from years past or if there’s a beard type that you’d like to see added this year.

UNGH.

“Let him who hath understanding
reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number is six hundred and sixty six.”
-Revelations 13:18

I always had a suspicion that my site logo may be working it’s black magic on my site stats behind the scenes, but could never prove it. He’s always sitting up there looking all like “IM UP IN YOUR BROWZR CURSN UR PAYJZ, BICHZ”. Now, I finally have the proof that the evil bastard is all up in my browser cursing my pages. Look at this little gem that I came across when looking through my stats this morning:

Can someone call Jebus for me? Or at least loan me a pair of boots of escapening with a +2d6 against evil logos?

I wrote The Better Blogroll WordPress Widget to give Wordpress users a lot more control over the way that Wordpress handles and displays their blogrolls.

Version 2.7 was written in response to a couple of user requests. Ed Brady requested that links with multiple categories only be displayed once, and Ness asked that the plugin be modified so that she could display links from every category but one.

This version contains those changes, and I also threw in the ability to be super picky about which link categories get displayed on your blogroll. You can now display links from all categories, specify a subset of categories, or even go in the other direction and show all categories except the ones that you specify.

If you want more information about Better Blogroll or have your own development suggestions, head on over to my Better Blogroll Widget for Wordpress Page.

Give it a try and get more bang from your blogroll.

This is week 42 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 287): The Lincolnic Leprechaun

I went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade with #1GF!’s family because it’s something of a tradition for them. I don’t really go for parades, but I didn’t have anything to do, so I tagged along. We wound down blocked off streets behind the parade route by ignoring barriers and giving policemen quizzical points down the streets that we weren’t supposed to be driving on. Oddly enough, they let us through each time with a wave.

The big draw for the kids of this particular 30 minute, small town parade is that they throw a lot of candy off the floats. Because I had never been, I had no idea that each of the kids would be leaving with full gallon freezer bags. This wasn’t including #1GF!’s brother’s take.

One of the people throwing candy had #1GF!’s brother hold a candy bucket while he untangled some strings of beads, and then forgot to take the bucket back when he ran off to rejoin his float. #1GF!’s brother started hucking candy up in the air like he was part of the parade and I think he still had a half bucket left once the ground was saturated.

Most of the time, I stood back with #1GF! while she watched from the curb, but there were a few occasions where I would walk up and drop pieces of candy into the kids’ bags. At one point, this little kid named Michael (I know his name because his father was chasing him yelling his name as he chased the candy throwing floats down the street) He was under 8 and had the strings of his hood tied so tightly that his face barely poked out of the the drawn hole. Well, he was all over the place, and I eventually backed over him while he knelt behind me picking up candy at my feet. Once I picked the kid up, he scurried off to where his father was with an “I’m OK! I’m OK!”

After that, I stayed mostly out of the way, with the exception of diving fully extended on the ground to wrestle a piece of candy from #1GF!’s sister. That only happened once, but everyone seemed to get a good WTF? laugh out of it. Maybe it looked a little nuts, but it cannot be said that I will avoid physical humor to make people laugh.

Afterward, we got some coffee and wandered around Home Depot looking at tile and faucets. At some point, #1GF! asked me when my beard was coming off, and I told her that her niece told me that my beard made me look like “Abraham Lincoln or a leprechaun”, so I didn’t know if I should. Even though we were in good spirits, the decisions eventually wore out, so we went home where I made #1GF! fettuccine alfredo and broccoli.

The results of the Smokin’ Poll are in:

If you could have a super power:

• Space / Time Control: 53%
• Mind Control: 19%
• Ability to fly: 15%
• Invisibility: 15%
• Self Healing: 10%
• Super strength: 3%

By a huge majority, the most popular super power is the abilty to reverse the flow of time. Mind control was the second choice, which is understandable, but I have a hard time believing that you all would be beaming “put down the gun” more often than “take off them pants”.

The ability to fly and invisibility tied for third place, meaning that never getting your junk jostled by the TSA again is on equal footing with an all-access pass to any locker room or bank vault in the world. Maybe I can understand that.

Where I think the results get a little odd is near the bottom. The combined total number of people who wanted self-healing and super strength didn’t match the next level up. Is no one interested in throwing cars or lifting trains with one hand any more? Has brute force fallen from grace as an admirable trait?

More importantly, is the ability to live a corrected, but perfect life through time control more attractive than accumulating and endless list of mistakes that would accompany the immortality of Self-healing?

How did you vote and why?

If you’ve ever heard Peter Frampton sing “Doooo You Feeeeel Liiiike I Doooo” in that robotic guitar voice, then you know what a talkbox sounds like. The effect has been around for over 40 years now, and has made it’s way into tracks from Classic Rock to Funk.

Because DigitalDarryl knows that I can’t resist compiling odd musical lists (like cowbell or actors turned singers), he has asked me on a number of occasions to compile a list of talkbox songs for him. Well, I’ve finally put together my 20th FineTune playlist, “The Talkbox Will Never Die”, so that D and all the talkbox fans out there can get their fill of talkbox madness by simply clicking the green button below.

I’ve included the full track listing below, but even at 60+ songs, this playlist feels a little light to me. If you can think of any talkbox songs that aren’t included, be sure to drop them in the comments.

Enjoy!

Canyon Defense: Earn money by destroying enemies, and spend it on defenses to destroy more. Advanced defenses are unlocked as you progress, but they never seem to be enough. If you let ten enemies get by you, the game ends.

Tower defense games have never held my interest, so I wasn’t expecting to like this one, but Canyon Defense has been very addictive for me. Not only is it more intuitive than than most tower defense games, but it’s the first that I’ve found that appeals to people who were into Starcraft rather than Warcraft.

My best score is somewhere in the 116,000 range and I’ve never unlocked more than four levels of defenses.

Enjoy!

It looks like Netflix has added around 200 movies to the Watch Instantly service in the last couple of weeks, putting the total number of titles at around 3700 movies. I’ve listed 17 that stand out, and the other 190 additions and 28 deletions are listed below.

Did I miss any of your favorites?

Recommended Netflix Watch Now New Additions (17)

When a new visitor shows up to your site, they will make a decision on whether you have something to offer them within ten seconds. If you don’t have something interesting for them to read once they’re finished with your most recent post, you may lose them. That’s why a lot of the top bloggers highlight their best content at the top of their blogs.

Whether you create your list manually or don’t have a “Best Of” list yet, the Best Foot Forward Wordpress plugin can make creating that post list a little easier. The plugin works in conjunction with the WordPress tagging system to display posts that are tagged with a certain word (or words) of your choice. For example, by tagging your favorite posts with the word “favorite” and then tell the plugin to display anything tagged with “favorite”, your best of list is automatically created. To add other posts, simply tag them with “favorite”. To remove a post from the list, just delete the tag from your post.

You can use any tags that you choose, so if you want to get really fancy, you could tag your March favorites with “favMarch2008″ and then tag April’s with “favApril2008″, and then tell the plugin to display both, so that you could easily create a cumulative list of your best posts without having to delete any tags from older favorites. That could make year end “Best of” lists very easy to compile.

For more information about this plugin, head over to my Best Foot Forward WordPress Widget Page.

Whether you’re a Dyer, a Mulligan, a Shea, or a Hobin, a Murphy, McDonough, a Caffrey, or Connell, here’s a playlist of some of the traditional Irish songs that I grew up with to get you primed for your yearly excursion into everything green.

For the rest of you, fear not. Most of the American Irish have as much of a connection to the motherland as you do, so grab your shamrocks and join us in the parlor.

Enjoy!

Irish Folk For Irish Folk

What are you doing for St. Paddy’s Day?

The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 280): The Pirate Whittling Tech Union Boss

I made egg, cheese and capicola bagel sandwiches for breakfast, and I have to say that it turned out pretty well. After breakfast, we went to the mall to search for presents for #1GF!’s Mom’s birthday. I think it was the moment when I realized that “Hanging Tough” by New Kids On the Block was playing on the Mall P/A, that the mall became a depressing place. It somehow made me notice all the shitty music that mall workers must have to listen to endlessly looping them through their days, one shitty musical minute at a time.

When we walked through our third department store, I realized that Department stores have even shittier music than the mall, and not one worker I saw seemed happy. The stores were full of merchandise that no one wanted, being stacked and reorganized by people who seemed like this was the end of their careers. There was no perkiness or joy in these department stores outside of the holiday season. I told #1GF! with a look of seriousness that I would never want to work in a department store. She looked at me like I was nuts and continued on her quest for the perfect gift.

The whole day was filled with shopping, and we decided to go the local restaurant for dinner. during the meal, we talked about what the hell I was doing with my life. I still think that it was a good decision to leave my last job, but I’m no closer to figuring out how to make a real living outside of the corporate walls than I was 41 weeks ago. We talked through what I liked to do and whether I should continue on or try to find a small company that is working on something interesting, but we both knew that I’m happier without a boss. At one point, I remember saying that my rebellious, but rational streak and my disdain for authority would be perfect for setting up a tech worker’s union.

In my experience, tech workers get the shit end of the stick when it comes to being chained to a job. Even entry level tech workers get put on call 24/7 with no extra pay. I remember a time where pagers and off hours calls meant extra compensation, but those days seem to be gone. Other people work nights and maybe weekends, but tech workers are tied and reachable 24 hours a day. This strategy allows companies to under report their labor costs, and that’s something that I think would be fun to economically correct by getting tech workers paid for off hours work. No more free O/T. No calls at three AM because the company won’t cover 24 hours with additional shifts. A union might make the labor pool mediocre, but 2% raises and forced off hours work make that happen anyway.

While I enjoyed my imaginary role as an IT union rep, I drifted off and started mentally dissecting some hand carved pirates that were on the ledge next to our table. I began trying to figure out if I could carve them because I thought it would be funny if I carved pirates and sea captains and made more money for them than I could writing my ass off every day. When I vocalized my pirate whittling idea, #1GF! probably realized that I was out of my mind and the conversation died out. #1GF! paid the bill, and we went home.

Breaker 1-9, Breaker 1-9, this is the Sharkman comin’ atcha, come on back. Anyone got their ears on? We’re low on green stamps, running on rags, and the county mounties are lockin’ us in double nickels, come awn.

The Sharkman’s got to get a HEAVY LOOOOAAAAD upstate ‘fore morning, and he needs some good ol’ wide-open road music to help get the hammer back on the floor where it belongs. You put together the list, and Ol’ Sharkman will keep an eye on Smokey Bear and his photobooths for ya, come awn. The Sharkman’s back quiet.

Information on how to join in on the fun can be found on my FineTune Friday Page. If you haven’t joined in yet, no gas, grass, or ass is required. On this trip, everyone rides for free.

I usually don’t post about things that I stumble, but this was too geeky not to share. It’s a flow chart of what happens to people who are exposed to D&D early in life. You’ll probably have to view the full-sized version to see that “No” leads to “Sunlight” and ultimately to “Girls”, and that both the TRS-80 and Khaaan! are mentioned.

found via BoingBoing

Peter: Lawrence, what would you do if you had a million dollars?
Lawrence: I’ll tell you what I’ll do, man… Two chicks at the same time.
Peter: That’s it? If you had a million dollars, that’s what you’d do? Two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight, man. I’ve always wanted to do that. I figure if I were a millionaire, I could hook that up. Chicks dig guys with money.
Peter: Well not all chicks…
Lawrence: Well, the type that double up on a guy like me do.
Peter: Good point.
Lawrence: Now, what would you do?
Peter: Besides two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Oh yeah.
Peter: Nothing.
Lawrence: Nothing?
Peter: I would relax. I would sit on my ass all day. I would do nothing.
Lawrence: You don’t need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin.

-from the movie, Office Space

I’ve been unemployed for 41 weeks now, and beyond creating couple of plugins for WordPress (Better Blogroll and Buddy Love), keeping #1GF! decently fed, and writing a lot, I can’t say that time has been filled with amazingly fun or creative accomplishments. Sure, I have the luxury of doing whatever I want to, but considering the avalanche of advice that I got before I left my job on what I should do with my time off, some days, I think that I must be going about this unemployment thing all wrong. The people who really know how to get the most out of unemployment all have jobs.

So, I ask you: If you could suddenly leave your job and not worry about money, what would you do with your free time?