Tuesday, February 26, 2008

cheeseburger in a can, reviewed

The world's greatest food product reviewed! And for your information, I'm quite sure I stumbled upon this when it was featured on the front page of Yahoo!

Sunday, February 17, 2008

the mexican john stoops

For the two people who read this and will get this, I was Alice, TX last week for work and met a guy who looks like the Mexican version of John Stoops.

Monday, February 11, 2008

feeling better?

I'm almost back to normal after nearly a week of being sick. Apparently, sleep isn't overrated.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

ron paul rally pictures!

Ha, I bet you didn't expect those Ron Paul rally pictures so soon. I certainly didn't. But, I'm doing laundry and this seems like a perfectly good time to not work at my salaried job. (I could be compiling permits right now, but I'm such a rebel.)

As I mentioned a couple days ago, Ron Paul has some very ardent and creative supporters. And, he's done a very good job of gaining the support of many young, relatively tech savvy 20 and 30-somethings. Just try to picture any of the images linked below at a rally for Clinton or McCain. Perhaps for Obama, or at least with the same enthusiasm, but definitely with different messages being represented.

The first sight that caught my eye was someone holding a rather clever poster. Very funny and very apt if you knew that Ron Paul wishes to abolish the IRS. (Speaking of which, I need to do my taxes. And this will probably be the first year in a while in which I do not receive a refund. We'll see.) But if you didn't know his stance on the IRS and my explanation made it all click, then you've already lost out on the inherest humor. And you have to be familiar with the Geico gecko .

Then there was a young man in a Back to the Future-themed t-shirt. Once again, you gotta know Ron Paul to find it funny. Next, there was a woman with rather nice looking portrait of Ron Paul. Note that he has signed the paining. A true man of his people and the 14th Congressional District of the State of Texas. When was the last time you saw that? Well, let's be honest. When was the last time you were at a rally for a marginal candidate from a major party?

The coup d'etat of the day was when I noticed a young woman as the rally was ending. She was wearing a Guy Fawkes mask! Hilarious. I suppose you not only need to know Ron Paul's positions, but also who Guy Fawkes is or to have seen V for Vendetta. After all, a little revolution now and then is a good thing.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

ron paul rally

I attended a Ron Paul rally yesterday. Huh? Yes, you read that correctly. There's a guy at work who is really into Ron Paul and he's got a couple others from work drinking the Kool-Aid so I decided to go for the spectacle. After all, Dr. Paul (he was an OBGYN at some point) does represent the 14th Congressional District of Texas in the United States House of Representatives which encompasses the city in which I now live. If you don't believe wikipedia, check out this mostly legitimate looking site.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with who Ron Paul is, he is a Congressman running for President and right now he's trying to win the Republican nomination. He won't win mind you. We'll almost know for sure in two days when inevitability plays out. Nonetheless, he does have some loyal and slightly zany supporters. This is mostly a result of his steadfast and slightly zany positions. To briefly explain his general political leanings, he ran for President in 2004 with the Libertarian party.

His ardent supporters were out there yesterday. I don't want to give anything away so I'll just leave you hanging. I took some photos and when I have time (read: never) I'll post them. There was some really clever stuff going on.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

greater than, less than

What is up with people using greater than (>) and less than (<) signs to compare things?

Friday, February 01, 2008

month end

I finally sort of get what month end is all about for businesses. And I only have to deal with it on the very last day of the month. There are no complicated reports to run, letters to send, complex accounting. My task is fairly simple. Get any tickets from the field processed by 1700 or else we have to fill out a lot of paperwork explaining why it's not in by then and thus cannot be counted towards the revenue for the month.

It's actually quite easy. Except for the part about waiting for supervisors to bring back their job packets and upload their reports so that I and others can process the tickets in a mad dash before time runs out. The only other thing is to get in a really good estimate by noon of our final numbers and explain why we were above or below the original forecast.

Yesterday was a bit taxing since of the three people who can process tickets, one was at a class in Houston, the second was at a funeral, and the third one is me. Plus, we were trying finally process a job from the way-back-when of previous management that had never been done right. And trying to resolve a mystery credit from a job even further in the way-back-when caused by using the wrong customer number. (It's hard to get paid if you don't send the bill to the right people. I never would have guessed that.) Those two things have made the importance of doing things right the first time abundantly clear.