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#1. Boil a pot of water, add macaroni.
#2. Answer cell phone call from customer, talk for about 20 minutes.
#3. After you hang up, realize that you left macaroni boiling all that time.
#4. Add way too much milk and butter to try to cover up your mistake.
From those of us who work at home for a living, a bit of news for those who live around us.
#1. From 08:00 - 17:00, I'm supposed to be working. Yup, even though my car is in the driveway and the front door is open; I don't have time to sit there and chit chat about the nuances of shrubberies. And honestly, I couldn't give a rats ass about it.
#2. I have a life. Yes, after 17:00 I might be out with my kids, working on some other things, or God forbid going to school. Don't get all pissy when I don't call you right back because I'm damn busy this week. Yes, you might think I'm a lazy bastard, and that's your prerogative to do so. But don't think I'm going to come to the door with a smile every time you want to bitch about something.
Here's the order of how things are handled in my life:
1. Family & Close Friends
2. Work
3. All the other crap
Please look for your position on the list and set your urgency level accordingly.
Dammit, I need a private blog. ;-) Then I could rant more....
For the new Iraqi Flag. Allah is counting the ballots. I personally like #4.
Thank God for digital cameras. Sometimes when you sit there with the kids while they play, you might take a few pictures just to capture something fun or at least to document their childhood. Then sometimes you get one like this....
Warning: Link opens up 2MB jpg.
Yes, I'm a very proud geek dad.
So tonight as I was digging through stuff for my Album of the Week post; I started to read up on what's going on with one of my favorite bands and what they are doing (besides touring). Honestly (IMHO) Queensryche will never be the band it was without their guitarist Chris DeGarmo. That's my opinion, I'll still see them if they come around, but I hope Chris is happy flying jets for a living now.
So as I'm digging through the news, I came to this little tidbit from an interview with Geoff:
.. Before wrapping-up, the talk turns back to the DVD and the duet with Dream Theatre on the Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. “We began playing that song because of the Iraq War and the George Bush administration. We felt strongly about it because it’s a protest song. Iraq is a complete disaster and it’s a no win situation. The Bush administration is corrupt and conniving. They’ve lied so many times to the people of the United States and the world. I know they’re in Iraq for the oil, but the social issues in those fundamentalist countries are so awful. I don’t believe in fundamentalism of any sort. The whole fundamentalist perspective is wrong. It needs to be taken out and obliterated. What they’re doing to people especially women; the rape, the murder and the torture is completely ridiculous. It’s pre-historic and against everything that, as an American, I believe in. From that stance, we have an obligation to go in and liberate the women of these countries.�..
OK Geoff, we're bad for going in and invading, but we should do something about the human rights violations? And what district in Washington State are you running for office? Keep this up and John Kerry might just make you an ambassador to Mozambique.
I've decided (for no reason whatsoever) that I'm going to post once a week about an album that I think is either really good or something that describes my week in general. Let's see if I can get through April doing this.
This week's album.
Queensryche - Promised Land
Hot muslim extremists are waiting to hear from you. Call us at 1-900-INFIDEL. $3.99 for the first minute, $2.99 each additional minute. Mention this advertisement and receive a free virgin from Allah upon your glorious martyrdom.
Update:
Of course, this is what the guy on the other end of the line really looks like:
Cheap Trick paid a visit tonight to the Honeywell Center and seeing as how they have been one of those bands I've "always wanted to see", I had to make the investment and catch the show (with the added bonus of being able to get home 20 minutes after the show was over).
So, after some convincing from the wife, I bought two tickets for me and Emily and we head out to the show. Great show by CT and the opening band (who was some local group of guys that work at the theater) were absolutely awesome. These guys gave CT a run for their money (IMHO). Anyhow after the show, Emily wanted to get a pick. We scoured around the auditorium and found one on the stage that a State Trooper recovered for her.
After the show, we headed out (after meeting Brian from the CT board) and drove past the tour bus where there was your usual group of gaggling fans. Emily wanted to stop, so I found a closer parking spot and we went off with my camera and a copy of the Cheap Trick "Silver" DVD in tow (hey, I'm ALWAYS prepared). Here's what we got:
Emily got three autographs and was giddy the entire way home. I've had a hard time convincing her that even though she got all the autographs, it's still my DVD. Hopefully I've broadened her musical horizons just a bit.
New blog on the wonderfully honest "Oil-for-Saddam" program run by the UN.
The Federal Government is spending taxpayer dollars on building model rockets.
Actually, it isn't a waste. NASA, the USAF, and a private company have just launched the first aerospike engine. The flight with a 10 foot long rocket (hint: christmas wish list) got up to Mach 1.5 and went to over 26,000 feet. Aerospike engines are really awesome since they look really cool and are efficient over a variety of altitudes. I won't go into the details of it, since the article does a nice job on that.
Wonder when Estes is going to start rolling out these bad boys....
A good cause AND a tax write off (lord knows I'll need a few before the year is out).
Put Iraq back on the air. Support the Liberty Alliance!
Update: I got bored
Nothing to bring the entire neighborhood together like an actual tornado IN the neighborhood.
Huntington County is pretty big. Most of the time when something is happening on the south side of the county, the north side is usually having the exact opposite. So tonight as some thunderstorms started rolling in from Wabash County, it was just gearing up to be a normal night.
Then the sirens went off. OK, no big deal, that usually happens once a year. Grab the kids and get downstairs, but nothing to panic about. Then the call from my father in law who has a police scanner about a touchdown in Mount Etna. That's five miles away. Shit. Grab the kids and start packing them up to go to my in-laws. Thankfully one of our neighbors was outside already calling people into their place (with a basement) so I sent the kids over there and stuck outside to watch the fireworks.
No digital camera, but I have to say that a wall cloud with heavy rotation is quite impressive. Eventually most of the adults made it upstairs to watch the fireworks and enjoy the carnage. Sounds like most of the houses were missed and it just made it nice for everyone to get together for a few minutes and chat about the weather.
Cox & Forkum nailed it.
Al-Qaida planned chemical attack in Jordan
Yes, I know that sending the latest Hamas guy on his way to visit with his old buddies was definitely news, but not too many outlets are giving this much attention.
If this has anything to do with their normal pattern of ops, this would most likely be the field trial before the big attack.
Last night, at the behest of the wifey I went and saw Kevin Smith's latest film, Jersey Girl. Of course, I didn't go alone. Yup, that cute little seven year old Emily is getting closer and closer to being a teenager. Since it was a Friday night and DeAnn wanted at least one kid out of the house while I was out, Emily got a daddy date night.
Of course the only time it was playing in Huntington is 9:15, which means that we'll get home around 11:30. Ick, but oh well, she's getting old enough to handle that.
BTW, spolier alert on clicking the link below. You have been warned.
First of all, WTF was with the main character's names. Ollie and Gertrude? I guess Kevin wanted something memorable for the audiences but still, c'mon. Ick. Oh well, move along...
Movie starts out with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck groping each other and getting ready to have a kid. Apparently Kevin cut out the wedding scene which I agree would have been a distraction. J-Lo gets knocked off in about 10 minutes. Thank you Kevin. ;-)
George Carlin is Affleck's dad which he plays the drunk sanitation worker quite well. His daughter is quite cute and I honestly think they did a stunning job finding a baby that had the same eyes between the baby Gertie and the seven year old.
Fast forward about 30 minutes, to the scene that made me cringe since I had Emily with me. A five minute scene between Affleck and Liv Tyler (who is really impressing me with her roles) where Liv asks Ben (for some thesis paper) about how often he rents porn and masturbates to it. While the scene was quite hilarious, I ept looking over at my daughter to see if she would start puking, laughing, or crack out an Uzi and blow away the entire audience (btw, we had a chat about that scene after the movie...everything's cool).
In the end, Affleck is offered a job and almost moves back to NYC. Fate intervenes and they stay in Jersey. Overall it's a good movie, but I don't know if I would go out an buy it on DVD. The cameos were great (especially Wil Smith), but it didn't really jump out as a "damn good storyline" movie (unlike some others I've reviewed here).
From FrontPageMag.com:
Going to war without France is like going deer-hunting without an accordion.
...and there is most certainly a devil to go along with him.
Friday afternoon, around 1:15. The constant hum of my wife's machine dies down and my UPS starts bleeping. Of course, Internet and everything else useful went down as well (my router, antenna, and office are in three different parts of the house), so the only way all three could have stayed up happily would be with three UPS's. Not going to happen....
Call the boss on the cell, tell her that I'm offline for the forseeable future. Enjoy the first really nice Friday afternoon in a while...
Power restores at 3:33. Just enough time for my reports to get done....
I don't watch the Chapelle Show as much as I used to. But even though I'm still voting for Bush, this is @#$*&^@# hilarious.
Five years at the job. What a wonderful, strange trip it has been. :-)
Last night after I got out of class, I had a chance to talk to a fellow classmate who just got back from a year in Iraq. Here's what he saw:
More later...
When it comes to technology in the automotive industry, I'm clueless. I could barely change my own oil (more out of a lack of confidence in my skills than actually turning the wrenches) and honestly I don't keep a close eye on what goes on in the industry. Looks like there are some cool toys coming out...
Over the weekend, the van's battery died (the old one, not the new, spiffy one). One of the kids plugged in something to the voltage converter, and that drained the battery enough to kill it. So after a quick call to the motor club (my jumpers were pitched a long time ago) they showed up in a pickup trunk with this little booksized unit with two cables. Maybe that's to check the voltage on the battery? Hooks it up, hits a switch and says "OK, try it". Van starts right up.
Gotta love technology...
Update: @#$*&^@#*& Technology. It was dead when I went out an hour later. Ripped out the monster battery and took it to AutoZone for testing. After an hour of charging/testing, it tested fine. Slapped it back in the van and it started. Giving it an hour to see if it starts. If it doesn't, I'll rip it back out and recharge it, then drive it to the repair shop later today.
Tonight is my second night of watching all four kids by myself. Right now I'm blogging from the laptop in the dining room while Nathan piles down a Fig Newton and Tyler spends hour #2 eating a bologna sandwich he doesn't want now (although he was begging for it a mere hour ago).
Big paper due tomorrow. Chances of it getting done, slim and getting worse as the night pours on. Maybe I should take up drinking...
Update: Papers done, Nathan fell asleep about twenty minutes after I typed this and had enough time in between the watch the president's speech.
OK, lets start banning services BEFORE they are rolled out to the public.
Seriously, a company decides they want to offer a service. It's made perfectly clear to everyone that "Hey, we might look through your stuff to see if there is anything that we can tip off our advertisers to". Now the Civil Liberties lawyers get up in arms of "invasion of privacy" and dumbass lawmakers start throwing around the idea of "protecting citizens rights".
Pass your damn bill Sen. Figueroa, I hope it gets laughed out of court...
Apparently once again Florida is living outside reality and at this point is having problems with the English language. Drudge is reporting about an ad placed in a local St. Pete paper calling for Donald Rumsfeld to be put "...up against a wall and say 'This is one of our bad days,' and pull the trigger,"
When Drudge questioned them about the ad, the Vice President of the organization behind ad responded with the following:
"We are getting raped, and they are planning to steal the election again."
Why do I have a strange feeling that I'm going to read about the "stolen" election in my grandkids textbooks thirty years from now....
Yup, it's a Quagmire
To conserve bandwidth on this site, I'm going to move the majority of pics over to my new photo blog. I'll still post the occasional pic on this site, but day to day stuff will be at the other site.
The new URL is http://bwohlgemuth.fotopages.com/.
DeAnn "torturing" Nathan at my mom's house last week. Just got the pic from my mom today.
I've always liked Blondie since I was a kid. Debbie Harry was always quite hot, and the band wrote some pretty diverse music. They did a "Behind the Music" a few years ago, and watching them play again was quite cool.
But I think it's time for Debbie Harry to find a new job. She was just awful on the Today show this morning. She basically whispered the words to "Call Me" and then was almost off-key on their new song (which the music was OK, but Debbie just ruined it). Maybe she has a cold, maybe she didn't get enough herbal tea this morning; but if that's the way they need to sing the songs now it's time to hang it up.
Just got it a couple of days ago. The original Ford Windstar was starting to act badly and with what we owed on it, it worked out to be easier to keep our existing van and get this one. After driving it for two days, I can 100% guarantee that I will keep owning Hondas for the forseeable future.
With a sick kid sleeping ten feet away, I decided that my site needed a little bit of tweaking. Instead of playing with colors and formats, I did some digging around and found MovableStyle.com which had this new style called "Modern Lines" which kicks booty. I've also updated the title to something a bit shorter (and more appropriate to my life). Enjoy!
...I would have never done it.
Broadband pricing is getting to the point where I am seriously considering dropping in a DSL line as a backup to the wireless in case it gets hosed. Anyone even think about doing this?
Well, as of right now I'm 72 hours into being the proud dad of a 13 month old. For those of you who didn't know, DeAnn and I were lucky to find out one of Tyler's half brothers was available to be adopted and we are now into our 90 day period getting to know him and getting all the usual things checked out. Other than some speech concerns, he's doing absolutely awesome. As soon as the new digital camera comes in (mine has decided to commit suicide), I will put more pics up.
From Fox News
An Apple spokesman contended that iPod users would "rather be robbed" than suffer the indignity of appearing to use different personal music players.
Leaving this without further comment....
