Just a short, simple blog for Bob to share his thoughts.
14 February 2019 • by Bob • Marriage
My wife special-ordered heart-shaped Cow Chip cookies for me for Valentine's Day. If you've lived in the Seattle area and you don't know about these cookies, then either a) you've been living under a rock, or b) you're dead.
PS - They were great, and yes - I shared.
24 December 2018 • by Bob • Christmas, Humor
In ancient days of yore, constable Ioan McClane (of the clan McClane) routed the Visigoth Hans von Gruber from the prodigious citadel of Nakatomi...
10 December 2018 • by Bob • Christmas, Humor, Education
As we rapidly approach the Christmas season, we are also reaching the end of my semester in Graduate School. With that in mind, I thought it apropos to post a version of the "12 Days of Christmas" for my fellow students who are bogged down with writing academic papers:
12 Pages Of Citations
11 Primary Sources
10 Cups Of Coffee
9 Hours Of Proofreading
8 Advising Hours
7 Rhetorical Questions
6 Quotation Blocks
5 Split-Infinitives
4 Supporting Arguments
3 Complete Rewrites
2 Illustrations
And A Thesis Statement In My Opening Paragraph
UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."
02 December 2018 • by Bob • Marriage, Humor, Christmas
My wife was shopping for Guardians of the Galaxy toys to donate to charity, and the following conversation took place:
Kathleen: | So, I was going to buy Star Lord, Groot, and Ranger. |
Me: | Ranger? |
Kathleen: | Yeah, you know - the squirrel. |
Me: | You mean Rocket? The raccoon? |
Kathleen: | Yeah, that's the one. |
Me: | o_O |
12 October 2018 • by Bob • Work, Humor
A friend of mine recently sent me the following video from Weird Al Yankovic, who is one of my favorite geek heroes.
As someone who has worked in the business world for the past few decades, I have to admit: the
That being said, Weird Al's song reminds me of my days in a cross-site technical support team that I helped create at Microsoft, which was supposed to be an amalgamation of two commonly-used technical support roles of beta engineers and escalation engineers. However, the role of that team quickly spiraled out of control into something that was totally unrecognizable from what I had proposed. Our team was renamed by a corporate president as "Delta Force," and despite the fact that everyone hated the name, we were stuck with it - because it came from a corporate president.
Getting back to the original point, I knew this team was screwed when Microsoft flew all of the team members to Redmond for a week when we were first starting out. The goals for the week were supposed to be creating the hierarchy and infrastructure that were required to organize and manage a large cross-site team, but we were bogged down for the first 1.5 days creating - seriously - our Mission Statement. It didn't matter how many times I pointed out that we could be using our time and Microsoft's resources considerably more efficiently if we tabled that discussion; I kept getting shot down by management, who continuously emphasized just how important a Mission Statement really is.
At some point during that week I marched into my new boss's office and told him (in no uncertain terms) that I wanted off that team as soon as possible. (Although he begged me to stay, and I did - for 1.5 years. And I hated almost every minute of it.)
With that in mind, the video from Weird Al was a fun [sic] reminder of that time.
02 June 2018 • by Bob • History, Humor
I just read this article, Pompeii victim crushed by boulder while fleeing eruption, which details a recent archeological discovery in Italy. The unfortunate soul in these photos from that article has to be one of the least-lucky people to have ever walked the face of the planet:
This doomed individual survived the initial eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii, only to have his head crushed by a rock during the subsequent eruption.
Sometimes, it's just not your day...
04 May 2018 • by Bob • Bicycling, Humor, Art
When you somehow manage to bump the camera button on your phone in its waterproof case during a desert ride and it creates an experimental bokeh-art film in your honor...
01 April 2018 • by Bob • Humor
Just in time for April Fool's Day, here are some new HTML tags for useless text.
Extended attributes are:
Attribute | Example |
---|---|
RHETORIC | <BLAH RHETORIC="Political" ALIGN="Liberal"> This could be used for: "So, my fellow Americans, I feel that this is a strong issue about which I was asked that should not go unnoticed by this administration because it impacts all of us where we live as people of this great land that....." |
ACCENT | <BLAH ACCENT="Southern"> This could be used for: "Yawl jus' don' figur dat I be fin tuh be slaypin muh ferty wanks afore I goes huntin' latah." |
Extended attributes are:
Attribute | Example |
---|---|
RHETORIC | <BLAH RHETORIC="Gossip"> This could be "Gossip," "Slander," "Hearsay," "Rumor," etc. Used for statements like: "Did you hear what Marc said to Luis? OHHH! You've gotta hear this...!" |
01 April 2018 • by Bob • Humor, Work
A friend of mine posted the following image to social media... and as someone who has had to attend more than a few soul-crushing phone conferences, I thought it was hilarious.
That being said, I thought this play set was missing a few things that would add to its realism.
For example, why doesn't it come with a whiteboard and four dried-out markers?
In addition, the conference phone should come with dozens of lifelike features, such as Dropped Calls, Random Static, Open Microphone Keyboard Typing, Private Background Conversations, and 15 minutes of 'Can You Hear Me?' dialog. This would turn your kids' 5-minute meeting into hours of troubleshooting entertainment - every time!
30 March 2018 • by Bob • Family, Humor
A few years ago I wrote a blog titled "Adventures with the Tooth Werewolf", where I wrote about how I rose my children with a belief in the Tooth Werewolf instead of the Tooth Fairy. In that same blog I also briefly mentioned that I had come up with the Easter Vampire instead of the Easter Bunny. (I'll bet you wish your parents had been this cool, right?)
That being said, one of my daughters sent me the following video, which she appropriately-labeled, "The Easter Vampire?"