At work today, speaking to my housekeeping contract manager...

Her: "You're not quite normal, are you Brian?"
Me: "Well, I did end up barefoot in the Olentangy at 9 PM last night."
Her: "What, were you drunk?"
Me: "No. ... OK... well, I admit I was drinking but certainly not drunk..."

Damn, hanging out with wishmaiden is fun. :)

I think everyone needs their own chase music, you know, in the movies or on TV when someone is chasing you music is always playing.  This music can determine the outcome of the entire chase, of course.  I think my chase music would be the chorus of this, and I'm pretty sure with such a great chase song I would easily escape.

Alright, time for bed, I have to work tomorrow/today.

Won't say this is better than the original but this version seems to capture me at this moment...

Last text message to my good friend Jeff who is up in Toledo and is also a big Red Wings fan:

"Motherfucker, P's first was icing and the second they didn't even have a shot of it actually going in.  Oh well, as an OSU fan I'm used to disappointment."

/he's a M fan

After another long day at work I came home, cooked dinner and watched the idiot box for a while, not even looking at a computer screen until after 9:15 PM (probably because quite a bit of my frustration today was due to processing orders in the procurement system since the main woman who does it is out).  Long story short my computer said it had local network access only, not internet access.  The cable modem and separate wireless router looked fine (all the proper lights lit, etc.) so I figured that it might be an outage due to the storms earlier.  Still, just for the hell of it I turn on my laptop and, hey, wait a minute, I've got wireless internet access.  OK, problem is between the router and the computer, I suspect its a bent cable that has been harassed recently by a lot of plugging in and unplugging due to my need to turn off my access on my main computer to circumvent something and the cable has a nice tight twist in it now.  No problem, I''ve got cables all over the place, right?  Nope, I spend fifteen minutes digging through boxes in the basement and come up with only jumpers. Crap!  Late evening run to Meijer to pickup an overpriced Cat5?  Then I have a stroke of genius and realize I have a long-ish cable between the modem and router that might just fit to the computer and I can replace that with a jumper, that's what jumpers are made for anyhow, right?  I get under the desk and spend a couple minutes trying to plug the new cable into the back of the machine since I didn't want to turn it off or spin it around for some reason, finally get it on and the frickin' Network Indicator Icon in the tray goes from Local Only icon to the Nothing icon, crap, the problem is the jack in the computer, fixable of course but a pain.  Just of the hell of it I start up FireFox and hey, my homepages load, I am connected despite that stupid icon on the tray.  As I try to see why the icon hasn't updated (even tried the classic Microsoft fix, restarting) in the Network Settings I see an option labelled "Connect to a network..." umm, that seems like more of a wireless network setup thingy, I check it out and not only does it show my network with excellent signal strength but also some weak background networks,  Hey, my tower has built-in wifi, I did not know that.  (I still am using the cable, 100 is better than 54).  Don't know why I typed this all out but I guess it goes to show why I didn't go into IT.  :)

Had a good time hanging out with wishesofastar last night, thankfully the good times continued onto today. I actually got quite a bit done today, much more than usual for a day-off (especially after the week I had at work). The best part of this is was that while I did a lot it didn't/doesn't feel like I've done much at all. One of the passages of the Tao Te Ching is about when things are done properly it seems like they were done by themselves.

Woke up surprisingly early and sort of goofed off then cut the grass and spent about an half-hour doing other yard-work, came in cooled off, cooked breakfast and played around with my new netbook (so far so good, good screen, nicely sized keyboard, typing on it now, speakers sort of suck but not too bad). After showering and whatnot, did a couple hours worth of housework and grabbed dinner.

The hockey game was really good, Detroit won which helped of course, next game is tomorrow night which is sort of nice that I made afternoon, not evening, plans with chronarchy and his gal tomorrow, sitting around watching me watch hockey probably isn't too exciting I'd imagine.  I  did try to put a filter on my kitchen faucet during the hockey game, ended up breaking and then fixing the faucet handle, sort of amusing more than anything else, guess that's why I'm somewhat decent at the whole maintenance thing, not afraid to jump right into things (or too dumb to show restraint), not panic when things fall apart and water shoots everywhere, and eventually manage to figure things out and fix what I broke.

I head up to Toledo Monday for the week, fun, fun. While it will be great seeing my sister, brother-in-law and my two nieces again, the overall purpose of the trip sorta casts a shadow over the whole thing, but again, make the most with what you've got and enjoy the moment, right?

This used to pretty much be the theme song of my (non-PSA) group of friends back in the college days. I was reminded of it while I was going through a few hundred unclassified mp3s a few minutes ago, perhaps it is telling of myself and my friends at this point in our lives, I may have lost quite a bit of that irrelevance since I've had "grow up" and become a functional member of society, but at my core I'm still the same weird freshman kid who thought that such abstractedness and un-seriousness was usually more meaningful than the boring things spelled out in black-and-white.

/ Freddie is on ducks
// "Cleaver fellow, isn't he?" "Yes, very cleaver."
/// "...what I want is not real at all."
\\\ "By Jove, I think we've got it!"

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/102458/Why-I-love-larger-men-

Ha.

Reading one of viedansante  's entries earlier that linked to a short story I scribbled out a while ago I remembered how much I am fascinated by the end of the world and how it would feel to go through that, so I wrote the below tonight. I'm thinking of a journal/diary method (slowly breaking down as events progress of course) that hopefully reveals key things (plot/character traits/events/etc.) naturally instead of spelling them out. That said the below probably is too blunt, but it's just a starting point. I would like to actually write a few, but not too many, entries before the one below to make it more natural. Instead of "hey, the world's about to end, better start writing a diary that will never be read because the fucking world is ending" thing it'll be something like, "My damn psychologist is making me keep this fucking diary like I'm some idiotic teenage girl..." thing and then (hopefully less blunt than below) reveal the events unfolding and try to make a plausible transition to "hell, cable's out, guess this journal at least gives me something to do."

I would be interested in your overall reaction, not specifics like spelling or grammar or "this-should-happen-like-this" suggestions and stuff, more like does this interest you and would you want to read more or I should just stick to my day job. Thanks and yes its a draft, took all of ten minutes to write if that.

( Here's nothing... )

Finally!  Took seven games and almost another overtime but they won the series against the Ducks!!!  I really think that I saw the two best hockey teams in the country/Canada tonight (the last two Stanley Cup champions of course) and the skating and skill showed that.  Detroit has out-skated and out-skilled Anaheim throughout the series but the Ducks seemed to get the lucky puck bounces and stayed in it.  Yet more bad officiating tonight, one of the Duck's goals was complete BS, coming from a powerplay that never should have been (Pronger, the satan of the Red Wings, cross-checked a Detroit player in front of Anaheim's goalie, throwing the Red Wing into the goalie and the officials called the Detroit player for Goalie Interference, bull shit.  Anyhow, that helped the Ducks tie it up eventually at 3-3 and just as it looked like we were going into yet another overtime game, Detroit scored and held off the Duck's last minute despiration plays.  Now it's the Chicago Blackhawks starting Sunday, hopefully their isn't too much of a "hangover".

I received the 2009 College of Pharmacy Outstanding Staff Award at our staff meeting this morning, think I kind of surprised people by not getting too worked up about it, hell, the woman who got it last year was almost in tears, I said thanks, shook the Dean's hand and that was about it.  Oh well, hope I didn't appear ungrateful but I've never really took praise well.  Hey, at least it's something to add to the resume.

There is a long standing tradition in hockey to not blame things on the officials. If you feel wronged you make up for it yourself, hit them harder, play the puck and score goals, this is part of what makes hockey great, part of what makes it the toughest sport. That being said, tonight's game blew big time. The Ducks scored first, no problem, but then a complete bullshit penalty was called on Detroit, interference called on a hard hit when the guy played the puck (you can't hit guys who don't have the puck, but if you have it, its open season, so long as you're not hit from behind). After replay clearly showed the Duck played the puck and was cleanly hit a fraction of a second later, the announcers started defending the Refs, bullshit, but whatever. They scored on that power play though and put the Wings back 2-0. The Red Wings scored on a power play themselves and dominated pretty much the rest of the game. With less than two minutes to go they pulled the goalie and went on the attack. Soon they scored, bringing the game to a tie and forcing overtime for the second game in a row, but wait! Why didn't the scoreboard update? It seems that the referee lost sight of the puck as it went behind the goalie (wearing a black uniform, mind you) and blew his whistle ending play. But wait! The whistle didn't sound until the puck had already went behind the goalie and was tapped into the net by either a Detroit player or a Duck. Oh, but the announcers tried to cover this by saying that the play ends as fucking soon as the ref determines that he cannot see the puck and decides to start bring the whistle to his lips, not when the whistle actually sounds, and, by the way, this is unreviewable. Mother fucker, not only did bad officiating lead to them going two ahead, but even worse officiating negated the tying goal. Try as the announcers might to cover for the officials, the look on their faces showed that they screwed up royally. If the Wings lose the series by one game, I'm gonna be pissed.

While I certainly wasn't the first to think that the current swine flu situation seemed a lot like Pandemic II , seeing this map really confrirmed this.  At least Madagascar should be safe...

Update for Faith:

At the request of chronarchy I started reading an old journal I kept back in '99 to see if I mentioned PSA (and what the weekly topics were), well, of course, I'm about half-way through and so far it really, really sucks. Sure, there's a lot of 20-year-old angst and depression, failures with girls and the like. There's also the already-realized-realization that I really haven't changed in ten fucking years, a third of my life. I was going to post a longer excerpt but I just came across this gem that sums everything up.

After discussing big elaborate optimistic plans for creating something(s) with my good friend at the time Josh, something I repeated and repeat with chronarchy to this day, I write in almost illegible cursive this:

3/5/99 "<...> If we could start something up, that would be awesome, it'll be awkward for me in the corporate world, but working for a company I started would rule. I don't know, I don't want to put too much hype in it, or it will fail just like everything else I've ever done."

Yeap, that's pretty much it.  Even back then I knew that I was my own worst obstacle but yet I never have dealt with that.

It is also really depressing to relive past incidences that I've totally screwed up with girls, that's the majority of the first half, by the way. I actually had a good number of really nice (and attractive) girls interested in me, and while they may not have ended up in marriage and kids, had a relationship started with at least one of them it could have better prepared me for future dealings with women.

But I again reel myself in and remember in true Taoist fashion that we have to deal with the "what is." not the "what if?" Though it is pretty funny that during this time I obviously was quite proud of being a Pagan and yet I never mentioned PSA, ha.

(BTW, I was heading up to Toledo when I got a work email that caused me to turn back around, only around Marion, and head back. Was able to save two of three cold rooms, called my dad to tell him I was just now leaving work, again, at 10:30 and he strongly told me to stay down here and drive up in the morning, so here I am, still in Columbus tonight)

MUCH BETTER game tonight, and yes I'd even be typing that if Columbus won.

Columbus (the city, not just the team) really needed this great game to get the Jackets cemented into the sports culture of the city, had they went out four games to none without a fight like Atlanta did years ago. Now at least they know the Jackets fought a good game (would have been nice if they fought this hard for the three previous games).

But, as a hardcore Detroit Red Wings fan, I loved it. I was expecting a high-scoring game and when Columbus came back to tie the game three times (two times from two point deficits), I was excited and a little bit nervous which is part of the great sports spectator experience.

Now, to address the controversy...

With less than two minutes to go in the game Columbus was assessed a too-many-men-on-the-ice two minute penalty. The fans hated the call of course but what really bothered me was when the local announcers (routing for Columbus, of course) started arguing the call themselves. First off, I really, really wish I could listen to the national announcers for games. I've listened to the Detroit announcers during games when I was in Toledo and while its better listening to your team's announcers, I like the supposed objectivity of the national announcers. Anyways, video replay CLEARLY F'ING showed that the Jackets had six skaters on the ice at the same time (you're allowed five skaters and a goalie). Not only that, but it wasn't an innocent timing issue, the refs are allowed some latitude in calling this penalty (and like all sports, the refs are told that they shouldn't call iffy penalties at the end of the game that may influence the outcome) but both the skater "leaving" the ice and the incoming skater were both 4-5' away from the wall/bench!!! Had it been a foot or two, alright, no big deal. HOWEVER, the incoming skater touched the puck BEFORE the outgoing skater had cleared the ice. That is a HUGE no-no! If neither the outgoing or incoming skater touched the puck and the penalty wasn't called, I would have been pissed as a Wings fan but I could understand the no-harm-no-foul approach this late into the game (earlier in the game, foul).

Detroit scored during this power play which won them the game. The REAL issue I thought Columbus fans might have (and I'm sure they'll pick up on it overnight and it'll be in the paper tomorrow which is why I'm typing this now) was that right before Detroit scored, one of Detroit's players skated through the blue zone (area in front of the goalie that is pretty much no-man's land for the opposing team) and hit the goalie's stick. This can be seen as goalie interference and could have nullified the goal. However, even the Columbus announcers didn't pick up on this (a Columbus skater skated into the goalie immediately after the Detroit player and disturbed him much, much more). So Columbus Blue Jacket fans, complain about that, not the penalty.

Anyways, Go Wings!!!

Just in case any of you read through my huge post last night, don't want you to think I've lost it, yet.

As I left work I mentally constructed this list:

Things I am happy for...

- Fair weather
- Wings on the tube tonight
- Several smart-ass comments made to me today because I wore a Detroit shirt and my quick replies
- A free marching band concert (i.e. practice)
- The smile on an adorable little Asian girl's face (7 or 8yo) when the band started playing as her and her father walked by
- That while work can be tough, it is nice to have a job, especially one where people actually listen to you
- The beautiful women around campus
- Having the confidence in myself that I know I can get through what lays ahead even though it won't be easy
- Damn, did I mention the beautiful women yet?

<of course, I'm leaving off the obvious things, friends, family, etc., those are a given.>

So I had a nice dinner with wishesofastar tonight (after quite an odyssey to get there, btw). The appetizer sampler consisted of fried cheese sticks, chicken tenders, buffalo wings, french fries and onion rings with six dipping sauces. We ordered a deep-dish pizza, after checking to make sure they didn't use olive oil; lots of pepperoni, a huge amount of Italian sausage and onions, cheese and sauce. I also have two tall draft Coors Lights.

She leaves as soon as we get back to my place, certainly understandable since we lost well over an hour due to my inability to turn-around when I realize I made a wrong turn or am lost (this was before the beer btw).

I come inside, check on the cat, open up a can of beer and turn on the TV, an interesting show on History channel about the Germanic tribes kicking Rome's ass is finishing up. As I get settled in, what comes on next? "Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony"

Touche, cruel world, touche...

(And yes, it was the company that made dinner nice, the food was average at best.)

I think I may have finally figured out why I've always loved Pinky & The Brain. It's not (only) that I often feel like I'm the Brain in a world full of Pinkies, or that people often misspell my name as Brain, don't know if that's a compliment or not...

Anyway, after listening to the opening theme song for the millionth time, I think it was really the unabated optimism of the Brain to take over the world despite the endless stream of failures which encountered the duo night after night.  There's a simple explanation for the optimism of Pinky, he is a blissful idiot after all, living purely in the moment as purely himself, but one would think the Brain would finally give up, coming to the inevitable conclusion that one genius mouse and one border-line mentally handicap mouse could not take over the world.  Despite his superior cranial capacity, the Brain continues his efforts to take over the world despite the obvious defeat imminent.

So why does he cause himself so much stress and even physical harm time and time again?  Because just as Pinky is truly Pinky in every moment, the Brain is also truly being the Brain in the same moment.  That is what makes the duo so wonderfully Taoist, the yin and yang of intellectualism and buffoon.  Does Brain ever reach his goal of (longtime, true fans would know why I have to include this qualifier) world domination?  No.  Does Pinky reach his goal of, well, we have to guess here, of being Pinky?  Hell yes.  

While Pinky continously pesters and unintentionally ruins the plans of the Brain, (almost) never does the Brain disown Pinky, he realizes Pinky's utility as an absolutely loyal, albeit slow, henchman.  The Brain needs Pinky, however, does Pinky need the Brain? 

Question probably best left for another night as its already way past my bedtime.  Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Edit: If you watch the above YouTube piece, it should automatically continue to play Pinky & The Brain pieces, the first is "Parts of the Brain".  While the Brain shows us the parts of the Brain, Pinky's only line is, "Brain stem, brain stem!"  Very telling.

Edit2: clip

Hmm, my buildings are on the front page of today's Dispatch, above the fold even.  Thankfully its not because of anything I did or will have to deal with (other than making it more difficult to come into and leave work).