Parents

Yes, I know I said that I was going to post about pants. Hell, I bet a bunch of you thought that it was going to be posted yesterday. Well sometimes I just get busy and I can't just ignore my job and entertain you...well seeing as my boss sees me about once every couple of weeks maybe I could...but that's not the point. So yes, I have yet to post about pants (not that I hear anyone complaining about that, which makes me sad) but all the letters to pants are in the title above, plus some extras so be happy with that.

Anyway I had to write this little rant because I went across campus to grab some lunch which I ate outside, all while witnessing the most incredible thing. Now, I don't know about the rest of you but when I went off to school I didn't have my parents walking me around the place. Even when it was first grade, in a new school, in a language I didn't know...what the hell was with my parents anyway? Ah, I'm kidding, I was given a sticker for my lunchbox every day I went to school, and I was happy to get that.

So I ask, why did I see numerous college freshmen wandering around campus with their parent(s) in tow? Seriously, do these kids need to be guided by their parents every step of their lives? This really is sad. Particularly when you realize that it's a work day and both parents are there to escort their precious baby (along with the rest of the family to watch in some cases). Don't these people have fucking jobs to go to? Seriously, if I had a kid (which I never will) I'd hope that they wouldn't need me to take off one (or more) or my precious holidays to show them around campus. For fucks sake there's enough orientation crap to bore you to tears, you don't need mom and dad to do it all with you!

Ok, stay tuned for more on pants! Maybe even by the end of the day...but not likely.

Part II: Shirts

Ok so moving down the body...well actually I guess we started that with the last example yesterday, but at least now we can put a shirt on that guy, though it's not likely to make things better. See for some reason it seems that there is a large number of guys out there who just don't have a clue.

Now we've all seen guys around town wearing an undershirt as well, outerwear. I really don't get this, do these guys not even look at the packages that these things come in? Now I'm not saying that these intellectual midgets are they kind of real men who abuse their spouse, but they are called wife beaters for a reason. So get the brain soap ready because here's a picture of a classy gentleman in his favoured attire. Please also note the moustache and and lack of a belt (something I'll get to another time). The only way it could be better would be if he had a mullet. Now unfortunately the types of people who wear these undershirts as tops don't read my blog...or have running water, but could someone please get the word out to them. For no other reason than I'm sick of seeing other guys armpits. Speaking of which, don't ever cut the sleeves off your t-shirts leaving a gaping hole large enough that I can see you navel. Unless you're a tailor you should never be altering your own clothing, ever!

The next group that needs to be admonished are those that wear free t-shirts, generally found in cases of beer or given away at nascar events. Actually let's broaden the category to those who wear beer logo t-shirts and sport team shirts with their idols on them. Look guys, clothes are fashion, not billboards. You want to wear clothing that says who you are...oh wait these shirts do say that, they say you're a fucking moron, and you're cheap! Look, I can understand the mistaken idea that wearing the team jersey the day of the game will help them win; you guys are simple minded and primitive and if we hadn't explained how the solar system works you would probably sacrifice something every morning to make the sun rise. But once the game is over take the fucking thing off. You are not an athlete, you don't even come close, and no matter how often your team scores you're not going to wearing a jersey with another mans name on it.

Ok, last but not least, camouflage clothing. Why? I'd say it might have something to do with a fear of terrorists but this has been going on for ages. Plus it's mostly woodland camouflage and that really doesn't work in URBAN environments anyway, so you stand out even more. Maybe you're trying to hide how fat you are, trust me it doesn't work, actually you are attracting attention. Who knows though, maybe it goes with the whole buzz cut thing and a desire to appear more manly and dangerous...well to me you seem to only be a danger to yourself. Just check out the photo below, it's a trifecta: camouflage, mullet and shitty moustache! (I think they might be at an air show which explains a lot.)

Ok, up next will be Part III: Pants...get ready

Part I: Hair.

Ok so I've been working on this idea for a blog post for some time. Those that know me can attest to the fact that I tend to dress better than the norm, at least for a chemist...though we are far from the norm to begin with...Anyway, maybe it's my ego talking but from what see these days it really seems as though the average guy could use a guide to fashion. Seriously it looks as though some of the men I see have been dressed by blind chimps. So in my desire to educate the masses, all 12 of them that read this (though 8 are women) here is my hopefully humorous guide to fashion for men, call it advice from the "Straight guy with a queer eye".

So let's take it from the top, hair. This would seem to be simple enough, after all it's stylish to have unkempt looking hair, so how hard can it be? Well, it seems that it can be pretty hard for a lot of guys. Now I don't want to shit on anyone for their sense of style, I realize that we don't all have the same tastes, but there are few things that should be avoided at all cost.

We all know that the mullet should never, ever be thought of yet alone seen. Business in the front party in the back, my ass! It's more like shitty haircut in the front, freaky redneck look from any other angle. How about you make a commitment to one type of hair style and go with it. In the end the mullet virtually combines the only two other hair styles I object to. I think the photo to the right sums it up properly, if you have a mullet expect to be ridiculed.

Now the two other styles I can't stand are the buzz cut and really long hair. Both just point out to the world that you are a lazy bastard. Yeah, the buzz cut is a hella cool military look. You know why it's done like that, because a soldier has to worry about killing or being killed, not coiffing his mullet. But they also have to be told how to do everything, so maybe it's just a simplicity thing in the end too. Either way if you are a normal person without a more to do by 9:00 than most will do all day, you have time to develop an actual style. Now remember folks, a lack of style is not a style, it's just lazy. The same goes for really long hair. Now I have nothing against long hair so long as you have it cut and styled. When you let it grow wild and free, to the point where it's down past your shoulders, maybe it's time to rethink things a bit.

Onto facial hair. Now there are some that would argue that facial hair is good and for some I suppose it can work. But unless you are blessed to be a Guatemalan it's likely that your facial hair really isn't helping things at all. In some cases a well trimmed beard can work for you, but often the look is better accomplished by getting a good 5 o'clock shadow going. But for the love of god, all gods in fact, do not grow a mustache if there is a chance (which is highly likely) that you look like any of these people (I couldn't disgrace the blog with such ugly pictures, you'll have to click the link to find out what I mean).

Finally, some of you may be familiar with the term manscaping. If not, take a second to read the definition in the link. Good, so the purpose is to maintain some semblance of the normal image of a homo sapien, rather than homo neanderthalensis. So removing excessive back hair, though potentially painful will probably make life better. And frankly it has to be more comfortable, half the reason I hate wearing hats is just how it feels to have my hair covered like that.

Now there is one final caveat with hair and particularly manscaping. Whatever you do, don't follow the lead of the gentleman below (and I include going to watch nascar in that restriction).

That's all for today, check back tomorrow for Part II: Shirts.

Quick update

This is going to be a quick little post, today my schedule gets a little messed up. The main reason is that my brother is coming to town for a visit. He'll be down until Saturday so I suppose I will have to be a bit of a tour guide. All in all it should be fun, I haven't really spent that much time with my brother in years, not since we were living together in Montreal back in '99 ... damn that's been a while.

Anyway as for myself, not a huge amount is new. I did a 40 km team time trial (TTT) on Sunday with a couple of guys from my bike club. The teams could have had up to four members, but we only managed to find 3. The real bonus was that one of the guys had a mechanical problem, his seat was almost falling off. So needless to say it was tricky for him to ride. This was the most disastrous TTT since the first one I ever did back in Alberta. There the guy at the front of the picture started so fast that we lost 2 of out 6 (the most we could lose) after about 8 km. On top of that we had the worlds slowest wheel change when we got a flat taking almost 2 minutes, it should take about 15 seconds. Needless to say that ride hurt, probably more than my latest TTT...Did I mention the first one was in the Rockies (Canmore), wonderful scenery, really nasty hills.

Oh, for an update to the construction work in my office I decided that I should include a photo, what can I say, these camera phones are actually kind of useful. Anyway moved out a week ago and the extent of the work appears to have been to remove ceiling tiles. So I figure that I might as well just stay in my office until someone actually shows up with tools, then maybe I'll consider getting out of the way.

In terms of my diploma, it turns out that the reason for the "recall" is that they forgot to add the line "Given at this University on the". So it's not so much a typo as a complete fucking oversight. I wonder if someone lost a job over that, because that's the kind of thing you should pay attention to. Admittedly I didn't notice it was missing, but I never saw one of their degrees before.

One last thing for the cyclocross fans out there...all one of you, maybe (I hope). I decided to make myself a portable barrier for training purposes. So for less than $10 in material costs I now have a nifty 16 inches high barrier that's about 6 feet long but can be carried in a backpack. So now that I have my front wheel back from Penn cycle I can get it repaired, by people who actually know what they are doing, and get onto some 'cross training. Seriously, I took my front wheel there 2 MONTHS ago and they never managed/bothered to order the bearings they need to fix it. So my recommendation to anyone looking to buy a bike, or bike accessories, is to go anywhere other than Penn cycle. Fucking dicks! Anyway below are more photos of my awesome barrier (and yes I kind of stole the idea from someone else) but he had used 4 inch diameter tubes, which really aren't backpack friendly.

Recall

In our consumer society the reality is that there are occasionally things that go wrong with the products that are produced and thus require a recall; though this only seems to be the case if the potential for lawsuits is high enough. In doing a little digging I came across an interesting site, listing the US government recalls, too bad it doesn't have an RSS feed, it could be fun to keep an eye on what comes up. Here are a few of the ones that caught my eye:

• Lands’ End Children’s Light-Up Backpacks Recalled for Overheating: That's right, the backpack can overheat and burn the child. Now that is really the definition of irony as the lighting system is supposed to make the child safer.

• The Mentholatum Company Issues a Nationwide Voluntary Recall of WellPatch® Cough & Cold Soothing Vapor Pads in the U.S.: Aparently they tried to sell a product that would treat coughs and colds, but just might happen to cause seizures...that's a fair trade right?


• Ballard Designs Inc. Recalls Potted Candles for Fire Hazard: Now that's just plain stupid, sure it's not the candle but the holder that's the fire hazard but you would think that they might have realized that the candle holder might get near a flame as well.


• Dell Announces Recall of Notebook Computer Batteries Due To Fire Hazard: This one just makes you wonder how long they knew about the problem, as it deals with computers sold as long ago as April 2004!


• Dollar Tree Stores Recall Counterfeit Extension Cords Due to Shock Hazard: Ok, I've heard of counterfeit money, that makes sense to me, but counterfeit extension cords? And how much profit could you possibly make on counterfeit merchandise sold at a DOLLAR STORE?

Anyway the reason I was thinking of this was because I received a letter yesterday from the University of Alberta's Office of the Registrar and Student Awards. They wrote to inform me that

...a degree parchment was issued to you that unfortunately contained an error. We therefore request that you please return the parchment...

Now maybe it's just me being paranoid but I have a sneaking suspicion that the "error" was that my name was on it. I figured that one day the would realize that I didn't deserve the degree but I never though that they would go so far as recalling it, I assumed I was in the clear!

New phone

So for the past week or so I have been having issues with my email and cell phone. I don't really know, but I certainly hope, that the email situation has been resolved. The phone situation I can at least say is now over with, I bought a new phone. I guess I'm a little more rough on my phones than I would like to believe, because as I think about this it comes to my attention that I have had 5 phones in 6 years. Though in my defense, the latest phone turned out to have some pretty serious issues, at least that's what I found out while doing a little digging last week. However I don't suppose dropping the phone out of my jersey pocket at 30 km/h helped matters any.

So in my continuous quest for a phone that I like (LG has been my favoured thus far) I have picked yet another new brand; this time a Sony Ericsson. So far I have no complaints about the phone, hell I no longer need an unobstructed view of the Western horizon to get a signal so that's a step in the right direction. Like all new phones it will take some getting used to; this is the big disadvantage of changing phones each time, they each have their own software/interface systems (that's where LG rocked in my opinion). With this latest phone I finally have a camera in it, not that I really care. I've always been of the mind that multiple use tools/items will never do everything well, and are more likely to do each thing a little bit more poorly because of the combination. But that doesn't mean that I won't play with the camera, below you can see some photos of my new place, which is evidently smaller than the lastplace, but that's what you get when you don't live in a part of town where there's a cop parked on the corner every day at six to keep an eye on the people going to the soup kitchen across the street.

Office construction update

Well I figured I should update everyone on how the progress on the electrical work above my desk is going. As I said yesterday I was kicked out of my office so that the work could be done above my desk. One of my office mates is far from this end of the office so he decided to stay.

So I decided to stop in today to see how the work was doing. Well there was a ladder at my desk and my office mate, nobody else. When I asked him about it he said that the guy had not been in at all that day.

Ok, maybe the work was done and he forgot the ladder at the end of the day, that happens right? So with eager anticipation I dashed over to the lab next door, plugged in a stirring plate and watch as NOTHING happened! There's no power in that wall and now nobody is working on it! I have a feeling the electrician was trained by the guys below:

Trail encounters

Ok, I meant to post this yesterday, but the disruptions in my office, which have continued through to today, kind of prevented me form finishing it. Anyway here's what I wanted to say:

Monday night I decided to head out for a mountain bike ride on a trail system near my place. I have to say that this city has done a great job of providing trails for mountain bikers and not just paved trails that far too many "mountain bikers" ride on almost exclusively. Though the biggest praise has to go to the guys and girls from MORC. They do a fabulous job of maintaining, improving and aquiring new trails in the cities. Which is why it was really cool that my third encounter of the night was with a group of them doing some trail work. I caught them just as they finished a section and rode out the rest of the trail chatting with the guy in front of me. Of course I also thanked them for all the work on the trails.

The other two encounters were a bit more unusual. The first encoutner actually happened twice, if that makes any sense at all. I wasn't terribly far into the ride when I came upon a gentleman walking the trail. Now this is just plain odd, this trail is kind of out of the way and not exactly a large walking trail as you can see from the picture. In fact there are a couple of areas where my handlebars are a bit to wide to get through without some fancy and fast leaning maneuvers. Anyway this guy just looked way out of place, I think he had a jacket over one arm and may even have had a breifcase with him. After passing him I kind of got the sense that he was either pretty stoned or just really out of it. Either way I was still too surprised to see someone walking on the trail to bother mentioning to him that it might not be a very safe idea. But the second time I saw him I did mention this, his mumbled and rather delayed responce only further confirmed my suspission that he was chemically enhanced at the moment. Though they were clearly not performance enhancing drugs.

The second encounter was more pleasant but almost more surprising. As I came around a bend I saw a deer on the edge of the trail. Now this trail is rather forest like but it is pretty close to the main body of the city and I haven't seen anything bigger than a fat squirel as far as wild animals go. So when I saw the deer I decided to stop right away and see what would happen. I guess he heard me because he perked up and moved back from the trail about 15 feet. But I could still see him pretty clearly. Which is about the point that I realized that he was a he, with horns. Now I know that a deer isn't a dangerous animal most of the time, but when they have horns and decide to be territorial, things can get a bit dangerous. Or maybe it was just because I had the memory of this image from a race in my head:

Yes, the deer knocked the guy off the bike and into the ditch durring the race!

But I was able to sit a few feet away and watch him eat for a mintue or so before I figured it would be best to keep riding past him. I passed by without incident and the second time through the loop I coudln't spot him at all. Though on the ride home I saw a doe and her fawns in a marsh area near the road and bike path. It's always funny to realize just how many large wild animals live right around us without us noticing most of the time.

Bloody morons!

I was going to post a blog about my mountain biking last night but I changed my mind. Why, you ask. Because I'm too pissed off right now to write out anything other than a short rant.

See after all the construction bullshit that went on for at least twice as long as predicted, I was finally able to return to my office and desk when I got back from Pittsburgh. That was a week ago. Since then I have had to deal with daily interruptions and intrusions by various maintenance people who feel some need to look at the work that was done. See, it seems that they are only done one part of the job.

One fellow in particular seems to come in once or twice a day. So it was no surprise to see him this morning, nor was it surprising to see him 10 minutes ago. The surprising thing was that he just now realized that he has to do some electrical work above my desk. His comment to me was "I have to do some work up there above you. I don't know how this is going to work for you." It's not going to fucking work for me you ass fuck! You have known for a week that I sit here and do my work. That I have a computer and files all over my desk. Now you come in to tell me that you have to do work above me and that it might take a day or two!!! Seriously, did you not think I would notice?

I'm so fucking pissed with these people it's not even funny any more. So now I'm going to fire off a letter to the building supervisor, yet again, then I'll move all my shit, yet again.

Oh and the reason for the work is that when they put in the cooling pipes they fucked up the electricity and the lab on the other side of my wall has no power. I hope this idiot electrocutes himself right on top of my desk.

Sleeping pains

So this past weekend has caused me to start to reconsider my sleep requirements. I've always prided myself on being able to function on minimal sleep, even doing some bike races that lasted over three hours on as little as four hours of sleep...yes had I slept more I probably would have done better, but you're missing the point if you think of it that way.

This weekend however I had decided that I need to get back to riding more, and consequently sleeping less as it seems that getting to bed early is not an option. Of course this would also be the weekend that all the rides started at 8:00 am. I can understand this when it's stupidly hot out, but now the weather is nearly perfect, why not start at 10:00? Saturday's ride wasn't too bad, particularly since I had been up until about 2:00 am playing poker. Sunday was a little harder to get up for but it was a shorter ride. Actually it was supposed to be a pre-ride before the club coffee ride, but my left knee was giving me some issues so I figured I'd call it a day after the pre-ride. I got lucky there as I managed to get home just as the first rain drops started to fall.

Now the downside to all this lack of sleep and increased exercise has been that I tended to fall asleep in the middle of the day. And I HATE that! I don't know why, but I just dislike taking naps, I always have. Maybe it has something to do with my childhood; I don't suppose seeing smoke come into my room from a small chimney fire when I was supposed to be napping lead to a positive association with napping. And for some reason my front teeth on the top of my jaw always go numb when I sleep midday, but never when I sleep at night, it's just odd.

But despite my best intentions my body won out and I crashed a few times on the couch. Figuring that maybe a change of location and some more activity would help me stay awake I went to the bedroom to put away the mess of clothes on the floor. Well somehow I made it onto my bed...like I need to draw you a diagram of that one. Now I happened to fall asleep with one arm up above my head, kind of with my forehead in the crook of my elbow. Now I'll spare some of the embarrassing details but I started to dream about Deirdre and kissing was involved, around which point I woke up, kissing my own arm. The worst part however was that as I went to move my arm back to my side I was shocked to feel...well nothing below my elbow! My forearm was completely asleep. Now I was still kind of in a daze from sleeping so my first thought was "Oh my god! My arm is broken! Shit!" This was the most dead-asleep my arm has ever been, it took minutes to finally be able to move it properly. I couldn't even move my fingers at first! I'm starting to wonder what kind of damage this does to my arm in the long run? How embarrassing would it be to have to have your arm amputated because it ran out of oxygen while you were sleeping on it for too long!

Oh well, just one more reason why I should sleep less.

Family parking only?

So yesterday Deirdre was having some issues with IKEA out in Pittsburgh, for more details check out her post. Anyway this reminded me of something that I had seen and actually photographed (rather than my usual trick of taking photos from Flickr). Anyway here is what I saw in the IKEA parking lot:
What the fuck is up with that?

There were a number of these signs in the parking lot, right near the more traditional handicapped spots. Does this mean that having children is a handicap?

Those who have read my blog for some time know that I'm not big on kids. Sure they are cute when they are asleep or well behaved, but the majority of their waking hours they can be a royal pain in the ass. And this is particularly true when they are being dragged all over town shopping. Hell I remember being in that situation as a kid, if fucking sucked! But I have to say that my tolerance is way down these days for screaming, running, crying kids in stores. And by the way, do you need your kid with you when you come to pick out a new couch? Suck it up and pay some slightly older kid to babysit for an hour or two; the bonus is you don't have to deal with the unruly behaviour that will occur, and don't think that it won't, it will, it always does.

But despite all this IKEA has chosen to give privilege to those with children, particularly those who bring them along shopping. Great, so now not only is my shopping experience (god that's a lame term) made all the worse by having kids there, but even if there is a nice open spot near the front, I'm apparently not allowed to park there.

Sure I see no way that they can enforce the policy, unless they will pay to have someone monitor the cars for baby seats, but it's still aggravating. Just because you chose to have children does not mean that you should be given special privilege. Just because I don't have kids does that mean that I am less of a person? Does it remind you of a something from our past?

On second thought they do have rest rooms for kids don't they...and thank god really. Half the reason I don't want kids is I don't want to have to look at someone elses crap, let alone worry about random mid-change urinations. Damn kids are gross!

Communication problems

Well that does it, I'm pissed. It seems that almost all forms of electronic communication at my disposal are simply fucked up!

My cell phone has been giving me issues for a few weeks. Sending calls directly to voicemail and not receiving text messages partway through "conversations". And having shit for a signal into my basement apartment, which technically is above ground, the parking lot out back just goes on top of the garages.

Now my email is screwed up beyond belief. I have been receiving emails very randomly today. The latest emails to arrive were sent 4.5 and 5.5 HOURS ago!!!

So if I don't get back to you I just haven't gotten the email yet. It seems that gmail has had issues like this in the past for small groups of users. And from what I can tell I don't lose any emails, they just take their sweet fucking time getting here.

I'm back, baby!

Ok, so after a longer than anticipated hiatus from the blog, to do a long ass road trip to Pittsburgh, Montreal and back to Pittsburgh (with a flight back to Minneapolis), I'm back at it. Obviously things have changed a bit. Call it boredom, or probably more appropriately blog envy, but after helping Deirdre set up her new blog I wanted something flashy too. So I put all my 3l33t coding skillz (yes they are that good that I have to mangle the most simple words to show that I'm hip) to work for me, copying other peoples photos from Flickr and bastardizing someones blog template with them. But hey, I kind of like the way it turned out.

So if you've been paying any attention at all you know that Deirdre has moved to Pittsburgh. Obviously this is great for her since she gets to go to grad school at a great school in a really neat program. Even more obvious is the fact that it really kind of sucks having your girlfriend live about 1400 km (870 miles) away. But that's just the way it's going to be for the moment. So in terms of the blog I don't want to let it get all mopey and sad. I could easily do that but that's not going to help anything. And more importantly it won't entertain anyone, which is clearly my primary goal...unless you are entertained by my pain?

So when I got back to the apartment on Monday I had some work ahead of me. Not only was the place full of boxes (seriously, I love my girlfriend but she went nuts on the number of boxes she thought she would need) but most of my stuff was out in the garage. By the way, I'm not sure how many of you know this, but boxes and box factories really stink (wow the immature guys out there are killing themselves on that one, right CMac and Aaron?) . Anyhow, the place is finally taking shape and I might have some pictures up shortly. The one downside to the place now is that I seem to have had some guests move in while I was away, small, and not so small, multiple legged guests. So maybe it's best that Deirdre isn't around at the moment, after having had to kill about 6 bugs in two days and one return visitor in the bedroom I don't think she would be too happy to be here right now.

Anyway that's about it for now, I hope you enjoy the new look of the blog and hopefully I can post more regularly. Oh and keep an eye on my "friends blogs" links, it should now tell you if they have posted something new recently. What can I say, I live to serve.

Moving

Yeah it's been a long time since I posted anything, but this time I at least have an excuse. I was helping Deirdre move to Pittsburgh for grad school. I'm actually still out there with her and I won't be back to Minneapolis until Monday, but we finally have the internet up and running at her place.

So if you want to check out her new blog here's the link. Of course it will also be in my sidebar as well. I should be back to posting again by Tuesday or so.