Being oddly specific

Just found a fun website called OddlySpecific.com.  They specialize in oddly specific signs.  Here are a few fun examples, but all of them are worth seeing:

 

Note the Pidgin version of the warning at the bottom, btw!

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Good advice indeed!

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From the "Thank you, Captain Obvious!" collection.

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I have no idea what to make of this one.

Being oddly specific

The funny side of a funeral

Okay, someone I know was at a funeral today for someone in her office who died of a pulmonary embolism. When she told me about this, she said "Am I a bad person?" She'd been at the funeral and almost burst out laughing when the first song they played was "Take My Breath Away." Even worse, the second song was "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Well, if she's a bad person, I am, too, because this is really funny stuff!

The funny side of a funeral

Your rationalist's horoscope for today

Rationalists horoscope: If you were born between 1-1 and 12-31, your sign is: Human. Today you’ll do some things, have some things happen to you, react in ways that are somewhat predictable given your upbringing, training, and typical responses, and then probably do some more stuff, and eventually knock off for the day, and fall asleep. 

Avoid bad things today.

Your rationalist's horoscope for today

More Epic Win

I realized I couldn't stop--these just had me ROFLing.

OMG, they reformatted Kenny!

Eeeeyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!

 

Whatever you were thinking of, just back away slowly and make no sudden moves

More Epic Win

Epic Win!

There are many sites dedicated to things not going the right way, such as LameBook, Failure Magazine, Stick Figure Death Theatre, and Stupidity, not to mention the classic Despair demotivational posters. All of these are worth reading and are very funny (particularly Stick Figure Death Theatre--try Bungee Jumping if you want a quick taste), but they're none of them very positive.

But I just bumped into the Epic Win site. Epic Win is all about people doing Really Cool Things and you get to look at it and say "Wow! That's incredibly neat!" and feel good that there are cool things being done.

Want an example or two? Try this video of fun things done to a latté:

If you don't feel like watching a video, you can admire this picture of a Snow-Totoro:

Or, you can admire the generally meta flavor of this:

(Thanks to Skye Hughes for pointing me at the Random Sunday: The Bad Parenting Edition, from which I found Epic Win.) 

Epic Win!

Fun stuff: The Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Theater

I've just been turned on to the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Theater.  SMBC Theater has a bunch of very funny short films you'll enjoy. The current film is Date Wars, a film about the battle between men and women on a first date.

Fun stuff: The Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Theater

Pictures from the cruise

I posted the pix from the cruise here.  I spent yesterday morning providing captions as well, so you'll have some idea of what you're looking at.  There are lots of pix of baby sloths from the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica.

Pictures from the cruise

The vacation was great!

We had a great time on the 10-day cruise through the Southern Caribbean.  We are home now, a bit tired and definitely tanned.

There's a song that the Flying Karamazovs would sing that I've always liked at this time of year. If it's not obvious in print, the tune is "Sentimental Journey."

We would like to wish you 'Merry Christmas'
But we're not all Christians here.
Hanukkah would raise the same objections.
What's the theme this time of year?

New Year, we might wish you "Happy New Year!"
But it's not the start of Jew Year,
Or of the Chinese....
It's hard as heck to be politically correct.

Have yourselves a really merry Solstice.
For all the others, it's the cause.
Have yourselves a really swinging Solstice.
Ritually sacrifice a Santa Claus!

The vacation was great!

For that really special someone....

There's always someone, you know. Someone for everyone. You might first meet them at school, at work, at church, through a hobby. They might be someone you first get to know at a sporting event, a concert, even on the bus every morning.

And soon, you find you can't get them out of your life. They're someone you think about a lot. Someone that occupies your time and your thoughts. Someone you can't wait to tell everyone you know about. 

And for your favorite picture of that Certain Someone in your life, a company on the net has finally come up with the absolutely perfect picture frame. 

Let the world know: they're the real thing. 

For that really special someone....

Gambling

My dear friend Brian and I have been planning on going to Vegas for ages.  AGES!  (How long?  Since before we were married to the respective Lights of Our Lives, that's how long.) 

We'd like to go there to gamble. We're not degenerate gamblers, we aren't risking the mortgage payment, it's not like we won't be able to afford whatever we're risking, but we like to gamble. Craps in particular.

Craps is a "boy" game. There's a lot of artificial community and much shouting and cheering.  You can also win (or lose) a considerable quantity of money fairly quickly. Blackjack is a quiet, cerebral game; Texas Hold 'Em is about calculating odds and reading your opponent; Draw and Stud poker are similar; Roulette is moderately sedate and has never quite grabbed me; Slots are definitely fun but there's no art to them at all and they're a guaranteed quick loser... but Craps gets you involved with the game, the betting, and even what the other players are doing. 

For one reason or another, we haven't been able to take a boy's weekend out to Vegas for all this time. It's to the point where I've been looking around to see if there are local casinos that I could get a craps fix at. (There aren't, really; I'd have to drive an hour and a half out to the Oregon Coast to get to Three Rivers Casino.) More importantly, there's no-one to go out there with: gambling by yourself is no fun.  ~sigh~ 

Well, I'll be able to do some of this on the cruise coming up soon: there are casinos on the ships and they  have craps tables in the casinos and there are a bunch of people who feel about craps the same way I do.  

But Brian and I are going to head out to Vegas at some point together.  Soon, I hope.

Gambling

The Babe's off to DC

She's doing training again in DC. I'll be driving her to the airport later this morning.

The Babe's off to DC

Been a little while...

I realized that it's been a week and a half since I posted. Part of this has been recovering after yet another hard disk crash (that's 2 major system crashes this summer; I believe that that's quite enough, thank you!) and not having passwords for a bunch of things like the blog, and part of it has been the joy, the thrill, the happiness of being laid off.

How you react to something is frequently a matter of choice and I have the luxury of choosing to be happy about this. I've got savings handy, there's plenty of work in the offing, and I am free! I am enjoying sleeping late and going to the gym as well as cleaning my office out of all kinds of detritus, both former-job-related and just stacked up. I spent some time recycling old manuals (stuff that had already been released) and shredding docs related to things not yet released or otherwise company confidential. I've freed a shocking amount of space: 3-1/2 years of project notebooks does build up, after all. Thank goodness for efficient shredders! I also sent one box of equipment to the company and I'm looking for the last bits for the second box, which should wrap things up.

I also filed for unemployment. That was good. Money shall be coming in in quite adequate quantities until book contracts and other things come in. And I hope to get out to Lane Community College in the next few days to talk to them about placement for a few classes next quarter.

Life's good. Life's very, very good.

Been a little while...