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August 31, 2008
You and me and Steve Ballmer...
... makes three.
Had the weirdest dream. I think it's because I've been on a 50-60's rock kick, but I had to share this cracked out masterpiece with you all.
The dream starts with my friend Ashley and I trying to go to her friend Alex's birthday. Well, Alex is kinda my friend to, to the level that anyone who you don't hang out with but twice a year is a friend. At any rate, we are going to his birthday and we run into this girl called ... Cat Toe... no shit. She tells me her name is Cat Toe. In my dream, I'm immediately mocking her, now that was a mistake, I quickly learned that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE, should you mock anybody named Cat Toe. Take heed.
So Cat Toe tosses us in a Cadillac limousine and that's where things get shady because there is a guy in the back seat who says he sales life insurance and keeps telling us that God made us out of clay. Being defiant by spirit I share with him that I don't believe in a single Christian God, 26 years worth of church reps and growing up in Christian culture/society couldn't sell me on God, neither can a salesman in the back of a limo driven by the diabolical Cat Toe.
This is the point where he starts screaming that god made us out of clay and my arm starts to crumble. Clearly the only response to this is, WHAT A POOR DESIGN! So that's what I yell back.
Luckily... don't laugh quite yet, this isn't exactly the best part... Aquaman inexplicably shows up to toss water on me which keeps the rest of my body from crumbling. It appears that the salesman and Cat Toe are terrified of Aquaman. Now I don't understand why anyone would be terrified of Aquaman, he essentially has no superpower. If he's outside of water for more than an hour he dies, what danger does he potentially hold in the back seat of a limo above water? Plus he has no flight, no superstrength, nothing... he's the most useless superhero in history, but hey, if he wants to save my ass, I'm not going to point it out.
SO Ashley and I decide not to take this sitting down and research with the help of Grissom from CSI, this caper and somehow discover that it was masterminded by STEVE BALLMER!!!
That's right, in my dreams I'm kidnapped and preached at under the direction of Microsoft's president. I thought it was only fitting. Regardless of how clearly implausible this dream was I've taken it as a sign that I must continue to use Apple products to thwart the diabolical Cat Toe, Salesman, and their dark master Steve Ballmer. This obviously secures that I am losing my mind slowly.
That is all. Oh, and in reality I downloaded a song titled "Streetwalker" by Delta Spirit. It's pretty cool and you can catch it on my MySpace profile as I've added it as the default song.
Posted by Decemberice at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
The funniest thing you have seen...
... yet today! For those moments when you have interstitial office encounters with Ninja assassins.
Posted by Decemberice at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
Can't find Lola...
... online.
I am looking for the Kinks song "Lola" and I don't want the live version. Where can I download it? Nowhere, that's where. Isn't it odd the songs that you can't find online. Even more peculiar are the ones that you can find live or in cover, but can't find the original track to. For instance, I can find 2 different live versions of Lola and a karaoke version but I can't find the studio recording.
At any rate, it just tops off my day which pretty much sucked. The only highlight was buying the old Aquaman cartoons from the 60's on Amazon Unbox, and getting a bit more work done on the book I'm writing. I realized while writing my book though that I have no grammatical skill whatsoever and I'm going to have to pay a small fortune to have it edited and I don't even know where to go to get it edited. I guess I should finish it first then worry about refining it.
It's not just my book. The concept and many of the details came from a friend and co-worker but he's even busier than I am so I somehow took on authoring it.
I'm looking forward to a build of the iPhone/iTunes firmware/software that allows you to sync purchases made on the iTunes store from your iPhone back to your PC wirelessly. I think the Zune has that feature with Windows Media Player. It would be really convenient. As it stands now, my iPhone doesn't quite have the capacity to replace my iPod, so I tote both around and it's rather inconvenient to have to always sync them both in order so that the songs I bought on my iPhone while out and about can make it onto my iPod. I'm sure higher capacity iPhones would really solve that problem without a need for additional software but I don't really want to buy a new iPhone right now I feel like I just bought one but I guess it has been over a year now.
Blah. Technology blues.
I suppose I should get around to making some changes to my Blog's design one of these days. There are some things I want to do with it but I just don't seem to have the time lately. I've never really got back into the swing of things since I returned from Jamaica. Well, I guess back to the hunt for Lola.
Posted by Decemberice at 12:44 AM | Comments (1)
August 28, 2008
Steve Jobs didn't die...
... someone might want to tell Bloomberg.
Steve Jobs' obituary was accidently published by Bloomberg. That must suck. I imagine Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and Pixar, is the type that reads Bloomberg. It actually highlights a rather sad aspect of the news world. His obituary had been pre-prepped by a journalist in case he were to drop dead at any moment, they would have a piece to cover it. I wonder who's prewriting my obit. Oh wait. That's right, nobody because I'm not famous. Maybe it would actually make me feel more important if people were writing about my death while I was alive.
Posted by Decemberice at 08:33 PM | Comments (2)
August 24, 2008
Back home...
... and settled.
I have been home for 3 weeks now but I wanted to post a blog commemorating my experiences in Jamaica. I've had a lot of time to reflect on the trip and have come to realized that I got a LOT out of the experience.
Folks have been asking for photos, so let me get that out of the way up front. My photos of the Trip to Strawberry Hill aren't currently working due to some MobileMe drama. I'm not sure what happened with them. They were fine one minute, disappeared the next. MobileMe hasn't exactly been the most reliable of Apple products but at least they are acknowledging it. I've posted a new album to my Gallery on Me.com with the rest of the pictures from Jamaica and hopefully I can restore the ones from Strawberry Hill soon. Here's a link.
I did go to Jamaica for work but we got the opportunity to play a bit while I was there too. I spent the majority of my time in New Kingston. Kingston is the capital of Jamaica, and New Kingston is the nicer neighborhood. I stayed at a building of condos called the Westbury. It was extremely nice and furnished well for the most part. Not everything worked in the apartment but all the essentials worked in mine and that's all you can really want.
We went to Portmore for work each day. Portmore is very close to Kingston. It only took us about 25-30 minutes to drive there. That's about the length of my daily commute here in the states.
We took a few weekend getaways while I was there. The most memorable was to Ocho Rios/Runaway Bay where I stayed at the all inclusive resort detailed in a previous blog and got to hang out at Jimmy Buffet's Margarittavile. I didn't get to see the Jamaica from the tour brochures until that point, but the entire time the country was full of beautiful mountains and the beaches were gorgeous. All in all a very cool trip!
Posted by Decemberice at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2008
Sunset on the Caribbean…
… with a coke and cheeseburger.
We got back last night from Ocho Rios (or Ochie as they call it here) which was a nice final highlight to my time in Jamaica. We went to an all-inclusive resort called Club Ambiance (www.clubambiance.com). I’ve come to know a new kind of heaven know as “all-inclusive”. They really mean it too.
The ride to Ochie was fun. I saw Jungle Vines! My life has been validated. I also saw some amazing carvings, and drove through a real Fern gulley with over 200 kinds of ferns. Who knew there were 200. Unforunately, that fact has now occupied space in my brain I could have used for something important.
So EK, and I get to Ocho Rios before we headed out to Runaway Bay and went to the local market to shop for non-touristy gear. That isn’t exactly what the Jamaican local markets are like however because I’ve never seen such a touristy local market in my life. I got talked into buying a massive modern art painting of some naked people dancing. It rocked! I only spent $80 dollars by the time I’d haggled it down from $300. Then our guide assigned his 13 year old cousin to taking us on a tour of Ochie. The kid kept trying to steer us to the Tourist stores and didn’t seem to understand my truly Seattle-like need for chocolate and coffee one in the same so I ended up finally finding my own coffee locale and EK and I had the worst frappucinos ever, but they were similar to Starbucks in that they were a cold coffee drink, which made me feel a little better about paying $7 a cup for them. That’s like a quarter million Jamaican dollars.
We stayed about 20 minutes from Ocho Rios in a location called Runaway Bay. It’s actually about 5 minutes down the highway from Sandals and Breezes. Less notably it is right next door to “Hedonism III”… the nude beach. Luckily, Hedonism III is well guarded so my vacation wasn’t tainted by old people parts (why are the elderly the only people who go to nude beaches?).
Back to the matter at hand…
Club Ambiance was really cool. Especially because it didn’t cost a small fortune and what you got for what you paid made it extremely worth it. I actually paid more to stay at the Holiday Inn last year for my “in-town getaway” than I paid to stay at this resort in Jamaica.
I took Monday off and we stayed for 3 days and 2 nights. It began like this: J and EK enter resort and are immediately greeted with a familiar pink drink. Having learned quickly that Jamaican’s don’t play when it comes to Rum, we asked if this was Rum punch and the front desk lady says “No Rum… not yet.” SHE LIES! One sip and the overproof white rum burned its way down. EK and I just kinda turned to each other and laughed.
Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a conversation and had no idea how it came up? Let me preface this by saying it was all a joke over why they would need our card on file when we had already given them the number. At some point after EK and I had mentioned something about bringing lizards and trashing the room, not turning off the coffee pot and burning down the resort… etc… the front desk lady raised an eyebrow, and lo and behold, we got a room right next to the front desk. But it’s OK because we had the no holds barred AC that made me, a winter guy, feel right at home. It was the first time I’ve felt cold in Jamaica. It was great!
So I swam in the ocean, got saltwater in my mouth, loved it. I was attacked by Sand Crabs, and played pool under a palm tree. I got to sit on a tropical beach, rum in hand, watching time go by, and the sun set over the ocean. I later came back as a good American to eat a cheeseburger and drink a coke oceanside. We watched this live band perform over dinner and they actually performed a dead-on cover of “Stir it Up” by Bob Marley. I love that song. I think our entire crew is sick of hearing “One Love” though. I cannot even express to you the astronomical likelihood that you will hear that song each time you turn on a radio anywhere in Jamaica.
I did not go snorkeling. I enjoy my fish steamed, not in their native environment. There they have the advantage. I’m entering their turf, and you have to be wise of fish, because they have every reason to hate man. We have everything, dump oil in their house from time to time, and then eat them. I would hate us too.
EK was brave and opted to go snorkeling. I can only laugh at his brave insanity. Incidentally, I also hate the word snorkel, and I’ve opted to refer to it henceforth as Fishservation.
Digressing for a moment, I want to mention my fascination with Jamaican pizza. The crust tastes like donuts and it is covered in sweet peppers and mozzarella. The sauce is like marinara. I could tell that this place catered to Americans because there was Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Midnight Snack. Most American’s will probably recognize Midnight Snack as “Fourth Meal” circa Taco Bell 2007-8.
… now back to the story…
On the ride back we stopped in Ochie again and I went to Margaritaville. OMG People freakin’ drink there! I stuck to Coke and Nachos We went back for $7 coffees and I went touristy shopping got terrified at the grammatical errors on the t-shirts and then escaped back to Kingston.
That leaves me with 3 working days left, or really 2 now before packing on Friday then heading out. I’m about done here and my last two days will be spent on metrics. BOOOO! If I see one more excel file in my life my head is going to explode and represent its shattered hot mess in the form of a pivot chart. But we can’t all make money playing video games now can we?
UPDATE: I was a little late posting this and my working days are up. I leave for the states first thing tomorrow morning... at the ungodly hour 6am. See you all soon.
I'll post the pictures of Ochie once I get back!
Posted by Decemberice at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)