Happy Halloween

This is much, much better when Marcus sings it, but as this is the best I have, let me present the Halloween anthem:

This is Unbelievable

Would someone PLEASE teach the Packers how to tackle?????

Post #354

Sorry for the silence; things have been busy for the last week (even though I didn't leave town over the weekend). I don't really have much time now, either, but I wanted to break the ice, so here's some what's whats:

*I went to a party with Bacon and Laura on Saturday and played beer pong for the first time. Amazing, considering my diploma from UW-Madison. Turns out it's fun.
*It's finally getting cold around here. The windows are frosted at night, and the heated seats in the Saab are getting their first use (so very nice to have).
*I'm just waiting to buy a bunch of post-Halloween candy. I hate how it gets more expensive before hand.
*The next few weekends are Madison, Minneapolis, Boston, Thanksgiving. Updates regarding those trips:
**Pat may have fooled me into flying solo on American Airlines to the east coast again. If things go sideways I'm blaming him.
**Maria takes her GRE this Saturday, and I'm going to be out of state. What a terrible boyfriend.
**I'm getting pretty excited for MN. Pat - we need to buy tickets sometime very soon. I'll get these; just tell me when you wanna go.
*I paintballed last Friday with a bunch of coworkers. It was a great time, and I actually don't feel too sore afterwards. May be because I'm working out, or maybe I just didn't crouch down as much.
*I have The Orange Box and Beautiful Katamari on the way from gamefly. There should be an upswing in videogame time for the next few days.
*Having not eaten lunch today, I'm damn hungry. I'm going to make something real good for dinner.
*I was just in Walgreens, and had this very strange interaction where a guy was looking at a shelf near the front of the store, then claimed to be waiting in line after I walked up to a register. I was like "nuh-huh", and he was like "um-yeah", and I let him go so I wouldn't have to tell him how it was.
*Pushing Up Daisies introduced musical elements last week. Careful, PUD - you wouldn't want to become totally unwatchable, would you?
*The number of people involved in next weekend's Madison Mash-em-up is sort of unbelievable. It's going to be balls-out amazing.

Solidifying My Place on Your Coat Tails via Facebook Pictures

I've come to realize that many of you, my friends, are destined for fame and fortune. By making sure to get lots of pictures of us together, and then tagging them on Facebook, I can make sure that when people look you up, they see my smiling mug right there.

Five years from now, when several of you are famous, and people are delighting to how fun it is that the nationally syndicated DJ Chris knows that indie-j-pop superstar Arun who knows the tabloid darling CEO Joe who knows the first Green Party Governor Harry, who knows the Guitar Hero national champion Chad, who knows Qualler, CPA to the stars, someone will notice that same skinny dude with the beard showing up in pictures of all of you. (Not to mention all you Atlas folk - that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.) Someone will ask, "Who is that?" And thus I will begin my new career as your hanger-on. I will be the Kato to your OJ. I will be the other guys to your Justin Timberlake. I will be the Luigi to your Mario.

Don't worry, though, I'll pull my weight. I'll always be there to go get that girl's phone number for you when you can't get out of your limo. I'll tell your assistants to pick up your dry cleaning. I'll negotiate the terms of your appearance on the Today Show. You won't be able to imagine how you'd ever get along without me. And if there's ever a moment of doubt, I'll just pull up all those Facebook pictures to remind you of all the good times we've shared.

OH THE GRANDEUR THAT SHALL BE QUALLER AND BRIGITTE'S WEDDING

Words cannot explain. Perhaps pictures can capture the raw emotion:

Random Updates

Haven't done this in a while - Friday Entertainment.

Also entertaining: ask Joe about this ridiculous dare or bet or something he completed last night. It involved 10 shots inside of 90 seconds. And predicting the colors of poker cards. And not vomiting. Just another day in the life of Pfeiffer, I suppose.

New York
I never really discussed New York, outside of a couple posts while we were there and the rant about my travel experience. (American has since promised me a "travel voucher", though I don't know if there's a dollar limit on it or anything.) (Also, Pat and I are flying AA to Boston because they're cheap, so wish us luck.) Suffice to say, the trip was awesome. Joe and I spent a lot of time exploring the city, with Arun joining in for one of the nights. I'm glad we didn't spend too much time inside of museums or other tourist traps, but rather just explored on our own. It was nice to get a little bit of a feel for the city. Many thanks to Katie and Arun for putting us up!

I also saw the ex-Madisonites who now live out there (Gabe, Anne and Caroline). They took us around to some local hipster bars (one so hip it didn't even have a sign), and we drank and laughed about everything from piles of garbage to guinea pigs.

Other Highlites of New York:
-Drunk Joe arguing with the cabbie about how to get back to Arun's
-The kids dancing on the train
-Piles of garbage
-Lost Planet
-Quality Meats/Water/Ice Cream
-PBR on a silver platter
-Arun not paying rent for a year
-Pat's strange affection for Katie's cat
-Upper East Side Hot Moms



Boston
The next trip on the docket is Madison, then Minneapolis, and then our next big one - Boston. Plans are nearly complete; Pat used his big shot connections to get us into an awesome hotel for a great rate. The presence of an Irish pub in the lobby will make everything just that much better. After the unbridled success of the NYC trip, I'm really excited to see what happens when we add Pat and lots of Irishmen to the same forumla.

Happy Birthday, Maria!
And, in closing, a big Happy Birthday to Maria tomorrow! If you see her, give her a party hat. She will be celebrating in style with her parents and me (I?). For those of you unfortunate enough to never have dinner with the Parrotts, let me tell ya; it's a great time.

American Airlines Flight 378 Nonstop from ORD to LGA

I've just returned from a trip to New York, and I wanted to tell you all about my journey there. I'm not talking about the time I spent in the city, I'm talking about the eleven hours I spent in the plane. Just to give you an idea, here's a time line:

(all times are Central and approximate)
10:50am: Plane is supposed to leave Chicago
12:10pm: Plane actually boards
12:20 - 3:30: Sit on the runway at O'Hare
3:30: Woman gets sick, the plane has to return to the terminal so paramedics can take her off.
3:40: When we were supposed to leave. Many planes (all waiting to go to NYC) take off, while we're back at the terminal.
3:45: Return to the runway, having lost our spot in line to take off
4:30: Finally take off, head for New York
5:00: Circle around Columbus, OH for a while
6:00: Circle around Scranton, PA for a while
7:00: Circle around New York, NY for a while
8:00: Land... in Harrisburg, PA to refuel
8:15: The fine folks at the Harrisburg airport find some stairs that will fit our plane
8:30: Eat the stale muffins that Starbucks (the only restaurant open) have left over
9:00: Leave from Harrisburg, PA
10:00: LAND IN NEW YORK CITY!!!!

Obviously, there's a lot I could talk about here. For starters, I'd like to discuss the Gilligan's Island Syndrome: this was supposed to be a two hour flight, so the crew brought around almost no food, and very little to drink. We ran out of food while still sitting on the ground in Chicago before the woman got sick. In an effort to get back out fast they didn't get anything else to eat. You can imagine that over the next four hours a lot of us wished they had. There were a few people on the plane that had chips or candy or something, and they handed it out in a display of humanity that makes me think we'd all be okay if zombies attacked tomorrow. I believe the toilets also stopped working while we were somewhere over the Midwest, but that didn't really matter so much (as you don't normally need a bathroom when you're starving).

The crew of the plane put on an amazing display of lying to us (to keep people under control, I guess). They kept telling us arbitrary times when we were finally going to get to take off or land ("We just got word we'll be taking off at 4:05", "Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for our final descent... into Harrisburg, PA" *This is how we found out were were landing in PA). After landing in PA we were told La Guardia was closed. Several passengers called friends or American Airlines directly and discovered that wasn't true. I don't really know why it was better to dole out a steady stream of lies or extremely inaccurate estimates, rather than just being honest.

The lack of accurate information made it impossible to deal with things efficiently; Joe was waiting for me in New York, and I kept getting told we would be there in 2-3 hours, so Joe ended up waiting until almost 7 for me, when he could have left far earlier. If I had just been told that things were really backed up and they didn't know when we'd get in, I could have told Joe not to wait; because they kept telling us we'd get there soon he had to waste a ton of time. Many other passengers had reservations or hotel rooms booked, and they lost tons of money on deposits and such because they were told we'd make it in time.

Another silver lining of the ordeal was the lovely folks in the Harrisburg, PA airport. The airport normally closes at 8pm, but they stuck around late to take care of us. The only thing open was the Starbucks / bar (they shared a staff and were connected), manned by three or four people. They served us gigantic shots and beers and coffees with a smile, and I'm sure 150 grumpy travelers aren't exactly a great group to have show up when you're supposed to be on your way home. So if you're from Harrisburg, tell the airport staff I say thanks.

In the end, the delays weren't American Airlines fault, but the way those delays were handled was. One of the flight attendants did a good job of trying to relay information and help out, but the other members of the staff shut down and went into this cold shoulder mode. Making announcements like "Ladies and gentlemen, we're out of food, so please stop asking. If you don't like this, take it up with American Airlines" is just confrontational. I get that it sucks for them as much as the passengers, but that's their job. They were so lucky that the group of passengers were good people and nobody freaked out on them. It certainly wasn't thanks to their professional tact.

I'm going to be writing a letter to American Airlines about this ordeal, and hopefully they have interest in fixing some of their issues so that next time things are handled better. I certainly will do my best to avoid flying on their airline again. Every person on that plane deserves a refund for the way we were treated.

(Luckily the rest of the trip was awesome.)

Nerd Alert!

Whoooop!Whoooop!

Pfeiffer and I are doing a Power Hour

A Power Hour is when you take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Joe and I are halfway through one right now. We're about to take shot #29...

There we go. So, to give you an idea, we've had three beers apiece in the last half hour. We're going to liveblog the rest. Oh, did somebody say

LIVEBLOGGING THE SECOND HALF OF A POWER HOUR WITH JOE
Arun is the man with the house that we are in, and he's been nice enough to provide us with a big wall full of Larry David and a couch with a comfy squish. He's not drinking just yet, as he is:

1) Waiting for the Mexican food we ordered
2) Taking some sort of "I'm still allowed to teach" test in the morning.

So let's take stock of where we are right now. We just took shot 35 (time flies), and I'm feeling pretty sloshy. I don't have much in my stomach (Joe and I had an amazing lunch, but it was back at 3 or so), so the beers are running rampant, picking fights all over the place. I'm definitely feeling it, especially on this empty stomach, and I'm staring down the barrel of way too many more. I definitely need this food NOW to help level things out.

Alright, Joe here. Dave made some room by going to the bathroom. We're on 40, 2/3 done! Dave and I are belching a concerning amount. I'm feeling a little better than him right now since the food has stuck with me more. The lunch we had this afternoon was amazing. Upper east side, kinda trendy, kinda fancy. I absolutely love doing long multi-hour dining and we were in this place for at least 2 hours, probably closer to 3. Spending the day in Manhattan was great and Brooklyn tonight should be great too!

We're on 48 now. Home stretch. The Mexican food we ordered has arrived and we have plans to meet up at 11pm.

DAVE IS BACK!@!!!!! WHOOOOOOO!!!PPPPP!!
Check it out: we're at 52 (well, I am - Joe's getting his food). We're doing well - won't be a problem. Also, we have an extra hour (not meeting people until 11, not at 10 like we thought).

Hear ye, hear ye: Joe's cock is tiny. So small that scientists argue over it's very existence (many say it's just a hydrogen molecule).

Alright, moving right along. The Mexican food we got (by Arun's reco.) is great. Joe, on the other hand, is doing a terrible job with his filling of the flower cups (we're using these little flower petal cups for shots of beer). I did just make him spill though. I'll take the cred for that (bad cred, though it is). I must again call out Arun for being so nice for putting us up (especially considering our conduct).

When in doubt, just shake it out. Shake it out, baby. Just shake it out. Unless you're on a volcano that's about to explode (if it gets shook). Then don't shake it out. Otherwise, just shake it out, baby.

Dave is back. Pfeiffer is stuck in the bathroom right now. The doorknob is broken, and Pfeiffer is drunk, and he can't figure out how to get out. We can hear him dropping the doorknob over and over. Hey, he got out!!! Hooray, Pfeiffer!!!

I'm feeling quite a bit better. Some food and a few minutes with no beer does wonders. We just remembered that Craig lives in town here, so we're trying to get a hold of him. I really hope we can get that kid on the line, because everybody (and I mean everybody) likes him.

Alright, so I think we're going to sign off for now. Joe and Arun are talking about My Space profiles, and we're going to meet up with people in like an hour and a half. We'll be sure to come back in if anything particularly amazing happens. We're heading up to the roof now, so we'll talk to ya'all later!

See All of the Facebook Messages

You can do it here:
http://www.spanishturtle.com/turtletest.php

Shoutboard on Facebook

Shoutboard is now a really, really simple Facebook app. I think you can add it by going here. If that doesn't work, you may be able to do it by going here.

All the application does is add a Shoutboard icon to your left nav (seen here), which you can click on to bring up the Shoutboard. Submit a message there if you like, and it works like normal. I want to get it so the board shows up in your profile, but that's proving much more difficult than getting the simple app running.

If I keep working on this thing, the next step is to build an interface where people can create their own boards. The site will generate the code for people in insert that Shoutboard, customized by the options the creator selects (color, number of posts, etc). A username/password system would also be good (I may actually just start using Facebook usernames, as I have access to that now with their API). But that'll all be a ways off, if I ever do it at all, as it would take quite a bit more effort. Past that even there'd be the possibility of capitalizing off of it by embedding ads or charging a monthly fee for an ad-free board. But I highly doubt I'll ever go that far.

Anyways, add it on Facebook if you like - if we get five users I can submit it to the application directory and we can all get famous.

Updates

I'm now using the Shoutboard iframe, and fixed the annoying fact that it redirected you back to the wrong place. It should be good now. I actually went through an hour process of passing in a referral url and whatnot when I realized I didn't need to and had to strip it all out. Ah, well, I learned something.

Be aware that Life has fixed a lot of the annoying stuff, and Gossip Girl is really starting to get pretty awesome.

I just discovered that the version of Soda Can Robot on youtube is all jacked up.

Joe and I head to New York on Thursday. Hopefully there will be some good things to report on from out East.

Improving the Shoutboard

So the Shoutboard idea was never to just have it on my page. My thought was to have the same Shoutboard in several places. You can post to it from anywhere it is displayed, and messages will show up in all locations. This way, it is more than just comments or email, it's a somewhat effective means to throw a quick message up in several places at once. It becomes social, it becomes very open, and potentially neat (at least in my opinion).

So if anybody would like, I've created a simple Shoutboard page that you can insert into your website/blog/whatever with no coding complications at all. Just insert the code in the text file below into your blog template or site!

shoutboard.txt

You can adjust the height and width in the code to change the size. You can also turn scrolling on or off just by setting that value. (If you make the Shoutboard small, I'd recommend turning scrolling on.) Because the posts will be of different lengths, it's hard to say what the right size is, but 200x600 seems to work alright. Please let me know if anybody does put it up, and if there are any problems! (This is a first for me, so I may very well have screwed something up.) I've inserted it below here; this is what it will look like on your site:

A Whole Lot more TV

Oh boy have I watched a lot of premiers in the last couple of weeks. Somebody has to have the balls to watch this crap. The newbies include:

Cavemen
Check it out: they're CAVEMEN! They're like normal people, but they're CAVE. MEN. I actually recognize one of the CAVEMEN from this weird five-minute show that American Eagle runs during the commercial breaks of The Real World on MTV. That has to be the strangest career path ever.

All in all it's like they took a normal sitcom, threw some hair and makeup on it, and surrounded it with jokes about how cavemen are sooooo silly. The best part of the whole show was when the CAAAAAVVVEEEEEMMMEEEENNNN played racquetball. One caveman called another c-a-v-e-m-a-n Bobby Knight when he got mad! Looks like cAvEmEn like college basketball!

Carpoolers
I thought this show took place exclusively in the car, during the carpool. I was saddened to see them leave the awesome Acura Legend they rode in. Remarkably, there were actually a couple of sort of funny bits in here (mostly thanks to some snappy editing and quick one-word punchlines), but a Napoleon Dynamite ripoff and one of the worst endings I've ever seen brought Carpoolers back down to the level we all expected. Can't wait for next week!

Pushing Daisies
I'm split on this. One one hand, I sort of dug the characters, and the very very bizarre tone/style was appreciated. But I'm also pretty sure this would wear thin inside of three episodes. I like a good mystery, and I like a good dog that can't be touched, but...

Easily the best part of the show was when the two main characters as kids built a little town, dressed up like monsters, and smashed it. Hats off to you, children who live in a cartoon! Pat hates you!

Private Practice
I missed the premier, so I'm coming in at the second episode. Laura and I LOVED how that stripper had a rash! Ha ha ha, ohhhhh strippers. You're so dirty! (Pat loves you!) We only watched the first couple of minutes, and I'm just picking it back up now, as I write this. Thus, you could say I am

LIVE BLOGGING PRIVATE PRACTICE
Looks like the kid from Veronica Mars (what was his name? Putty? Zinger? Something like that - the surfer. No, wait, it started with a P... Pizz? Pester? Whatever, you know who I mean) is still on the show. I hope we get to see his concave chest again real soon.

Alright, so here's the scoop: there are like a half dozen beautiful 30-something doctors who work together, and Pizz (it is Pizz, by the way) is their secretary or something. I think two of the doctors are recently divorced, and the thing with the stripper is that his friends got him a stripper for fun. Now that same guy is breaking into a house to save a random guy's life. Where the hell is he? Is this where the stripper lives? He was mumbling something about strippers when he walked up.

Phew! Commercial! It has Beyonce in it. It's nice to take a break from having no idea what's going on. Let's see what Beyonce is selling me... wait for it... wait for it... wow, they really don't want me to know. WHAT IS THIS FOR? Ah, American Express. Excuse me, I have to go sign up for a credit card with really high interest rates that isn't accepted anywhere because they dispute crap for me or something? Yeah, right, Beyonce. Nice try. Oh wait, I recorded this, I can skip commercials.

Alright, we're back, and the bald, black doctor who was looking for strippers but found a sick guy is just leaving the house. Meanwhile, back at the office, his ex-wife is peeling an orange. And the lady from Grey's Anatomy is there too. And now a third lady just brought a bike in that I guess belongs to HER ex-boyfriend/husband, but she's keeping it? JESUS THIS SHOW IS A MESS. Chris, you'd totally love this - watch it next week.

In this show they call Pizz Dell. Remember the Dell kid that got caught with pot? That was so obvious, it was just annoying when it actually happened.

Alright, now we're getting down to some real beef - SICK BABY!!! Baby's going to die, some sort of genetic disease, baby's mom's sister wants a baby, is she sick? Oh crap, I don't care. This is done.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Looking forward, most of the new shows aren't looking too hot. I'm really only excited about Dirty Sexy Money, but most of the shows aren't so bad that I'm already giving up on them. Typically I'll put in at least a couple of weeks before I give up on a show because I simply forget to watch. I'll probably check in on TV once in a while, but if you want updated TV content I'd turn to Chris and Qualler.

Outside of TV, the biggest deal in my life right now is that I now have two direct-reports at work, having just hired my first full time employee. I'm somewhat amazed how much stress & work this has added to my day. It's really more an issue of me finally having time to do the bazillion things I could never do because I was taking care of daily upkeep tasks. (And my boss is out having a kid, so I'm covering that too.) The new guy seems bright and I think he's going to work out pretty well. Two months from now I won't have any idea how anything got done without the extra help.

Hey - the stripper is back on Private Practice. They've introduced like six more doctors since I stopped talking about it.

Mystery Car Wash

I got stuck in ridiculous traffic today, so I trail blazed home through the west side of Chicago. Whilst randomally picking side streets to try I stumbled across a street with a Ferrari F430, a Porsche 911 GT3, a Bentley Continental GT Speed, an S-Class Mercedes and an X5 (in that order) parked in front of a car wash.

I was like "Woah, cool."

Blogulution Roundup, featuring exaggerations concerning the size of a graphic

Chris and Qualler recently made some big changes to The Blogulator. The first change you'll notice is a big 'ol flash-bang graphic at the top, and a few minutes later you'll get down to some details on the new whatnots (just keep scrolling). Looks like the boys behind the 'lutor are taking a stab at the big time. Give 'em hell, boys, we'll miss your small town sensibilities.

The changes there attracted my attention to all of their links, some of which I haven't visited in ages, and I found this comment from Chris on Erin and Chad's blog:

"you GOTS to edit that picture in your header. it's massive!" -Chris (June 18, 2007)

After checking out that blog, I discovered that Arun has revived his blog in Halloween style (probaby like a year ago). I didn't realize Arun was still keeping up with his writings, and it's awesome. How bizzare is it that Arun is also a teacher and also doesn't use capital letters (like Chris?). Weird. But wait, Chris is using capital letters now! Gee, I guess I'll take credit for that.

It's great to be able to add Arun to my daily blog reads, as the blogultion has dwindled to a small uprising (though it's been greatly increased in size thanks to the addition of a massive picture of a television). We've still got ijfp.com, the ocassional post on Imaginary Lines, and the Blogulator. There have also been a few gasps of air from Life After 208 recently (Caps and Laura both broke out some pretty fantastic posts last month). I want that one to come back.

A to-scale comparision of the new Blogulator grapic,
as compared to all else in existance.

Finally, if there are any sports fans in the house, let me draw your attention to Pie Traynor's Glove. It's a blog about sports, written by my friends Ted and Ben with the very ocassional contribution from myself or Paul. Ted is a professional writer who has published some baseball stories, and Ben is the single biggest baseball and college basketball nerd you will ever meet ever. Even if you have met Harry.

P.S. Remember Zombie City?

UPDATE: I thought of another one. The weights in Harry's Basement:Heavy :: The picture on the top of the Blogulator:Large

Shout Board Updates

First, I moved it. Duh. Second, you'll now be automatically redirected back to spanishturtle.com after posting, which is nice. Also, made a couple of design tweaks to make room for a vertical board.

Public Message Board up on Top

I've been wanting to mess around with some PHP and MySQL for a long time now, so I sat down this evening and built a simple little app for the top of the blog here. You can post any message you'd like, and the top three most recent messages will stay up there until they're pushed out.

It's very limited, and totally insecure (I need to learn how to hide the database user name/password). Luckily, the only data in this thing is the message board stuff, so I really don't care right now. The best thing is that I now have some experience with the syntax and database interaction, making future projects much more feasable.

Other than mastering the extreme basics of PHP, I also went out and got my car waxed today, which was nice. Unfortunately I'm now sitting here listening to a big rain storm put spots all over it. Ah, well, I was mostly interested in getting the paint sealed up before the cold weather hits anyways. I was pretty happy with how many of the little scratches and scrapes have been covered up with this simple touch-up. I think next spring I may (pun alert!) spring for a full detailing. And actually, I think the place I had the work done will give me a free wash tomorrow (some sort of 24-hour rain guarantee on detailing work).

I spent much of the weekend cleaning out the rest of the DVR, and I've now watched Big Shots, Kid Nation, Chuck, Bionic Woman, My Name is Earl, Dirty Sexy Money, and maybe some other things that I'm forgetting. (Quick aside: sorry if this is full of typos, I'm getting pretty tired, and I keep catching mistakes.) In the interest of brevity, here's a quick round-up of what I thought:

GOOD: Big Shots, Chuck, Dirty Sexy Money, my Name is earl
Chuck was just stupid but entertaining. Not really much to say about it. Big Shots was surprisingly interesting, but I'd be hard pressed to say why. I like to see Jeremy from Sports Night getting work, I suppose. Dirty Sexy Money is probably the only new show thus far that seems legitimately good. I really like the main character (Six Feet Under guy), and the overall idea.

MAYBE: Kid Nation, Bionic Woman
Kid Nation could be alright if interesting things start happening, and Bionic Woman has Starbuck, soooo... Both of these may very well end up on the garbage pile (especially Kid Nation), but neither one was so revolting that I want to write them off just yet.

So all in all, if you're keeping track here, I've really only cut off one or two of the new shows thus far. It's going to be a busy fall, folks.