Maybe it is because I am getting older, but watching commercials for the new TV season is not making me want to watch any of the new shows. The commercials all use the same technic, something bad is about to happen they flash multiple 2 second shots of all the main characters then freeze on one of them about to die. They then say to tune in to see what happens, but I don’t care. Unless the actor asked for a lot more money in the off-season, they will get out at the last second only to get into the same situation the next week. CS this or NC that it all seems to be the same, if it isn’t a law based show it is a dancing or surviving with someone you might have heard of. Somebody has to come up with something original soon, that isn’t on a cable channel I won’t pay for or too full of d-list stars I didn’t like in their fist time on television.

So I think I was younger than ten years old when I found out. I was helping my dad with a project, when I measured a 2×4 and I realized it wasn’t actually 2×4. I was bewildered why it was not actually 2×4 but guess what, I never forgot that. I have built various things over the years and have always known this. It didn’t cause me harm, it didn’t injure me and I certainly didn’t think that I needed to sue the company I bought them from for false advertising or damages. Yet this is what we have come to, Lowes has settled a lawsuit, which requires them to label everything with actual measurements and common names. My question is, who got hurt? Who gets the damages? Was there a house that was built that collapsed on the occupants because of the difference in measurements? This is why our country is going to hell in a hand basket! We have real problems but our courts and government are more concerned with stupid stuff like this! Sorry to rant but this kind of stuff drives me crazy! The judge in this case should have hit the lawyer in the head with his gavel and then thrown this case and him out of the court!

Link to story: http://threepercenternation.com/2014/09/litigation-nation-lowes-pays-1-6m-settlement-over-2×4-labeling/

So my wife finally got me to make my once a decade trip to the doctor. I hate the doctor’s office! First they put you in the waiting area, till at least fifteen minutes after the appointment time. Even thou they asked me to come twenty minutes early to the appointment to fill out paperwork. After checking the two boxes that pertain to my medical history and sign that I understand my rights in three different places as well as state that I don’t smoke or do drugs. Then when they call my name I think things are going to start happening. Except it is really a deception they just move me into an isolation room where they can leave me for another twenty minutes. Just when I am about to start stuffing my pockets with cotton balls and long tongue depressors when he finally walks in. Time in the office an hour and a half, time with the doctor ten minutes. Well thank God I only do this once a decade, any more often and I would really have to start stealing school project supplies.

So you wait in line, probably burning up your vacation time from work, to be the first to get a new iPhone. You would think if you put that much effort into being first in line, you might be a little more careful. Enjoy!

So the story I heard of the discovery of coffee was that some goat herder saw his goats get all jittery when they ate the berries of an unknown bush somewhere in Ethiopia. How it got from that goat dude to the rest of the world I don’t know, but I am so thankful it did. Before coffee the drink of choice in most of Europe was ale or some kind of alcohol. People were walking around in a semi-stupor. They didn’t know why drinking water straight from the dirty polluted river made them sick, so boiling it and turning it into alcohol killed the bugs. Along comes coffee, which they could still boil the water but now instead of stupor they all had a caffeine buzz. I don’t need alcohol to walk around all day in a stupor, I wake up in that state every day.  I would drag my carcass around for hours grumbling under my breath about having to be awake and would probably have no motivation to even get dressed. Thanks to an Ethiopian goat herder, I get less sleep, more clothing, and more done every day.

When you walk into a movie theater lobby there is the overwhelming smell of one of my favorite snacks, popcorn. I love it, cover it in fake or real butter salt it till a horse can use it as a lick and I am a happy man. Not mind you because of the price at the theater for the popcorn, which if purchased at the local grocery store is about fifty cents worth but requires me to call in a request to raise the limit on my credit card to buy at the theater. I will eat through the large bucket before the movie starts which requires another outrageously priced purchase, a soda. Both of these come out to equal the price I paid to see the movie. This is why most of my movie experiences lately have been less that memorable. Twenty minutes of ads at the beginning and no popcorn just aren’t making me want to get in my car and come to your giant warehouse of screens. I can sit at home watch the movie, make microwave popcorn and drink soda if I want all for less than the gas it would take to get there. Hollywood better start figuring this out before, direct to my Roku, is the only way anyone spend money on a movie.

I am turning fifty at the end of this year, yet every once in a while I go and do something stupid just to prove to myself I am getting old. Today I tried to play basketball against younger guys and multiple ibuprofen later I am still paying for it. My spine feels like someone took a baseball bat to it and my feet are laughing at me in a, this will sting for a few days kind of way. I don’t know why I keep thinking I can play with the kids, I was proud that I wasn’t winded or exhausted like I was before I started running, but getting banged around by guys bigger and younger than me is gonna do some damage. With the knot on my head and the possible concussion I am re-thinking the choices I made today. Hopefully I will learn from this, but I kind of doubt I will.

I hate dieting! I hate having to watch what I eat. The only reason I exercise is so I can eat. Every time I do anything like go out to dinner or on a business trip I come back and have to repent by eating like a rabbit until I drop the pounds again. I would never make it as a model, the not eating or tossing it back up does not compute in my mind. I want to go to Country Buffet and sit at the trough until I am just about full, they I hit the chocolate fountain! People ask me how I lost 75 pounds like I have some secret or special sauce. I think they are hoping I will say, “I just took this amazing pill for a week and it all fell off” When I tell them I worked my behind off, they look very disappointed. I do feel great, I have ten times the energy I did, but it takes everything that I have to stay here. One of these days I am hoping that I have retrained my brain to just eat like this normally. Until then I will look sadly at the box of donuts marked free and know they are not!

Today, was Apple fan-boy Christmas! Apple announced new iPhones and a Watch. You have to understand that Apple releases products slower than the other manufacturers. Samsung and all the others come out with new stuff every few months so, and this causes much trouble for the average fan-boy. You see all his PC/Android counterparts in the IT department have ribbed him about how their phone does all these things the iPhone can’t. Months go by as he suffers ridicule for having “last years” phone. He patiently reads the rumor sites for what Apple might be up to and can only quip back to the Androidian co-workers “yeah, well the next iPhone will be way better”. Luckily for them today was a good day for them. The iPhone is way better than the last and the watch looks pretty cool. So for about a week or two they can puff-out their chests and walk around the office with the shiny new toy, which will only be the latest and greatest for about that long.

I don’t know how much money companies spend on rearranging the cube farms, but it has to be a lot. Companies employ groups of folks to take apart and put it all back together in a slightly different configuration with the desk facing left instead of right. Not only the cubes have to be moved but also the power and network cable used have to be dealt with as well. We take it out, some places don’t even re-use it so you buy new and put it in just so the manager can have some power over where their people work. They quote some study where a company took everything away from the employees and just had standard cubes, which everyone shared. The result was predictable no one liked it. I don’t think we can take everyone out of having their own space but can’t we agree to a uniform design which might make someone have to walk a little farther to converse with a co-worker? We could say that the walking is part of a health and wellness program.