Monday, November 8, 2010

The color of embers in a dying winter fire

I went to a birthday party with my kids this past weekend. It was at a place called “Bounce U” which is basically just a few huge rooms with giant inflatable slides and bouncy things. Oh, and screeching kids. It has that too. It also has snot and crying kids. And pizza. One of the workers there was a 20 year old girl with a “smartphone” and a giant head.

‘Was the head inflatable?’ he asked knowingly.

Alas, no.

‘How smart was the phone?’ he asked indifferently.

Not smart enough to know it was being operated by a human pumpkin.

Her head was orange. I mean basketball orange. Gorgeous Hawaiian sunset orange. Apparently the tanning phenomenon has spread to the point where fake tans don’t even actually have to be the color tan; or even in the brown family.

“I went to Aruba for a week. I got such an awesome Orange! I mean, I think I was the orange-est one on the whole beach!”

She looked annoyed to be in the same state as these frolicking youngsters, much less in the same room as a 20 foot tall rubber slide that continually spewed out rolling toddlers who were either terrified or laughing or both at the same time. I can only imagine the text messages she was forcibly sending into the atmosphere with her tangerine speed-thumbs:

“OMG. This kid just bounced on his head! LOL! I’m a pumpkin-headed buffoon!”

“I’m totally texting at work! Someone just tried to stick a carving knife into my head and cut a toothy grin into it! OMFG!”

“LOL. My boss is such a jerk. I’m so over this place. I just had to extract myself from a basketball hoop because someone mistakenly shot a three pointer with my face.”

And so forth.

She was also, strangely enough, dressed like an Indian princess. She had the required “Bounce U” t-shirt on, but otherwise she had on furry moccasin-like boots and in general looked like a Cherokee. I moved a safe distance away and yelled “Hey Pumpkin-hontas!” to see if she would react. She didn’t (unless you count moving your thumbs over a blackberry keypad and eye-rolling dramatically as reacting).

She was orange.

Anyway, my kids had a good time bouncing around. The name of the place suggested that it was a place of higher learning, but there were no diplomas or graduation ceremonies. Maybe we’ll get one in the mail. I would like our diploma hand delivered by “Tangerine Dream” so I can tell her what a horrible Halloween decoration she is. Then I’ll make her wait in the garden for rabbits to dig her up and eat her.

She was orange.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Mea culpa

I know, haven't been around lately. It's the dog days of Autumn and a tornado ate my homework. My keyboard got stolen. My laptop ran away. My house got sick.

Er.

I've turned into one of those thumb-typing smartphone-absorbed parents that I hate. I'm kind of embarrassed about that. I'm going to Droid rehab for the next two months. They make you write letters and actually sit and talk to other human people.

Field trips to the post office.

Should be a blast.

I hope this post finds you well. As autumn enters my heart, lo I find my soul pining for the fjords and yearning for the dew covered fields of my youth. Mayhap a chance kiss of rain should touch the palm of my hand, then shall I see you again.

Wait. Sorry, I had the "poetry lock" key on. Damn thing keeps getting stuck.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Lotus Notes is a Busybody

Quick mini-rant here:

Lotus Notes is an email software developed by IBM that we use at my company. It was made out of granite and fire in 1723 and hasn't been upgraded since then. I tried to attach an Excel spreadsheet to an email and gunpowder fell out of the screen.

It's old.

Anyway, I was tippy typing away on an important memo today about very important coroporate-type stuff and I happened upon the need to type the word "uninstall" as in:

"I would love to uninstall Lotus Notes and send it to the woodshed for a proper whipping."

So the ubiquitous red squiggly line appears under "uninstall" which is Lotus Notes' way of saying:

"Heyyyyy mister, I don't rightly recognize this here word 'uninstall'. What is that, some kind of new-fangled whosy whatsit?"

*tobacco spit*

*spitoon ding*"

Turns out, Lotus Spell Checker has a major issue with this word. So I right-click on the squig to see what the mighty Lotus suggests I do with it. Instead of a list of possible re-spellings or alternate definitions, I get this:

"No suggestion."

Oh? No suggestion? You went out of your way to squig my word and now you are backing away with your hands up saying "I just know its bad, I don't know what to do with it though! It's bad! I know it!"

Don't give me crap for words that you don't even have the slightest inkling of how to handle.

"That one got too many letters! Squig it!"

"That one is wayyy to fancy-like for this here email! Squig it!"

"Me don't like! Too many big letters in front of small letters!"

Lotus Notes is the equivalent of Fisher Price email for toddlers, if such a thing were to exist.

That is all.
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