My brother, Bill, almost cuts off his finger...

I got a call from Bill the other day that was a little surprising and not surprising like "I'm moving to New York City and never talking to you again" surprising, but more like "I cannot believe you did that surprising". I've been there. I ought to know the difference. I've been on the latter end of that conversation before.

Bill asked, "Hey, remember when you had your accident with the hedge trimmer?"

Do I remember? How could I forget that? For those that don't know. I almost cut off my finger with an electric hedge trimmer in the most humanly stupid way possible. Well, I suppose that the stupidest way that I could have done it would have been to turn on the hedge trimmer, stare at it and put my finger in it. What I did was not really as stupid as THAT, but it ranks up there.

One hot summer day, I am cutting my stupid hedges, which I call that because I really, really hated those hedges. They were a blight on my nice house and after almost cutting off my finger; the luster wore off even more. The hedges were on the left side of my yard and were obviously put there to shield my nice yard from the blight that was my next door neighbor's yard. His yard was more of a collection of small shrubs, crab grass, field grass, bare patches of dirt, an above ground pool, a shed, a hot tub, a dog kennel in a cage complete with a dog house, a dog that barked a lot... Did I mention weeds and patches of dirt? While the hedges did indeed shield my precious eyes from the blight next door, I really hated cutting those hedges... a lot. I hated cutting them so much that I put it off until the branches were practically falling over from the top. When I trimmed the top, I pulled 4 foot long branches off every time.

What really sucked about the hedges is that they were grown very close to the neighbor's fence. When trimmed, there was just enough space to squeeze my 22-inch cutting path lawn mower between the fence and the hedge to mow the grass that had grown high. Before this could happen, I had to cut a path between the hedge and the fence. Seeing as how the fence was so close to the hedge, I had to cut a path like one would cut a path in the jungle with a machete. Unfortunately, I didn't have a machete. Well, maybe that was fortunate.

So with a rusty hedge trimmer, no gloves, and shorts on, I started to cut a path down the side of the hedge by the fence. Using a nifty arching motion with my right arm, I swung the trimmer up in the arm, over the branches above me and down by my side again. With my left hand, I pulled the cut branches down. It was a nice system of swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pull when BUZT, I stopped after cutting because I hit the cord that was powering the trimmer, nicking it, but not quite cutting through to the wires.

I thought, "Wow. That could have been dangerous. I could have cut through that power cord."

I should have been thinking something else that could have happened, something that happened not ten seconds later.

I started again with my swing, cut, pull (I’m getting tired of this, so I move faster), swing, cut, pull, swing, cut, pu... BZZT! There was that sound again. I look down to see what happened. I'm staring down at my left hand. My index finger has been cut... deep. My skin that was around the top of my finger now look like I've cut the top of my finger and started peeling it like a banana.

I yelp, "Ow." I stare at my wound for another second. Now blood is starting to rapidly emerge from my wound.

"Oh no. Oh no. Oh God. Oh crap!"

I am cursing myself for doing this. In vain, I shake my hand, which causes a pain tremor to shoot down my arm. I head for the sliding glass door that will take me back inside. In my haste to get back inside, I realize that the hedge trimmer is still running. I can hear it on the other side of the hedge. I start to run toward the hedge trimmer, but decide to just pull the plug.

I run inside and yell, "Take me to hospital!" I'm holding my hand.

Laura looks at me like "Yeah right."

"I'm not kidding!!!" I yell.

She took me to hospital and I endured a nice set of stitches and pain for a few weeks followed by humiliation and finger numbness...

But this story is not about me...

So Bill calls me and asks me if I remember my accident with the hedge trimmer.

I answer that yes I did.

He says, “Well, I may have just topped you today. I just got back from the hospital”

So what happened was that Bill was splitting boards with a table saw. He was pushing boards through a table saw for some unknown project that he’s been planning around the house.

Bill was originally supposed to come over to visit me by the way. We had it all planned out that Bill would come over to visit with his kids so that Julia could play with her cousin, Bill’s daughter, Tess.

The day before, Bill calls and cancels. He said that Sawyer, his son, had come down with a cold. I could understand that.

So Bill gets to work splitting boards. I need to mention that Bill is downstairs in his non-finished, dank basement doing this. He’s wearing work gloves, goggles and a dust mask.

Bill was guiding the board through the saw blade when (I’m assuming) ZING! He lops off the side of his left hand by the nail. It cuts clean through his thumb, shearing off the far right side of his right thumb. Did I mention that he cut through the bone? Oh yeah, Bill cut through the bone on his right hand. He really upped the ante on that feat. Not only did I not cut through my finger bone (I just cracked it), I also managed to retain my skin. Beaten on both accounts.

In shop class, we were taught that if you ever use a table saw that you should always use something to push the boards through past the blade. The one thing you should never do is to guide the boards through with your bare hands, well that’s exactly what Bill did. When I mentioned this to Bill later by asking, ‘You know you’re supposed to use a guide when using a table saw right?’, Bill got defensive and claimed that when he usually does something like that, he notices that he needs a guide and uses one. This time, he noticed at the same time as the accident.

Now Bill reacted much in the same way that I would have reacted. He noticed that he had cut off part of his thumb and he raced upstairs and screamed, “HELP ME!” to his wife, who I’m told not only did believe his cry for help and not think that he was kidding, but she helped stripped Bill of his mask, goggles and gloves before racing to find a baby sitter from a neighbor nearby.

So long story short, Bill goes the hospital, they spray it off, clean it up, x-ray it, and send him home with some kick ass medication.

The next day, I had to think of a joke. Whenever someone in our family gets injured, we of course tend to the injured, but when it’s apparent that they are okay, it’s open season. When I injured my foot one summer, my older brothers called me “Crip” because I had to hop around the house until my foot healed. After I injured my index finger and had it in a splint for several weeks, I heard a lot of “Don’t flip me off” jokes from co-workers and family alike.

I sought out the perfect joke for this incident, one that would be kind of subtle, yet obvious enough to be slightly mean, but still funny. I did a search for “Slang: Thumb”.

I had my joke, so I just had to call Bill. On my way home from work, I asked Bill how his day was going. He had taken the day off from work because of the pain and was seeing doctors on what to do about the thumb. He might need a skin graft or they might just let it heal over.

“Any diagnosis on how much time it’ll take to heal?” I asked.

“They didn’t really say,” Bill said.

“Well, as a rule of thumb, it takes a few weeks for this type of injury to heal.”

I wait. Bill kind of grumbles.

“Hmm… Is that supposed to be FUNNY?” Bill intones in a slightly annoyed voice.

I laugh.

“I couldn’t help it. I just had to come up with a joke.”

“Well it’s not really funny yet. I’m in pain!” Bill exclaimed.

I get off the phone with Bill and I just have to call people and try the joke out on them. Perhaps I just need to try it out on people that have all of the fingers, have no pain or both. So I scan down in my phone book on my cell phone and dial the first name I scroll across, my brother Joe. He’s not at his office, so I call home. He’s not home, so I talk to my sister-in-law, Jackie.

I ask her if she had heard about Bill’s accident. She hadn’t, so I gladly and helpfully fill her in on the details. I then proceed to tell the joke how I told Bill.

Her response?

“Oh, you’re terrible!” she exclaimed while laughing.

She mentions that Joe is out of town at a conference. So I call Joe on his cell phone. He happens to be in his hotel room at the time. I tell him about Bill’s accident and my subsequent joke.

His response? Laughter and chuckling.

On a roll, I call my Mom and my brother, Paul. Both found the joke funny. So it wasn’t the joke, it was the context of it that Bill couldn’t appreciate. I guess he had to have a little distance from the joke, like not be the one involved…

Now that isn’t exactly the end of the story. While I was off calling other people and telling them the joke, Joe happened to receive a call from Bill a short while after I had called him with the joke.

Bill called to ask Joe what we wanted to give Mom and Dad for Christmas. During the start of this conversation, Bill did not mention his accident to Joe, which was surprising to him. Bill suggested some things that Mom or Dad might be interested in. Joe wasn’t sure on what we should give them.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m all thumbs when it comes to giving gifts.”

Bill yells, “Did you talk to Bob??!”

Joe laughs explains that he had just talked to me a while before that.

I talk to Bill later and he’s a little peeved at being thumbed at for the sake of a few jokes.

“So you and Joe were just laughing it up at my expense, huh?” Bill asks.

“Sorry. I thought the joke was funny and needed to be repeated.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh come on!” I said. “It’s not like I’ve never gotten shit for doing similar things. I got lots of crap when I almost cut off my finger with the hedge trimmer. And don’t you remember when Joe almost broke my foot and I had to hop around for a few weeks? I kept getting this from Joe and Paul, ‘Move it, crip’”

“Yeah…”

“So just have a little sense of humor about it.”

“Well at least you still have you whole finger left. It’s not funny because I lost part of mine.” Bill retorted.

I thought about that and dismissed it. If anything, in our family, that makes it a lot funnier. Now if he had cut off his whole hand, now that wouldn’t be funny… for while. We’d probably have a moratorium on that one until he was free from pain, fitted with a prosthetic and could use it functionally. After that, the Captain Hook references would undoubtedly commence at some point.

Bill jokes about giving away Survivor, but gives a bigger hint...

Bill called Thursday night after Survivor usually airs.

I hadn't watched it yet because while I like the show, I'm not addicted to the show. I usually wait a few days to watch it on my DVR list.

Bill says, "I don't want to spoil Survivor for you, but someone wins immunity."

I chuckle and ask, "Oh really?"

Bill continues, "Yeah. And when he wins, they put the immunity necklace around his neck."

"Oh? So the person that wins immunity is a 'he', huh? You do realize that you gave away who might have won by narrowing it down to the men?"

"No..." Bill stammers a bit. "I... uhh.. was using the 'he' term in the relative non-gender use. I didn't give anything away."

"Well, we'll see," I laugh.

Sure enough, when the Immunity Challenge segment arrives, the person that wins it is a man and not only that, but the guy was in such a huge lead that it was pretty obvious that "he" was going to win it.

I really don't care, but it was just funny to me that Bill attempted to joke and not give anything away, but ended up giving a bigger hint than he intended. Leave that to a professional...

Bill freaks out over me telling him about Survivor...

I've been really, really busy lately. I have a stockpile of stuff I need to write about, like when Bill gets into an accident with a table saw. That doesn't sound so funny, but trust me, it is. For now, here's a story about me and Bill yelling at each other...

We're watching Survivor the other night upstairs while I'm cooking dinner and one of those cute kid story moments happen. Julia really hadn't seen it before. The part of the show we were watching was the immunity challenge where the show's "tribe members" have to navigate through a series of puzzles or challenges. This one centered around a person answering a series of questions to get a number. If they untied the box with that number on it and and unwrapped the item in the box, there might be a key. If they get the key, they go to another set of things to untie to get to an obstacle course, through the course, over a series of floating things and then pulling a flag to win.

Jeff Probst, the show's host, mentions that "Alex has a lead!"

Julia yells out, "Alex is going to win!"

Alex does indeed win and Julia yells out, "Alex won! I told you he'd win!"

My wife and I both laugh because we know she's never watched the show before and at that point, it was obvious that Alex was going to win, but we let her enjoy her moment.

"Yes, very smart, Julia." I said.

It was very soon after this that my twin brother, Bill, called. I thought the story was kind of cute so I wanted to tell him. Granted, it's not one of those "Ha Ha" stories, but it's a story parents like because we think our kids are so darn clever and cute.

I tell Bill, "Hey, we were just watching Survivor. Julia was watching it during the immunity challenge and...

"Don't tell me anything! I haven't seen it!" Bill yells at me. You have to remember that Bill can be a bit of a hot head and we often yell at each other like this.

"Bill, it's not going to reveal anything." I say

"Yes, it will. You'll try to make it generic, but you'll reveal something."

"Bill, I won't. It's just a cute story."

"Don't say anything."

"But I just wanted to tell you..."

"Don't say anything!"

"about this part..."

"I said not to say anything!"

"... but it's not going to reveal..."

"I don't want to hear it!"

"Look, it's not going to spoil anything!" At this point, I'm moving downstairs to yell at him.

"Yes. It. Will!"

"It was during the immunity challenge. Someone had a big lead..."

"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!"

"... when JEFF PROBST SAYS..."

"...AAGGHHH! I'M NOT LISTENing!!!!" Bill trails off at this point because it sounds like Bill, a grown man, has resorted to throwing the phone down. I can still hear yelling in the distance.

I get really pissed. All I'm trying to do is to tell him some innocent kid's story and he's acting this way.

He gets back on the phone and I yell, "LOOK! YOU BIG F*&*ING BABY! ALL I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU IS THAT WHEN JEFF PROBST YELLED, "SO-AND-SO IS IN A LEAD!" JULIA YELLED "SO-AND-SO'S GOING TO WIN!" WHEN SO-AND-SO DID WIN SHE SAID, "SO-AND-SO WON! I TOLD YOU THEY WERE GOING TO WIN! It's just some cute kid story and you are ruining it!!!"

"See! That's hardly giving anything away," I finish.

"We'll see.." Bill mutters.

"Oh you're such a baby when it comes to that."

"Because you always give something away. No matter how hard you try, you still do."

So the next morning I talked to Bill. I jokingly ask him, "So were you still able to enjoy Survivor after I gave something away?"

"Yes, but you totally gave it away!"

"What?" I ask.

"Yeah," Bill replied. "When Jeff said that Alex was in the lead, I thought, 'Well, I don't need to watch the rest of this now and I fast forwarded through it.'"

"You're kidding right? Seriously? You're upset because of that? It was blatantly obvious who was going to win that challenge."

"You never know," Bill said.

"You never know? By the time he said that, he had such a huge lead, it was obvious he was going to win."

"Sometimes, it's not like that. Someone comes from behind."

I sigh.

"You just can't help yourself."

"And you just can't stand to have anything revealed, no matter how small. You don't even like me telling you the show's description on the cable guide," I retort.

"Whatever. You told me about an episode of Amazing Race last year and I quote,'You'll be very happy at the result.' Yeah, like that didn't give much away."

"That was Joe (our older brother)! That wasn't me!"

"Well, you still ruin things..."

"Of course I do. You know who shot Mr. Burns? Maggie Simpson. And that chick in The Crying Game? Totally a guy!"

Bill kind of laughs

"Bill, I hate to ruin it for you, but in Titanic, the ship sinks at the end. Sorry..."

My bad half-day...

I don't want to complain about everything in my life, but today just seemed to fray the very fiber of my existence. Well, that's probably taking it too far, but it was pretty annoying at times today. I don't know if it's just because I was in a hurry and had things to do and places to go, because that tends to amplify it, or if I'm just impatient. It's probably a combination of both.

First off, I get up late for work. It's not that I'm "late" but rather I got up later than I thought I would. I get out the door at a semi-decent time, 7:30, and head for the local grocery store so I can buy a six-pack of pop and to get some cash back for the week.

I get to the check out and the guy behind there has just finished with a customer. I plop my six-pack down and wait for the guy to acknowledge me. He's looking down and making a motion with his leg. I wait. He makes the motion with his leg a few times more while looking down. I look at my watch, tap my hands on the checkout shelf and watch the guy make the same motion with his leg while looking down. The guy finally stops making that motion with his leg and bends down. He picks up a pen! The motion that he's been making for the last 45 seconds was him trying to manipulate a pen that had fallen down below the checkout surface and he was trying to pull it back towards him by gently, ever so gently and slowly, move the pen with the ball of his foot by pulling backwards on it. Granted, it probably would been a lot easier to bend down and grab the pen, not to mention faster, but this guy had chosen his method of pulling a pen towards him and he was sticking to it by God!

He finally gets up with his pen, sets it down and asks, "Did you find everything all right?"

I had. So he rings me up. He scans my pop and my donut. I give him my card and tell him how much cash back that I want. He types it in fast. I swipe my card and type the confirm commands to get my cash and I'm thinking that this is going to make up for lost time. The drawer opens for my cash when another store employee walks up. The cashier was starting to grab my cash, stops and then starts fiddling under the drawer for some receipts that he needs to give the other guy.

He's doing this with one hand by the way as the other hand is trying to get my cash. Now I'm assuming that giving me my cash first and sending me on my merry way would be smart since I'm the customer, but I guess he was wanting to please us both, which wasn't happening. The cashier mumbles something about receipts he needs to give someone when the other guy asks, "Do you have a quarter?"

I look down and the other guy has two dimes and a nickel in his hand. That's it? This is why I'm delayed yet again? I look at my watch as I have been doing for the last four minutes that I've been standing there hoping that it will send a signal that reads "Time is money" or "I'm a man that has too little time on his hands" or "Hey! Look at the time!"

Finally I get my money and leave. I glance at my watch and it's not bad, but not great. I had hoped to hit the new Dodge street expressway by 7:35, but it's now 7:45. Traffic is bad as I head a mile north as it seems that every car is itching to try out the new expressway.

I finally get going on the expressway, but when it merges into 680 South, that's when it's like a scene out of Final Destination 2. Cars are flying this way and that. Cars behind me are trying to get around me. I'm trying to get around the cars in front of me. Some lanes are going fast. Some are going slow, which causes near wrecks as those trying to get from the fast lanes to the slow lanes have to slow down abruptly to get over.

I finally get to work.

My agenda over the lunch hour was to renew my license at the Department of Motor Vehicles so that I can register to vote. I just moved to Omaha about 9 months ago so I must register to vote again. I find out from our receptionist that all of the DMVs are closed because they all have training classes on their new computer system this week. I was a little stumped. The deadline to register to vote in the state of Nebraska at the DMV is October 18th, which happens to be right in the middle of the closed office week. I smell conspiracy... No matter, I decided to go to the court house downtown to see if I can get a renewal.

I go downstairs to the renewal office and wait in line. It's not long, but it's a little stuffy down there. This is a bad problem because two vintage-clothes alterna-adults are standing in front of me. The woman to my left is wearing what can only be described as a black and white Purina dress (if they made clothes). Her hair has jet black roots with blond streaks to accentuate her short, slicked spiked up hair. She tops it off with some black horn-rimmed glasses. The guy is wearing a more conventional drab-green wool coat with a short stocking cap that is not unlike the caps that bald football players wear, except that it's just made of yarn.

My problem is not the clothes that they are wearing. You can wear whatever you want. I don't care.

However, if you are going to dress that way, how about taking a bath first? Better yet, how about a shower? While you're in the cleaning mood, how about washing those clothes?

They seemed like nice enough kids, but the guy took off his hat and starting fan them, which put regular whiffs of stale body odor with a touch of clove cigarettes or incense. Whatever it was, it was not too pleasant and I just had to stand there (because there was a scary looking guy right behind me) and cover my nose to avoid the B.O. As they were leaving, I felt compelled to remark, "It's called deodorant" but didn't because I'm sure they don't even realize they smell.

I finish with the DMV and head over to the local electronics store to get some earphone pads. Mine keep tearing because I don't wind up the headphones in their case. I just wrap it around my cd player and stuff it in my pocket, which probably contributes to the problem.

I go in and the friendly people there asked me if there was anything that I was looking for. I answer like I always do that "No. I'm just looking around. Thank You." which is followed by "Well, we have a lot of specials so feel free to ask" response.

I glance around at some of the MP3 accessories and look for the earphone pads. They're not in the usual spot, so I ask the guy behind the counter where they are. They had thoughtfully rearranged the store so he finds them for me.

As I'm paying for this 4 dollar item, the guy behind the counter makes sure to tell me that "As usual, we have our batteries on sale."

I mutter, "Uh huh."

I make the mistake of "glancing" at the back wall because they are filled with flash drives. The guy notices my "interest" and starts telling me about the wonders of flash memory. I am literally trying to walk away and he's going "I just got this 2 gig flash drive and it's really great because it comes complete with security on it and Firefox, which is really great."

I'm trying to walk away still, but at least he's trying to wrap it up fast.

"Whenever I work on someone's computer, I use the drive to put programs on it that I'll need like adaware, Spybot and a few others so that I don't have to download them from download.com."

I smile and say, "All right then."

Hate to be hard on the guy, but what part of my "I'm trying to walk out of the store" motion did he not understand. Plus, I have a flash drive and while handy it isn't as great as he describes. You mean you can actually put stuff on the flash drives and take them with you to put on someone else's computer? Get out of town!

So actually it was a bad half day. Maybe I just hate people?

Remember the Tornado Party when we had to take cover?

Saturday, September 17th was interesting to say the least. We were throwing a small get together at my house to watch the USC/NU game on ABC. The game was not what I liked to see. I was hoping that NU might build off some sort of offensive success early in the game and compete to win, but what we were treated with was run after run that only exposed how my Nebraska team still needs a lot of help on the offensive line and a lot of help in the defensive secondary, but that's not what this story is about.

One of the guests mentioned to me that the thunderheads developing outside to the east were really tall, so tall that they no longer were in our atmosphere, but in the stratosphere...

I kind of know what she meant, but not really. But hey, the clouds did indeed look extremely tall, so I went with it and even started telling people at the party, "You should see the thunderhead clouds forming outside. They're so tall that they're no longer in our atmosphere..."

A little after halftime, the weather started to get a little scary. Thunder started booming and some rain started. On the TV, the weather guy broke in with a split screen to mention that some possible tornado clouds had been spotted in our area... and were headed right towards us. At this point, it was decided that we should probably move downstairs to some more safety.

One of my wife's co-worker's joked, "Oh this is great! If only I had stayed at home, I'd be well clear of this storm. Out west, we're in the middle of it."

Another one quipped, "Yeah, for years, we'll be going 'Hey, remember when we went to Laura's tornado party and had to take cover in the basement?'"

Our neighbor was next door looking after her baby while her kids were downstairs with the rest of us. Laura suggested that we should go next door and go get her, so she could be in the basement with us since our neighbor's basement was unfinished and she was upstairs with the baby, not exactly the safest place. Laura called her up and headed over to her house to help her come over. A few minutes later, I get a call that I think is from Laura.

I hear nothing but wind and then I hear, "Hello?..."

I ask, "I'm here... "

"HellO?"

"Yes!"

"Bob?"

"Yes! Talk to me!"

"Oh sorry, this is Jessica (my neighbor down the street). I was just letting you guys know that you should get everyone in the basement."

"They are," I replied.

"Good. Because there is a funnel cloud that is hanging over my house. It keeps going up and down, but it hasn't touched ground yet."

I panic and sprint upstairs and throw open the door. I step outside and there in what seems to be the middle of the road right at about rooftop height, is a fairly large, white funnel cloud. It wasn't exactly the text book one that you would expect from a spinning cloud, but it was close enough for me! I look over to my left and see my neighbor and her baby. I usher them inside the house. I look the funnel cloud again and over to my left again and see Laura fiddling with the neighbor's door. She's carrying a dog carrier that must have their dog, Snoopy, in it. I yell, "Hurry up!"

She's moving slow.

I yell louder, "HURRY UP!"

She looks at me a little confused. I point behind her. Laura turns around, glances at the funnel cloud and starts hightailing at a much faster pace towards our house. I guess it's nothing like a storm right in front of you to get people moving...

We run inside. I close the door and (for some odd reason) lock the deadbolt (as if that would stop the storm). We run downstairs. I take a quick inventory of the people down there. Everyone seems accounted for. I decide to get the cats rounded up.

The storeroom has a hole in the wall for the cats to jump through to get to the food and their litter. I quickly block the hole with a large box and throw other heavy items behind it. I walk out of the storeroom and grab the two cats that were down there, Moe and Susie. I think Murphy (our other cat) is still upstairs.

I yell to Laura, "I'm going to get Murphy! The tornado's outside! (for some reason I yell this as it wasn't a tornado yet).

I start upstairs and Julia asks, "Tornado? Where?" She starts mounting the stairs to follow me! "I want to see!" she exclaims excitedly. One of Laura's co-workers quickly grabs Julia and takes her back downstairs telling her "we're going to have some fun!"

I rush upstairs and head towards the bedroom. I look in the bedroom and don’t find her. I run out back into the living room and look behind the couch. There she is. I pull the couch out and grab her. Murphy protests with some “rororr” sounds. She starts to thrash a little bit and giving her tendency to scratch me with her hind legs, I hold her back feet with my free hand while running down the stairs. Her heart is racing as we pass by the people downstairs. She protests again and I feel something warm on my chest.

I drop her in the storeroom and close the door behind me. I examine my shirt. It’s wet in a spot. So are my shorts. Murphy has peed on me!

This happened one other time when we were just getting ready to show our house to some people who were going to buy our house. They had brought their parents to show them the house. It was my duty to round up the cats and shove them in a large pet carrier so the buyers could tour the house without a cat attack. I get Moe in first, but Murphy protests and proceeds to pee a large amount of urine all over me. I am completely soaked on one side of my body. I had to rush upstairs, change out of my clothes and change fast before the buyers walked in. Thankfully, Murphy didn’t blow that sale.

With my clothes soaked in pee and a potential tornado outside, I did what most guys would do in that situation, I went back upstairs to change.

I ran into my bedroom again, grabbed a shirt and a pair of shorts and went downstairs into the storeroom with the cats to change.

When all was said and done, I joined our guests downstairs as we waited for the storm to subside. The funnel cloud didn’t drop, so we were spared damage.

The next day, I told my brother, Bill, about the experience.

His first question was: “Did you get video?”

Yeah… Because that was my first instinct! Screw getting my family safe and the animals safe. I needed to make sure that I got some sweet video of a possible tornado. Granted, that would have been cool, but my mind was elsewhere…

Video Game Tester: Gaining weight is easy when you sit and snack all day...

I started writing about my days as a video game tester in California.

I Once Had a Job Testing Video Game
A Hella Cool Pop in the City

I am not what you call a thin man. I've always been a little on the girthy side. I had a brief spurt of thinness when I came back from Army basic training (I was in the National Guard), but I quickly gained it back by sitting on my butt watching TV and drinking regular pop.

One glorious Spring/Summer of 1999 when I went on the Atkins diet, I lost about 20 pounds. I had dropped down from 225 to about 205 in a few months of dieting. Everyone was impressed at my resolve. I avoided sweets like the plague. I didn't eat bread. I took vitamins. I worked out. I rode my mountain bike. I played basketball. I was a "lean, mean, fighting machine" or at least lean...

After I obtained my job as a video game tester, I suddenly found it harder and harder to maintain my diet. I tried, but with things like meat and eggs now costing about twice as much in California than what they cost in Nebraska, I was forced to start skipping the protein and eating like a normal person.

My first week at the video game company, people would run and get a soda (see the hella story) often. I would go and buy my diet pop from the vending machines, which was adding to my daily costs in the city. Laura quickly started to complain about. It was bad enough we were shelling out 10 bucks a day for me to commute, but I shouldn't spoil myself from the vending machines! This would be a continual point of contention for us during our stay in California.

Before long, I was asked by a co-worker if I wanted to go and get a "soda". So we walked across the hall to the other side of the building into the break room. I pull out some money and start to put in the vending machine. He pulls open a large cooler filled to the brim with pop and takes two out. He asks what I'm doing. I tell him I'm buying a pop (duh). He then tells me that the pop is free. Turns out, our company, to compensate for the long hours required to work there, furnished pop for us.

Great! But the bad news was, the pop was all sugar pop. I initially resisted the urge by trying to bring in my own pop in my cooler, but then Laura started insisting that I buy, instead of my usual Diet Dr. Pepper, a cheap knockoff from a major retailer who shall remain nameless. I started bringing those, but those generic diet pops started losing their luster rather early. Oh sure, they tasted like Diet Dr. Pepper, kind of, but only if you drank it ice cold and really fast. Otherwise, you were stuck with a cheap knockoff that tasted like it was canned at the bottom of a metal bucket. So much so that I started to wonder if I was going to suffer from metal poisoning. Being the hypochondriac that I am, I had to make a decision. Chug down the generic swill or drink the forbidden sugar pop.

It wasn't a hard decision. I started drinking it.

It was pretty sweet. Some guys would start stocking it around Tuesday and if you were the lucky ones to get first dibs, you grabbed a few cans while they were warm to hide in your cube for the end of the week. Once it was cold, it was a pop lover's heaven.

Now there is a little bit of a problem when you start drinking sugar pop at a job in which you are required to sit there and just twiddle your hands all day long: you increase your calorie intake without a way to burn it off. Considering that I was working about 10 hours a day, I think it was safe to say that I was drinking about 5 pops a day during work alone. That alone accounts for over 1000 calories. When you couple that with the various snacks that I would eat all day like chips, popcorn and snack cakes, you are spelling a recipe for some nice weight gain.

There's an old Simpsons episode where Homer deliberately gets to over 300 so that he could be considered morbidly obese and could go on disability. He goes to the mall to get something to wear when he goes to "work" at home. The guy asks if he works with, around or something with computers. Homer says, "I work at a computer." The guy mutters to himself that it must be all the non-stop sitting and snacking. I can relate to that statement as I worked in a place where you could do non-stop sitting and snacking.

Now there I was in some nice shape when I came to California and I was ruining it by eating bad. To top that off, I wasn't working out. I had intended to work out, but when you do nothing but work and have little time off to yourself, the last thing you want to do is to do some more "work" by working out.

At work, I had tried to eat right, but that is expensive! If you take away the free donuts and the free pop, you end up having to drink some orange juice if you don't water. The OJ alone was two fifty at the food shop down in the atrium.

I tried to go without the extra pop and snacks, but when you're playing the same game or the same level of a game over and over and over until you want to shoot yourself in the head, your eyes will start to droop and you'll feel a little tired. Soon enough, your head will start to nod and then your body will twitch violently. You look around to see if anyone noticed that you kind of fell asleep. Then, before you know it, you WILL fall asleep! You'll wake up to see that you have run off the road in the Formula 1 game that you're testing and your car is nuzzled against a fence off-road while the in-game timer shows that you are 10 minutes into a two minute race!

This actually happened to me.

Scott, the co-worker from Ohio, mentioned to me that a former worker was notorious to taking cat naps while he was supposed to be testing. It was hard to catch him because his demeanor was a sleeply-eyed testing face. He'd look like he was sleeping, but then he'd move and the game would continue.

One day, Scott was walking by while the worker was supposed to be testing our free-form cuddly video game when he noticed that the in-game timer, which probably should be only at 3 minutes because the levels were pretty fast to finish, was now at 40 minutes. Scott yelled, "Juan! You're supposed to be testing, not sleeping!"

For fear of falling asleep, I would drink and eat to stay awake. At first you feel guilty about it, but then it becomes a natural habit.

My attempts at working out turned into doing some jumping jacks before work in my cube when no one was around and feeling like an idiot doing it. Having almost been interrupted more than once, I quickly disbanded the working out fever and resolved to gradually getting out of shape.

Oh sure, Laura and I would go hiking in the hills around our adopted hometown of Vacaville, but when you only do that once a week, the odds that you'll actually get a benefit and keep the pounds off are very slim indeed. I did also try to use the apartment complex "gym" that consisted of some really old exercise bikes and a really old weight station. The apartment manager told me after I used it that most residents use it a few times and then never come back. Well, it wasn't hard to figure out why...

But it wasn't just me with my snacking and eating. Because you could eat at your desk, you could walk around and see people eating Chinese food from containers, salads, yogurt, burgers and fries, sandwiches, frozen smoothies from downstairs, flavored coffees, frozen dinners, candy bars, popcorn, etc.

What was interesting about the ripple effect was that in the morning, the testing bay (the closed off area where we worked) actually smelled decent, but by the end of the day, it would smell like a take-out food mash-up what will all of people's food stuffed into people's tiny garbage cans outside of their cubes. After a while, our supervisor got so sick of the smell that she encouraged us to throw our stuff away outside the bay in the snack bar area's big garbage cans. I actually started to do this, but my attempts to kiss some behind and suck up to the boss fell on deaf ears. The place still ended up smelling.

What was worse was on Friday, when people would order out more to celebrate the weekly Friday paycheck. The food would pile up worse in the tiny garbage cans. Then when the weekend came, the building would shut the air ventilation off to save energy, which would create a nice semi-humid sauna just right for spreading the rank food smell around. So if you had to work Saturday or Sunday for overtime (which was often), this was an oh-so-pleasant aroma to take in while trying to work. We'd try propping open doors to get the rank smell out until the cleaning crew came on Sunday night, but it wouldn't help much. I took to bringing Lysol to spray down my area, which helped immensely.

Because of the previously mentioned snacking and eating, I ended up gaining weight.

I think I must have gained twenty pounds. When I arrived back in Nebraska some 10 months later, I was sitting down with my brother, Bill, who ever-so tactfully looked at me, laughed and then asked, "How much weight have you gained?"

I replied that I didn't know.

He then called me "Bobba the Hut" and quipped in a Jabba the Hut voice, "Bobba eata a lotta co nichua video gama. Ha Ha Ha."

You bastard...

What I remember about September 11th...

I have vivid memories of September11th. I think we always have that stamped in our memories when we experience a national disaster. I remember that when the space shuttle blew up for the first time, I was in my eighth-grade photography class. Our teacher was especially shaken up because he had applied to be the teacher that was picked to go up with the other astronauts.

When the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, I had just started student teaching in Grand Island, my home town. I remember watching CNN a lot to get whatever new information I could. It seemed to annoy my partner teacher, who for some reason quickly lost interest. Maybe she was just jaded from the draining school year.

When the attack on September 11th occurred, I was at home because I was unemployed. The Internet start-up company that I worked for laid me off about three weeks prior to that, which was two weeks after my daughter, Julia, was born, which was three months after I had bought my first home.

All in all, it was already a stressful situation. So there I was sitting at home waiting for job offers and taking care of my daughter with my wife, who was on her maternity leave.

We turned on the TV that morning and were struck by the image of one of the towers burning in New York City. Shortly after that, the other tower was in flames when the second plane hit it. One of the Good Morning America news anchors asked befuddled, "What is going on?"

We watched with stunned faces at the happenings in New York City. After a while, we had to stop watching and we started getting going with our day. We had to eat. We fed our daughter. We started some laundry.

At some point, we started talking about the job situation. A couple weeks prior, I had applied at a place I'll call The Company. I got an interview with The Company a week prior. I interviewed with no problem. It was a standard first interview, well... standard if you can picture a whole interview in which the interviewer is almost trying to talk you out of working at the company...

It was a suit and tie company. He laid that out clearly. Then he started going over the rules. Much like the ten commandments, these were a set of rules that shouldn't be broken. He said that at The Company, they don't allow you to have a lot of pictures and such on your desk. You desk should remain clean. For that matter, you can't drink or eat at your desk. Food was definitely not allowed at your desk. No liquids of any kind were allowed on your desk since they could spill and ruin your equipment. You were expected to be at your desk and ready to work at 8 am and could leave no earlier than 5 pm. You must never lean against the walls or on a desk (there was a reason the buildings still looked new he told me). You weren't allowed to read a newspaper or do anything non-company at your desk. You had to wear a suit and tie to work, but you could hang the coat up when you came in. You also weren't allowed to walk on the grass (this I had accidentally done... oops)

I was in dire straits for a job, so I told him that I'd have no problem with those rules, so he said that they would consider me for a second interview after he decided where I best fit.

My wife asked the prior morning on Sept 10th, if I thought I might get a call from The Company. I thought that I might.

The next morning, she asked, "You don't think they're going to call today do you? Probably not, right?"

I thought of the chaos on the TV and couldn't imagine that they'd call me for an interview that day. After all, they had completely shut down air travel and I came to find out later that a lot of businesses sent their employee's home for the day. One exception was The Company.

The phone rang at about 10:30, literally minutes after the second tower fell to the ground. My wife answered. She called for me with a confused look on her face. I walked over and she mouthed that she thought it was the company.

It was indeed someone from The Company. Amidst all that chaos, they had still came through on their plans to call me for an interview. I remember trying to concentrate on what the person was telling me because I kept thinking, "This is weird. Don't they know what's going on today?"

I came to find out later that the employees there were all expected to go back to work. Only one computer on the QA floor had internet access and it was used to feed curious and fearful employees information on what was going on that day.

I know it's not wrong to make your employees work. After all, the second tower workers were told to go back to work with the first tower in flames, but it was just kind of weird that they would call on that day. Not that I'm complaining since it did lead to a job for me, but it was still a little weird and very surreal. Plus, it was a sign of things to come at that job, but that's another story.

I will NOT get you a glass of water...

A short, short story for anyone who cares. I'm in the process of writing another story about video game testing, but it's taking awhile. Also, I'm getting to the point of the story where I think, "Does anyone care about this?" and almost ditching it like I've done with quite a few stories...


I live in a new subdivision in Omaha. It's pretty nice that we got to move into a neighborhood that's new because almost everybody that's moved in is around the same age with kids of varying ages. That's kind of what attracted us to build a new house. THAT and the ability for my wife to pick exactly what she wants in the house, price be damned! But that's another story...

Including my daughter, there are about 9 or 10 kids that play on our end at any given time. The run around. The chase each other. They ride bikes. They play on Julia's swingset. They jump on the trampoline.

Not that I'm complaining, but one of the drawback of having that many kids in your house or your neighborhood that they invariably will want to eat, get a drink of water or use your bathroom.

The eating is not so bad. I just offer them something that I know they'll turn down and they turn it down without asking for something else. What? You don't want to eat a peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwich? To each their own.

Before I kept a tab on this, Julia was grabbing stuff out of the pantry and feeding her friends everything from cheese puffs to potato chips, which would leave a lot of evidence behind that she was doing thing, unless the cheese puffs all over the floor are lying to me...

Which brings me to a point. Is it impossible for kinds 3 to 6 to not eat chips, crackers or popcorn without spilling them all over the floor? Either Julia dumps the bowl that she was balancing on her knee on the floor or the floor is littered with remnants from her eating. She has popcorn as a snack a lot and the floor is littered with kernels and puffed corn remnants. It's like she eats like the Cookie Monster with popcorn spraying every where.

What is irritating are the requests for drinks. Usually, it centers on someone (me) getting a kid a glass of water. Water isn't usually what they ask for. Usually they ask for some juice or milk, but since Julia tends to not drink either, I don't have it to give to them. This is usually followed by exasperated looks like they cannot believe that any sane person wouldn't have a juice box for a begging kid. So I give them a glass of water, which they drink about two drinks of, set down and leave it for me or the cats to knock over. All that effort for two drinks? I guess you could say that I'm the moron for giving them drinks that they won't finish.

I set this all up to tell this short story...

The other day, I was mowing my lawn. It was after work on a weekday and I was trying to get my lawn mowed before it got dark. Plus, I had a limited amount of gas, so I was trying to squeeze out the mowing on 1/3 of a tank before I ran out. Like any time I mow, I move fast so that I can get sort of a workout in.

I'm about halfway done with the back yard trying to finish up the mow job when Andy, the kid from two houses down saunters up. He's about 9-years-old and one of the oldest kids on our side of the block.

He yells, "Bob! Bob"

I turn my head, see Andy, turn off the mower, pull my walkman CD player out of my pocket and turn it off. I pull the headphones out of my ears.

"What?" I breathe heavily as I've been working up a sweat.

"Can I have a glass of water?"

I stare at him. Here I am sweating my ass off trying to mow the lawn and Andy is asking me for a glass of water.

"I'd get it myself, but Moe won't let me inside." Moe is one of our cats and he hates people, or at least, other people. He loves me and my family, but is incredibly vicious to strangers. He's been known to lunge at the kids and pat them with his paws because he's annoyed with the kids.

Andy must have opened the door, seen Moe there and Moe hissed at him, so he didn't risk walking in.

"I think he might bite me," Andy finished.

I looked over at Andy's house just two houses away.

"No offense, but isn't your house right over there? Can't you go to your own house to get a drink?"

"I guess so," he said smiling.

I immediately felt a little bad. Well, not really bad, but just a little. After all, I was never given the kind of slack these neighborhood kids get. I don't think they realize how good they have it. I may give them glasses of water while they're inside my house, but I will NOT get them a glass of water when I'm mowing. That's where I draw the line...

I give a man five minutes of my time and spend the next 40 minutes regretting it...

Last Saturday, I mowed the lawn, took a shower, and came back outside to finish putting things away before I had to get ready for lunch and then leave with my family.

I see some guys getting stuff out of an SUV in the middle of the street. I probably should have headed inside then, but I didn't know what was coming.

A guy comes running up to me and asks me a question: "If you could pick between these two fragrances, which would it be?"

I shrug, but play along. Both are well-known brands and both are some sort of fruit scent. I spray and sniff both and tell him, "Neither, because I don't like fruity smells."

The guy chuckles a little and says, "Well, we'll get you a different scent. It's our little gift to you for a few minutes of your time."

He tells me he's part of a marketing group that spreads the word about a particular product. "If someone knew of a great product, wouldn't you want someone to tell you about it?"

"I guess," I shrug.

"Well, we want to give you a quick demonstration that should only take five minutes of your time."

He then asks me if I've ever heard of a brand of vacuum, let's just call it The Vacuum Company.

I tell them I had, but added, "Let me stop you right there. I've just bought a brand new Dyson vacuum. I'm not interested in getting a new vacuum."

The guys eyes pop wide and he goes, "That's just perfect!" and proceeds to call another guy over to give me a demonstration. He assures me again that it's not going to take a long time, so I reluctantly let the guy in my house.

Within the first few minutes, I start to realize that this isn't going to take five minutes.

The other guy that just came in, let me just refer to him as Guy, drags along two boxes with him and when I say "drags", I'm being literal. He has a heavy limp like he's suffered with a hip malfunction for most of his life.

I guess I'm just good-hearted because I start feeling a little sorry for the guy, so I sit there patiently as he pulls out of a box, a vacuum head, some hoses, a big bag and an attachment that I've never seen before. After five grueling minutes, Guy gets the vacuum all snapped and pieced together. Guy then goes into a pitch about how The Vacuum Company doesn't do any advertising. They apparently rely on people like me to buy their vacuums door-to-door.

He plugs in the vacuum and snaps some circular filter pieces into his side attachment and starts to vacuum away. He unsnaps the circle filter and says, "Look at that." It indeed is filled with dirt fibers.

Guy goes into his pitch about how The Vacuum Company is one of the only companies whose vacuums are listed as actual "vacuum cleaners". Whereas my new Dyson, is a "vacuum sweeper."

He asks me to get my vacuum out. Vacuums a little with it (I had to show him how to turn it on) and then vacuums over the same carpet space with his vacuum. He shows me the result: more dirt. He does a demonstration in which he vacuums over the same space 52 times to simulate a years worth of vacuuming. Guy then vacuums over that same space again with his vacuum and shows me the result: more dirt.

It's at this point that I'm starting to get a little impatient. It's taking way longer than 5 minutes. The demonstration seems to have no end and it's starting to cut into lunch time for my daughter. My wife starts to make Julia her lunch while I'm stuck there, starving myself, waiting for this non-ending demonstration to end.

I then also start realizing that there seems to be a never-ending stream of dirt coming from my carpet. I think he could have gone over the same spots all day long and still managed to pull up bits of dirt. Also, he has a side attachment that is not even the bag, it's a place to put his filters, but it's also a way to increase the suction. I can only imagine what it would do with the actual bag intact.

It was during this period of helplessness that I started to realize that Guy sounded and talked just like Uncle Rico, the scheming uncle from Napoleon Dynamite who tries selling everything from breast enhancements to cheap tupperware.



Guy then says in an Uncle Rico way, "What I asked you, 'where would you say your dirtiest part of you house is?' What would you say?"

I started to try and think, but then I just said, "I would say... I don't know. Could you just tell me?"

Guy asks to go to the nearest bedroom. In the guess bedroom, he pulls up the sheets and starts vacuuming on the mattress. He shows me the result: lots of dirt and very fine dust. Apparently, dust mites feed on us and dispose of 5 times their body weight on our mattresses. Thanks Guy, I'm now paranoid that I might actually need this vacuum, but I resist the urge.

He also tries to sell me out of my Dyson by explaining that his vacuum has HEPA filter bags. I counter that not only does my Dyson have HEPA, but they are lifetime filters. He doesn't seem fazed and counters with how the HEPA rating is displayed on his vacuum but not on others. I look and can't find it (but I'm sure it's somewhere in my manual). He tells me how the vacuum will also clear the air. I counter with the fact that a British allergy association recommends my vacuum for allergy sufferers. He counters with someone else. I counter that the Dyson produces air 1.5 times cleaner than the air outside the vacuum. He counters with something else. I realize this is never going to end.

I ask if we can wrap this up, so he gives me the lowdown. $2000 for the vacuum!!!

I tell him rather bluntly, "Look, I told the first guy that I had just bought this Dyson and I'm NOT going to just throw it away to buy yours."

Guy/Uncle Rico says, "Okay, but I need to call my boss and let him know that I tried, but you're not interested."

He pulls out of his pocket the oldest, most beaten-up looking Nokia cell phone that I've seen since 1999, dials and starts to talk, in what can only be described as the biggest sack of horse crap that anyone's tried to feed me.

Guy asks, "What's your name?"

I tell him. He nods.

"I'm hear with Mr. At Large. I showed him the vacuum and he's very impressed with it (gives me a nod), but he says that he can't afford to buy another one because he's just bought a new Dyson. Can we do anything for him on the price?"

He nods and starts jotting down numbers. Now it doesn't sound so horrible while I'm typing this, but it sounded like he had just pretended to dial and was talking to no one. I was very tempted to ask Guy for the phone, but refrained.

He then knocked off $800 on the price and told me I could have it for 50 bucks a month. I again reiterated that I made it perfectly clear up front that I had a new vacuum and wasn't interested in buying a new one.

Guy nodded, thanked me for my time and then proceeded to take five minutes picking up all of his equipment and putting it back in the bags and then into the boxes.

I muttered, "Boy. You think they would give you a nice carrying case to haul those vacuums around."

Guy finally leaves and Laura goes, "How do you get yourself sucked into these things?"

I guess I got sucked in by the assurance that it would be only a short demonstration. I'll know better next time someone like that comes along. I then realized not only did I lose 40 minutes of my life that I'll never get back, I also didn't even get my spray fragrance.

Other music I'm listening to lately...

Futureheads - News and Tributes

The Futureheads are a band in the vein of punk rock in that they're not really punk. I guess you'd call them post-punk. My brother, Bill, said they remind him of the Clash, which they sound nothing like. I liked their first self-titled album a lot. The problem with a punkish-like band is that their first record is usually wall-to-wall uptempo number, which leads to disappointments on subsequent releases. The new album has uptempo numbers but a lot of them start out slow and end fast. Some are just slow the whole way through. I like it, but it's not wowing me. C+


Slayer - Christ Illusion

Slayer is a band that I grew up with when I was a metal head. They're a dark metal band that sings about such sunshiny topics like Satan, God, religion, war, demons, blood, etc. Did I mention they love to sing about dark stuff? Fast, pounding and full of fury, this album does not disappoint. I haven't listened to them in years, but it's a nice change of pace. I'd give it a B

These are just two I've been listening to this week. More to come...

We see the trailer for the Grudge 2 and Laura almost loses it...

My wife has several fears in life.

She's afraid of birds, kids that are possessed or ghosts and Billy Gilman.

For some reason, she's creeped out by Billy Gilman. Not the surely-20-years-old-by-now Billy Gilman, but the 12-year-old Billy Gilman. Gilman was one of those kid country proteges that got some airplay back in the late 90s. He put the albums out that old people would buy because he was young, cute and had a decent voice.

Laura was creeped out by him and still mentions it to this day.

Oh my God! It's Billy Gilman!!!

But this story isn't about Billy Gilman.

We went to see the new Will Ferrell movie, Talladega Nights - The Ballad of Ricky Bobby last Friday night. Right before the movie, they had the new trailer for the movie, Grudge 2. See the trailer here... link

Now I'm sure no one remembers my review of the original Grudge, but you can read it here.

I thought the original movie a little scary, but it had some major plot points that I felt were too big to make up for. The movie centers around a cursed house in which a man killed his wife and kid. Because they died in a violent way, the house curses anyone that goes into it and they die by the hands of the freaky-ass ghost of the wife and the creepy kid ghost.

The movie picks up right after the first movie ends. Sarah Michelle Gellar has survived the first movie and is back to watch everyone around her die.

The trailer shows flashes of everyone under the sun dying at the hands of the ghost wife, but they show a few flashes of the ghost kid lunging at people and screaming in his cat-like voice. It's at this point that Laura screams and winces.

I look over at her during the trailer and she has her head turned toward the side a little. She tries to look away, but is compelled to look just in time to see something like this:


She yelps, "Oh God!" and turns away. I laugh because I know her fears.

There's a quick shot of the freaky kid yowling a scream and people jump. My wife covers her face.

In another part of the trailer, a lady sees the freaky ghost kid and runs and hides under a table (Good thinking!). Her cell phone on the table above her starts ringing. Frantically, she reaches up to grab the phone when... she grabs the kids foot!

People jump and my wife yells, "Jesus Christ!"

Several more scares abound in the trailer (they don't seem to care that they're showing you everything I guess). My wife turns to me and mutters, "I'll not be seeing THAT movie thank you very much!"

I chuckle because I think back to the original fears. I think the perfect horror movie for my wife would be a possessed ghost kid that sings like Billy Gilman and has a flock of attack birds following him, not that I get her to see it.

A slight new look with more spell checks!

I noticed this template on a site. Someone modified the original design and added an extra column. I also was prompted to run the spell check on a few of the current stories. Apparently, it looks sloppi to hav a few mispelled words hear and their...

New music I'm liking...

There's a mash-up type band called Girl Talk that has a new cd out called "Night Ripper." It's what I like to call a mix tape for someone with a very short attention span. It mixes beats and sound segments from hundreds of popular songs into short segments to result in a long mix. Songs change direction several times before they're done. Recommended if you don't mind the anarchy going on in your head while listening.


Girl Talk - Night Ripper

A hella cool pop in the city...

In California, one of the biggest culture shocks I had to endure did not involve anything involving a landmark or a saying, although those certainly could cause confusion to anybody visiting or a newbie Californian like myself.

I mentioned before that I worked in San Francisco as a video game tester. While I worked there nearly every day and visited San Francisco off and on with my wife when I wasn't working, it wasn't until after I left the state that I found out that people referred to San Francisco as "The City". My wife told me that you couldn't refer to it as "San Fran" or "Frisco" or anything close to it without people glaring at you. It was just "The City". Eddie Izzard, a British comedian known for dressing in drag onstage, taped his "Dressed to Kill" HBO special in San Francisco and noted that it sounded like snakes were in the audience from the people hissing when he didn't refer to San Francisco as "The City".

Looking on this now, it strikes me as odd that San Francisco got this designation. New York City is "The Big Apple", New Orleans is "The Big Easy", Los Angeles is "LA", but I never understood why San Francisco is so special that it out of any city in the country is "The City". It's still strange to me.

California is also the home for the term "Hella". I first heard the term on a South Park episode where Cartman, the fat kid, annoyed everyone in one episode by declaring everything "hella stupid", "hella lame" or "hella crazy". I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a joke on the California use of the term "Hella". If you look it up online, you'll see that "hella" is actually a slang term mainly used in the Northern California area. Some think it's a derived from the term "hell of a" meaning "very" or "a lot".

A lot of culture comes from California. For example, the Valley Girls with their own Valley Speak that once swept the nation. For some reason, Hella just has never caught on with the rest of the country. Not that they don't try.

I had seen the South Park episode years before my move to California. Suddenly, I became surrounded by it. At the video game company, some guys would declare things "hella cool" or "hella crazy". I thought it was rather funny to suddenly hear it all around me. Funnier yet, the kids that weren't allowed to say "Hell" substituted "Heck" at created "Hecka" for "Hella". I almost lost it in a video store when I heard that the first time. I heard a kid declare to his Mom that the movie he wanted to rent looked "hecka cool". I thought it was just that one kid, but I heard it several times after that, usually in a video store, by kids that weren't teenagers yet declaring anything and everything "hecka cool".

One of the hardest words for me to avoid saying lest I be labeled an outsider in California was the word, "Pop."

When I was working at that Pizza Hut for a few short weeks, I'd take people's orders over the phone and I'd ask them near the end, "Do you want any pop to go with that order?"
This was usually followed by a confused sounding, "What?"

I thought that maybe people had a hard time understanding me since I have a habit of mumbling, so I'd repeat with, "Do you want any soft drinks like Coke, Diet Coke, etc."
One night, it became clear to me why people were confused. I asked the "Pop" question during an order and the lady answered with a drink order. She then asked, "Are you from the Midwest?" I answered that I was indeed from the Midwest, Nebraska to be exact. She said, "I'm from Ohio. I figured you were from around there because I haven't heard the word "Pop" used in a while."

It became clearer at the video game company. They would stock free pops into a large cooler for us to drink. People called it "soda".

Now at this point, you're probably wondering what took me so long. I just had never heard people refer to products like Coke as "soda". All my life, it was "Pop" so forgive me if it took me a long time to figure out what term people used for their "sodas". I think it was when I would see guys get up and go, “Dude, do you want a soda?” or “Hey, they just restocked the sodas?” that I put 2 and 2 together to get to the “soda” variable.

Soda was a hard term for me to adopt. It felt weird to call soft drinks “soda” because in my mind, “soda” is the clear, flavorless stuff that you add to hard liquor to dilute it, like with a vodka and soda.

So I would find myself saying to my tester friends, “They just restocked the pop… err… soda cooler!” To which guys would give me a strange look as I had stepped off the train in San Francisco wearing overalls with a banjo on my knee and a piece of straw hanging out of my mouth.

While I did my best to adopt the “soda” slang, I was stymied by my wife at home. She refused to call the soft drinks we used “soda”. We’d be at the store buying our groceries and I’d say that we’d need some “soda” to which she’d either glare at me or glare and ask, “Oh, you mean, pop?”
She was bound and determined to get me to stop saying it, so I would have to remember to call it “Pop” at home, but then revert to the California term by using “Soda” while I was working in San Francisco.

I think my California co-workers were confused by it. One day, they asked for an explanation when I again made the unkind mistake of referring to their “soda” as “pop”.
“What’s this “Pop” thing all about?” one of them asked. I tried to explain that this how I’d always referred to soft drinks at home, but again they looked at me like I was a yokel. Thankfully, a co-worker who was originally from Ohio came to my defense.

“Hey, I’ll back Bob up on this. That’s what they call it in the Midwest. You don’t understand. It’s not as is this is just a local thing. It’s everywhere! The store aisles literally say, “Pop”. You’ll see a store ad in the newspaper and people will say, ‘Hey! Pop’s on sale!"

I should point out that when I was in California that a lot of guys that I worked with seemed to have no concept that there are other states outside of California save for Oregon and Arizona. Most never seemed to have traveled outside of California. Why should they? They have almost every pastime that you could want to do in California. Like tall trees? Go to the Muir Woods. Like hiking? There are plenty of hills. Like to surf? Go to the beach. Like to ski? Go to Lake Tahoe.

Because of this, the guys I worked with seemed genuinely shocked when they'd walk by me and I'd be listening to some music that they'd actually listen to. They looked like they wanted to ask, "So did you mug some Californian and steal his walkman?"

It sounds very stupid now that I write about this, and it is, but the soda story actually sets up my next story: How to lose weight and then gain it all back and then some by sitting on your but all day.

I once had a job testing video games...

I'm starting another new direction with this blog that no one reads since you're all on My Space.

By the way, I thought about going with a My Space page when I started this blog over a year ago and I was struck by something, that it looked like crap. My Space pages look like some beginning web designer who only had a budget of $50 and one day to design a page. The pages are just plain ugly. Very ugly. I thought that there is no way I'd get any traffic on a page that looks this crappy, but I guess I was wrong. Oh well...

In 1999, my wife and I moved to California. She got a job at a local newspaper. I couldn't find much for work save for my immediate job when I walked into the local Pizza Hut, told them I had over 8 years experience and then proceeded to make 3 pizzas to their regular cook's one pizza. You could say I nailed the interview (which there wasn't one).

I had told my boss that I didn't come to California to work at Pizza Hut, so he was aware that I was planning on leaving.

One night, I stumbled across an ad that read, "Do you like to play sports video games?"

I read it. It was for doing quality assurance on video games. All I needed was a resume and a list of every game that I can ever remember playing. The resume I had. The list of games I had to make.

It took a while, but I managed to get my list of compiled. Scanning my memory from Pong until that time, I came up with an extremely long list of games. Surprisingly, I got an interview with the agency filling the job. I then nailed the job interview at a well-known video game company.

It was an interesting interview.

There were questions like:
"What makes a quality game?"
"Do you like playing games?"
"What do you like in a game?"
"What's the worse game you've ever played?"
"Have you ever spotted a bug in a game?"
"How would you go about testing a game?"

I had never tested a video game before, but I managed to cite some examples in which I thought a game sucked and why. I also managed to come up with some examples on some bugs that I had seen in some games.

They nodded and murmured to each other, "That's a bug."

I was excited as hell when they offered me the job. It was very unexpected. I was making barely six dollars an hour at Pizza Hut and now I'd be making twice that amount (almost). Looking back at that, it wasn't much to live on, but it was a decent amount and more than I had ever been paid before.

I told my wife that I got offered the job. Her response: "Oh Lord!"

I told my brother, Joe, that I got offered the job with the line: "Prepare for me to suddenly become the coolest uncle your boys have."

He said that their reaction to the news of my new job was that they were "very impressed."

Thus we enter the first stage of getting a job testing video games: Excitement.

You see, just like the five stages of dying, there are stages that one goes through when getting a job testing video games.

The five stages of dying are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

I would say the stages of getting a job testing video games are: Excitement, Disappointment, Depression, Self Pity and Acceptance.

People look at me odd when I used to tell them that getting a job as a video game tester was like dying. It's because you go through several stages when you work this job.

The day I started, I was a little nervous because I had to suddenly commute to and from San Francisco. Besides that, I had never worked at a testing job before and I had no idea what was expected of me. I imagined that I would be sitting around playing the game and making notes on what I thought was wrong. As a matter of fact, that is mainly what I ended up doing.

I chose a really ass backwards method of commuting to work. Instead of driving down the insane Interstate 80 west to San Francisco, which is the most direct route, I ended up taking a much longer way. I wanted to take the subway, the Bay Area Rapid Transit, to San Francisco, but there wasn't a line in the east bay where I lived, so I drove about 40 minutes from Vacaville to Concord to get on a train. From there, it was a 50 minute train ride to downtown San Francisco. From the station, it was a 20 minute walk straight south to get to South of Market, where the company was located. If you do the math, it's about an hour and 50 minutes each way! That alone depressed me.

So I'm in stage one: Excitement and it's pretty exciting so far. The building has a fantastic view of the city from where we work. The people are friendly. It's a very loose atmosphere.

The first week, they check out a system to me and give me a game to get familiar with. I start testing with a guy named Johnny. He was pretty cool and had done some testing for the company before, so he let me in on what to look for in the games. We each had a TV, a VCR and a game system, but that first week, I was testing with Johnny. We were playing a basketball game together. He was usually the Lakers. I was usually the Kings. We'd play and he'd take some notes on what he thought looked wrong. I learned to do some of the same.

So I'm in the middle of the Excitement stage when I suddenly started to feel a little different. I started to wonder if I had made the right decision or if I had settled because I came to the Bay Area with dreams of being a web programmer, but I ended up testing games. I decided to stick with it, but it wasn't long before I entered the second stage: Disappointment.

I started to get a little disappointed. I was disappointed with myself for working there. I was disappointed with the job because I soon realized that playing games all day long ceases to be fun several hours into the first day. When you start exploring the games and generally doing things that aren't fun like checking statistics, misspellings, player animations, etc, it starts to get tedious fast.

I think that I didn't feel that I belonged there. I was surrounded by dozens of younger guys who all seemed to know each other all ready. They would laugh and joke amongst each other while I was quiet. Being a Nebraska guy around California kids can be a little intimidating. I think I expected to find people that I related to. I didn't at first.

Worse yet, I shared a cube with Rod. Now Rod was a cool enough guy, but like me, he seemed to be disappointed with himself for working at the company. Rod told me that he too had moved to the Bay Area with his wife. She found a good job, but he was having trouble finding a job doing 3D modeling. He had hoped that working a job testing video games would be a way to network to do other things, but it was only after he took the job that most of the games came programmed from Japan while a few were programmed in the states, but not at our building, so he started to sink into the third stage: Depression.

When I started, he was playing a game in which a guy goes around blowing zombies up with various weapons. You blow your way through the game until you get to the end of the level. Then a new level starts with the same thing. You shoot zombies, collect power ups and fight the end guy. Between levels you were treated to some extremely bad voice acting in the cut scenes as the mastermind behind the bringing the dead to life shouts, "Ha Ha Ha! Yooou Foooolllsss!!!"

Rod would mimic all of the dialogue because he knew it all by heart. He could literally finish the game in an hour. Watching Rod test the video game over and over was bad enough. He would sit there all stoic, finish the game and then simulate himself blowing his head off with an invisible gun. He'd finish the game, give a big long sigh and then start the game up all over again. That's all he did all day for a few weeks that I sat next to him. To make matters worse, the game was practically finished. He had written up a few bugs in it that wouldn't be fixed and he couldn't find anything else. It was usually after he had finished the game twice that he'd get up and take a long and extended break.

As funny and sad as it was to see Rod go through the Depression stage, it was shortly after the basketball game was released that Rod quit. I liked Rod and talked to him a bit when I was testing. To make matters worse than him leaving, I was assigned the very same game that he was assigned!

I liked the game at first, but soon after getting good at the game and then beating it after an hour or two; I started to sink into the Depression stage myself. Like Rod, I started memorizing the horrible game dialogue and knew every twice and turn in the game after only a few days. It was not fun at all.

As if Depression wasn't enough, I started to sink into the next stage: Self-Pity. Actually the Depression and Self-Pity stages go hand in hand.

I suppose I should have looked on the bright side of things, but I couldn't when I was staring into the face of a soul-crushing arcade port that was not meant for playing eight hours a day.

It was then that I started to question my employment at the company. I started to feel guilty because I felt that I was abusing them for getting paid to work there. There I was, with a college degree and two years of graduate school in hand and the best that I could do was getting a job testing video games. I would think, "What kind of loser am I that this is my stopping point in California?"

I was commuting 3 hours and 30 minutes roundtrip per day for pete's sake! I had to shell out 8 dollars a day in tolls and train tickets to get to work, let alone the gas money it took to get to the train station.

I don't think that everyone that gets a job in the video game industry testing games is like this. The fact that I was homesick for my home state coupled with the long commutes made me super depressed and feeling sorry for myself. Everything was not living up to my expectations.

I finally settled into the last stage: Acceptance.

It was two months in when I finally accepted my job status. I was a temp and there were rumblings that they were going to get rid of the temps. There were 28 of us and they decided to get rid of half of us. I made the cut because I worked hard, did what I was told and didn't complain about it. I was literally the last person to make the cut list. It was after this reprieve that things started to pick up for me.

I'm probably being whiny about this, but I think the fact that so much change was happening so fast in my life was what caused these mixed feelings about becoming a video game tester. I live for stability, but the move, the commute, the job search and the newness of the situation magnified the feelings.

I guess the cat had the day off from waking you...

I got a call the other day from my wife. She sounded a little concerned.

"Umm... I had a little problem today."

"With what?"

I panicked a little because she had her review the day before and she had told me how much her salary adjustment would be. I was now concerned that they had decided against it and would be getting rid of her.

"With my car."

I was immediately concerned and a little relieved at the same time. We had just fixed the car for over 500 dollars due to a leak in the rear engine seal. We had tried to ignore it, but the oil output in Laura's Dodge Stratus had jumped up from two quarts of oil every three weeks, to two weeks, to one week, to every three days, to almost every day! It got so bad that my wife's side of the driveway was filled with large droplets of oil that seemed to be leaking from every pore of the engine. We used to joke that she'd never get lose because she'd always have a trail to follow from the day before.

We finally decided to get it fixed. I guess the seal was only being held in place by the parts behind it and it was flapping back and forth, which explained why the oil output fluctuated.

"The car didn't break down did it?"

"No, the car's fine."

I now imagined my wife getting into a fender bender somewhere. It had been some years since she last had an accident, but considering that she drives like a trucker on a caffeine IV facing a deadline somewhere in America, I thought the worst had happened.

"Then what's the problem?"

She sighed, "I had to get it towed."

"It was towed? Why? What happened?"

"Well," Laura said, "it all started when I woke up late for work."

I knew she had to be at work at 11am. She usually leaves at 10:30 am.

"What time did you wake up?"

"10 after 10."

"How come you slept so late?" I asked.

"It's Susie's fault! She didn't wake me up this morning!" Laura protested.

Susie is our newest cat. She's about 6 months old right now. Laura had told me before Susie always woke her up between 8 and 8:30 every morning by walking around her on the bed while she's sleeping. Today, she must have forgot. I guess you can't count on cats these days to keep a schedule.

"You know they do make these things today that wake you up when you set them to a certain time. They're called alarm clocks," I muttered.

"Ha Ha Ha. I forgot! Besides, Susie usually wakes me up."

"I guess you can't rely on cats to wake you up these days."

"Whatever."

Maybe Susie slept in herself and after Laura jumped out of bed, she thought, "Oh crap! I forgot to wake up Laura! I'm hungry! I'm thirsty! Pet me! Pet me!" This would be as close to cat remorse as you'd ever get.

"So what happened. You were late and?"

Laura continued, "I was a little late, so to save time I parked in a ten minute spot near the building."

Laura usually parks in the parking garage a block away. Considering she pays for it, I think it would make sense to expect her to park there.

I guessed, "And it got towed."

"Right." Laura confirmed. "If I ever park there, I usually move it after an hour, but... today I forgot. By the time I remembered, it was gone."

"So let me get this straight. You got your car towed today because you overslept because a cat didn't wake you up in time. Then you parked in a ten minute spot instead of the parking garage, which was only a block further away, to save time, but then forgot to move it."

"And I had some unpaid parking tickets," Laura reminded me.

"How much did it cost to get the car out?" I asked.

"Enough," she said.

As much as I would be mad about this, and this is the second time this has happened, my other fear of her job status was put to rest.

To borrow a line from the Simpsons Halloween of Horror show when Bart and Lisa raised the dead and Homer was more concerned that the car was okay over the zombies, I felt like asking:

"Did you lose your job?"

"No"

"Did the car get towed?"

"Yes!"

"But the job is still there."

"Uh huh."

"All right then."

How many times do I have to tell you?

I think every parent goes through it. Kids just don't listen. They don't listen. You yell. Then they adjust and don't hear it until you yell it. Then you sound like you're screaming at them. You're standing right behind them telling them to do something. They completely ignore you and continue doing what they're doing, which is something that you don't want them to do! It's one of the most frustrating things about being a parent.

My Mom can certainly relate to this topic because, while you may find this very hard to believe, was a kid that had trouble hearing what my parents said to me. She'd come down and complain about our room about what a disgrace it was and how it should be condemned, we'd feel bad and then we'd start cleaning it. After a while, Bill and I noticed that it was the same speech, so she'd come down and we'd chime in with "room is a disgrace" and "it should be condemned." My Mom would either ignore it or try not to laugh. Thankfully, she had a sense of humor about it and I lived to see more days to be a smart ass about it.

Where we have a hard time getting Julia to listen is when we try to get her in bed. She goofs around and generally does everything that she can to prolong to process. The nighttime ritual involves me walking her upstairs to the bathroom where she's takes a vitamin, takes a chewable asthma medicine, a liquid allergy medicine, brushes her teeth, rinses with water and washes her hands.

I'll give her the medicines and the vitamin, leave to grab something with a message to "Take you medicine" and come back and she's busy pulling the gummi vitamin apart and jamming the chewable tablet into the gummi vitamin.

I prompt her, "Take your medicine."

She continues merging the two objects into a super medicine.

"Take you medicine."

Still no progress.

"Take you MEDICINE!" I exclaim.

"Fine!" Julia finally says.

I help her brush her teeth and the same results happen with the rinsing and the washing of the hands. I'll turn on the water, hand her a cup and tell her to "Wash your hands and rinse."

I'll leave to grab her Teddy or grab something that I'm going to need later, come back and she's busy making a fountain with two little cups and the faucet. Julia just stands there with me behind her filling up one into the other and watching the results go down the drain.

"Rinse and wash your hands." I prod her.

She continues with the makeshift fountain.

"Rinse and wash your hands." I prod her again.

Still with the fountain action.

"Rinse and wash your HANDS!" I exclaim finally. "Why do I always have to tell you these things three times?"

"I don't know. Jeez Dad. Don't worry about it."

That's her new thing. I don't know where she got it, but for some reason, every command of disapproval is met with a "Jeez. Don't worry about it."

The next night. It's time to rinse and wash her hands. I tell her so and wait behind her. Nothing. I prod again and then a final exclamation.

I sigh.

"How many times do I have to keep telling you to do something."

"Three times?" She answers helpfully.

I have to stiffle a laugh and tell her to just do it.