Briefly saw the Bachelor in Paris...

Don't call me a woman yet. My wife and I were flipping through the channels last night when we happened upon the Bachelor in Paris, which was right before the 10 O'Clock news. We had just missed the rose ceremony, where the Bachelor gives out a rose to all the women that he asks to continue with him on the "journey".

I really don't know who any of the Bachelors were, but this guy is named Travis, and he's a doctor.

So when we came in, a lady named Allie, who is also a doctor started yelling at him demanding to know why she wasn't picked when she's a doctor like him and they have so much in common.

Earlier, she had apparently remarked that she was "ready to reproduce". He said that the reproduction comment scared him because he wasn't ready. I mean, what guy wouldn't be scared off by that comment 60 seconds into meeting a woman. I'm sure he wouldn't be against it, but I don't think he wants a ticking reproductive clock as a girlfriend either.

She cried and lamented that she's tried blind dates, dating services, etc and nothings worked because everyone is intimitated by her career. I think it's the baby thing that's scaring them off.

Most guys are basically scared boys when it comes to marriage and relationships. You need to ease them into the relationship. Unless he specifically says, "Hey, I'm Travis and I'm ready to reproduce," don't come back with that line yourself! Has that line ever worked?

So then they show a montage on what's going to happen this season on the Bachelor in Paris and the women in the clips talk about how great it was to do this in the most romantic city in the world. Maybe I'm a little jaded, but the Paris I saw when I visited didn't really qualify as "romantic".

I'm not sure if it was the smog-clogged streets with all of the diesel cars running around, the dogshit everywhere from people letting their dogs doing their business, the begging gypsies in the Metro stations, the expensive food, the snooty attitudes or the tons of tourists clogging to see all of the sights, but I seemed to have miss the whole most romantic city in the world thing.

I'm actually tempted to watch the rest of the series to see how many girls this guy can get with, how many women think that he's their soul mate, how many women think that their date was the most romantic date or how many times he can say that choosing among all of the hot women is the toughest thing that he's ever done. Yeah, I'm sure that medical school was no sweat. I'm tempted, but I probably won't. I have enough useless crap to watch...

Apparently it's not a good idea to do computer work on a carpet floor...

This Christmas, my wife announced that she had run out of ideas for gifts to get me, so she asked me if there was anything else that I wanted.

Now there were plenty of things that I wanted: a HDTV, a XBox 360, a new CD player for my car, a snow blower, Sirius satellite radio, a new computer, a recordable DVD player for the living room, etc, but she was thinking about the $50 range. The only thing I could think of was a new case for my computer.

I had originally bought a computer in 1997 when I was in graduate school, which I didn't finish because I managed to find a new career path that suited me. Eventually, the computer ended up getting slower and slower because the original configuration was:

Pentium 333 megahertz processor
8 meg video card
8 gig hard drive
128 megs of RAM

It suited its purpose for a while, but as all computers, it had to be upgraded. I upgraded to an Intel Celeron 1.7 Gig processor, 32 meg video card and 512 megs of RAM.

What I should have realized then and should have upgraded back then was the case. By the time I upgraded 3 years ago, the case's power supply was five-years-old. Plus, the case itself was small and not built for the ventilation required for today's computers.

You see my non-technical friends (if anyone actually reads this), computers need ventilation or they will burn up. Today's processors have fans strapped to them to keep them cool. Power supplies have their own fans. Even the video cards have fans strapped to them to keep them from melting down.

Today's computer cases are bigger than they need to be for ventilation purposes. They even have more open vent ports so that you can put nifty fans in them for more ventilation.

After the upgrade 3 years ago, my computer have perpetually acted like it's been stricken with malaria. One minute it'll feel cool to the touch and the next minute it's burning up. I hated leaving the computer on for fear that it would burn up while I wasn't home.

So that's what was on my mind when my wife asked me what I wanted. I wanted a new case for the computer that came with a new power supply.

She asked, "A computer case?" in that skeptical wife tone.

After quickly explaining the above reasoning, which she was probably zoning out, she said in an even more skeptical tone, "All right."

I convinced her that I wanted it done that day, so off we headed to DIT computers. I picked a nice black one that had easy remove sides. I couldn't wait to get it home to move my computer from one case to another. I had also bought a new video card with some money I had been hoarding, so I was even more anxious to try out some games that my computer had some trouble playing. I figured the new video card would help.

I opened the computer on my coffee table in the living room of my apartment and laid it down on its side on the carpet...

Now let me explain something...

I've tinkered with my computer quite a few times either cleaning it out or installing a new hardrive or a sound card that's gone bad and every time that I've done it, I would do it on the bar in my living room that had a nice hard stone tile floor.

This is an ideal location if you're in the house. You want a work area that has no carpet or anything that will cause static electricity. According to Webopedia, circuitry to on a computer component can be damaged by as little as 10 volts, but the human body can only perceive it when it's hit 1500 volts. They also suggest working on an anti-static mat.

I did not...

I had even been warned about this the first time I ever put in a new computer component. My sound was really bad when the computer first came because they were using a real crappy internal sound chip on the motherboard. I had the computer company send a sound card to fix the problem, but I didn't really know how to put one in. My friend from work, Kevin, showed me how to do it.

One of the first things that he told me to do was to make sure that I avoided static electricity. He suggested that if I was to work on my computer on carpet would be to touch something else prior to touching my computer components.

He cited one example in which a guy he was helping over the phone had his new RAM ready to install when he heard a "BZZT!" The guy had shocked the RAM, which was now dead.



I had heard about the dangers but much like I had never believed my parents when they told me that every time I turned the lights on and off that it cost a quarter or much in the way that conservatives dismiss the supposed dangers of global warming, I really didn't comprehend the severity of the problem.

So when I had my motherboard and other components laying on the carpet while I moved them from one case to another, it's a small miracle that I didn't fry everything.

I was trying to work on the floor undisturbed, but seeing as how my wife was at work and I had to watch my four-year-old daughter, Julia, it was hard to remain undisturbed. She was poking in and around the computer and even touching things at some points in the day. Several times, she jumped on my back while I was kneeling over the computer.

I felt the familiar "BZZZT!" of static electricity. And this happened several times.

I didn't think much about it, but I did when, after moving everything to the new box and then starting up the new computer box, the fans whirred, but nothing else happened. Nothing on the monitor. No familiar beep from the computer BIOS. Nothing.

I started to panic a little. I opened the box and reseeded everything on the motherboard. Nothing. I checked every power cable. Nothing. I tried the old video card. Nothing. I even tried running off the motherboard's video port. Nothing.

So I took it back to the computer store and had them run a computer diagnostic, which was going to take 5 to 7 business days before they even got to it.

Therefore, I had to suffer in guilt and panic for more than a week while I fretted about what could be wrong with the computer. I even sought help from a computer tech help forum that I frequent. At first I was a little vague in my details because I didn't think where I put the computer case together was relevant. Finally, when I disclosed the charges from my daughter and the putting the computer together on the carpet, I got this reply.

"LMAO! That motherboard is toast!!"

So in the end, it WAS the motherboard. I ended up getting a new motherboard/processor combination, which is really twisting my arm...

Christmas memories...

I was thinking about Christmas today. It's funny the things that you remember from Christmas. I remember a lot of the presents I got or shared with my twin brother, Bill.

Our present stack represented a large pile of legos. Seeing as we were a family of five kids, things piled up quickly. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder how much my parents must have spent on those presents. It couldn't have been cheap. Well, I'm sure they cut a few corners by giving Bill and I shared gifts. We often got stacks of gifts with both of our names on it seeing as we would be the ones who would both play with them. I hold no grudge over that practice. It was smart economics on my parents part. Two for the price of 1.

As I think back to Christmas from an adult perspective, there are bits and pieces of Christmas that come back to me.

• I remember staying awake one night and falling asleep on the basement steps waiting for Santa to come. We never saw him, but presents showed up anyway. Speaking of which, I noticed we didn't have a chimney so I often wondered how in the hell did he get in our house anyway?
• I remember getting Tobor, the remote controlled robot. This was a big deal back then. He was a black robot with a long wire hanging out of him. The remote control also had a long wire hanging out of it. The range was limited and he could only turn right everytime you clicked the remote, but I enjoyed it anyway.
• I remember some friends of my parents visiting us on Christmas when I was around 4. Their son near my age got a Little People treehouse that I could have swore was supposed to go to us and I was rather upset when they left and it went with them. Obviously, it was the son's gift, but tell a four-year-old kid that.
• I remember asking and getting Stretch Armstrong, the doll whose only purpose was to stretch his arms and legs. We stretched and stretched and it wasn't long before we broke him and noticed that he was filled with jelly.
• I remember asking for and getting a rubber dartgun. My sole reason for getting it was because I wanted to shoot my brother, Bill in the head so that the dart would stick like in the movie, the Toy. I got it, shot my brother, who cried when it hit him in the eye and it was promptly taken away. And who says that we're not affected by the media?
• I remember getting underoos (sp?), the underwear that had your favorite superhero on it. Now these weren't your pansy underroos from later when they had the character designs all over it. These were the ones that actually looked like the costume! We had Superman and Batman. Bill and I ran around like happy little pixies that day.
• I remember finding a Spiderman race track in my parent's closet about a month before Christmas. I'd come into the closet periodically and checked it out. I really can't remember who it was for, but when it showed up on Christmas, it was still a nice surprise.
• I remember not seeing Star Wars, but still wanting Star Wars toys for Christmas. It was a hard sell because there were so many of them. We didn't have a lot of the cool toys like the Tie Fighter or the Land Speeder, but we did end up with the Deathstar! I've talked to so many people who were jealous that I had that thing. It was three stories tall. It had an elevator and a garbage compactor complete with foam and trash monster. Why in the hell did I get rid of that one?
• I remember getting our beloved family dog, Snoopy, on Christmas. He arrived as a puppy. Every year, we would celebrate his birth on Christmas day.

I don't really remember the presents that I wanted and didn't get, unless you count the Atart 2600 the family wanted. Our parents claimed that their friends had one for their family and they hardly ever touched it. I thought back then that there would be no way I wouldn't want to play those games. Although thinking back now, I do remember a reluctance from a lot of friends to play the game system. They were probably bored of it and the last thing they wanted to do when a friend came over was to play it.

As a parent now, I often feel guilty that we're getting too many presents for our child or that we're not getting the right ones or not enough of ones that she wants. Then I realized that it's not that we get everything, it's that we get enough to create lasting memories. We don't have to get Julia everything because there will always be more than she could want. What's important that a child gets at least something, because getting nothing would suck ass.

Computer Broke - In a limbo

My computer is broke thanks to something I did...

My wife bought me a new computer case for Christmas because the old case's power supply is old and the case doesn't have a lot of ventilation. As a result, the temperature inside often ran at a balmy 140 degrees. Also, the computer started to act weird. I spent 30 minutes the other night typing my analysis of the local U2 concert when suddenly the computer reset. I had lost everything because I hadn't saved yet.

So I asked for a new case because I thought the power supply was going wacky. I moved everything over to the new computer, plugged everything in and turned on the computer. The computer chugged, but nothing happened. No beeps. No monitor signal. Nothing.

So the computer is at the computer shop waiting to be fixed.

Thank God the Amazing Race - Family Edition is over... Karma wins again...

I posted about the Weaver family from the Amazing Race - Family Edition last week here. They were the family that lost their Dad to a racetrack accident and then proceeded to go all crazy with their faith. In this season of the Amazing Race, they made sure to ask God for guidance for everything from finding a road sign to finding a red coffee bean in a large pile of other coffee beans.

It's not just the religious thing that bothers me, it's their moral superiority. It'd be one thing if they were nice to everybody in the race and then everybody hated them, but it wasn't that by a long shot. They were the team that didn't speak to any other team, which alienated them from everybody else.

Well, Tuesday night, they crowned a team champions of the Amazing Race and thank heaven it wasn't the Weavers. I feel for their loss, but again, their attitudes were horrible.

You see, the Amazing Race is a game where karma plays a big role in who wins. In all of their seasons (I think they're up to 10), the team that is ultra competitive, but are major pricks to everyone end up not winning the game.

There are always teams that I love to hate during the Amazing Race and they have never one the game. It's a fact. Don't dispute it. Look it up. I'm not wrong.

Last year, they had Rob and Amber from Survivor in the game. From the start, they were the team that messed with everyone. Rob bribed security guards not to give information in airports. Rob bribed cab drivers to not wait for teams. He messed with people's heads at airports. During one leg, one team's car overturned in a desert stretch, seriously injuring that team's cameraman. Every team stopped to either help or ask if they were OK except for Rob and Amber. They just drove on by. So it was of no surprise to me that on the final leg, when he and Amber got a flight ahead of everyone else to the final destination, another team got on the plane even when the jetway was taken away. They ended up losing. Karma.

The previous season to that, there was a former Miss Texas and her asshole boyfriend, who were again ultra competitive and nice to nobody. The boyfriend sneered at locals at every turn and almost got himself arrested when he refused to pay a cab driver in one country. The night before the final flight, the team that ended up winning came in way later to the airport than the other two teams. They found out that the flight that Miss Texas and boyfriend were on was delayed, which made a later flight the early flight. When the boyfriend found this out at the last minute, he attempted to get on the flight, but since he had already checked his bags at the counter on the original flight (on a different airline), they were not allowed to change flights. End result: the team that won gets to the final destination 20 minutes earlier and wins handily. I'm telling you, Karma.

Fast forward to Tuesday night, I just knew the Weavers were in for a date with Karma. They started the first hour way ahead of everyone else until they get to a challenge that involved them driving a golf cart into a stadium by way of the only entrance. They took forever finding the entrance and then fail to find the clue tacked to the back of one of the 55,000 indoor seats until hours later, which allowed the other teams to catch up. Rebecca, the 19-year-old put it very eliquently when she described her frustration.

"This is stupid..." (think of a bored teenager)

"I don't need to find this stupid clue. I've done more important things in my life. This is just stupid..." (think bored with a sneer)

They eventually find the clue, but it's for the last charter flight, which gives the other two teams a little lead. Karma finally caught up and the team that I was rooting for, the Linz family, finally won. You see, they were mostly positive. They never complained about what they were doing, where they were, or how they were doing it. I'm telling you, it's karma. That why I love the Amazing Race (except for this disappointing season of North America travel instead of world-wide, multi-continent travel). It's the team's that remain positive and are at least friendly to other teams or locals that win.

A new direction...

I've lost the heart to do this blog the way I've been doing it. It takes a lot of time and effort to try to think of funny stories to tell. If you've ever stumbled across this board, I apologize if you come back looking for stories and finding nothing. I've been a little lethargic in my updates for several reasons.

1. We moved into a small apartment while we're having our house built. It's nice and all, but very cramped compared to our last house. The closeness also breeds the lethargy.

2. It's winter. I find that I lack the energy to write when it's so dismal outside.

3. My daughter is spending time on the computer. I showed her how to use the mouse for some kids sites and now I have a hard time getting her off the damned thing.

4. I had a sibling yell at me in front of everybody at Thanksgiving because they didn't appreciate being written about for the whole world to see. This person especially didn't appreciate some comments I made to our mother about our childhood, which this person assumed that I was writing on here. I wasn't, but it didn't matter to this person. I have sworn to remove the site, but I think I'm just going to remove any stories people find offensive.

So, I'm just going to concentrate on me, but without the long stories.

Dad gets froze out...

It hasn't always been easy for my Dad. He's had to live an a drafty room. A room in which closing the window was not an option. If he tried to shut the window, the window just opened wider. A room in which he huddled in his bed in vain for warmth. He tried in vain to rectify the situation, but the circumstances are beyond his control. Complaining about it never helped and probably made the situation worse. He was stuck in the drafty room with no way out.

Now I could be referring to my Dad growing up on a farm in Cedar Rapids, but I'm actually referring to my Dad's living situation right now. You see, my Mom always feels hot. She'll try to fall asleep in their bedroom, but will roast unless she opens up the window. Thankfully, she's right next to the window, but the chill is enough to freeze my Dad out.

I've heard them argue about this subject off and on for as long as I can remember.

Usually the scenario involves this: Dad is sitting at his spot at the kitchen table blowing his nose from a cold when Mom walks by.

"Cold any better?" Mom asks.

"No!" Dad exclaims. "If you hadn't had that window open it might get better!"

"Oh Richard! Me having the window open is NOT making your cold worse!"

"Well, it sure as hell isn't getting any better!"

"Oh!"

"I swear you're trying to kill me!"

And then Mom walks away...

or something to that extent... I apologize if that isn't totally accurate. I'm sure there were a few god damns thrown in there for good measure.(Ha Ha)

My Dad has always maintained that my Mom has been slowly trying to kill him by leaving the window open on even the coldest nights and freezing him to death. I can relate since I find myself in a very similar situation. My wife, Laura, loves it cold and is always running a fan even in the dead of winter. There's many a night when I'm practically shivering while getting ready for bed and Laura will ask me to hit the ceiling fan.

I ask her, "You're hot!?"

"Yes," Laura stammers. "I'm dying!"

"I'm freezing!" I exclaim.

I just can't understand how God intended men and women to coexist when their temperature clocks are so out of wack.

The other day Laura, Julia and I were home visiting my parents when I had to ask about the window situation.

"Dad, does Mom still keep the window open every night?" I asked innocently.

"Oh, yes! She sure does!" Dad laughed.

"Don't you get cold?" I asked.

"Oh, sure." Dad replied. "I have to use an electric blanket on my side of the bed."

I laugh.

"We have a similar arrangement at our house. Laura likes it cold so she insists on no covers, so I have a thermal stadium blanket so I don't freeze."

Laura cuts in, "You don't freeze and it's not cold!"

"Yes it is!"

"You wake up sweating."

"I'd rather sweat than shiver," I reply.

By this time, Mom walks up and sits down at the kitchen table.

"You still keep the window open, don't you Mom?" My Dad asked my mother.

"Yes, but you know that I get hot."

"Uh huh." Dad replied.

"Besides, I want some fresh air when I sleep."

"What if I don't want fresh air," Dad asked.

"Well, I do want fresh air."

"Hey!" Dad exclaimed. "If I wanted fresh air, I'd go sit in the garage!"

Mom kind of rolls her eyes and sighs.

"So don't be surprised if some morning that you wake up and find me out in the garage getting some fresh air!" Dad finishes.

Mom starts to say, "I..." then pauses and asks, "Who brought up this topic?"

Dad points at me as I'm saying, "I did."

Mom says, "Then I'm done talking about this" and smirks at me.

My job is done here.