Look at what fun somebody had during the night.  Yup, that’s how I found my car when I walked outside this morning to go to work.  When I first saw the damage, I was sleepy enough to think I had frost on my window and I’d have to scrap it.  But before I could even start thinking about how odd that was I’d gotten close enough to realize it wasn’t frost on the window.  *sigh*

Craptastic Morning © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Mark’s Rating: 1.75 out of 5 stars

Friday, Ariesna and I were originally planning on having guests over. When we found out they were all canceling due to the weather; we hit up the video store and got a couple of movies. When we got home, the first one we watched was The Marine. I’d selected it because I remembered the trailers leading me to believe it would be a fun action flick. However after watching it, I have to declare it to be a steaming flaming pile of poo. From weak fight sequences to bad acting, this movie embodies the worst hackneyed and cliched parts of every C-movie action flick ever to be made. That being said if one watches this movie, thinking of it more like a parody of the genre (e.g. in the vein of Scary Movie) then it can be enjoyable. I spent the vast majority of the film’s 91 minutes laughing as cliche after cliche was perpetrated on the screen. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this film to any one; though it could make the basis of a good drinking game (every one takes a shot for every cliche used in the film). However one would have to be careful with such a game to avoid getting alcohol poisoning!

Review: The Marine © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Why aren’t people asking the marriage bigots flat out what they have against marriage? Against married couples? And by what right are they able to say that couples who are already legally married should have their marriages declared null and void? This proposed amendment breaks up marriages. God damn it, people should be hollering this at the top their lungs every time one of those marriage bigots gets all sanctimonious about what marriage means. People ought to be getting these marriage bigots into a corner and getting them to admit that they need to destroy legal, loving marriages in order to accomplish their goals. We ought to be getting these marriage bigots admitting that they have to strip away rights these Americans already have to do what they want to do.

I highly recommend you read Mr. Scalzi’s post in full.

Update: The comment thread on Mr. Scalzi’s post is rather long. I hadn’t completed reading it yet, when I posted this article. Heck, I’m still working my way through it. However the reason for this update is one of Mr. Scalzi’s replies to a comment was so dead on that I simply must quote him again.

As I’ve said a number of times in the past, the most “activist” judicial ruling I can think of in recent times was Bush v. Gore, and I think it was wildly poorly decided. However, you don’t see me hopping up and down like a frog on a plate, bitching about that damned activist Judge Scalia, because in my opinion, regardless of whether I like the ruling or not, the judiciary was doing its proper role. So, basically, if I have to live with a piece of crap ruling like Bush v. Gore, my sympathy for boo-hoo conservates bitching about “activist judges” is around about zero.

Bigots and Marriage © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Sick © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Buttercup is marry’ Humperdinck in a little less than half an hour. And every Wednesday, myself and a few co-workers head over to the Terrapin to get a cup of real coffee². Almost without fail, I order a “Grand Canyon” which is 2 shots of espresso, steamed milk, a shot of dark chocolate syrup and a shot of mango syrup. *yum* When I got there today, I picked up their tea menu and Rob (one of the owners) ordered me to put it down. I explained about the congestion and he accepted it, but I wouldn’t say he was happy about it. Then I ordered their Chinese Breakfast tea, as the description sounded similar to the yunnan jig tea I’ve mentioned before. Hot caffeinated beverages acquired, we headed back to the office and I headed back to the mountain of email that had arrived while I’d been out. After clearing out that mess (most of it went straight to the trash), I started/continued testing a problem I’d been working on Friday. I’m still processing the data for that test now, but I’m also starting to wonder if I should have stayed home again.

Today, like Sunday, I woke up feeling better than the day before. The problem is like Sunday, I didn’t stay home. Sunday, Ariesna & I were invited to go to Niabi Zoo over in Illinois with some of her family. It was a fun day and I took quite a few pictures³ but by the end of the day, I was totally wiped out and realized I should have stayed home. Now I’m not wiped out (so far) but I do feel more tired than I should from just sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen. Ah well, not much I can do about that now.

BTW, last night I upgraded Cath’s site to the current version of WordPress. I was kind of annoyed at how long it took but then most of that time was taken up my crappy ftp client having problems deleting the files for the old version from the webserver. Mind you I was booted into Windows at the time⁴ which undoubtably was part of the problem. But I did eventually get it done and wouldn’t you know it looks nearly identical to what it did before. I’d call that a good sign for a seamless upgrade, but I’m waiting to hear back from her before I call it a success. So why the upgrade? In part to patch some old security holes and in part because all the new/interesting stuff for WP is happening on the newer versions. This way if she feels like going out and picking a different theme⁵; it should be trivial to install it.

Anyway, one of the reasons I was annoyed with the amount of time it took was last night also happened to be the season premier for NCIS. I’ve been a fan of this show for a while now, but season 2’s finale was murder. Quite literally, as they killed off one of the NCIS agents. I was very much looking forward to seeing where they’d take the show next, but with upgrading the site and some other things I didn’t get to watch the show as thoroughly as I would have liked. From what I did see, I’m not sure how enjoyable season 3 will be. I don’t care for the new characters they introduced into the NCIS office (Director Jenny Shepard and Agent Ziva David). The romatic background between Gibbs & Shepard could be an interesting subplot but they seem to be pushing it too hard in an episode which should be dealing more directly with the remaining NCIS agents working to find Kate’s killer. And then to make the episode a 2-parter leaving us on another cliff-hanger is distinctly annoying. *sigh* I guess we’ll have to wait and see if they can pull this up with next week’s episode.

¹ Next to chicken noodle soup, hot tea works best for clearing up congestion and helping me feel better.
² The first part of this paragraph is a quote from The Princess Bride. And when I say coffee, I mean flavored espresso.
³ I’ll see about posting some of them later. Incidentally, there was a classic car show being held on the zoo’s premises so don’t be surprised if you see more car than animals photos.
⁴ I had some work to do that required M$ Word, as OpenOffice Writer couldn’t properly edit the fancy formating in the document (originally created in M$ Word).
⁵ By perhaps looking through the themes in Alex King’s Theme Browser.…

Feeling Better & Mumbling Randomly © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

This job has sucked every scrap of knowledge out of my skull and all of my will to live… Oooo bagels!

Conversation with a co-worker © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Employee Self-Appraisal Form

Instructions

To complete electronically, use the Tab key to go to the next field. To complete analogly: print this off, pull that pen out of your ass ear and scribble in your answers.

Name: Mark
Enslavement Date: 02 June 1997
Department: Crappy Code Catchers
Job Title: Intensification Whiz
Appraisal Period: From — Then, To — Now

Objective

This form is designed for you to explain to management how you’re screwing the company out of it’s money. It’s your chance to step back from the day-to-day pressures of your thralldom, and take an honest look at where you’ve been, where you are and what other company you might want to go to in the future.

Appraisal Procedures:

1. Complete this Self Appraisal Form, print out, and return to your manager via CONFIDENTIAL Interoffice envelope. Do NOT send your via diskettes or Internet email! Do NOT save this form to either the corporate LAN or your corporate PC hard drive! If you must save the document, please do so on a floppy disk. This way we can be sure that the original copy of your review can never be recovered should you decide to disagree with management’s assessment of your worthlessness.
2. Your supervisor will complete his appraisal of you. Most likely, this will take next to no time at all as they’re just going to blow you off exactly like they did last year. Management will then review your self appraisal and your supervisor’s evaluation to develop a GOALS & PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT PLAN for you to review before they fire you.
3. Supervisor meets with you to give you your termination notice. During this exit interview, you and the supervisor will discuss each appraisal topic, areas that need to be addressed, your career path, and the steps that need to be taken to get you on your way to your next employer. Specific goals will be set for the next review period; if you are so fortunate as to be staying with our company.
4. The original form must be signed and then placed in your permanent record. That way when your mind finally snaps; we can turn it over to the NSA.

Elements of your Job:

Describe your primary responsibilities and duties — your job description, as you understand it. While we’ve changed your job description approximately 8 times in 6 months; if you get this wrong, you will be fired.
Avoiding as much real work as possible.
Maintaining the illusion that I’m doing real work whenever under direction observation by either a supervisor or a manager.
Collect paychecks.
Eat the free donuts.

Accomplishments:

List your major accomplishments and contributions during this past review period. If you didn’t have any, don’t expect to be getting another pay check from us.
Avoided being downsized during reorganization.

Improvements made since your last appriasal:

What have you done to make it worth our while to keep you around instead of hiring a chimp to do your job?
Photographed company CEO “boinking” his secretary, but haven’t given copies of the images to his wife.

Self-Management:

Face it, you’re a screw up and we know it. So be honest and tell us exactly how you’ve been screwing up this year.
Failed to find another job.

Job Satisfaction:

A) What part of your job interests you the most?
Payday.
B) The least?
Coming to work every day.

Training:

Is what part of your job do you feel particularly inferior?
Coming to work.

What got in your way:

Find something (or somebody else) to blame for your shortcomings this year.
It’s all Wally’s fault.

Fully Utilitized:

How can we more fully exploit you?
I plead the 5th.

Personal Influences:

Note any personal factors that you feel should be considered in your present assignment or future jobs.
Do you mean beside that bong I smoked after chugging down my martini lunch?

Leadership/Employee Development

List for us all the ways you were able to bully your cow-orkers and/or underlings into doing your work for you.
See my answer to “Improvements made since your last appriasal:”

List project goals you are currently focused on:

• Collecting my paycheck.
• Building up vacation/sick time.
• Calculating the maximum amount of belly-button lint that will fit in an empty Coke can.

Personal improvement goals:

Since we know you’ve spent the past year screwing around on company time; can you list some things you could do to improve your productivity (if you were still working here next year)?
I could try actually working for once.

Where do you want your career to go:

What company do you want to be working in one year? In three years? In five years?
Screw all this, I just wanna win the Powerball and be independentally wealthy for the rest of my life.

General management comments:

Since we all know you’re going to be fired; here’s your one real shot to blame management for your failures. Note to secretary: Please cover this section in white-out before passing on to management. Thanks!
You’re all a bunch of bleepards!

Additional comments:

Any parting words?
Piss off!

Self-Evaluation © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I’m normally a coffee drinker. Heck, let’s be honest here; I’m more than just a coffee drinker. I’m both a coffee addict and a coffee snob. I’ll gladly pay ~$5 for a well brewed cup of espresso with a shot of flavored syrup in it and I regularly buy fresh beans from Gevalia rather than try to choke down that crap my office claims is coffee.

But for all that, coffee is not my exclusive poision. Particularly in the warmer months, nothing is quite so refreshing as a cold glass of ice-tea. To make my ice-tea, I generally put 5 bags of Lipton into a 1 gallon glass jar and stick it in the window for a few hours. It’s slow, but it turns out wonderful. Why am I talking so much about this?

Well, I had been reading through the various blogs on my portal page, when I saw an interesting note over at shades*of*grey. He mentioned an interesting marketing technique from Adagio Teas. Far too interesting to resist in my book, so I’m linking them up here –and in my sidebar– hoping to get a freebie. :)

What’s in your cup? © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Oh and the other thing that happened today? I got my kilt & jacket in the mail, complete with the invoice. *urk* The kilt & jacket look great but the invoice is kind of scary. I could pay it off right now from my savings, but I like having a bit of a buffer in there and this would nearly wipe that out. *sigh* I’ve really got to learn to stop spending so much money. Ah well, this is all in a good cause but more info on that will appear on this site in due course. :D

Update: For the curious, I bought my kilt through the Scots Dragon and the tartan for my kilt is Graham of Menteith.

Expensive Day © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.