Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

For the first time since I became a registered voter, I attended my local caucus. I was registered as an independent prior to going out tonight, so when I arrived I got in line and changed my registration to the Democratic party. That was about 6 PM and for the next 2 hours I was standing around in a school gym chatting with some neighbors and some strangers. It was loud, hot and crowded.

I think the official count of registered voters attending the caucus for our district was 355, which according to the caucus chairman that’s a new record. Around the walls of the gym were posters for several of the candidates: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards and Obama. Once things got a bit more organized, they caucus workers had us all line up in groups for them to count the number of supporters for each candidate. The first count determined which candidates were viable, to do this each candidate needed to have at least 50 supporters. Biden and Dodd were both eliminated at this stage. It looked like those supporters both switched over to Edwards but with all the people crowded into the gym, I can’t be sure about that. There were multiple, repeated recounts and at the end Obama had 206 supporters from our district. Most people (including us) left at this point, as we were told all that was left to do at the caucus was to fill out some official paperwork and to elect the delegates to go to the county convention. We didn’t have any interested in going to the county convention, so we headed home at that point.

It was an interesting experience but not what I was expecting. I had thought each candidate would have a representative who’d have an opportunity to speak to try convincing people to switch to their candidate. That didn’t happen. In fact, the closest thing we had to that were supporters for the various candidates starting to chant for their candidate, e.g. I say “O”, you say “Bama”. “O”! “Bama”! “O”! “Bama”!

Having been home for a while now, I see Obama won the Iowa Democractic Caucus. I wish him good luck in the other states and hope he wins.

Inspired by 50 Things Men Wish You Knew.

  1. Talk to me and tell me what you think; your thoughts and ideas are important to me. But keep in mind there’s a time and place for everything. This means my bathroom has a closed door policy and when it’s closed I’m in no mood to listen.
  2. You look hot in (or out of anything) you want to wear. This can make it difficult for me to help you pick out an outfit. I can help you out, it’s just I will want to you be prepared to take it off. Repeatedly. Slowly.
  3. A random unexpected grope is always welcome, even in public. Especially when I’m the one doing the groping.
  4. Sometimes the crankier, old man inside of me gets the better of my cranky, old man exterior and I take my bad attitude out on you. I don’t intend for it to happen and so I’ll apologize for it here now. Sorry.
  5. When I screw up, go ahead and tell me right away. My poor memory is part of my coping mechanism for dealing with an imperfect world. I forget all my screw-ups as quickly as I can, so I won’t remember it when you bring it up six months later.
  6. Shopping is a mission where specific target(s) must be acquired as quickly as possible. We go in and we get out. If you only wish to perform reconnaissance and information gathering on the target(s), be sure that objective is made clear during the mission briefing.
  7. There are a variety of physical traits that I find attractive. What I find even more attractive is when I can tell you are feeling confident and sexy.

We here at CoffeeBear.net wish you and yours a happy & safe holiday season.

Also our good friends1 over at Aperature Science wish you a Happy <Holiday Name Here>.

The video currently playing over at Aperature Science is a nice holiday gesture and heavily loaded with easter eggs. The ones I noticed were:

  • The presents under the Christmas tree are all orange boxes.
  • The gnome on the fireplace is from Half-Life2.
  • There’s a crowbar leaning up against the fireplace.
  • There’s a turret from Portal lurking in the shadows.
  • The “boxes” on the right are all ammo boxes from Half-Life.
  • The stockings hanging from the fireplace all have logos from various games by Valve.
  • The ornaments on the tree are characters from Team Fortress 2.
  • The sign above the fireplace is a parody of the signs in Portal.

And that’s all I noticed, leave a comment if you find more. 🙂

1 No, I don’t personally know anybody who works for Valve Software. I just really enjoyed playing Portal.

Frozen in Amber | CoffeeBear.net (via Flickr)

11 Dec 2007. Iowa. Cedar Rapids. The weather did suck. Mightly. 12 Dec 2007 everything was coated in a beautiful1 layer of ice. Fortunately my employer allows me to work from home and I did so yesterday. I still went outside, cleared off the cars and moved them to the other side of the street. Just in case the plows decided to make another pass at cleaning up our street. It wasn’t too bad out but I had a blazing headache, plus work to do and all. I took my camera outside with me and snapped a few hurried photos before rushing back inside to the warmth. Then I spent the day fighting my headache and trying to get some work done. But you don’t care about my suffering, you want pretty pictures. So go look at them already!

1 Beautiful provided you didn’t have to clear it off your car and try heading into work.

I’ve been bad about posting anything here, so here’s a collection of random thoughts that have occurred to me since my last posting.

  • For several years I carried a PDA to keep track of appointments, jot down notes and to have important phone numbers/addresses handy. I started off with a Handspring Visor Platinum, later switched over to a Sonly Clie for a color screen and rechargeable battery. Eventually the Clie started giving me problems so I started leaving it at home more & more. Instead I carried around my “paper brain”, a 3×5 spiral bound notebook. It worked alright but pages kept getting ripped whenever people needed scrap paper. Over time it became a ragged shadow of its former self and needed replacement. A couple of weeks back I finally did replace it; this time I picked up a Moleskine or as I’ve taken to call it “my snobby paper brain”. The Moleskine was about 3 times as expensive as my old “paper brain” and I’ve read numerous articles online from devotees of these notebooks. Those articles had aroused my curiosity. I find the paper to be very smooth and pleasant to write upon, though I do need to find a pen/ink to use which doesn’t bleed through so much. I’ve been writing…
    • character ideas for games I’m playing
    • dreams I’ve had
    • things I need to get done
    • grocery lists

    … and little things like that. It’s stuff which if I ever developed the more interesting bits could end up here, but for the most part is too mundane to make me want to post it.

  • I used a print out of a Windows BSOD and a black robe I still have from several years ago to be the Blue Screen of Death for my office’s Halloween festivities. The costume netted me third place and a $10 Target gift card. Whee!
  • We were down about a third in the number of kids coming by the house last night for Halloween. Maybe the massive number of kids last year was them checking us out since it was our first year there. Or maybe something else happened, but I thought we gave out good candy and we were stocked up to give more this year. Heck, we had an entire bag left unopened after we stopped for the night. Ah well, it’ll make the office happy as I’ll bring all the candy to work to get rid of it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s candy I like (saltwater taffy to be specific) but it’s a 5lb bag and I don’t need all those calories.

Update: I forgot to mention when I someday fill up my current Moleskine, I do plan to buy another one but next time will get the grid paper version vs the ruled paper version I have now. I think the grid will be more conducive to sketching than the lines, while still having something there to keep my written words running straight across the page.

Also I meant to talk about the new light fixture I finally got installed in our upstairs hallway. When we moved into the house, there was a floresent light in the hallway. But the bulb was never plugged into the fixture as there’s no switch for it1. So we bought a simple light fixture with a built-in switch. I got the old fixture taken down but in doing so found that the screws to hold the new fixture wouldn’t fit into the electrical box in the wall. I bought a new electrical box, but when I took out the old one I got another surprise. The old box was screwed into scraps of wood to kind of clamp the box to the drywall and as soon as I had the screws out of them… the bits of wood fell down inside the wall. *insert swearing here* Putting in the new light got put off for a while… basically until I had a chat with my father-in-law. He told me what kind of electrical box to buy and the next weekend I had the light installed.

1 Technically, there is a switch at the bottom of the stairs but turning it off kills all power to the upstairs.