Entitled title

I've been toying with the idea of changing the title of my blog to something else. Been thinking that Blog O' Stuff is losing its luster. Maybe I can come up with something catchy, something with a jingle, something that says, "Boy, that guy is fried!" Something like:

Frankly Scarlett, I Don't Give a Blog, or

SaoMiguelGuy's It's Not Easy Being Green Blog, or

My Blog, My Crap, or

You Had Me At Blog

Raise a toast at the Regal Beagle for good ole Barn

I just saw this online and am deeply saddened. Don Knotts, one of my favorites, died Friday at the age of 81.

Furniture wars?

If you live in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, you may appreciate this. I was watching the news this morning and realized that it seems like more than half the commercials are from furniture advertisers. It made me think, "Is there such a high demand in New England for furniture and bedding that the commercials are saturated with them?" For years, the lone furniture store advertiser was Jordan's Home Furniture, Waltham, Nashua, and Avon, home of MOM! Our motion odyssey movie theatre, featuring Jordan's sibling owners Barry and Elliot. You'd hear them on the radio and on the telly mimicking other television ads.

Now, there are others. For a while, there was Dean's "I Doubt It" Home Furniture, starring the annoying Dean. I believe he either went out of business or was bought out by equally annoying Bob's Discount Furniture.

Then, there's another staple in the home furniture market, Bernie and Phyl's, featuring a husband and wife team and a catchy jiggle to their commercial. Everybody! Bernie and Phy-yl's. Quality. Comfort and Price... That's Nice.

So now these three advertisers are constantly on the tube and in our sub-conscience. Why did I write this? I have no idea.

Crikey!

Oh yeah. This is going to make me want to visit the land down under.

I need to stop eating before going to bed

I just remembered a strange dream I had last night. I sailed away to China with a little row boat behind ya... No, that's not it.

All I remember is that I was with my brother-in-law at a casino-type place at a Texas Hold-Em table playing cards. The dealer was about two players from me when it was announced that this would be the last hand for the night. I looked at my cards and saw that my combined hand had four aces. Four aces! When it was my turn to bet, I was the last player playing against the dealer and I didn't know how much I should put in. I looked at my brother-in-law and asked him but I don't remember if there was an answer (this dream was very foggy much like that silly Caillou). I put in a conservative amount of chips to play it 'safe' and I ended up winning the hand.

Oh, I just remembered the amount, we thought the dealer said I won $715. We then proceeded to the window to cash in the chips. After the Asian guy behind the window (why an Asian guy, who knows?) counted it he said Seven-Fifty. My brother-in-law had said 'what, but the guy said 715'. I tried to shush him up so as not to make a scene, but the guy behind the glass went to get the dealer to verify the actual amount. After a minute, it was confirmed to be $750. So they drew me up this huge check, a la the ones you see at a benefit, or the ones in Happy Gilmore, and the amount had actually said something like $670-something because they took the taxes out. I was so excited I went to show my wife the check and she was happy and that's all I remember of the dream.

So what does this mean? That I have to go rent Happy Gilmore again?

Happy Washington's Birthday (observed)

How did we go from this George W. to this George W?

Olympic Officer

Every time I catch a report on the Winter Olympics, I keep hearing about Barney Miller, Barney Miller and how he's not living up to his expectations in the skiing events. My question would be, "Wow, he's on the Olympic team?! That's amazing." Come on he's got to be one of the oldest members on the team and he still qualified. That's a feat unto itself. Oh, I'm sure he's trying to keep the younger skiers in line given his police background. How he got time off from his hectic schedule keeping the precinct in check and making sure there was enough bad coffee to go around is beyond me. Detective Nick Yemana would have a fit if there wasn't enough bad coffee for everyone if he was still around. And you know, I thought I saw Detective Fish looking sulky after one of the reports. Of course, I couldn't tell if he was happy or sad for Miller. Any way, good for ole Barn and here's hoping for a gold!

Huh?... What's that?... Bode Miller? Are you sure? Oh....
.
.
.
Never mind.

It's Wonkavision

I picked up Gene Wilder's book, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, on CD at the library yesterday and started listening to it this morning. It's read by Mr. Wilder and it's very enjoyable so far. I've always liked Gene Wilder and his movies and it's interesting listening to him talk about his life.

Rufus!

Well, here is the new reigning Best In Show winner at this year's Westminster Dog Show competition.

I love dogs and all, but Spud McKenzie's fraternal twin wins a dog competition? Fred Willard would have had a field day with this one if he was providing the commentary. And the thing that put him over the top with the judges... His head is perfectly shaped like an egg.


Update: Well, alright, as I keep going back to Rufus' picture, he is kind of affable. Still not what I would expect to win a competition, but what do I know.

Snow place like home

Our son wrote this on the window yesterday morning after gazing out at the 18 inches of powder dumped on us from Sunday's Nor'Easter.

These things write themselves

I have a feeling Cheney's hunting accident will be blanketing the blogosphere today.

Transcript of VP Cheney and Harry Whittington's conversation before the accident:

Whittington: "Lovely day to hunt down some birds, eh, Dick."
Cheney: "Harrumph. Mmm. Yeah. Did you write up those papers for me about the legality of an Iran invasion and the 'no fault' cause?"
Whittington: "Um, yes, my office has the papers drawn up and signed for. Now, come on, forget about work and let's hunt us some quail. Look! There's a covey of them. I'm going for it. You've all done very well!! (He stumbles into some brush.)
Cheney (with a sinister smile): "Excellent..."
Cheney aims at 'quail' and shouts "Go f*ck yourself!"

Snowed in and no foosball

Figures. The first weekend this winter that we're basically snowed in on a Sunday and there's no football on T.V. to watch. I'm not looking forward to going outside and shoveling/plowing the stuff. I think I'll wait until later when the wind finally dies down a bit.

Snow means snow

Anyone for predictions on how much snow the Northeast is going to get tomorrow from the impending Nor'easter? Some are saying 6-12 inches. Others are saying 12-15.

A Honky Farewell

Franklin Cover, who played Mr. Willis on The Jeffersons, died of pneumonia on Sunday.

Is it me, or is there a lot of famous people dying lately? What's up with that?

Computers are so naughty I just want to pinch them

I was working on my home computer earlier and within 5 minutes of using it, the dang thing shutdown with two continuous beeps. beeeeee-boooooooo, beeeeeeee-boooooooooo
I completely shut it off and then on and then booted. Again, it shutdown within minutes with the same beeps. I tried one more time and again it happened. wtf.

This has happened once in a while since maybe last summer. I thought it was because the house was warm due to the heat so the computer was overheating and it shut itself down as a precaution. But, right now it's the middle of weather. I was talked to my buddy LordRasputin to get his thoughts, and he guessed the CPU was overheating. I've been meaning to check out the heat sink and fans in the case to see if everything was alright, but never got it. Well, today I got to it.

I checked the motherboard manual and the two beeps is indeed a precautionary thing on the board where the power shuts down when the system is in danger of overheating

All the fans (CPU and two system fans) are working. Upon closer look at the CPU fan, there's a good amount of dust between the heat sink and the CPU fan enough that it was covering about one third of the heat sink. Aha! That may be the culprit!

When I had the chance, I shut everything down and unplugged it. Dusted off all the fans, unscrewed the CPU fan from the heat sink and cleaned that out. Put everything back together and started her up. So far it's been up and running ever since. I'm not certain yet that was the problem, because it would happen like this randomly, but so far so good.

I don't get it

This story this morning is making me shake my head. A first grader is suspended from school for three days for sexual harassment? What is this world coming to? Does a 6 year old know what sexual harassment is? The boy's mother said to reporters that he had told her the girl touched him first so he touched her back. Did I miss something? Oh wait I think I figured it out. The news interviewed the mother and lo and behold, she's black! I sense the race card being dealt on this one and probably justifiably so.

I'm drawing a blank

Trying to figure out what to write.

Stay tuned for more rock 'n' roll.

So long, Grandpa.

Yet another TV icon from my youth has passed away. Grandpa Al Lewis from The Munsters died Friday night at the age of 95.

Update: Apparently, Grandpa may not have been born in 1910, but instead in 1923.

"Politics is not my strong suit"

So says Mass. Attorney General Tom Reilly yesterday after his hand-picked candidate for Lt. Governor dropped out of the race amid financial woes. Politics is not your thing? Then, why are you running for governor? Well, I wasn't too thrilled that Mr. Reilly announced his candidacy, so it will be interesting what happens with his campaign in the next few weeks.

By the way, what the heck is Geraldo Rivera doing subbing for Regis on Regis and Kelly this morning? ugh.

Woodchucks are groundhogs?

The morning news actually cut into the live broadcast of Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylania so I got to watch the groundhog festivities for the first time live. The newscasters were making comments as one of the guys in the top hats made his proclamation from the little scroll. The groundhog's long time handler, Bill Deeley, (aka Brian Doyle Murray) is retiring after this year so they made some niceties about him. One of which was said 'having the record of the number of times being kissed by a groundhog'. One of the newscasters said 'Yeah, that's something to be proud of' and then the other newscaster quipped, 'And having the most times being urinated on'. I busted out laughing at this point.

After Phil saw his shadow and literally being booed off stage by the crowd gathered in Punxsutawney, the news went to the next segment in which the local reporter was out on Beacon Hill talking to a woman who was taking care of a woodchuck. Woodchuck Pete as he was called. Apparently, woodchucks and groundhogs are one in the same. Interesting factoid of the day. Woodchuck Pete didn't see his shadow as witnessed by Spare Change Guy, a local homeless guy they brought onscreen. Thus, shattering Phil's moment in the spotlight. So which burrowing rodent is correct? You make the call.

Summary of last night's State of the Union address

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah fat whore fat whore blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah cheese doodle blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah cheese doodle blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah strategery blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah strategery blah blah blah blah blah blah blah steadfast blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah