Author: Sammy G

Before I issue my observations, I would like readers to know that I consider myself an expert in going to the bathroom. Since birth, I’ve had to purge excess waste from my body an estimated 35,328 times. Plus, the older I get, the more I get fixated on this process and the timing of this process. You see a lot of guys in their 30s and 40s talking about the phenomenon associated with having to get up a couple times a night. It’s a main topic of conversation with old people.

Which brings me to my observations, which could also be considered phenomenon. Since the turn of the century, I’ve noticed the emergence of two strange phenomenon with men’s urinals in public bathrooms. These two phenomenon are hereby expertly classified as “advertising

I have to post this blog, because the story needs to be recorded where others will see it, in the hopes that they might reference the story as a clear manifestation of spiritual involvement. Like fate. Or Nabu, the Assyrian god of knowledge and destiny.

This story is absolutely true. There is no embellishment for shock purposes.

Dan C. was a goody buddy of mine in high school. On weekend nights we would drive over to the Silver Diner on Rockville Pike dressed up in tuxedos. We would assume our regular position in the corner booth and send drinks to girls at other tables. Accompanying these drinks were napkins with pickup-lines scribbled. When the girls didn’t respond, we laughed at their missed opportunity, and heralded our premier position at the corner booth by slogging down french fries dipped in Old Bay sauce. We had a waitress named Ellen who we thought loved us. Now that I’m an adult, and can reflect on the situation, I bet Ellen hated our guts and secretly spit in our fries. We were some obnoxious teens. And we had driver’s licenses and a curfew past midnight.

I graduated high school back in 1991, the last year that U.S. teenagers spoke English in complete sentences. That was also the last year I ever saw Dan C. I went off to college, and while we spoke a couple times afterwards over the phone, we never reconnected. At least I have the memories of the good ‘ole days.

Fast forward to 2005, a year during which the majority of U.S. teenagers have identified the term “literacy” as a form of cancer. I’m in the process of cleaning out my basement. I’m going through all kinds of old boxes when I come across my high school yearbook from 1991. While flipping through the pages, I read where friends signed my yearbook from 14 years ago. I see Matt’s writing. And Kevin’s. Even Ben.

Then I come across Dan C.’s writing AND IT IS THE EXACT MOMENT THAT THE PHONE RINGS AND IT IS DAN C. CALLING ME AFTER 14 YEARS.

I recall that after the basement stopped spinning, my first words to Dan were, “Is this some kind of joke? Are you for real? What?”

So you can all have your 5,000 word posts on religion and faith. Based on my experience, Dan C. is a god.

I’m sure we can all agree that the most important times in one’s life are those in which a fantasy football roster is selected. If you can’t agree with this, then you are a lemming and should recuse yourself from further participation on this blog. Because it is obvious that spending many hours sitting around a table with a bunch of other guys and selecting a bunch of unknown players, tournament style, based on a bunch of ranking articles from arcane magazines, is far more important than mailing out invitations to my wedding, especially considering that there are sixteen weekends in the fantasy football season and only one weekend for my wedding.

I picked third out of ten teams. The 13th pick came in a bonus round.

1. Peyton Manning (QB) 2. Stephen Jackson (RB) 3. Tiki Barber (RB) 4. Darrell Jackson (WR) 5. Drew Bennett (WR) 6. Alge Crumpler (TE) 7. Michael Bennett (RB) 8. Lee Evans (WR) 9. Jake Delhomme (QB) 10. Marshall Faulk (RB) 11. Keenan McCardell (WR) 12. Washington Redskins defense (DST) 13. Nate Kaeding (K)

My surprise move is my second pick. I predict Steven Jackson is going to have a monster year. I bucked the advice of all the fantasy draft moguls and went for this guy based on my own observations.

Can anyone help me find out the current percentage of the U.S. population that has cancer?

I couldn’t find the answer. Would be much appreciated to anyone that can.

Because I’m in the professional creative industry, I get a lot of flak from Mac users who cajole me for basing my operation on a Wintel platform.

For those who work in publishing, design or media production fields, it’s sort of expected that you own a Mac. Macs are a symbol of creativity. An apple icon emblazoned on a business card shows to others just how true to creative you are. I actually have to make an extra effort to tell all the designers with whom I work that I’m on a Windows system. They’re embarrassed to know me.

However, today, I came across yet another reason why I don’t buy Macs: konfabulator.com

Let’s back up…

About four months ago, Apple pushed its latest OS release (Tiger) by heralding a specific feature called “widgets.

If I was convincted of taking part in a criminal conspiracy that defrauded millions I probably wouldn’t mind receiving house arrest as a punishment.

Lately, it seems that the lot of white-collar criminals are receiving house arrest as a form of punishment. This is a punishment in which a criminal is told that they must stay inside their house for months at a time and eat junk food and talk on the phone with their friends and sleep until noon and watch lots of movies on their enormous home entertainment system which is likely to be the envy of the modern world seeing that these criminals are millionaires who can also afford to shop online and have fancy decor delivered to their house whenever they feel like it. In fact, I’m thinking about starting an online shopping hub that specifically caters to rich criminals on house arrest.

I admit that I don’t know everything about the criminal justice system, but it seems that house arrest doesn’t exactly fit into the notion of rehabilitation. It would be hard to keep a straight face when a judge ordered me, after screwing over millions of people, to hang out inside my 15,000 square foot house for six months. This is because going to a real jail is probably worse. I’ve never been inside a real jail but I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption several thousand times. Real jail doesn’t look pretty.

I’ve been lucky enough to catch glimpses of Marth a Stewart’s house. Martha’s house arrest sentence has been televised. She’s baking cookies. She’s making lemonade for reporters. I didn’t see any lemonade and cookies at the Shawshank prison. Maybe my sense of fair and balanced justice is warped by the television and movies?

http://www.mozilla.org/reorganization/

As of August 3rd, Mozilla went all corporate on us. I didn’t read the whole page, but it seemed like the Q&A portion was meant to calm nerves by seeing the word “corporation” next to Mozilla.

I visited some of the executive blogs and got more of the same calming approach. My sense is that if they’re nearing 10% U.S. desktop share that they want to start seeing some duckets in the treasury. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, especially if they’re striking a deal with the IRS to keep some things tax-exempt with the original Foundation.

How does one go about recording .ram or .wam streams onto one’s hard drive?

On this 4th of July, while the flags are waving, I’m going to mull over this question:

Would $86 Billion have cured cancer?

What’s up with not having to sign any more credit card receipts at retail food counters? Am I the only one that’s noticed this recent change?

It started at Chipotle. Several months ago, I swiped the card for my burrito and…okay, my burrito and chips…the counter dude said that they’re not asking for signatures anymore on credit receipts.

The primary reason I can fathom for making this change is for operational efficiency. Some operations guy up the chain decided to emulate Starbucks and implement any change that would decrease queue system time. If true, then this seems absurd because the signature process takes 3 seconds at most. They still have to swipe the card and they still have to wait for both the merchant and customer receipts to print. What’s the point of bypassing the signature and saving 3 seconds?

Maybe the operational efficiency isn’t intended for customers. Maybe they’re sick of reconciling the receipts at the end of the day. They figure they save X amount of labor hours a year by avoiding the task of matching receipts to the roll record.

Is it for security? Are people standing out back of the restaurants, digging through trash, to lift signatures off the card receipts?

I tried searching Proquest to see if there was an article written. Couldn’t find anything. Is this weird? Am I the only one?