Twins vs. Dodgers

Melba and I went to the game tonight. Stopped at this joint for happy hour before the game:$3 taps, half price APPS... but the APPS weren't very good.

Then we hopped on the new light rail line to the metrodome:

The game was somewhat interesting all the way into the bottom of the 2nd when the Twins scored 6 runs, and never looked back. Melba and I continued our beer consumption unabated, however.

All in all, a fun outing in the baseball warehouse.

Apps

In most restaurants, the portion sizes you get with a main course meal are ridiculously huge. I've resorted to just ordering an appetizer (a.k.a. APPS) or two.

Even better if you can get the other peeps you're with to do the same thing - mix and match 3 or 4 plates of APPS and you're cookin' with gas. Delicious little mini-meals like drummies or quesadillas... doesn't get any better.

No point to this post, really. As you were.

TPS

Machinery, Inc. is far more Initech than Initech. Oh yes. Not content with a mere report, Machinery, Inc. has a 33 story TPS building.

Here's a pic I took of it today:

Don't call it a comeback

Almost exactly two months ago, I lamented the fact that both the Dodgers and the Twins were sucking. On that day, both teams were below .500 and in fourth place in their respective divisions.

Two months is a long time in a season of baseball. As of this evening, both teams are over .500 (Twins at .527, Dodgers at .533) and the Dodgers are in first place in the NL West. The Twins are a little less fortunate, having only improved to third place, but they're stuck behind Detroit (.671) and the ChiSox (.653) in their league - the #1 and #2 teams in baseball right now. The Twins have won 14 of their last 16 - pretty damn hot.

Melba and I will be attending the Twins game Tuesday night versus... the Dodgers. I love interleague baseball. Who will I pull for?

All in a name

Right after I clicked "Upload" on that last post, I had one of those EUREKA! moments that bitchslap me like a truckstop pimp every so often.

Check out this list of wildly successful people:

M. Night Shyamalan
F. Scott Fitzgerald
L. Ron Hubbard
C. George Scott
G. Gordon Liddy
J. Mays
B. Arthur
C. C. Deville

What do they all have in common? You betcha, Margie - they all have one of those initial thingies instead of an actual first name. All this time I thought it was ambition and talent and a little bit of luck that made ya successful - no. Ya just need a letter. So from now on, I'm gonna sign all my checks S. Ronald Lyon, and success will freshen me right up like a bright pink urinal puck.

Now I just need to get some checks.

Almost 35

In a couple of weeks, I turn 35. I was looking in the mirror thinking about this fact earlier tonight, and I realized something. I still don't feel like an adult. I don't feel any more mature than I did when I was 18, nor do I have any better of a handle on what it is I want to do when I grow up. In fact, all I seem to be really sure of is what I don't want to do.

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

Fuckin' A, Bubba.

I'm a few days short of one month working at Machinery, Inc. and that quote pops into my head on an almost daily basis as I sit in the windowless 7x10 cubicle I share with a guy who never even says hello. Adding to my general feeling of malaise is the career path I see my friends traveling - working their way up the corporate ladder, getting MBAs more for the extra earning potential than the extra knowledge potential. I'm not knocking higher education - I'm just wildly naive and believe that higher education should be about improving yourself and expanding your mind, not just a bigger paycheck.

I don't expect my work/career to be sunshine, daisies, heartfelt self-fulfillment, and blowjobs under the desk on a daily basis, but the idea of punching a clock in a job that doesn't DO anything for me just makes me want to gnaw on a pad of post-its.

On the other hand, maybe a mindless corporate gig where I make a pile of cash and live for weekends and two weeks of vacation really is the way to go. Stop this bitchy whining about wanting something more out of work and just punch that goddamn clock 'til I can retire and do what I really want to do.

Whatever that is.

Photoshop HDR.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 has support for a new type of image called HDR, or High Dynamic Range. There is a wildly technical explanation for what this is and how it works, but I'll skip that and boil it down to this. An HDR image allows for more detail in the shadow and highlight areas than a regular image.

You create an HDR image by shooting a range of many exposures of the same subject using a range of exposure settings, then merge all of the different versions into one image.

The merged result should have all of the highlight detail in the underexposed image...
...all of the shadow detail of the overexposed image...
...in addition to the normal midtones in the standard exposure:

In theory, a pretty dang cool idea for producing an image with more tonal range than a camera can capture with just one exposure. Unfortunately, as this is a pretty new tool in the Photoshop toolbox, I have zero experience with using it and am still poking around making crappy images. This is the best I can get out of it right now:Yep, looks like ass. I need to practice with the settings some more.

The little things.

I'm not much of a fan of newspapers. I prefer to get my news online, sans dead trees. However, there's this guy who stands out on the corner of 7th and Hennepin one or two days each week handing out FREE copies of the Star Tribune.

This fills me with glee.

Even though I would never buy a paper, even if it was 5 cents, getting one for free pretty much makes my morning. When I see the happy guy on the corner passing out papers as I get off the bus, I actually get a little bit giddy.

Free has an appeal all it's own. I read the free paper more thoroughly than I would read a paper I paid for.

Thanks to Chevy's, Block E, and NBA City for sponsoring the free papers.

Another great dream.

Please forgive my excited posting of stupid dreams lately, but I so rarely remember my dreams that I feel the need to share them on the rare occasions that I do and the even rarer times when they're cool.

This one rocked - I was in the lobby of Machinery, Inc. when ten Seriously Bad Lookin' Dudes barged in and started shooting up the place. These guys were throwin' hundreds of rounds into the walls and windows - it was just like the lobby scene in The Matrix, except I was there and had NO GUN. No problem, I just launched a perfect flying tackle on Bad Guy #3 and took his gun. Except by the time I got it out of his hand, it was empty and I had to settle for the pair of 9mm semiautos in his coat pocket.

Of course I then put on a shooting accuracy demonstration, takin' down the Bad Lookin' Dudes with 10 precisely placed shots as I jumped, spun, and dodged return fire.

In short, I kicked some serious ASS. And woke up with a big ass grin.

The Bus

On the bus in to work this morning, this guy:was snoring next to me so loudly, I could hear him over Soundgarden turned up so loud on my iPod that my nose was bleeding.

Pics from Alaska uploaded

I finally got around to uploading the pictures I shot on the latest trip up to Alaska. Follow my Flickr link on the right side to see them - look for the "Alaska v2.0" set.

Stupid.

I will never leave an extra-inning game before it finishes again.

There we were, one out in the bottom of the 12th, Twins down 2-1 to the Red Sox. We figured it'd be a good idea to hit the train before the crowd - the game was as good as over.

Nay.

We see Cuddyer get hit by a pitch on the TVs just before we get blown out of the stadium. Then, just before we get on the train, we hear a small cheer erupt from inside the stadium. Some security guards listening to the game on a car stereo nearby fill us in: Morneau hit a double. We're a little concerned, but still happy to be ahead of the crowds.

Wasn't until I got home and looked at ESPN.com that I realized the depth and breadth of our error. Torii Hunter was intentionally walked by Boston pitcher Julian Tavarez to load the bases, then Jason Kubel (who?!?) hit a GRAND SLAM to win the game for the Twins, 5-2.

Oh, the humanity.

No more bitchin'

Just about as timely as could be, I notice today's Quote of the Day:

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. -Maya Angelou

So there it is. No more compaining about the job.

Machinery, Inc., Day 9.

Have you ever taken a job, been interested in the work, maybe even a little bit excited about the possibility to learn new things... and then found out that the job is nothing like you were told it would be? Today was Day 9 working for Machinery, Inc., and while talking to one of my Machinery cow-orkers (not a contractor like me), I found out that I must "pay my dues" doing grunt level support before I will be allowed to do the work that I was actually hired to do.

The other contractor I work with who has been training me on all the ins and outs of Machinery, Inc., has been paying his dues for almost two years and is just now being considered for permanent hire. Their methodology is simple. The full time Machinery employees crap on the contractors for as long as they can, keeping the interesting, creative work for themselves.

This is borderline bait-and-switch, and it pisses me off. If they had told me that I would have to "pay my dues" when I was interviewing, fine - I'd have no beef. But I took this job based on their description of my duties: Support creative users doing things like video editing, and web and print design. That ain't happening, and it's looking like it won't happen anytime soon.

90% of the support calls I get fall into these three categories:

1. Citrix. (Citrix is the little-known tenth circle of hell.)
2. I forgot my password/let my password expire
3. The color copier is jammed/broken

Doesn't that sound positively THRILLING? I've learned about all there is to learn in this job (except for the godforsaken Citrix stuff), and I've only been doing it for NINE DAYS.

Did I mention that Machinery, Inc. is anal retentive about the corporate dress code? I'm supposed to wear a tie. I HATE TIES. I haven't worn one yet, but I won't be surprised when I get in trouble for not toeing the line like a good little cog.

I'm already starting to hate this job.

More golf.

Played another horrible round of good golf today. Mellar and his dad Sid invited me to play a round at a local public course, Dwan Golf Club in Bloomington.

Dwan isn't a very long course, but it's very well kept and is fun to play. It isn't a challenging course, but considering how horribly I play (I shot a 101), I don't need a challenge. More importantly, I only lost ONE ball in 18 holes - that's an accomplishment for me.

I only got one really decent shot of Mellar and Sid:

Dream it, ya dreamer!

Had a great dream last night. I was in the basement of this old, old house - but the basement was huge. Big enough to play baseball in, and a game was in progress.

This old basement (sounds like a bad TV show) was the kind with lots of exposed plumbing on the walls and ceiling. My good friend Mellar was there in the basement too, frantically disassembling pipes with a pipe wrench. I asked him why he was doing this, and he responded: "Because I flushed a bunch of porn down the toilet so my wife wouldn't see it - and now the pipes are clogged. She gets home from work in a half an hour".

For some reason, this sounded perfectly normal to me, so I went upstairs where I practiced riding my old motorcycle into the house and up the staircase to the second floor.

Keeping it REAL

Doing what I do for a living, I run into more and more people who seem to feel that computer illiteracy is something to be proud of. I've lost track of the times I've been out on a support call and heard things like "Ha ha... these computers - I can barely turn this thing on". Words like that coming from people who work in front of a computer for the majority of their day just make me wonder how in the hell they got hired.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not talking about a little self-deprecation when the support geek walks in to solve a problem. That's just conversation.

No, I'm pointing the you-are-an-idiot finger at those who gleefully boast that they didn't know that they shouldn't open every email attachment sent to them from names they don't recognize. And not only do they not know better, they don't care to know better, and will blissfully continue to open those damn virus-filled attachments even after I explain why it's a bad idea and ask them not to.

Since when is it cool to have no interest in expanding your knowledge? Learning a little something? Personally, I'm happy to learn about almost anything - whether it be something I'm interested in or not. I can't remember ever being stuck in a bad situation where I knew too much about something. I just don't get it.

As Chris Rock would say... "Keeping it real... yeah, real DUMB."

Corporate life, Day 5

After 4 days of work at the new job, I can finally log into a (notice the "a" and not "my") computer, and I now have access to handy things like email. I have a phone, but I can't sit at the desk where it rings yet. I may have a computer of my own in the next few days, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Most importantly (for me), the one network resource I still don't have access to is the timesheet system. I'm a little curious as to how I'm supposed to get paid.

Anyway, even though I'm an insignificant cog in the machine, I'm already somewhat comfortable in my job. The support calls are easy and fairly narrow in scope. Too narrow, in fact. I'm worried that I'm going to learn this job in about two weeks, and be bored to tears after that.

Here's the building I work in (I'm on the 16th floor, and I share a tiny cubicle with a view of a conference room door):It reminds me of a taller version of the waffle iron building on the UCLA campus.

Silver Bay

Melba and I joined my good friend Mellar, his wife Tiffany, and our friends Timm and Gina to spend the weekend at a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior.

Much good food was prepared, including breakfast and some killer nachos by Gina, delightful pork tenderloin with wild rice by Tiffany, and Melba made a tasty baked tilapia dish.

Timm, Mellar, and I golfed Superior National on Friday - and I think we all played horribly. I was particularly bad and shot something hellish like a 119, but despite the poor overall score, I managed to win a couple of bucks playing Zoo.

Saturday's outing was a trip to the Lutsen ski resort, where they have an alpine slide. An alpine slide is basically a concrete channel that winds it's way down the hill, and you ride it in a small sled that follows the channel. Very fun. I beat Mellar twice. Handily.

Saturday night, I got incredibly drunk and made an ass of myself, and thankfully passed out early. I haven't been that drunk in a really long time, nor have I made that big of an ass of myself in a really long time.

In better news... I'd share pictures from the trip, but somehow there are 315 of them and not all of them are fit for public consumption. There are some particularly incriminating shots of Timm, which I may use for blackmail purposes should he ever choose to run for public office.

This shot sums up the weekend pretty well: