Movie Quote

What we have here is a failure to communicate

This quote illustrates my problems at work.

Editor's note: if you don't recognize the quote check out the link.

Chew with your mouth closed

Okay so I can hear somebody eating peanuts an asle away. Its one of those sounds that grates on your nerves untill you want to pull your hair out and scream "Can you eat any LOUDER?"

Culture or something like it

So I already know what I'm going to be doing to my bedroom, or more specifically what I'm planning on doing to and hanging on the walls to make them less boring, I have yet to figure out what to do with my living room. I just ran across an artist named Jack Vettriano, who started off as a coal miner but eventually started painting after he was given a set of watercolors by his wife at the time. Anyway I'm thinking a print of Only the Deepest Red would work nicely, and work as a good transition between the blues and reds in my house. But I am also a big fan of Dancer for Money and An Imperfect Past which right now are just a limited edition prints making them very very pricey.

The engineer in me wants Bluebird at Bonneville though.

Mid-week Update

So I'm thinking about purchasing a new computer: Gateway Media PC. Something about still using a computer that I built 6 years ago makes me think its about time to retire that computer and use it for simply word processing, finances, internet surfing, etc. instead of using it for serious gaming. I doubt it would survive the rigorous upgrade process to make it gaming compatable anyway (after all its just a poor Dual Celeron thats been runing overclocked by 25% to 416MHz for its whole life with Intel's box fans)

Also again today I'm dealing with people that cannot ever seem to pay attention to details. So every single time I get something from them I have to read over every single stinking line to make sure they made the change I wanted to and didn't make it to something else, and I also have to make sure they read the redline and actually made the change instead of ignoring it. I don't understand why this keeps on happening, I know that I'm not the best of people to pay attention to the itty bitty details so for me to pick up on all these things all the time makes me wonder.

Maybe I am very picky and I just assume its normal. Of course even if that was the case I don't feel bad about it. With what I'm doing I feel not paying attention to the details could be a very bad thing and I expect everybody I work with to at the very least work at what I would consider average.

Today's Stupid

Okay so I've decided that this year's election is going to be an insult to the intelligence, or lack, of the voting populace. So far all the campaigning I've seen has consisted of mostly the following rhetoric: "You're stupid" and "No, YOU'RE stupid" and "Well you're majorly stupid, and yer mommy dresses ya funny". They seem to be able to say these things using big word and booming voices. I'm peeved at them.

And in other news some people have actually tried to get the US government to regulate google. Luckily a judge said google results classify as an opinion and is protected by first amendment rights. But jeez that's pretty scary. With the government the way it is today I don't know if you could defend yourself against an anti-trust lawsuit even if the service you provide is free to the user and the reason there aren't any competitors is that they can't develop a technology that works as well.

Well folks the 2004 American Le Mans race season has started and it looks as if it is going to be a pretty interesting year. They changed up the classes, Ferrari developed a new car and Saleen is looking to add another car to their team.

Racing like non other

Okay if you have the speed channel you need to check out Ice Racing. Seriously it is the craziest sort of racing I've seen. Its amazing to watch these guys go around corners sideways, on purpose!, with sparks flying out from underneath the studded snow tires.

Cue the Inspirational Music

BURNING HEART
Survivor

Two worlds collide
Rival nations
It's a primitive clash
Venting years of frustrations
Bravely we hope
Against all hope
There is so much at stake
Seems our freedom's up
Against the ropes
Does the crowd understand?
Is it East versus West
Or man against man
Can any nation stand alone
CHORUS
In the burning Heart
Just about to burst
There's a quest for answers
An unquenchable thirst
In the darkest night
Rising like a spire
In the burning heart
The unmistakable fire
In the burning heart

In the warriors code
There's no surrender
Though his body says stop
His spirit cries - never!
Deep in our soul
A quiet ember
Know it's you against you
It's the paradox
That drives us on
It's a battle of wills
In the heat of attack
It's the passion that kills
The victory is yours alone
CHORUS (sing chorus 3 times)
In the burning heart

Behold the Power of Stupid

Today has been one of those days that makes me want to crawl up into a ball under my desk and hide from the world. Today I have had to:

• Listen to very lengthy emails of an enormously obnoxious service guy (we'll call him lee).
  
• Rip apart a lift and extract the board because another service guy wouldn't listen and simply gave me a board instead of pulling one from a lift. I then had to pull one single component off and replace it with a wire jumper and reinstall into the lift. All to prove that the component in question was superfluous. This board and mounting system was design by somebody that is no longer here, also the way its mounted, the number of wires going to the board, number of identical connectors and whatnot make it a total service nightmare.
  
• Deal with another guy working on drawings that can seem to ever listen to me or read my instructions and never gets part numbers right even when I write them in huge block letters on the print.
  
• Had to answer for we're modifying controllers in house as opposed to getting them in modified, somehow the concept that the board house is done making them and that we aren't ordering anymore seems to have escaped some peoples mind. Also nobody seems to know exactly how many vehicles we're going to be building in the next month and half.
  
• Had to deal with a "severe weather alert" drill. However, the room that we're supposed to go to in case of a tornado now has a massive hole cut in one wall where they are planning on putting a glass window overlooking the shop floor. Nice move, I was safer at my desk where there aren't bins of scrap steel.
  
• Fix a Feature creep problem. I hate feature creep. Now they want to use resistive switches instead of regular hard closure switches. Great maybe I could get it to work but I still have to change a BOM and change component quantities and add a reel meaning, blah blah blah. Our contract manufacturer probably hates me.
  

I'm sure there was other things but I've blocked them out.

Middle of Nowhere

So I was watching TBS this evening and there was a walmart commercial that came on... well there was the main character talking about how she grew up on main street in a really small town; warsaw, in.

I think what this is saying that I live in the middle of nowhere because warsaw is about an hour away from here.

Ground Beef

Now that it costs less to buy the DVD than to go to see a movie (since I have a thing about going to a theater alone), DVD sales seem to be on the rise. DVDs also cost less than CDs. CD sales have been steadily falling. I can't even think of much music released these days that I'd even be willing to download much less spend my hard earned dollars and cents on. This lack of good or even distictive music has finally prompted me to present this idea to ya all:

Lets call the 2000s the meat grinder age.