The Notebook (not the movie)

Here's a history of the ordering process for the notebook I ordered a week ago:

I'm in Utah and ordered the notebook from some podunk bookstore in South Carolina via Amazon.

It shipped from Oregon.

It sat in Union City, California for four days.

It then flew from California (over Utah) to Denver, Colorado where it has been "processed".

I charted the information/physical trail and it looks something like this:

It appears to me that they're trying to avoid directly sending me the product I ordered.

A nitpicky error in the season finale of The Office

When Michael reluctantly gives Toby his watch during the exit interview, Toby says he'll set the watch for Costa Rica time. From what I can tell, Costa Rica is in the same timezone as Scranton.

*sigh* I'm a nerd.

UPDATE: check the comments for the subsequent drama that has unfolded since I posted this.

"But the ads made it look so cool!"

I'm doing a little research for a commercial we're shooting on Thursday that involves a bunch of sci-fi nerds standing in a line waiting for the premier of their new movie. (Although the commercial has nothing to do with sci-fi nor movies.)

As I tweaked the script, I remembered the red guards from the original Star Wars Trilogy (I think they were first seen in Empire Strikes Back). Wanting to learn a little more about them, I jumped on Wikipedia. From the 'pedia:

[Imperial Royal Guardsman] are the best and most loyal of the Imperial stormtroopers, solely responsible to Palpatine.... A mere 4% of all trainees would survive the rigors that awaited them to become Royal Guards; during a year-long training program, recruits sparred against each other continuously perfecting their combat skills. ...In their final test, each fought his training partner to the death...

Seriously impressive, right? And then there's this guy who's in charge of guarding the Palpatine's 10-speed:

The Emporer can be such a jerk sometimes.

Image courtesy of here.

Does ANYONE in Utah have this Moleskine?? - UPDATED X3

It's driving me nuts! I've called every bookstore I can think of and NOBODY has these notebooks in. I ordered one from an Amazon retailer on Sunday and, from what I can tell from the tracking info, it's been sitting in California since Tuesday.

I'm looking for the pocket sized, ruled, soft cover Moleskine notebook.

Do you have one? Do you know where I can get my hands on one ASAP? Drop me a line and if I can in fact get one, I'll buy you a snow cone.

UPDATE: Barnes & Noble said they had one at their Gateway location:


Except when I called, they don't really have it in stock. *sigh* And I went and got my hopes up.

UPDATE 2: BYU Bookstore has copies in. My good friend Laura is going to mail me one on Monday...unless someone else is going down sooner.

UPDATE 3: My good friend, faithful reader and distant relative, Erin, is coming to Salt Lake tonight from Provo and will be bringing me the long awaited notebook.
Photo courtesy of here.

Android is gonna rock

Come the end of the year, Android (Google's mobile phone platform) could be a fine replacement for the ol' iPhone. Seriously. Check out some of the apps those smart folks over at MIT have already come up with:

Loco
Loco is a mobile social network built on top an Android phone’s contact manager, so anyone in your contacts is already your friend, so to speak. You’ll be able to view and track where your friends are located using Google Maps and real-time geolocation. So, in essence, you can check out the scene at a few places before you commit to going all the way across town.

Locale
Locale is a dynamic settings manager. You set up different settings for your phone based on time and location. So when you’re at home, you can automatically have all your calls forwarded to your home phone line. When you’re at work, you can have your phone set to silent mode and have your phone’s background screen set to a constantly updating work chart.

GeoLife
GeoLife is basically your to-do list on top of Google Maps. When you get within a certain range of something you need to pick up, it alerts you.

It also works as a traditional to-do list for things that aren’t location-based. The team that put this together is also working on a route-creation system wherein you could pick a few important items from your list and then have a route plotted out for you to follow that day.

And that's just three of the seven apps reviewed at TechCrunch. No, I don't think paying an extra $20 a month for data is worth it for the iPhone. (Yeah, that could change when the iPhone SDK comes out.) But I'd be willing to shell out the extra cash to get access to those kinds of programs.

Liveblogging my TRAX ride

This is my experience riding the train home last night. I wrote most of it as the events were happening, so it's a little choppy. Enjoy.

You gotta be kidding me. I don't leave work until almost 7:00 on a Friday. To make things worse, most people are walking to the Jazz game. Without knowing it, they're rubbing it in my face: "Ha! You're just getting off work? We've already been home, had dinner and come back and are now going to an NBA playoff game. Sucker."

I board the train. Some woman/girl/chick is yelling into her Bluetooth headset. I believe she's talking to her mother. "If I had, like, fifty bucks, I would have had Amber run down here." Something about frozen coffee. I'm not the only one who's annoyed. People keep glaring back at her. Of course, she could move to the back of the train where there aren't any other passengers. No. That would be considerate.

"When was the last time I was out late? Besides that night with Jodie, I haven't been out late since Charles was in my life."

I could list a few reasons why Charles may have left.

As I consider whether or not I should inform her (in an equally loud voice) that I'm blogging her conversation, the unbelievable happens: Two middle-aged women wearing "Hillary Clinton" stickers and carrying a Hillary Clinton yard sign get on the train. They begin talking to the man next to me:

"Are you a republican?"

Oh no. #$&% no. They're going to start a political conversation about Hillary. I check under my seat for a revolver, lead pipe, candlestick - something from Clue that I can use to end my misery. Maybe I can use the rope and hang myself on the bar with the little hand lassos. Nothing. The brilliant Hillary supporters don't sit down before the train starts moving and get thrown back a couple of steps. I take some smug satisfaction in this.

One of them sits down across from me. I wonder if I should engage her in conversation. I'm extremely curious as to whether or not she really thinks Hillary still has a shot, which is to say I'm wondering if she's delusional.

Charles' Ex is now off the phone.

Wait. She's back on the phone. She's going to get off at 4500 South. Great. That's after my stop.

Now MY phone rings. It's my sister in-law. I answer, and in a voice louder than I should have used, "I'M ON THE TRAIN. SEND ME A TEXT MESSAGE." I hang up.

The Talker gets up and walks past me! I think she may be getting off! No such luck. She stays standing directly behind my seat. "Let's stay on the phone until we find each other." Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. I exchange a knowing look with the Hillary Clinton supporter. Unspoken words were exchanged: this girl is a moron.

Yes, I had a bit of a moment with Ms. Hillary Clinton supporter.

I continue writing this. "Oh yeah! I absolutely love riding TRAX." Ms. Clinton supporter and I look at each other again and this time we start laughing. Out loud. I look around the train. Some people are looking back at me. Are they amused? Are they wondering what I'm laughing at? I think they're in on the joke as one guy has actually taken OFF his headphones to pay attention to the situation.

My stop snuck up on me. Unprepared, I quickly close the laptop and gather my things. As I stand to leave with my armful of stuff, under her breath Ms. Clinton Supporter says, "Lucky you." I grin at her. It turns out Charles' Ex was exiting the train as well, so there was nothing left to say. As I exited the train I thought perhaps I should have told Ms. Clinton Supporter to check TheOtherDrummer.com for a full recap of tonight's events, but considering how die-hard a (soon to be disappointed) supporter she was, I don't think she would have appreciated my aforementioned comments.

What started out as a potentially depressing train ride turned out to be quite entertaining and humorous...and the entertainment and humor came from the most unlikely places.

Yesterday I said "bastard" in a client presentation

I did. Seriously. We were presenting collateral ideas to a client that happens to be an educational institution. I was trying to say "bachelor's and master's degrees" and instead I stumbled over the first two words and said "bastard degree".

My brain went kind of cloudy. I don't think I've ever said "bastard" before in my life and now I'd just said it in front of a client. What to do?? I could clearly hear the voice of my father in-law in my head: take it a step further. But how? Bastard isn't a normal part of my vocabulary. It didn't even "slip out." I just mumbled the perfect combination of words to result in me cussing. I honestly don't remember exactly what I said, but it was something to the effect of, "Did I just say 'bastard'?" Everyone agreed that I did and I went on reading the copy.

Later in the meeting there was another opportunity for me to slip "bastard" into the conversation while poking a bit of fun at myself, which I did.

I've now said used "bastard" seven times in this post. I think that oughtta do it for the next 28 years or so.

Photo courtesy of here.

30 Rock sucked last night

I want to apologize to everyone I've ever told to watch 30 Rock. If you watched last night's episode because of my urgings, I'm sincerely sorry.

It blew.

It wasn't nearly as funny as usual (except the part where the new CEO had the Hot Wheels car in her mouth), a lot of the jokes used sex as a crutch instead of being genuinely funny and the ending was atrocious: it felt like they ran out of time and what they squeezed in didn't make any sense.

I didn't even save it on our TiVo.

Please don't think less of me world. I swear the show isn't normally like that! It's usually funny and subtly hilarious and witty. I know I've passionately extolled the show in the past (numerous times on Twitter) but...but...I'm sorry.

Does this seem harsh? Perhaps. But when you tell people you love something and then they check it out and it turns out to be a steaming bag of poo, people may think you like steaming bags of poo. So let me be perfectly clear: I don't like poo, steaming or not. Bags are fine, poo is not.

UPDATE: I didn't realize it was the season finale! *groan* When does Chuck come back...?

See? I told you I was alive.

OK. So here's the story: work. Actually, I'm not sure why the *&%# I haven't been writing as much lately. Work has definitely been more insane than usual. And by "usual" I mean "than it was last October." Yes, work has been taking its toll and my brain has been mush. And Brain Mush is not conducive to writing.

Honestly, Call of Duty 4 has been my "decompression" activity lately. Yes, sniping terrorists not only is good for world peace but it's much more mindless than writing. Also, writing isn't a spectator sport - to really dig into something I need to shut out everything else and focus. However, my wife will watch me play COD4 and be a second set of eyes which has me promoted to rank of First Lieutenant II. I now have a sweet new assault rife with a red dot scope. Thank you honey!

I'm also getting old and fat, which means getting to the gym is much more important which means getting up early which means getting to bed early which means less blogging. Curse my love handles!! Curse them!

OK. Lunch break is over. Back to the grindstone.

Iron Man v. Batman

I know, I know... but it's funny.

I love the world

For some reason this commercial for Discovery Channel made me smile. Something about the line, "I love the giant squids" is funny to me. And, yes, one of these days I'm going to post something other than a video with a short commentary. I've been busy, OK?

Seriously, I had this same idea. Kind of.

OK, so it wasn't exactly the same, but I thought to myself, "I'm pretty sure my Macbook would fit just fine in an intra-office envelope. And it costs $700 less than a Macbook Air." Well played Lenovo, well played.

Jon Stewart on Hillary's Declining Respect for The Voters

UPDATE: I embedded a new link. It's a bit longer than the previous one. Start at about the 1:47 mark.

P.S. No, I'm still not dead.

My new nickname

I home teach a family, the Whites. They're nice people and my wife and I have become pretty good friends with them. How good of friends are we? Good enough friends that we feel comfortable farting in front of each other without feeling the need to blame it on our kids. Enough said.

A while back, their son Cole (pictured here in all his majesty) decided that I was the home teacher with the teeth. This is an odd distinction to make since my home teaching companion isn't missing any teeth of which I'm aware. I was fine with the name because I'd rather be known as the home teacher with teeth than the home teacher without teeth.

But "home teacher with teeth" isn't my new nickname.

This past Sunday while I was over I asked Cole what my name was. I expected one of two answers: something about teeth, or Jake's dad. (For whatever reason he has no problem remembering my son's name.) What came out of his mouth shocked us all:

"Groin."

Huh?

"Groin."

Pardon?

"Groin."

Come again?

"Groin."

There was no mistaking it. The kid was calling me Groin.

So the whole thing was a bit odd. But what has me more worried is that the name may have stuck. My wife answered the phone, "Yes, Groin?" when I called her a few days ago, and Cole called me Groin again tonight.

Despite its anatomical references, I'm sure "Groin" isn't the worst nickname ever. So I think I'm going to have a little contest: leave word in the comments about the worst nickname you've ever heard (you must have known the person who had it). I'll pick the top three or so for everyone to vote on. The person who submitted the worst nickname gets a prize. Seriously. I'm going to mail something to the winner. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I don't think it will be offensive.

I'm not dead

Just wanted to reassure my loyal readership that I'm not dead. Just fairly pretty really busy. Sorry for not posting in a week and please don't club me over the head for it.

Oh, and to avoid some mild profanity, stop the video about four seconds before the end.

Keep your socks fresh

No, your eyes doth not deceive you. My Fruit of the Loom® socks not only stay black, and are the ultimate for fit and comfort (debatable), but the folks at The Loom have taken sock packaging to an entirely new level by providing a resealable bag. Yes, resealable. Like something your salad would come in. But without the croutons and dressing.

I'm not sure why I'd need to reseal my socks in their original packaging. To my knowledge they don't have a shelf life and don't need to remain fresh. In fact, we'd like the socks to be a little less fresh as, frankly, they reeked. Horribly. Like something that I can't name because I'm not sure what it is. All I know is that it smells bad and is probably ugly. Like this guy. Imagine the scent this little guy would put out when in heat. That's what my socks smelled like. But worse.

Anyhoo, the socks are OK. We've washed them a couple of times now and only a little stench remains. Unfortunately, it was enough for one of these little critters to find me and start trying to make more little critters with my foot. It was awkward. I'm looking forward to summer when I can stop wearing the romantic socks and sart wearing flip-flops.

Smelly animal pic from here.

NKOTB are back!

I can hear the phone call now: "Jordan, stop! Don't cut your mullet - we're getting the band back together."

Why is this monumental news? Here's some background from their website:

... People...now see our place in pop history. We’ve read that we `begat the boy bands” like Backstreet Boys and N’Sync.... But hey, what about New Edition? There would be no New Kids without them. And of course, the Jackson Five begat New Edition. So I guess we were really just the first white boy band.

That's right. The first ever white boy band is getting back together after fifteen years. Fifteen long, empty, meaningless years.

Image courtesy of here.

Apple sued: lied about displays in iMacs

Apple told consumers that both the 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs displayed "millions of colors at all resolutions."

Apparently that's not the case.

"While Apple describes the display of both the 24-inch and 20-inch iMacs as though they were interchangeable, the monitors in each are of radically different technology. The 20-inch iMacs feature 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens, the least expensive of its type," according to the lawsuit.

What?? Apple produces overpriced hardware amidst hype of it being the greatest thing to ever be produced since the Ten Commandments? I find that hard to believe. But not really.

Full story here.

T-Mobile sues Engadget for using magenta in their logo

Seriously. No joke. See here. Apparently the higher-ups at Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile USA's parent company in Germany) don't want Engadget to use "their" color of magenta because such usage "could lead to confusion in the marketplace."

I'm not sure how many people are confusing Engadget Mobile with T-Mobile. Are people trying to sign up for cell service with T-Mobile through Engadget Mobile? If you are, you're stupid. Almost as stupid as the people who think people are that stupid. Like the higher ups at Deutsche Telekom.

Meanwhile, Engadget Mobile has taken a page out of my father in-law's book by taking it a step further. They changed their logo today to this:

Others have taken up the cause of thumbing their noses at Das Man by trying to get as many people as possible to use the color magenta that has DT's panties in a wad. Here's my contribution to the cause:

Thanks to Veronica for the tip.

Gmail introduces "Custom Time" - send e-mail to the past

Using Google's revolutionary "e-flux capacitor", you can "Just click 'Set custom time' from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option."

Very handy indeed! Now on Saturday when I remember my dad's birthday was Friday, I can send him an e-mail and using Custom Time, have it show up in his Inbox like it arrived on his birthday! I can even "mark as read" so he thinks he looked at it and forgot!

For more information on this feature, click here.

Google, what will you think of next? By the way, what's the date today?