Friday, August 29, 2008

Oh snap! My dad is always right about these sorts of things. Turns out McCain named his running mate, and it's Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. My dad said many months ago that McCain would choose a woman, and I laughed at the idea of the GOP copying the Democrats, but here we are. Then I said months ago, because the Obama/Hillary supporters had done such a good job splitting their party, that as long as Skeletor didn't pick a Nazi war criminal as his running mate, he was a presidential shoe-in. Now, I haven't personally vetted Mrs. Palin, but since she was born after WWII, I think those chances are pretty remote. You heard it here first folks: McCain/Palin win the White House in a landslide.

I finally got around to listening to the new Metallica single. It's okay I guess. I wasn't as disappointed by it as I was by my first listen of St. Anger (which has grown on me considerably since then). That said, the song feels recycled. It reminds me of Until It Sleeps, and a number of other songs from the Load/Reload era. And wait a second, that sounded suspiciously like a vintage Megadeth riff... Subtle attempt to bury the hatchet with Dave Mustaine with an homage or flagrant rippoff? Hmmm... It's not that the song's bad, it's just that it's nothing I haven't heard before. Besides, everyone knows Cliff Burton had a hand in all of 'tallica's best songs, and it's hard to write an album from beyond the grave, even with the aid of whatever magnetic coffin the band is now trying to sell me on. Definitely I'm going to give the whole album a listen at some point, but the single did nothing to really get me excited about the release date.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Bring on The Fall! College football starts tonight, and even though the GT game isn't on TV, I'm still excited. The air smelled like fall today and it's definitely cooler. Although I can't tell you exactly where the summer disappeared to, at this point, I couldn't care less about the heat and humidity. Bring on the temperate days and cool nights, the rustling leaves, and of course, the earth tones in my closet. Don't expect to see me on Saturday's between now and December unless you're also planning to join me on my reclining couch. Also, I thought I'd throw in a shameless plug for Chaos Rankings. The preseason rankings have been up for about 2 weeks, and the week 1 rankings will be up after the late games on Monday.

Monday, August 25, 2008

I'm not sure if it's just residual hilarity left over from seeing Mike Birbiglia live at the Improv last night (which was awesome, by the way), but we were just talking about cars at lunch and I can't stop laughing about "my tranny is overdriven." You know how sometimes when you get on a laughter kick, suddenly everything is funnier? Certainly Mike Birbiglia put us on one of those last night. Some of his jokes I'd see before on his stand-up specials, and some were new to me, but all were well-executed and many had me in tears. So I think my brain might still be latched in funny mode (kind of like me trying to be witty at 3 am). Regardless, 3-speed trannies and overdriven trannies was way more humorous than a standard Chipotle outing.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Emily and I have some exciting news! I know we just got married a couple months ago, and certainly at the time, this wasn't something we planned. But sometimes certain things don't work like they're supposed to. It's definitely something we both wanted, but we both thought it would be something to look forward to further down the road. This is such a life changing event and I hope we're ready for it. Although I suppose at this point it's going to happen whether we're prepared or not. That's right, I quit my job! Things spiraled downward so fast at GD that I was really left with no choice but to move on to bigger and better things. Well, better anyway. I'm going to a smaller company with a lot of very smart people and a completely different work environment. I have no doubt that I will be one of the worst engineers there, but I'm going to learn a hell of a lot, get to do some more fun engineering (less powerpoint, more vi), and expand my capabilities in the process. The last 3 months have been pretty miserable at work, followed by much complaining at home, so that Emily's at least as happy as I am that I finally said "enough is enough." GD gave my career a great start, but the time has come to do something (sort of) new. I'll still be a defense contractor working on submarine sonar systems, just on a different project at a different company where I already know easily half of the ~30 employees. There's something very rewarding about walking into an interview with two of the three company co-owners plus their chief engineer and being told "you don't have to sell yourself, we know what you're capable of and the job is yours if you want it, we just want to make sure that the projects we have in mind for you are something that you're interested in."

Monday, August 18, 2008

Does anyone know where I can get my hands on one of these jackets? I've been watching the Russian men's teams wear them for the last week or so and very much want to see about getting one for myself. My only lead so far is the "Opening Soon" Bosco Sport website. I already tried ebay and a cursory google search.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

A week ago, I had zero interest in watching the Olympics. Yet every night fo rthe past week I've been up until 1 am watching. Damn you best-of-the-best international sport competition! I have to admit that I'm hopelessly hooked. And I genuinely think that NBC is doing a better job with coverage than in previous years. Sure, I'm missing a lot of events, but I still think I prefer that to the rapid-fire coverage switching that they've done in the past where you never got to watch enough of anything to really get involved. My only complaint is that I'm hearing the same stories and anecdotes over and over and over again from the announcers. Please find some new drivel. And yes, I realize that I'm hooked on the Olympics because coverage over the last week has been primarily of all the high-profile sports where 16-30 year-old girls wear skin tight outfits, like swimming, volleyball, and gymnastics. But I will also readily admit to being hooked on the men's version of each of those same sports because the level of competition is so high and it's amazing to see what the human body is capable of, especially since mine will never be.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

I spent a lot of yesterday watching the Olympics, despite the beautiful weather. Today I resolved to remedy that and spent a couple hours in the early afternoon sitting on my porch reading. I have to say, I feel more relaxed now than I have in weeks. Despite reading Watchmen, which is kind of a downer, I feel great. The air was pleasant, the humidity wasn't bad, the breeze kept the bugs away, and I really felt like I could have been at the beach. I woke up at 11, ate breakfast while watching Team USA pound the Chinese basketball team into the ground, and then went outside in my PJs and just read a book for a couple hours. It's like I finally stopped an took a deep breath. If only I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow and get wound up all over again.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

I think I finally found a new layout I like. I'm still working out a few kinks, but I think I'm going to stick with this one for a while. Let me know what you think!

Friday, August 08, 2008

I think I managed to cancel out whatever auspicious power today held by shattering a mirror this morning.

Thursday, August 07, 2008


And people wonder why it takes so long for me to get any work done... This is probably the busiest week I've had, but it's fairly representative of a normal week for me. I spend so much of my time in meetings that there's precious little time to do anything productive outside of meetings. Then at least half that time is spent making sure other people are doing there jobs, doing other people's jobs for them, preparing for the next meeting, or following up on actions from the various meetings. So by the time all is said and done, I end up like Peter Gibbons, albeit for different reasons: "I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

If there's anything a Slurpee can't fix, I don't want to know about it. Despite getting reamed at my meeting this morning, I'm feeling much better now that I've got a nice big Coke/Cherry Slurpee in my hand.

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  • I'm Rev. Adam
  • From Oakton, Virginia, United States
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