Peyton Gives Back

A friend emailed me this the other day. I really am not a Peyton fan, especially living in Indianapolis with their hero worship BS...but this is funny. I believe this is from his winter/spring appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Crowe Chizek RULES!!!!!

Crowe Chizek is the greatest accounting/consulting firm in the world...and my friend Kathy, she's the greatest consultant ever!!!!

For those of you wondering if I have lost my mind, I actually am playing an Internet game. 8-) Turns out my story about how Kathy and I were born in the same hospital a month apart showed up on the desk of the Communications folks at Crowe Chizek. Their Web-crawling software or service provided them a hit on my wonderful blog when I put the company name in there. That blog should have but did not end up in the daily/weekly news at Crowe newsletter. I mean come on, what could they have possibly reported on that was better than that fine piece of work.

Now I want to do it again and see if I can get them to be regular readers or better yet, even commenters. It does make you wonder though. How many things you throw on the WWW get picked up or read by people you have no clue would be reading. Maybe I should Google myself more often. Yikes.

Darth Vader of Connect Four

I like to hang out with out technology people at work. I know, they are all Trekies and Star Wars freaks and nerds, well so am I, I suppose. Except the Trekie thing anyways.

So last week I was upstairs chatting them up and I saw some of their toys. When you sit around writing code all day, you really need an occasional distraction. I understand that. Among the toys were Rubik's Cubes, Nerf Basketball, these cool magnetic connector toys and a game of Connect Four.

Connect Four, for the uninformed is a 30-year old game with the concept of tic-tac-toe but with way more possibilities.

While I chatting, one of the other developers challenged one of his compatriots to a game and everyone sort of cringed and someone said. "oooo, you are challenging, Obi Wan?"

Of course my response was, "Obi Wan? Of What?..." Well Connect Four of course. Apparently this young man has won so much Connect four he has reached legendary status.

So I couldn't let that go. After he got done with his friend I joined in the fun. He immediately pounded me twice.

Those of you that know me, know two things about me. 1. I am competitive as heck. 2. I don't like losing much. I guess those are one in the same, but losing twice at Connect Four when I couldn't imagine going in that I would have had that much trouble sort of woke me up. In game 3 I finally paid attention, worked through possibilities in my brain and won the third game.

This did not go over well with Obi Wan, much like the Darth Vader, Obi Wan confrontation in Star Wars didn't go well. My competitor mumbled under his breathe and sulked back to his desk. Needless to say I celebrated and bolted the department before hazed into a rematch where Obi Wan could come back from the dead.

I am now Darth Vader to his Obi Wan. Stand in amazement at my Connect Four superiority!

Didn't die and other random notes about my guyhood

So I made it through the flight to and from Vegas without passing on to meet my maker. Apparently it wasn't meant to be and the fact that it is safer to fly in a plane than drive a car came through with the law of averages again.

Anyways, just a few random thoughts.

** Vegas is a complete cess-pool. Everywhere you turn you are attracted by the lowest common denominator of human life...the folks on the street side smacking cards for escort services, massive amounts of retail, flashing lights, loud noises, fireworks, fountains, and lest we not forget the gambling. About the only part of Vegas that TRUELY attracts me are the sports books in the major casinos. In a sports book, you can see about 3,000 televisions including typically a personal one at your table and you can sit there all day, betting or not and watch sports with waitresses bringing drinks if you act like you are betting. Oh well, three times to Vegas and now, the more I go, the less I like it. Does that make me less of a guy? I don't know. I just reach a point where it is tiring, all that noise and lights. I just go hide in my hotel room.

** The Cameron Crowe movie Elizabethtown is amazing. I saw a portion of it tonight for about the 30th time. For those of you who don't know it, check out the link, but it is the story of a guy (Orlando Bloom) who works for a massive shoe conglomerate in Oregon (sounds like Nike to me). Bloom has a disastrous shoe come out and the same week his dad dies and he has to go to Elizabethtown, Ky. for the funeral service. He meets a flight attendant (Kirsten Dunst) along the way and it is an AMAZING romantic comedy. Quite possibly for the humor and irreverence toward a lot of things, but also because of the impressive music collection. I think it is actually the numerous number of quotable lines. Check it out if you haven't already. Somehow the critics typically killed this movie, but I LOVE it...again, does this make me less of a guy?

** So last night after I concluded watching the 4 p.m. NFL games to ensure that my fantasy team was ensured a HORRENDOUS week (I won't bore you with that though), I watched in succession my favorite show NUMB3RS, and then Gray's Anatomy from Thursday and Private Practice from Wednesday night. Private Practice is the Gray's Anatomy spin off featuring Addison (Kate Walsh) from Gray's Anatomy. So I repeat the question, for the third time in the same post, does that make me less of a guy? Who knows.

Toodles for now. Hopefully this week will bring more posts and less dead space. Maybe using the phrase Toodles makes me less of a guy!

Irrational Fear #13,462

In about 11 hours I have to get on a Southwest Airlines direct flight to Las Vegas and I'm not looking forward to it. Oh don't get me wrong Vegas is swell and it should be an entertaining seminar/convention for work that I am going to, but I really don't like to fly.

I don't know when this started, but I feel vaguely akin to Tom Cruise in "A Few Good Men." Actually a lot like him.

Kaffee: I get sick when I fly because I'm afraid of crashing into a large mountain, I don't think Dramamine'll help.

I don't know why or how, but I just do not like it at all! Typically I am good somewhere about 5 minutes after takeoff, approximately when the ding and the seat belts sign go off, until about the point where they start making the perpare the cabin for crash landing...err...approach and landing messages come on. That is of course unless it is in the rain or wind and turbulence, then I white knuckle the arm rest.

Making matters worse, I am flying at noon and have to meet some work folks in the late afternoon so drinks are out pre-flight. Oh and my security blanket travel partner, Jennifer isn't their either.

Guess I better go to Legalzoom.com and make sure I have a Last Will and Testament.