Terrible Analogies

Here’s hoping that you had a nice, relaxing Valentine’s Day.  

It appears that the weatherman couldn’t have been more wrong about the forecast.  The weather was actually quite comfortable in southern California.  In between celebrating the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day I managed to squeeze in two trail runs in as many days.   When the rain does finally arrive I plan to spend my days in the gym, so it’s all good.

Not to get all non-sequitur on you, but for no apparent reason reason I’m been thinking about The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air recently, and something’s been bothering me about the show’s premise for the past three days.  If the Fresh Prince and his mother lived in the projects, and the Fresh Prince had an extraordinarily rich aunt who lived in a wealthy and prominent neighborhood of Los Angeles, why would his aunt let her sister live in such a squalid, dangerous location?  

It seemed that his mother and her sister were on good enough terms to let the Fresh Prince live with the aunt apparently with no conditions attached.  If they were on such good terms, why couldn’t his aunt kick a few bucks his way, helping he and his mother escape from a strangling life of targeted, criminal, gang-related violence?

I mean, here’s the aunt who’s dripping with jewelry, three self-centered kids, a powerfully-connected husband who happens to be a well-respected high-ranking judge, a smarmy butler, gardener, and an unknown number of servants lurking in the background performing a variety of tedious tasks all in an effort to keep her comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed.  Floating in a pretentious sea of haute culture and callous celebrity, his aunt couldn’t lift the three fingers it takes to write a check that could change the life of an extremely intelligent, grounded, good-natured child that deserves the opportunity to excel beyond his wildest dreams, breaking the cycle of turbulence and strife that his family has no doubt experienced for generations?

This is, after all, family.  No?

Personal, Random, Television, holiday holiday, Random, Television

Through a delicate, subtile combination of psychology and extreme violence, I’ve managed to wrangle the next five days off from work.  In my head I had planned out a few days of long trail runs and hill work in preparation for my attack on Mt. Whitney, but as luck would have it, it appears that one of those “storms of the century” type deals is going to start rolling into San Diego starting Friday evening, and I’m told it will linger around through at least Monday.  Great.

But at least I won’t be sitting in front of my laptop coding some abstract program, administrating Sharepoint or our Project 2007 environment, installing an iffy change control for a developer who can’t write a coherent sentence to save his life, or resurrecting a dying server that houses a database which contains the true name of God or some other business critical app.

But hey, I guess I should be grateful that I’m employed.  I mean, that’s what the news tells me, right?  In this current economy I should just acquiesce, fall on my knees, and grovel eastwards in reverence that a nameless corporation sees fit to take advantage of my talents, milking me for all I’m worth, draining me of my soul and slowly wringing out by carefully measured increments my will to live.  

And to think, I used to be such an upbeat guy…  ;-)

If it’s Friday, and you’re sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup in front of your corporate computer dreading what the day is about to wrought all over your shocked face, take comfort in the fact that I’ll be at Disneyland with the wife, eating a big stack of pancakes in the shape of Mickey Mouse, zipping down Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and deftly maneuvering the claw machine at the Disney arcade in a desperate attempt to pluck a stuffed fish or teddy bear for the birthday girl Karin.  

Yes….her birthday does fall on Friday the 13th.  Heap that fact on the teetering pile of innumerable reasons why I love her.  Heh…

Computer, holiday disneyland, holiday, Vacation

My wife’s birthday happens to fall on the day before Valentine’s day, which makes for a delicate gift-giving juggling act. I guess I should be thankful that her birthday doesn’t fall right before Christmas. I always thought that, as a kid, the cruelest thing that could happen to you was to have your birthday fall on the same day as Christmas. You would totally get screwed on the gifts because your parents would simply merge the two days together gypping you out of an entire days worth of presents.

At least when I was a kid the gifts were pretty cool. I remember getting an Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, Aurora Monster Models, a Green Machine, a Speak & Spell, and a Big Trak.  Admittedly, I didn’t get many toys as a kid, but the ones that I did get were nothing short of awesome.  

As an adult I wonder what kind of toys I’ll be buying for my future kids.  Slinking through the isles of the toy stores, I found one line of products that I certainly won’t buy simply because of the high creepiness factor:

holiday, toys holiday, toys

I’m sitting here at home after an amazing Christmas dinner with the folks and friends.  My wife, her brother, and I came back to our house after dinner where we’re currently watching a blu-ray copy of Wanted.  I’ve just downloaded The Wipers albums Is This Real and Over The Edge, and am now listening to their song “No Solution”, watching a Blu-ray, drinking a B-52, and furiously typing away at this blog entry.  Man, if I wasn’t riding the high of receiving my number one gift request of a Locke action figure (Thanks Karin!) I certainly wouldn’t be putting this post together, but rather digging in to the red velvet cake the brother-in-law gave us

I hope everyone had a joyous Christmas!  I know I did…

Wine in the manger

Out of frame is the detritus of shrimp tails and Wisconsin cheese curds

At some point the dictionary came out. I'm still not sure why...

Two things that Gerber does well: Produce baby food and manufacture knives.

Personal, holiday holiday

It’s the holidays, and I’ve too much egg nog in me to write anything meaningful, much less coherent.

While I’m off enjoying the love of family and friends, please enjoy these Christmas songs from some local San Diego talent:

[UPDATE: Songs removed.  Good things like this only last a day.]

Normal posting will resume tomorrow.  In the meantime, Merry Christmas!

Music, Personal holiday