neverbeencool

So this blogging thing…

Man, you stop doing it for a few months and it’s suddenly pretty damn hard.  Thought it would be like riding a bike, that I’d just log back in and start spewing the same worthless trash I soiled the intarnets with for the last several months.  Turns out it doesn’t quite work that way.

Take this post.  Do you realize that this thing almost turned out to be 2-300 words about how I hate the hiccups more than pedophiles, yellow mustard, and Moulin Rouge combined?  Lucky for you all, I axed that concept after trying to write the same boring paragraph for 20 straight minutes.

Then I threw around the idea of kvetching about how I’m a loser of a father because I haven’t figured out a way to pimp out my kids as successfully as Billy Ray Cyrus, or the Lohans, or the scientists who grew the Jonas Brothers in their underground lab like cute little singing sea monkeys.

And, finally, I thought about a little montage of Things That Kept Me From Blogging these past few months, but I realized that most of you a) don’t care about those little bits or b) already know all about how the little princess had her second operation, I got rear-ended by an uninsured fuckstick chatting on his cell phone while driving under the influence on a suspended license, our upstairs bathroom borked during Snowpacalypse ‘08, and I got LASIK.

So, instead of all that, you get Superfly Jimmy Snuka:

Dear Guy Who Sat Next to Me at Last Night’s Poker Game,

I’m sorry I have to be the one to tell you this.  I mean, we’ve never met before last night, and you had a couple buddies with you at the same damn table.  They should have looked out for you.

So remember how you went to a bar to play in a poker tournament, and instead spent the whole night hitting on that girl next to you?  The one you seemed to think was all over your sauce?  Yeah, um…  You were kinda pathetic.

I realize you may have had a couple of drinks, that the Guinness and Hefeweizen probably clouded your judgment a wee bit.  And let’s face it, we men are pretty damn dense in the best of circumstances, even when completely sober.  But you, sir, you ignored some signs that couldn’t have been clearer had they come from a big, fat burning bush FedEx-ed straight to your ass from Mount Horeb.

Don’t believe me?  Fine.  Let’s go to the tape:

Read the rest of this entry »

So happy to be home. Conference itself was great, but would have been a lot better if it hadn’t been in Vegas.

So I think I was pretty clear the other day about how wonderfully the trip there started (see Flight, Late; Room, Smoking; etc.). Started to get a little better the next day after they moved me out of that shit hole room I started off in and into a non-smoking one far from the casino floor.

But.

Last night, I was jerked out of bed by this:

Lasted for out 20 straight minutes, starting at a bit after midnight.  So glad to be out of that town.

My geek is showing.  The presentations today have been pretty damn good.  Made me want to not only embrace my inner nerd, but to wine, dine, and make sweet, sweet love to it.  Pat on the back to the presenters, Tom Rizzo and Steve Fox, who’ll no doubt end up finding their way here after obsessively Googling their own names tonight.

Shut up.  You know you do it, too.

So, again, I ended up with another fantastic human being sitting next to me in my last session:  Comment Guy.

So Comment Guy sits there, by himself, making random critiques throughout the presentation to no one in particular.  Sometimes he jokes to himself, sometimes he guffaws.  Sometimes he tries to refute the claims of the speaker.

What’s the ruling on this one?  Am I supposed to acknowledge this guy?  To give the forced pity laugh at his jokes?  To nod and “uh huh” every now any then?

And why can’t I end up next to the dude who just sits down, nods “hello,” then goes about his business while I take care of mine?

I’m totally changing deodorants.

So I cheated a little bit. Those last couple of posts, the ones covering the last two days? Wrote them this morning.

But THIS post is all about the here and now.

• My first real session of the day, Introduction to SharePoint Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, was standing room only. I think it drew a bigger crowd than Carrot Top and Chris Angel combined.
• Do people actually like Chris Angel? Do they actually eat up the shit he’s cooking? He looks like a reject from a Nine Inch Nails cover band.
• I attract winners. Dude sitting next to me in that last presentation was Question Guy, Sick Dude, and Guy Who Thinks I Give a Shit About Anything He Has to Say all rolled into one.
• Second sentence out of QG/SG/GWTIGASAAHHTS’s mouth included the words “I really like what unbiased professionals like Brit Hume have to say.”
• QG/SG/GWTIGASAAHHTS won’t stop talking to, and breathing at, me. If I get sick on this trip, I’m feeding him to my dog.
• Now he’s bragging to the guy on his other side about how his questions are baffling the speaker. Dick. At least that means he’s talking to/breathing at someone else.
• Oh, wait. My turn again. Thanks, guy.
• Any lawyers out there? Just wondering if “I thought what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas” is a legit manslaughter defense.

More later. Maybe. Running out of laptop juice.