Sunday, November 30, 2008

Goblin Mail Fail

I'm SO far behind on making posts, I thought I'd start small with a little cupdate. Some background is in order, so here goes...



I don't know if I ever made mention here or not, but in any case, I shall write of it now. A while ago at work, they implemented a change, where they have four fillers not in the number (i.e., assigned to a specific printer), but instead are what they have termed "time fillers". Now, the regular fillers can set aside any documents that weigh more than 40 pounds, require cutting of material, or is a count of 100 touches or more. Surprisingly, our numbers are up since these changes. The original way it was done was to have one time filler on each floor for the blue bins, and one time filler for both floors of the red bins. This created something of an imbalance, as some floors would have nothing, and others would have several. A month or so ago, they gave all the time fillers radios and had them dispatched by one of the supervisors to where to fill. Two weeks back, they changed that to an E-mail system, accessible at all our terminals, so when you get a time fill, it generates a message from that printer. Therefore, all day long, the printers are popping up the message, "You've got mail".

Stream of consciousness, while playing Runescape, one of the items sometimes dropped by a killed goblin is goblin mail. Every time I'd see the "You've got mail" message, I would think, "You've got goblin Mail", so I put this on the side of my cup!!!

Something I discovered about Baby is that when the trunk is open, there is a nice area just the size of one of my cups at the top edge, and makes a great place to set it while unloading. Of course, you should always try and remember that you've set it there. Before I was able to get a picture of this cup, I forgot to remove it before shutting the trunk lid.

I've made mention before of my fondness for LOLcats, and another affiliated website that I will sometimes visit is FailBlog. So, here you have it: Goblin Mail Fail!!!

Speaking of Baby, my last tank (well, I've actually got one fill up since this, but that will follow) took 10.2 gallons for 307.8 miles, for a very nice average of 30.18 MPG. I replaced the air filter halfway through this tank, and it seems to have done some good. Incidentally, this fill up takes it to exactly 100 gallons bought, and 2964.3 miles travelled, for a lifetime average of 29.46 MPG.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Looks Like...


Here's something I happened upon. This site has a program that takes a photo of yourself, and compares it to celebrities. The first one I tried with my current, fuzzy face, and it had Harrison Ford, Carey Grant, Gary Cooper and David Spade featured, among others. I tried an older photo, and the coolest thing about it to me was that it had Laurance Fishburne as Morpheus in it!!! I have no idea who V.S. Naipul is... if only there were some worldwide database that could be easily accessed that had information about everything!!!
The site, if you are interested, is My Heritage. You'll have to sign up to do it, but it's pretty easy. I had to look around a bit to find the celebrity look alike tool.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Scary Decorations

How I used my last vacation day!!! I took the Monday after Halloween off, and took the boys (who had that day off from school) to Universal Studios.



The older boy and I had just been there on Saturday, and they had a lot of the scary decorations up still. He said that I needed to bring my camera with me when we came back. Look who we saw there!!! Beetlejuice, the ghost with the most!!! Later on, by Jurassic Park, we saw him walking and carrying on a conversation with the mummy. Totally candid, who knew they hang out together???



Marylin was there, too. We actually saw more characters there this time than any other, I think. When we first got in there, we encountered a living statue guy. No pictures, but I did get a little video clip of him. Doc Emmit Brown from Back to the Future was driving a Segue around the park.






On the Saturday before, the boy and I stopped at Philippe's near Union Station for dinner. We ended up waiting half an hour in line, but it was worth it. A lot of fans from the SC game showed up there, I didn't know that was a thing for them.






Some of the various decorations.



There were skeleton solders up on the military vehicle. Many other ghouls and corpses all around the park.



In the airplane wreckage from War of the Worlds, they had set up many bloody bodies.



I think I made mention in one of the previous visits, they've Incorporated Norman into the Bates Motel set there. He spots the tram, and advances on it with his knife. The last shot had some guy's head in the way when he was close, but it actually came out pretty cool, with him peering around him!!!



Yesterday I bought another tank of gas for Baby. I hadn't updated since last time, which was a new low of 26.67 MPG (which, honestly, is still pretty darn decent). My wife drove her three days on that tank, which was soon after getting Janice back on the road. All her drive, while about 1/4 the distance, is city driving. Add in at least one day being stuck in a bad traffic jam and it all adds up. This tank was back on track, netting 30.51 MPG. Over the weekend I gave her her first oil change (mental note: buy a strap wrench for doing that, none of my filter wrenches worked well at all for it) and checked the tire pressures. The tires were all pretty low, so this should help quite a bit. Once all these fires are cleared up, I'll probably change out the ash-laden air filter. Coming up for the Thanksgiving weekend, we've got a fairly sizable road trip coming up, should be a good test.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

One of the Stupidest Things I've Seen

Oh, SO many things have happened!!! I've got four more cup pictures that I may or may not post, I've gassed up Baby again (who direly needs a bath, but small amounts of intermittent random rain have made that seem like a bad idea) and a lot more pictures I need to get off my cameras (video and still), but I'm going to share this one.

Weekend before last, my wife and I decided to see if we could possibly hit the Wicked lottery again, TWICE, and take both the boys. If not, we'd go on (just a ways up the tracks) to Universal Studios. We got there, and all put our names in. My wife told me later that when she saw our younger putting the first letter of his name on the slip, she knew he was going to get drawn. He did, and we bought two tickets on his draw, and waited to see if another name would come up. Another of the entrants had only wanted a single ticket, so at the end they were drawing for a solo seat. I think it was my wife's name that came up for that, and I was thinking of sending the other boy, but since the seats were split up, we decided not to. Besides, the older boy had already expressed interest in going to Universal instead. Momma and the younger stayed for the show, and we headed on. One of my friends from work also showed up with her girlfriend for the drawing.

Up the tracks we headed, and spent a fair amount of time at Universal. Being it was the first of November, a lot of the scary decorations were still up. Of course, I was prepared for the theatre, and didn't have my camera. It rained on us, we rode the Jurassic Park ride several times (in honor of Michael Criteon's impending death???) and the Mummy coaster more than a few, too. At the end of the day, we lined up for the Simpsons ride, which always has the largest line. Getting on, we were in the front of the car, and there was some commotion and confusion with the loading of the back seats. I thought nothing of it.

Very shortly after the attendant left the room, there's more commotion from the back seats. I look around, and one of the girls back there is all twisted with her leg wedged funny under the safety bar. The other girls back there are calling out for the attendant. We all start calling out, but no one is coming. I'd thought she'd gotten pinned under it wrong when it closed, but she was trying to get out from under the bar, and she did before the ride got underway!!!



We all told her just to hold on and stay down. She laid down across the back seats, and was that way throughout the ride. I have no idea what her deal was, if she was claustrophobic, foreign and didn't understand what was going on, or whacked out on goofballs, but it was about the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Probably made more so by the fact that it seems there is no monitoring of the ride while it is in progress.

Afterward, we viewed the on-ride photo previews (first time we've ever even looked at them, the kiosks are usually too crowded to bother with), and the girl who's lap she had her legs on joined us. I'd thought the whole back seat was together, but that was not the case. She said she was holding her hand and telling her "you're all right!!!" for the whole ride. Said her heart was going like crazy, and she didn't know if she was having a heart attack, but she was screaming and laughing the whole ride. Nice shot of the backs of our heads, huh??? The picture is at the very end of the ride, when it's pretty much stopped. They had an option to E-mail the picture for $5, and I figured since I'd spent $50 for a play already that day, and not a lot else (besides train fare) all day, I'd go for it.

I had to schedule my last vacation day, so I had chosen the following Monday, since the boys were off school that day, and we went back again. That's what most of the photos I've yet to take off my camera are of, but that will be at another time, if there's anything worth posting!!!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Quad CupDate, Part I

Time for some serious cupDating, the first one here came out quite a while ago. It has gone on from there!!!



One day I had my cup, and one of the girls I work with (but not very often: she's almost always on the 3rd level, but happened to have a half hour float on the first floor with me. They call her "Cool Whip", cuz she's "always on top". Get it???) started this drawing on my cup. A plausible drawing of a hula dancer holding a pineapple. It was all in red pen, and I later added in the green on her skirt, and the pineapple stem. She'd never gotten to the head, either, which I later added. I had specific ideas for how her face was going to go, but I did happen to be working, and by the time I got a look, one of the guys on the printer I was on had given her eyes and a mouth. Pretty nice, for a collaborative effort!!!



A few weeks later, I happened to have a bit of extra time between fills, and began the hula girl again. I had started with the skirt, and was going to make her a hippy girl. I remember back when Lilo and Stitch was coming out, how they were saying they were drawing the girls with wide hips, like the true islander girls have, and I thought what a great message that sent. So, that stuck with me. I added in the rest of her upper body, but I think I drew her too short. Oh well, just tell yourself that the skirt is kind of billowed out, cuz I didn't want her quite THAT hippy!!!

More to follow... Down there \/ \/ \/ ... I'm attempting a two part, in sequence but posted in opposite sequence post... In honor of the time change... Wish me luck with that...

Haha, my word ver is "CUPPA"!!!

Quad CupDate, Part II

I did this drawing on my cup around the middle of last week. It was a rip off of the artwork from one of my son's games, Portal. Not bad, considering it was from memory.



The funny part was when I came back to the printer, and everyone (middle shift included, even though it was already their time to go home) gathered around. One of the girls says to the others say, "There's Mr. 512, ask him what it's supposed to be." They did, they were thinking, "Beware of Manhole", "Man Going Down", "Man in the Hole", "I'm outta here" for possible meanings. I asked them if they'd heard of the video game Portal, and most of 'em had not (one guy had, his geek cred has been duly increased in my estimation), and I explained.



I noticed when I got home that I'd drawn Portal Dude mirrored to what the actual artwork is. My dyslexia rocks!!!



After my last couple of cup drawings, last Friday turned out to be incredibly slow for the last part. One cup, but two different drawings on this one. One side, the one I started out on, I drew the portal exit over a desert island. On the reverse side, I did the portal dude once again (again, mirrored, w00t!!!), only this time adorned with a grass skirt and a lei!!!



No one had to ask the meaning of this one!!!