Losing Clothes

I do not, at all, enjoy shopping for clothes.

This fundamental fact about me leads to at least two other facts:

(1) I get lots of clothing for my birthday and Christmas. This is good, because it means I don’t have to shop for clothes as often.

(2) When I find clothes that I like, I tend to keep them for a long time and wear them often. For example, I still wear the button-up shirt that I wore in my 11th grade class picture (I am now 27), and I still have an Atlanta Braves t-shirt that I received in 1993.

The problem is, for as long as I can remember, I have also had a problem losing clothes, and without exception, I always lose things that I actually like. And while there are other negative characteristics of my childhood that I have happily discarded (like, say, being afraid of spiders), the tendency to lose clothes that I like has doggedly followed me to adulthood.

The other day I realized that I had lost a brown polo shirt, which was a major blow, because it had a prominent place in my weekly rotation. Add that to the blue polo which I am convinced I lost somewhere in Colorado, the long-sleeved white shirt that I wore as an undershirt in the fall/winter, and the “Salute a Veteran” t-shirt that I got for giving blood, and my wardrobe has really taken a hit over the last few years. And then there was that sweet red, white and blue windbreaker that I lost in elementary school and have never really recovered from.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to shop for clothes again.

Disclaimer: Implying that I am completely over my childhood fear of spiders might have been somewhat misleading. That being said, one of my husband-ly duties is to deal with every spider that makes the unfortunate decision to enter our house. So, it’s something I’ve been working on.

The Etch-A-Sketchist

This guy is amazing—I can barely write my name with an Etch-A-Sketch.

Here are a couple of my favorites.

Observation #2

On infomercials, when companies boast about the “space age technology” of a given product, aren’t they really only claiming that they have a technology that was possibly developed as many as 50 years ago?

An Observation

I think that one of the smartest and dumbest things that people do is to assume that others will react to a certain situation the same way they do.

Bits And Pieces: 5.1.08

A few things on my mind on this windy Thursday morning:

• I don’t like complaining about gas prices, but I noticed on the way to work this morning that it’s now $3.55 for a gallon of regular unleaded. If this continues, I might have to take drastic measures—like learning how to drive my wife’s manually-transmissioned, more fuel-efficient car.
• So the Shaq experiment didn’t seem to work out so well with the Suns losing in the first round of the NBA Playoffs to the very team they hoped to beat with Shaq’s help, and reports suggest that Phoenix Head Coach Mike D’Antoni is on his way out. I don’t know how much I like D’Antoni, but it doesn’t seem fair for him to have to take responsibility for a busted trade that the GM and owner also signed off on.
  
• After losing 3-2 to the Nationals last night in the 12th inning, the Braves are now 0-9 in 1-run games. I’m not trying to be an alarmist or anything, but that doesn’t really seem to bode well for the team. If John Smoltz actually returns to the bullpen though, maybe that will change…
  

I Sometimes Forget…

…how much faster cable internet is than DSL.

But then I try to download 150MB worth of software updates at work and it takes

all

day.

Ultimate In Cebu City

I came across this poster advertising an ultimate frisbee tournament the other day and thought it was pretty cool.

I’m doubting that I’ll be in the Philippines this month, but if my plans change, at least I’ll have something to do why I’m there…

Weekend Notes

Caroline and I will be heading to Memphis in a little while for the weekend. I’ll be playing in an ultimate tournament with my old team, saying good-bye to a friend who’s heading to Mexico for a year, and staying with my in-laws for a couple of days. I’ll be back sometime late Sunday.

In the meantime, here are a couple of random items that I didn’t think were worthy of entire posts on their own:

• As I mentioned last week, I’ve been running lately, and last night, in preparation for this weekend, I pushed myself a little bit and managed to shave 1:45 off my previous time on my 3 mile(ish) course. Not too shabby.
• Although I might be the only person in the entire world that would care about this, I stumbled upon a pretty cool DuckTales website today. The best part is that it had a walk through of Scrooge McDuck’s mansion. The worst part is that the site is in Russian, which is a language I don’t speak. Oh well, you can’t have everything (who knew DT was so popular in Mother Russia?).
• Tonight, Gus Malzahn and his amazing offense at Tulsa will be put to the test against the Oklahoma Sooners. Tulsa has a terrible defense which gives up even more points than Arkansas’ does, so they should get destroyed, but it will be interesting to see how the Hurry-Up-No-Huddle offense does against OU.
• The Razorbacks try to even up their SEC record at 1-1 when they play the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday. If their aforementioned terrible defense doesn’t step it up a little bit against Andre’ Woodson and the Cats, it will be a difficult thing to do.

Everyone have a good weekend.

Who Knew?

I possess several nearly useless talents.

For example, I am really good at doubling numbers. If you were to say, “63,” I would reply with, “126, 252, 504, 1008, 2016, 4032…” at a very rapid rate for a long time (in fact, as I was typing those numbers, my typing skills lagged far behind my number-doubling skills). I suppose it’s kind of neat if you’ve never seen me do it before, but like I said, for the most part, it’s useless.

Another talent I have is the ability to recognize actors in movies. I’ll be watching some movie and will just hear a character speak, or catch a glimpse of his face and then I’ll recognize him as the butler in some other movie from 12 years earlier. This is another pretty useless ability, but it impresses people from time to time as well.

Sometimes though, I really drop the ball.

Last night, I was floored by the discovery that John Rhys-Davies, who played Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies, also played Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I might’ve been somewhat thrown off by the fact that Sallah is a big guy who dwarfs Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark while Gimli is, well, just a dwarf.

Probably several of you will chime in and say something to the effect that you immediately realized it was the same actor, and how could I not realize it if I was really as good at identifying actors as I say I am.

Normally, I would tell you to keep your gloating to yourself, but considering that this is an ability that I have been somewhat prideful about in the past, I deserve it—gloat away.

Something I Don’t Understand

Growing up, Disney’s DuckTales was one of my very favorite TV shows. Every day when I got home from school, I would watch the 30-minute cartoon and enjoyed following the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and his nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie while devouring a couple of Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies.

Unlike a lot of other cartoons that I grew up with (ahem, Transformers), DuckTales was cleverly-made, being very entertaining for children while at the same time having a lot of humor and historical allusions that only adults would get.

Because of this, I still enjoy watching a few episodes when I’m in a nostalgic sort of mood, so my wife, being aware of my DuckTales fondness, purchased the first two volumes for me on DVD.

I was watching a pretty good episode—Back Out in the Outback—today when I noticed something highly disturbing: Sundowner, who helps run Uncle Scrooge’s sheep ranch in the Australian Outback, has a pet dog named Dingo.

What is strange about this you ask? Only this: Sundowner himself appears to be some form of canine.

DuckTales, how in the world does this work? Does this bother anyone else?

Here is a screenshot of the speech-capable Sundowner comforting his bark-only-capable friend:

Always Improving

Important announcement: The Doc File has now stepped into the exciting world of mid-1990s technology with the addition of a search feature at the bottom of the sidebar.

Now, if want to go back and re-read a post and don’t know where to find it, or if you’re just curious to see what I have to say about something specific, you’re in luck.

I tested out the search bar myself after installing and it seemed to work pretty well, which was pleasantly surprising to me.

What’s next for The Doc File? There’s no telling, but I’m sure it will be equally mind-blowing.

Shopping At A Discount

I got home fairly late last night—around 12:30AM—and as I pulled into my parking spot, stumbled across a rather curious covert operation in progress near my apartment building.

A pick-up, with the engine running, was pulled up next to the dumpster, and a group of about four people were quickly and silently working together to extract a large piece of wooden furniture from the trash bin and put it in the back of the truck.

The group seemed a little concerned at my arrival, but I didn’t care too much about their midnight treasure hunt and just went up to my apartment.

It didn’t surprise me that someone would get furniture out of a dumpster—people love thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales, and dumpster diving is not all that different. What did surprise me is that this group thought they needed to wait until late at night and be sneaky about it. I mean, who cares if someone takes away the trash that you don’t want?

Who knows, maybe the furniture collectors were Swedish. Apparently, it’s illegal to find treasure in another man’s trash there…

There Can Be No Doubt…

It had been a while since we had heard anything from the Loch Ness Monster (except for that funny Toyota commercial, but that was generally considered to be a joke), but apparently, “Nessie” is alive and well.

I was particularly pleased to hear this. Out of all the myths and wild stories out there—Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, 2Pac being alive and well, Barry Bonds being steroid-free—the Loch Ness Monster has always been my favorite and the one I chose to believe in.

You can see the video and a local television station’s coverage of the story on YouTube.

Really, the video is a little disappointing; it’s only about ten seconds long and the monster could easily be a big log caught in a current.

But at least you can hear some cool Scottish accents.

Done!

Well, my blog makeover is officially complete.

Besides a new title and header and some other major cosmetic changes, I also included a couple of new pages in the sidebar that give a little background on myself and this blog.

I hope you like the new look, and I really hope that I got everything put back together right.

If you see something that doesn’t seem quite right, or if the RSS feed is broken or something, let me know.

Site Maintenance

As you may have noticed, my blog is undergoing a little maintenance with a new name, different color scheme, etc.

Since computer code and myself have a barely nodding acquaintance with one another, this little overhaul has been a somewhat arduous process, and I am not finished just yet.

Hopefully I’ll get it all figured out in a couple of days and will then resume regular posting.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience.

Pride

You would probably expect that a person who normally drives a Saturn wouldn't be too picky about what kind of rental car he was given.

You would generally be right.

But then yesterday, Enterprise gave me a "free upgrade" and I got stuck with a PT Cruiser.

I mean, even I have my limits.

On Dyslexia

Frank “Wildfire” Schulte (nicknamed after his pet horse) was a Major League right fielder who spent his best years playing for the great Chicago Cubs teams of the 1900s and 1910s.

A valuable part of the Cubs, Wildfire Schulte was often overshadowed by Hall of Famers Three Finger Brown, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance. However, for a few years, he was one of the National League’s top power hitters, although his numbers wouldn’t look very impressive today since he played during the Dead Ball Era.

Schulte’s best year came in 1911, when he hit .300 with 30 doubles, 21 triples, 21 home runs, 23 stolen bases and 107 RBI. He was the first player in the 20th century to hit 20 home runs in a season, and was rewarded for his efforts with the National League’s Most Valuable Player award and a brand new Chalmers automobile (which went to the MVP at the time).

Wildfire Schulte had a few other good seasons, but he wasn’t a Hall of Fame caliber player, and in the grand scheme of baseball history, wasn’t all that important. Which is probably why nobody really remembers him. In fact, I only tell you about him for this reason: I’ve read his name in baseball books for years, and it wasn’t until the other day that I realized his name was “Wildfire.”

Previously, I had always read it as “Wilfred.”

Talk about reordering your universe…



Sources for the statistics and some of the historical facts mentioned above include Baseball Reference and Wikipedia.

The Soap Opera Continues…

So it looks like you can completely disregard my post from yesterday.

It turns out that Dana Altman has changed his mind and is returning to his old job at Creighton.

It’s really getting hard to keep up with this whole coach search thing. First, we supposedly had Billy Gillispie from Texas A&M, then we were going after Bill Self from Kansas, then USC’s Tim Floyd and lastly John Calipari from Memphis before finally settling for Altman.

Apparently no one wants to coach at Arkansas.

A source close to the Arkansas Athletic Department has leaked that the job will be offered to me next, but so far I haven’t given any indication as to whether or not I am interested.

Seriously though, as the Arkansas Razorbacks increasingly become the laughingstock of the nation, it gets to be more and more difficult to be a Hog fan.

Over the weekend, I was in Little Rock with my wife’s family and we visited the Clinton Presidential Library. One of the items on display was a letter to President Clinton written by Nolan Richardson, who coached the Razorback basketball team to its first and only National Championship in 1994.

In times like this, I find solace in the words of wisdom offered by Richardson:

“Remember Though Times Don’t Last. However, Though People Do.”

So true.

Justice Is Served

One thing you may or may not know about me is that occasionally, I lapse into periods of severe idiocy where I disengage my brain and make terrible decisions.

This happened about a month and a half ago when I bought a new digital camera from YellowBeePhoto.com. Yellow Bee was selling the camera I wanted for about $30 less than anyone else, and their website looked legit enough, so I placed the order.

The next day, I received an email telling me that I needed to call them to verify some billing information. When I called them, they basically pulled a bait and switch on me and told me that while they didn’t have the camera I had ordered, they did have a very similar “Pro Kit” version for about $35 more that was supposedly the same camera model but with a few upgrades (such as the composition of the shell, the quality of the lens, etc.).


Because (as I mentioned above) I am sometimes an idiot, I reluctantly agreed to this, and ordered the upgraded version. Of course, when I received it, there were no upgrades (there was no mention of a “Pro Kit” on the box or any of the documentation); I had received the camera that I wanted, but had paid $35 more than the price on the website.

Had I not been an idiot, I would’ve done a little research ahead of time and discovered that Yellow Bee is notorious for this sort of thing, and sometimes does even worse. I actually got off pretty easy because I got the camera I originally wanted and for about the same price I could have gotten it elsewhere, but I was still pretty annoyed that I had been played.

One of the good things about the internet though is that it allows ripped-off customers to band together and actually do something about it.

Apparently, Yellow Bee Photo is just one of many semi-fraud store fronts in Brooklyn, NY that rip people off with unscrupulous business practices, who have now been caught thanks to the vigilance of the Web. One guy even went out and took photographs of all these bogus stores (the picture above is of Yellow Bee; it is in the “B West End Ave” suite).

And then yesterday I received the best news. My buddies at Yellow Bee sent me this email:

“To make your shopping at Yellow Bee Photo a much greater experience our website will be off until further notice. We do apologize for any inconvenience caused. You will be notified as soon as possible as to when the website will be re-opened for your shopping needs.”

I don’t think the words came out quite how they meant, but they were certainly right: shopping at Yellow Bee Photo is a much better experience if their website doesn’t work at all.

The Final Score: Western Civilization 1, Yellow Bee Photo 0.

A Less Significant Sacrifice

Every six months or so, we have a blood drive at our church, and since I am the type of person who is willing to give blood if it is exceptionally convenient, I donated at our blood drive yesterday afternoon.

If you’re lucky, you get a free t-shirt when you give blood, and yesterday, I was lucky (or so I thought). I didn’t really look at it until I got home. It said, “He gave His. I gave mine,” and then had a Jesus fish underneath it.

I dunno, there’s something about comparing my convenient gift of a superfluous pint of blood to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for all mankind that just irks me.

Design a new t-shirt.