The LandPhil

This is representative of my entire existence:

Source:www.xkcd.com

Since she called me last week to ask (she’d forgotten when it was…)

I passed my belt test.  I did get abused pretty good in the process.  I’m reasonably certain I’ve broken my big toe on my right foot.  I passed, though, so who cares?  Woohoo!  Purple belt!

Here’s a clip of the Colbert Report:

Colbert Report Wikipedia

Here’s the article that it spawned:

New Article

I love Stephen Colbert.

I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

I had no idea they were planning a party for me. Even when I walked in the front door and they all yelled, “Surprise”, I still thought it had been a mistake. I was thinking, “Oops, did they mistake me for Max?”

Then I saw Tano and Dave and Serge…and knew. I’d been had. I walked back out the door.

On my second arrival, I saw my parents. I pointed and said, “What? You…ooooh. Argh!”

Then I walked out the door again. After my third arrival, I was content to accept my fate. The funeral theme was hilarious: ‘In Loving Memory…’ cards, death certificate, individually wrapped handkerchiefs, a band playing dirges. The wheelchair was a nice touch as well.

I am a firefox convert.  I just downloaded a bunch of extensions.  I now have weather, advanced tab features, media player functionality, and mouse gestures.

I figure it’s only a matter of time before I buy a Mac.

When talking to a young women in the attempt to gain her name, phone number, beverage of choice, bra size, etc., do not scan the crowd behind you for other targets.

I was reading an article online just now and ran across the following:

For all intensive purposes

Um…what? It’s “for all intents and purposes” yahoo. We not talking about the ICU here. I swears.

Many people have asked what it’s like to be in technical support. Many people have assumed what it’s like to be in technical support. Many people think that they have what it takes to be in technical support. I’m am going to present an example that displays what being in technical support really entails — knowing how to do other people’s jobs.

Joe is 45 years old. He’s recently divorced with 2 kids. He went to college, but dropped out when his then girlfriend, now ex-wife got pregnant. He has worked in several fields including food service, sales, construction, and office management. His experience and his circumstances have landed him as a supervisor in the mail room of a large wall street investment firm.

Today, Joe is looking at being undermanned. It being after the holidays, he’s got a few guys out sick, and the always present few guys who still need to get back into the groove of working entire 5 day weeks again. So he’s out on the floor helping to sort mail and queue up carts for the runners. As he’s sifting through the current bin of incoming mail he comes across a piece that has been mis-delivered. It’s for a firm across the street. Joe’s options are:

• 1) Take the mail across the street on his lunch or break.
• 2) Call across the street and have them send a runner over to get it.
• 3) Drop it back into the outgoing mail for the postal service to sort out.
• 4) Ask his supervisor what he should do.

What does Joe choose to do?

Phil: Hello, this is corporate technical support. My name is Phil, how can I help you?
Joe: Hi, my name is Joe and I work down in the mail room. I got this piece of mail and it’s supposed to go across the street, what should I do?
Phil: Shove it up your ass and run out into traffic, fuckwad. *click*

The sun, on the playa, is like the fridge light to the cockroaches. It comes on and the roaches scurry for safety. In our case, we scurry under shade and drink lots of water. Sometimes venturing out into the daytime world to see the sights, or work our shifts. Mostly, however, we just sit under our shade and drink our water and plan our evening.

The sun setting is a hallowed event. Usually there is yelling or screaming or cannon fire or heavy drinking. We aren’t particularly loud, and we didn’t have a cannon, so we opted for the heavy drinking. At least 3 of the nights we were out there we could go out onto the street and, as the sun set, throw back shots of 151. Not a bad way to start things.

One of the events that marked the passing of the orb of light out of our sight, this year, was the fire cannons. Even if you weren’t really paying attention, you couldn’t miss the deep whoooomp of the cannons firing. You could feel it in your chest. Detect it’s rumblings in the ground below you. You could also see the smoke rings that it generated:

To watch the cannons fire was intriguing. You would hear the sound and see a black mushroom cloud appear from the ground. The force of the blast with enough upward momentum to “spin” the cloud away and congeal into a ring. It was really cool.

And as the rings ascended and eventually dissipated, you were left with the pink clouded sky. The last signs of the day that had kept the cities occupants under wraps. Who were now emerging and beginning the night long party that would eventually welcome the sun back the following day.

Burning Man. It’s out on the playa. Playa is your life, or rather, becomes your life. Not because you need it, but because it permeates into your entire being when you’re there.

Here’s a before pic:

And an after pic:

(click pics for original size pictures)

The second picture really doesn’t do it justice. The playa is so fine that it will get into anything. And the wind whips it up into solid fog almost. As seen here: