Office Ninja!

When I takeover the world all the mindless drones clerking my world headquarters will be getting their office supplies from this guy:


-t

5

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And I Want To Be Somebody Important, Like An Actor...

Woo! It's here! The first signs of the machine revolution!

You were there when they announced the exo-skeleton capable of augmenting a mere human's strength three-fold, it is just a short step to throw on some armor plating and offensive weaponry, and then what have you got? Mecha, in real life.

And now! Machine-Brain Interface! EXACTLY LIKE THE MATRIX.
Learn kung-fu in seconds, enjoy the ultimate virtual-reality experience available, leap tall buildings in a single bound, DODGE BULLETS!

If only I could find a way to harness these powers and bend them toward world conquest...

-t

*UPDATE* - Monkey controls robotic arm jacked directly into its brain! It works! We did it!

6

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It's Raining (On) Surgeons

FJM is a site dedicated to poking fun, and sometimes lambasting, bad sports commentary and analysis, in print and television.

It's written by a group of baseball fans who also happen to be sitcom writers. You may know some of their work, like The Office.

If you are a baseball fan, you should read the site. If you are a journalism fan, you should read the site. If you are a comedy fan, you could do a lot worse.

Here is a small excerpt of their work:

Ask any football, soccer, rugby, or lacrosse player what they think about rain delays in baseball and they’ll likely give you an answer we can’t print here.

"Fuckshit!" they'll say, those foulmouthed lax players.

What they’ll imply is that baseball players are a little less manly than other athletes simply because they won’t play in the rain. What’s the worst that could happen?

The game will be impossible to play, and no one will watch it.

Slower pitching? More runs scored? A few extra scratches and bruises? (Boo-hoo.)

It's not a contact sport, dummy. It's a precision sport. You don't perform knee surgery in the rain either.

link

In the same post there's a link to some great quotations on baseball.

-t

7

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Woman Wakes Up After Rigor Mortis Sets In (ZOMBIE!)

Weird news from WV this afternoon, found on bb: Woman comes back to life after rigor mortis sets in!

Or, as I would have headlined it:

FIRST DOCUMENTED ZOMBIE VIRUS CASE IN US
LOCALS FLEE IN PANIC, PATIENT IN ISOLATION, AWAY FROM BRAINS

Take the necessary steps to protect yourself. You thought avian flu was bad? Zombie Virus A is definitely, definitely, worse.

-t

P.S. Sorry, that last link is not a rickroll. It's a clip from the Evil Dead. Bruce Campbell is hilarious.

8

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Words Added To My Custom Dictionary -or- Why I Hate Lotus Notes

LotusNotes blows. Seriously. A lot.

A list of words added to my email spellcheck dictionary:

• 38pitches (Curt Schilling's blog)
• 3PM
• 401K
• 5PM
• 6pm

• Adina (does this surprise anyone else?)
• apts
• Attaboy
  

• Bioshock (2007 game of the year!)
• blog
• blogging
• bookmarked
• btw
  

• craigslist
  

• Daisuke (ok, it's Japanese)
• Donny (really?)
• download ("download" isn't in the standard dictionary?)
• drat (my favorite four-letter word!)
• dvds
  

• Erin (this is ridiculous - suggested correction? "Ermine")
• ESPN
  

• Fermat (Einstein is in the standard dictionary)
• Fermat's
• fyi
  

• gmail
• gotta
  

• hiya
• Hurley (from Lost)
• hyperlink (hey, email dictionary, it's the Internet Age)
• hyperlinks (cripes)
  

• Ichiro
  

• Jackie
• Joey
  

• Matsuzaka
• Matsuzaka's (separate entries for proper nouns and their possessives?)
• max (wow. I'm almost certain "max" is a real word, like, everywhere)
• MBTA
• munchkins
  

• nor'easter
  

• Ok (I hate capitalizing both 'o' and 'k')
• ok (obv.)
• online (alright, screw you, dictionary)
• ONYE
• Ortiz
  

• Philly
• Pinkerton
• punkface (this is one of the few I find understandable)
  

• RBIs
• rebook
• rebooked
• rebooks (probably the word used most often in my emails)
• RSS
  

• screengrab (maybe not a real word)
• screenshot (come on. def. a real word)
• Sox

• TD ("trade date" - MSOutlook spellcheck opts out of words in all caps)
• timesheet
• Timmy (honestly?)
• tpb
• tv (but "TV" is ok. ridiculous)
• txt
  

• Verizon
  

• workflow
  

• Yep

Any surprises in your custom dictionary?

-t

9

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Softball Wrapup

Game 3 - I skipped this game to go drinking with some of Sam's friends up from Alabama

Game 4 - Awesome game. We totally had the lead at one point! We were ahead, by like, three runs!

Anyway. I got there a little late and they put me in at shortstop without any warmup which turned out to be a mistake. The first play of the game was a one-bouncer right to me. I fielded it cleanly, and then threw it ten feet up the foul line past first base. Not even close.

I was getting heckled by the guy in centerfield, and when I turned around I realized it was our normal shortstop! So we switched places for the second batter, and I played center for the rest of the game.

In the second inning I made a pretty good catch on a sinking line drive. I'm no Jacboy Ellsbury, but I can get to the ball when I have to.

At the plate we got some pretty great performances. Three home runs ! One out-of-the-park, the other two the leg-'em-out variety.

So, inning-by-inning. The bad guys scored four runs in the first (helped by my initial throwing error), and we got one back in the first.

Then, and this is the really surprising part. We got back-to-back one-two-three innings in the field! We held them for two innings! Meanwhile our offense scored three runs in the third, and three more in the fourth! At the end of the fourth inning we were leading by three runs! A lead! Woo!

Then in the sixth we gave up three to tie the game. No score in the top of the seventh, so we came up to the plate with a chance at a walk-off victory.

I was batting third in the inning. No pressure.

The first guy made an out when the shortstop robbed him of a double on a screaming line drive up the middle. The next batter popped out.

Here I stood. Two outs, bottom of the seventh, tie game. And I....

roped a single up the middle! Woo! Keep the inning alive!

The girl up at the plate behind me grounded out to third.

But we got a quick one-two-three inning in the top of the eigth and in the bottom of the inning hit back-to-back doubles to win it!

So now our record is a very respectable 1-3-0.

Personally I went 3-3 or 3-4 (depending on the official scorer's ruling) with an RBI. I also broke up a double-play in the fourth which allowed a run to score.

-t

10

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Re-Reading (A Self-Referential Post)

I am a great writer. I was checking the archives and came across this:

This is one of the reasons I think I would make a good rich guy: I would buy everything. Well, you know, not everything, but almost certainly one of everything. link

No doubt my talents stem from a somewhat wild imagination.

This dream, for example:

So I’m brushing [my teeth], and I’m realizing this toothpaste is bad. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s…dry, sort of…paste-y. So I look at the tube, and in one glance I see that it’s expired, and that there are tiny little spiders living in the toothpaste. TINY SPIDERS IN THE EXPIRED TOOTHPASTE!

Not that I'm the only one with crazy dreams.

Finally, I would make an exceptionally great sketch comedy writer, (SNL, Second City, Improv Asylum, give me a call!) as evidenced by the bit I pitched and have been trying desperately to get SNL to steal, (as long as I get the credit for developing it). Seriously, tell me this wouldn't be hilarious:

I think they should make a stoner movie called “James Bong.” His agent number would be (obviously) 420, and in Q division everything would turn into a bong or a lighter. jump

It gets even funnier after the jump.

(I'm just filling up space 'til my millennial post. Dig it.) 11

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Rate My Manager (with LeadBack!)

Last week:

From:admin@leadback
Hello,

Tom, your supervisor is a participant in the Beacons of Leadership program.

A key part of the process is to provide feedback on personal leadership styles. We will use a 360-degree multi-rater survey called LeadBack®. The results from this feedback will help establish developmental goals.

You, Tom, have been chosen to give feedback. Please take it as a compliment. This is an excellent opportunity for you to contribute to the ongoing development of your colleague. You are one of a larger group of colleagues invited to participate.

This survey will take you approximately 10 minutes to complete. Please note, except for your supervisor's manager, all survey responses are confidential and anonymous.

Regards,
LeadBack Admin

Well, I will take it as a compliment! I am heartened that my opinion matters!

As you'd expect, the survey is twenty-five or so vanilla questions similar to "Please rate your level of agreement 'My manager is an outgoing person who encourages open dialogue within our group, but sometimes can take it too far and become a distraction' Agree Strongly; Agree; Disagree; Strongly Disagree"

I try to be as accurate as I can. Pull no punches, air no grievances, objective above all. I'm one of the few selected, right?

Today:

From:director@beacons
Hello,

You recently received information requesting your participation in a LeadBack survey as part of the Beacons of Leadership Program for your supervisor.

This request was sent to you all in error, please disregard any emails and any survey information that you may have received from the LeadBack administrator or myself.

Regards,
Beacons Director

Oh.

Should I also disregard the compliment?

-t

12

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Even Adina Can Appreciate This -or- A Good Reason To Watch NBA Playoff Coverage

This is one of the best studio teams ever assembled.



Stay classy, blogosphere.

-t

13

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Reeding and Rounding -or- I know only four of you are reading this

I've discovered an exciting new feature of my RSS reeder. It's called "Feed details."

Scant details, to be sure, but salient, and very interesting.

Pick a feed, click "details" and you shall receive:

Posts per week

and

Subscribers

Ok, no big deal. Until you check your own blog feed and discover that according to google reader you're averaging 1.9 posts per week and only four people are subscribed to your feed. And I happen to know that I'm one, and Samantha is another.

Take, for contrast, a popular sports blog I subscribe to:
Posts per week: 59
Subscribers: 957

Now I've got a target: 1000 readers

Or, at the very least, to reach a number that doesn't round down to zero.

-t

14

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I had intended this to be a brief aside - but, if wishes were fishes

I'm currently reading a book, called Ireland, and have been advised, that there is a plot twist near the end. "Ooh, I didn't see that twist coming." was the warning.

Which may mean that no twist was expected, or there was a twist expected, just not the one that was delivered.

So, as I'm reading, naturally, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for clues. Passages that may foreshadow later events, stand-alone sentences describing glances between major characters that are never acknowledged or explained. The abscence of exposition about a seeming innocuous point. "Aha, I think, the significance of that look will by the BIG REVEAL," or, "In a twist, that innocent explanation will actually be insidious and demented!"

I doubt I'll be surprised, is what I'm saying.

Which is ok, if it's done well I can still appreciate the architecture of the reveal, even if it substance has already been realized.

It occurred to me, though, that there could conceivably be a twist I don't suspect. Something that hasn't been hinted at ever, not once, in the book. That the author purposefully left meaningless clues, totally unrelated, hinting at a banal, ordinary, fully expectable twist, and then, instead of delivering, say, a curveball, delivers a freshly baked loaf of bread THAT IS ALSO A RADIOACTIVE ALIEN SUPERCOMPUTER!

You'd look pretty stupid standing there in the batter's box then, wouldn't you?

(That was rhetorical. You would look pretty stupid. It's a radioactive supercomputer from some distant planet. You thought it was going to be a baseball.)

There's no secondary reveal, either. No explanation. None of this "Oh, by the way, remember in the first inning when you got that hit I and the announcer said it was a "moon shot" that was an allusion to your former career as an astronaut, and the chapter about your best bud, the catcher, who rooms with you on the road, being an illegal immigrant from Cuba, that actually was symbolic, because he's actually an extra-terrestrial and instead of Cuba, he's from Alpha-Centauri - but he's still a heck of a catcher."

None of that. It's just you, an ordinary baseball player, and then an alien supercomputer that you could, if you chose, turn into a grilled cheese sandwich.

Or, imagine an Agatha Christie mystery (this is a particularly good illustration of my point, since AC is notorious for leaving out the necessary clues that figure into her big reveal, hated, by some, for cheating the readers) set on a train, where somebody dies, and all the passengers, who have never seen each other before, ever, and no one has any motive, and the lone detective is still plugging away, and then, at the crucial moment, he reveals, not that, by the way, all the other passengers had all starred in the same soap opera together back in the day, then served in the same military unit as spies, then settled down in the south of England and opened a bed and breakfast all together, and they in fact do have a motive, and you'd have known that and figured out the whole thing if only the history lesson had taken place in the prologue and not the penultimate chapter, no, instead, the lone detective reveals that the train is actually, ON THE MOON! And Moon Men storm the train and devour everyone on board the end.

How's that for a twist!?

Anyway, I'm now hoping for something like that. A twist so crazy it's almost as if the last two chapters of the book were replaced, accidentally, in the printing process with the last two chapters of some crazy science-fiction story set in the Star Wars universe, or where time-travel is possible. And hey, while you spent two-hundred pages learning about Irish history through the eyes of this young Dublin school child and his charming father, a history professor, often illustrated by small glimpses into early 20th century life, and clever observations about the Irish geography, you learn in the final chapter that the boy and his father ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON SEPARATED BY THIRTY YEARS As THE RESULT OF A FREAK TIME MACHINE EXPERIMENT AND WHEN THE BOY REACHES HIS THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY THEY BOTH DIE INSTANTANEOUSLY!

Nothing at all to do with Irish history. What a twist!

-t

15

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Strange Brew: Game 1

Played the first game of the season yesterday in the drizzly, swampy, Charlestown muck. Which I loved, because getting to Charlestown is hella more convinient than getting to Dedham for games. Next week we're in Brighton someplace, I think.

We played a good game, only lost by fifteen, in a full game (not shortened by the mercy slaughter rule).

Personally, I went one-for-three with a double (generous scorekeeping by the team captain, really an infield hit with a throwing error), and knocked in a run on a fielders choice. So I'm hitting 0.333 and my OPS is a solid 1.000. Not a bad line for the first game of the season, and I didn't have to go to Arizona to work out all winter (though I should have, I could barely lift my arms after swinging the bat. Thank goodness I play first base, I never would have been able to throw across the diamond).

Speaking of fielding, the right side of our infield is as solid as ever, with our star shortstop making two dramatic double plays (both 6-3) and a few more terrific stops to save extra base hits. The right side of the infield is also as solid as ever (that is, not very solid at all through the second baseman - still having a little trouble catching ground balls...and pop-ups...line drives, relay throws, underhand tosses from the shortstop on double play balls...)

The rest of the team looks good. After a few more innings the outfielders will, no doubt, resume making the spectacular catches we remember from last season, and our pitchers will once again be lights-out (here, of course, I'm speaking of the spotlights used for night games, where their pitches are usually deposited by the opposing batters).

A good first game. Go green team! (we changed colors, green is the new blue).

-t

16

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Reading

I'm addressing this to the Venn group of you readers who live in the intersecting circles of sports fans, and blog fans.

Mad MSPaint skilz

No doubt you're aware of the flap caused by Buzz Bissinger (author of Friday Night Lights, a totally awesome book you should read) on the HBO program "Costas Now" regarding the role of bloggers in sports coverage. (NYTime story)

I'm not going to comment, there's been more than enough of that in the blogosphere (and most of it seems to be of the cathartic "let's just get this out there so it's not running circles in my head all weekend preventing me from enjoying the derby/playoffs/baseball" variety), BUT, this bit by Joe Posnanski is a nice bit:

"This is really a great point, and one that just gets overlooked. There have always been blogs. What do we think Thomas Paine's Common Sense was? He wasn’t working for any mainstream media — there really wasn’t a mainstream media. It was a blog written long before the Internet. It was a published as a pamphlet and published anonymously — and James Chalmers (playing the role of Revolutionary Buzz) called him a 'political quack.' You could certainly argue that Paine's blog, more than any single work, spurred the Colonies to break from England." Joe Posnanski

And what are our amendments to the Constitution but a comment thread on our forefathers' principal post?

The world as blog. Dig(g) it.

-t

17

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It's Friday, Let's Vent

It's been a while since I've had these fingers o'mine pecking away at this typeboard here in front of me, so to get things moving, here's a post about some stuff at work.

1. The guy that sits behind me, across the row, drives me crazy. If he'd just keep his yap shut, or went anywhere else to prattle, I probably wouldn't mind so much, instead, he holds court at his desk whenever he can attract an audience, and when he can't he'll wait for an overheard bit of conversation and throw out a semi-topical movie misquote. Some illustrations:
   
   
   
   • Mispronounciation, talking about movies: "Ya, they were independent movies, you know, independent? They were at the Canny's Film Festival."
   
   
   • Misinformation, talking to his underlings: "You know how muscles work, right? Steroids don't make you get more muscles, see, when you lift, you're basically breaking down your muscle cells, and so your body is like 'I have to make more muscles so that doesn't happen again' right? And when you lift, your muscles get sore, so you have to stop. Steroids they help you not get sore so fast, so you can keep lifting, and it breaks down even more muscle tissue. It works because you know when you lift your muscles produce folic acid, and the acid eats away at the cells, and that's why it burns, and steroids stop it from burning so you can keep working out."
   
   
   • Mississippi, caught in a lie by a girl from MS:
     "When my wife got her law degree we talked about moving, so I was looking at places and one of my buddies said I should look in Jackson, MS, and I found this like huge mansion with a separate house on the lot for carriages, that had an attached apartment and tons of land for like two-hundred fifty, to three-hundred thousand."
     "Oh, really? A mansion? That seems like a lot"
     "Um, uh, well, it's in a town of like only four thousand people..."
     "Because a lot of my friends live down there and, they all have houses, but nothing like that for three hundred."
     "Uh, and, you've got to remember this is in like '98... and uh... well, we ended up buying a house in Bridgewater - I'm late for a meeting."
   
   
   
   
   
2. LOST spoilers. Luckily, I'm up-to-date on the most recent LOST episodes, so this isn't a factor for me, but, when three or four people start throwing out theories (dumb theories) and someone else nearby says 'What are you talking about? That show LOST? I haven't watched it.' and thye continue to talk about significant plot developments! (hint: everybody dies! jk, jk). I mean seriously, knock it off, don't spoil what is clearly a good show. You want to talk about Jericho or drivel of that nature go right ahead.



3. That thirty-something senior-eff-ing manager on the floor who insists on behaving like a twelve-year-old wearing two pigtails on the sides of her head, and using a mock-whiny high-pitched voice to complain about missing her coffee break because she thinks it's cute. It's not.



4. Coors Light sucks. The beer is undrinkable unless chilled so much that the cold temperature overwhelms its many flaws (flavor, body, color, finish, aftertaste). Kudos, I guess, to the marketing team that turned "This beer is only drinkable if it's so cold it numbs your whole head" into a legitimate tag line "Brewed cold, taste the Rockies" or something like that, but I'm immediately revoking those same kudos for producing the awful, "Let's Vent" television spot that lends this post its ironic title. It's beer. In a can. Open and pour. Don't be a jackass, and don't put tools on tv. I change the channel when that ad airs.

-t

18

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