Absolutely hilarious! Someone spent a lot of time on this:

http://www.lulu.tv/?p=3268

Hello! This is actually Jen (Ray's wife) posting because Ray hasn't used his LJ in FOREVER and I just found out that a couple of my friends have LJ's so I added my friends to his friends list. So, Brian, Devin, future posts may be Ray's. Considering I rarely post to my xanga I doubt I'll post to this. But now I'll get notified when YOU post! Yay! (Bri- I heard you got married last summer! Congrats!! I'm in the Carmichael/Citrus Heights area so we should catch up sometime.)

I found this interesting...

"Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries."
-Carl Sagan

I don't know, I guess I just don't think my life is that interesting. It seems I only get on here to post links, like this one about an exhaustive reference for web designers and developers. Pretty cool stuff.

Hey everybody. Everything is going well here, the new job is going great, Jen is feeling tired and Rowan is kicking up a storm, but otherwise she is feeling fine. My main reason for posting, actually, is to give everybody a heads up about Palladium Books being in trouble. If you are a gamer, you have at least heard about Palladium, and most likely have played Palladium, TMNT, or Rifts, so you should go look at this notice about why the company might be going under.

So, some news to post. I have been feeling stagnant at my current job for a while. Then I became irked when the only other IT person, JD, left in August and the company never replaced him. Not at JD but at the company. I never looked for another job, but when an opportunity presented itself, I took a look. I had two interviews, including one with the CIO of the company, and I will start as a Senior FoxPro Programmer April 17th. My last day at my current job is the 12th, giving me time to head down to L.A. for Jen's Southern California Baby Shower.

A friend posted about finding most of a word document on her parents' computer she had thought lost in a hard drive crash. This reminded me of a habit I have of leaving stuff in odd places to be found later. For example, I like coats with lots of pockets, and I put little ticket stubs or small photos in the little pockets, then forget about them when the coat gets hung up. Later, when I take that coat back out for the season, I am rifling through the pockets and discover these little time capsules. It happens with suitcases and backpacks as well.

Here, I'll go through the coat I brought to work with me. Ok, one pocket has a receipt for a Christmas gift I bought someone last week. No time capsule there. Another pocket has a notice about a team building exercise Jen's work had in November. The importance here, though, is the phone number on the back for a woman who was calling about a dog we found wandering the streets the weekend before Thanksgiving. See? A memory, right there. And, a third pocket has...ok, it has a throat lozenge. It looks pretty ancient, I'd better toss it out. Moving along, the fourth and fifth pockets are empty. They don't actually close, so I don't put much in them. Well, nothing too exciting, but this is a newer coat (birthday gift last January). I should do this again when I am wearing my leather jacket. Or I could pull my jean jacket out of the back of the closet. Jen hasn't let me wear that in years, I'm sure it would have some nifty stuff in the pockets.

From The NY Times:

New Yorkers reacted as only New Yorkers can: awestruck by their own determination. Foreign visitors were underwhelmed. "It's always like this in Paris," a pretty young Frenchwoman told a local news team. "It's normal, for me."

So, any New Yorkers reading this, are you awestruck by your own determination?

I just found out that the person hired to write up our company's technical documents and standard operating procedures doesn't know what a manual of style is. I could understand this if they had told one of the chemists to do it, but this person was specifically hired from outside just to write. I was checking some documents I had burned to CD for her when I noticed that the table of contents page looked a little unusual. Now, I don't read style manuals for fun (like some people I know), so I thought maybe this was just some format I hadn't yet encountered. So, out of curiosity, I asked what manual of style she used to create it, and she gave me a blank look.

Mmm, lunch. Time for food and, sometimes, the web. I found the castle I want to buy when I'm the next Bill Gates. Built in Italy by a Templar in 1216, plenty of history and fun stuff to investigate. This castle was listed as Castle Berg and at first I thought, "Castle Blerg!" but, alas, no, it is actually Castle Schwalenberg. Still pretty cool, though.

So, apparently parmesan can be mistaken for cocaine in a simple test used by police forces around the world. It reminded me of the woman that hired a hit man because she mistook a block of cheese for a block of cocaine.

I found this in the paper today, and wanted to record it. There is a martial element to it, as with many ancient Greek writings, but I see it a broader light, as an exhortation to learn from history and stand on the shoulders of giants to reach that little bit farther in our own lives.

For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset.

And for dessert tonight I am having two tasty oatmeal chocolate chip cookies Jen baked yesterday. There are another two dozen in the fridge, destined for a little cookie exchange at Jen's work tomorrow.


Mmm....these are good.


23 is as good as 24, right?

So, no food porn, but I did just make a pretty fine, if simple, meal. Jen is at choir rehearsal, so I went ahead and roasted a cornish game hen, made some real mashed potatoes, and cooked some green beans. Nothing fancy like blergeatkitty whips up, but not bad for me.
I kept the hen pretty simple, just put some herbs in a little dish of olive oil to sit, then smeared the oil over the bird and under the skin, roasted in foil at 350 for 35 minutes, then took off the foil and upped it to 400 for a little over 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, I boiled the potatoes, drained when they were soft, saving a bit of the water. I mashed them up with a bit of butter and milk. The green beans were just frozen beans that I zapped in the microwave. The potatoes were a little lumpy, and could have used a bit more milk, but overall it was mighty tasty.

Gettin' the word out for schempp:

I found a link to Poppy Z. Brite's blog where she talks about how some outlets reported on Katrina and the recovery New Orleans.

A meme from schempp:

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, (even if we don't speak often) please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL
memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog
and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you. Heh heh.

Truly applies right now.

I heard a news story on the radio this morning about a woman in India who went into the hospital for a cornea transplant, so I thought I would look up some details:
( WARNING: Nasty Hospital Error Ahead! )

From Wonkette: