Baaaaahhhh

So apparently, the lamb is a little soggy this year.


So it's raining again?


Yep...much like the writers of Saturday Night Live, Mother Nature just doesn't seem to know when a joke is over. It wasn't all that long ago we got buried in the type of heavy snow that takes down trees and power lines, and now we've gotten so much rain, lots of stuff is flooding. Mother Nature would appear to be against us for some reason...and I'd like her to stop.

That said, the forecast is for lovely weather for the rest of the week and into the weekend...which coincides with the beginning of April. Which brings me to today's Sametime Status. Everyone knows that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb...unless you live in a less bipolar climate. Today being the last day of March means it's lamb time...and today's lamb is getting rained on, and is potentially swimming in some flooded street somewhere.

So it's a day late...

Raise your hand if your College Hockey Team just made it to the Frozen Four!!! This Sametime Status works a whole lot better if you can see my hand in the air.


WOOHOO! Go Jeremy's College Team!


Yes! For the first time in the college's history, the team will be competing in the NCAA Division 1 Frozen Four. It's gonna be a thing!


And an exceedingly rare attempt at a Triple Crown.


Indeed. Based on research I did in my head a few seconds ago, not many schools have a Division III and a Division II national championship under their belts. My college has both, and now is a mere two games against world-class competition away from earning a Division I national championship. Sure, it's a tall order, but not many people expected them to get this far, so why not?


Anything can happen in playoffs!


Go Hockey Team!!

Yeah....it's monday

Happy "Texas Loves The Children" Day, Everybody!


So nothing good going on today?


Well, in addition to "Texas Loves The Children" Day, it's apparently, "Alarm Jeremy On Sametime" day, because before my computer even finished starting up this morning, I had Five IM windows open from people who were just waiting for me to appear. So yeah...it's been a busy morning. At least I feel important...or something.

SQUIRREL!

Why squirrel hate me?


Hahaha....I love that commercial.


Yep...it's some new commercial for an airline or something which follows the story of a movie producer and her quirky director. The director is filming a movie about squirrels riding on mopeds. It makes sense when you see it.

Of course, when filming, children and animals are the hardest things to work with...and squirrels would obviously be among the harder animals to film. So it stands to reason that the director would be having issues.

The commercial ends with the director talking to the producer and asks "Why squirrel hate me?" and that's very funny to me.


It's funny because he's such a jerk the rest of the time, and the squirrel makes him sad.


It's also funny because there's no way a squirrel can explain why it hates a director, so asking the producer that question could not have possibly yielded an answer...


On no....


Happy Rhetorical Friday, everyone!!!


I hate you.

Strangely Important

Dear Coke. Your new bottles are much more stylish, but they no longer fit in my fridge.


Get a bigger fridge.


I fear with the corporate attitude towards things that aren't money (ie: People), that would be a faster solution than having Coke change back to normally-shaped two-liter bottles.


You could also buy cans. They tend to be smaller.


This is true, but it's become financially unviable. The cost of a 12-pack of Coke cans has nearly doubled in the last 2 years, to the point where I simply don't buy them unless they're on sale. Strangely enough, the cost of a 2-liter bottle hasn't changed all that much lately, and they're always on sale. Because of this, I've tended to get those instead. Now, Coke has gone and thrown an additional monkey wrench in the works.


Poor premise, worst hook ever...this rant is lousy. Please continue.


Coke has reinvented the two-liter bottle. It's now more shapely and resembles one of their old-fashioned glass bottles. It's very nice to look at, and stands out well in the store from the wall of other available 2-liters. It's also slightly easier to grip, for those of you who don't just grab it by the cap. The unfortunate by-product of this redesign is that the bottle is a full 2 inches taller by a measurement I made by putting my fingers in front of my face and going "ehhhhhhhhhh...THAT much!"

The important thing to know is that the bottle is now too tall to fit in my refrigerator. I have to lay it flat, at which point, it takes up more valuable shelf space. Something needs to be done!

Tomorrow's is going to be pretty okay, too

Today’s Sametime Status is to remind you that monday’s Sametime Status was really good.


Really? I thought monday's was crap.


As a general rule, you think all the Sametime Statuses are crap.


I suppose that's true enough. Maybe you should try writing better stuff.


Today's Sametime Status is brought to you by the US Federal Government. Yes, the same government that's debating having a meeting with Toyota to yell at them or something. Last week, I got a letter in the mail from the government telling me that soon, they'd be sending me a Census form. Apparently, when the Census form got to me, there is no possible way that I would know what it was or what to do with it unless they sent me a letter in advance. It was truly something out of a Lewis Black routine. (Not surprisingly, viewer discretion is advised as the previous link may contain some foul language). It was in fact a piece of mail telling me that I'd be getting a piece of mail. It also said that I should fill out the form and mail it back right away.

So on monday, I get my census form in the mail. It's very exciting. Really. I would have filled it out in great haste and mailed it right back to the government, except for the fact that the government is really slow about everything, and I believe in fair play. So I plan on holding off on it for a couple days or so. I have yet to decide.

Anyway...in yesterday's mail, (that's Tuesday for those keeping score) I get a postcard in the mail telling me that I just received my Census form, and that I should fill it out and mail it back right away. That's right, folks...I got a piece of mail telling me that I got a piece of mail. All within days of getting a piece of mail telling me that I'd be getting a piece of mail.

This is somebody's job. I'm paying for this person to be employed...deciding that a mere census form is completely insufficient. I need 2 pieces of mail telling me about a third piece of mail. Some idiot sat in a room and actually designed the letter and the postcard...probably held a meeting with other idiots to decide what they should say and what government logo should be on them. All of these people need to be fired. They are a waste of my money.

Or Begonias...I haven't decided

I may plant some tulips


Uhm...good for you?


Well...this was apparently the "quote of the night" sitting around at dinner last night. I was explaining my recent landscaping project and how it may include planting some flowers or a shrub or something. I'm told it was funny that I thought of planting Tulips. I don't see what's wrong with that!

Even worse than you might think

I need my snakes!


Ladies and Gentlemen...if you'll please check around your computing area, Jeremy has apparently misplaced his pet snakes. Fortunately, only one of them is poisonous...and only mildly so, anyway.


Yeah, no...don't have any pet snakes. Today's Sametime Status is brought to you courtesy of the insanely bad motion picture "Snakes on a Train."


Snakes on a Plane?


Nope...not a typo. Apparently, somebody wanted to capitalize on the "Snakes on a Plane" hype and made something of a tie-in film. When I first saw the DVD, I had assumed it would be a spoof or something...such was not the case.


So you actually paid money for this?


Nope...I jacked the DVD from a loyal reader's house.


You do that a lot.


And I'm never not sorry that I do. Anyway...the line from today's Sametime Status comes in because the woman who is responsible for the snakes is running around trying to collect them so she can eat them and turn into a giant snake herself that proceeds to devour the entire train and disappear into an Oz-like flaming vortex of nothingness...I'm actually not making this up. Oh by the way...that line was a spoiler, so don't read it if you intend to watch the film.

By the way, that last line was ironic, because nobody should ever intend to watch the film. Ever.

Same to you, buddy!

Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat


Misplaced your keyboard again?


Today's Sametime Status is a celebration of the world's seemingly collective Irish heritage today.


Happy St. Patrick's Day to you too...even though you're not Irish.


The message is a strangely common Gaelic phrase meaning "May the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat."


A lovely and friendly sentiment for the day. Thank you for that.

I'm already Maddened

Pick Jeremy’s 12-5 Upset! New Mexico State over Michigan State, UTEP (El Paso) over Butler, Cornell over Temple, or Utah State over Texas A+M?


Wow...a sporting post that doesn't have anything to do with hockey? Shocking.


In all fairness, it is March Madness time. Due to peer pressure, I'm forced to come up with one of those silly bracket things around this time of year so I can enter pools to win bragging rights or something. This would be remarkably easier if I knew stuff about college basketball. My college basketball knowledge is sparse at best(I actually had to ask somebody what UTEP stood for). I know precisely 3 things...which the astute of you will realize is one more than last year. Here goes:

• A 16 Seed has NEVER beaten a 1 Seed in the current 64-team format.
  
• A 12 Seed ALWAYS beats a 5 Seed.
  
• This guy Sergio is going to be at the party on Friday and I'm totally going to post up on that chump.

Too bad you don't know what "Post Up" means.


Not important. It's some form of smack talk, so I'm going with it. I'm also going with SCIENCE! Here's a graph of first round winning percentage by Seed, based on actual data I found on the Internetz somewhere:

Aside from the 8/9 matchup, which is basically a coin toss, the winning percentage by seed follows a pretty solid line...with the exception of the 5 seed. The 5 seed is cursed, for whatever reason, and I'm going to take advantage of that. Here's what we're going to do:

Since you all comprise The Most Intelligent Readership In The World, I'm enlisting your help to decide on my 5-12 upset. Simply respond in the form of an IM, Email, or Blag Comment as to which 12 seed is going to take down the #5 team, and the team with the most votes moves on in my actual bracket. If I win any bragging rights or other form of prize, you get 0% of it. It's that simple!

You need to understand physics

Helpful Volleyball Tip #92: Before spiking a ball to the ground in frustration, move your face away from the direction of the rebound.


Oh, please tell me you did this.


Sorry...can't do that. I was an innocent bystander who just happened to have a front-row seat for this lesson-well-learned. Another purely hypothetical player (For Blag purposes, let's call her "Cristin") attempted to throw a ball to the ground in frustration. This is all well and good...not to mention not entirely uncommon. However, "Cristin" misjudged the angle of her throw, causing the ball to bounce back forcefully and hit her in the face.

Now, some people might be concerned for her well-being, but since we're talking about a squishy air-filled volleyball and not a rock or anything, everyone in the gym who bore witness to this purely hypothetical event busted out laughing at "Cristin"'s misfortune. A whimsical time was had by all.

I'm confused

Password Day and New Combination Lock Day in one week? This is too much to remember.


So you logged into your email this morning as 8-23-14?


Just about. More likely I'm going to lock myself out of my locker at some point in the near future and that will be significantly more embarrassing.

So, on Tuesday or Wednesday, I lost the lock that I keep on my gym bag, so I had to go out and get a new one. It's unfortunate, because I liked my lock. It was shiny and colorful, so I could find it easily, and the combination was actually easy to remember, since the first and third numbers added up to the second.


Only you would find that significant.


Be that as it may, my new lock is nowhere near as cool. Since our local all-purpose store (For Blag purposes, let's call it "Bull's-Eye") is roughly half the size of most other "Bull's-Eye" stores, they don't have the selection of stuff that you can usually find. As such, I had to settle for a moderately colorful lock, whose combination makes little sense except that two of the numbers are close to each other. How am I supposed to remember this crap first thing in the morning?


Too bad nobody makes a combo lock with a full keyboard so you can use your email password as the combination to the lock.


PATENT PENDING!!!

I'll take "Counter Productive" for 200, Alex!

People Who Just Don't Get It; Volume 2: That guy who only goes to the gym on days when they give away free bagels.


The gym gives away bagels?


They sure do. The second Tuesday of every month is "Bagel Tuesday," which by itself isn't such a bad thing...but when there are twice as many people in the gym on that particular day, it raises suspicions.

I even overheard one guy talking about how he never misses bagel day, and how he actually hadn't been to the gym since the last bagel day.

They're fuzzy

It’s Password Day! My email password is no longer T3ddyb3ars


That seems fitting.


Well, it probably shouldn't...


You didn't have a teddy bear growing up?


Well...it was a stuffed dolphin, but that's beside the point.


Still....another remarkably manly email password, Jeremy. Good job.


I guess it's time for the standard disclaimer that none of the passwords I've presented in my Password Day Sametime Statuses has ever been used as my actual email password.


Doesn't that make for a real pain in the buns having to come up with 2 new passwords every password day?


It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the loyal readers. You are welcome!

It's a nice crackly hum

I’m starting to think that the only reason I check my mail every day is so I have something to put in the shredder.


Shredding mail is fun.


I very much agree. Most people shred mail items which may contain personal information that can be used for identity theft, like credit card applications and those moronic checks your bank sends you so that you can write a loan to yourself at an exorbitant interest rate. I don't want anybody using those, so I make it a point to shred them. I got a new mail shredder not all that long ago because it was on sale, my old shredder would jam up all the time, and the new one can shred CD's as well. No truth to the rumour that I only bought it because it was featured prominently on an episode of "The Office." (And unlike every other time on the Blag I've said there's no truth to a rumour, there ACTUALLY is no truth to this one.)

The new shredder is a blast. It takes care of business efficiently and substantially...turning an entire envelope full of whatever crap the credit card companies put in it to confetti in seconds. It's a bit of a treat for me, to be perfectly honest, so I look forward to shredding stuff when it comes in the mail. I may go overboard on occasion and shred those coupon books, magazine subscription fliers, town newspapers, business reply postcards, and the credit-card-sized pocket calendar I got from my oil delivery company. None of that needed to be shredded, but I felt happier turning it into shards than simply tossing it in the garbage, so in the slot it goes.

Here's the problem. I don't get any mail that is worthwhile. All of my bills and banking are done online, I rarely look through the coupon books, I don't want or need a new credit card, I'm happy(ish) with my tv and internet service, I have a perfectly reasonable cell phone plan. It's a little disappointing to know that there will be nothing good in the mailbox when I go outside to check it. The saving grace is knowing that whatever's inside has about a 90% chance of going into the shredder within 5 minutes.

How can you threaten a plastic fish?

Give me back the brain cells that got destroyed while listening to that accursed Fillet-O-Fish jingle.


GIVE ME THAT FISH!!


Why did you do that?


It's more fun to annoy you than to agree....even though that is the worst jingle ever.


I see. So anyway...Lent is supposed to be a spiritual time, or something...but McDonald's has chosen to turn people's religious observances into profit by pushing their fish sandwich during a time when many Christians choose not to eat meat on Fridays. Jerks.

It wouldn't be so bad if they did a good job of it, but they give us this horrific commercial. I'm sure you've seen it, but if you haven't, it involves one of those singing plastic fish hanging on the wall. So they take the flawed concept of the plastic singing fish (If you actually bought one of those, stop reading now, and never come back to my Blag) and...here's a twist...make it sing.


Bad singing fish plus bad jingle...sounds like a perfect storm.


Unlike "Plan 9 From Outer Space" this is not one of those 'so bad it's good' moments. This thing is just awful. I think I'm going to kick Ronald McDonald in the face next time I see him for allowing this sort of thing to happen.

It means the world is going to end

Today’s date is 3-2-1-0. That only happens once every 1.8 million years or something.


Well...every hundred years, actually...but I guess that's beside the point.


Fairly often, a pattern or sequence emerges in the date or time that makes people decide it's newsworthy. Last year alone we had 7/8/9, 9/9/9, and 3/6/9, and some overzealous reporter decided to point out how this number sequence only shows up every 10,000 years. Forget the fact that the way we write dates in the US is different from the rest of the world, where they more logically put the day first (Then, the date is sorted by length...days and shorter than months, which are shorter than years), and the fact that not everyone in the world agrees that this is even the year 2010, according to our arbitrary system, a pattern emerged...and holy crap is it newsworthy!

So today, I would like to point out that by the same arbitrary system, today's date is 3/2/10. At 6:54 AM, it was an even more whimsical 6:54 3/2/10, and it will be again at 6:54 this evening, unless you use the more world-standard 24-hour clock, at which point you already missed it, so don't you feel bad you poor sucker? Since you missed it, there will never be another 6:54 3/2/10 in your lifetime. You'll just have to wait for the next bizarre arbitrary pattern to emerge that won't happen for another 654,000 years. I think it's in August or something...

Not sure why I didn't see this coming.

In hindsight, it may not have been a good idea to put the bag of cement next to the snowblower.


Sounds like pretty solid advice.


You're not funny.


I'm not trying to be...I'm just saying that that seems like a pretty hard and fast rule to go by.


I hate you.


Sounds like you need a really concrete solution to this problem.


Sounds like you need to go away.

So yeah...One of the more whimsical by-products of last week's giant snow storm is a lot of water running off from my snowblower. The heavy wet snow stuck to every part of it, and promptly melted when it got into the garage. This is all well and good, because I'm not overly concerned about water on the floor of the garage...except when it runs into the bag of cement I had leftover from replacing my mailbox last summer.

So in the end, I learned a valuable lesson. First, the signs recommending how many bags of cement to buy for a certain project are made by the companies making the bags of cement. This means they overestimate in order to sell you more bags of cement that end up sitting on the floor of your garage next to the snowblower indefinitely. Second...when such an event happens, find a use for said cement fairly quickly before you end up soaking the bag and ending up with a bag of rock on the floor of your garage that can only get tossed in the trash. Good tips for good living!