Feels Empty

I really have no music between Mythos and Neil Young?

This bothers you?

Not as much as you might think.  It was just a curiosity recently when the mp3 player in my car went from a Mythos song (I forget which one...maybe Odyssey) to  Heart of Gold by Neil Young.  It just seemed a little strange to me that there is nothing in my music library (The part that's on the flash drive in my car, anyway) that comes between My and Ne...alphabetically anyway. 

Then I got to thinking that there isn't that much decent music in the Na range.  Anybody got anything that should be in the gap? 

Very Few People Really Know This

Pro Tip:  Coffee tastes much better when you put coffee in it

So you make it from Beans, Not Crap?  

So it would seem.  Actually, I'm referring to an incident I had not long ago.

Oh, good!  Another edition of Jeremy Is An Idiot!


I have a coffee maker in my office.  I can't afford to buy coffee at the Adorably Tiny Cafeteria Thing In My Building (also, I'm afraid of the Toaster), and since I, and everyone else for that matter, moved offices, the coffee club upstairs has gone downhill.  It's also gone farther away, but that's entirely beside the point.  So, I bought a little coffee maker, and I keep my supplies in a drawer and make myself a nice cup of coffee every now and again if I happen to be in my office for an extended time.

The recipe is no great secret.  You put water in the back of the machine, you put coffee in the little basket, coffee dumps out the bottom into my cup.  I tend to put creamer and sugar in the cup before the coffee so it will be perfectly mixed by the dripping action and lead to less work in between brewing and drinking.  I'm an engineer, so I'm lazy like that.

While the recipe is pretty standard, there is little room for error.  If you don't put the cup below the spout, coffee will dump on the floor.  If you don't put water in, no coffee comes out.  If you run out of sugar and don't remember to steal any from the ATCTIMB, your coffee is bitter.  I'm not saying any of these things HAVE happened with any sort of regularity, but at least one of them is based on a true story.  Not long ago, I decided to try to save money on coffee by making coffee without it.  Seems like a pretty essential ingredient you might think, but I'm an engineer, so I have to go with experimental data.  Either that, or I forgot to put coffee in the basket...you'll have to decide which story you believe.  I go back to my computer and work on a project I was doing at the time.  After a couple minutes, and after the dripping sound behind me stopped, I turned around to get my cup, and I saw that it was full of a steaming milky white liquid that in almost no way resembled coffee.  This lack of resemblance included taste...I was curious, okay?

At this point, I knew exactly what I had done (or not done as the case may be), and was faced with a conundrum.  What do I do with this milky-sweet concoction I had just made?  I could pour it back into the machine and run it through again (including coffee this time), but this might run the risk of the cream and sugar clogging up the works.  Also, my little coffee maker specializes in making very hot coffee.  Putting this already hot liquid back into the machine might result in a lava-hot beverage capable of getting McDonald's sued.  Would the coffee brew as well if it were already infused with cream and sugar?  Does steaming-hot cream burn inside a coffee maker?   At the end, I had little choice but to do a walk of shame down the hallway to the bathroom carrying my cup of failure, dump out the sweetened milkwater, and start the whole coffee process over again.  It really did taste better the second time, but then I ran out of sugar again.  Time to go "shopping."

You Had To Think There

“It’s funny because it’s bad science.” – Actual Work Conversation

Oh, you nutty engineers and your nerdy discussions.  What's for lunch?  

So not long ago, we were having a discussion at work about flow controllers.  As with everything in engineering, nothing is ever completely exact, so there is always some component of error that has to be dealt with, and that came into play when talking about these particular components.  Let's say, for example, that a flow controller is designed to put anywhere between 0 and 100 liters of gas into a chamber every minute.  (Do keep in mind this is a completely hypothetical example, so don't go trying to recreate this process.)  You actually need 10 Liters per minute, so you set the flow controller to 10.  Great!  The flow controller will have an error amount relative to the maximum flow, let's say 1%.  So, in this case, you'll be getting 10 Liters, give or take 1...so anywhere from 9 to 11 liters will be your eventual flow.  Seems like a lot of error.

One solution is to reduce the size of the flow controller...let's say to a 20L max component.  Then, assuming the same 1% full range tolerance, you'll be at 10 +/- 0.2 Liters, or from 9.8 to 10.2 .  Much better!  Unless, of course, you have a different process on the same tool that requires a flow greater than 20 Liters.  You can't have it all.  What's the best solution?  As with everything in engineering, the answer is "It Depends."  

One possible solution that was hypothesized in a gedanken at work recently (It means "Thought Experiment," look it up.  Also look up Schrodinger's Cat while you're at it) was to place multiple flow controllers in parallel.  The tolerance of each individual one will be lower, thus the overall variation will be lower, right?  So this is obviously the way to go, right?

NOPE! 

Chuck Testa?

Uhm...wow...no.  The problem with this theory isn't actually so much with the tolerance.  It's certainly possible for the error to be less, sure.  In order to have the same extreme values, the performance of each of the smaller flow controllers would have to be off by the maximum amount, and all in the same direction.  Let's say you have a set of ten 10L controllers to replace a single 100L.  At a total flow of 10L, the single controller can be off by 1L, for a max flow of 11L.  If all of the 10L controllers were off by .1, and were putting out 1.1L, you'd still end up with the same 11L flow.  However, the likelihood of this is pretty low.  In reality, you're much more likely to have a Normal (or Gaussian) distribution of error, with half of the controllers flowing high, and half flowing low, with the mean flow value at your target:

In theory, the way to get closest to your target flow is to have an infinite number of infinitesimally small flow controllers.  The distribution will normalize everything out, and you're left with the most precise measure you can get.  This was the original point of the gedanken. 

The problem with this, of course, is that in order to implement this in the real world, you have to put more components into the system, increasing the complexity and probability that something will go wrong.  You also need to re-engineer everything from the supply cabinets to the incoming facilities to the software used to control all of these new flow controllers.  It's terrible engineering and, at least to us...very funny. 

You're probably not laughing.  I guess that's okay. 

They'd Just Turn The Meetings Into A Reality Show

Do TV network producers have to do an 8D to make sure shows like “How To Be A Gentleman” never happen again?

Is that some sort of emoticon?  8D?  Also, that show sucked.  

True story, when developing the concept for today's Sametime Status, I was going to use the show "Whitney" as the punchline, but apparently, that show isn't cancelled yet.  

Anyway, more germane to the point is that 8D is a structured problem solving method used by managers who need to have a spreadsheet or presentation to look at in order to complete their day.  It involves analyzing remote extremities of a system in order to figure out why something else went wrong.  It's also a remarkably effective way to kill time while ignoring other things that are going wrong and the fact that you still haven't fixed the original problem because you've been writing a presentation about it instead of fixing it.  

Strictly speaking, 8D stands for "8 Disciplines" because sadly, try as they might, they couldn't figure out how to get each step's name to start with D.  The steps are, in order:  Create a plan, Create a Team, Define the problem, Develop a Containment Plan, Determine Root Cause, Choose corrective actions, Implement and Validate corrective actions, Take Preventive Measures, and Congratulate the team.  Since "Congratulating the team" would often involve spending money on pizza or a handsome framed certificate, it is skipped 83% of the time.  

All that said, television entertainment should be in a near-constant state of improvement as people learn what other people look for in entertainment.  There really is no question that the bulk of TV shows now are of better quality than those of even 20 years ago, leave alone the 1950's.  Not just in terms of production value, but in editing, effects, acting, sound, and picture quality.  As great a TV show as "The A-Team" was back in the 80s, it's positively cheesy by today's standards, and Mr.T's acting chops are nothing short of disgraceful.  Sure, all of the old shows have great nostalgia factor, but as productions and works of the art of entertainment, they simply don't hold a candle to what can be done today.  

Then, along comes some unbelievably bad show such as "How To Be A Gentleman," "Pan Am," "The Playboy Club," or "Work It," and you're left wondering where the process broke down.  Somebody somewhere along the line between pitching the idea for the show, developing the initial script, rewrites, network reviews, producing the pilot, and test screenings should have been able to say, "Wait a second here, folks.  This show is atrocious.  Let's just stop and do something better."  

That didn't happen here, and this show (We'll stick with "How To be A Gentleman") was allowed to pollute the airwaves for a full hour and a half before the show was mercifully yanked from the universe after 3 episodes.  Nobody misses it.  Nobody liked it.  Yet, somebody (A whole lineup of people, actually) thought it was a good idea.  If these people lived in the engineering world, a structured problem solving method such as 8D, 8-Step, A3, FMEA, DMAIC, DILAWRI, Taguchi, Ishikawa, Seven-Step, NEVDGP, BSI (No, I'm not making ANY of those up) would have been used to identify why that program was allowed to air, why it went so appallingly wrong, and how to change the process so that an atrocity like that never makes its way to television again.  If that were the case, after a number of iterations, we would arrive at an asymptotic space where we've basically come up with the greatest TV show possible.  Clearly, we're not there yet, so I'm pretty sure the network execs haven't used this method.  For a comparatively small consulting fee, I'd be willing to train them. 

Well, You Are

Dear Vancouver:  Is it okay to say “You’re welcome” now?  

What exactly is Vancouver thanking you for?

Well, I didn't do anything.  But, the person in charge of the Los Angeles Kings' official Twitter account did.  We'll begin with a brief rant.

Yay!  People like those!

We live in a very strange age.  An age where corporate profits are of more importance than just about anything else, an information age, and an age of total wussification.  (Normally, I call it "The Wussification Of America," but today, we'll be talking about Canada.)  Sometimes, all of these things intersect and people just go nutty.  For instance, last week.  

The Los Angeles Kings were set to take on the #1 seed Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference Quarterfinals (This is hockey, BTW).  This is all well and good, except when you factor in that outside of Vancouver, the Canucks are one of the most hated NHL teams outside of Philadelphia.  Their fans have a reputation (deserved or otherwise) of being uninformed, overly biased, spoiled homers.  This is further exacerbated by the game announcers on their local TV feeds who exhibit many of the same traits.  On top of this, the players themselves have a reputation for being spoiled, whiny, prissy, and dirty, with some even getting Called Out In The Media about their antics. Some of the players did nothing to change people's opinion of them, Some Even Made It Worse.  

After the Kings' victory in Game 1 of this series, the folks in charge of the LA Twitter account jumped the gun a bit in talking a little smack by posting, "To everyone in Canada outside of BC, you're welcome."  Vancouver fans were quick to jump all over this saying, and rightfully so, that one game does not a series make.  However, it did not end there.  

Since the 24-hour news networks have fill about 23 1/2 hours per day of stuff that's not actual news, and they employ far fewer actual reporters than they used to, the folks in the newsroom have taken to scouring the internet for what might be passable as interesting.  Some reporters alit upon this (It bothers me that the spell checker on the Blag here doesn't recognize the word "Alit") and turned the Kings' Twitter into a News Item.  This is pretty sad.  

In addition to the sorry state of journalism at play here, we have another black mark on the NHL.  This playoff season has been pretty rough and there have been a number of large penalties and suspensions meted out for dangerous play, and that, along with somebody's Twitter feed, is what has dominated the headlines.  This LA/Vancouver series featured some of the best stories the NHL had to offer, with some highlight-reel goals, fast-paced action, hard hitting, and three of the best goaltenders in the league.  So, to all fans of hockey who got to watch this series and didn't pay attention to the lousy media coverage, "You're Welcome."    

Honking Would Have Been Too Ironic

Apparently, geese are allowed to jaywalk

I guess they have trouble with the signs indicating the crosswalk.

Whatever the reason, geese in general suck at crossing the road.  

They should take lessons from the chicken.  She's a pro.

So I was driving to work recently.  This involves several stoplights, including one at the entrance to a store that we'll call, "Sleeping Room, Rest Room, and Further" that has a traffic light.  As is my custom, I completely missed the light, so I'm stopped at the red.  While I'm waiting for the green light, a goose starts crossing through the intersection...pretty much right across the middle.  Stupid thing was so busy not watching the car coming out of the parking lot that had to drive around him that he didn't even notice that the light was changing.  By the time the light on my side was green, the goose was directly in front of my car.  There was oncoming traffic, so I couldn't go around him, so I had little choice but to sit there looking like a dope while the goose finished crossing the road. 

Feel The Burn!

Here’s a Fun Fact!   Leg Day at the gym makes you fall up the stairs when you get to work

We should change the name of the Blag here from "Jeremy Is In The Office" to "Jeremy Is A Pinhead."  

I disagree, and since I'm the one doing all the typing, I'm pretty sure I'll get my way.

I have my methods.

So anyway, today's Sametime Status is brought to you by the fact that I tripped all over myself trying to walk up the stairs to my office recently.  It's actually Not The First Time I've fallen on a flight of stairs for your amusement, but this time was different because I fell going up the stairs rather than down.  That makes all the difference or something.

I also wanted to let everyone know that today is National High Five Day, so make sure you celebrate by high fiving somebody.  

Don't Even Ask About The French Fries

Long John Silver is the pirate equivalent of Barney Stinson.  Discuss

I never understood why his trees were so cold.

So anyway, for today's edutainment, I return to the world of classic literature.

Return?  

The great Robert Lewis Stevenson, whose name is spelled with a V, upon further review, once wrote his piratey masterpiece "Treasure Island."  I say "Once" because I can't be bothered to look up the fact that it was published in 1883.  

Anyway, it's an adventure story featuring pirates, buried treasure, talking parrots, cannons, and possible swashbuckling.  Believe it or not, before "Treasure Island," was published, the general perception of pirates was very different.  This novel is where the ideas of peg legs, treasure maps, talking parrots, and phrases like "shiver me timbers" come from.  One novel has forever changed the way people believe pirates acted, spoke, and looked.  Long story short, International Talk Like A Pirate day would not exist if it weren't for R.L. Stevenson.  

Barney Stinson is a character on the whimsical sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" and I've probably referenced him in the Blag here at some point before.  You should be familiar with him.  If you're not take a couple minutes and Get Acquainted.  I submit to you that the characters of Barney Stinson and Treasure Island's Long John Silver are roughly the same. 

As you may have noticed, Barney has a number of catch phrases, such as "Suit Up!" and an overuse of the word "Awesome."  Long John Silver (who is officially the ship's cook, hence the name of the restaurant, although Hush Puppies weren't invented until the 1860's fully 100 years after the setting of Treasure Island, so I have no explanation for that), also has a number of catch phrases, like the aforementioned "Shiver me timbers" which he says a number of times. 

Both characters tell stories for personal gain, ending with a line meant to instill confidence in the validity of the tale.  In Silver's case, he ends many MANY sentences with the phrase "and you may lay to that." which is in every way the equivalent of Barney's famous, "True story."

Both characters go through an intervention staged by their associates.  Barney is given an intervention to assist in his addiction to performing magic tricks involving fire, while Silver is given the "Black Mark" by his crew for the supposedly failed treasure-hunting mission.

Both characters have the morals of a pirate, (which is more understandable in one case, since he actually is a pirate) willing to change loyalties and activities to serve their personal gain.

In conclusion...it should now be quite clear that Barney Stinson is a modern day Long John Silver...and you may lay to that.  

Anxiously Waiting The Third

Fan Of The Game!

 Any game in particular?  Or just the regular Internet game which you just lost?

Actually, I'm a bit of a celebrity now.  In addition to running my very own roughly-daily comedy Blag, almost being a Published Author, having a couple patents, and getting my name up on a couple volleyball tournaments' winners websites, I was bestowed a new honor over the weekend (and NOT for my continued use of the Oxford Comma).  Yes, boys and girls, I was presented the award for being the Manchester Monarchs' Fan Of The Game.  

So you won a drawing.

It's more than just a drawing.  It's a prestigious honor that is only shared by a handful of devoted followers.  

You won a drawing.

In addition to having my name up in lights on the Jumbotron, I had tribute bestowed upon me.

You were handed team logo Swag.


I was presented with a regal hooded sweatshirt as well as a logo cap.  I would have been granted passage to a future event as well...but there weren't any more.


So you didn't get tickets to the next game, since it was the last home game of the season.  Probably just as well, since the arena is a couple hours away.


You really do take the fun out of everything, don't you?


It's what I do.  


At least I got to walk through the concourse of the Shameless Corporate Sponsor Arena in Manchester announcing, "Make Way for the Fan Of The Game!"  I hope you don't think I'm making that up, because it totally happened.  I have witnesses.

That Might Have Hurt

License Plate:  “YOUNEK”  Anyone know what that means?

No...I sure don't.  

Me either.  It's one of those times where I get so confused by something that I just have to try to figure it out, and I'm having no luck.  It's obviously some sort of vanity plate, since it seems very unlikely that this pattern of letters would be arbitrarily assigned by the DMV of that particular state.  (It was, in fact, an out-of-state license plate)   

Only two things come to mind when trying to decrypt "YOUNEK," and the first is something that really should never be on a license plate.  That would be "Eunuch," but enough about that.  The only other thing that makes sense, if you want to use the word "sense" here, would be a complete, or unique, way to spell "Unique."  At this point, given the usual constraints of a license plate, I would think one could come up with any number of better ways to convey "Unique" in a unique way that would actually seem more likely to leave the reader thinking "Unique" instead of "Eunuch."  Examples would be "YOUNEEK," "YUNEEK", "YOUNIQ" etc.  

So there you have it...your homework assignment for the weekend.  Figure this nonsense out and let me know what the frig this idiot is talking about.  Unless, of course, they really are a eunuch, at which point, I'm sorry I made fun of you. 

A Whole Cruiseship Full Of Facepalms

So wait…this whole “Titanic” thing was real? 


Uhm...yes.  You know all those movies about the Civil War?  Well, that was a real thing, too.  


This week marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious cruise ship of its time.  I say "of its time" because luxury liners have come a long way since then, and the newest ones, such as Royal Caribbean's "Oasis Of The Seas" positively dwarfs the Titanic by all measures.  "OOTS" measures about 300 feet longer, 90 feet wider and 9 stories taller than Titanic did on her maiden (read: only) voyage.  More On That Here. 


Size of the ship is only important in relation to the size of James Cameron's ego, as his 1997 smash hit "My Heart Will Go On"....I mean..."Titanic" obliterated box office records becoming the first film to gross over 1 Billion dollars in theaters.  It would hold the record until James Cameron topped himself with "Avatar," a movie also about really large things, but in this case, really large blue people.  I digress.  



Here's a fun fact: Jeremy was once mistaken for James Cameron in a casino by a guy who had been awake and drinking at a poker table for what appeared to be far too long.  True story. 




Anyway, the film left a lasting impression on many people and led to some (unintentionally?) whimsical headlines Like This One. So much so, in fact, that far too many people took this film to be purely a work of fiction and not a fictional story set within the realm of an actual historical tragedy.  Yes, folks...some people think James Cameron made up this whole "Titanic" thing just to pad the box office receipts.  One of my most famous quotes (That people misquote me on ALL THE TIME, but they get the general idea, so I guess it's okay) is as follows: "Given the slightest opportunity, people will amaze you with their stupidity."  Well, the Internets are a glorious opportunity for people to show off how dumb and uninformed they are.  Fortunately for the rest of us, there are websites that take advantage of this to amuse and entertain.  So, direct from Failblog, I give you:  These People Had No Idea Titanic Was A Real Ship. 

You Know What Those Things Are Made Of?

Pizza Hut now has a pizza with a hot-dog-stuffed crust.  I’m not making this up

But...but...no?

I Really Wish This Wasn't True.  I just can't...no.  I can't. 

Unlike The Skeleton Joke...That's Just Hilarious

The problem with lawyer jokes is that lawyers don’t think they’re funny and the rest of us don’t think they’re jokes

 What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 50?  "Senator."  

I heard lawyers were good people deep down, so I buried one!

What's the difference between a lawyer and a vulture?  Frequent Flier miles!

Ah, yes.  The Lawyer Joke.  Long a staple of comedians and blaggers and the type of crap you've come to expect here.  

In fairness, we never really know what kind of crap we'll get here.  

 Well, today is International Be Kind To Lawyers Day.  I know this because lawyers are so shady, they Made Their Own Website to get people to stop picking on them for one day.  One of the ways they recommend for celebrating today is to refrain from telling lawyer jokes for 24 hours.  Oops. 

Just Needs A Mullet

More amused than I should be that somebody named Bubba won the Masters

There's a golfer named Bubba?

I guess strictly speaking, there's a golfer named Gerry Lester Watson Jr.  He goes by the nickname "Bubba" which delights the crap out of me.  

See, golf is a very genteel sport, full of peaceful walks through nature, picturesque settings, dress codes and the occasional profanity.

Slightly more occasional if people golf as badly as you do.

So when a golfer with a low-brow name like "Bubba" comes in and wins not only a golf tournament,  but possibly the most prestigious tournaments in the country (And I just learned today it's the only PGA major tournament that is always held at the same golf course).  The course itself is far from lacking controversy, as a matter of fact.  The Augusta National Golf Club only admitted rich white men to membership until 1990.  The rich part was actually optional, but nobody who isn't rich can afford to be a member, so I added that to the criteria myself.  The rule excluding black members was eliminated in 1990 when Ron Townsend was offered membership.  There remain no female members of Augusta, although you'll be pleased to know that women are allowed to carry the golf bags of members around the course. 

Rip It Up and Move Down At The Same Time, Apparently

I’m okay with having fun, but I have no idea how to Wang Chung

Jeremy's singing to himself again.  We should have some time.

Actually, I'm just making fun of the song "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung.  You see, there are very few hard and fast rules when it comes to music, but one of them is something I like to refer to as "Jeremy's Big Rule #1."  It states:

• If the lyrics of your song include the name of your group, it's a bad song.

It's actually pretty universal, covering just about every rap song, anything written by Kid Rock, and the aforementioned Wang Chung ditty. 

What about "Bad Company" by Bad Company?  From the album "Bad Company"?

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule...

"Rock and Roll Band" by Boston?

That one's kinda tenuous.  They're just referring to the city in the lyrics, not the band.

"Wild Wild West" by Escape Club?

Actually kind of a loophole there.  The full-length recording has the section in the middle where they say "Here comes Escape Club to rock you tonight" and that part is ridiculous and pretty well puts the whole song right down the pan.  However, the radio edit cuts that nonsense out, leaving a pretty decent song.  

ANYWAY...the point is that the Wang Chung song is pretty lousy and hasn't stood the test of time very well.  It also includes the line "Everybody Wang Chung tonight" which I have no idea how to pull off.  According to The Google, Wang Chung is Chinese for "Wang Chung"so their translation is no help.  

The opening lines of the song are "I'll drive a million miles to be with you tonight."  He'd be taking a ridiculously circuitous route to get there, since one million miles would circle the earth just over 40 times.  

All in all, I don't think we can put a whole lot of stock in the lyrics to this song.  Turns out to not matter much, since nobody likes it anyway.  

Don't Ask Where My Computer Was

When coming to work, an ID Badge is much more useful than a garage door opener

In most cases, I'm sure that's true.  But what if you work in a garage?

 Valid point, but I don't work in a garage.  I work in an office which requires employees to scan an ID badge in order to enter the building.  I know this.  I also have a garage at my house which requires clicking a button in order to open the door.  I know this as well.  

To facilitate going in to work, I have one of the aforementioned ID badges.  It stays in my car, locked safely away when I'm not at work.  It stays there so that I don't forget to bring it with me and have to drive back home to get it.  Smart.  

To facilitate going home, I have a remote control for the garage door.  This was all well and good until I got a car which could be programmed to mimic the door controls.  Once I got that set up, I had no need for the remote, but wanted to keep it around just in case, so I tucked it away in the little storage bin in my car that also contains my work ID badge.  There's plenty of room for both, and it's out of the way, so I don't have to think about it.  Smart.  

I keep my work ID badge on a lanyard that I got as a piece of corporate swag from one of my suppliers.  83% of all ID badge lanyards at my office were obtained this way.  On occasion, the lanyard itself gets caught up in the clip for the garage door opener and the remote comes along for the ride when being pulled out of the storage compartment in the car.  Not usually a problem, I free the remote and re-stow it.  In a recent case, my brain didn't work As Well As It Usually Does and as I grasped the conglomerate lanyard/garage door opener, I thought to myself, "I don't need all this."  I disconnected the remote from the lanyard and tossed the lanyard back in the storage and set off to work holding my garage door opener.  Not smart. 

Fat Stacks, But Over Time

If you’re reading this, you didn’t win either

I'm pretty sure I won at least a couple bucks by not playing.  

For those who enjoy living in caves, last week marked the highest lottery jackpot in American history.  Like so many other lemmings, I threw some money at tickets for the thing.  Basically, the logic was as follows:  I'm not going to win, but I can at least sleep tonight knowing that I gave it the ol' college try.  

None of us won.  

Let's be realistic here.  If I won 600-some million dollars, I wouldn't be writing this Blag anymore.  This whole thing came about by having to explain my instant messenger's status far too often.  If I win 600 million bucks, I won't be working anymore.  If I'm not working, I don't have to use the instant messenger.  If I don't use the instant messenger, I don't have to change the status.  If I don't change the status, there's nothing to explain, so no Blag.  It's a little sad to think about, but I simply wouldn't be doing this anymore.

You're in the same boat, as loyal readers.  If you won 600 million dollars, you're too busy fielding phone calls from long lost relatives who want to reconnect, old grade school friends who have great new business ideas, and charities who know who's new to the disposable income game.  You wouldn't be sitting around reading amateur comedy blags.  Unless, of course, you've decided that your new business venture with all of your new-found wealth is that of a sitcom producer looking for the next hot new talent...at which point, by all means, use the comment section here to get in touch with me.

Now...all that said...I came closer than you did to winning 600 million dollars last week.  I came closer to winning the lottery last week than I have in my entire life, and that spans all 3 or 4 times I've played the lottery.  I actually did have 4 of the 6 numbers right, on the same ticket no less, which entitled me to a nice dinner's worth of winnings, but a far cry from the obscene sum I was looking for when I bought the tickets.  So, bottom line...yes, I won some money in the lottery, no it's not enough to bother mugging me in the parking lot, yes I'm still working and coming up with great new Sametime Statuses for your entertainment, yes I want you all to come back tomorrow.  Money hasn't changed me.