Surfergeeks

Ireland called again Wednesday night. It was like 10pm our time which would have made it 2am their time. I should have answered it. Next time, I will.

So I’m sitting at work yesterday talking to another senior and an agent when my phone rings. I reach down and silence it and then take a look at the call display to see who it is that’s calling me. After all – if it appears to be important I will take it. The number that comes up is +35314593153. Hmm…definitely not a local number. So, over to Google I go to find out that the call was coming from Ireland. I almost wished I’d answered it now…it may have been Bono, or Sinead O’Connor. Maybe the IRA was attempting to recruit me for my computer skills…oh well, if they really want me, they’ll try again…

…ah well, at least you can always get a job at McDonald’s. Oh wait! This link tells us that you’re next-best dream job of taking orders in drive-thru has…well…been outsourced. Read all about it.

I’ll be posting this over the course of the day as there is so much stuff I want to vent, rant, and/or tell you about.

First off – Jack Astor’s has lost my business for good. Nikki & I stopped in there last night for supper and were extremely disappointed. The service was fine (the waiter forgot our refills but he admitted it and apologized) and the food was good. It’s the atmosphere of the place that has ruined it for us (Well, me anyway, I’ll let Nic make up her own mind). Jack’s used to be a hella cool place to eat – they had fun menus, fun staff, great food and terrific value! Then, sometime last year-ish they changed the menus. Gone were the fun menus – only to be replaced by a menu you would more expect to see at an upper class fine dining establishment. Some of the items disappeared, others changed, and of course, prices increased. Still a pretty decent value. So…onto last night…in we go. New menu yet again. Still got that stuffed-shirt look to it except now there is “scrawling” in the borders and white spaces with stupid little quotes and things like that. Prices have increased a little bit on some items BUT WAIT, what’s this? Jack’s Garlic Pan Bread is NO LONGER INCLUDED in entreés!!! They charge an extra $1.29 (without cheese – forgot to check how much it was with cheese) for any entreé! Not just pan bread either – soup? salad? forget it unless you’re willing to shill out the extra coin. Maybe I’m just being picky and unrealistic but why would you spend years building a reputation for a specific atmosphere and become well known for the amazing pan bread then go and change all that??? It makes no sense. Sure, they’ve decreased food cost by doing that but how many people like myself will no longer go back? Will the food cost savings offset the loss of income? Only time will tell but I rest easy knowing that it won’t be my dollars going there.

What’s better than the Spider-Man 2 movie? A parody of the Spider-Man movie made with Lego.

Check it out –> Link

So, bored at work and started talking to one of my agents about the origins of words. He ended up getting a call, but as this topic had piqued my interest, I did a quick google search. Found a couple of really amazing sites.

http://www.krysstal.com/wordname.html

http://www.etymonline.com/

On our way into work today I made a reference to Michael Milken. Nikki had no clue who I was talking about. In fact, I’d probably be willing to be that very few visitors to this site now who Milken is. If you do – cool – if not, he was a stock/bond broker who, in the eighties, created the ‘junk bond’ and made MILLIONS from it. He subsequently was charged with a whole ton of securities violations and spent some time in a federal white-collar prison (read ‘country club’, not federal pound-you-in-ass prison). So anyway, I couldn’t remember the name of the broker he worked for so when I got to work I jumped on Google to find out. (turns out it was Drexal Burnham Lambert) The site I found this on was www.weht.net – self-described as “the online compendium of ‘what ever happened to…?’ and ‘where are they now?’”. This is a pretty cool site.

So anyway, whilst whittling away the minutes at work I was browsing through this site and found out something that I never knew: The one(or two)-hit-wonder group Men Without Hats, best known for Saftey Dance, is Canadian! I always thought they were Australian. So did Nikki. I’m not sure why though. The only thing I can think of that could possibly make me think that is because the group Men At Work is Australian – ergo all bands that start off with the word ‘Men’ followed by a preposition of sorts is Australian. Weird.

Anyhoo, if you want to kill half an hour or so head over to that site. They don’t have a lot of stars but there’s some pretty goods one in there.

I have just realized that I am likely to be a sappy mother.

When Rob and I got home from work, Rob noticed that both Pika and Freya were walking next to each other. He also pointed out that they were the same size; same height, same length (width is a different story and beside the point).

My first reaction? *SOB* My baby has grown up. She’s not a cute, fuzzy kitten anymore.

Oh well, she may not be a kitten anymore, but at least she is still cute and fuzzy.

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/

Ok, how cool is this. Google in Klingon!

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-piglatin/

Or, how about pig latin?

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

What about in L33T?

If you tried to visit the site earlier today you may have received a rather disturbing message about the account being disabled. After a bit of research I found out that the hosting company that I “buy” server space from apparently had some type of problem. Not sure exactly how long the site was unavailable but as you can see, it’s back up now.

Not sure if this is a temporary thing or if all problems have been resolved – whatever the case, I’ve started to plan out a backup in case of such emergency.