I can't believe there's only 1 week left in October.  Where has this month gone????!

It's been over a month since I've blogged, but honestly, I don't have anything new to write about.  I can write about my daughter, but that's just more of the same old story - although I haven't paid anything for her in about a month because I have my own damn bills to pay. 

I could write about work.  In fact, I think I will write about work.

This week has been one hell of a week!  We're in the process of rolling out Blackberries to some of our employees, so last week I was in Lancaster on Tuesday and Hagerstown on Thursday to get these Blackberries ready.  This week, I was in Lancaster on Monday and Tuesday - Monday to finish up the Blackberries and then Tuesday to sit in on training and assist with another training session.   On Wednesday and Thursday I was in Hagerstown (driving the 2-1/2 hour round trip each day) for assisting with training sessions each day.

As it stands now on Thursday night, I have almost my entire 40 hours in for the week, so I'm only planning on working a very short time on Friday - mainly just to respond to e-mails that have piled up over the past few days.

It's really amazing how the attitude of people varies from office to office.  For example, with these Blackberries, there are people at each office who are supposed to help get them ready to be distributed because after they are distributed, those people on site are responsible for maintaining them.  Well, when I went to Lancaster last week, nobody helped me with the Blackberries.  I had to do them all by myself and I was highly pissed.

I will say, however, that when I first got there, one woman asked me about helping and since I hadn't had any experience with these particular Blackberries prior to that day, I told her that I wanted to work on one or two myself to figure out exactly how the proces was supposed to work.  I didn't see the point of having other people around me and we were all trying to fumble our way through the process.

Later, when I was ready for help, a different woman came up to me and asked me if I had all of the Blackberries done.  I told her that I was there to HELP with the Blackberries and not do them all by myself.  She then proceeded to change the subject and then disappeared.

So, those people have absolutely no fucking clue how to set one of these Blackberries up and the first time they call me for help, I'm going tell them how it is.

The one woman there asked me about documentation, but our documentation for the setup process flat out sucks.  It refers to figures/screenshots that aren't there and the menus shown for some functions are completely different than what is displayed on the Blackberry.  I'm afraid that if I just give them the documentation, they'll be calling me even more to ask me about things that aren't clear in the documentation.  

Now, if they had walked through the process with me and made notes on the directions as we went along, then they could do this on their own.

Also, when I went back to Lancaster on Monday, two of the people who should have helped me were off that day. 

The difference between Lancaster and Hagerstown was like the difference between night and day.

In Hagerstown, when I was there last Thursday, I had 4 people helping to set up the Blackberries - including 2 guys who were scheduled to be off that day!   They were great and they asked a lot of questions and even called me a couple of days in advance to see what they could do to get a head start.

Oh... back to Lancaster.  When I first got there, the one woman was all proud how they printed out labels for each Blackberry with the employee's name.  I pointed out that the Blackberry was going to go inside a protective case, so the labels were going to need to be removed - or else they'd be covered up. 

Anyhow, it's amazing how they thought that was being helpful.

I'm also kind of annoyed that I had to do this Blackberry rollout in two different sites this week.  On top of that, I did another project involving our wireless network in each site AND another project in Hagerstown, so I had an EXTREMELY busy week.

With this wireless network project, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall in trying to get my teammates to get their asses moving on their sites.   This project needs to be done by the end of the year and unless they have a sudden attack of motivation, we're not going to be done on schedule, and then I'll be the one who is made to look bad, so I guess it's time to hound my teammates once again....

But enough about work.

I guess I could talk about my "love life", or lack thereof.

I think I'm giving up.  I was a member on Match.com recently, but I'm just so fucking sick and tired of those sites - or more specifically, the women on those sites. 

I suppose I could just strike up a conversation with a woman that I see somewhere, but I still just don't do that.  It's not that I'm afraid to do it.... Hell, this past week while doing this wireless network project at work, I had to be lifted up on a forklift 30 or so feet in the air to replace some devices in our warehouse ceiling.  Did I mention that I'm afraid of heights?  I just did it!   So, I'm sure that if I really wanted to go up to some woman whom I find attractive, I can just do that too.... but I don't.

So I think that I'm just going to go about my life and if I'm meant to meet someone, I will.  I'm not actively looking for anyone.

I've been doing really well concerning exercising - until this past week.  I've only exercised one day over the past 8 days.  I need to get back into it over this weekend.  Unfortunately, this coming week could also turn out to be somewhat hectic at work.

Well, that's what's going on with me these days.  I think it's time to get to bed.

It's around 2:45 AM and I'm sitting here on my sofa, sipping a Mojito and watching "Transsiberian" on DVD.  I'm not into the movie too much (so far, anyhow), so I thought I'd break out my laptop and write a blog.

I've been on vacation this past week and I can't believe tomorrow/today is my last day off before I head back to work.  This week really flew by, but I did a couple of things...

Monday, I went to Shady Maple Smorgasbord in Lancaster County with my dad, mom, niece and nephew to celebrate my dad's birthday.  My dad turned 70 last Sunday and he LOVES Shady Maple and wanted to go there since you get a free breakfast, 20% off one item in their gift shop and a free pack of Whoopie Pies from their grocery store on your birthday.  Since the place is closed on Sundays - because it's run by Amish people, we had to go Monday.  (I think you have to go there within 2 days of your birthday, actually.)

After leaving Shady Maple, we went to the Park City Mall/Center in Lancaster to get my dad his birthday present.  He wanted a stereo system that looks like an old style radio, but it has a turntable and allows you to record your albums onto CDs.  We looked at Bon Ton and found one for $219, but my mom said it used to be $199 there.  Then we decided to look in the other big stores there to try to find it cheaper.  We went to Boscov's, JC Penny, Kohls - and pretty much walked all over the mall!

My mom mentioned that she had seen one of these stereos in Bed, Bath & Beyond, but apparently they don't have a store in Lancaster, so we came back to Harrisburg to check out what they had.  After that, we went to Target since I'd seen one in there before and then my dad wanted to see the one at Bon Ton again, so we stopped at the store in the Colonial Park Mall.  At the end of the day, we still hadn't bought it for him...  My mom wanted to see if she had a coupon for 20% off at Bed, Bath & Beyond and we made plans to go buy it later in the week.

It was A LOT of walking that day!!!!!

Tuesday I didn't do anything out of the ordinary but then I went to see "District 9" on Wednesday and "Inglorius Basterds" on Thursday.  I was going to go see "Halloween 2" on Friday, but traffic was a nightmare around the Harrisburg area and I wasn't going to make it in time, so I went to my mom's place and then she and I went to try to track down the stereo for my dad.

We went to dinner at TGI Fridays (her treat, no less!) and then we went to K-Mart, Boscov's, Sears, and Bon Ton - where we finally bought the damn thing!

Before we actually bought it, however, we saw the "Sale" sign on the thing listed the price as $250, so my mom started to have a cow and said "I'm going to talk to a manager!!!"  It turns out, the price was the same as it was at the store in Lancaster - just their sign was wrong.  Then, when we went to pay, I wanted to use a debit card I received as a rebate from Verizon for buying my new phone a few months ago.  The card was worth $70, but it kept getting rejected every time the sales clerk tried to use it.  I told her that it is supposed to be treated like a regular credit card and she said she was entering it that way.  I think, however, the problem was that she was trying to charge the whole amount to my card, not $70 and that's why it kept getting rejected.

Since I didn't make it to see "Halloween 2" yesterday, I went today.  After the movie, I went to the Capital City Mall.  I mean, I haven't been there ALL WEEK and I'm usually there every week day for lunch!  I went to Sears to see if they had any weed whackers left since mine died on me last weekend.  I was in the middle of using it last Sunday when it started smoking really badly and it eventually died.  I found one on sale for $40, so I bought it and then I ate dinner in the food court.  I'd been wanting to eat at Yummy Japan for awhile now, so I finally had my chance tonight.  This is a small restaurant in the food court, but they have a grill/hibachi to make the food while you wait.  I ordered their chicken and shrimp teriyaki and it was very good.

Tomorrow/today I need to mow my lawn and I will break out my new weed whacker and put it to its paces.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate.  I think it's supposed to be nice, anyhow.

Oh, one other thing happened on my vacation.  On Tuesday, my daughter called me and asked if I could help her with her car insurance. She needed $300 to help with that... so I asked her when she would be paying me back and she said next week after she got paid.  I looked at the calendar and said OK as long as I got repaid by Thursday. 

She is also behind on her car payments and she said that she wanted to get caught up on that by paying $400.  Now, I assumed she meant she had $400 now and since she wanted to pay that on her car, that was why she couldn't afford her car insurance.

So she stopped by my place Thursday afternoon to pick up a check and when I asked her about paying me back, she said it will be next week.  I kind of gave her a hard time about this and asked her why she can't pay me back this coming week.  She said she is going to use her next paycheck (she gets paid every week) to get caught up on her car payments.  So... I don't know what the heck she did with this week's paycheck.

Anyhow, I'll probably be lucky if I ever see that money again....

She pissed me off a couple of weeks ago too.  She asked if I could go to her bank and pay $200 on her car and then she was going to pay me back that weekend.  Well, when the weekend came, she said that she had to buy new contacts and she could only afford to pay me $100.  

So, right now, she actually owes me $400.  Plus, I paid $130 for her cell phone as a birthday present and I think I gave her more money back in the spring... which has turned into a gift, not a loan, although she said she would pay me back when I gave it to her.  Hell, I also think that she said that was going to be the last time that she asked me for money...

My mom has been bugging me about going on a trip sometime when I'm on vacation.  Because of the economy, they've frozen our travel at work, but I usually travel enough that when I have vacation, I like to just stay at home and relax.  My mom bought into some time-share crap last year and she had said about going to South Carolina, but I said I'd like to go to Las Vegas so she's been checking into that.  I'm not sure about going to Vegas with my mom, though....

Anyhow, if my daughter doesn't pay me back, I think that will rule out my trip to Vegas. 

Well, I think I'd better get to bed soon.  I'm going to have a hard time getting back on my sleep schedule tomorrow night.

I heard this song on Sirius the other day.  It's called "My Wena" and it's by Bowling For Soup.  I guess it's new... or fairly new.

Since I don't listen to regular radio, I don't know if they play this song.  If they do... well, it's pretty risque.  Sure, it's all tongue-in-cheek, but if you don't know what they're talking about... well, you're stupid.  Actually, the video should clear things up for you if you have any doubts.

You know the drill.  Stop the music above and click the video below to play it.

Here's another funny clip featuring Ned from the Bubba the Love Sponge show.  A running gag on the show is that Ned has sex with chickens, so here he calls about a contest and he has a slight misunderstanding of what the contest is all about.  After the call, they play a song, but you should stop the clip once the call ends because there is another video below featuring this song.  (Once again, make sure you stop my music player up above.)



OK.  Here's an actual video someone put together for that song.  Usually these videos are pretty stupid, but this one's kinda funny.  Apparently the person didn't understand what "drawers" are, however.  I mean, I'm sure they could have found a picture of Ned in his underwear and then had feathers coming out of them.  Also, this is a couple of years old - hence the reference to Terri Schaivo. 



"I'll be so still and quiet just like Terri Schiavo"??!  That's pretty funny.  If you're offended by that, what the fuck are you doing reading my blog???! 

Michael Jackson was a great entertainer back in the 80's & 90's.  There is no denying that.  The man changed the music industry.  Hell, before Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean", MTV was for rock music and they never played any videos by African-American artists.  Michael Jackson alone changed the landscape of MTV and put into motion a series of events that has resulted in the current incarnation of MTV being a completely different beast compared to when it was originally launched.  (Do they ever play music videos any more???!)  Also, Michael Jackson's video premieres for "Thriller" and other songs became events on MTV.

Of course, the man got in some trouble when he was accused of inappropriate behavior with young boys.  In all the articles I've read since the man died, and honestly it's not that many, they seem to either overlook his problems or they give the man the benefit of the doubt and believe that he was simply the target of greedy individuals.

I, however, think a bit differently.  What if he really did do perverted things with those young boys???!  I don't think he should be vilified.   I just think there should have been less of a spectacle made of his death and he shouldn't have been treated as if the President of the United States had passed away.

With that said, here are a few Michael Jackson jokes.... just because I have a weird sense of humor.  If you're likely to be offended, get out of my blog!  Don't say I didn't warn you!! 

So I heard that when Michael Jackson's doctor found him lying unconscious, he tried to perform CPR on him, but when he pinched Michael's nose to give him mouth-to-mouth, it came off!!!

According to the Coroner's report, Michael Jackson actually died of food poisoning.  It turns out he ate too many 12-year old wieners!!!!

I saw on the news the other day that a group of kids was gathering at the gate to Neverland Ranch.  They were waiting for the police to let them out!!!!!!

McDonalds is going to be honoring Michael Jackson with a new burger called the
McJackson.  It will have a 50-year old piece of meat between two 8-year old buns!!!

What's the difference between Michael Jackson and acne?  Acne didn't come on Macauley Culkin's face until he was 13!!!

Ok... that's enough.  

Here are two videos that you need to check out.  They're not Michael Jackson videos, although they are great parodies of his videos.

Eat It 

Fat

Weird Al is great!  Not only are they funny as hell (be sure you listen to the lyrics), it's amazing how he duplicated some of the scenes from Michael Jackson's videos.

And with that, I'm done.