I'm ducking out for most of the day today to do an inspection for work, so I doubt I'll have time to post anything here. But I read today's Sheldon comic and laughed at how accurate it seems to be. If you've ever been on Facebook, you can judge for yourself:
See this comic here, and the rest of the archive is worth perusing, if you're new to the comic.
It almost snuck up on me, but I remembered to check last week and see exactly when I had first posted here on Vox. If you haven't guessed already, that was a year ago, today. I'm not going to make too big a deal out of it, but I'm pretty proud of my year here on Vox. I feel like this is the first blog I've kept where I have actually written things on a regular basis, and made an attempt (sometimes) to write quality (in my opinion) posts (and even occasionally posted them for others to read!)
I'm going to copy Dave's format and list some links below to recap my past year's posts. Some are funny or interesting, and some may only be of note to me, but if you haven't seen them before, you might want to take a look to see what I've been doing here for the past year.
Total posts since joining Vox (not including this one): 405 (~34 posts a month, or a little over a post a day, on average)
Looking back, I'm pretty happy with how this blog turned out over the past year. I'm just going to keep writing and hope I can say the same next time we make it around the sun.
Thanks for all the people that did this today that reminded me that today's Tuesday! This is my first one of these, and while I don't plan on doing it every week, I hope to do it often enough to remind myself of some of the stuff I take for granted, and learn not to sweat the small stuff.
Things I Loathe
Things I LOVE
Last week I came home from work relatively early one day because my mother-in-law was going to watch the kids while Dee and I went out for a belated Valentine's Day meal.
We were walking out the door to the restaurant when my wife said, "Did you see the pants with the hole in the back? They look sort of like the ones you've got on, and I wanted to make sure you weren't going to wear them before we sewed them up."
To which I replied, "No, I didn't see any pants with holes in them. Where was it?" I craned my head around to see if I could identify whether I was wearing said pants, when we both suddenly realized that indeed, I was wearing said pants.
AND HAD BEEN FOR A FULL WORK DAY.
I came home last Thursday to find a package waiting for me. After some confusion (I didn't order anything and wasn't sure why I was getting a box from Costco.com), I opened it to find:
a brand new Garmin Nuvi 650 GPS unit that my awesome parents had bought for me as a present! I was so excited that I set it up to use for the very next day on my way to work, and now that I've had a chance to play with it, I can't tell you how much fun it is. Obviously, it's not really necessary for use on my drive to/from work (although it is fun to see the turns coming up ahead, or know how long I've been sitting stock-still in traffic), but it's going to be VERY handy for me.
I tell people that I have absolutely NO sense of direction. Seriously, I could get lost in a walk-in closet. I have managed to get lost in a 3 block drive between my grandparents' house and the local video store. Not something to be really proud of, but I've accepted that I just can't handle the spatial relationships that make up directions until I've driven a route a few times. This GPS looks to be a lifesaver for me for those times that I've been to a place less than 2-3 times, especially as it recalculates any time I go off route (e.g. make a wrong turn a street too early and end up spending another 20 minutes trying to find my way back to where I was).
Share your cell phone ring tone.
Submitted by Ross.
Usually my phone is on silent+vibrate, so it's not often I hear it, but lately I've had the first 20 seconds or so of this song as my ring tone. It's tame enough that it's not going to piss anyone off if it plays while I'm not around to answer the phone, but loud enough that I'll be able to hear it and get to it in time.
It shouldn't be "….Death and Taxes", it should be "Death TO Taxes!".
Although this year, it seems I am in for a surprise – I just got word from my accountant mother1 that I'm getting about a $3500 Federal tax refund and a $700 state tax refund this year. I guess having another kid has paid off in the short run.2
I guess the only problem is I'm not exactly sure how much to adjust my withholdings for next year so I'm not leaving Uncle Sam with such a big interest-free loan.
1Aren't I the luckiest guy to have a CPA for a mom? Seriously, I could do my own taxes, but it's nice just to send off a copy of all my tax docs and VERY nice that she doesn't even charge me for doing them!
2I'm not going to even think about how much money I'm going to have to spend on her in the long run. Just leave me to my delusions that I've got some extra money right now, okay?
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<Rant>
I came home a couple days ago to find my daughter playing with her new happy meal toy: a small figurine from The Spiderwick Chronicles that has a little button on the back that makes a small light in the birdhouse? the character is holding light up. I tried shining it on the wall to see if it made a dot, but it didn't seem to do much. Then I found the instructions:
So basically, you look through a little viewfinder which is backlit by the figurine's light, and you see an image, either a crow or a goblin. I'm sure this is in line with the premise of the movie somehow. I've got a little problem, though, with this toy (and McDonald's, by association) advocating that my child shine (bright) lights into her eyes from 12" away.
Sure, I can (and do) tell/teach her not to do this, but she's young enough still that she doesn't understand the consequences of staring at a bright light or at the sun, etc, even if I were to explain them to her. So I would appreciate if McDonald's wouldn't compound the issue by making it seem like it is OK to do this by way of a toy.
</Rant>
