I Love Thanksgiving Football

Or rather, I love wagering on Thanksgiving Football. Being on the West Coast, it's doubtful I'll be able to get up in time for the early game (it is a day off of work, after all). So I already made the call to the bookie (aka my friend who has a bookie) and locked in my bets for this week. I'm going with the Colts over the Lions (to hell with the spread, this is going to be a college style blow-out). This is my backup bet to my parlay of the day - Colts and Dallas. The Dallas game is pretty much even up (-3 at home against the Bears is just pick 'em in oddsmaker-speak). We'll see if I'm still playing with house money on Friday, or paying the house money. Gobble gobble.

Summertime

By The Sundays is what I'm listening to right now. Some old-school mod-rock for the blog. :)

Do some people wind up with the one that they adore
In a heart-shaped hotel room it’s what a heart is for
The bubble floats so madly will it stay sky-high?
Hello partner, kiss your name bye-bye

Ooh sometimes...

Romantic piscean seeks angel in disguise
Chinese-speaking girlfriend big brown eyes
Liverpudlian lady, sophisticated male
Hello partner, tell me love can’t fail

& it’s you and me in the summertime
We’ll be hand in hand down in the park
With a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye
& all the sunshine banishes the dark

Do some people wind up with the one that they abhor
In a distant hell-hole room, the third world war
But all I see is films where colourless despair
Meant angry young men with immaculate hair

Ooh sometimes...

Get up a voice inside says there’s no time for looking down
Only a pound a word & you’re talking to the town
But how do you coin the phrase though that will set your soul apart
Just to touch a lonely heart

& it’s you & me in the summertime
We’ll be hand down in the park
With a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye
& all the sunshine banishes the dark
& it’s you I need in the summertime
As I turn my white skin red
Two peas from the same pod yes we are
Or have I read too much fiction?
Is this how it happens?
How does it happen?
Is this how it happens?
Now, right now

Last Night

By The Strokes

Last night, she said:
"Oh, baby, I feel so down.
Oh it turns me off,
When I feel left out"

So I walked out:
"Oh, baby, don't care no more
I know this for sure,
I'm walkin' out that door"

Well, I've been in town for just about fifteen minutes now
And Baby, I feel so down
And I don't know why
I keep walkin' for miles

See, people they don't understand
No, girlfriends, they can't understand
Your Grandsons, they won't understand
On top of this, I ain't ever gonna understand...

Last night, she said:
"Oh, baby, don't feel so down.
Oh, it turns me off,
When I feel left out"

So I, I turn 'round:
"Oh, baby, gonna be alright"
It was a great big lie
'Cause I left that night, yeah

Oh, people they don't understand
No, girlfriends, they won't understand
Your grandsons, they won't understand
And me, I ain't ever gonna understand...

Last night, she said:
"Oh, baby, I feel so down.
See, it turns me off,
When I feel left out"

So I, I turn 'round:
"Oh, little girl, I don't care no more.
I know this for sure,
I'm walking out that door," yeah

Betting Update

I bombed out of the Google poker tournament last night. I was one of the first people out. I got bullied out of two low pocket pairs to begin the game, then got frustrated and went all in on a gut-shot straight which didn't draw (or course). On a brighter note, the Patriots covered my bet last night, so I'm now 2-1-1 since I started wagering on football again. I'm thinking the Colts should cover easily this Thursday against the Lions... but other than that "sure" pick, nothing jumps out at me. Maybe I should stare at the betting lines some more.

The Prevalence of the Internet

Wednesday is my favorite night of network television (my programming of choice now that I do not have cable). My two favorite shows - The West Wing and Law & Order - are on Wednesday nights, and it's the only night I actually make it a point to try and watch TV. During this week's TWW, one of the plot devices involved a White House staffer getting slammed on an Internet blog; while L&O found the whereabouts of a missing witness by "Googling" him. This Internet thing is really catching on, isn't it?

Google Poker

Google has a weekly poker tournament. I found out about this my first or second day here, but had not yet worked up the courage to go take on engineers and whatnot. I finally played last night, and came in second out of 29 players. I'm pretty proud of myself. :)

Come Join Us

By Bad Religion, is what I'm listening to at this moment. Awesome song.

so you say you gotta know why the world goes 'round
and you can't find the truth in the things you've found
and you're scared shitless 'cuz evil abounds
come and join us

well I heard you were looking for a place to fit in
full of adherent people with the same objective
a family to cling to and call brethren
come and join us

all we want to do is change your mind
all you need to do is close your eyes

so come and join us
come and join us
come and join us

don't you see the trouble that most people are in
and that they just want you for their own advantage
but I swear to you we're different from all of them
come and join us
I can tell you are lookin' for a way to live
where truth is determined by consensus
full of codified arbitrary directives
come and join us
all we want to have is your small mind
turn it into one of our own kind
you can go through life adrift and alone
desperate, desolate, on your own
but we're lookin' for a few more stalwart clones
so come and join us
come and join us
come and join us

we've got spite and dedication as a vehement brew
the world hates us, well we hate them too
but you're exempted of course if you
come and join us
independent, self-contented, revolutionary
intellectual, brave, strong and scholarly
if you're not one of them, you're us already so
come and join us

Look and Feel

Nothing illustrates the beauty and frustration of the digital age like getting a new computer. I recently started at Google as a Windows Systems Admin. On my first day, I was allocated one computer along with the usual accoutrements - keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. I started the task of "personalizing" my Windows XP computer. I know of many people who scoff at the meticulousness (they say obsessiveness) with which I customize and maintain my Windows interface. I firmly believe that the only way I can fully concentrate on my work tasks is if my Windows interface does not require any thought at all to navigate within.

I need my Cmd prompt to be located at certain places on the desktop and start menu. I need it to be configured to Quick Edit and have enough buffer size to enable proper scroll back (can't > everything to a text file). I need my directory structure to be completely neat and organized (unlike the rest of my life). There's nothing I hate more than not knowing where a file is and not having any idea where it should be. Filename searches are pretty much useless due to the lack of filenaming standards, so if I can't know the name of a certain file, I damn better know where that file should be on my drive. I also need my desktop icons just a certain way. I've noticed that there are two types of computer people - the laissez-faire ones that just let anything and everything appear on their desktop; and people like me, who obssessively preen and prune their desktop, then immediately lock everything in place.

I went through this process with my computer at work and settled down to do some "real" work. But then I was told that I would be allocated an additional workstation (which I decided would be my primary one since it was beefier), two more monitors (so now my primary workstation would be dual monitored), and a laptop. Holy shit, I think I'm going to have an aneurism.

In the beginning...

The hardest thing about blogging is not the material - everyday life has boatloads of material if you're the least bit perceptive - but just the act of starting. This is because the first post is always, always the lamest. With all apologies for this inauspicious start, I just had to crank something out just to get this process rolling. Don't get me wrong, I love to opine (whine?) about anything and everything, and I have definite long-term plans for my little piece of Blogger real estate (for instance, I want to somehow link this to the start page of my website - www.methodtim.net - but I'm, how shall I say, html-retarded).

That said, just the act of getting my first post on-line has become a monumental bitch. I have brain-lock like the Dickens. This is exhacerbated by the fact that I already have a low-tech blog-like journal on my site, which makes me feel like this particular blog has no frame of reference. I mean, it's not the start of something new, but I don't want to be rehashing things I covered on my personal site. So my solution is just to crank out this half-assed post just as a starting point - hopefully a starting point for greater and grander expositions about nothing in particular.

I guess you can look at this post in one of two ways: As a self-fulfilling prophecy that these three paragraphs will undoubtedly suck; or as a sly attempt by me to set the bar incredulously low, so that anything that comes after will shine in comparison. I'll let you know which one it is as soon as I figure it out myself.