Hehehe

According to this article, a prankster added "dog shit" as one of the ingredients on a packet of ham over in the UK.

And a bad Ron Artest joke:

Q:Why did Ron Artest leave before the game was over?

A: He wanted to beat the crowd.

For the Gamers

Calabasis

becomes one of the first cities in the nation to ban smoking outdoors when other people are present. I definitely applaud this decision. I am not allowed to pour toxic substances on other people's skin, so why am I allowed to put toxic smoke directly into their lungs?

The Rest of Last Week

Most of the weekdays of last week was spent either studying or watching Kings games.

The Kings had a 3 game winning steak going, before they lost a game they should have won in Orlando, and then lost again to Miami (which was expected). They play the 76ers tonight, and the line has the Kings losing by 5. Not good. Peja says he wants to stay in Sac for the rest of his career -- I've always been a Peja fan, but this year he has looked horrible and he hasn't been playing with any heart. He says he's had multiple injuries, including a back injury, which have been slowing him down. It'll be interesting to see if he gets traded, or whether he accepts less than max money to stay with the Kings. Brad Miller says after his contract with the Kings expires in 2010 that he wants to go back to Indiana to finish his career with the Pacers, even if he has to take the minimum amount to do so.

Worst name for a food product EVER:



I mean, seriously. WTF?

Saturday was game day with Jer, Matt, Matt's lil'sis Taylor, and Tracy's work friend Leslie. We played a game of Puerto Rico -- everybody was sure that Leslie was going to win even though she was a newbie, but it turns out that because it was such a shipping-poor game, Leslie (who had tons of money) ended up with almost no victory points. Matt had a horrible game, sitting just downstream of me, because I ended up playing the same strategy as him (by necessity, not out of spite). We also played Cities and Knights, which was a bizarre game as well. There were a ton of 2's, 3's, 9's, and 10's at the beginning of the game. Half the players lost their first city, which rarely happens. There were a ton of blue progress cards being delt to players too, so there was a lot of military action going on, which is also rare for us. Of course, I ended up drawing the intrigue card twice (it's the most useless card in the deck). I am going to make it a house rule that we don't play with that card, because in all the games I've ever played, I've never seen a use for that card even once because it's so situational.

Jer and I played Tetris Attack (Pokemon version) late into the night, and he beat me again -- he's a better player than I am, but not by much. I love that game. I wish they're release the Gamecube version -- sadly enough, they already have it finished (it was released in Japan), but Nintendo won't release it because they don't think it'll sell well here in the states. Bah on that!

QBA 502 -- Managerial Decision Analysis (post-week-2)

Wow, you blink and suddenly a week has gone by and you haven't posted anything on your blog.

Been doing LOTS of studying. As you may or may not know, the online classes at WP Carey are only 6 week long -- that's 5 weeks of studying, and 1 week for finals. Each week, we have a module to read, and a supplimentary textbook (which I've found useful for looking up specific concepts that weren't clear to me, but unnecessary to read in full so far). The modules are dense with material to learn, and then we have homework exercises to complete and a quiz to take at the end of every week to show that we've learned it.

The class I am taking right now is QBA 502, which is managerial decision analysis, aka statistics. I have been working hard to get ahead in case I run into a time crunch, and to make sure I have time to review my quizzes before I submit them. In order to get an A in the class, I need to score at least 180 points out of 200. Each missed quiz question is -1 points, so it's definitely important to do well on the quizzes.

Week 1 was pretty simple -- it covered basic stuff about data: how to create graphs in Excel, what a population and a sample is, what standard deviation is, etc... No sweat. Week 2, which I just completed last night, was significantly more difficult: normal populations, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and p-values. The material was a lot more dense and there was a lot more of it, the quiz questions were significantly tougher, and there were 22 of them. So far, between weeks 1 and 2, I've missed 2 quiz questions, meaning I have 18 more to blow between the next 3 weeks and the final (which is 50% of our grade).

Now I'm just getting started on week 3, which is regression testing. I haven't really delved into it yet, but it's supposed to be the toughest week, and I believe it. So far, I've covered least squares lines (a linear best-fit line for data on a scatterplot). That's easy, but I expect it to ramp up in toughness significantly now that I'm out of the introductory section.

So far, the workload has been entirely managable, and I am impressed with the overall quality of the modules and my fellow students.

My Adventures in Cooking Fish

Tracy and I were craving some salmon, and it was on sale at Safeway, so we bought a value-pack of the stuff. I went on the internet, and scrounged up an interesting sounding recipe. Now, my track record of tasty recipes that I have found on the internet is pretty good -- it's few and far between that I found a recipe that make me spew forth a stream of explitives, but that's exactly what happened on Sunday night.

The recipe was simple -- almost too simple. Take your salmon, and wash it in cold water. Towel it dry. Grate the skin of an orange (called zest), and rub the zest into the salmon with your fingers. Cover with a metric buttload of brown sugar. Fridge for 4-24 hours to marinate. All of this went without any real problems. However, when I pulled the salmon out, the brown sugar was gone, and my pieces of fish were sitting in a brown goo. Apparently, the brown sugar absorbed all of the water that was still in the salmon, turned into a liquid, and ran right off the fish and into the dish. Fat lot of good that did! Strike one for this recipe.

Now, the more interesting part of this recipe was how to cook the salmon. Basically, the recipe said "make your BBQ as hot as it will go for 15 minutes. Put the salmon on the grill. The skin on the bottom will burn, but that's okay because you're not going to eat that anyway. The fish will cook nicely."

So I opened up my BBQ to light it, and was immediately confronted with two problems: first, the entire grill was covered in white mold. YUCK! I guess some moisture got in there from all the rain we've been having. I scraped it off with a brush and figured that the heat would do a nice job of sterilizing the grill. The second problem was that the knob that controls the gas level wouldn't turn. Apparently my BBQ is a piece of shit (well, not apparently, I knew that already, what would I expect from something I bought at wal-mart?) and the knob mechanism isn't protected and with all the moisture we've been having, it RUSTED. So I brought out the WD-40 and eventually got it turning okay. I was wondering if the latent heat from lighting the BBQ would cause the WD-40 I put on the knob to ignite, causing the knob to melt in a fantastic dripping pile of plastic goo, but nothing so imaginative happened.

My auto-igniter hasn't worked for a long time (I don't even know why they include them -- they never work more than about 5 times before they break), so I generally light my grill using the "olympic method" -- you know what that is. Fold a paper towel up about 4 times until it resembles a torch, and jab it between the grill bars, then turn on the gas. Works like a charm, assuming you actually get it through the bars. Well, on my first attempt, I didn't, and had to drop the paper-towel on the grill itself lest I lose all the hair on my wrist. Of course, as soon as I did that, this huge gust of wind came out of nowhere, whipped the paper towel into the air, and it floated off, a huge mass of paper-embers. I imagine I must have looked quite silly jumping in the air and trying to swat it down. Eventually it floated into a nearby tree -- fortunately, by that time, the cold air had caused it to expire.

The second torch worked, and my BBQ was lit! The recipe said run the BBQ on high heat for 15 minutes, so that's what I did. When I came back 15 minutes later, it was HOT. I took my salmon (with a new layer of brown sugar on top), tossed it on the grill, and went back inside because I was freezing my ass off and I had to wait 5 minutes. When I came back 5 minutes later, there were enormous flames jutting out the back side of my BBQ! I said something like, and don't quote me on this, "*Expletive* *expletive*, *expletive* *expletive* *expletive*!!!"

I ran outside and tossed open the lid, and EVERYTHING inside my BBQ was on fire. The grill was on fire. The side of the BBQ were on fire. MY SALMON WAS ON FIRE. It was so hot in there that the brown sugar had liquified (which is was supposed to do, because that's basically what carmellized sugar is), and the intense heat and flames had ignited the liquified brown sugar (which is, apparently, flammable).

Grabbing my metal spatula, I approached the BBQ and grabbed the fish off, tossing it onto a nearby plate. As I cut the fish open, more expletives were heard coming from my mouth as I discovered the inside of the fish was STILL RAW.

I turned the BBQ off on one side, and put the fish on that side, and let the ambient heat from the other side cook the fish normally and sanely. I am left wondering what kind of BBQ the recipe author used -- because my BBQ gets incinerator hot when it's left on max heat with the lid closed. He must have been using the world's wussiest BBQ.

Turns out, the fish was actually pretty tasty once I cut all the burnt parts off. The orange zest was subtle, but nice. But I will NEVER cook my fish that way again.

At least not with my incinerator piece of shit BBQ.

Your Blind Spot

As I'm sure most of you are aware of, each of our eyes has a blind spot where our optical nerve passes through the photoreceptor sheet. In everyday life, we don't nice this because our brain compensates with information from each eye. Even using only one eye, our brain compensates nicely.

Scroll the following illustration until it's at about eye level.



Start about 2 feet away from your monitor. Close your left eye, and look at the cross. Move your head closer to the monitor. When you get about a foot away, the dot will completely disappear. By moving your head around, you can get a sense as to just how large your blind spot actually is! It's huge!

WP Carey Orientation, Day 4 & 5

I'm going to cover both of these days because day 4 and 5 are so related.

Day 4 started with two more faculty introductions, which by now we were all getting bored of. But it was good information. Around noon, we started in on the case competition. I'd never done a case competition before, so let me explain the idea to you: basically, you're given a real-life business case to analyze, and you have to make a presentation to a set of judges (who are all ex-executives) who grade you on both the content of your presentation and the presentation itself. Our case had to do with the Marriott hotel company, and whether a business proposal they were putting before the board of directors was a good idea. The head judge, who was explaining what to do to us said "basically, your presentation can either be why this is or isn't a good idea, or you can come up with some other idea to fix the problem at hand. Creativity will be rewarded".

We basically were given 9 hours to read a 10-page case summary, followed by 20 pages of financial figures, asset lists, and other assorted material, decide on a course of action, create a powerpoint presentation, and then work on presenting it and make sure we all know enough to answer questions from the judges. 9 hours sounds like a lot of time, and it would be for a single person to do the whole thing -- but when you introduce group deliberation in the mix, things REALLY slow down. My group, after deliberating for about 4 hours finally decided not to support Marriot's proposal, and introduce our own ideas. We hauled balls to get it done, and eeked out our presentation just before 10pm. My portion was a couple of powerpoint slides on the state of the economy and real estate markets around the time period where the case took place, as well as why we decided to reject the proposal and strike out with our own ideas -- It was seriously just like being on the apprentice, where you have a set amount of time to do a very difficult task. Complete with cameras taking pictures of you! We stayed up until midnight working on our presentations, and then we went to bed. We had literally worked for about 14 hours straight.

The next day (day 5) was the competition. We were all very nervous about presenting our case to the judges since only one of our group members had done something like this before. But everyone did a really phenominal job, and our presentation came off really well! I was super nervous, but I pulled it together and did a pretty good job. There were handshakes and hugs all around when we were done. We really felt like, as a team, we had produced, bonded, and done a good job.

Later that day, the judges told us what they liked and didn't like about our presentations, and said they were generally impressed with everyone's work. We asked some of the judges about our presentation in general, and they said they felt it was off-topic -- apparently the head judge had left them with the impression that the case was supposed to be judged on the merits of why we accepted/rejected the proposal Marriot had put forth, and not on our own solutions. We were all pretty mad at that, because the head judge had told us that coming up with our own ideas was a viable, and even highly valued option. But the point of the exercise had been served, which was to bond us and get us working together as a team.

After another happy hour, and a closing dinner, we all went to bed because we were so tired none of us really wanted to party or celebrate. :)

We are old.

All said, the orientation was a really positive experience, but I was ready to come home by the time it ended. I dove into the material for the first class yesterday and it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I'm sure it will ramp up in difficult as the weeks go on... but right now, I am full of energy and optimism about this program and I am ready to kick some ass and get good grades.

Wish me luck!

WP Carey Orientation, Day 3

Day 3 was the shortest of the 4 main days. We had 3 hours of faculty introduction, which was okay since most of the teachers were pretty interesting. The two more interesting activities we did was "Team Decision Making" and "The Beer Game".

Team decision making was an exercise that I'd played in high school. Basically, we divided into 6 teams. There were 8 rounds. Each round, each team had to pick either RED or BLUE. Based on that choice, we either won or lost points for our team based on whether we were in the minority or majority (eg. if more teams picked red than blue, the teams that picked red would lose points and the teams that picked blue would gain points).

We were told to bring $1 in quarters, which the professor collected, and then given minimal instruction before we started. Immediately, the teams started competing with each other, trying to outguess each other and rack up points for their own team at the expense of the other teams. We were given some chances to have a meeting of team representatives to see if we could come to some agreement, but for the most part, we didn't. At the end of the game, only two teams were in the positive scores! They got back 1 quarter for each point, and the teacher kept the bulk of the change! The point of the game was to see if we realized that ultimately, the enemy wasn't the other teams, it was the teacher who had all our quarters... But of course, we're so trained to compete in school with other people or other teams that we just naturally enter that mode when put in something that seems like a competitive setting, even if it's not to our mutual benefit!

The beer game was much more interesting to me. It, unfortunately, did not involve real beer. The idea behind the game was to illustrate points from supply chain management -- namely, the bullwhip effect. The bullwhip effect is an effect from having lag in the supply chain that amplifies fluctuations. The basic setup was this: at the left end of the table was a retailer. The retailer received order for cases of beer from customers. The retailer had so many cases of beer in his inventory, and then he would order more from the wholesaler. The wholesaler would receive his orders from the retailer, and could order more beer from the distributor. The distributor received his orders from the wholesaler, and could order more from the factory. The factory (which, in my group, was me) received orders from the retailer and decided how much new beer to make. The tricky part was this: although orders were made instantaneously, any beer the factory created, or any beer shipped up the supply chain took 2 weeks to arrive! As a result, you had to guess ahead what the demand for beer might be, and order accordingly. Of course, our guesses were quite wrong.

My team had some pretty serious problems. The guy playing the wholesaler decided that keeping a big inventory was too expensive, and so he trimmed down his inventory and ordered little. As a result, the distributor built up excessive inventory. When that happened,t he distributor stopped ordering from the factory. Then, when the orders got bigger, the wholesaler started ordering more beer, to the point where he completely depleted the distributor's inventory. By the time the distributor realized he needed to order more from the factory, it was too late and orders were piling up. The factory (me), which had been producing nothing suddenly got massive orders, for which there was no way to anticipate. Accordingly, I started to pump out huge amounts of beer to take care of all these excess orders. As the beer worked it's way up the supply chain, everyone ended up with HUGE inventories, and the number of orders tapered off as the inventories trickled into the retailer who passed them along to the customers. In other words, the wholesaler caused a small fluctuation, which was amplified by the distributor, and amplified again by me, the factory.

At the end of the game, we counted up our score. It turns out, one of the groups had done exceptionally well and beaten the all-time high score. My group, however, beat the all time WORST score! As a booby-prize, we each got ASU shot-glasses, which was pretty cool considering how poorly we did.

I found myself missing my friends who are into playing strategy games with me -- we probably would have done a lot better!

In the evening, my group went out to the Gordon Biersch brewery and had dinner. I ordered a chicken sandwich with some awesome garlic fries and a "wedge". "Wedge" is what they call their salads. I didn't know why until they delivered it -- it was literally a quarter of an iceburg lettuce with dressing on the top. I had to pick it apart to eat it! Interesting idea, not so great in practice. But at least they had hefewiezen on tap, and it was tasty!

WP Carey Orientation, Day 2

Day two kicked off the first of our 12-hour+ days. First we had a student services orientation, which was mostly covering stuff like academic dishonesty and other stuff that everyone should know by now, so it was pretty boring.

Oh, I forgot to mention on Day 1 -- at all sorts of random points through this orientation, there are two guys -- one with a sweet digial photo camera, and one with a digital video camera, taking pictures of us. It was like being on a reality TV show, where the camera is always there. You really learn how to ignore it fast.

We had a short coffee break, and they actually had fruit punch to drink. I don't know if you know this, but I am a fruit punch whore. I LOVE fruit punch. If there was a fruit punch tree, my whole back yard would be planted with them.

After that, we had intro to technology, where we learned how to use the blackboard system. Blackboard is an online-classroom system, comprised of several parts. There's a message board for leaving messages for your cohort-members, or just your team members. There's the modules, which are instructional tutorials on class subjects. There's 1 module per week (and the classes are 6 weeks long -- 5 weeks of instruction and 1 week of finals). There's also a quiz and some homework exercises. So we learned how to use all of that stuff, which was easy for someone like me who is computer literate. Even someone who is computer challenged would do okay.

We had lunch in the MU on campus -- they had like 7 restaurants in the MU (including a jamba juice), some of which weren't open. I ate at Schlotschkys (sp?), a (Jewish?) deli sandwich chain. It was pretty decent. The name always reminds me of "Chotchkys" from Office Space.

After lunch, we had our first faculty introduction. Our first class is Managerial Decision Analysis, less affectionately known as statistics. Unlike the stat classes I took at UCD, two things really stood out as being cool:
1) The book we are using uses Excel to do all the calculations, so no more finding the average of fifteen 10-digit numbers
2) The focus of the class is on what statistics are particularily useful to managers, and how to use them. So rather than being derivation based (eg. prove this), it's more practicality based (eg. learning about scatterplots, standard deviation and what it represents, regression analysis, etc...

As a result, rather than dreading statistics, I actually found myself looking forward to class. Weird, huh? Statistics isn't bad when it's not a bunch of gruntwork, and we get to make cool graphs! (yes, I am a dork)

After lunch, we had the team challenge. This was the big event for the day. The big idea here was to get us moving around and interacting with each other, and try and break down some of the barriers between us. In other words, icebreakers. In other words, HUMILIATION. Because humiliation really is the best icebreaker.

They started off with the worst event BY FAR, called monster medley. Basically, the person in charge told us to remember the first concert we ever went to. Then pick a song by that artist. Then pick a line out of that song. So each person in your group has 1 line, and you have 6 group members. Concatinate those lines together, and you have a new song that is 6 lines long. Now, not only did we have to SING our new song in front of the rest of the groups, we had to CHOREOGRAPH it. In about 20 minutes. As you can imagine, they were BAD. Really bad. But everyone had to do it, and afterwords, we were all thoroughly humbled. The rest of the events were more team-building and leadership oriented. As examples, figuring out how to navigate through an invisible maze, and then getting everyone through it. Playing the telephone game (where you pass a message down through a chain of people and see how it gets permuted from it's original meaning at the end). Trying to get everyone balanced on a thin rail. And putting a rubber band over your head so it covers your top lip, and then trying to get it onto your bottom lip without using hands. I can still taste the rubber band. Ick!

All said, it was pretty entertaining, except the monster medley. And, of course, the two camera guys were there the whole time trying to get interesting/funny shots of us. They got one of me with the rubber band in my mouth that was absolutely horrible.

That evening we went out to a local irish pub and had lots of appetizers and some beer. I had a cream ale that poured like a guinness but was much sweeter. It was interesting, and I kind of liked it. I also got a chance to get to know my teammate Matt better, and we struck up somewhat of a friendship. We got back to the hotel at around 8:30 -- for a 12 1/2 hour day. I took some codine and crashed. Hard.

WP Carey Orientation, Day 1

Day 1 was largely a matter of travel and check-in. I flew out of Sacra-torment-o airport, which was largely empty as usual, and arrived in Arizona about 1pm MST. Arizona's Sky Harbor airport is pretty cool. I can't really describe why, but it's big, it flows well, and it has multiple levels for traffic and multiple terminals. It had a lot of people in it, but it didn't feel overly crowded.

After grabbing my luggage and figuring out where the courtesy phones were (which took some doing), I called the Embassy Suites to have them come pick me up. They directed me where to wait, and after about 40 minutes, the shuttle came. At that point, I met a guy named Tim, who was one of my cohort-mates, and all-around nice guy to boot. Unfortunately, as I found out later, he wasn't on my team. But that's okay.

Checking into the Embassy Suites was no problem, though I thought it strange that they charged $10 extra for internet access. Don't the cheapy hotels have that for free? Maybe they figure most people who stay there are staying there on business and charge everything to the company, so the $10 just gets charged to the company and the people who stay don't care. I didn't really care either since I didn't come with a laptop, but it was strange none-the-less.

After checking in, unpacking my suitcase full of business clothes and making sure they weren't overly wrinkled, I went down to the check-in table, where I met Ivy, Toni, and... I can't remember who the third person was. Maybe Emily? In any case, they gave me a HEAVY backpack with a huge orientation binder, and books for my first and third classes (again, weird -- why not the second class?). The backpack was strange as well -- it didn't have zippers, but rather cinch-necks -- and the cinches were the straps! So, in other words, when you put the backpack on, it automatically cinched the neck. And when you took it off and opened it, the straps pulled in so they did not hang all over the place and snag on stuff. Neat in theory, didn't work so well in practice. :)

After getting my stuff, it was time for happy hour -- where they had a FREE open bar! Hell yeah! That's where I first met Rod (from Boeing), who was the other guy outside my team that I spent a lot of time talking with throughout orientation. After chatting it up, we were herded towards the ballroom for the opening dinner. As you might expect, the opening dinner had a lot of welcomes -- but the food was surprisingly good for catered food! I got the first opportunity to meet my team:

Jasmeet, an Indian guy who works for Motorola and lives North of San Francisco, AZ
Ryan, who works for Lockheed in Phoenix, AZ
Matt, who works for some small investment banking firm in Phoenix, AZ
Jim, who is a navy recruiter in Tucson, AZ
Christina, who works for the dept of health (or something like that) in Virginia

As you can see, 5 of my 6 group members were from CA or AZ, which was unexpected -- but good -- it'll make it easier to contact each other if we're mostly in the same time zones. Also, everyone on my team was nice -- in fact, everyone in the entire program I met was nice. Very cool. I got a chance to talk to Jasmeet a little bit later that night after dinner, and got to know him better. Even though he's from India, his English is very good and we got along great. I have no doubt that he'll make a good teammate.

WP Carey Orientation, Prelude

This is a chronicle of my experiences in Arizona. For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, I have decided to persue my MBA at Arizona State through the WP Carey school of business's online program. There are a lot of reasons why I chose ASU over some of the other options, including cost (WP Carey is cheaper than most other similar options, and they don't nickle and dime you to death), schedule (you only take 1 class at a time so you can really focus down on one subject), vacation schedule (four 1-week breaks and two 6-week breaks, as compared to four 1-week breaks at Indiana), responsiveness of their support staff, rigor of the program (they use the same faculty to do their classroom and online programs, and the program is the same level of difficulty), etc...

At the beginning of ASU's online program, you are required to attend a 1 week orientation where they show you the ropes and you get to meet the people you'll be going to virtual school with. WP Carey admits 50 students per half-year, and all 50 students (who are called a cohort) take the same classes in the same order. A big part of orientation is getting to know your fellow classmates, and especially the 5 of them that make up the team you'll be working with for the next two years. As you might imagine, there's always a little bit of apprehension about who your teammates are going to be, and whether they will pull their weight...

Arizona is awesome in the winter -- 73 degrees and sunny every day. As Ivy (the orientation coordinator) said, "The Winter cohorts are smarter because they know not to come to Arizona in the summer". So true. As mentioned in the previous entry, we stayed in the embassy suites, which were about 3 miles south of the campus in Tempe, AZ.

Okay, enough prelude. Let's get to the good stuff.

The Embassy Suites

If you're wondering why I haven't been updating my blog recently, it's because I haven't been in the state. As in, I went to Arizona on Sunday, and didn't get back until Friday. And I normally don't update my blog on the weekends (although maybe I should start). I'll post more about my trip to Arizona tomorrow or Tuesday, but I just discovered something really weird and I had to share.

During my 5 night trip, I stayed in the Embassy Suites. I don't think I've ever stayed in a suite before, but I'll put it like this: I would have named them the "Embassy Sweets!" because they were sweet! The rooms were actually two rooms: a front room with a table, couch, chair, TV, coffee maker, microwave, etc... and a back room with a large queen sized bed, closet, table, TV, etc... And, of course, a bathroom. Anyway, in addition to taking all my clothes to Arizona, I took a night-kit full of bathroom stuff -- my hair brush, toothbrush and toothpaste, extra contact lenses in case I accidentally destroyed mine, etc... Amongst other things, I took my nasal spray (which I mentioned in a previous entry about how I am addicted to my nasal spray), and some Flonase, which is a steroidal nasal spray that my nose doc prescribed to try and get my unaddicted to my other nasal spray. In the dry Arizona air, I didn't need my bad nasal spray, which was great, so I just used the Flonase every morning and slept great at night (with the help of some codine -- my next blog entry is going to be about how much I love codine).

In any case, Sunday morning, I packed up all my stuff, including everything in the bathroom. Checked it once. Checked it twice. Made sure I took everything I saw.

Then I got home. Unpacked everything. Friday night, I slept like crap because I'm back in California and apparently that means I need my bad nasal spray or I suffocate at night and I didn't use it. So Saturday night, I went in search of it. Looked in my night kit, and it wasn't there. I hadn't unpacked it. Wasn't anywhere else either. I suppose it's possible I left it in Arizona, but I kind of doubt it... Fortunately I had a backup bottle, so no biggie.

Tonight, I realized that I haven't been using my Flonase either (these things are very out of sight, out of mind with me). So I went in search of it. Looked in my night kit, and it wasn't there. I hadn't unpacked it. Wasn't anywhere else either. NOTICE A PATTERN HERE? I seriously doubt I left that in Arizona either -- especially since I didn't even keep it in the bathroom with my bad nasal spray. I kept it on the desk so I'd see it when I grabbed my wallet.

In other words, I think a maid from the Embassy Suites stole my nasal sprays. BOTH OF THEM! Three thoughts come to mind:
1) What the fuck?
2) Why?
3) Eeeew! I STUCK THOSE THINGS UP MY NOSE!!!

Abramoff is Going Down

2006 is kicking off just like 2005 did for Republicans: drenched in scandal. Jack Abramoff is a name most people don't know, but trust me when I say the following: this is going to be big news. Initial numbers say that up to 20, congresscritters may end up losing their jobs over this, which could potentially swing the house/senate democratic in November, but it could be more.

For you politicos, a good primer on Abramoff is here. The basic premise is that Abramoff would collect money from various parties (eg. Indian Casino Interests), donate that money through fake charities to Republican interests, and in return the Republican parties would give those parties political access to politicians like Tom Delay, who would press their agenda. Besides the money laundering aspect, this is serious pay for play, which amounts to bribes, which are (obviously) illegal.

How did they get caught? Abramoff was turned in by Michael Scanlon, who was an associate. How was Scanlon caught? By his jilted ex-lover. Abramoff, in a plea bargain, is expected to rat out senators who accepted his bribes -- and since Abramoff is connected to just about everyone in the Republican establishment (including Bush), you can expect some serious potential fallout.

Coming Soon to a Holy Ground Near You...

Yes, it's Jesusland.

"The Israeli government is planning to give up a large slice of land to American Christian evangelicals to build a biblical theme park by the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is said to have walked on water and fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish."

A biblical theme park? Well, at least they won't have any of those lame dinosaur rides...

Welcome Back

to myself... It's been about two weeks since I posted anything, and with good reason -- the holiday season (hey, I rhymed). On the 22nd on December, Tracy and I went down to LA to spend some time with my family. The weather was really nice, and we had a great time. My mother was extremely gracious. I came back late on the 26th, sick. And I have been sick for the last week -- first with a head cold, and now a cough that's been keeping me up at nights. But I am finally back at work now, so things will resume as before, and slowly head back towards normal.

Well, until next week. On Sunday, I fly out to Tempe, Arizona, for a week long orientation at ASU. In other words, my MBA program at WP Carey is starting! I am both excited and a bit apprehensive. Unfortunately, that means this blog won't get updated next week, so all three of you who read it will have to find your entertainment elsewhere. Sorry! ;) I may start a side-blog to chronicle my experiences attending ASU from afar -- I'd do it here, but I'm afraid this blog might be a bit too... juvenile/immature/lewd/pick your own appropriate descriptor. In other words, keep the professional stuff professional, and keep the antics here.

Two side notes: One, what was up with the weather today? I walked outside at 7:15 to go to work, and everything was cast in a pinkish hue. The sun was just coming up, the street was wet, the air was clear, and everything was framed in this strange light that made something as pedestrian as a normal street in Davis seem extraordinary. It was really bizarre. One of the radio hosts even commented on it.

Two, since Rob, Arnie, and Dawn are on vacation this week, I was flipping channels as I drove to work. Jack (formerly Howard) licks my crack, so that was out. The Zone, which used to be a decent station back in like 1995 but has been horrible ever since they switched to playing "Pussy Rock" (tm) full-time (Pussy Rock: John Meyer, Jet, Kelly Clarkson, etc...) had DJs that were so inane it made me want to drive off the road into the nearest ditch. I am not sure why that station is still on my presets. Then I hit KWOD, where I recognized a familiar voice... Who was it? Oh shit, it's Adam Corrola. I have a love/hate relationship with Adam Corrola. I loved him on the Man Show because him and Jimmy Kimmel were hilarious, and... well, who doesn't like trampolines? But on radio, the man just isn't that funny. I remember back in Los Angeles (circa 1992ish) when he took over Love Line (with Dr. Drew) on KROQ from the Riki Rachman, who was a poor replacement for the Poorman. I thought the show went downhill at that point, and I mostly stopped listening -- of course, then it became a TV show on MTV and became super popular.

In any case, it appears Adam Corolla is here to stay on KWOD in the mornings (see KWOD's website for details), and it's too bad. For what it's worth, the Adam Corolla Show that is on cable now (I forget what it's called -- Too Late with Adam Corolla?) had moments of comedy gold, but was mostly not that funny. I want my morning music back -- well, unless maybe they can get Jimmy Kimmel to join him.