Ping Pong

So my friend Vince and I have been trash talking about a ping pong showdown we have set for tomorrow. The funny thing is that throughout our friendship that has spanned over 25 years, we have been about 50/50 on everything we have ever competed against each other in. Tennis, basketball, golf (I think anyway, I personally run out of room for big numbers on the scorecard), ping pong, video games, you name it. That makes trash talking even more fun because we're both right, and both have grounds on which to stand.

Unfortunately for Vince, tomorrow I am going to make him look like this.

Grumbling about Gates

A month or so ago, Bill Belichick was fined by the NFL for having illegal cameras on the sideline of New England Patriots games. This whole ridiculous story was frequently referred to by the media as "Camera Gate." I think that is the last straw for me with this whole Gate thing. In fact, I refuse to even look up all the other news stories that in the past couple of years have been summarized by a word added to the word Gate. You all know what I am talking about. How did the media live for like 30 years after Watergate without latching onto this and then all of a sudden it becomes a good idea? People, this is not like bellbottoms coming back! This is not like those silly dinner plate size sunglasses you see everywhere these days that I guess were "cool" in the 70's "too." That is a "style" that has come back. Why? No idea. Anyway, stop with all this Gate stuff. It's stupid. Camera Gate? WTF does that even mean?! Gate is now synonymous with "scandal" now I guess and it is a lazy-ass easy way of making a headline in the newspaper or sensational nightly news program. What if there were a scandal about the way someone walks? Like, what if John Edwards becomes president and one day he trips over a pigeon while walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, twists his ankle and starts limping... And then it comes out that it was a fake pigeon planted in front of his right foot by George Bush, who after leaving office was not allowed back into Texas or anywhere else for that matter, so he spends his days avoiding prison by roaming the streets of D.C. Would they call it Gait Gate?! I mean, John is now limping because of a scandalous fake pigeon that the former president put in front of his right foot! Gait Gate!!!! But wait there's more. What if George put a storm grate on the sidewalk and John tripped over that and started limping? Would it be Storm Grate Gait Gate?! I think the ultimate Gate would be if George, instead of holding a door open for John to enter the Rose Garden, he swung it into his face and they called it Gate Gate. Fox News would be all over that. And then maybe, finally, George would find himself in jail for assaulting the president with a gate. Not for the 10,000 other illegal things he has done, but for causing Gate Gate.

Learning by doing

When I was youngster, my older brother was always the one out watching my dad work on the car, build things, learning how to make and fix things. I was never interested. I didn't think anything was wrong with that kind of thing, it just wasn't my ball of wax. Home Depot was the most boring place in the world. Now I am a little older and the man-genes have long since kicked in. I have tools galore and the desire for more. If something breaks I don't throw it away, I figure out how to fix it. If a room needs renovating, I don't necessarily call my dad every time anymore. For major projects, definitely. Even for minor projects I value the input of my parents, who have been through all this before. What I find interesting is that I never thought I would connect with my dad and brother on this level. I've always been the artistic and creative entity in our family and never the hammer slinger. Times have changed though, and I love it. Home Depot and Lowes are timesucks. I could wander the tool aisle at Sears for hours on end, thinking of projects and reasons to acquire more tools and materials. I guess I just find it interesting how owning a home can change a person. Of course, overhauling a house that my great-grandparents once moved into when it was brand new is different than buying a new house but you know what I mean. Owning a house, as my wife and I have found, requires a lot of time, patience, and manual labor. It also is a new outlet for a pair of creative minds. There is a finesse imperative in renovations, especially when doing the work with minimal outside input from professionals. Professionals know how to get the job done quickly and efficiently. They have to because it is on to the next job as soon as this one is done. Understandable. We find the beauty in the details though, and cutting something just right, or angling something this way or that, these all lead to a beautiful finished product to be proud of. These are concepts I always was aware of in my artwork, and are really being driven home as we work on our house.

The dominos begin to fall

I have been working on "greenifying" our house and a huge component to that is the heating system. Currently, we have a crappy old oil-burning boiler which runs in the low 70's efficiency. We both hate oil and everything this country does in the world and to the world to obtain it. I don't plan on getting up on a soap box here, so I won't. I'll just say we are replacing that old thing and in the process, getting solar panels and a new water heater and a new heating system. We're going with propane to heat the house, which is a byproduct of refining oil and therefore a little hypocritical of us, but it is the cleanest option that is within our price range for our climate. We don't even have natural gas in our road, which stinks because it is cleaner burning than propane. Anyway, all of these major changes are in the works, meanwhile the oil tank is almost empty and the temperature outside is dropping. Ok not really, it was 85 a couple days ago which is just plain unnatural for October in Connecticut. Regardless, things need to happen and they are all intertwined and let's just say the first of many dominos has bumped into the next and at some point in the hopefully not too far off future, our yard will be transformed, we won't be paying CL&P for electricity anymore, we will be burning less fuel to heat our house, will be heating our shower water with the electricity we are producing, and our boiler will never turn on during the day when we are not even home in the middle of the summer. I love that.

The Yankees Lose. Theeeeeeee Yankees Lose!

It seems big changes are brewing in New York. The bossman Steinbrenner is getting tired of being a loser and so it seems a complete overhaul is in the near future. I was thinking about Steinbrenner this morning and how he could easily be the villain in a comic book. Now, I don't read comics and don't know much about them other than the blockbuster movies that come out ad nauseam, but George is like a caricature of a human being. Everyone eventually despises him. Even those closest to him are only there because of the financial benefits of orbiting around him. The best part is, that so-called "Yankees Magic" has lost its luster in recent years. The free-flowing financial approach has gotten them nowhere and as a Red Sox fan it will be interesting to see how they pick themselves up from this mess. Onward and upward for the Sox, back to the drawing board for the Spankees.

Ergonomics

The ergonomics people have been coming around to do checks on our desks, etc. They gave me a new mouse and a new keyboard. I got a new phone too. I guess we're switching to a new service. And I have to use this thing for IM. My new desk will arrive on Thursday and I'm getting a laptop too!

About this blog

I am a web designer by trade (see image at right) and an aspiring photographer in my spare time. I also work on my house a lot and have several pets. I'm working on a masters degree with a concentration in photography and in my limitless spare time have decided to take up this venture. The basic premise is that I'll be using Google's image search, and only Google's image search, mixed with my own random thoughts and search terms, to put a new spin on this RiGoogleious world we're walking around in. My friend Vince and I call this "Google Image Humor (TM)" and I hope you will enjoy it. Be aware that many of my hot links will eventually break, but that is just the nature of the web. So, without further ado, welcome to this trainwreck of thought processes.