Yard Nazis

I tend to be naive about a lot of things. I'm not racist, so I assume no one around me is. I'm not judgemental, so I assume no one else is. I'm not a fracking loon, so I assume no one else is.

Boy, was I wrong.

I live in one of those neighborhoods with an Association. We pay a yearly fee, and in return someone cuts the grass. It also seems they go around and evaluate lawns. My lawn sucks. I'm not deluded in any way about that. I have young kids, limited time, two dogs, and I suck at yard work and household maintenence. My yard has weeds, the edges get a little uneven, I don't have a blower to blow my clippings into the phantom zone, and I can barely keep the lawn mower running.

But then again, other people have crappy lawns, too. I've checked. I'm not alone in that. At least my yard is green. Sure, it's mostly because the weeds have won out over the grass, but it's green, and it's relatively short.

Not sufficient, say the yard nazis.

These are the guys who spend half their salaries and all of their time working on their yards. It's ok with the kids don't get braces or attention, as long as they have a lush, green yard. Drought? Can't stop watering the yard on a daily basis.

And if that's what they like, then fine. I try not to judge. But come on...

I have a next door neighbor who believes the weeds in the community are being spawned solely in my yard, so he built a three foot fence to stop them. Built it himself over severalw eeks in the hot summer sun. Crazy as a hatter. It would only stop the weeds with eyes. The rest of them would either be airborne or travel under the ground. He spends an incredible amount of time on the yard. Currently it's all dead. I guess my weeds stole the rain.

When I suggested to our Association that maybe we should use our dues to repair the playground and avoid some crushed skulls, I was told that I was a jerk for suggesting the whole neighborhood rep[air something only the familys with young kids use, and by the way, you're a lazy slob who intentionally keeps his yard ugly to piss off the neighbors.

WTF?

I must admit it came as a bit of a shock to find out that anyone thought I had an ugly yard ON PURPOSE. Who does THAT? If I was doing it intentionally (like I don't cut the three inches of grass along that three foot fence. It's on my side, but it's not in my yard), I would do it up proper. Put a rusted out Chevy in front. Add some pink flamingos. Pee dirty words into the grass.

I think that the inherant flaw with volunteer Homeowners Associations is that the only people who have time to be on them are people who really shouldn't be on them. People who go to their yard with hair trimmers to ensure proper length of grass.

I think it's time to go pee in my yard...

Tornado vs the Walrus

My son learned a valuable lesson today. He learned that gravity makes its own rules, and he learned about two types of fear.

The first type of fear is the type that people get from thrill rides or horror movies. It's a nervous laugh followed by an adrenalin rush, while in the back of your head you know you're safe. Sure, as that roller coaster barrels down, you may have the fleeting though that maybe just this time the track won't hold, but it isn't really strong enough to taste.

The second type of fear is usually only experienced by someone shortly before they die. It's the feeling that something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Like that pain in your shoulder radiating down your arm, or that tree you know you won't miss. It's a very different type of fear.

Here's the situation, and before anything gets too out of hand, I'll let you know that Kevin and I lived. Kevin weights about 50 pounds soaking wet. I weigh 356 pounds (down from 391...a work in progress). I'm a big fella. But Kevin's 8 and wanted to ride the tornado water slide with his daddy. He'd ridden it with his mom, and it was no big deal.

We climbed the six stories to the top of the ride, which almost killed me right there. No line, and Kevin took the stairs two at a time. I was almost having a stroke when we got to the launchpad.

The float had four seats, and Kevin took the closest one. I took the one opposite him, sacrificing dignity to get my fat butt into the float hole. Kevin's side rose out of the water about a foot while my butt scraped the floor. The life guard gave us a shove with her shins to launch us, and we didn't budge. She tried again. Nothing. She tried to rotate the float and shove again, trying to hide a grin. She knew I was too heavy.

She took a running start and shoved the float hard enough to get us moving slowly towards the edge. "Sorry," I said, sheepishly.

Then we went over the edge into the Tornado.

I knew right away something was horribly, terribly wrong. Kevin was too high and I was too low, and we were moving way too fast. Kevin kept screaming, "You're making it go too fast! Stop it, daddy!" We picked up speed and angled almost 90 degrees, with Kevin slamming back and forth at the top of the float.

"Hold on!" I shouted to Kevin as if we were in a real tornado. Kevin clung to the raft for dear life. Just our luck if we broke free of the float and had to roll out of the ride like two wet hamsters in a sewer drain.

We kept our grips, although at one point I had to grab Kevin with my feet as my shoulders and head bounced against the slide. We shot out of the bottom of the slide fast enough to take the life guard by suprise, and went under briefly. Kevin was off the raft like lightening. I fell off clumsily, a fat walrus stuck in a tidal pool.

Real fear. Something to remember. And a wet flush of a ride with daddy, not to be repeated for a few hundred pounds.

News Flash! Tropicana Creates a Hole In The Space-Time Continuum!

I felt compelled to email Tropicana regarding a concern I had over their packaging and Truth in Marketing. I had just finished drinking 32 ounces of orange juice (120% Vitamin C), and thought I'd look at the ingredients. I didn't expect to be surprised, since the label said it was 100% Juice. I was stunned to see the below, which prompted the following email:

"I took a look at the ingredients for my Tropicana orange juice, which stated that it was 100% juice, and ran into what I can only assume is that "fuzzy math" I've heard about. "100%" in most cases refers to "everything." On your ingredients, it lists "100% pure orange juice," which is good, but then it lists "and natural flavors*" with the "*" being: "Ingredients not found in regular orange juice.

What the heck is THAT? What ingredients, and how can there be ANYTHING added over "100%" of something? Are you fracturing the space-time continuum?"

I'm still awaiting Tropicana's response. It might be that they mean, "Of the juice that we put in the bottle, 100% of THAT juice is juice. But there could be other things that we included, such as pesticides and radioactive spiders, which would fall into the 'ingredient not found in regular orange juice'."


UPDATE:
On 10/14/08 I received the following email from Tropicana. In a nutshell, they can say 100% when it's not 100% because the FDA says they can. But, if I'd like 100% juice that is more 100% than the 100% juice I'd been drinking, they have an additional product that is the same 100%, minus the part over 100%.

Chris:

We're pleased to answer your questions about natural flavors in Tropicana Orange Juice From Concentrate and explain about juice labeling. We follow the FDA Code of Federal Regulations for labeling. Ingredient suppliers consider their natural flavors highly confidential and are not required by federal labeling laws to disclose every component of a flavor formula. However, we can tell you that the term "natural flavor" in an ingredient listing can only be used when a natural food, such as fruits for example, are roasted, heated or extracted to concentrate the flavoring components. Natural flavors are used to enhance the flavor of a product. The amount of flavor in a product is typically very low. Ingredients are listed on labels in descending order by weight.

Juice is still called "100% juice" despite the addition of ingredients such as natural flavorings or nutritional supplements. This is because these added ingredients do not change the amount of juice solids in the product. Accordingly, we believe the label accurately discloses the nature and composition of the product and is properly labeled. If you prefer an orange juice without natural flavors, you'll be happy to know that we also offer Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice located in your store's chilled juice aisle.

Also, if you would like to provide your complete mailing address, we would be happy to mail a full value coupon, good on any of our products. Thank you for your business, Chris, and we hope this information is helpful.

NAME REDACTED
Tropicana Consumer Relations

Daddy's Little Girl

My youngest daughter, now a little over three weeks old, can go from full squall to calm sleep in seconds by listening to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," by Meat Loaf. My wife and I disagree on the reason. I think it's the beauty of Meat Loaf's wafting tones. My wife thinks it's the boredom of Old Man Rock.

Either way, I must thank Mr. Loaf.

Baby Meg Arrives!

My Public Calendar

Falls into the "kinda cool" department.

http://okennon.myplaxo.com/calendar

My IT Career

This is kinda neat...

To see my full career page, click here
http://www.jobfox.com/people/cokennon

Bad Tequila Taste

Ok, let me start of by saying I have nothing against Tila Tequila. I was one of her first few hundred MySpace friends a billion years ago (I'll take a moment for you to tease me about that. Now we will continue). She's cute as a button (and for those of you who have never fantasized about having sex with a button, I've included a photo), and arguably the Queen of self promotion. She went from being a fairly obscure musician to someone with a global following and a show on MTV. I'm not a big fan of most of her music, but music is a personal thing, so I'm definitely not going to knock it.

But her new show "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" made me vomit in my mouth and want to rinse my eyes with paint thinner. I don't know how much creative control Miss Tequila has, but since it all rides on her shoulders, I would hope she'd have the power to set right what so horribly has gone wrong.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the basic idea is like "The Bachelorette," only she's really hot and - here's the twist - she's bisexual and has a group of men AND women vying for her affection.

Now, a certain amount of campy shtick is to be expected. I mean, it's a bisexual Internet Hottie on a reality show. It ain't King Leer. I get that. But the folks who come courting are just...well...
Either bad actors or poorly programmed robots. Quite possibly both.

I mean, I know there are guys who know so little about romance and women that they think what they were doing was cool, but those guys usually spend their time playing Dungeons and Dragons on a Friday night, not making sure their chiseled abs are oiled up. The characters are so stereotypically one sided that it's painful to watch. Tila comments about one guy that there are "a million that look just like him" which is so very true about everyone on the show. Would it have hurt to include a few average looking people? A few average acting people? Someone who doesn't act like they're starving at a Golden Corral?

Whee! We might get to have sex with Tila! Puh-leeze. Tila's good looking, but she can't be the only hot Asian girl these little stud muffins have ever seen. Throttle back on the dog and pony show.

And, possibly the most horrible and offensive part of the whole show, what if Tila Tequila really does think these are good catches? What if she screened all these well built but abysmally shallow caricatures of humans and liked these the most?

*shudder*

The Healthcare Markup

If you're a reader of this blog you'll know that back in May I had to take my son to the ER at Memorial Regional. Due to a variety of factors my son was hit in the face with a baseball, and we went to the ER to make sure he was ok. By the time we got there the swelling was already going down. After about ten minutes we saw a doctor, who looked at him quickly, told us he was pretty sure he was fine, but he ordered a CAT scan to make sure he didn't have a concussion. We were out of there in about an hour.

The bill was for almost $6,000.

Having been through some medical procedures myself, and had relatives who have had extremely invasive procedures done in ERs, I knew this was a tad pricey. So I gave the ER folks a call. I pointed out that we didn't have insurance at the time, as I was between jobs. Since it was "self-pay" the hospital was able to drop the charge by 50%. But that still leaves me on the hook for about $3,000.

Questions abound.

For example, would they have ordered the costly CAT scan if they knew I didn't have insurance? If not, does that mean they ordered unnecessarry services to pad their bill? Are they normally this blatant about things like that? I guess I'm lucky they didn't order a sex change for my son to make sure he didn't fracture his gender.

If they charge the insurance companies 50% more than they charge individuals, then how much does it *really* cost? I'm not trying to jack the price back up (although I can't afford $3k any more than I can afford $5k), but when the price varies that much, do they really know what the service costs? Traditionally, if I pay three grand for something, I expect to drive it off the lot.

And finally, WHY does it cost so much? I don't mind costs that are reasonable, but does it really cost $3k to run a CAT scan machine for ten minutes? Does it run on diamonds? Require human sacrifice? It's like me charging $100 for an apple because I want to make sure I have enough money to buy apples ten years from now, and just in case they happen to be made of plutonium.

It's offensive. Really. All this to find out if my son was hit too hard by a baseball. I wonder what people did before the invention of the CAT scan machine? Just not get hit? Or pay $6,000 for someone to wave a dead chicken in the air.

I'll keep you posted on how this all shakes out.

Nice Bike!

After nearly eight years in mothballs, I finally took my bike out of storage. I used to ride fairly regularly, but then I got a real job, a wife, pets, children, and all that jazz. And all of a sudden I was a big fat guy, and my bicycle was covered in dust and spider webs.

Well, the kids are now old enough to ride, although still with training wheels, so I thought I'd ride with them. After all, my computer sucks, so whate else is there to do in life? And I did. And today I can barely walk. My legs are sore from my toes to my nose, and my prostate feels like a flaming honeydew melon.

But it was still a lot of fun.

I did a little research to see where biking has progressed in the last few years, and there are some neat alternatives out there. Giant has a cool bike called the Revive that looks fun, although like regular recumbent bikes, I wonder how they do going uphill? Anyone ever used one? Let me know.

And, in case anyone wonders, the picture isn't of me or anyone I know. I just thought it was funny.

My Evening with Vista

My old PC was starting to shudder as parts withered and died, so I broke down and bought a new one. I figured, why spend more than a few bucks when all I need is a few items, and I can transfer the rest.

It came preinstalled with Vista. According to the literature, I could transfer everything from my old computer to my new one, and happy sailing awaited.

That was four days ago. I finally have a browser and an internet connection working. Nothing else.

But, damn if that browser doesn't look snazzy!

Unfortunately, my memory (2 Gig) wouldn't transfer. It was DIMM and I needed DIMM2. My graphics card didn't transfer because Vitsa just simply doesn't like it. And that transfer? Just my cookies and images. None of my software. And the ones I still had CDs for and could reinstall? Just don't work. Vista didn't even bother to scream "She canna take it, Cap'n!" It just softly and silently vanishes away.

I tried switching hard drives so it would boot my old XP from my old XP drive. Crashes witha blue screen of death. I'm now on my next-to-the-last hope; creating a Virtual PC instance of XP to run my software. When my son asked me what I was doing, I told him, "Daddy's making a computer inside my computer so I can run things." He looked at me like I was an idiot. I fear he's right.

I even tried reinstalling XP over Vitsa. My XP disk tells me the current version is newer than what I'm trying to install, and since I couldn't possible mean to do that, it won't let me.

Bill Gates, one of these days you and I are going to meet. And you best hope you see me first, because I have a load of aggression to unload your way. I'm carrying a whole case of Whup Ass. And if I could get any of it to install, I'd open it right now.

New Job

For anyone left in the world who hasn't heard, I have a new "day job." I'm the Web Systems Lead for VHDA (Virginia Housing Development Authority). And I even have a bamboo plant in my office, so I guess I'm set!