Look -- I appreciate the fact that you are bound and determined to put 32oz of Diet Coke in my 32oz cup. Really, your generosity knows no bounds. But unfortunately for me and my cup holders, a 32oz cup does not hold 32oz of liquid. It holds about 31 1/2 ounces of drink. Before I can even get a straw poked through the pre-cut X in the lid, syrupy goodness begins to bubble its way up through the middle of the lid. The only solution to this is drinking the excess Coke from the top of the lid, lappi
With the swipe of a credit card, I have officially joined the high definition era. Wednesday, UPS delivered my mail-order 46" 1080p LCD flat screen television. And by "delivered," I mean "left me a note for me on my front door telling me to come pick it up." Oh sure, they'll attempt to deliver it two more times -- during the middle of the day, when obviously I'm at work. Someone should invent a shipping company that delivers packages between 6pm and 10pm. I'll probably detail my experience with
This morning, while dropping Mason off at the same elementary school I myself attended over two decades ago, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" came on the radio. As Susan walked Mason up to the school's front door, I turned up the radio, listened, and smiled.
On December 2nd of 1983, when I was in fifth grade, MTV debuted the fifteen minute long Thriller music video. Thriller (the album) was number one on the charts at that time, and the debut of the music video was promoted by MTV was a worldwid
So let's rewind for a second; I'm sick. Yesterday the doctor diagnosed me with bronchitis and pharyngitis (which I think is doctor-speak for "sore throat"). Four prescriptions and one shot and I'm just now starting to feel better. Mason, on the other hand, is just starting to come down with it all. When I picked him up from school yesterday he said he felt icky, and all he wanted to do yesterday afternoon was lie on the couch and watch television.
Jump forward a couple of hours -- it's Skate
I saw a package of these in Vegas last summer, but they were around $25 and I didn't think they were worth that. I ran across the same package for $15 (including shipping) last week on eBay, and decided to pick them up. Basically, they are as advertised -- horrified, B-movie victim action figures. "We provide the screaming hordes, you provide the monster!", says the packaging. I had a good time arranging them today on my desk, fleeing from random things that live in and around my work area.
So the other day Susan mentions to me that Morgan has a funny smell coming out of her face. Not knowing what to say about that, I simply nodded and went about my business. A few days later, Morgan's teachers mentioned that they're going to start teaching the kids how to brush their teeth, ostensibly because Morgan's breath is so bad.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago at Morgan's scheduled doctor's appointment. Susan mentioned the funny smell to the doctor and her first words were, "she's
A little over a week ago I downloaded the beta version of Google's new browser (Chrome) to give it a test run.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Internet Explorer didn't come bundled with Windows. Then again, believe it or not, there was a time when most people didn't have a use for Internet Explorer because they didn't have Internet access! These days Internet Explorer comes pre-installed (and deeply embedded) in Microsoft's operating systems, and therein lies the problem. To challe
I had a bunch of stuff to post today but I forgot to pull the pictures off my camera, so instead of posting those I'll offer you a challenge that I saw floating around the interwebs a while back.
You send me up to five things you would like me to take pictures of. Your requests can be specific or generic, doesn't matter, and obviously I retain the right to veto/ignore any requests. You may request up to five photos (I've got things to do, man!). Be creative, but remember that this blog is ra
As a kid I was, and to a certain extent still am, fascinated by movie special effects. Back then, the only thing neater to me than seeing a spaceship zoom across a movie screen was discovering exactly HOW those effects were achieved. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, it seems like every blockbuster movie that hit theaters was accompanied by a television special explaining how the special effects were achieved. I guess more people were interested in special effects back then. I can remember wat
It was one of those Sundays where the kids wanted to do "something" and we couldn't come up with a single thing to do. Finally Susan suggested we hit the Omniplex and so we did. We are members of the Oklahoma Science Museum something-or-other which allows us free admittance anytime we wish to go. So, we went.
When we arrived at the Omniplex -- er, Oklahoma Science Museum -- we were informed that a live demonstration of science was to take place in about ten minutes. We walked straight to the
After spending all of last week in Baltimore, Susan discovered that she was to return to Oklahoma at the same time a winter storm was set to arrive. About a dozen FAA Oklahoma attendees at the conference requested permission to skip the final four hours of the conference on Friday and fly home Thursday night. Permission denied. As a result, the lot of them have spent the past few days stranded, holed up in airports and hotels across the country. Susan was one of the lucky ones; she got stranded
If it were up to me, the O'Hara family Christmas tree would go up a few days before Christmas Day and would come down shortly after. But as I and countless other married men before me have learned, it is not in fact up to me. The only leverage I ever had in the matter went out the window when we made the switch from real trees to an artifical one. By delaying the real tree's delivery as long as possible and then constantly complaining about my allergies, dry pine needles and fire hazards, I was
Back when I was in fifth grade, our gifted class did a month-long study of clowns. I remember doing a book report on Emmett Kelly's biography, and even learning how to juggle. At the end of our clown class we had to perform in front of the school cafeteria during lunch time. And really, what better entertainment is there than dressing up a bunch of brainy, socially outcast nerds in bad clown makeup and forcing them to perform bad magic tricks and juggling acts in front of their peers as they eat
Last night I was in the mood for Chinese food. The first restaurant the GPS led me to was positioned between a Ferrari dealership and a Porsche dealership. Deciding this wasn't my side of town, I drove on to the next one -- a sleazy hole-in-the-wall restaurant named "The China King Buffet" -- at least, that's how it appeared on the GPS. Upon entering the restaurant, half of the signs were in Chinese; the other half, Spanish. My kind of place.
After fixing a plate of food and sitting down, I
Everything's going well during my Atlanta stay so far.
The hotel is swanky. The rooms are huge and breakfast and a "bistro" dinner are free. I only have two complaints about the room. The first is, you can't see the television from the desk area. The second is, the air conditioner is unusually loud -- it's woken me up in the middle of the night several times this week, which is pretty hard to do. Even with those two drawbacks I still give the hotel a 9 out of 10. I've never stayed in a Hote
A few weeks ago while we were in Chicago, Mason lost his Nintendo DS. I hadn't let him bring it into any museums or restaurants, so I just knew it would turn up at one of our relatives' homes. Sure enough, a week after we got back, Uncle Buddy found Mason's DS out on the back porch. "It only rained once," grandma said, positively. Three weeks after it went missing, Mason's DS arrived today in the mail. Mason is one happy (and lucky) little boy, and he can once again join the other DS holders at
I've spent the last few days fiddling with my new PVR system now affectionately dubbed "PiVo") getting things just right, and last night was the machine's first true test. Sunday night I told the machine to "record every episode of American Idol from now on," and last night my little digital recording pal did just that. Quietly in the background, hard drives spun up, the channel changed, and the computer recorded American Idol. After the kids went to bed, we got to sit down at watch the show at
Starting this year, Mason is attending Open Door, a program at Shedeck that allows you to drop your kids off a little early and pick them up a little late. It costs money, but it costs less money than it costs Susan and I to drive separately to work, and Mason loves playing with his friends both before and after school so it's a win all the way around.
This blog entry, however, has very little to do with Open Door. Instead, it has to do with the room (portable building, actually) that Open
The Stranger and I went to the Hornets vs. Sonics basketball game last night. Over the past two years, the "New Orleans Hornets" have been known as the "New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets." The league in general has been very careful not to refer to "our" team as simply the Oklahoma City Hornets. Most of the official merchandise available still says "New Orleans" on it.
Two years of having an NBA franchise here in OKC is coming to an end. At the end of this season the Hornets will migrate ba
I'm on the road again; pulled out of Tunica a little after 8am after downing a comped breakfast at Bally's.
For the second day in a row I came out ahead at a casino. Saturday night I won $120 in Broken Bow and walked away $90 up. Last night, I won $100 on slots and $100 on video poker. I had planned on playing more, but as I was walking through the middle of the casino my belt broke. I felt a weird "pop" and the next thing you know my pants fell down. I caught them before they got to my kne
This week Susan and I along with Johnny and a dozen of our co-workers are receiving SAN training from Dell. Our group is pretty diverse, consisting of a few people who have never heard of a SAN, a couple who have worked on SANs, and then the rest of us who fall somewhere in the middle ("I have a general knowledge of how SANs work but I've never physically touched one.")
Ten minutes into the training course we discovered our instructor ("Anne") had managed to write technical jargon all over o
In December of 1983, Mrs. Leatherwood organized a Christmastime "fantasy gift exchange." It worked like most other gift exchanges do -- everybody in class randomly picked the name of a fellow student and we were to give them a gift. The difference was, as this was a "fantasy" gift exchange, instead of buying the gifts we got to draw them on paper instead. The only limit to our gifts was our imagination.
I can't remember exactly who drew my name, but I specifically remember whose name I pulle
Last Friday marked thirty-five years of me walking the earth. It was probably the most low-key birthday I've had in a decade or two; maybe the quietest since Susan and I celebrated the event alone in 1996 and 1997, the years we spent living away from home in Spokane, Washington.
My co-workers who were stuck out of town with me in KCMO last week took me out multiple times for my birthday last week. "Let's go to the casino ... for Rob's birthday!" "Let's stop by the bar ... for Rob's birthday
Work has continued on the End User Provisioning Team here at work. You can tell the weeks we meet; I rarely update the blog those weeks, just because we're so busy here at work and when I get home I don't feel like getting on the computer. We had planning on meeting the week of April 25th as well, but moments ago I heard that week has been split into two week-long meetings, one the week of the 14th and another the week of the 28th. Crazy times around these here parts.
Last week I released ep
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord