"At the end of all my letters I like to write:

 'PS - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if we got rid of 'Q' and 'R'"
    Mitch Somethingorother, Stand-Up Comic

Life is good :-) I met this girl Julia at the Century who just rocks my world. When I would first go to the Century she was one of the first peopel to come drag me (kicking and screaming) out onto the floor. More recently she invited me to go see a band with some of her firnes. We had a great time. The band we saw did all these corny lounge tunes, but it did them well. I had Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire stuck in my head for a day and a half afterwards.

Saturday was just beautiful weather-wise. I finally got sick of bumming books off of friends so I got myself a library card, and an oil change. When I pulled up to Jiffy Lube there was a long line of cars and I was told it would be around an hour wait. Fantastic! Just the excuse I needed to hang my legs out the window while enjoying both the sun and a book. High quality.

Saturday night Jen, Vic, and I found this fantastic improv troupe that performs twice a weekend. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It was called Jet City Improv, and it was pretty much a higher quality Comedy Sportz if anyone's ever heard of that. Yall are near decent sized cities... go find a good comedy theater and take in a show.

Saturday was so nice that a friend of mine in the city decided to have a cookout on the roof of his building in downtown seattle Sunday afternoon. Sadly, Seattle weather is rarely co-operative so we wound up grilling in the rain. It was still great: Matt and Michelle live two blocks from the Pike's Place market (renown for fresh fish and produce) so we made a fantastic meal of fresh tuna, halibut, shrimp, and a good pound of sea scallops along with skewers of peppers, onions, mushrooms, and zuccini. The market also has some pretty strange booths (Jelly, anyone?) so we also picked up a whole bunch of gourmet sausages: Italian Sweet, Rosmary Chicken, Louisiana Hot, Lemon-Pepper Chicken... Well you get the idea. We topped it all of with milkshakes at a little diner in Queen Anne, and then staggered back to thei apartment where we were unable to move for several hours.

I tried dancing after that, but it was a losing battle. I would have left very early if a very tall girl in a killer dress had not cornered me, told me that she had just had a very bad date, a half a bottle of wine, and was of a mind to dance with a lot of guys. This was all accompanied with a look that said I'd better dance my A material and have a lot of nice things to say to boot. I managed to survive a few songs and then slinked home where I dropped into a food-induced coma that was probably not entirely unlike hibernation.

Have a wonderful week!

"What good is melody? What good is music?
 If it ain't possessing something sweet
 Nah, it ain't the melody, and it ain't the music
 There something else that makes that tune complete

 It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing."
    Louie Armstrong

OK so Louie wasn't the first person to record that song. His version is my favorite anyway. So Tim and Julia were good sports last night. I finally had my first real Being John Malkovich dance experience last night. You see really good dancers know both parts. So when the beginner lesson started up and we were short on follows I took the plunge and changed sides. Having a dozen or so novice guys try and lead you will really give you an appreciation for the importance of a correct lead. Poor Tim... when I asked him to go dancing with me I don't think he figured that he'd wind up having to (literally) dance with me. C'est La Vie. ;-)

The coolest part of the evening was when Julia (not Tim's wife, but one of girls I've been dancing with for months now) invited me along to go hear a band with some of her friends this Friday night. I know its only Thursday, but I hereby pronounce this week: "Boffo, a good one." :-)

"Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby..."
    Shaggy, Angel

"Over where Bo Peep would want to be, Mary..."
    ApologetiX, Manger

I've listened to every CD I own about twenty times over since I started working here, and today I finally got fed up. I went accross the atrium and asked my a friend of mine if I could borrow a CD. He asked what I liked, and I said, "anything different". So he gave me a CD of Christian parodies of Pop songs, where Nine Days Story of a Girl becomes Story of a Squirrel, Eminiem's The Real Slim Shady becomes The Real Sin Savior, etc... It was definitly a refreshing break.

Its all good. I think he's just giving me some pre-emptive payback. His wife and I will are dragging him out dancing tonight. He's being a good sport, but I think he's a bit terrified. Whatever, I took most of you dancing at some point, and you all turned out just fine. :-)

"Whoever once said that silence is gold,
 She never felt lonely, and she never felt old
 You gotta ease off, sister, and dig your man
 Sometimes you do the best you can."
    Indigo Swing

Silence sucks ass! Comments for everybody! http://rateyourmusic.com/yaccs/index

I had a fantastic weekend! Workshops both days from 9:30am till 5:00pm and dances ever night! There was even "after hours" dancing from midnight to weird O'clock in the morning for the die hards.

The teachers for all these classes were a couple from L.A.: Peter and Lisa. Lisa is clean-cut kind of girl: someone who might teach elementary school while Peter is obviously a tattoo artist and a skater. Quite the pair.

My second favorite class Fast Lindy, where we learned how to dance at music that was over 250 beats per minute. Try and picture 120 people lined up in four rows dancing an eight-count basic in under two seconds per basic. Ca-RAZY!

The best class by far was called 'Musicality'. The point of the class was that you don't need to really know a lot of material to dance well: just take what you got and style it with what the music says to you. It was so much fun, and so TRUE! There are a lot of people who do nothing but try and show off how much stuff they know, and this is actually a bad thing. The basics and simple steps are where you and your partner get a chance to "play", and if can keep it simple and just have fun with it then the steps and flashes you use look all the more cool when you do throw them in.

Now if I could just do enough (as Serena so eloquently put it) Serious Balls Gathering to ask out a certain girl I know then I'll be just about the happiest Geek I know. Ever forward.

"...And they built Stong Henge: one of the greatest henges in the world. No one has built a henge like that ever since. No one even knows what the f*** a 'Henge' is, but we've got one: Stone Henge it is. Before that they built Straw Henge and Wood Henge, but a Big Bad Wolf came and blew them down and three little piggies had to be relocated to the projects... whatever that means."
    Eddie Izzard

Well our group just finished its weekly Friday 5:00pm Guiness (or Frappucino for the non-lushes). My bug count is pushing sixty, I'm going to be working well past today's (arbitrary) End Of Milestone Deadline, and I need a shave. However, its a 'Jitterbug Weekend' here in Seattle (we're ramping up in preparation for Easter Swing :-) so I for one am going dancing. Have a lovely weekend!

"Shut up I'm thinking
 I had a clue now it's gone forever
 Sitting over these bones
 You can read in whatever you're needing to..."
    Dave Matthews, Warehouse

It occured to me today that the likely reason the British started having a cup of tea every day in the middle afternoon is because Ibuprofin hadn't been invented yet.

John: Newer and Blue-er Meanies have been sighted in the vicinity of this theater! There's only one way to go out.
Paul: How's that?
John: Singing!
    The Beatles, Yellow Submarine

I like to listen to music while I work, and seeing as it is my office I have a lot of say in what music get's played. :-) Anyway, as many of you know I've been known to sing on and off (key), and work is no exception to this rule. Now I work with my back to the door (I'm so trusting), and on more than one occasion someone has come into my office (I never close my door either) and actually just stood behind me for some unknown amount of time while I belt out harmony (cacophony?) to whatever fine tunes I happen to be listening to. No one has ever complained, but then again no ones has left any money in my tips jar either. My co-workers just don't appreciate how lucky they are to have me.

This has been a very long day. To steal a totally random phrase from Terry Pratchet: I feel like I'm being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces. I have no idea what that means, but it certainly conjurs some strange mental images, yes? Anyway, its Wednesday and that means swing at the Century with the other redheads. Goodnight.

"Well I been where you are, and I know the tale
 You're ready for rain, but it started to hail
 So today is a lemon... its over and done
 It could be tomorrow is your day in the sun."
    Indigo Swing, The Best You Can

So I spent the entire weekend curled up with a bottle of the nightime, sniffling, coughing, sneezing, why the hell did I fall asleep on my bedroom floor medicine. Yep, NyQuil. Good stuff. I took a dose two hours before bedtime on saturday. Then right before I went to sleep (oh at about 10:00pm) I decided I wasn't really feeling that much better so I took another BIG dose. When my roommate woke me up at 1:30pm the next day to field a call from my parents I honestly wondered what day it was.

This especially bummed me out because I was supposed to go (get this) curling with some of the guys I work with. That's right: curling. Oh you can't tell me you're not curious. Its like shuffleboard on ice and I thinks its in the rules that the winners have to buy the losers beer. Now that's a sport with ettiquettee... with equitette... with tequitet... with manners.

But no I couldn't go because I was in a NyQuil induced coma, and even if I had been conscious I was really too sick to curl, which I believe is on par with being too drunk to fish. Anyway, the problem has gotten me to thinking, and I've started to make a list of facts of the human condition that make no sense. Now I do believe in evolution, but there are plenty of things that make me wonder. Here's what I've got so far:

1. Getting sick
2. Underarm hair
3. Whatever makes us slow down and look at accidents
4. Flatulence
5. The idea that grass of a uniform hieght is somehow better
6. Acne
7. Tongsils, Appendicies, anything that you have in your body that only exists to be removed when it starts to kill you.
   posted by Scott | 10:08 PM

   ---

   
   
   Thursday, March 07, 2002  
   
   BINGO MOTHER F****ER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
   
   Check this out...
   posted by Scott | 6:50 PM

   ---

   
   
   Tuesday, March 05, 2002  

   "That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse"
       Robin Williams, Dead Poet's Society
   
   Getting back to the numbers in my life I learned some fun facts about the apps I work on. For those of you who aren't really software people, let me give you a brief description of what source code is. Source code is the human readable description of a program that is run through a compiler to create the actual program (which is just a big blob of ones and zeros. An example of source code might look something like this:
   
   if (ImDrivingHome && SomeMoronIsTailgaitingMe)
       {
       while(theAcceleratorIsNotFloored)
           stepOnIt!
       
       if (theAcceleratorISFloored && theMoronIsStillTailgatingMe)
           {
           while(bullets >0)
               {
               LoadSixGun
               For (iBullet = 6; iBullet > 0; iBullet--)
                   {
                   shootBulletAtMoron
                   if (moronIsDead)
                       break
                   }
               bullets -= 6;
               }
           if (bullets == 0 && moronIsAlive)
               goto hell
           else
               moronsKilled++;
           }
       else
           Call TryAndHitPedestriansSubroutine
       }
   etc...
   
   So that's a rough sketch of the type of stuff I write all day. Now these Offices Apps are all over ten years all, and I saw some numbers yesterday on how many lines of code (not entirely unlike the ones above) are in each of them. Access contains 1.9 million lines of code while Excel contains 3.9 million.
   
   That's a lot of dead morons.

   posted by Scott | 9:28 PM

   ---