A little bit of this and that

Bozzetto asked me today why I was thinking of this particular algebra problem. You know, the one where Cavitation had to show off his big brain on how to solve. I thought I had covered that here, when I said,

Yesterday, I spend half the evening writing up a big long post, and then I realize that buried in that post is an algebra word problem. So I toss out a little post with the algebra problem. And that post gets 8 comments, whereas the one that I spent all my time on gets zero.

Apparently, this was not explicit enough for Bozzetto. Now, Bozzetto, as some of you know, is a highly paid engineer whose primary job function is to figure out obscure and difficult-to-replicate failures on extremely expensive hardware, some of which is located in far off lands. And he's actually very good at his job. Possibly the best we have in our little section of The Company. So it troubles me that my algebra word problem was too obscure for him to figure out where it came from. I'm thinking, actually, that it may have been too obvious for him to have been able to figure out. Kind of like the old, "My computer didn't turn on. I'm suspecting it's the platform power sequencing microcontroller." "Uh, did you plug it in?" "MMmm....Oh shit."

Oddly enough, I seem to recall a trip to Carl's Jr. in which Bozzetto was expounding upon how this certain set of equipment had two power cords, but only one was ever plugged in, and it was possible that a certain failure might go away if they plugged in the other one, and no one knew for sure if the hardware was supposed to need both, or if one was supposed to be a redundant backup. So we have some history of him and the "did you plug it in?" business.

I'm guessing the rest of you guys figured out where the algebra problem came from. Or from where it came, in proper English.

I had kinda hoped that The JohnnyB would be back to life with the new compooter and its fresh load of commas. He had to stop posting for a while because he ran his old compooter completely out of commas. I bet you didn't know that was even possible, but it is.

I hope he doesn't smack me for that comment. It's a good thing I live 1000 miles away.

Though I hear he's moving here, except his wife is holding him back.

Speaking of moving here, I was describing for my boss today the shape of our deck and how replacement is imminent, and she says, "Is the deck gray?"

"Yes."

"I think we looked at your house when we moved here. Is there a trampoline?"

"Yes."

"Level with the ground?"

"Yes."

"We definitely looked at your house. I remember the deck being pretty rotted when we looked at it."

She moved here from Santa Clarabelle around a yearish before me. And the deck has not improved any in the ensuing time.

The Mrs. heard this story and said, "So, let's start moving with replacing the deck, then." I said, "With what money? I only make about $50/month off the blog." She said, "Put out fund raiser on the blog asking people to click a whole lot more until we have enough money to pay for the deck."

I explained how that would quickly be discovered and labeled as click-fraud, and then Google would not only not pay me for any of the clicks, but they'd probably cancel my account and take back all the money I've ever made. Which would be a pain now since I've already declared the income on my 2006 taxes.

That's right, folks, Me, CherkyB filed a Schedule C for ad revenue (actually, I think I ended up with a Schedule C-EZ since I had no expenses). And then I even had to apportion it for how much I accrued while in CA and how much while in CO. I spent some time wondering if I should declare the square footage of my bar as a home office and deduct it, but I decided against that. It really messes up your capital gains exclusion when you sell the house, plus I'm not sure the primary use of my bar is for blogging. Mostly, I drink and surf the web there, neither of which appears to be deductible.

About the fork joke, MaxieC made up a whole bunch of knock knock jokes that all involved something he could see and "your momma." Like, he told me "Carrot your momma." I just selected the fork one cuz it was the funniest. MaxieC thought they were all equally funny. He didn't get the "deeper" meaning. When he's older (like 7 years older), he'll look back on this blog and laugh at what a m-f-ing comic genius he was.

Which is more than any of you will do with your blogs.

I am dangerously close to running out of Yukon Jack. That drink is just so damned tasty. And not because it's 100 proof, either. I highly recommend it despite its Canadian origins. It really sticks to your ribs.

Speaking of which, we had ribs for dinner tonight. One of the nice things about having one of those indoor grilling cooktops (Jenn-Air-like, though ours is a GE knockoff) is that you can make decent babybacks inside. The Mrs. didn't make nearly enough, though. She made but one rack, and she got 5 ribs out of that, whereas everyone else only got three. That's right, MaxieC, a three year old child, got the same number of ribs that I did. And I am f-ing starving right now.

And dangerously close to being out of Yukon Jack. I'm substituting Maker's Mark, but it's not the same.

We now have five crickets. We gave up naming them after the first three. Number two is dead (drowned in the water dish), so only two of the five we have right now have names. They never seem to sing, though.