Just Sayin

Congratulations Dustin Black & Sean Penn for MILK

Lice Toy

When I was in high school and was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper we used WordPerfect and it would often mistakenly make suggestions for word in place of people's names. One of the women who worked on the paper with me was named Margot and it always used to make me laugh when the computer program would suggest replacing her name with the word "Maggot".

Now a days word processing programs and even phones have the ability to auto suggest words as you type and sometimes you don't even realize that they've gone ahead and replaced the words for you. Here is a conversation from earlier today between Giuseppe and I. Too funny!

Right on

So earlier this week I was watching American Idol with my roommate and I saw that they kicked Tatiana off the show.
 

I have to say, I was psyched to see her go. She's a complete freak and Simon nailed it when he said you're interested in being a start - not a singer. That was spot on the money and when they pressed her on it all she could talk about was marketing the "brand" that is Tatiana. This chick has a way over-inflated sense of self importance and I was glad that someone knocked her down. It's cruel to say but I enjoyed watching her cry. And I have to say that I am getting annoyed with everyone booing at Simon all the time. The truth is that this guy is the only one who isn't afraid to tell it like it is and 100% of the time he's right.

The hardest time of year

I find this time of year to be the worst. Now that my birthday and Presidents day (day off) is behind us it's pretty much a two month long stretch. Adding to that is the fact that the weather is typically either snow or rain and it feels raw outside and everything is grey and cloudy. I know I should be more optimistic because Spring is coming but in Boston you don't really feel it until mid April. A few years back we even had a blizzard during the first week of that month.

I'd really love to take a long weekend and just go sit in the sun somewhere.

Overload

Ok, so despite the fact that I voted for the guy and am psyched he's our president I'm getting a little bored with the over-exposure at this point. It's like bordering on Beyonce annoying where it's non stop. At the same time I'm getting really sick of listening to this rhetoric about economic stimulus. I keep hearing about it described in a way like we're all going to get $400 and then the world is better. Are you serious? If I had $400 I put it in the bank or pay down a bill. I wouldn't run out and spend it so how is that improving the situation? How is that even on a mass scale making the system run again?

And why is it that none of these companies looking for a handout have had to do a damn thing in order to get their money. I keep hearing about how GM or this other company or that company is too big to let fail? That's the last message we need to be sending them, because then there's no incentive to change. I think that what they should say is, you have 2 choices: figure out a plan or we're taking over. Right now it seems like all GM has to do is sit back and wait for the people to get sick of talking about it and then we'll just bail them out.

I hate to say but there's a part of me that actually wants to see one of these companies that refuses to make a better product because they think we'll all just buy their inferior crap because we're proud to be American, fail. I think they deserve it. But regardless I'm getting tired of hearing about it all the time. And it's never served up in a light that we know what the hell anyone is talking about. It's just we're fighting for a bailout package so we can all get some check.

I mean seriously. What?

I did it!

I got the iphone. Psyched right now but still trying to figure it out.

V-Day

Tonight Giuseppe and I are double dating with my brother and sister-in-law for Valentines day. They are coming up to the city and we're going to have a little vino at my place and then head down to dbar where the food is normally yummy anyway but they're having a special valentines day menu. I'll take pictures

Letting go

I would like to thank any of you who have been patient and not nagging me about why I haven't blogged in so long (not you Adam). It's been a rough week at work and for the first time in my career I had to lay someone off. There have been other layoffs at my company before but I never had to do the laying off personally. And the person I had to let go was a friend. It was really hard and I was sick about it leading up to it.

Thankfully the person I had to let go was a total professional about it. I can only imagine from some of the horror stories I've heard where people have complete meltdowns. I probably would have vomited all over the desk if that had happened. Anyway, i sure hope things start to turn around quickly because I don't want to go through another one of those again.

We also found out on Friday that we weren't going to pursue keeping the RadioShack account. It's a really tough brand because in my humble opinion they've really not done enough to keep their product cutting edge and most people think of them as the store you go to when you've had that "Oh shit" moment and you realized that something doesn't connect with something else. Needless to say with competitors like Best Buy which have way huger footprints in their storefronts, it's pretty easy to become irrelevant when you're perceived to sell stereo adapters.

I was really proud of our decision to pull out of the re-pitch though because the folks that run my company felt like it was a lost cause and didn't want people investing a lot of time needlessly. Hopefully we can win another big account back soon.

Laughter is the best medicine

So yesterday was my 38th birthday. If any of you reading this post are also Facebook people who sent me Happy Birthday wishes. Thanks again. That was great.

So last night I went over Giuseppe's and we couldn't really make big plans to do anything for my birthday because 1) it was the middle of the work week and 2) I had scheduled my annual endoscopy for this morning. I have to go annually to make sure my Barrett's esophogus hasn't gotten any worse - last year I had 7 ulcers.

Anyway I got to Giuseppe's and we watched some TV and then were getting ready for bed and he gave me a great card which both made me laugh and also made me realize how luck I am to have him. It was straight from the heart and just awesome. So he had spent some time making a virtual cake on his iPhone and here's what it looked like.

 

The 38 was for me and the 33 was for him (until June 20th anyway). The sign made me laugh a lot as did the answer to my question about why there was an extra number 3 in the upper right corner and he said "I don't know....I just couldn't figure out how to get rid of it." The candles has little virtual flames on top and when I blew into the microphone the blew out. It was pretty darn cute.

This morning I went in to get my endoscopy done and all 7 of my ulcers were gone. Now I certainly have been better about taking my omeprazole buit I also like to believe that laughter is the best medicine and the last year with G has certainly brought me more laughs. I'm reminded of the great scene in Roger Rabbit when the detective asks Jessica why she's with Roger and she answers very candidly "He makes me laugh."

It really is true.