This seems a bit counterproductive...

I saw a sign for this free annual church event.  My mother-in-law and a few friends attend this church, and they have explained that the "Trunk or Treat" event is a free event for children, where instead of going unsupervised door-to-door "trick-or-treating", they can do it with the supervision of adults in the church's parking lot.  Seems like a pretty good idea until you take a step back.  

All year long you tell your kids not to talk to strangers, not to take candy from strangers, not to get near the car of strangers... etc.  Now you take them to an event in which the sole purpose is to have your kids go from car to car recieving candy from multiple stranger's trunks... hmmmmm...

(By the way, look at the poor boy's concerned face.  I think even he knows something's up.)

As of the post the church's site hasn't been updated with the specifics, but if you're interested here's the link: http://www.npkids.org/

(Its still probably better than letting your 18 month old go by his/herself)  :)

Winning Wednesday: Stuff White People Like

My parents got this book for me for my birthday and I have to say its pretty funny.  Its a satire of well... Stuff White People Like, and is writen as a guide for non-white people who want to make white friends.  While the target of the parody is the liberal white person, even moderate and conservative people can get a laugh out of it.  Consistently while reading the book I either laughed because I was "caught" or snikered to myself because "I knew exactly who he's talking about".  

Give it a looksy and I think you'll find it entertaining.  Included in the book are also fill-in-the-blank "form letters" to make it easy to bond with a white person and a few quizzes to help determine your "whiteness".  The book is written by Christian Lander, and he also has a blog called Stuff White People Like.

Links:

Book on Amazon.com

Book's website

Stuff White People Like Blog

Going into the "adult" section

Shhhh. Don't tell my wife, but I just came out of the adult soda section at our local supermarket. Now you may be wondering.. WTF is "adult soda"?! Put your dirty mind to rest it isn't fizzy lubricants or soda in multi-purposed shaped bottles. Quite honestly... I don't know. Everything in that aisle looked like plain old pop. Perhaps its to give shoppers that naughty feeling without the store having to invest in red velvet curtains to hide the "products" from the kiddies.

Tech Tuesday: Vat to do...vat to do

Yesterday it became extremely apparent that I am all to dependent on the digital age. Both the Xbox LIVE and the Zune Marketplace servers were down for maintenance. That meant two of the three things I like to do when the kiddo has gone to bed and the wife is busy chatting with friends or reading a book, were unavailable. Despite being warned via email, LIVE message, AND dashboard announcement of the impending hiatus I was caught unprepared. So basically I had to resort to play all alone with no friends and stale music. *sigh*

Thank God Heroes was on last night or I might have withered away.

I'm sorry this post is passing on the boredom I experienced. (I'm not even going to put a picture to whet your imagination.) :)

ETA: Everything is up and running now, except for a small glitch with the Call of Duty 4 matchmaking (which makes playing online IMPOSSIBLE.)

REALLY strong coffee

Anyone who knows me, knows that I like my coffee pretty strong. If I can see the bottom of the mug, its too light.

A few months back Starbucks switched from brewing coffee every hour to every half hour. Obviously the purpose of the change was to provide fresher brewed coffee. To avoid wasting coffee they switched from brewing "full" batches to "half" batches (but doesn't that make the half batch the full batch now? Sorry, that's neither here nor there). Now that half as much coffee is brewed at a time, they run out quicker. In order to avoid making the customer wait for a new pot, a lot of time they do the ol' "tip the carafe" trick. If given the opportunity to wait for the coffee...take it! Several times I have enjoyed the first 3/4 of my cup when my mouth is suddenly infiltrated with hundrends of coffee grounds. Here is a picture from the last time it happened, the proverbrial "straw".

The thing that sucks the most is if you get your coffee to go, you have no idea this is going to happen until your sitting at your desk and all of a sudden a pile of coffee bean corpses are in your mouth. As I said, I like strong coffee now chewable. Its getting so bad I might start brewing my own coffee at home... nah, that sounds like a lot of work. :)

Oh how they grow...

I realize that this is a bit of a selfish post and has a very targeted audience (mainly me), but I was going through some old pictures and came across an old photo of Keegan (my son, for those who don't know).  It is CRAZY for me to think that this...

is the same little person as this...

Woah!

Did you Know...

Pac-man was partially inspired by Namco desinger Tohru Iwatani seeing a pizza with a slice misssing?  Pac-man's name in North America was originally Puck-man, but was changed just before release (if you're wondering why, think P=F).  The Japanese name for pac-man is pakku-man and comes from the Japanese onomatopeic phrase paku-paku-taberu.  The paku-paku imitates the sound of the mouth opening and closing (twice, kinda like a smacking sound).

Sources: 

http://www.gamespot.com/features/vgs/universal/hist_pacman/p4_01.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man