Just send me a message on {insert social network}!

The other day, some friends and myself were trying to make some plans to have a "gaming night" via Facebook's message board. These nights usually involve Call of Duty 4, Rock Band 2, pizza, and lots of alcohol.

As we were trying to make plans another opportunity came up that I thought one of my friends might want to do, so I text messaged him to see if he was interested. After a few minutes a response came by way of the Facebook board. It was at this point I realized there are entirely too many ways to get a hold of each other. So many, that it almost makes it impossible to effectively communicate. I did an inventory of ways to "send me a message":

• Facebook Profile
• LinkedIn Profile
• G-mail
• Google Talk
  
• Yahoo Mail
• Microsoft LIVE Space
• XBox LIVE
• Zune Social
• Microsoft Messenger
• Yahoo Messenger
  
• Twitter
• Blog Comments
• Raptr Profile
• 360voice.com/gamerDNA profile
• Work email
• Text Message
• Voice mail
• Work phone
• House phone
  
• Cell phone <---At least I think my phone can receive calls

And I know that I probably forgot a bunch of other ways to "reach" me, but my point is, out of all of those, only about five actually are read on a consistant basis: Talk, Twitter, text messages, phone calls and G-mail (although almost everything else filters into my G-mail account). So if you sent me a message and I haven't responded to you, it is because either A) I didn't get it, or B) I got it, but am too lazy to go to the appropriate website to respond

So how about you, can you think of all the ways people can "communicate" with you?

Cereals of the future

The other day as I poured myself a bowl of Marshmallow Mateys (a pirate themed generic knockoff of Lucky Charms), I snickered to myself. Its strange how some of history's most notorious villains are now plopped into everyday life as children's mascots of sort. A few centuries ago pirates were feared for raping, killing, stealing, etc, and their eastern equivalent, ninjas, were a group of secretive assassins. Yet today they are cartoon characters and even heroes in some cases. Don't get me wrong I still think ninjas and pirates are cool, but it makes me think: what will the children of 2200 eat for breakfast? Nazi Nuggets? Facist Flakes? Klan Krisp?

I guess only time will tell.

Words cannot describe my disgust

Only three letters can do this justice... W T F ?!?!?

What is that sound???

Back when we purchased our house we realized we needed some new furniture to go along with the new digs. Since we now had a house, we figured we'd get some "big people" furniture (i.e., made of REAL wood and didn't have to be put together with an Allen wrench). So we went to the local furniture store and picked out a nice three piece sectional that we liked. In the sea of boxes that was our living room the first few weeks, we unwrapped the furniture from its various boxes and proceeded to arrange them to our liking. When we opened one of the boxes a billion silica beads exploded all over our floor (apparently a bag had opened up, and the bags were about the size of a Mac and Cheese box). I tried my best to clean it up, and then continued my furniture moving duties as my wife "supervised" the correct positioning. Every time I moved the chaise it made a kind of scraping sound on our floor. I thought there was a rouge silica bead and just ignored it. Since then our furniture had never been rearranged. Last night the wifey and I wanted to snuggle up and watch a few episodes of Heroes, but neither of us wanted to assume the "parallel to the TV" position", instead opting for the "feet toward the TV position". So we compromised and rearranged the furniture (don't worry, the whole time we were moving stuff we were commenting on how silly this was). We removed the center piece and pushed the chaise and love seat together and watched three episodes. As we were going to bed, we moved them back into their proper position and again the chaise made the scrapping sound. We both thought it was the scheming silica bead and thought we should dispose of it so the little one wouldn't eat it. I tilted the chaise and found nothing, so I flipped it on its side and... WHAT THE?!?!? I found this...

It was like a buried treasure and my curiosity just couldn't take it. I had know idea what it could be, Pandora's Box, pirate treasure, a hidden stash of the mob's money?? I unzipped the pouch with the glee of an eight year old on Christmas morning and...










oh it was the feet of the couch.
I continued to flip each of the pieces and each had an identical pouch all containing four feet, four bolts, and an Allen wrench. Not quite as cool as pirate's gold, but better than Pandora's box. All this time we thought the sectional just sat on the ground. Oops!

Great weekend!

So I took the weekend off from blogging, because we just wanted to chill and enjoy the last "unofficial" weekend of summer. All and all it went pretty darn good. Friday night we met some friends at BJ's Brewhouse for happy hour and then rented What Happens in Vegas ("...you know why!"). Saturday night a friend came in to town that we hadn't seen in a few years and we caught up, had some drinks and rocked out with Rock Band. Sunday morning we rode our bikes to Le Parisien and met friends for crepes and then went to the movies. The guys saw Tropic Thunder and the girls saw The Pants Movie 2: Dirty Denim (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2). And then Monday we chilled at home and watched the Fresno State Bulldogs whoop on Rutgers 3000 miles away. We capped the weekend by watching a few episodes of Heroes. And on top of it all the weather was wonderful. Friday it was 106, but by the weekend the high had dropped to about 92!

Gross drinks and misspellings (<--??)

First let me give you some background... My wife did a great job of breastfeeding our son, but the time had come to transition him into the real world, where women do not freely offer their breasts just because you whine or cry. So naturally we tried to give him formula, his verdict was "I'd rather starve". So she talked to a relative of hers that was a pediatrician and he recommended adding Nesquik to the formula in order to mask the taste and sweeten it up a bit. The boy saw right through this and still refused to drink the formula. Finally the doctor suggested Soy Milk, and he's been hooked since, but I digress...

The fact is we've had this powdery concoction sitting in our pantry for the last six months just collecting dust. I had forgotten all about it, until my son, remembering the deception, decided to exact his revenge. He dumped about 2/3 of it all over our kitchen floor. Now a while back I had to clean a similar mess and it was not fun. Brooms don't work because the crap is so sticky, and the vacuum doesn't work because it's tile (instead you get your toes sandblasted from the stuff coming back at you...HARD). Again, I digress...

I was thirst and don't really drink milk unless its on my spoon as I'm eating cereal, so in order to up my calcium, I thought... hey I'll give it a try, it's been a while. So I make a glass of the sugary drink and take a gulp... yeah kinda gross. I think to myself, "If I pretend its a melted milkshake..." and take another swig. It helped but then I had this epiphany... why do I have to convince myself that a treat is another treat just to enjoy it. So I dumped it out and moved on with my day. I guess I should have expected that considering Nesquik can't spell quick correctly and their mascot is named after hasty sex (Quicky)!