Happy New Year!

Here are three New Year's resolutions for me and this blog:

1. Blog more. Resolution #2 ought to help with that.

2. Get better material. Hopefully in 2008 I'll take up something that will furnish me with more material for the direction I want this aviation/video games/media blog to go in.

3. Stop stealing music by listening to my iPod. At least, that's what the RIAA thinks I do.

Oh, and in honor of #3, here's Weird Al's video for "Don't Download this Song".

A Christmas Salute

The wacky hijinks will be back soon, I promise. I've got the next two weeks off, and regular blogging ought to improve. For today, though, I'd just like to give a salute to my brother-in-law, Seth.

Now Seth and I haven't seen eye to eye on a lot of things. I married his big sister, moved her out of Iowa, there've been some ongoing family issues, etc. Let's just say we never quite got off on the right foot and leave it at that.

But, while I'm muttering about the Seattle rain as I make my mile and a quarter walk from my condo to my climate controlled office, where I'll stress about about my part in getting a video game into the hands of the clamoring masses, Seth is "enjoying" the hospitalities of a barracks, scanning for IEDs along the roadway, and spending Christmas thousands of miles from his girlfriend and his family.

So while we don't agree on everything, I'd just like to say thanks to my brother-in-law. It's men and women just like him, from all over the country, who are spending Christmas far from home in warm, sandy places, so that the rest of us can enjoy warm homes filled with our loved ones.


Hooah Private, come home safe.

Walking Oddities

One of the perks of walking to work (aside from my apparently lower risk of being hit by a moving car) is some of the occasional odd or funny things I see. I'm trying to remember to use my cell phone cam to actually get pictures of these from time to time.

Here's one I enjoyed today, parked in an apartment parking lot.


It's the South end of a North-bound Dodge Intrepid. Aside from the owner's poor choice in cars, the things I want to point out are the placards hanging from the rear window. On the left, is the ubiquitous and obnoxious "Baby on Board" sign that tells us we should be extra careful to not rear-end this car. On the right, however, is a somewhat less common placard, advising us "Wife in Trunk".

A Plaything of Murphy's Law

Some days, it's good not to be wound too tightly, and to have a well tuned ability to laugh at yourself.

Today was one of those days for me.

It started out well enough. Sure, it took The Boy all of thirty seconds to defeat the refrigerator lock I'd installed the night before when he got up an hour and a half before we wanted him to, but he went to sleep when we put him in the playpen, and at least the eggnog carton had its lid on tightly and didn't leak on the floor during the time it lay on its side, unnoticed.

I even got to eat breakfast at home today, rather than having to microwave some oatmeal at work and eat at my desk. I had time to peel a couple of kiwis and put them in my lunch pail, make a cup of coffee to go (so that I could enjoy a hot cup of my current starbucks blend brewed with my Toddy once I got to work) and since I was driving instead of walking, I got to use my big lunch pail which meant the kiwis would still be in their normal shape when I went to eat them later.

Even the rain, which had been pouring almost nonstop for the past couple of days, stopped an hour before I left, leaving me with patches of blue skies overhead.

I probably should have recognized this as a sign.

So off I went on my merry way. Light traffic on the surface streets, no flooding along my route, psychologist and insane caller on the AM talk radio. Hey, there's one of my co-workers walking. I'll stop at this crosswalk and see if he wants to ride the rest of the way. It's nice now, but it could start pouring any second, and this way he can be dry.

There's no traffic, so I come to a leisurely stop, roll down the window, and ask him if he wants a ride. He turns toward me, says something, and then I'm staring at a blurry, fuzzy version of my crossover SUV's roof trying to figure out what the crunching noise somewhere behind me was.

Things I learned today:

• The rear crumple zone of a Saturn Vue can pwn the front crumple zone of a Honda Accord.
• Wearing a C-Spine collar and being strapped to a backboard for an hour and a half is not comfortable.
• Seatbelts are good things. So are normal CT Scan results.
  
• When being rear-ended, it is possible for your glasses to launch off your face, bounce off the windshield, and land somewhere behind your seat.
• You can run into fans of games you've worked on in the oddest places.
• I'm glad I read AmbulanceDriver, MedicMarch, and BabsRN. Somehow, having read a fair number of EMT horror stories made me a little more comfortable with my first (and hopefully only) trip in the back.
  
• It's difficult to keep track of where you are when all you can see is the sky or ceiling.
• Going to the hospital is more fun when you're there for a childbirth and the wristband is merely for identification as the father.
• And finally, my walking commute is apparently safer than my driving commute.