Beyond tunnel vision.... like shadows into the light

If your a new reader you've probally never read my reasons to get a TG-WoW do yourself a favor and go read that post right now. For the rest of you who continue to not listen to my advice I don't want to hear any whining.

You know who you are.

The weather has been excpitonally warm this weekend and as a direct result I've been spending a fair amount of time in the backyard. This has led me to a revelation of sort. Why on earth are pine trees planted in the desert? It's not like we have ton's of water out here yet I have two 30 foot+ pine trees in my back yard. The house in Kingman also had two giant pine trees! Really what possesses someone to plant these giant water sucking trees? You know if you could make beer from the things I could understand. Still that is just stupid ya know?

I think I'm just bitter I have to clean up all of those pine needles and don't get any of those Rocky Mountain Views.

Yes, I like Phoenix I just have to question some random person's motivation every now and again.

In our continuing series....

Our continuing series of things that are wrong with the world today....

First up I present the "Fox Sports Football Robot".


I don't need to go further, the grass skirt should be all that you need.












Just a whole diffrent level of evil... and the back label actually said "Made with the same high quality ingredients as our beers". Just what the world needs tasteless BBQ sauce.

For the record the missing one is from someone else I opted for the "Ladies and Gentlemen my life is in this bottle" bottle of Stubbs BBQ sauce instead.





Thanks for reading our continuing series of things that just shouldn't be. Good night and good luck.

I believe in miracles....

I believe in Eli Manning and the New York Giants, they can and will beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

What gives me this confidence and insight?

I'm a Cardinals Fan! We had a not losing season this year therefor the NFC team in the Super Bowl must win when playing in a NFC teams home field! If nothing else I do feel that the Patriots should be taken down a rung or two on the old totem pole.

What more can you ask for?

A hail Mary or three and hope the either Tom Brady or Randy Moss trips over a Playmate at the Playboy party.

What not to get for your babies crib

This is for all the pregnant friends who are from arizona and now live someplace else.

I think I have a new favorite game reviewer....

Even if you don't like gaming (eve/cody/brandi/scott/everybody else) you can apperciate this guy.

The one with alot of words...

No I haven't been watching friends... there is no gratitous nudity in that show. And I'm on a Led Zepplin kick so it's kind of hard to use a line from one of their songs.

Why?

Because there are 3 other posts in the last 4 years with some sort of Led Zepplin refrence. Ok here's a game for you, find two of the three titles with lines from Led Zepplin songs and you will win dinner on me... and when I say on me I will meet you at like a Chilli's in a strip mall some placy buy you a beer and dinner. I'm not really going to let you eat dinner on me unless you 20 something cute and female in which case goto town.

Now your probally asking yourself why only 4 years for this game Tom? Well that's easy that is about how long I've been on blogger you don't honestly expect me to expect you to search all 8 years of this shit do you?

Wait 7 years? Oh good lord it has been 7 years... December 1, 2000. I started blogging in the 20th century! There has to be some sort of award for that. "And now to present Tom with the award for the most pristine and occasionally amusing pile of shit on the intertubes is Kate Beckensile" (and if Kate Beckensile isn't around snag Cylon Model Eight aka Boomer aka Athena to present the award) This pile of crap is older then some of my friends kids and is defitnaly older then all of their marriages.

I wonder if it's time to graduate from blogger to a honest to goodness domain name and some sort of open source web2.0 social networking esque website with a content managment system that would allow me to blog in real time as I thought of something, post pictures when ever I saw something that was amusing to me!

Or I can have another beer and go get some books packaged together for more friends having their first peanut.

I think I'm going to do that, personal jesus would be proud.

On how many levels?

is this wrong?

With his mind he says.... "NO MORE"

Hmmm I guess I should explain my title this evening. I'm listening to music as I often do when I write. And in the case of this evening I happen to be listening to a playlist I call "Seattle Sounds" which if you can't figure out from the title contains mainly music from Seattle like Pearl Jam.

So when I start writing I write the line that is playing when I open the page... and in this case it happens to be what amounts to a Pearl Jam protest song, against President Bush.

Why do I feel the need to explain this? I have alot of knuckle dragging republican family members that read this drivel... And I mean knuckle dragging in the most positive sense of the word possible :)

Ok now that I've offended 2.8 of my readers lets get on with it already.

So a loooooonnnnnnngggggg while back I was having a beer with a coworker and her husband who had just started his own I.T. consulting business. As we sat their drinking our Fat Tires in the late Arizona summer the subject turned to blogs and other thing web 2.0. At which point Rich (the coworkers husbands name) tells me about his blog Securosis. A couple of weeks later coworker and I are talking and I mention I've been reading Rich's blog and mention what I like and don't like... Ok I mainly like everything I'm an encouraging person like that.

A week or so later coworker comes back and says something to the effect that Rich liked the feedback and if there is anything I want to ask him I can and he will publish it on his blog. Several weeks pass and I can't come up with any thing good, finally I come up with this little gem

Yeah it's not much but I think it's cool and Rich is respected in the I.T. security blogger circuit. At least I didn't ask him about the best ways to find new and intersting p0rn... I'm pretty sure I have that one covered.

Don't you trip like I do?

You know I really need to do something about all of this crap on my floors and all of the tripping that then follows the crap around. It's bad enough I'm tripping lord forbid the roomba trip over itself...

Oh yeah I got what could only be called two of the most throughly awesome xmas gifts one being a 30 pack of Coors light (individually wrapped (thanks Scott)) and a Roomba (Thanks Grandpa, people are going to have to work hard to top that gift) The roomba is a awesome little piece of technology while it does not replace traditional cleaning it makes the time between cleanings a little less dirty. I've actually been very surprised at how well it works, and it has a 5 pin serial port so we all know what that means... roombas with chain guns and rockets.

I may have to put a lift kit and beer cooler on the thing to just to complete the redneck motif.

Oh and I need to find a Tony Stewart bumper sticker for the roomba too!

Hopefully everyone had a quiet and pregnant new year where no streaking or feats of mass quantities of alcohol were consumed... Hell I was just happy that I didn't spend this year curled up in a ball sick like I have 3 of the last 4 years. I did break with one tradition this year and watch Dick Clark on ABC... uh yeah... he's going on the top of my death pool this year or at the very least most likely to end up cryogenically frozen in Scottsdale.

What does 2008 hold in store? Who knows thats why linear time is so cool! My only hope is that 2008 holds more quality strippers then 2007 did (for the record the # of quality strippers in 2007 was 8 one night in April)

And world peace... but honestly I would just be happy with more strippers.

Miracles...

8 and 8 on the year! I think it's going to be a good season next year.

Merry Christmas from Kingman Arizona

A public service and christmas message all in one...

Got kids? Going to be having kids? Have a couple of 20 somethings that hang out like they were your kids?

You need to read the following article on Wired.

Merry Christmas / Festivus for the rest of us!

A message....

Not directed at anyone person in particular... mostly... don't think these messages are for you? Print out this blog post and write in your name, instant personal message from Tom!


Hey ___________ I picked up the new TOOL DVD today... I basically paid $10 for a 8 minute video and a 45 minute documentary. Yet I don't feel ripped off! You should pick it up or borrow it next time your in my neck of the woods.

Hey ___________ I heard this line and thought of you.... "finally I get to save the earth with deadly lasers instead of deadly slide shows" (al gore)


Hey ___________ They hypnotoad commercials aren't nearly as good as the hypnotoad show... all hail hypnotoad!

Why only three? Well if you read more often you would know that now wouldn't you.

Ok just so you don't feel left out you big baby...

Hey ____________ Catch this movie trailer before it's taken down from the site it's posted to!

What was that scar? Situated from afar....

So I upgraded to Leopard the day it came out on my Mac. Yeah I know I'm adventurous I also downgraded to Vista on the same day. In the almost 7 weeks and change I've been very happy with Leopard as compared to Vista. I have had one gripe though, the performance is not what I was expecting Leopard has been kind of chunky at times for me. I chalked this up to the fact that I did a upgrade instead of a clean install.

Why on earth did I do that? Simple, every piece of literature I read on upgrading MAC OS X said you could do a straight upgrade and not have to worry about a clean install. I bought it because I had done several upgrades on Linux boxes rather then do straight reinstalls.

So I broke down the other night and popped the Leopard disk in the drive and did a clean install. Holy crap talk about the easiest install I have ever done. 4 clicks of the mouse to get it kicked off. Three more clicks to start the restore process from my Time Machine disk. Total time the old "Aluminum Falcon" was out of commission? One hour forty five minutes. And when I was done everything was back in place and worked just like it had before. Programs, Play lists, Pictures, Passwords in both Safari and Firefox everything worked perfectly!

This joy was tempered by the experince earlier in the week of talking to a vendor support person for a application at work. While we were chatting and waiting for things to happen on the machine at work I mentioned in passing I was thinking of buying a MAC (I do this to gauge how friendly people are to the idea of other operating systems and ideologies other then windows). I got a 10 minute talk on why Windows was better. And honestly most of it was the same crap that I've heard for years. Sad and she sounded kind of hot too.

Yes I just completely rejected a woman based on attitude to a Mac.

And just to make sure the universe did right it self at some point Cody and Eve (aka Mr. & Mrs. Content) have pegged my envy meter yet again by a new and redesigned death-by-blog.com blog...

Where I begin to question...

My sanity or the sanity of my coworkers....

This was the first email I opened at work this morning.....

----------------------------
From: Nathan
To: Andrea; Brad; Sherpa; Greg; Jim; John; Scott; Tom
CC: Victoria
Subject: I got elfed
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 23:35:42 -0700

Hey, I just made a total elf of myself. Check it out by clicking the link below.
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1157868405
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Some days it just doesn't pay to get a second cup of coffee...