Road Closed

There are times I really, really, really hate Canton. It doesn't happen often, as a) I don't spend much time there, b) its a relatively nice place and c) it isn't Stoughton (ok, Stoughton isn't that bad, but you have to agree it rolls off the tongue kind of funny). Last night I was furious with Canton though, because of its sheer stupidity.
As we were driving down Washington St, Meghan and I came up to some road work that has been going on since about 1998. Most nights, I'm coming home from work, so this road work is on the other side of the street and only inconveniences me so far as to force me way to the right of the rather narrow lane, in order to avoid hitting a construction worker or police officer.
Well last night was a little different. I had to go TO work at 9:30 at night, to write a couple last minute emails. We're down the Cape for five days, and I had a final exam at Brandeis last night, so I rather hastily ran out of work. Heading to work, we ran into the construction, and a rather helpful sign:

ROAD CLOSED

Not, DETOUR, with some helpful hints as to where to go. Not that I don't know Canton that well, but I don't just travel in random 1930's neighborhoods for no reason either. So I made my first attempt to go through the neighborhood and loop back to Washington St, only to hit Washington St. right where another police officer was standing, only all to glad to tell me that I couldn't turn in the direction that I wanted to go, waving his little orange stick and telling me to turn left.
Ugh. I hate Canton. So I went back to the original road I had turned onto, traveled a good mile to a mile and a half out of my way, and then finally made it to the highway.
Is it that hard for one of the 5 police officers that manage to scam detail off of this job to maybe put up a couple detour signs? How can you just close a road? I'm pretty sure in most civilized towns, cities and nations, they give you a hint as to the best way around.


(Red is the road closure, blue is my original attempt to get around it, green is my eventual route. Its a complete coincidence that its labeled with green dots, because going all the way around because they don't know how to close a road properly isn't very "green" at all)

Who Needs a TV to watch TV?

I vowed, solemnly, to myself, that I would take some time this weekend to actually sit down and post a few thoughts.

That was before I found out that they added all six seasons of Highlander to hulu.com. Wow. All I can say is, well, wow. I guess you get the short end of the stick on this one... because you know, there can be only one... and by that I mean only one thing I do online at a time.

But on that note, at what point do we just get rid of the TVs? You can watch all of the seasons of Lost @ ABC, Family Guy and Colbert @ Hulu, and I'm pretty sure that crazy Japanese game show is online as well (and yes, I'm downright giddy about that one, and I'd be sad I didn't see the premier, but, well, you know, its online).

I don't have anything else to say, 'cause I have to go watch Highlander. But I'll do my best to revisit this non-video web site once or twice again this weekend.

The Internet. Short for Idiots with Keyboards

Steve Jobs had me at hello. I'm not kidding. I've been infatuated with the iphone since it was announced, and now that its price point is dropping, its service is getting better, and our Verizon contract is just about up, I'm very seriously considering getting one (er, a couple).
Here's the thing; they're coming out in less than a month, and its almost impossible to get info directly from Apple or AT&T... you know, important stuff like how much will a plan cost, can you get a family plan, ect. I don't particularly like AT&T but I'm willing to sacrifice my dislike for a snazzy iphone. I still can't abide their website though, with 3ish weeks to go until release they should provide plenty more info.
So what do I do? I go to the tech sites (my fav Engadget, or gizmodo) to see if they have any insight to my not so pressing questions.
What annoys most about having to do this though is the comments that are involved... half of the posters HATE Apple, and the other half have filed papers to be adopted by Jobs. They're fighting is annoying and petty; its beyond reproach and I'm disgusted that I bother to read it.
But then again, why do I bother to read it? As always, the lesson is that the internet is full of good information, bad information, but mostly a bunch of idiots. Ugh. And I just want to know how much text messaging will cost.

17

Wow - what a night.

A lot more entertaining and interesting things will be said in the various corners of the internets, so I'll simply add my favorite sentimental moment of the night.

It got a little dusty in the O'Girard household right after midnight. After 2 minutes of being harassed by the ESPN reporter shortly after winning, Kevin Garnett spun around and found himself hugging Bill Russell. Garnett's words:

"I got my own now. I hope we did you proud"

Again - wow.

Sublog: The Most Hated Man on the Train: Part IV: How Many G&T's Does It Take?

So I've always wondered (and by always, I mean for the last twenty minutes) how many Gin & Tonics it would take for me to think that I'll actually miss the commuter rail.

As a day in-day out affair, its a pretty painful existence, and I'm quite sure that I actually despise it. But after 4+ days off from work, I realize that its something that I'll probably miss.

Why?

Well, I'll miss the nice conductor in the morning, who lets me move from the 4th car to the vestibule between the 5th and the 6th so that I can be the first person off the train (and into the dunkin donuts...)

And I'll miss it because it holds a lot of my memories from my first few months of my first real job (before I realized that it was better to beat everyone else off the train and to my car)

And because even though that box car that hit us hurt like hell, it makes for a great story (even though I have to put up with people asking me why I didn't file a claim... i just didn't so get over it!!! I had to get to class!!!)

And because I'm going to hate driving within a week... and then I'll just end up being the most hated man on the road...

(oh, and the answer to the aforementioned question is 5... fyi.)

Return of the Random One-Off Thoughs

I'm all for Bill Simmons going out and doing his own thing... even if he did kind of rip off my joke about the Bill Engvall Show. Don't get me wrong, I love the Worldwide Leader and all but I've never been more into the NBA and more aggravated by the lack of BSG material. If he has to wipe my hard drive due to the spyware that the ads on his own site would create, that's fine. I'll jack the USB port into my wrist and download the virus into my body if I have to.

One of my top ten albums of this decade? The Jay-Z/Linkin Park CD... it should therefore come as no surprise that I'm downright giddy about this new Busta Rhymes song with the guys from LP... even if I'm a month late.

To Meghan's point, if you are over the age of forty, please stay out of the self-check-out lane at the supermarket/target/anywhere-else-there-may-be-one. You don't know how to work it efficiently, you don't know how to work it with any ease or skill, in fact, you just don't know how to work it. You're dealing with people who want to wait for literally nothing, let alone your fat ass figuring out what direction the bill needs to go in to the bill feeder, when in fact it can go in any direction just so long as you aren't a complete idiot (and rest assured if you're having difficulty, you look like a complete idiot trying to use it). Do the rest of us a favor and keep the 17 and under crowd from being unemployed and hit up the 12-items-or-less lane.

I don't get the obsession with cars. I know a lot of people that trip over their own feet at the sight of a "sexy" car... or whatever the kids are calling it these days. I'm so done with this its not even funny. I've never cared about cars beyond which ever is the nicest that I can afford (and I drive a Nissan Sentra, so as you can imagine I don't dream big). There are so many things I want from this life, and a nice Hybrid Lexus or a well appointed Audi may be one of them, but you'll never see me go into full swoon mode over a Saleen or a Maybach, I just don't have it in me. Let's agree to a) agree to disagree on this one, and b) not talk about cars when I'm around. I don't care and if you haven't noticed I'm tuning you out.

Hilary had a point you know. You may not like it, and she shouldn't have said it, but she had a point.

Which reminds me to send you here.

Matt on Kevin Drum on Jonah Goldberg on George Packer. It may make sense if you follow the link, but trust me, you may not care (sorry Matt, I couldn't help myself on that one... but I do generally enjoy your blog and even understand it 20% of the time!)

I do agree with Matt here on the other hand.

One more week until the big work move to Quincy. I think I've finally got a handle on the exact name of this particular stretch of road:

I'm just not saying what it does (but it does sum to 222).

I was thinking about the Pats-Giants Superbowl last night... and when I concentrate on it just for a minute, I realize that I'm still not over it. I'm pretty sure I'm scarred by it, and I know that next season isn't going to be easy to deal with.

Bees!

I'm not surprised that as I delve into my own archives (why exactly would I bother with your boring updates?) that many of the videos that I've posted from youtube have since disappeared off their site. Its sad that everyone is paranoid of copyright violation - I know this stuff isn't free, but I wish the networks/studios/professional sports establishments would be a little more accepting of peoples use of old material. Ah well. Enjoy it when it goes up i guess is the lesson here.
On that note, I noticed that comedy central doesn't pull their own videos, and though I haven't watched Colbert for a good year now (not really sure why...) I did enjoy this:




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On The Line

Every so often (I like to call these times "long weekends") I find that I try and reach out to people I know through social networking sites. Generally I find these to be a complete waste of time, and as such my profiles and pages lay dormant with e-weeds growing upon them. And then, a good 2 or 3 times a year, I decide it would be fun to pretend like I keep in touch.
Today i sent a good 10 or 15 friend requests on Facebook. And who knew that I didn't have a picture! Well, I didn't know that, but I suppose that everyone else did.
Myspace? Haven't checked it in ages. Friendster? WTF? Does anyone still use that? Linkedin? Well, once in a while I add a new person, if only because it seems like the only logical networking site to be a part of.
Anyway, today is the day I decided that I was going to be a social butterfly. Let's just move past it because you know I won't keep it up and I won't care that I don't, and pretty soon I'll devolve into an anti-social caterpillar.
In other on-the-line news, I've finally started using Pandora. You may not care about this, but know that it has saved my sanity recently. Last summer, my nearby co-workers had a playlist with all of the hottest jams (let's pretend I didn't just say that, but it really was the best way to describe it), and I heard the same 20 songs over and over again.
Since then, they've all quit and I've had to fend for myself on the music-entertainment front to get me through the day. I've tried repeatedly to use Rhapsody's in-browser application to listen in, but that never works. So I've had to switch to online radio streaming.
WAAF works from time to time, but its not always what I'm looking for at work. WBOS is good, but it kind of freaks me out when they play 10 second Linkin Park clips on a loop during the broadcast commercial breaks - its cool at first but then it just seems weird. And I'm certainly not about to listen to JAMN or KISS, so I finally moved over to Pandora.
I've got to say, it is a bit repetative at times (I do hear a few songs more than once a day), but it does a great job of staying within the parameters of artists/songs that you tell it to play. One thing I've always disliked about these types of radio stations (if you haven't used Pandora before, its basically internet "radio", in that you tell it what you like and it plays those artists/songs and those that are like it, without commercial interruption) is that they have a very wide range of songs they feel "fit" into the genres you really like, and they don't play the artists you select nearly often enough.
Pandora has been quite different - I hear OAR, Linkin Park, 311 & Dave Matthews quite a bit (the artists I selected), and surprisingly it doesn't stray too far from this mish-mash of artists. And the audio quality is excellent, which is another benefit.
One problem - my new computer in Crown Colony (where my office will be moved to this coming Friday) doesn't have a built in speaker. I've got to fix this... I've gotten too used to my music at work recently.
Wow, what a boring post. Sorry about that folks. I promise to come up with something a little more clever later. And I'll buy you a treat if you accept me as your friend on Facebook... that is, if you do it in the next 25 seconds... otherwise I may have stopped caring.