I had originally planned to write about the Supreme Court’s just-announced decision on gun rights, but then I thought — I should write about something important, something that’s on the hearts and minds of the entire American people, if not the whole world. So, I’m going to write about the new iPhone 4™

Once, as recently as last week, I was just like you. I whiled away the meaningless minutes of my life doing meaningless things like … well, it seems I’ve forgotten, exactly, but they were things like you do. But now that I am the proud possessor — nay — guardian of this device, my life has changed. Everything is different. Colors are richer.* Sunsets are more beautiful.** Relationships are more satisfying.*** In fact, I lack the words to construct a sufficient hyperbole.

Aesthetically, the 4th generation iPhone™ is a work of art. Its design is as timeless as the Taj Majal, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa, as armless as the Venus de Milo. Black, and sleek, it is almost entirely made of glass. Not just any glass, but (we are told) a scratch-proof glass that is 30 times as hard as regular glass.****

Gracing the edge of this device is a band of stainless steel that serves as the antenna — a beautiful synergy of form and function. Some recipients of the iPhone 4™, clearly unworthy of the honor, have complained that the iPhone™ loses reception if this band is touched in a certain way. But as Steve Jobs™ (Apple CEO, technical visionary, Divine Being) has made clear, these “people” are holding it incorrectly. The correct way is this: 1) lay the iPhone™ on a flat surface, 2) take three steps back, 3) with eyes closed and head bowed, pray that Steve Jobs™ will forgive you for your sins.

Functionally, the iPhone 4™ is revolutionary. It decisively answers the nagging questions of our generation, like, can I possibly waste more time on Facebook? Can I be more distracted when talking to people? Is it possible to make the Internet smaller and harder to read? Yes, yes, and yes!

The most revolutionary thing about the iPhone™ is the App Store. Before, a phone was simply a means of talking to people over long distances. But with the iPhone and its App Store, I finally have a way of draining my bank account in $0.99 increments!

In conclusion, it should be obvious that I spent all my time this week playing with my new iPhone 4™ instead of working on a decent blog post.

Sent from my iPhone.

* On the screen.
** On the screen.
*** Not really.
**** Sadly, the keys in my pocket appear to be 31 times as hard as regular glass.

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If they ever harvest my organs, I think they’re getting a pretty good deal. I mean, my liver comes with a free beer six pack.

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The other day, I sat on my porch. Just sat there, doing nothing. I basked in the late afternoon sunlight. I listened to birds, singing. I smelled the faint scent of Spring. Well, it was either Spring or the old lady on the corner smoking her “medicine”.

Whatever. It was pretty cool. And I thought, Why don’t I do this more often? Wait, I remember: it’s hard to trick a three-year-old into leaving you alone for five minutes. *

Seriously, people without kids just don’t understand how kids dominate your life. And that’s a good thing. If they did understand, nobody would intentionally get pregnant, and the survival of our species would depend on high school prom.

That said, dog owners do get a bit of a foretaste of what having kids is like. In some areas, dogs are actually harder. For example, it only took me a day to teach my son to pee on a newspaper.

* Although, I think I’ve found the secret: hide-and-seek + count to 1000 = cocktail time!

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Oh poop, has it been 9 months since I posted something, here? You know, I thought I’d get my annual blog-post in early.

My buddy satyr asks me if Spoonfighter is dead. It probably is. Hey – lots of things died in 2009: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, the Democrats ….

I’m actually bothering to blog because I have to tell someone (i.e. the readers of this blog, i.e. no-one) about my goals for 2010. (I’m sure I’ll have others, when I fail at these.)

1) Goal numero uno: Stop thinking until March

This goal was suggested by my buddy Chris. You see, I have a problem. I am addicted to constantly thinking about life’s big questions. Over and over and over and over. Were it not for this goal, I would have already spent most of this morning tallying up the pros and cons (once again) of such questions as, “What do I really believe about God?”, “What is the point of my own existence?”, and “Will anyone notice if I don’t wear underwear today?”

Secretly, you see, I believe I’m a genius, and that I’m smarter than all those other people who have tried to answer these questions, unsuccessfully. (Buddha went commando. And everyone could tell.) Although I’m getting close to the answers (which I will publish in the form of an eBook), some people have suggested that my “obsessive-compulsive over-thinking” (OCOT) might actually be interfering with some of my other goals, like “enjoying life”, and “not being an angry jerk to my kids.”

My buddy Chris said, “Why don’t you try not thinking for a month?” I told him I’d think about it.

2) Goal numero dos: Read everything on the internet

As 2009 was coming to a close, I realized that I only flirt with the internet. I never commit. I don’t jump in at the deep end. I don’t get the big, extra-value, 20%-more free, bottle o’ internet, and slather the entire contents over my whole body.

What a disgusting image. Anyway, this goal grew out of one of last year’s goals, which was to figure out a way to make some money off the internet. I soon noticed that several other people already seem to have had that idea. That’s when it dawned on me that I have almost no idea what’s actually on the internet these days. I don’t have a list of blogs I read. I don’t hang out at YouTube. I don’t Tweet. I only just found out about Lala.

So, in the interest of setting attainable goals, and with all the extra time I have now that I’m not thinking or wearing underwear to work, I will explore the internet, page by page, link by link, NSFW-video by NSFW-video. A journey of a 7,943,567,328,293,335,110,832,477 miles begins with a single step. Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it!

At least I already know about lolcats. That’s about 15% of the internet, right there.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the economy is bad. In recession. Like what happens to men when they jump into cold water. Or so I’m told. It is especially bad in places like Michigan. Michigan is having trouble because it produces only two things, cars, and mosquitoes. And only the mosquitoes are impressive. (In fact, President Obama was able to sell Michigan to Canada for $37 at the White House garage sale last Saturday. Suckers. They totally paid too much.*) Just kidding, Michigan.

So like I was saying, the economy is in really bad shape. For example, the price of a six pack of my favorite beer has gone from $7 to $9. I want to know what Obama is going to do about that, dammit! When this terrible, terrible thing occurred, I began to pay attention and started learning about economics and stuff. I even read some stuff in Wikipedia. I would like to share what I have learned with you.

First, the main reason the economy is really bad, and not just a little bad, is you! Yes, that’s right, you: the average American. Our economy isn’t doing well unless it is growing, and it doesn’t grow unless the vast majority of you spend an ever-increasing amount of money. But what did you do, when you heard a little bit of bad news about real estate, and the credit market, and the stock market? You stopped spending and started putting your money in savings accounts. Selfish jerks. We’re not going to get out of this mess until you go out there and beg your credit card companies to let you have some more money and then buy eight or nine big screen TVs and a couple Cadillacs. Got it? Also, it would help if the population grew faster, so either have some more kids or quit bitching about illegal immigrants.

The second thing I learned is that economic hard times aren’t always bad. When money gets tight and times get tough, people go back to basics. They spend more time with family. They play board games. They drink more cheap beer. Most importantly, they draw upon strengths and abilities they had forgotten they had, in order to make it through. Many people are growing vegetables in their gardens. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are both working on new sex tapes.

I’m finding ways to get through, too. I tried making my own beer last month, ’cause I’m not paying no $9 for a six pack. Unfortunately, it tastes bad enough that college frat boys won’t drink it. And they’ll drink Old English out of a mossy toilet bowl. So now I’m working on a sex tape …

* Ha ha, I can say that cause I was born there.

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1. Take off your clothes
2. Stand in front of a large mirror
3. Start jumping up and down
4. Flex all your muscles
5. Observe how much of you appears to be trying to catch up with the rest of you.

Optional step for added “fun”:
6. Perform before and after each holiday meal.

Merry Christmahannukwanzika!

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This XKCD cartoon basically explains how I got into my career: link.

In my case, the critical experience occurred after college, when I was doing data entry at Sun Microsystems, and it was Solaris I was messing with, not Perl. (Although I am pretty good at Perl, now, too.)

If you have no idea what I’m talking about:
1. Perl is a programming language.
2. Solaris is an operating system. (Like Windows, MacOS, etc. But way betterer.)

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Interesting quote from Timothy Ferriss (author of the 4-Hour Workweek), from his blog, on why he doesn’t do much stock-market investing:

Here’s the deal — to beat the market consistently, you have to: 1) have better information than most people, 2) have superior analysis of the same information, or 3) have better luck than a Leprechaun.

Discarding luck as a strategem, and personally discarding better analysis because I don’t want to spend my life poring over annual reports or evaluating algorithms, there is a simple conclusion: don’t invest in anything that you don’t know inside and out better than most of the world.

Full blog entry

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I’m on-call at the moment, which means that I get paged any time a customer has a problem with one of their computers, or any time a monitoring program thinks one of those computers might have a problem. The monitoring program has obsessive-compulsive disorder, and it likes to send a lot of pages at night for things that I really can’t do anything about, other than to wake up and curse my pager and then toss and turn for an hour until I finally pass out again so that I’m ready for the next page. I have been on-call in some fashion for several weeks now, and life has lost all meaning. Here is a Haiku I wrote:

Colors fade to gray
There is no joy, no beauty
On-call yet again

Here is another Haiku I wrote:

Nostrils fill with stench
Last night’s meal was a mistake
Now I fart onions

It does not really have anything to do with on-call, but I like it.

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Personally, I feel much safer knowing that once something is designated as “suspicious” by our security professionals, it cannot become “unsuspicious” until it has been blown up.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution. Full story.

Apparently, duct tape and tin foil on anything is considered suspicious. I’m glad that my college days are behind me; there was always the risk, in college, of waking up wrapped in tin foil and duct taped to a pole. “I’m sorry Mrs. Smith, but your son was clearly suspicious. We had to detonate him as a precaution.”

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