Billy Mays can eat a dick.

So for my birthday I asked for a Billy Mays Big City Slider Maker. I received said Big City slider maker and used it (after washing it per the instructions) to, um, make sliders.
Weeks pass and my wife asks me to make dinner one night, so I break out the Slider Maker. Kiki bought 92% lean beef, so I was making griddled buns and bacon to go with. I had about 4 pans going at once. Right as I was about to take the last batch out, I noticed the following.

Metallic paint on ALL the sliders. Seems like the miracle nonstick coating(TM) coats the burgers as well. Now I have to call the "As Seen on TV" hotline and try to return this thing. I'll let you know how it goes.
In the meantime, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is... though I'm not sure this applies here...

Maybe YOU are

Last night Kiki told a story at dinner about someone drawing a skinhead on a desk in her classroom. The story was about how incompetently the counselors at the high school she teaches at handled the issue (shocking, I know).
Sidebar, are there any school guidance counselors that are helpful? Mine, Mr. Anderson, should discourage me from applying to the list of colleges I brought in because he thought I'd never get into them. Then he'd spend the rest of our mandatory meeting time to tell me about his son going to Notre Dame on a tennis scholarship. Worthless bastard.
Anyway, Miette listened quietly to this story and the following exchange took place:
Miette: Mommy, was Richard at work today (a colleague of my wife's that Miette has met)?
Kiki: Yes, honey
Miette: Is he a skinnyhead?
It was another of those moments where you're dying to laugh but can't. You never know what they'll repeat.

A glimpse at my professional life.

This post is the result of a particularly terrible Monday I had a few weeks back. I'm posting it in hopes that a google search of Cisco and Plantronics Headset yeilds this info for someone, as it wasn't available for me.
For the Cisco Call Manager (telephone system) we use Plantronics headsets. CS-55s for the phones on the desks and CS-50/60s or Voyager 510s for the soft phones (PC-Based phone). The Headset with the desk phone has a button on the side for call control. Click it to answer or hang up on a call. The 2 for the softphone do as well, but they don't work without the Plantronics PersonoCall software and some other tweaking.
I was told by both my vendor and plantronics support that I did not need the software to make the call control button work. After a day of toiling on it, I got to someone at plantronics who knew what the f they were talking about and they told me that you do indeed need to install the PersonoCall software and do it before installing the Cisco Softphone. Additionally, you have to Designate the headset as the Handset in the audio tab or audio tuning wizard on the Cisco IP communicator.
These are all outlined by Plantronics in a document here:
http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/user_guides/cisco_IP_communicator_setup.pdf

http://plantronics.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/plantronics.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=9482&p_created=1197413729&p_sid=62BLSupj&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzMsMzMmcF9wcm9kcz0wJnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9ubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXBlcnNvbm9jYWxs&p_li=&p_topview=1

Fun, right? Insert cliche "At least I have a Job" here.

What up, Dawg?

So, we want to get a dog. Specifically, Miette wants to open a box on her birthday that contains a new dog. I have been using Petfinder.com (which rules) and pressing people I know that know things about dog adoption.
The double-edged sword here is that we're looking to adopt a stray, not buy a dog from a pet store. However, some shelters or foster homes charge $300 for an adoption. I guess I get it, because they're boarding the dogs and paying to have them fixed in some cases, but damn; at what point do you want to stop paying and let someone else take care of the dog?
The hard part of all of this is that any quick search on petfinder yields hundreds of cute dogs I can picture owning. The problem for me will be making a decision. If I do actually go and look at any, that's where I think it will end. I don't think I'll be able to walk away from any dogs I look at.
The other double-edged sword is how many great dogs are available at any time only means there are that many and probably tenfold more homeless dogs.
Adopt one, will ya?

F-

I miss you, Blog. I miss when I had time to write for you. I miss the time before facebook when I didn't condense my thoughts into a single sentence that starts with "Zach Is..."
I miss my old mutual admiration society. Chidester stopped blogging a long time ago, and Lindblog just closed its doors. I would make time for them. I haven't been able to make it for myself or other blogs like the Foggy Monocle or A Douchebag's Guide.
I do try to make time for Yelp, which gets posted here in the right margin, but even my posts over there are edited for time. I'm still a prickish snob, I just don't have time to tell you about it.
It's mostly because I have too much going on at work and at home.
So here it go. A re-commitment to updating this once a week. Word is bond.