I guess the first problem of the new year is how to say it. Do you say “twenty ten” or “two thousand ten?” I’m partial to the latter. For ten years, we’ve been saying “two thousand.” It was “two thousand one,” “two thousand four,” “two thousand nine.” We didn’t say “twenty five,” did we? Of course not. And I don’t think anyone was saying “twenty oh seven.” So why are people saying “twenty ten” now? Because it’s easier to say? It rolls off the tongue? Give me a break, you lazy fucks. It’s one goddamn syllable. I’m sticking with “two thousand,” which is better than Bill O'Reilly, who says “two ten” or “two eleven.”

So, what happened in twenty aught nine? It started out with a feeling of “hope and change“, but eventually that feeling turned to “let’s hope this year ends soon!” In January, an estimated 8.9 billion people (according to the Obama Administration) crowded the streets of Washington D.C. to witness the historical inauguration of America’s first president to be elected after George W. Bush. One of the new president’s first task was to fix the economic abyss he inherited from the evil Dubbya administration. The magic bullet fix was a piece of shit called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – also called the Stimulus Bill, or Porkulus Bill – which was passed in February.

Our Emperor promised an end to earmark spending, but said the Porkulus Bill was “last year’s business” and blamed the Bush Administration. He scared everyone by saying if it wasn’t passed, Republicans would sleep with Democrats, jobless Americans would rain from the sky, and four horsemen would come trotting down Pennsylvania Avenue on tiny Shetland ponies to ask what’s in our wallet. So, before anyone in Congress read the bill – or the last page came off the laser printer for that matter – it was passed into law. But did any of us struggling Americans get any of those 787 billion dollars to stimulate anything? Fuck no. That would have made sense. Instead, it was to be given to states for civil projects they deemed shovel-ready. Oh, these were worthy, job-creating projects like changing highway signs in Arizona from kilometers to miles, covered garages for people’s bicycles in Oregon, the removal of gang-related tattoos in California, or the researching why pigs smell so bad in Iowa (which gives a whole new meaning to “pork spending”). I couldn’t make this shit up if I was high.

Then there’s the quaint fairy tale of General Motors. They sold a total of seven vehicles during the last fiscal year and had their hand out like some beggar with a tin cup at Union Station. They changed their name to Government Motors and took a whole bunch of “too big to fail” bailout rupees. Now they sell cars made of bean sprouts and tofu that get 37 miles per gallon city (42 highway) on unleaded soy juice. Chrysler played musical pockets with nearly seven billion of our tax dollars by declaring bankruptcy and selling it’s assets to a company called “New Chrysler.” Yeah. Pass the bong, please.

On the personal front, I bought a digital SLR camera in February. I love creating images with a camera, and I had hoped to take many more photos than I already have. However, visits to people whose profession involves nitrile gloves couple with my daily commute to the fourth circle of hell pretty much killed that notion. I haven’t lost interest though… just lack the time (and sometimes energy).

In March, the “in case shit happens” company AIG received 170 billion of OUR bailout tax dollars, THEN posted a $61 billion loss after paying their fat cat executives big bonuses in the amount of $61 billion dollars… or so says Sean Hannity. This news angered the King and his jesters so much, all they could do was blame Bush. They completely failed to see the irony that they were the ones who passed the legislation that authorized the bailouts and the bonuses. The Supreme Leader – who refused to let us forget that he inherited this economic crisis from the Bush Administration – fired the CEO of Government Motors and promoted Howie Long to the position.

Also in March, I had – rather, tried to have – a cholesterol test. A stupid little cholesterol test started a roller coaster ride of doctor appointments. It started a span of several months were I felt like a patient of Gregory House, and didn’t make a complete week of soul-crushing commutes to Seattle. I saw my PCP, a hematologist, a pulmonologist, had a polysomnogram, pulmonary function test, echo cardiogram, and a chest CT. To this day, I’m still seeing these doctors. You can read more in my blog updates from April and May of two kay zero niner.

In April, the “R2D2 Formula 409 8675309 Jenny Jenny” virus – also called “swine flu,” genetically engineered by hand sanitizer companies – was in the news. The CDC issued a new government mandate forcing all Americans to wash their fucking hands more. That was a direct quote, I believe. Someone fact-check me against MSNBC. Also in April, Lil'Kim test fired a missile that Biggie said could reach Hawaii. The Messiah couldn’t have a power from the Axis of Evil throwing bombs at his grandmother’s old house, so while he was doing frightening low-altitude passes over New York City, he sent the Seventh Fleet to Waikiki and texted Jong-Il a message that read “OMG Bad Kimmy! LOL :)“

After four months of back-breaking work screwing up our economy even more, Congress was mighty damn hungry. After roll call, they took a vote in the House. Mexican food was the choice by an overwhelming 257 to 178 vote. This influenced the Senate to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court… because she went to law school, no one else wanted the job, and she had an awesome recipe for green chilli salsa.

At home, I was continuing my weekly wallet purge to the great health care plan in the sky, which you can read about in my July update. I had several paychecktomies throughout June and July while pop star and international pedophile of mystery Michael Jackson died, Sarah Palin tried to get the deposit back on her Alaskan Governor’s mansion, and Obama gave $4,500 to anyone with a fucked up ride. The billion dollar plan was to last 3 months, but to the delight of the DAA (American Dyslexia Association), “Cash for Clunkers” cost us $3 billion, and only lasted one month. While Democrats called the Clunker plan a success, Nancy Pelosi wanted the program ended because it was wasting taxpayer dollars that would be better spent on investigating Bush-era CIA lies. The Beltway Brain Trust then focused their enormous efforts (and our tremendous tax dollars) on fixing the nation’s health care system, completely ignoring the “why fix what’s not broke” adage taught to us by our grandparents. Fed up with politics as usual, Obama called the world leaders of Cambridge for a Beer Summit at the White House. When Professor Gates complained there were no pretzels or beer nuts, Obama blamed the Bush Administration… and Somali pirates.

In August, General McChrystal asked Chancellor Obama for 40,000 more troops to fight terrorist for truth and justice. But our fearless leader had better things to do for the next four months… like go to Copenhagan to hawk the City of Chicago like an aluminum siding salesman, receive a Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush, play golf on Martha’s Vineyard, and killing Ted Kennedy with kindness. Instead, he deployed Democrats and SEIU members to America’s Town Halls to defend the High Council's plan to shove an unwanted, highly expensive health care suppository up our mud cutters. It was – and remains – highly irritating that Congress keeps pushing their own agenda despite the wishes of the constituents. I wrote an update about it. Wanna read it? Here goes…

One of the funniest moments of the year was Dictator Obama’s address in front of a joint session of Congress, his 3,780th appearance on America’s television airwaves. While forecasting the pending doom and gloom that will befall the United States if health care reform is not passed, he was interrupted by Kanye West, who yelled out “You lie! The Republicans have the best health care plan of all time!” Pissed over the coverage of this outburst by FOX News, Obama ordered a missile strike on Rupert Murdock. He then attempted to earn money to pay for health care reform by making cameo appearances on The Red Green Show, Dancing with the Stars, reruns of Starsky and Hutch, Iron Chef America, ABC Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Sponge Bob Square Pants. Obama was later presented an Academy Award (photo) and a green Masters Jacket (photo).

This fall, I did a little e-commerce web site designage, which later allowed me to get a couple new laptop computers. I wrote a little about that not long ago. Also this fall, some hippie demon spawn from Colorado went up-up and away in a beautiful balloon. No, not because he was a member of The 5th Dimension, but because his name was “Falcon” and he thought he could fly.

Let’s see,… what else? Oh, David Letterman admitted to having sex on the Appalachian Trail with Tiger Woods, who nearly had a complete 18-ho golf course built before being caught with his putter in the bunker; Khalid Sheikh Salahi and his wife crashed the White House State Dinner, and Obama appointed them to Czar of Fine Dining despite protest from Bobby Flay; The New York Yankees won the World Series… again. That makes 400 world championships at last count; and Rush Limbaugh was briefly hospitalized for chest pains when he realized the Obamas were also Christmasing in Hawaii.

With the bar set so low by 2009, it should be easy to have a better 2010. Here’s hoping your’s is a good one.

Yeah, I know. Lame. Last year I received a friendly complaint. I can’t remember if it was an email, or a jabber, message by Carrier pigeon… maybe it was a smoke signal. The point is, someone complained about titties on my blog because they read it at work. I won’t mention who, but I used to work with him, it’s not the guy who looked like Jesus, and his name rhymes with Lyle Goddard. So, in the interest in keeping the image for this update suitable for work, you get a picture of birds. Thanks Kyle! Oh shit…

Alright, let’s see what I was up to in 2008. Going through old posts on the blog, I am the most boring sonofabitch in Washington state. I’m still working in Seattle and suffering through a soul-crushing 165 mile round trip commute. It’s wake up at 4:30am, do the three S regimen, dress, commute, work, commute, home at 7:30pm, eat dinner, watch a couple hours of TV, go to sleep, rinse and repeat. Finding time to write in this blog has become a chore with so little time.

In January 2008, I asked The Company for pay raise. At the time, I had been with The Company for three and a half years and only got a one dollar per hour raise in May 2006. Then in October 2006, they gave me a 25% raise because they were transferring me to Seattle. I don’t consider that an actual raise, though. The cost of living and working in Seattle is higher than Oak Harbor. While I had failed plans of moving down there, the additional pay covered gas to commute and higher food prices in Seattle. In fact, by the time January 2008 rolled around, and it was just me and LDriver making the daily commute, that additional 25% increase was just about completely spent on travel expenses to and from Seattle… then gas became a precious fluid, garnering four and a half dollars a gallon. Excellent!

They agreed to a pay raise, and gave me more than I expected. I asked for a 6.6% increase, they gave me a 21.6% increase. The only caveat was I had to move from the Hosting department to Systems Administration. I liked Hosting. I knew the job well, I liked my managers, and enjoyed the work. While I got my promotion and raise in January, it didn’t take effect until March. Moving into Systems Administration was a promotion that put me in a group of cerebral people with a different manager… and after nine months I still feel like I don’t fit in.

I started looking for a new truck last January when Capital One approved me for one of their Blank Checks with a limit big enough to afford a much newer model year.

If you’ve read this waste of time before (or know me personally) you’ll recall I bought a used 1994 Ford F-150 in June of 2006. That was a nice truck and I liked it a lot. However, about three months after I bought that truck, The Company closed the Oak Harbor office, and a few months after that I was driving that ’94 truck to Seattle once a week. I think that weekly 200-mile trip was the begining of the end. I started to have a lot of troubles with the old 4×4. It was running rough at temperature, so I had it tuned and scoped. It got new plugs and wire, a new rotor and cap, even a new serpentine belt. After all that and more than $500, it still ran rough! The next month, I was driving home from Seattle, LDriver was with me, and the transmission started slipping. We were at highway speed when the tranny slipped out of gear and the engine raced. When I let off the accelerator, the gear re-engaged. We limped to Mount Vernon where LDriver’s wife met us. We poured a quart of Mercon into the tranny, and I gingerly drove it the rest of the way home. A couple weeks later, I took the truck into the shop, and spent several hundred dollars more to have the transmission fluids changed, bands tightened, and filters replaced. That helped, but the mechanic told me the fluid was very burnt and contained metal dust, indicating the transmission was in serious need of more attention than just filters and fluid. When the lower radiator hose blew out a couple of weeks later, I knew it was time to get out of that ’94 truck fast or be buried in repair bills and a busted-ass truck!

That was the back story which led to me buying a new used truck in February. After searching the dealer web sites in Western Washington, I finally settled on three trucks at three different dealers that I wanted to go test drive. My first stop was Ford of Bellevue where they had a white 2005 Lariat. I called the salesman before driving 100 miles, and he asked me which truck I wanted to see. Apparently there was some confusion on their web site with two different trucks getting the same price and inventory ID number. Several other callers were disappointed to hear that another white 2005 F-150 with over-sized tires and a lift kit was not on the Bellevue lot. Lucky for me the “other” truck with the same inventory ID was still available. I really think that’s why the price was a couple thousand lower than other Lariats of the same year and mileage at other dealers. If you want to read the full story of the day I bought my 2005 F-150, the original post can be found here.

March… Promotion. I stayed in the Hosting department for about six weeks removing all ties to a domain registrar (which The Company owned then sold). I also spent that time resolving my outstanding tickets, after which I relocated my desk to a cubicle near the sysadmin offices in true Milton Waddams fashion. To The Company management (which I’m sure read this occasionally), don’t worry… I don’t have any plans to burn the place down… yet.

The only part of being a sysadmin I don’t like is pager duty. Being on-call sucks. With over 4,100 services being monitored network-wide, there always seems to be something that will wake you up a couple (read: ten) times a night. The very first night I was on pager duty, I was awakened by a loud beeping. Still half asleep, my brain said “FIRE?” …and my heart started to race. But I quickly rubbed away the eye boogers and realized it was the pager. From that point, whenever I have the pager, I change the alert tone to something that doesn’t sound like a smoke detector, or a FedEx truck backing up into my bedroom. Jesus!

The rest of spring was pretty much status quo: sleep, work, sleep, work, pager, work, sleep, work, ad nauseam. I was sick and tired of the Primary elections, and gas prices were higher than Heath Ledger. Holy hell, man! At it’s peak, the cheapest gasoline price I could find was $4.30 a gallon. It was costing $28 (or 6.5 gallons) a day to drive to work and back in LDriver’s 1997 Mercury Sable. Do the math, people, that was about $600 a month in fuel costs! Who am I, Donald Trump? I don’t make that kind of money! Somehow I paid for it, though I maxed out credit cards. Seems stupid to ruin a good credit rating for the sake of driving to work… especially when I can work from home just as easily… but ya do what ya gotta do to pay the bills.

I was having some serious knee troubles in late June and early July. I went to the doctor, and he told me it was Patello-femoral Pain Syndrome. Whatever it was, getting plenty of rest and staying off my knee, coupled with a liver- and kidney-killing cocktail of 400mg of ibuprofen and 1000mg of acetaminophen seemed to help a lot. It took about two weeks before I could bear full weight on my knee without a great deal of pants-pissing pain. My knee still stiffens up in the car during my commute to hell, but it’s much better than it was in July.

In September, I started getting interested in the Presidential Primary elections. I marveled at my apparent maturing into a Republican. I guess age has a way changing people. Whether it is for the better is yet to be seen. For now, I’m comfortable with being a Republican and not at all pleased with the election of King Obama. All of His rhetoric about needing change, not more of the same, is a load of shit. In the two months since the general election, we’ve seen nothing but the typical Chicago political corruption we’ve seen for decades. Change indeed!

That’s about it for 2008. Sorry for the delay, too. I started this post on December 31, but four days of pager duty — which started on New Year’s eve – lasted nine days due to a birth in The Company’s family. Happy New Year! Let’s hope 2009 is better than 2008.

Yeah… maybe I’m a Scrooge or a grinch, but I say bullshit. There’s no such thing as Christmas spirit anymore. There’s just buy buy buy! Sale sale sale! Now 30% off this shit, and 50% off that shit! Cities and towns decorate their streets not for the spirit, but to entice consumers to consume. Fuck each and every goddamned television and radio commercial for whoring themselves for our money. Fuck every newspaper ad and insert offering an insane discount on that must-have lead-laden crap made in China. Fuck the goddamned throngs of inconsiderate, mindless assholes that crowd every mall, department store, and curio shop in search of the perfect gift… or a gift that will suffice.

I’m not a religious man at all, yet I can’t help but laugh at how a religious event has been twisted into a reason to buy things. Whether you believe December 25 is a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, or a Christian celebration of the approximate birthday of Jesus, the roots of Christmas are based in religion not capitalism.

Back in the 1650s, Puritans in Massachusetts banned the celebration of Christmas for nearly three decades because they saw it as a throwback to their Crown roots. They couldn’t take time off from work, have a big feast, decorate their homes, etc. Even when the law was overturned, the disdain for Christmas continued for many years. In fact, Christmas in America attracted about as much attention as Kwanzaa does today until the mid 1800s. But, just after the Civil War, retailers realized they could use the Christmas season to market their shit we gotta have. Their first hurdle was getting Protestants to let go of their hostility towards Christmas. Then President Ulysses S. Grant designated Christmas a federal holiday in 1870, promoting the secular aspects of the holiday. Ever since then, the holiday season of advertising and commercialization has gotten out of hand.

If you’re less than 80 years old, you grew up with the heart-warming story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer who saved Christmas with his nose so bright. But that entire story was made up by an employee of Montgomery Ward. A national Christmas icon created by a department store in order to sell more crap, then immortalized in songs, television, movies, and comic books. While Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa Claus, they definitely “standardized” the image of a jolly fat man, with rosy cheeks and a flowing white beard wearing a gaudy pimp suit.

Now that same happy image sits on thrones in department stores across the country, surrounded by “elves” in curly-toed shoes and long lines of selfish, greedy vaginal vermin begging for Red Ryder BB guns and dolls that piss themselves. I offer a hearty fuck you to all you parents and your children who have infested our retail outlets with incessant screeching and crying. We should pass a law that outlaws these prepubescent shitstains from throwing a fucking tantrum in a public store, and punish their non-confrontational, tree-hugging, soy-eating parents for not smacking the fuck out of their misbehaving brats!

Christmas is all about the almighty dollar nowadays, as evidenced by the non-stop holiday ads in every form of media. It’s ridiculous. It’s like driving down skid row looking for a hooker. They’re all dressed provocatively, as if to say, “pick me, pick me!” C’mon, you know it’s true! Especially when you realize you’re looking for the best deal for the least amount of money. “Sucky sucky five dolla? Me love you long time.” Or, “Garmin GPS hundred dolla?” No difference.

The recent economic recession seems to made things worse: holiday email spam, television ads, radio ads, junk mail, “Christmasized” logos on retailer’s web sites… It’s a constant barrage of holiday marketing that retailers hoped would make a bad economy a bit better. Christ! There’s over 50 shopping channels broadcasting 24 hours a day, and late-night television is lousy with paid programming. Who the fuck is buying all this shit in the middle of the night? If the economy is so bad, why haven’t all these sleep-deprived materialistic fuckwads with credit cards and a shipping address heard about it?

Of course, the holiday ads don’t stop on December 25. Oh no. There’s the “After Christmas” sale, the “Post-Christmas Sale-abration” sale, the “December Clearance” sale, the “New Year” sale, the “Boxing Day” sale, the “Everything Must Go” sale… whatever the time, the retailers have a sale for it. If there was truth in advertising, there’d only be one kind of sale — the “Buy Our Shit So We Won’t Have To Be Bailed Out By The Government” sale. Fuck TARP and fuck Prince Henry, too!

Why do they always pin the hopes of their bottom line on four to six weeks of holiday discounts? Doesn’t it make sense to market like it’s the holidays all year long? Maybe if they did, so much attention wouldn’t be paid to their economic well-being at Christmas and we can get back to the real reason for the season.

But the holidays aren’t JUST about capitalism. Even though it’s only for one week a year, families put aside their differences and get together to celebrate a tradition. People are usually more generous during the Chrismahanukwanzakah season, and the shear amount of alcohol consumption makes everyone appear happier. However, the impending debt, crowded stores, stupid greeting cards, ungrateful phony attitudes, and endless drone of the old tired Christmas songs just makes me hate the time of year all the more…. which leads to posts like this. It’s more predicable than the first snow.

Fuck it. That’s all for today. Tina’s already shot me several disapproving glares for writing yet another annual “I hate Christmas” post. I’ll have my annual year in review post sometime before the new year… hopefully.

On Thursday, July 3, I was supposed to work from home, but didn’t. I went to the doctor about my knee then spend the rest of the day with ice and heat on it. More on that later. On Friday, I drove around and took some pictures with a friend’s camera. It’s been a long time since I used a quality SLR camera, and I was having a blast… even though I knew I would pay for it later (again, more on that later).

The camera was a Nikon D80 digital single lens reflex camera, and it works exactly like the Old Time SLRs I used to used back in the Before Time, but better. Total control of the aperture and shutter equals full manual mode. A reflex mirror and real viewfinder! OMG, what fun! I could take long exposures with a small aperture for a greater depth of field which means everything is in focus. Nothing like the point and shoot cameras you can get at the Wal-Marche, with their tiny useless flashes and shitty LCD displays.

After a rude filter-shopping encounter with an old shrew (read: shriveled cunt) at the Oak Harbor Ritz Camera, I decided to download a PDF of the Nikon’s owners manual. I started playing with the settings, and put it in black and white mode with a red filter effect. This would allow me to take black and white photos where reds were lighter and the blues darker — like Ansel Adams photographs. For my first attempt with a borrowed camera, I don’t think the pictures turned out too bad. Take a look at the gallery.

When I got home from shooting black and white, it was dinner time. After dinner, I re-adjusted the camera back to color images with no filtering in order to take pictures of the town’s fireworks display.

Speaking of fireworks, my neighbors are complete fucking retards. They were having a barbecue, and had about 700 people jammed in their house. I may be two or three people off on that estimate, but let’s say there were a lot of people next door. Christ, one of their waterhead kids had a fanned mohawk haircut. Really, a mohawk? Mr. T from the 1980s called; he says he pities your drunk ass for shaving your kid’s head that way! Be a parent and tell the kid no at least once before he grows up into a total cocksucker!

Anyway, including the two front yards and gravel driveway, the door-to-door distance between the front of my house and the front of one of my neighbors is about seventy feet. The gravel driveway is slightly wider than three cars widths. Think of a one way street with cars on both sides, the remaining space is about a car width and a half. There’s basically the width of a car left in the driveway, and the vehicles parks along the edges of the yards are newer, no more than 5 year old cars. So what do my retarded fucking neighbors do? Before the sun goes down, they drag a hunk of plywood into the middle of the driveway and light off Class B fucking fireworks! The so-called “safe and sane” fireworks you buy at the stands in town weren’t good enough for these fuckstains. No. They had to have the biggest, loudest fireworks available at the Swinomish indian reservation. For those of you not familiar with the area, those are casino indians, not Slurpee indians.

I knew, just fucking knew, that my new truck was being showered in burning embers of black powder, and I couldn’t have that. At 8:45pm — with the sun still shining — I grabbed the camera and my tripod, and I peeled out of the driveway, which was the best white boy show of disgust I could muster. I drove up to Barrington Drive west of the Wal-Marche, where it was an all-out block party.

The streets were lines with cars, and people had set up lawn chairs on any semi-level plot of land they could find. One group of people even had a bonfire going, which I thought was highly illegal. The police had better things to do, I guess… seatbelt quotas must be low. People had their dogs with them, kids were screaming and running around with sparklers, moms were snapping pictures with cell phones (!), and dads were showing off their testicular size with fire and explosives. God Bless America, dammit!

I found a grassy knoll and set up the tripod — hanging my backpack o’ socket wrench set from the stabilizing weight hook — and placed the camera atop it. It was still quite bright outside, but at least I was ready for the show… albeit more than an hour early. When the show finally started around 10:15pm, I started taking pictures with the remote trigger. The pictures, most at 6 second exposers, turned out better than I thought they would. Check ‘em out in the gallery.

It was 11:00pm when I got home, and my jackass neighbors were still huddled about their plywood pyrotechnic platform swilling beer. They acted like Geordi LaForge from the Star Trek TNG episode “Identity Crisis” in all the foot-candles my fog and headlights threw at them. Drunk fuckers. Tina had turned on the floodlights out front in hopes they would give up, but no such luck. They continued to light off fireworks until 12:30am, when I finally got fed up and told them to knock it off. Washington state law was on my side after midnight; next step would have been to call the sheriff. Luckily they went inside to sleep off their stupor.

I mentioned my knee. I have no idea what the fuck is going on with my right knee, but I know it hurts. The amount of time I spend at my desk and the long 200-mile round trip commute from hell has often left my leg stiff and sore. But after a few steps and an hour or so of being straightened, things were basically back to normal.

However, in early June it really started to bug me. I got up from my desk to go home, and could barely walk. I couldn’t put any weight on my right knee. I finally stretched it out and was able to hobble to the car to get home. Once home, I slapped a heating pad on my knee and gobbled Tylenol like they were potato chips for the pain. Nothing helped… until I made an appointment to see my doctor. Days before I was supposed to go in, I was walking around like I was Michael Johnson, only whiter… and slower… and fatter… and breathing a whole lot more. I was upright, at least!

I canceled my doctor’s appointment, and when my knee got that confirmation, it started hurting again. Getting old sucks a fat one, so I made another appointment and finally saw the doc on the 3rd. He twisted my foot, pulled my leg, and pressed down on my knee cap while telling me to tighten thigh muscles. When he was done, my knee hurt more than it did going in, but he said that was good. He said that there’s probably no physical damage, that the cartilage is bruised, and my knee is “pissed off at me.” He used those words, “pissed off at me.” The official problem is Patello-femoral Pain Syndrome (but I think it’s more like Retropatellar Pain Syndrome). They’re both very similar.

The doc showed my a cool model of the knee, and explained my thigh muscles (quadriceps) aren’t pulling my knee cap (patella) evenly through the groove (trochlear groove) of my thigh bone (femur) when I walk or straighten my leg. It’s that uneven pull that is causing my knee cap to inflame my knee. He sent me home with instructions to exercise my quads, and take 400mg of Advil and 1000mg of Tylenol — at the same time — for pain and anti-inflamation. That’s not working. It’s been more than 10 days since I saw the doc, and I’m still in the same amount of pain I was when I saw him. The next time I see him, he’ll probably stab me with a large needle full of cortisone… or send me somewhere for an MRI. Fucking excellent.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll keep ya up to date on my knee, ’cause I know how everyone loves other peoples’ pain. You bastards.

I lead one helluva boring life. It’s the same old shit every day, but I’ll try to whip something together here.

In January 2007, nothing happened. Oh, terrible shit happened in January; Microsoft released Vista and Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House, but nothing interesting happened to me. But in February, The Company bought a domain name registrar. We were officially in the seedy underworld of domain registration, with the likes of GoDaddy and Network Solutions — but on a much smaller scale. Out of 856 domain registrars, we ranked 130-something. It took a lot of my time, and it was a constant battle with domain registrants before we sold the registrar to some other sucker! I learned a lot about SRS and how domain registrars operate. Would I want to do it again? Fuck no! The domain name administration isn’t bad, but the people who register domain names suck ass. I was never so happy and relieved when the web server, mail servers, name servers, and phone numbers were finally transferred to the new owners.

In March, I was back in the ER with pneumonia. Surprise! It’s an annual event anymore, like the return of the Swallows to Capistrano. I had a temperature of 103.1°F (39.5°C) and missed seven days of work while I laid in bed dying. After all the visits I’ve made to the hospital, you’d think they’d have a clue what was wrong with me…

April and May brought the Virginia Tech massacre and the death of Jerry Falwell, but it was boring for me. Not until June did I get pulled over by the Washington State Patrol for not wearing a seatbelt and I blogged about how stupid the seatbelt laws are. Not wearing a seatbelt doesn’t risk anyone on the highway but me. Of course, a seatbelt violation is a primary offense in Washington, where we had to wait until January 1, 2008 before text messaging while driving became a secondary offense. Awesome. Governor Mudcutter must be proud.

In July I turned 41, and August was uneventful. Sometime during the summer, we lost one of our carpoolers. He started working from home because The Company needed techs to answer phones at 5:00am… and there were also benefits to LDriver’s vehicle and my sanity that perpetrated the decision.

Ever lose your wallet? I did in September. It was teh sux! I had to replace debit cards, credit cards, my drivers license, my insurance card, the proximity card to gain access to the building in which I work, and other such things that reside in one’s wallet. It was a major pain in the ass, and I don’t recommend it to anyone.

Also in September, we lost a second carpooler. There was a she-bitched, he-lied, she-said event at The Company that would rival any plot line of Desperate Housewives. When the Astroglide dried, one employee was fired and the other was allowed to work from Oak Harbor (and no longer in the carpool). I was — and am still — highly pissed at the situation. The one thing that all of us carpoolers from Oak Harbor want is to work in our hometown so we don’t have to do the soul-crushing commute twice a day.

Then in October, The Company moved from the Westin Building to the Active Voice Building. This move was directly next door. The telephone companies needed the space in the Westin, so the Westin management offered another space in the building next door for a lot less rent, and they would pay to move us. Packing up my office shit twice in one year is not my idea fun, and the new space is much smaller than the space in the Westin. People that had offices in the Westin were forced into cubicles in the new space. Can you guess who those people were? I’ll bet you can!

I started feeling the onset of pneumonia again in October. This time, I went to a doctor instead of laying down on my death bed then heading to the ER. The doctor listened to my lungs, gave me a hit of his albuterol through a nebulizer, then told me I have asthma. Can you believe that shit? He gave me a prescription for a ProAir inhaler, which worked not so well. I may as well have been huffing fumes from the tailpipe of my truck. When I finished that canister, he put me on Ventolin, which is better. It works, but could be better. I’m also on Qvar. Ventolin is a rescue inhaler, Qvar is a preventative inhaler. Puff puff pass!

I got another new mobile phone in the fall, too. This one is the shizznit! It’s like the continuum transfunctioner, but without the oral pleasure (dammit), and its mystery is only exceeded by its power, baby! It’s got a faster CPU, faster internet connection, more RAM, more ROM, does GPS… and it’s definitely become the most useful phone I’ve ever owned. I’ve even registered wafwot.mobi to create a mobile-friendly site for the phone.

In November, I bought new tires for my truck. The old kicks were getting a bit thin in the tread department, so I figured I’d better bite the bullet before the winter weather rolled in. I went to good ol’ Les Schwab for the tires, and $800 later, my truck was sporting new rubber. A couple days later, it was time for a tune up — the first tune up since I bought the truck. It got new plugs, new wires, a new serpentine belt, new distributor cap, new rotor, and it was tuned and scoped. That took a $450 bite out of my wallet.

Oh, but my truck wasn’t done yet. Less than a month after it was in for it’s $450 manicure, the lower radiator hose blew open like John Ritter‘s aorta. I limped the truck home, not letting it get over “H” on the temperature gauge. Several strenuous and painful hours later, LDriver and I had the new hose installed. The older I get, the more I hate working on cars. I promised I wouldn’t work on the truck, leaving the maintenance up to the professionals. But, it’s too fucking expensive!

The holidays were quiet and uneventful. Tina and I spent Thansgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day together, not going anywhere. We just stayed home and watched football.

And that was my year. Told you it was boring.

A note from wafwot: I wrote this while watching the Seahawks beat the Redskins on January 5, but completely forgot to wikify it and publish it! Holy hell! It wasn’t until I went to spout off about the New England Patsies losing Super Bowl XLII that I discovered the old draft. So, that’s why you may notice it appearing on my blog in February but having a January date. I’d apologize, but you already know I’m a lazy bastard that needs to type/write more often.

Some people really don’t like the holidays, and I’m one of them. No, I’m not Jewish, or Arab, or part of any other non-Christmas celebrating sect. As a child, I loved Christmas. The anticipation, the excitement, the lights, the tree, the music, family, not going to school for two weeks. It was fanfuckingtastic! More stimulation than a child should have. Maybe that’s why I’ve grown to despise late December. I totally understand why my paternal grandfather always called it “Kissmyass.”

Everyone and their goddamn great uncle’s cousin twice removed is in your pocket. Food banks are begging for food for the throngs of hungry homeless; the Salvation Army of bellringers clanging at every department store, grocery store and post office in an eight thousand mile radius; Christmas Seals apparently needs money for more cigarettes; it’s an interminable stream of pleading for money. Here’s an idea: Give the gift of get off my fucking back. Everywhere you go, it’s “save the starving, feed the dying, make the guy with a credit card feel guilty.” I’m just tired of it all.

And while I’m in a pissy, bitching mood, what the fuck is up with the stores? Jesus H. McChristmas, people! I went to Wal-Marché last weekend to get my inhaler prescriptions filled and pick up a few things we needed at the house. I think every fat Navy wife with their waterhead kids in the entire Pacific Fleet was in that store… and they’re rude as fuck! I’m going to write a book. “Wafwot’s Rules for Shopping in Modern Civilization.”

Rule #1: When pushing your shopping cart, move to the side of the goddamn aisle! I don’t know how many times I’ve headed down an aisle only to be aisle-blocked by some elderly Flip comparison shopping, trying to save that one tenth of a penny per pound of rice. It’s rice! You need to buy a ton to save a nickel. Pick up a box and move the fuck out of my way! Nothing pisses me off more than using another aisle to bypass a ailse-blocker, only to discover they’re now blocking the other end of the aisle!

Rule #2: Don’t talk to your friends in the middle of a high-traffic aisle. Yeah, yeah. We get it. You haven’t seen Steve since 1982, when you stole a bottle of Bacardi 151 from your daddy, got drunk, and sodomized the barnyard animals of old man Kotter’s farm. Catch up on your own fucking time, or take the conversation to Arts and Crafts, or Women’s Underwear. You’re creating a cart traffic jam for the entire store with all that jaw-jacking!

Rule #3: The rules of the highway pertain to shopping carts, too! If you’re in a store in the United States, and you’re pushing a cart down an aisle, keep right motherfucker! The only time you should be on the left side of the aisle is if you’re heading the other direction, or you’re passing some inconsiderate shit-eater who’s breaking Rule 2. I can’t count how many times I’ve got stuck between end caps, waiting for some supersize black woman trailing a bus load of crying children, like Mother Goose with a gaggle of goslings… one after another.

Rule #4: Pick up the pace! How many times have you been stuck being some crippled old fuck that’s shopping as they walk? They’re moving at the speed of smell, molesting every product they pass. If you’re 65 years old or older, this rule states that you’re only allowed to shop Monday through Friday between 10:00am and 4:00pm. Us faster moving folks will be at work, so slap on that wig and push that walker all you want during those 30 hours.

Rule #5: If you can’t control your kid, or your kid is acting like the spawn of Satan, screaming and crying to beat the band, then we as a shopping public have the inalienable right to bitch slap the fuck out of you and your misbehaving uterine litter. Congress should pass a law giving the public the ability to legally punch spoiled little brats in the throat as to crush the larynx, preventing further noise from their chocolate-coated faces.

It’s a short book, but I’ll leave it open-ended so we can add amendments to it. It’ll be a living document. If you have any additions, add ‘em to the comments below.

Okay, enough Kissmyass for now.

With all the money I sunk into my truck in November, you’d think it was in tip-top condition. However, you’d be wrong. It’s not a major tragedy, but I was sitting in a fast-food drive-through Tuesday night, and I heard what sounded like pouring water. It sounded very much like a circus animal urinating on pavement. Possibly a lengthy emesis of an intoxicated teenager splashing on linoleum of a high school hallway. Since it was raining out, I didn’t think much of it. However, I kept an eye on my dashboard gauges just in case.

I got my food and the temperature looked okay. About a mile from the Jack in the Box, the temperature was climbing, and I knew something happened to my damned cooling system. Sonofabitch! I was only about a mile from home, but I wasn’t going to make it that far. The gauge got to “H” at the top of a hill, and luckily, I was able to coast down the other side and let the December night air cool the engine down enough for me to make the final hundred yards of my trip home. The engine got as hot and steamy as Tommy and Pamela, but never went above the “H.”

The next morning, Tina and I went out and looked at the damage. We found a long messy gash on the underside of the lower radiator hose. Just as with women, long messy gashes are not good. I wasn’t taking the truck anywhere without replacing that hose, and I had an 11:00am doctor’s appointment. LDriver came and gave me a lift to the doctor’s, then we hit the auto parts store where I picked up a hose and a new thermostat. When I got home, I realized I asked for and bought an upper radiator hose, when I needed to replace the lower hose. Goddammit. Three hours would pass before I could get another ride to the auto parts store for the correct hose.

Once I had the correct hose, LDriver and I worked on taking the blown hose off my truck. I swear to fuck, there’s hardly any room to work in that engine compartment. It’s nothing at all like my old Mustang. You’d have more room to work if you were fingering a nun. No shit! On top of that, the hose just didn’t want to come off. We worked on prying that bitch off the water pump for more than an hour! It finally popped off with the help of a broom stick. The right tool for the… job. What the shit, man? Putting the new hose on was a bit easier, but not much. I coated the inside of the hose ends with oil, and LDriver and I tried to shove that hose onto the water pump. Only a priest raping a fourth grader would have a tighter fit. After another 30 minutes, it was finally good to go! I tightened down the clamps with a socket wrench, and filled that bitch with water.

My ass is fucking beat! I look like I was beat up by twenty three 5-year olds; scrapes and knicks on my knuckles, bruises on my arms, a deep fat bruise on my leg. Fuck, the hood latch left about seven bruises on my stomach. I look like I was caught in the crossfire of rubber bullets. I ache all over and feel like I was rolled by a ‘ho and her pimp, left for dead in a Motel 6. This getting old shit sucks ass.

All’s well now… or is it? I didn’t have a chance to replace the antifreeze in the system, and the temperatures are going to drop below freezing tonight. It fucking figures. Since I have to drive to Seattle on Friday, I’m going to have to go out tonight and get some antifreeze. Shit! It’s 10:00pm as I’m typing this.

I need to trade my truck in for a new(er) truck…

The image here is a screen capture from a new page on wafwot.com. My new cell phone has a GPS chipset in it, and I’m running a cool little program that automatically uploads my current position to a database on my web server. The web page then plots the points using Google Maps or Google Earth. It so totally kicks ass! You can view my latest trip, or previous trips, or even see my current location! I don’t always have the program running on the phone, however, so the web page may not always show my latest position. The program is called TrackMe, and was written by Luis Espinosa. The web interface was written by jcleek/Slacker, also of the xda-developers forums, and I’ve even contributed a tiny bit to the web code. Check out my GPS tracking at gps.wafwot.com. If you have Google Earth installed, load up my KML file at http://www.wafwot.com/gps/routes/wafwot.kml. It’s pretty damn cool.

As I mentioned, I got a new phone. I’m such a technology whore when it comes to phones. My last new phone was only April of this year, but I was using it for so much, I was getting frustrated at the slow speed of the phone and the Int0rn3ts.

My new phone is an AT&T Tilt. Here’s another picture. This bitch smokes! It’s got more gadgets than Sean Connery and Roger Moore combined! Windows Mobile 6 Professional powered by a 400 MHz Qualcomm processor, a 65k-color tilting TFT touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth 2.0 with support of up to 6 simultaneous pairings, a 3 megapixel camera with 10x zoom and autofocus, built-in GPS, quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 3.6 Mbps tri band UMTS/HSDPA (that’s right, 3.6 megabits per second, baby), 256 MB of flash ROM, 128 MB SRAM, and a microSD expansion slot with support for 32 GB memory cards. I currently have a 4 GB card in the phone, because they don’t make 32 giggers yet. (My god, look at all them Wikipedia links!)

Oh, and it’s a phone, too! Imagine that.

The GPS chipset and large microSD card lets me run TomTom Navigator on the phone for voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation. I was amazed at how accurate TomTom is, at least on roads that have existed for more than a few years. It’s the dog’s bollocks, man! Of course, we drive the same route day after day after day after day after… but it’s nice to have for those trips around accidents, or the rare time I get lost. I’ll be fucked by starving Pygmies before I’ll stop and ask for directions! I’m a guy, damn it! We’re not supposed to ask for directions or the monkeys will fly out our asses, and we can’t have that.

It’s a beautiful thing when I can be secure shelled into work via VPN, chatting on a jabber server, live tracking my journey on Google Maps for the world to see, and surfing the web at DSL speeds — in the palm of my hand — while doing 75 miles an hour northbound on I-5. Don’t get your panties in a knot, I’m a passenger at those times. If I was driving, I’d be text messaging, too! Ha ha!

Okay, enough about my geek toys. What else has happened? I had some work done on my truck. Early in November, I had Les Schwab put on four new Wild Country tires. I bought the truck with the old tires on it, and they were getting a little thin in the tread department. The new tires are nice and quiet, and with winter on the way, it feels good to know my ass (and LDriver’s ass) will safer… because we all know how I worry about LDriver’s ass.

Just before Thanksgiving, I took the truck to Hilltop Texaco here in Oak Harbor. The soul-crushing commutes to Seattle on Fridays were taking their toll on my engine. After doing a hundred miles — forty of which are at 70+ miles per hour — the truck was running rough and felt like it needed a good tune-up. So, during lunch on one of the three days of the holiday-shortened week I worked from home, I took my F-150 to Hilltop. I sat in their waiting room for nearly four freaking hours, tortured by FOX News and watching people shovel popcorn down their esophagus like their name was Moses and they just got back from his little pow-wow with God in the mountains.

Anyway, the mechanics at Hilltop put in new spark plugs, new wires, a new distributor cap, a new rotor, a new serpentine belt, and tuned and scoped the engine. They also checked the electrical system and the brakes. The truck passed all it’s tests, but still runs rough at idle once it’s up to running temperature. Damn it all to hell, I hate vehicles, sometimes. Nearly five hundred dollars, and I still have the “trouble” I took the truck in for. It rides much nicer, sounds better, and even shifts gears smoother… but what the fuck, man?

Speaking of Thanksgiving, Tina and I had a nice holiday. We didn’t go anywhere, or do anything special. We’re boring like that. But, I had a nice nine-day span of being at home, coupled with turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and football. It was a relaxing weekend work-from-home four-day weekend string of days. I wish I could do that more often! Like once a month! Fuck, think of the gas (and money) I’d save. As it is, I spend more than $90 a week in gas.

Okay, there ya go. Not so great, but it catches you up a bit and prevents me from going the whole month of November without an update. December should be a little chattier.

These pyrotechnic boneheads pour large quantities of beer down their throats then decide to light off illegal fireworks made by bad drivers and sold by drunk Indians… casino, not Slurpee. It’s always the 13 to 35 year old American male who feels it’s their Constitutional right to blow shit up. Of course, it usually ends with a house on fire, or a hand blown off, or an eyeball that’s taken out by stupidity. Fuck, the news in Seattle has a story of a man who was shot, with a gun, in an argument over fireworks. The crowd of people at this fireworks party were so hostile, that paramedics had to move the victim away from the scene in order to work on him before he was pronounced dead. How fucking stupid do you have to be to shoot a man over fireworks, then fight with paramedics who arrive to fix your fuck-up? I won’t open the can of worms about why one needs a gun at a holiday party with alcohol and explosives. That’ll start a pro/con-gun flame war in the comments section, I’m sure… and I can’t have that.

In my own front yard, literally, my neighbors were lighting off Indian fireworks. For two straight nights, they disturbed the peace with fireworks until midnight. On the 3rd, and part of tonight, they were lighting them off in the gravel driveway less than 5 feet from their guests’ vehicles and another neighbor’s Ford Shelby GT. They eventually moved from the driveway to their side yard, where they proceeded to set fire to the grass. Dumb fucking drunk hillbillies.

In a related topic, I read that our crack government officials have passed a bullshit bill (H.R. 692, which has become law number 110-41) that allows the States to lower Old Glory to half-staff to honor the death of members of the armed forces who die while serving on active duty. It’s called the Army Specialist Joseph P. Micks Federal Flag Code Amendment Act of 2007.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for honoring the men and women that die in order to preserve our oil fields (I mean) freedom. In all seriousness, these brave souls deserve to be honored for their sacrifice. No matter what your feelings are on this war, no matter what lies our government tells us, it’s the young men and women of our military that are putting their lives on the line in that cat box of a country. Damn right they should be honored… but lowering the National flag is not the correct way.

Let’s take a look at some figures. The Iraq War started March 20, 2003, which was 1569 days ago. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 211 members of the armed forces connected to Washington State’s military communities and hometowns have been killed between March 20, 2003 and July 2, 2007. Doing the math, 1569 divided by 211 equals one Washington State service member killed every 7.4 days. Are we really going to lower the Flag of the United States every week? What’s the point of even raising it? Did the House, the Senate, and the President even think about (or even know) how many people have died (and continue to die) in Iraq?

The law is stupid, plain and simple. The law states that governors may lower the National flag in their state. But I feel it belittles a tradition of lowering the flag for honored principal figures of the United States Government and the Governor of a State, territory, or possession, as a mark of respect to their memory. The irony is this law diminishes the ultimate sacrifice of the very people the law is intended to honor — those who have fought to keep the star-spangled banner raised and flying proudly! Lowering it for every service member that dies in the line of duty is too much. Aren’t we supposed to honor our Nation’s fallen service members on Memorial Day? Hello?! Hell, President Truman ordered the flags at half-staff “for the gallant and heroic American soldiers, sailors, marines, and others who gave their lives to their country in World War II.” The greatest generation only got two days to honor the dead from World War II.

All this flag lowering is bullshit! Our president seems to order the flags lowered for any and every event that comes down the pike. The Columbia crash and the death of Bob Hope in 2003, the tsunami victims in 2004, the deaths of Pope John Paul II‘s and Rosa Parks in 2005, the victims (?) of Hurricane Katrina and the death of Coretta Scott King in 2006, the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre back in April 2007, and Wafwot’s itchy hemorrhoids in June 2007.

Okay, believe it or not, I made the last one up… but some of those others really singe the hairs on my scrotal sack. The Pope? What happened to separation of church and state? According to the CIA‘s World Factbook, 78% of the United States is Christian. How many of the remaining 22% felt a religious figure should not be honored by lowering the flag?

Hope, King and Parks were great Americans, but lowering the flag seems a bit over the top, and is inappropriate. The “victims” of Hurricane Katrina? I won’t even go into why I think most of those people died because they refused to get on the bus. Hey dumbasses! Rosa’s bus boycott ended in 1955… in Alabama, not Louisiana!

The tsunami victims? Really? Uhh, Mr. President… they’re not even American! And honoring gun shot victims because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time… it just… I can’t… Ugh! What the fuck?! It was sad, yes. It was a tragedy, yes. Should the flags be lowered to honor students for sitting in a classroom while some dickhead Korean shot at them? I submit that they shouldn’t. Shit. Seung-Hui Cho was probably pissed off because he couldn’t drive well. And how gay is Wikipedia for having an article about a mass-murdering Korean fuckhead?

Alright, I’ve had enough. My blood pressure can’t take it! I have to save what little rage I have left for the commutes in my truck on Fridays. The four of you that read this crap are probably tired of reading my rantings about nonsensical bullshit, anyway. Konnichiwa, bitches.