That's not my name!

The name on my birth certificate is James. Growing up people called me Jimmy at first. Then, when I was about 6 or 7, I came downstairs one night and proclaimed to my family that I was now "Jimm-I-E" after seeing it spelled that way on a cast list on the back of a Sesame Street album I had been listening to. I grew into Jim for most of the rest of my school days.

My Junior year of high school, I took "James" as my moniker. I was very interested in business and it just seemed more professional and appropriate -- that, and it differentiated me from my then crush's current boyfriend who went by "Jim."

I've gone by James since then. There are still some really old friends that call me Jim, and a few relatives I allow to continue with that (Hi Mamaw!), but when I introduce myself, either in person, or via email, or on the phone, or in any other fashion you can think of, I always use "James." Most people are good about it and call me James, but some people need a polite reminder or two. Then I give up.

I don't know what it is, but when someone responds to an email, or calls me on the phone and just feels empowered to call me by the more diminutive "Jim," it kinda ticks me off! I have to restrain myself from responding to them with some name their granny might call them as she pinched their cheek.

When my wife and I named our kids, we actually took this into account. We gave them names that they could grow with --for my daughter, two names that could stand alone, or together, or take nicknames for each of them, or just use initials. She could find something fitting as a high-powered corporate lawyer, a teacher, a crafter, a mother, a politician, a wife, an actress, a friend. For now, she goes mostly by a diminutive combination of her two names. It fits her for now.

For my middle child, the same thing. Initials would be OK. Full proper name on a business card handed out to fellow professionals would look classy. Playing around with his buddies, now or 40 years from now, a name variation would work. As introduced by his own child on "Take your parent to school day." Still OK. For this one, we threw in an extra middle name with some history that will give him some interesting tales to tell one day.

And for our youngest, yet again. Plenty of options. We use many variations of his names already when we call him, or talk to him. It depends on how playful we're being, or how much trouble he's in. We through in an extra middle name for him as well. My wife never had a middle name until we got married, so we were making up for it. :-)

I don't know what power or familiarity some people think that they have that they can just make up names to call someone. If I am introduced to Robert. I'll call him Robert until and unless he corrects me and offers that I can call him Bob. It's a sign of respect. Don't assume...

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity...

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. see if they slow down.

2. Page yourself over the intercom... don't disguise your voice.

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.

4. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks . Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

5. In the memo field of all your checks, write 'For Marijuana'.

6. Skip down the hall rather than walk and see how many looks you get.

7. Order a diet water, whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

8. Specify that your drive-through order is 'To Go'.

9. Sing along at the opera.

10. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you have a headache.

11. When the money comes out of the ATM, scream... 'I Won! I Won!'

12. When leaving the Zoo, start running towards the parking lot, yelling 'Run for your lives! They're loose!'

13. Tell your children over dinner, 'Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go.'

And the final way to keep a healthy level of insanity...

14. Pick up a box of condoms at the pharmacy, go to the counter and ask where the fitting room is.

A new store in town

A new supermarket opened in Pulaski, Wisconsin. It has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.

When you pass the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and you experience the scent of fresh cut hay.

In the meat department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks and brats.

In the liquor department, the fresh, clean, smell of tapped Miller Lite.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying.

The bread department features the tantalizing smell of fresh baked bread and cookies.

…I don't buy toilet paper there anymore.

Hi Daddy!

This is what I heard when I got home tonight -- barely seconds through the door...

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec adipiscing, sapien vel rutrum tristique, est turpis vestibulum sem, sit amet imperdiet mauris lacus eu nisl. Quisque et elit orci, posuere pharetra nisi. Nam volutpat laoreet orci, id tristique enim fringilla sed. Phasellus imperdiet urna id tellus feugiat porta. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris sed magna dui, non lobortis lectus. Aenean sit amet lorem ac sem hendrerit ultrices vitae sed diam. Quisque non est ac elit sodales laoreet ut in diam. Fusce vel nisl a arcu pharetra dignissim non ac sem. Etiam risus mi, condimentum a sollicitudin a, sodales ut tellus. Nullam diam leo, eleifend et viverra eu, porta vitae orci. Duis scelerisque nisl a sapien facilisis laoreet. Aliquam augue arcu, adipiscing id consectetur ut, cursus at magna. Duis ac sapien urna, quis sollicitudin tortor. Vivamus nec lacus bibendum odio auctor pharetra.

Phasellus sodales consequat tellus, at cursus dui pharetra sed. Vivamus ut erat in nisl accumsan consequat. Fusce egestas dolor a metus rhoncus semper. Quisque vitae velit tellus. Aliquam pellentesque malesuada erat, quis iaculis leo lobortis sit amet. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Sed a arcu sed tellus lobortis fringilla sed vitae ante. Cras sit amet quam purus, a gravida urna. Fusce ornare auctor diam, nec ornare leo pretium nec. Phasellus tristique rhoncus ante, nec consequat magna congue in. Nunc mattis dictum justo, ac commodo tortor pellentesque eu. Nullam eros libero, feugiat ac dapibus et, eleifend in magna.

Nunc purus diam, interdum nec lobortis quis, euismod a felis. Cras sit amet metus sollicitudin magna eleifend mollis in non tortor. Praesent euismod, ipsum non porttitor convallis, nunc augue tempus augue, eu dictum leo libero vel mi. Phasellus suscipit volutpat elit at euismod. Phasellus quis purus at purus luctus scelerisque. Maecenas lobortis urna eu nulla interdum ac commodo enim ornare. Quisque pharetra blandit faucibus. Proin eu interdum lorem. Cras ac leo vel odio pharetra ornare nec non nulla. Integer ac urna nunc. Morbi massa sem, tincidunt non imperdiet in, vulputate ut orci. Maecenas rhoncus rutrum neque eu molestie. Duis cursus convallis justo non posuere. Sed aliquet tincidunt turpis, id tincidunt nunc tincidunt et. Maecenas tempor, odio sit amet auctor placerat, sem lorem consequat lacus, et dapibus magna diam eu sem.

In interdum varius consequat. Fusce sagittis vulputate magna, porta ultrices nibh pretium quis. Quisque nec odio leo, vel convallis leo. Mauris aliquam pharetra libero a feugiat. Sed consequat auctor accumsan. Aenean nec mauris vitae nulla suscipit congue. Sed rutrum pulvinar libero, nec ullamcorper nunc tincidunt at. Quisque et quam magna, tempor aliquet lacus. Maecenas vehicula, risus vitae tempus facilisis, massa purus dictum felis, eu commodo velit lacus quis magna. Ut augue orci, tincidunt id elementum in, sodales id sem. Sed nunc nisi, elementum a dapibus a, mattis mattis eros.

Ut tincidunt neque vel tortor faucibus euismod. Maecenas tempor, libero porta egestas egestas, dolor lectus pulvinar orci, sed congue metus nulla et sem. Sed at justo ligula. Sed non ipsum eu purus convallis mollis. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Integer placerat, arcu ac interdum suscipit, ipsum ligula egestas lectus, quis tincidunt lacus sem a nulla. Praesent at ante sed tellus adipiscing facilisis. Integer purus nisi, sagittis hendrerit accumsan in, ultricies eget nunc. Phasellus quis tortor elit, in aliquet eros. Suspendisse ac pulvinar mauris.

OK, that's not exactly what my three kids said (see here for more information on lorem ipsum if you're interested), but it sure sounded like it. It seemed like they were rattling off everything that had happened to each of them since I left at 7:!5 this morning. And they all seemed to want to tell me at the same time. They were flitting from one end of the house to the other, then back to show me something ("No wait, that's not it," and back to get what they really wanted to show me). This went on for several minutes. Then they said "Hi Daddy". Gotta love it! Welcome home!

Interactive Haiti videos - Streetview on steroids

You've probably see Google's StreetView shots when you're looking at Google Maps. It's cool to be able to pan around, zoom in, and "take control of the camera" while looking at images taken right outside your door. Now, imagine the same thing in Haiti after the devastating earthquakes recently. Now imagine doing that with video instead of still snapshots. I'm not sure exactly what technology was used to capture these interactive videos, but it sure looks like the next big thing. Fascinate (is that a word?) with the technology, then place yourself in the car, driving through all that ruin. Watching people wander dazed, confused, lonely and afraid. It's so sad.

You can see four videos including a walking section at CNN's site

Have a Picnik!

I've written before about free on-line photo-editing site Picnik, but looks like it's worth yet another look. I was reminded of this site the other day by one of my web search bots that caught a reference to a bookmarklet that Picnik has. By using this bookmarklet, you surf to any page you want, and when you see an image you want to edit in Picnik, simply click the bookmarklet on your toolbar. Picnik loads and presents you with a gallery of the images on the site you came from for editing. Select the one you want, and edit away. Pretty cool use.

The actual bookmarklet is:

javascript:void(window.location.href='http://www.picnik.com/?import='+escape(window.location.href));

but you can grab it more easily from Picnik's site directly.

The site and the bookmarklet have both been around for a while, so I'm not quite sure why my alert bot triggered it, but it gave me a good reason to check out the site again. You should too!

What a wise man once said...

Esquire Magazine shared a few things that Homer Simpson has learned in his life. DOH! Who'da thunk he was so wise?! Here are a few wise nuggets of Homer wisdom.

When someone tells you your butt is on fire, you should take them at their word.

There is no such thing as a bad doughnut.

Kids are like monkeys, only louder.

If you want results, press the red button. The rest are useless.

You should just name your third kid Baby. Trust me — it'll save you a lot of hassle.

You can have many different jobs and still be lazy.

You can get free stuff if you mention a product in a magazine interview. Like Chips Ahoy! cookies.

You may think it's easier to de-ice your windshield with a flamethrower, but there are repercussions. Serious repercussions.

There are some things that just aren't meant to be eaten.

The intelligent man wins his battles with pointed words. I'm sorry — I meant sticks. Pointed sticks.

There are way too many numbers. The world would be a better place if we lost half of them — starting with 8. I've always hated 8.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "My God! He's covered in some sort of goo," I'd be a rich man.

Be generous in the bedroom — share your sandwich.

I've climbed the highest mountains ... fallen down the deepest valleys ... I've been to Japan and Africa ... and I've even gone into space. But I'd trade it all for a piece of candy right now.

Every creature on God's earth has a right to exist. Except for that damn ruby-throated South American warbler.

I don't need a surgeon telling me how to operate on myself.

Sometimes I think there's no reason to get out of bed ... then I feel wet, and I realize there is.

Let me just say, Winnie the Pooh getting his head caught in a honey pot? It's not funny. It can really happen.

Even though it is awesome and powerful, I don't take no guff from the ocean.

I never ate an animal I didn't like.

A fool and his money are soon parted. I would pay anyone a lot of money to explain that to me.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll get a hook caught on his eyelid or something.

I made a deal with myself ten years ago ... and got ripped off.

Never leave your car keys in a reactor core.

Always trust your first instinct — unless it tells you to use your life savings to develop a Destructo Ray.

When you borrow something from your neighbor, always do it under the cover of darkness.

If a spaceship landed and aliens took me back to their planet and made me their leader, and I got to spend the rest of my life eating doughnuts and watching alien dancing girls and ruling with a swift and merciless hand? That would be sweet.

I may not be the richest man on earth. Or the smartest. Or the handsomest.

Never throw a butcher knife in anger.

The office is no place for off-color remarks or offensive jokes. That's why I never go there.

My favorite color is chocolate.

Always feel with your heart, although it's better with your hands.

The hardest thing I've had to face as a father was burying my own child. He climbed back out, but it still hurts.

If doctors are so right, why am I still alive?

I'm not afraid to say the word racism, or the words doormat and bee stinger.

Always have plenty of clean white shirts and blue pants.

I love natural disasters because we're allowed to get out of work.

When I'm dead, I'm going to sleep. Oh, man, am I going to sleep.

What kind of fool would leave a pie on a windowsill, anyway?


Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0102-JAN_HOMER#ixzz0cYTvUw73

The Men of Tundra Comics

Some more humor from Tundra Comics. I had to buy the Page-a-Day calendar this year!

www.tundracomics.com

The many faces of Picasa

We use Google's Picasa to manage, edit, and create with our photos at home. The newest version come with a "face recognition" element. Basically, it looks for faces in your photo collection and then asks you to label them with names. As it finds other pictures that look like the face you've labeled as "bob" it suggests that maybe this is "Bob" and you can confirm or deny. Eventually, it will make it easier to find pictures of "Bob" in your collection. You can make interesting stuff with those found pictures of "Bob" as well.

That's the premise anyway.

Google is a powerful and brilliant company that releases [mostly] great products and feature sets. This one is a little hard to get used to though. As I was working through the bucket of faces to apply names to, my wife walked up and said something along the lines of Amy isn't in that picture, that's a picture of Mary. I thought that I had mislabeled the face. Closer inspection proved that I had labeled it correctly. Amy was in that picture -- actually as a small print in a picture on the wall behind Amy in the picture! Picasa had found a picture within a picture. That was a little strange...

Moving on, though, Picasa's ability to find any face in any picture made it a little hard at times. A little comical at others. It actually "found faces" in baby doll faces and in scanned comic strips, and pictures of Lego creations. But, a word to all other Picasa users... beware of taking pictures at parades, public wave pools, or in rooms covered with family photo collages on the wall! :-) It takes FOREVER to get through those pictures...

We have unearthed a few pictures we forgot we had by going through this process though. it's worth it I think, but can be quite tiring at times as well. And it only does it per profile for some reason, so for now, I'm consolidating my naming activities in my wife's profile since that's where we started, but would be nice to have this as a cross-profile feature. Oh well. Still have 14,000 or so faces to name. Better get going.

Did you know?

Click to enlarge...

Source: Online Education

Nothing is impossible

You've reached your destination :-)

Online Pictionary-esque game

Can't find anything to do? How about playing a little game of Sketcharoo with some one somewhere in the world? Sketcharoo? What's that? Remember the game Pictionary where you had to draw an image of a word that was presented to you on a card? Sketcharoo is like Pictionary 2.0. You can play against the computer (using previously drawn clues that you guess), or against another player (where you take turns guessing and drawing).

Careful. It's additive. It's also a research project by those wacky kiwi's down under. They say:

This project is being undertaken as part of a research project at the Department of Design Studies, Otago University. Our aim is to investigate games that translate ‘serious work tasks’ into multi-user online games and compare them to conventional online surveys. Our game ‘Sketcharoo’ is inspired by the popular game Pictionary: two players, connected via Internet, play a round of ‘guess the drawing’. One person draws, one guesses, and we log these sessions and analyse how recognisable each drawing was. This enables us to gather information about how descriptive these drawings are and also if there are significant cultural differences between user groups. At the same time we compare the game-like survey against a conventional online survey to deduct which one is more enjoyable.

I say - cool game!

2000-10 or 20-10? I win!

My wife and I had a little discussion the other night about how to say the current year, 2010. I say twenty-ten and she says that it's two-thousand ten. She claims it takes the same amount of time to say (I disagree) and follows two-thousand and nine more logically.

As a married man, I guess I should just relent and thank her for setting me right :-) But... I have documents to prove my point...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/01/MN621BB41U.DTL

http://www.esquire.com/features/funny-slang-language-dictionary/how-to-pronounce-2010-1109

http://askville.amazon.com/pronounce-year-2010-2038/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=11224744

http://gawker.com/5438854/great-debates-how-should-we-pronounce-2010

But I guess in the end both of us will have to hear the other's pronunciation all year long... at least until twenty-eleven.

I'm so glad she "settled" for me!

A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:

Floor 1 - These men Have Jobs

She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 2 - These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

'That's nice,' she thinks, 'but I want more.' So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads:

Floor 3 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and are Extremely Good Looking.

'Wow,' she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 4 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework.

'Oh, mercy me!' she exclaims, 'I can hardly stand it!'

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads:

Floor 5 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads:

Floor 6 - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

Chad Carpenter is NUTS!

I posted a few comics by Tundra Comics recently. I went back to their site today to see what I'd missed. WHOA did I miss a lot. I didn't even see the archives when I bounced over there last time. This guy Chad Carpenter is one sick puppy! See below for evidence... (all are Copyright Tundra Comics)

Owl City - Fireflies