Another beautiful day, another icon

Another beautiful day and another Mary Worth icon. A classic Mary Worth audible punctuation dialog balloon. Why not, huh? That would make more sense since a sound goes with the word. A question mark by itself does not have a sound. It alters the sound of a word, unless one hails from parts of the southern United States. People from those regions tend to make every sentence sound like a question.

I noticed that KFC no longer advertises its Famous Bowls. I guess the demographic that enjoys its food in a huge pile rather than separated does not have as much disposable income as thought by the marketers at KFC. In the non-cracker south, gravy does not belong on top of corn. Non-cracker south includes most of the southern United States.

Why does Kentucky Fried Chicken use a sample from "Sweet Home Alabama" in its commercials? The unavailability of songs about Kentucky suitable for marketing products?

Problems solved

Hooray! Problems solved and not a single use of profanity nor taking Bob Saget's name in vain. I'm glad that I have a wide screen monitor to allow me to view multiple documents side by side. I don't know how anyone can code all day without getting cross eyed.

A trip to the landfill

Bonus icons from Mary Worth:

Went to the landfill to film the WFSC 409 tour. Not much to see because the rains made the roads around the work site too messy. Captured some footage of turkey buzzards going through the garbage and ignoring the workers nearby. The landfill manager said that this facility now has a small population of sea gulls that came in with the storms. College Station is more than 100 miles from the nearest ocean. I did not see any of the sea gulls but I will check the footage more carefully. The sea gulls may have blended in with the garbage.

Yesterday, I went to a seminar on blogging and how other departments are using blogs to communicate. I will make another attempt to explain how our department can use a blog as a newsletter and for other communication. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a wall whenever I attempt to explain the positive potential of blogging and other communication mediums. Maybe it's my own inability to communicate effectively.

I'm thinking about putting an RSS feed on aperfectworld.org so that people don't have to visit every day. It would cause less frustration whenever I don't update because of server problems, personal issues, bad weather or any number of reasons.

This afternoon I get to figure out how an older version of a web page ended up on display and try to fix it. I need a different exclamation of frustration. Fuck! and its variants is not appropriate for a professional atmosphere. Neither is an Hawaiian shirt but I'm wearing one today. I'll try "Bob Saget!" - it has the same cadence as "God Damnit!" but without the potential of eternal damnation. I got the Bob Saget idea from some videos of a Tourette's sufferer who uses Bob Saget as a curse. I hope Bob Saget does not have any supernatural powers.

I love my job but not enough to do it for free.

aperfectworld.org is back!

Hooray! aperfectworld.org is back up. Hopefully, it will stay up tonight so that I can finally do an update.



The Barry White as an Star Trek alert voice gag is quite hilarious but it is time for a change.

Vera's dialog in the second panel is the funniest thing I've read on the comics page in a long time. Mary's dialog in the second panel is quite humorous as well. Where did the china cabinet go?

A future project: construct a 3D model of Mary Worth's apartment based upon Giella's drawings. Probably get a few illegal operation errors from the computer program. I'm obsessive enough to come up with the concept of 3D modeling a comic strip character's apartment but too much of a procrastinator to actually do the project.

Why do people say that they do not mean to pry when in fact that is what they are doing?

aperfectworld.org is down

I am receiving a 403 Forbidden when I visit aperfectworld.org. I cannot FTP either. I'll give it another 24 hours before I call IPower. For those do not access the blog via the website, today's cartoon:
Maybe I need a vacation from cartoons for a while.

Run Thru the Vines Results

Run Thru the Vines Results: 10K
15th out of 18 in group (Female 30 - 39)
175th place overall
Chip time: 1:06:11.5
Gun time: 1:06:32.8
Pace: 10:40/Mile

I was aiming for 1:10:00 for this race.

For some reason aperfectworld.org is down. I hope the outage is temporary.

A return to normalcy?

Maybe this week will be normal. I'm behind on updates, scanning, laundry, dishes and other things. Hopefully, I can catch up.


My new monitor is in place. My eyes should melt out of my skull by Friday.

The first time ever a name is mentioned. Better Half takes a major turn toward the surreal.

I don't want to get into the physics of this dress or the female figure. Another thing I'd thought I would never experience before the age of 40 - being disturbed by a Herman panel.

The yellow and white star burst dress did not work, the hideous food did not work, looks like Mary Worth will have to resort to water boarding in order to force Vera to reveal the secrets of her past.

I will update my cartoon tonight. I will make the time.

Run and sleep, sleep and run

This week I ran 15.1 miles, burned about 1919.4 calories and weigh 172.5 pounds.

Monday: 3.28 miles in 35:00
Wednesday: 2.33 miles in 25:00
Friday: 3.29 miles in 35:00

Saturday ran in the Run Thru the Vines 10K. I don't have the official results yet but I estimate my time as 1:06:00. About a 10:30 mile. It was cold and windy.

I seems like I spent most of the day in bed. I ran in the race, went home, took a shower, read and started a nap. Someone called and woke me up. Just as I started to go back to sleep I received another phone call. I got out of bed to wait for some visitors. The visitors came and went. I went out to get some lunch and came back. I went back to bed and read for a while then fell asleep again. I was awakened by my earlier visitors bringing Pickles back. I tried to go back to bed but the dogs wanted to go out so I took them out and went back to bed. I was again awakened by a phone call from Walter. He thought it was safe to call but he did not know that I had been attempting to take a two hour nap all day. After he got off the phone, I was finally able to take an uninterrupted nap.

I spend a lot of time on the weekends sleeping. Trying to make up some sort of sleep deficit, I guess.

To hell with it

Forget the update, I'm going to bed. I have a 10K race tomorrow.

Ministerial candidate blog

Rev. Eric Posa's blog

The blog of our ministerial candidate. Check it out, post comments.

Church business and dog farts

I did not update the website last night. I had a church Board meeting last night that went a little long.

Four very important items were discussed.

1. Hiring a bookkeeper - motion passed. This will cut down on the hours the Treasurer has to spend working on things. Our church has grown beyond the only qualification for Treasurer is simply being able to balance a checkbook. The treasurer will oversee the finances but the bookkeeper will do the data entry and generate reports.


2. Search process - found out some details about candidating week and took care of some other matters regarding the search.


3. Proposed budget explained and approved pending modifications as new pledges come in. The finance committee did an outstanding job on this and the membership has been quite generous in its pledging.


4. A mutually beneficial proposal regarding a parking lot was discussed, explained and approved to move forward. The congregation will be informed and consulted as details come together.
   

The meeting was productive and all four items were discussed and acted upon appropriately. This was my penultimate meeting as Board president. This was one of the more enjoyable meetings that I presided over in my tenure. It ran a bit long but each of these things discussed will make a substantial difference in the life of the church. A certain amount of fulfillment from that helps compensate for the meeting length. Maybe the food helped - a windfall from my department ordering too much food for an event.

I did not bother turning on my computer last night. Messages to me should start bouncing as my inbox becomes clogged with spam.


I will update tonight.


A bit of wisdom gained from experience: Do not feed a dog cheese after 9:00 pm unless one wants to awaken at 3:00 am to allow the dog to take care of business. Cheese induced dog farts will really wake you up in the morning. Sort of an olfactory equivalent to a 2x4 upside the head.

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The King Features colorist applied the red a bit heavily on the ladies' lips.

Alternative dialog

Alternate dialog first panel:
"Hello, Mary. I used to live in a world where people call before visiting. Please forgive me for not realizing that Charterstone has suspended the normal rules of ettiquette."

Unseen third panel:
"I love homemade apple pie, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but unfortunately I was diagnosed with diabetes last year. Thank you Mary for reminding me of the things I can no longer enjoy."

At least Mary did not make a tuna casserole.

Jim Varney is dead

All that set up for a lame pun. Grandpa needs to get out more.

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I listened to a bit of the John Boy and Billy Big Show on 99.5 - the Fox while traveling between garage sales on Saturday. They did this bit titled, "Married Man". The theme song parodies the Spiderman cartoon theme song. Married Man and his friend, College Buddy, compare the party preceding the renewal of marriage vows with the bachelor party of some years before. Instead of 21 year old strippers the pre-vow renewal party consisted of going to a live performance of "Man of La Mancha" starring Jim Varney. Important detail: I heard this on the radio, Saturday, April 7, 2007. College Buddy comments sarcastically that the theater performance was way better than the 21 year old strippers from the bachelor party. Actually, College Buddy was wrong because any performance by Jim Varney would be much more impressive than a performance by a 21 year old stripper because Jim Varney died February 10, 2000. Please refer back to the important detail.

I hoped I conveyed the full magnitude of suckness that is 99.5 - the Fox, the classic rock station for the Brazos Valley. Instead of music in the morning, this station plays the comedy stylings of idiots, non-local idiots (Thus depriving me of the opportunity of giving the idiots the finger if I encountered them at a live remote). This radio station plays the comedy stylings of non-local idiots who failed to update their damn material!

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In a perfect world, only one person per gathering would be allowed to spew inane chatter.

Photo montage

My first attempt at a photo montage video.

Snow!?! WTF!?

The day before Easter and it's sleeting, snowing and 35 degrees F in south Texas. All this screwed up cold weather happened after Al Gore won the Oscar. I believe the cosmos decided to make Al Gore its bitch. The northeast U.S. received the brunt of the nasty cold weather. Thankfully, in the south, it will go away in a day or two.

I spent most of the day in bed snuggled under blankets. Visited the few garage sales open for business, ran at the gym and went to Doc Green's with Walter.

This week I ran 13.51 miles, burned 1692.2 calories and weigh 172.5 pounds. This weight gain bothers me. I might consult a nutritionist at Scott & White. I could exercise more but I have a life. I should do some serious meal planning. Both of us could benefit from a visit with a nutritionist.

Monday: 3.32 miles in 35:00
Wednesday: 2.34 miles in 25:00
Saturday: 5.89 miles in 65:00

I planned on running Friday but opted to take Loki to the park and the dog wash. The dog wash has a ramp leading up to the wash basin; a great feature if one has a dog that will walk up a ramp. I do not own such a dog. Loki can alter his weight at will but I can still lift him.

Now there is a strong man event I would like to see - the lifting a reluctant Bullmastiff into a tub event.

Have a happy Easter.

Assertivness is too much work

I hate being assertive. It's so much work.

Sure, people will walk all over me but I don't mind. Especially if those people are small, beautiful women and they walk barefooted on my back. It really works the kinks out of the muscles.

I'm figuring out a method to train Loki to walk on my back. It would be a neat trick and he is the right weight. If anyone has any ideas drop me a line.

What would it take to get those True ads on my site? Pictures of attractive scantily clad women would certainly increase my page views. Plus, if a cartoon really sucks at least there is something else to look at. It could increase my revenue from the things that, by agreement, I'm not allowed to mention or draw attention to.

It's time to turn on my assertiveness and find out what's the hold up on my new computer.

Mary Worth is being exceptionally pushy. I'm really starting to dislike her. Vera does not want to remain at your stupid party. Get it!

Furniture and Functional Fitness

My new office furniture arrived and I put it together with some help from student workers. My new computer and components are not in place yet, so I've hooked up my current computer. Just the monitor, keyboard, mouse and Ethernet. No sound or printing. I wanted enough to do some work. All my stuff is still piled up in my office. I will start putting it up this afternoon.

I'm way behind on my scanning but I have 17 days worth of cartoons ready to go.

I subscribe to a number of health and fitness e-newsletters. Four of them often refer to "functional fitness" without really defining it. They do say that their exercise programs make you functionally fit as opposed to the false fitness involved in weight lifting and long distance cardio. I find the exercises they recommend useful and quite effective, especially when other gym users hoard equipment. I also lift weights and run long distances in training for a specific race. When not training for a race I do shorter bursts of running with an emphasis on speed. I would like to be able to maintain a 10:00 minute/ mile pace very comfortably for a marathon.

I find some of the statements that these exercise gurus make about marathon running a bit annoying but the statements are just opinions. Really, it is more of an attitude that they don't enjoy marathon running but if you do that's fine. None of them recommend it as a way to get fit. I wouldn't recommend marathon running as a means of becoming fit. I took it up to test my limits and found that I enjoyed doing it. I limit myself to one or two marathons a year. I had to do other things in order to get fit enough to take on the challenge. Fitness is a side effect.

Back to "functional fitness". I've decided to define it as the ability to do something outside one's normal routine; for example, assemble and move furniture, and still have the ability to do one's regular exercise routine without injury. I moved, lifted and assembled furniture then was able to do my circuit on Tuesday and run over 2 miles on Wednesday. I'm not tired or sore.

Hopefully, I can have my new computer in place today. That will make it easier to arrange the rest of my office.

Ann Coulter and Noise - no they are not related this time

I slept better with the volume on the noise machine turned down. No sounds of waterfalls intruding upon my dreams.

Loki seems to like the noise machine, he's been sleeping in the bedroom instead of the living room.

Ann Coulter - every cartoonists' greatest challenge. Maybe not, just draw a skeleton with long hair. Ann Coulter should be ignored until she learns to behave like an adult.

Alternate spelling suggestions for Coulter: colder, jolter, counter, clutter, colet.

Noise Machine and Empty Space

I purchased a noise machine from Bed, Bath and Beyond. It plays a variety of relaxing sounds and has a timer. I set it to play the waterfalls all night. It drowned out most of Walter's snoring. I turned up the volume instead of hitting Walter and it had the same effect of making him stop snoring. I will need to try this thing for a few more nights in order to determine its effectiveness.
I dreamt that I slipped into the empty space between the tiny particles that make up an atom. It was dark and sounded like a waterfall. The journey into the empty space proved more interesting than the destination.

The 20 minute version of In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida kind of sucks. Maybe it should be enjoyed while laying in a meadow high on LSD rather than in an office stimulated by caffeine. Maybe the song just sucks regardless of chemicals ingested and location.

Glasbergen really needs to stop drawing reflections, too damn disturbing. Harriet's kneecaps are more aesthetically pleasing than her breasts.

In answer to your "?", Mary, "I-um have work to do." means, "Okay, you biddy, I've made my appearance at your dumb party can I go and be by myself or with a group of people I like or visit my therapist or be anywhere else but this @#$%! party?" Vera is just renting an apartment, a place to put her stuff, sleep, cook, relax and bathe; not a bunch of instant friends.

This whole story line pisses me off because I have dealt with people who tried to impose their "friendship" upon me and try to force me to conform to their ideas of friendship. Then they became angry when forced to use stronger tactics to get them out of my life because subtlety and tact failed. Since this is Mary Worth, Vera will have to resort to suicide.

Then there is the whole Aldo affair. Nobody likes a raging hypocrite, Mary.

People in Darfur are trying to avoid death and I'm pissed off about a comic strip storyline. I feel powerless regarding both Darfur and this Mary Worth storyline.

Weekly Running Log

This week I ran 4.6 miles, burned 576.4 calories and weigh 171.3 pounds.

I got my body fat percentage checked at the gym. 33.2% Four marathons, 35K run, 1/2 marathon and a couple of 5Ks and it is 33.2%. I want a second opinion. The first time I had it checked it was close to 37% so some progress has been made.

Tuesday: 2.28 miles in 25:00
Thursday: 2.32 miles in 25:00

I did not run on Saturday because I participated in a day of mindfulness.