Brian's Brain

We're all moved in to the new house. Hooray! Ellie keeps getting lost (she'll wander around looking for the stairs that lead to her bedroom). She's also terribly excited by the loft that overlooks the front entrance -- for some reason this feature is a 2-year olds dream come true. Still plenty of work to be done with unpacking and I still need to get some additional pictures up.. Stand by for those.. In the mean time, I've got a picture of the outside of the house here. If you're interested in the technical details, it's a 4 bed, 4 bath house w/ about 3800 sq ft (100% finished) on .80 acres. Come visit!

... Actually, that's a bit harsh -- I'm not that bad. But I'm definitely in the bottom 2 billion. Maybe the bottom 3 billion a good day. Just to be fair and keep my ego from getting too banged up, let's just say I'm better than my mom and leave it at that. So I'm surfing the 'net reading other people's blogs (most are even more boring than this one -- if you can imagine) realizing that a tiny handful of these these people are surprisingly funny -- and the ones that are funny have some REALLY good design that's gone into the logo and site in general.. Some even have cooler merchandise than me!! For example, one person is offering a t-shirt that says "I play violent video games. I could snap at any minute" (For those of you with no sense of humor, this is pretty funny). I'm pro-funny. If anybody ever ran for president on the platform of "pro-funny" they would probably get my vote. Maybe I should run? I would definitely vote for me.

I think I'm going to title this blog "The Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about". Although it seems kind of long. The more I read other blogs the more I realize I need some clever catchline to make people think there's porn here or nobody's going to read it. Thoughts?



Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not even sure about the universe. --Albert Einstein

How many seconds until I can find a story about a grown man who peed his pants on an airplane? Ready... GO!

15 seconds... plenty of stories about kids peeing their pants on airplanes.. not quite..

35 seconds.. Found doctors talking about the problem of urniation on airplanes..

62 seconds.. DING!! Found a story on a medical website about a guy who was constantly wetting himself on flights.

Stay tuned for next week's episode when we ask google whether I should go to bed or stay up for an extra hour eating snacks. A little pre-emptive research says this will probably lean towards "snacks".

"I remember how my Great Uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off the paint." -- Jack Handey
In other news... So I get the call from the long distance company (you know the call)
Good afternoon sir, could I interest you in some long distance savings?
umm.. no thanks. I'm rich as hell.
*pause* How much do you pay for your long distance?
5.9 cents a minute
*another long pause* Is that a promotion?
No.
Uh.. thanksforyourtime*click*

[Space Station]: Uh.. Mission Control? This is the ISS... the boys and I have all got together and talked about this... and umm.. when it's time for us to leave the station, is there a chance we could catch a ride with the Russians?

From Dave Barry's Blog:
"At this time we have found no -- repeat, NO -- substantiation of the rumor that, as a child, "Joe Millionaire" played Cindy, the youngest girl in the Brady Bunch. Please do not circulate this rumor widely on the Internet! Thank you."

Finally!! Someone understands how awful it is to have to take off your shoes in airport security checkpoints and they're doing something to make it all okay!! FREE SOCKS!. These guys seem to know what makes people feel all warm inside.

Hey.. Bush.. when even the GERMANS don't want to fight, TAKE THE HINT!

Could I be any more excited? A few weeks ago I switched my cell phone service from Nextel to Sprint -- but before I begin, I think a few disclaimers are in order.

First, let's talk about Nextel. They're not bad -- but I think they're the cell phone carrier for people who have more money than sense. Let's face it, the two-way radio is cool, but is it really worth paying double what the other carriers are charging? I switched from two phones sharing 1,000 minutes for $150/mo to two phones sharing 2000 minutes (plus free calls between the phones) for $85. There's something to be said for helping fools to part with their money -- Nextel has this mastered.

Second, let's talk about my choice to switch to Sprint. I swear I was sober when I did so and to the best of my knowledge, had not been the victim of any government (or corporate) mind control projects. This is a hot topic of debate among friends and coworkers, however. So take this with a grain of salt. Anyway, it turns out Sprint, at the time, was kind enough to offer UNLIMITED DATA on their phones! Yes.. the same thing T-Mobile charges $5 to $25/mo extra for 5mb to 15mb of data.. AT&T in similar price ranges.. Sprint is giving away UNLIMITED for FREE. I still can't figure out what made them do this -- but it's okay by me!! (Note: I don't think they're offering any more plans of this nature).

So here's the good news -- it turns out the Samsung N400 can be plugged into a computer via USB (with the top secret cable that Sprint won't tell you about). In other words, you can surf the net, from your laptop, using their 1xRTT CDMA network. And since the plan uses UNLIMITED DATA, I can connect to the internet, for free, anywhere within the SprintPCS coverage area.. once again.. FOR FREE..

So about this secret cable... It turns out Sprint doesn't want this to be a well known thing because I all but had their customer service reps deny its existence. It's as though it's critical to national security that customers not buy these cables because once I got it out of them that yes, there was a cable I could use to connect my laptop to the internet through the phone, that they didn't sell the cable and it was impossible to find one.. so I'd best not even try. They need a better cover story because 10 seconds later, I had found one on eBay for $19.95 and it was on the way.

Sprint... I love you. This is the greatest thing ever, and I promise to recommend you to all my blog buddies because of this. *MUUAH*. I do have a couple of complaints though... 1> Don't advertise that this stuff goes 144k -- I'm lucky to be getting 1k (yes.. slower than a 14.4k dialup modem). The speed SUCKS! Fortunately, it's for backup-travelling purposes only.. but come on, 144k? please. Only one other complaint... I was shocked at first when I found out that I could only download ringtones from the SprintPCS site -- I was further shocked to discover that they wanted $1 for every ringtone I downloaded, and I was FLOORED to find out that they expire after 90 days!!!! WHAT THE ?! I have to RENT MY RING TONES?! The ones that come with the phone are all AWFUL - they're all SONGS.. and I REFUSE to be the guy who has a FREAKING SONG PLAY every time his phone rings. NOT A SINGLE NORMAL RING TONE COMES WITH THIS PHONE! So I'm stuck RENTING one from Sprint.
I asked the customer service rep about this, and asked if there was ANY POSSIBLE WAY for me to download a ring tone from another site.. he was very quick to dodge the question and eventually I got it out of him that yes, this could be done, but doing so would VOID MY WARRANTY! Give me a BREAK!

Good thing I have this data thing. Reow.