Seriously. Where did we get these rules of ettiquette for tipping anyway? It’s all a bunch of hogwash if you ask me. We’re told that fifteen percent of the total cost of the meal is a good standard. Twenty is better. Some people tip only the taxable amount, some people tip on the entire ticket, blah blah blah. All hogwash. Let me tell you my rules of tipping. Feel free to print this out and replace your tipping calculator with it. It will save you a lot of money.
I’ve noticed over the last however-long-I’ve-been-driving-now that birds are evolving to be less afraid of cars on the road. Slowly but surely, they and their children grow more and more daring and brave about sitting there in that damn puddle drinking shitwater – and not moving when I’m about to run over them. Sometimes they wait so long that I don’t see them fly away, and when I look back, there’s nothing there. So they’re obviously still getting away, but they just wait until the absolute last second to move now. What the hell is up with that? I know I’m going to hit one one of these times, and I’m not going to feel the least bit bad about it. You want to take your chances and play chicken with me, then don’t bitch when I squash you with my tire.
Similarly, I’ve noticed humans evolving the same way. Nothing is more annoying, in fact, than having to slow way the hell down to wait while some asshole struts across the street like he’s on a Sunday stroll, staring right at me to see if I’m going to react. These people know they’re holding up traffic, and they know they’re being arrogant selfish pricks, but they do it anyway. And that look they give you while they’re walking is like ‘yeah, what are you gonna do about it?’
We watched House tonight on television – great show, by the way – and as I was getting up to turn off the TV, the ‘next on’ bit came on to tell me what was going to be on the news at nine tonight. Immediately I got so disgusted I wanted to hit someone. Real hard. And this isn’t one of those annoyances – this was an almost incoceivably inconsiderate and disrespectful piece they were advertising.
She said it with fervor, “… Plus, how this swimsuit supermodel barely survived the crashing winds of the tsunami!” played against some moving footage of the woman modeling in a bikini.
I’ve never been what you’d call a “good” golfer. I’m not even mediocre. I’m lucky if I can hit 75. On the front nine. But my dad always tried to teach me, and I just couldn’t catch it. Sure, occasionally I’d hit a real nice drive and actually put it on the fairway. I’ve even chipped into the cup from ten or fifteen yards before. I’ve made some grand putts and chipped out of the sand a few times. But for the most part, I suck royally.
Aaron and I played a round of eighteen last summer and I think it took us somewhere around eight hours to finally finish the game. We had let several teams play through us at various points in the day too. We couldn’t hit that ball straight to save our lives. We sure drank a lot of beer though. Perhaps one is the cause of the other…
Season’s Greetings, everyone. Have you got all your Christmas shopping done? I don’t. Three days until Christmas, I’m snowed in and I don’t have everyone’s gifts yet. Ah well, there might not be a family get-together this year anyway. My dad’s sick, my sister’s boys are sick and my daughter’s sick. Actually on second thought, maybe we should all get together since we’re already all sick. I actually have money to spend this year, thanks in part to my new job, but also to the money I will not be claiming as income I recently came across.
Yeah, I recently decided to try the online poker thing, since I play at home all the time. I put together a Friday-night table a couple months ago, and we’re going strong now playing a couple of times a month. Everyone’s getting good and the pot usually splits three ways at the end, small, medium and large. So only two people lose everything. Anyway, I’ve become somewhat addicted to the Hold ’em phenomenon, having been sucked in by the WPT on television, and playing it on Friday nights. So I checked out an online casino.
Greetings friends and family of the Crater…
The Moon’s Crater Network has been alive and prosperous on the web for ten years now. It started as a single page on an AOL account and graduated to a tilde account at a dialup company in Abilene. Upon my discharge from the Air Force, I slid into a position at a web hosting company where I was given a dedicated Proliant 1850 Server with a RAID 5 and a meg pipe to the Internet. All for my own site. I thereby registered spacebrew.com for my humble online home. It’s gone through many changes and has seen many faces over the years. I once even turned it into a Star Wars fan site, though I’ll never publicly admit that. Many writers have come and gone, many columns have been posted and stolen and posted elsewhere. Many visitors came to visit and many memories were made here. During the Crater23 days, the site took more than 2000 unique visitor hits per week. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit. But not much.
The site(s) have seen many colors, have spawned many ideas, and have brought about inspiration in many other people to do the same thing. Some of these sites went on to become well known hard-hitters in the industry. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and FatXXX.com come to mind. Some of the writers here went on to pursue their own projects, never to be heard from again. For instance, none of you remember the catastrophe that was stellasite.com. I think I even paid for that domain name.
Last night, for my birthday, Mellowship let me get up on stage and play a few songs with them. It was exciting to be back up on the stage finally, with a whole band behind me. All my coworkers showed up to cheer me on and get their drink on. Here are the photos.
There’s not much that can get me down in the mornings like traffic. I hate traffic and – well, I think that’s mostly because of the people causing it. Far be it from me though to rant about traffic on the web! You know me better than that. Truly though, traffic is about the only thing that can throw a wrench in the intake of my good morning. Turning around and seeing my daughter look back up over her car seat to get a look at me could brighten the darkest day. I digress.
So this morning was no different. Except that my sister’s boys are both sick, so I had to take Callie somewhere else for daycare today. In Krum. Which is north of Denton. So it took 45 minutes to drive all the way out there, then an hour and a half to make it all the way back to downtown Dallas to get to work. Sigh. So that’s a lot of traffic I dealt with that I won’t be ranting about. Just to let you know.
I sit here, at home, in total humiliation – of the worst kind. I’ve read/posted in and even created my own threads about people shitting in their pants before. And I don’t know whether this is some sort of sick kharma, or if it was just my turn. Let me start by telling you though – I didn’t shit my pants.
I was sitting on the cool public toilet at work at about one o’clock – fortunately, it was after our company meeting – minding my own business and taking a pretty grizzly shit. I had been sitting there for six or seven minutes, I guess, and – having gotten bored with it – decided to play a cheesy java game on my phone. I reached into the pocket of my khakis and fished out my phone. And started looking for snake – or something equally as entertaining. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, and dropped my phone on the tile. It slid about two feet in front of my feet.
Saturday, before I left the house, I let my dogs out in the back yard. Being a relatively nice day, I decided to step out with them for a few minutes. I was admiring the weather and the scenery (I live on a beautiful green belt). I have a fence that’s almost entirely see-through in the back, being made of what I call dog-wire. Much like chicken wire, but the wire is thicker and forms larger rectangles – great stuff for keeping dogs in but maintaining a pleasant appeal. It’s a very rustic looking fence, and – wait… You didn’t come to read about my fence…
Anyway, I saw a rabbit through the fence and decided it would be nice to let my dogs chase it away down toward the creek. My dogs are some fast mother bitches, but never have they come close to catching one of these rabbits. Well, I opened the gate and my dogs tore out like bullets, running right past the damn rabbit. They love to run in the greenbelt, where they can really stretch their legs and run for five or six hundred yards in each direction.