What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Jagosaurus]

Luke, does he ever go swimming? Imagine it's too cold now but my dog had eye & ear drops I had to use when she went swimming in ponds to prevent infections.

Oh no. She can't swim; way too top heavy. Even when she was three years old she would sink, muzzle first.

Poor dog can't even dog paddle.

I think it is possible she may have torn one of her three eyelids (crazy that dogs have three eye lids eh?) but "me no doctor".

Even if the diagnosis was "sorry, but that's just how it'll be" I would be fine with that. But this "Hmm. Let's try this" is bullsnot. Two hours of my day and a hundred dollars out of my pocket to stress out my dog? Eff that nonsense .

Sorry! She* .... worth a try!.Cleared up my dog's issue

[Luke]

Sorry! She* .... worth a try!.Cleared up my dog's issue

No need to apologize.

She's on prescription eye drops ($35 a teeny tiny bottle) and so far no go. I'm putting the check on hold and going to a new vet.

[emwearz]

Emailed EA and got into the Titanfall beta even after they closed the sign up!

I did the same thing and got the Beta.

Apparently they opened it to everyone today.

I think that is only on Xbox One, the PC version is still invite only?

[Luke]

Jeez-a-loo:

http://gawker.com/heres-why-this-viral- ... aweinstein

[Luke]

Sometimes I have days where only Streets of Rage on the Sega CD and a Cuban Cohiba will make me copacetic. Today is one of those days.



That ash tray was on my carpet for all of four seconds.

[mjmjr25]

Having real OCD about my gaming setup and just clutter around my house in general - been putting a lot of time into working it out.

It dawned on me - the largest TV I have downstairs (40" Toshiba LCD) has zero gaming systems hooked up to it - yet I have 5 dedicated gaming setups...hence the feeling like I can't move.

My CMVS is currently on a long table w/32" CRT on one end and the CMVS and a chair at the other end. I hooked the CMVS to the 40" via component and it stores nicely on the shelving underneath when not in use. I took the 23" CRT on my Mahogany Custom Cab out to the garage. I took the long table upstairs to use as a puzzle / lego building table, and I took the 32" CRT and put it on the Mahogany Custom Cab. Getting rid of just that one TV and that one table has opened up the whole area...work still to be done, but have a significant sense of relief with just this one small change.

Before:

After:

In the other corner, with large TV and table gone, I moved my custom cab into that space, my punch/kick bag away from the treadmill and into where the custom cab was - so this area feels much more open, the treadmill area is much more open - and i'm feeling much better about things:

Before:

After:

[Luke]

SMILES: This is a good day.

It started at 12am this morning. I spent an hour or two chatting with one of my buddies who resides in London while enjoying a Cuban Cohiba.

Later this morning I did a little research and found that 80% of Cohibas are counterfeits. I took my last Cohiba (twenty bucks a pop) to my local cigar shop, and shazam, the owner said "This is the real deal". The cigar was passed around the smokers at the store (the store is a humidor, and a bunch of guys smoking cigars on couches while watching sports) and my prize was praised.

After that great and surprising news I stopped at a game retailer *nudge nudge*. As always, when I walked in I was welcomed with "Hi Luke!". I asked if they were still liquidating PS2 games, and the manager said "I'd pay you to take 'em at this point".

After going through around two hundred copies of Guitar Heroes' and DDRs', lo and behold I found a scratch free copy of Persona 3 Fes. Might not sound like a big deal, but it was priced at $26.99, and I paid nada for it.

Not kidding. I told the manager, "Duder, can you at least put it on hold for me. I only have three bucks on me". He placed it in a different envelope, and said "You'll be back Luke. You always come back" with a theatrical voice at that.

So yeah. Super fun day that should only get better.

[fastbilly1]

Ticked - On the drive to work today a jackass decided he did not have to wait in line on the interstate to get into bumper to bumper traffic and the hauler in front of me had to slam his brakes and swerve to miss him. As he did this the bottom rear vehicle on his trailer, a Dodge Caravan, snapped one of its restraints and lunged backwards at me. I had no where to swerve (stopped cars or a cement wall) so I just slammed the brakes and as soon as a gap opened I shot for it and ended up parked on the side of the road for a minute as the hauler slowed down to see what was causing the shower of sparks from the rear of his vehicle. It happened so fast that had I not been paying attention, well I would have ended up with a Dodge Caravan in the cab of my sedan. So not unlike mjmjr's brush with electricity last week, I think it is time for me to downsize somethings and use that money to travel some.

Smile - I guess they dont call me fast for nothing?

[prfsnl_gmr]

That sounds like a terribly close call, and I am glad that you are well.

Incidents like these always remind me of one of my favorite passages from Moby Dick:

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?—Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters—some few of which are casually chronicled—of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

It is important to appreciate life while we have it, and I will be certain to hug my children tonight when I arrive home.

[REPO Man]

Pretty nice today (around 79F), and not as chilly as it's been lately.