Swinging Cactus

A couple Fridays back, my coworker Melissa and I had gone to lunch at Texas Roadhouse. 

For some reason, during the week, the only day they are open for lunch is Friday, so it is always quite crowded.  As a result, the service tends to be slower.  It did give me time to look around the decor from my seat during occasional lulls in the conversation.

On the ledge was a series of small cacti scattered around to the walkway.

"Do you think those are real cacti?" I asked Melissa.

"They look real."

I studied the one closest to me; it was about 6 feet away.

"I don't know," she replied.

I looked at the needles on the stump and they seemed to be curved downward, as if gravity had taken it's toll on it.  What I recall of a cactus is the needles are straight.  The needles also looked colored, but I am color blind and they were quite small.  I also thought that was risky to have real cacti out where a child could touch it or an elderly person could fall into it.  Or even worse, someone could knock it over the ledge onto someone below.

"I think it's fake."  I determined that the risk for an injury to the general public was too high for it to be real.

"Why not touch it?" she dared me.

Maybe I'll just pick it up and smack the waitress in the side of the face with it."  Our waitress was actually quite pretty.  She was blonde and probably about 27 years old. 

Melissa sat next to me for about 16 months and knew my sense of humor well.  I also knew hers well and it did not surprise me she burst out laughing at the thought.

I also decided I would throw Melissa under the bus just for fun.

The pretty waitress came back to our table.

"I was wondering, are those cacti real?"

"No, they're fake," she answered cheerfully. 

"I was going to say, that would be dangerous."

She took a couple steps over and patted the rubber tips on the plant to show they were not real needles.

"That's a relief."  I pointed to Melissa and said, "She wanted to hit you in the side of the face to see if it was real!"

Melissa  screamed, "What!" while simultaneously laughing.  The waitress burst out laughting as well.

"I never said that," insisted Melissa.  How did she not see me doing this from a mile away?  She sat next to me all those months after all and knows my sense of humor.

The waitress through the laughter assured her, "I, somehow, don't think you were the one that said that."

I sat there afterwards, during the meal, and wondered what would actually enrage someone so much as to pick up a cactus and smack someone with it.

My Mother, The Thief, Part III

It had been a very tough week at work because we had an IT disaster with our production system that forced us onto our disaster recovery [DR] plan.  I was in Saturday morning and afternoon to do some clean up when my coworker, Melissa, also had to stop in to wrap some loose ends from our disaster recovery adventure this week. 

[Side note: EVERYONE, including people with home computers and laptops, should have a disaster recovery plan in place when it comes to EVERYTHING, not just computer technology.]

So we both wrapped up at about 2:00 p.m. and decided to go grab something to eat before she headed home and I went over to my mom's.

Melissa was familiar with the story of my mom and her stealing the condiment dishes from a few weeks ago and as the meal was wrapping up, I noticed I had two of the dipping dishes in front of me.  They had 1000 Island dressing in them.

"If my mom were here," I joked, "She would get a to go box and take these home."

I reached over and grabbed my phone.

"I should take a picture of these and send them to my mom and see if she has these."

I snapped a photo and sent a text.

"Do you already have 2 like these?"

Lunch continued for a few minutes and before I knew it, I received a text back.

"Yes but I could use a back up"

Clearly, she is preparing for some kind of disaster recovery.  That said, Melissa and I both laughed at her response.

A moment later, a second text came through.

"I double dog dare you"

I was double dog dared by my mother, grandmother of five plus three step-grandchildren, to steal the condiment dishes.

Now Melissa was laughing her ass off, also daring me to do it.

I did not steal the dishes. 

When I arrived at her house after lunch she wondered where the dishes were.  I was then chastized by her,"You can't say 'No,' to a 'Double Dog Dare.'"

My Mother, The Thief, Part II

Friday night I had some car trouble. It always sucks having car trouble, but my mom lived only 20 minutes away, so I called her to see if she could help me with her jumper cables.

We could not jump the battery successfully, so while waiting for a tow, we went inside to eat at a local restaurant that I often go to.

She got an individual pizza and I had a sandwich.

Soon thereafter, we got the call the tow truck was 30 minutes out, so we got "To Go" boxes.

"What a shame. You don't have any dipping sauces, so you can't steal the dishes." This is just a couple weeks after the night at the Okolona restaurant when I learned she has a history of taking these particular dishes home.

"I don't know," she says as she picks up the empty plate and puts it on the to go pizza box. "I think this one will fit perfectly in my 'To Go' box."

"That's not funny. Don't you dare!"

Thankfully, she was joking. Her sense of humor is funny.

I wonder if stealing the little dipping dishes is a gateway crime. In a year, will the police will be tasering a 66 year old woman with $100,000 of stolen weapons in the trunk of her Honda Civic?

My Mother, The Thief

Last Friday night, I arranged for a ride from my mom to the airport to get a rental car. I was heading out of town for two Springsteen shows in Philly and I did not want to put the 1600+ miles on my car. So after I get the car, I thought I would take her out to dinner.

We went to a local establishment in Okolona and they were crowded as heck. We ended up right next to the server's station, where the soda machine and the register were. Mom ordered a sampler appetizer for her dinner. It had potato skins, fried cheese wedges and chicken fingers on it. She had also requested BBQ sauce and sour cream. I got the chicken fingers and it tasted great.

We were both unable to finish the meal, so mom asked for a "To Go" box. I let her have my chicken fingers that were left since I was going to leave town for five days.

It was a small box barely able to hold the leftover food. It was made smaller when mom went to put in the actual dishes that had the extra BBQ sauce and sour cream in them.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I am out of sour cream at home and I don't have any BBQ sauce either."

"Mom, you can't take their dishes!"

"Oh they won't miss them. Where do you think I got the ones for the kids to use for their ketchup?"

Suddenly I realized how mom accumulated the 7 or 8 dishes in her cabinet! I would later learn they were quite useful for them to dip their veggies into their ranch dressing.

"MOM!" I could not believe this.

The box would not close, so she asked for a second box.

I could NOT believe this, but she's 65 now and has ceased caring anymore about societal constraints.

The second box arrived.

"Put those in the box," she said.

"They're right behind me. They'll see."

"They're not paying attention," she assured me.

They were literally two feet behind me. I carefully, and as quickly as I could, picked them both up and went to put them in the second box with my left hand, leaving my right hand to close the box quickly.

It was at that moment, she let out a loud squeal that sounded like "WHEEEEEEE!" that resulted in my nearly having a heart attack and throwing the two small condiment dishes to the ceiling.

She started laughing having totally flustered me. She did the squeal simply to #$%^ with me.

I shut the lid and it was almost over.

She told me to throw the napkins on top of the plates so the servers would not notice them missing and we walked out casually, well, she did. I was fast paced, thinking the condiment dish police might get me for aiding and abetting a senior citizen.

I can't believe I helped her take those two dishes.

She still had the BBQ sauce when I was back on Tuesday. And then I saw her entire collection. I wonder if this stack of little dishes is a hint that she is wanting more grandkids dipping carrots into ranch dressing now that the others are getting older?

Pelotonia - In Memory of Our Friend Doug

My friend Erin is participating in fund raiser for Pelotonia in memory of our friend Doug. 100% of the proceeds go to the James Cancer Hospital at The Ohio State University.

I wrote the note below about Doug after I heard the news, remembering him. Perhaps next year I will come up and ride in it rather than supporting someone else.

***

From January 25th, 2009

Doug and I were friend in college in Dayton. I met him when I was 18. We spent a lot of time together during a four year period. I last spoke with him around 10 years ago.

Mary sent me pictures of him last night taken 20 years ago. Doug was always one for a picture, with a smile on his face for every single photo; goofing with Ted and Mike, partying with Erin, Tracy and Cindy or just hanging with friends.

He loved music. He listened to everything, but what I will always remember was how big of a Def Leppard fan he was and this was when Hysteria came out sophmore year of college. Every party at his Kettering Dorm room had half of Hysteria played at some point in the music mix. That was a great album and it's what I may always associate with Doug more than anything else.

Doug always had the best parties at Kettering Dorms and at the house on Wyoming. He was the one that got all the cute girls that we worked with in the dining hall to show up at the parties. We went to several concerts together over the years: The Rolling Stones, Boston, Farm Aid, The Grateful Dead, The Who, Henri Lee Summer and a few others I am probably forgetting.

That 1989 Rolling Stones show was a highlight for him. Mike and I waited in line for 38 hours to get those seats as the number 2 and number 3 people in line at UD Arena for our group on a hot summer day and night and day. I think Doug even brought us beer at one point while we were waiting now that I think about it.

Leading up to the show, we told him we were in the 300 level in Riverfront Stadium and didn't actually give him his ticket until we walked to the field level and he asked why we were going onto the field if we were supposed to be up in the nose bleeds.

He about shit himself when we finally got through security to our 8th row, dead center seats. We were so close that the inflatable doll during "Honky Tonk Women" was above AND behind our heads. When the flames shot up during the opening, we felt the heat from the flames!!! Mick and Keith are really ugly up close.

Doug was a huge fan of Living Color and they opened the show for the Stones that night. He was the one standing and singing along with every one of their songs during their opening set.

And when the Stones came out, he went apeshit when they played "Bitch" as the second song of the set. It was his favorite Stones song and the one song he really hoped they would play.

He was a fairly funny guy and on rare occasions he had a very hilarious and raw sense of humor. That was surprising because he would sometimes (often) be very offended by comments that we (mostly I) would make.

One night, junior or senior year, at one of Doug's parties at that house on Wyoming, Erin (and maybe Tracy) were standing, facing Doug, Chris and myself sitting on the couch in the front room at Doug's house. As was typical, there was a lot of alcohol consumed at the party by this time.

Erin was PISSED off about something and reading Doug and Chris the riot act for something they said or did. Doug reached down on the couch and casually grabbed the remote. He hit play on the VCR remote as he made like he was moving the remote out of the way and apparently there was a porno in the VCR. I think the magic elves must have left it as I'm sure good practicing Catholic boys at a Catholic university would never have one of those in their house.

It was quite a graphic movie as the next thing I saw on the TV behind Erin while she was yelling was a humongous erection and I say that NOT because it was a 19 inch TV.

The three of us sat there trying desperately not to crack up as Erin went on and on about whatever she was talking about for the longest two minutes I'll ever remember. I remember looking at Doug and Chris and back at Erin a couple times as they sat there with suspicious grins growing on their faces (and I did not have a poker face either) and Erin is not registering at all what is going on the TV screen behind her.

Finally something clued her in to the fact that all three of us were stiffling laughter (we were bursting at the seams as giggles were escaping by this point) and she turned around and was so disgusted with what was on TV and upset that we were sitting there laughing our asses off seconds later that she stormed out of the room. I think Doug finally collected himself and went after her to calm her down.

The rudeness was completely out of character for Doug yet it was perhaps the funniest thing I ever saw him do.

When I drove by that house last month on my way to a local Dayton bar, just before a UD basketball game, I couldn't even pick Doug's house out of the eight or nine houses on the right despite my spending many, many nights drinking with friends there 20 years ago. Chris had to point it out when we passed it after the game. I even roomed with him for a short period at that house one summer as he and I worked in the dish room handling inventory counts and repairs to the furniture in the UD dining hall. I almost roomed with him and his roommates midway through sophmore year when a roommate moved out of Kettering, but one of his roommates didn't know me so he vetoed Doug's suggestion.

I watched game 7 of the 1992 NL Championship series at his apartment on Irving near Kramer's bar while I did laundry that night. His apartment building had a coin laundry in the building. It was the Braves versus the Pirates. Francisco Cabrera had a hit and Sid Bream, half hobbled from injury, slid across home plate just beating the tag in the 9th inning. It was thrilling to watch the series that year and that was an unbelievable finish to the NLCS that year. Even though we were both Reds fans, we both cheered over the excitement of the play as we literally leapt off the couch.

I watched a few Bengals and Reds games with him at the house. He grew up in Cincinnati and moved back there after I left Dayton in 1993.

The SNLs we watched during the 1988 presidential election were good times. Remember Jon Lovitz's Dukakis imitation ("I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!") opposite Dana Carvey's Bush imitation?

He came to Columbus for the Octoberfest on a surprise trip with Chris, Matt, Ted and Mike to see me and we experienced our infamous dunking booth incident in 1993. I was glad security did not escort us out of the festival. The phrase "Please do not throw the ball at the girl" (said twice over the loud speakers) is a memory from that night that none of us will ever forget.

I can't imagine all the conversations he and I had over the years working in the dish room at Kettering, working banquets, all the parties he threw that I attended. Just every day conversations, long forgotten, not very profound or important.

He was the most decent one of our circle of friends. It's not a coincidence that all my memories and stories of Doug are good memories.

Erin and Mary both contacted me on Friday and let me know he was moved to the Hospice in Hamilton, OH. I only learned in December he had been battling cancer.

And now he is gone at the age of 39. I've spent the past two days thinking of him and sharing some of these stories with friends. I thought it was the best way I could celebrate him and remember him.

CyberBeer - A New Currency Unit

I received a message from my cousin Sam last week. She had encountered an issue on her desktop that had stumped her regarding Excel, so she asked me if I could come out and take a look at it.

I rode out after work and was able to quickly figure out what the issue was. Then she asked, “Can you take a look at my fax? It faxes out just fine, but it won’t receive faxes. It never picks up.” It was a Dell 946 All-in-one fax machine and it was completely foreign to me.

I said I would, though I made sure she knew it was not my area of expertise. To get a printer to work correctly, I usually turn off and on the printer and reboot a computer.

All I knew was what my Uncle Roger told me - they had a fax line installed and it was dedicated for the printer/fax.

I tried calling the number first to make sure it would ring. It did. It also never picked up, just as Sam described. Check.

I found the manually very quickly and made sure the phone cord was plugged into the fax slot and not the phone slot. Check.

It had great instructions in it for identifying how to receive a fax. As I traversed the menu on the fax, it looked nothing like the manual! WTF! My Uncle Roger was there as well, so I had verification I was not crazy. He and I both were stumped.

So, as all IT people do at some point during the day, I pulled up Google. An IT person, contrary to rumor and "The Peele Hypothesis," cannot know every given IT thing. We may have vague thoughts or ideas about certain unfamiliar items. We may have troubleshooting techniques that drive an end-user crazy because they seems so simple (ie. “So is your power on?”) We may know someone across the room who knows the answer without researching it.

My experience is that IT really becomes less about what you know and more about how you can research and find the answer to things you have no knowledge of. I spent 30 minutes searching, changing my search criteria, and trying to find the elusive answer when magically I came across a discussion board where someone else had a similar issue.

A wise man known as PudgyOne had helped that poor lost soul in February 2011 and thanks to him, I looked like a genius when I pulled up the properties, changed a drop down box value and successfully got the fax to pick up after 3 rings. I was so excited, I joined the site just to let him know how much his answered helped me 16 months later.

As I laid down to go to sleep that night, I thought about how cool it would be to buy that guy a beer, but sadly, I don’t know him and I’ll never meet him in person. But wouldn’t it be great to send him a beer though!

As I got drowsy, I created in my mind a new economic currency known as the CyberBeer. The CyberBeer is the equivalent to approximately $4 US and the purpose is to send someone a CyberBeer, particularly on something that he or she wrote up on a public board several months ago, as a token of appreciation. The $4 US unit is derived from the $3.09 Happy hour price for a double of mainstream American beer at my local bar or the equivalent of a pint of real beer. But what’s great is you can send the CyberBeer with a click of the button.

I am not sure it is enough to base an entire economy on. I doubt it would ever catch on. But I like the sentiment.

I think more than anything my mind just wanders too much as I try to sleep. Tonight, I’ll have a cold one and silently toast all those super users who happily offer others support by documenting their findings publically. Every non-IT person reading this (12 of you?) should go tell their IT person how much you appreciate what they do. No matter how frustrated or angry you get with them, they eventually do solve the issue.

And this October 10th, make sure to thank your IT guy and make it National Thank Your IT Guy Day.  It’s on 10/10 – that’s binary (credit to Richard Brown for that.)

Your IT person will get that joke even if you don’t.

I mean, why not? There’s a National Nurses Day, a National Bosses Day, National Secretaries Day ….

Madison's Bike Ride

I drove home through the adjoining neighborhood Friday night and I saw a mom pushing her daughter on a bike down a sidewalk.  My first thought was how soft children were as the little girl had both training wheels and a helmet.

Back in first grade in the mid 1970s, parents were not so overly concerned that kids were forced to wear helmet as the scar remaining over my left eye reflects.  I was rushed to a hospital for an injury I barely recall except for Robin, Babs (yep, that was her name and she was Robin's twin sister,) and others walking me home after I wrecked on Huntsman Trail, in sight of the house.  It was the reason I missed two days of school, I believe, the only two days I missed in first grade because I had a slight concussion as well.

As I drove past the mother and daughter, I thought about ten years ago when I spent Memorial Day weekend in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Aside from the wonderful gift of whooping cough that Calvin gave us and what forever has been known as "The Apocalyptic Water Fight of 2002," I got to take my niece Madison out to ride her bike for one of the first time in her life.

May was so excited, she ran to her room to get her pads.

"Why does she need pads?" I asked aloud.

She really didn't need them as it turned out, except these were Power Rangers pads, so she was excited to use them for the first time on her new bike.  I helped her get arm pads, elbow pads, leg pads and knew pads on.  I expected dome sort of chest armor to go with the helmet.  She was actually more armored than a Power Ranger at this point.

I carried her bike down the driveway as it was very steep and put it on the sidewalk.  The road sloped downward and she climbed on her little bicycle with the training wheels.

"OK," she squealed, "PUSH!"

"Madison, I don't think you understand how a bicycle works.  You have to pedal."

"PUSH!!!"

So I reached down and grabbed the seat she was on and pushed from behind.  I watched as she slowly steered down the sidewalk into the grass.

"PUSH!!!" she order.

"Pedal!" I yelled, walking down.

"PUSH!!!"

I then realized what was happening.  She was too young and not strong enough to pedal.  

The PUSH game was OK going down the hill, but it got old coming back up.  Plus she was not good at steering as I tried to get her back up the street to her house.  Thankfully she was done by the time we got up to the driveway again and ready to go play something else.