Top 10 Things I have learned in the last 33 years

It's a new year, and in the wake of the disappointment that flows from yet another decade passing without a flying car or my own lightsaber I have decided to take stock of my life. What have I learned in the last three decades on this planet that will equip me for the future? What follows are some life lessons and observations that are sure to come in handy. For convenience sake I have whittled the list down to the top ten.

#10 Time travel is only possible after reaching 88 mph.

Why 88 mph? I don't know, but it sure seemed fast back in 1985. Reaching 88 mph now doesn't seem like such a difficult task, finding a running Delorean however does.

#9 Sometimes rap music can unite an entire country

Big Mac, Mc DLT, a Quarter-Pounder with some cheese
Fillet-o-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal
Mcnuggets, tasty golden french fries, regular and larger size
And salads, chef or garden, or a chicken salad oriental
Big Big Breakfast, Egg Mcmuffin, hot hotcakes and sausage
Maybe biscuits, bacon, egg and cheese and sausage, danish, hashbrown too, and for dessert hot apple pies and sundaes three varieties.

A soft serve cone, three kinds of shakes, and chocolately-chip cookies, and to drink a Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, an orange drink, a Sprite, a coffee (decaf too) a lowfat milk also an orange juice.

I love Mcdonald's good time great taste
And I get this all at one place!
The good time, great taste... of McDonald's...

#8 Alf was just a puppet.

I took this one hard. Until NASA can find a way to get us off this rock and a little closer to Melmac we will have to continue to rely on Chinese food joints to control the feral cat population.

#7 I kind of miss the Soviets

I would rather have the U.S.S.R. than terrorists. Terrorists are "Tom Cruise crazy." Sure we were all afraid of the Russians and their nuclear arsenal, but in the end - despite what Red Dawn taught us - the Soviets weren't anymore interested in total nuclear destruction than we were.

Okay, so maybe the gulags were a bad idea, and communism wasn't so great, but think of all the things the Soviet Union made better. War movies, James Bond, Olympic ice hockey, defection stories . . . all better under Soviet rule. Let's face it, James Bond sucks now. I miss the arrogance of American 1980's war movies. The fall of the Soviet Union all but ruined Chuck Norris's movie career.

#6 In the future no one will work. We will all have lucrative sponsorship deals with fast food restaurants.

So it's come to this. Jared & Christine duke it out to be the king or queen of fast food weight loss. Who will win the title of healthiest unhealthy food - Subway or Taco Bell? My goal for 2010 is to gain 50lbs and then lose it in 6 months by eating only 1 Baconator(R) a day and nothing else. My hope is that Wendy's will then offer me piles of money to extoll the virtues of their healthy cuisine making me the king of fast food weight loss.

#5 It always rains while I am taking out the trash.

I could live in the middle of the Mohave and it would still rain every Tuesday evening. Rain on "trash night" is as predictable and reliable as the atomic clock in Boulder, CO. If the Mayan's had a trash day on any of their hundreds of calendars the symbol would be one of me, drenched to the bone and holding a hefty bag full of dirty diapers and empty SlimFast cans.

To be continued

Auto Eulogies Redux

Earlier I wrote about one man's tribute to his savings account. A tribute that came in the form of a simple sticker on the back of his SUV. The touching tale of how this man lost his savings in the great stock market crash of 2008 still resonates with everyone who sees his shiny SUV.

Yesterday I saw something that took auto eulogies to a new level. We've all seen them . . . "In memory of [insert loved one's name here]." Yesterday as I pulled into work at the secret underground Woodcraft World Wide Headquarters my eyes were pulled to the rear window of a white SUV in he parking lot. In tiny white letters it said, "In memory of Trixie." My first thought was, "oh, how sad," but then I realized that Trixie is a dog, was a dog - or had been a dog.

I love my dog, but when he dies you won't find me eulogizing him on the rear window of my Jeep. I will do the respectful thing and stuff him - that way he'll always be around for me to pet.

Last night I finished the internet.

There are many sites I regularly visit. These sites run the gamut from online retailers to message boards. Most of the really good stuff on the internet I have already found. Every morning I check out Woot, all of the Woot sites actually, to see what incredible deal I'm most likely not going to take advantage of. I swing by Fark to see what news I might have missed. I stop by Found to see what somebody else left behind. I make a stop by The Smoking Gun to make sure no one I know has been arrested in a stupid tee shirt. There are about 15 - 20 other sites that I'll venture to throughout the day as well - not counting the one I work for (woodcraft.com).

As a professional Web designer, I spend a great deal of the day on the internet. And in case you're wondering, the internet is wicked large. The author Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that,

"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

That pretty much sums up the way you should look at the World Wide Web.

Scientists have theories about the end of the universe. They claim that the universe is ever expanding and that at some point, like a giant elastic underwear band, the universe will snap back and cease to exist. I now believe that the internet may suffer the same fate.

Last night, for the first time, I may have finished the internet. After a decade and a half of visiting an endless hodgepodge of sites I very nearly ran out of internet around 9:30 pm est. Much like the brave explorers of the 15 century that sailed without fear towards the "edge of the earth," I briefly saw the end, and then lost it. For a few precious seconds I realized I had managed to see everything of any importance and I was forced to be patient, and wait for them to make more internet.

Thankfully, I awoke this morning to find that the internet gods had indeed replenished the internet with lousy homemade videos, canceled television shows, public domain photos of upside-down dogs, left behind shopping lists and bags of crap. All was right with the World Wide Web.