Big Football Weekend

With the AAFL draft and a Colts preseason game, I was pretty busy with football related activities on Saturday. Check out pictures and more on my sports blog.

Extraneous Questions from Work

I thought I would share an e-mail I got from work. This is more a cathartic act to deal with my job than actually news to my readers, but I hope you'll find it amusing.

I sent my boss an Excel spreadsheet with various data. I made sure to label each of the column carefully. As you can see, the circled columns clearly show they are labeled "December 2002". I then get an e-mail from by boss asking if the data was from December 2002 or June 2003. This is the kind of extraneous e-mails I answer all day. It's not that it's hard to send an e-mail reply, but I just seems so useless to answer a question that should be perfectly obvious. *Sigh*

Thanks for letting me share my frustrations with you.

Indians Game

My company had it's annual picnic at an Indianapolis Indians game this past weekend. The weather was perfect, the food was good (and free!), unfortunately the Indians have one of the worst fielding teams I've ever seen. That combined with a horrendous outing from the pitcher (he had a 47.25 ERA for the game. Seriously!) combined for a 12-0 lead by the Durham Bulls in the second inning. We left shortly thereafter not needing to see any more of the beatdown. I almost forgot: we did get free hats as one of the first 4,000 fans. Always nice to get free stuff!

Only in Indiana...

This vehicle was in front of me on the interstate Friday. The picture's a little grainy (it was taken with my cell phone), but it's pickup truck with a coffin (yes, a coffin) in the back. Either someone passed away and the family couldn't afford a hearse or the truck's owner found a good deal on a coffin that day. Either way, this is just something I don't think you see to often outside of Indiana!

Pictures from Dad's birthday

Here are some pictures from my Dad's birthday back on July 3. I won't give away his age; let's just say he's over 18. Happy birthday dad!

Notes from a Staff Meeting

I just came from our quarterly staff meeting and decided to share some humorous thoughts. (Note: if anyone from work is reading this, I put this here for more own amusement and do not wish to insult or embarrass anyone.)

- I believe the intent of the first announcement is that we need to check our internal intranet more often (why I don't know as the last time I went there for a software update I found the information out of date by a year), however we were instructed to "check your internet" when we returned to our office. Hence why I'm writing this blog now; I'd hate to disobey orders.

- The only free parking spot at our new building is about 1 1/2 miles away whereas at the old building you could park 100 feet away. In spite of this, we were told that the company was trying to replicate the old parking options at the new building. Only 7,820 feet closer and they'll have it!

- We were told that our new "anonymous" intranet suggestion box could be traced back to us if the administrator received any violent suggestions. That's fine (I don't want administration to have to read death threats or anything like that), but it kind of negates the idea of an "anonymous" suggestion box.

- The above-mentioned suggestion box included items like the fire alarm is too loud, could we get the company to pay for cell phones, and we need hypo-allergenic soap in the bathroom. This is from a company who's employees have to walk miles to their cars, received a pittance of a "standard of living" increase with no merit-based raises, and has seen it's amount of incoming requests for work dwindle. Yet hypo-allergenic soap is the biggest complaint people have? (I'd send my own suggestions in, but I don't trust the "anonymous" suggestion box.)

- Two new students employees were told at the beginning of the meeting that "we'll try not to bore you." After several department managers had no reports, those students were apologized to because they were being bored (True story. Honestly!) And that pretty much explains it all.

- There are times when we have visitors come for meetings. Fortunately we have a vistors lot for just such an occasion. At this meeting, however, we were told visitors who parked in the lot and signed in at the front desk "may or may not be towed" and "we can't make any guarantees" that they won't be towed. Good thing that visitors lot is there, huh?

Hope that I didn't bore you. But it was good to get that off my chest. Now I'm going to eat my second donut I got from the meeting (really the only good thing about staff meetings.) Mmm, donuts.

Split Personality

Up until now, my blog has been a hodgepodge of sports, ramblings, and family events. Starting today, I'm splitting them up. This spot, Troy's Cube, will remain to contain family pictures, vacation stories, and random thoughts on life. My new blog, tentatively title Stiffler's Sports Cube, will contain thoughts on sports including AAFL fantasy football details. So for those who only want to see pictures of Brian and Grant, keep your web brower tuned here, but for those of you who want to know what I think of Purdue basketball and football, the Colts, other sports teams, and, yes, perhaps even the Pacers, as well as complete AAFL details, go to Stiffler's Sports Cube.

Brian Turns Three

Yes, it's hard to believe that my baby sister now has a three year old. Brian, my wonderful nephew, turned three a few weeks ago. Since he's such a good boy, he got spoiled by not one, but two celebrations.

Brian, my sister Amanda, brother-in-law Andy, and my mom joined Rachel and I on June 9 at Chuck-E-Cheese. Neither Rachel nor I had been to Chuck-E-Cheese since it was changed from Show Biz Pizza Place. The only things I had remembered from Show Biz was a animatronic monkey in a sparkly jacket playing piano, lots of pizza, and ski-ball. Well, the monkey is gone (replaced by a mouse, Chuck-E), but the pizza and ski-ball remain. Brian wasn't too interested in the ski-ball (don't worry, us adults made up for him). He wasn't too interested in Chuck-E either, but his mother used to be scared of Santa Claus, so I'm sure he'll come around. Brian had a lot of fun climbing through this tube jungle gym they had set up and playing some of the more three year old sized games.



The next day, we met the nearly the entire extended family at Deming Park in Terre Haute. They had just constructed a new playground. The entire thing is a set of walkways that you climb or walk up on and from there are various slides, poles, "rock" walls, etc. to go on. Oh, and the entire thing is surrounded by ground-up rubber chips to prevent any harsh injuries. When I was growing up, we had rocks with razor sharp edges to gash open our legs when we would fall. The rubber chips seemed much safer, but where's the fun in staying safe on the playground? Brian got a ton of gifts as expected. He's into Diego now. I'm not quite sure what Diego does, only that he speaks Spanish and seems to rescue animals in the jungle or something. I'm a little behind on my knowledge of current toys. If Brian ever gets into Star Wars or G.I. Joes, I'm all of that. Last year, Brian would rip open presents, push them aside (throw them aside if they were clothes or something else that you couldn't play with), and move on to the next gift. This year, he would open a present, and then run to the middle of the group and proudly show off his new gift. The highlight of the day was playing with Brian on the playground. Rachel and my cousin Tressa had a great time running around with him. They may have had more fun than Brian! Brian can't quite get our names out. Rachel is "Ray-Ray" and Tressa was "T". That last one is particularly confusing since there are four of us in the family with names starting with T's. Anyway, we had fun, Brian had fun, and we'll get ready for the next birthday. (Speaking of which, my birthday is coming up. PS3's are only $599 at Wal-Mart!)

Weddings and Open Houses

Unlike my globetrotting siblings-in-law, Rachel and I are usually content to stay within the vicinity of our house most of the time. This summer has seen us travel across the state to various weddings and open houses. I haven't wrote about them mainly since the pictures have been sitting on my camera or my home computer for the last few weeks. The purchase of a Sony Flash Drive this weekend has made it easy to transfer pictures to and from home, so I'm ready to start the updates in whatever the literary equivalent of a montage is. (Mini rambling: As mentioned I now own a 2GB flash drive small enough to fit in my pocket. In fact, it's smaller than a pocket knife I own. For someone that grew up with 5 1/4" floppy disks with less than 100 KB, that's pretty astounding. Yes, I'm getting old.)

May 26 - Susan King and Chris Thorpe wedding.

Rachel and I headed down to Bloomington for the nuptials of our friends Susan and Chris. Susan met Chris on a vacation in Jamaica. Just thought you needed to know that for some reason.Since we were going to Bedford the next day, Rachel and I decided to stay the night in Bloomington. I found there are relatively few choices for hotels for such a big city (West Lafayette/Lafayette has many more places to stay; again, just so you know). I made reservations for a non-smoking room (seriously, hotels still have smoking rooms in Southern Indiana?) at the not-at-all-luxurious Super 8. Luxury didn't matter since we mainly just needed a place to sleep. However, upon opening the door to our room, I rush of tobacco odor flooded our senses. We gave the room about 30 seconds with the door closed and then rushed down to the front desk to request a non-smoking room. Unfortunately, there were no non-smoking rooms left so the manager upgraded us to a "suite". Now, the jacuzzi tub was a nice touch, I must admit. However, calling this a "suite" is an understatement. Basically the room was the exact size as the rest, it just had the aforementioned jacuzzi. So, everything worked out fine there.

The wedding went on as planned with just a few showers before and afterwards. The wedding was at a chapel next to the Union building in the heart of IU's campus. In case you haven't been there, IU had the oak/birch/willow/dogwood version of Johnny Appleseed sprinkle tree seeds all over the campus. Everything seems to be covered in foliage. Maybe IU should be the Sycamores instead of ISU. Being a graduate of the much less tree lined campus of Purdue University, I'm not a fan of the jungle that is IU's campus. Someone remarked to me that I "had to" admit that IU's campus was better than Purdue's. Oops. Wrong person to say that too. Purdue may have made some bad choices in designing their campus (lack of parking, dorms 500 miles from civilization, "Indian burial grounds"), but at least they understand the word moderation when it comes to landscaping.

Anyway, the wedding was fine. I'd write more, but this is a blog about me and, well, it wasn't my wedding. The reception was fine although I must be the only person over 21 that doesn't drink. This was a wedding made up of mostly people from our church, and still nearly everyone was drinking. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that and people were definitely drinking in moderation, but I always feel odd to be the only one NOT drinking. Of course, I seemed to be the only one not making a salad and not partaking in the cheese course as well, so maybe I'm just odd.



May 27 - Kate Hawkins open house.

Rachel and I moved on from Bloomington down to Bedford to celebrate her cousin Kate graduating from high school. Kate will be moving on to the tree lined campus of IU. Apparently my marrying into the family did nothing to change her allegiances in colleges. Again, everything went well. They had a nice spread of food and snacks which is always appreciated. Congratulations to Kate and, despite my teasing of college choices, good luck at IU.



June 2 - Tiara Clerk open house.

Onto Brazil for my cousin Tiara's open house to celebrate her graduation from high school. Again, proving that I am the black sheep of the family, Tiara will be moving on to IU. Apparently Tiara and Kate didn't aspire to graduate from Purdue and take a job where they would have time to write blogs all day. Oh well. Best of luck to Tiara as well.

Oh, and to all you guys at IU: Kate and Tiara are both taken (as last I checked; high school relationships aren't exactly chiseled in stone) so please stay away from my underage cousins. They'll be spending too much time studying anyway. Just like I was. Ummm, mostly.



P.S. You didn't really think you'd get through a post without Brian and Grant pictures did you?

Radio Math

Since Mike and Mike in the Morning decided to talk about Sox & Yanks, I flipped around the dials on the radio this morning. I caught a radio DJ (do they still call them DJs?) commenting on how album (do they still call them albums?) sales of Journey were up 100% since the song "Don't Stop Believing" was played on the Sopranos. She also commented on downloads being up 482%. She then commented that she "couldn't comprehend how that [482%] was calculated." Really? That's not that hard of math. Right when I was thinking about how funny it would be to bring this up in a blog, she further demonstrated her complete lack of match skills. She said something to this effect: "So, sales are up 100%. Does that mean there were 0 sales before because no one were buying them and now they're 100% because people are buying them again." I was dumbfounded. I think she actually believes there were 0 sales this week so whatever number of sales there were this week made it 100%. She may even believe that there were 0 sales last week and 100 this week, I'm not sure. Then again, she could still be doing the long division in her head trying to figure out what 482% means. So for every high schooler out there struggling with math, there could be a future in morning drive-time radio for you!