John's Blog

A nice, relaxing holiday, so far. Loaded up the car and did the pilgrimage to PA which was a nice change of pace. I've always thought it odd that as I grow older, so many times the parent/child roles seem to be reversed with the exception of when I stay at their house. Somehow, I feel like I'm 15 whenever I stay there, no matter what the circumstances, through nobody's fault but my own.

I was subjected to watching "Wheel Of Fortune" while I was there, something I haven't seen for many years. What the heck happened to that show? It used to be "spin the wheel/solve the puzzle"; simple formula, simple game, but it worked. Now it's gussied up with all kinds of bells and buzzers which I guess speed up the pace of the game for our short attention span society...like this was such a slow paced and intellectually challenging game? And what really ticks me off is the cavalier way that they were buying vowels. In the "good 'ol days" you only bought a vowel when you were in a "balls to the wall" desperate situation. And who was that "fembot" flipping the letters; what happened to Vana White? When did they replace her with a blond robot?

I found myself reading a book that was given to me as part of our Secret Santa gift exchange at work. A pretty cool book containing ironic quotations and paradoxical wit and wisdom. An interesting read, but I was falling asleep reading it, when the back cover flap fell open to reveal a picture of the author who bears an uncanny resemblance to a corporate person at work who I'm none too fond of. I almost let this ruin the book for me, but I got over it....just have to make sure I don't look at that picture.

My Christmas present (iPod) came in very handy for the road trip. Got to listen to some tunes, and some podcasts that I had downloaded. I had downloaded Leo Laporte's Tech Guy show; forgot how much I enjoyed listening to him. Also reminded me what a train wreck G4/TechTV has become. And for some reason in the music mix I did for the road, I had included "Black Coffee In Bed" from Squeeze. Probably because I used to think it was a cool song that I hadn't heard for a long time, and it probably will be a long time before I listen to it again. The lyrics keep repeating about the "stain on my notebook" left from a coffee cup. I kept thinking "why the 'f did you put a coffee cup on a computer?" and if so why are you stupid enough to whine about it? I'm sure I'm missing the point of the song, but I must delete it from the playlist anyway.