Happy 40th

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So today is the 40th anniversary of airing of the first episode of Star Trek.  Given that I am only 37, I have seen all the episodes as reruns.  In fact, right before I sat down to write this entry, I was watching The Trouble With Tribbles.

I remember when I went to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the movie theater.  I remember that they only fired one laser during the entire 2 hours and 12 minutes and I also remember falling asleep during the last hour or so of the film.  What a let down!

But all was forgiven when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn came out.  Now this was a movie!  I have watched this movie about 50 times.  I remember one winter during the 80s when I watched it every week for about 30 weeks.  My mother was in a bowling league and so I would go over to my aunt's house.  My brother would go across the street to his friend's house.  My cousin would go to her room and listen to records and I would watch The Wrath of Kahn on Video Disc.  I have it on VHS (a far superior format to Video Disc) and love Ricardo Montalban as Kahn.  Try as they might, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise could not create a better bad guy (though the Borg were pretty convincing).

Much has been said about Star Wars being a superior franchise and HERE is a site describing the fire power of each relative technology (in case you don't go to the link, the Empire wins convincingly).  If that is the only measuring stick you use then yes, Star Wars wins.  But consider this, at the place where I work, you cannot go to www.starwars.com as it is blocked by the firewall.  You can get to www.startrek.com just fine however.

If your want to surf the web looking for sci-fi franchise information on company time, the winner is obvious (at least where I work).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Interpretation Please?

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So I wake up this morning right out of a strange dream.  Dreams are said to be either for exercising the synapses in the brain or to deal with immediate concerns in our lives.  There are several times in the Old Testament where dreams were interpreted and even prophetic.  So anyway, I try to at least think about my dreams before dismissing them, just in case.

Here was my dream.  I am looking into what I assume is my backyard and see a metal swing set.  On this swing set, a small dog (I assume it is mine) is swinging in a half shell of a coconut.  He is about 5 feet off the ground and I can tell that he cannot get down so I go to rescue him.  When I get there, I notice that the coconut shell is not hanging from a chain but very thick cobwebs and the cobweb is also connected to the top of a very tall telephone pole.  At the top of the pole where the cobweb ends is a very large bees nest, several nests actually.  My attempt to remove the dog from the coconut shell angers the bees and I can hear them humming loudly and heading toward me.  So I begin to run.  The bees appear to be about the size of mosquitoes and quickly catch me and land on my back.  I walk around to the front of the house (with the bee mosquitoes still on me).  If I walk fast, they start to get angry and hum.  If I walk slowly, the just stay on my back.  I awoke just as I was trying to decide how to get my shirt off.

Now I don't know about you but when I want answers I go to Mr. Google.  The first promising hit is this site that has an "interpret" feature where you put in what was in your dream and it tells you what it means.  Here are the results...

• Bees: To see bees in your dream, symbolizes good luck, harmony, and bliss. Bees are also symbolic of work and industry (so far, so good).
• Dog: To see a dog in your dream, indicates a skill that you have ignored or forgotten, but needs to be activated (again, not necessarily bad).
• Swing: To dream about a swing, represents an expression of great satisfaction and freedom (this is turning out better than I thought).
• Coconuts: To see a coconut in your dream, foretells that you will receive an unexpected gift of money (not sure if seeing an empty coconut shell would mean the opposite).

So, it is all good it seems.  Now I had a dream once when I was a teenager that I was a pregnant kangaroo in the express checkout lane at a grocery store where I was buying some Chicklets.  I wonder what that web site says that dream meant?

I think I will quit while I am ahead.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

It Goes Without Saying

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So we are now living in an apartment.  The apartment comes with many amenities: a community pool, a community workout room, a wrapping center (complete with paper, bows, gift bags, etc.), free movie rentals (selections change monthly), use of a pool table, use of 2 computers with high speed internet (during business hours) and to top it all off the community is behind some huge gates that you have to have a remote to in order to get in (which makes pizza delivery a little tricky).  I am sure I am forgetting some things but you get the idea, it is a pretty cool place to live.

I did notice though that on the front of the gate (the one you have to have a remote for) there is a sign that says, "No Solicitation."  Is this really necessary?  I would hope it is obvious to a would be solicitor that if you can't even get on the property, you might not be able to solicit.  Perhaps the sign is for tenants as they drive in to remind them not to solicit other occupants.  I know that I generally refuse to buy candy bars or other fund raising wares from anyone.  I do however offer to donate directly to the cause if they would only give me the correct person / business to make the check out to but they seldom follow up with that information.  I don't try to sell candy bars to my co-workers and I don't buy from them.  I figure this makes us even in the long run.

In general though I think the whole "No Solicitation" sign is not needed.  This should be a given rule.  I know of no one who wants to be solicited (ok, mind out of the gutter here readers).  This is also true of the "Do Not Call" list.  What a silly concept.  Does anyone like getting telemarketing calls?

I did get visited once by a foreign student trying to sell encyclopedias to help pay for his college.  I did have a No Solicitation sign on my front door but it was obvious that this was not one of the words in the English language that he understood.  I invited him in, gave him a glass of water and kindly explained what the sign meant so he could avoid the other houses in the neighborhood that also had signs like mine.  He was very thankful and understanding.

I think maybe I wouldn't mind being solicited by a No Solicitation sign salesman.  Now that would be niche market since by design there would be no repeat business.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Sign Here Please

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

One of the things I have learned at a father is never do something funny unless you are willing to do it a) 100 times in a row or b) every day for the foreseeable future.  I won't go into details but there are things that (for some reason) my kids find wildly entertaining.  Things that I wouldn't mind NOT doing for the rest of my life.  New fathers, this is my best advice to you: Don't do something for a simple laugh unless you want to do it many, many, many times in a row.

Anyway, my son has a reading goal for school.  He is supposed to read 200 minutes in the first 6 weeks.  This only averages out to about 5 minutes per day.  For the first week or so he was doing his best to stay at the minimum.  And then he picked up the pace since there were other kids at school that were up to 100 minutes ahead of him.  The wife has tried to get him to read over the last year or two and it was like pulling teeth.  But now all of a sudden it is a competition at school and reading has taken on a whole new purpose.  I don't know if this trick is going to work long term but I guess we will wait and see.

When he is done reading for the day, one of the parents has to sign a form that states what book was read, what day it was read on, how many minutes it was read, and what the total minutes to date for the six weeks is.  The wife signed the first week's worth and then one day she was gone and I was asked to sign.  Now the wife has excellent penmanship.  She really puts forth the effort for her signature to be pretty.  On the other hand, you are lucky to make out 2 letters of my last name.  My son watched me sign my name and he thought it was a joke.  He thought that no one would sign their name so poorly.  And my signature looks especially poor compared to the wife's a few lines up on the same sheet of paper.  So every night for the last week or so, he has requested that I be the one to sign this form.  He cracks up every time I scrawl out my "name."

There is another form that has to be initialed daily.  He requested (with a smirk on his face) that I also take care of this.  He was real disappointed when the J and D were actually legible.

I am predicting that form has only the wife's initials on it from now on.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

What Was I Thinking!?!

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So I wake up this morning and my first thought is not about having this day off of work.  It is not about sleeping in or maybe getting up to make the coffee (nudged the wife and talked her in to it).  It is not about getting up to go to the bathroom (though that made the top 5 thoughts for sure).  No, I was met with the haunting thought that I forgot to blog!  Oh, the horror!  I mean, I made it 50+ days in a row without missing (even when I did not have internet access at the apartment!).

Well I have had the day to think about it.  A day in which I spent time at the local mall (tons of blog-worthy material can be had at the mall).  I thought about the missed blog quite often and have come to the conclusion that I am just going to forgive myself for it and move on.  This is even a little bit liberating.  Perhaps at the end of the day if I do not have a truly blog-worthy random thought then (just perhaps) I will skip another day.  The pressure of this blog streak is over now and I have no desire to start over.

This may be a service to you as well faithful reader.  I mean which is better, logging on to this site and not finding a blog or finding one that is not entertaining?  I even thought of stopping altogether but an email I just received from a new reader made me banish that thought.  Evidently he discovered my blog during a marathon shopping trip with his wife and kids.  According to the email, my blog helped him set a personal record for time at a mall.

Maybe wherever that record is recorded, my blog will be mentioned in the fine print.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

A Long Forgotten Theory (I'll Make This Short)

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

When I was much younger I proposed a theory that tied the number of words spoken to the length of one's life.  I suggested that at birth, each person was assigned an exact number of words and when that number was reached, they died.  I think I spent about 10 minutes thinking this up and working through the various parts of the theory (why some people die much younger / older, what about people who are born mute, etc.).  All in all it seemed pretty solid.  Over the years I have explained this to the few people bored enough to listen to it.  Each attempted to poke holes in it, usually failing.

I then read a study suggesting that women use about 7,000 words per day and men about 2,000.  Again I had to adjust my theory accordingly.  So women are allotted approximately 3.5 times as much words at birth as men.  Talk show hosts are also obviously given a generous portion compared to the rest of us.

If people would actually believe my theory, I think the world would be a much better place.  Think of it, no idle chatter at all.  No wasted speech.  Why would you want to waste your words so carelessly as to discuss sports, soap operas, your kids or grandkids?  Speech would be so precious.  Think of the money saved in court cases alone.  No lawyer would want to make long winded speeches to the jury or judge.

The biggest hole in my theory originally was what about people who take vows of silence (like monks)?  I answer that by suggesting that somehow (through divine knowledge perhaps) they are told that they have very few (perhaps one) left and hence a vow of silence.

My proof?  Well may I suggest that the last words out of every monk's mouth who has taken such a vow is, "Ouch!"

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

One, Two, Zip Your Pants

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

One of the things that I got when moving down here was new work clothes.  I got 5 new pairs of pants and 6 new shirts.  This was a moving gift from my Mom (thanks Mom).  We went shopping one night back in Indiana.  I had not been clothes shopping with my mom in like 20+ years.  It seemed a little weird at first.  But hey, this was free clothes, so I got over it.

I decided not to wear any of the new clothes until we got down here to Texas.  Most of the pants were the same brand and style and all had both a button and a metal hook type connector.  It was here that my mind must have been confused.  My mother was with us the first few days in Texas since she helped us move down here (well, you do the math, we had the van, the Buick and a U-Haul and only the wife and I to drive them - believe it or not, it was cheaper to pay for her hotel room on the way down and a plane ticket back than it was to rent one of the pull behind devices to tow one of the vehicles).  Anyway, I was saying, Mom was with us for the first few days here in Texas.  Consequently, she was able to see my go to work in the clothes that she bought me.

The first morning she noticed that I had forgotten to zip my pants.  This has got to be a "Mother" thing since she noticed this right off the bat, right as I was leaving my bedroom and heading toward the kitchen.  Like she had this mental checklist to go over before I left the apartment, and "check fly" was toward the top of the list.  As I recall, I also left the pants unzipped the next day or two.

This really bothered me since I have been an adult for some time now and having my pants zipped before I leave the house is something that I thought I had mastered in my 37 years.  I chalked it up to being a result of getting dressed in a strange surrounding (the new apartment) and did not think about it again until earlier this week.  I think I have found a valid excuse.  You see I believe that mentally I was counting to two when putting on my pants.  1) Button Pants and 2) Zip Pants.  Since these new pants had both a button and a metal clasp (now steps 1 and 2), my mind stopped there and did not get to what was now step 3 (the zipping).  All my old pants just had the 2 steps and I just could not compute a 3rd step.

Are you buying this?  Didn't think so.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

1Jon