Oktoberfest and Dancing
I met Geoff in front of his place on Friday afternoon, and we walked down to roughly somewhere along Main to wait for a bus. Just as we despaired a bus bore down on us and happily stopped between stops to pick us up. We got off on Grand, south of where the city had barricaded it off, and headed north, through the barricades.
What followed was a long night, involving lots and lots of beer. Warsteiner Dunkel and Boulevard Bob's 47 accompanied me through an Oktoberfest Friday with talking, laughing, singing, and just a whole ton of dancing. It was definitely the most fun I've had yet at Oktoberfest in Kansas City. After the event itself, those in attendance filed off in various directions, with a contingent of us moving on to the Zoo Bar, as is our custom.
While there I ran into Sarah, who was patiently spending some quality time with some college friends immediately following a wedding somewhere in town. We sat and talked for a while. When the bar closed we, along with an extremely inebriated Geoff made our way through the streets. We lost Geoff at 13th and Walnut as he just kind of wandered off, ignoring sharp yells of his name. I walked Sarah to her car, and she gave me a ride home.
The next day I woke up with an uncomfortable hangover, but it cleared nicely by noon or so. I went down to the Power and Light District for the beerfest, to find that none of my friends that had previously expressed interest, and had even made plans, felt up to the challenge of attending. While the music was great, as was the beer and the scenery, I wasn't quite awake enough to enjoy the event by myself. I went home and slept away the afternoon.
I met James and Angela down at Oktoberfest again later that night. They were largely unimpressed by the unimpressive band that was playing for the duration of their stay, so they announced their plans to leave, as soon as we finished a funnel cake. As we ate the funnel cake(my first in perhaps five years), I mentioned how long it had been since I'd had an elephant ear, and received blank stares from both of them. Apparently, like the proper pronunciation of "Apricot," elephant ears are something that never really reached Kansas City. Their loss.
As we ate the funnel cake I received a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the high-five smiles of Amanda, Matt, and Tony before me. I informed James and Angela that I would probably be joining them later, but for now I was going to remain at Oktoberfest with my three newly-arrived friends. We stayed for the Prost Band, and did a little dancing. Tony and I began shouting that stupid song about boots with the fur and apple-bottom jeans until it was many iterations past amusing to our neighbors. That's pretty much how the rest of the evening went.
I received a number of text messages from Nick, who with Anna had just flown in from their honeymoon in Georgia. He was at Grinders, then somewhere else, and then at JP where I eventually caught up with them. We closed that place down, and after doing so Ryan, Nick, Anna and I went to YJ's for late night delicious food. I got home by perhaps 4am, and slept soundly until high noon.
Sarah(a different Sarah) and I had planned on getting together to go for a long walk on Sunday, but were both too exhausted and hungover to attempt it. Instead we met for brunch at You Say Tomato and recapped our weekends. It was a wonderful weekend for me, and I look forward to more in KC.
One thing I determined this weekend, and through various recent events is that though I love dancing, and am generally pretty good at it, I think I need to take lessons. The last formal instruction I ever received was when I went to Cotillion in junior high, and learned how to do the foxtrot to "It Would Take a Strong Strong Man," and "Baby, Baby," by Rick Astley and Amy Grant, respectively.
So, I think I'd like to take some dance lessons here in KC. I think it would be a lot of fun, but there are mitigating factors that also amplify one another. The first is that I think I would need to go with the same woman to these lessons, and basically have a standing date to do so, and scheduling is a pain. The second problem is that since I'm a single person, it's difficult to find a single woman with whom to go, and with whom such a commitment could be made without a major emotional production, or consent, or payment.
I'd love to take dance lessons, but I need to find a woman, even just a friend, with whom to go.
I met Geoff in front of his place on Friday afternoon, and we walked down to roughly somewhere along Main to wait for a bus. Just as we despaired a bus bore down on us and happily stopped between stops to pick us up. We got off on Grand, south of where the city had barricaded it off, and headed north, through the barricades.
What followed was a long night, involving lots and lots of beer. Warsteiner Dunkel and Boulevard Bob's 47 accompanied me through an Oktoberfest Friday with talking, laughing, singing, and just a whole ton of dancing. It was definitely the most fun I've had yet at Oktoberfest in Kansas City. After the event itself, those in attendance filed off in various directions, with a contingent of us moving on to the Zoo Bar, as is our custom.
While there I ran into Sarah, who was patiently spending some quality time with some college friends immediately following a wedding somewhere in town. We sat and talked for a while. When the bar closed we, along with an extremely inebriated Geoff made our way through the streets. We lost Geoff at 13th and Walnut as he just kind of wandered off, ignoring sharp yells of his name. I walked Sarah to her car, and she gave me a ride home.
The next day I woke up with an uncomfortable hangover, but it cleared nicely by noon or so. I went down to the Power and Light District for the beerfest, to find that none of my friends that had previously expressed interest, and had even made plans, felt up to the challenge of attending. While the music was great, as was the beer and the scenery, I wasn't quite awake enough to enjoy the event by myself. I went home and slept away the afternoon.
I met James and Angela down at Oktoberfest again later that night. They were largely unimpressed by the unimpressive band that was playing for the duration of their stay, so they announced their plans to leave, as soon as we finished a funnel cake. As we ate the funnel cake(my first in perhaps five years), I mentioned how long it had been since I'd had an elephant ear, and received blank stares from both of them. Apparently, like the proper pronunciation of "Apricot," elephant ears are something that never really reached Kansas City. Their loss.
As we ate the funnel cake I received a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the high-five smiles of Amanda, Matt, and Tony before me. I informed James and Angela that I would probably be joining them later, but for now I was going to remain at Oktoberfest with my three newly-arrived friends. We stayed for the Prost Band, and did a little dancing. Tony and I began shouting that stupid song about boots with the fur and apple-bottom jeans until it was many iterations past amusing to our neighbors. That's pretty much how the rest of the evening went.
I received a number of text messages from Nick, who with Anna had just flown in from their honeymoon in Georgia. He was at Grinders, then somewhere else, and then at JP where I eventually caught up with them. We closed that place down, and after doing so Ryan, Nick, Anna and I went to YJ's for late night delicious food. I got home by perhaps 4am, and slept soundly until high noon.
Sarah(a different Sarah) and I had planned on getting together to go for a long walk on Sunday, but were both too exhausted and hungover to attempt it. Instead we met for brunch at You Say Tomato and recapped our weekends. It was a wonderful weekend for me, and I look forward to more in KC.
One thing I determined this weekend, and through various recent events is that though I love dancing, and am generally pretty good at it, I think I need to take lessons. The last formal instruction I ever received was when I went to Cotillion in junior high, and learned how to do the foxtrot to "It Would Take a Strong Strong Man," and "Baby, Baby," by Rick Astley and Amy Grant, respectively.
So, I think I'd like to take some dance lessons here in KC. I think it would be a lot of fun, but there are mitigating factors that also amplify one another. The first is that I think I would need to go with the same woman to these lessons, and basically have a standing date to do so, and scheduling is a pain. The second problem is that since I'm a single person, it's difficult to find a single woman with whom to go, and with whom such a commitment could be made without a major emotional production, or consent, or payment.
I'd love to take dance lessons, but I need to find a woman, even just a friend, with whom to go.
Make me a Logo
I'm pretty much inept at visual creativity. I can't operate photoshop or photoshop-like applications to save my life, so I hope it never comes to that. I can clumsily superimpose images on top of other images for goofy-looking novelty purposes, but that's about the limit of my image editing proficiency.
As such, I need your help, because Brad has convinced me that the next version of this site needs to have a snappy graphical logo at the top of it. I've put a placeholder on there for now. I know there is a handful of people that frequent this site that know their way around the average normal taxpayer's image manipulation program, and I am now calling for their help.
There aren't a lot of qualifications for it, but it should at least moderately match the color scheme I've chosen for the new site, though I'm pretty flexible on that. Seeing as I have little idea of style, except that I like contrast. Incorporating something from my photo selection would be greatly appreciated, but again, it's not required. The only hard rule is that it needs to be 75 pixels tall by 300 pixels wide. Transparency is fine. File formats are fine, as long as any web browser can view them.
I've thrown together a slap-dash upload page for people to use, if anyone wants to actually make a submission. I'd really appreciate it if you'd like to make one. Not only will you see your submission on my little website, but I'll buy you a beer in real life.
Have at it!
I'm pretty much inept at visual creativity. I can't operate photoshop or photoshop-like applications to save my life, so I hope it never comes to that. I can clumsily superimpose images on top of other images for goofy-looking novelty purposes, but that's about the limit of my image editing proficiency.
As such, I need your help, because Brad has convinced me that the next version of this site needs to have a snappy graphical logo at the top of it. I've put a placeholder on there for now. I know there is a handful of people that frequent this site that know their way around the average normal taxpayer's image manipulation program, and I am now calling for their help.
There aren't a lot of qualifications for it, but it should at least moderately match the color scheme I've chosen for the new site, though I'm pretty flexible on that. Seeing as I have little idea of style, except that I like contrast. Incorporating something from my photo selection would be greatly appreciated, but again, it's not required. The only hard rule is that it needs to be 75 pixels tall by 300 pixels wide. Transparency is fine. File formats are fine, as long as any web browser can view them.
I've thrown together a slap-dash upload page for people to use, if anyone wants to actually make a submission. I'd really appreciate it if you'd like to make one. Not only will you see your submission on my little website, but I'll buy you a beer in real life.
Have at it!
2:38 PM, Oct 18, 2008 
John McCain
Hey folks. Sorry I haven't talked to you in a while. I've been busy with something or other, I'm sure. I got an idea while I was out last night, inspired by the random hilarity of Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle, and brainstormed for some content with some friends over beers at Grinders. The result is McCain Dislikes You and I think you'll enjoy it.
Outage
I called in sick to work on Friday, but even so I had work to do, so I logged in from home to get it done. In the course of the work I was doing, I managed to accidentally corrupt a production database during business hours. A production outage of perhaps 30 minutes was incurred, and I received a page to call Todd, my two-levels-up boss as soon as possible. So I called him, and he immediately put me on speaker. He told me that he had his boss, Carl, with him in the room. I have never heard Carl speak.
The following quotations are paraphrased for the sake of simplicity.
"John, I understand that you caused an outage today."
"Yes."
"I need you to promise me, and Carl, that you'll never do that again. Do you promise?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." -click-
The next day(Saturday), I heard from coworkers that the root password was changed across the environment on Friday evening. I decided to check on what that actually meant on Sunday afternoon, and wasn't able to login from home. Things did not bode well, despite the assurances from multiple friends and coworkers that there must be a reasonable alternative explanation. Something inside me said that there must be, but the rest of me took the time to dust off my resume and get some inquiries out for jobs. It was at this point that, regardless of what happened the next day, I decided that I was no longer interested in working at DST.
I walked into my cube this morning to find my computer missing. I sat down and checked my email with my phone to see if any of the job emails I'd sent the previous day had produced any replies. They hadn't. Soon after, Todd came by my cube and without making eye contact asked me to follow him. He took me downstairs to an office I'd never seen before. Silent Carl and another guy I recognized but whose name I didn't know came out of hiding and entered the room behind us.
Todd picked up a piece of paper in his stubby sweaty hands, and read off a passage about how I acknowledged on Friday I caused an outage, and because of that I was dangerous and couldn't be trusted. Since DST doesn't employ dangerous and untrustworthy people, the piece of paper went on to state that as of that moment my employment was terminated. I was out of the building in ninety seconds. I don't know why I even made the drive.
I called in sick to work on Friday, but even so I had work to do, so I logged in from home to get it done. In the course of the work I was doing, I managed to accidentally corrupt a production database during business hours. A production outage of perhaps 30 minutes was incurred, and I received a page to call Todd, my two-levels-up boss as soon as possible. So I called him, and he immediately put me on speaker. He told me that he had his boss, Carl, with him in the room. I have never heard Carl speak.
The following quotations are paraphrased for the sake of simplicity.
"John, I understand that you caused an outage today."
"Yes."
"I need you to promise me, and Carl, that you'll never do that again. Do you promise?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." -click-
The next day(Saturday), I heard from coworkers that the root password was changed across the environment on Friday evening. I decided to check on what that actually meant on Sunday afternoon, and wasn't able to login from home. Things did not bode well, despite the assurances from multiple friends and coworkers that there must be a reasonable alternative explanation. Something inside me said that there must be, but the rest of me took the time to dust off my resume and get some inquiries out for jobs. It was at this point that, regardless of what happened the next day, I decided that I was no longer interested in working at DST.
I walked into my cube this morning to find my computer missing. I sat down and checked my email with my phone to see if any of the job emails I'd sent the previous day had produced any replies. They hadn't. Soon after, Todd came by my cube and without making eye contact asked me to follow him. He took me downstairs to an office I'd never seen before. Silent Carl and another guy I recognized but whose name I didn't know came out of hiding and entered the room behind us.
Todd picked up a piece of paper in his stubby sweaty hands, and read off a passage about how I acknowledged on Friday I caused an outage, and because of that I was dangerous and couldn't be trusted. Since DST doesn't employ dangerous and untrustworthy people, the piece of paper went on to state that as of that moment my employment was terminated. I was out of the building in ninety seconds. I don't know why I even made the drive.
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