Popularity

Bangchi may be the smartest person I know. Her office is next to mine, we've worked together for 10 years. She is from a small village in China, and has been through some experiences that few share. She has an advanced degree in biochemestry and information systems. She builds applications from scratch in a fraction it would take the time for most other developers. We have been told we fight like an old married couple, but I think its more like brother and sister.
I knew Bangchi had a blog, but we really never talked much about it until a few weeks ago. She asked how many hits I had gotten since I started it. I told her Blogspot doesn't keep up with it so I don't know, probably about 38. So, she tells me her blog has been hit more than 233,000 times. My sibling rivalry juices began all of the sudden flowing. I accuse her of writing an app to hit her own blog to get the counts up (I don't really believe it, but I have to come up with something). She is loving getting the best of me because I just can't believe that many people would want to go look at her last trip to New York or her class reunion in China. After several minutes of me asking stupid questions about how she gets that many users and her laughing histarically AT me, I have to change my tac.
"PLEASE put a link to my blog on yours", I began grovelling. It wasn't pretty. She had bragging rights and I had none. I don't write this thing for attention (that is a lie). Ok, I do. Anyway, Bangchi not only put a link to my blog on hers, but she has written two of her blogs about me.

Enjoy. http://blog.creaders.net/huaihuaijia/user_blog_diary.php?did=46192

I'm Surprised You're Surprised.

I have never ranted on this blog before. This will be my first and possibly my last. So, if you don't want to read me ranting, or if you are offended by the word "vagina" you'd better stop now.
Michelle Duggar is pregnant with her 19th child and she is "surprised." As I recall, last year when she went on the Today Show and announced she was having #18, they were "surprised" as well. What the hell are they surprised about?? It's like being surprised that the Eagles are doing a reunion tour. I just don't get it.
Mrs Ozzy asked me this morning why this bothers me so, when they are supporting themselves. That is a great question. This is a free country and those weirdo's from Arkansas can have as many kids as they want, and there shouldn't be a law preventing that (unless they are on gov't run healthcare, which is another story). But I certainly wouldn't blame their health insurance carrier for raising their rates. That's what happens after you wreck your car, and I contend that is why they have a reality show. Because people can't help but look at a car wreck.
Check this out, below is a listing of kids and their bdays.
1 1988
2 & 3 1990
4 1991
5 1992
6 1993
7 1995
8 1996
9 1997
10 & 11 1998
12 2000
13 2001
14 2002
15 2004
16 2005
17 2007
18 2008
19 on the freaking way 2010

This woman gets pregnant every time her husband fakes an orgasm. Stand up comics could write an entire act making jokes about her vagina.
Here's my bitch, if you want a ton of kids, fine have a few of your own, then take some poor child out of a bad situation and make it better for them. There are thousands of kids in foster care in this country that need loving families (like the Duggars profess they are). There are many interractial babies in this country that could be adopted. If you are too white to love a brown child, Russia and the Ukrain have hundreds of thousands of orphans that can be adopted. According to iorphan.org, only 1 in 10 of these kids turn out to be productive members of society. But, no, its more important for the Duggars to show the world they still have intercourse than to bring one of these truely needy kids into their family and love them.
I have three kids, two biological, one adopted. I love the one that wasn't made from my sperm just as much as the two that were.

Free Tanqueray

Mrs Ozzy and her best friend were planning their first wedding. The lady that does their hair was getting married, and they were in charge of making things run smoothly, getting the photographer, dj, etc. They were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and they thought it would be "fun." I'm not sure how planning a wedding would be fun, but to each their own. I wasn't thrilled about attending the wedding since I wouldn't know anyone, but I was going to support my bride. Well, the wedding went well, and the reception was a cash bar, and some pretty good heavy hor'dourves. Well, Mrs Ozzy's payment was free drinks at the reception. She told me they were serving Tanqueray just for me.
Well, I couldn't let them down, so I had a couple drinks. Danced a couple of dances, drank a couple more drinks. Then it occured to me that each of the 12 tables at the reception had a disposable camera. Put there for the guests to capture their experience at the reception. So, I went to every table, took a picture of myself with their camera and encouraged them to use up the film. Throughout the night as people left and tables were empty, I took the camera from the table and used the remaining film. Then, get another drink.
We stayed till the very end and did a little cleanup, and Mrs Ozzy drove us home.
I woke Sunday morning with a headache, and a fear that I had embarrassed myself, or worse, embarrassed the wedding planner. I didn't get an earful when I got up, so I must have behaved pretty well. I hope that is still the case when the film is developed.

Like, why?

I have a few pet peeves. One is the improper use of the word "like." I can handle an occasional "like", but it drives me insane when a person can't convey a thought without a blue streak of "likes." So, I very seldom watch "LA Ink", but a friend of mine is going to appear on the show soon, so I tuned in tonight. I was 5 minutes into tonights episode, when I had to rewind it to the beginning in order to accurately count the "like's." A 60 minute show (which is actually about 44 minutes less commercials) had 112 instances of an incorrect use of the word. That's like one "like" every like 23.57 seconds. Good Grief.

Being Old Sucks

I am 43. Usually I don't feel old. Then, I go to work where there are 128 people in my dept. the average age is 33.4 (the median is 29.8) and its 60% women. There are FIFTEEN people that I work with that hadn't had their first birthday when I started my career at this company. And this wasn't my first job.

So, this year I started dying my hair. I use women's hair dye (the cheapest I can find) rather than men's. I tried that men's stuff once and it lasted about a week. The one thing I did like about it is the gloves are bigger in the men's dye. I have to really be carefull not to rip those little gloves that come in women's hair dye boxes. Other than that, its just a pain in the ass to leave that crap on your hair and moustache for 25 minutes and keep it off your skin.

There was a time in my life when I would try to keep stuff like dying my hair a secret. It is more fun to just make fun of it.

Fixing Things

The pull cord on my weedeater broke. It was true pain to replace the spring that retracts the cord. It reminded me of a time when my old man and I took the oven door off at Teddy's house. The thing came off real easy, but putting it back on was quite another matter. We aren't stupid, but we certainly felt like it as we screwed around trying to get this thing back on. That is how I felt with this cord spring on the weedeater. The thing came apart very easily, but getting it back together was pure hell. So I had to call my dad to get some sympathy. The call started something like this:

Me: Hey Dad, you remember that oven door we had such a hard time getting back on?

Dad: Ya, I remember.

Me: Well I'm having similar problems with this weed eater that I'm working on. It is driving me crazy, so I stopped to drink some beer and give you a call -

Dad: That's how you tell if a man's tough.

Me: Huh?

Dad: That's how you tell if a man's tough, if he trims the hair around his nuts with a weedeater. (Dad remembers every joke he has ever heard. He is a joke remembering/telling machine. Jokes are so engrained in his personality that he sometimes just blurts out punchlines. We'll be driving to Lowe's and he'll say, "cunning runt" or be telling a story and say, "the fantom rides." These are punchlines to jokes that you have to stop him and ask to hear the joke to you understand what he is talking about.)

Me: Oh.

Dad: You know how to tell if a woman is tough?

Me: Huh?

Dad: If her vibrator has a kick start.

Me: Oh. pause Back to the weed eater...

When my old man gets on a roll, he is a really funny guy. Sometimes I laugh with him, sometimes I openly laugh at him. We talked for another several minutes about his health and his upcoming trip to Montana.

I ended the call by saying, "Dad, I love you." I planned to say that when I made the call. I had to plan it, because I can't remember saying those words to my dad in my life. Never. When I was young my dad would say he loved me, but as I recall, it was in the context with the other kids. Like, "I (or we) love you boys." Never to me as an individual. I'm certainly not blaming my reluctance to sharing feelings on my dad. I know without a doubt that his dad never told him he loved him, although I'm sure he did. My grandfather, the son of immigrants grew up on the streets of New York in the depression. Expressing love was not something he ever learned.
Before hanging up Dad said he loved me as well.

I am proud that I am the original "dirty old man's" grandson, but there are a few family traditions my old man and I are working to change.

Candy What?

Ozzy Jr asked me an interesting question earlier in the summer, "Dad, at what age can I start cussing?" I thought to myself, "whatthehell kind of question is that?" I didn't have a good answer, just "you have to be older than you are."

Fast forward to Saturday. Beautiful weather, I have a ton of stuff to do, and its Ozzy Jr's job to cut the grass and he finally got busy on it. 10 minutes in he saw a wasp. Last week he saw a wasp and wasn't able to finish the job due to his emotional state. Now, he's too scared to cut the grass because he saw a wasp. I was not happy. Cutting the grass was not on my agenda. At the point of our father/son discussion when I knew he was not going to finish the job, I said words that my father may have said to me. "Well, you just take your candy ass inside and unload the dishwasher!" He disappeared into the house.

Earlier in the day we had the disucssion of doing what you fear to overcome the fear, but obviously, he wasn't buying it. I resigned myself to cutting the grass. 20 minutes into the chore, he came out and told me he decided he could do it. He took over and cut the rest of the yard. I was proud that he overcame his fear and later I told him just that. I also said, "sorry I called you a 'candy ass'." He replied, "I like the word 'candy ass'."

I like the word "candy ass" too.