Motivational poster of the Week 1/30/10

Enjoy the Weekend.

-Doc

Cybergrievances - Guest Post from Absolutgator

My kids, who are in elementary school, have teacher assistants that are parents of a couple of other kids in class. Their job, which they volunteer to do, is simply to help the teachers with special projects and to keep all the parents informed about things going on in the classroom/special events. On Wednesday, we received an e-mail notification that there was a case of head lice in my son’s class; no it wasn’t him. The e-mail had a Word document attached that came from the school nurse about how to check your kids and what to do if you found lice. Good job keeping parents informed, right?

Well not for one parent. To protect the assholishness identity of this person, I’ll call him Mr. Jobs. It appears that Mr. Jobs is not a fan of Windows-based computers and really is annoyed by the attachment:

I appreciate your e-mails, but can I ask... why would this come as an attachment? I'm not a MS Word user (it's one of the worst written programs ever), but I was able to open it in other programs (like Pages and Staroffice). There's NOTHING in that document that would require it to be in a word document. No special formatting, pictures, etc. This is a REALLY big pet peeve of mine.

1. For all the windows users, you are risking them getting a virus (I use a Mac, so that's not a concern of mine). Microsoft Office documents are the petri dish of the Internet.

2. You expect everyone to have a $200 word processing software just to read an e-mail.

3. It makes me have to open another application to read something that's just plain text anyway.

So... in the future, I'd like to ask that if you are going to send us e-mails that are simple plain text, that you send them as e-mails. Not word attachments. IF, you have a highly formatted document with pictures, your fonts, etc., then I suggest you export those as a PDF, which everyone can freely read.

Just as an example (and to help anyone out that got this e-mail and doesn't have the ability to open the latest word documents), here's how the e-mail should have been:

Mr. Jobs then goes on to take the text from the attachment and put it at the bottom of the e-mail.

This really got under my skin for a couple of reasons. First, he clicked Reply All. Did he really have to let it be known to everyone how unhappy he was that she forwarded what was sent to her? Second, she is a volunteer! She is not getting paid to help the teacher that this guy’s kid is taught by and shouldn’t catch flack from some coffeehouse Mac lover (what a pretentious ass!).

So, it got me thinking. With all the ways we communicate electronically today, what are your greatest annoyances? (If you missed it, mine is when people use Reply All when they really need reply to only one person.)

-AbsolutGator

UPDATE: The dumbass did it again! The teacher assistant forwarded an e-mail attachement from the principal this time. He replied all what it 'should have looked like' and said 'your welcome' at the end of his e-mail. This makes me think of an SNL skit..."This guy needs a beatin'!"

Thursday Random Thoughts 1/28/10

Stuff I have been thinking about:

-Anybody remember Charo? She hasn't changed a bit in 30 years since she was on the Love Boat....Cuchie Cuchie!

-I love the Urban Dictionary website. I wish that it wasn't blocked at my work... Bunch of good stuff there.

-Last week we had a visitor whose IP address was from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Who knew there was such a thing? What do they teach there leg breaking and extortion? (I keeed I keeed!) But seriously I have to think that NJIT is the poor step brother of MIT. Maybe they will film an episode of Jersey Shore there next season.

- Sign in the break room where I work. "I want to be very clear about this! On Friday January 30th all refrigerators will be cleaned out and any leftovers thrown away!" So much for being "Very Clear" considering this Friday is the 29th... so exactly what day is my week old egg roll gonna get tossed again?

-What is so "fun" about an inch long Snickers bar?

-The Winter Olympics are coming up and I enjoy them. Not quite as much as the summer games, I can't watch the ice skating or ice dancing or stuff like that, but I do like some of the skiing and bobsledding and stuff. NBC always seems to find the heart wrenching and touching stories to tell about the athletes. I bet that NBC is still looking for the sequel to the Tonya Harding - Nancy Kerrigan thing. Speaking of which can you believe that Tonya had the nerve to have her PR person (how does she even have a PR person?) issue a note of sympathy on the passing of Nancy's father. That Tonya Harding still has her trademark lack of tact, that's for sure.

-I really like the song, "I just haven't met you yet" by Michael Buble. Is Buble the reincarnation of Frank Sinatra just minus Rat Pack?

- They are calling for snow in my area this weekend Friday into Saturday. One of the people on the radio insists that the local grocery store chains are in cahoots with the dairy farmers and bread makers and they are blackmailing the meteorologists just so they can sell out the shelves of milk and bread. Ahhh the joys of snow in North Carolina.

- The Absolutgator e-mailed me yesterday saying that he wants to guest post a blog. I told him that he could post tomorrow morning. I wonder what he has in that head of his? Who knows... I just hope that he doesn't kill off the readership here! Check back tomorrow and see what he comes up with.

-Doc

Tweet of the Week 1/27/10

It was such a great week on Twitter and a bunch of Award worthy Tweets were tweeted. Tweets by @Jayman3768 , @Dana_Lu , @Kiki_Mo , and @MandyVaughn all were close contenders but one had to win. So Without further adieu let me introduce this weeks winner a fellow blogger KarenSugarpants:
Karen pens a great blog by the same name KarenSugarPants (please visit sometime) that I highly recommend. However that is not the reason she is tweeter of the week. the reason she won was her uncanny ability to get her point across very directly in just one word!

The Following Tweets happened last Saturday morning while I was at the grocery store. Ms. Pants is opining about the fact that she is "retired" from web design and is seeking other employment:

karensugarpants: Watching Sportsnet with my husband & coffee. Retirement means no pants

My response: docnolz: @karensugarpants No pants = no sugar :-(

And the WINNER Less than two minutes later Karensugarpants: @docnolz sugarpantIES!

Yes for this quick wit you win the Doc's Tweet of the week award from YJKOBT. Here you go Karen!

There you go Karen enjoy your award... and everyone keep tweeting and check back next week for the Tweet of the Week!

-Doc

A Texas Sized Sex Ed Talk

The old adage is that everything is bigger in Texas. Apparently that holds true when it comes to the sex education in the schools there as well. Yesterday while scanning for odd news stories I came across several stories about a motivational speech gone awry.
It seems that a member of the school board in Hitchcock (yes ironically I said Hitchcock) Texas was invited to give a motivational speech to 6th - 8th grade girls at the middle school there. The speaker, Dr. Shirley Price had heard that the girls were being pressured to have sex and decided to ask the school's principal to leave the room so she could discuss the topic with the girl's in private. The discussion seems to have started with a public discussion about the use of the word "bitch" and escalated from there.
Some of what was said and discussed is in debate and has been denied by the speaker but various news reports say that graphic discussions describing how to perform oral and anal sex and role playing situations where boys may try to pressure the girls into performing these acts. Dr. Shirley helped to explain and even role play these situations with the girls and included the phrasing “what is said in here stays in here.”
Understandably parents are upset. Not only were parents not notified ahead of time to allow their children to be excused if they felt that the sex ed talk was inappropriate but now they are having to do damage control about some of the things that were said.
Don't get me wrong, I feel that sex ed is a valuable educational tool and that parents should talk to their kids about sex. However I think that parents should be able to determine how and where this discussion takes place. Sex Ed can take place in a more clinical manner than a speaker discussing oral and anal sex and role playing the same. The speaker is now apologizing publicly but wants to speak to the girls again to apologize again in person. Ummm I don't think so.
What do you think? What is your opinion on how sex ed should take place in the schools? What is and what isn't appropriate? Comment and let me know your take.

-Doc

Deep Fried Hooters Chicken at Home!

So my in laws gave me this awesome turkey fryer for Christmas. They were down to visit this past weekend and I decided to fire it up. No I didn't burn the house down and the results were very yummy. So here I present a short series of pictures documenting how to do a Hooters deep fried chicken at home.

Fill the cooker with about 2.5 gallons of Peanut oil (Yes I am looking sytlish in sweats)

light the burner but be careful- especially in the rain

Prepare the bird by cleaning and then injecting with Hooters wing Sauce

I used Medium sauce and Emeril's Chicken rub

Check the oil temp. It takes awhile to get it up to 325 degrees

Hang the bird on the hook thingy
Rub the bird with the Chicken rub

While you are still waiting for the oil to get to 325 make sure to have a few of these handy

Keep waiting for the oil to get to the proper temp 325 degrees

OK, lower the bird into the oil and cook for 26 minutes

Keep Cooking....

Make sure the temp stays about 325... Very important!

Completed bird ready to cut and serve!

Oh yeah, I made a Green bean casserole too!

The finished product Mmmmm yummy!

OK so there you have it. The Chicken was very juicy and done perfectly... We all ate off it Sunday, last night, and I have the leftovers for lunch today. Not hard at all to do and as I said nothing got burned down.

-Doc

The Barrel O' Fun

I always thought this picture was great... for some reason something made me think of it while I was waiting for 45 minutes to get my H1N1 shot this morning, so I had to google it and find it to post for you guys. It's "The Barrel O' Fun." Does it look like they are having fun to you??

-Doc

Weekly Poll - What do you think of Twitter?

Last week we discussed race relations and by the comments and the poll votes it seems that we are divided on where our country stands. This week's poll is a little bit of a lighter topic. Twitter!
Inspiration for this poll came from our friend Mrs. D who writes 3 Men & a Lady. (Give her blog a read. She is both funny and insightful.) Last week she said that she was not sure about Twitter because it can be confusing, however I got an email on Saturday saying that she was now following my Tweets. To be truthful Twitter can be confusing and if you don't know how to use it (a la the Mt. Cat) or an application that sorts your stream for you it's not worth a lot.
Poll question and topic for discussion is what do you think about Twitter? Is it great? Are you a full fledged Tweeter? Are you just a novice experimenting? Do you hate it? Do you find yourself having conversations in Twitter-speak with Hash tags and @ symbols? What say you? Please vote in the poll which will be up all week and comments below.

-Doc