Kyle's Blog

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the blog. Started it up on July 4th, 2006. Now I suppose I could do some kind of retrospective, like they do on TV shows or magazines or something. But, honestly, that's why the "Archives" link is over there on the right. Last year, I had a competition - with a prize! Thing is, not many people entered. I don't know if I didn't advertise it early enough or maybe no-one cared. Either way, I'm not going to do one this year. If you disagree, put a comment on this post saying to bring it back. If there's enough (and I haven't really decided what constitutes "enough" - six, maybe? I don't know), then I'll be sure to have one next year.

OK, maybe a little retrospective. The thing is, the real highlights of the past year are the thing that didn't happen, for the most part. I didn't get sick or get diagnosed with something new. That's a real event for me. Out in California, I was averaging one a year there for awhile. I am by no means cured of all my crap, but at least I haven't picked up anything new. I count that as a win.

One highlight of something that happened, as opposed to not happening, is we survived both the worst winter in living memory in Iowa as well as the worst flood on record up here. Moving out here from California, everyone kept telling us that it was going to be so bad going back to snow. I told them I grew up with it and so did Sue. Sure, it would take us a bit to get used to it again, but I'm sure it will be fine. Everyone out here was laughing at me, being from California and not used to the cold and the snow. Of course, they stopped laughing by January when we were well on our way to a record snow-fall. Roads, schools, and businesses closing left and right. Towns, counties, and the state ran out of money to clear the roads. Couldn't afford salt or to pay the crews. They finally gave up towards the end and only made token passes on the main roads. The side roads didn't get so much as a second look. By the time they even put the plows out there, most of the snow had melted. Guess they figure Mother Nature made the mess, bitch can clean it up.

Then, after surviving five feet of snow in three months, we had the flooding. I'm sure you all have heard quite enough about that on the national news, so I'm not going to belabor that point. We made it through, lots of people complaining, etc. I was actually considering doing some math and proving, rigorously, that some people are just f'in idiots. It's a hobby.

Anyway, hope you all have a happy Fourth and I'll be back on Monday morning.

The last day at work, for me, before the holiday was not what you might call "relaxing". We had a customer guy in all day and it was up to me, and pretty much just me, to take care of him. Other people would duck their heads in now and then, but I was there for the whole thing. He was in to see the hardware I brought back last week. One other guy and I were the only two people trained up on it and the other guy had a lot of other stuff going, so I covered it.

Mr. Customer got in around 9:00. He had some other stuff to see before me, so it was about 10:00 before he wandered back my way. One of the guys that I was working with last week flew out for this little dog and pony show. I'm not real sure why and he isn't either (Well, other than the customer said "Hey, why don't you go out there?"). On the plus side, the Engineer from last week is a great guy to work with and we get along well. The three of us (sometimes it was four and sometimes six, but the three of us were there pretty much straight through) started in on it. Mr. Customer is supposed to really know his shit. The only thing I'm certain he knew well is how to dodge responsibility. Motherfucker wouldn't make a decision if you put a gun to his head and asked him what was his favorite color. Oh, sure, he wrote down a bunch of stuff to go ask when he got home - can't really fault his "note-taking" skills. But that's about it. By the way, his entire job for this trip was to see the hardware and bless it so that we could start using it. All he had to do was watch the show, ask a couple of questions, and say "Yep, looks good." And he fucked it up.

We start pushing on through the morning and we're actually making good progress. He's using a checklist that doesn't apply to us, but that's OK, because I start brow-beating him until we make progress (He name an item, I'd say "Doesn't apply. The installers did it last week and I can't bring it back." He name the next item, I'd say "Yep, this screen here." He'd name the next item, I'd say "Yep, I told you this morning I still had that task to do, but you needed to see it before I finished." Continue those three answers for three hours.).

Then he says something about moving through the checklist faster or something, trying to get a lot done before lunch. Well, it gets on about 12:15 and I'm starving to death. I sort of snapped at one of my guys and apologized, saying that I was getting hungry and I get grumpy when I'm like that (true enough, but I didn't continue the statement with " ... and this spineless piece of shit ain't helping!"). Well, we get to a reasonable stopping point and Mr. Can't Make A Decision says we can break for lunch and "go feed Kyle." I managed to only smile and not say "Look you little bitch, I ate breakfast at 6:00 this morning and I have a fistful of medical issues. If I could leave you alone here and go get a sandwich, I would. But I'm supposed to babysit you, you fucking jellyfish. So, pretty please, with sugar on top, get in the fucking car." I sooooo earned my pay today.

We were trying to decide what to do for lunch as I pretty much nixed the idea of eating at our cafeteria (the program was paying for lunch since I had to keep an eye on the invertebrate - and that means we go somewhere I like). Knowing that the Engineer from last week doesn't know anywhere in town and the nematode wouldn't make a call and I'd be forced to kill him, I said "Hey, you all like sushi?" Turns out, they did. I took the Defiant today because I knew this was a distinct possibility, so I drove (Good Lord, I can't imagine what would have happened if the spineless-wonder had been driving and we came up to a 4-way stop. Hell, we'd still be sitting there.). I felt much less homicidal after lunch. For awhile, anyway. They all thought it was a good lunch and complimented my selection. Of course, I'm betting the human sponge was more impressed that I actually made a decision.

We get back to work and head back to the hardware. Things are bumping along pretty good. The Cowardly Lion has a few more questions, which we field without trouble. He wants to run a few tests, punch some buttons and whatnot, and that goes off without a hitch. Then the son-of-a-bitch almost made me throttle him (or whatever it's called when you kill a jellyfish with your bare hand - mercy killing? I don't know.). We have a computer back there that I didn't set up but that is plugged into some stuff. In fact, we pretty much just bought it and had some people set it up for us who said "Try not to screw it up." (and they said it many times) Well, Mr. Chicken-shit says that we don't have all the newest patches installed or something. I can't really argue with him because, like I said, we paid someone to get us going and if they say this is what it takes, then this is what it takes. I'm all for keeping the OS up-to-date but you don't start installing OS updates on a working piece of equipment when it's a special order and you don't have time to get another one before you ship. I tell him that he shouldn't do it without calling the install people. He says that it's no big deal, I'm being overly dramatic, that the patches are benign. We went back and forth on this awhile before I finally said "Hey man, it's your hardware, do what you want. It's my job to bring forward the risks." If I'd have been thinking, I would have added "But if you're going to install those patches, I want you to put in writing that I've warned you of the risks and are proceeding against my advice." Fortunately, it didn't come to that. The other two guys in the room at the time agreed with me, but they weren't getting involved. Oh, we also hadn't made a system back-up yet, so he'd have destroyed the only working copy. It would have cost us at least two weeks to get it fixed and we don't have two days to dick around, much less two weeks. Eventually, he backed off and agreed to call the installers and ask them what they thought. He wrote that down in his little notebook. It was actually kind of a big moment for him because he made a decision to go against the standard rules and almost tried to use his brain.

The day dragged on for awhile after that and he finally left around quarter to five. The other three of us had a little more work to do and then we finally got out of there. I think I got away from work about quarter to six. So it was only a ten-and-a-half hour day for me. Could have been much worse. The downside is that I know this isn't over. There will be phone calls and conferences and discussions back and forth for some time yet. The only bright side is that I won't have to deal with it until Monday. He's traveling tomorrow and then it's The Fourth and the weekend. I don't have anything that won't keep until Monday and I'm taking tomorrow off. I don't think I'm going to have any trouble putting work out of my mind. Gonna celebrate the birth of my country by blowing up a small piece of it.

Glad I ended that story when I did. I was running out of synonyms for "spineless" and "cowardly." Of course, I could have used a thesaurus, but that's almost like cheating.

What a bitch of a day. It wasn't supposed to be anything like that. At one point today, my boss said "How is it you keep finding all these odd-ball, unsolvable problems?" I'm not usually one to go begging for help at the first sign of trouble. Actually, I tend to see that as a sign of weakness and avoid it at all costs. When I brought the problem to my boss, he was stumped. First, he asked a couple of questions to be sure the "issue" was really an issue. I refrained from the knee-jerk answer of "Yes, I know what the hell I'm doing and won't waste your time with something that I haven't confirmed." Instead, I just answered his questions. Then, he came up with a couple of suggestions for solutions. I went to check them out and they wouldn't work. The day was dragging on and I absolutely had to have everything squared away before I left. And I wasn't planning on hanging around until midnight.

The real bitch of it was that the problem wasn't that big of a deal on the surface. I'm going to use an analogy because the real issue would take too long to type up and be way too boring to read. OK, so let's suppose you had to make a phone call. That's it. Just call a guy. You've got his number. He's expecting your phone call. It's the most important thing on your "to do" list, so you can tell everyone else that you're going to ignore them until it's done. It's also one of the most important things going on in the team as a whole because the clock is ticking, which means you can take whatever resources or time from other people you need. To make a phone call. But you can't call from your desk. You can't call from the conference room. You can't call from your cell phone. You end up running all over the whole freakin' building trying to find just the right phone to use. Every time you try one, it doesn't pass some test or another. Phone after phone after phone is just no good.

I just realized, this is like a really bad nightmare. The kind where you know something (you don't know what) is chasing you, but your legs won't move. Or you're running in syrup. Or you keep tripping. Or you're tied down. Yeah, that pretty much sums up my day. Hour after hour of that.

The only upside is that I finally "made my phone call" about 3:00 this afternoon. I'd been working on it since about 8:30 or so. All that time to accomplish what should have been a no-brainer. Got a bunch of other people involved too. None of them worked it out either, so I don't feel too bad. My boss was surprised that it would be such a big deal, but when he had all the facts, he completely understood - especially since he couldn't come up with an answer either. Being as I eventually solved, he wasn't too put out.

Tomorrow, I've got a customer type coming in. He's going to piss me off. I already know he will. In fact, I think I'm getting pissed off at him right now, just thinking about how much he's going to piss me off tomorrow. Maybe I'll wear my black t-shirt and shades. Then, when he shows up asking around about how things are working, I'll just stand in the back and nod - never saying a word. You know, be all intimidating and shit. Yeah, that's what I need to do. Maybe I should tatoo my face before tomorrow morning too. Just in time for the Fourth!

Well today didn't quite go as smoothly as it should have. OK, maybe I had some kind of fantasy thing going on that I really shouldn't have got so invested in (no, not the fantasy you're thinking of - I know that one won't happen). I sort of thought I might, you know, enter as a conquering hero - I brought back the hardware when everyone said I couldn't. But no. No, the big ticket item showed up today and everyone just had to go out and see it. They were messing around with it, checking it out, arguing over what should be where, and generally ignoring me. I mean, I was out there with them for a good portion of the day, doing the same stuff, so that's how I know all that. Anyway, I still needed to get my work done. I told my boss I'd need some time from certain people and he starts talking about how my stuff is lower priority than this big test that's going down next week and we should talk about how we're going to get everything situated. I just nodded. Then I grabbed the guy I needed to do some work and we went and did it. I decided that I'd just do my f'in job and worry about the other crap later, if ever (probably not).

All day long I was running back and forth between two different labs that are several hundred yards apart and my desk. I think I did more walking around today than I have since, uh, hmm, since I got my driver's license? Something like that. My feet are actually sore.

I did get several comments on the new haircut today. I ended up just saying I got tired of hair. One woman asked what my wife thought about it. I said she didn't mind much because if she doesn't like it, she only has to wait a couple of weeks.

We're in negotiations about what we're going to do for the Fourth. Surprisingly, I'm of the opinion we should go down and visit my family for a few days and Sue thinks a quiet weekend at home would be nice. After all my traveling, Sue was sure I'd want to stay here. I said that normally I would, but there are some extenuating circumstances. First, we haven't seen my Grandma in awhile and she's certainly not getting any younger. Second, it's the Fourth. There's a lot of talk up here about not doing any fireworks. They usually do them over the river downtown, but being as downtown is condemned and infested right now, the city fathers are pretty set on scrubbing the whole thing. Also, my family gets together every year on the Fourth and I haven't seen many of them in awhile. Finally, if I'm just sitting around the house this weekend, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up thinking about work far too often. If I'm back home, doing stuff and seeing people, I'm fairly certain that I won't be thinking about work at all. At best, one or two things might occur to me on the drive down, which isn't bad. The downside to all this is that I'd have a five or six hour drive there and back. So it requires further thought. Also - fireworks. Gotta blow something up.

Well, that was a bitch of a trip. Friday evening (6/21), at 5:00, I get a call from some of the "boss-types" back at work and we talk for awhile. They tell me they think I should stay. Well, not so much that they think I should stay but the customer tells them they think I should stay and my guys tell me they don't think we should tell the customer to go fuck themselves (I told them if they weren't comfortable with, I would volunteer for that job. "Hey Jeff, yeah it's Kyle ... Going well, thanks. ... Yep, heard about your plan for me to hang out here for another week. Go fuck yourself. ... I said 'Go. Fuck. Your-self.' You want me to email it you?"). The week was not quite a complete and total waste of my time. They sent out another guy to "assist" me. He's a hardware guy and we were going to be putting shit together. So while he was getting trained up on that, I was running interference with the customer and the 'strategery' part. That way at least one of us would get some use out of the trip.

They (and to be honest, I'm not really sure which "they" I'm talking about here) set us up with this old boy from Texas. Now, he'd just got back in country from another job and flew directly to us. We all figured he'd be worn out as hell, so I mentioned to a couple of people that our first task ought to be to stay the hell out of his way. When he showed up, I changed that from a suggestion to an order (I don't typically give "orders" so much as "hey, this is a good idea and you're an idiot if you don't do this."). Dude was six-foot tall and wiry. Had long gray hair, slightly receding, and big bushy mustache (one of those long ones that start under the nose and run to the bottom of the chin, but no hair on the actual chin itself). If I saw him in bar, let's say, my first thought would be "OK, don't fuck with that guy. He'll cut you." In fact, if at any time he had reached down and pulled a switchblade out of his boot, I would have absolutely not be surprised. Turns out though, he was an awesome guy. Got the job done, never complained once (Dude said he was 13 time-zones off.). Showed us everything we needed to know about assembly and configuration. He and I were shooting the breeze for a few minutes at one point while we were waiting for someone else to get squared away, and he's just as decent a guy as you could ever hope to meet. Though, I'm still of the opinion you don't want to piss him off. 'Cause he'll cut you.

Tuesday evening, the plan was that I would rent a U-Haul and drive me some hardware back to the ranch. I had not only volunteered for the mission, but I was working hard to convince everyone that it was the best plan (out of an admittedly crappy selection). I had just about everyone on board. Wednesday evening, I get a call from my boss, who was totally on-board with my plan up to that point, saying that my road-trip was scrubbed. Turns out, the fucking insurance wienie got involved. If we shipped it, the deductible was just a few grand. If I drove it, the deductible was seven figures. Here's where things get interesting because I kept arguing with my boss. I said that I understand he difference between a few thousand and million-dollar price-tags. However, if this equipment broke, the project was screwed (the hardware is damned near impossible to put your hands on in less than a year, and we pulled off a minor miracle getting this set). He said he understood my position, but the company wouldn't sign off on a seven-figure liability. I said I disagreed, but would follow orders. I called the guys I was working with to let them know and said I'd see them the next morning. Well, my boss had also sent an email out laying out the story and it was waiting on me when I got back to my room (he told me about it on the phone). He had sent it to me, the program manager, a couple of other program-involved people, and his boss. I hit "Reply All" and went to town. Oh, I didn't drop any f-bombs but I used phrases like "represents a grave risk to the integrity of the program". It was about a page long. A couple of people mentioned that it seemed, and I quote, "awfully brave". I was like "Motherfucker shipped me out for two weeks and second-guessed my judgment. He gets what he gets."

Thursday morning, I get in and "things are moving" (not unusual- the plans had changed twice a day, every day for two weeks). The guys I was working with out there said that their company would take the risk. Meaning, one of them would drive it back to my place. I said that I would ride along because it was a long drive (I called my boss to let him know the update and the first thing I said was "I just want you to know I didn't start this shit!"). Technically, and legally, I was not supposed to drive and I didn't, but I was willing should the need arise. They were delivering it to us and I was just hitching a ride. Besides, it would have been a real asshole move for me to lobby so hard for this drive and then I'm all like "OK then, see you on the other end. Give me a call when you get in. You know, if it's not too late or anything." The drive ended up taking us about 14 hours, door to door.

I don't know if you all heard about it, but there was a bad storm in Omaha Friday evening about 5:00. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds. Golf-ball-plus-sized hail. Power lines down all over town. Trees snapped in half. And Kyle sitting in a mini-van with a quarter-million-dollars worth of equipment, thinking "After all the shit I raised to do this drive, how the fuck am I gonna explain 'hail damage'?" I was in the front passenger seat and the noise from the hail was so loud that the driver and I couldn't hear each other over it. A lot of people pulled off onto the shoulder. We just tucked in behind a semi and crept along through downtown Omaha. Of course, while it's going down, we're both sitting there, tying to act all macho. About an hour later, when we all the way out of it, we both turned to each other and went "HOLY SHIT!!!" We were both seriously worried that the windows were going to get punched in.

Friday night, after all the excitement and a looooong-ass day, we rolled into the office around 9:30. We unloaded the van and were both pretty beat. We had called ahead and told the program manager to meet us with "beer and wings". Now, he's a pretty cool guy, so all he said was "What time?" Sure enough, he was there - though he took us out for dinner instead of meeting us with beer and wings. Sue came out to pick me up and have some dessert. The PM's boss and the boss's wife came out to say hi and pound a couple of beers. Of course, we had to tell all our road stories (200 miles behind a live-cattle truck. Bitches darting out in front of us into the left lane, then not speeding us. Nebraska blows.). The driver said he had to meet Sue. Being as we had a shitload of time to kill, he started off the day saying "Tell me the story of Kyle." So I did. All of it. College, the sicknesses, life in CA, etc. By the time I was done, he said "OK, I have to meet your wife. I gotta see what kind of woman could put up with all your shit." Sue was good enough to come out and say hi to everyone. I ended up in bed about 11:30 and just collapsed.

I said, a few weeks back, that I wouldn't shave until I had hardware in hand. And I didn't. I told everyone on the trip that I wasn't just a scummy bastard, but there was a point to it. They laughed. Most of them thought it was a good idea. Showed commitment. This evening, I got rid of all of it. Well, what I had of it. I think I may have got a little carried away with getting rid of hair. I mean, the before and after pictures are ... dramatically different. Sue took one look at me and said "Whoa, that's ... wow, that's short." I said "Yeah. But if you don't like it, just wait two weeks. Besides, I said I was going to shave when I brought the hardware home. And I don't aim to leave a job half-done."

You know, after looking at the two pictures, I see that I missed a great opportunity to rob a 7-11. I'd never know they were the same person and they're both me. Coulda made me a couple-a hundred bucks. Might've got shot, but that wouldn't have been any worse than all the shit I've been through the last couple of weeks. Hell, at least they'll give you morphine for that. Some bed rest. Green Jell-O. Ah well, no use crying over spilt milk. Or un-robbed convenience stores.

For our anniversary, we deiced to get Rock Band. We had both really liked Guitar Hero, so this seemed like a natural extension. The box showed up a few days before I got home and Sue was good and didn't open it. Saturday morning, though, I was downstairs with the pocket knife, and we got that bad-boy assembled and running. We had a bit of a scare with it though. We put the disk in the Wii and it didn't show up on the main menu like all our other games down. At first, we thought that we got a bad disk. I just about hit the roof - especially with all the shit I'd been through over the last two weeks. Then I finally thought, well, let's just select it and see what happens. "System Update in Progress." Well shit. Then it worked fine. So for about 10 minutes there, I was just about ready to start slitting throats. But it all worked out. Sue took the drums for the first set and grabbed the mike. Man, that is a fun game. It's fairly forgiving on the vocals. It doesn't do real voice-recognition, so you can just hum and still score points. You have to be in the ball-park on the note though. The best one, so far, is "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys. It's a rap tune, so no notes. You just scream. I totally tore it up. High score, five stars, crowd goes wild. There's a Bon Jovi tune in there (Wanted Dead or Alive, I think) that Sue liked. We haven't made it to the Metallica one yet (Enter Sandman) or the Chili Peppers (Dani California). Those are the ones I'm really looking forward to.

It'll probably be a busy week at work and I'm seriously going to try to take Thursday off, making it a four-day weekend. I got some BBQ'ing to get done. Steaks, sweet corn, potato salad. Couple of cold ones. And some Rock Band. I'm going to be flat-out voice-less when I get back to work on Monday. That's OK, I'm pretty sure I know the few sign-language signals I'll need (trust me, there's only, like, two or three I'm gonna need).

I'm still on travel. I had some hope of coming home early, but the customer fucked it up. In fact, there's been a number of things the customer has fucked up for me this week. They're thousands of miles away and still think they know better than us here what needs to happen. The people I'm working with out here are actually really good people. There's M & R - both engineers. They agree with me that the customer is doing nothing but pissing in the beer. Tomorrow, when I begin my second week "in the wind", I'm going to propose to them that we just do the job and don't talk to the customer until it's over. In fact, I'm going so far as to suggest flat-out mutiny. And by that I mean that we're going to deliver a quality product despite the customer. If I can convince them, I'd like to set up a communications black-out. We're not returning voice mails, we're not responding to emails, we're not answering the phone. Shit man, short of them sumbitches flying out here and knocking on my hotel room, I ain't talking to them. In all honesty, that's probably for the best. I mean, I haven't (yet) called them a bunch of goat-fucking sons-of-whores ... well, OK, it was implied but I didn't actually say it. That's gotta count for something, right?

I'm also thinking I'm not going to report back to my boss(es) either. Fuckers shipped me out for two weeks - they can damn well wait 'til I get back. If they even care. My big accomplishment for this week was not being shot. Really. Sure, I learned a few things and got real pissed at the customer but the whole "no-one put a cap in my ass" is what's going on the report.

My real boss (that is, the guy that authorizes my timecard every week) has this thing where he wants all of us to fill out a bi-weekly status report. He doesn't have a lot of time to come around and see what everyone's up to all the time, so we're supposed to fill out a quick status report every two weeks on-line (technically in "Lotus Notes" - but I hate that Hell-spawned piece of whale shite). That way he can look it up over the weekend or in the evenings instead of trying to schedule meetings with us or catch us at our desks. It is kind of handy for us as well - at the end of the year when we have to list our "accomplishments" for the year, you've already got a bunch of them listed out. Thing is, I don't, uh, "make it a priority" you might say. In fact, I'm lucky if I actually go do it once every two months. So, I'm batting about 0.250 or so. But, oh, have I got some things to go in my status report this time. In fact, I've been giving quite a lot of thought about what I'm putting in there this time. "YOU SHIPPED MY ASS OUT FOR TWO WEEKS, MOTHERFUCKER!" Bump up the font size to 48, turn it red, make it bold - you know, "eye-catching".

Tomorrow is the first day of my "exile." Lots of running around today getting things set up for the trip and make sure I'm not leaving anything hanging. Oh sure, there was the proforma bitching about going at all. A couple of people almost tried to make me feel better about it or see if there was some other way I could schedule it and there wasn't. I'm screwed and there's not much anyone is going to do about it. I told my boss I thought there was little use of me (or anyone) going out there. He agreed that there was really no good technical reason to send anyone - it's all about keeping the customer happy and, well, babysitting. I mentioned I was thinking about taking my golf clubs and he said that might not be a bad idea. But I said I had decided against it because it's just too much hassle getting them through the airport. Then we talked for awhile about places to see, tourist traps, and such. You know it's going to be a great and productive business trip when your boss is giving you driving directions to the state park.

I actually got one or two comments on my "beard" at work today. One girl even said she liked it. When I got home, I told Sue I got a couple of compliments and she said "You mean they didn't laugh?" I said "Not in front of me. They know better than that." Then I thought for a second. "What the hell you mean 'they didn't laugh?'" She said "Well, you make fun of it all the time." I had to admit she had a point. At one point today, when someone seemed a bit surprised that I was actually going to carry through on my threat to not shave until I had hardware in hand, I shouted "Beard stays on until the box comes home!" Then I had to qualify it: "... you know, with what I can grow as a beard. Close as I can get and all. It's really more the thought that counts." Right now, the best estimate is that we won't get it until the first of July. So I told them that if I don't have the box in-house and plugged in (meaning that we have all the necessary components) by the Fourth, then I'm dyeing my hair. I'm thinking of going peroxide blond. Again. It's a good look for me. But not my eyebrows. Makes me too nervous having that stuff so close to my eyes.

While we were eating dinner, we had the TV on, as usual. This new commercial for Quizno's came on. They're pimping their new sandwich deal, which they call "5 Meat Stack". Something about five meats on a sandwich for five bucks. Well, I wasn't really paying attention to the commercial and all of a sudden Sue just starts busting out laughing. After she calmed down enough, she explained. Turns out she wasn't really paying attention to the commercial either and only half heard it. There's an announcer guy with a deep voice telling you all about the wonderful deal on these sandwiches and then he said "Five Meat Stack." Sue thought he said "Hi Meatsack!" in this really deep voice. The best part is that the TV sits near the door to the garage and so it looked, for all the world, like Leroy all of a sudden was yelling into the kitchen. Sue seriously cracked up at this and I did too when she told me. (The commercial is linked above in Quicktime format. It's the one that starts with a woman wearing a purple blouse sitting in a chair, eating a five-dollar bill. You'll know it if you see it.)

Not long after we moved in, I bought some ice cream that claimed to be the "Best in the Midwest." Well, that's some pretty strong claims there, pardner. Turns out, it was some really good ice cream. Problem was, I could never remember the name. I knew it was something simple. One evening, not too long ago, Sue said she was going grocery shopping the next day and wanted to know if there was anything I wanted. I said I wanted some of that good ice cream, but I couldn't remember the name. So I said "You know, some of that Fred's Ice Cream. I think that's the name, anyway." Well, we actually had a pint in the freezer, so I had to go find out what the name really was. It's called Whitey's. Nothing at all like "Fred." I mean, they share an "e" but that's about it. So now every time she goes to the store, I ask her to pick up some "Fred's". "Hey hon, next time you go to the store, can you get me some more Fred's? Man, Fred does a mean butter pecan." There is no Fred.