It’s been a while.

Happy New Year, Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.

My Christmas gifts included some much-needed new sweaters and socks, a pair of lovely children, and an Xbox 360. No gamertag yet. However, I do have pictures of some epic paintjobs from Forza Motorsports 2, which I will share with you right nao!

An announcement to make.

Earlier today, my lovely wife Heather gave birth to two lovely children, Anna Elizabeth McIntosh and Arthur Edgar McIntosh.

Just thought you’d like to know.

-Lewis

Well, Matt (the previously-mentioned auditing department n00b) faced the Audit Panel on Friday. We’ll get there in a moment, but first, something completely different. Went up to Boston on Sunday around noontime to see some old friends, and more importantly, to pick up my friend Edgar, from London, who’s vistiting here on work all weekend. He’s staying with us for the week, and it’s fantastic to see him again.Heather’s quite well, and now we return to our update, already in progress.

As I was saying, he presented to the Audit Board on Friday. Most new auditors make the mistake of reporting “discrepancies” and “code violations” and “company handbook violations” from the IT department. They don’t know yet that we work to our own tune. The more interesting bits of the report included (these are direct quotes):

• An average of 16 dress code violations…per day
• Lack of respect for company property (walls/cubicles with various adhesives used to attach posters and other assorted, useless decorations)
• Lack of respect for other co-workers
• Failure to follow Robert’s Rules of Order during weekly staff meetings
• Failure to have weekly staff meetings on a weekly basis
• When staff meetings do occur, they take place on a ping-pong table in the server room, with many non-related topics being discussed (sample topics include an upcoming fashion show, various family issues, a deep discussion on how much various (not-to-be-named) members of the IT staff would like to have sexual relations with various people, and an even deeper discussion on desktop pictures.)
• Department head refuses to use proper English, instead using an obscure British variant. (Excuse me, but since when is British English obscure and not proper?)
• The American flag is not displayed enough in this department, Accounting has a flag on every desk. IT has various non-American country flags, a United Nations flag, and quite a few flags from something called the “United Federation of Planets,” whatever that may be.
• Completely incomprehensible language. Foreign terms include (spelling may be off) “wankar,” “ars,” “fiber-optical connecting,” “lahnux,” “newb,” “stoo-foo,” and “feck.”
• My cubicle is very very hot, and smells like coffee and processed sugars. (Editor’s note: His cubicle is right next to the IT department’s snack table. Matt does *not* like anything artifical, nor does he like coffee. There’s something wrong with this kid, I swear.)

Once Matt was done presenting to the Audit Board, they looked through his handouts, looked at each other, then laughed hysterically, before calling me up to defend my self. My defense consisted of the following points:

• Despite these glaring issues, we’re the best-run department in the building.
• The last time we had a system failure, it was my former boss’s fault.
• All-time downtime percentages are at 1% of operating time.
• You have no imagination r creativity, and you have no idea what it means to be in Information Technology. GTFO.

Before he got back, the others in IT set to work pranking his cubicle:

• The vent above his cube has been adjusted – now it’s the coldest cube on the floor, due to the trap door in the A/C vent being opened. (IT was getting a little warm anyway.)
• One of those things that beeps at random intervals has been hidden inside his phone.
• His phone has been tapped.
• An old sandwich has been hidden inside a drawer. Give it a few days, and it’ll be mouldy.

That’s the news from Floor 2, Section 5. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

NOT.

This has literally been the Week from Hell.

The story starts 2 weeks ago. It was a perfectly normal day, until 10:30. I see the boss coming down the hallway and discreetly hide my game of OpenTTD. Trailing him is what looks like a recent buisness school graduate, with a MBA whose ink has barely dried.

Turns out I was right. Entitlement junkie (yuppie, whatever you want to call it) has been assigned to MY department as a liaison to the Auditing Department. Used to, they just had an auditor come down every so often, but now we’ve got a guy with his own cube. (Thankfully, I was involved in the cube-picking process. He currently has the cubicle with the worst ventilation. It’s always steaming hot.) This guy is a yuppie in the worst sense of the word, and he has no clue how things work in the realm of ANY information technology department, never mind mine. The boss left for a moment to get his briefcase before the 3 of us went out to lunch. I stood up to grab my coat and scarf and all, and he starts critiquing things. Chief among them:

• “Your socks need to be matched.” (I was wearing one polka-dot sock and one black sock.)

• “Where’s your tie? Why isn’t your shirt buttoned?” (I was wearing an Apple t-shirt under a plaid shirt.)

• “Those pants aren’t approved in the dress code.” (I was wearing khaki cargo pants, dress code states no cargo pants. IT handbook states “Screw the dress code.”

• “Your hair is fucked up.” (You all know what my hair looks like, I think. If not, picture an early-Beatles haircut.)

• “Why aren’t there any American flags in here? Where’s your love for your homeland?” (Firstly, he sounds like a Russian. Secondly, I have British and Norwegian flags in my office (to honor my heritage.) Thirdly, my homeland isn’t America.)

• “You drive that piece of shit?” (Firstly, my Saab 900 isn’t a piece of shit. Secondly, nobody calls MY car a piece of shit without getting his seat heater disconnected. It was COLD that day, around 30 or so.)

Lunch went a bit better, he turned back into his reasonable, eager self. I learned that he was starting this week, and as soon as I got back, I gave orders that his life should be made as hard as possible.

So Monday morning, he walks in all cheerful, and as is customary for new people in my department, I took him to lunch. Monday, I drove my Saab 96. Earlier that morning, I disconnected the heater vent for his side of the cabin. During lunch, he made the comment that our “standards are lacking” and that “that scarf and trenchcoat makes you look like a fool.” He clearly has no originality whatsoever.

For those who don’t know (most of you, I think,) my scarf is roughly identical to that of the Fourth Doctor’s.

He spent most of this week snooping around the office and being a general pain in the arse.

He makes a presentation this week on what he’s found to the Audit Department tomorrow. As department head, I will be sitting in on this meeting. Expect a great post.

For some reason, I really do like this whole “Notes on a <topic>” naming scheme.

Back to our original topic. Firstly, we now know the genders of Heather’s children.

Twins. One boy, one girl.

And now, back to our usual rambling blog post.

Heather’s gotten some really oddball cravings lately. Some of the stereotypical pickles with <insert food here>. However, there have been weirder ones.

• Ice cream with bacon.
• Ice cream with ketchup.
• Ice cream with cheese.
• Ice cream. All the fucking time.

Anyhow. Heather’s also become very moody. Very very very moody.

Also, some of you know this, but we’ve established that separate beds seems to work best. Heather tends to sleep very still, but sleep at an angle to the bed that isn’t parallel to anything. I tend to do at an equally odd angle (actually, we usually ended up in a weird angle and weirdly interconnected), but I move around. A lot.

So, she sleeps in the master bedroom, and I sleep in my office/guest room. We’ve slept almost as well as we have since before the pregnancy.

So, yeah. Middle of December’s when the birth is expected. If all goes well, me and Heather will be somewhere in England, celebrating Christmas with our family. However, the doctors have said that Heather may not be able to fly now. Damn airlines.

With luck, we’ll be in England there. Once it becomes definate, perhaps we could plan another Mini-TT-Forums meet. Maybe this time, I’ll actually meet orudge.

I just installed Mac OS X 10.5. WOOHOO!

This isn’t going to be a comprehensive review, that might come a bit later. These are just a few general observations after 5 minutes of using it.

• Poking around in System Preferences, I notice that under Network, AppleTalk is still supported. AppleTalk hasn’t been use for ages. Still, this pleases me, as I may soon have to use it in order to connect a recent purchase of mine.
• The new Dock isn’t as bad as people have made it out to be.
• Stacks are FUCKING AWESOME.
• I like the “grass blades” desktop a bit better than the new default starfield, although I’m waiting for a hacked starfield to include some sort of spaceship.
• The intro movie’s “jump-to-lightspeed” thing should be used as an effect for switching desktops on Spaces.
• Time Machine hasn’t been used yet. I’m afraid that when I touch it, a man in a police box will appear in my front lawn.
• Someone really needs to figure out how to make the Time Machine logo into a TARDIS.

…to never chaperone a school dance again. If I feel like retaining the rest of my sanity, that is.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a (hopefully long) series of posts about life as a high school teacher by my lovely wife, Heather.

Try and stay easy on her, this is her first blog.

-Lewis
Homecoming dance is the most popular dance of the whole year. People bring boy/girl/friends, along with people who are just friends, and people who may or may not be going out….*sigh*

Relationships are freakin’ confusing.

(A note for our international readers: I’m not sure if the secondary-level schools (roughly ages 14 through 18) have what we call in America “Homecoming Week/Weekend,” which is usually on one of the last home games in that school’s football (American football) season. There’s usually a “school spirit week,” which is nothing more than a good excuse to allow students to come in wearing the wacky costume or style of the day. We had the following:

• Monday – Pajama day. Self-explanatory, although some people streched the definition of “pajamas” to include “skimpy outfits that one would only wear to bed if they weren’t on wearing it for long, if ya know what I mean.”
• Tuesday – Pink Day. Also self-explanatory. I forgot to mention, all week, they collected money for breast cancer research.
• Wednesday – Hat Day. This one is very popular, as you usually can’t wear hats in school. There’s a catch, though. You had to buy a pin on Monday or Tuesday (a pink ribbon on a safety pin) in order to wear a hat. Almost three-quarters of the school wore a hat.
• Thursday – Hawaiian Shirt Day.
• Friday – Class Colour Day. All week, they sold different-coloured t-shirts during lunches, with one colour for each grade/class:
  • 9th grade – green (a rather ugly bright green, at that, but many people wore other shades of green with it)
  • 10th grade -blue
  • 11th grade – red
  • 12th grade – Black and gold (our school colours.)

  Also on Friday was a pep rally during 5th period. (Thank god, that group of freshmen is my worst class all day, and now I didn’t have to see them.) The pep rally involved a presentation of all the fall sports team, a cheerleading routine, and perhaps the most interesting bit, a tug-of war between the different grades. The victors got to face the teachers. Teachers won. Agasint quite a few football players.

So Friday night, the homecoming football match happens. It was FUCKING WET. We went anyway, though. Got wet. Had fun.

Saturday night was the Homecoming Dance. This is where all the fun is.

Started out just fine. Until around 8 or so, when everybody who was going was already there. Firstly, teens don’t really dance anymore. They call it dancing, but it’s really just grinding. Not a pretty sight to see. By 9:30 or so, the back wall of the gymnasium turned into a touchy-feely makeout-fest. Ew. Lewis made the foolish decision of chaperoning as well. He’s still got a headache (as of Sunday morning, the time of writing.)

What happened was, there was a mass of humanity clustered around the front of the DJ table, around 50 people deep. In the middle of this madness, somewhere, somehow, SOMEBODY was smoking pot. It’s got a very distinctive smell, and it has the unfortunate quality of being able to rise above any other smell in the room, whether that smell be hormones or body odor. Nobody got caught, however. However, thanks to the use of a breathalyzer, a couple of students were caught on the way out with a BAC of .9 each.

The dance ended at 11. Couldn’t have come any sooner.

Earlier in the school year, I started to write a draft for a blog about how school goes on a normal day. I still haven’t finished it. It’ll definitely be up soon, I’m thinking perhaps each quarter in the school year, I’ll make a new blog post.

Thanks for reading!

-Heather McIntosh

Actually, no. Surprise *something else*.

You most likely have no clue what that means.

It’s ok. Most people don’t.

It’s an old family tradition on my mom’s side of the family that started around the Great Depression.

Even during the Depression, my mom’s family would make large meals.

Inevitably, there would be leftovers. And as anyone with a refrigerator knows, leftovers tend to pile up. By the end of the week, there’s enough to make a meal. The challenge is actually being brave enough to mix the leftovers together.

Being the hardy Norwegians they were, they decided to make a sort of game out of it. They called it “forlat bak smörgåsbord,” borrowing a word from the Swedes (extra points of you can guess which one.) Literally translated, it means something to the effect of “left-behind buffet.” How it works is, when there are enough leftovers accumulated in the fridge, the person who would usually cook declares a forlat bak. This is done by shouting loudly in a way that attracts the attention of everyone in the house, and often some of the neighbours.

Everyone then rushes into the dining room, where a name is picked from a hat. This (un?)lucky person is responsible for the meal. Anything that’s in the fridge or pantry is fair game, but they have to use a majority of the leftovers that are available to them.

Once the meal is over, the other diners would give the meal a score, and this score was recorded. After a set amount of forlat baks, usually 10 or 20, the person with the most points is awarded a prize of some kind.

Despite the end of the Depression, this custom continued, because, well, it was fun.

My mom learned it soon after she was able to cook, and introduced it to my dad, who absolutely loved it. Mom liked it too, because English cuisine makes for excellent and easily adaptable leftovers.

Me and Heather started it in our house a month ago or so.

So far, I’m winning.

• We don’t need no stinkin’ dress code!

(Note: This blog post was inspired by something I saw on Lifehacker, a site that has suggestions for dress codes for various events, like job interviews and such.

I was therefore inspired to write down my usual dress “code,” as it’s really more a series of unrelated suggestions. It’s really quite random, and if I wasn’t as well-liked at the office as I am, I would have been fired by now.

Before that, though, I found a very useful Firefox plug-in called FoxyTunes, which lets me control iTunes through a little set of icons in the bottom statusbar. It also lets me add now-playing signatures like these:
—————-
Now playing: The Strokes – New York City Cops
via FoxyTunes

Now that we all know what I’m listening to, on with today’s regularly scheduled blog post.

Any normal day:

• Cargo pants (usually khaki, although sometimes brown or black), and…
  • A collared shirt with an interesting pattern + a t-shirt of some kind, or
  • A collared shirt with an interesting pattern + a tie and an equally interesting but contrasting pattern

Work – Fridays:

• Tie-dyed shirt and khakis, or…
• Star Trek uniform. (Don’t ask.)

Fancy occasions:

• Pinstriped suit. (Think David Tennant.)
• Black suit. (For when pinstripes are too flamboyant/it’s a funeral or somewhere equally non-festive.)

All of the above:

• Fourth Doctor scarf. (When it’s cold, obviously.)
• Trenchcoat. (When it’s cold.)
• A hat of some type:
  • Boston Red sox hat.
  • Baseball cap with “Geek Inside” written on the front, in the style of an “Intel Inside” logo
  • Apple ballcap.
  • Amish-style straw hat. (Good for golfing, gardening, and anywhere there’s sunshine.)
  • Wool hats of various patterns and styles. (They’re warm and cozy. )
• Shoes:
  • Pair of Børn loafers, beige/tan/dark brown, nubuck material, tan leather on the inside. (They look cool, and they feel awesome. I wear these every day.)
  • Pair of Merrel leather loafers (Basically, same as the Børns, but leather, for when I *have* to look fancy.)

That’s about it, really. Included here is some examples of t-shirts I wear often:

• Pretty much anything from thinkgeek.com
• Lots of tie-dye.
• Lots of Apple t-shirts.
• Various software companies.
• Various bands.
• A Saab 900 t-shirt that I absolutely adore.
• A Doctor Who t-shirt from ThinkGeek.com that says “You Never Forget Your First Doctor.” (My absolute favourite shirt at the moment.)

—————-
Now playing: The Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done
via FoxyTunes