It's stuff like this that makes e-mail fun at work.

Tim e-mailed to let the SharePoint team know he was working at home sick, this was the exchange we had...

Tim:

Hi Team,

I’m going to stay at home with the germs. I heard that it was a popular pastime for the team these past couple weeks.

Tomatoes are not to blame! Please, don’t turn against them.

And don’t worry too much about me; I took a vitamin (Flintstones COMPLETE [More COMPLETE with Choline]) , so everything should be fine.

Sincerely,
-Tim

Reeves:

Since Fred is bigger than Barney is he more nutritious?

Tim

I’d have to assume that Fred’s additional mass of chalk and artificial sweetner contributes no nutritional value.

I imagine molds of many characters, each receiving the same miniscule scoop of vitamins and minerals, moving down a conveyer to a second, varying-sized treatment of filler.

I don’t know if they do anything to even out the nutritive content. Perhaps they’re all liquids that eventually bake or cool.

When they’re formed, they go into a bottle and then I eat them.

That’s how health works.

You want to know the rest of what's in Flintstones?

I had a glass or orange juice then brushed my teeth.  Ah, refreshing.

Why does it taste horrible if I drink orange juice after I brush my teeth but it's tasty when I brush my teeth after I drink orange juice?

Oh, turns out the orange juice I like is made by Coca Cola company... who knew?

This is much more exciting to me than it is to the rest of the world.  I have cleared my inbox and my workload is now tracked by my task list.

Why is this good?  It now means that I'm not using my inbox to figure out what I need to do next.  Why is that bad?  Because the contents of my inbox are controlled by everyone else more than they are controlled by me... makes it hard for me to be in control of my tasks.

Now I need to actually get the stuff done.  The upside is I know what the stuff is.

The stress of moving and changing jobs has kind of put me off blogging... so for updates I refer to you Paula's blog.  She has been much better than I about blogging as of late.

At any rate... after a much delayed flight from Dublin to Chicago we're relaxing in the American Airlines Admiral club.  I must say, AA is going down hill.  The aircraft here from Dublin was a total beater (our seats had no functioning lights and the channels on the AV system wouldn't change).  The Admiral's club is not much better, the seats all look like the upholstery hasn't been cleaned in a decade.

Yep, delaying my flight for several hours forcing me to have a 5 hour layover makes me grumpy.

Bah!

Paula and I are complete old fogies... we rang in 2008 from bed.  On the plus side... it's the first time in several years we've actually been awake at midnight.

Have a wonderful, safe and peaceful 2008!

I've got a new job (soon)!  The beginning of next year I'll be joining the Sharepoint team in Redmond, Washington.  I'm super-excited about this new position.  I'll be moving into the greater Office organization and getting a chance once again, to work with friends from the past. 

While Paula and I are both really excited to be moving to Redmond we're still a little bit stressed and sad.  We're facing down our second international move in less than two years (can you say "gluttons for punishment"?) and are a little disappointed to be leaving Ireland. We love the Irish people, the country and especially the convenient travel.

We will, however, be over the hump soon and are working hard to distract ourselves (went to Waterford last weekend, going to Spain this weekend, going to western Ireland in early December and to New York for Christmas with my sister <phew>). 

January 14th is my first day... so I'm sure the time will fly.

Okay, I'm starting to get my head back above water. 

Paula and I got back from Germany last Tuesday,  and Thursday our friend Max flew in from Colorado.  We went from ten days of touring Germany with my parents to five days of touring Ireland (well, Paula and Max did most of the touring... I dug through e-mail ).

And now more fun news, our friend Christopher is going to come stay with us next week!  We're both stoked to have yet another visitor from the states.  We really enjoy living in Ireland but do miss our friends tremendously.

Every once in a while, when I'm rinsing a spoon, I manage to put it in the flow of the tap just right and spray myself.  What a pain.

What if, however, someone clever stuck a spoon on the back of a toothbrush?  Well, you'd get the Brush & Rinse, of course.

As we age, men slowly gain an understanding of what and what not to wear but some never get it.  As someone who's figured out some of the dos and don'ts in life I thought I'd pass on some info which is self-evident to most... but not obvious to all.

Wearing things on your belt does not make you look like Batman

Trust me here, there are very few situations where you can safely wear something on your belt and not look like a dork.  Things you shouldn't hook to your belt include compact cameras, leather man pocket tools, pagers and cell phones.  I know, wearing a cell phone on your belt makes you kind of feel like you have a holster... but honestly, it doesn't make you look like Han Solo.  

Speaking of cell phones, here's another one:

Unless you're talking on the phone, take off your Bluetooth headset

If your cell phone holster makes you feel like a cowboy then your Bluetooth headset must make you feel downright special forces.  Sorry, it doesn't look like a military-issue comm set and people aren't giving you extra looks because you're so ultra-manly cool.  Here's a quick tip: if you're eating dinner in a restaurant, enjoying a meal with your date... take off the ear-tumor.  First, you shouldn't answer a call during a romantic meal out.  Second, you're not so important that you should answer a call during a romantic meal out.  But it probably doesn't matter... if you're wearing an ear piece during meals you won't be eating with company long... she's already planning on breaking up with you Sgt. Rock.

And while you're taking off that silly earpiece...

Not even movie stars look cool wearing sunglasses inside

I suppose there's one exception, Jack Nicholson... but that's all I'll give you.  Everyone else who wears sunglasses inside is just kidding themselves.  This goes double if the sun isn't even up.  Stevie Wonder, you're on notice, you poseur.

Coming soon

In my next men's fashion advice column please look for additional gems such as:

• If you're over 40, make sure your shirt has sleeves
  and
• Only .1% of the population can get away with wearing bike shorts (even fewer, a Speedo)

But wait... there's more

My new teen fashion blog will debut shortly.  Here's a teaser:

• Leave your PJs at home, why advertise you're lazy and your parents have no control over you?
  and
• No, your "Spoiled Princess" T-shirt isn't cute, but until the FDA legislates warning labels for brats, keep wearing it.

It's July 14th... hard to believe we've been in Ireland for a year already.  My official first day at work was the 17th (a Monday) but Paula and I arrived the Friday before to start getting settled in. 

Time has gone by very quickly and we're still having a blast.  Here's to another great year (and to getting our friends from California to come visit ;)).

This is the type of really, really important stuff I spend time thinking about... 

As I was hanging our new shower curtain I wondered... who decided there should be 12 holes in the curtain?  Someone, at some point, decided to make a shower curtain with 12 holes... who were they?  Why did they pick the number 12?  Why did everyone else say "12? That's genius! I'll put 12 in mine too."  Our shower curtain from Pottery Barn has 12 holes, the liner we bought from Target has 12 holes and the set of curtain rings we bought in Ireland came in a pack of 12.

The Irish government has generously acknowledged that we all work too hard and have declared today, March 1st, to be "Work Life Balance Day".  In order to help us out they have... thank the maker... created a web site!  I feel much better now.

The Work Life Balance web site has lots of information, but the most helpful thing on the site by far is their 142 page report which includes qualitative results for employers and employees.  Having a very short attention span, I jumped straight to the Policy Measures/Interventions on the employee section.  I examined the 10 bullet points find the holy grail of... uh... doing stuff to not work too hard while keeping up the respect of coworkers and continuing to earn promotions...  and took away these two things from the list that I'll need to address:

1. "Change in the culture of organizations, i.e. male attitudes [...]"
   
   Given we have no women on our team as of yet, I'm going to work with my coworkers to rotate the responsibility of having a female attitude.  With our team of 9 I think a good balance would be two or three people each week taking on the role, bringing in the much needed female qualities our team lacks (empathy, fashion sense and a general distaste for fart jokes).  They won't, however, need to wear a skirt... that would be silly.
   
2. "Remove the mythology behind work-life balance arrangements."
   
   This is going to be a tougher one to implement.  To date we've been able to keep people slaving away at their computers with the threat of a Minotaur which roams the halls until 7pm.  Granted, it also means I can no longer go home early every Thursday using the excuse "Sorry, I need to pick my Unicorn up for school, my wife is at her mermaid husbandry class."

Speaking of husbandry... women in Ireland get 26 weeks of maternity leave.  Their husbands? 1-3 days.  Uh, oh... I feel some male attitude coming back.

Saw this on Christopher's site (he saw it on Trina's site (she got it from her brother-in-law (he saw it on CC Chapman's site (he got it as a chain mail from his sister))))... have I mentioned I have trouble staying on track?  Where was I?  Oh yes... 

The general idea is this: put your entire music library on shuffle, write down the first 14 tracks and slot them in for these pre-set sections of your life movie (rules, my play list and movie scenes below).

So, here's the thing, I wanted to link to clips of each of the tracks so people would be able to listen to them if curious, but Amazon doesn't have samples of all these tracks... so I instead went waaaaayyyy off the reservation and and started pulling pictures in from my life, slapping them into Photo Story and adding the musical tracks.  The end result lands somewhere between nostalgia and narcissism.

Video: My Life

Steps/rules:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every section below, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new section, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool …

Yep... I'm lucky.  Sure, you already know I have the smartest, most bee-you-ti-ful wife ever... but that's not what I'm talking about in this instance.

Dublin is great... but there is some stuff you can't buy in Ireland (a US power strip, for example).  As a result, when I come back to the states on business I always end up coming back with a shopping list.  This time I had some pretty random stuff on the list.  Being a guy (you know, never asks for directions) I just drove off into Redmond.

Randomly I turned right and hey!  A lighting store, perfect.  I needed 9" harps to replace some which had been lost in the move.  Trying to drive out of the parking lot I was forced to turn right. A little down the street: hey!  Staples, I need 8.5" by 11" sheet protectors... and a power strip.

To make a short story long, by randomly driving around I never should have made it back to the hotel in under three hours with any of the things on my list. 

It took me 20 minutes and I got everything.  I'm a lucky bastard (did I mention I have a beautiful wife too?)

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 

Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying "we have no new information on your bag".  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we'd never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 

When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there... lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better... it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn't leaked (which would have sucked big-time... Paula's pillow was in the bag too).

Ahh... vacation is over, we can relax now. :D

So, having tired of chain e-mail, the net has now switched to chain blog posts.

So, the game is apparently quite simple, give 5 things that few people know about you, then tag 5 friends to have them follow suit.  Omar has dragged me into this... So here goes:

1. I wanted to be an actor, a stuntman, a race driver and/or design cars... and no, that wasn't when I was in 6th grade, it was when I was in college.  I chose UCSD because it was close to Hollywood (well, closer than Toledo, Ohio was) and had a good engineering program (which I thought would be good for designing race cars).  Partway through school I decided I didn't want to be an engineer, I wanted to be a Psychologist.  Suffice it to say, I didn't do any of those things.  I do, however, still want to be Paul Newman.
2. I'm related to Orson Welles, distantly. We have the same great-great-great grandfather... I'm not sure what that makes us.  Family lore also has it that James Hadfield is a distant relative, but that's unsubstantiated (and probably nothing to brag about).
3. My feet are a wonder of nature.  I'm 5'9" and my feet are size 13.  They are also on upside-down: the bottom of them are baby-soft and the tops of my toes have calluses.  Between the size and the extra hair you'd think I was an over-grown Hobbit.
4. I'm obsessed with solitaire on my cell phone.  It's how I relax (and give myself carpal tunnel in my thumb).  The result is I've learned interesting things like:
   1. If you hold the joystick up it will automatically put cards up into the Ace piles.
   2. If you win a game and watch the cards bounce around, you'll see there's a bug, the cards count down from King down to Ace... then the King shows up again.
   3. While the end of game cards are bouncing around pressing "draw" will start stacking them back into the pile.
5. I hate dry wood in my mouth.  Chopsticks, popsicle sticks, anything.  Gives me the willies big time.  If you're ever at a Chinese (Japanese, Thai, etc.) restaurant with me you'll see the first thing I do is dump my chopsticks into my water glass and leave them there until I'm satisfied they're good an soaked.

There you go, 5 things.  I figure that at some point down the road someone will have to start up a game of "Five more things people don't know about me"... but until then I'll have to pass the baton.  

• I started at ResNova to replace Rob (can you believe it's been 12 years?), I'm sure he has a tale to tell. 
• Jason has taken on the awesome responsibility of caring for our good friend Leslie.  There was no application process so I'd like to learn more.
• For a long time Tami has been my blog "pen pal".  Let's hear five things from her (or her cat).
• Not everyone on the net lives in America... so let's hear from Casper, a fellow Dublin resident.
• An last, but not least, to Steve Davis, because I'm sure he has something funny to say (or at least, frightening).

The Economist's review of the world for 2005 has Ireland ranked as the best place to live in the world based on quality of life indicators.  The US failed to break the top ten but wasn't far off at 13 in the survey of 111 countries.

You know the reason, right? 

Via BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4020523.stm (thanks for the pointer Laurence!)

Update: A link to the full report thanks to Casper: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

Walking home from work on Wednesday (well... walking home from the train) I noticed a sign: "Dublin City Marathon Course Route, expect delays".  Huh, what do you know?  The Marathon course runs right in front of our house.

Here we are, right between miles 18 and 19:

It was very cool.  Lots of people lined the streets and cheered every runner as they went by.  Apparently people line the entire course (the Dublin Marathon is internationally known as "the friendly marathon" ).

Having been born on the thirteenth (of a different month) I've always had an affinity for what many feel is an unlucky date.  When the 13th also happens to fall on a Friday... that's even better.  Hey, it's the 13 AND it's the end of the work week.

So, for those of you who are a little anxious today, I'll distract you with some vocabulary fun:

Triskaidekaphobia - Fear of the number thirteen (not to be confused with Trichopathophobia, the fear of hair)
Paraskavedekatriaphobia - Fear of Friday the Thirteenth

Hmm... I wonder if paraskavedkatriaphilia is a word?