Jodi Running the Nike Women's Half Marathon

My little lady is in Germany right now, so in her honor I thought I would post this. This was taken last weekend during the Nike Women's Half Marathon. Here is JJ at mile 11 running on the the pacific coast highway near Golden Gate Park.

I Need to Outsource!

So desk jockey (a.k.a me) learned a valuable lesson this weekend. I call it the pandoras box effect. I woke up last Saturday thinking that I was going to wrap up my little sprinkler project in the front yard. I thought I'd be done by noon, sipping wine in the city with friends by 3 (see first box in the comic above). I started digging my trench next to a planter box and realized the only wood left was the wood above the dirt (see box 2 in the comic). One trip to Lowes and 4 green wood planks later I rebuilt my planter box (see box 3 in the comic). By this time it was 3:00 and I was already burnt out on the project. I had a little conversation with myself that went something like, "come on Todd, let's do this, get pumped up, let's knock this out." I then started picking like a mad man (see box 4). I got about 10 minutes into picking and herd a loud hiss. Half a second later water shot out of the ground with great pressure. I was hoping for oil but unlike the Beverly Hillbilies I hit my water main (see last box in the comic). The water is blasting the neighbors house shooting rocks caught up in the stream. Just my luck, there is a nice big window in the front.
I grab my cell phone, dial 411, and get the water district. At the same I am on my knees, ripping the lid off the Christy box trying to look for the shutoff valve. I dig through mud and about 8 black widows to get to the valve. I find it along with the meter which is spinning like a slot machine. Because I'm not Superman I could not close the valve. 3 minutes later the water guys showed up. It took both of them using a large T-bar to turn the valve off (I didn't feel so bad). Long story short they ran a hose from the neighbors house to mine so I had water through the night. The next morning I had a dude who was recommended by the water guys come out at 7 am and fix my water main. Lesson learned: I need to outsource! In my defense the water main was only 6 inches below the dirt, I guess standard is 18 inches.

Falling Down

For those of you that received my email asking for your phone number you probably already know I had one of those weeks. If you are interested read on. Our company had our big user conference and I've pretty much been working the past 12 days strait. Everything was going fine till Tuesday night. After all day at the conference it was time to attend client dinners and after parties. I must have been in 6 cabs in total that night. Unfortunately my phone slipped out of my pocket in one of them.
The fun started when the cabbie left a voice mail on my dads phone. He must have seen the recent calls list. He left a nice message saying that he had the phone and that I should call to pick it up. I'm thinking sweet, I'll hand the guy a $20 for his inconvenience and I'll be back in action...WRONG! I wake up the next morning and I'm calling my phone like I'm dialing for dollars. I'm talking 100's of times. I give the POS (piece of $h#%) all day thinking, "maybe he works the swing shift." By Thursday morning I knew something was up. I logged into Verizon and saw that my used minutes were through the roof and that the last call he made was just minutes ago. Ok, now it's personal. I sent text messages saying that I would pay him for the phone, no luck. My last message went like this; "You have 5 minutes to call me before I shut the phone off and notify the police." No Luck. So I had to go down to the Verizon store and buy a new phone which was not cheap.
So of course I'm angry and looking for vengeance. All kinds of evil illegal devious thoughts fill my head of what I'd like to do to the guy. But the one I will carry out, and is 100% legal will be the most painful to him and people he knows. You see come Monday, I will receive a list of every call he made, phone numbers and all. Now I would like to report the phone stolen and turn the list over but the SFPD will do nothing, they can't even investigate murders let alone my stupid phone. Instead I will search every phone number on the internet and see what I can find. Then I will enter it into every solicitors phone bank that I can find. What's worse, a fine from the police or 10 solicitors calling you a day? Where I was the jackass this week, he will be the jackass for months to come. Just think of the picture above featuring me, with a laptop and a mouse instead of a briefcase and shotgun.

I did it

Why are these kids screaming you ask? They are screaming because I finally bought myself a 42" Plasma TV. Now if you are considering such a purchase here are some helpful hints.

• Best Buy and Circuit City don't always have the best deals or staff. I bought mine at a place called Video Only, and they we $300 dollars cheaper on certain models.
• Plasma vs. LCD vs. DLP. It really depends on your needs. Do some research on the web to figure out what is best for you. Do your homework before stepping foot in the wolves den.
  
• Just because these things say HDTV on them does not mean that you have it. Typically you have to get a box from your cable provider to convert the signal. We got ours yesterday and the difference is AMAZING. It will be hard to go back to regular TV. We are talking about blades of grass people, not big green fields. If I was on TV a lot I would be scared of HD. You can almost see into their soul.