I get home and flip on my laptop. I look up and there's an alert from Apple. I have new downloads available. I open the dialog and, voila. Safari version 3.1 (525.13) is ready for download!

Apple finally released a version of Safari for Windows that doesn't crash INSTANTLY!

Yay.

Thank God. It's been months since Apple released a version that didn't crash within 3seconds of starting up. I haven't been able to do successful Safari development or testing in months. That's really great when you're about to release a large scale production website. Uh, we hope it works.

Everybody and their momma would tell Apple about it. Apple would keep releasing Safari like it worked. We'd all fire up Safari and guess what? Same thing.

Apple: "It works now."
    Users: "Uh, no it doesn't."
Apple: "OK, it works now."
    Users: "Uh, no it doesn't."
Apple: "How about now?"
    Users: "Nope. Nothin'. Still broke."
Apple: "Now?"
    Users: "Nada."
Apple: "I said it works. Now leave me alone!"
    Users: "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Labels: Technology, Web Development, Website, Work

Found in Parking Lot at 2560:
One (1) used condom.
Magnum size.
Discarded in lot.

Please see Facilities Manager to claim.

Yeah. You read right. I'll be Gat Damned if I didn't find a used condom in the parking lot when I pulled in to work this morning. I setp out of my truck and BAM! There it is lying on the ground. Staring me in the face.

"Is that a ?...It damn sure is!!!"

And they bitched about the "sea of cigarette butts" in the parking lots at work. How about somebody do something to clean up this shit? If I track a cigarette butt on my shoe, that's not exactly end-of-the-world nasty. But a goddman used fucking condom? Eww Eww Eww!

What I wanna know is who's fucking in the YellowBook parking lot? What kind of mad parking lot sex does a yellow pages provider inspire?

"Unh... Ooooh... Say it, bitch!"
    "Ohhh ... Yellow Book dot commmmm!!!"
"Business is off the charts!"

OK. Eww. I just grossed myself out with that one.

I'm debating whether or not to send something to facilities in response to their ludicrous flame e-mail about smoking. But I talked to HR and they said they have my back.

Dear Facilities,

Attached is photographic evidence of what I found in the parking lot today. You people have the nerve to complain about the highly dubious "sea of butts" in the parking lot. You've got to be fucking kidding me. Piss off, you hypocritical collection of contradictions.



xoxo
keller Rob

Labels: Work

Y'all aint even heard from my ass in the 08.

I been busy as a sumummabitch through the New Year. Working on the new release of YellowBook.com, but I promise I've got posts in the queue, ready to back date.

So stay tuned, campers. There's a whole bunch coming.

Labels: Blogging, Life, Website, Work

Ecch! I've been eating like shit the past week. I've had so much crap.

Usually I eat like this very unconsciously when I'm stressed. This past week was a combination of stress and circumstance. So far I've had the following:

1. An entire Franzone's pizza
2. Half a Franzone's pizza
3. Buffalo Chicken Fajitas at Chili's
4. A Bleu Cheeseburger from Bennigan's
5. Catered pasta from Little Sicily
6. Catered pizza AND stromboli from Amedeo's
7. A giant Cheese steak omelet skillet at O'Grady's
8. A 12" Chicken Parm. sandwich and 2 cheeseburgers from TD Alfredo's
9. To top it all off I had like 4 Entenmann's donuts in the span of a couple of hours.

Now some of these were unavoidable. Catered lunches at mandatory meetings. The group I go to lunch with decided they wanted to go to certain places this week.

The rest was me stress eating. Truthfully I cant even identify what the stressor is. I'm sure you can't tell it to look at me, but I don't usually eat like this. There's something subconsciously bothering me, but I don't quite know what it is. The conscious stressors I have aren't enough to make me eat like this.

What the deal?
This week I'll be eating salads for dinner. Seriously. No bullshit.

Labels: Food, Life, Work

So around 4:00 today, Jeff gets the idea in his head that we should knock off and play football for a little bit.

Good plan!

One problem. The football that Jeff keeps in his car trunk ... is still in his car trunk. Unfortunately, Jeff drove his SUV in to work today. D'oh!

I said, "I'm not going to let that stop us. We can go right now and buy a football." Sure enough, I drove over to the Sports Authority on 202 with Jeff and we purchased a football and were back in like 20 minutes. Sweet!

We knocked off around 4:15 and went out in the street on Renaissance Blvd. and played a game of catch for about 45 minutes. Jeff, RC, Kel, Alex, Anton, and me.

We discovered that the Russians in our group have had little experience with throwing a football, so we taught them. It was like 40 degrees outside, but so what. We're men. We can take it. Of course Alex ran to his car to get gloves and earmuffs. Wuss, hehe ;) Aren't you from Russia? Shouldn't you be used to the cold?


Damn, that was fun. That was just what the doctor ordered.
Where else can you work in corporate America and not only knock off to go play football in the street, but leave work to go out and actually buy the football? I love this job, man!

Labels: Fun, Games, Sports, Work

Had lunch today at Coyote Crossing in Conshohocken.

That place is really really good.

We were celebrating Gina's birthday which was actually like 2 weeks ago, but it was an excuse to get everybody together.

We took two caravans to meet up with the girls and some people from Unreal. No one actually knew exactly where it was, but since I knew that immediate area, pretty well, I knew exactly how to get there. Kel couldn't understand how I knew how to get there, but didn't know where it was. Trust me. look it up on a map. What's 2 blocks from there? Need I say more?

Just by simple force of habit, I went the way I knew, which was to come down South Gulph and then down Matsonford into Conshohocken. If I actually thought about it, I should have went down River Rd. which would have spat me out at the Conshy Bridge with no turns. Oh well. Jeff, as usual starts to freak out when he doesn't know where he is. This is the conversation that went on going down 8th Street:

"Where are we!?!?!?!"
    "We're ... here."
"Oh, I know where we are! THIS PLACE IS AWESOME!!!!!"

Coyote Crossing had a really pleasant atmosphere. There was a bar up front, but then there was the big dining area for tables of like a dozen or more. It was really good Mexican food. Not like other Mexican places I've been to where it's just been some slop that they throw on a tortilla or so classy that it loses all authenticity. I highly recommend it. It would actually be a good place to take a date. They had a really nice wine selection. Not that we had a liquid lunch or anything. :)

Labels: Bars, Food, Night life, Work

God Dammit!

I almost pulled another "Jeff" today.

Sure enough as I walked out the door this morning, I left my work laptop right in the same fucking place as I did yesterday. Fortunately I was only a mile away from my house before I realized it and hung a quick U-ie.

Labels: Work

Dammit!

I pulled my very first "Jeff" today.

I walked into my cube with me personal laptop in my hand. I looked over and noticed that my dock was empty. Where was my work laptop? Had the laptop Nazis decided to punish me for not locking it up over the weekend by moving it? Did someone steal it? Then I realized.

Damn, I took it home over the weekend! I left it on the couch! Shit.

I brought it home over the weekend just in case I needed it, and didn't give it another thought. When leaving for work this morning, since I hadn't though about it over the weekend, I also didn't think to pick it up on the way out the door.

Well, I wasn't about to drive back home to get it. Fuck it. I'll work on my personal laptop today. I've got most everything I need on it to do my job, anyway.

Fortunately, I didn't have much in the way of physical work to do today. Mostly meetings until the afternoon. Then I goofed off for the rest of the day, so.... win!

Labels: Work

Met the girls for lunch today, sans Jeff. We met up at Subway. Ordinarily, at Subway I usually get the same thing every time. It's pretty much the only thing I like there. I get a 12" roasted chicken breast sandwich on Italian Herbs & Cheese bread, with swiss cheese, Southwest sauce and nothing else. For some reason, I decided to get it toasted. Boy, what a mistake that was. I took a mediocre thing and made it worse. Yes, tasting it ensured it was hot. So hot in fact, that all the flavor just kind of evaporated. I bit into this sandwich and couldn't taste anything. I mean I knew there was food in my mouth, but what was the point?

Since I had gone to the bother of ordering it, and paying for it. I toughed it out. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't ... anything. I was too hungry to care.

Labels: Food, Work

Had a lot of fun last night at Lucky Strike in Philadelphia.

YellowBook had a Internet Team outing last night. Every once in a while they like to get out of the office. Of course this happens to coincide with a release day, so we all could use the stress release.

Funny story about release day. My team and I went out to lunch yesterday. Jeff gets a call on his cell phone while we're in the restaurant. He doesn't recognize the number and assumes it's an unimportant call, so he ignores it. Shortly after, I get a call on my cell and I assume it's a recruiter. It so happens that it's the office desperately trying to get a hold of us. Something went wrong with the release. We got back to the office after lunch and walked into a total surprise melee. All this the day after Jeff made a big stink about everybody having our cellphone numbers. D'oh!

Anyway...

Busy day at work. Everyone was struggling to get out of the office in time to get down to Center City. Of course, I was like the last one because I had to make a playlist for on the way down. Something with some speed and aggression. If I'm going to be driving down the Schuylkill with the rest of the rush hour dumbasses, I'm going to need to channel my homicidal urges.

So I'm headed down 76 and it's pretty slow, as would be expected. Between Belmont and City it gets really slow. A goddamn U-Haul truck stalls out right in front of me in the left lane. Razzafrazzin brickafrikkin rat bastard summumabitch! After that silly shit, I get around him and make my way into the city. So now I get off the Vine St. Expressway at 15th street and I have the incessant gridlock to look forward to. People wonder why I don't want to work in the city.

Spending time looking for a place to park downtown is like masturbating with a cheese grater. It may be exciting and different for a minute, but ultimately painful. I didn't want to park in a garage. The prices are nuts. Although finding a spot on the street is almost futile. After taking a few circuits around City Hall, I made my way over to Chestnut Street in the hopes of finding a spot. Nevermind the fire truck right outside of Lucky Strike that traffic couldn't get around, what about the SEPTA bus stuck behind me, blocking the entire intersection at 13th and Chestnut? Once I got around the fire truck, I found a spot only a couple of blocks from the place. OK, so it was a loading zone, but you know what? The cost of a ticket would probably be about the same as parking in a garage, so fuck it.

I made my way into Lucky Strike, and it was kind of a cool joint. Multiple floors of bars/restaurants/bowling alleys. Swank. I saw that there was a private event on the second floor. That must be us. So I made my way up. Nope. Evidently it was an event for PhIMA. What the hell is PhIMA? I stuck my head in just to make sure. Guess who's there? Oh, shit. It's Gina. :) Before I can say boo, she swept me in and was showing me around. Guess who else is there? It's Desirea. :) They assumed I was there for PhIMA. I didn't even know what that was. It just so happened that not only were Des & Gina members, but so was Jeff's wife, Tara. Gina & Des introduced me. I told her that when Jeff comes home at night and goes, "That son of a ..." , that's me! (Just kidding) I hung around for a few minutes, but I really wasn't supposed to be there, so I politely excused myself and went and found my people.

My group was up on the third floor. Most everybody was there. Andy, James, Ilmer, Alex & Anton, Jeff, and Michelle were already there. Dessi and Tina showed up a little later than me. Tina encountered that same stalled out truck on 76. She must have been not too far behind me. So we're all chatting (and drinking). Having a good time. Andy ordered this moderately interesting-looking blue drink called a Lucky Strike. It looked like a big blue martini. You know me, I stuck to Yeunglings all night.

After a while we got food. The cuisine at Lucky Strike is kind of interesting. Pretty much what you'd find at like a Chili's or an Applebee's or something like that. But with a couple of twists. They serve breakfast there along with their dinner menu. Not usually two things you'd find together outside of a diner. They even have a breakfast burger, which is a burger topped with a fried egg. That's different.

So we're eating, drinking, chatting, having a good ole' time. We're all done eating and now let the bowling begin! We got two lanes for 10 people. Easy enough, right? God we had so much fun. And evidently a couple of us can actually bowl. James did really well. Alex was crushing pins. I'm glad he was on my team. It was only like his fifth time bowling ever. Ilmer and Dessi were beginners. We all were such cheerleaders for them.

As for myself, I stunk out loud. You know me. All form and no follow through. I use my classic four step drop. Of course I was only using a 14 pound ball, so I was throwing fastballs with zero control. Truly I needed a heavier ball. Once I slowed down my release, I regained some of that control. They actually had speedometers on the lanes and by far, I threw the fastest balls.

That's the cool thing about bowling. You can completely suck and still have fun.

Speaking of suck...Anton. Anton set a bad precedent by rolling a 9 in the first frame. From there, it was all downhill. Gutter, Gutter, Gutter, Gutter... Gutter. Hahah! The first game, he bowled a whopping 29, only to be beat out by quiet little Dessi (a first timer) in the 10th frame. Hehe. I told him the second game was the dignity game. I think his patented stumble-and-chuck method might have been holding him back.

About 9:00, the girls were done with their PhIMA event and came upstairs to join us in the lounge. I would have liked to have seen them bowl a few frames, but they just kind of hung out gabbing the rest of the night. I tore my self away from the lanes for a bit a couple of times and hung out with them until it was my turn again. I didn't want to let them feel neglected. :)

We wrapped up at about 11. We all kind of stumbled back to where we parked, seemingly all over the city. ;) James suggested the next outing be at Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian steakhouse across the street. I got back to my truck and sure enough, there was a ticket. Thirty bucks for parking in a loading zone. But you know what? It's still more preferable to parking in a garage, for about the same price.


So Lucky Strike was a great night. God that was fun. What did we learn?

1. Parking in Center City is like masturbating with a cheese grater
2. Yeungling is bowling fuel
3. PhIMA is the Philadelhpia Interactive Marketing Association
4. I met Jeff's wife, so I guess I learned something
5. I learned that Anton can't bowl worth squat, hehe
6. I learned that Tina and Michelle are a lot of fun. Put those two together and they're trouble. That's OK. I like trouble.
7. Ultimately, I learned that I really like the people I work with directly. They're a group of people that really like to have fun. We work hard and we play hard. Nobody's stuck up or a stick in the mud. That's important to me. These really are my kind of people.

Labels: Bars, Food, Life, Night life, Work

As I'm sitting here reinstalling software on my laptop, I've made a decision. In order to save hard drive space, I have decided not to install any Visual Studio 6 components or Visual Studio 2002/2003 components. Therefore I will no longer be supporting any legacy app development. All of my applications that were built with earlier versions of the studio will be ported to Visual Studio 2005 if code was not already developed in parallel. Visual Studio Add-Ins will continue to have backwards compatibility with 2002/2003 versions, but will be built by, deployed by, and targeted to Visual Studio 2005/2008.

Labels: ASP.Net, C Sharp, Javascript, Programming, Technology, VB.Net, Web Development, Work

Labels: Work

So I had another employment agency interview today. This time with MacArthur Associates. They're located in Center City at 16th & Market. Basically across from City Hall.

First off, I wasn't going to drive down. It would be a complete waste of gas. The only place to park is right on Market Street in front of a building; good luck with that, or in a parking garage which is going to cost an exorbitent amount of money. If I were going to work in Philadelphia, it would cost like $22 a day. That's like $5,200 a year just for parking.

So what's my alternative? SEPTA. FUCK!!!

I'd have to drive to Bridgeport or Norristown which would take at least a half-hour without traffic. Then get on the train which would also cost an obscene amount of money. With SEPTA gouging prices and now they're doing away with transfers, it would cost $3.10 to get on the Rt. 100 to 69th St. and transfer to the El (Market/Frankford Line) each way. During peak hours that would take at least another hour and a half.

That's just the bitching part of this rant.

OK so on the way down on the Rt. 100, this loud ass heffer on her cell phone was cussin' her ass off on her cell phone. Ignorant cooz, don't you know you're disturbing everyone on the train? Don't nobody wanna hear that shit. Shut the fuck up!

The rest of the passengers and I were just shooting each other looks like, "This heffer..." On the plus side, I got to share some eye contact with some good-lookin' honeys. There was this one that was a nurse wearing green scubs. Mmm. There's just something about nurses. There was also this one in a pink top that was just bangin'.

There was also this little 17-year old eyeballin' me like a piece of steak. Baby, I'm flattered. Your little ass is cute, but you don't got nothin' I want. I mean damn, in my interview gear I look good. Damn good. So fresh, so clean. Meaner than a broke-dick dog in fact. Got to beat 'em off with a stick.

OK, so now I'm down at 69th St. Damn. I forgot about the fucking El construction, so Market Street is closed from 69th St. to 40th St. There are damn shuttle buses that herd us in like so much cattle and move ever so slowly through West Philly traffic. Then you leave the buses and move underground to take the rest of the El at high speed. You ever wonder why the Elevated Train goes underground?

Anyway, after a 2 hour commute, I had a rinky dink 25 minute meeting then had to go right back. Well I wasn't ready to endure mass transit for another 2 hours just yet. So I walked around Center City for a little bit. Right around City Hall and Love Park is a great place to just people watch. On days I would go downtown, on my lunch breaks, I would sit in the courtyard of the Centre Square bulding and just people watch for hours. Yes, hours. On a good day, you see so many honeys go by.

Repeat commute in reverse. Only this time, When the El shuttle dropped my off, I decided to take myself a little smoke break. I'm just standing there minding my own business. And this orca of a dude just walks up and start a conversation.

OK. It must be me. I must have the face that draws in the crazies. To look at this dude you might think he was perfectly normal. Just some average blue-collar worker. When he approached me, I thought he wanted a cigarette or something. I don't exactly know what he was saying to me. Something about how some lowlife brotha was beating on his sister and if he called the sheriffs, they'd take his house away. And you know, the women don't like it when they don't have no place to live.

Now because I'm not a complete and total dick, on the outside, I was just smiling and nodding, "Yeah, you're right. No, they don't like that." I was very nice to him. :|

On the inside, I was screaming, "Will you get the fuck away from me?!?!? Take your retarded ass on down the road! Seriously, move the fuck on!" Maybe because I was in a suit, he thought I was his caseworker or something.

Eventually he moved on, still kind of muttering to himself. I took a couple more minutes and finished my cigarette. I moved through the concourse and got on the Rt. 100 to head back towards Bridgeport. Guess who's on the damn train? My new buddy, sitting right at the front of the car with an open seat right behind him. Dammit! Needless to say, I quickly grabbed a seat near the back of the car and prayed he never turned around for fear he might start another conversation.

So, 4 hours on mass transit and a blown afternoon later, people still wonder why I don't want to work in Philadelphia. Oh, and did I mention the city wage tax?

Labels: Job Hunting, Rants, Work

I love summer. :)

Boy, the women are out today. I was out having a smoke break today and this Asian woman with great tits walks out of the gym that's next to my job today. She had just got out of the shower so she was still wet. She was wearing this low-cut jogging outfit. Nice. Really nice, dude. Typically, Asians aren't my thing, but this one was exceptional.

Later, I was out having another smoke break, and this older broad walks out of the gym with the firmest ass I've ever seen on a white woman. She was wearing this tight blue sweatsuit. Man, oh man!

When the women are out wearing less and less...I love summertime. :)

Labels: Hot Bitches, Summer, Work

OK, so I left my cigarettes in the house this morning. I said to my self, "Rather than going back into the house to get them, I'll test my willpower and see if I can endure the day without them."

OK, so...



I'm climbing up the walls having nic fits all over the place, scratching and clawing, just feening for a smoke. I don't actually know what to do at work if I'm not outside having a smoke break all through the day. ;)

Needless to say, I'll be stopping at the local gas station before going to Outback tonight.

Labels: Work

I went out with some people at work last night to happy hour at Kildare's.

Mike Georgeff had invited me. It was good to come out and see some people I work with in a social setting. I like that my job is like that. There are forty-year olds I can hang out with, but there are also a bunch of people my age I can hang out with as well.

Justin Buchanan, Bruce Dennis, and Lee-Ann camefrom GHR, and some of Mike's friends came out as well. Adam Fortuno was supposed to come out, but I had heard he had a medical emergency with his family, so I understand that. Steve Mullen, who left GHR shortly after I joined, was supposed to show, too. Don't know what happened to him. I also got to meet and hang out with Cliff (one of Mike's friends), who as it turns out, is the son of the Schuylkill Township Police Dept.'s Sergeant Cliff. Dude! But he was a cool dude. Lee-Ann's husband (whose name I don't currently remember) showed up and hung out with us for a few hours.

This was my first time at Kildare's. The first thing one should know about Kildare's in King of Prussia is, you can't get there from here. If you're coming down 202 North, well it's on the Southbound side so you have to get in the far left lane at North Gulph Road and flip a U-ie into the place. For a Thursday night, the place was packed. The free valet parking was good fortune, though. The line was so freakin' long, though. All the way out of Kildare's out in front of patio.com, all the way out to North Gulph Road in one direction and all the way back out to 202 South in the other. It took me like a half hour just to get in and I was still only the second one there, after Mike.

Kildare's was pretty cool. Definitely a step above dive. You know, shit on the walls and shit. Live music. There was a guy playing a solo acoustic set. He wasn't terrible. He was actually a very good guitarist, but his song selection was just putting me to sleep. There was a very Bill-Chott-in-The-Ringer-esque looking fellow who just walked onstage and just started playing the tambourine. Dude, this guy took his job waaaaay too seriously. He had one Michael Jackson glove, you know, to protect his tambourine hand from injury. :| I'm not even sure he was actually part of the act, but he played that tambourine all night, with some soul. :|

I paced myself pretty well. We all know how out of control I can get. I started with a couple of lagers. Shortly I moved to the amaretto/rocks. I was starting to feel myself after a while, so I slowed down. That Buchanan kid can drink. He had like 4 Guinness' and a carbomb in the span of like an hour and fifteen minutes. After a couple of hours, we all started moving to the $2 well drinks. They were cheap and get you fucked up almost just as quickly as top shelf. Rum & cokes for everyone!

Georgeff was fuckin funny after gettin some drinks in him. At first, he was like, "This guitarist is putting me to sleep." A few drinks later, "He's not that bad." A few more, "This is a great guitarist!" After a couple hours he was like, "This guy is the shit!" Later, when the DJ came on (around midnight), he just couldn't resist dancing. I just sat ther watching his skinny white butt bust a move. Though we got pissed at the DJ because in the middle of playing Sublime - What I Got, his fucking cd started skipping. Man, fucked up our drunken groove.

We had a good time. The $2 well drinks did us in, I think though. We were there drinking until about 1 in the morning. Well, at least I was. I couldn't drink anymore and not be fucked up the next day at work. I had to leave. As I hear, Mike and Cliff closed the place down. We were all a little concerned about how Mike was going to get home.

I had to take Mike to pick up his car this morning from Kildare's. Evidently, he rode home with Cliff (who was also phucked up) and took his wife's car in the next morning.

Labels: Bars, Night life, Work

One of the things I've found is that going out to lunch really does seem to make the day go by faster. At Weston I never really went to lunch. I would always work through it.

Now that I'm at GHR, I've gone out to lunch with my boss and others nearly every day. It really is exactly what is needed to break up the day.

I'm used to settling in in the morning, starting a tempo and maintaining it until the end of the day, pausing periodically. I never felt myself getting burnt out until I stopped doing that. Getting out of the office, just for an hour allows me to break that non-stopping pattern. That little bitty hour of not staring at a monitor and just seeing something else, anything else in the outside world, even if it is mostly traffic, keeps me level.

The only thing I fear is that I won't be able to maintain those staggering production rates like I used to. When I come back from lunch, I have to get settled back in, recharge the batteries, maybe have a smoke, start up from a cold stop, remember what the hell I was doing before lunch, and then set the tempo once again.

But before you know it, it's 5:30 and time to go home.

Labels: Work