Recently in Humor Category
Has this ever happened to you?
No, of course it hasn't. This only happens to boneheads, of which I am one.
Let me explain.
I was sitting in a meeting last week. Not one of those soccer-scouts-church-neighborhood-band-PTA-unimportant evening meetings, but a real meeting, a professional meeting, a meeting full of hard-nosed engineers, a meeting during the day, a meeting where I had to be on the ball, pay attention, demonstrate acumen, show insight, and articulate vision. This was an adult meeting, a significant meeting, a meeting of utmost moment.
It was a meeting I was getting paid to be at.
We were gathered in a beautiful conference room on the 12th floor of a Washington office building. We sat at a large table, our laptops arrayed around us. I was positioned strategically at the table's head. It was mid-morning. A colleague stood to my right briefing upcoming plans. He was intent, serious. His message was important. My trusty green 1-quart Stanley thermos sat nearby on the table. As the planning session droned on, I picked up my thermos, curious whether I had any coffee left. I was fairly certain I had finished my daily allotment, but I wanted to make sure. I knew I had just drained the last of my home brew from the thermos top that served as my cup. But if there was more coffee in the thermos, I would take it. My thermos seemed empty. I shook it vigorously to confirm. Nope. No coffee. I gave a small, inaudible sigh. A bit more coffee sure would have made the morning go faster.
As I held the thermos upright in my lap, I looked ruefully at the thermos top sitting on the table, picked it up with absolute, unequivocal, 100 percent moral certainty it was empty, inverted it, and went to screw it in place.
Sploosh!
An inch of coffee dumped in my lap. Not only that... it was hot. I jumped up, interrupting the proceedings. Of course this was the day I chose to wear khakis rather than dark suit pants so it was immediately obvious to everyone in the room that something unpleasant involving a liquid had just happened to me. Paper napkins flew in my general direction to assist, but the cotton cloth of my pants had already soaked up everything.
If I had peed my pants I could not have made a stain that looked more like I peed my pants than this stain did. I made my way to the men's room out in the corridor praying with all the fervor I could muster that no one was present in the usually busy hallway. But, no, as always, it was filled with professionals. There might as well have been a big, glowing, neon arrow pointing directly at my crotch.
See? What did I tell you?
Bonehead.
K-
No, of course it hasn't. This only happens to boneheads, of which I am one.
Let me explain.
I was sitting in a meeting last week. Not one of those soccer-scouts-church-neighborhood-band-PTA-unimportant evening meetings, but a real meeting, a professional meeting, a meeting full of hard-nosed engineers, a meeting during the day, a meeting where I had to be on the ball, pay attention, demonstrate acumen, show insight, and articulate vision. This was an adult meeting, a significant meeting, a meeting of utmost moment.
It was a meeting I was getting paid to be at.
We were gathered in a beautiful conference room on the 12th floor of a Washington office building. We sat at a large table, our laptops arrayed around us. I was positioned strategically at the table's head. It was mid-morning. A colleague stood to my right briefing upcoming plans. He was intent, serious. His message was important. My trusty green 1-quart Stanley thermos sat nearby on the table. As the planning session droned on, I picked up my thermos, curious whether I had any coffee left. I was fairly certain I had finished my daily allotment, but I wanted to make sure. I knew I had just drained the last of my home brew from the thermos top that served as my cup. But if there was more coffee in the thermos, I would take it. My thermos seemed empty. I shook it vigorously to confirm. Nope. No coffee. I gave a small, inaudible sigh. A bit more coffee sure would have made the morning go faster.
As I held the thermos upright in my lap, I looked ruefully at the thermos top sitting on the table, picked it up with absolute, unequivocal, 100 percent moral certainty it was empty, inverted it, and went to screw it in place.
Sploosh!
An inch of coffee dumped in my lap. Not only that... it was hot. I jumped up, interrupting the proceedings. Of course this was the day I chose to wear khakis rather than dark suit pants so it was immediately obvious to everyone in the room that something unpleasant involving a liquid had just happened to me. Paper napkins flew in my general direction to assist, but the cotton cloth of my pants had already soaked up everything.
If I had peed my pants I could not have made a stain that looked more like I peed my pants than this stain did. I made my way to the men's room out in the corridor praying with all the fervor I could muster that no one was present in the usually busy hallway. But, no, as always, it was filled with professionals. There might as well have been a big, glowing, neon arrow pointing directly at my crotch.
See? What did I tell you?
Bonehead.
K-
When Christmas dinner consists of homemade chicken pot pie, and you loudly announce to the house that you had better start cooking, the statement: "The first thing I've got to do is go bone the chicken." generates a lot of laughter.
(bone tr.v. - to remove the bones from.)
K-
(bone tr.v. - to remove the bones from.)
K-
Snippet of conversation between my younger son and me on the way home from York College last night:
"Can I get a haircut tomorrow? It's been a while. I really need a haircut."
"Sure. But your hair looks OK to me."
"But I've got this mullet-thing going in the back. It's starting to annoy me."
I suppose he could always take up hockey.
K-
"Can I get a haircut tomorrow? It's been a while. I really need a haircut."
"Sure. But your hair looks OK to me."
"But I've got this mullet-thing going in the back. It's starting to annoy me."
I suppose he could always take up hockey.
K-
Yesterday one of my favorite computer programs stopped working for no apparent reason. I've used Eudora as my email client for as long as I can remember. Probably 10 years, likely more. I've never had any problem with it either at home or at work. It gets mail. It sends mail. Eudora isn't flashy. It does exactly what it needs to without doing anything superfluous.
I love it. It's just like me.
But for reasons still unclear to me, Eudora on my work PC decided it would no longer send messages. It would retrieve them, it would queue them, but it wouldn't send them. Eudora kept giving me a "550 Authentication Required" error whenever I hit the "send" button. I don't know if it was my ISP or me that changed, but sending email from work was dead in the water.
I did the usual computer repairman thing. I tried this; I tried that; poked this; poked that, blindly hoping some random change would fix things. Nothing worked. I went as far as installing Thunderbird, which worked fine, just to prove an email client still worked for me.
Late today, after what I figured to be a few, final, probably futile, rounds of Googling help for Eudora, a forum on some obscure website suggested I add this one statement to my eudora.ini file that I did not need before:
SMTPAuthBanished=CRAM-MD5
I didn't know what it meant. I was grasping at straws. I cut. I pasted. I saved. I hit send.
Badda-boom, badda-bing, all my queued email went sailing on its way, all of them, maybe a hundred, each titled something like "Test", "Another Test", "Yet Another Test", "Still Yet Another Test", "Still Yet One More Test", and "This is Absolutely the Last Test." Changing that one setting caused Eudora to spew forth test email like projectile vomit to everyone I knew. You'll probably get one.
No need to reply.
K-
I love it. It's just like me.
But for reasons still unclear to me, Eudora on my work PC decided it would no longer send messages. It would retrieve them, it would queue them, but it wouldn't send them. Eudora kept giving me a "550 Authentication Required" error whenever I hit the "send" button. I don't know if it was my ISP or me that changed, but sending email from work was dead in the water.
I did the usual computer repairman thing. I tried this; I tried that; poked this; poked that, blindly hoping some random change would fix things. Nothing worked. I went as far as installing Thunderbird, which worked fine, just to prove an email client still worked for me.
Late today, after what I figured to be a few, final, probably futile, rounds of Googling help for Eudora, a forum on some obscure website suggested I add this one statement to my eudora.ini file that I did not need before:
SMTPAuthBanished=CRAM-MD5
I didn't know what it meant. I was grasping at straws. I cut. I pasted. I saved. I hit send.
Badda-boom, badda-bing, all my queued email went sailing on its way, all of them, maybe a hundred, each titled something like "Test", "Another Test", "Yet Another Test", "Still Yet Another Test", "Still Yet One More Test", and "This is Absolutely the Last Test." Changing that one setting caused Eudora to spew forth test email like projectile vomit to everyone I knew. You'll probably get one.
No need to reply.
K-
When you're my age - twilight years, kids gone, nothing but cheap thrills to keep you going - pet peeves take on significantly more importance in your life. You nurse them. You give them names. You join clubs so you can talk with other like-minded pet-peevers. I'm a champion pet-peever and I cherish mine. I have a couple of pet peeves with hats on them.
Take those disposable roadside signs, for instance. Real estate, estate sales, yard sales, garage sales, garage roofs, roof repair, car repair, junk cars, junk houses, junk itself, you name it, those 2'x3' disposable signs appear at every intersection of every goddamn road in Howard County. They are a major pet peeve of mine. The signs are ugly, block my view, and have no business being posted on public thoroughfares. Arrogant, stupid, I'm-just-gonna-do-what-I-feel-like bozos with something to sell put up these signs with absolutely no accountability. These people are nothing more than spammers and litterers. Remember Alice's Restaurant? People won't sit next to litterers. People move away from litterers. That's how reprehensible litterers are.
Turns out I'm not alone.
Led by our clear-sighted, forward-thinking, shiny-green county executive, Ken Ulman, an army of highway workers is this week - today - as we speak, sweeping Howard County clean. Sweeping clean our roadways of commercial blight! Sweeping clean our intersections of vertical spam! Sweeping clean our median strips of unnecessary signs! Sweeping clean our neighborhoods of every disposable placard they can find! Sweeping clean the Howard countryside of all that unwanted, despicable, advertising! I'm renewed! Invigorated! Reborn!
It's the rapture! I feel it! Hallelujah!!! Give God praise and glory!
Now if Ulman could only do the same thing with movie talkers.
K-
Take those disposable roadside signs, for instance. Real estate, estate sales, yard sales, garage sales, garage roofs, roof repair, car repair, junk cars, junk houses, junk itself, you name it, those 2'x3' disposable signs appear at every intersection of every goddamn road in Howard County. They are a major pet peeve of mine. The signs are ugly, block my view, and have no business being posted on public thoroughfares. Arrogant, stupid, I'm-just-gonna-do-what-I-feel-like bozos with something to sell put up these signs with absolutely no accountability. These people are nothing more than spammers and litterers. Remember Alice's Restaurant? People won't sit next to litterers. People move away from litterers. That's how reprehensible litterers are.
Turns out I'm not alone.
Led by our clear-sighted, forward-thinking, shiny-green county executive, Ken Ulman, an army of highway workers is this week - today - as we speak, sweeping Howard County clean. Sweeping clean our roadways of commercial blight! Sweeping clean our intersections of vertical spam! Sweeping clean our median strips of unnecessary signs! Sweeping clean our neighborhoods of every disposable placard they can find! Sweeping clean the Howard countryside of all that unwanted, despicable, advertising! I'm renewed! Invigorated! Reborn!
It's the rapture! I feel it! Hallelujah!!! Give God praise and glory!
Now if Ulman could only do the same thing with movie talkers.
K-
5 Things I Dislike Generally Liked by the Hoi Polloi
5 Things I Like Generally Disliked by the Hoi Polloi
- Disney World
- Pets
- Lucille Ball
- Raw apples
- Dr. Pepper
Setting the record straight.
- The post office
- Cold weather
- Rachel Ray
- Lima beans
- Very spicy food
K-
when a gulp of coffee goes down the wrong pipe and the whole thing comes shooting back out through your nose.
Of course the up-side is then the whole world smells like Kenya Highland AA.
K-
Of course the up-side is then the whole world smells like Kenya Highland AA.
K-
Danny left his cell phone in a campus bathroom yesterday. The person who found it used his cell phone to call the house and leave a message about where he took it. Later, after Danny had retrieved his phone, this snippet of conversation ensued:
Danny: "I hate knowing I've lost something."
Me: "Why? If you don't know you've lost something, then you wouldn't know to go look for it."
Danny: "I know! That's exactly my point!"
Logic. It comes in all flavors.
K-
Danny: "I hate knowing I've lost something."
Me: "Why? If you don't know you've lost something, then you wouldn't know to go look for it."
Danny: "I know! That's exactly my point!"
Logic. It comes in all flavors.
K-
