In honor of St. Patrick's Day

The only green I adorned myself with on this day could be found on the tip of my finger...

The new Costco Milk jugs

I mean, what's the dealio with these new Costco Milk jugs??? At first I was thinking they looked pretty cool, but when I discovered that it is impossible to pour milk out of them without making a huge mess, I started to wonder what those idiots were thinking. I am almost certain they are LOL'ing their butts off at us consumers just like the inventors of ties and high heels! My Quality Assurance master's program would have had a field day with this one!

While I have the pictures posted, and since it seems to be a common practice to post recipes on blogs, I thought I'd go ahead and post mine.

1 Styrofoam bowl
1 box of cheerios
1 piece of crap jug of Costco milk
1 plastic spoon

Pour cereal in bowl
Pour milk on top of cereal
Curse under breath because of the huge unavoidable mess
Make mental note to write scathing letter to Kirkland and Costco
Make mental note to complain to the world on blog about POC milk jug
Clean up mess (& that of all others before me who don't think it's their job)
Curse some more (note: use only LDS approved swear words such as: Fetch, Flip, oh my Heck and in some cases Barnacles). The neighbor girl says "snap", I like that one but I'm going to have to petition the Utahrd populace for approval and acceptance into the culture.

The Cure - Lullaby

There were problems on the Virginia Railway Express today, so my 40 minute ride home was nearly 2 hours. I was listening to my fave, the Cure and got the spiderman song stuck in my head:

On candystrip legs the spiderman comes

Softly through the shadow of the evening sun
Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead
Looking for the victim shivering in bed
Searching out fear in the gathering gloom
And suddenly!
A movement in the corner of the room!
And there is nothing I can do
When I realise with fright
That the spiderman is having me for dinner tonight!
--
Quietly he laughs and shaking his head
Creeps closer now
Closer to the foot of the bed
And softer than shadow and quicker than flies
His arms are all around me and his tongue in my eyes
"Be still be calm be quiet now my precious boy
Don't struggle like that or I will only love you more
For it's much too late to get away or turn on the light
The spiderman is having you for dinner tonight!"
--
And I feel like I'm being eaten
By a thousand million shivering furry holes
And I know that in the morning I will wake up
In the shivering cold
And the spiderman is always hungry...

This video is pretty weird!

My Movie quiz thing - A few challenging ones (old)

#1 He's an idiot. Comes from upbringing. His parents are probably idiots too. Back to the Future - Nicole, welcome to blogsville!

#2 Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today. Groundhog Day - Gwen, Yay!

#3 He's a pedantic, pontificating, pretentious bastard, a belligerent old fart, a worthless steaming pile of cow dung, figuratively speaking. Hint: This pen is BLUE, ROYAL BLUE! Liar Liar - Nicole

#4 Mornin', boys! I brung your breakfast! Open Range - Christopher, I knew you'd get this one!

#5 "Time out! I hate to break out of character, but you cannot shout into a persons ear. It does damage. The spitting I don't mind but..." The Man Who Knew Too Little - Tory, I love that line

#6 I just started auditing a woman who told me to get bent. Stranger Than Fiction - Tory

#7 I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothing. Rescuers Down Under - Gwen

#8 I hate your stinking guts. You make me vomit. You're scum between my toes! Little Rascals - Aleks, Aleks used to go around quoting this when she was like 2-3 yrs old, hilarious

#9 I'm telling you to shut up! I will tell your recorder so that you don't forget! Hint: This is an old school Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton movie. Michael Keaton's character says he loves that Barnie Rubble, he's a great actor. They work at a mortuary. Answer: Night Shift

#10 Hey! What are you doing? C'mon, you're messing up my hair! Whoa! Whoa! Stop it! *Whoa!*... Hey, this might be a good look for me. Hint: think of shrinking head doctor. Beatlejuice - Erin A

#11 My balls are freezin! I never thought I'd say THAT with a smile on my face. Hint: This one isn't as inappropriate as it sounds. Think of Michael Keaton as a snowman. Answer: Jack Frost

#12 We'd have more luck playing pickup sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak. Planes, Trains and Automobiles - Cathleen, wow this was a hard one

#13 You can trouble me for a warm glass of shut-the-hell-up. Now, you will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep. Check out the name tag. You're in my world now, grandma. Happy Gilmore - Cathleen

#14 Mary... I desperately wanna make love to a school boy. Hint: OK, this is inappropriate but it is snot coming out of your nose hilarious. This character had rehearsed this line differently and had intended to romance Mary, but that's how it came out. Dumb and Dumber - Theresa

#15 Oh, great. If anyone attacks we can blink em' to death. Toy Story - Erin A, thanks for participating

#16 Yeah, Utah. It's wedged in between Wyoming and Nevada. You've seen pictures of it, right? Hint: This is old school, Chevy Chase, he takes on many identities. Answer: Fletch

#17 He hates these cans. Stay away from the cans. Hint: This is old school Steve Martin, a poor black kid who becomes very wealthy. Answer: The Jerk

#18 Hey, little anal-dwelling butt monkey. Time for you to go home, little buddy. Bruce Almighty - Theresa

#19 Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh? Hint: This is old school Chevy Chase and Bill Murry about golf. Answer: Caddy Shack

#20 I don't think so. No one says "whoopsidaisies" do they? Unless they're... There *is* no "unless." No one has said "whoopsidaisies" for fifty years and even then it was only little girls with blonde ringlets. Knotting Hill - Theresa

My brother Chris

I've been thinking a lot about my brother Chris since he just celebrated his birthday a few days ago, he's 1 year my junior. He has always been such an amazing person. He was always so confident, never seemed to have any insecurities and was just a natural leader. He was by far the funniest person I ever knew for the longest time. Witty, silly (Jim Carey silly) and just plain hilarious. He lead a band of us followers on Laguna Beach capers where we wreaked havoc on that quiet little town. If there was anything for free in that town (mints, toothpicks, lolli-pops, coffee and cookies, free samples or tastes, etc.) he knew about it and we raided it. Nobody ever threw us out (we were way too fast) even though we frequented businesses like our favorite bank daily to partake of coffee and cookies, after all, we were patrons.

One day Chris discovered a new supplier to add to our rounds, the Cellar restaurant on Ocean or Forest Ave, in the basement of a building. They kept a jar of mints on the counter near the register. The place was pretty dead during the day and so nobody tended the counter and Chris ran down and disappeared into the dark lobby and quickly emerged with a handful of mints. I was afraid to go down there uncertain of what I might encounter, until I saw his loot and nobody running after him. So I got up the nerves to go down and get my share, after all, I was a patron. I descended into the darkness with my heart pounding with anticipation of my intents being discovered when I spotted them on the counter. Just as I was reaching for the delicacies, Chris shrilled in his loudest voice from atop that dark stairwell, "GET AWAY FROM THOSE MINTS". My heart now relocated to my throat caused me to bolt back up from whence I came in a panic without even a single morsel to tantalize my pallet. That was only one of a thousand such stories. Just picture a little Jim Carey running amok making all sorts of embarrassing noises in otherwise reverent settings like grocery stores, drug stores, hardware stores, art stores, jewelry stores, banks, etc. and me and others laughing hysterically in pursuit and you'll have a glimmer of my brother Chris.

Chris was always extremely competitive and unbeknownst to me at the time, Chris was extremely intelligent (that's a heck of a combination). I knew he had a great memory and a knack for trivia but he went on to use his gifts to pursue a bachelor's at UCLA, a Law degree from BYU and then on to Film school at USC. He hobnobs with the rich and famous and has become quite successful himself. He helped me out of a big jam with a large loan when I was laid off, no hesitations and no questions asked, something I'll always be grateful to him for. He owns the rights to many films and is currently producing the sequel to "Point Break" which featured Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves early in their careers. Chris is the Chief Operating Officer and owns the rights to this Point Break 2 (Indo), which is slated to hit the big screen later this year. I am pulling for his great success, I know he has stressed a lot and has put a great deal of time, effort and risk into this big project but he believes in it and has the passion to make it a success.

I'm including a link to an article where Writer and Director Peter Iliff of Point Break Indo blogs a rebuttal to someone who is accusing him of plagiarism (see his blog to the accompanying article, which has lot's of neat info about the Point Break Indo story). This blog post is a tribute to my brother Chris, in recognition of his birthday. Someone with whom I am happy to have shared many childhood memories and with whom I am very proud of.

Piclens for Mozilla Firefox

I found this pretty cool plugin called piclens for the Mozilla Firefox browser that has a pretty neat museum gallery presentation interface for you to review photos stored in flickr, picasa, photobucket and a few others (unfortunately not Phanfare). Actually, it gets old after a while because there isn't much to it but it's a lot of fun to play around with for a while, very state of the art stuff. Disregard watching my clips below, I happened upon this one on YouTube that narrates and everything.

I know there are software tools out there that allow you to capture screen activity and I will research that and perhaps update the link below as the video clip I've captured isn't very crisp. But it at least gives an idea of how this thing works. The best part of course is that it's free. Once you install it (it will require a bounce of your current firefox sessions), all you need to do is get to one of these photo galleries on the internet (only works with Firefox, not with Windows Internet Explorer) and then click the little blue arrow button in the top right corner and away you go.



OK, so I found a new fun freeware software utility called Camstudio that lets you capture you screen activity (for training purposes and what not). It was discontinued in 2005, it seems Macromedia got involved and it became Robodemo. Then somehow Adobe got it and they now market a more advanced version called Captivate ($700). I haven't done a whole lot of research in this space beyond that, I read one feedback that preferred something called Camtasia ($300) in case anyone is interested...

I'm not sure if it was just my antiquated computer bogging down with the freeware recording software running concurrently capturing the hefty graphics of piclens, but the recording is as choppy as the actual experience was running the two of them together. I read someone slam robodemo for capturing all the lags. In any case, if I were to do this for a living, I'd want a monster fast computer and professional software that would produce a more smooth end result. So, it seems you get what you pay for. BTW, my Camstudio .avi file is 1/10 the size of my video w/audio file (and much more crisp image resolution). I don't like the choppy though and you should not see that in real life use of piclens if your computer is half decent. My dinosaur did fine without Camstudio running concurrently as witnessed in my video clip above!

A day in the life of Greg Baker (yawn)

My schedule is a little crazy, I have 2 jobs. I work four 10 hour days during my regular job (Tuesday-Friday), often working from home on Tuesdays. I work 24 hours on the weekend for the 2nd job, 7am-11pm on Saturdays and 11pm-7am Sunday-Monday. I sleep on Monday 8am-2pm. Fortunately, neither job is stressful and in fact, both jobs are rather enjoyable. The weekend job involves just being there in case of emergencies, and so I have a lot of "free" time. I was able to get my Master's degree making good use of that time. They've locked the firewall down pretty tight now so it's getting harder and harder to do things online during my "free" time.

I have family night on Mondays, racquetball challenge nights on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I try to take care of church work on Wednesdays and Fridays should be date night but we don't get out too frequently because to take Isabelle is hard and to wait until she gets to bed makes getting up early on Saturday mornings difficult. So it's usually a movie with the kids or just hanging out. After church on Sundays, I usually always get a good solid nap and then hanging out with the family or doing my home teaching. My biggest challenge, trying to fit in a little more fitness time into my schedule. 2 nights of racquetball a week isn't satisfactorily balancing out the ice cream and sweets intake during the week...










So, my typical day has me awakening at 5:20 to catch a 6:15 train. My ride to the train station (including walk from parking to platform) is about 15 minutes. My train ride is about 40 minutes barring problems, which I usually spend reading something (Yes, I took that picture of myself on the train pretending to read, wanted to capture "reality" as best I could).



My trip from my connecting lot where I pick up my trusty 1994 Camry (it's ugly but that's OK since it lives out in the elements) with 220K miles on it to my office is 15-20 minutes. I typically catch the 5:23pm train home, usually too tired to read for too long so I eventually listen to music and try to get a power nap and arrive home at around 6:30pm. I'd say half the year I'm arriving to and leaving from work in the dark. But again, fortunately that's only 3 days a week. Saturdays are spent almost entirely in a darkened room with a usual brief run at lunch to pick up food.

My 1995 Turbo M3

My first experience with BMWs was a mint condition 1999 328iS. The car handled amazingly, easily sticking through hard turns at 40-50mph, attributable to the expensive sticky Yokohamas and the highly precise German engineering in the M sports suspension. The only thing it lacked was horse power. It looked tougher than it was, and while it would smoke a Vette through a winding course, it had little raw top end power. People pulling up next to me expected more, which lead me to expect more. This drove me to want an M3. I didn't lose a dime on the 328iS, it was that clean (in retrospect, I should have just kept it).

When I saw it, I knew it had to be mine, a 1995 M3 Turbo with only 63K miles on it and a newer larger 3.2L engine (the 1995 was the only e36 M3 that had the 3.0 liter engine, the 96-99 had the 3.2). Not only that, it had an after market turbo that boosted the horse power by 50-60hp so theoretically it should be much faster than a stock M3, and it was. With nearly $30K just in after market parts (see the spreadsheet in this link), this thing was burning through custom catalytic converters every 2 years (at least that's how frequently I needed to have emissions testing), which translated into a good $1000+ each time. The fun factor was definitely there, but got undermined every time I had to go to Cathleen for the unbudgeted repairs. It doesn't take long to understand what you have to do when dental work has to be postponed so we can pay for Greg's fun factor. I sold the car October 30, 2007, after owning it for 2 1/2 years. I'm now hunting for something fun but slightly more reserved. (All you ever wanted to know about M cars)

I love the uniqueness of the clown shoe M Coupe, which is the same chassis as the e36 M3, underneath is the same suspension and motor. I hated the style at first, but it grew on me more and more, especially since I've only seen 2-3 on the road in my lifetime. I have a tendency toward the non-conformist. I also like the M Roadster, they're pretty common though. The only problem with these, they are two-seaters (not very practical for a man with 9 kids). My justification, I spend 98% of my driving time in my car alone. So, as long as we have another larger 3rd car (we do, a 2000 Volvo S80), we should be OK, right? Plus, I have a 4door 1994 Camry as my train car... The 1999-2000 had the 240hp engine, the 2001-2002 has he 330hp engine. The M Coupes and Z3 Coupes are pretty rare, they just come up for sale on occasion, I of course want the 2002. The Z3 Roadster is the slower cousin to the M Roadster and the Z3 Coupe is likewise to the M Coupe, both of which share the 328iS chassis/motor. I'd even gladly take one of these slower Z3 Coupe cousins, but they too are hard to find. The James Bond GoldenEye movie is what put the Roadster on the map. Cathleen does not want me to be 007, but prefers me to drive a low maintenance, high fuel efficiency Japanese car.