Category: Uncategorized

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Storm Of The Century Of The Moment! – Media Watch

Friends,

Yeah, it’s been raining and stuff. Big Pacific storm. Whatever. The Idyllwild Town Crier website has a breaking news alert describing our dire situation. Better copy it here before the editors over there take it down…

Breaking News
Saturday, 6:46 a.m.

Anything that can leak, will leak.

Any mud that can slide, will slide.

Any flood that can flood, will flood.

At 6:46 a.m. Saturday in Idyllwild it is pouring rain, and it has been raining all night. If this isn’t the storm of the century it is at least the storm of the year.

It is pouring rain so hard that it sounds like two storms. One storm is pummeling the land in a steady downpour, while the other storm dumps heavier batches just to break up the monotony.

It is like listening to methamphetamine-crazed drummers wailing on snare drums, bongos, tom-toms, and garbage can lids all at the same time, with feeling.

In a nutshell, here’s the National Weather Service forecast for the Riverside County moutains:

Flash flood watch through Saturday afternoon.
Heavy snow warning above 6,000 feet through Sunday evening.
Wind advisory through Sunday night.
Dense fog advisory until 2 p.m. today.

For more information, click below:

National Weather Service report
Riverside County Mountains
http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iwszone?Sites=:caz056

Cal Trans Road Conditions
http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roads.cgi

Uh oh. A meth reference? Drummers? Somebody let the interns update the corporate site. BTW, “any flood that can flood, will flood?” What’s going on there? The Rule of Threes really didn’t play out so well, did it?

Oh dear.

– bob

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404 – Friday Not Found

Friends,

Remember how my siblings had been so generous over the Christmas holiday with their maladies? Well, I’ve got it too. Thanks!

I took a nap when I got home yesterday and woke up this morning at 4:04. The most graphic detail about this flavor of fluey fun is that when I did wake up, I couldn’t actually see the clock at first since my head was stuck to the pillow. Yeah, that kind of stuck.

bluh.

– bob

P.S. Oh yeah, Obama and Huckabee won in Iowa last night. Do we care? Let’s ask President Gephardt!

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happy new year.

Friends,

We made it. If 2006 was a truly stinkeroo year for reasons that might be best left to a splash into the archives, doesn’t it seem that 2007 was merely a “transition” year? Some of us transitioned more than the others though. I gained an impossibly adorable niece, ended an abhorrent and downright smelly habit, didn’t get a new job, and managed to annoy my vivacious writing partner enough to make her move to another state (not even a neighboring state. what the hell did you do, champ? -ed)

Oh!Yeah, that little Inez is awfully cute. This is from Christmas, where her handlers were sick. My nephew and his driver were also unwell. Now I hear that Dad has graciously accepted their gift of goo. Generous!

What about that smelly habit? Yeah, I’ve decided to quit smoking after a two and a half decade career supporting America’s proud family tobacco farmers. They’ll be sad even after hearing the real reason why I made the decision. It wasn’t because of the hectoring (although there was plenty of that). It wasn’t even because I’m a cheapskate and holy crap, have you priced a pack lately? No, it’s actually an anti-government move (yeah, huge. our institutions should start crumbling any minute. – ed. The scoundrels in office haven’t learned that they can’t count on cigarette taxes as a reliable source of income for their pet projects. Surely they’ll try to score political points by claiming that their taxation has achieved their aims of forcing more people to quit. “It’s a win for public health!” they’ll gloat. I’ll believe that on a cold day in a Kaiser waiting room, thankyouverymuch. So no more cigarette tax revenue from me.

To answer your questions ahead of time, I’ve tried to quit before and was unsuccessful. I’m angrier about it now though. Oh, yeah. I’ve got a hell of a headache.

As far as the job search goes, as little said about it as possible is better. How depressing is it? I made similar money (maybe more when adjusted for inflation) two and a half decades ago. Hey! Isn’t that when…

Once the nicotine withdrawals subside, I think I’ll be better able to get down the business of business. Stuff’s going on here at Jaunty Central too that’ll be unveiled very soon. Too soon for some!

I hope you’re enjoying your new year so far. We’re gonna have a bunch of fun, okay?

Your pal,

– bob

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Try To Find The Worrisome Bits Hidden Here

Mes Amis,

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on holiday in Egypt with his new girlfriend, former supermodel Marienne Neverheardofher after a very public (and very quick) divorce. While he’s been away from the Continent, this sort of thing has been going on…

Our allies in the War On Orange Juice™. (you didn’t mention this, but rudy’s polling well in florida. coincidence? -ed Not really.)

– bob

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Genius! – What’s For Lunch? Edition

Diners,

I was downstairs at The Charity (much better. the name is short and sweet. just don’t forget the right tags. – ed Alright! Cripes.) working on a machine around noon yesterday when the thought of lunch occurred to us. One of the “perks” of the job is free lunch. We can eat in the commissary the same fare that the downtrodden line up for every day. Of course, some fare is more popular than others so it’s wise to call first…

  • “Hi, is this the kitchen? What’s for lunch today?”
  • “Yeah, this is the kitchen, but we don’t know what’s for lunch today.”
  • “You’re right there, aren’t you? Can you take a look?”
  • “We’ve seen it, we just don’t know what it is.”

And the guy on the phone was actually involved in lunch preparation and STILL didn’t know. Just wow.

Buon appetito!

– bob

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bobtherieau.com Is Down UP! – or – Gimme An F!

editor’s note: look kid, the site was down for two freakin’ hours. christ, you get that shook up over a little website, i ain’t even gonna tell you what’s in the water you’re drinking. oh yeah, obama snorted cocaine too. what’re you gonna do? cry? – ed

Friends,

Just a brief little love note to the intertubes: Where oh where has my website gone? Into the ether? Perhaps. One could ping the site and receive a response not unlike the fluttering heartbeat of a baby bird that has struck your living room window so hard that the sound was mistaken for gunplay. You could ping the site, but that seems to be all. No pretty pictures. No idea how much Russian spam I have waiting to be deleted. No robot sounds.

Maybe this is the day the interwebs died.

– bob

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In Town Update

Friends,

Heat is good. You’ll love it, I’m sure. Before I left my Secret Alpine Laboratory for the weekend, I bought a fine rolling radiator with a neat feature. It has—and I’m not kidding—an “antifreeze function.” You set the switch and it maintains a constant 42 degrees. It did its job. The house, once I returned yesterday, was forty two freakin’ degrees. Good lord.

Hours and hours later, I managed to actually warm the house. Pesky frigid wood. The snow outside is melting and the snow inside was abated, but not too far off. Cripes.

Christmas shopping? Nearly done. There’s a cute girl who needs a little something…

Your pal,

bob

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Out Of Town Update

Friends,

Just a little note to let you know that I’ll be in America’s Finest Pretty Good Adequate Will Do In A Pinch Doesn’t Stink Too Bad Barely Passable City this weekend. All Christmas shopping will occur during this blessed period we call Mallpanikohazeukah.

So dammit, be nice. We’re watching.

– bob

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Surf’s Up!

Friends,

If you’ve been missing out on the happy webcam feed (and what would be the reason for that, exactly?), you might’ve missed this:

A snowy picture
A pleasant dusting yesterday was supplemented by another foot last night. Let’s see what the meteorologists at The Town Crier have to say about this brutal winter storm…

Breaking News — Sun., Dec. 9, 8:45 p.m.

As of 8:46 a.m. chains or 4-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires on all four wheels are required on Hwy 74 from Hemet to Palm Desert, and on Hwy 243 from Mountain Center to the northern boundary of the San Bernardino National Forest. Which means, basically, from Mountain Center, through Idyllwild and Pine Cove, to just above Banning to the north.

About a foot of new snow fell last night on top of the three inches that fell the night before. It is still snowing pretty hard and the wind is gusting. The storm system is moving from west to east, and is expected to start breaking up today, with scattered showers continuing into tonight. Highs are predicted in the 40s, with lows in the 20s.

Most roads are snowy, icy or wet. Drive with extreme caution and make sure you have chains with you.

More information will be posted here as conditions change.

Chains. Right. Wonder if there’s anything really pressing going on at the Festival Of Dirt tomorrow…

Your [frosty] pal,

– bob

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Genius! – Your Best Interest Edition

Friends,

This one has nothing to do with my workplace down in The Festival Of Dirt, but a bunch of stories that came out in the last week. Admit it. You hate the planet, don’t you? Of course you do. We all do and I can prove it. First, it’s those damned divorced people:

“…because divorced households have fewer people, they have more rooms per person and are using their living space less efficiently. This inefficiency may also lead to an increase in generating greenhouse gases, the study concludes.

They’re jerks, right? Those divorced people. Bah pooh!

But what about environmentalists? They’d be in favor of green energy projects, right? They couldn’t possibly be planet haters too…

The coalition, the Coastal Habitat Alliance, also sued over the wind project in state District Court in Travis County. That suit claims that the state’s Public Utility Commission illegally denied the alliance’s request to participate in permit hearings for the wind project’s transmission line.

Where can you turn then? The wise men inhabiting the cradle of Christianity must have an answer to fix this mess. What say you, oh soothsayers?

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

“The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle,” said Liad Ortar, the campaign’s cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site’s environmental forum. “Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation.”

Okay. No help there. Certainly the combined intelligence of no more august a body than the United Nations will provide relief for our imminent crisis. After all, we’re on the brink of disaster and must take every drastic step possible to stem the tide of carbon dioxide emissions. They’ll take the wisest course, surely, and show us the way towards a green future…

Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.

But critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.

“Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country,” said Chris Goodall, author of the book “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.”

Alright then. If they’re not taking this thing all that seriously…

Your pal,

bob

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Institute Of Fairly Reasonable Forward Movement

Friends,

Oh, how the professional journalist class complains about pesky bloggers. Always with the research and the agendas and the poor spelling. Here’s a guy who’s kind of a journalist who’s the latest to have gone cranky (thanks to deadspin.com):

“And when you look at the internet business, what’s dangerous about it is that people who are clearly unqualified get to disseminate their piece to the masses. I respect the journalism industry, and the fact of the matter is …someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can. They are not trained. Not experts.

He’s got a point (after you enjoy the comments on that post), so by the power vested in me, I hereby introduce the International Institute Of Fairly Reasonable Forward Movement credential process for bloggers. For your substantial tuition fee, you’ll receive training in subjects such as; writing words, thinking about things, putting things on the interwebs, and making certain statements. Once you have attained those high and lofty goals, you’ll receive certified certification from the Important Board of Blogging Certification. Wince no more at ad hominem attacks by people who are actually getting paid for the kind of writing you do every day—for free!

You’re proud, you’re slightly unhinged, you’re down with the typey and the linkey. Get your certification today!

Your pal,

bob (Dean of Students)

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Genius! – The Lifecycle Of The Common Work Ticket

Friends,

This is a quick one, but remember that it drives those of us in the darker arts of gizmo fixertàge completely batcrap nuts. Take notes:

Wednesday, a week ago: Computer problem encountered by staff member. Too busy. Resolves to think about it tomorrow.
Thursday, last week: Staff member makes half-hearted attempt to troubleshoot and perhaps remedy problem. Attempt fails.
Friday: Staff member enlists coworker in department to help resolve problem. Two heads are better than one, certainly. New attempt fails. Successive attempts put off until Monday.
Monday: Oh yeah, did problem magically resolve over weekend? No. Think about telling manager—tomorrow.
Tuesday: Discuss problem with manager. Manager asks subordinate to submit trouble ticket. Ticket submitted at end of day.
Wednesday, this week: I receive the ticket first thing in the morning and start work on problem. Original staff member expresses anger that problem has been plaguing her department for an entire week and that I.T. response has been so slow. Problem resolved in less than thirty minutes from receipt of ticket.

This scenario has been stripped of specifics simply due to the fact that it has played itself out four times over the last two months. The details aren’t important but the dumb. Oh, the dumb. It burns.

Your pal,

bob

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Leftovers

Friends,

As a public service announcement, I’d like to make it abundantly clear that Tofurkey does not a sandwich make. And just to put an exclamation mark on the whole affair, eww. If you follow the link, you’ll see some recipes, but once again, eww. It was fine the first time last Saturday, during Thanksgiving: Part I. It was even okay reheated on Thursday for Thanksgiving: Part II. The leftover thing really isn’t happening with Tofurkey though.

If the Friday afternoon sandwich is the big thing I have to miss about eating critters, I think I can deal. Can I hear an amen?

– bob