Nerd Word(s): Don't Take My Shoelaces Away

Don't Take My Shoelaces Away
- Statement

1. "I'm fine"

[ Origin: I believe that when prisoners or mental health patients are suspected of being suicidal, their shoelaces are taken away, or they are given shoes without them for fear of strangulation by shoelace. ]

- usage
1. "Man, when Ron Artest got that rebound and put back, that had to be one of the worst moments as a Suns fan. Are you going to be okay?"
"So long as Steve Nash is a Sun, you don't have to take my shoelaces away."

2. "There's a rumor that Miyamoto won't be directing the next Zelda game."
"You don't have to take my shoelaces away until we at least see how it turns out."

This is Not the Post You Were Looking For

• Yesterday the swine flu hit the Internet. No, I don't mean the actual flu. I mean the general pandemonium of it. Twitter was on fire with messages about it. News sites were running reports. At the end of the day, what good did it all do?
  
  Let's keep in mind that roughly 155,000 people die each day for various reasons. It's really not time to freak out yet. That being said, I find it amusing that while the whole world was in an uproar, someone at the U.S. Department of Health was finding my blog by searching for Shaq:
  

• Today I went to the Podiatrist. Apparently I have a very mild case of Plantar Fasciitis if anyone really cared. The fantastic part is the location of the doctor's office. It resides right here on the second floor of this building. Anyone see the problem? Two points if you do.
  

• Alexis Gentry, the new Twitter voice of the Suns, and head coach Alvin Gentry's daughter recently asked the fans for nicknames for Goran Dragic. I posted a reply, which she actually mentioned.
  
  My family's nickname for Dragic comes from both his resemblance to my man-crush Steve Nash, and from my mother's tendency to mix up basketball players. Many a night we would walk in to the living room to hear Mom screaming, "Nash you fool!" A quick glance at the court would reveal that Nash was actually on the bench. Dragic's nickname soon became "Not Nash".
  
  "Oh man. Not Nash is on fire tonight."

• Searching Google for: Best Story on Blogger has me as the #1 or #2 hit right now.
  Searching Google for: Babe of the Day puts me on the first three pages.

The Liang Prank

Back in October, my coworker Liang was sent to Romania for a one month assignment. For him it was an opportunity to check out Europe and try out a new work place. For Sean it was the opportunity to pull the prank of a lifetime. We quickly assembled a team of super nerds from around the office and began plotting.

The "Plan" as viewed on Liang's new Newton.

Liang is the very proud owner of a three monitor set up. As I noted in The Developer Trap, monitors are at a premium around the office, and Liang loves to point out that he has three. We began by taking all of the technology out of his office and filling it with old and antiquated equipment. Whenever possible, something made by Apple was used since Liang has a bigger man-crush on Steve Jobs than I do on Steve Nash.

Liang also owns a large stuffed rabbit that sits in his office. We once considered an intervention, or at least investigation, but eventually decided that it's better to just not ask questions.

For my part of the prank, we stole the bunny and hid it in a ceiling tile. I then made several ransom note style newspaper cutout messages to lead him on a scavenger hunt from one point to the next. A cardboard X was taped to his window, and at 3 PM, the X would cast a shadow on the floor of where he should search.

Liang hates having the windows in his office open. You'd think having an office in one of the few Phoenecian sky scrapers would be incentive enough to look outside, but Liang stays true to his nerd roots and avoids the sunlight like the nosferatu.

We were going to steal and hide the blinds, but eventually decided that leaving them open with a surprise waiting would be a better decision. We printed out a large photo of us holding the bunny, cut it in to tiny strips, and placed it on his blinds so that when they were opened the picture wouldn't be noticed. When the blinds were then closed, the picture would reveal itself.

Sean wanted Liang to take it in the face like a boxer who doesn't know how to block, so we took a large, battery operated nerf gun and rigged it to go off when the door was opened. This would also trigger an 80's style tape deck which would then beging playing this song.

A bungee cord was then secured to the door to make sure he wouldn't immediately shut it to block the oncoming nerf barrage.

The final part of the plan was packing peanuts.

Lots and lots of packing peanuts.

It took two full nights after work to set up the joke. A webcam was placed inside of Liang's office, and on the morning of his return from his long trip it was set to broadcast to the our 50+ coworkers who were all "in" on the joke.

As he turned the handle and the door flew out of his hand I could hear a loud obsenity shouted from the general direction of his office. He immediately jumped back and out of range. Like a newborn baby, he stood for a few moments, his brain not fully registering what his eyes were seeing.

After inspecting and cleaning for a few hours, he finally had a path made to his desk.

"At least I can finally get some work done, maybe answer some emails" he told me as we returned from lunch.

It was at this point that he shut his blinds.

As I walked back towards my office I heard an exasperated nerd sigh, "You got the bunny too?"

A few notes:

• The webcam feed was saved, but unfortunately the sound was not. You can view it here, although there's not much to see.
• The packing peanuts were a bit of an optical illusion. The illusion can be seen here. Still, it was about 100 dollars worth of packing peanuts. Were you fooled? He certainly was.
• You can see the full set of pictures on my flickr account here.
• Next to Steve Nash, Sean is my vote for Canadian of the year. Make sure you let him know if you enjoyed the prank.
  

Finally, A Use for Twitter

Sean informed me a few days ago that he had been following "The Real Shaq" on twitter. 

"You realize that 'The Real Shaq' is probably a 5'4 White, 14 year old emo kid who's getting his jolly's from the attention, right?" I asked him.

"I don't know. I think it's really him"

Today Sean and I were discussing rumored trade situations over IM, and the possibility of Shaq being traded to Cleveland.

"Well, I just got a twitter from The Real Shaq, and he's at 5 & Diner right now," Sean informed me.

"Let's go then" I said, assuming that I'd finally put this "Real Shaq" crap to rest.

Twenty minutes later we were pulling up to the restaurant and looking for the big black truck that he's rumored to drive around town. "Maybe that's it" Sean said, pointing at an older, but nice Van and laughing. As we pulled up I saw the Superman symbol on the grill.

Maybe that is it?

We went in, and to my surprise the MDE(Most Dominant Ever) was sitting in the corner booth by himself. We gave the man a nod and "Hey" as we walked to our table and were soon whispering back and forth like 12 year old girls at the 7th grade dance.

"You go talk to him" I said, while tugging nervously on my dress.
"No, you go talk to him" Sean replied while flipping his hair.

We placed our order, and spent 10 minutes trying to work up the sack to go say something.

"Should I tell him I'm glad he's sticking around?"
"Go tell him you're his twitter buddy"
"Should I ask for a picture?"

Given another 2-3 years, I'm sure we would have worked up the nerve to go talk to him, but before that could happen Sean's iPhone buzzed with a "tweet" from Shaq.

I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say somethin

"Hey" Sean said, with a slight bit of confidence.

Returning to our hushed whispers I asked Sean, "Should we go talk to him now?"
"I don't know, should we?"

"Yes, you should" a very deep voice entered our conversation from 2 booths over.

We quickly hopped up and rushed over like like two eight year olds who had just heard the ice cream truck pass by.

"I know it's dorky man, but can I get a pic with you?" I asked, slightly intimidated.

"Of course" he said, "Pull up a seat" The behemoth slid over and patted the booth next to him. As I pulled out my phone to take a picture he snatched it out of my hand and inspected it.

"What's this got? Windows Mobile?"
"Um... yeah"

Doing my best to look tall. Thanks for slouching, Shaq.

He gave it the once over before handing it back and showing off his Google Phone. We talked for a bit, and snapped a photo for both Sean and me before shaking hands and returning to our table. I almost got the feeling he wanted us to hang out, but we didn't really want to push our luck.

"Make sure you put that on your web page" he said as we walked away.

After he'd left, our young waiter came over. We asked if Shaq had actually eaten anything since his table was empty when we'd gone over.

"He ordered like 20 dollars worth of food" the kid stammered out, obviously thrilled to be talking about it, "And he left me a 160 dollar tip. Then he asked for a Sprite and gave me forty bucks for it."

Sean and the big Shaq-tus.

We got back to the office, and saw that Shaq's last twitter was basically calling us a bunch of panzies:

To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect

Not to be outdone "The Real Nash" wrote:

Diesel, 5 n diner has great chili and milkshakes but i know you're on a diet so you had a salad!!

Twitter accounts for: Sean and Jesse.  Feel free to follow us.

West Side Story

My co-worker Sean is a pimp. If you know him, then that's no surprise to you, but it bears repeating. While my programmer free time is spent writing a half finished video game that would have been "slightly behind the times" had I finished it in 1995 when I started it, his free time is spent writing kick ass websites that will change your life.

When he was younger he wrote SkateboardSpots, and then the now infamous BallersUseTide.

"Man," he commented over IM a few weeks ago. Sean always starts deep and insightful conversations with the word Man. "I should make a flip book of the standings in the West this year where they all switch places as it happened."

I almost feel bad for the guy. I pulled him back in to the exciting and inevitably disappointing world of being a Sun's fan about 2 years ago. Since then he's watched most every game with the enthusiasm of a 5 year old who thinks that Steve Nash is a superhero.

But he was right. If you paid attention to the NBA this year you know the top 8 spots flipped and flopped more than Ginobili and Bowen combined. Every day someone different was in first place, and a loss could easily take you from 3rd to 6th, and a win could take you back again.

"Maybe you should make a website?" I asked. He is a web developer after all.

2 weeks later he was done:
http://ign.oram.us/nba/

I'd like to say I helped, but truth be told, about 99.5% of the work was done by Sean.

Digg It

Valentine's Day Plans

A few months ago, before Sun's general manager Steve Kerr decided to metaphorically punch me in the balls* and trade Shawn Marion for Shaq, I bought tickets to a few of this season's Sun's games. One particular game just happened to be on Valentine's day. It wasn't so much the day as it was the fact that we'd be playing the Mavericks, one of our biggest rivals.

I bought 4 tickets to the game assuming I'd find some other peeps who'd want to go too and Sean quickly jumped on 2 of them. Apparently he won the lottery when marrying Amy because 2 tickets to a Suns game is a good Valentine's day date for her.

Miranda naturally assumed the fourth ticket was hers. "You know you're not going to get a date" she repeatedly told me, but I held out hope.

"You want me to ask FlipCup?" Sean asked me one day. FlipCup is Amy's ridiculously cute and ridiculously too young for me sister Rachel. She got the nickname one St. Patty's day after a particularly heated drinking game. "You know, just in a friendly way." he continued, but I could already see his eyes aglow at the thought of he and I being brothers-in-law.

"Sure" I replied, "It's better than taking my sister on a Valentine's date and she seems like fun."

A few text messages later she was on board, and the evening was mostly planned out. I didn't know much about Rachel except that she seemed like fun, had a penchant for silly hats, and was short(Read: win, win, win).

"I need to do something obnoxious and cheesy since it's Valentine's day" I told Sean, "You know, like buy a huge stuffed teddy bear and make her carry it around all night."

"Yeah, freak her out. That seems like a good way to go." he replied, but Amy thought Rachel would be amused.

Today, like two cowboys who can't quit each other, Sean and I made our way to Wal-mart to look for bears. After searching through what seemed like miles of Dickie's and generic products we found the Valentine's section and picked out the biggest bear. Sean suggested I go find one of the kid's Sun's jerseys and put it on the bear.

"Wow, you really commit to a joke" my co-worker Anne commented after questioning me about the bear that now sits in my office.
"Uh, yeah, that's me in a nutshell"

Don't worry peeps, there's still a week and a half for her to come to her senses and back out of this.

*Seriously, unless this trade includes plans to a working time machine to go get Shaq from 5 years ago, what were they thinking? I'm sad. I'm scared. I'm confused. Somebody call Steve Nash and ask him to hold me.

Is Nash taking shots at AI?

I was recently searching for movies on youtube featuring my man-crush Steve Nash. I stumbled upon a few which made me wonder if he was purposely making fun of Allen Iverson or if it was just a coincidence. Since it appears to be Magic Media Month here at Sesquipedalis I decided to share the movies with you(Or is it Awesome Annual Alliteration day?).

To fully understand what I'm talking about you should first watch the now famous footage of Iverson in a post game interview. If you're a basketball fan of any kind you've probably already seen this, but even if you have seen it you'll probably still find it amusing.

Now watch these two videos of Steve Nash

See what I did there?

Geremy(Todd) mentioned to me that he was surprised I hadn't written about this yet. To be honest I just wasn't sure if I was ready to or not, but I think the time has come. I'm ready to talk about it.

Sometimes things just fall in to place out of nowhere, and you think they're perfect. An unexpected love seems like it could never falter as if some invisible hand is writing your story. You put faith in this "thing" because the only logical explanation is that it was fate. This perceived perfection removes even the possibility of things ever "turning sour".

Then you hit the inevitable bump in the road. Suddenly fear takes over. Doubt rushes over you like a tidal wave that you can't possibly stand against. Soon all the things you held to be true in this world are questioned. Was it real? Was it a lie? Is the world truly round?

Eventually we deal with these wounds. It's life. Either they heal, are displaced, or the rift is mended with the once "true love".

The above of course describes my past year. The excitement came to an abrupt close over the summer in a way that I wasn't particularly prepared to deal with. At first I thought maybe it was time to move on, give up the ghost, stop carrying the torch, but when that little Canadian hit his first pull up three pointer this season I was hooked again and realized I had been fooling myself.

Go Suns.

NBA Action: It's FANtastic

Anyone who knows me, reads this blog, or has seen me walking down the street knows my feelings on the Phoenix Suns and Steve Nash in particular. My crush on him is rivaled only by my crush on the twins, and it took two of them to even come close to my feelings for the small Canadian genius.

With that in mind, I was obviously a little upset yesterday when the league decided to suspend Stoudemire and Diaw after they got up off the bench because Robert Horry took a cheap shot at Nash. I'm not going to retell the story as it's all over the news, but basically San Antonio played dirty, and they got a boost because of it.

Everyone who's followed this story has commented that we should take out one of their guys in a dirty play. Normally I'd say, "Turn the other cheek", but in this case it seems like the league is condoning that kind of action.

On a totally unrelated, and apparently obscure note, azcentral is reporting the following story:

The Phoenix Suns announced today that they had signed Scottsdale resident Mike Tyson to a 10 day contract.

Says Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni, "His ball handling is a bit weak, but I think you'll find his defensive abilities on Duncan... striking."

When asked for his thoughts Tyson said, "I'm just biting at the chance to get out there and show the world what I can do again"

My boy Sean N over at www.blarrg.com even got an advanced picture of Tyson in his uni.

At any rate, Sun's in 6.

More Elevator Humor...

Yesterday was a big day for me... I had two tickets to the Sun's playoff game against the Lakers. Sean N had two tickets also. In the past year, I have watched him grow from fan to super fan. He came in to the office wearing his new Barbosa jersey and started getting me psyched for the game.

By lunch time he was in a frenzy, so we made a trip to the mall for corn dog nuggets and to pick me up a Nash jersey to wear to the game. While we were there, we stopped by the photo booth and took some couple's photos that I think turned out rather nicely. All in all I'd say it was the quintessential trip to the mall.

I tried to get some inside information out of Sean about Nash. Since Sean is also a Canadian I assumed he knew him from the meetings or something, but he was too busy drawing hearts around Leandro Barbosa pictures to respond.

Eventually it was time to go meet Mory for dinner(She was my date for the game), so I packed up and headed out. As I left, there was a woman in the elevator who asked if I was going to the game(I was wearing a Nash jersey and talking to a coworker about the game, so it was probably pretty obvious).

"Yeah, I'm excited. Should be a good game"
"I'm going too"
At this point I feigned excitement and responded, "Maybe I'll see you there!!! I'll be the one in the Nash jersey"

I thought it was a somewhat funny joke since:
A) I had just said I was going to the game, and was wearing the jersey.
B) 85% of the people in the crowd would have on the same outfit that I did.

Apparently I was wrong because she looked at me like I had just been dropped off by the short bus. The small talk continued for a moment, but she quickly took off after the doors opened.

On the bright side, the Suns crushed the Lakers.

Top 5: Things that rocked about last month

It was recently brought to my attention that a little over a month ago I was quite excited about the upcoming month, which has since passed. The person who brought this to my attention shall remain nameless, but she recommended I write a follow up about the top 5 things that actually rocked about last month and made all 5 points "Kendall".

Still not sure who this anonymous person is? Okay, last hint. Her name rhymes with Bendall.

But enough about that, let's put this train back on the tracks and move on with the topic at hand. In no particular order, the top 5 things that rocked about last month...

1. My Hoodie - The weather has been great. The one most important thing I'd forgotten about was that the return of cold weather means the return of the hoodie.

2. Holidays - Thanksgiving was subdued as it was tethered to a more sad event(My grandmother passed away the following day), but Halloween was a fun time. My costume was great, and riding around in my car with the Batman theme was hilarious. The quantity of scantily clad women was somewhat low, but that was okay.

3. Steve Nash - New franchise record 15 wins in a row and counting. Enough said.

4. Wii - My month has been exceptionally busy, and while I got the new Nintendo on the 19th of November, I'm still less than half way through Zelda. The other nerds have repeatedly made fun of me for not being done, but nothing shuts a nerd up like, "Yeah, I've been busy hanging out with the super hot neighbor twins."

5. Neighbors - Oh yeah, and I guess meeting my neighbors and all that was fun too. As I look back, I haven't written about them much, but I guess it just isn't that exciting for me.

Top 5: Things that rock about the upcoming month

Unfortunately it's been a somewhat slow week for me. With a boring week comes a boring blog entry. Sure I had a night where I hit on a lesbian, hung out with a Cardinals cheerleader, and saw two people making out who really had no business making out, but that night sort of had that "Been there done that" kind of feel, so I think it's time to mix it up a little.

This is the first and most likely last entry in a series we'll call "Top 5". Today's topic, the upcoming month, and why it rocks.

1. Thanksgiving -
I don't like turkey. I don't like cranberry sauce. In fact, 9 out of 10 traditional Thanksgiving day foods I'm not a huge fan of. The exception of course being stuffing. I'm sure someone will correct me here if I'm wrong, but I believe that Stuffing comes from the Navajo word Stuffay meaning quite literally "Fruit of the gods".

So what is it (aside from the stuffing) that rocks about Turkey day? It's a few things:

First, it's tradition. I'm not a huge fan of tradition either, but when it comes to the holidays, the family gets together, and we all bring our A game. Jokes are flying. People are laughing. Tales are told.

Second, it's a four day weekend to relax and have fun.

Third, I've had a date of one sort or another for the last eight Thanksgivings. Sure the first six were Stacey, and the last was Angela who was there because her girlfriend is scary, not to see me, but that doesn't matter. Of course the prospects for a date this year are looking mighty slim, but I haven't given up hope.

If you're a single, female blog reader between the ages of 21 and 40, and in to short nerds, feel free to send in an application to join the family T-day.

2. Cooler Weather -
I hate talking about the weather. I hate caring about the weather, but ever since I got a bad ass convertible, the two months a year where it's cool enough to ride around during the day with the top down are the best. There's just something relaxing about it.

3. Halloween -
There's only one thing that rocks about Halloween, and that's the costumes. No, I'm not talking about some dude dressed up in a really funny costume, or somebody who just nailed that Superman look, I'm talking about the females. Sometime between age 15 and now I missed the memo, and it became acceptable for a girl to dress as anything on Halloween as long as it was slutty. Slutty Devil, Slutty Police Officer, Slutty Nurse, Slutty Ballerina, Slutty Princess? Yeah, I've seen them all.

Girls seem to enjoy dressing revealing and sexy, and guys obviously like it, so why does it only happen one day a year? Is it that we as a society need an excuse, or is it that if we did what we wanted all of the time it would become less exciting?

4. New Nintendo and new Zelda -
Unless you're a first time reader, you already know I'm a huge dork, so let's skip the formalities on this one and just say that I will spend half the month of November skipping through the house with a cardboard tube in my left hand pretending it's a sword and humming the theme to Legend of Zelda. Sure it makes me lame, but despite what I said in #1, it's tradition.

5. Steve Nash -
For all the crushes I've written about in my blog, none come close to my man-crush on Steve Nash. I loved the guy's spunk when we had him as a rookie 10 years ago, but since he's come back to the Suns, the little Canadian kid who could has dominated the NBA through sheer will. He's short, not that fast, not that athletic, and he seems to follow my hair style choices. He hooked up with both a Spice Girl, and Elizabeth Hurley. Basically, he's my hero, and in a couple of weeks he returns to action to own the NBA yet again. I couldn't possibly be more excited.