P.S. Don’t pay any attention to the title of this post. It’s a geek joke for my buddy Brad Bell.

I took my daughter over to my dad’s today. He lives in a small town outside of Columbia, and every year, they have a little parade and fair. Here are some of the pictures that I took today. They’re not great quality (I took them on my cell phone), but they turned out pretty good.

Actually, I just finished watching the video of Apple’s iPhone SDK roadmap announcement.  They’ve done so many things right over the last few years that it’s starting to make me feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.  When I first started working in IT, Apple and Macintosh computers were like the overpriced Yugos of the computer world.  Back then they were married to the RISC architecture, which in and of itself is not bad.  I think it was everything around the chip that made it an unholy nightmare.  I remember having to spend 3 hours one day trying to upgrade from 7.5.3 to 7.6 in order to get a certain peripheral working.  It sucked the life right out of me.

However, recently, everything has been going much better.  First was Apple’s decision to switch to a Unix-core operating system, OS X.  Then, more recently, they switched to an Intel-based hardware architecture.  Of course, all that goes without mentioning the iPods and iPhone, which brings me back to the iPhone SDK.  It makes me want to get an iPhone, just so I can make it tell me how darn sexy I look.

If you’re interested, check out the video.  It’s about 1 hour and 15 minutes long.  Probably not for the faint-of-heart.

Many thanks to Erica for taking the pics. Enjoy!

Here’s my first:

Catherine Zeta Jones

Catherine Zeta Jones is a beautiful, beautiful woman. The desire of men all over this great land. I liked her in the Zorro movies – they were cute. I enjoyed Entrapment with Sean Connery – I’m always up for a good caper. She was outstanding in Traffic – totally ruthless.

However, have you seen the frickin’ side of beef that she’s married to? Observe and compare:

I have to believe that she committed relational suicide when she made out with Sean Connery in Entrapment for all the world to see. Thirty-year-old hotty swapping spit with a sixty-year-old who sounds drunk all the time…I’m just saying.

First of all, there’s the groomsmen. They all come to the front of the church in a line, all dressed in the same threads. Sometimes I wish that they would hold hands like preschool kids at the museum field trip. It would make me giggle. They think they look fly. Their girlfriend/wife may even think they look cool. But, the sad reality is that only James Bond looks good in a bow tie.

I’m pretty sure that only half of the bridesmaids are glad to be there. Think about it. Put five women in a room and ask them what they think is good fashion. You’ll get at least four different answers. You take those same five women and make them all wear the exact same dress that none of them actually picked out, and you may well have a full revolt on your hands.

I think the best part of the wedding, though, has to be the kids. You never know what they’re going to do. If you’re actually lucky enough to get them down the aisle, you really have to watch them. Otherwise, one may knock over the candle stand and catch the bride’s dress on fire, at which point the Maid of Honor will have to beat her with the bouquet to save her life.

And of course, don’t forget the ever popular groomsman that passes out, or the bride who trips on her way down the aisle. My personal favorite, however, is when drunk Uncle Bob shows up and has Vietnam flashbacks around the time the flashbulbs start going off. Suddenly, the groomsmen look like Viet Cong, and the flowers look a lot like jungle. It takes a good four hours and a nice shot with a tranquilizer gun to get old Bob out of the baptistry.

I think the ideal wedding should be performed more like a BBQ. Everyone wears whatever they want, the food is way better than the country club’s, and you can just take drunk Uncle Bob out back and beat him senseless(er) when he starts acting up. Then, if the bride doesn’t die from the groom’s cooking, everyone gathers around for the kiss that seals the deal.

I know, I know. I’m a genius. And is God laughing – hopefully with me.

What’s really bad is when I have trouble with my shoes, and I spend a little too much time bent over. Then I get a little loopy and light-headed. Would it be weird if I used an oxygen mask to put on my shoes? Again, I’m just wondering.

The only thing that I hate more than being fat and disgusting is working out. It hurts. And it makes me tired. Neither one of those scenarios sounds good to me. Thankfully, our Bowflex in the spare bedroom serves other functions besides giving me muscular aches. First, it’s holding the floor down. Secondly, you can see it through the window, so folks assume that I use it.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of a good physical fitness routine. I also understand people that want to look hot. I wish I could do both of those without working at it. I used to work out all the time in college. I could be found in the gym every single day. For some reason, I didn’t mind the soreness back in those days, probably because I didn’t have a daughter that wanted to be carried everywhere we go. Maybe now that she is beginning to learn how to do these sorts of things on her own, I can get back in the swing of things.

I have to go now…my daughter wants me to come and wipe her butt. *sigh*

So, I wanna be a cowboy. Who doesn’t. Have you ever seen John Wayne swagger? When you swagger like that, people think one of two things – either he has jock-itch, or he’s a bad, bad dude. And the way he says “Pil-grum.” ** swoon ** It’s man-love at first sight (you know, where you shake a hand and do that little one-armed half-hug).

So, what’s brought this kind of talk on, you ask? Winchester. The Winchester 1300 Defender pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, to be exact. Here’s a picture if you’re interested.

But alas! My wife, Emma, is all up in arms (pun intended) over my newfound love affair. I mean, I understand her concern and all. She’s witnessed me fall out of a chair, trip over my own pants, and hurt myself in the most amazing ways. She knows about the time I accidentally drilled a hole through the side of our house. But let’s put that aside for a moment. I grew up in the country on a farm. My brother and I learned about guns at a very early age. In fact, I think my dad gave me a new .410 single-shot shotgun when I was just 12 years old. I loved that thing. I really do know what I’m doing around guns.

I like to look at the practical side of things. Crime is up in this town, and our mayor and city council don’t have a clue. They’re more concerned about setting up a citizen review board to knit-pick what our boys-in-blue do rather than coming up with ways to combat escalating violent crime. (Just as an aside, if you want to cut crime, I think you should start giving cops the authority to shoot anyone that has their pants hanging off their butt. It would send a message. That’s all I’m saying.)

I’m very concerned with protecting my family. Emma doesn’t quite understand that. The way I figure it, the reason she doesn’t understand is because she’s not the one in charge of protecting said family. That falls on the man of the house. I literally lose sleep over this some nights. I’m pretty sure that the sight of me in my underwear at 2-o’clock in the morning is not going to be enough to stop someone that breaks into our house. Although, I could be wrong. It seems to stop my wife all the time!

I’m going to keep working on her.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Pil-grum.