I hate fucking hostels...
I know what you're thinking. Jesus Jefe, hostels are great! Such cheap living in such a great communal and invigorating setting, what's not to like?

1. My painful fucking steel bunk bed that's like some metal sculptor's wet dream.

2. None of the bathrooms on my floor work.

3. Jack-asses who check into a hostel after midnight.

4. The crazy fucking middle-aged German guy who paces around my room muttering to himself. He of course is very friendly with your author. Ever since I mistakenly thought he was retarded and offered to help the crazy old bastard find the 3rd floor he's had a special place for yours truly.

5. It smells kinda funny.

At any rate, I just have one more night before I can look forward to the loving embrace of my own bed... just one more tortuous night and one more tortuous flight to go... Shit.

Nothing pithy comes to mind..
el Jefe

Tech Conference

A couple of months ago, with sheer bravado and some say a wee dash of chicanery, the Jefe managed to get his place of employment to send him to a tech conference. Said intellectual fun fest is being held in Sunny San Diego, California where your author's ass is as we speak (so to speak) firmly and most comfortably wedged. After three days of watching geeks blog and post pictures on the con, I belatedly remembered that I myself had a blog. So here it is, my first and last missive on Etech 2005.

I haven't been to many of these conferences(read:none), but so far I can tell you one thing, it is exhausting. Exhausting in many ways actually. There's the fact that a lot of these geeks and freaks are smarter/better than me in all things tech. They have neater toys (read: fancy phones and laptops), I'm forced to sit and pay attention, and its bloody expensive here in sunny San Diego.

I will say that these people are certainly an interesting lot to observe. The majority of these guys (and yeah, its a sausage fest. what else did I expect I wonder?) are the usual flavor of the geek/nerd/dork in appearance, about 30 percent of them are Metros, and the rest are just weird looking with a few minority groups such as women mixed in. The third group, the truly interesting group I'm sure, are no doubt merely the inevitable result of being a member of any strongly individualistic sect. Makes for good people watching for your's truly at any rate. There's this one guy here who I swear looks like he's from the Planet of the Apes.

Planet of the Fucking Apes!

I'm trying not to be a dick, but the guy has lots of curly hair, a near total beard (read: you can barely see face), and a hook nose that I swear makes him look like Cornelius's brother. I saw him at a presentation and I couldn't stop looking at him; He probably thinks I'm weird or something. Just when I thought I'd seen it all though, the coup de grace fell. I heard him speak and he had a well articulated yet soft spoken voice that definitely made him sound like Cornelius. It blew me away. I was expecting a horse or bellicose voice to fit the look, but no it sounded like Cornelius telling Charlton Heston to watch out or something.

When I expounded on this theory of the various techie types in Jwatt's general direction, who is attending with me, he automatically and logically queried me on my classification for myself. To which I replied... [EDITED OUT: This blog is nominally anonymous for heaven's sake! Can't have you people freaking recognizing me on the street! Hah!]. Which I thought was quite witty and intelligent on my part. I'd say he was suitably impressed.

This just in!
As I've been typing this I've been eavesdropping on a conversation behind me between an American and a Scot (this con is lousy w/Brits for some reason).

[Now, the reader will be tempted to condemn me for this. I'd should just like to point out that this isn't mere rude noseyness on my part but a sad result of my admitted Anglophilia where concerns accents.]

At any rate. I wasn't really listening until he happened to mention soccer. Apparently he's a coder of some sort. Fairly recently he says, a friend of his did a study which concluded (via 150 years of game history) that if you bet on the underdog team in any match in the Second devision or lower who are not a member of the top or bottom 5 teams that your betting success rate should approximate 80% for a season!

So there you are readers. I have repayed your strangely tenacious loyalty a thousand times over. Enjoy.

This conference was totally fucking worth it! I'm going to go home and get my org to
put all disposable income into this scheme!

Planet of the fucking Apes man!
el Jefe

Have you ever had a moment when you pause in the midst of your day, take stock, only to suddently realize just how much of a cliche you are? Wondered when it was that you gave up? Stopped trying?

I do.

More often than I'd care to admit

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Contents of Today's Grocery Cart:

2 bottles of wine
1 six pack Guiness
1 frozen pizza
1 piece of Gouda
1 box of crackers

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the sad bit... I just dropped $40 bucks at the store only to go home and microwave a hotdog for dinner.

Who can find the Bachelor in this picture? Anyone?
el Jefe