A pickup with three guys in it pulls into the lumber yard. One of the men gets out and goes into the office.
“I need some four-by-two’s,” he says.
“You must mean two-by-four’s” replies the clerk.
The man scratches his head. “Wait a minute,” he says, “I’ll go check.”
Back, after an animated conversation with the other occupants of the truck, he reassures the clerk, that, yes, in fact, two-by-fours would be acceptable.
“OK,” says the clerk, writing it down, “how long you want ‘em?”
The guy gets the blank look again. “Uh… I guess I better go check,” he says. He goes back out to the truck, and there’s another animated conversation.
The guy comes back into the office. “A long time,” he says, “we’re building a house”.

Saw the movie again about a few days ago. Well, actually, just caught about the last 45 minutes of it. It has a very catchy ending theme that was based on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” And now it’s playing in my brain. Can’t help bobbing my head. It also reminds me of a couple of my trainees (yes, I work at a call center as a trainer) who were, well, let’s just say they weren’t honest. But anyway, it’s their life. They would just have to understand that if I issued them incident reports about their cheating, it’s not that I want to, but I have to. Oh well, to each their own.

Ever wanted to learn how to speak Spanish? Conversationally?

Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Create your own website. You can get a free blog by going to blogger.com.
2. Load it up with all the English words you can think or speak of.
3. Make up some conversational sentences, like, where’s the bathroom, or my bladder is bursting, or I am horny as hell.
4. Go to Google’s web translation page.
5. Type in your URI in the box provided for translating webpages.
6. Hit translate.
7. Voila. You already have a reference of sentences you can use when speaking to someone in Spanish.

Additional Notes:
You can also translate it to other languages, but Google’s language tool doesn’t really have any use if you wanna speak Japanese or Korean or any other language that has weird symbols for their alphabet, since you don’t know how to say those characters.

And they told me Google is ONLY a search engine.

A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly, “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

Bubba, Jim Bob, and Leroy were fishing out on the lake last November, and, when Bubba tipped his head back to empty the Jim Beam, he fell out of the boat into the lake. Jim Bob and Leroy pulled him back in, but as Bubba didn’t look too good, they started up the Evinrude and headed back to the pier.

By the time they got there, Bubba was turning kind of blue, and his teeth were chattering like all’s tryin’ to get out. Jim Bob said, “Leroy, go run up to the pickup and get Doc Pritchard on the CB, and ask him what we should do”.

Doc Pritchard, after hearing a description of the case, said “Now, Leroy, listen closely. Bubba is in great danger. He has hy-po-thermia. Now what you need to do is get all them wet clothes off of Bubba, and take your clothes off, and pile your clothes and jackets on top of him. Then you all get under that pile, and hug up to Bubba real close so that you warm him up. You understand me Leroy? You gotta warm Bubba up, or he’ll die.”

Leroy and the Doc 10-4′ed each other, and Leroy came back to the pier. “Wh-Wh-What’d th-th-the d-d-doc s-s-say L-L-Leroy?”, Bubba chattered.

“Bubba, Doc says you’re gonna die.”

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs saying the U.S. Government is not doing everything in its power to help the calamity-stricken States. These bloggers have taken the initiative to contribute in helping Louisiana, et al. Here’s an example: The Bulldog Manifesto.

And so because of this, I would like to ask Mr. George W. Bush. How does it feel to have some States, very popular and very self-sustaining, to suddenly degrade to a third-world country’s level? Heck, A third-world country’s even better. At least their people are used to their government not caring for them. They already know that their government can’t do anything for them. BUT YOURS CAN. Why don’t you pull out your troops from Iraq? Didn’t you capture Saddam already? Wasn’t that your mission? Or is capturing Iraq’s oil refineries your personal agenda? I don’t want to cuss, but this just bites.

I’m not an American. I’m an Earthling. Bite me.

I used to play tennis. I love the running and hitting and everything about it. I even followed the grand slam tournaments all-year long. But like I said, I used to play tennis. It’s been a long time since I played. I think it’s more than five years already. It was when Sampras was the king of the courts.

So when badminton became famous, I tried it out. It involves hitting something as hard as you can. And though I still enjoy running, at my age, I would enjoy hitting something more than running. But to my surprise, no matter how hard I hit the shuttlecock, that’s what they call the thing you hit, it doesn’t zoom as I liked it way back when I was playing tennis. It’s more tiring, it’s less satisfying, and it’s more tiring. Did I say tiring already? Anyway, I would still play badminton as long as it’s not for something big. I’d play it for fun, not for a prize. But I sure miss hitting balls than cocks. That didn’t come out right. Let me rephrase. I would rather play tennis than badminton.

…has been revived. After two long weeks of recuperation, Blue has been reinstated and revitalised. She’s humming like a bird. She’s purrin’ like a cat. She’s thumpin’ again. I missed her. That’s why we went South last weekend, to this resthouse in Tagaytay. Zoomin round the bends, huggin the curves and roarin on the straights. Been a while since I felt like that with Blue.

Blue’s my car, by the way. She got beached for two weeks because of loose tie rods, a cracked ball joint, and something that has to do with the engine support. It really didn’t take two weeks to fix those, but it took me two weeks to come up with the money to have her repaired. The actual repair took about two hours. Cost me a pretty penny, but it would’ve cost more if I went to the other shop that told me Blue had loose tie rods. And I’m pretty happy with the shop’s work. Besides, they gave me a 6-month warranty. If something goes wrong, I hope Blue stays together long enough for me to get to the shop to burn it down. Hehe.

There’s a really nice article, albeit a long read, posted at Nugget’s Live Journal. A very thought-provoking read for the geeks and a source of enlightenment for the noobs. Have a great read.

I’ve been following this comic strip for a while now. I even read and re-read the archives, from the first strip to the most current one. It’s a comic strip for geeks, by (I could only presume) a geek. It’s very witty, although sometimes, I can’t get the joke because it’s either too techy, or too regional. That’s where I also found the name for this website. Gormless. At first, it was defined as “one who is totally bereft of gorm.” This was totally a geek thing, making up a word that is virtually nonexistent. But then, some of the geeks who are also religiously following the strip proved me wrong. It WAS a word. Just not globally accepted and was buried beneath a cave of British literature a long time ago. The first website that defined the word was Wikipedia. Then it was moved to the Wiktionary. Then other online dictionaries added the word into their database about a few hours or days later. Now, it’s accepted all over and is being used by everyone. Gormless is a common word now. You can see the etymology, meaning and synonyms as well as where it first appeared when you go here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gormless.

The word is not flattering. It is condescending. Sarcastic, ironic, oftentimes offensive. One who is totally bereft of gorm. Funny, their actions may be. But the “them” can sometimes be you and me.

It’s all good.