Month: October 2010

Movember is really upon us!

Note: This is a repost from October 14th, with a “before” picture added. Happy Hallowe’en!

Like a coat of arms for his face: A well maintained moustache is a symbol of the modern gentleman.

Recently I Tweeted that I was going to grow an evil moustache to look like a guy who ties women to train tracks. My Twitter friend @ALL_CAPS Tweeted back that I should be part of his Movember team. I didn’t know what Movember was. The same day I joked over lunch with a few of my coworkers that we should all grow moustaches just for fun. Pretty much everyone I spoke to seemed to like the idea.

Did you ever hear of « Movember » ?

The ‘Mo’, slang for moustache, and November come together each year for Movember.

Each November we challenge men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The moustache is our ribbon, the means by which we raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, our commitment is to grow a moustache for 30 days. Funds raised benefit Prostate Cancer Canada.

Registering is easy, and just hit the following link if you want to join @ALL_CAPS’ team “The Movemberists”. We’ve got 11 members so far and it’s still early!

Here’s a before shot, taken today:

The Glamorous Before Shot

Later tonight I’ll completely shave my little goatee and scruff, and then Every day in November, I’ll post a picture of my growing moustache, and I’ll also do this 30-day meme that I’m stealing from Sarah:

  • Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
  • Day 02- The meaning behind your blog name
  • Day 03- A recent picture of you and your friends
  • Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn’t have
  • Day 05- A picture of somewhere you’ve been to
  • Day 06- Favorite super hero/fictional character and why
  • Day 07- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
  • Day 08- Short term goals for this month and why
  • Day 09- Something you’re proud of in the past few days
  • Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad
  • Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends
  • Day 12- How you found out about WordPress and why you made one
  • Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you
  • Day 14- A picture of you and your family
  • Day 15- Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play
  • Day 16- Another picture of yourself
  • Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
  • Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have
  • Day 19- Nicknames you have; why do you have them
  • Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future
  • Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy
  • Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else
  • Day 23- Something you crave for a lot
  • Day 24- A letter to your parents
  • Day 25- What I would find in your bag
  • Day 26- What you think about your friends
  • Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge
  • Day 28- A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?
  • Day 29- In this past month, what have you learned
  • Day 30- Who are you?

Who’s in? ;-{)

I’m about to kill someone. GRRRRRRR!

We used to have our own server room. Walking distance from my office. Easy access. Somehow, the computer service people convinced us to move all our servers in their computer room.

What they sold us:

  1. “The computer room is climate-controlled!”
  2. “We have three backup generators!!”
  3. “There’s 75 of us! We can give you excellent customer service!!!”
  4. “We have sophisticated monitoring tools!!!!”
  5. “We’ll take care of the ever-greening!!!!!”
  6. “There’s 75 of us! Even if 10 guys are sick, we can still take care of your systems you won’t even see the difference!!!!!!!!!”
  7. “We recognize the importance of your service!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
  8. “You’ll have direct access to a technician 24/7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

What they’re actually delivering:

  1. “AC is out in the computer room… Which servers of yours can we shut down for the day?”
  2. “Two of the three backup generators failed, there will be an outage of 24 hours this week-end.”
  3. “Well, I’m not in charge of this anymore.”
  4. “It seems the monitoring tools failed at the exact time the problem happened – so we didn’t notice.”
  5. “You need new boxes? Let’s talk about the cost for a bit.”
  6. “I’m new on you system and I need 4 months to get up to speed.”
  7. “Is that patch you want applied purely cosmetic? I have other important things to do.”
  8. “Let me get back to you on that during the week.”

I’m so pissed right now.

One month

In one month, I’ll be celebrating my 15th wedding anniversary.

Online sources say that it’s the crystal anniversary. Sounds like a great opportunity to get my LovelyWife those awesome Roulette Scotch glasses that she loves so much, doesn’t it? From their website:

Roulette is a unique collection of whiskey tumblers. Hand made in Germany, this crystal glass is so perfectly crafted that it effortlessly spins on its axis, like a roulette wheel does on the casino’s playing table. Almost ‘magic’ to watch, it permits a gentle swirling and therefore a gradual extraction of the deepest aromas of this noble liqueur. The currently available 5 different styles will be gradually joined by 5 more, to create a truly amazing and collectors sought gallery of stunningly beautiful glasses.

I already have She already has the #2 and #4.

It’s amazing that she stayed with me this long, isn’t it?

To the left!

Weird.

I drew this awesome rendition on my iPad.

I dreamt that in an alternate reality, instead of having the argument “Does the toilet paper need to roll out from the front or the back of the holder?”, people would argue about the toilet paper roll unrolling from the right or the left.

Then I tried to publish this from my iPad with the WordPress App, and ended up deleting a bunch of posts, and basically screwed a whole bunch of settings. Who knew you couldn’t schedule posts from the iPad? That just seems weird. Anyone had any success with the WordPress App for iPad? I’m reading some reviews online and it seems to be borked.

My secret admirer – solved

Edit: Apparently, blogging from my iPad is really hard. I seem to erase a whole bunch of posts.

So I figured out who offered me the awesome 2011 Malt yearbook. I’m happy because it’s not someone I need to take a restraining order against. 😉

So to my BFF Martin, thanks a million mate.

In other news, I spent most of the day working in the yard, cutting branches and stuff. So now it’s onto dinner (Raclette FTW!)  with a nice Valais Wine. Yum!

My secret admirer – an update

Yesterday I wrote about my secret admirer and the book I received. You can read all about it here.

If you’re too lazy to click, here’s the gist of the story:

I received a book that I didn’t order.

The book came with a standard form-letter addressed to “Dear Whisky Friend”. Well that didn’t help. But it also had an order number and the name and email address of the editor, along with a line that says “email me if you have any questions about your recent purchase”. So I did.

Hello there,

I just received a copy of the 2011 Malt Whiskey Yearbook – order number 3683.

I have to be honest with you, I have no recollection of ever buying this book. Don’t get me wrong, I love Single Malt, and I would most likely buy the book, but I didn’t.

So I’m puzzled. I’m thinking someone else made that purchase for me, as my credit card statement doesn’t list this purchase. But the book only came with a generic “Dear Whisky Friend” letter. Would you be able to tell me who bought this book? That way I can thank the proper person.

All the best,

Mike

This morning I got a reply from the Editor:

Hi Mike

You´re right, it was another person who ordered the book for you and paid for it.

However, I´m sorry to say that I am not in the position to reveal who that person was. By law I´m obliged not to reveal any information from my customer record to a third party. Sorry.

Hope you´ll enjoy the book.

Best regards / Ingvar

Ingvar Ronde
Editor
Malt Whisky Yearbook

So it looks like I’m out of luck to get a name, but at least I know I’m not crazy enough to order books without remembering. Still, I have a few “suspects” lined-up. So I fired an email to the first one. He’s Mike from secret-scotland.com (those guys are amazing, and they’re helping me plan my Scotland trip. I’ll do a post just about them soon)

Hi Scotland Mike

[Some stuff about the Scotland trip]

I would also like to thank you for the Whisky Malt 2011 yearbook I received in the mail yesterday. I had no recollection of ordering this book, and wrote to the editor to ask who ordered it for me. Well, he wouldn’t tell me who did, but let’s just say you’re on top of my “suspects” list, since it’s a book about Whisky, it was paid for in pounds, and you’re pretty much the only guy in Scotland who knows my mailing address.  😉 If it’s not you, I’m sure you can find something else to apply the thank you to. 😀

Cheers,

Canadian Mike

But still no dice. BTW, I don’t call him “Scotland Mike”, and I don’t call myself “Canadian Mike”. I only did this not to confuse you.

Hi canadian Mike,

[Some stuff about the Scotland trip]

Cheers,

Scotland Mike

P.S. The book must be from some secret wealthy benefactor! The “wealthy” bit rules us out of that category.

So I’m back to square one. And by the way, the book is awesome.