that other guy’s thoughts

in the interest of your interest and my curiosity, I poured through the archives to find the best and brightest posts of 2004, enjoy!

The year kicked off in to a banging good start as Juby became the inaugural inductee into the DTFU Hall-o-Fame, and I enjoyed the company of old friends.

The first of what would become 8 zillion people stepped up in an attempt to dethrone the king president. I decided that Johnny E. was my man, which apparently doomed him to failure. It all seems a bit pointless in perspective now doesn’t it?

Somebody other than me came through with a little perspective about ‘natural’ disasters that might have a smidgen of relevance to that whole sub-Asian tsunami thing. I started hearing rumblings of losing my job old job, continued to educate my readers in the ways of political ideology, and we all marveled at the possibilities of mankind.

I attempted to lose more money than the football players make, to no avail…but I did get a freebie. Other people’s jobs were lost but I didn’t fret. NASCAR confessions were made. A-ROD joined the evil empire but luckily became a little nancy. I decided that if you can’t have a little bit of fun with your friends…well then the terrorists have already won, and the Mooch let it all out in ‘greatest valentines day post in the history of the internet’ ™.

People were stupid, and I detected more impending doom in my job old job. I laid out official TOG foreign policy. I also flogged my own dead horse of journalistic competence, and broke ways with my generally conservative brethren on the FMA.

Spain got kicked in the teeth, and decided to pay the mob protection money. POTUS wannabe’s showed how ‘hip’ they were, and I decided that I was going to unleash the dogs of expletive war if I damn well felt like it…fuckers.

I interviewed for an internship at Boeing in Seattle, but didn’t get it because I have no discernable people skills…the fuckers. SpaceShip One got ready to do it’s thing, I dispensed some wit, raged against the machine, and because while definitely satisfying, this ultimately proved ineffectual, I vacationed in went to Florida in the month of April for kicks, it’s quite nice there about that time of year.

Reinvigorated by the spirit of competition, I raged some more, contemplated a change of venue, did a crap ton of work, graciously accepted the advice of good friends, and did even more work

SpaceShip One went to space (*side tangent* the picture in the post is still my desktop background *side tangent*) I developed an acute sense of accomplishment, and rightly so. Somehow I still found time to ponder the fate of the cow, and the special powers of Jimmy John’s employees.

Summer brought the wonder of GMail, the loss of the Gipper, and the appreciation of at least one grateful citizen. My job old job loss became official. I desperately attempted to spread the joy of GMail, a embarked for some more kicks.

Michael Moore tried to take over the world. And other’s tried to help. I railed against the modern nomenclature of Independence Day. And I still tried to spread the joy of GMail.

I got the best complement ever on the job old job. The world fought back against the evil forces of Michael Moore. I watched the boys of summer with more good friends, and once again tried to spread the joy of GMail.

I reached the legal drinking age, but to my friends dismay did not begin to partake of this pestilent devil’s brew. And decided that I didn’t give a crap about my job old job any more…and it felt good.

I was still pathetic, but at least I could share it with my aerospace chums during the new school year. Sadly, Nick got redeployed and wasn’t there to hear the rest of the AE clan tell each other stories about how awesome their internships were.

I had a little fun with girls a girl. Updates became infrequent and we endured a semester of my worst posting habits ever. Partly because of the aforementioned girl, and partly because politics are stupid when everybody is paying attention.

Included on this sparsely written semester long track are the hit singles:

I’m gonna quit my job, no wait nevermind
Help, I’m from western Kansas and I’ve lost my identity
School is hard
America…Fuck Yeah
Look at me, I’m ecclectic

and the timeless classic:

Wait, was it my birthday already?

Slowly, the postings returned in the month of December. Unfortunately, as it turns out, school is still hard and I’m still angst’n about my job old job. On the bright side however, good music is still good, and there is apparently a method to my madness.

And for Gits and Shiggles, I felt like postulating string theory, comprehending the economics of Super Wal-Mart, and pondering the lingustics of French fries.

Which wraps us up to this very post, in which I fairly apparently wrap up the year in review rather wittingly I might add.

Since the ‘French fry’ is derived from ‘French Fried Potatoes’ where ‘French’ is an adjective modifying ‘fried potatoes’ and fried is an adjective modifying ‘potatoes’ shouldn’t the proper two word abbreviation be ‘fried potatoes’ or ‘French taters’ Since technically, ‘French Fry’ could refer to anything that has be cut into long slender strips and fried in oil, such squash, halibut, or a human ear?

I’ve been thinking again, this time about Super Wal-Mart.

I am not entirely sure that bigger is necessarily better…and for pure self-interested financial reasons, not ‘hippy-isolationist, heaven help the small local business’ reasons.

It is my conjecture that having oodles of retail space only helps you if you oodles of different types of stuff to sell.

Given the hypothetical situation of a store that sells only the 1 square foot Product A that costs the store 5 dollars to buy and they sell it for 10 dollars. Let us also say that the store has 100 square feet of space in which to sell it. Naturally, they keep 100 units of Product A in stock. Now, so at any given time they have $500 invested on their inventory. If they sell 100 units each week, the store makes $500/week. Now, while that 100 units is in stock the store has to in effect ‘borrow’ the amount of money which it paid for it’s inventory. So, each week the store is making $500 on an investment of $500, or a relative earnings rate of 100% per week.

*side tangent for those of you with only minor understandings of economics* Anytime you hold money with out doing anything with it, you are essentially ‘borrowing’ else you could invest the money and earn interest, (if you’re stand still, you’re falling at the back)
*no more side tangent for you*

Now, if the store expands the amount of retail space to 200 square feet, but still sells only 100 units/week. The inventory investment at any given time is $1000 and the return in $500, and the store has effectively halved their relative earnings rate to 50% per week. And this doesn’t even take into account the extra money spent on acquisition and upkeep of the new space.

Granting the premise that a shiny new store with wide-open space will add business. Let’s assume that store now sells 125 units/week, a 25% increase. That still gives a relative earnings rate of 62.5%

Using this math you see that in order to keep the same relative earning rate, sales would need to increase at the same rate as inventory expansion.

Now in reality, a store would continue to expand and sell more units until their relative earnings ratio was just above whatever interest rate they could get by investing their money.

Now I said all that so you’ll understand me when I say this:

There is NO economic reason to display Cheerios boxes 37-abreast and 15-deep instead of 1-abreast & 15-deep unless you sell 37 times more Cheerios boxes that way. And yet, I saw this very arrangement last evening at Super Wal-Mart.

Yes folks, I’m and Aerospace Engineer, and I just explained economic principles to you that most economics graduates don’t understand. Ever wonder why I take offense to all college grads being considered of the same intelligence.

I’ve been thinking a lot about string theory, and it comes to me that nobody has any justification for how those little bands of oscillating energy transmit those oscillations through nothingness without relying on the electromagnetic force which string theory is suppose to replace.

I spent the evening at the daisy house party seeing old friends. Man, how I miss the days of yore. I was also informed, and rightly so, that I don’t divulge nearly enough information to you, my faithlessful readers.

For this, I am sorry. I know my posting habits sucked all semester. I’ve got plenty of excuses–hard classes and dumb girls to name two–but they’re not the real reason.

The real reason is that I walk the fine line of blogging. TOG’s thoughts exists not as some voyeuristic window into my everyday life, or as some publication for the sole purpose of convincing the masses that my ideas are good and everyone else is dumb.

I post because I have a point to make. Sometimes it’s political, sometimes not. Sometimes I want you all to know about something cool that happened to me, sometimes I just want you all to know my life is boring. But mostly I just like to make points.

In real life, I’m not an outgoing person; I don’t express myself to strangers at all. There’s a better than even chance that I’ve got some social anxiety disease, but I don’t care enough to worry about it. I don’t do something unless it’s worth doing, and I don’t say something unless it’s worth saying. This may rob me of some depth of human experience, but it’s they way I am.

It’s a round about way of making my point but… If I don’t post it just means that I’ve got nothing important to say, and my life is sometimes like that.

I would like you to look at the date stamp on my previous post, as well as on this one and ponder to yourself, or out loud, what are the odds that Kyle hasn’t moved from the same computer between posts?

Even if I didn’t know the answer, I’d give it better than even money.

TOG->Chill’n in the DL, thought you all might enjoy my latest favorite tunage:

Close the door and turn the lights low
Take a second take life slow
Listen to the sirens in the night’s glow
Inside my room

i got 4 walls around a 12 foot kingdom
it’s where my heart’s at, it’s where i sing from
my land where my fates are smilin,
come on in and i’ll grant you asylum
posters on the wall anounce a better way
pictures on the shelf recall a better day
the monster in the closet turned out to be a friend of mine
so now it’s cool we’re tight, i mean we’re hangin’ out like all the time
coast to coast i’m known to roam
renouned mostly for nouns and verbs as i spit sound
and my flights of fantasy race round reality
chase down insanity here where i hit ground
and it’s bound to be almost profound to me
to be sound asleep beneath my roof, between my sheets
it makes me pause, count blessings, learn lessons
stop stressin’ for a second, then i get back to busy streets

Close the door and turn the lights low
Take a second take life slow
Listen to the sirens in the night’s glow
Inside my room

Here it is the island where I spent my punishment
Where Boogie monsters boogied
Where the wild things came and went
I spend a thousand million hours in my winter’s discontent
Staring out at flowers, during April showers
But now the door is mine to open or to close as I see fit
A fort for all my treasures walls to things that don’t mean shit
I elevate my state here when I see my life in pits
And I’ve got lip shaped pillows so I’m always being kissed
We held our secret meetings here
Belted out the beatings here
To get the help to find myself I’m be myself retreating here
We speak a secret greeting here so only friends can pass
A moat to all my troubles and them I’m free at last
I’m the dj on the tables, I’m the mc on the mic
I’m the guy that rocks the solo and the hand that brings the light
I’m the tears upon my pillow and the frog that sings in spite
Because the things that come in here are only things I like

Close the door and turn the lights low
Take a second take life slow
Listen to the sirens in the night’s glow
Inside my room

-Inside My Room, 2 Skinnee J’s “Official Most Favoritest Band of TOG” From their newest album, Sexy Karate

Well, today was supposed to be the day that SOECS took over all my systems, but…

THEY FUCKED IT UP!

Their planned out ’system transfer’ so splediferiously bungled up that they’ve asked begged me to stay and keep the whole thing from crashing down on them and their precious egos.

Sorry fellas, Friday is my last day. Period

So the transfer has been postponed until they pull their collective heads out of their asses and realize that they have no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Muah ha ha ha!

Yo 6 o’clock every morning you waking up yawning
To the sound of your alarm clock alarm
About an hour from now
You should be at the place of employment
Which is annoying cause it’s so boring
Your co-workers are talking too loud for you to ignore them
It affects your occupational performance
You wonder why your work load is so enormous
Because your boss just laid off three quarters of the whole office
People get depressed, they get ulcers
From the stress that the corporate environment causes
Regardless of how you ultimately wanna solve this
Seems to me like you’ve got one of four choices:
You could take a new job offer for more chips
Stick it out a little longer or forfeit
But my advice to anybody that wants to quit
It’ll feel much better if you say it like this:

Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job, take this job, take this job and shove it

Yo, if your boss is a S-O-B
Tell him to S-H-O-V-E the J-O-B
Put your middle finger up slowly
Put it close enough to his face so he can examine it closely
Say I ain’t workin here no more
Who do you think you are?
Rip your apron off, throw it on the floor
Run to the door, to the payphone
Make a toll-free call
Tell your spouse what happened and where you are
So they can come and get you in the car later on
And help you search for a new 9 to 5 job
If the unemployment line ain’t that long
You can take your time printin out W-9 forms
Eventually, you’ll get on if you try hard enough
And you’ll get money if you keep punchin your time card enough
Maybe you hate it, maybe you love it
But if you hate it all you gotta do is get mad and tell the boss to

Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job, take this job, take this job and shove it

Yo, some occupations are like slave gigs
The boss is favored and get placed in something spacious
While the most hated get placed in some small cubicle spaces
Or get thrown down in the basement, get your stapler confiscated
You constantly waitin for a paycheck
Twelve months passed by and you still ain’t get paid yet
Here’s a optimistic motto
If you ever late for today you could say you early for tomorrow
Most 9 to 5’s are hard
cause the description in the job ain’t no picnic in the park
People get hired
Drink coffee to stay wired
So they don’t get tired, sleep late, and get fired

You came in late, you already ate,
nowww, you wanna take a lunch break!??!

Ay, yo bust it, ain’t no need to discuss it
Just take this job and shove it, right between your buttocks

Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job, take this job, take this job and shove it

Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Ah Ah ah ah ahahah ah
I ain’t workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain’t workin here no more
Ay Ay Ay ayee ay
I ain’t workin here no more

-Canibus & Biz Markie, Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee

…until I start my month of unemployment

I gave my two weeks notice on Friday. My 3.5-year journey through the woods of IT is finally coming to an end. When it’s all over I’ll write some serious postage concerning. Until then, remind yourself of my year-long transition through my previous bread line posts.