Yes, it is that time again. This week’s WBQotW pays homage to that less morbid of life’s two inevitabilities.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

Q: Why do programmers get Halloween and Christmas confused?

A: Because 31 OCT == 25 DEC

* Don’t be upset (or even surprised for that matter) if you don’t get this joke. In fact, you might be a healthier human being if you don’t. If you do get it, then sit back and remember those glory days in Discrete Math and laugh until Mountain Dew squirts out of your nose and ruins your “Seven of Nine” mouse pad.

The “Spring Musical” is in full swing. Last night was the first musical run-through with the choir and orchestra. Tonight, will be a full run-through (with dialog and songs).

When I auditioned for the musical this year, I resolved not to complain about it. During previous Christmas and Easter musicals, I have moaned and groaned about spending hours and hours at the church. Not this time.

This is a ministry which is to say I am offering my time to God and I am a firm believer that God does not accept a begrudged offering. Yes, we have spent an average of five nights a week at the church. Yes, I am tired. But if I want God to bless this production and bless people through it, I need to grow up a little and tough it out. I hope I’ve done a better job this time around.

Oh! And I’m not sure I mentioned this, but this will be the first time (since a Christmas pageant in 2nd grade) that I am singing a solo on stage. Scary! I get lots of encouragement from the choir and cast, but I’m still really nervous about it. Fear is foreign to me. I’m usually not afraid of anything other than physical pain. In fact, I’m usually not afraid to belt out a tune, but those are always Dr. Demento tunes and intended to make people laugh. This is totally different.

Oone last thing. Since I am playing a member of the Sanhedrin (Jewish high council) I am expected to grow a beard. HA! I’ll post pictures soon. It’s really pathetic.

What were you doing five years ago?
In March 2001 I had just gotten laid off from my first ‘real’ job after college, Insurance Technologies. They blamed the tech stock crash.

Five snacks I enjoy:
Cheetoes
Chili-cheese Fritos
Gorp (Good Old Raisins and Peanuts)
Nerds (Grape and Strawberry)
Butterfinger

Five songs to which I know all the lyrics:
“With or Without You” by U2
“I Love Rocky Road” by Weird Al Yankovic
“Flood” by Jars of Clay
“So Happy Together” by The Turtles
“Amazing Grace” verses 1, 2, and 4 *wink*

Five things I’d do if I were a millionaire:
Give a chunk to the church
Pay off my debt
Pay off my parents’ debt
Buy a house
Buy a car with cash in a metal brief case (and demand a retardedly low price)

Five bad habits:
Procrastination
Laziness
Surfing too much
Vocal ticks (from mild Tourette)
Snoring

Five things I like doing:
Loving on my angel, Tammy
Mountain Biking
Rock Climbing
PC Gaming (Strategy and MMORPG)
Eating

Five things I would never wear or buy:
A Macintosh
A suit
Shorts that go past my knees
A pet (cat, dog, fish, or otherwise)
Flip-flops (I own a pair, but they’re only for wearing in locker room showers.)

Five favorite toys:
Mountain bike
Computer
Climbing wall in my garage
Gameboy Advanced
Camera

This week’s white board quip comes from one of those ancient email forwards which purports to contain actual classified ads.

Classified ad – Wanted: 50 girls for stripping machine operators in factory.

Clearly, the machine operators’ union has grown too powerful!

Early this morning, a once in a century event took place. I tried to stay up for it, but I didn’t make it. Did you?!

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, but for those not in the know, our clocks experienced the following rare event:

01:02:03 04/05/06

Some folks will have to look at that for a minute to figure out the significance. The rest of us will wait for them to “get it”.

…

Ah! See now?! Isn’t that cool? Oh one, oh two, oh three… Twenty one minutes later, a slightly less cool event took place, which I also slept through:

1:23 4/5/6

Some folks say that you can enjoy this again this afternoon, but that doesn’t really count. Every good geek knows that 1 PM is really just 13 o’clock and there’s nothing cool about 13:02:03… Yeah. I’m a geek. Get over it.

Thanks for sharing this amazing second with me. I look forward to sharing 12:34 5/6/7 with you next year!

(Shamelessly scraped from The Sneeze.)

Yet another geekish quip this week. I don’t think this is from thinkgeek.com, but I’m not positive of that.

/* You are not expected to understand this */

If you don’t know what it means… well, then it is an effective comment.

This Friday, Tammy and I were invited to the movies by some new friends of ours in the “college and career” age group. (For those of you not familiar with Sunday School vocabulary, that means these folks are in the 19 to 24 age range.) It was a lot of fun to hang with college kids again and we only really felt “old” a couple of times. (Like when one of them said, “Oh, the Supertones were big when I was in, like, seventh grade.” Oof.)

All that is to explain why we went to an opening night movie. This is extremely rare for me. Unless it’s something I’m hyped about, I like to let the dust settle and see if the movie is worth my money. Still, “Ice Age: The Meltdown” was not going to be a total unknown to me. I really loved the first “Ice Age”, and own the DVD (that’s at least four grins, if anyone’s counting).

The first Ice Age managed to be funny even though it was pretty heavily laden with humanism and eco-nazism. The animation was revolutionary and the story was entertaining. The humor was just the right balance of silly kid stuff and clever word play. Brilliant. I was excited when I heard a sequel was on the way, but as per my usual pessimism with Hollywood, I kept my expectations under control.

“The Meltdown” was a lot of fun and I laughed out loud many times. The animation was improved over the original, but you have to be a CGI geek like me to really notice it. (The water and fur were much improved.) The humor was a little more forced in places and some of the running gags got old. There was just as much eco-nazi drivel hidden in the dialog this time (maybe more so with the global warming slant), but over all the movie didn’t come across as political.

If anything stopped this movie from being great, it was that the story was not well told. The plot was painfully stretched, with many seemingly pointless side trips and long rabbit trails that were only followed for the sake of a joke that didn’t really fit the story, even if it was funny.

The acting (voiced and animated) was excellent, the visuals were superb and the humor was enough, but in the end, Meltdown just didn’t live up to its older sibling’s standards. Still, I enjoyed it enough to give it three out of five grins.

I met with Dr. Kwong again this morning. More x-rays, more poking, yada yada yada. My elbow (technically the head of my right radius) is still broken. This time I could actually see the break on the x-rays.

The doc is concerned at my limited range of motion, so he’s banned me from wearing the sling. That’s a good thing because the sling was a real pain in the butt, but a not so good thing because moving my arm around is an even bigger pain … in the arm!

Probably the biggest benefit of getting me out of the sling is the effect it has on me mentally. I need to stop babying my arm so much. Yes, it’s still broken. Yes, there are limits to what I can do. But with my wing untied, I can quit worrying about it so much and get back to using it.

I will be starting physical therapy this week and that should help a lot. For now, I just need to get over the pain and get the muscles, et al, back to work. Dr. Kwong says I shouldn’t twist (like turning a key or door knob) nor lift anything heavier than half a pound (My arm weighs at least five pounds, so I’m not sure how that works.) but I need to work towards straightening my elbow completely. Right now, it just won’t go.

Thanks to everyone for continued thoughts and prayers.

This week’s WBQotW comes straight from my favorite source of t-shirts and cubicle toys, ThinkGeek.com.

2 + 2 = 5, for extremely large values of 2.