1.  Woffenden Big Kid Theorem - While riding on the back of my shopping cart through Fred Meyers, I many parents tried not to give disapproving glances at my "setting a bad example" for their children.  Then I realize a little gem:

See, everyone tells you that after your 21st birthday there are no good birthdays till 25, and that's a let down because it's just cheaper car insurance - yay.  But at different points between the age of 18 and 25 you gain the freedom to do certain things (for instance, riding your shopping cart) without anyone saying a word.  It only happens later on in that time span, because then you are starting to look old enough that there's no way you're young enough for them to reprimand you.

When you know for sure you won't have to deal with a confrontation from a party pooper, you do these things more often.

2.  Bachelor House Cleaning Corollary - Cleaning house is nine times more likely to happen if it is accompanied by good ale and a good radio station.  Tonight is sky.fm's piano jazz station, and the brew is Snow Cap seasonal ale by Pyramid.

After a long day working I didn't think I had the energy to clean house.  The house is already half clean and I don't feel like I've started working yet.

Today I was buying some business cards online when I accidentally discovered how to hack the store I was visiting.  While placing my order, I put Coeur d'Alene in for my city's name, and when I submitted the form I got this lovely result: www.znatd.com/screenshots/oops_sqlinjection.jpg.

That looks innocent enough if you don't know what it means, but pretty much what it means is I could steal all their data (like, are they storing credit card numbers?), destroy all their data, make a bunch of orders and mark them all paid, change customers named "Robert" to "Assface", etc.

Rather than exploit my new power I chose to be good and send them notification of the issue, tell them how to fix it, and let them know that if they didn't have anyone capable of it I'd gladly fix it for them for a price :-)

Woo!

I got back in touch with an old highschool friend via Facebook.  He used to go to the bible study I lead when we were in highschool.

He entered Bible college, and is about 6 months away from becoming a pastor.  Uh oh.

See, thing is, I really don't get along with pastors.  I'm down with Jesus, but pastors bug the living shit out of me.  So now I'm faced with walking a thin, fine line.  I have to give this guy room to break my stereotypes and be himself.  I have to accept him even if he is "pastory" because he matters more than beliefs, hangups, and annoying behavior does.

Besides, maybe I'll be a balancing force for him.  And while I'm too arrogant to give much credit to the idea (hey, at least I admit it), perhaps he'll be a balancing force for me.

In the last few weeks I've introduced a few friends of mine to swing dancing, but the best place around here that teaches it really misses the spirit. The instructor knew only latin dances for years and is too used to it to really *get* swing.

So tonight I threw them all in cars and we drove down to Moscow and hit up Swing Devils. It was grand. There are such great dancers there. It was really refreshing. We had a great time.

When a tango came on I really missed havingophelia_03 around, and in general bucko  was missed as well.  I have to admit I'm getting rusty.  Coeur d'Alene needs a GOOD dance studio, dang it.  Maybe I'll have to look around Spokane.

It was a great night.  For those of you in Coeur d'Alene or Post Falls that are interested in learning to Swing, call me.  We're probably going back next Thursday for their Halloween dance. How could it possibly go wrong? Woo!

All people visiting here right now are really lucky.

I seriously love jazz and swing.  I mean real jazz and 30's and 40's swing. The big band stuff.

So I actually did talk to the tatooed hottie in the end.  I couldn't help it. It was funny.

I packed my stuff up, and was walking out, and just as I was headed to the door so was she. This of course meant it was time to do something that would make for a great story later :-) How could I resist?

"Girl with glorious tatoo?"

"Man with curly hair?"

"Do you often get random strangers proposing to you because of said tatoo? Because marry me."

She cracked up, and thanked me for making her day.  Mission accomplished :-p

The downside of working from a cafe:  the company.   There's an absolutely glorious girl sitting a few seats down.  Her right arm from the shoulder to elbow is a full mural-style tatoo with an oriental lady, a sword, and a flower... it's beautiful, but more importantly it's badass.

*swoon*

Marry me tatoo'd-arm girl.

And she's a smoking hottie on top of it all!

Some people just manage to suck all the color out of a room and radiate it themselves, you know?

I'm posing as a student hanging out at the North Idaho Community College campus.  It's really funny to listen to classic first-week-of-school "insecure banter" going on all around me.  Guys trying to make only mildly funny jokes "work", etc.

I do not miss college, that I do not.

I'm an odd one - I actually miss the coursework and the material, but (with little exception) not really the people.

When we're young we see so much possibility in life. I think that's most of the reason I get depressed now... life doesn't seem to stack up to what I dreamed it would.

Take love for example. I always figured it would be a situation where I couldn't live without someone, ached for them, dreamed it would work out and found to my surprise that the feeling was mutual.  But at 26, it feels like that is just a fantasy.  Feelings that strong only end up being one sided or really short lived.

I always saw being cynical about love as a sign of weakness, but here I am exhibiting it.

It seems like a stupid fairy tale now.  I don't know how to escape that belief.

Sorry to be so negative.  I'll try to find something more positive to post about next time.

When someone calls you at 5 AM, either they think you're a really good friend or they're really screwed.

I'll pretend it was the former :-)

... I need sleep now.

Jason and I were at a water park the other day, and he was using his card to pay for a locker rental. The girl behind the counter ran the card and handed him the receipt to sign, and he signed it "Holy Crap!"

The girl looked at it, smiled, and said "Ha ha - you put an exclamation point." As in, she didn't even notice that he signed "Holy Crap" as his name, but she thought it was funny he put an exclamation point after his "name". I thought her lack of observation was pretty funny, but later that day another employee trumped her.

Jason used his card to buy some ice cream, and the employee asked him for ID. He handed the employee my ID, the employee looked at it, looked at him, handed the ID back and said "thanks!". Jason signed the receipt, and all was good. Congratulations ice cream stand person, you fail at life.

Somehow they failed to notice all of the following:

• The name on the ID was completely different than the one on the credit card
• The picture on the ID was a white guy, and Jason is Asian.
• He signed the receipt "Sweet Jesus!"

Why would they ask for the ID if they weren't even going to glance at it?

For the first time in a long time I have lots of birthday plans - between Jason, Chris, Jen, Haeven, and my mom I have all of today, Friday and Saturday blocked out doing fun things.

:-)

I had a great day today - took a good long break.


I went drinking/dancing around the town, and ran into some old friends I knew from highschool, among which was a very hot gal. I was this close to taking her home before I finally came to my senses and took off

I was never such a manwhore before, why is it so hard to back away from girls now?

"Welcome to USBank online banking help center, how can I help you?"

"Yeah see - I'm a retard and managed to lock myself out of your website."

"I'd be happy to help you with that."

"You'll help with my being a retard?"

"No, just the site."

"Oh. Damn."

-cut to end of call-

"Alright, well is there anything else I can do for you then?"

"Sure you can't do anything about the whole retard thing?"

"Yes."

"Ok then nope. I'm good."

"Thank you for choosing USBank and have a wonderful day."

The Fu and I are thinking of painting our Macbook Pros. Suggestions? I think a big fat Dell logo on the back would be pretty funny, but I'm sure I can do better than that.

I recently solved a horrendous bug related to large Flash projects, and felt I needed to post about it so others suffering from it would be able to find the solution. This wouldn't be the most appropriate place for that, so I've started a "tech blog", where I'll post about that kind of thing. I've been sparing all of you from my more nerdy ramblings, and now I need an outlet.

You can find my tech blog at jwoffenden.blogspot.com, if you feel like checking it out.

I like to mix the taste of beer with the taste of my foot.

"Temporary girlfriend on a trial basis"? Well at least she had a sense of humor about it :-)