Cyber Monday I suppose that this has been going on for a while, but this is the first year that I can remember so much press about Cyber Monday. Of course, I only learned of Black Friday last year so maybe I just never payed any attention to such before.

I must say that I did do the majority of my shopping in regular "brick-and-morter" stores this year. But to finish my shopping for my wife I had to go online. This is not really a big deal since I do a pretty good amount of online shopping all the time. The biggest drawback to the online gift shopping when you live with someone else is that you most tell them something will be coming and that they cannot open it. It does add some excitement, but it may also give them too many clues. Once, I went so far as to have the gift delivered to a friend's so that there would be nothing known.

Blog alert: "how i met your mother" will be on at 8:30pm on CBS.

We also just watched "Batman Begins". I would rate it quite high. Does a very good job of beginning, as the name implies, the Batman story. Sure, they throw in the Katie Holmes character as simple eye candy - her role is rather pointless and adds very little to the whole. Bale does the best job as Batman since Keaton, and maybe better. Biggest complaint: they once again show the scene of the Wayne's death...this was covered in "Batman" and personally I do not think we need to keep reinventing it. BTW it was crazy seeing Neeson as a bad guy.

I have decided on a beer to brew. After looking through my clone books and other resources I decided to simply make somthing up. Yes, it is a bit daring but after a while it is time to walk on your own. I am hoping that either this weekend or next I will find the time to make a batch of Bock style beer. I have als decided on a name. It will be known as, "Bock Your Brains Out."  ¶ 19:54 3 comments

  Blogger's Block Here I am, no real posts since last Friday and I cannot think of anything real to blog about.

Like Mr. St. Jude I saw Harry Potter last weekend. The wife thought that it would be amazing to see it at the IMAX. I don't know what I was expecting but I was not really impressed. Maybe you really need to see and IMAX movie at the IMAX. Sure, it was big, but other than that it was nothing more.

We did see a "preview" for this Mars movie about the rovers. It was all fine and such until we got the the end and they put up on the screen, "A Public Service from Lockheed Martin". Since when do our defense contractors do public services? And is it really a public service if you have to pay $12 to see it. Seems more like a money-making service.

Back to HP. It was pretty good. I think that I liked it better than POA but I was somewhat unhappy with POA and the liberties it took with the plots timeline. For a book that was so large GOF they did a great job of getting in the important stuff.

I would also like to apologize for not reminding you about "how i met your mother" again this week.

And since tommorrow celebrates our destruction of the indigenous peoples of North America I'll leave you with this:

Wir essen Truthahn. Basta!  ¶ 17:27 1 comments

  Go Buckeyes!!!!   ¶ 14:45 2 comments

  Great Service Nothing beats great customer service. One industry that stands out above all others is the airline industry. These guys have been doing such a great job for so long that they are making money hand over fist.

I was flying home today from NY to Grand Rapids and had an intermediate in Cleveland. Now, generally I don't say word one against Cleveland...it is where I am from and made me who I am. But today I got really worked over there. I landed there shortly before noon. The flight was about 10 minutes early so I checked the monitors and there was a flight to GR at 12:30. I was at the new gate before the lady began to board the plane. I asked if there was any way I could get onto this flight. She thought about it for a moment and then said no because I had a check bag and they need 30 minutes to do the transfer. At this point there were 25 minutes to go. I didn't say anything and went off to wait 2 1/2 hours.

When I land in GR my bag did not come off the baggage carousel. I went to report it as lost and the guy behind the counter goes into the back room and brings my bag out. He says that bags often beat passangers.

So my bag was put on the plane without me on the earlier flight. First, I thought that all bags on a plane needed to have a passanger. Second, if this is something that this airline commonly does why didn't the lady know this and put me on the earlier flight? Either way I was pretty pissed walking out of the airport today.

Good thing there is such great customer service in the airline industry.  ¶ 18:51 0 comments

  Internet recognition In a moment of narcisism I decided to google "Villenke". To my pleasure it was listed and a hit under "Sports Night" and "Susan of All Trades". So I suppose I, and my fellow blogger buddies, have acheived the smallest amount of internet visibility.

Of course, if I wanted more internet hits I could list a bunch of popular porn and celebrity names in a blog title or post. But people would not stay, I would just have hits.

Congratulations to us all.  ¶ 21:44 2 comments

  Life on the Road So being out of town for a week, or more, is rarely a lot of fun. Being be yourself makes it nearly always a suckfest. There may be others at work that you can interact with but when you walk out the door you are on your own. You find yourself calling the hotel home, you sit around on a bed and watch TV that you don't care about, simply trying to kill enough time so that you can go to dinner. Where to go? Do you spend a bunch of time trying to find neat local places or do you simply take the easy way out and hit a chain? In the end it doesn't really matter because you are by yourself. If you are lucky then you get to skip the hostess and head right for the bar. The bar is where the other lonely guys, sorry girls but there are never any lonely business women at the bar, or the local drunks are. You get yourself and drink and order some food. Maybe there is someone to talk with, but mostly you look at the TV, the same thing that you ran aways from in your "home". But since this is a bar they will have ESPN on. One TV will be showing ESPN and the other has "the duece". When you've really hit it sweet they will have the closed captioning on so that you can read the inane chatter. Since you are alone you drink your two beers and then feel bad because it feels like you are drinking alone with other people watching you. Don't want to have the third beer though, you have to drive back to your hotel room. If you have managed to kill enough time at the restaurant you get back watch an hour of TV and then call it a night. Sure it is only 9:30, and if you were really at home you wouldn't even think of going to be, but if you sleep then the next day will get here sooner and eventually it will be Friday and you get to go home.

And then your wife will say, "Let's go out for dinner."  ¶ 21:27 2 comments

  S Words Well, I forgot to remind you all to watch "how i met your mother" and you all probably forgot to watch.

But if you did.

Swords.
Lemon Laws.
Doctor Who's Time Traveling Phone Booth.
Chinese Food.

Next week I will try to remind you.

It really is LOL funny.

BTW, I am currently in Chester, NY and doing a little stand-by for my current customer. This should be a fine week of not much to do.

I am hoping that I get to brew some more beer in the next couple of weeks. Maybe I should wait until after my birthday...possibly there will be some beer related gifts that will aid my beer making. Sure, some of you are not local but are there any recommendations for my next batch?

Final note: Winter Lager has been released. So those of you who love this tasty beer from the Boston Beer Co. can once again partake.  ¶ 21:14 1 comments

  Something funny As many of you know I am a hopeless TV afficianado. And as we all know I am quite found of a good chuckle (or more). So if you have the time I recommend that you set aside 30 minutes of your time to check out my favorite new show of the 2005 season, how i met your mother. Our cast consists of the suprising hilarious Doogie Howser, sorry, Neil Patrick Harris. We also have Alyson Hannigan, only one link to imdb you lazy bastards-you can link once you are there, and Jason Segel, from Freak and Geeks (one of two excellent show that was cancelled too soon at the end of the same season, Sports Night). Sure we have some others but they were unknown to us before now.

I could try and convince you that this is funny by refering to things that made me laugh, but simply take my word for it and watch it.

Once you have my closing will make more sense.

BTW, I am using my wife's computer for this post and I am being driven crazy by the damn American keyboard layout. I think Susan will know what I am talking about.

SUIT UP!  ¶ 11:01 3 comments

  How to win Does anyone remember how the Americans defeated the Soviets? We would all like to think that it had to do with freedom, justice, Patriotism, and a firm belief that our way was the best way. That would be nice because then we can continue to believe that such things are the keys to America's success and continued success.

The fact of the matter is that a simple actor from California who happened to be President at the time used a simple American idea to defeat the Soviets. Spend money that you don't have. It was that simple. The cold war went on for 45 years and all it took was a simple idea like spending what you don't have. The Soviets simply couldn't keep up. We had more not money than they did. We decided to build many more bombs, so they had to also. We decided to build more subs that can launch more missels, so they had to also. The best was when we decided to build "lasers" in space. The Soviets, nearly out of not-money, gave up. They simply said, "We can't do that and we can't afford that." The next thing you know they coudn't afford the Berlin Wall anymore and it fell down.

The moral of the story is that you can defeat your enemies not with smarts, cunning, or ability. If you simply have the will to run as fast as you can in an expensive direction then your enemies will believe that you know what you are doing and try and follow you. When they give up because they do not have anymore money then you win.

Does this all seems a bit esoteric for a blog? It is just something that is rather close to home right now.  ¶ 20:40 0 comments

  American President Since yesterday was an election day I started thinking....

I heard reports today that voter turnout here in GR was are 13%. That is simply outstanding. Because local government has a much higher effect on your daily life then anything the doofus in the White House does people should care, but they don't. When Americans vote for president the turnout is high but people still vote stupidly. What are we to do as a society.

Enter American President.
10 Canidates, 10 weeks, and America votes by phone to eleminate a canidate every week. This combines American's love of TV, mindless voting, and caring about politics at the wrong level. There can be immunity challenges (think voter registration, singing, who looks best dressed up as Uncle Sam, "simple life" challenge, feats of strength, etc.) to help our canidates make it through. We can vote by phone "American Idol" style and then we can all blog about how horrible it was that someone was unfairly kicked off.

Just think...Americans still will not care about local elections but they will vote in an entertaining manner for President.  ¶ 21:50 3 comments

  Basement Woes My wife and I decided to finish our basement this year. Our house was built in 1949 so there are many things about this basement that are non-ideal for finishing. We have many conduit pipes below the joists, we have duct work that is in the way, we have a shower clean-out that is very much below the joists...I could go on. But we went ahead anyway. I framed in the new walls myself and then ran all of the electrical. It was a fine project.

Before we started I drew up an bunch of different layouts in Visio just to get an idea of how it would go. BTW Visio was much easier than trying to do it in CAD. All of the premade shapes were there and the editing was much simplier. So I had put a bunch of furniture and such in these new rooms partly to fill the rooms to give an idea of how much space would be in them and partly as I envisioned them being when we were done.

Now the have the drywall up and painted, the doors hung, and the carpet installed. So what happens. She says that the furniture I placed in the rooms on the drawings were simply for effect and she wants it completely different.

I set up one of the new rooms to be something of a home theater room. The TV and the speakers all positioned so that the effect is optimal. This does not jive with how she sees this room as a place for having a bunch of people over. She wants the TV in the corner and the speakers non equadistant. Sure, the home is the "woman's" place but I suppose I was naive to think that one room could be the way that I want.  ¶ 09:47 4 comments

  so this is blog? See bandwagon...jump on.

That is the best description of what is going on here.

I have a number of friends who have begun blogging, they have their own reasons which are probably more valid than mine but not more than most, and figured that I could also do this. How hard could this be, write down so c**p about what is going on in my life or general observations. At the very least it keeps those that I know informed on what is going on. It also will be the authorities something to see when I snap and do something...better not write anymore on that.

What will be happening here. Well, we will not be saving the world, enlightening anyone, or helping to advance mankind. I'll post about work, play, hobbies and other such things that interest me and if it makes any sense someone might comment on it.  ¶ 16:10 3 comments