Some time ago I was attending Microsoft’s TechReady conference in Seattle with a few of my teammates.  I don’t sleep well when I’m away from home so I generally take Ambien at night to help me sleep so I’m not a complete disaster during the days at the conference.

One night at the beginning of the week I had already taken my Ambien and was waiting for it to kick in.  Since I needed to sync up on some schedule planning with one of my teammates I decided to fire off a quick e-mail.  Whoops.  It really wasn’t helpful, but it was pretty funny.

I really have no idea what most of this is even about, but you can definitely tell that I’m falling asleep along the way.  I’ve fast-forwarded to the good part.  (Names and confidential details removed.)

I would feel better about this if I knew [teammate] was covering the stuff I’m missing.  Let’s start talking that way tomorrow when we are trying to decide when we cn a plansll.  I sent out an unvitation to a dinner at cheesecake factorqay, so [teammate] shoule llo ve that.  We can findine the meetin schedule over dinner therer.  Then wenb we get back to the olifwe 8 yu  can sweettak the peoples into getting gus a meeting room on the cheap. Maybeww sese ccan we=just meet here insteaed ov hainf to go find someppleace priavete to have our team planinig sessin.If those schedules also work for [teammate] that gives us two longish sections where we wcould gt stuff done, hopeulllf at some time when Im not so tierad as I am now.  I thin k the ambien is really kickin in.

Last night I had just such a dream.  I was heading off to work, carpooling with a person from my neighborhood with whom I never carpool.  For some reason we were in my hometown of Roosevelt.  We were turning onto my parent’s street when we were held at the intersection to wait for a passenger jet airplane, which came hurtling down my parent’s street and into the parking lot of the strip mall at the end of the street, pulled up abruptly and banked hard right to avoid running into the store at the back of the parking lot, then leveled out and pulled up hard again, then banked hard right again 180 degrees and pulled up a third time to complete the take-off.

Someone commented to me, “Only the very best pilots fly in and out of here.”

At about this point the person with whom I was carpooling said to me, “So, how do you want to square up on the carpooling?”

I said, “Well, what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I usually charge $25 to carpool plus mileage at a minimum.”

“Okay.  See you at work,” I said as I walked off toward my (not my parent’s) house.

I thought to myself, “I’ll just drive my ’67 Camaro to work.  It’s a nice day today anyway.”

I walked back toward my parent’s home and watched another airplane take off.  ”This is weird.  This seems like a dream,” I thought to myself.  I pinched myself pretty hard on the arm.

“Ouch,” I said.  I didn’t wake up though.  I kept walking toward my house to get into my Camaro.

Then I woke up later.  ”That WAS a weird dream,” I thought.

Like I said, sometimes you learn from your dreams.  For example, I learned that pinching yourself doesn’t really wake you up.  That’s good to know for future reference.

It was April of 2000 and we had just moved to Utah because I’d taken a job at Novell.  We were closing on our home the following day and I had just received a paycheck I needed in order to close on our new home.

Some of you already know where this is going.

I walked into the bank with paycheck in hand.  I went up to the counter and said, “I need to deposit this check, and then I need to draw a counter check for certified funds in [x] amount.”

The teller looks up my account information and says, “Uh, you don’t have enough money in your account to draw a check for certified funds in that amount.”

“Well, that’s why I’m depositing this check, see.”

“We have to wait for the money from that check to clear before we can draw a check for certified funds with that money.”

“How long does that take?” I asked.

“Usually two or three business days.”

“Well, that is not going to work for me.  I need to close on a home tomorrow!”

“I’m sorry, sir, that is our policy.  I’m afraid there is nothing I can do for you.”

I thought for a minute, nearly stepped away from the window.

Then I said, “Can I cash this check instead?”

“Well, yes sir, you can cash your check, if you want.”

“Alright,” I said.  ”I would like to cash this check.”

I endorsed the check and she counted out the money into my hand.  But I didn’t leave.

“Is there something else I can help you with?”

“Yes, just a question.  If I deposit this cash, can you draw a check for certified funds using this cash?”

She looks at me, a bit stymied.  ”Well, yes.”

I handed her the cash she had just given me.  ”I would like to deposit this cash into my account, and then draw a counter check for certified funds for [x] amount.”

She proceeded to do just as I asked.  We closed on the house the next day.

(Homework assignment:  Essay:  Should I feel more annoyed at such a stupid rule with such an obvious workaround, or at the fact that an employee of the bank was unable to identify the workaround and help me out?  Discuss.)

The lap chart only track [sic] the individual time for laps 2 – 20. With [James] Stewart having a bad start and [Ryan Villopoto] getting into first early we can safely say [Villopoto] had the faster 1st lap.

Uh, yes.  But why make it so complicated?  Since all twenty riders lined up next to each other at the start, but Villopoto was in the lead at the end of lap one, that pretty much should be enough to say that Villopoto had the fastest lap time on the 1st lap.

I don’t think you need to use deductive reasoning when you can rely on facts.

Today the snowplows came by to clear the street that did not need to be cleared anymore.  This was the result:

Snow Boulder

I have a hard time seeing how anyone could think this was helping.  Next time, Spanish Fork Snowplow-Person, if this is how you are going to “help”, don’t bother.

(Tagged “humor”, because I’m sure it will be funny someday.)

Since I realize there are hundreds of thousands of you loyal readers who probably did not catch the press conference, I will summarize it for you.  Understand, sometimes Tom didn’t do a very good job of saying what he really meant to say, so I might paraphrase a bit.

Holmoe:  “Let me cut to the chase.  With the University of Utah leaving the Mountain West for the PAC 10, or 12, whatever, we were pretty stoked because we thought that finally now we would have a chance at being second in the conference.  Then Boise State came into the Mountain West, and frankly, they scare the poo-poos right out of us.  So we are announcing today that, starting in 2011, BYU football will be independent.  I mean, it’s worked well for Notre Dame, so it should work for us too.”

Press:  “What about TV coverage?”

Holmoe:  “Since USC totally hosed themselves ESPN has looking for another overrated football team to make a really big deal out of.  They’ve chosen BYU, and we are really excited about that.  Really excited and happy.  Happily excited.”

Press:  “What motivated you to make this decision?”

Holmoe:  “The primary reason for us to do this is exposure.  For some reason we agreed to an exclusivity deal with The Mtn network a few years ago and hardly anyone can see our games on TV even if they live in Utah.  Now we will have all our home games broadcast on ESPN and will have rights to rebroadcast all of our games on BYU TV.  Since our games will be seen by a much larger audience, the broadcasting rights will be worth a fortune and we’ll be able to attract big-name schools to play us because of the revenue they can get.  And we won’t have to share the revenue with our conference either.  So, each game will be televised, to a larger nationwide audience, with big-name schools playing us, so that’s a lot more money, tons of money.”

Press:  “Uh, I thought the primary reason was for exposure, not money.”

Holmoe:  “That’s correct.”

Press:  “But it seems quite clear that you are excited about all the money.”

Holmoe:  “Well, as you know, being a private faith-based institution we hold our students to a much higher honor code standard than most other universities.  And, as you might also know, our football players are pretty much the same as they are at any other school.  That means we have a high incidence of honor code violations here.  Having all of that money should, uh, help to alleviate that situation, if you know what I mean.”

Press:  “We don’t know what you mean.”

Holmoe:  “Well, let’s just say that sometimes, a person might feel like a football player has violated the honor code in a way that is negative towards that person, whereas if that person was a bit better off financially, they might be able to better understand that, no, that really wasn’t an honor code violation per se.  I’m just speaking hypothetically here, but I think you understand where I’m coming from.”

Press:  “What about your other sports?”

Holmoe:  “Our other sports will be playing in the West Coast Conference.  They have several advantages for us.  They are nearby.  Their schools are all faith-based institutions like ours.  They are so small and desperate that they would accommodate our playing schedule which excludes Sundays and General Conference weekends.  And USU is not in that conference.”

Press:  “But, couldn’t USU be invited into that conference?  I mean, being faith-based isn’t a strict requirement for the WCC.”

Holmoe:  “Based on, er, conversations we’ve had with the WCC, I don’t foresee that happening.  Ever.  Or at least as long as BYU is in the WCC.  We plan to hold them down, I mean, play in a different conference from them, as long as possible.”

Press:  “How long has this deal been in the works?”

Holmoe:  “We’ve been working on this for several years now, at least the past five years we’ve been working on it, trying to figure out how to get BYU into a BCS game through some other means than raw merit.  This deal should help with the money, or exposure, we need to do that.  You know, the way USC did all those years.”

Press:  “But, we thought this was primarily a reaction to Utah leaving the MWC, Boise State being invited into the MWC, and BYU not getting invited to the PAC-10 or the Big XII.”

Holmoe:  “That’s correct.”

Press:  “But you just now said you’ve been working on this for several years.  What gives?”

Holmoe:  “We have ways of, uh, knowing what the future holds.”

Press:  “You mentioned the deal with ESPN.”

Holmoe:  “We’re really happy and excited about that.”

Press:  “Yes, you said that.  But ESPN has lots of channels in their network; is it contracted which of the ESPN network channels you will be on?”

Holmoe:  (silence)

Press:  “So, do you know which ESPN channels you will be playing on?”

Holmoe:  “Well, which channels do they have?”

Press:  “Well, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, ESPN 3, ESPN ‘El Ocho’, for example.”

Holmoe:  “Well, I would imagine ABC, pretty much all the time…”

(looks at the ESPN guy who is shaking his head)

Holmoe:  “Well, maybe not ALL the time…”

(ESPN guy is still shaking his head)

Holmoe:  “Well, I think ‘El Ocho’ is guaranteed, and the other channels based on merit, you know, if we are playing really well, and there aren’t any other games to show then…”

(ESPN guy nods head)

Holmoe:  “Yeah, something like that.  But probably mostly ABC or ESPN.  Or SpeedTV.”

Press:  “So, now that you are independent and Utah is in the PAC-10, who is your big rival?  USU?”

Holmoe:  “No.  Not USU.  Absolutely not that despicable USU.  Probably Notre Dame, they are our big rival now.”

Press:  “But they don’t really consider you a big rival.”

Holmoe:  “Oh, they are.  You will see.”

_{Note:  Holmoe did not actually say any of these things, in case anyone is wondering. In particular, if Holmoe’s attorney is wondering.}

I guess I can understand it.  It’s kind of like a person being a part of one street gang, and then going to join a different street gang.  NBA teams are pretty much the same as street gangs as far as I can tell.  You can think of them as advanced street gangs.  When you are a young man growing up in the inner city, the gangs recruit you this way:  “Sure, for now you will have to wear Oakland Raiders clothing and hold this handgun sideways when you kill people.  But, you know we are like the farm league for the Indiana Pacers.  Someday you could be an NBA star if you just work your way up the ladder.”

Anyway, one of the leaders of the Cleveland gang had his feelings really and truly hurt by all of this so he wrote a letter to make himself feel better.  Now everyone is making fun of his letter because it uses the Comic Sans font.  I never use Comic Sans, but I guess I missed the memo that says, “Do not use this font.  Ever.”

So I’m not going to make fun of that dude for using Comic Sans.  I’m also not going to make fun of him for an entire letter comprised of paragraphs which almost without exception have only a single sentence in them.  I’m also not going to make fun of him for not knowing how to use capitalization or punctuation or quotation marks.  No sir.  I am not that kind of person.  Instead, I’m going to make fun of him for a completely different reason.

Here is a direct quote from his letter.  Note that, since this is one of the places he (ab)used quotation marks, I also have to quote the quotation marks, so this will seem a little weird.

““I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”“

Hmm.  Interesting.  And also, how exactly does he plan to do this?  I mean, since he doesn’t actually play the games.  And also, he says he personally guarantees it; or what?  What happens if a team LeBron plays for actually wins a championship before Cleveland?  Usually, a guarantee comes with an “or” clause, e.g. “or your money back,” “or I will eat my hat”, “or I will write another letter in Comic Sans with poor punctuation and post it on the internet.”

I also don’t understand the “self-titled former ‘king’” phrasing.  Is he saying that LeBron himself refers to his own self as “the former king”?  Because otherwise, doesn’t it seem weird to claim that LeBron gave himself the “king” title, and yet this guy is going to claim that he doesn’t have that title anymore?  Or maybe he doesn’t understand what “self-titled” means.

Of course, if you read further in the letter, you will see this:

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that’s simply not how it works.

I fail to see what this has to do with anything.  But it definitely discredits the entire letter.  As everyone knows, Moses was taken directly into heaven without dying first.  So apparently, sometimes it actually does work that way.

I’ve verified this on two separate occasions.  The first was in college, when we were having a killer waterfight with the girls who lived across the parking lot, and we were just about to enter complete domination phase when I smashed my big toe into one of those scallop-topped concrete edging stones and broke my big toenail right off.  It looked like normal a year later.  Then, last year when we hiked Maple Mountain, I broke my big toenail halfway off at the root and have been sort of managing that situation ever since.  It almost looks like normal now, and it’s been almost a year.

I’m sure, like me, you will not be surprised to know that I’m not the first to notice this fantastic phenomenon.

A quick search revealed that the ancient Yrgyuilf tribe also noticed this phenomenon.  Located deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle near the equator, the story goes that this simple tribe had a problem:  They could not tell time, because they had no seasons, being near the equator, and they had not noticed the sun yet.  They also owned everything they had.

One day the tribe elder had a revelation.  He called a tribe council.  ”I’ve figured out our problem!” he announced.  ”We’re all depressed and unhappy!”  A murmur ran through the tribe.  Yes! they thought.  I hadn’t realized it until now, but yes! I am depressed!  And  unhappy!

“Probably the reason we are so depressed and unhappy is because we own everything we have, and we don’t have a bunch of crap we don’t really need!” the crowd exclaimed.

“What will we do about it?”

“We need a reason to spend money that we don’t have, and go into debt, on a regular basis!” someone suggested.

“Hey yeah!  That’ll work!”

“But … but, when should we do this?”

“Wait — isn’t that what Christmas is for?” someone asked.

The elder took control of the situation.  ”Excellent, everyone.  We’ve figured out what is wrong with us:  we are depressed and unhappy, and we didn’t even know it until now.  The reason we are depressed and unhappy is because we don’t have any debt or crap we don’t really need.  Celebrating Christmas will solve our problem, as it provides the opportunity to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need.  Only problem is, we need to know when to celebrate.”

A wise old man stepped forward.  ”Once,” he said, “I stubbed the crap out of my big toe and my toenail broke right off.  It took a long time to grow back.  We could call that time period, uh, a ‘year’.”

“We will celebrate Christmas every year by spending money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need,” said the tribe elder.  ”I feel happier already!”

As the council continued, they decided that each year, they would select a young virgin and smash her big toenail until it fell off.  When it had completely grown back, it would be time to celebrate!

It wasn’t long until they realized they could use similar logic for other measurements of time:

• How long after I sprain my ankle until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One month.
• How long after I pull a tooth out of my head until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One week.
• How long after I shave until my whiskers grow back?  One day.
• How long after I bean you in the head with this rock until your headache goes away?  One hour.
• How long after I prick my finger until the bleeding stops?  One minute.

Figuring out a measurement for one day took some time, as the young virgins in town didn’t seem to be growing their whiskers back.  After some deliberation, they figured that a male virgin could work.  It took a while, but they eventually found a male virgin that actually could grow whiskers back, and they celebrated because now they could measure days.

This worked quite well for the Yrgyuilf tribe for a while.  It created jobs as some people were in charge of rounding up the young virgins for timekeeping purposes, and others would regularly prick their fingers or bean them in the head with rocks in order to know things like whether it was time for lunch.

After a while, they started having trouble finding young virgins and also had to simultaneously deal with a significant teenage pregnancy epidemic, so they decided that perhaps any old person could be used for measuring time.  Surprisingly, experimentation showed that it worked about the same.

Eventually someone asked the question, “How long is forever?”  They had a hard time deciding how to measure this, so they eventually settled on three different options:

• If you bash someone’s skull in with a rock, forever is how long it takes for them to wake up.
• If you sever someone’s legs at the hips with a chainsaw, forever is how long it takes for them to grow back.
• If you impale someone through the heart on a sharpened post, forever is how long it takes for their heart to start beating again.

Since it was so essential to get this experiment right, they searched and searched and eventually found three young virgins to help them complete this experiment.  Unfortunately, it was about this time that the tribe pretty much disbanded.  Three of the original Yrgyuilf tribe members are still there, spraining each other’s ankles and pricking each other’s fingers and smashing each other’s toenails off and beaning each other in the head with rocks in order to measure time while they are waiting to see how long forever is.  They’ve stopped measuring weeks because they are all out of teeth and don’t know how to do it anymore.

The rest of the tribe members moved to the city and became dentists.

At least, that’s what happened in our family.

One night, we were just laying there together in bed.  All the kids were asleep.  I turned toward my wife and softly said, “What would you think if we got a new MacBook Pro?”

She got a bit of a twinkle in her eye as she turned and snuggled in toward me.  ”Why do you want one?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, pretty much it is time for me to get a decent laptop.  Even though I don’t want to spend the money, and even though we are trying to do the Dave Ramsey Dance, I think it is holding my career back.  I don’t think it is wise to continue without one.  I think it is an investment that we need to make in my career,” I said in the most romantic way possible.

She kind of bit her lower lip, then said, “Well, why are you thinking of a MacBook Pro?”

“Their laptops are simply the best hardware available,” I explained seductively.  ”I would dual-boot it with Boot Camp so it ran Snow Leopard in one partition and Windows 7 Ultimate in the other partition.  Then I could create a domain-joined account in the Windows 7 partition with a separate virtual drive that holds all of the company data that I can protect with BitLocker.  That way I can use my laptop to work remotely and also have excellent Mac hardware.  I’m getting excited just thinking about it.”

“Oooooh, baby, I love it when you talk to me like that.  Let’s do it!” she said.  So with that, we turned off the lights and went to sleep.

Some time later, the long-awaited day came.  I was at work when my wife called.  ”Honey, it is time,” she said.  ”The MacBook Pro is here.”

I rushed home to this:

They are prettier after they are born.

I must admit it didn’t look like much. But I know that true beauty lies within. Within the box, I mean.

Sure enough, we didn’t have to wait long before the laptop started making its way out.

It's crowning!

When they first come out they have this weird whitish covering on them.

Now THAT'S a good looking laptop! He (she) is so handsome (pretty)!

It's a boy (I guess)!

We decided to name him Steve, for obvious reasons.

I’m not kidding around here.  Well, actually, I sort of am.  But really, I’m hilarious.

I mean it.

In fact, I’ve been told that I’m too funny.  I tell too many jokes.  People don’t appreciate that.  I totally get it, too.  It hurts to laugh too much, plus you start to cry and you blow snot all over yourself.

In Heinlein’s book “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the story of the human Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars and brought back to earth to learn how to behave like a human, one of the hardest things for him to learn was to have a sense of humor.  As the book goes, Martians had no concept of humor and the humans had a hard time teaching Michael about humor and why people laugh.

Initially Michael was told that people laugh when something is funny, which means it is something happy or something that makes him happy.  Yet Michael knew that people also felt happiness through love, and friendship, and achievement, and yet those sorts of things didn’t make people laugh.  It wasn’t until some time later that Michael came to the realization that things are funny not because they are happy, but because they are painful.  People laugh to deal with the pain, the irony, the frustration, the sadness.  Not because they are happy.

Jerry Seinfeld says, “What’s the deal with airline food?”  We laugh because we are thinking, “Yeah, no kidding.  Airline food is lame!”  Brian Regan says, “I before E, except after C, and when sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and you’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!”  We laugh because we think, “For sure.  I can never figure out how that rule is supposed to work!”  I say, “People hate to laugh because they blow snot all over themselves.”  You laugh because you think, “I know, that is so embarrassing, and now I have to wash these clothes.”

We don’t laugh at jokes about airline food because we love it so much.  We laugh because it is so annoying.  Michael Smith (or Heinlein, technically) was right — we laugh because it hurts, not because it is happy.

This is why I’m finding it odd that some people don’t like me making such funny jokes because my humor is too cynical and sarcastic.  According to Heinlein, it wouldn’t be so darn funny if it wasn’t a little painful.  And we know that Heinlein could not be wrong.  After all, he wrote Starship Troopers, which was a great story before Paul Verhoeven ruined it.

In other words, it isn’t the cynicism or sarcasm that is inappropriate.  It is the humor that is inappropriate.  It’s like I’m trying to tell you, I’m literally too funny.  I can’t help myself.  I start out trying to have a serious blog post and the next thing you know you are scrubbing snot off your monitor.

Sorry.