It’s Halloween and everyone in the office has dressed up.

I’m Goku. I worked on the hair for like 20 minutes this morning and it still doesn’t look right. I wish I knew how to make a mo-hawk…

Just wanted to say, that at almost the end of my first week, I am happier than I have been in a long time.

I noticed a weird sensation in my face. My cheeks are growing tired of smiling.

Riding around the office on a razor scooter, listening to my iPod all day, tossing stress balls around, chatting with people, laughing, working, just generally having fun.

This is gonna be awesome.

So one of my first tasks is to come up with a greek god to name my development server after. I have two options I am trying to choose between (narrowed it down from hundreds):

Apollo – Son of Leto, brother of Artemis, god of music and archery. Day after day he drives a chariot across the sky giving life giving light to the world. Shoots arrows of insight. Works closely with Oracles to determine outcomes.

Cadmus – Was told by the oracle to abandon a year long quest and divinely led to build thebes (a city). Raised up a core group of five warriors (the spartes) to help build his city.

The benefits of Apollo are that he is actually a god (whereas Cadmus is just a mortal). Also, Apollo is related to Leto and Artemis, who are my boss’s and co-workers choices (respectively). Apollo is a little cliche… I think I am somewhat leaning towards Apollo, but if this decision were a personal one, and the choice I made were private, I would pick Cadmus. However, since everyone will know which one I pick, and will judge me on it, I am leaning towards Apollo…

Input welcome.

Imagine if you will a stuffed aflac duck. Very ordinary… usual… white with yellow feet. Imagine if you squeeze this duck, it will utter the word “aflac” in an annoying voice.

Now imagine that perhaps your co-worker, whom you are comfortable with, brings this menace to work. Imagine further that she enjoys giving this duck a squeeze knowing full well the annoyance it inflicts upon you.

Perhaps you could stand it for a while… perhaps it’s even funny at first. Maybe it reminds you of the easy button from staples… But eventually, you hate this duck. The mere thought that her gentle grip upon it’s odious body could encite it’s issuing of this onerous meaningless phrase causes your left lower eyelid to flutter ever so slightly. The vein in your temple pulses with the rage it causes you. The outburst from this fowl foul causes your muscles to convulse as you jolt from your chair.

“Damn that infernal duck!!!!” you cry out as you grab the beast and launch it into the air… where it catches in the rafters twenty feet above.

“nooo!!!!” cries your co-worker, and runs over to a box of squeezy stress-balls and begins pelting the ceiling with them in an attempt to dislodge the poor hideous nuisance.

And thus… Duckball is born.

Two teams. Duck team and World team. Every time the duck is knocked down from the rafters Duck team gets a point. Every time duck team fails, World team gets a point. When Duck team succeeds, World team attempts to re-lodge the duck upon it’s lofty perch once more. If World team prevails, World team receives a point, if World team does not, then Duck team gets a point. Each day the duck or world team receive five tries to accomplish their goal (if you fail, the other team only gets one point per day, not per try). The number of tries your team receives per day increases by five for each week your team does not succeed.

This trail was one of the first tasks revealed to me upon my arrival at my new job. I am on the World team (trying to keep the duck in the rafters). So far, we are winning. Something like 78 to 56…

My new job looks like it is going to be fun.

I found this awesome pendant light that I want to buy for my dining room. It’s a Mission Style Wooden Dining Pendant. The problem is… I have no idea where to buy it. My wife and I have been separately searching the Internet for a total of about 4 hours now and have not been able to find it anywhere.

I sent an e-mail to the site owners, but I doubt they will ever respond…

Any suggestions are welcome.

The last cell phone I bought was about three years ago. The one I got last October was the “free” phone, and it is a mistake I will never make again.

My wife broke her phone last week, and I spent about an hour in the AT&T store waiting to be helped. I played with the iPhone almost the entire time. When I first saw the display, my only thought was, “Oh yeah… I guess AT&T is the exclusive iPhone service provider… huh…” and then I just moved right on past and started looking at the other phones.

I found the pink Razor my wife wanted (she was sick, and waiting in the car). I waited and waited for a salesman so I could make my purchase. I tried to look at the sweet windows mobile phone my Dad has, but you couldn’t even slide it open to test it out (stupid) and I was shocked to see that it was almost $600. This phone had been the phone I was planning on getting for my Christmas present (Julie and I buy our Christmas presents from each other for ourselves each year), but not with that price tag on it.

Finally, thoroughly bored, and sick of the crappy music some kid had left the iPhone blaring, I went over to the display to try and figure out how to make it shut up. I’m sad to admit it took me a bit (probably 30 seconds) to figure out how to turn off the Macy Gray crap crackling the (what sounded to be blown) speakers. I instantly disliked the UI, but I can’t now remember why. Probably that there were no real menus or anything like that. Oh, and I couldn’t fine the stylus and was disgusted by how nastily smeared up the screen was.

I stopped the music, and then pressed the square button at the bottom thinking that would turn it off, or give me some sort of menu with options (I didn’t care which). It didn’t. I was presented with the home screen. Ok… Hrm… No games… “Text” (boring…) “Calendar” (boring…) “Photos” (who cares, I have a digital camera) “Camera” (couldn’t that have been part of photos?) “YouTube” (really? hrm… intriguing…) *click*

I am presented with a bunch of videos. Cool. That could be entertaining for a while… I’m not really up for watching youtube videos in the middle of a store at the moment though, so I click back on the home button.

“Stocks” (boring) “Maps” (sweet… That could could be helpful) *click*

Google maps pops up and I start playing with it. I’m a sucker for Google maps, and I see that it has the “satellite” view. I start flying around the country looking at things for a few, and then click the home button to see what other treats there might be.

“Weather” (meh… not completely useless) “Clock” (boring…) “Calculator” (always useful) “Notes” (oh… wait… where is the keyboard???) *click*

I pop open the little note pad, and start trying to type in a test sentence with my thumbs. It is extremely awful. Where is the freaking stylus? I horribly misspell every single word as my fat thumbs jab at the tiny little pictures of letters crammed at the bottom of the screen. I somehow managed to type in “Mac sux, and so does this” before I put the phone down completely disgusted, and walked away.

At this point the loud business man with the blue tooth ear piece looking for a blackberry-like cellphone who had been monopolizing the salesman’s time walked over to the iPhone display. He started asking questions about it and tried to type in a note. He started complaining about the keyboard immediately(who wouldn’t?). He then exclaimed, “bah… Too high tech geeky for me! I need something that just works” and walked back over to the blackberry a few phones down. On his way he got a phone call and started talking noisily on his phone.

The salesman rolled his eyes and turned towards me. “I’m sorry, I’ll be with you very shortly.”

He wasn’t helping the guy at the moment, so I asked, “Do you guys have the stylus for the iPhone?”

“Doesn’t come with one. Apple made it to be used only with one index finger, cradling it in your other hand.” (turns out this isn’t entirely true)

“Wow… ok…”

At that point he started helping the guy again, and I wandered a bit more.

Over the next 45 minutes I wandered back to the display again and again. Each time staying a bit longer, and each time I left staying away a little shorter. By the time they got around to helping me, I was sad that I had to pull myself away from the phone.

I began asking questions about the data plan and price, and found that it was shockingly affordable (it was only $50 more than the phone we were buying Julie, and over $200 less than the one I was already looking at for Christmas), and I was happy to hear that it would interact with my home wifi and that I got unlimited data transfer over the phone even when not on wifi. It had a web browser, and it was even an iPod. It was like a little web surfing, music/movie, phone. It was… wait… no… oh the horror… it was awesome!

Saturday afternoon I went back and bought it (very early Christmas present). I went straight home and activated it. I called my brother as soon as it was activated and told him about it. I looked up show-times for a movie. I lay in bed that night watching youTube videos until the battery almost died. I checked my e-mail while furniture shopping the next day. I looked up coupons for the furniture store while looking around. I listened to music while mowing the lawn when I got home. I downloaded the Rush Limbaugh podcast and watched/listened to it while I cooked dinner and cleaned my computer room. I ripped King Kong off of a DVD I had bought and watched it that night while I went to sleep (and then finished it this morning while I went through my morning routine). I used it so much that the battery didn’t get completely charged until Sunday night, and it has run all the way down and back up about five or six times now. I love this little phone.

It has so many features I like that surprised me, and only a few that really pissed me off (no flash??? What the heck were they thinking?). The battery life is lacking (although it charges extremely quickly), and it irritates me that I can’t plug my normal headphones into it (I hate earbuds, and want to use my normal sound-canceling over the ear headphones).

All in all it’s a crazy tight little phone. I guess I will have to admit that I think Mac sucks a little less now…