Johnny X's March 2009

My Newest Book I Have to Wait Two Years to Read


A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon

Favorite Email

Zach: I have a little snag in our plans for Thursday night. My calling is coaching the young men's basketball teams in my ward. It's region time and the priest team is doing very well and has a game Thursday night at 7 pm, semi finals. The games are an hour, or less. I can be at Cam's at 8. Don't let that stop you guys from going to dinner, or getting together earlier. I'll get there at 8 though. Thoughts?

Cam: My first thought is, Bummer. My second thought is, who the crap made you a basketball coach?

Zach: Jesus, Cam. Jesus.

Favorite Youtube Video: It's Just Like a Mini Mall

I often say that I work with some of the dumbest people in the country. I am not sure if people actually believe me, or if they take it as an exaggeration as I am blowing of steam, but it's true.

Exhibit A: I work for a company that does insurance inspections on homes. Some insurance companies require that the inspector take a photo of the number of the home to confirm the address, so that they know we saw the correct home.

We got a report in the other day where the inspector took a picture of the request the insurance company sent us. So, to confirm that the address was correct he took a picture of a piece of paper, and sent it in labelled "Address confirmation," which of course makes no sense at all. It doesn't confirm that he saw the right house, it just confirms that he could if he wanted to.

How can you possibly think that that is the right thing to do? That you are going to send this to the QC staff, and they will look at it be like "Yep. The number on the request he took a picture of didn't change when he printed it," and send the picture of your clipboard to the insurance company? Awesome. Quite professional.

I was going to post this picture, but I would have to black out most of it (name, address etc.), and it wouldn't be worth it.

A pet peeve of mine that has formed because of my job is the word barbecue being spelled BBQ, bar-b-que (seriously! What is that!), or barbeque.

Whenever an insured has a built-in BARBECUE we need to list that in the report, and the spelling needs to be changed 98% of the time, and it drove me nuts. This doesn't have much to do with my work now, but I could get a well-done (pardon the pun) report, but if they spelled barbecue wrong (which, like i said, was 98% of the time) I would be super upset, and was always sure to let the inspector know.

I don't know why it bothered me so much. It appears that I was the only one in the office correcting it, and that 4% of the English speaking population actually knows how to spell the stupid word. I have gotten emails back from underwriters with it spelled incorrectly, so obviously the people I was fixing it for didn't know the difference, and the pricing tool I am currently working with has it built-in as 'barbeque,' and I can't do anything about it.

Maybe I am just sensitive becuase I was going to get 100% on a spelling test in the fifth grade once, but I didn't, because I spelled barbecue with a 'q.'

Anyway, a friend recently told me to try Jim Beam sunflower seeds, which I did. Although, it gave me pause when I saw that they couldn't spell it either. It is much more offensive to me when you sell barbecue products (flavor, or grills) and don't know how to spell it. You should be able to spell your own product

Really. How did this word get a pass by everyone? How is it that it gets five different spellings when other words have one?

Piece of Lit

Then he heard the weeping. That was what woke him: a soft but penetrating weeping that because it was do delicate was able to slip through the mesh of sleep and reach the place where his fear lived. - Pedro Páramo, Jaun Rulfo

Six Hours of Driving and a Jazz Game

The Freshmaker



Being overly excited, but it's the people in the back that make this a keeper

Some Guy With Bagpipes

I had to pee so bad!