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Better Than The Maze

July 25, 2006

Having a cigarette while drinking may reduce the effects of the alcohol, scientists suggest – but the tests have only been carried out on rats so far. The lead scientist explained, “we did everything within reason to create a nice bar scene for the rats, but when all was said and done it wasn’t much more than a little hole in wall– literally.”
Hot Potato

September 29, 2003

A 6-foot tall, 150-pound Mr. Potato Head statue once used by the Rhode Island Tourism Division was stolen Friday from the driveway of a private home in Newport, Rhode Island. After hearing the news, the search for a 6-foot tall letter “E” was initiated by former Vice President Dan Quayle.
All By Four

April 19, 2011

I had to explain some car stuff to my wife today. The difference between “four wheel drive” and “all wheel drive” is as follows: In a four wheel drive car the power from the engine is transferred to each wheel to improve traction and handling. All wheel drive does much the same thing, but the spare tire also spins when the vehicle is in motion.
Kitchen Project

January 20, 2026

So here was my contribution to the Santa Breakfast for the Loveland High School Marching Band in December 2025. The Oreo cookie is a Lazy Susan, the Hershey bars are for hot pots, and the KitKat bars are for glasses. I made all of these on my CNC machine. As my skills as a woodworker evolve, I have come to realize that while sanding projects properly is a big pain in the ass, it does make for a much better looking finished project.
Oil Well That Ends Well

June 17, 2010

After causing the largest oil spill in U.S. history, British Petroleum announced today a $20 billion fund to compensate individuals negatively effected by this disaster. In an unrelated story, BP released a statement to refineries noting a minor increase of $1 for the next 20 billion barrels it sells.
Women Are Strange

December 15, 2001

Many great philosophers have tried to isolate exactly what separates human kind from the rest of the animal kingdom. As a species human beings are not the fastest creatures, we do not have the most strength, and when it comes to flying through the air under our own power, well, it’s safe to say that we suck pretty bad there too. I sat on my couch the other night eating a half dozen tiny saltine and peanut butter sandwiches and realized we are the only species on this planet where the males spend quite a large percentage of their free time trying to understand the females. Which might not be such a bad thing if it did a lick of good.

I look back to my high school days and think of many things I regret doing and not doing. For example, I could probably track down my ninth grade algebra teacher in order to cover his house in toilet paper and put someone else’s license plates on his car, but my anger has dissipated over the years. Sure—I still firmly believe he took way too much pleasure in torturing me, but if I got caught throwing eggs at his house I would no longer have the luxury of being charged as a minor.

The biggest thing I would have NOT done in high school if I could do it all over again would be attending my senior prom. In fact, I use this as evidence I will never create a time traveling device. If I were to master time travel sometime in the future, the first thing I would have done is gone back to 1992 and physically prevented myself from going through with it. I bought into the hype that everyone should go to their senior prom. Not that I’m against the general idea, but I ended up asking this girl I hardly knew to be my date. The whole night was incredibly awkward. I spent the entire night asking myself questions like “Is this supposed to be fun?”, “Why did I pay 80 bucks so I could rent clothes that make me look like the waiter?”, and “I wonder who is on Saturday Night Live tonight? Maybe this time it will be funny.”

I learned many, many things during my time in college. Very little of this knowledge related to any higher understanding of women. My love for Taco Bell was at its peak during this time in my life, and I was always asking my friends if they wanted to join me on a run for the border. When I would ask my guy friends to go with me they would usually respond with something to the effect of “Omar, you are becoming a freak about Taco Bell—get a life!” They would never agree to go and then pout and be otherwise ill tempered the rest of the night because the mere thought of another soft taco and bean burrito made them gag. My girlfriend at the time, however, seemed to do this on a surprisingly regular basis.

Starting a relationship with a woman is a lot like buying an automobile. When going to buy a car it is usually quite difficult to know exactly how much the car costs. Sure, there might be a price on the windshield, but this is just a ball park figure. The final cost of the car is the sticker price plus a certain number of dollars determined by a complex set of factors that include rifling through all potential customer’s wallets for detailed personal financial information. The entire process is designed to be disorienting and confusing. Is the 500 bucks for rust proofing a good idea or a total scam? Should I buy a car that is entirely manufactured in Peru? Did the salesman just steal my wallet? In the end most people consider the purchase a success if they have any money at all left over and the vehicle they drive off the lot has close to the number of doors as the sales person promised.

Starting a relationship with a man is more like buying groceries. While lacking the new car smell and endless strings of colored plastic flags, grocery shopping is a very simple process. You can look at an item, pick it up, and use any other senses to determine if a given product meets your needs at the time. While trying to be helpful and courteous, employees at these establishments are for the most part apathetic about individual decisions made by customers. Nobody get fired based on, say, how many cans of soup are purchased on a given day.

If you happen to be a man, you probably find the behavior of women to be just as foreign and confusing as a crooked Mexican real estate time share scheme. For better or worse, that is just the way things are. And it helps prove how advance the human race has become over the years.
Good Oil Boys

April 11, 2003

The Army Corps of Engineers today released details regarding a controversial plan to rebuild Iraq’s oilfields once the military campaign has ended. While some members of Congress are questioning the ethics of awarding a seven billion dollar contract without competitive bidding to a company once run by Vice President Dick Chaney, the Bush administration replied, “What, did you just meet us?”
Lax Security

January 22, 2012

Security screening in one major airport was completely closed today for the better part of an hour after experiencing another cupcake related incident. A senior administrator at the TSA explained. “While we feel that we have made every effort to explain our actions related to the ‘cupcake in a jar’ incident, we would also like to ask the general public not to bring a dozen cupcake jars through security– especially when their primary ingredient appeared to be chocolate flavored laxatives.”
1997 Christmas Letter

December 25, 1997

Well folks, it’s that time of year again– the days are getting shorter, annoying Christmas music is playing at the mall, the political forces that run our nation are gearing up for the next presidential election, and, of course, it’s time to publish my third annual Christmas letter. This brings up the question of whether I should even try to construct a letter that surpasses the high standard that I set for myself when writing the first two Christmas letters. Consider the world of movies for a moment. By the time they get to making a third movie in a series it pretty much just sucks. I am sure they meant well when they made “Superman 3”, but putting Christopher Reeves, Richard Prior, and a wacky evil computer together isn’t something to be proud of. Even “Return of the Jedi” wasn’t as good as its predecessors. Oh no, they built ANOTHER Death Star for the good guys to blow up at the very end. On the other hand, I listened to the School House Rock CD (which I own, of course) and learned that three is a magic number. I don’t think they would have made a number magical if there was an inherent problem with it. In conclusion (of the introduction), I know the risks but I am none the less going to give it a shot. If you are not completely satisfied with this product, just send any unused portion to the address provided for a full refund.

In case you didn’t already know, I left my job at Saxe, Inc. Among other things, the thought of developing software to help companies send out more junk mail slowly wore down my will to live. After a while I would wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling thinking the world would be a better place if I just called in sick for the day. Even the lure of the cappuccino machine and the ping pong table (see last year’s Christmas letter) wasn’t enough to convince me to stay. My departure was civil and professional, considering the fact that several of the upper level managers were (and to the best of my knowledge still are) minions of Satan.

One of the last things I did before leaving Saxe was use up all of my vacation time on a road trip to see the Indianapolis 500. My friend Tina and I drove a total of 2,048 miles to watch thirty-three men drive around a big loop 200 times. Of course not all of them made it all the way through to finish the race. I don’t have exact numbers, but quite a few of the racers stopped themselves by smashing into the outside walls, a few just ran into each other, and then there was one guy who was driving along minding his own business when his car just caught on fire. I felt bad for the guy, but then a bunch of people came along and extinguished him.

The sheer magnitude of the Indianapolis 500 is impressive. Hundreds of thousands of people converge to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway one day a year to see the big race. The planning required to pull something like this off is extensive– roads are blocked off, businesses are closed down, and special busses are brought in to move the masses more efficiently. Every effort is made to ensure the audience enjoys the race. Having taken all of this into consideration, I don’t understand why they built one of the world’s largest racing facilities in a climate that on average receives more precipitation during the last weekend in May than the entire Amazon Basin gets all year. I guess I am still a little bitter about the fact that we were forced to go to the race track three different days before the race track was dry enough to get the race finished.

I really should have had a new job lined up BEFORE I left my old job at Saxe, but then it would have been a lot harder to take the entire summer off. After a few weeks of doing no productive work, I realized my summer needed a little more structure. Applying the theory that there cannot be light without darkness, good without evil, and “tastes great” without “less filling” to my otherwise unproductive summer free time, I decided to go back to school to start working toward my Masters Degree. After a rather flimsy search, I decided to take a graduate level mathematics class at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was rough, but twice a week all summer I got up, shaved, showered, and made my way to downtown Denver in time for my 4 PM class– even if it was raining. A lesser person might have just stayed home and watched that old episode of “The A Team” where George Peppard and company save the defenseless workers from the evil bad guy while narrowly eluding the military forces that are relentlessly pursuing them for the crime they didn’t commit. You know the one. Anyway, I got through summer school with only minor bruises and am planning on receiving my Masters degree sometime in the next 8 to 10 years.

All good things must come to an end, and my “summer of unemployment” was no exception. After evaluating my bank account, I begrudgingly realized that an “autumn of unemployment” was not a financial option. I started sending my resume out to companies and eventually was hired at company called Rogue Wave Software. Rogue Wave’s current focus involves brokering brides of the Philippines to wealthy but socially underdeveloped gentlemen. Of course it’s all a front to hide the fact they are really developing, marketing, and supporting digital dynamic reusable hierarchical multi-platform modularized procedural language libraries.

I am currently working in the Technical Support division of Rogue Wave Software. We have constructed an international array of computers connected through a highly evolved network of PPP, ISDN, and T1 telecommunication lines that allow for the fast, efficient, and reliable movement of information allowing us to seamlessly communicate in our ever increasing global community. Does this investment in time and money improve our relationship with our customers? I don’t know, but it runs Quake really well.

One of the more interesting aspects of this job, besides, of course, playing Quake, involves the notion that part of our responsibility involves helping the customers so they don’t have to call us in the first place. To achieve this goal we are constantly reporting bugs in our software, finding problems with our documentation, and publishing helpful hints on the Internet. The more successful we become at this venture the more people get fired due to a decrease in the number of customer calls. But, since most of us in technical support were just recently hired, we are only performing our jobs at a level where our wages are garnished.

With the possible exception of leaving a bunch of store bought tortillas in my refrigerator for an entire year just to see what would happen (they shattered when I tried to move them), I believe that my crowning accomplishment of the year would have to be the day that I completed all the levels on the “Duke Nukem 3D” CD that I bought for my computer in January. Anyone can get through a few levels and then give up, but I had what it takes to get through all 30 levels (and one of the secret levels that I am not allowed to talk about) without getting burned out. Sure, I could have stopped half way through and gone outside or read a book, but that would have been a cop out. I stuck by my guns– knowing that I made it down a path where so few see any value whatsoever.

I am sending this letter by E-mail as much as possible in an effort to promote living environmentally friendly lifestyles. Remember to recycle folks, because if you don’t all of us will have to live with the garbage until the sun runs out of fuel and collapses on itself with the resulting explosion enveloping the planet Earth as we know it– instantaneously converting countless generations of accomplishments back into the basic building blocks of matter from which we were created. And that’s a long time.

That about wraps things up here. If you ever question how to live your life, just remember what everyone tells John Cusack in the movie “Better Off Dead”– “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”
Heading Out To San Francisco

January 8, 2003

For one reason or another, my family isn’t very big on Christmas tradition. We don’t cut down live trees. We don’t prepare an elaborate turkey dinner for Christmas. Heck, we have yet to construct a family coat of arms. This probably means the Lutfey family isn’t every going to be featured in a Norman Rockwell painting anytime in the foreseeable future. Despite all of this, we do make an effort to be in the same city every year around the holidays. This year my mom and I packed our bags and headed out to visit my sister in San Francisco. (NOTE TO SELF: Come up with a witty and insightful “Rice-a-roni” joke to end the paragraph.)

My journey started out by driving to Denver International Airport. My plan was to park in the long term parking lot and take the shuttle to the terminal. Which would have worked fine, except for the fact that the long term parking was too full to accept any new cars. I honestly don’t how this could happen since the airport is located in the geographic center of the Great Plains. I think letting cars park next to the paved parking lot in one of the hundreds of thousands of acres of undeveloped prairie land would be a valid option. But then again, people often tell me I think too much. My concern started growing when I kept driving towards the airport only to find the on-site long term parking was full. Same thing for the relatively close-in economy parking. The only option left was parking in the actual parking garage. Fortunately, there was plenty of empty spots. Unfortunately, it is the most expensive place to park in the entire state of Colorado. As I got out of the car I noticed a sign stating that all cars left would be towed when either A) Thirty days had elapsed, or B) The bill for parking exceeds the estimated blue book value of the car.

Once we arrived in San Francisco and got all of our belonging settled, my sister drove us around the city so we could see various points of interest. After seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf, my sister drove us through the mission district (a predominantly gay part of the city.) As we were stopped at an intersection, I pointed to a man in the crosswalk and said, “He looks SO gay.” Right after I said that, I realized my window was open. The guy looked right at me, made a “telephone” gesture by extending his thumb and pinkie finger, and mouthed the words “call me.”

OK, the last part just happened in my “wouldn’t it have been funny if…” fantasy world. My mom was completely offended by the whole situation, which only made it more entertaining for me. My sister was amused, but thought I was flattering myself. I spent the next hour or so making the telephone gesture whenever my mom looked at me. My sister’s boyfriend sat in the car quietly thinking to himself, “They will be gone in three days. They will be gone in three days….”

Over the past few years we have gotten into the habit (or “tradition”, if you will) of going to see some form of theatrical presentation around the holidays. In the past we have seen “Rent” and “Phantom of the Opera.” This year my sister purchased tickets to “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” I must say it was quite an experience. Anyone familiar with transsexual Nazi propaganda musicals knows exactly what I’m talking about. For all the other people out there still living in trees and caves, the show centers around a young man whose penis is cut off in an elaborate attempt to escape from East Berlin during the mid 1980s. Despite (or maybe because of) the odd premise, I enjoyed the evening. The musical numbers were fun to listen to and the finale used enormous volumes of artificial fog. (NOTE TO IMPRESSIONABLE READERS: Please do not take this paragraph as an endorsement of genital mutilation.)

After my whole “getting stuck in the women’s bathroom in an Amsterdam McDonalds” experience back in 1999, I thought my days of writing about fast food franchise restrooms were over. Not so, it turns out. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Despite being in the culturally diverse city of San Francisco, we stopped in a McDonalds near my sister’s apartment one afternoon for a quick bite to eat. Situated on the west side of the city near a monstrously large park, the area is home to quite a few homeless people. One of the fundamental rules of owning a restaurant in a large city is to make it really difficult for anyone to use the bathroom facilities. Most of the time this involves the use of a bathroom key tied to some sort of large and cumbersome item such as a brick or open container of scalding hot french fry grease.

This facility, however, took the inaccessibility concept one step further by installing a remote buzzer device. Anyone wanting to go to the bathroom would go to the cashier and asked to be buzzed inside. In principle, this is a decent solution. There is, however, a weak link in the system– it assumes everyone understands the concept of a buzzer. Which, unfortunately, was not the case. As we sat at a table we watched several people have difficulty gaining entrance to the bathroom. One young man kept trying to turn the knob after the buzzer stopped, which turns out to be the exact opposite of what he was supposed to be doing. This led to a rather annoyed manager coming over and giving him a quick lesson on how to operate the door. This was followed by a spirited philosophical discussion of “if there is one person in the bathroom and two stalls, am I allowed to go in?” After we finished eating, I decided it would just be easier to go outside and pee in an obscured corner of the parking lot.

Eventually we had to fly back to Colorado. We got on the plane and I realized the passenger in the seat next to me was the same guy one I yelled at in the Mission District. Let’s just say I had some explaining to do. Or was I sitting next to my mom? Either way, the plane landed in Colorado, I went back to Loveland, and my sister’s boyfriend is happy to be rid of us for the better part of a year.
Sleep Deprivation

March 26, 2012

I truly believe that any sleep deprivation study needs to use 10 month old children who wake up a random intervals in the middle of the night. My second daughter, Samantha, is quite skilled at screaming at random intervals in the night for reasons completely unknown to me.

So I took her downstairs the other night to try and calm her down, but none of the usual tricks were doing me any good. Eventually I just sat down with her on the recliner and turned on the television. After randomly moving through channels we both dozed off in the chair. When I woke up I had a bunch of strange thoughts in my head such as:

Drug cartels from south of the boarder are funding conservative super PACs to keep funding for the war on drugs
The Rosetta Stone company is actively suppressing Esperanto for their own finical gain.
Jimmy Carter, at night when he isn’t working on being an international peace ambassador, is a super hero whose only goal is to get the United States to convert to the metric system.

So I’m not really sure what channel I was watching when I fell asleep, but I highly suspect it was one of those crazy 24 news channels. That, or I was watching the Colbert report commenting on these topics. The last alternative is that I’m just strange enough to think of these things on my own.
Jack Of All Trades

April 15, 2009

Action star and martial artist Jackie Chan recently stirred up controversy with a comment that the general Chinese population “needs to be controlled.” When asked how the government should subdue a nation of 1.3 billion people, Mr. Chan replied simply, “ladders.”
Drug War

February 21, 2005

Rush Limbaugh is expected to visit Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday. When asked about the nature of the visit, the conservative radio talk show host stated, “I’m excited to see the emergence of freedom in a country that for so many years has been ravished by war. That, and the vast expanse of heroin-producing poppy fields.”
Omar And Katherine Lutfey

April 18, 2009

I got the day off on Tuesday, so I decided to get a few errands taken off my to do list. I took my car to the shop to get the driver’s side power window fixed, a saw my doctor for my annual check-up, oh, yeah, and I went and married Katherine.

“You did what?” many people have asked. We are having a wedding in June, and we are going on a honeymoon to New York City in May. Since we weren’t really doing anything in the traditional order, we decided to get the paperwork out of the way. It turns out that getting married in Larimer County, Colorado is fairly simple. Katherine filled out the forms online, and the next day we went to the office to get the paperwork. Actually, it is the same place where car registration takes place. The only strange part of the process was the fact that we weren’t allowed to sign the marriage certificate at that office.

So we went home, and in a very beautiful ceremony that involved Katherine, myself, and the dog, we signed the marriage license. We wanted Maury to sign as the witness, but when we put the pen in his paws he kept trying to tear it apart with his teeth. But he watched us– hoping to get a treat when we were finished. The next day Katherine took the paperwork back and now we are officially married.

So now Katherine Herbig is now Katherine Lutfey who gets to change her name. I don’t have do to any of that– I won the coin toss over whose last name we were going to use. We thought of combining our last names, but then we decided that if we have kids and they wanted to get married to someone else with a hyphenated last name they would have four last names, and that just seems like a bit much. So now Katherine has the exciting privilege of changing her social security card, driver’s license, passport, and Starbucks frequent drinker reward card.
Word On The Street

November 25, 2002

Paramount Pictures recently announced plans for a motion picture based on the 1980s Fox television drama “21 Jump Street.” Plans call for the return of some original cast members and a heavy dose of computer-generated effects to turn Richard Grieko back into an undercover high school student.
The Real Santa

June 15, 2001

Even with the help of my overactive imagination, I could not have even remotely predicted what was going to happen to me one Saturday night last December. Sitting on Santa’s lap, even as at the age of twenty-seven, is not a totally uncommon activity when attending the neighbor’s Christmas party. Things got weird for me, however, when “Santa” turned out to be my high school math teacher.

Before I go any further here, I need to rewind my life thirteen years to provide background information about some of the people involved in the story. With varying degrees of success, I had four different teachers attempt to fill my brain with the theorems, concepts, and procedures of a standard high school mathematics curriculum. To the best of my knowledge, I have only seen one of them dressed up as Santa Claus.

After sprinkling references about Mr. Eggert (my ninth grade algebra teacher) throughout recent stories, it was really just a matter of time before I devoted an entire story to the man who derived enormous amounts of joy and happiness to making my life as a high school freshman a living hell. I sometimes feel guilty just mentioning his name. It’s not because he was a mean, smelly, cigar smoking, bitter man who went out of his way to telephone my parents during the middle of dinner to discuss my attitude problem. In reality, he is just too easy of a target. Not everyone who sponsors their school’s chess team has a room full of emotional baggage upstairs, but Mr. Eggert is not someone to disprove this popular notion. I somehow managed to survive my entire freshman year with Mr. Eggert. I learned a lot in his class, and most of it was only tangentially related to mathematics.

My situation started to look better during my sophomore year of high school. My previous mathematics teacher was replaced with a much less evil model. Looking back on the situation, I suspect Mr. Ridgely, my tenth grade geometry teacher, conspired to play “good cop” to Mr. Eggert’s “bad smelling cop”. He was a very enthusiastic and helpful teacher. To top it off, he never called my parents during dinner time. Despite the fact that a large percentage of the entire world was plotting against me during my years as a teenager, I can honestly say that he probably wasn’t conspiring to destroy my life. Or, if he was, he did a very nice job of concealing his intentions.

Fast forward twelve and a half years to last December. My mother and I were invited to a Christmas party hosted by some of our old neighbors. Well, they aren’t really all that old– they just aren’t our neighbors anymore. In addition to visiting with a lot of friends I haven’t seen in a while, someone brought a plate of frozen miniature chocolate eclairs I found to be quite tasty. I started seeing everything in a different perspective. I spent my entire life up to that moment in time thinking that eclairs could only be one size and temperature. Why not make the pastries smaller? Why not serve them below room temperature? Then I applied the same thinking to humanity in general. I unearthed some universal truths about humanity. However, this story is about Santa Claus. The truths about chocolate eclairs will be written at a later date.

Guess who comes knocking on the door after everyone finished eating? If you answered “Jehovah’s Witnesses” you would be absolutely wrong, even though that would make for an interesting plot twist. No, Santa Claus himself joined the party with his big sack of presents for everyone at the party. I guess that means nobody fell into the “naughty” category for the year. Either that or the newly implemented NaughtyOrNice.com web site was malfunctioning and reporting a “nice” status for all individuals.

Santa sat down in the middle of the living room and pulled presents out one at a time. Everyone, including myself, sat on Santa’s lap when their name was called. For some reason, my mom seemed especially entertained when it was my turn. He gave me a calendar, so I suppose I wasn’t quite as nice as I could have been. I was really hoping for something that exploded or in some way was designed to catch on fire.

Guess who Santa Claus turned out to be? “A Jehovah’s Witness” is still not the correct answer. You can also rule out Mr. Eggert since it involved being kind and generous to little kids. Also the smell of stale cigar smoke would have scared away many of the smaller children. Santa was my geometry teacher, Mr. Ridgely. Sitting on his lap without realizing it at the time embarrassed me at first. But after a few minutes I decided that it was, like many aspects of my life, too strange to be anything but funny.

No matter where you see him– at the mall with little kids on his lap, next to a Salvation Army donation bucket, or at the liquor store loading up on cigarettes and whisky- I think it is human nature to assume that you don’t personally know the true Santa Claus. So if “Santa” comes around next year and I’ve been nice enough to receive a present, I’ll at least know why his lap seems so familiar.
Television Playlists

August 1, 2009

I wrote a ranting lunatic type letter to Dish Network the other day just to make myself feel better. Basically I want to be able to make playlists of DVR television shows for my future children to watch based on their age. Then I want everyone to be able to share their playlists with the world through the Internet. Anyone, even Oprah, could make suggestions about programming to watch based on date of birth. From this I can see which shows are popular with parents whose children are the same age. Oh yeah, and when my kid turns on the TV, they have to enter their own password so they can only watch shows on their own playlist. I’ll switch over to which ever company can effectively set this up. So Dish, Echostar, Cable guys, and Tivo– get working on this ASAP– my first girl is due in December!
25

November 6, 2002

The non-traditional action series “24” is back for another season on the Fox network. The first season documented a single twenty-four hour period of the main character’s life that included, among other things, foiling an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate. The first ten episodes of this season are focusing on Kiefer Sutherland enjoying a decent night’s sleep.
AT&T Drops Tiger NYC

December 31, 2009

Telecommunication giant AT&T recently announced plans to drop sponsorship of Tiger Woods due to his indefinite break from professional golf and infidelity issues. AT&T has also recently stopped selling certain phones in New York City for unknown reasons. This has led Tiger and NYC to become friends on Facebook and send each other messages about how AT&T is little more than a no-talent ass clown and they could both do better.
A Sure Thing

November 12, 2002

An offshore gaming company recently stopped taking bets on the final outcome of ABC’s “The Bachelor.” Since taping the final episode, a highly disproportionate number of bets were placed for one of the two remaining candidates– leading officials to suspect the outcome of the show was leaked to the public. As a result, the company is also no longer accepting bets for previous lottery numbers, WWF Smackdowns, or the results of the 2002 midterm elections.
Black Remote Technology

March 1, 2009

Who wants to save electricity? Or from a more pragmatic perspective: Who wants to save money? By far the best first step in reducing a home utility bill is to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs to replace less efficient incandescent bulbs. These CFL bulbs used to be quite pricey, but I just checked on Amazon.com and found a pack of 8 bulbs available for $12.69. Don’t wait for the old bulbs to burn out– grab the step stool from the utility closet and go on a bulb changing spree. The the cost of the new bulbs will be covered by the savings on next month’s electricity bill. The biggest challenge is removing the new bulbs from the hermetically sealed double-walled cocoons that General Electric uses to keep their merchandise safe during the moving process. Personally, I have found these types of packages quite easy to open by driving to my local home improvement store and a) renting an acoustic welder, b) purchasing a set of the “jaws of life”, and c) ranting like a lunatic at the poor girl working the customer service center until she successfully opens the package.

So now you figured out how easy it is to save a few bucks each month without any real long-term lifestyle change. So what’s next? CFL bulbs are the low hanging fruit on the home energy efficiency tree. Many of the next ideas, while they will consume less electricity, have a more significant startup cost. Buying a programmable thermostat can save money, but it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. Buying Energy Star appliances is also going to save money in the long run. Heck, replacing all the exterior windows in a house with double pained high efficiency windows will pay off ten to fifteen years down the road. Assuming, of course, that home prices will stop going down somewhere down the road. And, just a reminder, if you don’t own the building in which you live, well, none of this paragraph applies to you anyway.

For the forty five percent of the population that is renting, and the rest of the home owners who are only one quarter the environmentalist of Ed Begley Jr., the next step is to go from room to room and count how many remote controls you use on a regular basis. Here is a list of the electronic devices in my house that use a remote control: two television sets, two DVD players, satellite box, audio receiver, Playstation 2, XM Radio, and two CD players. When these devices are plugged in but not turned on they are drawing power. All these devices are consuming small amounts of electricity 24/7 which adds up to about 5% of your electric bill.

One way to eliminate this problem is to plug these devices into outlets which are shut off by a nearby electrical switch. Another solution is to plug these devices into a power strip. When you turn off the switch on the wall or on the power strip, no electricity is getting to these devices. While this solution works in a technical sense, many people are going to forget to physically disconnect these devices on a regular basis. And, let’s face it, another segment of the population won’t really understand why they need to unplug something they just turned off.

I have a much better idea.

In the future, any stand-alone electronic device that comes with a remote control is also going to contain a built-in remote control cradle to physically keep the remote control with the device. When the remote is not in the cradle, the electronic device listens for signals from the remote. When the remote is returned to the cradle, it physically activates a switch which disables the circuitry used for the remote control. The benefits are twofold: The remote control is kept with the device when not in use and the device is not wasting energy associated with the remote control. Note that when the remote is in the cradle all the non-remote functionality is still active.

A slight variation of this idea can be implemented for more complex setups such as a home entertainment centers. Often times several components are working in unison. For example, a universal remote control can send signals to a television set, a cable box, and DVD player. For this setup a stand alone cradle can be used for the single remote control. This type of cradle plugs into a wall outlet and contains space for multiple electrical devices (much like a power switch) for the television, cable box, and DVD player. When the universal remote control is removed from the cradle, power is restored to all the devices. When the user is finished, all the devices are turned off through the remote control and the remote control is placed back in the cradle. This activates a switch which completely cuts off all power to these devices.

While reducing a home’s power consumption by 5% may seem trivial, as a nation we are wasting 65 Billion kilowatt-hours of electricity which costs us $5.8 billion dollars a year. To put that in perspective, the Hoover Dam produces 565 million kilowatt-hours each year. That is equivalent to 115 Hoover Dams.
Not in Russian Anymore

March 3, 2012

I was looking through my wordpress admin page and I noticed more than 1,000 spam responses in the comments section. By default I don’t post any of these to my site, but just for fun I looked through some of the stuff that people are trying to get on my site. About half of the comments were in, and I’m just kind of guessing here because there were a bunch of backwards Rs and other symbols I didn’t recognize, Russian or some similar language. If these spammers are so smart, can’t they figure out only to spam sites that at least use the same character set?

While I was messing around with my website setup, I thought I would give the “automagically post this to my facebook page” plugin another shot. I tried a few months ago but wasn’t able to get it to work. Here goes attempt number 2. Engage!
Free Bird

July 1, 2003

Pop singer Rachel Farris and her independent record label are embedding mini-CDs in the lids of 4.8 million soft drink cups to be distributed at movie theaters and amusement parks. One music executive, who asked to remain anonymous, commented on this unique promotion, “As an industry, we want to send the message that we can give away millions of digitally stored copies of popular music, but if anyone else tries it, we will sue the pants off them.”
Dog Days

April 4, 2009

I pulled up to the house just as a woman and her dog were leaving to go for an afternoon walk. I reached for a dog biscuit as I stepped out of the truck. The dog ate it up while I talked to the woman.

“This is for you.” I said as I handed her the small cardboard box.

She examined the label with a slight look of confusion on her face. The dog had by now made quick work of his unexpected treat.

“You are on the wrong street. This package is for 3001 Swallow Place. My house is 3001 Swallow Bend.” she replied.

“My mistake, but I will need that dog treat back.”

A moment of awkward silence ensued.

This whole situation happened to me this week, but the I didn’t come up with the last line until after I drove away. I guess my sharp wit is balanced out by my poor timing. Maybe that’s why I write so much stuff on the Internet.
2003 Christmas Letter

December 25, 2003
Imagine this: After a moderately busy day at work, I’m sitting in my La-Z-Boy making saltine and peanut butter sandwiches.

One side of my brain (I’m not sure which– possibly the inside) is busy mentally writing a letter to the cracker company. “Dear Zesta, I should start out by saying I quite enjoy eating your saltine crackers. I find them pleasing to my palette and very reasonably priced. However, as I was sitting in my La-Z-Boy eating saltine and peanut butter sandwiches I realized a potential quality control problem with your product. When I get to the bottom of a sleeve of crackers, occasionally there is one left over. Each peanut butter saltine sandwich I make uses exactly two saltines. I was wondering: is there supposed to be an odd or even number of crackers in each sleeve? Personally, I would prefer to have an even number. Which leads me to my question: what should I do with the last cracker? I tried using both one and three saltines with peanut butter, but found the results unsatisfactory. Any information you can provide me on this matter would be greatly appreciated.”

The rest of my brain was busy processing information from earlier in the afternoon– the shorter days, the first significant snowfall of the year, the icy roads I had to navigate all morning and, of course, the trailer park where I got a UPS truck stuck twenty miles away from the center. It all reminded me (with the exception of the trailer park bit—more on that later) that is was time to write my annual Christmas letter. I jumped up from the La-Z-Boy, looked down at the last couple of saltines, sat down again, finished the last of the crackers, got up again, let the dog outside, decided I, too, had to empty my bladder, grabbed a soda from the refrigerator, and then raced to my computer to start writing. Oh, yeah, and somewhere in there I had the oil in my car changed.

Speaking of automobiles, I just realized that I’ve been driving my Saturn almost as long as I’ve been writing Christmas letters. Based on my personal experience, 1996 was a good year to buy a Saturn. In the seven and a half years I’ve owned this vehicle, it has served me well. However, after consulting my ancient Chinese astrological charts I discovered that 2003 was destined to be “the year of the broken alternator.”

Here is what I learned from the situation:
1. When the battery light on the dashboard goes on, hoping it will just turn itself off in a few days may not always be the best solution.
2. Anyone familiar with northern Colorado will agree that being stranded alone in a non-functioning vehicle in the complete void of civilization between Loveland and Greeley is not the best way to start an evening.
3. When #1 and #2 are no longer just hypothetical situations, it is possible to take your girlfriend’s car to Wal-Mart, buy a new, fully charged battery, install it in the vehicle with the broken alternator, drive to a nearby mechanic for repair work, and finally return the slightly used battery the next day without the woman at the customer service desk realizing what happened. When she asked the reason for the return, I simply said I made a mistake and only needed a nine volt.
September 25, 2003 marked my one year anniversary working at UPS. I’m not sure why, but I expected the day to be kind of special. Nothing too fancy– maybe a nice bottle of wine or some flowers. You know, just a little something to make me feel like I’m important to UPS. But no, UPS just went on like it does every day, completely oblivious to my feelings.

Now that I completely understand / mentally repress everything that happens during the morning shift at UPS, I find my mind occasionally wanders while my body is busy running in and out of the delivery trucks. Just looking at a box moving down the belt can reveal a lot about its contents. Packages from a company such as L.L. Bean have a distinct look and feel that says, “Hello, I’ve got a sweater inside me.” Packages sent from less frequent shippers say things like, “This is a care package for my son who just started college.” Or, “I used to be a box of coco-puffs cereal.”

Sometimes during the spare seven nanoseconds between loading boxes I ask myself questions like, “Come on, now Omar, really, do you even know how long a nanosecond is?”, “Do you like movies about gladiators?”, and, of course, “Who comes up with these street names?” One part of town in Fort Collins is full of “Lord of the Rings” themed street names such as Shire, Hobbit, and Gilgalad. One morning when a coworker asked if a package for an address on Gilgalad Street should be loaded on one of my trucks, I replied with one of my favorite Hobbit songs, “Gilgalad was an Elven-king. Of him the harpers sadly sing…” I stopped only because someone threw a moderately heavy package at the back of my head, but that’s another story. (one I don’t remember, for some reason.)

I made my first official “career move” at UPS in September when I started working as a Saturday air driver. So now, in addition to my usual responsibilities of loading trucks Monday through Friday, I now spend Saturday mornings in a brown UPS truck. After I put on my cute little brown uniform, I deliver packages in the towns of Fort Collins, Laporte, and Belleview. For anyone not familiar with northern Colorado, Laporte is a small town up in the foothills where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of Fort Collins. Belleview is nestled even further up in the mountains where people go to get away from the hustle and bustle of Laporte, usually with little more than a handful of cows and several high caliber firearms.

Driving UPS trucks has been a good learning experience for me. After one moderately sized Friday night snowstorm, I found out what a UPS truck can and can’t do. It can descend a moderately icy inclined entrance to a trailer park without much trouble. After I delivered the package, I discovered that getting back up and on to the main road was not a simple task. After several failed attempts, I looked around, found some trash to stick under the rear tires, and was soon on my way.

Well, that just about wraps things up for 2003. Will 2004 be the year I resolve the odd saltine cracker mystery? Will I keep working at UPS? Will my coworkers keep throwing packages at the back of my head? If you want to know the answer to these and many other totally unrelated questions, stay tuned for the 2004 edition. Until then, just remember my favorite line from the movie “Office Space.” Bob: Looks like you’ve been missing quite a bit of work lately. Peter Gibbons: Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve been MISSING it, Bob.
50% off sale

September 17, 2025

In case you are wondering, not every project turns out perfect on my cnc machine.
Adventures In Europe

August 28, 2001

No matter how many times it happens to me, I’m never totally comfortable when I am stranded near a nuclear power plant and witness an explosion. I suspect this is a good thing. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

This story is the first of three documenting my recent trip to Germany. If you are anything like me, you may be wondering what exactly I was doing several thousand of miles away from my apartment in Boulder, Colorado. Like every other aspect of my life, it just happened.

The whole situation started when I decided to accompany Scott (a friend I have known since I was three years old) to visit his parents who recently moved to Stuttgart, Germany. After flying into the airport at Frankfurt we found our luggage and met up with Scott’s parents. We piled our stuff into the back of the used Volvo they purchased after arriving in the country and headed out on the Autobahn.

I’m not exactly sure what caused the car to overheat on the way back from the airport. I suspect it was either a larger than usual payload, extreme heat and humidity, or what the German people like to refer to as “fahrfegnugen.” Before this trip I had always assumed it to be a condiment for bratwurst. Whatever the reason, we pulled over at a rest stop to investigate the situation in more detail.

After coming to a complete stop and opening the hood of the car, the three males got out to troubleshoot the situation. A few minutes of quiet contemplation produced three completely different and largely contradictory explanations as to the cause of the overheating. It was either A) the radiator, B) the water pump, or C) the windshield wiper fluid. Always the optimist, I decided to choose the one component in the car which I knew the most about. Having run out of windshield wiper fluid in my own car before, I knew how to handle the situation. The fact that the situation shared no common symptoms with my previous experience in no way influenced my diagnosis of the situation.

My idea about the windshield wiper fluid being low turned out to be incorrect. After locating the reservoir, it quickly became apparent there was enough of this fluid for the car to operate. Adding to my extensive database of car repair knowledge, I now hypothesize that windshield wiper fluid is not directly related to the regulating the temperature of an automobile engine. At least for Volvos.

While I did learn something new, it wasn’t proving to be immediately useful in getting the car back in working order. After letting the engine cool down a little bit we slowly opened the radiator cap and noticed it seemed a bit low on whatever type of fluid it was suppose to contain. We ended up pouring a bottle of water I had filled up back at the airport into the radiator. We started the car back up and the temperature returned to an acceptable level. We cautiously got back on the highway.

After a few minutes, the temperature returned to its “too hot” reading on the dashboard. Lacking any actual numbers on the temperature gauge, I can only make an educated guess as to what constitutes an abnormally high engine temperature. Based on causal observations I believe the far left side of the gauge represents room temperature and the far right side represents the surface temperature of the sun.

So once again we pull off the highway. This time, however, we stopped right next to a nuclear power plant. This is when I remembered I recently purchased a membership in AAA. I whipped out my cell phone and called the 1-800 number. After explaining the situation with the vehicle overheating the woman on the other end of the line explained to me that AAA stands for something something of America, and that they did not have the resources to dispatch a tow truck to Germany.

After several additional calls to a more local automobile support group, we were able to get some assistance. A man in bright orange overalls filled the radiator full of water. He then shook one of the rubber hoses that ran from the radiator to some other part of the engine. I don’t think he should have done that. The hose burst open and steam and water came flying out in all directions. The guy wasn’t hurt, but the car seemed to be done moving under its own power for the day.

Eventually a tow truck arrived and took us all to the local Volvo shop. By then it was after 6 PM on Saturday. Being that we were in Europe the shop had already closed. The sign on the window said, “We will be open again in September-October at the latest.” We left the car at the dealership and took a series of taxis and trains to get the rest of the way back to Scott’s parent’s house.

The flight from Denver, Colorado to Frankfurt, Germany took roughly nine hours. Getting the rest of the way only took another six. We did all manage to get there without any other difficulties. I learned a lot on the trip, and I’ll never forget how to say in German that, “The automobile has exploded by the nuclear power plant.”
Come On Holmes

February 15, 2010

I watched “Holmes on Homes” on HGTV last night. Mike Holmes travels to people’s houses to repair shady contractor projects gone awry. Now he can finally quit his part time job working security detail for that Dexy’s Midnight Runners tribute band.
Parade Skit

May 8, 2006

I never thought I would say this, but it turns out our Kinetics theme was too liberal for Boulder. After considering a handful of options, we decided to be “Official Government Surveillance Mascots” since the whole unauthorized wiretapping is such a hot topic these days. So we decorated the craft and constructed some appropriate costumes. We also had to come up with a three minute skit to perform during the parade. I thought it was really funny and would have played well in Boulder, but we got booed off the stage after getting about one quarter of the way through.

Omar: Hello, I’m TAPPY!

Katherine: And I’m TIPPY!

Omar: And we may or may not have been created as marketing tool from an unnamed government surveillance organization.

Katherine: It seems that a lot of people are upset because the government is trying to find all the terrorists. We are here to set the record straight about stuff like this. Are there any concerned citizens here that have any questions for us? How about you? (points to Cindy)

Cindy: My friends tell me that government surveillance is bad.

Omar: Your friends are just plain wrong. We just want to make sure everyone stays away from danger.

Katherine: Is it wrong for a mother to limit the amount of lead based paint her children drink every day?

Cindy: Umm, I guess not, but didn’t President Bush violate the 1978 FISA bill when he authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on US citizens without a warrant?

Katherine: Of course he didn’t do anything wrong. If the president did something wrong he would tell us—that’s how great of a guy he is.

Omar: He just decided that when Congress passed the Patriot Act it gave him the right to do whatever he wants—including not telling congress what he has been up to.

Cindy: So is the government watching me? I’m not doing anything illegal.

Omar: Of course we are watching you. Since we can’t separate the good guys and the bad guys, we have to listen to everything so we can sort things out. It is just like dredging an entire lake to find all the dead hookers at the bottom. What’s wrong with that?

Cindy: Nothing, I suppose, but doesn’t that mean we are losing our civil liberties?

Katherine: Only the people who are breaking the law should be worried. We just want to find the bad guys—like Osama Bin Laden’s social planner or that old lady with cancer who grows her own marijuana plants instead.

Cindy: She is a terrorist? I thought she was doing that to ease the constant pain that prescription drugs couldn’t help.

Omar: Just because someone had a perfectly good reason to break the law doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be locked up in jail.

Cindy: So can you give me an example of some terrorist that have been caught through this program?

Katherine: Of course not. That would just assist the terrorists.

Cindy: What about these secret government operations recently disclosed at AT&T switching rooms across the country? What are those for?

Omar: We have a trouble maker in section 5. Roger that.

Then Scott, wearing a trench coat and sunglasses comes over and carries Cindy off the stage.
Office Aids

November 12, 2002

Bill Gates recently announced two large monetary investments in India. The founder of Microsoft is donating $100 million to fight AIDS and investing another $400 million to promote Microsoft products in the developing nation. Critics point out this action will do little more than eliminate one virus and replace it with another.
Mom, I Want To Grow Up And Be A Lounge Singer

April 5, 2001

While laying on my couch the other day I experienced one of those, “What should I be doing with my life” moments. OK, to be honest, I was sleeping on my couch in the middle of the afternoon when some random noise woke me up and caused me to go through the usual questions of self examination such as, “Who am I?”, “Did I oversleep some important television show?”, “Why is there an empty bag of parmesan flavored goldfish resting on my stomach?”, and, “Are strange objects really flying out of the television set at me, or was I just dreaming that part?”

After a few moments of getting my bearings and being reasonably sure I wasn’t being attacked by any of the electronic equipment in my living room, I started thinking about what I’m doing with my life. I got myself through college and I have been a computer geek for the past five years, but I never felt like my destiny was to sit in a cubical debugging computer code while the glow of the florescent lights slowly sucked away my life force.

I do not posses the background in behavioral science to explain this aspect of my psyche, but in my travels around the world I’ve discovered a strange admiration of lounge singers. I can’t imagine they make a lot of money or have hoards of young women following them from show to show, but from my point of view it is a noble profession.

I mentally traced this feeling back to a lounge singer I met when I was on a vacation in Hawaii. This guy’s job was to play music in the pool and bar area of the hotel from four until eight three times a week. The resort was on the west side of the island and the bar faced the beach. Any job that involves sitting near the beach in shorts and a T-shirt watching the sun set three times a week is OK in my book. Sure, he isn’t busy finding a cure for cancer and he probably isn’t contributing much to the Gross National Product, but I don’t think that really kept him awake at night.

I met another lounge singer role model when I spent six months living and working in Holland. Some of the people I worked with recommended this small hole-in-the-wall steak restaurant in the town of Haarlem. On the weekends they had a singer sitting behind the bar singing tunes in Dutch and English. I didn’t understand any of the songs in Dutch. For all I know he was singing the, “We drink Heineken and push annoying Americans into the icky canal water” song. That might explain why everyone would raise up their beers, look at me, and break into uncontrollable laughter as the more athletically inclined individuals threw me into the nearest canal.

I don’t want to come off as one of those “fancy lad know it all” types , but I know a lot of words to a lot of popular music. There are even some situations where I know ALL of the words to a given song. I also hypothesize that some of these might be the actual lyrics the original artist intended when they composed the song, although I haven’t done enough research to prove or disprove this theory. For example, I don’t think Jimmy Buffet ever used the phrase, “I’m heading down to the shore for another high colonic.” At least not in his songs.

Another skill I posses that I believe will help me become a successful lounge singer is my ability to sing. At the moment, I can only sing in the shower where nobody else can hear me. I pretend the shower head is a somewhat improperly placed microphone and the cartoon fish on my plastic shower curtain are people in the audience waiting to be entertained.

In order to be more relaxed when I’m performing I employ the classic technique of pretending that I’m naked. This doesn’t take too much imagination on my part since when I take a shower I have removed many of my clothes beforehand. Another issue is that most traditional microphones don’t have water shooting out of them. To get around this I tilt the shower head to one side and tilt my head the other way. A unique special effect I like to use involves singing as water is constantly shooting into my mouth. I believe that logistical considerations would keep me from incorporating this into any of my future lounge acts.

One potential problem I see on my way to becoming a lounge singer is the fact that I really don’t know how to play the piano. Even though I played trombone in high school, I don’t think this would directly benefit me as a lounge singer. One of the key elements in this line of work is the ability to play an instrument and sing at the same time. All my attempts to sing and play trombone simultaneously have failed. I have also learned that while waterproof, trombones do not seem to be designed to function in the shower.

While I’m not sure if I’ll ever become an actual lounge singer, I do like to entertain the thought when I’m stuck in traffic or trying to get my computer to submit to my will. It’s possible that my lack of talent may prove to be the biggest hurdle. And there is always “The Man” who is doing his best to keep me down. I may not be a lounge singer today, and depending on what is on television it might not happen tomorrow, but one of these days I’ll realize my dream-even if it means flying to Holland, beating the crap out of that lounge singer, and tossing his body into the nearest canal.
2022 Christmas Letter

December 25, 2022
Brown collar worker Omar Lutfey here with yet another end of the year summary of the wildly important and utterly trivial events of my life. I leave it up to you, the reader, to determine which is which.

In January it was decided that the kids were old enough and Grandma was young enough to hang out with each other for a week while Katherine and I took our first vacation with just the two of us since before our children existed. We jumped on an airplane that took us to Quito, Ecuador in an adventure I’m calling “South of the Equator Shenanigans.”

Naturally this type of trip involved an above average number of activities which would be thought of as “heavy breathing.” Walking around, for example, seemed to require twice as much air as in Loveland, Colorado. It turns out the elevation of Quito is almost double that of our home town. We rode a gondola up to triple our usual height above sea level where keeping our heads upright became a surprisingly strenuous activity. Even then we weren’t at the very top– we wisely declined to hike to the summit at 15,696 feet. Numerous people over the years have reached the end of the trail only to have all of the atoms of their body spontaneously disperse into the upper stratosphere.

Oxygen levels aside, life in Quito is quite different than what I’ve grown to expect. Posted hours for when restaurants are going to be open are more of a suggestion than a strict guideline. Think of it more as “if we are going to be open at all, it will be quite likely between these hours.” We saw the place right next to our hotel open once during the week despite walking by a dozen times during the week when they “should” have been open according to their sign.

Negotiating with cab drivers was another new skill we acquired in Ecuador. Interviewing someone who wants to drive you somewhere is an essential activity. Here are just a few of the questions we often asked.
- “How much to drive us to our hotel?”
- “Will that vehicle actually get us to our destination?”
- “Are you really a cab driver?”
Due to the extreme elevation range and close proximity to the equator, the area can easily grow literally every type of plant that currently exists on Earth. The Supermaxi sold 14 different types of potatoes and I suspect we could have found twice as many at the local food market. While at the local grocery store I saw several types of fruits and vegetables that up until that point I thought were works of fiction including Audrey II from “The Little Shop of Horrors.”

Are there any down sides to Quito? Sure. Cram 2 million people into a few square miles and the result is going to be a dirty noisy affair. While I personally felt safe walking around during the day, the building code requires all structures to be protected by at least three of the following security measures: A six foot tall concrete wall (shards of broken glass at the top is optional), metal fences with pointy tops, electric wires, and barbed wire. I suspect attempts at incorporating any of these into our current home would meet significant opposition from our homeowners association.

In game night news, we continued a longstanding tradition of altering board game rules for our own amusement. Some of the more common unwritten rules of Monopoly include putting fees paid into the center for the next player who lands on free parking, players collecting $400 for landing exactly on “Go”, and dad frequently “forgetting” to collect rent from mom. On game night we created a new Monopoly house rule where in order to collect rent for the first time you have to provide a detailed description of the properties amenities.

Mediterranean Avenue: Due to the fact that rent is only $2 a night we are unable to provide clean sheets for each guest. In fact there is no bed, but rather you can sleep in the broken lazy boy in the lobby. If said chair is occupied guests may choose to sleep in front of the establishment under the tattered awning. Children twelve and under are welcome to countless hours of fun with our complimentary “Bag Of Rats.”

Chez Chaz: Formerly known as Saint Charles Place, Chez Chaz offers the best fusion of French-Irish culture since Christopher Lambert played an immortal Irish alien in the 1986 box office blockbuster “Highlander.” Just try finding two other words that end in Z and don’t rhyme. Our free breakfast bar consists solely of our patented “pieces of yogurt” which, in all honesty, is most likely a major health code violation.

Illinois Ave: We offer our guests a state of the art breakfast bar claw game. Test your hand/eye coordination as you maneuver frozen waffles, greasy bacon, and steaming hot bowls of oatmeal with the mechanical claw. The first round is of course complementary, and any additional attempts are quite reasonably priced at $1 each. Good luck!

It turns out the title “2022 Christmas Letter” doesn’t really catch the glowing-eye orbs of the Internet search engine attention-bots. I firmly believe “YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHICH MEMBER OF MY FAMILY WAS PLACED IN AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE!” along with a thumbnail image of me slapping my cheeks “Home Alone” style next to a pixelated light brown blob will exponentially increase my “influencer” status. [Spoiler alert– it was our dog Mya]

Alert readers of my past letters will be thinking, “I thought you only had one dog. Who did Mya marry?” [Spoiler alert– it was our new dog Buddy.] OK, so this doesn’t degrade into a running-backwards-in-time situation comedy episode I’ll start at the beginning of the story. Back in the spring one of my inlaw’s neighbors was working on “getting her affairs in order” by writing a will. As a friendly gesture we agreed to take Buddy. A few weeks later she passed away and we were the new owners of a Basset Hound Beagle mix. Since then we have defined him to be a completely new breed of dog called a Bagel. After a few days the kids decided to marry the dogs in a simple yet dignified ceremony. We all sleep better knowing these two are no longer living in sin. Conversely, we all sleep worse because Buddy likes to bark at four in the morning for reasons that still remain a mystery to all of us.

After unlocking “Riding My Age In Miles On A Bike” last year I started looking for a slightly more ambitious exercise goal. Traveling 1000 miles on my bicycle seemed reasonable. I did the maths and I only needed to ride 2.7 miles each day. On a weekly basis this works out to less than two hours a week. I devised a simple plan I like to call “do two hours less of stupid things each week and get on a bike instead.” For example, when I started streaming movies such as “Highlander 2”, “Battlefield Earth”, and “Shakes The Clown” I would turn off the television and go for a ride. While it sounds complex and difficult to implement, by the end of the year I added a fourth digit to my odometer. When the dust settled I rode 1253 miles.

While I was getting dressed this weekend I came to the realization that everything I put on was purchased by my wife from Costco. For a brief moment I thought I was really, really uncool. Then I realized Katherine is awesome and Costco sells very, very comfortable clothes. Why did it take half my life to appreciate the benefits of pants with elasticated waistbands?

To wrap things up I’ve included a few completely out of context electronic messages I composed over the past 12 months:
- I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far in life without a monocle.
- When all is said and done I can’t stay mad at someone who dressed up as me for Halloween.
- It was one of those times I wished I was twenty years younger but somehow not twenty years stupider.
The Real World: The Next Generation

July 3, 2005

Commander Data and Captain Jean-Luc Picard are sitting in the Enterprise ready room.

Commander Data comments, “I find this mission to be highly illogical, Captain.”

Captain Picard replies, “Yes, I know, but we have no choice but to go through with the alliance.”

“But the Enterprise has fought off many worthy adversaries—why should we give up without even firing a single photon torpedo?”

“Listen Mr. Data, we survived numerous adventures over the years, but trust me, this time resistance IS futile. Let’s just get it over with and move on.”

Picard and Data walk out of the ready room on to the main bridge of the Enterprise. The room is empty except for two men poised with cameras. Picard walks over to a waiting camera man, briefly pauses, and starts reading from a script. “This is the true story of seven strangers, picked to live on a starship and have their lives holographically recorded, and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting REAL. The Real World: The Next Generation!”

Picard gestures at the turbolift and continues, “And now let’s welcome the seven young strangers who will be running the Enterprise on her next mission.”

Four girls and three guys in their early twenties sheepishly walk out of the turbolift and on to the bridge. After brief introductions with Captain Picard and Commander Data, the Captain explains the mission. “With the assistance of Commander Data and myself, the seven of you will be in charge of…” The captain rolls his eyes and quietly sighs to himself. “…delivering a shipment of Ramulan ale to the resort planet Risa. While this may not be the most dangerous mission ever attempted, you will have to learn about ship navigation, interstellar communications, and of course… “

“Hey everyone, I just found a ****load of Ramulan ale in the cargo hold,” one of the seven strangers who apparently snuck off during the introductions yelled as he burst out of the turbo lift, “and someone loaded thrity-seven different erotic hot tub programs on to the holodeck’s computer! Let’s get it on!”

The seven strangers start celebrating and giving each other high fives as they head towards the holodeck—completely forgetting about the Captain and their new mission.

The next scene shows the seven strangers getting drunk in the hot tub. Picard and Data are sitting in the tub still in their complete uniforms looking awkward and uncomfortable.

“Dude, I am sooooo wasted on this Ramulan ale… what all is in it?” One of the seven asked.

Sandy and Jill started a conversation. “So if you could do anyone here, who would it be?”

“Honestly?” Jill asked.

Sandy replied, “Yeah.”

“It may just be that I’m really drunk right now,” Jill confessed, “But I think it would be that robot guy.”

Commander Data, hearing his name, cocked his head slightly and addressed the girl’s comment. “I am fully functional, programmed in multiple techniques.”

“Data!” Picard snapped, “We need to get things moving here. We must to get to Risa as fast as possible so we can move on to our next REAL mission—delivering badly needed medical supplies to Barrius 3.”

One of the other women in the hot tub piped up. “It may be because my grandfather did bad, bad things to me when I was young, but that bald English guy is looking pretty good to me right about now if I could just convince him to spank me for not cleaning up my room perfectly. Is that a bad thing?”

The Captain got shivers just thinking how many things were wrong with the entire situation. Picard yelled out, “Enough is enough. Computer—end holodeck program and seal off the cargo hold to everyone but myself and Commander Data. The rest of you will get into a regulation Star Fleet uniform and report the main bridge in ten minutes.”

Captain Picard starting walking briskly out of the holodeck. “Commander, you are with me.” He ordered. Data looked over at Jill, made a telephone gesture with his thumb and pinky and silently mouthed the words “fully functional” before following the Captain to the bridge.

Eventually, everyone finds their way into uniforms and to the main bridge. The Captain starts explaining how to operate various functions on the ship. “Everything can be accessed through voice commands to the computer.” The Captain explained. “For example: computer—plot a course to Risa.”

The computer responded, “Course laid out. At warp eight we will arrive at Risa in three hours.”

Steve, the one who first located the Ramulan ale, piped up, “Hey computer—you sound pretty hot. What do you look like in a bikini?”

The computer responded, “Please restate the command.”

Captain Picard smacked Steve on the top of his head. “This is not a game! Look, all you guys have to do is tell the computer to engage on the course to Risa and we will be on our way. Do you think we could get that done sometime today?”

Jill looked around and asked the Captain, “So which one of us gets to say ‘engage’?”

“What? It doesn’t matter. Someone says it and the ship starts moving.” The Captain explained.

“I think we need to have a ship-wide meeting to decide.” Steve said.

“I give up! Commander Data—you are in charge. If they can’t decide who gets to say ‘engage’ in the next ten minutes Data will say it. I’ll be in my quarters reading Great Expectations until we get to Risa.” The Captain ordered as he walked towards the turbolift.

Three hours later Picard and Data are waving goodbye to the seven Real World members on the planet of Risa displayed on the main screen on the bridge.

“Captain,” Data started, “I found this mission provided me with a unique insight into the human condition.”

“What are you talking about Data?” the Captain asked, “This was nothing more than seven spoiled kids allowed to run around the ship for the entertainment of the holoprojector audience. What is insightful about that?”

“After you retired to you quarters,” Data explained, “with the aid of my newly installed emotion chip, Jill demonstrated several ways to make me even more fully functional, if you know what I mean.”

Not sure how to respond to Data’s last comment, the captain replied, “Plot a course to Barrius 3, warp 9, Commander.”

“Course plotted,” Data replied. “Captain, can I ask you a question?”

“What is it Data?”

“Can I say ‘engage’ this time?” Data asked.

“Sure Data.” The Captain said, with a hint of resignation in his voice.

“Engage.”
Love Crimes

January 1, 2007

In a recent radio address, President Bush promoted a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriages. Even though current Federal law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, the President said we must “counteract a few activist judges insisting on imposing their arbitrary will on the people– because we all know that’s MY job!”
New TLC Show

August 15, 2009

Following the success of the show, “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” The Learning Channel greenlighted a sister show titled, “I Thought I Was Pregnant But It Turns Out I Was Just Getting Fat Really Quickly After My Boyfriend Dumped Me And I Just Sat Around On The Couch Eating Microwave Pizza and Twinkies All Day Long Waiting For A Miracle To Occur.”
Break me off a piece of that

September 17, 2025

Welcome to my CNC page! I’m starting things off with my Kit Kat coaster project designed as a fundraiser for the Loveland High School Marching Band. Here is a link to donate:

https://secure.givelively.org/donate/loveland-high-school-band-boosters/the-crimson-campaign/isabel-lutfey

You can also check out the band’s website for more information:

https://lovelandband.org

If you want a coaster come find me in real life and I’ll give you one. You can donate anonymously, so I’m just going on the honor system here.

I make these on my CNC machine out of MDF, spray paint them, and add felt feet to the bottom. If all goes according to plan (and, really, how often does that happen?) I’m going to have these as part of a basket for the Santa’s Breakfast fundraiser this holiday season.
Raising Security

September 15, 2002

Faced with shrinking profit margins, airlines in the United States are imposing new fees to help boost their bottom line. At various airports around the country, for example, passengers going through security can pay forty dollars to walk past Federal screeners and submit to an extensive “hand search” by perky eighteen year old women in Hooters outfits.
Getting To The Bottom Of Things

November 13, 2002

This week the Supreme Court heard opening arguments in a dispute between Victoria’s Secret and a similarly named Victor’s Little Secret. At issue is the Federal Trademark Dilution Act passed by Congress seven years ago. Lawyers for the lingerie giant claim Victor’s Little Secret, a single Kentucky store that sells lingerie and adult-only novelties, is infringing on Victoria’s Secret trademarked name. The proceeding were delayed, however, when the Honorable Clarence Thomas opened up a Victoria’s Secrets catalog and requested several specific lingerie models meet him privately in his chambers to help him “identify with the product in question.”
Inexpensive Solar Collector

September 17, 2009

I was reading an article in Popular Mechanics about solar energy when I came up with this idea. Solar panels are generally made out of relatively rare and expensive materials and have other drawbacks that, given our current technology, keep solar panels from being economically competitive with other methods of generating electricity such as coal and natural gas. While it is possible that improvements in solar panel technology may change this in the future, a more cost effective method of converting sunlight to electricity would reduce our toll on the environment. This is where solar collectors come into the equation. Is it possible to gather sunlight in such a way that could be used to generate electricity and be cheaper than current methods?

A company in New Mexico is working on reducing the cost of creating energy from sunlight. reflecting light onto a small area. The energy harnessed in turn powers a Stirling Engine which then creates electricity (pictured on the left). As I read the article I was impressed with this different approach to the problem. Honestly, I didn’t even know how a Stirling Engine worked. They could really be onto something here. The article mentioned the company has worked out all the technological issues, now they are focusing on reducing the cost of building these devices. The article noted that each of these dishes can power roughly 12 houses with electricity.

So I thought about it for a while, and I think there is a much less expensive way to achieve the same results. Here is how I would build a cheaper solar collector:

Step one: Acquire an OLD satellite dish. Not one of the 18 inch models that are currently in use. You need an old school dish that is several feet in diameter. Here is a good example:

Step Two: Acquire/buy several hundred blank CDs. Back in the day you could ask AOL for as many as you wanted, but I’m not sure that would fly today.

Step Three: Line the entire inside of the dish with CDs, with the exception of the very center, making sure the sure the most reflective side is facing up. This will allow for the sunlight to be concentrated at the focal point. Attach the CDs to the dish with bolts (in case they need to be replaced in the future), or Lee press on nails (if that’s all you have in your purse).

Step Four: Place a large sized convex mirror, maybe one from a truck side mirror, at the focal point of the dish. This is made easier by using the existing support structure of the dish. The purpose of the mirror is to focus the light back onto the exact center of the dish. (This will be where the engine is eventually placed). Finding a mirror with the correct curvature could take some work.

Step Five: Build a level circular base out of concrete. The diameter should be at least as large as the diameter of the top edge of the dish.

Step Six: Place the Sterling Engine in the center of the base.

Step Seven: Build a support structure for the dish. When finished, the base needs to be able to rotate freely in two dimensions in order to track the sun. It also must be able to accommodate the engine in the center of the dish that keeps the top of the engine at the center of the dish.

Step Eight: Build a mechanism for tracking the sun.

So how is this method better than what has already been built? The main improvement is moving the engine from the focal point of the dish to a stationary position underneath the dish. This reduces overall center of gravity and complexity since only the dish itself is moving. It also shades most of the engine, which relies on temperature differentials to produce energy. Also, the smaller scale would allow individual homeowners to build this device from a kit to provide some or all of their home’s energy needs.

Action Figure!

April 21, 2025

Everyone and their dog is making themselves into action figures on the Internet this week, so I thought I would give it a go! Full disclosure– I used ChatGPT and this isn’t even my dog!

Here is the starting photograph of me and said dog on Halloween:

And the prompt I used for ChatGPT was:

Use this image to create a picture of a action figure toy  in a blister package from head to toe with accessories which include a two gallon red and white round water cooler with a white handle, a container of sunscreen, and a pair of sunglasses.  The package should read "UPS Driver" and below that "summer edition" The background should be three shades of brown in an abstract swirling pattern.

Free Passage

December 12, 2004

McDonalds is spending $300,000 to fly Charlie Bell to Australia in a special medically-equipped corporate jet. Bell, who recently resigned the top position at the golden arches, will return to his native country and continue his battle against colorectal cancer. In a similar gesture of medical goodwill, the world’s largest fast food franchise will soon distribute heart defibulators in upcoming adult happy meals.
This Old Crack House

July 21, 2003

Good afternoon everyone. We are on location in Detroit, Michigan to kick off our latest project. But before we start out, I need to explain to our viewers at home why this is going to be one of the most unique projects ever attempted. Our broadcast affiliate, just like any other television network, is required to comply with FCC regulations to incorporate anti-drug messages into the station’s programming. While most channels simply agree to run a certain number of approved commercials every month, the Public Broadcasting Service doesn’t have traditional commercial breaks. After countless meetings with lawyers on both sides, an agreement was made to produce a special anti-drug episode of our home improvement series. To make this project even more special, we have assembled an All-Star PBS team. In addition to my usual crew, Dean Johnson and Robin Hartyl put their “Hometime” plans on hold and flew in from Minnesota. Norm Abrams is ready to help out in the New Yankee Workshop. My name is Steve Thomas, and welcome to “This Old Crack House.”

Steve: I’m standing in front of our next project– a crack house in Detroit, Michigan. Just looking around here, Tom, I see a lot of unique challenges.

Tom: Right you are, Steve. First of all, this is going to be a scheduling nightmare. While we usually put in a lot of long nights to get a project like this finished on time, we saw the condition of the neighborhood, and the entire crew agreed to stop work at dusk each day and high-tail it back to the Holiday Inn.

Steve: And that’s thirty-seven miles away!

Tom: Yes, it is, but we feel it’s a necessary precaution.

Steve: Now the situation with our homeowner is quite unique. Grace Smith is an eighty-five year old retired school teacher. It turns out that the crack heads broke into her house when she was visiting her grandchildren in the suburbs. Now she is too ashamed to tell anyone, so she just spends most of her time in a dilapidated garage at the back of the property. We will be taking with Grace a little later, but first, Tom, what is the condition of the house?

Tom: Well Steve, I hate to tell you this, but the situation doesn’t look too good. I went down into the basement to see what was going on, and it wasn’t pretty. First of all, I discovered what I believe to be a decomposing body near the hot water heater. And, more importantly, the crawl space lacks adequate ventilation. Over time, this has caused the floor joists to rot. Before we do anything on the main floor, we are going to have to reinforce the sub floor.

Steve: And what about the body?

Tom: Well, it doesn’t pose any structural issues, so I think we will be better off leaving it alone. Maybe, if the budget allows, we could cover it up with some scrap plastic to keep the rodents away.

Steve: Tom, you know as well as I do that on a project like this, we always seem to run into these kinds of issues. But let’s take a moment right now to see what Norm Abrams has got going for us in his workshop.

Norm: Thanks Steve. I’m sorry I couldn’t be out there to see all that urban decay personally. I did get some measurements of the crack house and I have acquired the materials for a new carpentry project. But before we start any work, we need to take a minute to talk about safety. Remember to always use protective eyewear when operating power tools. Also, each project has its own unique hazards. For example, we are reminding everyone to wear steel-toed boots with a thick rubber sole at all times. We don’t want to start working only to have someone accidentally step on a syringe filled with leftover heroin and traces of possibly HIV infected blood. Just to be on the safe side, we have also made the entire landscaping crew promise, in writing, not to engage in unprotected sex with any of the crack whores in the house.

Now for the project itself– after seeing footage of the crack house, one of the first things that I noticed was the horrible condition of the methamphetamine lab. Half-empty bottles of cough syrup were on the floor, and the main work area lacked proper ventilation. I’ve designed a nice mahogany work center that will really help the occupants of the house. It contains plenty of storage for raw materials, and I’ve used a special crown molding that gives the piece a very elegant appearance. Anyone using this area will now be able to manufacture large quantities of illegal narcotics while at the same time reducing the risk of blowing themselves up in the process. If you would like to build a meth lab in your house, a set of measured drawings is available on our website.

Steve: We will check back with you later Norm. Next we have our friends Dean and Robin from “Hometime” who are working in the bathroom.

Dean: Hello, I’m Dean Johnson…

Robin: And I’m Robin Harytl. Dean and I have been working together for so long that we can even….

Dean: …finish each other’s sentences. Well, that was just a little bit of a humorous exchange we have been working on to introduce ourselves. Just to use at parties and what not, if we ever get invited to one.

Robin: We are really excited to be here. Now normally we only tape our shows in affluent suburbs of Minneapolis, so this was a quite a change for us. To help add a little class to this crack house, Dean and I are brainstorming ideas for fixing up the bathroom.

Dean: There are two things that really jumped out at us when we entered the bathroom. And, no, that doesn’t include the crack head hiding behind the door who tried to steal our video camera equipment. First of all, we thought someone started their own project when we saw some rather large holes in the drywall by the toilet.

Robin: But then we realized someone just cut out the copper pipes and, we think, traded them for crack. The other feature is a message left by one of the home’s occupants in some kind of permanent marker. It says, “Yo yo yo… Mary Katherine is my crack hoe. Anyone who touches her gets their house privileges revoked and a healthy ass whooping by me. — Anthony.”

Dean: We did think about painting over the note, but in the end we decided it gave the area more character if we just left it alone. Also, right as we were considering our options, the original author, Anthony, came into the bathroom and suggested, using gestures with his favorite baseball bat, that we not alter his message in any way whatsoever.

Robin: As far as the missing pipes, we decided to do something to keep this problem from coming back sometime in the future. Instead of repairing the damage, we have decided to remove the toilet, and cut out a small hole in the floor. This will allow the urine and feces to drop directly down into the crawlspace, and onto what appears, from up here, to be a dead body of some sort.

Dean: Now normally this would be against the building code, but given the unique situation of this house, we decided to take certain liberties with the new design.

Steve: Well, that’s all the time we have for today. In our next episode we will see what happens when Tom Silva accidentally drops acid and the schedule gets pushed back due to a surprise police raid. So keep watching as we work to put the crack back in This Old Crack House.
You Know You Are An Insomniac If

October 30, 2001

After witnessing the popularity of recent book titles such as “You Might Be a Redneck If…”, “You Might Be Rush Limbaugh If…” and “You Are Most Likely Stuck In Someone Else’s Trunk If…” I decided the time has come to write my own words of wisdom about some of my quirky personality traits. My first thought was to write about being a computer geek. While I saw a lot of potential in this aspect of my life, the real inspiration came to me at 5:30 in the morning when I was watching “Invisible Mom 2.”

Now I don’t want to go ruining the surprise for those readers out there who have “Invisible Mom, the prequel to Invisible Mom 2” on video tape and plan to watch it later on in the week. The basic plot is that the mother in the family can for some reason turn completely invisible. The only way the other characters know she is around is through seeing the movement of otherwise inanimate objects, hearing her voice, and looking at any recently consumed food in her digestive tract. And sometimes she became visible at just the wrong moment for reasons I don’t understand. I fully expect that aspect of the movie to be completely explained in the next film in the series which is tentatively being called “Invisible Step Mom.”

So what is so important about this movie? In all honesty, the movie itself is only half of the equation. This movie, and countless others come on in what I refer to as the “golden hours” of the night. It’s too early for HBO to start showing their children’s programming, but it’s too late to spool up another soft porn movie. This seems to be the time when I get the most productive work done. And please keep in mind that the phrase “most productive” is relative to the rest of my day. Sometimes just doing less damage to the world in general can be productive.

If you are anything like me, you wisely spent this “golden hour” wondering why telephones and calculators have their numbers in a different order. I’m not a brain surgeon, but I suspect these types of random thoughts running about freely in my head while I’m sleeping may contribute to my somewhat abnormal sleeping habits. Well, maybe not having a steady job for the past year might be a contributing factor.

Just to set the record straight, calculators have the 1,2,3 row on the bottom row while telephones put it on the top row. I’m not really upset about this arrangement, but the fact that it took me 27 years to figure it out bothered me. The 4,5,6 row always seems to be middle and zero is always at the bottom. Why couldn’t everyone agree on a common format?

After quickly dismissing the idea of getting “everyone” to agree on this, I started thinking which system is better. If you start typing numbers in a word processing document from lowest to highest, the lower numbers would appear to be higher on the screen. However, if you gathered up a bunch of people at a party and arranged them by height you would have the shorter people closer to the ground and the taller ones closer to the ceiling. While it proves a point, this does not make for a very amusing social get together. You know you are at a bad party if someone does this and it becomes a highlight of the evening.

Of course I haven’t even gotten into zero yet. No matter what, zero appears at the bottom in a row without any other numbers. That doesn’t seem to be very fair to the other numbers who are forced to share. It seems that since zero and one are neighbors on the number line that they should be close together everywhere else. Now every where I go I look to see which order numbers appear. Calculators and full sized computer keyboards put the lower numbers at the bottom. Telephones and remote controls all seem to put the low numbers on tops. Automated Teller Machines go both ways. But I digress. From what, I’m not sure.

While I couldn’t possibly write down every single thought that I’ve had tonight, here are a few of the other questions that I have been pondering. How much do my lava lamps add to the electricity bill? Should I go out and say hi the person delivering my newspaper? What is Kathleen going to dress up as for Halloween? How long until the mustard in my refrigerator goes bad? Why is the ceiling in my apartment more bumpy than the walls? If you are asking these questions as you stay awake all night, you just might be an insomniac.
If I Had A Million Dollars…

May 10, 2021

If I had a million dollars

I would want a million more

(why not two million more?)

Good point… wait, what are you getting at?

(I think you are missing the point of the song.)

Oh, all right, let me start over.

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy us some time.

(that’s better)

But only good times.

(I think that goes without saying)

If I had a million dollars

We wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.

If I had a million dollars

We’d buy a bed cause it costs more

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy us a brand new game of “Life”

And I would let you be the travel agent

(but I don’t think the new version has that job anymore)

So if I had a million dollars,

I’d go online and buy a vintage version of “Life”

And let you be the travel agent

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy you a real Bob Ross painting

(With happy trees?)

Extra happy trees!

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy the top tier of cable TV

Then cancel it since we’d have so much to go out and see

If I had a million dollars I’d buy your love

(Or at least your lust. I’m not sure how much your love goes for these days)

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy you a Model X

(But not a red one cause that’s crude)

If I had a million dollars

I’d buy you the world
Mile High Club

April 9, 2004

In the wake of record-high crude oil prices, one national newspaper reporter asked the President what can be done to conserve this limited resource. The Commander-in-Chief replied, “We all must do our part to conserve fuel. I, for example, have retracted my open invitation for Rush Limbaugh to travel with me on Air Force One.”
Star Trek 11? I’ve Lost Count

May 11, 2009

I have to start out by mentioning that back in the day I used to just skip out of work so I could be one of the very first people to see the latest Star Trek movie on Friday afternoon. Being a UPS driver doesn’t make this very easy, and I didn’t really want to use one of my two option days I get each year. So Katherine and I went to the theater on Sunday afternoon to see what all the fuss is about.

My first impression of the movie was, “Wow– they must have saved a lot of money by using the set of ‘Ugly Betty’ as the bridge of the Enterprise.” Every time they turned a corner on the ship I was expecting to see Vanessa Williams bravely holding up some comically large space weapon with her assistant Marc cowering behind while making sarcastic comments about how the crew dressed such as, “if this is the best outfits the future can come up with, well just phaser me now.” I’m not quite sure where America Ferrera fits into this situation, but I’ll bet she would stick her nose in everyone’s business and find a quirky resolution to the problem.

Here is a run down of the some of the main characters:

James Kirk: fiesty kiddo who spends most of the movie dangling perilously on the edge of things.

Young Spock: realizing that the television show “Heroes” isn’t going to last forever, Zachary Quinto stepped out of the role of the evil Sylar and hopped on board as Spock. His biggest challenge for the role: shaving his facial hair between every take.

Old Spock: according to the movie, Leonard Nemoy was 147 years old when he got sent back in time. I swear he didn’t look a day over 90.

The Bad Guy: Had some strange tatoo on his face and went around destroying Federation planets. I’m not sure if these two facts are related. Too bad Ricardo Montelbon wasn’t around when they filmed this– now there was a guy you just couldn’t help but hate.

And the big surprise at the end: There wasn’t any! None of the main characters were killed because they all have to be kept alive so all the stuff that has already been made at least kind of makes sense. I guess that’s the problem with making a movie that is both a prequel and a sequel in the Star Trek Universe.

I suspect the next film will focus on how William Shatner became such a bad actor.
Estate Planning

March 3, 2013

In a recent interview on Fox News Sunday the Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney placed the blame for not winning the election squarely on his campaign’s failure to connect with minority voters. His wife, however, was quick to place blame on the fourth estate. “And just to be clear about this, when I say ‘fourth estate’ I am referring to the media, and not our actual fourth estate we purchased to be closer to Rafalca, our professionally trained dance horse which recently competed in the 2012 Olympics.”
Blowing In The Wind

September 25, 2010

A recently completed offshore renewable energy facility has been put into service off the coast of Ramsgate in Kent, England. The turbines, which will generate enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, are poised to officially take over the record for largest wind farm– a record currently held by Taco Bell.
Xmas Party Story

January 15, 2001

If you happen to be familiar with my annual Christmas letter you may be scratching your head thinking, “But Omar, it’s not anywhere near the end of the year– how can you already be posting your Christmas letter?” I decided that publishing my Christmas letter only once a year is not consistent with my idiom of working on “Internet Time.” I’m not exactly sure how to define “Internet Time,” but for the purposes of this letter it is me being up at 3 in the morning in my boxers and a T-shirt surfing the web because I got tired of watching infomercials on the television.

What do women want? This question has plagued mankind since God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden (which I believed contained no menstrual cycles, beauty magazine quizzes, or clothes that made Eve look fat). When contemplating what women want, I prefer to approach the problem from a different perspective. It is possible to list all the things that men could possibly do, take out the things that woman don’t want, and what is left, by the process of deduction, is what women want. While creating a list of all possible actions mankind can take is well beyond my attention span, I am willing to add a few items to the “don’t do” list.

First of all, women like compliments. There are, however, some important issues to consider when telling a woman “I love you.” Fellow men out there, I cannot stress this enough: only say this to a wife or established girlfriend. In general, a woman you have met for lunch once or twice and exchanged a few E-mail messages with does not meet these criterion. If you are invited to a party, it is generally considered bad taste to repeatedly yell out to the woman hosting the party “Angie, I love you. I know you don’t love me back, but that’s OK.” For whatever reason you may think it’s a good idea at the time (i.e. EXCESSIVE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION), it will ultimately do more damage than good.

Secondly, trying to hit on women after excessive alcohol consumption is generally not a good idea. For example, you may think that going around at a party after downing a few drinks telling women you have never met they have a nice tail and a blouse full of goodies is an example of your witty banter, but in reality they usually just smile politely, leave the room for some reason or another, and strangely enough you never see them again.

And last of all, it is a good idea to stay after the party has died down and help clean up the mess. It is a bad idea to stay after the party has died down and repeatedly throw up in the sink before you pass out on the couch until the next afternoon. No further explanation is needed for this point.

I really can’t continue until I confess something here. I didn’t just use my overactive imagination to create three random activities women don’t like. I attended Angie’s Christmas party, got drunk, professed my unrequited love to her, told several other women they had nice tails and blouses full of goodies, threw up several times (for history’s sake, I remember it being once in the sink, and three times in the toilet), and passed out on their couch. Around eleven in the morning, on what I think was my last trip to bow down to the porcelain God, I looked down at my boxer shorts and bare legs and commented to Angie, “I’m not wearing any pants” in a somewhat matter-of-fact tone of voice. It was well past noon when I finally thought I could make it home without blowing chunks in my car.

I can’t say that I’m really proud of what I did, but I have to admit that it’s pretty amusing despite the fact that I am the ass in the story. In general I like to write stories where other people look stupid– it makes me feel better about my shortcomings in life. While I could have altered the facts of the story to make me look better, I don’t think it would have made for a funny story. Since I put (slightly) more importance on being funny than being truthful, I recorded the events as accurately as my impaired brain recalled them.

For reasons that I greatly appreciate yet do not totally comprehend, Angie doesn’t seem to hate me. I suspect it is analogous to the episode of “Cops” where the guy in the beat up old pickup truck gets caught with the prostitute only to realize SHE was really a HE while handcuffed in the back seat of the patrol car. Sure, you can send him down to the station to be booked, but in all reality everything that happened before the police and television crew arrived will torture his soul a lot longer than any consequences of legal proceedings. As far as Angie goes, I think it is safe to assume that her name will not come up in future letters any time soon. If I manage to get invited to next year’s party, I think I’ll be the designated driver.

And, just in case you are wondering, I took that line from the movie “Hot Shots.” The actual quote is “Not playing to win is like sleeping with your sister. Sure she’s a great piece of tail with a blouse full of goodies, but it’s just illegal.”
Why I Want My Own Route

July 23, 2009

Here are the exact directions (meaning I’m not making any of this up) to 4580 County Road 68, Wellington, Colorado:

Go north on I-25 and get off at the Wellington exit. Head north on the east side frontage road until you see a sign for CR68. There is only one house on the road and it is in no way labeled. Don’t worry– that isn’t the house you are looking for, but it does happen to belong to the guy’s brother. He will vaguely point you towards three dirt roads in various states of disrepair. Keep driving until you see another man driving around a front end loader for no particular reason. He will explain how to get to the small workshop and instruct you to leave the package in the old refrigerator in the back– either compartment is fine.

Author: olutfey