October 2006

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
Show and Tell
Delays, Delays
Shop Talk
Too Lazy to Write
BRB

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

Thursday, October 19, 2006
1:02PM

I don’t generally like to write about all the weird searches that land people on my site, but this one from Google was too much to pass up:

Sealed LDS Couple Pregnant Affair

Ok, buddy—while I’m not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for, I’m pretty sure you’ll find it south of Provo.

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Show and Tell

Sunday, October 15, 2006
3:25PM

What does a person bordering on narcissistic do when asked by a fellow blogger to show off some of his sketches? He shows them off, of course!

Panda. It's what's for dinner.

I resurrected these photographs and sketches from my old resume site today. The site has been offline for a few years, so much of the information is outdated and a lot of the links will be dead (sorry). I killed a few of the links recently on purpose. The code is dreadful, and I keep swearing that I’ll eventually rework it. Mostly, I just keep swearing.

But who knows? Maybe someday if I spiff it up enough, it’ll help me land my dream job. You know—the one with the Eight Hour Lunches?

Shut up and take me to the sketches.
Naw, I'd rather see some of Doug’s old photography.

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Delays, Delays

Sunday, October 8, 2006
5:25PM

My plane home from Italy arrived half an hour late yesterday. I should have expected it. After all, everything else seemed to run on a relaxed schedule, why not the airlines? Unfortunately, this meant that I got to New York half an hour late and missed my already tight connection.

I got off the plane and went directly to a dirty, crowded customs room, where I waited for over thirty minutes with hundreds of other people. They herded us like dumb cattle back and forth as we waited for the stamp of ink on our customs declarations that would set us free.

A short, stout woman with a thick New York accent walked around the baggage claim calling out names from a stack of boarding passes in her hand. “Do you have one for a Doug Humphries?” I ask.

“Doug what?”

“Humphries.”

“Humphries, Humphries, Humphries…here we go. Here’s your voucher for the hotel.”

“My what?”

“Your voucher for the hotel. You’ll be staying at the JFK Ramada Plaza Hotel.”

“Here’s the one for dinner, and this is your ticket. You’ll leave tomorrow at 7:15AM.”

After asking several people for instructions on how to get to the shuttle and getting several different answers, I made my way up to the Delta desk and worked it out with someone at the baggage check.

The Ramada. I’m not sure, but think it might mean “undesirable” in Spanish. I had stayed in a Ramada once before in Milwaukee. If where I was headed was going to be anything like that one, then the sinking feeling in my stomach was easily justified. Some twenty minutes later, the shuttle arrived in all its glory with soiled seats and torn and blackened wall to wall carpet. In the back, a white plastic grocery bag tied to a handle was the only thing that kept the emergency door from flying open.

We wound our way in the dark through small back roads under trees, past an abandoned industrial building whose windows were knocked out. Then, just around the corner from a sewage treatment facility (I’m not kidding) appeared my hotel.

Next to a train track for the airport at the foot of a busy freeway, the dingy white building stood on tall round pillars in the middle of a half empty parking lot. Before I could even think, the first words to escape my lips were, “What a shit-hole!” One of the passengers heard my comment and gave me a quick dirty look for my language. I swore again.

Now, I had wanted to describe this place as a roach motel, but the truth is, I didn’t see any roaches at all in the forty-five minute line where I waited to check in. My guess is that they had stopped at the door. Utterly repulsed by what they saw, I’m sure they must have turned around.

After the line finally crept forward a little, I noticed a photocopied sign:

High School in the Hood Alumni Reunion
October 7, 2006
10:00PM-3:00AM
Grand Ballroom

October seventh…October seventh…but today’s the eighth, right? It wasn’t. I pushed the thought out of my head. As tired as I was, I probably wouldn’t notice it anyhow.

At length, I presented my voucher at the front desk, got my key card and went to my room. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled like cigarettes—and ass. Funny how the ashtrays and matches weren’t the first clues that I had been given a smoker’s room.

I closed and locked the door behind me and looked around at the peeling yellow wallpaper, the asbestos ceiling texture, and the dark orange and yellow drapes. A very small television sat on a stand in front of a shabby looking bed that made me think I’d probably be better off just sleeping in my clothes.

Behold, the lap of luxury! (Or maybe the shower).
P.S. Don't bend over to pick up the soap. The rats are quite big—and lonely.

After talking to Heidi on the phone for about an hour, I killed a spider on the very same patch of ceiling where three others just like him were still stuck in all their two-dimensional agony. I hate spiders, so I was a little nervous that there might be more. But my desire to sleep soon overwhelmed me and I climbed into bed.

At about 1:30 AM, I became vaguely aware of a dull, heavy noise penetrating every wall in the room. Thump. Thump. Thump. THUMPA-THUMP-THUMPITTY-THUMP-THUMP-BAM!!! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!! I was two floors up from the bash near the end of a long hall, but I may as well have been sleeping on one of the speakers. When the music finally died down and the happy little alumni had all gone back to their rooms for the night, it was about 3:00AM.

Getting any sleep from that point was beyond hopeless. So, in spite of my better judgment, I sat up in bed and spent the next hour or so just writing. Frankly, I was surprised that not even one person stopped by to knock on the door before I left. I was sort of expecting to open the door and hear someone say, “Yeah. It’s Pizza Hut…I’ve got your hot wings and crack.”

Damn, it’s good to be home.

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Shop Talk

Wednesday, October 4, 2006
4:45PM

Eight Hour Lunch turned a year old last month. Given my typical attention span, I wasn’t sure it would ever make it out of the design and coding stages, so you can imagine my surprise when other people actually started reading it. What started out as a dumping ground for my random thoughts and whims has grown into…well…an even larger dumping ground for my thoughts and whims. Except that people are visiting the dump now.

Which brings me to my next point. Yesterday, my Technorati ranking broke the 100,000 mark. Considering that new blogs start out ranked around two million, this was a pleasant surprise.

I often like to say that I write here strictly for myself—and that’s mostly true. It would be dishonest of me to say that I don’t enjoy your kind comments and links to the site. The rude comments are fun, too.

Finally, rumors of the monumental success of my Google ads on the site are…ok…they’re non-existent. I’m not sure how I should take that. I mean really, no one’s accusing me of doing this for the money. Ok, ok, I wouldn’t pay for it either, but it’s a nice fantasy. Lest you doubt my sincerity, here is a screenshot that shows how much money from ads from the very first day I put them on the site:

Amazing, isn't it?

I have a theory about this. You may have noticed I’m inclined, on rare occasion, to rant about religion. The necessary language of these rants has made some pages of my site virtual magnets for obnoxious religious ads. I can’t blame you for not following them. I’m embarrassed that they even show up on the site at all. The only thing that ever makes me want to follow them on other people’s sites is that I know it costs the advertiser money. They’re like weeds, and for every one I block, a new one pops up in its place. Some of them even use alternate URLs to get around my filters.

In the meantime, as a thank you, I’d like you to have my current blacklist. Just add the URLs to your competitive ad filter and voila! I hope I’ve saved you some time, and I hope it helps to get more useable ads on your site.

Doug

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Too Lazy to Write

Tuesday, October 3 2006
10:15PM

I'm feeling way too tired to write, but here are some more photos of Rome I took on Sunday.

Personally, I would have funded cancer research.
But hey, if your god says he needs another pad on that side of town…

I like it here well enough, in fact I like it lot. But I don't think I could love it without my wife and kid. It's just not the kind of thing you'd typically enjoy as much alone. Yes, I'm a pathetic basket case, ok?

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