Wif-Fi on the Thames

Since my buddy Lance Manion is on holiday across the pond, I thought of him when I saw this article today.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/23/wireless_thames/

Getting good Wi-Fi over there, Lance?

-la

I'm Game

Went to a Hornets game the other night. They played the Portland Trailblazers, who, in the end, didn't blaze much of a trail.

The game came about because my sister-in-law bought me tickets for this past Christmas. Very cool gift by the way (um, for future reference, you know...) ;)

My original intention was to have a guy's night out. I figured I'd invite a few of the guys out to the game where we could cheer on the Hornets, leer at the Honey Bees, eat some burgers, drink some beer, burp, and scratch ourselves. You know...guy stuff.

Then, my buddy...I'll call him Steve for the purpose of this writing, was unable to go due to some work-related thing. Suddenly, I had an extra ticket. Damn.

Since none of the usual suspects could attend, I thought I'd do the right thing and ask my wife, who actually REALLY wanted to go. And, hell, she's cool. I mean, going with her is like having one of the guys there. Ok, well, maybe without the leering, burping, and scratching. Let's just say she brings a certain civility to the group. Probably much-needed civility.

The day of the show, I call the wife and ask her to look at the tickets and let me know where the seats are located. I'm looking at the Ford Center web site. She reads me the numbers. They aren't good. I tell her to bring oxygen. And binoculars. (There are Honeybees involved here, remember.)

That evening, we get to the Ford Center and meet my buddies outside. Dude K (yeah, it's a pseudonym...so what?) was sitting outside by the Ford 150 pickup display waiting for us. I say sitting because a few weeks prior to this outing, he was playing basketball when all of a sudden he felt his Achilles tendon rip away from the bone in his heel. Not a good thing. He's opted to forego surgery, but that's put him in a hard plastic boot on his left foot. Oh, that, and crutches. He can't put any weight on his foot. At all.

So, we head inside. We got there early to get something to eat. Like I mentioned: Burgers and beer. I ask an attendant where the seats are located. He tells us to go up two escalators then we have to walk around almost all the way around the back of the Ford Center. I'm thinking that this is going to suck out loud for Dude K, but there are three others. If we had to carry him we could. The attendant was even nice enough to mention that there was some handicap accessible seating available. But, Dude K is tenacious like that. No handicap seating for him.

So we ride up the first escalator. So far so good. Oh-oh. The next escalator is out. Of course. But, Dude K doesn't even miss a beat. He hops up the stairs on one leg. Crutches in one hand, railing in the other, hop, hop, hop....it made me sweat just watching him. And, he wasn't slow about it either.

So, then we walk around to our section and we go in. We're at the bottom of the section. I look up to where I think we have to go. Man, is it steep. I keep thinking that I really should have brought oxygen. Dude J, my other buddy who's with us jokes that we should build base camp here just in case the bad weather moves in. I'm starting to think maybe he's right.

I start up Kilimanjaro and scout for our seats. I'm looking from the seat letters to the tickets, back to the seat letters, back to the tickets. I keep climbing, careful not to look back lest I get hit with a wave of vertigo and topple off this sucker.

I finally reach row R: It's the farthest possible point from civilization inside the Ford Center.

On the other hand, I've always wanted to know what held up the ceiling of that place. Now I know.

The bad part here is that Dude K has to make it all the way up here. We're so high I can see clouds and small planes below us. I see him start up the stairs. And, man, he's hopping ON ONE LEG ALL THE WAY UP. I think he stopped once to catch his breath, but damn, he was a trooper. To illustrate just how far up we were, I've enclosed a picture of the court from our vantage point:

The banners that hang from the rafters around the upper deck cheap seats pronouce that you are in "Loud City". I think they only call it that because the printer left the 'C' off the word 'Loud'. Still, despite the lack of oxygen and high altitude, we had a great time watching the Hornets beat up on the Trailblazers. I thought for sure that some closer seats would open up so that we could move down once the game got started, but no. The Ford Center holds (someone told me) 19,250 people. There were 19,100 in attendance that Wednesday night. An amazing feat here in OKC.

Dude K and Dude J both had a great time. Even if Dude K now has one thigh the size of a redwood from the workout.

And, Mrs. A had a great time, too. She loved it, as a matter of fact, and would definitely go back. I'm sure we will, but I hope next time I can leave the oxygen at home.

-la

Small Amount of Cat? Nope, Large Amount of Crap.

I was sitting last night watching part one of the Westminster Dog Show and it got me thinking about the insinuations that Lance Manion made against me. After all, it is a dog-eat-dog world out here in the blogosphere. If a guy doesn't defend himself with rational and well thought-out logic, then he finds himself getting cooked even more by the flames.

When I first read the post I pretty much thought that the time had come for ol' Lance to up his dosage. No big surprise there. If you've ever seen the guy play Quake, you'd know what I mean. BTW, you're not supposed to blow yourself up when you do those rocket jumps, m'man. ;)

Anyway, a lot of time has passed since this was first brought up and because I've been so damn busy with work, the wee one, the older wee one, the wife's birthday, Valentine's Day, studying, and all other manner of things, it seems like this is beyond yesterday's news. Still, I don't want Lance's rantings to go to waste, so here's what really happened.

Did I throw caution to the wind and run with scissors despite knowing how Lance would react to this news? Um, ok, maybe. Did I think he'd ever find out about the damn cat in the first place? No. I mean, come on. I live in Oklahoma. He's somewhere else that's not Oklahoma.

Here's the deal: I read one of Lance's blog entries regarding his current bumper crop o' kitties (I'm not going to link to it. If you care enough, go to his blog and dig through his archive yourself...), one of which he affectionately called Small Amount of Cat. I thought the name was funny and it kind of stuck in my head. Fast forward a few weeks. I come home one night and find this waiting for
me. You all remember this.

So, I'd read about Lance's Small Amount of Cat and I happened to call the new kitten that a few times. My wife thought it was hilarious and it stuck. I didn't discourage her from using it because, well, I never thought Lance would find out.

I mean, I live in Oklahoma. He lives somewhere else that's not Oklahoma.

After hearing Small Amount of Cat a few hundred times, it got old. And, we still hadn't come up with an official name for the animal. And, calling her something like shithead wasn't too PC. It was then that a brilliant thought occurred to me.

"Let's see, Small Amount of Cat (SAC)....hmm, can't go around calling her SAC...."

Well, I could, but I probably wouldn't still be married. Besides, my next door
neighbor uses that acronym for his man-room. To him, it means "Spousal Avoidance Center". After all of this, I was spending a lot of time in my own SAC after blaming my wife for all this trouble.

Small Amount of Cat worked, but I knew that was what Lance called his bit o' trouble. "What if I change the C to a K?" Ok, Small Amount of Kat. Once again, couldn't go around calling her SAK. OK, how about SAKI? What should the 'I' stand for? Then it popped into my head: Incorporated. SAKI. Don't ask. I don't know where it came from either. To quote Akroyd in Ghostbusters, "It just popped into my head..."

"Yep, that's it." And, I happen to be a big fan of sake, the Japanese rice wine.

So, it fit. Alternate spelling included. Besides, I don't ever remember seeing any kind of copyright symbol on Lance's Small Amount of Cat moniker. I simply did what most people do these days...steal an idea, make it better, and call it my own.

Of course, now I'm going to copywrite it.

To this day, I'm unsure as to how Lance found out about the entry at DailyKitten.com. My wife was beaming when she found out that the pic of Saki that she sent in was chosen. And then her spirits were bolstered further at the number of comments left in response to the posting. I read through them and pointed out that yes, the comments were great. Yes, there were a lot of them. Yes, they came from all over the world including Australia. However, I got The Look when I pointed out that all the comments were left by women. Sad, lonely, cat women with nothing better to do than coo over a picture of our kitten being caught in the act of wreaking havoc in our other cat's food dishes.

The wife was so happy about this posting (as if she'd won the damn lottery or
something) that she called her immediate family and sent the link to just about
everyone in her address book. That might have included Lance. She didn't seem to be able to remember doing that, however.

And then a few days later, unbeknownst to me, this thing is growing like a virus. Out of nowhere, I get a call from a colleague and friend of mine. The call goes kind of like this:

"Dude, you have to read Mercenary Words."

I'm thinking...cool, Lance has written something funny again. And, I needed a break anyway.

"Dude, this time it's about YOU!"

"Oh shit, now what....? Well, it's either gonna be really good or really bad..."

I was hoping he wasn't going to mention The Ultimate or that time with that thing in that place with those people.

"Man, is he mad at you...! Wow...."

"I think I'm gonna have to have a little talk with Mrs. Armenia when I get home..."

And, that's what happened, folks. The whole story. Yes, my life is complicated.

Judge for yourself whether the Lance's flaming of yours truly was justified rage or not. Personally, I don't think so. Still, all he needs to know is that the BeefTasty is on it's way. If that's not enough, I'll officially rename the cat (like they do the dogs on Westmister) to "Madam Lance Manion Rocks You Like A Hurricane!"

I did mention it was a female cat, right?

Peace out...!
-la