Ain't it the truth.....

Scenes from FrontRunner

I rode the FrontRunner up to Ogden today, I give it a 2 thumbs up.  I wish I'd actually timed it, but I'd bet it doesn't take as much time as driving, especially if it were during rush hour.  And it rides a lot smoother than Trax, I didn't realize how fast we were going until I noticed the freeway right next to me and we were keeping pace with some of the faster cars.  Clean, comfortable, smooth ride and an onboard bathroom to boot.  All in all, if I lived in Davis or Weber counties and worked downtown, or somewhere close to a Trax line, I'd take it rather than fight rush hour traffic.  Hands down. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Utah, over half the population of the state lives in a straight line up and down the Wasatch Front (the green area on the map), about 70 miles from Ogden to Provo.  For years people have argued that we are perfectly set up for a single commuter rail line straight up and down the front, from Provo to Ogden (the 2 large population centers at the top and bottom of the front).  Last year the Utah Transit Authority finally opened the north line from Saly Lake to Ogden.  Good timing too, because it caught the high gas prices and ridership exceeded expectations.  I don't know if it remains higher than expected, but from what I saw it was getting used (and I was home by 5:30). 

Things you might see on your FrontRunner ride

Funny spider video, some bad language.

Hope you're all having a great day!

Sometimes Google bites you in the butt.

Geometry 4B, generally a sophmore or junior class, I have several freshmen in it. One of them is Fidel, who has been quiet and shy for the first 1/4 of the year. He's come out of his shell this month, at least in my class. He's joined in with the classroom bantering back and forth for the last couple of weeks, and last week he raised his hand and said "Hey, Mr. Rossi, I looked up your name on Google and you're a porn star." (Yes, this is one of the fun things about teaching high school in an inner city (for Utah) school, kids say these things). Now I know that there is an old lounge singer in Las Vegas with my name, my little brother even went up to him after a show and got me an autographed business card. Porn star, I didn't know. I let poor Fidel down, though, I didn't react the way he expected. I just looked at him and came back with "There may be one with my name, but it definitly ain't me." and continued on with the lesson. Haven't heard anything about it since then.

All others Palin comparison to this one.

I'm taking a Leadership class for my Master's program this semester. One of the assignments was to read a leadership book and answer a few questions on it. Everybody and their uncle was bound to read "How to Make Friends and Influence People" and those other popular leadership books. So, I was kind of stuck, wanting to read something no one else would be.

In early October I was walking through Barnes and Noble, carrying my recent purchase of season 5 of That 70's Show, when I saw it on a table on the way out. At first it didn't even occur to me to choose it as my book, I just laughed at the oxymoronicy* of it all. Then I realized that I was really a bit curious as to what it could say, and that's when I decided to read it for my class.
Books slapped together immediately after a surprise appointment suck. I could have written it better, it reeked of amateurship.
The book had some good leadership ideas, but very few of them were explained or backed up by Palin's experiences. In fact, you get to know her whole political career quite well, since it is re-hashed from beginning to end in every chapter.
So, if you want to confirm your decision not to vote for her, you can borrow the book from me - it confirmed my decision.

*Yes, I know that's not a word.

Rachel

Stupid is as stupid does.

7% of all your emails are important. 13% are irrelevant, but funny. Another 13% are sexually related - "I love you, check out my website" and prescription offers. 14% are some sort of scam and 17% are some sort of chain email (the last person who broke this chain was George W Bush, look what happened to him). The last 36% are total bullshit. Of this type I write tonight.

I got an email from a coworker today, warning me about giving gift cards for Christmas. It told of several companies that were holding off closing their doors and going bankrupt until after the Christmas season so they could sell a bunch of worthless gift cards. The email named over a dozen companies, including Sprint, Dell, Ethan Allen and Rite Aid.

For the love of God, would you people please quit believing everything that is sent to you in your inbox!

I'm not talking to those of you who hit DELETE when you see this propaganda, and fortunately that includes most of you that I choose to associate with. But there are a few acquaintances and coworkers that insist on forwarding every warning, every threat, every support our troops and every "the end of the world is near because a Democrat is going to be president" email that you get.

It's not all true. People are lying to you to either put forth their agenda or just because they think it is funny that so many morons fall for this garbage.

Count me out, take me off your list. Unless you have researched it and found there to be some truth to it, don't clog up my inbox or brain with it.

Thanks. And have a good day.

U of U kicks ass!

I really don't care about college sports, or professional sports for that matter. But, in the UofU/BYU rivalry, I care. And I love it when the U wins. For those of you unfamiliar with the aforementioned rivalry, here's the basics:

• The U, or The University of Utah, is the biggest state university in Utah, located on the north-east foothills of Salt Lake City.
• BYU, the Y, or Brigham Young University, is the biggest private university in the state, owned and operated by the LDS Church. It is located about 35 miles south of the U, on the east foothills of Provo.
• The biggest rivalry in the state is between the U and the Y. Very, very few people, if any, will admit to not having a preference between the 2.
• The color red signifies the U, the color blue signifies the Y
• The University of Utah kicked the Cougar's ass today in football, 48 to 24 at Rice Stadium, the U's home field.

Other than the fact that the superiority of an intuition of higher learning has no relation to how it's football team does whatsoever, I still get bragging rights for the next year.

Went and saw the new James Bond movie today.

Scene: Long straight dirt road, the ultimate classic red Corvette screams a right turn through an intersection, dirt flying everywhere and a huge dust trail flowing behind it.  The driver (unseen) guns it and the car races down the perfectly straight road towards the horizon.  You just notice that there are sirens in the background.  From above you see the car, the dust trail, and the lone motorcycle cop in hot pursuit.  30 more seconds of scenes from the bumper, above, the side and as if you're about to get run over by the car.  The siren is almost as loud as the roar of the Corvette's engine, you see the chase from above and as it pans down you see the road heading for a cliff.  Foot on the clutch, hand downshifting, engine revving even more, the steering wheel is yanked to the left and the driver's door is thrown open.  All at once, you see the driver leap from the car, sideways it slips over the edge, almost dragging the driver with it, and you hear the motorcycle come to a halt.  Hands gripping the edge of the cliff as they pull the driver up onto the road again.  He looks like he's about 12 years old, with bleached hair.  He looks up and you see his view.  A motorcycle hovering above the road with no wheels, Robocopish guy standing in front of it.  In a metallic voice, Robocop asks "What is your name?"  The boy responds, with pride, "My name is James Tiberius Kirk."
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If you don't get the meaning of that last line, then you might as well skip the rest of this post.  And even if you do realize who that is, you still may want to skip it.  All depends on whether or not you are a Star Trek fan.
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I went and saw the new James Bond movie.  She had two free tickets, I had two free entrees at The Old Spaghetti Factory.  Cheap night out.  Before you all get your panties in a bunch, there's nothing romantic going on.  She is the teacher going through the Master's program with me and we went as friends.  The food was great, the movie started out too fast, was too slow in the midde, but the last half was great, captivating. 
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But that's not what this post is about.  It's about the trailer I saw before the movie.  The new Star Trek movie trailer.  It is obviously not written to resemble anything written by Gene Rodenberry.  It reminded me of the difference between the Lost In Space series and the recent movie with the same name.  A must see, well, for me at least.  May 8th, 2009.  Don't ask me if I'm free that day.
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If you want to see the trailer, go to http://www.startrekmovie.com/ and navigate your way to the videos.  You want to see Trailer 2.  Let me know if you're interested in joining me on May 8th.

New post on "World According to Pedro"

Check it out: http://worldaccordingtopedro.blogspot.com/

Um, whoops!

I'd be willing to bet most of you have never heard of Insure-Rite, Inc., or even know that the state has contracted with this company to keep track of cars without insurance.  Probably because you rarely have a car with current registration in your name that isn't insured.
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Not so true for me.   I switch the insurance from one LTD to another so often that my insurance agent has a special ring for me on her cell phone.  And this switching back and forth could have bitten me in the butt badly, if I'd had an accident or gotten pulled over.  The last switch I remember doing is dropping the insurance from the convertible so that I could insure the wagon.  So for the last few months the convertible has been parked and I've been driving the wagon and the 4 door.

A couple of days ago I got this letter in the mail, informing me that they had me on record as not having any insurance on the 4 door.  Immediately I thought "What morons, they can't even keep track of which cars I have and don't have insured."  But, before I mailed their form back with "You Morons" written across the page, I figured I'd just check to make sure I was right and they were wrong.  Yeah, you guessed it, I'm the moron, not them.  All I can think is it's a damn good thing I didn't get in a wreck during these last few months.  Of course, it meant that I had to drive the convertible to work today, despite the cold...

Uh, that's not what I meant...

I'm sitting in my classroom about 20 minutes into 1st period (my STS period so no kids). One of my students wanders in and of course I start to give him crap for being late. He decides to blame me for being late, 'cause after all everything is my fault.

• ME: It's not my job to wake you up every morning.
• HIM: Yes it is.
• ME: Hey, I'm not your mother.
• HIM: You look like her.
• ME: I don't know if that's more of an insult to me or to you.
• HIM: (trying to deflect the burn back on his mother) Hey, I'm not the one who LOOKS like a man.

Yeah, I'm still giving him crap about that.

Paige

Up, up & away, in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon........

This is not a fake. Well, the picture isn't, although I would bet the dominant features are not as God made them. But someone I trust completely took this picture herself on a recent cruise, so at least the picture hasn't been photoshopped.

Yeah, I know, you're wondering why I put this picture on here, other than to see how many hits I can get from the 14 to 90 year old male demographics. Well, I do want to see if there's a spike in hits, but the photographer didn't want to post it on her own blog so I offered to post it for her, and I have to admit I'm amused at the odditity of it all. Who truly thinks that is attractive?

When was the last time you.....

• got up out of your seat to change the channel on the TV?
• rolled down a car window without just pushing a button?
• opened a garage door by hand?
• wound your watch?
• got a busy signal?

Havin' my baby, what a lovely way of takin' the day off...

I woke up Wednesday morning all stuffed up, achey and feeling like crap. So I called up the automated subfinder system for my district and arranged a substitute for the day. That means I got to crawl right back into bed and sleep the day away? Uh, no. That means I had to head down to the school and prepare lessons for the substitute. I was in my room getting something together when a student walked in, looked at me and said "Man, Mr. Rossi, looks like you just had a baby." Yeah, any doubt about whether or not I should be taking the day off evaporated at that comment.

Dad & Julia

The home stretch, the light at the end of the tunnel, the 18th hole and any other metaphor for being almost done....

I just registered for my last semester of my Master's degree.  By April I'll be done, and early June I'll be walking across the stage getting my diploma.  Maybe even before my high school has it's graduation, then I can wear my Master's neck thingy during the ceremonies this year. (Our principal has the faculty get dressed up in graduation gowns with all the accessories for the event.)  Anyway, I can hardly beleive it's almost over, it seems like just yesterday when we walked into our first class, and yet at the same time it's taken me 30 years to get around to getting my Master's.  Hope you all will be there when I do.

Good Puns Intended

This week has been a good week for really funny puns, at least funny to me.  If you read my post "The Internet Sucks", in her second comment Paperback Writer refers to California Proposition 8 as Prop Hate.  Never has a more fitting pun been made.  But an equally fitting one can be seen in the Nov 8, 2008 Salt Lake Tribune Public Forum.  In his letter, Randy Teal refers to the upcoming inaugration of Barack Obama as president as marking the end of an error. Bravo folks.

And now that Barack Obama has been elected, my hope for America renewed, I just can't find the energy to care about our current embarassment of a president.  So, in honor of the future this is the last time I will look backwards, at least in regards to stupid things G.W. has said.  The following quotes come from the rest of the pages in my Out of Office Countdown calendar (73 days left). 

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  Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the concequences of words.
• 
  
  Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
• 
  
  They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program.
• 
  
  They misunderestimated me
• 
  
  Wow! Brazil is big!
• 
  
  We need a common enemy to unite us.
• 
  
  The legislature's job is to write law.  It's the executive branch's job to interpret law.
• 
  
  This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all.
• 
  
  I used to fly myself, and I said, "well, there's one terrible pilot."
• 
  
  I think we are welcomed.  But it was not a peaceful welcome.
• 
  
  Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir.  I talk to families who die.
• 
  
  I couldn't imagine someone like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.
• 
  
  If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
• 
  
  Natural Gas is hemispheric.  I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.
• 
  
  It's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life.
• 
  
  As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic...
• 
  
  But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me.
• 
  
  I understand the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region.
• 
  
  I hope you leave here and walk out and say "What did he say?"