I got into trouble with my wife after I cooked dinner the other night. I don’t know why. Here’s the photos of our sweet & sour chicken dinner…

My son got me the other day. I sit down at my computer and wiggle the mouse, screen stays black. Press a key on the keyboard – nothing. Press every button on the front of the montitor – no dice. Hit the reset button on the PC – nada. Make sure all the cables are plugged in – check. “Well crap,” I think, “my nice 19-inch monitor died, now my cheap backup has died. Time to bite the bullet and buy a new flat screen.”
I find one that I want and am one click away from the actual purchase when my son walks in and says “Oh, are you buying a new monitor?” and then reaches over and presses the power button on the “broken” monitor. I heard my geek cred flushing down the toilet as it came on. And, of course, my wife was a witness to this event.
In my defense, the power button on the monitor was very well camouflaged.

So my mother-in-law wanted a new computer – had to be brand new, no refurbs – and she wanted it now. Off we head to Best Buy where I ask the sale person what they recommend. Their recommendation matches what I had already researched for her so I ask if they have many returns on that system. Apparently they have only had that system for about a week, so he hasn’t seen any yet, but it’s too soon to know. Well, Mom wants to check Circuit City and see if they have anything cheaper before we buy from BB, so we head around the block…
Waltz in to CC and a young kid asks if we need help. Explain what she wants and he leads us over to the same PC. Same price. I ask how long they’ve had this one in stock – he says they’ve had it for months. Ask how many returns they’ve had on it – he says that none of their desktop PC’s get returned, only laptops. I try to bring up the system properties on the PC and realize that it has never been configured – it’s still on it’s first boot. That seems strange. Well, since the price is the same, Mom decides to buy from CC. This is where things get fun…

The kid starts ringing up the order and then says, “I’m sorry, but we only have two of those in stock – one is an open box and the other is the display model.”

“Huh,” I ask, “does the open box mean that it was a return?”

“Yes” says the kid. The same one who just told me they never get returned.

Mom and I look at each other then say, in unison, “We’ll head back to Best Buy and take their new one.”

Comment spam is getting out of hand, so implementing some changes. Sorry for any inconvenience.

My son whines entirely too much.

“Daddy, turn the ligh back on; Daddy, turn the hot water back on, please; Daddy, please quit sitting on me; Daddy, please quit beating me with the rubber hose; Daddy, can I come out of the oven yet?”

I mean all the kid does is whine.

Courtesy of Vincent Price and Michael Jackson (before he became a freak):

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
for no mere mortal can resist
the evil of the thriller

Reader Andy was willing to submit a much better translation for the song “Alles Neu” than the one BabelFish provided…

I burn my studio, sniff the ashes like cocaine.
I strike dead my gold fish, bury it in the yard.
I blow up my apartment, let go of everything I have.
My old life tastes like hard-bitten toast,
roast myself a splendid steak, peter cooks finest meat now.
I am the update, Peter Fox 1.1.
I want to shake it (go dancing), party, but my pond is too small.
I grow a new row of teeth as with a white shark.
Waxed, doped, polished new teeth.
I’m euphoric, and I have expensive plans.
I buy construction machines, excavators and road-rollers and cranes.
Jump at Berlin, press the siren.
I build beautiful towers of (audio-) speakers.
Basses massage your souls.
I am the wrecking ball of the g-g-g-German scene.

Hey, everything shines, so beautifully new.
Hey, if you don’t like it, make (it) new. (renew it)
The world is covered in dust, but i want to see where things are heading.
Climb the mountain of dirt, because at the top there’s a fresh wind.
Hey, everything shines, so beautifully new.

I’m tired of my old stuff, leave it rotting in a bag,
mothball the clothes and go shopping naked.
I’m completely renovated, girls have something to look at.
in good health, hard bodied, world champion in chess and boxing.
Only talk straight, give me a yes or a no.
Finished with falderal (nonsense), i stop fooling around.
If i should ever smoke weed again, i’ll smash an axe into my leg.
Don’t ever want to lie again, want to mean every sentence like i say it.
My head explodes, everything has to change.
I look for the button, meet the powerful men.
Force the country into happiness, buy banks and networks.
Everyone goes crazy, trembling sheep and lambs.
I look better than Bono, and i’m a man of the people (average guy ?)
Ready to save the world, though that might be a little too ambitious.

Hey, everything shines, so beautifully new.
Hey, if you don’t like it, make (it) new.
The air is used up here, it’s hard for me to breathe.
Bye bye, i got to get out of here, the walls are getting closer.
The world is covered in dust, but i want to see where things are heading.
Climb the mountain of dirt, because at the top there’s a fresh wind.
Hey, everything shines, so beautifully new.

Brought to you by the letter “R”!

[http://www.talklikeapirateday.com]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_like_a_pirate_day]

[http://www.wikihow.com/Talk-Like-a-Pirate]

[View the GreenEggPage in Pirate-speak!]

Today’s video comes from that strange trip you take when you start clicking on related links… It all started with my post about Alles Neu, which has a related link on Youtube of “Marry Me“, featuring Peter Fox,” which is pretty funny, and that had a link to “Mercedes Benz” which, while it’s not really my style at all, does have a guy dressed up as Optimus Prime (I think, never was really into Transformers) in it, which gives it some geek cred.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbMrIiTfZYk]

YouTube says I can’t embed this one, so click the linky to view it.

* Update: This was a really crappy BabelFish translation. A better translation can be found here: http://greeneggpage.com/?p=510

Earlier I posted the video to Alles Neu by Peter Fox, and I mentioned that I had found the German lyrics. Well, a trip through BabelFish resulted in this: (if anyone can do a better translation, please, please let me know)