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OK, I haven’t posted in a while, but today I uploaded a video (my first YouTube in 2 years!), and I had been telling a Second Life friend about my puppy friends along my walking route, so I dug this up and posted it. Enjoy!

This is hilarious. These gift-disguising hints are by GameStop, but they can apply to a wide variety of presents.

10. Disguise Box
Put game box in bigger box. This make little barbarians confused like bear staring at own reflection in lake. Hah, crazy bears.

9. Heavy Lifting
Toss heavy rock in box with game to add weight and confusion. “Too heavy for game. Must be rock.” Good guess, little barbarian. I fooled you.

8. Decoy Gift
Wrap game in awful holiday sweater. Barbarian get coal one year. Best gift ever, but disguised with moss. Was angry first. Now think very clever idea.

7. The Misdirect
Insert yoga DVD cover art inside plastic game cover. If little stinkers open gift early, they see woman doing “downward dog.” Joke on little stinkers.

6. Clinking Coins
Place nickels in box with game. They go crazy trying to figure out what make jingle sound. Plus when they open box, they get a game and contribution to college fund. Education and fun in one package.

5. Gift Too Thin
Wrap piece of paper with name of game on it. Gamer think it probably IOU at first, but then you hand them game and they go crazy for hugging you. Big reward for big barbarian. Hooray.

4. Ticking Package
Put inexpensive ticking wristwatch in box with games. Everybody wonder what gift is. Could be watch. Probably not bomb, right? Surprise! It games. Way more fun than other possibilities.

3. Music Box
Tape one side of musical greeting card to game. Then tape other side of card to gift box you put game in. If little barbarian shake package, the card falls opens and plays. Everyone wonder why gift sings “Silent Night.”

2. Disguise Scent
Spray box with perfume. This make gift stinky like skunk. Smell keep little barbarians off the scent for sure.

1. Inflatable Games
Put games in large plastic freezer baggie. Then blow up baggie and wrap it. Little barbarians call this UFWO, or “Unidentified Fat Wrapped Object.”

I used to give my Dad subscriptions to Sports Illustrated every year, so I’ve wrapped a few cinder blocks and pieces of paper with the name of the gift on it in my time.

By the way, the Game Stop site also has “The Ninja Guide to Gift Hiding”, which also has some clever and useful holiday pointers.

It’s Karlyn’s birthday! If you know her, personally or from reading about her here — or if you don’t know her at all — leave her a comment wishing her a happy one!

Yes, I haven’t posted in a while - I’ve been working on lyrics for my music, taking piano lessons, giving computer lessons in return for piano lessions, working part-time, trimming tree branches away from the house, helping my wife cope with her evil step-siblings who are bullying her mom, DJing on Second Life, DJing on Blip.fm, posting things on Twitter and Facebook, and last Friday I cooked a huge pot of my signature beef vegetable soup, as is traditional on the first cold weekend that I have time.

Eh, who am I kidding — I could have posted but I was just dragging butt.

And besides: Look over to the left of the page: my Twitter & Blip.fm posts show up in the sidebar, as well as on Facebook, so it’s just as good as blogging, except you don’t get to listen to me blather on at length about things of no importance.

Like for instance.

Come to think of it, that makes it BETTER than blogging.

ANYWAY:

I have emerged from semi-exile to wish Happy Birthday to two of my readers (which means, to about half of the reading audience that I have left): Former co-worker Todn8r, and longtime blogging friend in Norway, RennyBA

Hope you two make the best of your respective days!

The Blues isn’t my favorite musical genre, but I have a new favorite workout song: The Blues Brothers’ Sweet Home Chicago! Check it out, especially the killer trombone solo that starts at 3:57:

That solo is true vindication for everyone who was a trombone geek in high school.

Like, um, me.

The past 24 hours haven’t been great for our dependence on public utilities and the like: Last night we lost power for about an hour last night because of the storms, and about an hour after it came back on, we lost cable for TWO hours.

Then this afternoon as I was heading to work, I noticed that there was water gushing up between the seams in the stream in front of our house.

I’ve seen this before. In the more than 10 years that we’ve been in this house, there have been about six times that they’ve had to shut off the water and dig a hole in the street to fix the water lines. The last time was about three years ago; it was cold and raining, and at about 9 in the evening one of the utility workers knocked on our door to warn us that they’d be shutting off the water in 30 minutes.

The time before that, we found out by hearing the jackhammers and pumps at 3 o’clock in the morning, but I suspected earlier that something would be happening, since I saw water flooding from another house’s water meter flowing into the gutter.

And thus I was right: About 5, the work crews showed up and tore the part of our lawn next to the street.

Fortunately, they got it fixed in just a few hours, but it’s odd that all these utilities broke down within a 24 hour period.

Then, add to that the fact that as of tomorrow, thanks to our Wise Benevolent Protectors in the federal government, you’ll no longer be about to watch TV from an analog broadcasted signal. Our bureaucratic overlords have determined that nobody needs to watch TV in a place where the TV isn’t hooked up to something.

We’ve got one of those digital attennas on our breakroom TV at work, and it’s crap-diddly-tastic, It only picks up half of the broadcast channels, and most of those are unwatchable because of the picture freezing and skipping.

And why is the government so hot on having everyone have digital TVs?

Remember the old Yakoff Smirnoff joke? “In Soviet Union, TV watches YOU!”

It turns out that there are theories that the reason for DTV is to give the government two-way transmission capabilities.

In other words, to keep an eye on us while we’re keeping an eye on Real Housewives of Orange County.

Yeah, they can’t keep the water, power or cable going, but they’re trying to run a video feed from each of hour houses.

Well, after a whole #$%@%&$# month of not being able to blog for no apparent #*&$*&$%# reason … now, all of a sudden, I CAN!!!!

And again, for no apparent reason.

%$@#.

SO anyway, I’m back, and have a few things to post, and hopefully I will, assuming I don’t get %$@#ed around again.

I didn’t post last night because I was busy cramming for a job interview that I had today.

Yes, I’m such a nerd I study for interviews.

Anyway, I won’t go into detail at this point, but it was actually an enjoyable interview, because they seemed to really be impressed with my wide variety of experience.

It’s good to have your abilities respected every now and then, especially when I’m job hunting, and especially after I was having to do all this random stuff that had nothing to do with my skills for my last two years at my previous job.

Also, it’s a great little company with smart, friendly people, and I learned a lot of fascinating things about the business they’re in. Bonus points: The owners love dogs, and often have their poodle at the office. Unfortunately, they don’t have a health plan, so I don’t know if we would be able to work out enough to pay compensate, but it would be a chance to use both my creative abilities and my office skills.

Anyway, there’s my obligatory post, and now I’ve got to get back to working on the music thing …

For the first three days of the challenge, I put together one good tune beginning each day, and the third day was the best one.

That third one got me overconfident, apparently. On the evening of the fourth, I sat on the back porch with my guitar and pounded out a couple of hopeful-sounding chord progressions … but alas, when I got them punched into my music software, hopeful turned to hopeless.

So the next night, I was too dispirited to try to start from scratch again, so instead I went back to what I started on the 3rd … and I’ve got to say, what I ended up with, after tinkering with it again today, is pretty cool. Kind of Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty sounding, except I don’t really like their stuff a lot.

(And BTW, thanks much to Yay-Kim for her tips and pointers!)

Still, though, I really need to pick up the pace if I’m going to compile another 9 of those boogers before this short month is through — and if I’m going to do any vocals at all, it’ll require a personal effort comparable to D-Day and class-picture-day all rolled into one.

And another area in which I’m lacking is the song-naming arena; the song that I’ve pretty much finished is called “A Minor F C Chords 2-5-08″, for lack of anything more descriptive. Another song is called “Simple Tune 2-2-08″.

Somewhere, Springsteen is laughing his butt off.

Anyway, I just keep on plugging, and maybe along the way I’ll learn enough survival skills to be able to churn through these chores a little faster.

And now for something completely different, here’s a really, really fat guy, firing a gun really, really fast:

(Via Attack of the Show)

Hmm, that’s a catchy little rhythm … I think I’ll download it and build a song around it …

… or rather TRYING to be musicking, and failing miserably.

But still I need to post, so here’s a picture I took yesterday of my exercise buddy, Gracie:

Gracie is a sweet little doggie on my walking route, a couple of blocks south of my street. I met her just less than two years ago when I had to start my walks to rebuild my lung power, and now she usually runs to the fence when she sees me coming, so I can pet her through the links (she’s too short for me to reach her over the fence).

I got to see her again today, since it was extra-warm again (record heat for this date! 84F!) and it might be the last warm day for a walk for a while. This time when I stood up after I petted her, she stood up too, and whined for more petting, and leaned against the fence so I could scratch behind her ears.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for puppies. But look at those beautiful brown eyes! Isn’t she sweet?

(BTW, I’ve talked to her owner a couple of times, that’s how I know Gracie’s name. I’m not going pet psychic or Dr. Doolittle or anything.)

Anyway, that oughta hold ya; now I’m going back to not being any good at doing music.

UPDATE: Welcome, new visitors from Pam’s Carnival of the Canines! Please bookmark the main page here and keep coming back!