Borderline Fantastic

Back in 9th and 10th grade we lived in an apartment and I put a pull-up bar in the doorway into the kitchen. I’d just walk by, see it, do a few pull-ups. I was never in better shape. You could also contribute the ‘being in shape’ to playing 2 sports per year in those grades. That number dwindled to 1 (and that track season, it could be argued, should only count as .5 in terms of effort) and then to none my senior year. We moved after my 10th grade year and the pull-up bar was left behind in the apartment.

In comes the Iron Gym. An unexpected gift under the tree. I’m sure I saw the commercial, but I didn’t really pay attention. Its a bit more involved than my old pull-up bar. The old one really was just a rod that we screwed into the door way. The Iron Gym sort of latches onto the door jam. At first I was pretty nervous that the whole thing would come crashing down. More because I have little faith that the house can stand any extra pressure on it. So far, so good, my door is still intact.

In a few weeks, expect me to look like this …

It has almost become a tradition between my friend Zach and I, to go out late on the weekends to random fast food joints, or eats like Denny’s, and just hang out or talk about various projects that both of us secretly knew we would never actually do, but were cool none the less.  Well, after being inspired by the internet, one of those nights just happened to come tonight. I got in my car and headed over to Zach’s house to pick him up. We embark on a trip that only ends up awesome. At this point its 10ish pm, and we figure that any fast food place is going to be open, but to our surprise the Burger King we intended on going to was closed. Bummed out, we set off for the next burger king, still no dice, Zach gets out of the car to look at the hours sign, but all it says is closed on  Christmas. These two Burger Kings were on the same road, so we were just hoping those two were closed for some strange reason, and as we left from the second Burger King I decided that I was not going to stop driving until I carry out my damn plan. With no luck at the third Burger King we decide to give up on Burger King and go somewhere else. There was a Wendy’s and a Checkers across the street, however Zach thinks square burgers are wrong, and Checkers would not work because it was only drive through, and we wanted a place to sit down.

So we finally decide on McDonalds.

As we walk it, it is obvious that it has been a slow night. The place had maybe four employees,  and they all looked pretty bored. I walked up to the counter, looked at the meal and decided what type of burger I wanted.

Then I ordered.

One quarter pounder with cheese with 16xBacon, a small fry and a large Dr. Pepper.

Looking down at the register the lady taking my order started to punch it in, it seemed to take a moment before what I asked for processed. She did a double take and asked me if I misspoke, and I replied kindly that I did infact want 16 orders of bacon. In disbelief she said okay and started to punch it in, but as she did she called her manager over, I think she wasn’t actually sure if it was possible. The manager came over and was in similar disbelief. She actually continued to try to convince me against it, she made sure that I understood how much it was actually going to cost, I said that’s fine, 16 pieces of bacon is worth it. “Okay” she said with obvious surprise and she punched in her order, then looked back to the sandwich maker and shouted “yeah that’s actually 16 pieces of bacon,” to make sure the maker didn’t think it was a typo.

They make it up, it took a few extra minutes because they never keep that much bacon ready to be served, and I get my tray, the massive meat morsel couldn’t even fit in the box it was crammed into.  You could smell the bacon from feet away. They did misunderstand me when I asked for 16xBacon, I intended to get 16 servings of bacon, each serving of bacon is actually 3 pieces, so it should have ended up as 3×16 pieces of bacon, however I am happy with what I got. One of these days I am going to go back and get the full 3×16Bacon burger. That day will be magical.

The burger ended up being fantastic, the patty along with the cheese pickles and ketchup were nice overtones just resting on top of the great bacon taste.  To be honest, I intend to get this again, it was the best tasting thing McDonalds has ever made for me! I would recommend this for anyone that would like to actually eat something delicious at McDonalds.

Needless to say, tonight was a fantastic night, and I am for the first time completely satisfied by my McDonalds experience. Zach on the other hand only got two McDoubles, small fry, and a drink. I have a feeling it is going to dwell inside of him for years until one day he is going to call me and say “Man I cannot take it anymore, not getting a 16xBacon burger that night was the worst mistake I have ever made,” in which case I will gladly share 16xBacon burgers with him at McDonalds.

Needless to say I recorded the night with photographs:

Here are the most popular posts from last month …

1. Everywhere I go I keep her picture in my wallet - Why, why, why? Each month I come closer to just dedicating the whole site to Gym Class Heroes.
2. I’m Scott Malkinson and I have diabetes - A great South Park clip.
3. Philly Hoop Group Classic - The classic was this past weekend. Niagara won the Liberty Bracket and Villanova won the Independence Bracket.
4. A whole bunch tied …
Can I Keep My Jersey?
Great Stories from the SI NFL Stadium Rankings
Links for May 20
Norm MacDonald on Leno (Surprising since the video is no longer available from Hulu.)
Sherman Alexie on The Colbert Report
This Season’s New Shows
What are/were your pet’s names?

I usually make it a point to mention when I finish a book. It’s probably nothing to most people, but it happens so rarely for me, I like to keep track. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much of a reader. In fact, that post I mentioned that the book I just finished was coming out, Paul Shirley’s Can I Keep My Jersey? A month after that post I finished Moneyball in about a month. A definite record for me, which I forgot all about. A few things got in the way reading Can I Keep My Jersey? Mostly life, and there was another book I read in there, but that one isn’t really worth discussing. So while how good a book is has some part in how long it takes me to finish it, what’s going on in my life really is the dominant factor. I say that because taking forever to finish this one may be a bad sign. It isn’t a bad sign, as I said, other things were going on. I really enjoyed this one.

In case you haven’t heard of Paul Shirley, he’s a basketball player. He’s good enough for it to be his primary occupation. The book, Can I Keep My Jersey?, recounts 4 years of his basketball life as he played for 11 teams in 5 different countries. In fact, that’s the subtitle: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond. He has a lot to say about everyone involved in the game, from players and coaches to management. A lot of interesting commentary about what goes on behind the scenes.

The entire is him recounting his experiences, sort of like a diary or writing home from the road. It’s written in a very familiar way and makes you feel like he’s really letting you get to know him.

It’s really interesting to see how, even though he gets to play basketball for a living, life isn’t perfect. He has to travel the world to find a job. While some places are nice to visit, many places you don’t want to spend more than 20 minutes in. Not every team in the world is based in a wonderful city. Also, not every team has the finances of an NBA team so traveling and lodging on the road is almost always a good time.

I think a common comment about Paul Shirley is that he’s someone you’d want to hang out with. I mean, why not, he played in the NBA and he seems normal. Two things concern me about him: he might complain more that I do, I don’t need complaint encouragement, and we disagree greatly on his musical tastes. I think we could get past that.

He currently does a weekly podcast with his brother called Off Topic with Matt and Paul Shirley.

That’s all for my book report today. Wagers on when the next one will be? I should point out I had some books on CD and an audible account for a few months. So I listened to Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (which I should really talk about soon, it was excellent) and When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. I’m almost done with Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and have her newest book, The Wordy Shipmates, loaded on the iPhone and ready to go. I’m also open to suggestions from the crowd.

A few weeks ago I heard this story on The Moth Podcast (it’s an mp3 since this site doesn’t create show pages) about a guy who decided to outsource some of his daily activities. If you don’t feel like listening there is this article he wrote in Esquire. Or I could just tell you what I got out of it … (actually the Esquire article is very entertaining, so make sure you read it at some point)

The guy is AJ Jacobs, apparently he is very bright because he adjusted one of my ideas into something that is actually possible, apparently. He found a company in India that offers ‘remote executive assistants.’ This assistant will do research, memos, emails, etc. He finds another company that offers a concierge service. The cost? The assistant is $1000/month for 8 hour days (although that might be half price, I think he had a coupon) and the concierge is $400/month for 4 hour days. I guess not terrible prices, and I don’t need that much time, I don’t think.

If you read the whole article it goes past just work related to his job. He outsources talking to his parents, dealing with his wife, even reading bed time stories to his kid. He even attempts to outsource his therapy sessions. Too far or too wise?

I’ve been saying for a while that I need an intern. Before you ask, yes, sort of like Darin (Kramer’s intern). Now this intern could do intern-related tasks. I have plenty of web site work that needs to be done. There is also a lot of data entry on ICH. I recently got sick of it all so I’ve been automating it, but once I get the automation done I will still need to check it every once in a while, you never know when part of it will break down. There are also plenty of other features I’d add if I had someone to check it over more often. I’d have time to do this if I didn’t have an actual job, but even then an intern would be nice.

While all that would be very helpful and make the internship moderately legit, there are other things I’d like my intern to take care of. Prior to needing an intern, in college, I decided I needed a stenographer to follow me around all day and take down all my conversations. I found I was forgetting many of my genius ideas as school work got in the way. My roommate had originally applied for the position. So the intern could serve this purpose. They would just need to be alert during the day and jot down notes of what I say. Then I’d be able to quickly look through the notes and they would jog my memory about whatever idea or story I had mentioned earlier in the day.

The issue is that I can’t get an intern (it would be hard enough to get the 1st one, but after they told their story, no way I’d get another) and I don’t have the money to pay for an assistant. So he really didn’t solve my problem. He just had the funds to do so. I’m curious how this guy survived after the outsourcing experiment ended. He seemed to become quite reliant on them.

1. What are/were your pet’s names? - This was a QOTD on March 21, 2007. Our new movie reviewer, Pat, stumbled across it while checking out the site and saw that his sister had posted about his cat being hit by a car. He had been told the cat ran away.
2. Underground Resume Ranking – Week 5 and 3. Underground Resume Ranking Report – Week 6 - Gregg started his own resume rankings, which have been really popular. They have been missing the past 2 weeks, hopefully Gregg’s schedule opens up soon.
4. College Football Week 6 Recap - This week’s just happened to be popular.
5. What is your dealbreaker movie? - A QOTD from the beginning of the month.

Have you ever defriended anyone on Facebook or MySpace?

I can’t think of anyone that I’ve defriended. It’s not like you are actually friends. Even if you stop being friends in real life are you going to make the effort to defriend them? You still want to see what that person is up to and maybe someday they will be in a position where you need to use them for your own personal gain. I guess perhaps defriending an old girlfriend would be a good idea, I’ve been lucky enough to not have to deal with that. There have been some cases in which I’ve thought I had grounds to defriend someone, I never actually did but I thought the reasons were interesting enough to explore.

The Supporter
A few months back, I logged in and in my feed it said one of my friends had become a supporter of Rick Santorum. What? Why now? He lost in 06, by a ton. What is he now, a lobbyist? Now if this happened while he was in office or running for office, then it’s slightly different. Not much though, I still would question this person’s judgment. How did this happen? Was this person wandering around Facebook and thought, ‘Hey, I’m a big Rick Santorum fan. He isn’t really doing anything important right now but I think I’ll support him as a person.‘ Can I have my own page for people to support me? Actually, I probably can. I should look into that. Using that logic in reverse I supported Michael Moore, hoping to weed out some friends. As of yet I don’t think anyone has taken the bait.

The Commenter
Recently my feed has been overrun by someone who comments on other people’s pictures at least six times per day. Is this necessary? I don’t mind the occasional comment but have some self control. If you have that much to say, pick up the phone. These aren’t even my pictures, I post to Flickr, any on Facebook were because I wanted to try it out. Maybe I’m just jealous because I’ve never had any of my friends comment on any of my Flickr pictures. Not a one.

The Pointless Status Updater
I only recently started changing my status on occasion. Actually, I don’t change my status, I just hooked it up to my Twitter so it happens on its own when I update that. I haven’t encountered anyone who updates too constantly with completely inane updates, but I feel it will come one day and I’m just warning you now. So far my friends are sticking to what they are doing. Once it starts during into AIM away messages with quotes and such I will be forced to turn off status messages.

The Relationship Changer
Sadly for 90% of the people I know, the relationship status on Facebook is our strongest bond. I may not have talked to them in forever, but at least I know their about their relationship. Some people are out of control though. A constant change from single to in a relationship to it’s complicated and back again on a weekly basis. Please just be truthful. Seeing as it’s our strongest bond, if it’s not correct, then are we even friends at all? If it is truthful and your relationship status is in constant flux, then just stick to ‘It’s Complicated’ for a while until it changes to ‘Engaged’ because clearly that is where the relationship is headed. That is only until the inevitable ‘is no longer listed as Married’ message. On a related note, you girls who are in a relationship with your friend. Knock it off. You’re on notice.

Defriended Alerts
There are two ways to look at the defriending: 1) Who cares, the person won’t even notice or 2) I want them to notice. That’s is where the alerts come in. I want to defriend someone and let them know it. In fact, I want it in my feed and I want to include my reason. I want everyone, especially that person, to know I have defriended them for making too many comments or because they supported someone ridiculous.

Defriendicization
The hardest part has been coming up with the name. Dave is to thank for this one, although he suggested Debefriendicization but I thought that got a little long. I’m open to other suggestions, but I think this gets the point across.

Here is what was popular across BF in September.

1. Underground Resume Ranking Report - Week 4
2t. Everywhere I go I keep her picture in my wallet
2t. What are/were your pet’s names?
4. Five Most Hated MLB Teams
5. BF College Football Week 3 Preview

You may have noticed over the past two weeks there have been a lot more sports posts than anything else here on Borderline Fantastic. The BF Front Page was being overloaded with them. I wanted to keep things a little more separated because the sports content has a much different audience than the usual BF content that I would still like to focus on and increase the number of those sort of posts.

I created a new home page for these posts, Borderline Fantastic Sports. You will notice that page has a different look from the rest of BF. In addition to removing full sports posts from the main page all of the sports pages also have that different look to them. Again, to try and separate them. I’m still working on that design. I’ll be tinkering more with the front page to give a little more information about new sports posts.

I hope to have a few more categories split apart to make the site easier to navigate and so you can pick your favorite sections to follow.

When buying birthday cards, or any sort of greeting card, it usually is a very personal activity. You want to find that perfect card.

I hate buying cards. I’m very picky and rarely can I find just the right one. Sometimes it’s especially difficult when it comes to the Happy Birthday Step-Dad section.

On occasion I will buy a card that is sentimental. Most times they will be funny or odd, something that might be perceived as strange or childish to observers.

My usual method of purchasing a card is to tuck it under the envelop flap, face down, with the bar code visible so that it can easily be scanned without the card being seen. This avoids any awkwardness at the register. If the cashier would happen to see the card said ‘Happy Birthday, Mom’ they might feel the need for some small-talk and ask about your mom’s birthday. It could get much worse with Get Well Soon cards. I also don’t want to be judged based on the appearance of the card.

I usually go to the Hallmark store but there weren’t any convenient for my ride home yesterday so I went to Wal-Mart. After only a few cards I found one that was perfect. It may have been the best card I’ve ever found, but I haven’t kept track to be able to say that for sure. If I had to categorize it I would say it was cute, possibly childish. It would have sentimental meaning, but it wasn’t a flowery card with script writing. I put the card under the envelope flap as usual and headed to pay. I get up to typical Wal-Mart cashier with only the card to purchase. She scans it then proceeds to pull it out and read the front. Then she opens it up to read what’s inside. The whole time I’m standing there with my money out. It’s only a few lines but it takes her a little while to digest. Luckily the extent of conversation was her saying, ‘That’s cute.’

I feel like the Hallmark employees follow some sort of code that states they are not to read the cards while checking out. I can see the Wal-Mart employees not being used to it. They don’t often come across cards and they don’t stock them themselves.

I had developed my card tuck system before ever having someone read a card I had purchased. I had only assumed that it would be an odd encounter if the cashier were to read the card. Turns out, I was right. I will make more of an effort to go to Hallmark from now on. If I do wind up at Wal-Mart or Target I hope I won’t let the fact that the cashier may read the card in anyway sway my selection. Sadly, I feel my fear of being judged by the cashier will weigh heavily on my decision. Especially those Wal-Mart cashiers, they’re so hard to impress.