Saturday, September 30, 2006

PPD 41


I usually don't go in for self-portraits, but what the heck, it's the weekend. This was taken at the Great American Beer Fest on Friday, and then edited to within an inch of whatever it's equivalent of a life is.


Edits: Yes. Oh yes.
Taken: Friday, September 29th

Thursday, September 28, 2006

PPD 40


It looks to me like some sort of postmodern castle, complete with arrow slits and embrasures. I believe this is the top of the art museum, although I didn't actually check.
Edits: Cropped
Taken: Tuesday, August 25th

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Too lazy for real posts...

Instead of forwarding you all a bunch of crap, I'll just post it here. You know you secretly miss the forwarding, admit it!








This one may take a little explanation. If you stare at the middle, it should seem like parts of it are rotating. It might help if you view the fullsize version.



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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

HR Unhappy Board - Unhappy No More

Over the last couple of months a sort of tradition has developed at work. It started innocently - one of my coworkers has no internal filter on what he says, so every now and then he says something that hilarious in a purely juvenile sense. After a few bits of this unintentional had collected, I wrote them on my whiteboard.

Over the course of a few weeks, people would occasionally see the board and get a chuckle out of it. Then a few days later, they'd come back with something to add. In recent weeks there have been new things added to the board on a daily basis. Somewhere along the line it was dubbed the "HR Unhappy Board" because if we actually had an HR department they would doubtless have been driven to fits by the board.

Then, the inevitable happened - management saw it. First, management laughed and walked away. Five minutes later, management came back and decreed that it be removed, because it was "a lawsuit waiting to happen". Now, normally I'm one to complain about this sort of thing, but in this case I have to admit management was right on. By this point the board was potentially offensive on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation and possibly pedophilia. Probably not a good thing to put up in the workplace.

But this, dear friends, is the internet. And I think we all know that the internet is EXACTLY where that sort of thing belongs. So what else could I do but post a giant picture of the HR Unhappy Board, along with a full transcription of everything on it? Names have been abbreviated to protect the so-very-very-guilty, but otherwise it's all there baby.

In order to properly appreciate this board, you must realize that every single quote here was uttered off the cuff, at work, by a male member of the staff, and that we're all incredibly immature and amused by things like this. So just stick with me.



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Quotes from the board (in very rough chronological order):
"Hey [W], come play with my thing and tell me if it's gay" - D

"We need sex and I think this guy can give it to us." - D

"I haven't eaten dick all day!" - D

"Maybe my little tool is not quite there." - D

(In reference to Jesus)
"I don't care who killed him, I'm just glad he's dead." - B
"Eh, he'd be dead by now anyway." - T

"We need that picture of me next to the little boy." - D

"Let's hold her down and dick around for a while." - T

"You can bang on my thing now." - T

"Just don't want to blow the load." - T

"Hawaii is different from a tomato." - W

"Hey [N], do you want to bang my box dude?" - D2

"That short little brown chick's gonna screw up my day." - N

"You eat mine and I'll eat yours." - T

"I want one of those big balls to sit on." - D

"We should extend the backend stripper." - T

"You feel my urge." - G

"Feel's good to [G]" - R

(In reference to the demise of the HR Unhappy Board)
"I thought it was inevitable and gay, all at the same time." - D





Oh, and the final irony is that I know my feed is on the internal distribution server. So now this post and all the board's glory will be delivered to the email of nearly everyone in the company, as well as permanently saved in the archives.

PS, since I know eventually in the fullness of time some random person will surf in off the internet and read this -- IT'S A FREAKIN' JOKE. Don't get offended, it's all in good fun between friends. If you're offended by this, I don't really care. Go away and don't bug me. Thanks.

PPS, the picture is really big. If you want the fill size one, click away...

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

PPD 39



Partially I like this one because it just feels like summer - the blue sky, the sunlight in the leaves, the totem-polish art piece. Another reason is that the angle of that totem pole, upper right to center, feels a bit odd. Lastly I like it because I know it was shot very close to downtown, Denver Health to be exact. You find the coolest little nooks downtown if you look hard enough.

Edits: None
Taken: Sunday, September 3rd

Monday, September 18, 2006

PPD 38





Maybe it's just me, but this looks a lot like something from a prison. the high wall, the tower behind it. There's even razor wire along the top of the wall -- you can just see the glint in the corner of the wall.

The reason I like this picture is that it's not a prison - it's West High School. No wonder people say school is just prison for kids.

Edits: None
Taken: Sunday, September 3rd

Sunday, September 17, 2006

PPD 37 - Clown Car Parade



This is probably the funniest view on downtown rush hour that I can think of. They're all so small, it looks like traffic in a European city with nothing but those goofy SmartCars. how can that be frustrating and stressful? It's like the circus!

This is probably about my 900th picture of the Holy Ghost building -- it's the big metal pillars by the front door, from about 5 feet away.

Edits: None
Taken: Friday, September 15th

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Belated Congratulations

My friends Sean and Michelle got married last Sunday. Of course I congratulated them both at the ceremony, but hey, why would I have a blog if not to do things publicly? So congratulations! Of course they're in Hawaii now, so I hope they've got better things to do than read this...

Aw who am I kidding? This whole post is just an excuse to show one picture. One embarassing picture. See, Sean is usually one of the more classy gentlemen I know. Most would even call him metrosexual. Of course his wedding day was no exception. But sometimes the camera takes things out of context in a way that just has to be shared. So Sean, here's to you!



If anyone's interested, more wedding pictures here.

PPD 36



This screen is a bit of public art on the side of the Federal building in downtown Denver. You can't tell from a still picture, and it's even hard to tell in person, but the screen actually shows video. Sometimes you'll see people walking by, sometimes cars, once I think I saw a stream. But it's like video done by impressionists. I walked by it at least half-a-dozen times before I realized it was showing anything at all, and a couple more before I realized all the little pillars are also part of the display. It's a suprisingly good bit of art, especially considering that it's in public and on a government building. It's not something that'll blow your mind, but if you happen to be in the vicinity I'd encourage you to take a gander.

I've probably taken 30 pictures of this, trying to get something I liked. I'm not sure this is really a great one, but I'm tired of messing with it, so this is it.

Maybe it's just me, but this picture looks a little crooked, like it's tilted a bit. But I checked in Paintshop, and this is probably one of the most level pictures I've ever taken. Some sort of goofy optical illusion I guess....

Edits: None
Taken: Thursday, September 7th

Accounting Humor

One of Wendy's accounting profs sent these to her. Now I present them for your amusement. Maybe not quite as good as some of the recent Navy spoofs, but still funny if you're business-geeky enough.






Wednesday, September 13, 2006

PPD 35



Another good late afternoon shot. This was taken from east of the city, off a fire escape on Children's Hospital. There were lots of people around, but nobody seemed to think it odd that I was climbing up a fire escape. Go figure.

Edits: Cropped, Gamma Adjustment
Taken: Thursday, August 31st

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

PPD 34



I just love the late afternoon sunlight, it gives such great shadows and tones. This is the wall of an apartment building near the old iron bridge over Cherry Creek.

Edits: Cropped, rotated
Taken: Tuesday, September 12th

Monday, September 11, 2006

Thursday, September 07, 2006

What Would Brian Read?

In the interests of messing around with this nifty RSS technology stuff that I purportedly work with all day, and also a fit of incredible hubris, I've decided that you all want to read even more of the stuff I like. To that end I've set up what Newsgator geekily calls "clippings feeds", but could maybe be better described as "What Does Brian Think You Should Read."

For those of you not familiar with the concept, these are feeds made of things that I've read and thought interesting enough to recognize to anyone unfortunate enough to be listening.

I've set up four of these wonderful, one way communication devices.
(note: Blogger.com seems completely certain that there need to be 12 line breaks here. I'm tired of arguing with it, so just scroll. Sorry bout that.)










FunnySubscribe in NewsGator Online
TechnicalSubscribe in NewsGator Online
GeekySubscribe in NewsGator Online
InterestingSubscribe in NewsGator Online
These should also be autodiscoverable from my blog page, so you can subscribe from the Newsgator Toolbar if you've got it (or, I suppose, any other feedreader on the planet...)
Of course this is all totally useless to you without a feedreader. So go sign up for Newsgator or something!

More Homeowner Fun - Masonry

Continuing my intermittent series of the joys of being a new first-time homeowner we have my latest adventure, brickmasonry. Many of you have probably heard this already, but perhaps some other poor soul with find this and feel less bad about themselves. Plus I've got pictures up!

Anyway, a few weeks ago we had a rain & hail storm. In fact Wendy even took a few pictures of it. In between photography sessions she heard a rattling sound in the ceiling near the dining room.


As it turned out, there was half a brick missing from the outside of the house! I'm not quite sure how this happened. Probably it just weathered apart, but who knows? Either way, it's a hole in the side of the house, and if you look up close you can see a piece of wood back there. It's not a woodframe house -- that's the floor joist on the inside of the house. That rattling sound Wendy heard in the ceiling? That was hail, coming into the inside of the house.

Clearly this couldn't be allowed to continue into winter. I tried getting insurance to pay for it, but they declared it "normal wear and tear." Much as I would've loved to argue with them, I suspect they're probably right. That left me in charge of getting it fixed.


So after a trip to hardware store, up the ladder I went. Unfortunately the remaining half of the brick was still tightly mortared into the wall. So I ended up breaking it apart with a chisel, which pretty much covered me and the entire side of the house in red brick dust. I also got one of my goofiest self-picture yet!

After that a little fun with brick and mortar and I've got a complete wall. It remains to be seen whether it's going to fall down in the middle of some dark and stormy night. But I take comfort in the thought that it can't be worse than it was before, and that the house has probably been treated worse than this at some point in it's 115 year history. Besides, it stayed in the wall for over a week, so it must be good, right?

PPD 32



This is another shot from the late summer perfection of last weekend. Near the end of the afternoon I was biking through widely underappreciated Cheesman Park when the lush flower beds near the pavilions caught my eye.

Of course I wouldn't just give you an out of focus picture of flowers. There were dozens of bees buzzing around the flowers, stocking up on nectar before the end of summer. The one in the upper right was even obliging enough to pose for this picture.

Edits: None
Taken: Sunday, August 3rd

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

PPD 31

 
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Last weekend was the Taste of Colorado here in Denver, which is basically just a downtown festival for you out-of-towners. Sunday also happened to be a nearly perfect late fall day. Between the two of them, I actually managed to get a decent panoramic of downtown despite 3 hours of sleep and a respectable hangover (damn bachelor parties...)

The picture covers about 150 degrees, so it looks a little squashed. If you click through to the original size it'll look a bit better, or at least bigger. The stitching worked out quite well this time, except in the crowds where you'll see some ghosts if you look closely. Spooky... :)

Edits: Stitched
Taken: Sunday, September 3rd

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

PPD 30



What I really like about this picture is how well the brick wall captured the redness of the pre-sunset light, it really captures that "end of the day" feeling for me. Also the acute angle of the near corner makes it look a bit odd which I find visually interesting.

Edits: Saturation up, brightness down, hue'd a little red
Taken: Thursday, August 31st

Ming Dethroned

I wrote last week about the new photo on my mantle. What I didn't show you was the incredibly classy bit of art that was there before.

That's right, an original movie poster from the incredibly cheesy 1980 movie Flash Gordon. Nothing says class like the bald-headed alien overlord Ming the Merciless, especially with birdman warriors and floating castles! And of course the perfect topper to it all, the quote at the top: "Pathetic earthlings... WHO can save you now?" I wonder if it could be "Flash Gordon, quarterback, New York Jets?"

My brother got that poster for me as a Christmas present years ago. Flash Gordon is something of a cult favorite in our family for it's stupefyingly bad plot, acting and dialogue. So I actually do love the poster... maybe just not right there.

Normally I wouldn't have even thought to put it there, but when I was moving into the house I needed somewhere to put it that wouldn't be in the way. What better place than six feet up the wall? I thought it would come down in short order, but for whatever reason it sat there for almost 9 months, threatening my living room with destruction from the Planet Mongo. It was a surprisingly long reign, but all good things must come to an end.

Monday, September 04, 2006

PPD 29 - Immature/Inappropriate Humor

Since I haven't posted anything since last week Thursday, I figure I can get away with posting a bunch of pictures at once because it averages out to one a day. Rationalization is fun, isn't it?

Also in honor of a long weekend, I think it's time for a bit of humor here on PPD. Specifically, immature and mildly inappropriate humor. I should note that some of this could be called offensive by some more sensitive people, so consider yourself forewarned. (For the record, that's mostly aimed at any readers I don't know about)


So first of all we have this billboard. Heh heh, it says "nuts." I wonder if that guy is looking for his?




Next we have this photo from the smoking area at Children's Hospital. Aside from it being a little odd having a smoking section at a hospital, it's also funny having a super-happy kid-friendly garbage can there. "Hey kids, welcome to the smoking section! Don't litter, just stick your butts in my mouth! Hahaha!!"




This is a building downtown. Yes, it really is the "Denver Hitting Club". Of course it's a perfectly legitimate establishment, but my first thought was that it's some sort of weird club for smacking people around. More like this...





Lastly, we have a picture from work. A while back a group of us found a box in a storeroom that had the nameplates from our offices previous tenants. The one on top was for one "Bob Fuqua". I'm sure that name has a perfectly normal pronunciation, probably something like "foo-kwa". But of course it's much funnier if you move the accent to the first syllable, because then it sounds like a four-letter word. And from there it's not hard to add a "d" on the end, making a well-known but immature insult. And of course, immediately after that, you end up with a picture like this...





Anyway, that's about it for today. Hope y'all found it at least mildly amusing. :)