How do you know when you’ve gone too far with your inflatable christmas decorations? I’d say this is about just right. And only two doors down from my mother’s house! She was thrilled as you might guess.

Pretty uneventful week. One step closer to a new job. Still waiting patiently. Went bowling with the lab rats tonight at the Pro Bowl in Lansing. Been a long time since I’ve been there! And WTF - my bowling ball has a huge crack in it!?! Its been sitting in my closet for a while now, I take it out, and bam, cracked. This totally sucks. I still bowled with it, did ok in the upper 160s both games. Guess its time for a new one.

Buying a cellphone is a real pain. So many phones, so many plans, so much fine print in the contracts. I considered Cingular for a while, partly because they offer rollover minutes, and a group discount since I also get their home phone and DSL service. Alas, their web site totally sucks, and they did not offer much in the way of good deals on phones. So too bad.

I settled on Verizon because their website totally ruled, and made it very easy for me to select a plan that looked good, and then add phones and accessories, all in a very logical and user friendly way. It would total up the charges for you, all without asking for any detailed personal information. Verizon made it clear that I could get a phone and rebate for each line set up on a shared family plan, Cingular made no such distinction.

So I picked the plan and phones that looked good and then went to their store to see the phones in person - which worked out well because not only will the store match the internet prices they can make additional deals in person to seal the buy. For instance not only did they waive one activation charge, but they offered a deal on two equipment packages, and they made one of the phones free which would have cost $50 even on the web site. How cool is that? So VERY IMPORTANT - if shopping Verizon plans and phones, make sure to get the internet prices BEFORE going to the store, make sure they know you have this info, and the rest should be easy bargaining for you. The Verizon sales people were very knowledgable, mildly pushy but nothing serious, they were in a hurry mostly because the place is always packed.

Just got a new cellphone over the weekend - finally. I retired my outdated Verizon prepaid phone of over 3 years. The buttons had rubbed off and were falling apart. The original battery was good for about 5 minutes talk time. So anyway, I love having a camera phone for catching random things during the day. As luck would have it, while driving home on 96 today I spotted two Dodge Calibers cruising, one was partially masked, but this white one was completely uncovered. I couldn’t get a front end shot since I was driving at the time, but it was still fun. Check it out:

Holy crap, we went looking for Mario DDR and I guess through some manufacturing snafu, the game is completely out of stock at every retailer. The thing is going for like $150 in some places, minimum $100 on eBay - retail is $49.99 for pete’s sake!

Julie managed to pull off a surprisingly effective surprise birthday party for Steve last night. Excellent turnout and good food. As the night wore on they broke out Mario DDR for Gamecube with two dance pads. My first time playing, the game is strangely addictive! Mike and I tried to figure out how to turn it into a drinking game, still thinking about that one though. I know it can be done!

From my brother-in-law, storm chaser, and amateur photog Jason, a nice picture somewhere in the Colorado countryside:

Strangely appropriate this time of year here in Michigan, it registered 12 degrees F when I came in just now. It will probably be colder yet tonight.

Fairly eventful week at work - the new payroll system we are putting in (Clarety) has finally gone live and is being rolled out into production. Had a nice little kickoff party Monday morning with a few terse speeches and free breakfast food. This particular project has been meandering along since 1997, quite a long time to revamp a process but this is the government we’re talking about and it is a complicated process as they go.

Already successfully processed a small daily run of transactions, the big monthly run will come next week. Things seems to be going smoothly so far. I have spent most of my time researching unusual anomalies in the converted data, things that simply were too strange in the old system to convert properly into the new database - it happens.

But ah, the weekend is here, caught only the first period of the MSU hockey game tonight, had to jet early to meet up with a group at BW3 for beers and wings. I love B-dubs, it is probably my favorite bar in town even though it is a chain. Cheap quality beer and a good variety, unpretentious atmosphere, wifi, dozens of tvs stuffed into every nook and cranny of the place, lots of tables. Only thing missing are some pool tables. Most everyone else was heading on to the club, I stayed behind because I wouldn’t have had much fun there. I’ll be the DD later tonight of course.