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It’s Ninja Day 2008!!!

Posted in Ninja Day, holiday, humor, life, ninjas on December 5, 2008 by Paxton

ninja_day_banner

That’s right, it’s that time of the year once again.  December 5th.  The Day of the Ninja. Today is a day to celebrate the lethal, the invisible, the AWESOME…Ninja.

Regular readers know that this blog celebrates Ninja Day every year.  See last year here.  And 2006 here.

Many people ask me what it’s like to be a ninja.  Really, being a ninja is just like being a normal person, except faster and more awesome.  People also want to know if just by being a bad ass ninja do I get out of many fights or, every once in a while, do I get to deliver a glorious and spectacular ninja death unto some poor soul’s sorry ass.  The answer is, I get to deliver ninja justice onto people everyday.  Sometimes multiple times in a day.  Let’s take a look at a few of the attacks I see on a daily basis.

Pax Enter the Dragon

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December is here, the Christmas decorations are up!

Posted in Christmas, holiday, life on December 1, 2008 by Paxton

South Park Santa Pax

Alright, now that I’ve eaten enough food to feed a third world nation for three months, it’s time for the three week slide into Christmas. I’m like a bottomless pit in November and December. I’m almost ashamed of the amount of food I eat during the holidays. Plus, I was sick most of last week so I couldn’t really do any running at the gym, or outside because it was a bit chilly. I’m going to have to get Steph to roll me out the door in the morning so I can get to work.

Anyway, I worked all weekend on the blog header you see up top. I had several ideas and I didn’t like how any of them turned out. This one finally just came together and I really like it. Maybe I’ll show you a few of the ideas that didn’t make it as a Christmas blog header this week.

Till then, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. FYI…Auburn completely self-destructed in the Iron Bowl on Saturday. It was painful to watch. Best of luck to Alabama in the SEC Championship against Florida. Should be a fun game to watch.

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Battle Scars: Running the Winn-Dixie Obstacle Course

Posted in humor, life, personal, work on November 18, 2008 by Paxton

obstacle_course_finishSo, every year, Winn-Dixie throws its employees a picnic and calls it Associate Appreciation Day. They have vendors come in and give out tons of free stuff. Pepsi and Coke show up and give out cans and bottles of free soda. Sometimes they even give out test flavors. Last year we got to try Squirt Citrus Power before it hit the shelves earlier this year.

At these picnics, Winn-Dixie will organize events that we, as employees, will participate in. One year they had a tri-sport challenge where you threw a football, shot a basketball and kicked a soccer ball to win prizes. Another year they organized a “Winn-Dixie Jacksonville Idol” karaoke contest. Usually management organizes their groups into teams and watches us compete.   Days before this event, these managers will start smack talking each other saying their department will win this, other departments are scared of their team, etc, etc.  It’s like the Associate Appreciation Day events are the equivalent of the “Coliseum Games” in Rome. We employees are the gladiators, the CEO and management team are the Emperor and Senate. The employees team up and compete in the “games”, trying to outdo each other and entertain management while they gorge themselves on food and drink. It’s fun for all. :-)

This year there were several events and collectively it was called the Winn-Dixie Olympics.  I competed in two events; the tug-of-war and the obstacle course.  The tug-of-war almost became a blog article in and of itself.  Our team won 2 matches then was told we were eliminated because we didn’t beat our opponents quick enough.  I didn’t realize there was a time restriction.  We dispatched our first opponent in just over 7 seconds.  The second one took a little longer but not much more than 12 seconds.  We were all a little ticked that a team that went 2-0 was being eliminated. Come to find out later, we actually did win the Gold in that event.  I don’t know who fell asleep at the wheel, but I’m glad they finally recognized.  IT PeopleSoft came to REPRESENT, yo. Here’s the winning tug-of-war team:

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Bloodsport: My adventures donating the red stuff

Posted in donate blood, humor, life, personal on July 30, 2008 by Paxton

Wait, I missed posting to my blog last week? WTF?! Wow, that one flew right passed me. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit taking fistfuls of Xanax. Yikes, the things that happen when you stay sober. Life lessons, people. Lessons that you learn in life. That’s what this is. How did I lose a week?!  Maybe I was abducted by aliens.  Yeah, that’s it, aliens were not-surprisingly attracted to my ridiculous awesomeness and had to perform their “experiments” on me to determine the origin of my awesome (maybe my wife and I should stop marathon-ing X-Files episodes, it may be affecting my thought process).

Actually, I fully intended to post an article last week but several things stopped me, and by “several things” I mean “one thing”. That one thing is that I’m really f’n lazy.

Laziness

It’s time I call a spade a spade and just lay it out on the table. I’m a lazy S.O.B. If the TV remote is lost in the cushions of the sofa, I won’t look for it. I’m watching whatever is on TV, even if that happens to be a marathon of makeover shows on TLC. 10 Years Younger, What Not to Wear, You Look Like An Idiot…whatever. I’m watching it. I once watched a marathon of home decorating shows on HGTV because the batteries in the remote were dead. It’s insane. Speaking of, how many houses have nice maple wood floors underneath orange shag carpeting? If you watch these shows, pretty much every home in America. I also learned that if you live in the Northeast, your home is as old as the US Constitution, has at most 1000 square feet and can be sold on the open market for about $400,000 - $500,000.  That’s just how the Northerners roll.  But I digress.

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New Computer for me; well relatively new, not new-new

Posted in computers, humor, work on October 11, 2007 by Paxton

Winn-DixieWinn-Dixie finally refreshed the IT department’s computers. When I started here in 2005 I got a Dell Optiplex desktop with Windows 2000 (!), 512Mb of RAM and this gi-normous CRT monitor that took up my entire desk. To say my computer was old and slow would be like saying Gigli was a bad movie. REDUNDANT. As if old components wasn’t enough, all I had left on the hard drive was 100Mb. I don’t know what’s taking up all my space as I’ve uninstalled all unnecessary applications and deleted all my temp files. Since now there’s no room on the hard drive to create temp files my computer comes crashing down around me like an imploding Vegas casino whenever I try to open a Word document. I’m a computer professional, I should have a computer that is more commiserate with my mad programming skillz. This is like having Jeff Gordon drive in the Pepsi 500 with a Honda Prius. It’s absurd.

Anyway, corporate decided that we had suffered enough with resource errors and crashing hard drives and decided to upgrade our workstations. I thought I was going to get a brand new Lenovo desktop (yay!) but unfortunately they didn’t go that far. First they replaced my clownishly large monitor with a brand new, 17″ flat-screen work of art. The screen on this baby is like butta, my friends. So much easier on my strained eyes. It really does help with headaches and such after developing and writing code for 8-9 hours a day. Next they refreshed my computer with an extra 1.5Gb of RAM and Windows XP professional. Yes, Winn-Dixie adopts Windows XP only 6 years after it was released, Woo-Hoo! At this rate we’ll have Windows Vista by the time I retire.

new Computer

Here’s a pic of my new workstation. Gorgeous, isn’t it, daaaaahling? I’m literally tearing up as I type on it right now. Everything runs so much faster and cleaner. The colors are bright and not hazy. Letters and fonts are cleaner and easier to read. It’s a little poor boy’s dream come true!

When I came in the morning after they refreshed our computers all of our old CRT monitors littered the floor like some sort of computer graveyard. I bruised my shins trying to make my way into my cubicle.

 

 

 

Anyway, I was just so happy I thought I’d share. I should have a more appropriately Halloween-y article for you by Friday. I’ve been working on it the past few days but haven’t been able to gussy it up and make it look all purty for you guys. So check back in a few days for a more seasonally appropriate article.

 

Peace.

 

 

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