So now I hear that baseball is NOT going on strike. Well, I'm kind of disappointed about that. Major League Baseball is damaged and I thought the strike might be a good way to force them to get their act together. Apparently that won't be the case. There has been some discussion as to who is to blame for the mess that baseball is in. As a public service, I will tell you exactly who is to blame! Don't blame the greedy players and their obscene salaries. After all, if you earned that much money and someone offered you even more, I doubt that you'd refuse it. (I know I wouldn't!) So is it the owners fault? No it is not. Every owner wants to get the most popular star players to join their teams. In today's market that means throwing bags of money at them. That's just how things work. So who's to blame? I say that baseball fans are the culprits. Why do the fans keep putting up with all this crap? I hear people say that "if they go on strike, I'll never watch another game." Yes you will. MLB has had nine strikes in the past 30 years. That's an average of one strike every 3.3 years! People, MLB has done it before and they will do it again... and you fans will still go to the games and keep paying higher and higher prices for tickets to support the ever-increasing salaries and until THAT stops, nothing is going to change.

Some people are just too stupid to be using the internet. A few hours ago, I received an email from a customer asking questions about information that was posted on someone else's website. He found the site by following a series of web links, begining with one that he found on the "other links" page of my company's website. (By the way, this "other links" page is clearly labelled as being links to other related websites and it contains a long list of site addresses.) Since I am a good little corporate lackey, I politely answered this email by stating that I couldn't really help him and that perhaps he would like to contact someone from that other website to find out information about products that they offer. What I would have liked to write is: "are you a complete idiot? How on earth do you expect me to know about something you found somewhere on the internet? I know that I'm basically a genius, but you can't seriously expect me to know everything?!? Now could you please turn around so I can kick your ass."

Baseball still hasn't gone on strike? What is taking these turkeys so long? (Message to baseball players: walk out already! The longer you wait, the more I have to listen to all of your pathetic whining on the local news.) They are so completely out of touch with reality they might as well be playing baseball on Mars. Well good riddance. The world doesn't need any of you, so just take your ball and go home.

Today's bad idea award goes to my ten year old nephew. We were sitting around having a chat, when he suddenly asked if my brother had a chain saw. When questioned why he needed a chain saw, my nephew responded that he wanted to try cutting a penny in half!

I just got the word... financing was approved this morning for my house purchase. Looks like I'll be a home owner on October 1st.

On today's newscast, they said to expect gas prices to rise in the near future because crude oil prices have recently climbed back up to US$30 per barrel. Is there anyone else who's tired of this rhetoric? Crude oil prices fluctuate. Oil has been above US$30 in the past before dropping down to lower prices. Did you ever notice lower gas prices to correspond with the price of oil when the price of crude went down? No??? Well I didn't either. Yet, when oil prices go up, they immediately raise gas prices and blame it on crude oil. It doesn't make any sense. If this truly is a valid reason, then it should work both ways: up and down. Well I know what the problem is, and I'll let you in on a little secret. The oil companies and the government are working together to screw you as a consumer. Almost the entire price of gasoline is comprised of taxes. It is in the government's best interest to keep the prices of fuel as high as the market will bear, so that they make more money off of those fuel taxes. That is why the government never finds anything when it investigates possible price fixing among oil companies. It's a cover up! Everyone knows that the oil companies fix their prices, yet the government can never prove it because they're both in on it together. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Your life is not complete until you visit the Redneck Neighbor website. This has got to be the funniest website I've ever seen! Read all about the (mis)adventures of Carlos' next-door neighbor. The best part is that these are true stories and Carlos has pictures to prove it! By the time I got to the end of the page, I almost had a stomach ache from laughing so hard!

Well it has finally happened. After years of reliable service, my car is now virtually undrivable. You see, the problem is that my horn is broken. How am I supposed to drive if I can't honk at the people that are in my way? (Especially considering that everyone is usually in my way!) I better get this fixed ASAP.

Dang! My hard drive crashed this past weekend. The good news is that it was only a secondary drive, and since my main hard drive is still working, my computer isn't actually "down." Better still, I think that I'll be able to recover the data that is stored on the dead hard drive. I may be wrong, but I think that the problem is actually on the drive's electronic circuit board. So now I need to find another hard drive that is exactly the same model as mine. Then I'll simply swap the circuit boards on them and see if I can bring my dead drive back to life. Sounds simple, no? (Anyone happen to have a Fujitsu MPE3136AT that they aren't using?)

Coming this fall on TNN, Pamela Anderson will provide the voice of a shapely new cartoon character known as "Stripperella." (No, I am not making this up.) According to the promos, Anderson's character is a "stripper by night and a superhero by later that night." Don't you just love cartoons?

Wow! Has it been that long already? It's been 25 years, today, since Elvis Presley went into hiding.

I have never had a more gross meal than I had at McDonald's. First of all, I shouldn't have gone there in the first place. I don't know what I was thinking... I seriously NEVER go there! But I was in a rush, so I decided to pick up a roast vegetable salad. I guess I should pay more attention to advertisements, because if I had seen what this salad was going to look like, I would have ordered something else. I was thinking that there would be onions, green peppers, pickles, and things like that... well, maybe those things were actually in there, but I seriously couldn't tell. Other than the lettuce, there was nothing identifiable in that salad, and it's a weird feeling to eat vegetables that you can't identify. It was all downhill after that. A beeper was sounding in the background, which I assume meant that some food was finished cooking. But there were about 47 people working there and no-one turned off the beeper. It is very distracting to eat a meal, while being tortured with a never-ending: "BEEP... BEEP... BEEP... BEEP... BEEP... BEEP..." and so on. After choking down a few bites of my salad, I decided to have an ice-cream. In the two seconds that I was at the counter, placing my order, someone decided to clear my table which meant they threw away the drink that I was still planning to drink. But I will give McDonald's a little credit because they replaced my coke, with no questions asked, after I explained what had happened.

Since I am the most patient person in the world (note: that was me being sarcastic), what's the real rush with getting my house deal finalized? Apparently I've missed the deadline for the weekly banker's meeting, where they decide if they should borrow money to you. That means I'll now have to wait until week before I find out if I have a deal or not. Dum-de-dum-de-dum... here I am waiting... still waiting... Oh yeah, we've also changed the possession date to October 1st.

Well, after my offer, a counter offer, and my counter counter offer... it is apparently a done deal. I will officially own my own house on September 15th. Of course everything is subject to blah blah blah... (does anyone actually read the fine print?) I still have until August 15th to back out, if I change my mind, but otherwise it is final.

What I did today: woke up, showered, got dressed, drove to work, ate lunch, bought a house, drove home, ate supper, watched tv, went to sleep. Wait a minute... bought a house... what's up with that? Well, actually I signed an offer to buy a house. Now I've got to wait to see if my offer is accepted. I should know by tomorrow. This is very scary stuff! (But kinda fun too.)