Saturday, December 24, 2011

Seasons Greetings 2.0

In keeping with the tradition, I have decided to add to my already mediocre Seasons Greetings post:

To everyone applicable:

Merry Christmas
Happy Chanuka


For all of my atheist friends who have graciously decided not to judge me (or my wild and crazy beliefs) this holiday season...here's your sign:





And of course for everyone else:

Super Funtime Non-Denominational Winter Festivus Celebration Moment

Happy Holidays to all from Edge of the Lemon.

-Cheers!

Friday, December 16, 2011

An Interview with Mike Wheeler

I was recently cleaning up some of the old web links out of my Favorites folder the other day (R.I.P. - Drift the Reality), when I came across a link called Edge of the Lemon.  "What the f#$% is Edge of the Lemon?" I thought to myself.   As I clicked the link, I was suddenly filled with a wave of nostalgia, remembrance, panic and finally regret...sort of like coming across that carton of cottage cheese I hid in the back of the fridge just to find out it expired and got all stinky.  So here we are again, loyal readers (I think we're up to six now), with a long overdue edition of everyone's not so favorite blog thingy - Lemony Edginess (or something like that...I forget).  Anyway, sorry for being away for so long, but I'm sure you all found something else to bide your time...

First some updates:  M and the kids are doing well.  Lexy is growing at warp speed, Ayris and Ash are still trying to kill each other and Adler is just barely starting to learn to talk.  Ayris and I have been trying to teach Adler to speak by continuing to repeat words to him until he politely nods his head and quickly walks away.  Incidentally, the following is a list of words that start to sound really weird if you say them like 50 times in a row:  "daddy", "sister", "taco", "jedi", "funny", and "poop sandwich".

Before we dive right into the latest post, I need some closure on an issue that I have been working through over the past several weeks/months:






Everyone's favorite person, Mike Wheeler, and I have been doing a lot of interviewing lately for project managers to join our team.  We recently held a series of interviews for MBA graduates from some of the local colleges in the St Louis area.  Due to the time of the year and our busy schedules, someone thought it would be a good idea to schedule them all within a few days of each other (I don't recall the final number, but I remember I stopped counting after interviewing the 1,587th candidate).

As the discussions started to meld into each other, so did our interview questions.  I found my peers asking the same questions in tangent with my same questions throughout this entire series of interviews that never seemed to end.  I then started to think of Wheeler and how he would respond if he were asked a series of questions in an interview setting. 

The below is my interpretation of how that might happen, but instead of a job interview, I decided to make it more realistic and create a setting of a press conference (PLEASE NOTE:  I do not condone most of these as valid interview questions in a real job interview type setting...feel free to pass your own judgement on their quality/validity).




















A friend of M's started reading this blog a little while back, and she recently asked, "who is this Mike Wheeler guy?"  Well Amy, I hope this post has helped answer that question for you...at least a little bit.

As for the rest of you, there is a little bit of Mike Wheeler in all of us...maybe...I don't know.  I'm just trying to figure out how to end this post with words of wisdom or something meaningful without it sounding campy or forced.  Oh wait, here's something - Mike Wheeler lives in all of us...something something...or perish! 

How was that?

In closing, I leave you all with my latest laugh inducing picture.  This one takes me all the way back to high school and a running gag that sometimes gets revisited still to this day:



Mr Ahlberg, I hope you are doing well...

-Cheers!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Randomy randomness is random

Welcome back to your regular dose of citrusy lovin' from that not so cordial blog:  Edge of the Lemon.  It's been over a week since my last post, things are starting to get crazy / stupid / busy at work, M and the kids are doing well, and I'm still in search of new shows to watch on TV.  With that said, M and I have started watching the new episodes of Castle (which have been piling up in the DVR) while taking shots of Rumple Mintz throughout the course of the show.  I have dubbed this new game CastleMintz, and I expect it to start catching on in certain areas of world very soon.

As you may have noticed (look to the right), you may see more stuff added to the sidebar.  This stuff is commonly referred to as gadgets in the blogging circles.  I realized that there wasn't really much going on over there so I decided to go crazy with these gadgets to try and attract more readers.

New gadgets include:
  • Top 10 most popular blog posts
  • A new "Followers" option (since people tell me Facebook sucks at letting them know I have a new post) - PLEASE JOIN SO I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
  • Some gadget called Feedjit that shows where the last 10 viewers are from
  • And a bunch of fish...feel free to feed them or just simply ignore them (they don't have any feelings so don't feel bad)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of the new features and that they bring you hours of enjoyment in the future. 

Now, on with the post:

Several months ago, I posted a series of Random Thoughts.  Considering this was about as successful as any other post, I decided to try it again.  We'll start with some complaining...

Actors are posers and they suck!

In my search for new shows, I have noticed that the wonderful world of TV/movie make believe is not afraid to provide a character that plays video games.  These "gamers", if you will, are often shown in their natural environment in front of a television, controller in hand with the dumbest f%&$ing look on their faces and spazing their bodies like they just stuck a paper clip in an electrical outlet.  What's worse, have these actors who are trying to be "gamers" ever held a controller before?


For those of you who don't understand this frustration, let me try to use a more mainstream example to show you what I am trying to convey.  Imagine an actor has a role as a baseball player; however, this actor has never played nor seen a game of baseball ever in their life.  If they walk up to the plate with a catcher's mitt on their head, a bat sticking out of their ass, and third base stapled to their chest, you'd probably realize right away that actor has no right pretending to be a baseball player.

The same holds true when actors grab a controller and pretends to be a gamer.  In the 30 years I have been playing video games, not once have I ever been required to constantly mash all of the buttons at the same time for five consecutive minutes while contorting my body through an imaginary tennis racket.  Seriously, are you playing Call of Duty or trying to take off a woman's bra for the first time?  Man Up you posers!  ***See what I did there?***

Along with gaming, as a musician I can tell almost right away when someone is not actually trying to look like they know what they're doing when they hold an instrument:


It's almost embarrassing to watch people mess around with the fake confidence that they actually think they are convincing the viewing public they actually know what they are doing...for shame!

For the record, this is how you play a guitar:



***rock hands***

The faster the food...

Dear Wendy's "new" Old Fashioned Burgers with natural cut fries:  You suck!  I miss your old burgers and your old fries were way better.  Goodbye forever...and yes, I am serious.  That is all.

Dear Culver's Butter Burgers:  You're really starting to look good these days (for some reason).  Would you like to come over this Saturday for dinner?

Dear Chipotle Burritos:  Yes, I am still mad at you...you know what you did.  But I will be forgiving you very soon.

Right faux pas, wrong audience:

I recently participated in Employee Appreciation Day at work.  As a Director in my company, I have many "leadership-like" duties where I must be accountable.  For Employee Appreciation Day, it was my important task of welcoming employees as they came into the cafeteria, handing out lunch trays (I gave out vouchers for flashlights last year) and directing them towards the buckets of free chili.  I also had to wear an apron and remind everyone how appreciated they were...it was epic!

After lunch, I ran into the HR director who put the whole thing together.  She told me there was a whole bunch of cornbread left over and that they were going to freeze it so they could give it to a soup kitchen this week for Thanksgiving.  She was obviously very excited as we openly discussed in the elevator on our way back to work:







Did I mention this cornbread was going to a soup kitchen?  For the homeless?  Yeah, not my best moment...

Bang the Wii-mote Slowly:

The below picture is the aftermath of one of my children using a Nintendo Wii remote to hammer pretend nails into a very real wall while their brother and sister cheer them on:


This is why we can't have nice things...


Go Cowboys!

Several weekends ago, Ayris went over to my dad's house, and in between some yard work, they took time off to watch the Cowboys football game.  Ever since, Ayris has been begging to watch more football (I'm so proud!).  She wanted so badly to watch more that she continued to pester M about it.  When Sunday finally rolled around, Ayris wanted to go visit my mom for a few hours and completely forgot about the game coming on.  When M went to go pick her up later, Ayris was very upset when she realized she missed the Cowboys game, and the following conversation took place in car ride home:



I can't wait until Ayris becomes a teenager...

And so ends another series of lessons sometimes known as really real life.  Hopefully everyone enjoyed a nice, fresh glass of randomness along with a whole bunch of new gadgets to peruse (seriously, become a Follower, all the cool kids are doing it...you want to be cool don't you?).

Before we go, I leave you with the latest pic I found online that has been giving me my daily laughs lately:


Get well soon, Mr Dead Bird...

-Cheers!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Enter the Year Two










That's right, it's The Lemon's 1st birthday!  Can you believe it?  Yeah, me too...whatever.

Anyway, as I was planning on what I wanted to do for this special edition, I was reminded of something that happened earlier this year.  I was interviewing a potential candidate for a project manager position on my team, when one of my peers, Kevin, decided to ask one final question:


Yes, Kevin really did ask this question in the interview, I'm not making this up...right Kevbo?

So since this was an interview and most interviewees are REALLY EXCITED, the answer was an energetic and passionate "no..."

But regardless, it made me wonder - What if the world HAS heard of Edge of the Lemon?

With a common theme in mind, I decided to re-introduce the world to Edge of the Lemon.  Now I know what you're thinking - "Photoshopped pics peddling your stupid site?  That's totally been done before..."  To that I say, "Why yes, jerkass, it has been done before...it all has.  And here it is again!"  So, in all it's glory, I present to you a deluge of pictures based on Edge of the Lemon (okay, so maybe it's more like eight pictures and not a full deluge, but it can still feel overwhelming...sort of):

























So there you have it, year 1 is officially behind us!  Looking forward to the future, you can expect more zany stories about M and the kids, more yarn spinning, amazing new products from Uncle Buckey, and of course, more Mike Wheeler.

As we close this special edition, I leave you with something I saw at the Newark airport a couple of weeks ago:



Cara rolled her eyes at me when I made her wait so I could snap this picture.  For those of you who don't know me very well, this is really fricken funny!

-Cheers!