Cheeky's Hideaway

A Format C: Moment

Those of you who visited the Hideaway on Friday were witness to something I’ve feared for years: the exposure of my technical incompetence. I bought the domain www.cheekyshideaway.com and was all fired up to map it to the blog, but somehow I managed to:

a) Erase all the formatting, rendering the site a giant white page that looked like it was a left-over web-site from 1997

b) Eliminate any and all image links for Fridays contribution

c) Piss off the technical support at GoDaddy, who were visibly straining to not end every sentence in their e-mails with “you moron.”

As you can tell, I’ve managed to at least reverse the problem, if not solve it, but I’ve been humbled. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, having always prided myself on being able to figure these things out; I was even briefly known as “Help-Desk Tony” by a contingent of Claud’s friends, until I protested because I didn’t want to get calls every time someone’s printer wasn’t working.

That doesn’t mean I’m done trying. There’s lots of cool looking daddy sites out there (BIYF and Mr. BigDubya have gone through recent facelifts) and I aspire to a slicker look here, too. I’ve got my HTML basics book on my bedside table (next to my pocket protector and propeller hat) and you may see some changes in the days ahead. I’ll probably end up making it unreadable; at this rate, my next change may send shocks through they keyboard to my readers. Then again, I may just give up…I’ve been known to get frustrated from time to time.

All 7 and We'll Watch Them Fall

I was watching this meme work it's way through the daddy blogs late last week, getting a kick out of some of the answers (BIYF is too freakin' funny) and immediately ruminating over what mine would be were I to be one of the chosen ones.  Thanks to Mr. Big Dubya (who is both a gentleman and a scholar) I've been tagged, and like him I like these types of exercises.  I did have to look up the definition of the word "meme" from the Office of Nerd Relations (it's a "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", like a virus you don't mind getting) and, satisfied, it's now time to get on with the countdown:

7 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Dive the Great Barrier Reef
2. Travel back and forth between my home in Cap Ferrat and my villa on Capri in my huge sailboat.
3. Fit comfortably into size 32 jeans again
4. Defeat Dr. Nefarious in the final battle of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
5. Watch my Seahawks win a Super Bowl
6. Get the hell out of the financial services industry
7. Hear my daughter thank me at her graduation, her Academy Award acceptance speech, and her inauguration (no pressure, sweety)

7 Things I Cannot Do

1. Pay full price for music
2. Jump out of an airplane (I'm a coward)
3. Cliff-dive (see above)
4. Turn down a good plate of nachos
5. Remember peoples names after I meet them
6. Play basketball without tackling
7. Go for that (no can do)

7 Things that Attract Me to the Opposite Sex

1. Boobs
2. Being genuine
3. Sarcastic sense of humor
4. Boobs
5. Challenging intellectual dialog
6. Comfort in your own skin
7. Boobs

7 Things I Say Most Often (or too much)

1. Son of a BITCH!
2. Are you kidding me?
3. I'm out
4. Done!
5. Sorry...I should light a match
6. It's gonna be fine
7. Dude

7 Celebrity Crushes

1. The woman from Il Postino
2. Halle Berry
3. Uma Thurman
4. Catherine Bell
5. Christa Miller
6. Keira Knightly
7. Catherine Zeta-Jones

7 People I Want to Do This

1. Cliff Claven
2. Trey Parker & Matt Stone
3. Franklin from "Arrested Development"
4. Tom Waits
5. Kevin Garnett
6. William Shatner
7. David Lee Roth

Dude, I'm out.  Done!  It's gonna be fine.

Sorry...I should light a match.

Defending the Cave

Tonight I'm flying solo while Claud hits the town with a friend.  I always look forward to these nights, partially because I get to spend more time with Cheeky, but mainly because I get the opportunity to revert to my more primal instincts. 

First thing is first, and I'll be teaching Cheeky the lyrics to "Whole Lotta Rosie"  I may even pull out the guitar I've practiced twice since buying it and mangle some chords for her.  She needs this sort of exposure or she'll turn into one of those lame girls who has Christina Aguilera ringtones on her cell phone and talks like an extra from "Bring it On".  My lovely wife would never encourage this, of course, but it takes active management from an early age to counteract the evil forces that turn girls into mallrats. 

After that, I'm thinking perhaps a healthy dose of Christopher Walken movies until Cheeky falls asleep.  If Claud stays out long enough, I may even fire up the Xbox for a little Grand Theft Auto mayhem, provided the drive-bys don't wake Cheeky up.  My poor wife has to deal with all my pre-pubescent tendencies when she's around, so I may as well get the particularly gnarly ones out of the way when she doesn't have to be subjected to them.

Claud's been getting out a lot more, negotiating the high school politics of the local mommy groups.  I may have to devote a future entry to the intricate heirarchy of seating arrangements at these events, and the passive-aggressive ways that women can give other women the Heisman.  In the meantime, it's better than sitting at home all day waiting for the next feeding cycle until I come home to tell her about Xena's new planet.  (NOTE:  This dispatch from the Office of Nerd Relations is particularly disturbing.  I wonder how many of the scientists on this planetary project have had a twenty-sided die stuck in their nostril?  Probably more than a few...)

Not Chloe related, but...

I just got back from a business trip to Atlanta, and although it was brief I feel compelled to offer a formal apology to the South.  Since my half of the country kicked their ass in the War of Northern Aggression, I've had a bit of a skewed view of Southerners.  Not particularly fair, I admit, although there hasn't been a lot I've seen to counteract that image until now.  But Atlanta was a beautiful city, and everyone was very nice and not at all like a hillbilly.  I still don't get NASCAR, and no way will I ever live any place where I have moist pit-stains before I leave the garage, but I will no longer lump them in with Romulans and Thermians on my alien-species chart.

We were out by Home Depot corporate headquarters in Atlanta, and noticed that, not surprisingly, there was a Home Depot store across the street.  My question:  how bad would it suck to be the manager of that store?  What if the CEO comes strolling in just after someone loses a finger on a band-saw, or while a contractor is screaming about how they don't have enough white 600 watt 3-way multi-location dimmers in stock.  I'll bet they send middle-managers over there with little paper hats on to work behind the counter and learn the business, too.  It's probably much more entertaining in my head than it is in real life, but it was pretty tempting to go in there and see if I could get them to come re-install our dishwasher, or at least paint "Lowe's Rules" across my forehead and ask for some help with a bathroom renovation.

Finally, from the Office of Nerd Relations, there was an interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times this morning written by Brian Greene on Einstein's famous E=mc² equation, which turned 100 years old a few days ago.  It's all about what it actually means to you and me, and about how that Einstein guy was pretty smart.  You can hear Einstein himself explain it here.