there's a sucker born every minute

I've recently started to educate myself on wine. Although I'm most-definitely a green eonophile, I'm starting to learn that I can purchase relatively good wine that I like for less than 15$.

Last fall, my non-bimbo friend invited me and a couple dozen other friends to Tony's Wine Warehouse for a wine class. I hadn't paid a lot of attention during the class, but I thank my lucky stars that after the class, the slight buzz and slick sales pitch didn't convince me to drop a chunk of change on discount wine at highly inflated prices. I did, however, really enjoy the class. It was entertaining and just a really fun experience to have with friends.

Today, I found an article from the Nov 2005 observer on the enigma of Tony's Wine Warehouse. I absolutely laughed my head off.

Apparently, Tony's is known for being the sleezy used car lot for wine in the Dallas area: "This deeply irks many longtime professionals in the Dallas wine trade. Tony's, they insist, butters its bread by dispensing instructional swill during class sessions--preying on participants' gullibility to justify inflated prices, often for wines well past their prime obtained mostly from distributor closeout lists. This sullies the whole wine trade, they say."

... "But is Tony's retail strategy illegal? It certainly doesn't violate any law to charge whatever price the market will bear, especially if through hard work and clever marketing you've unearthed a customer base willing to pay it. "The kicker on this is everybody knows he's doing it," says a Dallas wine salesperson. "He's been doing it for years...the question is what's up with the people that buy into that. That's really more a story about Dallas than anything else.""

anger management

You know, I like to bash the megachurches just like everyone else, but I actually learned a lot recently from a certain megachurch pastor's webcast series. I learned fairly early in life to try to believe that I can learn something from anyone-- no matter how small.

Anger has always been a difficult issue to wrap my brain around-- mostly because of my family. But you know, at some point, I just have to look at my family objectively and realize that even though I've been heavily influenced by them (good or bad), it's ultimately myself who is responsible for my own behavior.

So I was encouraged to hear said pastor teach about the causes of anger and the constructive and destructive uses of anger in our lives from a christian perspective. Growing up, I don't think I can remember one sermon where it was preached that anger could even possibly be constructive. And I don't think I had too many life experiences of anger that were constructive either. And so I did what any good bible-believer does: wallow in repression, guilt and sulking. Later in life, I realized that this can't be good, but I'm still trying to work it out. And so, some of these webcasts resonated with me.

Anyway, keep an open mind and check these out: 1 2 3 4

But don't worry, I won't be leaving my church to go to the megachurch. There's not much difference anyway between watching it online or watching it theatre-style on a big screen at a "satellite" franchise. :)

not again...

While removing a DFC-3BXL from a WS-X6748-GE-TX module, I severely cut my thumb. Luckily, I had a bandaid in my wallet and I was able to stop myself from bleeding all over the thing. rock up and down... WTF?

Taking out the Trash

One of the highlights of my week is to take out the trash. Okay, this may sound a little wierd, but I really enjoy it. I usually only take it out at night, after I've come home from work, cooked, ate, cleaned, etc. It's a short walk from my apartment to the dumpster, but it's the only time of the day that I really feel like I am outside and in the real world.

My days pretty-much consist of getting up, driving to work, sitting infront of a computer all day--much of which inside a big room full of noisy machines and no windows-- and then I drive home going from one rectangle to another (apartment-to-cubicle-to-apartment).

But my quiet, nightime walk to the dumpser is a mini vacation where I can see a few stars behind the trees and a bright, comforting moon.

It reminds me a little bit about the nightly walk I took as a kid (a looong time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) from the barn to the house in the dark winter. We would have finished all the nightly milking chores, the vacuum pump turned off, the equipment cleaned and put away, and the cows quietly munching away on hay. We'd shut off the lights and go out into the frozen dark. I'll always remember how the snow crunched like cereal under my boots in the below-zero air. And if I'd stop for a second, everything went completely and utterly quiet. I'd trudge up the hill and eventually reach the basement where the rush of warm air would fog over my glasses and I'd strip off my coveralls and boots. And then on to a well-earned, good night's sleep.