TDNCY

This is so badass. Let’s be honest. How many of us have wanted to do this at one time or another?

You stay classy, Philadelphia. Sorry John.

It’s always gunny in Philadelphia

First, I would like to wish everyone involved at tdncy and its viewers a Merry Christmas. I hope you all have a wonderful day and safe holiday season.

Now, there is something that I definitely do NOT care about: air travel. Living in the great state of California has definitely been a wonderful life change for me over the past six years. However, with that comes the necessity of absurdly long journeys (Odysseus has nothing on me; what a tool) to visit my family during special occasions. I used to love flying as a little kid. What an awesome time: McDonalds happy meals with airplane toys courtesy of United Airlines, a movie on the plane, free soda; I’m sorry, is this a party or a plane ride? Fast forward fifteen years: You’re lucky to get a bag of snack mix and the occasional half-can of diet coke (the flight attendant on my most recent flight was charging two bucks for a bottle of water…wut?). Forget a meal. For the most part, forget a movie (at least a good one. I don’t consider anything by Rob Schneider or Hilary Duff to be an actual movie. When I was a kid we got to watch Batman and Mighty Ducks 2). Worst of all, I NEVER get to sit next to the cute girl. I’m always next to the person who has a horrible cough, won’t stop talking, or wants to switch with my aisle seat (that’s right, I always make sure I get an aisle seat. If you didn’t get it, that’s a you problem) so they can sit next to their six-year-old or because they need the space for some other reason. I haven’t even gotten into delays yet (more on that later). Let’s face it, flying sucks. I don’t fear flying, not at all. I just think it sucks. Basically, when I’m done with a flight I feel like I do when I finish watching an NBA game: cheated out of my time and money, groggy, embarrassed that I just wasted a couple hours of my life, not knowing where I am or what time it is, and swearing I’ll never do it again. Since I’ve had so many horrible airline experiences, including a recent fiasco that made me feel like I was in a fricken’ holiday disney movie, I decided to compile my top 5 worst airline experiences ever. So sit back, relax, and enjoy that you aren’t me in the following situations…

#5- San Diego to Atlanta (Christmas 2004)
This one wasn’t THAT bad, but I still needed a 5th ranked one. Honestly, have you ever heard of a top 4 list? Anyway, we had a layover in Vegas and our plane that was to take us from Vegas to Atlanta hadn’t even left Michigan when it was time to take off. Needless to say, it was a few hours late and I got in very late. I was tired and angry. Annoying, but not nearly as a bad as…

#4- Fresno, CA to Newark, NJ (November, 2008)
I went to visit my good college friend Cougar who had just started grad school in the Big Apple. My flight from Fresno to Denver was fine, but we got delayed about two hours going from Denver to Newark. On the way back, in typical Jersey fashion, incompetence took over. Sitting on the runway to take off, a stupid beeping noise would not stop on the plane. It was then that the pilot came over the intercom and told us that there was a problem with the plane and we had to go back to have it serviced. Great. Already 30 minutes late, and we had to have the stupid plane looked at. Don’t mind that I have a connecting flight in Denver at 9:30 pm (the last flight back to Fresno that night) and that I had two important meetings and a class to teach the next day. Fortunately, we made it into Denver with 19 minutes before my next flight. I had to sprint 54 gates in order to make my flight in Denver, and the woman at the terminal was a jerk. This experience sucked, but trust me, it wasn’t as bad as…

#3- San Diego to Indianapolis (Christmas, 2003)
I was flying from San Diego to Indianapolis to visit my brother for a few days and attend the Boilermaker Invitational (BOILER UP!) then drive with him back to Atlanta for the holidays. After taking off from the San Diego airport, as we were over the Pacific Ocean mind you, the pilot gets on the intercom and tells us we have to back and land in San Diego (about 4 minutes after taking off) because once of the doors was not fully shut. We land in San Diego, and standard protocol requires a full-service check of the plane to ensure no other problems are present. Naturally, I missed my connecting flight in Denver, and the next available flight was not for about 7 hours. Great. Sitting in the Denver airport is exactly what I wanted to do for a quarter of a day. Fortunately, I had my lap top and Road Trip on DVD to occupy me for part of it. I got in to West Lafayette absurdly late, which made me ticked off, but not as ticked off as…

#2- San Jose, CA to St. Louis, MO (September, 2008)
So I thought flying out of San Jose would be a better idea than Fresno because it would be cheaper. I was wrong. The 2 1/2 hour drive from Fresno to San Jose was a bad idea. At the San Jose airport, Frontier airlines (easily the WORST airline ever, btw) tells us 10 minutes before take-off that there is engine trouble and that our flight to Denver (what is it with Denver?) was cancelled. Not delayed, cancelled. Uh, excuse me? I’m helping my graduate professor present her research at a national conference tomorrow. This isn’t really a “my bad” type of situation. So, after waiting an hour in line at Frontier’s desk, they decide to bus me and my buddy over to San Francisco and fly out from there. An hour long ride through Bay Area rush hour traffic, swerving in and out of the shoulder lane, later we arrive in San Francisco. We made our flight and got to Denver, then flew in to St. Louis. It was probably the groggiest I’ve ever been, and I decided to skip the conference’s opening meet and greet social that night because I felt I would be doing a disservice to our program by showing up with a worse attitude than Bill Belichick. Boy was I ticked off that evening, however that was a vacation in paradise compared to…

#1- Fresno, CA to Portland, ME (Christmas, 2008)
This epic journey began at 5:00 a.m. pacific time on December 20 when my cab driver was 15 minutes late because he couldn’t find my neighborhood. Whatever. Just get me there. My flight from Fresno to Vegas made it on time. Alright, so far so good. All I need now is my flight from Vegas to D.C. be on time, and then my flight from D.C. to Portland me on schedule and I’m golden. Please, like all of that is gonna go well. The plane to take us from Vegas to D.C. was stuck in Boston because it was frozen (wut? frozen? yes, FROZEN). It took four hours to defrost it (are we talking about an airplane or a Swanson’s microwave dinner, here?). Naturally, I already knew I would miss the last flight from D.C. to Portland that night. I knew people in D.C. that I could crash with, so I thought I could handle an evening in the capital. We got into D.C. at midnight, and my good friend Kareem picked me up and brought me back to his pad (side note: it was great to see him and his family, what class acts). We woke up about six hours after getting home, and drove to Reagan national airport for a 10 a.m. flight to Portland. We are sitting in the plane…on the runway…ready to take off…and they tell us the flight has been cancelled due to weather…excuse me? You couldn’t see that fricken’ huge white blob on the weather map that was just about to devour all of New England before it got there? You thought it was a better idea to let us board and get ready for takeoff, THEN cancel the flight? It’s called anticipation: learn it. So the next available flight is the following evening at 9:20 p.m. Fantastic. It was nice being able to spend an extra day and a half with my good friend Kareem and see my other friend Christina from high school; but seriously, is this Home Alone 4 1/2 or something? Am I Jonathan Taylor Thomas in movie trying to get home for Christmas? Seriously. So I get to the airport the following night for my flight, and the airlines just aren’t done yet. At 9:20 (remember, that’s when we are supposed to TAKE OFF, and we haven’t boarded yet) they tell us that our crew isn’t there, and that they are on another flight that won’t arrive for an hour….wut? Let me get this straight, it’s time to LEAVE, and you don’t feel the need to tell us until NOW that our CREW ISN’T THERE??? Where did you think they were twenty minutes ago???!!! What are you people from Jersey or something?? Finally, the crew gets there and we board, and hour late. I arrive in Portland around 11:30 p.m.. What should have taken about 15 hours took 64. Nonetheless, I am here, and the one good thing to come out of this was that Mark made two funny movie posters that I got tagged in on facebook which made me laugh so hard I almost had to be hospitalized. Seriously airlines, get it together. Hoyt just doesn’t care about airline travel.

BSOD represents the Windows Server from OSX

I was getting ready to connect to the Windows server today from my new iMac. I was trying to remember how to make a quick connect icon on my desktop and ventured into “Get Info” for the server to see what it could offer me. Notice the image on the screen of the monitor in the “preview image” of the windows server.  That’s right, that’s a BSOD, or the dreaded Blue Screen of Death you get when windows experiences a failure of epic proportions.  It appears someone at Apple has a sense of humor.

My father sent me this.  I immediately laughed so hard that I cried.  Please kids, just stay the f$#% away from handguns.

I’ve decided to start a new weekly rant regarding things I don’t care about called

“Hoyt doesn’t care.”

12/18: ESPN’s obsession with the NFL

Really? REALLY? Flipping through channels on my television set in the middle of June and I’m subjected to “NFL Live!”? Nevermind the exciting baseball playoff races in the AL East and basically the entire National League; I’d much rather hear some has been who played defensive tackle for the Browns 11 years ago talk about how Chad Johnson’s decision to get his meals catered by Applebees instead of Ponderosa will affect the Bengals’ ability to audible when they pick up a safety blitz. Honestly. I consider myself a casual sports fan. I basically like a little bit of everything (and maybe a little more of the NHL and college football). But being force fed predictions about which departure of a defensive coordinator will hurt a team the most in the middle of July is just awful. Then we hit the end of August, and the most unholy of cartel’s is materialized with the actual beginning of the NFL season. Nevermind the world series or the USC/Ohio State game, let’s talk about how one person’s comment that “uh, we aren’t quite on the same pages as our coaches” apparently creates an apocalyptic clash that requires Sal Paolantonio (sp?) to provide “Breaking News!” updates every 12 minutes. Shut up. I really don’t care. If these things aren’t ridiculous enough, I’ve saved the best for last. A week or so ago I’m watching ESPN and the most absurd thing EVER is scrolled across the bottom line. Statistical “projections” for fantasy purposes for games that have ALREADY STARTED….wut? Nevermind baseball free agency, that is seeing 9 figure contracts restructure the competitive balance in some divisions. Nevermind the fact that the Celtics and Lakers have officially renewed one of the greatest rivalries in all of sports and are on pace to meet up again in June. Nevermind the fact that the San Jose Sharks have started 25-3-3 and are the quickest NHL team to reach 50 points in a season. Let’s project how Trent Edwards will do tonight even though the game is halfway through the second quarter (by the way, I think they projected he would have about 1 TD and 1 pick…yeah, at that point he already had 4 interceptions; what a waste of space). In conclusion, I don’t mind the NFL. Like I said, I’m a casual sports fan who likes taking a little bit of everything that the buffet has to offer. But basically ESPN has turned sports coverage into one of those family size variety packs of snack bags we used to get at Costco as kids (remember, Mark?). Honestly, nobody ever ate those stupid Ruffles or Lays; we only cared about Doritos, Doritos Ranch, and Cheetos. So stop giving us 24 bags of Ruffles. Honestly, Hoyt just doesn’t care.

Penis Reduction Pills

Amimated GIF of our Commander in Chief dodging a shoe at a press conference in Iraq today.

BAGHDAD — President Bush quickly ducked when a pair of shoes were hurled at him Sunday, but the protest showed it will be tougher to sidestep anger over the war here.

“This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” shouted Muntadar al-Zeidi in Arabic as he threw his shoe at Bush during a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The shoe narrowly missed the president’s head.

Generally I don’t like pulling content from other websites (other than youtube, of course) but each and every time I look at this, it just makes me laugh. A lot.

This comes from failblog.org

Just watch the video…it will speak for itself

I don’t know if any of you had heard about this yet, but it happened earlier in the fall. For pre-olympic qualifying, Slovakia and Bulgaria faced off in women’s ice hockey. In what would become one of the most thrilling finishes in hockey history, this video captures it all (actually, it is only the first of three highlight videos, you can find the rest on youtube). If you watch the third video, you’ll see that Bulgaria actually does better when they don’t have a goalie in net. final score: 82-0