Consider your welcome worn out.

The house guest is an interesting breed.  They usually visit for a good reason, a reason that makes you happy.  A monumental occasion that you want to share with those close to you.  But lets be honest, you enjoy the presence of your house guest at the expense, to some degree, of your own comfort.  They know it, and you know it, but it is always manageable for a short period of time.

Our friend, Bart.

Our house guest, Bart (Bathroom Absolutely Ripped ToBits) has been with us since about March.  When he first arrived, it was awesome.  He kept Katie company when she didn't have a substituting job lined up for the day.  He provided fodder for workplace conversation.  And we have learned a few things from Bart in the last couple of months.  For example, we will probably never buy a house with only one bathroom, but if we do, we know that we can survive a weekend with five adults and only one bathroom.  We have learned how to replace the sub floor, and that a 15 inch pry bar is a fantastic tool when ripping up the underlayment layer of a house's floor. We have learned that the crawl space under the house isn't really that scary.

But it isn't all sugar and spice with Bart around.  He has quite literally bowed under the weight of his own vanity, which requires us to step in, and provide him support.  That is what friends do.  But, it does try one's patience.  After working with him all day today, I feel like a good friend, and I feel like we have made some progress.  But the truth is that Bart is still in pretty rough shape, and it will be a while before he is ready to leave us...

Tom out.

On to the Next

After a two month hiatus, the ninja is back and can proudly proclaim that the ship of me complaining about how school is sucking the life out of me during my good, youthful years has sailed.  In the last week, several milestones have been reached.

Most importantly, the Mazda in which this ninja rides, toppled the 185,000 mile mark with class.  Back seat covered in dog hair, string cheese wrappers and pens jammed into the driver side door pocket, and 3 pennies glued to the bottom of the cup holder with layers of Diet Mountain Dew.

Secondly, I turned 28.  This means two things.  First, my ten year high school reunion is this summer (not going).  And second, it is only a matter of months before I have friends celebrating their 30th birthdays with black Over the Hill balloons and napkins and Miata convertibles.  But ultimately, it means nothing.  I took the day off and we ate plain cheesecake.

The third milestone is that I graduated with my MBA from Boise State University.  In my Resolusmus List, I wanted to get all As this term, and I almost made it.  As of right now, the silly elective course with zero graded assignments, and the "laid-back", cool non-professor has kept me from that dream.  I have an email in to the professor asking for justification and in hopes of a change, but I'm not optimistic.

But, that is not the important thing because I graduated and I really don't care that much.  The important thing is that I'm done!  The first thing I did after obtaining those three special letters after my name was de-lumberjack myself, much to the pleasure of everyone who was tired of wondering if they should give me a chainsaw or a flea collar for a graduation/birthday gift.

  The other question I keep getting is....WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?  Interesting question.



Other than relax and enjoy my evenings and weekends, hang out with Katie and friends that I have all but ignored for the last couple of years, and help Katie maintain the home that I have been living in (such as replacing five sprinkler heads this evening), here are two ideas.

Number One: I will be taking pictures.  Taking pictures of everything with the graduation/birthday present that I bought myself, the Nikon D5000 camera.  I have pretty much already mastered this bad boy, as you can see:

I understand the importance of lighting.

I also know how to capture action clearly.

Honestly, though, it is a fine piece of camera ass that I plan on taxing extensively this summer.  There are plenty of gizmos and whizbangs for me to figure out, so it should keep me busy for a while.

Number Two: I will be writing blogs about things that don't really matter, and using various nerdy tools to help prove my points.  And that will begin with settling the debate of whether the toilet seat shall be left up or down.  To be upfront, I gladly put the toilet seat down, and I have been doing it for so long that I don't think I could go back if I wanted to.  Insert lame, predictable joke about me being well trained here.  I don't remember how it came to be that I put the toilet seat down, and I don't really care.  So, when male friends come to visit our home and leave the toilet seat up, it is as strange to me as it is to Katie.  As we discussed this after our friends left one night, I mockingly mentioned the classic argument that women should put the toilet seat up for men because women want to be treated equally or whatever that stupid ass argument is.  What this boiled down to was me creating a spreadsheet to prove what position, as a matter of efficiency, the toilet seat should be left in after use.

Here is a link to the Google Doc for the fellow nerds that aren't just going to take my word for it.  If the link doesn't work, by all means email me so I can send it along.

It is based on the logic that if the toilet seat needs to be in the down position for the majority of "uses", then it is most efficient to leave it down.  The last line of the spreadsheet shows the percentage of "uses" that require the seat to be down, and if it is above 50%, the seat shall remain down.  I have provided a few screen shots to illustrate some examples.

Standard: 1 male, 1 female...

No matter how many males you add...

The first shows that increasing the number of males and the number of times the males pee decreases the percentage of events that requires the toilet seat to be down.  So, if these variables do increase, so does the validity of the argument for leaving the seat up.

The second shows the example of having one male and one female each providing a #1 and a #2 daily.  The percentage is in favor of always leaving the seat down.

The third shot proves that as males are added to the building, the percentage approaches 50%, but never reaches it.  Therefore, no matter how many males are in the building, the seat should always be down (assuming each male provides a single #1 and a single #2 daily).

There are some things that the model does not consider, such as the fact that males could pee with the seat down, in which case you would need to consider who cleans the bathroom floor.  Another example is that the lid is usually closed as well, so does that defeat the goal of efficiency in that the person still has to lift the lid even when utilizing the seat in the down position?  I don't have all of the answers, man.