BillyStyle

Recently I happened to find myself at a website for a new Gold’s Gym game for the Wii. I instantly cringed at this image. That splash around her can only be intended to be sweat, right? I mean she’s fake working out, and when you really work out you sweat, so it must be. So if I get this game, my entire living room will be soaking wet, it will smell worse than a gym in New Jersey, and I’ll be so dehydrated that I’ll have to be driven to the emergency room? So nasty. Thanks Gold’s.

Middle-of-post-update: Hahaha, I just watched the video on that site. There is an awesome awkward mustache man dancing with a bunch of younger pony tailed workout girls about three quarters of the way through the video. Wonderful!

I might as well talk about my feelings toward video games requiring any physical effort more than movements of less than an inch by a few fingers.

No thanks.

I’ll admit it’s a genius marketing move. So many non-geeks and baby boomers now own video game consoles that it’s ridiculous. But for me, I have a bowling alley up the street, I own a tennis racket (racquet? nah, this is America!), I have basketball shoes, I can go to a real gym if I so choose, and I enjoy a sweat-free smell to my living room. Now if I want to run around killing zombies and what not, I’ll use one of my various video game consoles. And even if I do want to pretend to do something I already do outside, I’d rather just watch the little dude on TV do whatever it is I tell him to do with my thumbs and fingers.

The WWA World Championships are this week in Orlando. That means that this is a crazy week at work. Crazy awesome though.

So just today, I coached in the morning. I had one of three boats. I had a family of a father and two sons. They all improved and started to figure out proper jumping position, so that was cool. Also riding on the lake was Ben Greenwood and his crew of riders competing in the tournament. Kurt Robertson and his buddies were out there as well getting tuned up for the competition.

Here is a list of moves I witnessed today, just when I was nearby. Pete Rose (Marcos Torres and Ben Greenwood), 720s (Bob Sichel and Ben Greenwood), backside 540 (Paulie Koch), and many other great moves. There’s even a 13 year old girl doing switch 540s, both heelside and toeside. Yeah.

If you don’t know what any of this means, come to Florida and I’ll teach ya! Life is pretty good here. I even got to ride and did me a roast beef tantrum. Woo!

Nothing says “I don’t know anything about personal cleanliness or managing my money” more than a soap dispenser that squirts watery soap mess all over your hands, wrists, and counter top when you stand at the sink of somebody’s bathroom, only wishing to practice good hygiene.

My philosophy is that it’s worth the money to just buy a new one. This goes with many things like such as (see what I did there?) most toiletries (bar soap, toothpaste, etc.), car tires (learned that one the hard way), and um, well right now I’m running short, feel free to help out in the comments.

Back to hand soap.

Seriously, it’s so much harder to get the hands clean with watered-down hand soap. You have to pump a lot more times, you are guaranteed to make a mess all over the counter, and you leave without really feeling like you have clean hands. All for what? Maybe saving a quarter per year? Maybe a dollar if you go crazy with it? Hand soap is crazy cheap, just buy a new one.

So, me being who I am, I searched the old INTERNETS for some pictures or something on this phenomenon. Apparently, you could kill somebody by adding tap water to your hand soap. Yep, it’s murder. See, tap water in soap can be a nice place for pseudomona bacteria to grow, which is the subject of this lovely picture. Psuedomona means false unit, which is totally awesome. It can lead to some sort of nasty bacterial infection, which could possibly lead to problems bad enough to kill people who already suffer from serious health problems like diabetes. Here’s the nitty gritty.

If you have a hard time believing that, take a glass of tap water and let it sit for a week then take a drink. You wouldn’t want to do that right? Yeah, not so good. So if you add tap water to your soap to save a penny or two at hygiene’s expense, you’re actually throwing hygiene right out the window and just smearing bacteria all over your hands. Nice work frugal idiot.

Just go to your local dollar store and get a new supply that will last you many months anyway (since you add water to soap, I assume you don’t respect hand-washing and probably skip that whole scene after just taking a leak, you dirty bugger).

And finally, I just played a game online against somebody named Gerd Hums.

End of line.

The title has nothing to do with this post, it was just the first word that came into my brain when the cursor was blinking in the Title field.

Opening Thoughts

Just a bit ago when I went to write this post, I found that all of my sites were down, hosted by the same company. I checked their own site and it was also down. Everything was back up a couple of minutes later, but I managed to do some calculations during that time. They guarantee 99.9% up time, which gives them a little under 9 hours per year of down time. That’s a bit shy of an hour per month, which they have gone nowhere near. So well done BlueHost, well done. I still like you.

Wakeboarding

Life is good, as it has been ever since I moved to Florida. Here are some fun things that happened this week. I landed a tantrum to blind with an indy grab for the first time. That’s a fun one. I have ridden with plenty of good friends this week, and during one set I tried a double flip for the first time ever. That scared the snot out of me, which was really fun. Here’s the video: (It’s poor quality, but here is the link to the high quality version.)

Then today, I went riding with my friends Ben Greenwood and Trevor Hansen. After that, we came home and Trevor took a look at the video above there.

Trevor is, to date, the only person to land the move I tried, a double back roll, on a normal wake, as in not using a double up. (I’ll put the video below) He gave me a thumbs up and proceeded to coach me and break down the video to help encourage me to try it again and land the thing. That was pretty awesome in itself! I just tried the move on a whim, and now I feel motivated to land a double invert on a wakeboard. I mean come on, I have been coached by the only person in the world who has done it wake to wake. That’s awesome.

Here’s the aforementioned video:

Sorry, the video can’t be embedded on here. That’s something about online videos that bugs me, not allowing people to put them on their site, but whatever, that’s for another time. Check it out on Trevor’s blog here: Trevor’s Double Back Roll.

Nice huh? Yeah, he’s good. So is Ben. He landed a lot of different 720s today and a couple 900s.

Non-Wakeboarding

I get thoughts from time to time of what to blog about. I usually forget those by the time I sit back down at this desk. I’m okay with that, but perhaps I should try to work on fixing my retention method. So all I really have right now is this link for you:

Go Away: Hilarious email conversations between a talented graphic artist and people who have crossed him. The top post is a great place to start reading.

Well I suppose it’s finally time for the tale of my Earth Day 2010 butt laceration incident. It was a lovely Thursday here in Florida and just so happened to be Earth Day. I went to McCormick’s Cable Park with some co-workers and our Swedish contingent who were in their last of 4 weeks with us. There were a lot of people at the cable, so I took a few laps, got warmed up, crashed on something I don’t remember now, then got back in line. The line took a good 20 minutes to get through, so when I got going again, I didn’t want to fall. That plays a part in the story. You can click the pictures for bigger versions.

Bec on the rail. The red circle is where the collision took place.

For those of you who aren’t aware, a cable park is a place where us wakeboarders are pulled around a lake in a circle by a mechanism that runs along a cable strung tightly up about 30 feet above the water. It lets us ride without a boat and practice fun things like sliding across solid objects, known as rails and kickers.

So on lap 1 of my second ride that day, I hit the rainbow rail (shaped in an arch, just like a rainbow) and misjudged it, so I jumped off to the side of the rail where the rope could pull me back toward the rail. I was riding on the water, and felt the rope trying to pull me back into the rail. I knew I should let go, but not wanting to get back in line, I decided I should try to avoid the inevitable collision with said rail.

Bad decision.

With less than 10 feet of rail remaining, I got pulled right into it and was flung around to where I got pretty disoriented for a minute and had a few painful spots all over my body, namely my elbows and my buttocks. The water was murky, so I couldn’t see the damage. All I knew was that my butt felt the same as my left arm, which just had a medium size raspberry on it, so I didn’t panic.

After swimming to the shore, I noticed my shorts were ripped open pretty nicely, so I pulled them back and saw quite a bit of raw Billy butt flesh. I couldn’t see it too well because of my life jacket, but I decided to get to the office quickly so I could get some first aid action on it quickly.

Close up of what cut me. That small angled gap acted like a knife.

Once outside the office I took my jacket off and had a good look at the damage, it was pretty significant. Jesse, the girl I had paid to ride for the day, was sitting outside, and I let her see the wound. She got pretty wide-eyed, then told me how to get to the nearby hospital.

I wasn’t in much pain, and needed to get my belongings, so I took the walk (maybe 100 yards) back to my stuff. Still only minor pain, so I proceeded to show off my fresh gash to all the people I knew. I warned them all that it was very gory and they shouldn’t see it if they easily get sick. The reaction was the same from most people: very wide eyes, some expletive, and disbelief. We took pictures and all that good stuff, then I drove myself to the hospital with Cassie, the daughter of my boss who had just cut her foot open on a bike earlier that day.

At the hospital, I was in the unfortunate position of having a few guys standing behind me looking at my exposed backside making comments. Once the internal stitches and surface staples were in, those guys standing there looking at my butt made remarks such as “That looks real nice.” That was a bit odd.

Anyway, I’m all healed up now and I literally have a bad ass scar. Pun intended! We had a fun staple removing mini party at my house and I even got to take one of them out myself. Thanks to Ben for providing the proper tool and my nurses Kathy and Allison.

Okay, now that it’s all said and done, here is the link to some very graphic pictures of the butt. I haven’t put them in this post because of how gross they are. Enjoy! Warning: Very graphic butt laceration pictures. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Again, this is another non-butt update. I’m still mid-healing process. I find it’s better to let the thing heal up so I can post the whole story. Just a little more time.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is how careful you need to be when using your horn while driving. I learned to really appreciate the power of the horn when I lived in New York for a couple of years. People there are very quick to let you know if you are slowing down the flow of traffic.

I figure there are three types of honks: friendly “hello” honks, heads up honks, and straight up rage/anger honks. I drive a 1999 F-150, which has one of the best stock horns in all the automotive world. It’s got about three or four different horn tones at once, and they are all loud and abrasive. That means I can really lay on the rage/anger honk, but need to use some precision on the other honks. There is a fourth “honk” but that doesn’t involve a car, my friends Didi and Dotti would understand.

Friendly “Hello” Honk: This one has to happen in quick little taps. It must be at least two honks, and can be probably no more than four. Any less and you sound like you’re a bit mad or something. More on this in the next part.

Heads Up Honk: This almost has to be two quick little honks. The reason it needs to be two though is something I learned a bit ago.

There was a weird turning lane situation where I was going to turn left, and a car was rolling toward me in the same turning lane waiting to merge with my oncoming traffic. I turned in a bit earlier that I should have I guess, so I tried to give two quick Hey I’m here honks, but I girly-pressed the second honk and it had no sound. I think that sent the wrong message. I ended up going back to my right, into my previous lane and driving around the other car. The large woman in there didn’t look too pleased with me. I was honestly just trying to avoid a crash, and she thought I was mad at her or something. Kinda dumb.

Rage/Anger Honk: This is my favorite, especially with my horn. This one you kind of arch your back, get your shoulders right in there digging into your seat back and fully extend your arm, getting plenty of pressure on the palm of your hand pushing deep into the horn. I prefer to go for at least 3 seconds, sometimes for up to 6 or 7 seconds to really let it set in.

Here’s my best use of this horn. At an intersection years back, I was stopped at a stop sign. I was set to turn left, and there were a few cars lined up across from me at another stop sign wanting to go straight through the intersection. So, the first car had the right of way. I let him go, and in this intersection, we weren’t exactly head on, we were shifted further to each others’ right than usual. So I started rolling out to get my left turn in quickly so the second car at the sign wouldn’t have to wait too long.

Well, that car’s driver didn’t feel it was necessary to stop, and I’m not somebody who likes to be disrespected like that. I had mostly made my turn, so I was nose-to-driver-side of this car. I laid on that horn buddy! The guy gave me a “Hey it’s cool that I just cut you off” wave, and I held the horn, with eye contact, until that wave turned into him showing me his longest finger. Yep, classy move buddy.

That got me to laugh pretty loudly. My horn has the effect of making people feel panic, which I love to watch happen. I don’t know, I’m a nerd and I love to kind of let people know how I feel about them.

This post is kind of lame, yeah, but it had to be put out there. People, use your horns! It’s a lot of fun, but be careful to not make them sound to angry. Even on the small taps, you’ve got to put some muscle into it, or you’ll just be awkwardly pushing on your steering wheel only to have nothing happen.

So get out there and start honking! Oh, also, don’t honk when you’re picking somebody up at their house. Seriously, be a decent human and go knock on their door. Maybe send a text. Just don’t sit out there and lay on your horn, so inconsiderate! OKBYE

Word is out that I’ve injured my right butt cheek yet again. It is all true and as I type this I have 10 staples holding my new butt hole together.

I’m waiting for the right time to blog about the whole thing, which I figure will be within a couple weeks of when I get the staples removed.

I’ll have a nice detailed story just like I did when I tore another butt hole in the same cheek just under a year ago. I will tell you now that this one was a wakeboard injury and that the gay jokes will still be aplenty. Last time I got a large piece of wood jammed into my butt, this time I got a new butt hole torn by a rainbow. Yes, that’s right, a rainbow.

So hold tight, the story, along with very graphic gory pictures, is on its way.