Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

Believe it or not, I got a bunch of emails from people who’ve enjoyed the last two monthly photo rambling posts– April Photo Ramblings and March Photo Ramblings. And so I present May’s Photo Ramblings. Any favorites?

This year my day-job company encouraged employees to come to work in costume. Now, there are costumes and then there are super-costumes. I’m all about the latter. For the past five years I’ve been collecting pieces of Roman armor (What? you have a better hobby?) They’re great for “armor of god” lessons in church. Finally, this past week, I obtained the remaining parts to my Roman soldier super-costume and I wore it to work on Friday. Some thoughts on the experience:

When Mormons asked who I was, I told them Captain Moroni. Otherwise, I said Julius Caesar.

I managed to get the costume on all by myself (quite the effort in the parking lot.) I worked all day long dressed like this. It felt anachronistic to be debugging database problems when I should have been fighting Goths and Vandals or beating down a peasant insurrection.

Tunics are like mini-skirts– they don’t leave much to the imagination, particularly when you sit down. Fortunately I wore a pair of red shorts to preserve a bit of dignity and modesty.

Authentic Roman leather sandals look cool, but the raw leather quickly began to scrape skin off from my feet, causing considerable pain. Maybe socks with sandals isn’t such a bad idea after all?!?

Very Noisy. This might be obvious, what with the metal and all, but it came as a surprise to me. The armor makes a lot of noise clanking and rattling around. There were no sneak attacks for the Romans. If ever you hear a story that goes, “and then this Roman soldier snuck up behind me,” don’t believe it.

The armor is heavy. Extremely heavy. As the day wore on, my shoulders began to ache and I began to slump forward under the pressure. Also, the collar of the segmented plates chaffed and bruised my neck by the end of the day. No wonder Roman soldiers were so barbarous– all that chaffing!

The sandal treads are many small rivet heads which probably work great on dirt but provide the same traction as 100 greased air hockey pucks when on office tile.

People kept asking if I was a Spartan. No. Spartans are from Sparta. Sparta is a city in Greece. Spartans are Greek, not Roman. You’all have been watching too much 300. Gosh.

Armor is hard to put on by yourself. I needed the Roman equivalent of a squire or page. It’s even hard to tie your sandals in full armor. It’s even more difficult when you have on the metal shin guards (not pictured.) Again, a squire would have been nice.

Conversation with my mom

me: [showing her the super-costume]

mom:”You look just like those bad soldiers who were mean to Jesus in the church movies.”

me: “Well Mom, to be accurate, the Jews were the ones who delivered Jesus to the Romans…”

• There are currently 401 posts and 1,087 comments, contained within 63 categories.
• Akismet has protected this site from 80,837 spam comments.
• I weigh 194 lbs and can bench press 255 lbs (as of today!)
• Leapfish.com valuation of the coolest website in Utah: $21,172.00
• My BMI (Body Mass Index) is 27.83, which means I classify as Overweight
• Number of lines of conversation with my amazing bot since January 6, 2007: 5,839
• Number of times someone has asked the friendly robot how old I am: 33 (the mutinous bot always replies with one of “39″, “Born in the 20th century” or “under 40″. I’m NOT 39, BTW…)
• Number of domains I’ve sold this year: one. Selling price: $1,000.00
• 44 people have boycotted diamonds so far. Have you?!?
• Ryan Byrd dot net Google Analytic stats since the beginning of the year: 22,194 Visits; 81,089 Pageviews; 3.65 Pages/Visit; 4:46 Avg. Time on Site
• 37.86% of people visit RBDN to play the games.
• Number of times the f-word was used with my robot this year: 31
• Yesterday was National Talk Like A Pirate Day.

I was blog tagged by Ms. Duncan recently, and so here is my response:

1. I once ran a mile in 4:45

2. I can count to ten in Japanese

3. I know Morse code

4. When I was younger I wanted to be an artist

5. My favorite types of candy include: circus peanuts, fruit Mentos, Jolly Ranchers, Cow Tails, Snickers, gummy cola bottles, Bubble Yum/Bubblicious, burnt peanuts (Boston Baked Beans), Lemon Heads, Tangy Taffy and Laffy Taffy. Oh, and I don’t eat American chocolate, cause it tastes waxy.

BONUS:

6. I’ve never broken a bone

7. I collect children’s books. My favorite authors include Theodor Seuss Geisel, John Dennis Fitzgerald and Roald Dahl

8. I spend way too much time on my blog

9. I like lima beans

10. I don’t eat a lot of red meat, but when I do, I always order my steaks well done.

I now tag Cory Bickmore, as an excuse to get him to update his blog, which is in desperate need of refreshing!

The following conversation occurred last week:

• [co-worker Ron^* (very serious)]: (to me): Are you going to fire me today?
• [me (laughing)]: Hmm. I hadn’t planned on it, still, I’d consider it if you ticked me off, or if I was annoyed at something else and needed a quick pick-me-up, …
• [Ron (still serious)]: ‘Cause I had a dream last night that you fired me.
• [me (weirded out)]: You had a dream about me? That’s strange.

And then I come to find out that a lot of my co-workers have had dreams about me lately, including: Holli, Rob, Brady, Jill and Bo. I’m OK with the ladies dreaming about me, that *totally* makes sense, but dudes? No thanks.

* names have been changed

With all this talk recently of stolen paintings, I got to musing about similar activities. No, No, I didn’t take off with the Goya, though I am an appreciator of fine art. What I’m talking about is how to rob an armored car as an intellectual exercise, a puzzle if you will.

Wait! is it illegal to chat about robbing an armored car in the abstract?^* I’m not sure. Perhaps we’ll curtail our conversation somewhat. If we could talk about such topics without threat of legal action we might have a little contest about planning just such an event.

Here would be the rules:

• No injuring or killing people. If you plan on using some sort of knock-out gas/pill/injection, be sure you have a doctor on your “staff.”
• No spending more money than what an armored car can reasonably be expected to carry (for our sake, we’ll limit it to $300,000.)
• No using more than 5 accomplices. (It should be hard enough to find just five people and convince them to commit a felony with you.)
• Weapons are ok, but only legal or homemade weapons. You cannot, for example, use nuclear weapons, military-grade armaments or explosives (that is, no M60s, grenades or C4 plastic explosive.) Semiautomatic AR-15s, AK-47s, pipe-bombs, smoke-bombs, etc. are ok.
• Your plan cannot result in anyone being caught.
• No fair copying the Italian Job, or Groundhog Day

Plans would be judged by elegance, speed, level of difficulty, practicality/plausibility, ROI(return on investment), setup and execution time.

Potentially Useful Links:

• Armored Trucks.com
• Jaws of Life
• Used Armored Vehicles
• Armored Solutions

* My legal counsel advises me that any applicable statute would require intent and because this blog states that this is PURELY HYPOTHETICAL, there shouldn’t be any possible provisions that might be stretched to apply to me. Still, I’m keeping it pretty detail-free, just to be safe.

Podcast

Utah is *supposedly* number one in:

• Jello consumption,
• anti-depressant use,
• piano ownership, (five times the national average),
• birth rate,
• personal bankruptcies,
• literacy,
• computers per capita,
• household size.

Utah is *reportedly* dead last in:

• families headed by a single parent,
• births to unwed mothers,
• spending per student in public schools and
• alcohol consumption per capita.

Antidepressant Study (Thanks Kristen!)
The study was conducted by Express Scripts Inc., a St. Louis-based
pharmacy benefits management company, which tracked prescriptions of 24
drug types in about 2 million people selected at random from its 48
million members. Those studied were enrolled in privately managed
health-care programs, and the information gleaned from the study is
intended for use by HMOs. Medicare and Medicaid recipients were not
included in the study.

Utah also leads the nation in the use of narcotic painkillers such as
codeine and morphine-based drugs, the study found, and is ranked seventh
in total prescriptions overall. Kentucky ranked first.

Thanks Dan Hersam

Poor Taste Joke Deleted

Update: um, the word “crazy” doesn’t always mean “bad”, people. I’m happy to live in Utah. This post was not meant to rag on Utahans or to complain how much Utah sucks. To the contrary, I was relating how we are, indeed, not your average Joes. Ya know?

I’m under the weather, so to speak, this morning. Which you are too, unless you are an astronaut reading this blog from aboard the international space station.

Let’s review the layers of the earth’s atmosphere:

From the top, we have the

• Ionosphere,
• the Mesosphere,
• the Stratosphere (containing the ozone layer),
• the Tropopause
• and the Troposphere.

The Troposphere starts at the Earth’s surface and extends upwards nearly 9 miles and contains just about all our weather. Like I said, we’re all under the weather.

But I digress, I only meant to say that I am ill. (I did not say that I was sick, because of my loyal English readers who inform me that ill and sick are quite different. Sick means you’re throwing up, whereas ill simply denotes poor health.)

You’ll probably want to hear today’s podcast, because I sound all congested. It will be fun for both of us!

Podcast

(My cellphone rings)

Me: Hello?

Caller: Is Nate there?

Me: No. I think you have the wrong number.

Caller: Are you sure?

Me: Well, I’m sure this is not Nate.

Caller: [pause] Hmm. Ok then.

Podcast

My automobile misfortunes continue. First, my windshield cracked, and now I find a bullet-hole sized puncture in the tread of the rear passenger side tire. No doubt I was the victim of the driveby rage of one of my detractors, or “haters” as I call them. Foiled again guys — I’ve got my hater blockers^* on!

Large hate-deflecting sunglasses or not, I still had to go to Big-O Tires and drop $172.62 on a new tire. Also, I had to change that blown tire in a suit, which is not very fun. Fortunately, Mike Nelson, who owns a similarly configured Four Runner, was there to instruct me in the arcane technique of unchaining the hidden spare tire, cinched up into the belly of the vehicle. Thanks Mike.

* Hater Blockers: A very large pair of dark sunglasses to block out the hate from any people who are jealous of you in this world.

Podcast