Random Thoughts

I know that this is a little late, but January 16th marked my one year anniversary being in Iceland. You may ask how did I celebrate this joyous occasion? Answer, consume enough rum to remove all thoughts of this event. Unfortunately I had to sober up and there is the constant reminded of still being here.

“Hoth” represents the place I live fairly well. My recent attempt to escape my current imprisonment on this ICE land has made me rethink the title of my Blog. My thoughts are of a different SiFi movie. “Jim on the Gulag Planetoid Rura Penthe” is better realization of my current status. For those who don’t know, Rura Penthe is the ice-covered Klingon penal colony from Star Trek VI. But I’m going to stay with the “Jim on Hoth”, mainly because the sound of the new title doesn’t appeal to me like the current title and I am more of a fan of Star Wars than Star Trek.

My attempted escape failed, but the good news is couple of friends has just recently fulfilled this seemingly impossible feat. So there is still hope.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been going through withdraws from lack of decent consumables & entertainment. Occasionally I regress back to childhood by finding bliss from cartoons and PB&J. But this came to a screeching halt when I found out that my Peter Pan PB was part of the recalled, of course this is after I eaten half the jar. But don’t worry. No Salmonella and the “Captain” has saved the day again, and no this captain is not Kirk. Just recently I received a care package from my lovely wife, which contained a box of Captain Crunch. In addition to some newly acquired movies, life is better now.

Urinal Cakes

During my lunch break I usually will take a look at news, which usually includes a little bit of everything from International to the local newspaper back home. At least a couple times a week this usually leads to the “Weird Wide World” section of tri-cities herald online. I find that this section does an excellent job of placing so many weird stories from all over the world. Even MSN and CNN cannot even compete with the “THE HERALD”.

Usually I just browse through the short description deciding if any are worth reading more, when I came across “N.M. orders 500 talking urinal cakes”. Now with a headline like that I could resist to see what they are talking about. Sure enough the state of New Mexico has order 500 talking urinal cakes at $21 each, in the attempt to help prevent men driving while under the influence. The states idea is that men that have been drinking at the bars/restaurants, they usually use the bathroom prior to getting behind the wheel. These devices are motion sensitive, so when someone walks up to urinal a women’s voice that is flirty says the following:

"Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks?”

“Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home."

And then finishes up with best part

“Remember, your future is in your hand."

Shark Anyone

I have heard from multiple people that a shark steak can be very good. But traditional Icelandic shark is much different. Once a year there is a heritage celebration in Iceland where a feast is prepare of traditional food. Usually I enjoy the experience a different culture, but experiencing this day once in my life time is enough and fortunately I missed this year’s celebration. Since this day just recently passed, I thought of sharing my previous experience. Here is a portion of an email that I sent last year, before I started a blog.

I don’t know if many people can say they have eaten fermented shark. I can now say that I have or at least attempted. Iceland has a celebration once a year, where there is a feast of traditional food. Some of their traditional food includes: shark, sheep’s head, sheep testicles, and many more. To get back to the shark, it is prepared by burying the shark meat for several weeks. Then the meat is removed from the ground and hung up to dry. Once dry this meat is cut up in little cubes and is ready to be served.

The cantina prepared several of these traditional items and for this reason, I don’t know if the food was authentic or not. But I was adventurous that night and tried the shark, sour whale, sour sheep, and smoked sheep. I wasn’t adventurous enough to try the sheep’s head or testicles, couldn’t get over the look of the food. Well let me first state that the shark was the worst thing I have ever eaten. It was so disgusting that I had to spit it out in my napkin. The remaining items that I tried were fairly bad, but I was able to finishing eating them unlike the shark. These very little items ruined the whole meal. I couldn’t get the taste out of mouth. I tried to eat some other items for dinner that night, but couldn’t.

Sitting at the table, wondering what the hell was I thinking. I watched the re-action of several people trying the same food for the first time. I imagine that I had a similar look as I ate it also. I was feeling better about the experience until one guy came and sat at our table. He had a huge plate of shark. He proceeded to pour chile sauce over it and then just started shoveling away. Seeing this, I felt like I was going to be sick and had to get out of there. Now a couple days later, on an occasion I can still smell that food when I am eating.

It is hard to describe the taste I experience during that dinner, just due to the fact that there has never been anything that is even close to being comparable. The best description of the taste is how it is prepared, rotting meat that has been buried in the ground for several weeks.

Noodling

Saturday night, which is our weekly gathering where it is a time for all of us to unwind from work. This usually involves a lot of BS and large amounts of adult beverages, which are about all you can do in this part of the world. On these weekly gathering mant different cultures are represented. I enjoy learning about other countries and even other parts of the US.

This night in particular we were sitting around having a good time when someone mentioned cow tipping. I don’t remember how we got on the subject, but I am sure it had something to do subject of stupid things. Now I’ve heard about this stereotypically hick past time, but I have never participated in this activity. Which I am surprised I have never tried this, since I grew up in Idaho. But besides my lack of experience in cow tipping, there was one guy from Australia that never heard of cow tripping. So a couple of us were telling what the activity consist of when another guy started talking about noodling. Having never heard of this past time, at first I had a hard time believing that someone would actually do this. But at the same time it is believable just due the fact it sounded so stupid just like cow tipping.

Noodling is basic idea of people wading out into water that is known to have catfish and randomly feel into holes, logs, under rocks, and other places that catfish will settle. Once they find a catfish, noodlers will try to pull the catfish out by the mouth or gills and wrestle it to the surface. Since I have actual been fishing for catfish before and actually caught a few in my life time, I know that catfish have some fairly sharp fins and they could actually clamp down on your hand or arm. Speaking of dangerous, not only that but putting your hand into an environment that could actually be worse that a catfish. I was thinking of a poisonous snake or something that actually could bit off a digit.

Remember I was still skeptical and seeing is believing. Hum, I doubt there are any catfish in Iceland and I don’t think there is enough rum/vodka in the world for me to ever try this. So the next best thing, google it. Sure enough there were plenty of articles and pictures.











From what I see is that most people that do this, it is just another form of fishing for them. But I see different, this is just another fishing story (aka bragging rights). I picture it as a group of guys sitting around the camp fire telling how many and how big fish they have caught. Each one of them trying to out do the other, when one of the guy speaks up “well have you ever caught a 100 pound catfish with your bare hands.” But this is only my opinion and I guess fisherman’s need their version of an extreme sport.

I think that I will stick to getting my fish from Red Lobster or skipper, and stay with my current sport of choice snowboarding.

Telemarketers

I believe that everyone has heard of the “Do Not Call List”, which is a attemp to stop/reduce the number of telemarketers. I admit this has reduced the number of calls to my home number, at least initially. But over the 6 months, there has been one company that calls the house on a frequent basis. The new spin with this particular debt consolidation company is that they say I selected something on the web that requested them to call me. There is no way I requested them to call and even if I did, I want them to stop now. Since I am not home very often, my lovely wife has the unfortunate task to tell this company repeatly, to stop calling and remove our names from their list. Which has not stopped and from what I hear, there is at least 1 call a day.
I know that we are not the only ones to suffer from these very annoying calls, but just recently I read an article were a man in California was fed up with these Telemarketing companies and wanted to do something to make it stop. He found a provision in the law that put the “Do Not Call List” into affect that specifically is directed to unwanted calls. Basically the law says that a violation of this provision is when a company is told to stop calling and continues to call, which there is a penalty of $500 for a violation. So he has started to sue these companies and has won some cases. I don’t want to write about everything in the article, but if you want to take a look here is the link:

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/02/suing_telemarke.html

I feel that in the US there are way too many people out there that are “SUE HAPPY” and most cases are ridiculous. Like the woman that sued McDonalds because she spilled hot coffee on herself. Of course the media does not help with the widely reported initial ruling that she won and then the almost non existing reports that the ruling in the case was overturned. She never did get a dime. I believe that most stupid warnings on products you see today. Like "Caution: Hot" or what ever the McDonalds cup say now (I never get coffee there). Of course it hot, it is coffee. Do the soda cups need to say "Caution: Cold"?

But back to the subject at hand, if this is only way to stop Telemarketers. Then maybe people should look into this possibly perusing this action. Now I am not going to start to sue every telemarketer that calls the house or suggesting anyone to do that either. But this particular company that keeps calling my house at the frequency they do, I feel that it is almost at the point of considering this harassment. Maybe this type of action is needed to try stopping the calls.

By the way, if anybody has any other solution to stop the calls please let me know. The only other way that I can think is to convince this company they would be better off without my business, which I was thinking of telling them I have no job, $500k in debt, and have filled bankruptcy twice. But it is probably a scam, so that won’t even work.

Inventions

Inventions!

Today at work was very boring, a lot of paperwork and I realized that there are some little things/inventions that make life so much easier.

This realization started as I was reviewing this paperwork. There were several mistakes, so I reached into my desk to grab the white out dispenser and hand came up empty. Some bastard took it from my desk. At first, I thought no problem I will go get another one from the supply cabinet. Come to find out that there is no more of these items in the office and apparently we have been out for some time. No wonder some one stole it. To solve this solution our wonderful administrative assistant was able to locate a brand new bottle of liquid paper. Now this bottle had a new feature, the top is made like a pen. I thought some new could be cool. It started out okay, but after the 4th mistake I was hiding the tip clogged. I was able to un-clog the tip and start again. Well it did not last much longer until it was clogged again. This happened a couple of times before I finally gave up on the new feature and started using the brush inside of the bottle. Soon after this I had white out over everything, including myself, except what I was trying to cover up. This started to get annoying, so I ditched the whole white out concept and started crossing thing out with my pen. The bad part I need one of the guys working for me to correct these mistake electronically and reprint these documents again. So guess what I will be doing tomorrow.

If you guessed paperwork, you would be CORRECT!!! Now this new feature is not what I call making life easier, but the white dispinser I consider a greatest invention. I can’t believe I miss my white out dispenser, how sad is that.

Never Tick Off an Engineer

I received this picture in an email. I receive engineering jokes all the time and I not sure if others find them as amusing as I do, but I think this is hilarious.

Sorry I tried to enlarge the image, but it came out too blury. Hope everyone can see it.

By the way, no I did not figure what is the amount. It would not be as funny. Besides my brain hurts anymore, when I try to do simple calculations!!

Back to the Stone Age

Recently I heard that Iceland was one of the fastest European countries in the means of advancing in technologies. When I heard this I was kind of disappointed that they did not elaborate, due to the fact that I have been in Iceland for over a year now and I do not see it. Of course when I heard this, it was on the English radio station on Iceland’s major airline and they are probably a little bias. But from my experience there always seems that something is lost in translation. Also, my personal opinion is that most Icelanders forget about anything/anyone outside the Reykjavik area, which is 90% of Iceland population, for this little island. So this could be true, but when I went snowboarding last weekend these thoughts kept popping into my head. Here is a picture of there main lift.

Of course for those who don’t ski/snowboard, this probably doesn’t mean much. But I would not be suprised if this surface lift was twice as old as I am and while I boarding that day, I was expecting someone to show up on the slopes with wooden skies.

SUNNY DAY

I know that this is a new record for me, two posts within a month. Let’s just hope I can keep this up or maybe even break my record.

Since returning to Iceland, I have been a little down. I believe that there are several reasons I’m in this bad mood, which mainly is just recently leaving home AGAIN, and celebrating my 1 year anniversary of being in Iceland. But I also believe that lack of sun for so long is a major reason.

Being this far North makes the days very short in the winter and the majority of the time it is overcast, especially in this area. But here in Reydarfjordur there is no chance for any sun from mid October to mid March. The elevations of the mountains surrounding the village are very high and with sun not rising very high on the horizon, results in no sun. It is so bad that every year they the locals even throw a huge party every year when this period is over, at least this is what I heard since I was home for 2 weeks last year. Now the locals recommend a diet rich with fish to help out with through this periods. Now I have already eaten more fish this year than I have my whole life. So I say NO THANK YOU. I had another solution:

GO TO WHERE THE SUN IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On top of the mountain. I know there is a better place to go, somewhere away from Iceland, but it was the best I could do.

Even though it was freezing and the snow kind of sucked for snowboarding, it was well worth the trip.

I KNOW WHAT YOUR SAYING, ABOUT TIME FOR A NEW POST

Well it has been awhile since I made a post and people are starting to let me know. One of the main reasons it has been a long time is that I forgot my username and password. I know it is fairly sad, but Blogger doesn't make it to easy. They give a chance to find this information by typing in your email address. But if your blog doesn't show up on the main page, it is very difficult to contact them concerning any issues. Well all that aside, I final remeber how to get to area to make a post. Hopefully I can find some time to make some additional posts.

Before I go:

Yes, I do check my blog. Mandy and Gregg, I appreciate you keep looking for posts and for your comments.

No on the pirates. I had troubles with Click and The Da Vinci Code.

Andy, I think you and brian (because he likes posting mytube clips) should test out the theroy about DVD Shirnk and of course capture it on video.