Friday Fun: That’s Not What She Said

I like “That’s What She Said” jokes just as much as the next person. I could listen to them all day (and I do), but I really do miss the days when jokes didn’t have to be perverse or controversial to be funny. Somewhere around the age of 12 or 13, it seems like everyone’s funny bone becomes a funny boner. Humor and perversion become inseparable.

What happened to finding humor in a play on words that didn’t hinge on prepositions like “up” or “in?” When did we start having to look over both shoulders before telling a joke? When did NSFW even become an acronym?

Well, I, for one, still love the clean classics. A good knock knock joke or a clever and innocent play on words will tickle my fancy every time. So, in honor of the oldies but goodies, in honor of a time and age when we wouldn’t have understood a single Michael Scott joke, here are a few of my favorites:

Joke # 1

Q: “What did the mommy buffalo say to her child as he walked away?”

A: “Bye, son.”

BWAAAHAAAHAAAHAAA!!! Get it!? Bye, son. . . . Like bison – as in plural for buffalo?. . . . . . Man, this joke is genius. . . . . Now, catch your breath, I’ve got more.

Joke #2

Q: “Did you hear what happened to the peanut in Central Park?”

A: “He was a salted!”

Brilliant! Come on, someone call Mariska Hargitay, this peanut was A SALTED!!!!! Hahahahahaha! This is purified awesome.

Ok, Ok, there’s more…

Joke #3

One day a piece of string was going for a walk to blow off some steam. He ended up walking into a bar to get a beer. Immediately the bartender said: “Hey, aren’t you a piece of string?!”

String said: “Why, yes I am.”

The bartender replied, “We don’t serve string here, GET OUTTA MY BAR!”

Now String was pretty upset, but as he continued on his walk he ran into a friend. She said, “String, what’s wrong? You look so sad.”

String said, “Oh, I’m just having a bad day, and I got kicked out of this bar….”

She knew just the thing to make him feel better, so she frayed his ends. And sure enough, he felt like a whole new piece of string. Unfortunately though, the feeling didn’t last long, and soon he began to sulk again.

A little while later, he ran into another friend. She said, “String, what’s wrong? You look so sad.” He told her the whole story. She knew just the thing to make him feel better, so she tied him in a knot.

And it worked. String felt so great, he had the confidence to go back to that bar and demand his beer.

He walked in and said, “Bartender, gimme a beer!”

The bartender looked at him for second and said, “Hey, aren’t you that piece of string who came in here earlier?”

And then the string said, “No, I’m a frayed knot!”

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..Um

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…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..ah-hem

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

Ok, Ok, I’m back. I’m Sorry. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even type (wiping tears from my eyes). That might be my favorite. joke. EVER. . . . . I’m a frayed knot. . . Who did that crazy string think he was fooling?

Ok, moving on. . .

Joke #4

Q: “Why did the tomato blush?”

A: “Because he saw the salad dressing”

Pure. Classic. Genius.

And finally. . . .

Joke #5

Now this one is for the super big nerds out there. And the fact that I even understand this joke is proof that working at Schipul has turned me into a bona fide GEEK. Special thanks to our programmers for this, as a couple of them recently tweeted this joke and had me in stitches.

“A SQL query walks into a bar. He approaches two tables and says: Mind if I join you?”


HilARious!!!! Y’all, jokes like this are why knee slapping EXISTS.

In conclusion. . .

I hope you enjoyed my sweet, silly and clean jokes. If you didn’t, I’m sorry. But don’t misunderstand my apology. I’m not sorry because I told them to you. I’m sorry because that little piece of your soul – the place where joy and simple things live – is empty. That must suck.

The End.

BCS Controversy Catchup in College Football

Bowl Championship Series
Bowl Championship Series

Our typical fun Friday posts take on subjects not often mentioned here on the Schipul Blog, and I am proud to introduce College Football into the mix.

December has always been Bowl season in college football. More recently, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has brought both excitement and controversy into the college football landscape. Here’s some brief information to catch you up to speed on college football bowl games:

  1. The 1902 Rose Bowl between Michigan and Stanford was the 1st Bowl game
  2. The 2009-2010 season saw 34 different Bowl games, matching 68 of the 120 Division 1 teams
  3. The Bowl Championship series began in 1998 with the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta bowls
  4. The BCS bowls match the #1 and #2 teams together, along with other conference champions
  5. Recently (2006), the BCS has added a 5th game, the Championship game, to allow more teams into BCS games
  6. The BCS process has been under much scrutiny every year

That final point is where I’d like to focus in on. You might assume that if the BCS contains 5 games, that the Top 10 teams at the end of the season would participate in the BCS games. This has in fact never been the case. The BCS teams are made up of the #1 and #2 teams in the country, along with the conference champions from the:

  • Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
  • Big XII Conference
  • Big East Conference
  • Big Ten Conference
  • Pac 10 Conference
  • Southeastern Conference (SEC)

The additional spots are made up of other top teams in the country, chosen at the selection process. Top teams in the country that are not in one of these big six conferences typically have a much harder time making it into the BCS games (except Notre Dame, who has a special guarantee agreement if they finish in the Top 8 of the BCS rankings).

The BCS rankings are made up of 2 polls and an average 6 computer rankings. Currently the 2 polls are the  USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll and Harris Poll (no link, because it’s a mystery why this poll is even used).  The AP Poll requested to be removed from the BCS in 2004 amidst controversy of rankings in the 2003 season. This was just the beginning of controversy in the BCS. Below, I recap some of the controversy in the short history of the BCS.

1998 – #3 Kansas State was left out in the cold because of a loss to Texas A&M in the Big XII Conference championship (a great overtime win). Not all conferences play championship games, and if Kansas State did not have to play in this game, they would have been undefeated and would have very likely would have played Tennessee for the National Championship.

1999 – With only two undefeated teams, the BCS correctly chose Florida State to play Virginia Tech. Not too tricky.

2000 – Oklahoma was the only undefeated team, and Florida State was chosen as the best team with one loss, despite it’s loss coming to Miami, another one-beaten team who’s loss came to Washington, the third one-beaten. Florida State’s Strength of Schedule (combined record of opponents + some math) boosted them in the BCS rankings. Strength of Schedule (SOS) continues to be a key element in the computer portion of the BCS rankings.

2001 – While there wasn’t any controversy in the #1 and #2 selections, a 3-loss LSU team (from the SEC) defeated a 1-loss Illinois team from the Big Ten. This begins what will become the dominance of SEC teams in BCS games.

2002 – Again, a clear Championship game between undefeated Miami and Ohio State (a controversial double-overtime game). This year, Florida State was the ACC champion, despite having 4 losses. This begins the ACC’s separation from the other conferences as true college football powers.

2003 – Despite being #1 in both of the human polls (Coaches poll and AP poll), USC (of the Pac 10) was #3 in the BCS rankings and was left out of the National Championship game. The Coaches poll was contractually obligated to award LSU as the national champ after their victory over OU. The AP poll gave their championship to USC, who had a great victory over Michigan in the Rose bowl. This was part of the seed that prompted the AP poll to opt out of being used by the BCS.

2004 – Four teams finished the regular season undefeated. USC and OU played for the championship, while Auburn (from the SEC) was left out. The fourth team, Utah, is in the Mountain West conference, which is not one of the big six used by the BCS. This fact, combined with their SOS, prevented them from being selected in the top 2. This denial to non-major conference teams continues today. Utah won their game easily against the 3-loss Big East champ Pitt. The Big East also began to slide just like the ACC in 2002.

2005 – Texas defeated USC in a fantastic game of the only two undefeated teams. While no controversy, the selection of two of two undefeated teams doesn’t take a fancy formula. Florida State, with 4 losses, becomes the lowest ranked team (#22) to play in a BCS game, while 1-loss Oregon (#5) did not get a BCS bowl bid.

2006 – While there were two undefeated teams, only one of them (Ohio State) played in the championship game. Boise State of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), who went on to win their bowl game and finish undefeated, was ranked 8th behind two teams each with two losses (LSU and USC). This continued the trend since 2004 of not showing much respect to non-major conference teams that go undefeated.

2007 – The next to last week of BCS rankings had Missouri and West Virginia in the #1 and #2 spots, two surprises for the season, though both teams lost their final games to then drop out of the top spots. A 2-loss LSU team defeated 1-loss Ohio State, while undefeated Hawaii was only ever ranked as high as #10. It should be noted that Hawaii was crushed by Georgia in their bowl game.

2008 – An undefeated Boise State team and an undefeated Utah team both finished undefeated and in the Top 10 of the BCS, though neither team played for a national championship. Boise did not even play in a BCS game, while again a 4-loss ACC team was given an automatic bid.

2009 – Again, an undefeated Boise State and an undefeated TCU (#6 and #4), where not allowed in the championship game. This was probably a good decision, since there were other undefeated teams. Sadly, Boise and TCU were forced to play each other, which prevented them from showing the nation how we truly stack up against one another.

2010 – Will Boise State and TCU still be left on the outside looking in? Only time will tell.

Why is this such a big deal? At the heart of the BCS is money, and lots of it. Nicholas Bakalar of the NY Times took on this issue in 2009, highlighting the drastic difference in BCS game payouts compared to other bowl games. ESPN recently signed a $500 million 4-year deal to own the rights to the 5 BCS games. Michael Smith of the Sports Business Journal covers in detail the split of the money to the football conferences from the BCS pool of fund.

Now, some of you may argue that the BCS does work, since it has helped to make some tough decisions over the past 12 years. I’ll leave you to make your case in the comments below.

Taste of Korean – Korean Festival at Discovery Green

One day from Discovery Green‘s web site, I found there was a Korean Festival event to be held on Oct.23 at Discovery Green in downtown Houston. Since I had never been to a Korean event, we decided to go. It turned out it was a wonderful event. lots of fun – traditional Korean drums, dance, food, kong fu…

Here are some highlights:

Korean drums play an important part in the traditional Korean performing art. Love those drums.

The traditional dance was played beautifully.

Farmers dance – originally performed as part of farm work.

Kong fu

Hand crafts and food

Overall, the performance was great. Food was decent with reasonable price. We also have learned a lot of Korean culture from there. And the event was free!

Interested in the events at Discovery Green? You should visit their web site at www.discoverygreen.com. They serve a wide variety of events year around.

Paintball is a sport, WHAT?

Yes, paintball is a sport.  It’s more commonly thought of as a hobby or just a recreational game. And that’s how it all starts…

There’s not a day that goes by that the word paintball is not heard in my house.  My 13 year old son is consumed with it. He eats, sleeps, and breathes paintball.  It’s because of him that I have learned these lessons to pass on to you!

Types of paintball games:

  1. Woodsball – the original form of paintball played in the woods.  Fields consist of trees, bushes, and other natural resources.  Sometimes you’ll find other things like old cars and buildings too.  But it’s all played in the woods.
  2. Speedball – the most common form of paintball that uses bunkers of equal size and  distribution  on the field.  Also called recball.
  3. Scenarios – paintball games in which players participate in a scenario or story, often a re-enactment.

What you need to play paintball:

  1. A paintball marker (gun)
  2. Ammunition (paint balls)
  3. Mask or goggles
  4. Protective clothing (if you’re a noob)

Common paintball terms:

  1. Staging Area– the area where the players store their gear and rest between games.  It’s also where they hang out, talk smack and challenge each other.
  2. Barrel socks – a “sock” type device that fits around the barrel of the gun and captures a paintball in the case of accidental firing.  Trust me, when hanging out in the staging area, you are grateful for barrel socks!
  3. Masks on – this means you better get that mask on and now! Masks are required on the field even if you’re not playing.
  4. Hit – when the paintball leaves a solid mark on your clothing or equipment.  Splatters do not count, it must be a solid mark.
  5. Wiping – players sometimes “wipe” the paint to make it look like they didn’t get hit.  We call these players CHEATERS!
  6. Ramping – This one still confuses me. I think of it as automatically changing the mode of fire from semi-automatic to fully automatic.  The gun goes pop, pop, pop, then badadadadadada, sort of like a machine gun mode.  And while it’s legal in some leagues, I think of it as another form of cheating!
  7. Bonus Balling – this occurs when a player continually shoots his opponent knowing that they already have a hit.  Again, CHEATER!
  8. Go, Go, Go!!! – the start of a game.  You’d better be ready or you’re hit!

Probably the least known fact about paintball is that there are teams and tournaments played all around the world.  In the US, we have many official paintball leagues.  The two main ones are  the National Professional Paintball League (NPPL), and Paintball Sports Promotions (PSP).  At the college level, there’s the NCPA College Paintball Association which includes teams from the  University of Florida, Purdue University,  University of Connecticut and about 15 other teams.  The NCPA has begun reaching out to high schools and organizing leagues (which Austin is totally looking forward too!).  At a local level, we have the Houston Rookie League (HRL) which has 3 man tournaments specifically for beginners.

As a parent, I often wonder what I have to look forward to with Austin’s paintball obsession.  Well, the PSP World Cup games are held close to Orlando, FL so that’s pretty cool.  The NPPL World Championship games are held in Las Vegas, even better!  And with high school right around the corner followed by college, who knows, maybe there’s a future in paintball for Austin…

Austin playing woodsball scenario game

Shameless plugs: Thanks to Tanks Paintball for helping Austin with the sport and Pro Edge Paintball for assisting Austin with his gear.  And to both, for taking my money!

Friday Fun Post: (kind of) Manly Tips When Getting Hitched

It’s wedding season in my world right now, both for friends of mine and for myself. For the past 7 months my fiance, Brooke, and I have been busy planing our wedding and attending a few others. Next week we will be going to wedding 7 and two weeks from now will be the 8th and final on our list for the year.

Today is actually 6 months to the day from my own wedding so I figured I’d share a few things from a guy’s point of view that have helped me thus far for anyone else in the same boat. First tip, don’t call the day six months from your wedding your “negative six month anniversary”. I just learned that last night.

Second, pick a couple things you are passionate about to be more involved with then let your bride-to-be have final say on everything else about their wedding. I call it “their wedding” because it is. You get to be involved, be excited about that.

That doesn’t mean you cannot care, answer questions and have an opinion. If she’s asking she wants to know. Give your input then focus on what you can do about those couple things above.

Mine were/are…

Groom and groomsmen wedding attire:
I don’t really want to put what I get married in back in a bag and return it to Men’s Wearhouse so I’ll be using this opportunity to rationalize buying a killer Don Draper-esque suit. If suits are your thing, J Crew has some pretty rad options. Otherwise department stores give you a chance to see a wide variety.

No matter your preference on a suit or tux you will want to make sure it fits. And actually fits, not like the guy at Al’s Formal Wear says it fits to sell it to you. GQ has a couple quick slides online about buying a good suit and Esquire offers an easy 7 point diagram covering the basics.

The folks at Saint Arnold Brewery were kind enough to let us use their nifty building for engagement pics.

Photographer:
I like photography and think when it comes to weddings a lot of it is lame. I’ve been in weddings where the photographer needed other people to suggest photos and help arrange shots. I didn’t want to worry about this so finding a good photographer was important. One thing I found very helpful was meeting with them to see their style and how they interact as a person, not just what they post online. In the end we got a killer photog and the pictures are going to rule.

*Bonus tip for the ladies – if you follow her or friend her you can win free wedding stuff.

Music:
You want the music to get grandma on the dance floor but not be cheesy at the same time. Or I do anyways. Everyone’s style is their own so no help there but what has been useful is keeping a running list as I hear songs or think of them. You probably don’t need to write down “Shout!” but the song you and your better half scream all the words to in the car may slip your mind when it comes time to picking tracks.

And while I’m not positive yet, I think the same theory covered in this post will apply to another big wedding element… registering. We are starting this process tonight so we’ll see how it goes but my plan is to register for highball glasses and an iPad then let Brooke pick everything else. Everything minus a butter dish because those are useless.

Good luck gentlemen. And ladies, thanks.

Derek Key | @derekskey

Thumbnail photo for post courtesy of jessekruger on flickr.
Post photo courtesy of Kelly Hornberger Photography.

SFL: The Schipul Fantasy Football League Update

If you know anyone that works here at Schipul, you’ll know we’re a pretty competitive group. Not a whole lot of us are want to lose, and I’m sure there is a sub-set of us who no one wants to see lose for fear of flying objects or obscure injury.

So of course, we started a fantasy football league.

Rookie Commissioner Michael Coppens put together the crew, a batch of 10 Schipul misfits and a couple of the company’s close friends. Draft day was held after-hours in our conference room where dinner and libations were consumed and the crap talk immediately started flying.

We live to draft: The War Room
We live to draft: The War Room

Aside: For those of you who aren’t familiar with fantasy football, it goes like this: A certain number of teams (usually 10 or 12) divvy out NFL players by position (e.g. you get quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, a kicker, and a defense) and, depending on their individual performances each week, they garner a certain number of points. The sum of these points is put up against the sum of your opponent’s points that week. Team with the most points wins. Repeat weekly.

After three weeks, I’d like to proudly say I’m in dead last place. This is obviously because I’m cursed with too much knowledge. Mr. Coppens himself is in first place which, as I’m sure we’ll all agree, is a little suspicious considering he’s the Commissioner. And although it’s still early, it’s gotta be hard for people like Project Manager Derek who (see standings below) has scored the third highest point total of any team, but has only won one game. Such is the life of a fantasy football owner.

What’s the point?

In all seriousness, Schipul values its culture above almost everything else (customer service is easily number one). And even though not everyone in the league has two televisions turned to one game and the other to NFL’s Red Zone while streaming a third game from ESPN3.com with four separate StatTracker windows open to keep up with fantasy stats like some people, it’s a great opportunity for our employees to hang out with each other and chat it up around the water cooler.

Even though dead last place takes a beating on Monday morning in the smack talk, I can’t wait for that shiny, shimmering moment when one of my players explodes, I smash my opponent, and I can get my own comebacks in.

No wins after the first three weeks? Only sounds like it’s going to be more of feat when I come back and win.

The Shake Down

East Division

Double Rainbow Warriors (Michael Coppens)
Not a Coward (Courtney Pemberton)
Dirty Branch Danger Fields (Rodney Sabrsula)
Team Key (Derek Key)
The Helper Monkeys (April Kyle)
One two Farve Five (Glen Zangirolami)
3-0-0
3-0-0
2-1-0
1-2-0
0-3-0
0-3-0

West Division

H-Town Headwreckas (Albert Hughes)
The Expandables (Dan M)
Orange Goo Goo (John-Michael Oswalt)
Ocho Cinco Ranch (Aaron Long)
Team Rice (Regina Rice)
Houston Get Money Crew (David Stagg)
2-0-1
2-1-0
2-1-0
1-1-1
1-2-0
0-3-0

Friday Fun Post: In Ur Interwebz

When I started blogging several years back, it was considered a cardinal sin to devote an entire post to nothing but pictures of your cats. It was a standard bored blogger fallback. Nothing interesting to say, but still want to put up a post so your readers will check in? HEY GUYS, LOOK AT THIS CUTE THING MY CAT DID! Perhaps understandably, to many people those posts signaled a blogger who had just lost all street cred. [Blogger “street” cred being so very important of course.]

Funny how times have changed. Now it’s not only acceptable to post pictures of your cats, if you slap a silly saying on top of it you have the potential of becoming an internet sensation overnight. If you’ve ever visited the Schipul office, you know that we have a fondness for these four-legged furry creatures. Some of us have cats that are so talented they tweet! LOLCat images find themselves in just about every office-wide email thread, and some of us [not saying who] might have a small collection of the images prepared for any occasion that might arise.

We’re also big fans of (client) IKEA. From delicious lunches to roaming the aisles looking for that new great thing we just have. to. have. So naturally, when we got wind yesterday of a marketing experiment from IKEA UK that involved dropping 100 cats in a store overnight, just to see what would happen, we fell in love. It’s a very creative campaign and as you’ll see, resulted in some lovely images. We can’t wait to see what the final product looks like.

UPDATED: Here’s the final product! Thanks @McTello for the link!

Another big event in Schipul-land this week was the introduction of Google’s new instant search. Now that we’ve all gotten a chance to play with it, it’s interesting to look at how this new move from Google will change the way we search, and as a result, the way we build websites.

But you didn’t want to hear about any of that stuff right now. This is FRIDAY FUN time! So instead, check out the fun application of the instant search from Urlesque.

Now that we’ve killed your afternoon workplace productivity… Have a great weekend everyone!

Friday Fun Post: Brewmasters International Beer Festival

It’s the day before Labor Day Weekend and you still don’t have plans? Why not go down to Galveston, Texas for the Brewmasters International Beer Festival? Heck, you could even go for the whole weekend if you want.

“The Lone Star State’s Premiere Beer event Is finally here!”

Labor Day Weekend  |  September 3-6, 2010

Beer lovers rejoice at this four-day extravaganza with an unimaginable variety of hundreds of beers, musical entertainment, scrumptious culinary selections, educational seminars from Beer 101, all the way to how to brew your own. There will also be BrewLicious featuring fine food & beer pairings, and many more events for the beer lovers delight.

Let your taste buds get carried away with specialty beers from around the world. Utilizing the beautiful bayside oasis of the Moody Garden grounds & conference center, beer enthusiasts gather to grab a mug, take a chug, and enjoy the ultimate beer sampling experience.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/defekto

What a perfect excuse to go to the Beach with fellow Beer Lovers to  eat Brats & Burgers while have a Brew!

Check out some of the other awesome things that will be happening at the event this weekend:

For other news about Beer in Texas, check out  Ronnie Crocker  Beer, Tx Blog over on the Chron.com.

You can also read about some of the Schipulite’s favorite Beers on an oldie but goodie blog post “Thirty Days of Thanks – Beer” by David Stagg.

Don’t Drink and Drive.

Friday Fun Posts: No Barriers Bash

Imagine a place where you never hear “you can’t” – a place totally focused on learning what you CAN do…

Imagine you live life with a challenging illness or special needs… you get told “you can’t” a lot.

Imagine a place where they don’t say you can’t do that… only… let’s find a way so you CAN do that.

From giant swings to giant turtles… to canoes… to tree houses… to finding gold… there is a place that is solely focused on helping people learn what they CAN do… for people of all ages and abilities.   Camp For All is a  unique, state of the art facility that  is totally barrier free, not just accessible.

Camp For All is a unique camping and retreat facility that works in collaboration with other non-profits to provide life changing programs for children and adults with challenging illnesses and special needs.   Campers of all ages and abilities gain self-confidence and independence while having fun, learning new skills and  bonding with others who share their challenges in a safe and understanding environment.

Campers learn what they can do at Camp For All, not what they can’t do.  For the first time, they are surrounded by others with the same challenges and the feeling of loneliness goes away.  Surrounded by understanding and acceptance and immersed in the Camp For All activities and positive environment, they have an opportunity to focus on the joy of life.  That feeling of independence and confidence goes home with them.  And regardless of how much longer they have to live, they are not just survivors, they have become strong survivors.

This unique barrier-free organization has partnered up with one of our favorite Houston based suppliers of libations, St. Arnold’s Brewery, to throw a party! A party to raise funds to help children and adults with cancer, HIV, epilepsy, spina bifida, sickle cell, burns and so much more have a chance to DISCOVER LIFE!!

Camp For All - No Barriers Bash
Camp For All - No Barriers Bash

The No Barriers Bash is coming up on:

  • Saturday, September 18, 2010
  • At Saint Arnold Brewing Company
  • From 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Enjoy delicious bbq and unlimited drinks as you mix, mingle and have fun. Emory Quinn will take the stage for a concert you will not want to miss!!
Join us for a super fun way to support a super organization!