Behold!  The original utterance of “That’s what she said,” from a 1992 “Wayne’s World” skit on Saturday Night Live, predating The Family Guy by seven years, and The Office by thirteen years.

That is all.

If you’re like me you knew there was a writers’ strike but didn’t really understand what it was about.  It finally made sense to me after reading about it on Jenna Fischer’s blog and watching the YouTube video she links to, which shows Greg Daniels, Ryan, Kelly, Mose, and Toby on the picket line (they are all writers on the show).

The gist of it is that contracts were written in a time before the Internet and before TV shows were sold on DVD.  So when someone watches a show on NBC.com, for example, the network considers that promotional material and gets to keep nearly all the ad revenue (whereas the writers/actors get paid whenever a show is rerun on TV).  Similarly, the networks keep nearly all the proceeds of DVD sales.  Ten years from now, digital downloads and DVDs could very likely be the main ways people watch television shows, and it’s not exactly fair that the networks get to keep all that cash for themselves.

And if that’s wrong, then I guess I still don’t understand it after all.

Last Monday marked two years since Stephanie and I got hitched, an event which was well-documented on this site and others.  Those of you who are fans of The Office are no doubt familiar with the Dwight Schrute bobble head.  Well in honor of our second anniversary, my wife had a bobble-head Kip constructed.  You will see the results below, I think it’s pretty cool, although the bobble-head doesn’t have the I-sit-behind-a-computer-all-day physique of yours truly.  But I don’t think I’d want a realistic representation of my waistline sitting on my desk all day anyway.  Other than the eye color, I think it’s pretty spot-on, at least insofar as that is possible on a bobble head.

It’s me.  I’m the bobble-head. Yes!

Today at work, I did absolutely nothing productive.  Now some of you might think, “Yeah, right.  It just feels like you did nothing productive.”  But, truly, I did absolutely nothing at work today.  Everything I touched turned into waste that I threw out at the end of the day.  So to pass the time of this interminably long day, I came up with an idea for the post that I am now making.  (And yes, I do realize that a similar question was posed on “The Office” in Season 2.)

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life, and were allowed to take five movies with you, what would those movies be?  Ground rules being that any mode of movie is allowed be it VHS, DVD, reel-to-reel, etc, and compilations or multi-disc movies count as a single movie.

My personal TOP 5 (“High Fidelity” geeks are enjoying this) are as follows:

5:  Sahara
Matthew McConaughey...need I really say more?  However, I will humor you.  This movie is excellent in my opinion.  The relationship between McConaughey and Zahn (Al in the movie) is hilarious, and neither of them is bad to look at for two hours over and over again.

4:  Anne of Green Gables Box Set
Ok so there really isn’t a box set, but it is a movie divided into three parts (the last one being absolutely fictitious and not from the books), and I want all of them.  It’s my list, so I make the rules.  It is a wonderful story, and has sentimental value between Kip and myself.

3:  Legally Blonde
We all know that deep down inside, we all wish we were blonde.  The movie is so funny, and cute, and corny, and great that it has to be on everyone’s’ list.

2:  Pride and Prejudice  (The A&E version only, any other version is a sheer abomination.)
This movie is by far one of my favorites.  I love the book, and this is the most accurate adaptation I have ever seen.  The acting is phenomenal, the clothes are classic and accurate, and the actors themselves really fit the parts (can you say Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy).  The music is excellent as well.

And at the top of my list...

1:  Kip and Stephanie’s Honeymoon Video from Hawaii
If I’m going to be stranded on an island for the rest of my life without my husband there in person, I at least want to be able to see the two of us together while we were both very happy, in a beautiful location.  I would miss him too terribly to not have some part of him there with me.  I’m sure all of you are thinking that is the dumbest, corniest pick yet, but I don’t care.  I love Kip!!

Now it is your turn.  Post your lists if you dare allow the rest of the world (or at least our readers) know exactly what kind of person you really are.

For today’s installment I figured I’d give you guys an idea of where I work.  And if you’re someone from work, don’t worry—I have blurred out anything that might possibly be confidential.

Above you can see a pretty wide shot of my desk.

• Airplane:  This is a promotional poster that they gave us, one of a set of four, showing something that a customer has actually designed using our software.

• Rubik’s Tetrahedron:  I think this is actually a knock-off, not made by Rubik’s.  I picked it up at Stephanie’s family’s yard sale for a quarter.  It is pretty simple to solve, I can do it in like five minutes and I never had to look up any “strategy” to figure it out.

• Decoy pen:  I am very protective of my pens.  It seems that whatever pen is located on the edge of my desk is always the one that is borrowed “for just a second” and never returned.  So I keep a cheap pen there as a decoy.  Even though both types of pen are available in the supply room... they might stop stocking the good ones right when I need one.

• Post-it notes:  Post-it notes with Unix commands I use frequently enough that I need to keep them handy, but infrequently enough that I haven’t memorized them.

• vi cheat sheets:  The vi cheat sheets that I have mentioned before.

• Chair:  My chair.  Not much to it.

• Three boxen:  Three out of four computers I manage.  The fourth is actually in the corner, under the desk.  You can see it behind the chair but I didn’t label it.  One is my main workstation, two are only used to run test scripts overnight, and one is used for collection and overnight builds of our team’s code.

Here you have the other side of my cube.

• Trash can:  I think that is self-explanatory.

• Good pens:  This is where I keep the non-decoy pens.

• Chess board:  The chessboard I mentioned in my second blog post.

• Simpsons quotes:  These quotes from a Simpsons calendar were once on my dorm room door.  Some of them are very politically incorrect, but no one has said anything in two years.

• White board:  I have blurred out the only information that could get me into trouble for putting on the web, the rest is just notes from two different conversations.  Oh, it is sitting sideways because I have nothing to hang it from the wall with.

Last but not least, we have a closer view of what I am looking at for eight hours a day.

• Watch:  I cannot use a keyboard with my watch on, so as soon as I get to work it comes off.

• Wedding photo:  A picture from our wedding that is not on this site because I have never gotten around to scanning the pictures that we got from the photographer.  It is Stephanie next to our getaway car.  The other picture (obscured by an apple juice bottle) is one that Meredith took on the day we got engaged.

• Double-pen:  A double-headed pen that makes me uneasy.  Highlighter end is neon-greenish-yellow, pen end is black.

• Binary clock:  The binary clock that my mother-in-law gave me at a wedding shower.  Ten points to the first person who can correctly tell me what time it reads.
  Hint:  it is in BCD mode, and the MSB is the top-most light in each column.
  Update:  Jonah gets the ten points for correctly identifying the time as 08:21:50.

• Black keyboard:  I spray painted my keyboard black four years ago (an idea I have to admit I copied from Garrison… imitation is the sincerest form of flattery though, right?).  I decided I’d bring it in to work.  If you work for a software company and need to see the labels on the keys, I don’t want you anywhere near my computer.

• Rear-view mirror:  I hate it when people sneak up behind me.  There was an episode of Seinfeld about this.  I got this two dollar mirror, which I think is more effective than giving all my sidling coworkers boxes of Tic-Tacs.

• telnet session:  I spend a lot of time in telnet.  I think my orange on black color scheme is easy on the eyes, and delightfully old school.

• “Curly”:  You can’t see him very well (in fact, you can see him better in the first picture), but there is this little alien-like figurine with a magnet on his head that holds paperclips (like this, only in red).  I got this in Fort Lauderdale when we were visiting Stephanie’s sister last spring.

• Apple juice:  Coke products (including Minute Maid juices) are provided for us for free.  I always drink a bottle of apple juice in the morning.  Each bottle contains 250% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C!

• Calendar:  A calendar layout I came up with.  There are no breaks between the months except an extra-bold line, and no weekends, but there is the week number.  On the left side of my monitor I also have a one-inch-wide version of the calendar that is invaluable.

Well that’s my crib!  Goodbye, MTV!

It’s a “Jump To Conclusions” mat.

If you’re a fan of The Office, you will recognize how incredibly funny this article is (read to at least the fourth paragraph...).

And if you’re not a fan, you should be.  Season 2 starts September 20.  9:30pm on Tuesdays on NBC.  Check it out.  It’s stupid awesome.