Last night, we were sitting inside, listening to the rain, when there was a loud pop, followed by no power. Vanya had been running around wild, and every light in the house had been on, so the sudden dark and quiet was disconcerting.

If you go into Hemingway's Tobacco on Jefferson Highway on any given weekday afternoon, there are a group of old out of shape dudes, shooting the shit and smoking cigars. Despite the fact that they smell bad and have yellow teeth, I'm more than just a little envious of them. Sitting over source code while shooting the shit and drinking coffee in one's necktie just isn't the same.

A buddy of mine -- coincidentally one named Craig -- forwarded me a link to this Craigslist post.

I'm a little bit disappointed in how little football I watched last night. After months of anticipation, we get to the first night of the season. By the time I got everyone fed, calmed down, to bed, and went to the couch to turn on the TV, I was in time to see NC State's 4th and long attempt fail with 2 minutes in the fourth quarter. I then got to watch South Carolina run out the clock.

Perhaps you received my tweet of August 14 and were wondering what's the story behind the story. It read, "My wife is trying to get me the first appointment in front of an Obama death panel right now."

On the Wednesday that we were in Maine, our gracious hosts decided that they had had just about enough of little kids and drunk adults, so they headed back to urban Massachusetts for a day of office work rather than continue the adventure with the Linkins and theskinnyonbenny family.

On Sunday, we returned home from a 10-day vacation in New England. We spent a day on each end in Boston, but the majority of the time in Maine. We stayed in a cabin in the middle of lakes, mountains, and a river, where the humidity was low, and the air smelled of pine.

I remember that in 9th grade, a history teacher sought to describe the immensity of China's population by telling us that you could line up all of the people in China, start marching them into the ocean, and the line would go on forever.

All of these are honest-to-god comments that came to my mind when reading people's Facebook updates, and which I didn't think appropriate to leave as replies.

A month or so ago, we were driving through the LSU campus, and there were two university club teams playing that fake sport from Harry Potter with the broomsticks. I only saw what I could glimpse as I passed from a moving car, but they definitely had a few spectators and two teams running around on their sticks.

Here's your new drinking game, good this week only: take a drink every time you hear "New Haven Firefighters."

I'm finally to the point in the Cox customer service process where instead of calling a machine, getting frustrated, and then eventually getting a range of hours during which the guy might show up, the guy calls me directly and asks me for a firm time that he can show up at my house at my convenience. Don't be jealous. You have to suffer through immensely bad service, then take time out of your day to go down and bitch before you can get to this point.