Yeah, I love pets, as a general principle ... just not so much in my house.  It's an OCD thing.  Dogs are fun to play with, but they don't fit well into my personal space.  I'd rather play with other people's dogs.

It's true that I've seen entertaining improv.  I got dragged out to a late-night show this past New Years Eve.  It was funny, just not intellectually engaging like I expect from standup.

I definitely go in for political humor, myself.  For my favorites, I'd have to list ... hmm.  George Carlin (duh), Robin Williams, Chris Rock (good social commentary), Ron White (but not the rest of the Blue Collar Comedy guys (although Foxworthy isn't complete crap)), Dennis Miller, Jeff Dunham ...

Hmm, those are the big ones coming to mind right now.

Wow, sorry about the long delay there.  The end of the week was a little squirrelly.  It's easy to lose track of what I've responded to already, when it's a stream of comments.  With private messages, at least you've got the little replied indicator to keep it straight.

So, what sort of work with animals do you mean?  Have you worked in a vet office or something?  One of my sisters is a vet tech.

And yeah, there's also a difference between not being prepared ... and going up on stage and thinking you're going to spin it as you go.  I've seen a couple do the latter.  It's never been pretty, that I've seen.

Even improv comedy isn't really random and completely made up on the spot.  They always have an idea of where they're going to steer it.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of improv comedy, anyway.  I prefer more thought out, intelligent comedy.  Improv generally deteriorates to bathroom humor and random, silly things.

That's pretty much what I'm planning on, with YouTube.  I'm still working on getting my material and delivery clean enough to have someone record it, and then I'll post bits of it.

Heh, I've seen people do exactly what your friends are suggesting you do.  It's generally not a pretty thing to see.  "Well, I'm pretty funny, and I've had some funny things happen in my life, so I'll just go up on stage and talk about my life."  *shudder*  No, no, no, no, no, no.  You have to have your thoughts all in order, because as soon as you're standing in front of dozens of people, you'll start forgetting which parts you've already mentioned.  You need to have your punchlines planned out and phrased properly.  There's a hell of a lot of writing, memorizing, and other prep work which goes into even a 5 minute standup segment.

Ohhhhhh.  I see now.  I thought you had meant that you work in an Apple Store ... in the back room or something, dealing with the technical problems people have.  Whole bunch of stuff in the back.  Gotcha, I think.

Do the latest Mac OSes even have a Remote Desktop feature?  I can't imagine they haven't implemented it for at least some versions, since XP Pro has had it for 7 or 8 years now.  But, I guess they wouldn't implement that in the retail versions, huh?

Hmm, what sort of physical work is there nowadays?  The only thing really coming to mind is construction.  If you can get something in I.T. that's more mobile, it's fun.

I'm attached to the Work-from-Home support section, myself.  I occasionally get tied down to the helpdesk, taking care of tickets, but I'm usually off driving all the hell around North Carolina, either installing new Work-from-Home users or swapping out PCs of existing ones.  With about 500 or 600 people working from home, you'd be amazed how many machines need to be swapped out, in any given week.  Some of those users live 2 hours away from the office, so one swap-out (about 30 or 45 minutes of work) can take up half of my day.  I haven't even bothered taking a lunch for the past two weeks.  I just munch on peanuts or protein bars, while on the road, and then I have a large travel mug full of water.