Hamster of Doom, The

The Hunt for Green October

2011-09-10T18:49:00.001-04:00

So, like I was saying, I am unemployed. I did not go all-out with the job search right away. I was getting enough aggravation from people connected to my ex-employer, as well as a number of other distractions, and did my best to balance that with a sincere effort to enjoy the summer.

But that doesn't mean I didn't expend any effort in the job hunt. I didn't knock myself out over it, but I still managed to come up with at least three realistic prospects almost every week. (The state only requires three "job search activities," not actual applications, each week. I figure three applications are more likely to yield results.) There was only one week when I couldn't come up with three prospects: it was the week of the debt ceiling dance-off, when nobody was listing anything new, and some old listings even got yanked.

Three realistic prospects per week is way better than what I was finding in 2009. Back then, I had to apply to some iffy things in order to make my thrice-weekly goal, and the job I ended up with had been one of those half-assed 4:30 pm Friday desperation applications. (My entire cover letter was as follows: "Please let me know if you think I'm a good candidate for this position. I am interested in aviation.") I don't ever want that to happen again!

And I was spending a lot of time each week to dig up those three leads. This time around, often these leads come from incoming calls.

Of course, I'd be happier if any of them ever panned out - if I could even get in for an interview. But at least people are calling me. And I'm not having to expend much effort to get my three per week. Not like last time.

This means that theoretically, if I were to spend more time looking, I might actually get something. I plan to spend more time looking after this weekend.

Aside from all of that, I still have the same job-hunting complaints I had in 2009: crap from afar (overseas "recruiters," i.e. telemarketers, calling with low-paying, short-term, out-of-state contracts for which I am not remotely qualified); inquiries from insurance companies that are looking for "sales trainees" who work straight commission and have to pay for their own training before ever earning a nickel.

Job sites are still full of ads that sound as though they are written with a very specific person in mind, with an awe-inspiring list of qualifications, who somehow has only 2 to 5 years' experience to work for $15/hr. Or they want someone with ten years' experience in a technology that didn't exist ten years ago.

I saw one ad from a company that listed "free coffee" among its benefits. Some companies (including my most recent ex-employer) actually have eliminated free coffee, either temporarily or permanently, due to budget problems, but when you're at that point financially, I think it's time to throw in the towel. Anyway, coffee is cheap. If you describe it as a benefit, prospective employees may wonder how petty you are. Is anything else free? Will they have to bring their own toilet paper and paper clips?

Some small creative contract jobs are listed as "contests." Applicants are invited to complete the work (on their own time, for free) and submit it to a website where everyone can see it, and only the winner gets paid.

My biggest gripe is the Taleo resume submission system. If I see a job that looks good and I click the "Apply!" button and it sends me to Taleo, I skip it. That's how bad Taleo is. It makes you upload your resume, and then it attempts to parse it into a standard form, which ends up a garbled mess. Then you have to cut and paste everything, piece by piece, into all their little fields until it is satisfied.

You have to "create a new account" and rebuild the form every time you apply to a different company that uses Taleo. You can't just say "hey Taleo, you remember me from that other company, right? Everything's the same, so go ahead and get the data I already gave you and then tell me if you need anything else." Nope. You start from scratch every time.

I'd probably grit my teeth and endure it for a really good job, but so far I haven't seen a really good job on a Taleo-powered site.

I remember encountering this a lot more often in 2009, even though I was applying to fewer jobs. It would seem that other resume submission sites have either given up on half-assed parsing or at least have the good manners not to require applicants to suffer for their software's deficiencies.

Anyway...
Fall is just around the corner. I can probably make it through the winter on just my unemployment and savings without missing any payments as long as it doesn't get too cold, but I'd rather get something sooner, before the furnace starts guzzling oil. That means that I should try to get something before the end of October. Is that realistic? Can I do it? And can I get something that's actually better than crappy this time? I look forward to finding out.

Oh, hello! I didn't see you there!

2011-09-09T17:58:00.004-04:00

Did I mention that I lost my job at the end of May? Yes, I did mention that... just not here. I am now gainlessly unemployed.

I don't have the time or energy to do much more than scratch the surface of what this has been like, but here are some lowlights:

- The company ceased operations abruptly and completely, leaving a couple of small airports in the lurch when their FBOs were shut down. Everybody (supposedly, but apparently not really) was laid off.

- After the layoff was announced, but before I had finished packing up my desk, I was asked to do a substantial amount of work (two or three weeks' worth) before going home. I said no, and I'm still flabbergasted that he had the nerve to ask. (Or I would have been, if I hadn't already known how clueless this overpaid useless jerk was.)

- I was later allowed to take my laptop from the office in order to do contract work for a couple of the company's ex-clients as well as for whatever new company might buy some of the old company's assets. I was worried that I would be swamped with work, when all I wanted to do was put that horrible place and all of its flaky people behind me.

However, I had serious trouble getting cooperation from any of these people. Several of them wanted me to give an estimate for the work but refused to give any details as to what they wanted. I told them, "Mark up the documents with the changes you want and send them to me, or just answer the questions below. That will let me scope the work and then I can give you a firm quote. Otherwise, my hourly fee is $X and I'll bill you as we go."

One of them said he had no trouble getting a flat quote from someone else. Really? Without giving them any information up front? I bet they're being grossly overcharged. I considered grossly overcharging too, but I know these people too well. They're so disorganized and indecisive that no matter how much I charged them, they'd drag it out for so long that it would average it out to $2/hour and drive me insane the whole time.

So I refused to price the work without additional details. They got all offended and said they were just trying to help me out because they thought I needed the work. LOL. I need money, but not so desperately that I'm going to commit myself to an unlimited run for a fixed price. I'd commit myself to a laughing academy first.

So I ended up with only one client, who gave me a week's worth of work but has been blowing me off for six or seven weeks since. He insists he still wants me to finish the work just as soon as he can get around to figuring out what he wants me to do. But at least he paid me.

- To complicate matters, my old work laptop committed suicide a few weeks ago. (I don't blame it.) Long story short, one of its crucial but elderly internal organs shorted out. Badly. I had to call in an electrician to restore power to half my downstairs afterwards. It was Saturday, and they always charge more on weekends. I could have waited, but I wasn't willing to spend the rest of the weekend with no power in the most important quadrant of my house. Fortunately, I was able to salvage the hard disk; but I already had backups of all my documents. What I really needed was some very expensive software that had been installed on there, but I've discovered that I can't run the software from that disk on a different computer unless I have an additional software license. Sigh. Without that software, I may not be able to finish the work at all.

Incidentally, the electrician was able to give me a price quote on some future work I'd like him to do, but only AFTER I gave him all the details of what I wanted. Funny how that works.

- ANYWAY... the new company that bought the old company contracted someone else (who is probably overcharging them, but that's not my problem) to do that work. Maybe I should be miffed and heartbroken, but I'm relieved. The person I'd be dealing with is the same one who originally wanted me to do all that stuff before I went home on our last day. He asks me the same questions repeatedly even though he already has my previous answers in writing AND I scold him for re-asking. He never ANSWERS any of my or anyone else's questions. He generally doesn't seem to know what's going on.

I could go on and on about all the things I loathed about this guy and how he's a symbol of what's wrong with America and why keeping him on makes the new company look stupid, considering the trail of destruction he's already left in his wake. But I won't do that. I'll just say I'm thrilled that we're mostly not working together any more.

- I am doing a minuscule amount of work for the other VP, but he's not an idiot. He's pretty good to work with. If he'd been in charge of the original project, we'd be done by now and they wouldn't be getting overcharged by those other people. But that's not my problem!

Because misery loves company

2011-05-18T10:23:00.002-04:00

Recently, I had occasion to conduct a Google search for "little shits egged my house" (with quotes).

I was very sad to get only one result. It made me feel very alone. So I'm putting this here to give comfort to others who find themselves in need of company during a very specific type of crisis. :)

It was only one egg, and it was on my living room window rather than on the shingles, so it wasn't too difficult to remove most of it the next day. The rest, I couldn't reach very well, so I hope the last few days of rain have helped to dislodge it. I'll try again later.

As for the miscreant(s), I am only assuming that it was a couple of youngsters trying to impress one another. But I don't really know. I was in another room when it happened, and I thought something had fallen in the living room. By the time I figured out what what had happened, they were long gone. But regardless of their size or number, they're still little shits in my book.

Update on Nova Scotia

2011-01-28T09:38:00.003-05:00

A couple of years ago I mentioned a problem with a fax machine from Nova Scotia that had been going on for several years. It would call relentlessly, all day long, starting before 8 am, every few minutes.

It was especially a problem on the day that I blogged about it, because I was using Verizon DSL for Internet instead of cable, and it would drop my VPN every time the phone rang because there was no DSL filter on my burglar alarm. (Long story here.)

Anyway, the day I blogged about it was the last time I heard from them for a while.

Some time passed before the fax machine started calling again. It was still Nova Scotia, but one digit in the phone number was different. And in reviewing that old blog post, I discovered that it had been two years almost to the day; and that the calls the previous year had also been in January.

I suspect that telemarketers and junk faxers don't work on that kind of a schedule. Businesses do, though.

I Googled the new number and found out that it was the "incoming faxes only" line for a water testing lab that was part of a bigger company that dealt in frozen seafood.

New Bedford... frozen seafood... hmmm. Yes, it was starting to make sense.

Probably this outfit was trying to buy fish from a supplier in New Bedford. Maybe their regular fax machine was on the blink, so they went down the hallway to use the water testing lab's fax machine instead. And if their fax machines are anything like that piece of crap I sit next to at work, it didn't give up after the first try. It just kept dialing and dialing and dialing.

Actually, it didn't keep dialing this time. Not that day. I have a new phone with a BLOCK button that, when pressed, causes the phone to not-ring on any future incoming calls from that number, and when the answering machine picks up, it sends an obnoxious beep that tells the caller there's something wrong.

So I pushed BLOCK and thought the problem was solved; but just to be on the safe side, I went to the company's website and explained the situation.

The next day, when I came home from work, I found six more calls from them on my caller ID. (I still have other phones that DON'T have the blocking feature, so I still get a list of blocked calls.)

But only six. Maybe someone read my email during mid-fax and stopped the machine, because I'm telling you, that machine usually doesn't give up after only six tries.

That was three weeks ago. They never did reply to my email, so I'll never know for sure what that really was all about. I also don't know for sure that they won't try again next year. But now I know who they are, and I have all their contact info, and I have access to a fax machine that's just as tireless as theirs.

Good News and Bad News!

2010-06-08T20:26:00.003-04:00

So, the good news is that I get to keep my job through the rest of the week. The bad news is that most of my coworkers (those who hadn't already quit) were dismissed today. Also, because the company is going out of business, they don't have to offer COBRA. (So they've told us, but we're not going to take their word for it.)

There is a slim but definite chance that what's left of us (I think like six people, plus any remaining accounts that haven't already run screaming into the night) could get bought by the end of the week, in which case my job will probably continue. Joy.

It would have made lots of sense for them to throw in the towel six months ago when we were losing accounts left and right. In fact, at that point, I was hoping to be let go because the stress and insanity and futility were so demoralizing. But our investors hung in there with us and nursed us back to health and waited until we stabilized and showed signs of growth... and then they gave us the finger.

In other news, I wore mismatched shoes to work this morning, and not even for the first time.

Pool of doom

2010-01-30T13:19:00.005-05:00

This happened in several stages over the last week or so. (Contrast with this, taken during the summer.)

In some way, this reminds me of pictures of the dilapidated structures at Lincoln Park, Rocky Point, and The Gobbler (long story, and no I never went there). Once the focal point of a happy family's fun, it's now a dangerous eyesore.

I wonder if my neighbor will pay someone to take care of it now, or if she'll just let nature continue to take its toll. Her husband died years ago; her older son is still in jail (knock on wood), and her younger son lives in a home for adults with Down syndrome. It must break her heart to see this thing in her yard every day, but it's probably expensive to get rid of it professionally.

My high beams, let me show you them.

2009-10-16T07:19:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I got fed up with my boss's vague, incomplete, ever-changing, sometimes contradictory instructions, especially when she took to scolding me for not following a particular set of instructions she had not given.

Oh, as an unrelated side note, if Blackberries are as unreliable for sending emails as multiple Blackberry-using bosses I've had have claimed, why is anyone still using a Blackberry? And how is it that only the useful emails fall through the cracks, but the bitchy ones always seem to reach me?

Back to my story. At the height of my anger yesterday, and after having received a couple of email scoldings, I was called into my boss's office, and I was ready to tell her to shove it.

But she was all chipper and cheerful and that just made me madder, so I gave her a piece of my mind. (My job, though busy and frustrating, does not require a lot of brain power, so I could afford to lose a piece of my mind.) She responded calmly with a lot of BS, including a game of and "my problems are bigger than your problems" and "my health is worse than your health." Which is probably true, but doesn't excuse poor behavior. In fact, if it's true that her health problem causes cognitive defects, then she probably shouldn't be in charge of safety (among other things).

After that, she then semi-hesitantly told me that she needed to talk to me about a "sensitive subject." You see, apparently, allegedly, multiple male coworkers have complained that I've been flashing my high beams and it makes them uncomfortable. Ah, not literally flashing them, as in exposing them, but that my gigantic mutant nipples are visible through my clothes in our very cold office. And there was this one particular blue sweater that they wouldn't shut up about. (I do have one blue sweater that I wore once, several weeks ago.)

It would be different if we were at a party, ha-ha, the coworkers allegedly said, but this is an office.

My boss claims that she was outraged on my behalf but felt that she should tell me to cover up, in the interest of workplace decorum. (This workplace where people play obnoxious youtube videos at full volume to "entertain" the staff. Hello, some of us are actually working.)

I asked my female coworker, who also reports to this woman, what she thought of this claim. Like me, she thought it was more likely that either our boss had a personal problem with it, or she was just playing mind games with me as punishment for being uppity. Seems she made a similar comment to one of my predecessors, that her clothes made male coworkers "uncomfortable."

There have been three people with my job in the last 1.5 years, including me. (Not including the consultant, a man who worked offsite.) All three were women. She's made these comments to two out of three. Remarkable. (The other one was apparently a saint; boss won't shut up about about how great she was.)

I'm working in an extremely sexist industry, and it's true that my perkiness is sometimes visible, so my boss's claim is not entirely implausible. However, I don't think I'm unusually indiscreet, and most of the time my clothes are not only modest, but frumpy. And I actually do cover up when I'm aware of a problem. In any case, no one should be looking at my chest if it makes them uncomfortable. In fact, it's pretty rare that they can even see it, since I spend very little time away from my desk.

So I'm not upset if someone saw my twins making a point, and I'm not going to throw away the blue sweater or buy special extra-thick bras to hide my shame. But I am upset that my boss is full of shit. Which is silly, because I already knew that.

TV with minimal cable

2009-08-28T22:26:00.000-04:00

Cable is not in my budget, which means I'm not watching Mad Men or Adult Swim, two of my favorite things about having cable. (I know I can watch some of this stuff on the Internet, but I really, really, really don't want to spend MORE time in front of the damn computer.) Missing my stories makes me sad, but I managed to pick up a few new habits on regular TV anyway:

Da Vinci's Inquest

This Canadian show from a few years back is in syndication in the US. I watch it (okay, I tape it) on channel 5 at 1:35 AM on Sundays, just before the overhauled Star Trek episodes. It's a crime drama loosely based on a real coroner in Vancouver. It's very talky, with a lot of political intrigue. I'm not sure why I like it so much. It might be Da Vinci's dry sense of humor. I know it's not his cheap haircuts.

I started watching this a year or two ago, but it was on Sunday nights and I couldn't keep up with it or tape it because the schedule was perturbed by football or something (or maybe I just wasn't able to keep track). Hopefully that won't be a problem any more.

Mental

Over the years, I've wondered why TV series about mental health facilities never do well. I liked Wonderland with Michelle Forbes (who at the time was famous mainly for a brief stint as a Maqui on ST:TNG), but it got canceled after three episodes, and then I spent the next nine years hoping something like it would show up again.

Then Mental came along, and I was quickly disillusioned. It sucked like nothing has ever sucked before. I don't even want to waste my time telling you all the different ways it sucks; it's just thoroughly horrible. Imagine if Dr. House were a psychiatrist, and used various little schemes to trick his patients into getting well. Okay, well, sometimes Dr. House resorts to dirty tricks, but the Dr. House's tricks usually convince the patient to accept the treatment. They don't constitute the treatment! Dr. What's-his-name's tricks actually heal the patients. Like one time he shows the the patient some spiral twirly wheel gadget to hypnotize him, and then the guy's all better. Later, Dr. Mental admits to someone else that he didn't really hypnotize the patient with the twirly spiral wheel.

Great! What a wonderfully inaccurate and misleading of a profession that's already horribly misunderstood. Did the Levines do any research into mental health care or mental illness at all?

Another big difference is that, because of his unethical hijinks, Dr. House is generally portrayed and viewed as a troubled jerk who is tolerated (barely) by most people only because of his tremendous diagnostic skills. Dr. Mental is adored by most of his colleagues, and it's supposed to be charming and cute that he treats his patients like pathetic gullible morons with his cheezy theatrics.

It makes me wonder if the Levines are Scientologists, but my Google search says probably not. I'll continue to be curious, though.

These petty criticisms are just scratching the surface. Hate it, hate it, hate it, and I really hope to hear soon that it wasn't picked up for a second season.

So why did I keep watching it? At first I was hoping that it would get better, and then when I realized there was no hope I continued to watch because it was still programmed on my machine and I was fascinated by just how bad it was.

If it does get picked up for a second season, I really hope that it's on at the same time as something I actually like so that I won't be tempted to stare at this train wreck again.

The Goode Family

This was Mike Judge's new effort with ABC after the cancellation of King of the Hill. The Goodes were a lot like the Hills, but sort of opposite... only not really... and it's already canceled. Maybe that's because ABC continues not to know how to position an animated show, or maybe it's because some of the people who were willing to laugh at Texans took it personally when the same kind of humor was pointed at them. I didn't find it mean-spirited at all - not more than KotH, anyway - but it seems that many people really were uncomfortable with it.

I don't know why ABC picked it up in the first place. It doesn't really fit in their lineup. But it was good to hear the voices of Julia Sweeney and Brian Doyle Murray again, even if only for a short time.

Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers

Okay, so I accidentally lied. I do have a little bit of cable. I have basic (not to be confused with standard) cable, because antenna reception here is very bad, like, nil thanks to wind and ocean. New Bedford was probably the first city in MA to abandon roof antennas as soon as an alternative became available; our roofs take enough abuse without mounting big things on them.

So with cable, I get most of the Boston and Providence channels, plus several public access/government channels and all the shopping channels. I also get a few more unscrambled cable channels, mostly HD plus Univision and Telemundo, thanks to the QAM tuner in my digital TV. Sadly, however, that's of limited usefulness since it's only on this one TV and I don't have any way to tape the shows or watch them in a different room (I'd need a QAM tuner on my DVD-RAM machine or VCR to do that). I watch my telenovela "live," or I don't watch it at all, because life's too short to spend the whole damn day on YouTube.

But I digress. I'd love to blather at length about the unavailability of standalone, non-USB QAM tuners that I could hook up to a VCR (tell me if you know something I don't), but this is not the time.

New Bedford cable access channel 95 is the home of Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers, a local horror host show that can also be seen nationwide thanks to some horror host network. I started watching Penny infrequently a few years ago, but didn't make it a regular thing until I lost the rest of my cable channels and could no longer get my Friday Night Fix on the Cartoon Network.

After Penny's show, we're usually treated to some other horror host's show. Sadly, because most of these horror host shows deal in movies that are in the public domain, you end up seeing the likes of Dementia 13 a lot, or worse (like The Brain That Wouldn't Die). So it's very important that the horror host not suck.

There's one who just stands around in a cape and recaps the scene that you just saw, mostly to drool about how hot the woman in it was. There's another who interrupts scenes to make insipid wisecracks. (Being surrounded by flames does not make him or his skanks look any hotter.) There's also a non-horror one with an ensemble cast that reminds me of Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job.

Only The Late Dr. Lady Show comes close to Penny Dreadful, in my opinion. Penny does field trips to local places, like the Lizzie Borden House and the former Danvers State Hospital, and she also interviews local artists and showcases their work. She did one episode in Portuguese. Neat! New Bedford is very, very lucky to have her.

On that obsequious note, I leave the computer to go back to my TV, where an old Penny Dreadful Shilling Shocker is already in progress. (New eps in September. I can't wait!)

Semi-apathetic suspense

2009-08-28T07:12:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, my boss left the office early to participate in an important managers' teleconference at home. The purpose of the teleconference was for the managers of the week to justify the expense of each direct report. The admin assistant and I each had to send her a list of all our recent duties and any future projects we were waiting to do.

("Managers of the week" is not an official term. It's just that certain managers each week are getting hit by layoffs.)

To put this all into perspective, they've recently dropped several pilots (and aircraft), and our one and only Sharepoint expert will be gone in a couple of weeks. (His last day was going to be today, but he got a temporary reprieve.) Being essential to the company's operations doesn't seem to be a factor in the decision making. It's all about the money. Fortunately, I'm not exactly pulling down a king's ransom right now, but I know that I'm also seen mostly as a glorified admin who knows how to use Framemaker, and the consulting firm that had been doing my work before is still interested in the relationship.

I checked my email this morning for a reassuring email and didn't find one. That doesn't bother me as much as you would expect. I've been pretty unhappy working there - I don't feel respected there, and it looks like they're going to go back on the agreement to let me work at home anyway (due to a laptop shortage). If I do get the axe, I'll ask if I can claim that this was only ever meant to be a limited engagement; that'll look and sound better on my resume and in interviews. I'll be upset if I can't get that.

Don't get me wrong. I'd rather keep my job than lose it, just so that I don't have to desperately grab the next low-paying crappy job that comes along. It pays a little bit better than unemployment, and I like most of my coworkers. But this layoff, if it happens, will be the least upsetting layoff of my entire life, including the time I lost my very first out-of-college job with the real estate tycoon and wasn't eligible for unemployment. It's so much stress and so much time for so little money, with a cloud of doom hanging over everything, and it's leaving me with very little time to do anything else.

I don't strongly expect a layoff, and my boss thinks we're safe, but I do have some reason to worry. I may stop at my grandparents' on the way home, but I'll blog and tweet whether I'm out or safe as soon as I have a chance.

Update: I'm safe. Exhausted and overworked, but safe. At least for today!

Poolside view

2009-08-24T20:00:00.003-04:00

This is the view from my bathroom window. (Click to enlarge; even the big version doesn't do it justice!) It's my neighbor's yard.

The swimming pool has been out of commission since before I moved in here in November 2003; I don't think the liner was completely destroyed yet then, but there were at least a few weeds in there the following summer.

The plants die off over the winter, leaving behind nothing but sad grey brush, and then they come back ever-lusher with the next summer. By 2007, it was full of green, though not quite as wild as it is now; my neighbor's son (who would technically also be my neighbor if he could just stay out of prison long enough) spent a weekend with a friend digging the substantial foliage out of there and told me that he planned to put in a new liner and restore the pool to its former glory.

That seems unlikely now, as the walls appear to be rusted all the way through. He went back to jail a few weeks after that, and is still there now. (You can see only one of his three vehicles in this picture. There was a fourth one too, next to the one you can see, but it was hauled away as evidence.) The weeds grew back, somewhat meekly at first at the end of that summer, but the remaining roots of the plants that had been removed came back stronger than ever in the summer of aught-eight, and now it's just plain crazy.

I am fascinated by this mess. I wish my neighbor would plant a garden in there, but she's not good with steps, and the whole thing probably breaks her heart. She had a contractor there recently to do some work on her house; I had hoped he'd do something about the pool, but I guess it wasn't in the budget. I think her lawn service asked her about it too, but it appears that they'll continue to mow around it for the foreseeable future.

Hamster's new wheel and other adventures

2009-08-22T22:22:00.005-04:00

I meant to post this weeks ago - after I accepted the offer, before my first day of work. It started out as a summary of the interviews I had at three different companies, but it was too long, and when I had time to cut it down, I had already started the job, and I wanted to talk about that instead, but then there was the vandalism, and that seemed more important to write about, and then I got sidetracked...

So here are shortened versions of all those things. It ends up being long.

Vandalism

I think everyone already knows about this stuff by now, but someone sorta-broke one of my windows with a BB gun back in June, and someone (else?) badly dented the roof of car a few weeks ago (my first week at work) when they walked on top of it. Footprints on the hood, roof, and trunk. The cops managed to punch out most of the dent from inside the car, but you can still see hints of the damage.

Later that week, someone (else?) left a big fudge dragon on the front steps of my house. Yes, I'm sure it wasn't from a dog, based on the size, shape, location, and smell.

The police asked if I thought it was personal. I don't think so, but it was an interesting question, because I've had some experiences that prove you really don't know what goes on in someone else's head. Now that I've had a few incident-free weeks, I'm less worried about that, but it's not going to make replacing the window any cheaper.

And now the spellbinding tale of my three interviews

The thing I found most interesting/awful about this job search was that I did not get called in for even ONE software-related job, or indeed any technical writing job. 21 years of software technical writing experience, starting before I even graduated college, and I couldn't get an interview. I'm not sure what that says about my future, but now that I've been working in another industry for a short while, I really want back into software.

First interview: Proposal writer at a lottery systems company in Providence

No parking or validation, not even for visitors, at a company that has a parking garage in the building. The staff were unfriendly and inconsiderate. They didn't ask to see my writing samples, and were obsessed with telling me about the overtime. If I had gotten the job, it would have been strict office hours (plus tons of take-home overtime), no telecommuting, an annoying drive, expensive parking (or a short bus ride from East Providence, not cutting enough time out of my drive to actually get any reading done), and two bosses with no personality. The building, which is supposedly the company's world headquarters, also has no cafeteria. I guess you go to the Providence Place mall for everything - parking, lunch... I wonder if the company provides office supplies, or if you have to buy those at the mall too.

Second interview: Appraisal writer at a metals appraisal company in Lincoln

The interviewer on the phone gave inadequate directions to the place ("look it up on Google," but the building itself was difficult to get into and there was no hint as to what floor the company was on). He asked me if I had kids (not a legal question). The office was in a dumpy old mill building among a bunch of other dumpy mill buildings, with a rubbly parking area ("lot" would be a gross exaggeration) that promised to be dark and creepy in the evening, much like the inside of the building itself.

They didn't ask to see any samples, and they asked me repeatedly if I was cool with lots of overtime. (How the hell do you answer a question like that?) The guy who had interviewed me on the phone asked again if I had kids. Then he explained that they had to know if I had any "childcare issues" that would interfere with aforementioned overtime. (That version of the question is legal, but only if you ask it of all candidates, not just the female ones. I don't know whether he would have asked that question of the male candidates too.)

I've been dealing with overtime throughout my adult life; it really isn't a big deal, so it annoyed me to be asked this at two interviews in a row. But I really don't want to work for a company that's too rinky-dink to have someone on board that understands basic EEOC stuff. (No HR department.) Of course, I was in no position to turn down a job, regardless, and it seemed like interesting work. But they had no idea whatsoever what a technical writer does. I explained that it was essentially the same as what they do: obtain information from many different sources and distill it into a form that's meaningful and actionable for the intended audience. But I guess I wasn't convincing. Maybe they had already decided on someone.

When I was rejected, they told me it was because they wanted someone with "more of a narrative style." Huh? What would they know about my narrative style? They never mentioned that during the interview. I have a narrative style. I saw their appraisal documents, and they didn't require any more "narrative" than technical manuals do.

Third interview: Where I work now

This one's not even a writing job. Despite being called "technical publications editing," the pubs aren't particularly technical, in my opinion, though they are extremely dull. And I'm not sure I'd even call it editing so much as formatting.

But what I liked about the interview was that the people were friendly and nobody made a big deal about overtime (though they acknowledged that it exists). I also liked that my future boss was impressed with my attention to detail - a quality that some ex-employers have found annoying, and which didn't seem to delight the other people I had interviewed with, who got impatient when I asked them detailed questions about the position other than the overtime.

The job

It's not the best-paying, most interesting, geographically convenient job I could have wished for, but in thinking back over the three interviews I had, I'm glad this is the one that panned out.

Okay, so I kind of hate it right now. I've got deadlines all over the place, but I still don't have most of the software or source files I need to complete any of the work, and the atmosphere is often much more schmoozy than I would like. But it's much better than working with people who act like they have broomsticks shoved up their butts, so that's nice. I just wish they'd dial it down a little when I'm trying to work. Instead, it becomes more schmoozy when the Government Airplane Agency (GAA) guys are around, which is usually when I'm under the most pressure.

And my boss thinks I'm too impatient, which might have something to do with the fact that I'm trying to get some work done instead of participating in the stupid banter. She's right - I get very short with people when they prevent me from getting my work done so that I can go home. It's an hour each way, so the thought of staying late because I had to wait for one of the managers or GAA guys to finish telling some lengthy, non-work-related anecdote so that I can get some urgent piece of information really pisses me off. (I used to be such a procrastinator. Now I can't wait to finish things. Maybe it's the ADD treatment. It's nice to finish something on time and then goof off guilt-free afterwards and not have to put in overtime. On the other hand, when I had more ADD it was easier to tune people out instead of getting mad when they were wasting my time.)

But it'll get better when I have all my equipment, software, source files, etc. and can do some of this stuff from home. At least I hope so.

I don't know how long it will last. The company may be in trouble. Some high-ranking partner in the company was recently charged with securities fraud that took place a few years ago when he was a partner in another company. He's also being sued by former employees who weren't paid for their last two weeks of work before that company folded. (Link to interesting website removed for security purposes because the management is understandably keeping tabs on the website too. Email me for URL if you're interested.) He was also allegedly in on a deal in which some employees' insurance and retirement account contributions were diverted for some other purpose. This worries me because I'm working for the same company (same money and same people), just with a different name.

The company has lost some contracts lately, and at least a few of our accounts payables are way overdue, so I have reason to be a little nervous about the future there. The company's strategy is to spend more money to provide greater services than some of our competitors, but if nobody wants to pay for those services, we're screwed.

Oh well. I'll continue to ride this gravy train (bouillon-cube gravy at best, I assure you) as long as necessary and/or possible.

But wait - there's more!

That is, there's more in this Notepad file that I write my blog posts in, but I'm going to have mercy on you and wait a few days before I post more. Actually I am going to post them now but tell Blogger not to publish them until later; if I don't do that, then who knows how long it'll be before I get around to it again, and then I won't want to post the stuff I've already written.

This is not an update

2009-08-11T23:01:00.000-04:00

I want to write about what's going on in my life - my new job, and various other things - but what I want to do takes third place to what I MUST do and what I NEED to do. Sadly, I'm barely addressing the "need" stuff these days because there's so much of the "must" stuff.

I'm still hoping that things will get better when I'm able to do some of my work from home, but since my boss and my employer are in constant crisis mode, I don't know when they're going to be able to get their shit together long enough to make that happen. Hell, I don't even have most of the software I need yet to do my job.

Drat. I only meant for this to be one sentence. It's past my bedtime. I've already given more of an update than I intended. I'm turning into my boss! Oh noes!!

The good, the bad, and the maybe

2009-04-02T19:24:00.002-04:00

We've had three family deaths in the last month - none of them related to each other, strangely enough. (Technically, not related to me either except by marriage.)

Two of them were elderly people who died last Saturday. Both of their services were yesterday (fortunately not at the same time). Damn, that was a long day.

Weirdly enough, at both wakes people wanted to talk to me about my unemployment, especially at the second one, because nobody liked the guy.

At some point, my newly-widowed aunt asked my dead uncle's nephew (REALLY not related to me) to find me a job. The guy kind of reminds me of a gangster. He said he'd talk to his buddy for me. That's when I found out that his buddy is the former mayor of my city.

Great. The only letter to the editor that any newspaper has ever published from me was the one where I urged my fellow citizens not to re-elect my uncle's nephew's buddy in 2006. (The buddy lost, and we've been better off without him.) Hopefully the guy doesn't keep a list of his dangerous letter-writing foes!

It would be a long shot at best, so I'm not getting my hopes up. It would be nice to have a local job, though.

The other thing that's going on is that I'm hanging around an office in East Providence in my paltry free time. They're giving me free training on for some skills I want that should really improve my resume. They also give me free lunch every day when I'm there (it's a three-person office at most, they're all siblings, so they eat together). In exchange, I do miscellaneous writing tasks for them. So far, in a month, that's consisted of helping to write a short blurb for a website, and helping design a flier.

I'm supposed to give training on some software in a few weeks, but it will be for only one person, so it's not going to pay much - I don't know how much. It'll just be a one-time thing, but then I can add training to my resume too, if I want to (not sure if I do).

Meanwhile, the job listings are getting crazier. More companies are looking for combo writer/programmers and so forth. And I'm also seeing companies advertising specifically for recent graduates with less than one year of experience.

So, it's not all bad - I'm learning stuff, and once in a while I meet clients of the company that I'm training with, any of whom might suddenly need a writer in a hurry (doubtful, but please don't burst my bubble). Plus, my relative's gangsterlike newphew's buddy might have something. There's still hope - it's just not easy to keep my spirits up all the time. I just try to take it easy on the days when I feel really bad, and then make up the difference when I'm feeling better.

Crap from afar

2009-02-20T17:42:00.003-05:00

The moment a contract job gets posted on Monster, my phone rings. Isn't that great?

No. It SUCKS.

So, what's the problem? Here's what it's like for the job-seeker:

The phone rings. The caller ID says that it's someone in Virginia or some other place with a good job market. The caller is actually somebody in India who claims to have found me on Monster and thinks I'd be a great fit for this three-month contract in Missouri which requires an active security clearance and experience with ArborText.

Here are some things that you can find out by looking at my profile and resume on Monster: I don't live near MO, I have never had a security clearance, and I have never used ArborText.

Often they email and call at the same time, or just email.

Today, I replied to one of those emails, asking if he had seen on my resume where it says that I live in MA and not MO, and if the client was open to telecommuting (they're usually not). At this point, I was genuinely curious as to what was happening.

A few minutes later, he called. I asked him if this meant that the client was okay with telecommuting. He had no idea what I was talking about - he hadn't read my email yet. (sigh) He claimed that he had seen my resume on Monster, but then backpedalled and admitted that he hadn't. I advised him that he could have ruled me out in just a few seconds if he had looked at it.

Then he told me that he didn't have access to my resume.

WHAT?

That's when I realized that I wasn't talking to a real recruiter. I was talking to a telemarketer. It took only a few seconds of Googling to find out that many US staffing agencies have outsourced their recruiting functions to India. For what it costs them to pay one worker in the US to screen resumes and contact only the most likely candidates, they can now pay a whole squad of overseas workers to phone and email as many people as their technology can handle. No need to pre-screen!

Based on the calls/emails I've been getting, these are mostly agencies that I've never had a good experience with as a job-seeker and I've often wondered how they stay in business. Their recruiters (on either side of the ocean) are very polite and cordial until the moment they realize it's not going to work out. Then they won't even answer an email.

These agencies never seem to have exclusive relationships with any clients. Whenever I see a contract that's listed by multiple agencies, these are the agencies whose names I see repeatedly. I'm also seeing some new names, and I'm wondering if some of these new players are perhaps even based in India.

Well, it was annoying enough to see a long list of "new jobs posted today" and realize that they're all for the same contract. Now I'm getting contacted multiple times for the same contract as well.

But every time I've had a call about a contract, I've seen it on Monster, too. Sometimes I see that the contract is also listed with a staffing agency that I wouldn't mind doing business with.

So, these companies are really shooting themselves in the foot with this strategy. In addition to wasting my time, spamming me with totally nonsensical queries (a one-month contract in New Jersey that I'm not qualified for? three months part-time in Austin?), and generally pissing me off, they're also alerting me to the existence of contracts that I can apply to through another agency.

But at least these are real contracts. I'm still getting spam from "Michael Vincent" three times a week claiming that he's found me a job. What a guy! (I've never opened these emails; I have no idea what they are, but I think it's safe to assume they're garbage.)

PS: I realize that I label most of my blog posts with the "dumbness" tag.

Putting trivia on my resume

2009-02-10T14:10:00.005-05:00

I just had the most illuminating conversation with a recruiter. (Yes, I'm getting calls every week. This is so much less awful so far than 2002 was.) Knock wood

I already knew that HR people and recruiters search resumes for certain buzzwords, which is why my resume now lists every software I've ever used in my entire career, even if some of the software is pretty much a given within my line of work.

Now I've discovered why this isn't good enough. I also have to exhaustively list every activity involved in performing my job, no matter how universal it is to the job. For example, any technical writer can tell you that the job requires you to refer to various resources (documents, people, a product) in order to get the information you need to complete the work. However, the HR community doesn't seem to know this.

So, it turns out that for as long as I've been doing online job searches, I've been falling through a lot of HR nets because I neglected to include the secret word "interview" on my resume, e.g. "interview analysts." ("Interview" does seem to be the standard word, so if I'd said "consult with analysts" I'd still miss.)

I don't know yet what the secret verb is for reviewing specification documents. Read? Review? Inspect? Refer to? Use? Peruse?

I guess HR's ignorance explains why I am constantly encountering lengthy, detailed job application questionnaires asking how much experience I have performing each of the many minuscule mundane general tasks that comprise any tech writing job, such as "using word processing software."

Yes, really. I had to answer that question twice on Friday on different job applications.

The same recruiter also told me that it is even worse for software developers. More buzzwords. You have to guess what they are when you write your resume. You can't assume anything.

What's funny about this, not that I'm feeling amused right now, is that I went to a "career consulting" place this morning (old job pays for it) and their advice about resumes was very touchy-feely: Don't just repeat the job description. Tell them who you ARE.

Ha! Maybe that works in non-technical fields. In the software industry, as long as you match their description, they don't give a shit who you are. You might as well cut and paste their job description into your resume. It's the only way to make sure you used the right words.

I'm so, so tempted to upload a resume to Monster that's simply a list of words and phrases, with no employer names, dates, sentences, or even formatting. Just to see what will happen.

Alas, I can't really afford to screw around with my job search...

Unprovoked kindness

2009-02-02T12:12:00.003-05:00

About a month ago, I ordered some Moro blood oranges - my favorite citrus in the world - from a grower in Arizona. The only box size available is 18 pounds, and it's not cheap.

I had been nervous about layoffs for months, but after the holidays passed, I made a resolution to stop worrying and enjoy the good fortune of being employed. So I decided to get the oranges. (I still winced when I saw how much the shipping would be!)

A couple of weeks later, when I lost my job, the first thing I did (even before telling anyone else) was to cancel the oranges, which wouldn't ship for a few more weeks. Between the cost and the shipping, it was more than I felt I should spend. I'd be starting my period of incomelessness on the wrong foot by splurging on something I could get at the grocery store.

They were nice about it, didn't try to talk me into keeping the order or buying something cheaper, and wished me luck. That, in itself, was a relief to me, and I made a mental note to place a guilt-free order next year if I had a job.

Sunkist blood oranges showed up at the supermarket last week. I bought a few. They were all flawless on the outside, but on the inside most of them were already past their prime after sitting on the store shelf unrefrigerated for a day or two. I still thought they were fine - a slightly withered blood orange is better than none at all - but I wondered how much nicer a fresh one would be.

When I came back from my errands today, there was a big box of blood oranges on my doorstep, with a note from the grower asking me to please accept the gift and good luck with a new job. The box was crammed full of blood oranges.

I picked a squashed-looking one with particularly scarred skin and cut it open. It was beautiful and juicy and perfect.

The McClendons sent me a big box of fresh oranges for no good reason other than to brighten my day - in fact, there's enough here to brighten a few weeks. It worked, and now they have a customer for life, too. (For the record, they also sell other citrus, dates, and honey.)

Job hunter's lament

2009-01-27T13:02:00.003-05:00

Never in the history of the world has job hunting been such a royal pain in the ass.

I'm not talking about the shitty job market. I'm talking about the websites. Oh my god, the damn websites.

Six years ago, you could enter a profile on Monster and similar sites, and then apply for those jobs by clicking Apply. That wasn't too bad.

You'd think that six years later, these websites would be even more robust and easier to use. Not all of them are. I have found Monster to be particularly moody. Sometimes it seems to accept my edits, but when I check later they're not there. I never know at any time whether all of my info is up there or not, so I refer people to my LinkedIn or Dice profile instead.

Monster is also semi-unusable in Firefox, much to my profound annoyance.

LinkedIn and Dice are much more reliable, but I have yet to find a good lead on Dice (everything worth looking at there is also on Monster), and LinkedIn is suffering from a bad case of overload, as is USAjobs. There are too many people hitting these sites at the same time. There's nothing like entering lots of information on one of those forms, only to click Save and get an error. Sometimes you can click again and it resubmits okay, but sometimes your info is lost and you have to try again. And again. And again.

Now for the even bigger annoyance: employers post their jobs on various job search sites and presumably also search them for your resume, but because some of these job search sites have performance issues, not to mention that Monster got hacked recently, many (actually, all of them so far) make you go to their own website to apply.

So now you have to enter all of your info. Again.

Some let you paste in your resume and call it a day, but others want you to enter every data element individually. Then you hit Save and hope it takes.

But that is not annoying enough, so a great many of these sites make you create an account with a password.

For Christ's sake. This is fucking ridiculous.

Funniest of all is that many of these companies are using the same forms. It would be nice if I could just enter all of this info just once, into a single password-protected account, and then let them each refer to it at their leisure.

Oh wait, that already exists! It's called Monster, Dice, LinkedIn, etc... (I used to use HotJobs and CareerBuilder, but they never got me anything except phone calls from MLM companies.)

I can understand why companies do this. I really can. There are probably legal reasons I don't even know about. And it ensures that they get all the data they need, even if it's not in your Monster profile. If they don't make you jump through hoops, they get inundated with frivolous applications.

Still, it's insane. My day is way too short already. I don't want to spend hours cutting and pasting the same information in multiple places, but that's my new hobby.

In other news, I may be getting some editing work on the side. It won't pay much, and my first client is a university which means it's going to be reported to the IRS, which means I'm going to have to go legit. But if I get enough editing work, I can raise my rates. Then I'll have to decide how much time I'm willing to spend on fruitless cutting and pasting.

Slightly less dire than originally thought

2009-01-19T11:54:00.002-05:00

Turns out that my unemployment payments in Massachusetts will be much higher (more than double) what they were in Florida, so I may be able to stay afloat a little longer than I had expected.

I probably won't be able to stay afloat without a job for as long as I did in FL, though, because I no longer have any savings and the cost of living is a lot higher.

Still, it was a big relief to find out that it wasn't as bleak as I had first thought.

On another note, please check out Look Around You at 1:00 and 1:15 AM Sunday nights (Monday mornings) on the Cartoon Channel. It's weird and funny beyond belief, but it's not violent or crazy. It's a live-action, very dry British parody of educational films circa 1980. There's a website, too.

Last night's episodes were "Maths" and "Water," below. (I thought "Water" was the funnier of the two.)

Hamster needs a new wheel

2009-01-14T19:18:00.002-05:00

It happened again. The recortes de personal. This time I have no occasion to feel any guilt, because I did not survive!

My severance letter was dated January 2. This was probably in the works long before Christmas. I wonder how long my boss knew.

Investors were not impressed; the company's stock price, which had been stable for a few weeks, has been going downhill ever since. (I remember the good old days when this sort of thing was good for the stock price.)

I cleaned out my desk today. I've barely updated my resume. I'm still catching my breath. My LinkedIn profile still isn't fixed up yet (almost, but not done). I have some leads that I haven't had a chance to follow up on.

I've been in touch with two of the other three writers who were included in the purge. We're all flabbergasted; we did good work. But it's clear that our work is going to be completed in an exotic land. The software is coded and tested there already. (It's not technically "outsourcing" because they're all company employees.)

As for the reason we, specifically, were chosen, we weren't given a straight answer. The answer I got was mathematically improbable. In reality, I think it had to do with office politics. It seems that staying out of office politics can be as dangerous as getting involved, if someone takes your silence as evidence that you've sided against them.

The software industry has been very unstable for me. My job title doesn't command much respect, either in creative circles or in technical circles. Some people see technical writers as overpaid secretaries; some see us as failed novelists; some see us as unimaginative nerds. We're usually at the bottom of the food chain in a software company.

I'd love to do something else, but it's very rare that I see a job description for anything that doesn't require a lot of exactly-the-same experience. Employers aren't really into "transferable skills." Or the job is entry level and won't pay enough to cover my bills, assuming they'll even agree to speak to someone with experience. Or they want someone with a master's degree. Or they're really, really far away. I'm going to have to get creative about ways to make money.

PS: Forgot to mention - I took home a souvenir with my boss's blessing.

I suck at parallel parking

2008-12-22T11:59:00.000-05:00

Fortunately, I rarely have to park between two cars on my street. When I do, they're usually so far apart that I can easily drive forward into the space.

When they're a little closer together, I can try to parallel park, but I usually end up about a mile from the curb.

If they're close enough together to be the size of a regular parking space, I drive around the corner and park on the cross street.

It sucks, and I've tried to remedy this before with actual people explaining how to do it. Sadly, however, I am a very bad student and people get frustrated and then I just give up.

This weekend, I tried to learn by reading and watching instructional videos. I thought that if I had a well-narrated explanation, something that fits my own cognitive process better, I'd have more luck.

I viewed countless videos and read countless narratives, and discovered that there are at least two popular techniques (the two-turns version and the turn, straight, turn version). You would think that this would double my odds of getting it right. That's what I thought, anyway.

Then I found this neat flash game, which tests your grasp of the concept and lets you practice. Or, if you're like me, it forces you face the sad fact that you might never, ever be able to do it, due to some strange personal cognitive/spatial/something deficit. I played that damn thing for over an hour and mostly hit the curb and the two cars. I did get the car parked a few times without incident, but this seemed more like a fluke than an accomplishment.

Here's the thing: I have a problem, both in video games and in real life, with driving backwards. I can't figure out which way to turn the wheel. Even when I know, intellectually, which way it's supposed to go, I really have to think about it to understand why it works.

This probably seems ridiculous to you. Of course, if you turn your wheels to the right, you'll go to the right, whether you're going forwards or backwards and no matter which way you're looking! Duh! All I can say is that I'm glad it makes sense to everyone else. There's some disconnect between the part of my brain that understands that, and the part of my brain that understands what I see out my rear window.

Swapping things from left to right isn't a problem. I can easily write backwards. I can easily drive a car on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right (unless the road is really narrow and full of sharp pointy rocks, but that's another story). But put the car in reverse, and I'm lost.

Another problem is being able to figure clearances. Objects in mirrors are closer than they appear, but objects in windows are evidently a lot further away than they look through the window. I discover this when I'm parking in front of someone on the street. Time and again I'll back up as far as I dare, only to discover that I still had an insane amount of space to deal with. It's as if I don't how long the back of my car is. How can this still be a problem after 25 years of driving? Why can't I get past the incorrect belief that I'm going to hit a car that's 10 feet away? I do not understand!

Combine my confusing backwards left-and-right stuff with my apparent inability to judge distances, and you can see why this seems overwhelming.

I think there's a third obstacle, too, but I haven't figured out what it is. It's not just fear/anxiety, because I can't even manage it in a video game, where I can (and do) hit the other cars with impunity.

I'll try parallel parking again eventually, but I don't think I'll make much progress until I can deal with the backwards driving and/or the clearance issues.

(By the way, if you try the Flash game, let me know if you think it's a lot harder than the real thing. Maybe I let it discourage me more than it should.)

My parents voted for Obama

2008-11-10T08:12:00.002-05:00

They both liked McCain a lot at one time, and I had thought that if they were going to vote for anyone (doubtful), it would be for him.

But they also used to grumble that he wasn't a very good Republican, so I was thinking that their odds of voting for a Democrat would be even lower.

The stock market meltdown and the tax stuff must have changed their minds. (That's what it usually comes down to.)

I don't think McCain ever got it through his head that $250,000 (the minimum taxable income to be affected by Obama's tax increase) is way more money than most people make. The more he tried to scare people with that tax increase, the clearer it was that he didn't have a grasp of what's going on in the country financially right now.

Most people would be thrilled to make $250K (after exemptions and deductions), even if it meant paying more in taxes (only the portion over $250K would be taxed at the higher rate). Right now, a lot of us are more concerned that we soon won't be making anything per year.

WoooooOOOOOoooo!!! Election!!

2008-11-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

In previous election years, I've had restaurant dinners on election night. I've sometimes considered cooking something, but that's difficult on a work day, and in recent years I wasn't feeling optimistic enough to put in the effort. (I.e., I didn't have a recipe for crow pie.)

I decided this year would be different. I took the day off. I had a nice restaurant lunch, and now I've got vegetables roasting in the oven, and there's a Dogfish Head 120-Minute IPA chilling briefly in the fridge.

I was prepared for a long night, but the way things are going, I might still be drinking that IPA during someone's victory speech. (Of course I'm not going to mention any names. Don't want to jinx it.)

And now, a grab-bag of miscellaneous thoughts:

Palin was extremely creepy on SNL last night. I don't know if she even thought she was being funny.

The Day the Earth Stood Still remake starring Jon Hamm ("John Ham! If it feels like ham, don't wipe your ass with it!") is scheduled for release on December 12. I don't know anything about this movie, but I do remember the original: the planet Earth acquires weapons of mass destruction, and the worried spacemen show up right away to nip it in the bud. Hmm.

Last night I witnessed the second arrest to take place in front of my house within the last six months. I'm not sure what's an average number of times for most people.

I was watching The Horror of Dracula last week when that guy, Van Helsing's friend, picked up a wooden stake off the floor and prepared to drive it into some vampirella's heart. All I could think was, "dude, that's really unsanitary."

There's this cereal called Smart Start. The woman in the TV ad really emphasizes those Rs. Smrrrrrt Strrrrrt. I'm sure she's pronouncing those words correctly, but to me it just sounds like burping. They should consider redoing those ads with another actor for those of us who live in the Northeast. Actually, they need two: one to say "Smawt Stawt" and another to say "Smat Stat."

My parents voted today. Both of them. Color me shocked. I didn't ask who they voted for. I know they used to really like McCain; I don't know what they thought about Palin. (We cannot discuss these things civilly any more.) Or maybe they were motivated to vote because of one of the ballot questions. Search me. I was just really shocked to hear that they had voted at all; I didn't think they would.

I got a catalog that purports to sell healthy products. Most of the items are new-agey, pseudo-scientific crap which have already been thoroughly debunked, but there are some exceptions. Some of them are just plain crazy. There's a digital jellyfish lightshow - basically, something you could get as a screen saver for a couple of bucks, but instead you pay $40 for this thing. The writeup references "remarkable health benefits attributed to home aquariums." It also urges you to "watch your child's face explode with delight" when they see this thing. (The catalog doesn't give any dimensions or have other things in the picture for comparison, so it could be as small as a night light, or as big as a freezer.) My question: how much would you pay to watch your child's face explode?

ABC censors the spirit of John Adams

2008-09-21T23:30:00.005-04:00

I figured cyberspace would immediately be full of complaints about ABC cutting off Kirk Ellis, a writer from John Adams, during his acceptance speech. He talked about the importance of having articulate leaders who could articulate complex thoughts in complete sentences. Right after he said that (he wasn't done yet), they went to commercial - which is not what they usually do. He wasn't going overtime with his speech or anything - there wasn't any warning music.

Ahh, here's something. At 9:49. Okay, so it wasn't just me. I just wanted to make sure I saw what I thought I saw.

There had been a few vague political comments throughout the evening. I noticed copious whining about that elsewhere in cyberspace. To those kiddies of all ages, I need to explain that the awards show is given by and for off-duty entertainers who are actual human beings, and not puppets or monkeys. Unlike you, some of them are aware of what's going on in the world and care about it. I'm sorry that you were so upset to find out that they actually have lives and thoughts and words outside of your TV and your celebrity magazines. And I'm sorry that ABC (Disney) is willing to coddle you in your cushy fantasy world.

Ellis's remarks were the only ones that were clearly aimed specifically at Bush.

And now I really want to see John Adams.

Cereal Review and Unrelated PSA

2008-09-08T12:30:00.000-04:00

Some so-called "product reviews" are nothing more than an expression of a blogger's desire to mock and ridicule something they don't like.

This is that kind of review.

My mother got me a box of Hearty Morning cereal by Cascadian Farm in the mistaken belief that it was a granola cereal. It does have some "granola clusters," but they're lost among the whole wheat flakes. (I hate wheat flakes.)

Overall, the texture of this cereal is awful if you get it wet. Like I said, there isn't enough granola here to save the day. The typical wheat flakes get very soggy very fast; but the fiber holds them together, which means that you have to chew them even though they're already mush.

The "crunchy bran strands" are a joke - they're not particularly crunchy even when they're dry. They look intriguing in the picture, though.

The cereal's flavor is better if you eat it dry, too. The very light sweetening doesn't survive the milk bath. I hear some people eat cold cereal in apple juice or something similar, instead of milk - that might have better flavor too, but since I need my cold cereal to be a delivery system for milk, and I can't stand soggy flakes no matter what they're soaked in, I'll pass.

I like how there's a yellow banner at the bottom front of the box:

Heart-Healthy diets rich in grain products with soluble fiber like
Hearty Morning May Lower Cholesterol

LOL. There's even more explanatory text underneath, further describing the combination of dietary factors that "may reduce the risk" of heart disease.

Cascadian Farm has a whole line of organic food products, many of them fruit-related, that look a lot more appealing. But I couldn't bring myself to eat another bowlful of this cereal. Much as I hate throwing food away, especially with the irony that organic farming techniques are supposed to be less bad for the environment, this stuff has got to go.

And now, an unrelated public service announcement in Squigglevision:

'Tude on Tape

2008-07-09T19:17:00.002-04:00

My SME at work writes crappy, incomplete specs, doesn't update them when information changes, and makes lazy, vague comments (like "I'm not sure if this is true") when he reviews my work. He also gives me lots of attitude when I ask a question (even if he doesn't know the answer).

One time I sent him a list of questions, which he ignored for more than a month. (I could say more about that whole incident, but I'm already tired and pissed off.)

Anyway, I've encountered people like this before, but most of the people I've worked with have not been like that. Not everyone is great at writing specs, but they make up for it with thorough reviews. Or if they're not great reviewers, they're at least willing to answer questions about things I suspect might be wrong.

In any case, being rude to the writers is not the standard where I work.

More than a year ago SME conducted some training sessions, which were recorded for posterity. I'm not sure exactly who attended the training, but I know that it was a variety of people from different departments.

I was watching one of those sessions today, and got some puny benefit from it, although I was pretty annoyed by all the times when he said "well this is just like another screen in blah blah blah, so we can skip this." (Incorrectly assuming that people are familiar with blah blah blah.) And all the times he said "This is the Blah Blah Blah screen" without saying anything more about it. Some training.

At some point, someone asked what one of the acronyms stood for. SME didn't remember, and declined to look it up in the help, because (he said) "the help is useless."

He then spent more than three minutes of class time looking for the spec, which also did not explain what the acronym stood for.

Eventually, someone in the class revealed that the answer was indeed in the help. (This means that the writer got it right, no thanks to the spec.) Disbelieving, SME pulled up the help so that he could see it with his own eyes. There, he also found the answer to another question he had been unable to answer, but then noted that some other acronym wasn't defined. "At least they got one right," he grumbled.

Yeah, I know - I just grumbled about him in front of the entire world. But somehow I don't think it's the same thing as grumbling about him, or his department's work, in front of a large group of coworkers.

I'm not sure what to do. Should I:

Share this recording with my boss, who already knows that I'm dissatisfied with SME's specs, reviewing, and attitude.
Bring it to the attention of SME's boss, who already fields more questions about his crappy specs than anyone else's (which means he's also failing to answer questions from other people). She may have witnessed it when it happened, but that was a while back and she might care more if she knows a writer heard it.
Tell SME tomorrow that I heard his five minutes' worth of griping about the writers and ask if he's found out what that acronym means yet so that I can spell it out in the help. (Of course I'm going to fix it anyway.)
Sit on it and wait till he gives me some attitude, then blow up at him and throw the "evidence" in his face. Ahem, I mean "explain why his attitude strikes me as counterproductive."
Do nothing, but stew over it for many years. (My version of "letting it go.")

To complicate matters, we're doing employee reviews for the next several months (it's a complicated process), which means that anything I say to my boss and/or SME's boss might carry more weight than it usually would - or it could get swept under the rug to keep it off the record, in which case there was no point in saying anything.

I like #3 because SME never did let any of the writers know that the info about that acronym was missing. (Clearly he didn't notice that it was missing when he reviewed the original writer's work, either.)

Brain drippings

2008-06-18T22:16:00.004-04:00

I wish I could punch the next person who says "we are a nation of laws." Instead, I'm going to ask them if they know who they're quoting, and what the context of that quote is. If they say they're quoting some dopey pundit or a deranged elderly relative, I'll leave them alone; but if they say it was John Adams, which seems to be the consensus among people who like to repeat one another indiscriminately, I'll tell them that the John Adams quote is from Part the First, Article XXX of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it goes like this:

In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.

(Not wishing to beat a dead horse, I won't point out that "a nation of laws" isn't even the correct wording.)

And then I'll ask them what the hell the constitutional separation of powers in government has to do with whatever they're ranting and raving about. And then I'll ask them to say whatever they're trying to say in their own words, instead of repeating out-of-context clichés they don't understand.

Or maybe I won't, because I swear it's a losing battle.

I have three computers in my house. Not one of them has a properly functioning DVD player from which I can take a screen capture.
I recently made chicken stock from chicken feet. The feet were a bit creepy to work with, but it is the most awesome chicken stock I've ever made.

I eventually resolved my need for an electronic hipster PDA by getting a discontinued Palm on clearance. Yes, I know that's exactly what I was trying to avoid, but there just weren't any reasonable alternatives. Most devices that could handle lists were much more expensive; there was a cheaper brand, but the input method was horrible and the display very small.

At my old job, one of my coworkers brought a cake to work for someone's birthday. She didn't know the birthday boy well and didn't realize that he had a very strict diet. He politely ate a small piece and told her he couldn't have any more. When we had all had as much as we wanted, he took it into the kitchen for the rest of the company to enjoy. My coworker was highly offended by this and complained bitterly to me that it was very rude of him not to take it home, and that if he didn't want the rest he should have given it back to her.

When I had my birthday, my boss brought a huge, sorta gross (Crisco-heavy) cake. I was already full from lunch and didn't want ANY of the cake, but I managed to eat a tactful amount. After we had all had as much as we wanted, there was about 80% of this huge thing left, which she encouraged me to take home. Nervously (remembering my weird offended ex-coworker, who by the way was eventually dismissed for making people nervous with her increasingly venemous comments about petty things), I said I couldn't take it because it was too big to carry around the subway while lugging my laptop bag too. (Thank you, MBTA, for letting me blame you!)

Instead of being offended, she suggested that we put it out in the kitchen to let our other coworkers finish it off.

Cartoony drippings

I've always suspected that The Simpsons' Principal Skinner had a twin. In one episode, when he's dating one of Marge's sisters, she starts to tell him what it's like to have a twin. She pauses, and Skinner finishes her thought. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like being away from your twin is like missing a part of your own self.

I suppose this could also mean that he and Patty were soulmates, but this seems unlikely since she turned out to be a lesbian.
I am even more sure that Peter Griffin is not the father of Stewie Griffin. Evidence: 1) Stewie doesn't look like Peter; 2) Stewie is British; 3) In one episode, Lois says that Stewie looks just like his father.
I wanted to keep noting the little opening credit captions in the few "new" Futurama episodes (only four so far that I know of, as a result of quartering "Bender's Big Score"), but couldn't read them because Comedy Central puts these gigantic banners at the bottom of the screen, obscuring parts of the show you're trying to watch. I know it's not important that I do this... it's just a weird compulsion I have because I did it for so long. Also, I just hate those big damn banners on my TV screen.
It wasn't until well into the second season of American Dad that I realized that they have a different newspaper headline every week. (Lest you think I'm unusually unobservant, I rarely watched the opening credits.)

A better pet food class action update

2008-06-17T15:57:00.002-04:00

It's official... here's the website that explains the settlement and what to do.

Pet Food Class Action Lawsuit Update

2008-06-12T22:29:00.002-04:00

It turns out that the website I posted for this a few months ago may already have been defunct by the time I found it and spent more than an hour filling out the form and then told everyone else about it.

This means that if you used that form and did not receive some sort of confirmation (an email or mass mailing), your information probably fell into a black hole.

Now that there's a preliminary settlement, however, you'll have an opportunity to file with the class at this claims administration site. (The pet food case isn't listed there just yet, but should be maybe sometime next week.)

Sorry for the confusion. I was suspicious when I didn't get a confirmation email, but it took me a while to get in touch with someone and find out what was going on.

Sunlight and entropy

2008-06-10T19:27:00.000-04:00

Three few weeks ago, my doctor let me borrow a lightbox in hopes that it would control (not cure, but temporarily manage) my sleeping problems. The idea is that it helps the body keep track of what time the day began, so that it knows when it's time to shut itself down to go to sleep.

Three weeks later, I'm sleep deprived and my house is the messiest it's ever been. The lightbox definitely worked - it just didn't work the way we had hoped.

I was skeptical of it at first, because my body seems to be pretty well aware of what time I'm getting out of bed. It's traumatic enough, anyway. The problem happens 16 hours later, when my body seems blissfully unaware of what it's supposed to do next. However, the lightbox is supposed to affect your body's production of melatonin, which then (theoretically) solves everything.

HA.

Originally, the doctor told me to start with fifteen minutes' exposure each morning. Being an ambitious sort of person, especially when the required effort is virtually nil (you sit close to the light, but you can read or watch TV), I asked if it would be okay to start with 30 minutes instead. He said sure, try it.

I tried it. One week later, after unwillingly staying awake later and later each night, I finally pulled an involuntary all-nighter, which SUCKED.

Being unable to get to sleep at a reasonable hour each night did not mean that I never got tired. It's just that I got tired at inappropriate times, like while I was at work. The sleep deprivation aggravated my ADD, and I also became very anxious. My body still had no idea when bedtime was supposed to be, in spite of my efforts to create a bedtime routine and all that other sleep hygiene junk that the normal people always recommend (because it works well for normal people).

After the all-nighter, I decided to cut back to ten minutes each morning. This was less awful than when I had been getting 30 minutes at a time - the anxiety went away and I was able to get some sleep - but otherwise, I was still worse off than when I hadn't been using the lightbox at all.

Most of the hours when I was awake were not of the highest quality, either. I was able to muster adequate alertness when I really needed it, but the rest of the time, I was pretty slow. Doing anything other than the absolute minimum (job, basic personal and household sanitation tasks, cutting postage-stamp-size yard, killing centipedes) was out of the question. I think I cooked twice. The rest of the time, it was fast food and frozen pizzas.

The three best, most productive hours of each day? 10 pm to 1 am. Nice. Meanwhile, for the last week, it was a struggle to keep my eyes open during my light exposure. (You don't have to look directly into the light, but you do have to keep your eyes open.)

I spent the last two Saturdays mostly in bed, catching up on sleep. (Saturdays had been a problem for the last few months anyway, but not this bad.) This Saturday may end up the same. That left Sunday, my one well-rested day, for whatever I had to do all week. You know it's bad when I'm almost too busy to watch a Lakers vs. Celtics game.

There's stuff all over my floor - the floor in every room, I mean - not gross stuff, just general untidiness. I took to throwing things on the floor as a reminder to myself that they needed to be properly put away later, when I was feeling more energetic and could figure out where they were supposed to go.

Today the doctor said, "let's not use the lightbox any more," and admitted that he's had only about a 50% success rate with it. Maybe we'll try it again when I'm in the middle of my late-winter slump - but I'm not going to give it a whole three weeks next time if it makes me feel worse.

It's amazing how quickly a simple tweak to your sleep-wake cycle (what little you may have) can plunge your work, body, and life into total disorder. Ironically, that's why I don't consider this experiment to have been a failure - instead, it proved that it's possible to quickly induce meaningful (if temporary) changes to something that I had believed thoroughly intractable.

Incidentally, I did suggest to the doctor that I should try the light at bedtime instead of morning. He thought it was a terrible idea, but I'm not so sure. Surely there was once an evolutionary advantage for some people to respond paradoxically to light exposure. These would have been the people who were naturals for keeping watch at night, hunting at night - or conducting nighttime attacks. Maybe bright light is our signal to call it a "night."

30 Feet and It Kills

2008-05-11T19:47:00.002-04:00

In other news, there's a gigantic centipede in my house which I haven't killed, for the following reasons:

If it's that big, then it must be eating really well. The thought of having that much centipede food in my house is even creepier than the centipede itself. Seriously, I wonder if centipedes eat mice.
Supposedly they have a painful bite. Screw that, this one's so big it could bite my fingers off.
It's too goddamn fast to catch.

I reserve the right to change my mind at any time; I've got a can of bug spray that's just itching to be used.

Survivors guilt

2008-05-10T03:15:00.004-04:00

Because my employer is publicly traded, and because I am paranoid enough already, I have to limit what I say about this, but here's the Cliff's Notes version, in 98% English:

My company removed several dozen people (not me) from their jobs this week in an abrupt and oafish manner. In Mexico, not that I live there but I'm trying to avoid using certain words, this is known as "recorte de personal."

Three of the recortados were in my group; all three of them were good, and one was indispensible. I could easily think of someone else that we could afford to lose. I'm not saying I'd be happy about it - I really wouldn't - but I would not be as sad. One of them has suffered five recortes in the same amount of time that I've only been hit twice, and there I was all that time feeling sorry for myself... and because of his age (it's a big number) it's not going to be easy for him to find something else.

It appears that the decisions were made on paper by people who didn't know any of those whose livelihoods they held in their hands. That probably sounds good in theory, but paper does not tell the whole story, especially when the last review was more than a year ago.

It also appears that the projects people were working on may have been a factor in these decisions. If the managers had had any input to the process, they might have been able to swap some people between projects, so as not to lose a good person just because their worst deadbeat was working on a "more important" project.

Most of the managers were almost as blindsided as the employees. The recortes were conducted, mostly by telephone (unavoidable, given the number of telecommuters), by the highest levels of senior management.

Unfortunately, the only communication the rest of us got on this was a very lame email from the company president saying (paraphrased) "Yeah, that happened, it was real tough. Sux to be them, but the rest of us are still here, right? I mean, PHEW, huh? If for some reason you want to know more, ask your boss."

In other words, "we just took a big dump on your sense of financial security; we'll have your mom clean up the mess."

I found out, off the record, that there will be a less lame followup on Monday, but I thought it would have been better to do that today. I mean, they can't drop the hammer on conscientious people, let the rest of us stew over it all weekend, and then expect us not to be suspicious of them every time we have a slightly disappointing quarter.

Naturally, I am grateful, if a bit surprised, to have survived. I suppose I need to get over it, because it seems that the working environment I prefer - corporate not too cozy impersonal, that's my thing, honest to god - is also the one most prone to recortes de personal. Go figure. It's no fun to be in a recorte-free zone if your psychotic boss is screaming in your face about missing grapadoras all the time.

I got very little done today. I did what I could, but just about everything I did reminded me of one of the recortes, and I had no trouble finding less productive, less upsetting ways to occupy my time.

I amused myself with this video about ten times (warning: LOUD). It's the theme song from the telenovela I'm recapping now. The studio version of the song is more polished, but it's much more fun to watch actress Adela Noriega react to beloved ranchera crooner Vicente Fernández as he serenades her. (I'd say he's like Wayne Newton in terms of image and popularity, except I'm not sure if that's quite correct.)

Useful Spanish of the day
Olvidemos el pasado, y vivamos el presente
Let's forget about the past, and live the present

Verizon DSL vs. Comcast HSI

2008-04-14T14:47:00.004-04:00

It might be a bit premature yet to give a final judgment, but I can tell you what I've observed so far.

I started off with DSL because it was cheaper, long-term, than cable. There's also the fact that I somewhat resent the cable company and would love like to dump cable entirely. (Unfortunately, the local dish offerings carry even fewer of the stations I want, and I can't even tune in most of the "local" stations with just an antenna.)

So I got DSL, and it was fine for a few years until I started working from home. Here's the deal: you're supposed to put a filter on any device that's connected to the phone line (other than the DSL modem). Otherwise, DSL noise will get through on your voice line, which can make conversation difficult.

Anyway, the DSL performance was pretty good and very reliable. I noticed some slowness when using the phone and the Internet at the same time, but it wasn't a big problem until I started working at home.

I use a VPN client to connect to my employer's network. I don't need it all the time, or even most of the time, but I do need it. I noticed that any phone activity - ringing, dialing, talking, whatever - would cause the VPN connection to drop. (I don't know whether that was due to voice noise interfering with the DSL, or if it was a bandwidth problem.) I could work around this to some extent, but when you're in the middle of a lengthy file transfer, you do not want some idiot fax machine from Canada to wreck the whole thing!

And sometimes (but not always), I would have trouble viewing WebEx sessions while dialed in on a teleconference. I could work around this by calling in on my cell phone, but it got to be very annoying.

Also annoying was the constant hiss on my phone line, which the DSL filters were supposed to eliminate.

After Googling around a bit, I discovered that if you have a burglar alarm that's connected to your phone line, it needs a filter too. That never occurred to me, and Verizon never mentioned it. IT'S IMPORTANT. It has cost Verizon and other DSL providers some (admittedly not much) business. There's still nothing about it on their website, as far as I can see.

First, I tried to resolve this with Verizon. I was very happy with the talk we had, but it turned out that they had badly misunderstood my request. I still don't know what they thought I wanted them to do, but I can tell you that it should NOT have involved interrupting my phone and DSL service on and off for several hours. Especially without warning me first. In fact, I was so angry with them that I was ready to switch my phone to Comcast too, just out of spite.

I asked several people what they thought of Comcast's phone service, and as a result, I decided to forgive Verizon.

But the VPN connection was still getting dropped. Verizon told me that they couldn't do anything about my burglar alarm, and I'd have to ask the alarm company to install the DSL filter. Protection One told me they'd be happy to do that for a fee, but since I wasn't even sure it would solve my problem (it would get rid of the hiss, but what about the VPN getting dropped?), I wasn't willing to pay what it would cost.

So I went to the Comcast website and ordered HSI from them. I wasn't at all impressed with the ordering process - you fill out a form on their website, which is simple enough, and then you have to wait and wait and wait for a CSR to "chat" with you to confirm that you really do want to place the order. She said it was for "security." I wish there had been a better way. The chat interface sucks - you have to keep that tab of your browser out where you can see it, because it won't flash in your taskbar or anything when the CSR finally shows up.

It all got done quickly enough, however, and I had my cable modem and "installation kit" three days later. The instructions and installation diagram were pitiful; fortunately, I knew what I was doing. Then I inserted the "installation wizard disk," which didn't work, and I had to call Customer Support.

At that point, I wondered if I would need a stiff drink. I was sure I'd either end up speaking to an unhelpful moron, a person reading from a script in such a thick accent I wouldn't be able to understand anything, or god forbid maybe an unhelpful moron reading from a script in a thick accent. It'd be an hour if I was lucky.

Instead I ended up with a bright and helpful person named Ryan who figured out what was wrong, rebooted my "moodem" (yes, he did have a thick Canadian accent, but somehow we were able to converse), did a couple of other things, and that took care of it. This took about 20 minutes.

So far, I've found cable Internet to be much moodier, speedwise, than DSL. It's often somewhat chuggy during peak times (which are fortunately not the hours when I'm working). My VPN connection is hanging in there, though, and it's pretty nice to be able to pick up the phone without hearing a loud hiss and getting network errors all over the place.

Pet Food Class Action Lawsuit

2008-04-02T19:07:00.001-04:00

I've been Googling feebly and intermittently for over a year for information about a class action lawsuit. I kept running into things that looked like ambulance-chasers fishing for clients, but I didn't find THE lawsuit until today.

Go here if your pet ate any of the recalled pet food and got sick around that time [link removed because it's now defunct; go here instead]. The page includes links to recall lists if you're not sure. (In addition to the well-publicized cat and dog food recalls, there were also recalls for rat food, bird food, ferret food... I'm not sure what else.) It also links to the form where you can give them your info.

If you're not sure whether you should be included in the class or not, fill out the form anyway. I don't think they've finalized all of those details yet, but they can decide whether or not you meet the requirements based on the info you give them.

If your pet didn't get sick, but you had to go to the vet for tests to make sure, it won't hurt to fill out the form.

If you have really good evidence - autopsy results, empty cans with lot numbers on them, dated store receipts, etc. - you might be better off filing a lawsuit on your own. You may not be able to do that if you participate in the class action. (I don't think filling out the form commits you as a member of the class.)

This won't bring your pet back. It won't heal damaged kidneys. It won't change the still-inadequate mechanisms that are supposed to protect pets and their humans from contaminated foods. It won't even make you feel better. The settlement amount is likely to be insultingly small. Frankly, I doubt that it will accomplish anything at all.

But if you've still got some grief to spare, you might as well pass a tiny portion of it up the line to someone who had a hand in causing it.

Old people love robots

2008-04-02T16:35:00.000-04:00

(Fudge, I meant to post this a month ago, but it looks like I only saved it and didn't post it. And then I posted it and forgot to fix the date. D'oh!)

Too bad Sony stopped making AIBO.

And now for something completely different

2008-03-31T13:22:00.004-04:00

There's a bunch of cartoon stuff I'd like to discuss, but as usual, I don't have time.

As a consolation, here's an unacceptable substitute.
Ladies and gentlemen - Mr. Conway Twitty.

What'd he look like?

2008-03-26T13:29:00.002-04:00

Something came up at work yesterday that promises to leave me with virtually no time for frivolity over the next few weeks.

However, that doesn't mean you guys can't be frivolous on my behalf: tell me what, if any, mental image you had of the Easter Bunny as a child.

We were talking about this at work yesterday, in reference to those terrifying-looking... things they have at the mall. You think kids balk at sitting on Santa's lap, you should see what they do around this thing. At least Santa looks human. This thing at the mall is a monstrosity. Some costumes are better than others, but IMO they're all frightening. I don't think the Mall Edition Easter Bunny was invented yet when I was young enough to care about such things. Either that, or my parents wisely kept me away, because I'm telling you, it's creepy.

But that got us to thinking... how did we picture the Easter Bunny when we were little? My coworkers weren't sure. I honestly can't remember how I pictured him. I know I didn't picture a man in a nightmarish costume, but I'm sure I didn't picture an actual rabbit either. I think I must have had some vague idea of a cartoon bunny, which would have looked out of place sneaking around our living room.

Not surprisingly, the Easter Bunny was the weak link in the triumvirate of childhood mythical figures I grew up with. Santa seemed improbable, the Tooth Fairy seemed improbable and pointless, but it was the Easter Bunny who really failed to grab my credulity. The Tooth Fairy is a fairy, so maybe she can walk through walls; Santa goes down a chimney or one of those weird pipes on your roof that I didn't realize at the time actually led to the toilet; how the hell does the Easter Bunny get in?

And was it a coincidence that both he and Santa preferred a snack of beer and popcorn?

Without a consistent physical appearance or the kind of supporting literature that has buoyed Santa for generations, good ol' EB is a liability to the triumvirate. He threatens to bring them all down.

In any case, I'm straying from the question. I'm really curious. Did you picture a rabbit - how did he carry the basket?
Did you picture something like what's at the mall?
Something else?

Moving on

2008-03-20T21:14:00.001-04:00

Try as I might, I can't stop reliving what happened a year ago. It started on St. Patrick's day and ended on what, this year, will be Easter.

There was a brief glimmer of hope on this day halfway through the ordeal - the 20th, when I brought her home from the pet hospital in anticipation of at least a partial recovery.

That hope was short-lived; it began to fade shortly after we got home. She immediately went outside and lay on the cold ground, wanting to nap on a bare patch of dirt in the shade. I practically had to drag her back into the house.

The vet had told me that it'd get better after she had something to eat and a long drink of water. I couldn't get her to take anything, though; chicken, cheese, and even a squirt of water from a turkey-baster were all vigorously rejected. I tried for hours, then reluctantly went to my room for the night.

She was too sick to follow me up the stairs and didn't try; I wanted to stay downstairs with her, but I knew that if I did, I would just continue to hover over her all night harassing her as I had all day, desperately trying to get her to eat or drink something. She needed a break from me.

If I had known that that was going to be the last night she spent at my house, you bet your ass I would have stayed up with her. It's only one of many regrets I have about that week. I certainly didn't get any sleep; I watched old telenovelas all night, not even knowing what the hell I was watching, and went down every few hours to check on her. She'd look at me curiously each time, wondering what I wanted.

Things continued to deteriorate the next morning, and I knew that I would have to take her back to the animal hospital. I told her we were going for a ride, and for the first time since I brought her home, she reacted with something like enthusiasm. I got the leash and warned her that we were only going to the vet. She didn't care. She wagged her tail feebly, struggled to her feet, and even tried to climb into the car without my help. Even when we arrived at the hospital - a place she knew well by this time - she didn't balk. Ever the little trouper.

They did the best they could, but soon discovered that her kidneys were completely shot. They hadn't thought to look at the kidneys before; she had OD'ed on her pain pills, so they had been focusing on her heart and liver. Evidently, however, the kidneys had already been in bad shape, and the OD finished them off.

It took a few weeks to get to a point where I no longer expected her to greet me at the door each night when I came home; it took longer to deal with all the little pieces of kibble she'd hidden all over the house.

Her noseprints are still on the car window. It would have taken thirty seconds to wipe that window clean, but I've kept coming up with great ways to get out of doing it. I'll take care of it this Sunday. I'd be willing to keep those sloppy noseprints forever, but I think a year is long enough.

I'm a dude!

2008-03-17T10:03:00.002-04:00

According to the Gender Genie, I'm a man!

I fed it all of the blogpost text on this page, and in return it gave me a score of 4300 for female content, 4828 for male content.

I guess I don't talk enough about babies, shoes, and makeup.

Reality check

2008-03-14T23:19:00.003-04:00

I know I need to let go of this, but it's been an ongoing problem for several months, and came to a head this week.

My boss agrees with me on this, and that ought to be more than enough validation for me. Still, I'm baffled as to why it's been such a problem.

Consider the following brain teaser:

Imagine that your company has a product called Chicken, and you are responsible for writing the help for the Butt section of Chicken. Also imagine that you are the first competent person to work on Chickenbutt in several years, so that:

The first version of Chickenbutt help reflected the state of the product as of release 1.0.

There were a few point releases of Chicken after that, but no accompanying help releases. A knowledgeable person tells you that there were no Butt changes in any of those Chicken releases.

The next Chicken release was 2.0. Chickenbutt had some changes due to release 2.0, but the help was not updated at that time because the people in charge of doing that work were two cappuchin monkeys with severe substance abuse problems and no organs to grind. (One of them was eventually laid off, I'm told, while the other got promoted... neither of them took notes on what they "did.")

The next Chicken release was 2.1. You, the spunky new superstar employee, updated the Chickenbutt help to the 2.0 level, and there were no additional changes due to 2.1.

A really obnoxious but wealthy customer wants to see the Chickenbutt help as of the 1.1 release. One of your coworkers, who may also have some cappuchin monkey DNA, has to figure out (based on what I've outlined above) which version to give this customer. (Hint: the odds of picking the right one at random are 2 out of 3.)

Now, here's the brainteaser: How many emails does it take to make the coworker understand that it's not okay to send the help for Chickenbutt 2.1? (Hint: This is a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer. I kept a random sampling of my emails as evidence, but it seemed like overkill to keep all of them.)

Free drugs!!!

2008-03-09T16:17:00.001-04:00

The only thing I find surprising about this is that it's only just being reported now.

Discarded drugs, unmetabolized drugs, veterinary drugs, and possibly chemically active metabolites of drugs are being found in drinking water after being flushed down the toilet and "treated." Discarded drugs in landfills can also end up in drinking water.

Officials lie, plead ignorance, cite "post-9/11 security concerns," and disingenuously claim that their water meets regulatory standards (which don't actually address drugs).

I think a lot of consumers also don't realize that many of the bottled water brands they buy (thinking they're cleaner than tap water) are actually just some other city's tap water, which may or may not be safer than what comes out of their own faucets, regardless of whether it tastes better or not.

The power of obnoxiou$

2008-03-07T14:08:00.004-05:00

In September 2006, I started a blog called Ugly Betty Recaps. All I was going to do there was recaps of, yep, you guessed it, Ugly Betty.

I knew that most readers probably wouldn't leave comments on the site, so I put up a Sitemeter to find out who was visiting and how they found the page.

It takes a while to recap an hour-long drama show, and I quickly discovered that the sooner I put up the recap, the more hits I was likely to get. If the recap wasn't up yet when people started looking for it, they'd go to another site instead. On one particular occasion, there was an especially good episode that I was able to recap quickly, and I got what I considered to be a whopping 190 hits in the next 24 hours - far more than my previous record, and several times larger than my usual average for the day after an episode.

Anyway. I started doing something else on that site, called "Great Moments in Office Episodes." It was a totally goofy thing where I'd just post list of funny lines in an episode. At times, more people were showing up to read those than the Betty recaps, even though they weren't recaps and required virtually no effort or creativity on my part.

So. The writers' strike began, Betty and Office were out of the picture, and Celebrity Apprentice hit the airwaves. Even though it fills me with self-loathing to watch a regular Apprentice series, never mind the even dumber celebrity version, I've never been able to stop; in fact I've kept scorecards each season. I figured I might as well recap the show so that the blog didn't feel neglected.

It turns out that it's pretty easy to recap an Apprentice episode quickly. That didn't surprise me. What did surprise me is the number of people who have surfed in to read these recaps. More than the Betty recaps, more than the Office moments... sometimes more than both combined.

For example: last night, the dreaded Omarosa got fired. Since then, I've had more than 400 hits - more than twice my previous record. And it's not even a completed recap. It's just a very spare outline of the task, with a more detailed summary of the boardroom scene. I can't attribute this to my recapping skills, because most of these readers seem to be newcomers looking for a summary of what they missed. They just want more Apprentice.

But, c'mon... 400? I am gobsmacked! I guess I know now why Trump likes Omarosa so much. She couldn't sell hot chocolate to an Eskimo, but she can inspire great contempt which, when harnessed properly, sells lots of advertising time.

It's not my favorite thing about our culture.

Whose fault is this?

2008-03-05T11:20:00.005-05:00

That was a rhetorical question.

A bunch of oldsters in the defense/aerospace industry are fixing to retire. There's concern that there won't be enough young people to take their place. The article goes on to say that there is a talent pool, but said talent is more interested in working in other industries.

Well, DUH.

So they're trying to get to kids in early grades, to get them interested in careers. They're also trying to make themselves more attractive to recent graduates by offering good benefits. (Evidently, they're doing very little to entice more experienced workers.)

For 14 years, I lived in an area that was chock-full of aerospace/defense companies, and I couldn't even get an interview. I had no trouble staying employed while I was in Florida (except for that last year), but I couldn't get near a government contractor.

In retrospect, this is okay with me, and I realize that writers are not really the group of workers that this "crisis" is about anyway. But I worked with a lot of very bright technical people who had similarly been unable to get a foot in the door. Or, they'd worked at one of those places for a short while, only to be dismissed during a mass layoff. Or, they could only get in as contractors, when they really wanted job stability and insurance, because they were trying to raise a family.

So, I'm very sorry if these industries are worried, but their strategy is overlooking one very important thing: If there's a shortage of people who want to work for them now, it's because the current generations of job-hunters either remember the layoffs/bloodbaths firsthand or have heard about them from their parents. It wasn't just the young, marketable workers who lost their jobs - it was also older people who had worked in the same industry their entire lives and didn't have the right kind of experience to find adequate employment in another industry.

I realize that the layoffs couldn't be helped, but it's the way they were conducted that alienated so many people: a constant cycle of hiring and laying off, with no one feeling secure about their position or their ability to find a comparable new job.

And the industries are doing nothing to convince anyone that it won't happen again. Of course, they can't promise that, but they're essentially ignoring the thing that gave them the bad rep in the first place. My morbid suggestion is to include a merit-based severance package among the advertised benefits, and a post-layoff education program to better qualify ex-employees for work in another industry.

I realize that would never happen. I'm just saying that's what it would take for a lot of people to ever come near aerospace or defense again, after so many people got screwed so badly before.

Letters, I read their letters

2008-02-29T17:02:00.003-05:00

The listing on my house expired on Monday. The guy didn't call me or anything. I called him today to ask for my keys back. He didn't put up a fight, but he had some great excuses for why he hadn't called me yet. (Ironic, since the slogan on his sign says "no excuses... just results!")

Today, I got three mailings from three other Realtors wishing to list my home. I'm not going to decide anything yet, but I'm fascinated by the three very different approaches that these three people are taking.

#1: Hi, I want to list your house. All my agents speak Spanish and Portuguese!

Swell! You definitely want a bilingual agent in this area.

#2: Hi, I want to list your house. Here's my one-size-fits-all strategy, along with a graph that shows how well it works. Go to this website and check out my other listings.

My previous agent was also a one-gimmick guy, but this guy's gimmick is much better. And at least he has a strategy. The problem with #1 is that the ability to speak Portuguese is not, in itself, proof of having a strategy.

#3: Hi, I want to list your house. I have a bilingual staff. Here's a copy of my resume, listing all of my awards, achievements, and community activities. Here's a sample of the four-page ad I regularly place in numerous publications. Here's ten pages of testimonials from satisfied customers. Here's a report of my recent sales figures.

If I were in such a desperate hurry to re-list that I wasn't willing to wait for tomorrow's mail, or do any research on my own, I think it's obvious who I would choose. It probably took #3 just a few hours to put that mail package together, but it blows her competition out of the water.

This experience is also an excellent reminder of why my last few job searches were so awful. In the olden, pre-Internet days, you could make up a package similar to #3's and mail it. You can't do that any more - sending an email with lots of attachments, or an URL, just doesn't have the same effect. Especially if any part of it gets mangled or stripped off by the company's spam catchers, etc. And in many cases, they won't even let you apply by email any more: you have to fill out a form on their website. Maybe that's okay for some kinds of jobs, but I find it very difficult to distinguish myself from the other applicants when there's so little flexibility.

Anyway, I had another blog post I wanted to write, and now I don't have time for it. Too bad, because I'm dying to do it, but I was really surprised by these three mailings and how much they revealed about each person. I seldom find myself on the receiving end of a resume, so this was an eye-opener.

Electronic hipster PDA

2008-02-25T18:06:00.000-05:00

I'm reaching out to my wisdomful ~~multitudedozen~~ handful of readers for some help.

I used to have a Palm M105 with a folding keyboard. I used it as a sort of makeshift laptop, since I didn't have a real laptop at the time and I sometimes wanted to write something while away from the computer.

Considering what I paid for the Palm and keyboard at the time, I felt that it was a piece of crap. Very soon after the warranty ran out, it stopped hotsyncing properly, and (contrary to the manufacturer's claims) it always lost its memory during a battery swap no matter how fast I did it.

When I called Palm to complain, they were complete assholes about it. Their attitude was, "sucks to be you, guess you'll have to buy a better one." They didn't, for example, try to troubleshoot the hotsyncing problem, or offer to tell me where I could send it for evaluation, or even recommend a similar model I might like. Nothing like that. I stashed it away for a while and forgot about it, since I had a laptop by that time anyway.

Some time later, I became a list-making freak, and I thought I'd give the M105 a new lease on life. The only thing I used it for was to maintain lists. When the batteries got low, I'd write down the list items on a piece of paper (I know, how 20th century) and reconstruct the whole mess after the battery swap. (I didn't change the batteries very often, or this would have gotten tiresome.)

The M105 finally crapped out on me for good, but we had a whole drawerful of newer, sexier ones at work - leftovers from a nightmarish project we agreed never to speak of again except in the most hateful terms. I borrowed one for a while, and it was nice. I turned it in when I quit my job, and have been Palmless ever since.

The one and only thing I liked about the Palm was that it let me sort my lists several different ways, categorize them, date them, prioritize them, etc. (Actually, I liked some of the alarm sounds too, but I've already got five alarm clocks I don't use, so that's fine.) I use an ancient Rolodex-like method for keeping addresses, and I have no interest in changing that. I keep phone numbers in my cell phone and on my simm card, which suits me just fine. I still use a regular paper Day-Timer for keeping non-work-related appointments, and I prefer to keep doing it that way. But when it comes to all these lists I make - shopping lists, grocery lists, to-do lists, lists that defy casual explanation - all these pieces of paper are driving me crazy.

Yes I could put them on index cards, but that wouldn't solve the problem. I want to be able to sort the items one way, then another way, reprioritize them, delete things, change things, etc. without having to put them on a new piece of paper every time I want a different view.

That's it! That's all I want! I don't even mind if I have to write them down once in a while for a battery swap. I figured that there had to be a cheaper, non-Palm-brand gizmo that would do this for me. So, last summer I went to Staples, Kmart, and a few other places looking for one. At first, I thought it would be a piece of cake. I thought maybe I'd even find a few in the kids' section. I worried that I'd have a hard time choosing and would be tempted to get something fancier than I needed.

I found that Sharp makes several inexpensive calendar/address devices, some of which have memo functions, Spanish dictionaries, calorie counters and even pedometers, but none of them have a list function (nor the onscreen real estate to show more than three or four lines at a time anyway). I tried to get around that by using the different address fields as different aspects of my lists - categories, priorities, etc. - but this sucked, I couldn't view them as a list, and I didn't have any sorting options. I could tell you what time it was in Hawaii, and the Spanish word for dog, but I still couldn't build a damn list.

I found some other "personal electronic organizers" that were even less impressive, but I could not find anything with a to-do list - with or without all that other stuff I didn't want. My choices seemed to be Palm, a similarly-priced Palm competitor, or nothing.

Someone does make a very expensive thing (more expensive than the cheapest model Palm sells at any given time) that converts your spoken words into an organized grocery list and then prints it for you, but that's not even close to what I want either. I only mention it because if you do a search on "electronic list maker," this damn thing dominates the results.

And of course, there's lots of software that does this, but I'm looking for something handheld-size AND cheap. I'm thinking $30 or less (it really should be less) for something that does what the Palm list function does, or more if it can do a better list (more sort options, maybe, or multiple keywords). I don't care about calendar and address stuff - that is, I won't refuse an otherwise acceptable thing just because it had those on it, but I won't pay extra for them. It doesn't have to hotsync, connect to a network, convert julian calendar dates to Mayan calendar dates, to or play music. It doesn't even have to tell time. It doesn't need to store a thousand pages of data, light up, or display spiffy graphics, though I'd appreciate some nonvolatile memory to compensate for what's inside my skull.

I considered getting an old Palm (maybe even a M105!) on eBay, but I wasn't encouraged by the price vs. condition availability there. Anything that promises to be in good shape goes for more money than I want to pay for it. The old ones probably don't have much life left in them, and the newer ones cost a lot more, even if they've been off the market for a couple of years.

Keeping my lists on paper is no big hardship. I've got LOTS and lots of little pieces of paper and there's no chance I'll run out of them. I'm not crippled by the inability to sort items on the fly. I'm just a little surprised that in the sub-Palm market, there are oodles of electronic address/calendar devices, yet apparently not a single list organizer.

(This is the part where you jump in and tell me about some product that everyone else knows about except me.)

Trio Treat

2008-02-20T10:23:00.002-05:00

Of all the things in the world to write a blog post about, I don't know why I felt like picking on this defenseless dessert. I guess the unfulfilled promise of a "treat" rubbed me the wrong way. Dr. Oetker's "Trio Treat Layered Gelatin Mix" is not much of a treat.

It's a gelatin mix that you whip in a blender with room-temperature water. You pour half of it into dessert glasses, then you pour the second half. (The slight pause between pourings causes the difference between the layers of "foam" to be more pronounced.) Refrigerate, and the gelatin and foam layers solidify.

One thing I will say in its favor - it's convenient not to have to boil water and stir to dissolve the stuff. On the other hand, I can't imagine being so desperate for gelatin that I couldn't wait for the water to boil. Either way, you still have to refrigerate it.

And if you're going to have to wait a couple of hours anyway, you want the outcome to be worth the wait. I didn't feel that it was.

First, this is definitely more about looks and texture than flavor. The taste of this stuff isn't remotely comparable to Jell-o's. It's vaguely fruity, but when the color of something says "fruit! FRUIT! FRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUIT!!!!!" then you need something that's better than vague.

Second, if you like the texture of solidified foam, you might still find something to enjoy here, but if not, then not. Imagine cheap ice cream that has half-melted and then been refrozen. It was sort of like that.

Third, if you want neat-looking gelatin, you have much more appealing options - like making regular gelatin with fruit in it, or some alternative liquid like red wine, or creative layering with two flavors (tilt the glass while the first layer hardens - woooooo!!!), or... I don't know... something clever with Cool Hoowhip... or just get better-looking dessert glasses.

Cold feet

2008-02-05T00:23:00.000-05:00

For months and months and months, I complained that I didn't like either Obama or Clinton, but if I had to choose between them, there was no question that I'd choose Obama over Clinton.

By the time we were down to three people, however, my grudging preference for Obama had become genuine admiration. That's not to say that I loved everything about him, and I still liked Edwards better in many ways, but I had decided that Obama wasn't so bad after all. Especially compared to Clinton, whose husband was starting to become offensive (like the time he dismissed Obama's win in SC, saying "Jesse Jackson won there too").

Then Edwards dropped out, and I decided that Obama and I were a done deal. But then there was the debate on Thursday night, which changed everything. Well... it changed one thing. I decided it would be more than okay with me if Clinton became president. It'd still be great if Obama won, but Clinton would be great too. And I was convinced that either of them had an excellent chance of beating Romney or McCain in the general election.

The weekend passed. Nothing changed.

Then yesterday morning, I read a letter in the newpaper from a local woman who recalled Clinton's work in New Bedford in 1973. (Read this awesome article to find out what project she worked on next.)

New Bedford, of all the damn places. Clinton had been doing good deeds in New Bedford back when she was nobody. (Not that Obama was any kind of lazy slob back in the day, either.)

I was impressed by the story, and it made me feel even better about the possibility of another Clinton presidency if things didn't work out for Obama.

I promptly forgot about it for a few hours. Later, when I was halfway up the stairs with a basket of laundry, it occurred to me: I could vote for Clinton in the primary instead of Obama!

Simple, yes. But I had never entertained that thought before. Suddenly, though, I felt obligated to come up with a reason not to do it.

I weighed my thoughts for the rest of the afternoon and all evening. I thought about it while she was on Letterman. I woke up early this morning and thought some more while I lay in bed for an hour and a half, watching pre-primary coverage, still mulling it over.

I thought about it as I got dressed and drove to the polling place.

Every argument I could think of, for or against either candidate, had an equally compelling counterargument. Here's a tiny sample:

Clinton was great in 1973. But after all she's been through, is she the same person now that she was then? Does she do these things because she really cares, or only because she's ambitious and expects a reward? Does it matter what her motivation is if the outcome helps people? Doesn't all this hard work deserve a reward? But is the presidency a suitable reward?

Would our having a female president further antagonize conservative Muslim governments against us, or are they already maxed out, hatewise? Do we care? If she sends a representative to negotiate with them in her stead, would that be taken as a slight? Would Bill Clinton make a great emissary, or would they see him as the president's emasculated errand-boy? Is it sexist and/or racist and/or realistic to think that Obama would be more effective in this role?

Is there any more dirt the Republicans can dig up on the Clintons? Even if there is, haven't they proven to be pretty much mudproof by now? Could there be unforeseen dirt on Obama as well, and if so will he be as able to fend it off?

Isn't it extremely difficult to write off Clinton's eight years of White House experience? On the other hand, isn't it equally difficult to write off the memory of how contentious things became between the Clinton White House and the Republican leadership? Is that divisiveness permanent? Would we have to live through another four to eight years of that bullshit?

What's more likely to hurt a campaign in the general election: racism or sexism? Will this disappear after the election? Will it increase the odds of an assassination attempt?

Clinton often seems plastic. I don't like this, but other voters seem to respond to it. Does a plastic exterior guarantee a hollow interior? Or does it hide something really huge? Is it possible that Clinton's been holding out on us, and she can do a lot more than we think she can?

Why am I not asking similar questions about Obama?

Clinton is more conservative than I would like. A moderate approach is often more likely to succeed, but a person with greater charisma has a better chance of getting buy-in on more ambitious plans.

Ultimately, I realized that I couldn't let this one, very old story about Clinton in New Bedford reverse all of the reasons I preferred Obama. Much of it came down to a personal preference in the candidates' styles. Of course I have doubts and unanswered questions, but it would be strange if I didn't. At least this time, if the person I didn't vote for gets the nomination, I won't be filled with dread.

Having two good choices made the decision very difficult. How ironic that I had so much angst over a situation where even a "bad" outcome (Clinton gets the nomination) would be okay with me. It's not as if a terrible thing will happen as the result of my making the "wrong" choice.

Even when we're satisfied that we know all we need to know, there are no guarantees. At some point, you have to settle for the information that's available, and hope that the person you put your faith in doesn't screw you over or get run over by a truck.

(I got to the polling place around 8:30. My ballot was #33. Not a bad turnout, for a primary.)

Peapod

2008-01-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

While I was sick - wow, it's been a month now - I found myself housebound and needing groceries. I thought to myself, "too bad nobody delivers."

Then I remembered Stop & Shop's Peapod. It's been around for a few years, I think, but wasn't available in my area when I looked it up last summer. I checked again while I was sick, and they were offering it. Yay!!

Yay until I picked out a few things I needed and tried to submit my order. That's when I found out that there's a $50 minimum. That's in addition to the $9.95 delivery charge and a fuel surcharge.

I was desperate, though, and I really needed some of these things. I decided to take advantage of the fact that someone else would be carrying these things for me, and made up the difference by ordering lots of bulky or heavy things that are often a nuisance to lug between the car in the house.

My next surprise was that I wasn't able to get delivery until the next day. The next evening, in fact. (I was placing my order around noon.) And the website enthusiastically endorses tipping, which suggests to me that they're not paying their workers enough.

Under the circumstances, I decided to go ahead and do it, but Peapod was not at all what I had imagined. I thought it was going to be an old-fashioned kind of delivery service, where you'd place an order for a few urgent items, then someone would pack it and deliver it, and that'd be it.

In short, I don't recommend Peapod if:

Your budget is tight
You don't need much stuff
You need something in a hurry
You can get out of the house in the next 36 hours

The irony is that I did go out on the day of my delivery. I went to Kmart because I got to feeling better for a few hours and I desperately needed a new pillow. If I had known the day before that I would be well enough to shop, I wouldn't have placed that order. As it turned out, I probably shouldn't have gone out at all, but given the amount of time I was going to spend in bed over the next week, I'm glad I had a decent pillow.

My order did show up within the 3-hour window they predicted, and the order was complete and correct. But I can't imagine that I would ever do this again. The only reason I can think of that I might use Peapod again is if I were planning a party, then suddenly became too busy to shop. Then I'd be very glad to be able to skip that step and have all the food delivered to my door.

It's probably also nice for a big family that goes through groceries very quickly, and has money to burn. I don't know anyone like that. For the amount I paid for delivery, fuel, and tip, I probably could have bought most of the things I had really needed in the first place. Just not while I was coughing my head off.

Useful Spanish of the day
una propina
(a tip)

Incoherent OMG outrage WTF tomatoes !?!?!??!

2008-01-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

Again, I don't have time for a blog post; again, there are more interesting things I've been wanting to blog about for weeks; and again, something else comes up and I just have to write about it.

Yesterday, my father forwarded me a "send this to everyone you know" email from a total stranger complaining about how the school he works at in some southern state is full of (presumably illegal) immigrant kids and how they're all fat and they all have cell phones and they don't eat their free school lunches that we, the taxpayers, so generously give them. And then blah blah blah about the cost of "supporting" these ungrateful people who "take our jobs" etc etc etc.

(My father dutifully forwards everything he's told to, or at least I assume he does, based on how much of it I've been getting lately.)

Thanks to the magic of html formatting in emails (I so miss the happy days of plain text), there was lots of underlining, and italics, and different size fonts, and possibly colors. (I've deleted the email and hope never to see it again, so I can't check.)

The point of all this, believe it or not, had something to do a certain fast food restaurant refusing to pay an extra penny per pound for tomatoes, although I'm not at all sure that he really understood the issue since he didn't go into any detail at all. If he had understood the issue, he probably would have mentioned Burger King by name and told everyone to go there. Then we could all eat there, get fat, and talk on our cell phones, glad that that extra penny per pound wasn't getting wasted on those fat, cell-phone-using children.

It doesn't matter whether he understood the issue or not, because his argument was so vague and poorly constructed that there was no way of knowing what he expected you to do, besides forward the email. It went something like "fat Mexican kids on cell phones, your tax dollars at work, stealing our jobs, I'm upset about the tomatoes, forward this to everyone you know."

I guess this person doesn't know that fattening fast food is cheaper than nutritious food; doesn't remember what school food tastes like; doesn't know how cheaply you can get a cell phone these days; doesn't see these kids helping to support their families at their minimum wage night jobs; doesn't know that not all immigrants are here illegally; doesn't know that the cost of providing social services to the indigent (everyone, not just immigrants) pales in comparison to other government expenditures that some of us find repulsive; doesn't know that the people who use fake SSNs to work will never collect the money they're paying into Social Security (that's right, it's free money for the rest of us); and doesn't know that picking tomatoes for agriculture minimum wage (less than regular minimum wage in most states) is not the American dream.

Maybe he does know. Or maybe he suspects. But he's not going to mention any of that because that would interfere with the outrage he's trying to evoke in the reader. Instead, after reading this eyesore of a temper tantrum, we're supposed to imagine that these kids are stealing high-paying investment banker jobs.

I'm not sure how being fat, having cell phones, and being nauseated by cafeteria food makes them any different from other kids, nor how a stranger's bitter and wildly exaggerated description (they're all fat? they all have cell phones? and if so... so what?) would change my opinion of anything, but it's obvious that the people who enjoy these "outrage" emails just like to groove on the hatefulness of them, rather than do any thinking. They won't listen to a reasonable, well-informed argument; but give them a meaningless, uninformed, strongly-worded, unfocused opinion with so clearly stated point, and they'll eat it up.

And I wouldn't care so much if these people didn't vote. Maybe there's a way to screen for that at the polling place. "Do you get most of your news and information about the world from forwarded emails? Great! Just put your ballot through this special scanner." Or maybe we could create our own forward-everywhere email telling people that if they vote, they will die. Then we add a slew of fake headers at the top to give it that air of frequently-forwarded credibility.

Actually, I think I've seen this email before, without the paragraph about the tomatoes. I see on Snopes all the time where someone has revived some old forwarded piece of crap, tacked on a new "message" paragraph at the beginning or end, and then sends it back into the world as reincarnated crap. I wish that if people would do that, that they'd choose a more coherent, less ignorant piece of crap. But maybe there's no such thing.

Useful Spanish of the day
La misma mierda de siempre
The usual shit (literally, "same shit as always")

UPDATED Go ahead and call me again, Nova Scotia

2008-01-18T10:43:00.003-05:00

UPDATE! This wasn't any ordinary junk-faxing incident. Find out what really happened here.

I really, truly don't have time for a blog post right now, but I wanted to get this out there right away.

Every once in a while, my phone starts ringing. A lot. Every few minutes, all day long. It's a fax machine from Nova Scotia that just won't give up.

It's been a long time - maybe as long as a year - since I'd last heard from these people. I had forgotten all about them, or thought they'd forgotten about me, when I got a cheap fax machine recently.

I set up the machine so that it doesn't accept a fax unless I specifically tell it to; nobody should be sending me a fax unless we've talked about it and I'm waiting for it.

So, receiving unwanted faxes is not the problem.

The problem used to be that I just didn't like having my phone ring off the hook for hours at a time.

Now I've got a bigger problem - I'm working at home, and I use a VPN connection to transfer files. Some of these file transfers take more than a few minutes. Normally, there is no problem. But my Internet service is DSL, and while DSL is fine for most things, my VPN connection is quite fragile, and if the phone so much as rings my VPN gets dropped.

So, the phone calls from Nova Scotia started again today. Phone rang for a while and stopped. A few minutes later, it happened again and my VPN got dropped; I had been just about to start a big file transfer.

The number on my caller ID says:

902-837-7466

A google search on this number revealed absolutely nothing. Not even other bloggers complaining about it. So I wrote up a little fax of my own and dialed the number. Guess what? The number is supposedly disconnected.

I say "supposedly" because anyone can create an outgoing message that sounds like a disconnection notice. Of course it's just as likely that they're lying about their caller ID number - it can be done. Either way, what this tells me is that these people know they're sending illegal faxes.

I asked the phone company what I could do, and their answer boiled down to "dunno, sux to be you I guess." Thanks, Verizon!

But I also found these people. You send them your unwanted faxes, and they go after the faxers. If they win money, they send you a cut. It doesn't cost you anything.

So now I'm waiting for that phone to ring again, so I can receive the fax and pass it on to someone who knows what to do with it.

I'm surprised it's taking so long. Maybe when they get a phone call at their "disconnected" number, it's their signal that they've pissed someone off.

Later the same day: Foo. I just realized that if they're in Nova Scotia, they're probably not subject to US law.

I'm still alive

2008-01-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

I caught the flu right after Christmas (about an hour after Christmas, to be precise). I've been sitting on a bunch of potential blog posts, but haven't had the time/energy to do any. Now I'm recovering and trying to catch up on the many things I had to let slide while I was sick. Blech. More later.

Slurm withdrawal: Futurama opening credit captions

2008-01-06T00:46:00.000-05:00

I worked on this thing, casually, on and off for years and years, even though I suspected that someone had probably already dutifully posted them week after week during the show's original run.

It took a long time, because I kept missing them and then waiting for the rerun. I finally finished the list during Adult Swim's Farewell Futurama marathon last week.

I'm sure this simple list already exists on the Internet someplace, but I couldn't find a finished one during my lazy-ass four-second Google search, so I'm just going to post what I've got, seeing as how I've already typed it slowly over a period of many years. (I did find a few lists that were incomplete, but mine's complete, so nyah.)

You can find detailed episode information about each episode, including the opening captions, here. And over here is a neat site that includes the cartoon snippets used in the opening credits for at least the first 62 episodes.

This is nothing so fancy. It's just the list. See here for a similar list of Bart Simpson's chalkboard scrawlings.

1. IN COLOR
2. IN HYPNO-VISION
3. AS SEEN ON TV
4. Presented in BC BRAIN CONTROL where available
5. Featuring GRATUITOUS ALIEN NUDITY
6. LOADING...
7. PRESENTED IN D O U B L E V I S I O N (WHERE DRUNK)
8. Mr. Bender's Wardrobe by ROBOTANY 500
9. Condemned by the Space Pope
10. Filmed on Location
11. Transmitido en Martian en SAP
12. PROUDLY MADE ON EARTH
13. LIVE FROM OMICRON PERSEI 8
14. (Brought to you by Glagnar's Human Rinds) MADE FROM MEAT BY-PRODUCTS
15. NOT Y3K COMPLIANT
16. FROM THE MAKERS OF FUTURAMA
17. Based On a True Story
18. From the network that brought you "The Simpsons"
19. (Brought to you by Arachno-Spores) THE SHOW THAT WATCHES BACK
20. Not Based on the Novel by James Fenimore Cooper
21. Nominated For Three Glemmys
22. This Episode Has Been Modified To Fit Your Primitive Screen
23. Coming Soon to an Illegal DVD
24. As Foretold by Nostradamus
25. A Stern Warning of Things to Come
26. SIMULCAST ON CRAZY PEOPLE'S FILLINGS
27. LARVA-TESTED, PUPA-APPROVED
28. (Brought to you by Molten Boron) FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY
29. PAINSTAKINGLY DRAWN BEFORE A LIVE AUDIENCE
30. TOUCH EYEBALLS TO SCREEN FOR CHEAP LASER SURGERY
31. SMELL-O-VISION USERS INSERT NOSTRIL TUBES NOW
32. Not a Substitute for Human Interaction
33. Secreted by the Comedy Bee
34. IF NOT ENTERTAINING, WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN
35. THIS EPISODE PERFORMED ENTIRELY BY SOCK PUPPETS
36. BROADCAST SIMULTANEOUSLY ONE YEAR IN THE FUTURE
37. Now With Chucklelin
38. TORN FROM TOMORROW'S HEADLINES
39. 80% ENTERTAINMENT BY VOLUME
40. Deciphered From Crop Circles
41. PLEASE RISE FOR THE FUTURAMA THEME SONG
42. KRAFTED WITH LUV BY MONSTERS
43. (Brought to you by Thompson's Teeth) Bender's Humor by Microsoft Joke
44. DISCLAIMER: ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL ROBOTS WOULD BE REALLY COOL
45. FEDERAL LAW PROHIBITS CHANGING THE CHANNEL
46. FOR PROPER VIEWING, TAKE RED PILL NOW
47. NO HUMANS WERE PROBED IN THE MAKING OF THIS EPISODE
48. SCRATCH HERE TO REVEAL PRIZE
49. PSST... BIG PARTY AT YOUR HOUSE AFTER THE SHOW!
50. Hey, TiVo! Suggest this!
51. FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY (EXCEPT GRANDMA & GRANDPA)
52. PLEASE TURN OFF ALL CELL PHONES AND TRICORDERS
53. LOVE IT OR SHOVE IT
54. IF ACCIDENTALLY WATCHED, INDUCE VOMITING
55. BIGFOOT'S CHOICE
56. IT'S LIKE "HEE HAW" WITH LASERS
57. WHEN YOU SEE THE ROBOT, DRINK!
58. SOON TO BE A MAJOR RELIGION
59. OR IS IT?
60. CONTROLLING YOU THROUGH A CHIP IN YOUR BUTT SINCE 1999
61. Not affiliated with Futurama Brass Knuckle Co.
62. KNOWN TO CAUSE INSANITY IN LABORATORY MICE
63. NOW INTERACTIVE! JOYSTICK CONTROLS FRY'S LEFT EAR
64. DANCING SPACE POTATOES? YOU BET!
65. WHERE NO FAN HAS GONE BEFORE
66. A BY-PRODUCT OF THE TV INDUSTRY
67. TOO HOT FOR RADIO
68. YOU CAN'T PROVE IT WON'T HAPPEN
69. BEATS A HARD KICK IN THE FACE
70. VOTED "BEST"
71. THANKS FOR WATCHING, FUTURAMA SLAVE ARMY! (Written in symbols; diligent fans cracked the code)
72. SEE YOU ON SOME OTHER CHANNEL

Thought Poops*

2007-12-19T11:00:00.000-05:00

*I don't want to be accused of plagiarizing George Carlin's Brain Droppings.

Rudolph resolution

Maggie pointed out that Santa is just a typical, arbitrary, narrow-minded authority figure, and that's probably why kids take this depiction of him for granted. They are used to seeing this kind of behavior in adults. That's sad, but it also makes sense. I guess I was too hung up on Santa as an idealized character, and forgot that from a kid's point of view, it's still fun to watch the misfit triumph over the dumb, bossy grownups. Strangely enough, looking at the North Pole as a microcosm of our crazy world, and Santa Claus as The Man, actually makes the whole Rudolph thing a lot less offensive to me.

Compassionate Romney

I am just wondering how many more things Romney can do to deepen my contempt for him. I keep thinking I've reached my limit, then he does something else.

He tells us that he was so happy when the Mormons decided to accept blacks, that he had to pull over to the side of the road and weep tears of joy. Yes, I'm sure that's totally true. I'm sure that he had been losing a lot of sleep over that. Obviously, his religion's previously codified racism didn't upset him enough to convince him that it was a crock, but still, boohoo. Mitt, are you sure you weren't weeping tears of terror?

And then he weeps at the sight of a soldier's casket. This is the same guy who felt that Huckabee should apologize for having the temerity to criticize their beloved president's deadly, expensive, failed, immoral, unpopular foreign policy.

Personally, I think Romney is weeping tears of embarrassment because Huckabee is kicking his ass. And if a guy like Huckabee can kick your ass, you should be embarrassed.

Speaking of asses

At work, there's a pair of lips stuck to my ass. I don't know why. I don't hold a position of power. I don't have any special clout that I can exert on this person's behalf, although she seems to think I do. If I did, I doubt that that's how I would spend it; in reality, though, I'm pretty sure I can't do anything for this person. I'm not even sure if I trust her.

I know some people live for the sensation of being sucked up to. I don't. It's not the same thing as being respected. It's more like being used (or, more accurately, being prepared for future use).

Speaking of work

Thanks to LinkedIn, my replacement at the old job has discovered my email address. It sounds as though my ex-boss is giving him the same kind of lunatic grief that he used to give me.

It also sounds as though my replacement maybe isn't very good at figuring things out, like simply looking around for info, and doesn't enjoy the challenge of searching for solutions to solve problems. This should make him a good fit for my ex-boss, who sometimes has fits of inquisitiveness himself, but doesn't like it when he has to wait for someone else to solve a mystery.

And I just now this minute realized something for the first time. Every time I said "I'm not sure about that" and my ex-boss flipped out, I always assumed that he was annoyed that I didn't simply say yes and promise to produce whatever bizarre thing he wanted. It's only just now occurring to me that he's the sort of person who would have been almost as happy to hear a firm "No, I'm sure that's not possible," rather than wait for a better-informed answer. This explains a lot that I wish I had figured out several years ago.

Not-Entirely-Useless Spanish of the day for certain limited situations

Lynch
Yo tengo un cacahuete.** That means "I have a peanut."

McGuirk
How did we go from "What's your job" to "I have a peanut"?

Lynch
Yo tengo un puerco*** en mi nariz.

McGuirk
What does that mean?

Lynch
"I have a pig in my nose."

McGuirk
What is going on in Mexico?

(Home Movies, "Hiatus")

**Also "cacahuate." Both words are Nahuatl (Aztec). Use "maní" outside Mexico.
*** "Cerdo" is probably a better choice than "puerco," which usually refers to the meat (pork) rather than the animal.

Run, run Rudolph... for your life!

2007-12-14T23:45:00.000-05:00

If you were waiting for this, I apologize that it was probably not worth the wait. It's just something I need to get off my chest from year to year. However, now that I'm giving it an esteemed place (or at least a little cubbyhole) in the blog-o-verse, and being a lot more blunt in my contempt, maybe I won't feel the need to repeat it again.

Also, I did a little research this year, and for the first time I was surprised to find most of my questions answered. (New info has been available for more than two years, but my last search was probably five years ago.) Follow the links below for way more info which will only further my argument that this beloved holiday classic deserves to be replaced with Fox Nooz or an hour-long loop of Alec Baldwin's "Scheweddy Balls" skit from Saturday Night Live.

Okey dokey, here goes:

I call it "the Rudolph Rant" because it's the Rudolph special that inspires it; but it's the portrayal of Santa that gets my dander up.

Every year I watch some portion of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and then end up changing the channel in angry disbelief. Yes - year after year. Because I am gullible and idealistic. Over each twelve-month period, I always figure I just didn't remember it right; that it couldn't possibly be as bad as I recall. I mean, I like the songs; I like the animation; Rudolph is cute; what's not to like?

I know it's dumb to get worked up over a work of fiction about a bunch of imaginary characters, but here's the thing: when you're a kid, you're told that Santa Claus has godlike oversight of your behavior. I was never told that God micromanaged me to the point of keeping track of my sleeping habits, but Santa kept a whole damn ledger on the subject, which was frightening to me since I've never been a good sleeper. More important, however, was that he (in addition to God) was making decisions about me based on my good and bad deeds. In that sense, he was a moral authority. As such, a kid might look to him as a role model.

Fortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Despite a recent campaign in the UK to slim the Jolly One down, I don't believe that Santa is the reason people get fat. I don't know of any kid who fretted over the douchebaggery exhibited by Santa Claus in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," either. (I didn't, as a youngster.) And I'm always irritated when someone else talks about political correctness with reference to the classics of my childhood. It seems that even when we're very young, we're able to take things like this with a grain of salt, with the good stuff making us happy and the bad stuff floating over our oblivious heads.

Nevertheless, it bugs me when an imaginary godlike character acts like a shithead in front of little kids.

Grievance #1: As an employer, Santa is a nightmare.

Inasmuch as he's an employer at all. I'm not even sure what the elves' status is. All I know is that he allows the head elf to bully the other elves into submission. Does he explicitly condone this elf's behavior, or does he just not care? Clearly, the employees/slaves don't feel free to voice their concerns about the head elf's harassment, because Hermey (not Herbie) prefers to run away rather than approach Santa about his interest in dentistry. (Interestingly, in the script, the head elf is "FOREMAN," which brings to mind Red Foreman from That 70's Show, who was always threatening to put his foot up someone's ass.) Be nice if someone pointed out that the workplace isn't supposed to be this way, and if it is, you need to get out and/or seek legal remedies and financial compensation.

He also lets the reindeer coach (Blitzen, I believe) belittle and ostracize Rudolph when his "noncomformity" is discovered.

Grievance #2: As a businessman, Santa is miserably short-sighted.

He's got an aspiring dentist and an amazingly great flying reindeer at his disposal, but neither of these match his narrow ideas of what a Santa needs, so they're both useless as far as he's concerned. Between elderly Santa, his wife, and all those candy-eating/making elves, you'd think there'd be a huge demand for a dentist. He can't be offering decent benefits if there's no room on the North Pole for a dentist.

And the way he lets the foreman treats his elves, he is asking for trouble. It doesn't matter if the EEOC doesn't apply to elves (I'm not sure), or if there aren't any courts with jurisdiction so that elves can sue; those elves could easily mutiny. They'd be eating Claus-chops and wiping their mouths on plush red napkins if they ever realized what a raw deal they were getting.

Santa has some neighbors (the Bumble and Yukon Cornelius) with whom he might form strategic agreements, or at least a monthly casserole exchange, but he'd just as soon hang around the house in his underwear. Okay, I can sorta relate to this, but when you're the main inhabitant of the North Pole you really ought to show more interest in your tiny community. Especially if you've got another neighbor, a winged lion, whose entire mission in life is to collect unwanted toys. If you were Santa, wouldn't you be thrilled to have a backup source of unique toys? Just in case your sizable slave labor force decided to strike?? Well, sure you would - but that's because you're smart.

Grievance #3 (and this is the one I'm not joking about so much): Santa, as portrayed in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," is a miserable judge of character; if you're funny-looking you have to wonder if you're going to get any toys at all.

Santa seems impressed by Rudolph's flying abilities at first, but when he finds out about the shiny nose, not only does he laugh in the child's face, he also tells Donner (Rudolph's father) that he ought to be ashamed for encouraging him to try out for the team! Only later, when he's in desperate need of emergency lighting, does he change his mind. At this point, his attitude is not one of contrition. Rather, it's like, "Hey, Rudolph - I just figured out how you're not a worthless waste of meat! Whaddaya say, kiddo?"

And Rudolph, who is a much better reindeer than I am, cheerfully agrees to help out. I think he should have said "Fuck you, Fatty - you're on your own" and delivered the Misfit Toys himself.

Ah yes. The Misfit Toys. I think it's bad enough as it stands, but in the original script and first broadcast, they were essentially forgotten after that one scene. It was only because of a write-in campaign that Santa picked up those toys at all. How sad is it that nobody involved in this story considered that Santa should do this, until thousands of horrified parents begged them to address this loose end? Is Santa truly such a narrow-minded asshole that he can't imagine any demand for one swishy Charlie-in-the-Box, or one spotted elephant? They couldn't think of one kid who might prefer a one-of-a-kind toy? There's a whole island full of lonely, homeless toys who cry themselves to sleep every night, and we're just going to leave it at that?

Again, I've never heard of any kid being harmed or upset by this story, but I'm glad I'm not the only adult who saw some problems.

As for the doll, her problem was supposedly only ever referred to vaguely in the script as being "psychological," and elsewhere we're told that she's clinically depressed due to having been abandoned by her mistress.

WOW. That's a load of guilt to lay on any kid who wants to give up an old toy; if it ever was in the script, I'm glad it got thrown out. But I suspect that it was never in the script, and that the real reason for having her there was something even more misogynistic, like the doll wasn't blond or something. Either that, or it's just a mean joke to explain why she cries.

There - I've run out of steam. Now I feel a little silly, but I also feel relieved. I need never speak of this again. At least until I think of more reasons to gripe next year.

Snowflakes of thought

2007-12-13T15:23:00.000-05:00

Snowflakes as in "lots of little things that accumulate to create a pointless mess."

I took my car to the dealer last week to solve the CEL mystery. Turned out the engine control unit was fixin' to drop dead, so I'm glad I didn't try driving to Cambridge that week. It was under warranty, so they fixed it for free. Then I hung around the dealership being tortured by the CNN for an hour longer than I needed to, because they didn't bother to tell me when they were finished with my car. (I brought my laptop with me so I could work, but I could still hear the TV, and I was afraid that some of the stupid would burn me.)
Speaking of stupid, on the early news on Fox Providence last night (something I generally try to avoid), there was a story about a kids' vaccine called Hib. It's pronounced "hib." The dingaling on TV kept saying "H-I-B" instead - actually, it sounded like she was saying "H-I-V." I knew there wasn't an HIV vaccine, but I'm guessing that many people do not know that and were probably very happy to hear that kids were being immunized against HIV.
Speaking some more of stupid, that's me after midnight. I was bummed by the lack of new Daily Show and Colbert Report (especially since Scott McClellan wrote a not-yet-published tell-all book about his misadventures as White House press secretary). I thought I would give Keith Olbermann's show a try. Well, it's not on till midnight, and it turns out that my brain shuts down a few minutes before that. (It explains why I watch cartoons at bedtime.) I can tell that that man has a lot of brains and anger inside him, and I bet I'd enjoy watching him in the morning... I should probably record his show at night and then watch it when I get up.
Speaking of cartoons, a Futurama movie (Bender's Big Score) came out on DVD and I didn't even know about it. The Cartoon Network didn't get to renew their contract with the show; they were brutally outbid by Comedy Central, who will start running it sometime in 2008. They'll be showing the new movies broken into half-hour episodes. I am excited about this, because the Bender movie resolves something in a previous episode that many people found upsetting (I had thought it was just me).
Speaking some more of cartoons, the Boondocks episode "A Huey Freeman Christmas" is maybe the best Peanuts Christmas tribute/spoof of all time.
Sunday's Republican debate on Univision was even worse than I expected. Many of the immigration and foreign policy remarks seemed to be directed mainly at the Cuban exile community, which is big in the Miami area (where the debate was held) and is generally their best bet for votes anyway. In politics, and especially on immigration matters, the rest of the US-Latino community is often at odds with these views, and this was reflected in blog posts on Monday. In other words, the Republican candidates studied to pass the test and not to actually become informed or learn something. (Isn't that also how they want schools to work?) I wish there was a way for NOBODY to win the Republican primary. Fred Thompson was particularly dickish.
I went to the China Garden again on Sunday, but this time I forgot my camera. One of these days I'll go there, have my camera with me, AND the batteries will be working. And I'd better do that soon, because I noticed they were looking at carpet and wooden flooring samples. After all these decades, they might actually be planning to redecorate.
I found out that it's legal to chain two instead of three at the beginning (or end) of a row for double crochet. Not that I was worried. I mean, I've been doing it for years and the Yarn Police have never come for me. But I still felt better when I Googled and found out that lots of other people do it too.
Rudolph is not off the hook yet. (The angry hook, not the crochet hook.) That rant is still coming. When I get around to it.

Oklahoma is OK (NOT)

2007-12-12T17:55:00.000-05:00

By some strange twist of fate, I have FOUR friends in Oklahoma. I have zero friends that I know of in NV, and only one that I can think of in NY, but I've got four in Oklahoma. Go figure.

Thanks to the big ice storm this past weekend, three of these people got big tree limbs all over their property, and two of them aren't expecting their power to come back on till Monday at the earliest.

I complain about New England weather, but it could definitely be a lot worse.

(I sure hope I didn't tempt fate, just now.)

Credit card currency conversion fee settlement

2007-12-06T11:14:00.000-05:00

In case you don't already know about this:

There's a class action lawsuit against Visa, Mastercard, and some other credit card companies for overcharging people on overseas transactions (if you travelled outside the US, or ordered stuff from Canada, Mexico, Europe, etc.). They inflated the exchange rate AND added hidden fees - very naughty.

Naturally, they deny any wrongdoing, but because they are goodhearted people, they're paying out $336 million or so to cheer everyone up.

So if you ordered any anime stuff from Japan, or went to Canada to eat poutine and visit the king's igloo, or went to Mexico to recruit illegal immigrants, etc. between 2/1/96 and 11/8/06, you can apply for a piece of the settlement before May 30, 2008.

The payouts are likely to be small, especially if you've only ordered a few things online. But if you traveled at all, it could add up. When I submitted my claim a long while back (couldn't have been more than a year, I guess), all I could remember was a $30 order to Germany for some Kraftwerk junk. Later on I remembered buying something from Russia, but it was too long ago and I couldn't provide any specifics. So I'll be getting somewhere between 30 cents (thirty!!! cents!!!) and $25. Yeah, that's quite a spread, but the uncertainty is because of the way I filed out the form when they weren't offering the three different refund options yet.

You probably won't get a lot of money back, but why let someone else keep it?

Quick grab bag o' thoughts

2007-12-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

It's not that I haven't felt like posting. It's not that I haven't had anything to say. It's just that I haven't had time!

I made my Monday deadline (barely), did a tag-team recap of the Destilando Amor finale that night (I didn't get the best segment, but I still managed to make a joke about killing someone with a demitasse spoon), and finished up some more work stuff the next day.

Huh, that'd only be yesterday, right? This is turning out to be a really long week.

I've got more to do today, but it's less urgent, and frankly I'm burnt out - too burnt out to talk about this cake thing that's on my mind, and much too burnt out for my yearly rant about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But not too burnt out for these:

My check engine light came on again. This time it definitely wasn't related to the gas cap. The guy at Autozone said it had something to do with some solenoid thingy related to my brakes, and I couldn't get a car appointment until Friday, so I'm staying out of Cambridge this week (don't want to drive the car out of town until I know what's going on). Most likely it's nothing serious, because the light went off after three more restarts, but this makes two times that the CEL has come on within a month, and I've only owned the car less than 18 months. I'd like to know wtf is going on.
I heard Norm MacDonald in a TV commercial. He was the voice of a cartoon gingerbread man. It was sorta pitiful, but at least he didn't sound drunk, like he was the last few times I've seen him. I blame Frank Stallone.
I had a birthday. We ended up not going to the Restaurant That Time Forgot after all; instead we went to Hong Kong City in Taunton. It's in the building that used to be the Roseland bowling alley and ballroom. (There's a dance school upstairs.) The food there was great; they had THE best sushi I've ever had; but I don't recommend their mixed drinks. Their rendition of the Navy Grog didn't sound tempting at all, and my mother said her Mai Tai was awful. Their Suffering Bastard wasn't very good either. And my BIL, with whom I was sharing the birthday celebration, missed out entirely because he was stuck in a traffic jam for a couple of hours. We took some food home for him and had cake (my mother made a killer red velvet), but still, he totally got ripped off.
I chased that lousy Suffering Bastard (or as my aunt Carol used to tactfully call it, "Suffering Bee") with a shot of Patrón Silver. It was good, but not better than the cheaper Cazadores Blanco. In related news, a while back when I was feeling wealthy, I got a bottle of Milagro Reposado to replace my then-almost-finished Cazodores. I tried some when I got home and was revolted. It was very different from Cazadores, and I hated it.

I used up some of this pricey stuff in cooking, in mixed drinks, etc. and eventually it was gone, after which I replaced it with more Cazadores. The punchline? I guess I got to sort of liking Milagro after all, because my first sip of Cazadores after the one-month break was even more jarring than my first sip of Milagro. Milagro is crisp and peppery, while Cazadores is much oakier, almost scotchy (as is Patrón).
Back when I was a happy Cingular customer, I was able to get a new, better phone for free every year if I signed a two-year contract. This kept them competitive with other companies, which all offer free phones to new customers.

Now that AT&T has taken over, that deal is gone. New customers still get a free phone (or a deeply discounted iPhone, or whatever), but existing customers do not. You have to wait 18 months, and even then I think you get only a discount, not a freebie (they don't explain this clearly on their website). I really want a new phone, because I don't like the one I have; but after 8 years of nothing but free phones, I refuse to pay ANYTHING for a new one. Or a used one, for that matter. My contract with them expires in September, I think, after which I suppose I will be up for grabs. Brilliant marketing strategy, AT&T!
Back in September, Univision hosted a debate for the Democratic presidential candidates in Miami. Questions were asked in Spanish; candidates were required to give their answers in English (Richardson complained about this), which was translated and broadcast in Spanish only (no English on SAP - I checked - and no English captions on CC2). Everyone showed up for this debate except Joe Biden, who had to do some Pentagon thing the next day or something.

The Republicans were also offered a chance to debate, but the only person who accepted at the time was John McCain. That guy will talk to anyone. I guess they all reconsidered, though, because they're going to have their debate this Sunday at 7 (or maybe it's 8). I doubt that I will make it through the whole thing, but I am looking forward to seeing how they answer questions about immigration, multilingual education, etc. right to the faces of a voting audience that will be something like 95% Latino.
I made those other two soup mixes I got from Plimouth Plantation. The instructions for the pumpkin chowder said to add two cups of cream before serving; not having two cups of cream handy, I added a little milk to one bowlful. A LITTLE milk. It converted this delicious, peachy-colored soup into a bland bowlful of nothing. I ate the rest of the soup without any dairy ingredients, and it was great, even if not technically a chowder.

The Indian Corn Pottage ended up more like a big pot of grits or cornmeal mush with spinach. (A pottage should have a sludgy consistency, but grits absorb so much liquid that the corn-to-liquid ratio was bound to make it very thick.) It wasn't bad, but it actually benefited from a little bit of cream, which improved the texture.
I got Office Space on DVD for my birthday. The "extras" in this so-called "with flair" edition weren't very impressive, but it did include captions AND audio in French and Spanish. I wanted to hear how Lumberg and Milton would sound.

Neither the French nor Spanish version really got the delivery quite right. Lumberg didn't have the slow-talking schtick, for example. Translating his lines literally ("I'm going to have to ask you to go ahead and...") made them too long to say slowly within the allotted time. It might have been smarter to give him a slightly less wordy version to say, so that he could say it the same way as Gary Cole. But maybe that's just me. (Anyway, there's no excuse not to say "síííííííííí" slowly when Lumberg is saying "yeaaaaaah" slowly.)

Meanwhile, the Milton we know has a mousy little voice, but the guy who was doing Milton in French gave him sort of a Muppet-like voice (Fozzie Bear, maybe?), and the guy who did him in Spanish didn't even do that much.

The audio Spanish translation did capture Lumberg's personality much better than the translated captions, though. When Lumberg said "greaaaat," the captions always said "muy bien" (a bland way of saying "very good"), but in the audio he said a few different things, like "estupendo" and "óptimo." It would have been nice if he'd just used one word again and again, for better quotability; but if he can't speak slowly, I'm glad he could at least speak pompously and colorfully.

14! F O U R T E E N ! ! ! !

2007-11-29T21:20:00.000-05:00

I got fourteen catalogs in the mail yesterday.

Four-fuckin'-teen. In one day. That is a record for me.

Thirteen are in the recycling bin, which is going to be very hard to lift come trash day because I've been getting LOTS of catalogs every day for the last few weeks. (I should just take the recycling out every week, but I'm too lazy. I just wait until it gets full.)

I got six today. Five are in the recycling bin. The sixth, I'm going to look at tonight to decide whether I want to go to the LL Bean store. Then that's going into the bin too.

So... in two days I'll have put 19 catalogs in the trash.

Yes, I know all this heavy math is overwhelming. But that's because I still can't freakin' believe I got 14!!! catalogs in one day.

Useful Spanish of the day
¡¡catorce!!
fourteen!!

Weekend leftovers

2007-11-26T14:16:00.000-05:00

The restaurant that time forgot

I went to China Garden again this weekend. I ordered another Navy Grog, which didn't show up until I was nearly halfway through my lunch (egg foo yung). According to the drink menu, their recipe is passionfruit juice and Barbados gold rum. It still tastes more like grapefruit juice to me, but maybe I don't remember what passionfruit juice tastes like.

I brought my camera this time to take pictures. You'll notice that they're not posted below. That's because the Kodak batteries that came with the camera (which I got maybe a month ago) were already dead. But that's okay. I'm going back there twice in the next three weeks. After mumblemumble years they can certainly manage to stay open another few weeks, knock on wood.

I'm taking pictures not because the decor is fancy or even attractive, but because it's barely changed at all for as long as I can remember. I'd like to have some record of it before they redecorate.

Now I need product

I got a haircut on Saturday. I knew what I wanted, but I couldn't remember the name of the character on General Hospital who had the same cut. All I could remember was that, in this character's deep dark past, her original name was "Connie Falconieri." You see, because it's a big secret, she and her boyfriend mention it loudly and frequently - far more often than her real name ("Kate Howard," I remembered later).

Fortunately, the stylist knew who I was talking about and gave me more-or-less the same cut. This was a welcome switch from my last stylist. She watched TV all day in her salon, but it was mostly talk/brawl shows and judge shows, none of which provide much inspiration for a lady wanting a decent haircut.

The best celebrity/TV character hair salon experience I ever had was many years ago when I went for color. I said I wanted the same shade of red as Dr. Crusher from ST:TNG. The stylist didn't ask "Who's that?"; she asked "Which season?" I had to admit that I wasn't sure!

I can read and so are you

Some friends gave me the gift of fine literature this weekend: Stephen Colbert's I Am America and So Can You. This book has literally changed my life since I began reading it. Before that, I was a person who didn't own a copy of the book. That's completely different now.

Seriously, it's much better than I had expected. It's bigger than it looked on TV, and the binding is actually nice, with end papers (you never see those any more) and a ribbon bookmark. The contents are even better. It's a lot like watching the show (which is going to be off the air for who knows how much longer), and there are even sarcastic notes in the margin to sort-of duplicate "The Word." There's a transcript of his speech at the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner last year. There are helpful photos, thought-provoking stickers, and countless other features, such as words.

Everyone should own at least one copy of this book. I'd recommend one copy for each room for quick reference at all times; attached with a chain if possible to prevent theft. If there are multiple people or other literates in your household, you might need more copies.

I know Colbert himself has already endorsed the book with his own award. I'd also like to nominate it for a Hamster-Themed Blog Readers' Choice Award.

New pet peeve

Car companies must have some of the biggest advertising budgets in the world. So why are their commercials so lame? (VW ads excluded.) We are talking about some of the dullest, most uncreative, unimaginative ads of all time. A few are extra-loud or have annoying music, which means that in addition to being bored by them, I actively hate them.

There are some brilliant ads for car insurance. Too bad none of these clever advertisers do business in MA.

Useful Spanish of the day
ornitorrinco
(platypus)

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T02:12:00.000-05:00

Technically, if you count posts to other blogs, I've still been blogging every day. Yesterday I posted my last (as in final, for a long time) telenovela recap. It wasn't the masterpiece I had hoped, but you gotta recap the episode you've got, and not the episode you wish you had.

Boy, was I ever in a shitty mood.

The birthday thing upset me a lot, and it was actually worse than I described. It got even worse still before we finally worked it out, but we did work it out.

It turns out I was coming down with something; no wonder I was so fatigued, miserable, and out of sorts. The miserable headache's gone now, but the rest of me is not feeling so great. I'm not sure whether I'm going to be able to make it to Thanksgiving dinner or not.

I also found out who the so-called "slacker" was at work. I've seen her workload, and she has definitely not been slacking; however, it's true that she claimed she had completed certain tasks that she hadn't. (Which I am now stuck with, although I would have ended up stuck with them even if she'd been honest about them.)

Yeah, I'm whining again. So sue me! I promise I'll stop when I feel better, which won't be today.

I've never missed a Thanksgiving before. :(( My first Thanksgiving in Florida was a real stinker; it was rainy and crappy and a lot of my relatives were either sick or working that day, so it was just me, my uncle, one cousin, and one of their neighbors. We went to a cafeteria/buffet-style restaurant that was frequented mostly by old people who preferred minced, bland food. As for the staff - I overhead one of the employees asking another why everyone kept asking for turkey.

Even if I have to stay home today, I'm pretty sure there will be leftovers. And they won't be minced or bland.

I hope everyone else has a much better day! Happy Thanksgiving!

Throwing in the towel

2007-11-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

I don't know whether it's the challenge of posting once a day, or if it's just my blogging "style" (or lack of it); but as I had feared, Hamster of Doom, The is fast devolving into a personal bitchfest.

I realize that some people start a blog for the sole purpose of venting, but that's really not the kind of blog I want; I was never sure I wanted one in the first place. I thought it would be fun to blog once per day for a month, but I was mistaken.

So, I'm going to hang it up for a while. If I find another fascinating cracker, rest assured I will post about it immediately.

Bear with me - I feel like whining

2007-11-19T21:57:00.000-05:00

I don't get a ton of social invitations, but I get a few. Sometimes they coincide with family obligations (mostly birthdays), in which case I turn them down in favor of the family thing, and if I might sometimes wish there weren't so many obligations, I've never let them hear a peep about it. Because:

I really don't want to miss these things, even if I grump about them privately a little bit.
When I get my one personal day of obligation per year, I expect everyone else to pretend to be just as delighted as I am on their birthdays, anniversaries, school things, etc.
It's their day, not mine. If I wanted to go to that other thing that badly, I would just go. I wouldn't ask them to reschedule their stuff for my convenience. Until today, I didn't even realize that it was an option. But apparently, it is... starting with my birthday!

Yes - due to some "misunderstanding" which my sister and mother are now blaming on each other, it seems that I'm going to be taking a day off work to celebrate my own birthday.

At my old job, I used to take my bday off because I was always looking for any excuse to take a day off from that madhouse. Last year, it was also a handy subterfuge for a job interview. (In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get that job.)

But I'm not thrilled to be asking for a day off on the last business day before a deadline. (Which is unlikely to move again, knock on wood.) It won't be a big deal at all and nobody will be upset about it; but it's just not how I wanted to spend my vacation time. I wanted to take some time off AFTER the deadline.

Of course, when I let slip that I was miffed about this, everyone claimed that I had misunderstood. (That's what happens when someone leaves a message on your answering machine saying that everyone has plans on either Saturday or Sunday that weekend.) The innocent reply was, "but (X) IS your birthday."

True. We all have birthdays on weekdays from time to time, but this would be the first time we had a birthday party on a weekday starting at 4:30.

(I can't believe I'm complaining that my own birthday has become an obligation for ME.)

And by the time everybody backpedalled and said no, no, that's not what we meant, please you don't have to ask for the day off, I had already asked for it. And if I'm going to take the day off then we are damn well going to have a party and we are all going to LIKE it goddamn it!

Or as Clark Griswold would say: "You'll be whistling Zippity Doo-da out of your assholes!"

I suppose I could look at it differently and be grateful that they want to do anything for me at all, but since we always do birthdays, and since this particular one reeks of obligation, plus I have a headache, I think I'd rather go to Burger Chef and get a Fun Meal. The truth is that I'm not extremely excited about this thing to begin with, and I'm sort of beyond the point where it seems likely that I'll be getting a pony not that I ever wanted one, etc.

I was so pissed off about this that I started writing this as soon as I got home. I haven't eaten yet. I'm missing my telenovela (the machine is getting it, so it's okay, but I really prefer to watch it when it's on). I think I should maybe stop sulking and get on with my life. :-)

Again, I don't really care that much about the damn birthday. In fact, I'd be thrilled if there were some way to postpone it for a few years. I'm just disappointed that they had to make it so obvious that it was going to be a pain in the ass for them.

Useful Spanish of the day
¡Feliz cumpleaños, maldita sea!
Happy birthday, dammit!

I need a zombie slayer

2007-11-18T00:33:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention... my deadline moved again.

Yeah. I posted that thing about deadlines two days before the new deadline. Well, that deadline is now old, as in obsolete.

This past Friday, I was informed that we had a new deadline: Dec. 3. Why? Because some unnamed person on my "team" had deliberately misrepresented his or her progress, and some of the unfinished material was urgent enough that we (just the writing group, not the entire project) have to keep pluggin' away until some particular very important task (I don't know which one) gets finished by the unnamed person. Which means that I need to continue helping the other writers complete their non-urgent odds and ends too. Why? Because we can't justify extending the deadline for just one person; therefore we all have to keep busy.

The project and team are both big enough that I really don't have any way to identify the miscreant or the unfinished task. I take it this person isn't being fired right now only because my ultra-nice boss's boss wants to give this person a chance to learn a lesson and redeem hirself.

I'm told there were two waves of layoffs before I was hired; I can tell that a lot of incompetence was involved in the creation of the material I'm now responsible for and I've been assured that the person(s) involved are no longer with the company. In light of that, I can understand the management's reluctance to can someone now, but if someone is still laying a big fat goose egg on company time and lying about it, my morale would not at all be hurt by this person's dismissal.

Meanwhile, I don't like this thing where a deadline gets up and moves. It's supposed to be DEAD. That's why we call it a deadline.

So, my question is: how do you kill a zombie? Thank you for your time.

More about Agave Nectar

2007-11-18T00:14:00.000-05:00

I'm still skeptical that it (at least this brand) is 3x sweeter than honey. It's definitely not sweeter than sugar and it's absolutely not easier to use than "simple syrup" (which you get by boiling sugar and water).

However, if you occasionally need small amounts of cold-water-soluble sweetener, it turns out this stuff is actually pretty good.

I got some Triple Sec today and tried to make a fresh lime margarita, but it was WAY too tart when made as directed. I added some of this agave stuff to sweeten it, and indeed, my drink is now quite nice. There was a very faint, slightly viscous residue at the bottom of the glass, but that's all. A swirl of the glass got rid of that.

Flavorwise, the nectar didn't add anything except sweetness. Impressive!

This is the light version of Agave Nectar. The Fairhaven Stop & Shop also has an amber version, which supposedly is more maple-ish. (I'd just as soon use actual maple for my mapleicious needs, such as the applesauce that is bubbling happily on my stove right now.) In addition, according to the manufacturer's website, there's a "dark" version, which they didn't have at the store.

In case you didn't know, the agave is a plant native to Mexico. One variety, the Blue Agave, if grown in the state of Jalisco and harvested and distilled under strict regulatory controls, winds up in my ~~medicine~~ kitchen cabinet in the form of tequila. Other varieties, grown anywhere (including Jalisco) and prepared slightly differently, can be distilled and marketed as mezcal (sometimes barely distinguishable from tequila). For that matter, blue agave harvested or prepared outside of Jalisco also gets marketed as mezcal.

There, it's barely Sunday and you've already had your Spanish of the day!

Agave Nectar is made from wild agaves (i.e. not tequila-producing). There's still a lot of "wilderness" in Mexico; I confess that I don't know whether its conservation has been a result of deliberate actions, or if there simply hasn't been adequate "opportunity" to exploit all of that land yet. In any case, if these "wild" agaves are growing in true wilderness, then I am definitely in favor of supporting this venture.

Some people make alternative-healthish and even borderline magical claims about agave nectar, which I haven't looked into at all. It does appear to be more diabetic-friendly than HFCS, if that's an issue for you.

The stuff is not cheap - I paid $4.39 for 11.75 ounces - so it's not a bargain over regular sugar or honey, either. I imagine that its market niche will always be pretty small. But it's ideal within that small niche!

Pete Seeger kicks ass

2007-11-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

My friend Julie (no relation) recently posted this on DailyKos, which got rec'ed all over the place. It's a video of Pete Seeger making a rare TV appearance on the Smothers Brothers show, plus a partial transcript of some testimony he gave to the Unamerican Activities Committee in 1950. There's also a link to the full transcript.

You can listen to him sing while you read the transcript. I recommend it.

Funny. A few days ago I was remembering that I was once (briefly) interested in folk music, but I couldn't recall why. All I could remember was "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" and the like, which has never been my cup of tea. Amazingly, I had forgotten all about the likes of Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. (Granted, most of the folk music I remember fondly would actually be considered protest songs, for which there was seemingly little reason to consider in the 80s.)

Thanks, Julie, for the reminder.

Useful Spanish of the day
caza de brujas
(witch-hunt)

Why people need to get a life

2007-11-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

When I first started reading this story, I thought it was just a simple case of a childish prank gone horribly wrong.

It was a childish prank, but it was not perpetrated just by children. There were parents involved.

A 13-year-old girl made friends with a boy named Josh on Myspace. Eventually Josh rejected her, and she hanged herself. (There's way more to it than that, but that's the overview.)

The prank: Josh didn't exist. Someone made him up specifically to mess with this girl.

That's not so unusual, unfortunately. What's remarkable is that the Josh prank wasn't just a mean trick between kids. It was a neighborhood family. The parents were in on it.

Unbelievable. It's kinda tough to get kids to sort out their problems rationally if their parents are going to pull shit like this.

The stress of daily blogging drives me to meme

2007-11-16T01:56:00.000-05:00

After posting this last night, I began to feel a little guilty. I had picked up a meme from a perfectly nice person, only to mock it mercilessly. That was snotty.

But it's still my best bet for a blog post today.

Nevertheless, I'll change my answer to #29.

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night?

Dale Gribble

2. What were you doing at 0800?

Trying to scrape together $2 in change for commuter rail parking. (Only found $1... the MBTA Police are gonna get me!)

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?

Recapping.

4. What happened to you in 2006?

I played a joke on my boss, and it was awesome.

I started watching and recapping Mexican telenovelas. This is my truly pitiful first attempt. This is my much better (or at least much more accurate) most recent effort.

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?

"Thanks" to the cashier at Staples.

6. How many beverages did you have today?

On this specific date, none yet; but since I've been out of bed, I've had two cups of coffee and two sodas.

7. What color is your hairbrush?

I use a pick and/or comb.

8. What was the last thing you paid for?

Some paper I bought at Staples.

9. Where were you last night?

Why? What did you hear?
Oh, right - I was at home. I didn't knock off work until after 7 and I had to get up early (madrugar) today.

10. What color is your front door?

You'd think I'd know, wouldn't you? I think it's gray. I didn't paint it and I don't much care. :-)

11. Where do you keep your change?

In the change pouch on my wallet.

12. What’s the weather like today?

Yesterday it was warm and shitty. Today it's too soon to tell, although NOAA predicts that it will be a little less shitty.

13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor?

Fat-and-sugar flavor.

14. What excites you?

Just about anything, if I'm in the mood for it.

15. Do you want to cut your hair?

No, but I might pay someone else to cut it.

16. Are you over the age of 25?

I am more than qualified to become a United States Senator.

17. Do you talk a lot?

Sometimes.

18. Do you watch the O.C.?

Hasn't that been off the air for a while?

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?

Who the hell doesn't?

20. Do you make up your own words?

That's ludicrulous.

21. Are you a jealous person?

Is this a trick question to guess my species?
Hint: I'm not a jealous DOLPHIN.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter 'A'

No.

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’

No.

24. Who’s the first person on your received call list?

My dentist.

25. What does the last text message you received say

I don't do text messages.

26. Do you chew on your straw?

No. It stops working if you chew on it.

27. Do you have curly hair?

Sometimes.

28. Where’s the next place you’re going to?

Work.

29. Who’s the rudest person in your life?

I am.

30. What was the last thing you ate?

Chicken in a Biskit crackers.

31. Will you get married in the future?

If I marry at all, it will have to be in the future.

32. What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?

The ONLY movie I've seen in the last two weeks was Borat.

33. Is there anyone you like right now?

I like lots of people.
(Why do I get the impression this thing was written by a nine-year-old?)

34. When was the last time you did the dishes?

Sunday. Oh yeah, baby. I did 'em good.

35. Are you currently depressed?

No.

36. Did you cry today?

No.

37. Why did you answer and post this?

I posted this because I needed a post for Friday and there was no guarantee that anything better was going to turn up. I thank Brian for posting his when he did, because this one-post-a-day thing is killin' me.

I answered this because without the answers, it would have been even lamer.

38. Tag 5 people you want to do this survey.

Um, no. But thanks for the suggestion.

Random thoughts of the day

2007-11-15T21:37:00.000-05:00

I usually spend Thursdays in the office, which makes for a really long day, especially since I have additional blogging duties on Thursdays (today's posts aren't up yet). I got home later than usual tonight, so these feeble offerings will have to do:

Astro Boy (60s version)

I saw this weird cartoon today for the first time. It's on the Cartoon Network (technically Adult Swim) at 5:30 AM, if you have the misfortune to be up so early.

Astro Boy was the first "anime" to be broadcast outside Japan. (I really feel the need to put it in quotes because it's so different from the contemporary stuff.) I don't like most anime, but I wanted to see Astro Boy at least once to get a better idea of where the genre got started in the US. I probably would have liked it more as a kid. I'm pretty sure the only reason I like Speed Racer now is because I saw it (intermittently) when I was a kid. All these years later, I can still watch it through preteen eyes. I don't have that advantage with Astro Boy.

I don't see myself getting up needlessly early or missing my favorite train to watch it again, and if I were to tape it I'm pretty sure I'd never find time to play it back. Nevertheless, I'm glad I watched it. For a few minutes there in the groggy gloom, I felt like I'd gone back in time. I love that feeling.

Bonus cracker information

For years I've seen these "Chicken in a Biskit" crackers at the store. (Evidently, they are more popular overseas.) Morbid curiosity finally won out and I bought some. My observations:

Although they are baked, they're greasy enough to have been fried.
Although they do contain chicken, they don't taste much like it.
Although they don't taste so bad as to be inedible, I'm not sure I care to finish what's in the box. Maybe they're better in soup (they'll probably melt as soon as they hit the water).

Useful Spanish of the day

A few days ago (or maybe weeks... I don't remember) I claimed that "tequila" is masculine. In fact, it's both masculine and feminine. Unusual, but it explains a lot.

Obligatory blog post

2007-11-14T15:40:00.000-05:00

If not for my keen sense of self-preservation, I would be knocking my head against the table by now. I'm just going to say random stuff until I have a few paragraphs, then get back to work.

I have tea every morning at home. (I have coffee at the office, because I need a better jolt.) Today's tea was lapsang souchong. The only stuff I have is loose. I measured it into my tea filter and teapot downstairs and brought it upstairs, where I have a hot pot. In the time it took me to get up the stairs I forgot I was carrying unsecured tea, tilted the pot with the filter, and made a mess. That was exciting. I vacuumed it up and went back for more. The second batch made it up the stairs safely.

I spent the morning tapping my fingers against my mousepad, waiting for something to do. After lunch I got three things thrown at me, which doesn't really explain why I didn't write this lame blog post this morning when I had more time.

All righty. That's multiple paragraphs. I'm calling it a blog post. Sorry it sucks, but they can't all be Milton stories.

Useful Spanish of the day
Titles of some popular telenovelas. See if you can detect a running theme:
Heridas de Amor: Wounds of Love
Destilando Amor: Distilling Love
Barrera de Amor: Barrier/obstacle of Love
Amar sin Limites: To Love without Limits
Yo Amo a Juan Querendón: I Love Irresistible Juan
Amor Real: Real Love
Como Ama una Mujer: How a Woman Loves

The line is feeling much better now...

2007-11-13T12:20:00.000-05:00

There's just one thing I don't like about deadlines. They tend to recover at the last minute.

The nice thing about deadlines, in theory, is that no matter what happens before they arrive - no matter how stressful things get - you know that (again, in theory) it will be all over five minutes later.

Did I mention that this is just in theory, and that things almost never work out that way?

So it's probably foolish of me to hurry to finish my work in time for the first deadline, knowing that it's going to get moved. (Sometimes many times.) Nevertheless, I keep doing it. Just in case.

I didn't get a full workload for this release at first, because I was new and they figured it might take me longer to finish things. When this turned out not to be true, I was given more work, but I seem to have the Touch of Death - if you assign a new feature to me, there's about a 40% chance it will get canceled. Sweet!

So I finished my own work with no problem, and then I took on some other work, and I rushed and hurried. For a moment there, it looked like they were going to move the deadline because of one bug-ridden feature, but there was a big meeting, and all the concerned parties decided to cancel that feature rather than delay the release.

I was thrilled with this decision. The end was in sight! Because we had started with such a backlog (due to previous understaffing and neglect), we weren't expected to finish every last thing; so as long as we'd covered all the important stuff, we would be okay. Whatever we couldn't finish now, we could finish in the downtime between releases.

But there was one customer who really wanted that one feature. And they have lots of money. So now all the other customers are going to have to wait an extra seven weeks for the release so this one customer can get what it wants. This was decided on the very day of our deadline.

We - my group, that is - decided to push our own deadline back just 12 business days, since our own work was almost done. But we're also getting tied up with a lot of training and other long meetings that we had specifically scheduled for AFTER the release; the meetings and training can't wait any longer, so we're constantly interrupting our work to attend these things.

What scares us is that we all know about feature creep. Some genius is going to say (just after we finish and compile our help files), "Hey - we've got seven whole weeks. Let's throw in a couple more features!"

My latest effort is in technical review right now, so I need to sit around and wait for it to come back before I can continue. There's nothing like doing nothing when you have a ton of stuff to do.

Useful Spanish of the day
pasado mañana
day after tomorrow... as in "I have another lunchless five-hour meeting the day after tomorrow"
vs.
pasada mañana
yesterday morning

Serious soup and crackers

2007-11-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

During my recent visit to Plimoth Plantation, I got four soup mixes and a piece of maple candy.

I shall say no more of the maple candy. Rest assured that its end was quick and humane. Well... quick.

The four soup mixes were: Farmhouse Chowder, Bean Pottage (Heritage Bean Soup), Pumpkin Chowder, and Pottage of Indian Corn (not on Nantucket Pantry's website). You'll notice that the website lists a bunch of other soups, some of which I would have grabbed in a heartbeat if they'd been available (e.g. black bean); or else I saw them but skipped them because I didn't think they'd be any good (e.g. pease porridge).

In fact, I didn't have much hope that any of these would be any good. My experience with dry soup mixes (even the "gourmet" ones) has been mostly negative. The seasoning packet is too puny, or it's mostly onion salt and MSG. or the grains have been partially pre-cooked and have no character left after being reconstituted.

So far, however, I've been impressed with these. The Farmhouse Chowder's seasoning was just about perfect, except for being a little too sweet. I didn't need to add anything, although I did use all chicken broth instead of a half broth/half water mixture as the instructions suggested. I also threw in some lean sausage at the end because I thought it needed some meat. The texture was very nice - naturally thick, not watery or gummy as many mixes are. I added a little bit of milk to make it more "chowderish," but it really wasn't necessary.

The Bean Pottage had regular whole beans, not those semi-precooked things, and they really needed cleaning - I found a few pebbles and twigs. Unfortunately, it included some cranberry beans (not to be confused with cranberries), which, um... well let's just say their inclusion was unfortunate. (Like anasazi beans and pinto beans, they're very tasty, but they're problematic.) I used 8 cups of beef broth and 2 cups of water (in contrast to their recommended 10 cups of broth) and a small ham hock. I added a box of spinach at the end for nutrition, but again, like the Farmhouse Chowder, the flavor and texture were nearly perfect. There was a little too much rosemary and once again I could taste sugar, which I didn't think was necessary.

I haven't had the others yet. I'm saving the corn pottage for a stormy winter day. I'm not sure when I'm going to have the pumpkin chowder.

I'm also going to put in a plug for two serious crackers I discovered recently due to a brief oyster cracker shortage: Nabisco's Uneeda Biscuit and Nabisco's Crown Pilot chowder crackers. Both crackers are large and sturdy. The Crown Pilot is, apparently, a New England favorite, especially further north; I'd never heard of it before. At some point Nabisco discontinued it and told people to use the Uneedas instead, but that didn't go over well, so they brought the Crown Pilot back.

(While Crown Pilot seems to have quite a following, as evidenced by the quality of the Google hits I got for it, the Uneeda is not as beloved, despite going all the way back to 1899. Even Kraft's links seem to be broken.)

Although I couldn't choose a favorite based on flavor alone - they're virtually identical, except only the Uneeda contains a small amount of yeast, and only the Crown Pilot contains a small amount of molasses - the Crown Pilot wins hands-down based on its much lower price (about $3.79 for a 14 oz. box, compared to Uneeda's $2.99 for a 3.5 oz. box) and its packaging. The Uneeda comes in tray within a plastic sleeve; because of the tray, you can't roll down the sleeve for freshness. The Crown Pilots come in three pouches of eight crackers each, and you can easily put the pouch in a ziplock bag once you've opened it.

The artwork on the Uneeda box is much cooler, though; it's easier to find articles about the artwork than the cracker itself.

Bonus: Donald Kerr can sit on it

2007-11-11T22:22:00.000-05:00

Donald Kerr is the principal deputy director of national intelligence. He feels that we need to change our definition of privacy.

You know, because of the terrorists.

If you disagree with Kerr and then they strike again, remember, it's all your fault. Yours and that irresponsible Civics teacher who taught you about junk like "probable cause" in ninth grade. All because you wouldn't let those harmless nice people abuse their power and treat you like a criminal.

It is still Sunday

2007-11-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

I started the day earlier than I would have liked with a phone call from the guy who's allegedly trying to sell my house. (Truthfully, agents aren't knocking themselves out as sellers' agents - they're knocking themselves out as buyers' agents.) The people were coming up from New York and would be here between 11 and 12.

The timing seemed uncanny, since just yesterday I was telling my grandparents that I figured that househunting season was just about finished (winter isn't a hot time in the real estate business, especially when the holidays are approaching) and I wasn't going to get my hopes up of anything happening again until at least mid-January and probably not until Spring.

But it wasn't so uncanny after all, as 11 o'clock came and went, then noon, then 1... those nasty New Yorkers blew me off. Heh. I've heard that about those people.

Kmart was mobbed. There were quite a few people wanting help with Christmas trees - yeah, I know, we're supposed to put up our trees just as soon as we've finished wrapping our Thanksgiving leftovers now - and they were getting grumpy about it.

Or maybe these were Veterans' Day trees. It's hard to tell the difference. Right now my mother has a "Thanksgiving tree." She plans to keep this tree up all year round and decorate for the occasion. What fascinates me about this is that when I considered doing something like that back in 2002, she mocked me. Oh well.

Then groceries, then Friendly's. Screw my cholesterol. Screw my weight. I had coupons that were expiring. I'll leave out the details of my shame and just say that I'm going to be eating pretty much nothing but bean-and-spinach soup and oatmeal for the next few days to atone for my sins.

Then bills and laundry. The usual. And now Desperate Housewives in Spanish, thanks to the magic of SAP.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to find out more on how my Taster's Choice got replaced by Folger's Crystals via an elaborate, multistep process that couldn't have been an accident... but once again, I'm going to try not to get my hopes up.

It's almost 10:00 now - time for cartoons. (I love the new "Xavier"!)

Que the hell is THIS?

2007-11-11T00:58:00.003-05:00

This here. Another hamster of doom, but not as prolific as me.

There's also a flying hamster of doom, apparently, but that doesn't concern me.

Useful Spanish of the day
Hazme caso
Pay me heed

It is still Saturday

2007-11-10T20:43:00.001-05:00

I had a doctor's appointment today in Arlington. I wasn't sure what traffic would be like, so I left extra-early (and ended up getting there extra-early too). That went okay, except it turns out she doesn't accept the new insurance I'm going to have in two months, even though she's on their list. She said she used to, and even though she's tried to break off her relationship with them, she can't seem to get rid of them. So she said that if I couldn't line up yet a new doctor soon, she'd see me again and put the paperwork through and see what happens.

Woo. Life on the edge.

After that, I decided to go to the Cape to see my parents, because they had some papers for me to sign. I thought it would be clever to take rt. 95 to 495, but that's because I didn't consult a map first. Oops. It probably only cost me a few minutes vs. my planned route down 24 (and it's possible that rt. 3 would have been quicker), but oh well.

For lunch I stopped at one of my favorite places in the world, the China Garden in Raynham. I wish I had taken my camera, because that place has barely changed in 30 years, inside or out; for years I've worried that they would remodel without warning, and then all that I remember would be gone.

They still serve Fall River-style chow mein alone or in a sandwich; they still have the lounge and the fruity drinks. And I don't think their collection of elevator music has changed in a long time, either. Here are the last four songs I heard there:

Theme from "A Summer Place"
Somethin' Stupid
Whatchamacallit, the theme song from Arthur
A Taste of Honey

...the most recent of which was a hit in 1981.

In addition to a somewhat coagulated chow mein sandwich, I had a Navy Grog, which supposedly consists of three kinds of rum, some kind of orange liqueur like triple sec, and a combination of grapefruit, orange, and pineapple juice. Of the juices, I tasted only grapefruit, but it was really good. The sandwich was less inspiring, but when you've been eating coagulated chow mein since early childhood it seems like it's supposed to be that way. (It's not always coagulated, but their plates are usually ice cold, so if you don't eat fast, that's what you end up with.) There were also french fries - not a lot of them, but they were good and they stood up to the sweet-and-sour sauce. (Don't knock it till you try it.)

I looked down at my placemat, which had the Chinese zodiac animals on it. I half-expected the date on there to be 1981, but to my surprise (and almost disappointment) it was 2007.

To people who didn't grow up near this restaurant, it probably sounds like the lunch from hell. For me it was like soaking in nostalgia. The tea was good, too, and the pot poured nice, which is something you can't take for granted.

Here's what my fortune cookie said:

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

I've gotten this one before, worded slightly differently. To that, I would add "...and a full stomach isn't either. I'M TALKIN' ABOUT YOU, [Hollywood studio executive and/or Republican name here]!"

Next I went to my parents', where I signed the paperwork and they also gave me their old scanner. No idea what I'll do with it. Their dog stuck her tongue up my nose more than once before I could get her away from my face. We and my grandparents went to Seafood Sam's in Sandwich for an early dinner. Tomorrow's their last day, so they really stuffed our lobster rolls.

I hit the store on the way home and got, among the usual provisions, a syrup called Agave Nectar. I had seen it before and was curious about it. I was a little nervous about tasting it, but it's very inoffensive - much milder than honey, and a little runnier. I'm hoping that it will dissolve well in iced tea (the label claims it mixes easily even in cold drinks). It's 60 calories per tablespoon, same as honey; but since it's not as sweet, the ability to mix well with cold drinks (if true) would be its only significant virtue. (A tablespoon of sugar is 45 calories, but I wouldn't put that much sugar in an iced tea. I didn't live in the South that long.)

In other news, the so-called powers that be are still being dicks about the writers' strike. This does not surprise me. What does surprise is me is the way they're bullying everyone else in the business, as if that's going to pressure the writers into ending the strike. All it's going to do is show that the people who run Hollywood are even greedier and pettier than imagined. We can all find ways to keep busy while the strike goes on, and creative people are used to dealing with an unreliable revenue stream; but these guys aren't going to be able to make their yacht payments if they keep treating their underlings like shit.

ALSO, it appears that there's a movie based on the videogame Hitman. I never played the game, but I thought it might be fun. As for the movie... let's see... you don't get to kill anybody, but you get to watch someone kill people... hmm... like there's never been a movie like that?

While flippin' channels I came upon COPS... there's a cop named Smallwood. <beavis>He said "Smallwood." Small wood. Heh heh heh. Small wood. Get it? Get it? Small wood. Heh heh heh.</butthead>

That is my blog post for the day. Thank you for reading. Please join me tomorrow for something that might be even duller. Such is the peril of blogging once per day.

Useful Spanish of the day
Sábado Gigante
Giant Saturday; or, three hours in hell.

The Mystery of Taster's Choice

2007-11-09T21:01:00.000-05:00

I don't know how well I can describe this situation without getting into some really boring and tedious details, but in one of my help folders, there's a topic we'll call "Taster's Choice." At some point, I'm not sure exactly when, somebody deleted that file and replaced it with a file we'll call "Folger's Crystals" - a completely unrelated topic from a different help folder. And it wasn't moved over there, either. It was copied.

We use naming conventions to help sort out all the different topics; the Folger's Crystals file name clearly conveyed that it it did not belong in the place where it had been copied.

It is possible that Taster's Choice legitimately resides in a different folder. I don't have access to all of the folders, and nobody has replied to my after-5:00 PM query yet. If Taster's Choice still exists somewhere, then there's no problem. In fact, I was easily able to reconstruct it based on an older copy, so there's still not a problem, except for the fact that somebody put Folger's Crystals in my help folder.

So far that sounds like it could have been a really strange accident. I guess. But wait - there's more. That someone then linked the Folger's Crystals help topic to the Taster's Choice entry in the Table O'Contents. So if you're looking in the TOC and want to read about Taster's Choice, or if you're using our software and need help with the Taster's Choice screen, you end up with... Folger's Crystals!!

You can't tell me that's an accident. That's fuckery. Although, I still have to wonder... a person wishing to make trouble could have done even better; they could have copied Folger's Crystals over and renamed it Taster's Choice so I wouldn't have caught it so easily. Or they could have kept Taster's Choice there and replaced all of the information with instructions that would wreak havoc with the software. I probably would not have been the wiser, since I didn't have to do anything with Taster's Choice for this release.

I need to do some more investigation (which will include an incredibly long download) to get more clues as to what happened. This doesn't seem like it could have been a mistake (you'd have to make a lot of interrelated mistakes to make it happen), but as dirty tricks go it's kind of a weird one.

Update: I just finished that download (someone had the foresight to zip it up). It appears that this strange thing has happened just within the last five weeks. Now I'm even more convinced it wasn't an accident - but then I sound paranoid... arghhhhh....

Useful Spanish of the day
fastidiar
to annoy, wreck, interfere, mess with

Am I awake?

2007-11-09T09:28:00.000-05:00

I slept extremely well last night - better than I have in weeks. I had put a heated mattress pad on the bed last weekend, but it still wasn't warm enough, so last night I decided to put on the down comforter too.

Niiiiiiiice.

I slept like a rock. I slept like a dead person. In fact, I overslept like a dead person. I've only been up less than 20 minutes.

So I hope you can understand my disorientation when I read this story about a Boston priest who has been arrested in New York for stalking Conan O'Brien. Seriously. You need to read the story to get the full impact. He sent creepy notes on parish letterhead and said he wouldn't be a guest on Conan's show until Conan had given him a confession.

Between this and yesterday's confusion over file modification dates, it appears that I'm battling a severe sleep deficit. Until I can make it up, I need to look for something less confusing online to jolt me back into reality, because this tea I'm drinking is not working fast enough.

Bland nightmares

2007-11-08T17:13:00.000-05:00

Ever have a dream about something that's so mundane, you're not sure whether you dreamed it or not?

When you work with RoboHELP, you don't just work with just one file at a time. You need to have the whole directory. The project directories are pretty big. Since there are multiple writers working on this release, and we're scattered over six or seven states, the source files are kept on the network. When we need to work on something, we need to grab the whole directory and download it over a very slow connection. (We can zip it on the network first and then download the much smaller zip file, but even that takes a very long time.) If you're working from home, there's also a very moody VPN client involved.

To save time, we typically download each directory only once. After that, we copy only the changed files back and forth to keep our local copies in synch with whatever's on the network. This is a bit tricky for a lot of reasons (for example, if you change just the name of a file, its modification date doesn't get updated; and a changed filename can wreak havoc with a help project).

This goofy directory thing and the slow download times are why we can't use a regular document control system to prevent problems. RoboHELP actually has a pretty good document control system, but it's meant for a small LAN, not the multi-state monstrosity we use.

Anyway, I had a dream last night that when I was carefully comparing directories, I discovered that sorting by the date column didn't work. It mostly worked, but certain types of files simply weren't getting sorted, and were just showing up wherever they wanted to.

The problem is that the dream was so vivid, I didn't know it was a dream. (In fact, I'm still not 100% convinced.) I was convinced that this was something that had really happened yesterday. I spent the better part of this morning comparing the network and my local copies to make sure that my 18 directories of 150 to 300 files each were in sync and that all of the dates were sorted.

It was a good idea to do that in any case, but damn, it sucked!

Maybe if you wag your tail

2007-11-08T11:09:00.000-05:00

Remember Leo Buscaglia? He was the guy who was always telling people they should hug more often. Amazingly, however, a hug is too frosty a greeting for the person who's peddling this T-shirt I saw recently in a catalog: "Greet everyone as you would your dog."

I'm wondering how this person greets his or her dog. Here is how I used to do it:

"Hola Pollypoo! Puppypup-poopypoo sweetie bum-bum que pasa wazzup what's happenin' what's goin' on... UGH!!-" (wiping mouth with back of hand) "-okay that's enough of that, oh yes it is Miss Puppy, oh yes it is, you're a sweet puppy, yes you are" (patting dog's haunch) "spanky spanky, Polly wanna cookie?" (give store brand dog biscuit later found to have been tainted with melamine) "oooh what a good girl eatin' your cookie. Now go outside go poopie!"

And on a rainy or snowy day, I might grab a towel and wipe her down. It would hardly seem proper to do that to a human. Dogs and humans have different needs; that's why we treat (and greet) them differently.

I realize that the intention here is "greet everyone warmly," but even that is silly. I don't greet everyone I see the same way because I don't feel the same about everyone I see. I think a civil "hello" is sufficient, while my grandparents inspire a more enthusiastic response. In fact, I think it'd be insulting to my grandparents if I seemed just as happy to see the waiter as I was to see them.

I see crap like this all the time on T-shirts and bumper stickers and coffee mugs. Crap that might sound sentimental or inspiring or deep, if you don't put a nanosecond's thought into it; but just plain stupid if you consider it at all. A much better T-shirt caption would be "Don't be an asshole." (I'm sure such a shirt exists, but I never get those kinds of catalogs.)

It's probably too much to ask that the words on a shirt be anything but shallow. After all, if there's anything more shallow than what's skin-deep, it'd have to be the stuff you wear on top of your skin, right?

Does anyone even like this stuff? I'm guessing no, because I hardly ever see anyone wearing these vapid things. They must be given as gifts by people who give even less thought to gift-giving than they do to the dopey words they read. Yeah, it can be hard to pick out gifts for some people, but some gifts suck more than others, and...

I feel a rant coming on, but I don't have time for it now. I've got plenty of bile stored up on the subject of Christmas shopping, and I'm sure eventually I'll blow it all out in the form of a noxious blog post around Thanksgiving.

I know these catalog people and T-shirt peddlers are just trying trying to make a living. All I ask is that they leave the poor dogs out of it!

Useful Spanish of the day:
Te extraño, mi preciosa.
I miss you, my precious.

Token blog post for today

2007-11-07T01:50:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow (technically the rest of today) will likely be very busy. Also, Blogger is about to go down for maintenance in a few minutes. In case I don't have time to post anything else, here's a link to something I already posted elsewhere for today. It is my second-to-last recap (or possibly my very last - not sure yet) for Destilando Amor. The "Useful Spanish of the day" is a colorful expression I picked up from tonight's episode.

Useful Spanish of the day
duro hueso de roer
tough bone to gnaw (i.e. a stubborn person)

Update

2007-11-06T12:18:00.001-05:00

I didn't have to go to Autozone after all because the light went off. With some engine errors, if the error goes away and stays gone after you've run the engine three times, the light will turn off. (This is true for VWs and Toyotas - dunno about other cars.) So I'm sure it was a loose gas cap. Since on a Toyota you can only tighten the cap so far (it clicks once and that's it), if I get the error again I'll have to get a new cap.

I went to vote and the polling place was hoppin'. At 10 in the morning. I don't know if this had something to do with people wanting to keep/get rid of our mayor, or if there's something more interesting going on that I don't know about. (I DO read the paper, believe it or not.)

I almost got a haircut while I was out and about, but then chickened out. I have to get back to work anyway.

Signs of mid-Autumn

2007-11-06T08:50:00.001-05:00

A robin on your lawn is supposed to be the first sign of Spring. Leaves changing color herald the start of Autumn. The first snow means it's Winter.

Well, there are two other milestones that are so significant to me, they deserve a season. Since none is available, I just call it mid-Autumn. They are:

Election day
Nosebleeds

I know you don't want to hear about the nosebleed. It will tell you that it was spectacular - I considered asking a coworker to take me to the ER, and that's when it finally stopped.

Election day is a little easier to talk about. I don't know much (okay, I don't know anything) about any of the local elections, other than the mayoral one. In fact, I didn't even realize an election was coming until I read an editorial saying that Lang was going to win. It's my own fault for not keeping up with these things, although it would certainly help if we had sample ballots or something. (I didn't see any in the Standard-Times, though it's possible they printed one that didn't show up in their daily feed.) I'm glad there's one race I can vote in, at least, because I'd hate not to have a reason to vote at all.

Hell, even my sister is voting today. Her father-in-law holds an elected position in their city. I don't think she likes anything about the way he does his job, so I'm not sure why she votes for him... unless the competition is even worse. Either that or she's just saying she's voting for him when she's actually voting for his opponent.

I have a little election day routine. After work, I get some takeout at a nice restaurant and a bottle of pop wine (like Arbor Mist) and then I enjoy while the election results come in. The next day, I vow never to drink that cheap shit again.

However, given the lack of suspense in this year's election and the fact that I need to get up early tomorrow for more acronym training, I think I'll settle for a burger at the drive-through (I need the iron... and I promise to skip the fries) and maybe a shot of tequila later on.

Training is done, I am enriched

2007-11-05T14:39:00.000-05:00

Well, the training turned out to be no big deal, and we ended up with a pretty decent lunch break. It wasn't the worst training I've ever sat through, and I did learn a few important things:

Elvis Presley did "Always on My Mind" long before Willie Nelson did. I didn't know that. Go ahead and laugh.
When a lot of acronyms are being thrown around, it's very humorous when someone starts referring to TBS, A&E, and other cable networks to see if anyone notices.
It's unwise to plan an outdoor wedding in Vermont in November.

As our last activity, we played a game of "Jeopardy" to prove that we had learned something. My boss's boss asked which of us was going to be Sean Connery. Someone else did a Sean Connery impression. Boss's boss said "I'll take 'penis' for $200, Trebek." One of the categories was "Analysts," which, you guessed it, she pronounced "anal-lists."

It beats playing "hide-the-milton," that's for sure.

In other news, my coworkers tell me I can drive around for five years with the "check engine" light on and nothing will happen. Since mine came on right after I went to the gas station, I'm thinking it probably didn't like the way I put the gas cap back on, or some trivial thing like that. You know, it'd be really nice if that damn thing actually meant something - it comes on at the drop of a hat and can mean just about anything. I'll have someone at Autozone check it out tomorrow.

Useful Spanish of the day
Trebek, voy a tomar "Pene" por $200.
(Trebek, I'll take "Penis" for $200.)

Plimoth Plantation

2007-11-04T20:21:00.000-05:00

Yes, that is the correct spelling. Plimoth Plantation is located in Plymouth, MA. The Pilgrims couldn't spell for shit.

I live at, oh, let's call it 123 Soda St. There's a lady named K. who lives at, oh, let's call it 123 Sheboopie St. The two words begin with the same letter but don't look alike, don't sound alike, and aren't even the same size; the streets don't intersect and aren't even next to each other. I sometimes get K's mail. In fact, sometimes I will even get two copies of the same catalog - one addressed to her, and one addressed to me. I call her and ask if she wants the mail, and she comes and picks it up, or not.

To thank me for this very small favor, K. offered me some passes to Plimoth Plantation, where she works. At first I was timid about taking them, but when I realized she had a whole stack of them and a sincere desire to get rid of them, I took a bunch. My sister loves the place, and her kids have never been there. (I haven't been there myself since 1988. For some reason it was required for a class I was taking. It was a very cold, windy day and the people I went with were tripping on acid. They kept saying "road trip, heh heh heh.")

The first thing we saw that got a reaction out of one of the kids was a gate with a "Staff Only" sign. Only the littlest one was interested, but he was so excited about it, I wanted to take a picture. But the camera wouldn't cooperate. This is a completely different gate; it's just a coincidence that it had my niece's name scrawled on it. All three of them wanted in on this picture. My sister told them not to make faces. This is them not making faces. (Note the soda bottles. I didn't know they had Dr. Pepper in 1627!)

I have another niece, but I didn't get a picture of her today. That's because I already have a bunch on my phone... but I can't figure out how to get them off of my phone except by emailing them, which I've been too lazy to do.

This guy was making a canoe by burning the guts out of a tree trunk. Apparently, if they keep the fire burning continuously day and night (with someone watching it at all times) they can have a canoe in seven days; but they'd only do that if they really needed one in a hurry. He had some other interesting things to say, but I didn't hear all of it because my nephew kept saying "Ma-ma. Ma-ma! Mama! You can see his butt! Dad! Dad! You can see his butt. Julie, look. You can see his butt..." (Actually, you could only see his hips.)

I didn't get a picture of the Wampanoag guy who was telling us about the time the settlers found their corn, which they had buried for safekeeping, and took it. Evidently, the settlers felt that the corn had been a gift from God, and naturally that gift had been meant for them. They were so happy with this gift that they came back with some well-armed friends and helped themselves to more gifts, including a lot more corn and some other choice items. Eventually, for the sake of making peace, they promised to pay for it... but they never quite did.

I'm not sure what this lady's story was. I couldn't hear most of what she was saying because there were a lot of kids in that hut, chattering. She was covered in animal skins, as were all the benches. She kept looking at people who were holding cameras; I appreciated her cooperation, but I actually did not want to blind her, so I waited for her to look away. My first photo was out of focus because the auto-focus was grabbing spectators' heads; after most of the people filed out I got a much better picture. ("Better" being a relative term since it's still pretty awful.) If it looks overexposed, it's because I had to brighten it after the fact; the original is way too dark. As for that sparkly crap in the foreground, it's ashes from the fire, I guess. I didn't even notice it at the time.

I suppose I should mention that, although the "English settlers" remain "in character" at all times, pretending that it's 1627 and avoiding modern slang, the Wampanoags do not. I'm pretty sure they didn't have Lenscrafters back then. Nor Levi's like you see around the woman's ankles in the next photo.

This is somebody's lunch. It's a rabbit, and if you ask me it's overdone. (The pot had only water in it.) I'd love to be able to tell you that the rabbit smelled great, but in truth all we could smell was the smoke from the campfire and the fire in the canoe. Since that's a smell we associate with barbecue anyway, the whole Wampanoag site smelled great!

I didn't take any pictures in the settlers' village because, well, frankly I forgot. If I had photographed anything, it would have been the chamber pots. My nephews wanted to know why there were weird little ceramic bowls under each bed, and they were very excited to hear what they were for.

We admired other pottery items in the village; there were some for sale in the craft center gift shop. Unfortunately, the power had gone out in that building, and they weren't able to process credit cards. And although I normally carry a checkbook, I had left it at home. (I had blown my paltry cash on lunch.) I figured we could still get the ceramic things (my BIL wanted a three-handled cup, and I wanted a double-decker candle holder) at the main gift shop, which had electricity, but they didn't have the pottery we wanted there.

Instead I got four huge soup mixes and a big piece of maple candy, which added up to about the same as that one candle holder anyway.

Tomorrow: A five-hour Webex training session (on process improvements) from 10 to 3 in a conference room, with no break for lunch. They're going to pause just long enough for us to get our lunches out of the refrigerator and bring them back to the training room so that we can continue to nourish our minds. Oh, and did I mention my Check Engine light is on? If I'm lucky, maybe I'll break down on the side of the road and not have to go to my training.

Useful Spanish of the day
ponerse las pilas
("Put on the batteries" - i.e. get your ass in gear - something you might say to lollygagging children who are more interested in inspecting stones they find on the ground than in the interesting things around them, as if they can't find the exact same kinds of stones in their backyard)

Oh, it's ON, baby! Yeah!!

2007-11-03T12:33:00.000-04:00

I was gonna go to Plimouth Plantation on Saturday, but "Noel" is being a pain in the ass. So much for my plan to make a Saturday blog post of the trip. Maybe on Sunday instead, if there aren't fallen trees littering the roads. Meanwhile, I figure I'd better post this now, on the off chance I lose power during the storm or something.

It's official: the writers' strike begins Monday. I've got a five-hour Webex training session that I've been dreading, so I thought it might be funny to skip it, sleep late that day, wait for my boss to call, and then say "but I thought we were on strike!"

But then I thought again. We've got three more hours of ~~torture~~ enlightenment coming to us on Wednesday, and attendance at these eight hours' worth of ~~misery~~ opportunityness is supposed to count towards 5% of our annual review. No kidding. It's serious. And the Monday thing is 10 to 3 and they're not even providing lunch, so we have to bring our own. I'm gonna have to eat my lunch out of a BAG. *snif* I mean, I'll decorate it with crayons and junk, or maybe even bring it in my old King Kong lunchbox, but when I'm away from home I really prefer to have my lunch handed to me by a professional.

Anyway.

The Writers Guild of America strike means that there won't be any new Daily Show, Colbert Report, or other hot-off-the press stuff (Letterman, Conan, etc.), effective immediately. That sucks. I'm going to miss them. On the other hand, it means I'll probably get to bed earlier.

Daytime soaps like General Hospital typically have about four to six weeks' worth of material in the can. If they dry up while the strike is in progress, I'll have enough of a cooling-off period to dump GH. I was going to dump it sooner or later anyway, but this would make it easier.

Prime time dramas and sitcoms usually have just a little more saved up, and if those dry up there will be nothing to keep me from watching all the telenovelas I want (we typically run several months behind Mexico, and I don't think this strike even includes Mexican writers). Fortunately, one hour per night is my limit. Aside from that, I can catch up on some books and DVDs, or even do something productive, although that seems unlikely.

The lead times on some of those cartoons I watch on Adult Swim are really, really long. Plus, I'm half-asleep when I watch them, so if you show me the same episode a few months later, I'll think it's a new one anyway. So I don't expect any pain there whatsoever.

The movie business could be impacted in some way too, except the gestation period for a film is so long that it'd probably be easier for the film industry to absorb the impact. It often takes me a couple of years to get around to watching a movie anyway.

So if the strike isn't resolved quickly, the 2008 TV season might be a little slow. Which is fine with me. I can survive for a long time on just reruns and the highly mockable local news broadcasts. If they try running reality shows instead of letting me catch up on the things I was hoping to see in reruns (Bionic Woman, Boston Legal, House), then I will have no choice but to spend that time exercising, enriching my mind, and god knows what else. Maybe knitting and martial arts. I'll become a really well-read, mitten-wearing killing machine.

Plus, this strike involves only writers in the US, so this might make it easier for foreign movies and TV shows to get more screen time here.

The last writers' strike, in 1988, lasted 5.5 months. Amazingly, even though I watched plenty of TV in those days, I don't remember the strike at all. That doesn't mean that I don't think the strike is irrelevant. The writers are asking for an updated deal on royalties on DVD sales (which were originally negotiated in 1988, based on either tapes or laserdiscs I guess), as well as "new" distribution channels like downloads, for which they currently receive nothing. That seems reasonable to me. I will very happily read books and watch The Andy Griffith Show for as long as I have to, and I'll be equally happy when the writers come back, too.

(Note ACTUAL POSTING TIME below... I set it myself with my own little hands!)

(Update - again - HA! I also set it WRONG. It should say AM, not PM. One of these days I'll get it right...)

Useful Spanish of the day
Adelante. Alégrame el día.
(Go ahead. Make my day.)

Time??

2007-11-02T20:14:00.000-04:00

Due to some confusing behavior from Blogger, it appears that if you open the Compose window at 10:42 pm on 11/1 and then finish (and post to blog) a few hours later on 11/2, the timestamp reflects the time you opened the Compose window, rather than the time you hit Publish Post. This could be annoying for people who are participating in NaBloPoMo (or whatever it is called) in earnest.

I tool a look at Blogger's "Settings" options and didn't see a way to correct this. I know I can change the timestamp manually, but the whole idea behind timestamps is that you're not SUPPOSED to have to think about them!

Useful Spanish of the day
Nunca iniciar una guerra terrestre en Asia.
(Never start a land war in Asia.)
Inspired by seeing Wallace Shawn in a Stargate:SG1 episode

Our ever-shrinking dollar

2007-11-02T12:35:00.000-04:00

Current exchange rate: 1 wampum = $1.50

Day of the Dead odds and ends

2007-11-01T22:42:00.000-04:00

I have another boss-from-hell story. Believe it or not, it's about a different boss. He wasn't nearly as bad as the other one - that is, he was awful, but he was consistently awful, whereas the milton-hog was unpredictably dysfunctional.

But I'm not telling that story today, because it's a bit long (not as long as the milton story), and I'm still cobbling it together from memory and an old email. And I still need to do a little research for the epilogue.

Instead, here are some odds and ends.

We had a big, huge, gigantic "town meeting" teleconference at work today. The person who was running the meeting was not a good speaker. I'll spare you most of the details of the audio problems that arise from having a 100-party teleconference. (For one thing, people don't think to mute their phones until someone tells them to; the mute code is *6, so when the moderator says "don't forget to mute your phone," you can hear two beeps from every person hitting those buttons.)

The very long-winded moderator, who droned like Ben Stein in a Clear Eyes commercial, said a couple of funny things. First was the recurring phrase "from a vision perspective," which as far as I could tell was simply a time-consuming way of saying "uh." Second was when he promised that the task force "would not create any artificial barriers to progress." Yikes - what's the alternative to artificial barriers? Real barriers!

Today I got a very intimidating (if I didn't know better and didn't have insurance) postcard in the mail, promising hefty fines if I don't hurry up and get medical insurance by the end of the year. You can tell they mean business because of the thick red stripe at the top (yep, I mean business too).

Then you get to the end of the scary thing and it says "If you already have health coverage, please disregard this notice."

Heh. If they don't know whether or not I have insurance, how can they fine me?

In the USA, we bury or cremate our dead, have a funeral, and then after that we're on our own. We can make a special effort to do something with our families afterwards, but it can be difficult to find the initiative to set up something like that when you're still grieving, and it may not seem worth the trouble once the grief has mellowed.

Today is Mexico's (and elsewhere's) Day of the Dead. It's actually a two-day event, remembering children and saints on November 1, then everyone else on November 2. In between, there's an overnight visit to the cemetery, bringing gifts, food, and drink to the deceased.

The rituals and celebrations provide an automatic, organized way for families to celebrate departed loved ones in a positive atmosphere, so that the shock of death and the raw grief of the funeral isn't the last time they remember bonding over their loss. It also provides an ideal time to discuss death with children in a relaxed way that isn't possible when you're breaking them the bad news about their goldfish.

Granted, Día de los Muertos is mainly a religious holiday, and the celebrations are based on the belief that the dead have gone on to a better place. But I still like the idea of a formalized and festive celebration of the dead, rather than the lonely, somber, piecemeal approach that's the norm here.

This weekend: Plimouth Plantation with the kiddies!

Useful Spanish of the day:
Si mi abuela tuviera ruedas, sería una bicicleta.
(If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.)

Excuse me, but I believe you have my milton.

2007-11-01T00:55:00.002-04:00

I promise that all my blog posts won't be nearly as long as this one. I've been sitting on this story since February 2006, and I thought it was high time I told it to the world.

This story involves a prank on someone with no sense of humor. You'll see soon enough how badly he took it. And he's not the type to let something go. Ever. Even though I don't work there any more, I would bet you anything that I'd hear from him if this ever got back to him. I don't care if he can't do anything about it, I really don't want to hear from him.

Therefore, to reduce the story's googlability, I've avoided using certain words. The first is the generic name of a common piece of office equipment, and the second is a particular brand. I thought long and hard (approximately seven minutes) about the code name I would use.

The object depicted in this photo was issued to me by my ~~current~~ former employer at my request. (They ~~are good~~ were people, and they trusted me with nice things. I took it home when I cleaned out my desk.) Let us call it a "milton." Specifically, let us describe it as a red Slingwine 747 milton. This milton has nothing to do with the story - I just wanted to show it off. It is a symbol of, well, you'll see.

(I should probably explain now that at my old job, Office Space was considered a sacred film - more like a documentary, in fact - and the Milton schtick was so beloved that we even named a project after the brand of you-know-what that Milton had so much trouble with.)

Enough preamble. MOVIE SIGN!

Some time in 2005, at my old job, my boss got us a big gray Slingwine 777. It was better than the crappy, constantly-jamming Bostitch miltons we all had at our desks, and it was great for fastening thick stacks of paper. He put the 777 on his desk and sent an email to the whole department saying that he got us this supermilton and it would be on his desk.

Soon afterward, someone from another group used the supermilton and put it down near the printer, a few feet directly in front of Boss's desk (also a few feet away from me). I said, "That goes on Boss's desk." And Boss generously said, "It doesn't matter where it is, as long as we all know where it is." Famous last words.

A few months later, one of my coworkers needed to use the supermilton several times. Each time, he would take it from Boss's desk and leave it near the printer, since he knew he would need to use it again soon. (Boss had a ton of meetings that week, so he never saw this happen, but it's not as if the coworker meant to be sneaky about it.) Later, the milton would mysteriously wind up on Boss's desk again.

I didn't see any of this, because at this point I was in a cubicle. Most of my coworkers were not in cubes yet, and could still see the printer and each other.

Late one morning, the coworker left the supermilton by the printer, and when he came back from lunch, Boss had left the office for the day, and the supermilton was GONE. The coworker quickly discovered that Boss had left it in his desk drawer. (Boss locked almost everything, so it didn't seem like snooping to look in one of the few drawers that wasn't locked.) This was the Boss who had once stressed the importance of everyone knowing where the supermilton was.

Coworker then wanted someone other than himself to post an innocent-sounding companywide email asking the person who had borrowed our supermilton to please return it.

I said, "Don't look at me - he probably thinks I'm the one who's been moving the milton anyway." (Coworker was Boss's second least favorite person in the company. I was his very least favorite. This was common knowledge. Coworker and I were both actively looking for new jobs, mostly because of Boss.)

We didn't end up sending out an email, but we laughed about it and also considered 1) simply taking the milton out of Boss's drawer and putting it next to the printer, 2) taking the milton out of Boss's drawer and putting it in his mailbox, and 3) encasing the milton in jello, except that would probably ruin it and then we'd have to buy him a new one, and given his total lack of a sense of humor, it might not be worth it. Also, it would be a waste of jello.

Coworker and I conferred with our other coworkers later that day. Boss had been extra-dickish to all of us lately, and for once nobody was willing to let it slide. The idea of getting a duplicate supermilton for mischief was so appealing to the others that in less than 60 seconds, I had all the donations I needed to pick up a new one after work.

We weren't sure yet what we wanted to do with it. Cover it in pink nail polish? Cover it in Harley Davidson stickers? Drag it behind a car for 10 miles? All we knew was that it was his turn to be vexed at our expense.

I brought the milton in the next day. I gave it to the aforementioned coworker and his confederate. Then I went back to my cube to mind my own business. My part in this prank was finished - or so I thought.

Boss went home for lunch. A few minutes later, I heard a strange clanking over by the printer, and some giggling. Here is what I saw.

The original milton was still in his desk drawer. The key was on his desk in plain sight. Nobody felt that there was any need for overkill. He would notice the key and/or chain immediately, then soon notice the other. He would then unlock the milton, try to put it back in his drawer, see his own milton, and be amused. The whole gag would be done within minutes.

Instead, it went on for 18 hours.

Boss came back from lunch. For many hours, nothing happened. I emailed the confederate, who had the best view, and asked if anything had happened. He said he didn't think Boss had noticed yet, even though the scene you see above was less than ten feet directly in front of him.

Time passed. Everyone else went home. Finally it was just me in my cube, and Boss a few desks away. At this point, you might think that Boss had already noticed the milton and was either pretending not to in order to save face, and/or was plotting a clever revenge. You would be wrong on both counts.

I started composing this email to a friend:

I guess our boss hasn't noticed the milton and gigantic chain on the table across from his desk.

Then I heard the printer wheezing. Then Boss's chair sliding back. Then footsteps. Papers rustling.

I started typing again, partly to report the goings-on, and partly because I realized it would be a good idea to look busy.

Ooh, he just printed something. I can hear him rattling the chains now.

Then a grunt, followed by rapidly approaching footsteps.

I think he's pissed. Gotta go

He walked into my cube and towered over me, trying to be intimidating. He looked like he was struggling to control himself - which was actually a nice change of pace, although I wasn't sure he wouldn't lose it at any moment. If I had not been used to this kind of behavior from him already, I might have been scared.

The first words out of his mouth were "Did you do this?" (A natural question, since I am always drilling holes through things and then chaining them to other things.) He then asked if I was the person who had been "playing games with" his precious milton. You know, the one that was for all of us to use, as long as it was kept out where we all knew where it was, that he had hidden in his desk for no one to see or use. That milton.

We had a brief conversation, in which I admitted only that I was aware of the situation, and that the milton had been chained to the table intentionally. I could tell he didn't think it was funny, but I had no idea that he didn't even recognize that it was a prank. He took off to seek a "solution."

Time for a new email - this one to my coworkers.

He noticed when he printed something out.
He is asking Maintenance Guy for bolt cutters.
Now he is telling people it's his milton and thinks [uninvolved person] is involved.
He is planning some countermeasure.
I don't want to spoil the surprise for him when he looks in his drawer.

He wants to know who did it. I said it was a group effort, but declined to identify the group. I told him I didn't personally attach the lock and don't have the key, and I think he is now assuming that I wasn't a member of the group. Will straighten this out tomorrow if necessary.

I went to my parents' house for dinner and called the confederate from there to warn him that he would be the first to face Boss's wrath the next morning. We discussed whether or not we should just explain it to him and put him out of his misery.

First thing next morning, the confederate emailed us the following (paraphrased):

Hamster called last night to tell me about Boss's reaction. I called Boss to find out how mad he was. He said at first he thought someone was crazy, then he realized it was a joke and didn't let it bother him.

("Didn't let it bother him?" Is that what you call it when someone practically shits his pants?)

I told him it was an duplicate milton, and that his original milton was still wherever he hid it. He was still confused, so I told him "we" (unspecified) bought the duplicate. I didn't explain why.

He gave a phony laugh and said he was going to leave a present for me. I'm here now and I haven't found it yet. The chain is still locked to the table, but the duplicate milton is gone. So is the key we left on his desk. His old milton is still in the drawer. I don't see anything special at any of our desks.

Boss showed up a little later, but before I did. He grumbled some more, not really getting the joke, and the confederate AGAIN told him "That's not your milton." Apparently, this fact hadn't registered with him when the confederate told him the night before. He had to be told explicitly, again, that this was a different milton which we had purchased on our own, and that "his" milton was still wherever he had hidden it. The confederate also felt it necessary to explain to him why we had done this, and then suggested to our Boss that he look for "his" milton now. Which he did.

I am told that at this point, he finally understood why it was funny, or at any rate he pretended to, minus the laughing.

As for the little surprise he had left for us, we thought maybe he had left conjunctivitis germs all over our stuff or something. But nothing ever materialized. Including the duplicate milton.

We were hoping the outcome would be that we would have two supermiltons, but for a little while, we didn't have any. We eventually found the original supermilton "hidden" behind the printer, and it stayed near the printer for the rest of the time I worked there. Supermilton II was never seen again. Which suggests to me that he never did get the point of the joke, namely: you just don't know how to share, do you?

We never touched "his" milton, which originally was OUR milton. He made the situation a lot worse by jumping to conclusions that I'd never guessed he'd jump to. But he actually stole ours! After we paid for it ourselves, labeled it properly, and locked it up to prevent theft. Oh, I guess the joke was on us, ha-ha, don't we feel foolish now!

Are you kidding me? That was the closest any of us had been to wanting to show up at work in ages! I know he thought that pretending not to react was depriving us of our payoff, and that's the funniest part of all. We were relieved that he failed to bring down the wrath of HR on us (we didn't know if he'd try or not). That was the only reaction we had been worried about. Beyond that, it was all gravy.

Failing to lose one's temper is not the same thing as not reacting, and he actually gave us quite a lot. He proved our point without even realizing it. If you think of it as an experiment rather than a prank, it revealed a lot about him:

His first assumption was that one of us had maliciously stolen something out of his desk and damaged it. If you're working for someone who thinks you're that untrustworthy, it's best to find out sooner rather than later.

He acted on that assumption without any investigation or thought - starting with ME. He didn't take a moment to assess the situation. Instead he went off on the first person that was handy.

He acted like it was an emergency to get that chain removed immediately or else he wouldn't be able to use the milton and the sky would fall. (The milton was quite usable, even with the chain on it, so it's obvious that he was more interested in repossessing it than in using it.)

Some people, if they really thought someone had been in their desk, would check all the drawers to see if anything else had been taken. He was too focused on the milton problem. (Okay, this doesn't prove anything, but it struck me as bizarre, and therefore worthy of a bullet point.)

Even after being told twice that we never touched HIS milton, he still had to be told to look in his drawer before he understood that it was a different one. Up until then, I had thought I was the only person who had trouble communicating information to him, and even wondered if he was just being thick on purpose to annoy me (because it was hard to believe he could be so clueless).

I told some of my friends about this when it was happening. They thought it was hilarious. So did my parents. One thing these people all had in common was that they had already been hearing True Tales of Horror about my boss for nearly three years. I hear the story didn't get as many laughs when they told it to other people. Maybe it's not as good without the three-year warmup. Me, I'm just happy I got out of that crazy place and lived to tell the tale.

As for Coworker, he quit not long afterwards, and he even told Boss that he, Boss, was the reason he was leaving. Coworker came back briefly as a part-time consultant, reporting to Confederate, but within a few months was grateful to have an excuse to quit again, because Boss kept interfering.

Useful Spanish of the day:
Perdóneme, pero creo que tienes mi grapadora.
(Excuse me, but I believe you have my milton.)

Behold the Hamster of Doom

2007-10-02T10:22:00.001-04:00

Coming November 1!