Queries

Man, when I'm on a roll, I don't stop, and when I stop, it's cold turkey, isn't it? I've thought of lots of post topics over the past few weeks, but the time to write them down always eludes me. That's always a problem for me: finding the time. I know you make time for what's important, and that should indicate that this blog isn't that important. I like to write on it and chronicle what I'm up to, but in the end, there are more important things that I have to do, but at the same time, I enjoy writing on it, and I wish I had more time to do it, and isn't this a ridiculously long run-on sentence? If I were proof-reading and revising, I'd probably fix it, but that would only be worth it if I knew someone read it.

Anyway,my thoughts of the moment revolve around a staple of the writing industry: the query letter. I hate these things, but you know, there really isn't a better way to do it. If you have to review hundreds and hundreds of properties every day and pick something that you think will further your livelihood, you've got to have an efficient way to weed through the options. An easy way is via a quick one page letter that tells about the story to see if you feel it or not. If you do, you ask for more. If you don't, you pass on it. They all seem to acknowledge that they just might be passing on the net big thing, but again, there's not time to know, really. You have to pick the best queries and hope for the best.

However, as the person on the other side of that letter, I am faced with endless rejections. I know it's because I have a weakness when it comes to selling anything. I understand that a query letter is you trying to sell yourself to someone, and while some people can sell ice to an eskimo, I couldn't sell water to dehydrated guy in the desert. I can be persuasive in my own way, but when it comes to outright selling something, I'm absolutely terrible. Hence, all my queries are rejected.

Now, I can tell about my story in my letters. I give all the basic, pertinent information. I can give a succinct synopsis. I can make it all very well-written and have it make perfect sense to the reader. But I fail on buzzwording someone into buying. I know that's what my queries lack, but I feel incapable of figuring out what that hump is that I can't jump over.

Weather

Around here, there is a storm rolling in. The weather forecasters are proclaiming a "snowmageddon" as we have inches and inches of snow to be dumped on us by Mother Nature. It is to begin today, and some school districts (small ones) even proactively closed school based on these reports. People have taken to the stores to buy out the staples in anticipation of being utterly trapped.

I am not one of those people. I am also not panicking. In addition, I look out the window here on the 81th floor on this day of snow and see... Nothing. The day is overcast, and it is cold, but at present, nothing is happening. It was supposed to start overnight. Then it was supposed to start at six. Last I heard, it is supposed to start at eleven. Last seasons "snowpocalypse" resulted in a light dusting of snow which was gone by noon. I am quick to remind people of this, but still, the fearmongering produced by the news stations has set deep into everyone's psyches, and as such, people are afraid.

Now, to be fear, there is precedent for some fear of the winter weather around here. Back in 2007, we have a devastating ice storm that wiped out power all over the place. It was the first time I had ever been without power for more than a few hours. At that time, I was out for four days. Back in 11 or 12, we had a Christmas Eve snow storm that nearly stranded my parents and siblings at my house and postponed the Christmas Day get together with the Queen's family for a week. I have walked out my door to sheets of ice and buried roads before, so it is entirely possible to get dumped on.

I also believe in the power of prayer, and after the last major storm, I asked God to not dump huge amounts of snow on us until I no longer needed to travel into work (i.e. I become a professionally published writer or at least, work from home). Now, I do know that with my present job, we have a limited allowance to work from home, so perhaps that requirement is fulfilled. We'll see. Bottom line is that I don't want to drive into work on covered roads. It's way too dangerous.

We'll see what today holds, but the predictions are honestly quite low, and the fact that they keep getting pushed back on when they start does not bode well for them.

Life Insurance

It's that time of year again: time for annual insurance enrollment, where the powers that be decide that you can change how your insurance plans are setup. It's also where if you decide you want to keep what you have, but don't do anything, they automatically give you the top tier plan. It happened to me. I don't understand it.

Anyway, in the course of looking over the options, I ran across something I've seen on there every year since I started: the life insurance. I've never taken it. You know, when you buy something, you get it with the express purpose of using it or expecting to use it at some point. It's there if you need it, but the point is that you're the end user of the product. Life insurance doesn't work that way. It's a monetary value of what your life is worth to everyone around you, so that if you happen to lose it for whatever reason, they can have some solace in the idea that they are very well paid in your sudden absence (and can pay for the funeral and plot of ground that will house your mortal remains).

I stared at the options for a very long time, and so far, I've not brought myself to make a choice. This is my sixth time to have said choice at my present employer, and I just can't. To make matters worse, there are separate options for you and your spouse. This means that you can choose yourself or your significant other but you don't have to pick both if you don't want to. That sort of choice makes you face the fact that your life has a limit to it. We don't like to think about that, but at some point somewhere down the road, it's going to end.

I want to pretend I'm different. I've bared aged in awhile, but pondering this makes me admit that it'll happen. I still act and feel quite young, and to be honest, I act younger than most people my age. They and those even younger complain about all kinds of "old people" stuff, but not me. No, I will live until Jesus comes.

Part of me feels like if I decide to make the election for either myself or the Queen, it's like an invitation for the end. If I choose only me, that feels responsible. If I choose only her, that makes me feel like I'm asking for her to pop off (which makes me a bit of a jerk, if you're keeping score). If I go with both, I wonder about the children since that sort of preps us both for the long sleep.

It's a question for which there is no scientific answer, and one that theology can't agree upon. What does happen? Christianity mostly says if you're good (and follow Jesus), you go straight to heaven, while if you're anything else, you're in eternal damnation. Others say it's a sleep, of sorts, until God's return when you're risen to be judged, and either insert prior heaven and hell notions or the good join him, while the not-so-good return to the ground for eternal death. Some believe in ghosts being spirits of the dearly departed trapped on our plane instead of wherever, and others believe in reincarnation where you just keep coming back. But the non-religious types would just say once you're dead, you're dead.

As for me, I keep an open mind. I believe in God and Jesus, and know that there is a place prepared for the great beyond, but I can't really quantify it. The promise of eternal life is there, and I do believe that, but it remains an unknown, and I feel like there is more to do here. The Parable of the Ten Talents always weighs upon me, and I don't want to be the guy caught having squandered his life.

What will I do about my insurance quandry? Well, I'm not really superstitious, but I don't know. I still feel like electing something is just asking for trouble. Yet, responsibility would say that not electing is reckless. And so the debate will ever rage inside my head.

Ice In Soda

Whether you call it soda, pop, or have conversations that flow like this:
"You want a coke?"
"Yup."
"What kind?"
"Dr. Pepper."
Then you know what I'm talking about. Carbonated beverages. Many of us drink them with practically every meal when eating out, and they go hand in hand with the ice within them. Now, when you think about the ice in your soda, you usually think it is there to keep the drink cold or possibly make it ever colder while simultaneously watering it down. In fact, when the soda fountains are self-serve, I occasionally got no ice at all since the drinks were refrigerated in the machine and I drink it too fast for it to get cold.

You see, I drink a lot of fluids. For some reason, my body processes fluids incredibly fast and so I get dehydrated very quickly. I can knock back a gallon of water of day. For the sake of comparison with two of the most recommended amounts of water one should drink, that's 16 glasses compared to 8, or at least 33% more than half my weight in ounces.

Anyway, I discovered that the ice in soda has another purpose.

The fountain machine we have at work has a bit of a problem. It overcarbonates creating massive heads on the soda it puts into your cup. Without ice, I stand there and either stir it or just wait for it to fizz down to put more in. It can take awhile. Now, you may know that interacting with the bubbles makes the head of the soda go down faster. Some people put a finger in there or blow on it to drive the bubbles down and such, and it turns out ice does the same thing.

The existence of ice in the drink helps to drive the head of the drink down much like stirring it or otherwise interacting with the bubbles. I found that interesting.

What Is Success?

When you're growing up, and you think about what you want to do, people say if you work hard enough, you will succeed. So what do you consider yourself if you work that hard your entire life, and despite all your hard work, you still cannot succeed? Are you a failure? Do you just need to work harder? Or is there another factor that no one ever tells you about because it is so discouraging to know how it is to your success that knowing that there is an element you can't control can discourage you.

I am talking, of course, about other people. To make it even more discouraging, it isn't just other people, it is the right people. You can be the top of your field. Better than Einstein. Better than da Vinci. Better than Mozart. Better than Spielberg. You could have ideas and works that could change the world forever. You could run the country better than any leader in its history. But if you don't know the right people, it will never happen.

It is all a matter of pure luck, really. Most of the world's success stories rely just as much on the right place at the right time with the right person as much as they do the hard work and talent of the individual. Some of those stories could have just as easily ended in an arrest as they did in success. Those are the lengths to which people have gone to achieve their goals.

Success is like a chain where one link leads directly to the next but like a chain, where is the first link? People love to have been the first to know something after it gets big, but they never want to go first on something new.

What does this mean for you? Just an acknowledgement. Success is hard work, make no mistake about it. You have to possess the talent to make something of yourself in any field.

But it is just as much finding the right ear to hear you.

Misguided Commercials

It is no secret that commercials seem to forget what happens in the real world. Their depictions of everyday life are often beyond laughable. One that seems to repeat itself is just how much money companies seem to think that the average person has on hand at any given time.

A recent bank commercial that inspired this post depicted someone going to the store and buying a little more than was on their list. How much more? Well, that was the joke as we heard the back up sounds of a large truck backing into their driveway. The implication was that this guy could just go out on a whim and buy a truck load worth of merchandise just like that. Absolutely no one in my circle of friends is capable of spending that much at one time. Not that they would have on hand in their bank account anyway, which was what this commercial implied.

Another recent one has a daughter asking dear old dad for concert tickets, and because dad gets double points or something for each purchase, he offers to take every friend she has, he'll go, and take his friend as well. Nothing in this commercial suggests he is anything above average, yet he apparently has a fortune tucked away somewhere.

When I thought about this further, I realized that businesses do actually think this about their average consumer. Anytime I sat through any class on sales, they always told us that a no answer was not a true no, but just a request for more information. They believed that if you pushed hard enough, the person would see the value in the product and always buy it. They never believe that a no means that they do not have the money.

When I had to deal with collection agencies back when I was really broke, I told one that I was unable to pay, and he made a big point of saying that he noted that I refused to pay. That is what companies think of us. We are all sitting out here with millions of dollars at our disposal and just not buying from them. They believe if they push hard enough they will get us to buy something.

Personally, I am on a limited budget, and I cannot simply spend lots and lots of cash on just anything. And unless my ship really comes in, I can't see me buying a truck load of anything.

Come on. That's just silly.

Dumbest Reason I Was Ever Fired

You know, in my life, I've had quite a few jobs. Some were good. Some were bad. And from most of them, I was unceremoniously "let go" for one reason or another. Most of the time, it was something absolutely stupid, or I messed up in some way that they just sacked me over. However, for no reason in particular today, my mind wandered to what I consider to be one of the dumbest reasons I was ever fired.

For the Queen's sanity, I will note that my present job in not in the remotest bit of jeopardy.

Anyway, at the time in question, I had applied for a job via a temp agency and landed me a not half bad data entry position. At the time, it was a pretty decent job, so I was content enough to have gotten it. On my second day there, some kind of discussion started over jobs and such, and however the discussion got there, I remarked that there has to be a reason to fire you. Employers can't just up and fire you for no reason.

To prove they certainly could, they up and fired me for no reason. Seriously. The person from the temp agency asked what happened, and I told her about the discussion, and she said that as a temp, they could decide not to keep and basically fire me on a whim. So they did. Just to prove a point.

Obviously, the take away from this experience was never tell your employer what they can or can't do. They'll show you exactly just how much power they possess. I suppose it didn't help that I'd only been there a day when that discussion happened.

I promise you it never happened again. That's for sure.

How to Completely Derail a Problem Discussion

So, you're in a situation be it via email or conference call discussing some kind of problem which has arisen. The issue has been established, and people are working to get to the heart of the matter by attempting to sort out what needs to be done and who needs to do it. Somewhere, someone returns to the source of the original information in an attempt to figure out the intent or perhaps the mindset behind some level of advisement.

Then, out of no where, someone asks why, but it's a why something happened that can only be speculation and its answer has no bearing on the actual problem or its solution. It usually amounts to a bit of the blame game when it happens because someone asks why you asked so-n-so, or why someone did that thing they did. Where most questions to that point had flowed in a completely logical fashion, the right-field "why" kinks it all, and since no one wants to admit that they don't care, the conversation ends up completely derailed with guesswork and speculation.

When I'm looking to solve a problem, I keep it simple: what did you want it to do, or what sort of solution are you looking for? Never have I asked why they did it or why someone was bothered about it. Sometimes I wonder, but I know that it just comes off as accusatory and most of the time, it adds far more time to any discussion that I can spend doing something else.

The most recent eyeroller had to do with a discussion over how something worked, and really, it wasn't my specialty anyway. They had possibly misunderstood the original info and added the original people onto the email. The original person derailed the entire conversation by asking why the asker asked my group instead of, you know, just answering their question to him. Then the email string went off the deep end never returning to its original topic.

Seriously, there are questions with irrelevant answers. Some say there are no stupid questions, but I assure you there are. They are just trying to spark discussion when they say that. In fact, there are hosts of stupid, pointless and irrelevant questions that should never be asked in a group setting. If you are about to ask a question that will not, in any way, benefit the group, don't ask it. If you are asking a question that you are throwing out for the direct purpose of blaming someone else for something, don't ask it. If you feel like you have to lead the question with an apology, don't ask it. And finally, if you think your questions requires a disclaimer, either don't ask it or don't provide the disclaimer. Seriously, no one cares.

And finally, to clear up another fallacy: the customer is not always right. Ask anyone in technical support.

The Turning Of A Page

You ever get something that is somewhat mundane in nature, and yet for reasons unexplained, the creators of said object have placed an inordinate amount of work into some feature that provides no real value or functionality? When you look at most things, everything serves some kind of purpose, even colors which provide some aesthetic value. Most of the time, companies won't waste their time in tossing in stuff that is completely pointless.

Today, I saw an email that contained a link to our annual benefits novel, which was provided as an online doc rather than cutting down a forest to send it to everyone (which I'm sure they've done anyway). It opened up in this e-reader, similar to what I've seen used by store ads online. I'm sure you've seen these before. You hover your mouse in the lower corner of the "page", the page reacts and you can drag it over like you're turning a real page (you know, instead of clicking the little right arrow at the bottom of the screen like a sane user).

I caught the sound out of the tinny speaker in the CPU (since I really don't care about sound on my work computer; that's what headphones are for). Yeah, in this benefits document that 90% of the users will read at work, they bothered to take the extra time and expense to include a page turning sound. I can't even imagine how many man-hours went into this extremely minor and utterly pointless detail. I suppose that's my insurance premiums at work.

Every since then, I've been looking for something to compare how absolutely pointless that sound is, and I got nothing. There is literally nothing I can think of off the top of my head that would hold less consumer value than the sound of a turning page in an online benefits manual. There's a new simile for you.

That's as useless as the sound of a turning page in an ebook. And yet, that page turn sound will still be more pointless than whatever you compared it to.

Two Ways To Play

In the world of video games, the spectrum spans between two types of players. There are the casual ones who will play a little of everything that comes into contact with their system, and when they play, they just go until they feel like stopping, and then move on. Then there are the hardcore ones who will start a game and play it to its absolute conclusion. This type does not play just any game, but carefully select their next conquest like a general surveying the enemy. Your average gamer will range somewhere between the two extremes tending towards hardcore on some types of games and casual on others.

I was recently friended by someone who I failed to note played video games and even asked me about the Xbox on a prior occasion. Obviously, this time, I gave him my tag and once he sent the request, I was able to stalk ... er, I mean review the games he has played. Where my list is at 99, his is sitting at 442. Obviously, a part of this is because he has had his Xbox for longer than I've had mine (I found his oldest achievement to be earned on November 20, 2006 vs my December 25, 2011), but based on how incomplete his list of games is, I would put him as a casual gamer.

His list of games is littered with sort of begun games all nestled down around a handful of achievements with less than half being above the fifty percent mark. His overall percentage is 37, which considering just how many games he has on his tag is not exactly terrible. I noted a few games here and there that he was really dedicated to, completing them into the 80 and 90 percentiles, and he did complete 20 of them. None of this is meant to put him down or cause any insult, I promise. It simply indicates what amounts to an overall casual gamer.

I have another friend who recently found the true achievement site, and is casually working to get a higher completion on some of his games, but he suffers from a lack of play time, and as such, many of his games are still fairly low, but he is fortunate to only have 27 of them on his list to work with, but he has completed 3 of them so far.

Personally, I was casual for about a year before I discovered a fascinating achievement site at trueachievements.com where I completely junked out over the games and became a bit more hardcore (though not before I had all the earmarks of casual on my gamertag). As such, I gathered a handful of just really stupid games that I had rented and really disliked, and if I want to bring my overall percentage up, I now have to revisit them. Of my 99 games, I have a completion percentage of 47.89, and my overall goal is to eventually hit 80. I do have 50% on more than half of them, and I hope to hit a 50% overall rating around the end of the month, though by the looks of it, it will be a few days into November before I hit it. That site has some sweet tracking tools that I easily obsess over.

When you think about it, I'm sure we all start out as the casual gamer type regardless of whether it is actual games or other things in life. We begin by exploring and trying different things and build up a little experience with this and that before finding what we like and settling in. When we find our hardcore, we generally focus that attention on a small subset of where we start, much like the friend with nearly 450 games. He tried a lot, but devoted his attention to a certain type of game that he finds himself good with.

There are people out there who have changed gamer tags when they've moved from casual to hardcore so that they can control their completion percentages and ensure that they fully complete everything they touch and more carefully screen their games. While this is possible in the Xbox world, it hides a little of the truth of one's past by painting them as a perfect player when they really aren't. If I went to a new gamertag just to get 100%, I would have to replay so many games that I would lose more time than I would gain by starting new stuff. Yes, my percentage would be higher, but at a cost I'm not willing to pay. My tag with all its ups and downs is an accurate reflection of my Xbox gaming history, and really, there is nothing wrong with it.

This also serves as a sort of life metaphor where you can never escape from your past or even hide it as it all becomes a part of you. Yes, you have that Yoostar game on there with 12 achievements you can never attain. Yes, Transformers: The Game is there will all its gloriously horrible play control, and you never want to see it again. And yes, Child of Eden will forever taunt you with its achievements that are so hard to get, its True Achievement ratings are some of the highest on the site. Yet, how does this differ from bad decisions made and learned from in real life? Maybe you should have done this or shouldn't have done that, and all you can do is move on.

Naturally, the biggest difference is that anyone can look at your Xbox gaming history in all its glorious detail where your mind can be a closed book keeping your history carefully hidden. But just like having the Michael Jackson Experience and Just Dance Kids 2 in your gaming history doesn't make you a dance game enthusiast (ok, yes, and that Dance Central 3 sitting at 94%, whatever), elements of your past do not necessarily define your person at present.

I kind of went down a philosophical rabbit hole on this post, but no matter. Your past can make you who are, but it doesn't necessarily define you. Be yourself.

Relentless Updates

Here's something that came to mind as I sat down to another security alert from Java as it wants to make another update. Updates.

When a program is released, it is usually put out there "as good as it gets" for the moment until something surprising comes along to derail it, and the developer is forced to put out an update to fix whatever problem arose. These updates, or patches, are only possible because our computers are almost permanently online with a fairly speedy connection, where once upon a time, if a developer put out a program that required a patch, the consumer was screwed.

I recall one such game, called Riven (a sequel to Myst), that froze at a certain point of the game, and after some digging, I learned that the game was glitched and required a patch to fix it. I located said patch (I don't remember how) and popped that on a 3.5" disk to load into the game directory. It fixed the problem. Nowadays, your xBox or whatever would simply download the patch as soon as it was available and you'd never know there was a problem.

This ease of update has led to quite a bit of laziness on the part of some developers since they know once problems come up, they can instantly fix it and move on. This means that you, as a user, basically become unpaid beta testers of some companies' products since your instant feedback (read: ire over a crappy game) will enable the developers to correct issues they might never have found without months of more testing. One particularly heinous example was the release of the game Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. If you have the original Xbox or PS3 version of this game that came out on release day, you have a game that is can never be played without the update. The game was so badly glitched (all Lego games are inherently glitched, but this one was the worst) that the company was forced to replace all the game discs for the Wii owners since the Wii was not able to take game updates. If you're like me, however, and waited till the game went down to 19.99, then your disc is fine.

I use this update thing as a sort of gauge as to the worthiness of a particular product. For instance, Java (although supposedly in every product ever) seems to be one of the buggiest things out there. My computer gets updates almost daily for it meaning the developer finds something wrong with it almost daily.Oh sure, you might say, "well, they are improving it," and that is undoubtedly true some of the time, but developers would not update a product with newer and better stuff on a daily basis. A good portion of these are likely patches to fix bugs.

Another is Adobe Air. The Amazon Cloud Player uses this, and guess what has to update every single time I use it. Yeah. It tells me to close what I'm doing so it can make its update, so I let it finish what it is doing and then tell it to update. I figure it worked last time, and it'll work this time without their precious update. Obviously, the Air does something that the Cloud Player uses, but whatever that is has nothing to do with the updates it makes.

I know these are free, of course, but it still stinks that those developers can't just put out something that works the first (or even second) time without persistent updates that slow everything down while you wait for them to basically say, "Whoops, hang on a minute while I fix this."

The Last Few Days

Well, this was a surprise, wasn't it? Go through a couple months of a post a day, and suddenly, I disappear. Well, I didn't disappear, but I did suffer from a lack of planning for not having anything ready for when I lose my mind and forget to look at the blog for a few days. You see, so far, I've been creating a post and setting the date for sometime after today, so I'd be posting every day, even if I wrote today's post yesterday. This time, though, I had nothing and forgot about it.

Oops.

The real bonus to writing this way is that inspiration can strike at any time, and I'm ready for it as opposed to sitting down at the computer one morning and staring at a blank screen, which is exactly what I did this morning, which is why I'm writing about writing instead of something more interesting because this is exactly what is on my mind at this moment.

The way I see it, though, it is better to have something rather than nothing so that you are aware I still exist and do not believe that the blog has fallen by the wayside. Again.

The Computer Call

So last night as we're sitting down to a healthy dinner of chili dogs and Star Trek, we get a call from some guy with a Farsi accent telling me that he is calling about my computer. Now, these people have called before, but in my initial interrogation, they eventually hung up because the answers they gave made absolutely no sense. This time, I kept the guy on the line longer to try and figure out the purpose of his call.

Spoiler: I never did.

Anyway, he said he was calling about my computer, and I asked the most natural question that any geek should have in such a situation: which one? Well, without missing a beat, he said that they had detected that my Windows or Apple Mac computer had unsolicited programs accessing the internet and these programs were not viruses and could not be detected by regular virus software. I asked how, he said he had already told me that. I told him he hadn't, and he insisted that he could show me if I accessed my computer. I told him I would not give him access to my computer, and he said he would walk me through it to show me one of these programs.

Still curious as to what he is selling (I suspect some kind of registry cleaner or spyware/malware cleaner deal), I go ahead and proceed to my nearest computer and ask him to proceed. He asks if I'm the primary user of my computer. I tell him some of them. He paused at this answer, apparently, uncertain as to how to move on, but finally, he went ahead with his spiel. He then asks if I know where the keyboard is. I have to admit that I was completely thrown by the question. I was like, "What about the keyboard?" He asks again if I can find it. I just say yes, thinking he could not have possibly just asked me that.

Then, he asks me to find the C-T-R-L button in the lower left hand corner of the keyboard. I had to take a moment to inform him that he could speed up a bit here since I'm not a first grader, and am, in fact, a rather savvy user/programmer/sometimes hacker. I can keep up. He acknowledges and then asks me if I can find the little banner key that looks like the Windows symbol. I inform him that I'm well aware of what the Windows key is.

He asks me to hold that key down. I wait patiently for the next step, since there is no reason to just hold that key down without pressing some other key. He is guiding me to a Windows speed key combo, and I was not going to just plug that in without knowing what it is. He asks if I'm holding the key down. I ask him what the next keypress is. He asks if I can find the R button. I confirm that he is asking me to pull up the Run dialog box. I use the darn thing all the time.

Thrown by my phraseology, I guess, he mumbled out something I didn't fully understand. Still playing along, I opened the Run box and wait. He asks me if I see the box that says Run on it. I tell him that I can. He asks if I can see the white space in that box. I confirm that I can, and assure him one more time that I can keep up if he would cut to the chase.

Undaunted by my insistence to speed up, he asks if there is anything in that white box. I tell him that yes, there is the last thing that I typed in that box. It was, in fact, the IP address of a network drive in my house that I used to copy some stuff around, though I didn't go into that with him. He told me to press the backspace button to clear that box out. Little did he know that since the info in there is actually highlights when you open the run box, you can usually just start typing, but you know, whatever.

He had, so far, spent five minutes telling me how to pull up the Run dialog box using what was, no doubt, a page of step-by-step instructions in front of him. He finally got to the meat of his instructions. What to type in that precious box. He said to press E as in echo. I press nothing and wait for whatever he wants me to spell out. He asks if I have an E in that box. I ask him what he wants me to type in the box. He says E as in echo. I say ok.

He moves on to V as in Victor. I assure him, once again, that I can keep up and note, and I actually said "for QA purposes," that he was going irritatingly slow when I've repeatedly told him to move it along. He was unmoved and said to put in E as in echo again. He confirmed "E as in echo, V as in Victor, E as in echo." I confirmed, "Are you asking me to pull up the Event Viewer?" and I quickly typed in eventvwr.

About this time, the Queen was telling me not to do anything they told me to, and I assured her I had it under control, and was still just playing along. However, I glanced at the time, and noted that a) my chili dogs are getting cold and b) I was running out of time for Star Trek since they wanted to watch that Toy Story Halloween special at 7.

I told him I had the event viewer open, and asked very directly what I'm looking for. He asked what I see on my screen. I told him there are lots of things on my screen. What does he want me to look for? He asked if I saw event viewer local. I told him yes, and he asked me to list the items below that. I told him no, and asked what the point of this was. He said he was showing me the programs running. I told him that at this point I was kind of annoyed by how slow he was going and that I really didn't have time for this right now.

And I hung up.

I am still curious as to what he was going for, who he was calling from, and what he was selling since he was basically posing as a technical person calling in response to a message sent from one of my computers. This concerned me, and I really wanted to find out who they were to confirm whether they actually did get something from one of my computers or not. Perhaps they'll call again, and I'll torture them then.

A Social Experiment

The best part about having an anonymous blog is the ability to write about things around me, and no one knows I'm the perpetrator of such things. In this instance, the Queen decided to make me do something in my office that I would, under every other circumstance, never do or participate in. At her workplace, she got this "Boo" thing for Halloween, and was instructed to pass it on, as it were. She decided that I should place one in my workplace too to see what happens. I initially balked at the idea since I just work at work, and don't care about "spirit" nonsense. My motivation is the 2 week paycheck and that's all I need.

However, after some thought, being the progenitor of the action, I figured it would be amusing to see how it plays out, so I gave considerable thought to who I should give this little seed to in order to have the best chance of it taking off. Since I get there very early in the morning, I can pretty much choose who I want. I made my selection of someone I think will actually do it, and has the added bonus of being within earshot (but not eyeshot) of my cubical. I don't normally associate with this person at all - not in the same department or running circles or anything. Hence, the chances that I will be a suspect (besides the fact that I never participate in anything) is so ridiculously low, it's almost amusing.

I made the delivery, and the person arrived about 45 minutes later. They talked to the person in the cube next to them (which I knew they would, since they converse often) who, of course, took no credit for the placement of the item. They pondered who might, but weren't certain since they had no idea when it arrived.

They returned to the topic maybe an hour later, again, kind of wondering where it came from and what the purpose was. Now, the item is little more than a cup of candy, but it has a note that says to do the same for someone else and place it without getting caught. Not only is the conversation amusing, but the overall experiment will be fascinating to track.

We seeded this with one item and instructions to keep it going. How far will it go? Will it take off at all? Will I actually get one myself at some point? What will be the overall results of breaking up the monotony with one random element from what amounts to a random source? They suggested it might be a "spirit thing," and that's not a bad idea, after all, but we all know that I would never be on a spirit committee (insert shudder here).

As the day went on, I gathered from the tone of voice I heard and such that this person was actually a little freaked out by the existence of this random element, and declared they had no idea what to do with it (despite the fact that it contained instructions to "Boo" someone else). They asked people on the spirit committee continuing to declare she didn't know what to do, and of course, they weren't aware of it.

What this means is that my clever choice was probably the worst one I could have made. Rather than the leader I took this person for, they appear to be a total follower unable to make an independent decision. It may not go anywhere. Oh well. I will simply sit back and watch to see how and if it unfolds at all.

Flint Ridge

So in the spirit of recalling memories, I have one from the distant past. Well, really, this is more of an overview because this place was a sort of family tradition for years that just stopped at some point. I'm talking about a place on Highway 412 in Oklahoma called Flint Ridge.

It is my understanding that my parents managed to get in on the ground level in this place when it first came into being, and as property owners, we went up there over the summer and camped out, hiked on trails, and cooked over an open fire. They had pools, mini-golf, canoeing (which I did not like at the time), paddleboats, horseback riding, and I'm sure some other stuff that I don't recall. I recall it being fun to go. We looked forward to it.

Thinking about it now, I don't really know any of the details because it is a parents' job to keep the world fun for the child and disguise whatever else goes into life for a time. As such, I do not know if there were any costs or anything else associated with doing anything, but I don't think there was since I figure I would have heard of something over the several years when we went.

I also don't know why we stopped going. My knee jerk reaction is to say it was the birth of my sister, but I can quickly disprove that since I have a photo of us there in my Facebook albums when she was two and I was fourteen. Hence, the only logical explanation is that something within the family situation changed to disallow our going there. I ponder the time period following the last time I can confirm we went, and I don't have any idea.

As I picture the mini-golf course in my head and smile at the memory, I recall some conversation my parents had over Flint Ridge and something changing there. Perhaps they raised the rates or started charging for the services that were included for all those years. It happens, especially when a place gets big enough. Whatever it was, it was significant.

But many summers of my youth were spent there doing outdoorsy things.

What do I recall the most at this time? Something stupid, naturally. That would be canoeing down the Illinois River, but not the calm, easy ride that one might think of when one might ponder a canoe trip. Oh, heck no.

I recall being very young and screaming every time the canoe hit the rock bed of the river. I recall being scared out of my wits during the entire ride as my parents deftly navigated every obstacle the river offered from that low level where the canoe had to be dragged over those rocks to ensuring they got around tree branches in the water to making sure the canoe did not capsize at underwater obstacles we bumped into. At every turn, my poor parents had to deal with two frantic, screaming children who thought for sure they were going to die at any moment - life jackets or not. Unlike the time where Sassy Pants screaming bloody murder at the carnival rides but loved every moment, we were very happy when the multi-hour canoe ride was over and we were not interested in doing it again.

Of course they made us do it again the next year, but we still hated it.

In retrospect, it was probably fun, and I wish I had tried to enjoy it more, but little kids don't understand those sorts of things. The canoe was made of a heavy metal, was very buoyant and stable, and there was no chance of it being punctured or tipping over, so every fear was completely unfounded. That doesn't even include two loving people who would sacrifice themselves for the pair of screaming brats.

I occasionally think of Flint Ridge, and even asked about it once. I don't recall what my mother said about it though. I get so distracted sometimes. But it was a memory and experience that made me who I am.

Lost to Time

I was talking to the Queen last night, and we delved into some philosophical territory. If you ever give a thought to life and what it means to you and creation, you may eventually come to the sobering revelation that much of what you do on this planet will be completely forgotten, not only by everyone you know, but by you as well. Every day, we seem to trudge forward hoping to make a difference, but when you take two steps back, what sort of difference are we hoping to make? What sort of impact are we hoping for by taking the left road instead of the right one?

I remember seeing a graphic once showing an eventual timeline of the universe from the theoretical big bang to the theoretical burning out and death of everything. It's the sort of thing that brings up the existential question of "If nothing existed, what would there be?" This timeline started with the average person's lifespan and "zoomed out" little by little through periods of earth history to the history of the solar system to the lifespan of the sun and on out, all the while focusing on the period we just came from. It made our lifespan a speck on a universal scale.

Where does that leave us? Even if you ponder known history, our lives are very tiny. How many people have walked the earth? How many lives were lived from birth to death in obscurity? Most of them, actually. The number of truly "famous" people is extremely small. And of the really famous people, how much of their lives are lost? How many are reduced to a series of dates? We can find out dates for Abraham Lincoln on when he was born, died, got married, had children, some of his work, etc., but we do not know much about his childhood beyond what might be anecdotal. We don't know much about his day to day life, even as a president. Sure, major engagements might be recorded, but not the little things. What did he and his wife like to talk about? What was their fondest memory, I wonder? Is there any truth to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter? You see, that movie plays into the fundamental truth that there are gaps in history. It's the same sort of thing that Assassin's Creed III does with the revolutionary war. We know when the major stuff happened, but we can't know the conversations and who went in and out. Maybe there was a freelance assassin named Connor who helped out. Who knows?

While that comes off as ridiculous, that's just famous people. How about the next person that walks past you? How about the person who sits next to you at work? How about the person you might consider your best friend? How much do you know about them? How much do they know about you? Next to nothing is probably fairly close to the truth. You might say, "Well they know this and that," but they also only know what you tell them. Did you cover your childhood in detail? Did you tell them all about your weekend in every detail (ok, so probably)?

Even people who are open tend not to tell of everything. Even if you know it all, that's just you. What happens to their story when they're gone? How much do you know about your parents? Grandparents? Great-grandparents? I imagine the list kept getting shorter. Personally, the extent of what I know about my great-grandparents are their names, birth and death dates, and the dates they got married (for some of them). That's it.

It's as sad as a tombstone. I read once that the most important part of a tombstone isn't the dates that tell birth and death, but the dash that connects them. That dash contains so many experiences and no matter who it is, so much life, that it isn't fair that someone's entire existence is reduced to a dash.

Sometimes, I think when I walk in a crowd of people that attached to every face I see is a story. An entire life story from beginning to the present day just as full and complete as my own. I know that every person who walks past me is walking there for a purpose that they know. They left some place to show up where I saw them for a reason known to them, and once they are done, they will leave and go somewhere else. I may or may not ever see them again.

Billions of stories. Billions of them are lost every day, and we don't even realize it. But really, what could anyone do with all of that? We try to tell our stories to our children, and I dare say, if our children react the way we did upon hearing those stories, they will remember them just as well as we remembered our parents' stories. Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, and I can't help but wonder how many times we've repeated the same mistakes.

Maybe you are one of the few who, like me, have not only created a blog, but have kept up with it by writing down the various things that happen while supplying the occasional story of the past. Swell, but you know that blogger.com isn't forever. Someday, the site will die, and the data will be forever lost, and the stories forever gone.

Then there's the more sobering reality: who reads it anyway? If you're like me, then you probably find that the stats on your site consist of maybe two or three hits a day. It's probably one or two consistent readers, if you're lucky, and some accidental hits.

What does this add up to? It means that all the things that you weigh in your life as so significant are just little things that make up a big picture. They are things that pass and something else will take its place eventually. We are on this rock for a limited time in the larger scale of things, and eventually, we will pass on leaving the rock to someone else. They will eventually forget us. Some may last longer than others, but even those who last will only be a name. People know of Edgar Allen Poe, who never thought he'd be remembered, but he is little more than a name.

As for what comes next, none of us can confirm it. I believe in the Christian ideals where faith in God and Jesus promises an eternal life, but my human brain cannot comprehend something like "eternity." Remember that scale I mentioned. Eternity would be that whole thing and then some. I can't comprehend a hundred years. I have no hope of understanding eternity until I get there.

Point is that while we're here, we have to make the most of what we have to work with. We have our own company to keep, and our families to tend. Life is a miracle, and should always be treated as such.

The Most Basic Of Skills

This one made me literally walk away from my computer. Seriously, I was so dumbfounded that I had no words. Where do I begin?

So the other day I was asked to use a program that I maintain to create some sample files for a client using their data so they can have an idea of what sort of data gets returned. Simple enough request. Get it all the time. This little program returns regular old text files named in a variety of ways, but they can all be opened in notepad, which is the most basic text file reader known to man since DOS's "edit" command.

They didn't tell me where to send the files, so I got them all made up and send them to the people in charge of this client's account, and asked if they wanted to send the files or should I and to whom. Where I lost all my words was the response I got back. It read (word for word): "I am unable to open the files. Can you send them to (so-n-so) directly?"

This person cannot open a basic text file. Every program on the planet can see the contents of this file. You can use any word processor on any platform. You could put that file into Unix and still open it. You can open that file and read it in nearly every program that can open a file without any issues at all (well, not Paint, but why would you even try?). The file type is so basic, most email programs won't even block it, and this person can't open it.

We live in a computer age where opening programs is a part of daily life. I could send this file to my phone and still open it to see its contents. Heck, I could probably text it, and still be able to crack it open. How is it possible this person could not open the files?

I would say it takes all kinds, and I'm sorry, but this is the type of person who would get better reception from a potato than a satellite dish.

Ugh.

Did Boba Fett Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?

In a rare case of me not doing my own writing, I offer a link for today since I found it terribly fascinating. Hopefully, it doesn't go down anytime soon.

In this article, the author offers a series of explanations rooted within the canon of the Star Wars universe presenting why he believes that Boba Fett was responsible for the deaths of both the Jawas and their Sandcrawler as well as the single biggest event to set Luke Skywalker on his Jedi path: the murder of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru along with the destruction of their homestead.

If you've been in Star Wars since the beginning, as I have, and you know the movies inside and out, then you'll probably find this to be a very interesting read, and you know, some very good points are made throughout.

Top 10 Reasons Boba Fett Killed Luke Skywalker's Aunt and Uncle

Enjoy.

That Annoying Van

So two days ago, I went out to start my trusty van using the procedure I have been using for awhile to make sure that it does start (I turn the key to on, wait 30 seconds, then turn it over), and it didn't start. Well, to begin with, it did try to turn over, but halfway though that, it sounded like it choked. It was weird. After that, it gave me nothing, and none of my little tricks worked to make it go. Those tricks being to wait longer with it in on, and manically keep turning the key to start until it kicks it over. I was dead in the water.

As a result, I had to keep the car. Well, it was too late for the Queen to take me to work and then get everyone else around on time, so it was for me to be the late one (since I was already) and take everyone else to their destinations, which also means I needed to pick them all up. That's the smallest part of the issue, though. The big part is the problem itself. I've never been able to figure out what is causing this bizarre issue. If I just turn it on, it won't start. If I let it set for 30 seconds, it works. Granted, I'd not tested any of the components yet, and I know that's the next step.

That being said, it was nice to spend time with everyone that morning even though there was a little stress with the car problem. After I got home that evening, I went out to see if the van would start at all figuring my next step would be decided from there. I got in, and it started right up. Well, since it worked the way it had been, I decided to let it go, and sort it out over the weekend. You know, when I have time to take something apart.

Well, the morning came, and guess what? No start. Not even a tick of a start. The one main difference I notice at this point is that the solenoid isn't clicking. This brings me back to my original belief in that the solenoid is dead and my turning the ignition to on prior to starting had been basically "charging it" where the weird pop I heard that first morning was likely the solenoid completely dying.

To add insult to injury that morning, my ignition tumbler has been stubborn in that sometimes the key won't turn. I always have to tap it a few times with a very large wrench to pop the key into place and turn it. Well, on that morning, it took quite a few taps to get it to turn as well. I think the whole starter system is falling apart, but one thing at a time. I needed to get home, pull the starter, and get it to Autozone to test it.

So my task yesterday evening was to pull that starter out and most likely replace it. I found where it was located in the engine compartment and like most vehicles I've owned, this one looked to be a pain to get out of there. I eventually found where I could use a very long ratchet extension to get at one bolt, but the other bolt appeared to have lost its head entirely. I was very cross about that. I spent probably an hour trying to work the thing loose until it occurred to me that it was bolted to the transmission, which, you may recall, is the first thing that had to be fixed on the van. I thought that surely the guys who did the transmission didn't shear off a bolt head and leave it.

I looked more thoroughly and sure enough, the starter was bolted to the transmission from the opposite side of where the other bolt was attached. No wonder I couldn't find it. Got that loose and it fell right off (you know, after I disconnected the solenoid wires and stuff). Victory. I was off to Autozone after dinner.

At Autozone, they took the starter over to the tester, and as my luck tends to be, it passed the test. However, the guy who ran the test noted that while the machine passed it, it sounded weak. He did not want to just recommend the $100+ replacement since the machine did pass it, but that's what it sounded like to him. I figured it was that or the solenoid anyway, so I decided to replace it.

Here's the funny part. If you ask someone who knows about cars, they'll tell you that the starter is one of the sturdiest components and you rarely have to replace them. I've had to replace 3 starters on vehicles I've owned, and every last one of them passed the test at Autozone. I have some serious doubts about that tester.

Anyway, I popped the starter on the van, and it fixed the problem. In fact, I never realized how rough that van was actually starting. When I turn the key now, it just purrs right to life where it always sounded like it struggled before. Just one more thing to listen for when I buy used again, I suppose.

Man, I really got screwed on the van. See why I'm in no hurry to let them know about their financial screw up? That dealership strikes me as a slip shod operation.

The Real Victim in Mary Poppins

I recently re-watched Mary Poppins for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time, and noted something that I've noticed before but didn't give too much thought. Right at the top of the movie, Dick Van Dyke, as Bert, is dancing around as a street musician entertaining the crowd by coming up with impromptu poems about them. He pops a couple off to applause and laughter (while introducing the minor character of Andrew, who is a dog, and apparently, Mary Poppins speaks dog) until he comes across a nice old lady called "Miss Persimmon." Remember, dear Miss Persimmon?

That's the only picture that came up in a Google search for her. Look how happy she is to have been noticed. If you consider the formation of her name being "miss" instead of "mrs," that would indicate that she is an unmarried woman, and at her age, she would be referred to as an old maid. Who knows why? But at this moment, she's overjoyed that this young man not only acknowledged her, but can actually come up with a clever little poem just for her. Her day has been made.

What happens next? Well, the wind blows, and instead of launching into something clever about Miss Persimmon, Bert talks about the wind changing and something to happen that has all happened before. The crowd can see that he has clearly lost his mind, but before they can pop him off to the loony bin, he jumps into a lively rendition pre-reprise of Step in Time, dancing around the crowd like a maniac.

However, if you watch the background here, you'll notice that Miss Persimmon quickly turns and leaves the crowd entirely. She does not stay to watch his performance and is not there for the applause once he is done. You see, having been called out by the young Bert, she doesn't understand why he did not come up with something about here, and when he stares off and then launches into something else, she is devastated.

Miss Persimmon does not appear the rest of the movie. Granted, most of the people in that first scene don't either, but the point is that within the context of the movie, this poor little old lady had her feelings smashed in the first scene by one of the main characters, and probably spent the duration of the film crying in her brandy at home.

Next time you watch Mary Poppins, remember dear Miss Persimmon. She just wants to be loved.

A Good Sense Of Humor

It's important to laugh. Laughter has been medically proven to be therapeutic to just about every sort of problem you can experience. It releases some sort of physical mumbo jumbo that allows your body to speed healing and promote good health. A big part of laughing is having a good sense of humor, which is very important when dealing with extended family.

With the Queen's family, I became a one joke wonder when I managed to poke my eye out with a screwdriver. They wasted absolutely no time in ensuring that every single eye joke known to man was exhausted and new ones were thought up as quickly as possible. So the very positive outcome there was that I am not sensitive at all to eye-related comments. The Queen even got me a bookmark that says, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, and then hey, free eyeball."

On the other side of the coin, the other night at dinner with my parents and siblings, we were asking my dad where he would like to have dinner on his birthday (which is today - happy birthday, dad). We often encourage family members to pick somewhere they like to eat or would enjoy, and he laughed and said QuikTrip (a local convenience store, if you're not in the know, but their food is really good). Rather than ask him to pick something serious, we all proceeded to talk about exactly what we would choose from QuikTrip (the Jalapeño sausage is especially tasty). I'm sure he'll end up picking somewhere else, but it was amusing.

I recently read the best suggestion of all time on how respond to people who post pictures of themselves fishing for compliments. When you see one of those fabulous bathing suit photos, comment on something in the background. The example given has two women in bikinis posing and smiling. The comments on the picture related to the Dodge Charger and Ford Mustang sitting in the background. The picture's poster was all put out that no one commented on her bikini body.

And finally, the Queen often tells me about something that plays on the K95 radio station every morning called 2nd chance date or something like that where someone calls in and laments that they had a great date with so-n-so, but they never called back. Some of these have resulted in shenanigans worthy of a rom-com. One involved a woman leaving half way through a date, and when they spoke of her reasoning, it turned out that the guy had dated her mother at one point, and she could not handle that. Another had a woman calling in about a date she went on 2 weeks ago with no call back, but the name and number she gave turned out to be the guy she had been dating for 8 months rather than the one she dated two weeks ago. He did not want to discuss them on the radio. Another was a guy named Jack who dated a woman named Jill (I know, I couldn't believe it either), and although they got along great, she could not deal with the endless supply of "Jack & Jill" jokes for the rest of her life. She should have just laughed about it and moved on.

Anyway...

So no long dissertations today. Just something short and amusing. Smile. It's good for you.

A Solid Piece of Advice

Advice comes from the strangest of places sometimes. There was one piece of advice that I received that stuck with me ever since since hearing it shook me right to the core. It was an absolute bit of truth of biblical proportions, and it came from the unlikeliest of sources.

Back in 2000, I was looking for a job. I answered lots of ads, and ended up in all kinds of weird places that I never went back to. One such place was a renovated QuikTrip near where my parents live, and while this place has had many names before and after this business was there, at the time I walked in through those doors, it was a place that sold vacuum cleaners. I did not know this when I responded to the ad, and like this type of job tends to do, they told me nothing about it over the phone.

I walked in and sat with a room of people curious about the job, and got pitched this job where you get paid for demonstrating a vacuum cleaner for people in their homes. They boasted screening and set appointments, and "all you have to do is" demo a certain number of times and you get paid regardless of whether one sells or not. If you get a sale, you get more. After watching the demo, I figured I had nothing better to do, so I thought I'd see how I did.

If you'd read this blog for any length of time, you can probably guess exactly how that went. Catastrophic failure would be a fairly accurate description. I made exactly bupkis doing this job. The X number of appointments never happened. Ever. In fact, the expectation turned out to be completely unrealistic, and it also turned out that no one ever achieved the sales necessary for the mega payout either. It was setup to look good, and pay as little as possible. Pretty much everyone quit very quickly.

While I was there, however, I was talking to the seedy head sales guy (who looked exactly like a seedy vacuum cleaner salesman), and he asked me about doing something. I can't remember what he asked, but I responded with the gainsay response that one gives when one forgets to do something. I told him that I didn't have time. That's when he said it. Pay attention to this one.

You make time for what's important to you.

When he said that, I just stopped and looked at him. It was as if the entire world of time and things to do just crashed down on top of me. It ripped time from an unreachable shelf and made it something that I controlled, but showed me that the 24 hours I get in a day are mine to do with as I please. There are obligations and options, but when it comes right down to it, I make that decision. This bit of advice ended up being coupled with another piece I got probably the year before or so from just as unlikely a source.

Before I was out of a job, I worked for that Fireplace Company where I lost my eye. At that company there was a guy who was older, but not entirely grizzled yet, who drove the forklift around the yard. again, I don't remember the circumstances of the discussion we were having, but he said I could leave and do something or another. Naturally, we were on the clock in the middle of the work day, so I said I couldn't leave. Then this exchange happened.

"You can do whatever you want," he said.

I paused for a moment, having never considered that very obvious notion, but then cleverly (I thought) responded, "Yeah, but there are consequences."

"Exactly," he said.

What does this add up to? A bit of wisdom that I'll impart to you, my lovely readers, on this Monday. Maybe you know this. Maybe you never thought about it. But within this is a bit of freedom you might not have noticed.

Your life is yours to live as you please. No one controls you. No one can tell you what to do with it. You have the freedom to choose where you spend your time, but of course, some things are more important than others, and you always have to weigh the consequences of doing versus not doing. You will always, however, make the time to do what you feel is important.

If family is important to you, you will find time to spend with them. If you love movies, you'll always be able to find a couple hours to watch one. If you love reading, you'll read. While choosing to do these things, you will choose not to do something else. You will have to live with those consequences. Some consequences are negligible, such as choosing a movie over a video game - your gamerscore might suffer. Some are more severe, such as choosing video games over the family - the relationship might suffer.

But in the end, the choice is yours. What is most important to you?

The Horror Of Christmas

It's the beginning of October, which means it's that time of year where people complain to no end about stores preparing for Christmas. I think it's weird, in a way, how people make their lives so strictly compartmentalized. This day is for this; this month is for that; we don't talk about this until this date. Nothing follows a more universal ruleset than Christmas.

Now, for me, I don't really care. I play an iPod with 12,000 songs on shuffle every day, and in there are a couple hundred Christmas tunes. They pop up year round. There are other people who also don't mind a year round Christmas. One of the Queen's grandmothers, for instance, kept a Christmas tree setup all year, though I suspect it was primarily because she didn't want to deal with the setup and takedown herself since she lived alone.

For others, it's a major huge deal though. Christmas is not discussed, referenced, or acknowledged until the day after Thanksgiving. No exceptions. They completely avoid Hobby Lobby from July through November. I overheard a conversation today where someone heard the song "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" on the radio, and actually said it made them sick and demanded the station be changed. The nature of the ensuing conversation usually revolves around "let's get through first" before ending that statement series with Thanksgiving, of course.

Of course, listening to these conversations also reminds me of how much people like to fit in with each other, since the strongest of personalities is always the one to start this sort of discussion. They always want validation when they speak, so naturally, the other people who chime in agree and offer their own "horror stories" of early Christmas observations. And someone always mentions Hobby Lobby's tendency to start bringing the decorations out in July (though someone defended this recently by noting that any Christmas-related crafts would need to be started early, which justifies their bringing these things out when they do).

For the most part, everyone agrees that certain holidays should be relegated to certain times of the year only, and thinks it's all a marketing deal, and while that may be true, there is also nothing wrong with discussing topics whenever you feel like it. There is also nothing wrong with a station playing Christmas-related music whenever they feel like it.

This is just another case of people needing to get over themselves.

In my humble opinion, of course.

If You Can't Trust Your Co-Workers...

Here's some math you've probably never thought about before. Maybe you have and I'm just not giving you enough credit, but for those of you that haven't, consider this. In a seven day period, there are a total of 168 hours. Of those 168 hours, you could spend an average of 56 of them sleeping (if you go with the 8 hours a day - I know that doesn't apply to all of you - I promise there are fingers pointing back at me, too). That leaves you 112 hours.

Your average 40 hour work week will include five 9-hour days (gotta include that lunch hour) along with another hour allowance (at a minimum) for the drive to and from work, if it only takes 30 minutes to get there. Hence, you will spend around 40-50 hours with the people you work with. That leaves you 52 hours to yourself...well, sort of.

You've got to prepare for work in the mornings which will take anywhere from 30-90 minutes depending on how much prep you need. If you go to church, that will eat up anywhere from 2-4 hours, not including prep and drive times. Then there's food preparation, depending on how much you cook at home. The point to all this is that you likely spend just as much time around your co-workers as you do your family at home.

On my desk at work, I've tended to keep some kind of receptacle that holds water (or something equally to less drinkable). I don't secure it or much of anything else, but just assume that my co-workers will just leave it alone. Apparently, this is not an entirely safe thing to do in some environments.

I don't remember the exact circumstances surrounding this conversation, but somehow, I ended up in a very short conversation with someone (probably one of those people who can't handle more than 10 seconds without a work spoken, and also probably in an elevator) and mentioned that I always had a water bottle or something on my desk. He said that I must really trust my co-workers.

This was a guy with that sort of look on his face of absolute conceit, as if he were the best thing that ever happened to any room he entered, and the world grew a little darker when he left. He looked like a prankster. Now, I considered his words over trust, and the only thing that came to my mind was that if you can't trust your co-workers, who can you trust? No, you're not bound to them, but at the same time, you're really stuck with these people every day of your life until you or they move on to something else. Change can always happens, but until it does, you'll be seeing them tomorrow.

There are always those that think it's hilarious to mess with people, and while this can certainly mix things up to keep life interesting, there is always a line in my opinion. You should never interfere with someone's ability to do their job. I knew someone who had a habit of doing "something" to people's computers when they left them unlocked. One that I know of was when he changed someone's screen resolution to 640x480 which completely screwed up the layout of the icons on their desktop, but the worst was when someone unplugged someone else's phone. Our phones are on some complicated network system that I don't fully comprehend, and unplugging the phone caused it to basically reset. They had to call IT and everything to get the line reestablished. This was followed, of course, by a mass email telling everyone not to do that.

I believe you should trust and get along with your co-workers. After all, they're pretty much your second family, and you probably see them more than your main one.

The Van Story

So at the beginning of the year last year, I was driving around town in an old 1988 Lincoln Town Car. It had some issues, not the least of which involved some kind of electrical that constant drained the battery and a power steering fluid leak that was just hopeless. So we decided to unload it ... um, trade it in on something else. I wanted to keep my status as "car payment free," so I put back $2000 to spend on a used vehicle.

It's hard to find a used vehicle for $2000. I figured whatever I got for this might have an issue or two, but I just needed it to run and not require a jump every morning. After some touring around, we ended up a local dealership where we were shown to a minivan that they were charging $4000 for. This was above my price range, but at the same time, we had been looking for a bit, and found that $2000 was definitely not going to get me anything worth driving.

They asked if my old car ran, and I said it did (failing to mention anything about it starting consistently since they didn't ask). In fact, for its final drive to the lot, we had to jump it. They said they'd give $500 for the old car unseen since it ran, making the van $3500 plus the fees and nonsense gave us a total of $3800. I handed over my $2K leaving us with a balance of $1800.

Well, they said that the amount was so low that it wasn't worth the trouble to finance it, so we settled on a gentlemen's agreement of $300 for 6 months. They took my credit card number, and they would just run the card on a certain day for the $300, and we call it good. That's a lot of math, and I do not apologize for it.

Anyway, it all went rather smoothly, and I thought I was good to go. For a couple weeks.

Then, it started having some transmission problems. I'm terrible with cars and stuff, and so when I went perusing for one, I had no idea what to look for or what the warning signs are for "run away as fast as possible." Rather, I'm the sucker born every minute who gets sucked in by the salesman to buy now. I took the van to a transmission person who took one look at the dipstick and declared that I was screwed and needed a new transmission. He described it in more detail than that, but that was the gist of it.

Boom. $1500.

Now, an interesting detail on this whole thing is that somewhere along the way, the car lot failed to put my credit card in their auto pay whatchamacallit, and relied, instead, on someone manually running the card through. That person disappeared, so after they missed two payments that I had budgeted, I called them up and asked about it. They said whoops, and ran the two payments.

Now, having just dropped $1500 for a transmission on a vehicle that I now only owed $1200 on, I decided that since they were supposed to run the payments automatically, I would simply ignore it going forward if they forgot subsequent payments. As a matter of, shall we say, cosmic coincidence, the final payment was scheduled for the expiration month of my credit card, so if they failed to take anything in a timely manner, the card would no longer work.

They never took another payment, so I chalk that up to them basically paying for the transmission. What I owe lingers in the back of my mind, and I'm not sure what will happen when the time comes to trade this van off, which I want to do fairly soon, since it has some other problems.

One of the earlier things I tried when the transmission started acting up was replacing the spark plugs. (it made sense based on the symptoms). Well, I jacked up one of the spark plug holes forcing me to have to rethread it and then put in a rethreading spring deal down there. It's all holding together, but I do not want to have to replace that spark plug. The A/C technically works, but it won't hold any freon due to a leak somewhere that will drain it in only a few days. The left blinker has a short to where the rear light won't flash. And there is something up with the ignition system. I have to turn the key to on, wait about 30 seconds, and then turn it over. If I try to jump the gun, it won't start, and I have to wait longer. I don't really get that.

Oh, and the radio sucks. It is radio only. No cassette, CD, or external audio jack. Basically, I'm stuck with airwaves.

So, I'm ready to get rid of this thing,but before I can do that, I'll need some scratch under me both to be able to afford another car payment as well as accounting for the possibility of that unpaid $1200. The moral of the story here is to make sure when you buy a used car to look under the hood and check everything. If your instincts tell you something is wrong, then walk away.

Casual Driving

Not sure how well I've conveyed this through these posts, but on the whole, I am a very laid back individual. I have my moments of intensity, sure, but when it comes down to basic, everyday personality, I take it easy. This translates into my driving style as well.

A lot of people, once they get behind the wheel of a car, change into someone altogether different. The happy granny becomes a road raging maniac when caught behind someone going 5 under the speed limit and that sort of thing. From a general perspective, those things don't bother me. I'd rather people actually cruise along at a reasonable speed, but I also take it fairly easy myself on the road.

My angle when I'm driving is that wherever I'm going, I won't get there much quicker by gunning my engine and zipping around everyone else. In addition, driving in that manner increases your stress level quite a bit since driving takes a lot more out of you, energy-wise, than people give it credit for. When speeding down the expressway, you're constantly looking over your shoulder for the cop to bust you for speeding and trying to get around someone who might or might not try merging in front of you.

I'm the opposite. I tend to set the cruise control for the speed limit and lay back and watch the scenery go by. I look at every other driver on the road as someone who wants to destroy me for absolutely no reason, and as such, I give everyone a pretty wide girth. I assume everyone on every side street wants to pull out in front of me, and I never just gun it off at a light lest someone should run the fresh red the other direction (which has happened more than once). I also figure that since people love to turn right on red, they'll probably do so right in front of me.

It seems a touch paranoid, perhaps, but the last speeding ticket I got was in car without a speedometer right after I exited a highway after driving for two hours straight, and I've been in one accident that was considered my fault ... in 1993 ... on ice. I've actually detailed my accidents here recently, so no need to go into them again.

In addition, driving is not stressful for me. I just chill when I'm behind the wheel, and life is good. If I'm stuck in traffic, then oh well. I'm not going to get there any quicker by worrying about it. If I'm in construction, I generally don't like it because of the inherent danger in driving in those conditions (so I like to avoid it entirely), but I also am not concerned about the time it takes. I try not to leave too late for something so I can just relax on a drive.

It doesn't always happen, of course, but I'm also describing my ideal situation here. That's just me, though. Mr. Cruise Control. If you're behind me, then just go around. I'm probably not going to go any faster, cause I'm in no hurry. It's relaxing.

Apparently, I'm Threatening

So this is something I never really think about because it strikes me as a little preposterous. However, I know how I can be sometimes, and I can kind of see it...kind of. What made me think of my coming off as a threatening presence was when I had to deal with something at Sassy Pants' school, and it was something I wasn't altogether happy about.

I don't want to detail the issue, but it involved my going into the same person a few times trying for their approval over something. I went in a total of four times over the course of a day, while being turned down each time. The final time I went in, the person apparently saw me coming and brought in the principal to sit in. I was turned down once more, and the principal said we were done for the day.

I told the Queen about the whole thing, and especially the end where the principal was called in, and she did note that I have a sort of intensity about me sometimes that some people might find threatening if they don't know me. This is especially intense when I am somewhat angry, but note that my being angry does not translate into shouting or name calling or even grumbled insults. In fact, I remain completely cordial, though I have had occasion to debate the issue (some say argue, but it's more that I state my case and try to debunk their side of it where an argument might come off as a gainsay disagreement as opposed to a civil conversation. i.e. "Yes, it is." "No, it isn't.").

In addition, I'm not exactly a big guy. Genetically, I have very, very broad shoulders (8 inch collarbones), and while I'm not "muscular", I have some decent muscle mass, and I'm not fat. I'm also only 5'9", so picture a average heighted guy with that sort of trapezoidal male figure where it tapers slightly down from shoulder to waist and that's me. I do have a bit of a smart mouth, and I do have a sort of unfortunate tendency to make one feel stupid without half trying (ok, I admit to doing it on purpose sometimes...very subtly. I have talked people into removing their phone batteries while they're talking on them just to see if they would. Some totally did.).

So, I suppose when it comes to being threatening, it is possible that I can come off that way, but I don't intend to. I also did not hear from that person again when we sent just Sassy Pants in to see her one more time the following day (had to work, you know). Perhaps she didn't want to deal with me again. I consider that a victory.

People Are Thick

Sometimes, people get caught up in their own little world, and reply to business emails with their strong words to impress everyone else on the massive email string without realizing that they sound like a complete idiot because they never bothered to read any of the replies to their previous inquiries. They use acronyms like crazy, especially ETA, which in most cases, also makes them sound like an idiot since they clearly have no idea what it actually stands for (Estimated Time of Arrival, just in case you're one of them, but don't want to admit it).

One individual in particular replied to an email string stating that the formatting was incorrect in a couple of fields due to the existence of decimals and commas. That is all he said about it. I didn't know which fields were affected or what sort of output he needed beyond removing those characters. Add to this that the other people were actively running the files anyway, which would mean that once they get them all done, none of them will work since they're formatted incorrectly. To date, no one has so much as noticed this little plot hole.

Anyway, on Mr. Decimal-Comma, I replied to his email string (it was a double reply since I had to address both his issue and the other one where someone was having trouble running one of the files, see plot hole) asking which fields were affected and what sort of output he wanted. Later that day, he replied again asking if the formatting was complete and for an "eta on when that will be complete". Besides the egregious misuse of the acronym, I had to wonder if he even read what I wrote before since that was literally the next reply. You may note that it does not contain the answer to my question of "which fields are affected."

I cut and pasted my previous question noting that the eta is dependent on his answer to my question. (Note the proper usage of the acronym; if you broke that out and read it in full, the statement would still make sense). I just have to wonder how some of these end up in positions of power when they clearly don't read the communication they receive.

Voicemails Are A Waste Of Time

Not all the time, mind you. Sometimes, the best thing to leave is a voicemail for one reason or another, but I'm talking about people who leave voicemails for the sake of leaving a voicemail.

For instance, I was called today by someone who needed me to fix something for them. He talked to someone in our Tier 1 group who IM'd me to say he was calling. I acknowledged said call and said I'll call him back. I knew his name, why he was calling, the ticket he was referencing, and I had his number. If you add that up, you'll find every piece of info anyone could possibly leave in a voicemail other than a convenient time to call back. He insisted on leaving a voicemail, which cost him a minute or so, and cost me a minute or so to retrieve it (as well as the time it took to write this angry blog about it).

His voicemail consisted of no new information.No times. No alternate callback numbers. No other people to contact in case he was out. Nothing. That list I gave above? That's what he left.

I have had people leave me a voicemail only to say they sent me an email. I had already read the email, and didn't need the voicemail. I am not sure that people are aware that it take time to check voicemail. It actually takes longer to check a voicemail than pretty much every other form of message-leaving communication. Text is quick. You can check that in the info bar if you catch it coming in. Emails are quick. Voicemail is slow.

I'm tired of pointless voicemails. Can you tell?

Betcha Didn't Think About That...

So this will be quick because your mind will elaborate on this far better than I ever could, I'm sure. So, we know you're supposed to watch your hands when you've completed your business in the bathroom. We also know that not everyone does this, so some individuals go so far as to use a paper towel to exit the bathroom to make sure they do not soil their hands on someone else's stink.

However, if you are this type of individual, I want you to consider a couple of things. First, if you were in a stall, how many hands touched that door lock on the way out, and what state were they in?

Second, and most importantly, what state were your hands in when your buckled your pants, and did you happen to touch your belt after you washed your hands? Wouldn't that be the same as that door handle you avoided?

Have a nice day.

A One Way Street

So as we were watching Castle the other night, a new character was introduced who is a "Fruitarian," which is apparently someone who only eats fruits and grains ("Man's original diet, as God intended", so he says). Anyway, the way the interactions with this character went is that whenever he was there, they accommodated this diet of his. He made his stuff and offered it freely, whether anyone else was interested in having it or not.

It got me to thinking about how these sorts of relationships are depicted in movies and TV. When someone decides they are restricted to one type of food or they leave off one food group, it is not only them, but they tend to take everyone around them with them for the ride. Since they don't eat meat, for example, now no one around them can eat meat so no one is offended. Everyone also seems ok with this. Extending this attitude past just food, anytime someone is out of the perceived norm, everyone starts basically walking on eggshells around them so as to not offend.

Exactly when did this become the expectation? If our fruitarian character doesn't want meat for some kind of personal moral reason, why should his values extend to everyone else in the room? Our country is supposedly founded upon the principles of free thought, enabling everyone to go their own way. Yet, whenever someone enters the room who isn't with the grain, there is suddenly accommodation and tiptoeing to make sure no one gets hurt by opinions they disagree with.

Honestly, if Castle wanted a real steak instead of a papaya steak (I guess that's a real thing), he should be allowed to have one without the fruity character taking offense to it. The same goes for every other difference people have. Unless there is a legitimate health issue involved with practicing some sort of freedom around another (usually dealing with allegies and nuts), then no one should be restricted from doing something just because someone else in the room disagrees with it.

The world is ripe with people who disagree over this or that, and yet, we seem very bent on insisting that everyone agree. Getting along is not a prerequisite to life, believe it or not. If I can player a shooter without adverse mental problems, and you don't like shooter games because they're violent, then don't play them but don't expect me to stop. Same with all types of movies. Some like the violence, some like the bad comedy, some like the romance, and in all cases, there are others who don't. No one should lose one for the sake of the other. If you don't like it, then don't worry about it.

But too many people out there are a one way street with their opinion in that if you aren't doing it their way, you are doing it wrong. The world is more like the center grassy area of a school campus between classes. Everyone is going every direction possible, and no one is tripping over anyone else. Well, sometimes they do, but they get back up and move on. There are some laws and rules that are not to be broken for the benefit of all society, but when it comes to pure opinions (and you can probably think of more than a few), everyone needs to do their thing and leave others to their things.

It is the difference of opinions that gives us the cornucopia of ideas that drives innovation forward. Someone thinks of this which inspires someone else to to do that. If not for our differences, the two would do the same thing and no one would move past it. Differences are good.

The one way street only leads to stagnation. Maybe that works for some people, but not for me. And that's my opinion.

A Dog's Life

So if you've actually read very much of this blog, you might or might not recall that we have a dog. In the context of the blog, I refer to him as the Hunter, because he is a black lab/German shepherd mix, ad in my mind, that would make a hunter of a dog. Anyway, we got him in 2009, figuring his birthday to be around Valentine's Day, and after some training, he finally stays in the backyard (thank you, invisible fence). At night, he prefers to stay inside, but when morning comes, he knows well enough to leave the house and stay outside all day. Or he used to.

You see, there has been a very disturbing change with him recently in that he refused to leave his crate (a large dog carrier where we make him sleep at night; don't trust him free-roaming) in the mornings to go back outside. I'll open the door, and he'll just stare at me rather sheepishly. That sort of dog look where their ears are down and their eyes droop very sadly. A couple of times, I've just left the crate open and eventually he came out and I've been able to coax him outside ... when I've had the time.

Then he refused to even come out. He would stubbornly stay inside the crate, and when he did come out, he would run back in when I approached the back door. He would end up curling himself up as far back as he could go. This came to a head one morning when I could not get him to come out but left the door open. He never left, so the Queen tried to coax him outside. She pulled him out of his crate, and he straight up growled at her and bit her arm.

This was a shock. The Hunter had never bit anyone. He had been tortured by small children, and exhibited some displeasure before, but he had never attacked any member of the family. I spoke with The Mixer at work, as he is a bit of a dog whisperer, to try and sort out what in the world is going on with my dog, and he had some thoughts about it. Mainly, he suspected there was something about the backyard that made it an unsafe place to him.

So the next morning, I had the day off, so having let him stay inside (only I deal with him at this point to try to sort him out), when I opened the crate, he stayed in it. I offered him treats, cheese, ham, and shot water at him to try and get him to come out, but he preferred to stay in that crate rather than respond to any of it. Yeah, I offered a dog straight up meat, and he refused. He was tempted, but he would not come out. I closed the door at various points during the morning, and reopened it to try and coax him, but nothing. Around noon (he had been inside since about 10 the previous night), he finally came out, but seeing me go for the back door, he ran back into his crate. I coaxed him back out with the ham again, and had one of the children close the door behind him. He tried to return once he got the ham, but he found he was trapped. He finally went outside.

Now, before this, he has pretty much lived only on the concrete porch area of the yard, never straying far from the back door. He is constantly watching us and waiting for his chance to come in, and he always starts pounding the door between 7 and 9 wanting in. I decided to work with some basic training on him, offering treats and such. Did a little come and sit and stay, and not much else to see if he would get those, and he understood just fine. I did all this in the backyard to try and foster a level of comfort with the environment. That's when I noticed something about his behavior.

The closer I got to my northern fenceline, the more nervous he acted. He would come and get the treat and might sit for me a few feet north of the porch. I worked my way all the way to the north fence, and told him to come. He came to me, snagged his treat, and immediately ran back to the porch. I finally gave him is treat and scratched his head so he would stay. I told him to sit, and he did, but stared at the fence and whined. A little further back, he would not sit at all, but only looked at the fence and whined.

We had recently gotten a notice from the city to cut our yard, and we were somewhat thrown by this, since our yard was already cut. I had actually mowed not long before receiving this, but upon walking my property, I found there was quite a bit of brush and such along the north fence, so I went ahead and cut it all down in case that was the complaint. It was not long after that that the Hunter started his extra weird behavior.

Our present suspicion? Well, we have always gotten along great with our north neighbors. Never any problems at all with them, and even occasionally talk to them. But their yard is the one he is afraid of. Did they do something to my dog to make him so afraid of his own yard that he would go so far as to attack a member of the family to avoid it? That's what freaks him out. We can't imagine what happened out there, but at this point, that's what we know. And it is disturbing.

Repetitive Topics

The hardest part of writing on a blog every day is the stuff you have to come up with to talk about. This would actually go for any relationship ever, since after long enough, your past has been fully examined, and all you have is the future to deal with along with whatever happens to be going on around you. I pondered a couple of things before starting this entry and I found I had done them already, so I decided to talk about talking about things I've already talked about.

Okay, so that sentence was a little circular, but when it comes to fresh topics, it's important to pay attention to what's going on around you at all times and see if there is anything there worth touching on. Paying attention would not only give people such as me things to write about, but it would provide some kind of discussion point to go along with when it comes to chatting it up with the people most important to you as well. Many, many times the Queen has wished to initiate a conversation, but neither of us have anything new to talk about. We communicate pretty constantly, so all the new, actual, physical stuff gets covered and by the time we get home from work, we're only left with "what's for dinner".

Of course, this is a big and there is always something new that comes up (even if there is truly nothing new under the sun). Sometimes, the very topic is how something new is actually something old. Celebrities do something silly that everyone decries and parental organizations go momentarily crazy making new rules to fight the new threat to their children's whatever, even though nothing is actually new, and someone just managed to say, "sure there was a rule, but it didn't say not to do that."

Even after writing about this,do I have anything new really? Not so much at the moment. If I give it long enough, though, I'm sure something will come up. The tricky part for me is writing about it before the inspiration is gone.