Posts from — October 2003

Pam and I watch a new show called Clean Sweep every once in a while. People with these incredibly messy houses call in a team of professional organizers to help clean and organize several rooms of their house. They are made to “purge” a good portion of the stuff and with the help of a decorator and carpenter, redo the rooms into some nice living areas. What’s amazing is these morons actually come on national TV and show us how they are huge slobs.

Watching the show I can’t help thinking that the soon after the Clean Sweep team leaves, the room will be back to its original mess. People that have such cluttered areas are not going to change. On the show, they often blame the clutter on being too busy or having too much stuff. I say they’re just lazy. Keeping yourself organized actually takes less time since you aren’t hunting through a ton of garbage to get what you want.

Here at work there are several people that have extremely messy desks. One guy has so much clutter that there’s not one open square inch of desk space or floor space. I wonder how much time this person wastes hunting through the flood of papers to find that report he needs. It makes me think he is wired differently than others to feel the need to save every last freakin piece of paper that he handles. He needs professional help.

Other people have trouble letting go of their email. Our place gives a generous amount of space to store your email files. It takes work but if properly managed, this amount is fine. But keeping that 3 year old report that you think you may need is not good. Delete it and get on with business.

From The Wave, the Top 10 Geekiest hobbies. Thankfully blogging isn’t on the list although I’m not really sure why. But I can count number 3, Star Trek as one of my other hobbies.

I just finished reading another great issue of Wired. Among other things, it has an article about the mysterious Wachowski Brothers. Their next installment of The Matrix is due out very soon. I enjoyed learning a little more about the two that made these great films.

Google has a couple of new features, a dictionary and a calculator. Just type in define: cat and Google will attempt to tell you what the word means.

Well I’m getting a new type of spam, comment spam. Asshole spammers leave comments in old entries of my weblog with links to their webpages. They do this in an attempt to get a higher PageRank with Google. These scum stop at nothing to annoy people.

It’s not hard to realize why spam is so prolific. The Great Unwashed actually want their penis sizes increased so they respond to the email and the spammers make money off of them. These idiots are buying their crap so it will never stop. Or will it?

The statistics for the amount of spam clogging the internet is staggering. It will soon be out of control and our lawmakers and software companies will finally have to take drastic action. Something like taking the spammers out back and beating the shit out of them would be a nice start.

Anyway, my comment system is offline while I add a few patches to prevent these annoyances.

Note to all the people turning left into the parking garage just before the crosswalk: USE YOUR DAMN TURN SIGNALS TO LET PEOPLE KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YOU INCONSIDERATE BOOBS. Thank you.

It’s “YOU ARE Welcome” or “YOU’RE welcome” not “YOUR Welcome.”

This home theatre is unbelievable.

“Asteroids do not concern me Admiral. I want that ship, not excuses.”– Darth Vader.

Another fridge magnet thing. This one talks.

Have you ever pressed your scroll lock key?

Send a love note to one of your friends.

Me: “May I use your copier/scanner to process a big document?”

Other tech: “Who is it for?”

Me: “It’s for me.”

Other tech: “No. Who is it really for?”

Me: “Does it matter? I’m the one asking for help.”

Other tech: “Well… (insert long, boring story about how it would be hard to get me working with his scanner) … I can’t help right now.”

Me: “Nevermind.”

Me: (thinking to myself) This guy is a loser.

My team is in position and has completed a long-range survey of the area.
Early analysis indicates a heavy concentration of mid- and high-level
corporate personnel, for the most part engaged in communications and
software development/deployment. Local infrastructure appears well-executed,
with a user-friendly arterial surface transport system, and a reasonable
spectrum of replenishment facilities. Note: they are limited to ground
transportation, manual control, in this zone. Fusion-powered air transport
has not yet been implemented, scheduled Q1 04.

Team Zed (Col. Ted Bryce, you may have heard of him), at its discretion,
will conclude their mission with a close-in sweep in stealth mode. This is
the first field trial for our new stealth package, with its major software
upgrade. We’re all feeling real confident that the new system will more than
satisfy the Appropriations people and their abaci.

Final report will be compiled by this time tomorrow. I’ll contact you,
using secure protocol Romeo Niner Lima.

It’s worth celebrating a federal appeals court’s ruling Tuesday to revive the telemarketing do-not-call registry. But even if it passes further appeals, this won’t be the end of the issue.

A do-not-call list should start with no exceptions. People should then be free to add “it’s-OK-to-call'’ categories for themselves. The list shouldn’t exempt charities, political parties and survey researchers. They intrude on my privacy as much as any other solicitor.

People used to put signs on their front doors that said “No solicitors.” The sign didn’t differentiate among door-to-door salesmen, witnesses for Christ and candidates for dogcatcher. “No solicitors” meant “no solicitors.” The “do-not-call” list should be handled the same way.

Still, the telemarketers who are fighting the list are, as usual, missing the point. We want them to leave us alone. Why won’t they take “No!'’ for an answer?

It seems appropriate to revisit The Arnold Soundboard after his win today in California. Congratulations, I think he’ll do a great job.

And don’t stop with the Arnold soundboard, there are lots more to enjoy.

Arnold as mayor of California makes me think of the first time Marty McFly and Doc Brown met in Back to the Future:

Dr. Emmet Brown: Then tell me, “future boy”, who is president in the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmet Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?! Who’s Vice President? Jerry Lewis?
Marty McFly: What?
Dr. Emmet Brown: I suppose Jane Wyman is the first lady! And Jack Benny is secretary of the treasury! I’ve had enough practical jokes for one evening! Good day, future boy!

Want to be able to take short breaks outside of the building throughout the day while everyone else is inside working? Then take up smoking. It’s perfectly acceptable for a smoker to go outside - on company time to take a short cigarette break. They can also litter and smell up the area by the door with their cigarette butts. Go ahead and ruin everyone’s lungs with your second-hand smoke, thanks.

Just a reminder, you can be placed on probation by me anywhere. Parking crooked in a parking space so nobody will park next to you will get you 2 weeks. Sending me a snotty email gets you 4 weeks. Just be careful and we shouldn’t have any problems, OK?

Monday, Comcast upgraded their On Demand service. Now you can go in and choose from a bigger selection of movies, TV shows and specials. They even have short movies from my favorite online video site, Atom Films. It’s hardly like having TIVO service like the company says but it promises to be a nice feature to our digital cable. There’s only one problem. You can’t access it. There are constant communication errors, and selecting something to watch from their online guide is horribly slow. This problem has been plaguing them for a long time and I was hopeful it would be fixed with this new upgrade. TIVO is looking better and better to me.