Sunday, February 29, 2004

Overheard conversations

There's a thread on another board where they talk about overheard conversations. I have a few, including one about wicker rattan chairs, but one I don't usually tell came while I was having a party at the Outback Steak House. I forgot what party it was, but we had like 8-12 people all around one big table there. I excused myself to go to the restroom, and while I was sitting in the stall, I heard two people come in. This is the type of conversation I heard:

Dude1: Okay, listen for a second. I have to tell you something very important, and you have to promise not to tell anyone, okay?
Dude2: What is going ON man?
Dude1: Okay, well, see... all right. You remember all that equipment you have in your garage? You know, the stuff you kept for the company picnic before the buyout?
Dude2: Yeah. What, does the company want it back?
Dude1: No. The company doesn't even know it exists anymore. The new management couldn't give a fuck about the employees, and they are so clueless about assets, that... okay, first, everything is still there, right?
Dude2: Yeah...? What the heck will I do with all those party supplies and stuff?
Dude1: Okay, what you have are NOT picnic and carnival supplies. You have, in your garage... ... over one million dollars worth of equipment. Servers, routers, racks, and so on.
Dude2: Oh my god.
Dude1: We told you they were supplies for the picnic because ... we didn't want you to get into any trouble. Look, Ray knew about the buyout months before we got wind of it. So, right before the buyout, he purchased all that equipment, and then we put it in your garage, my basement, and Tom's garage.
Dude2: W-why?
Dude1: Think about it. Ray knew the company was in trouble. He knew our competitor would buy us out, and so he accepted the bid for the competitor he knew would be a moron with the paperwork. He bought all that equipment right before he accepted the bid, knowing that the bills would come in 60 days after the audit.
Dude2: Oh my god. Oh my god. What if something happened to it? Like my garage leaked? No wonder you rented a fork lift.
Dude1: I chose your house because the garage was new, and not full, and I trusted you, man. Have I ever let you down?
Dude2: S-so... Ray...?
Dude1: Ray is starting a new company. He got tired of the old biz. Ray is using his money from the buyout to start a new company, and Tom and I are helping out. When we get everything set up, we'll take the equipment, you quit work, come to our company... you get your old job title back, and you won't work for Dr. Evil anymore, okay?
Dude2: Wow. I don't believe it.
Dude1: I told you I'd take care of you. I have never let you down, ever. You okay?
Dude2: Yeah. I just wish you would have told me.
Dude1: We... I didn't want you to worry. And it's not illegal. Ray bought the stuff, and the competitor picked up the tab under assumed debt. They have never debated it for a second because they never check. Now let's get back to the table, just keep your mouth quiet, but just agree that Tom knows what he's talking about, okay?
Dude2: Wow... just... wow.

Then they both left. This was back in the Dot.com bubble, so this was pretty sneaky. I still wonder if it's legal, or Dude2 was being lied to, or what. Pretty weird. I know if someone stored stuff in my house... I'd be peeking.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:25 PM EST [Link]

What is the sound of one sinus popping?

Forgive any spelling errors. I am typing this with a horrible sinus headache on a laptop in bed. It took me over a minute to write that sentence because my brain can't seem to get past the misplaced modifer that mioght be in that statement, so I feel the need to add I have the sinus headache, not the laptop. In my befuddled state, I am listening to Kodo, the taiko drumming group from Japan, as presented on the Ovation Cable Network. Why I would listen to an energetic drum and fife group while I have headache is because it's less distracting that normal TV, and the TV drowns out the noise of the keyboard.

The last few days have been pretty good, though. The week stunk, but Saturday was especially good, and I'll get into that later.

Work has its moments. The bad moments are when I have to wade through people who want me to do something, but don't tell me what. Like, "I want a machine that tests these phone numbers." I go, "Okay, what numbers, for what reason, what data are you looking for, and what format do you want it in?" There's usually a puase, and a "Oh... I don't know..." I most cases, these are early signs of projects that go nowhere. Like I do them, and then the people I do them for are, "Yeah, uh-huh, fine, great." Over the years, I have seen this trend where a lot of project managers are really bad with following through. I am guessing that they have this really great idea at some meeting, or maybe just suggest something to make THEM look good, and then by the time I have what they wanted, they have already lost interest. I am not talking about months here. I am talking about days, or in some cases, an hour later. "I NEED TO KNOW ALL PHONE NUMBERS IN TENNESSEE THAT ARE OWNED BY MCI!!!" I send them mail an hour or so later, and I get, "Why did you send me all this data?" I tell them it's all the MCI Tennessee numbers they asked for. "Oh yeah..." they say, as if I reminded them of some grammar school chum he hasn't thought about since 1978. "Uh... thanks." I stopped asking why they needed the data years ago.

I wish Mickey Hart, the drummer from The Grateful Dead, would shut up. I watched Kodo Live at the Acropolis for the music, not to hear Mickey explore his drumming roots with Takeshi.

Not all projects end in a fizzle, though. I'd say about 1 in 3 end up being useful. Some of them require a lot of work, and those are always a gamble on my ego, because I could have spent a month working really hard only to find out the guy I did it for is no longer interested, no longer on the project, or no longer a project manager. But Friday was not one of those days. I did a rather complicated project and totally over-delivered in a form that would be incredibly useful to a lot of people. I built a bug webserver that sorted error logs by type and linked them with a daily report that dozens of people use daily. I have done a lot of incredibly useful things for my company, and I am pretty proud of many of them. My work has gotten so useful, that if it's down for even a day, I hear about it. Luckily, I use Linux, so I don't have to worry about system crashes, only hardware failures, which are fairly rare.

Saturday was a busy day. I got up, paid some bills, and then headed off to Frederick, Maryland. Why? To learn from some of the best group of convention merchants I know. Mystic Station Designs. I have always wanted to be a part of their group for multiple reasons. I was inspired by their work ethic, confidence, and character. But I didn't even know what they sold (well, in detail). I am going to be working for them at Gencon this year, so I had to go through some of their training in Kory's basement. I learned about their business model, which is fairly dynamic and well-planned. I was also relieved that they don't use high-pressure, they pace their employees, and let their authors retain copyright. I also found some inlets into their self-published works, and might be doing some writing for them.

The Metro ride there and back was pretty hellish, though. Going there took 2 hours from Vienna to Shady Grove (where Allison picked me up). They were doing track work on the Yellow and Blue Lines, and the Orange Line shares tracks in DC with the Blue. It took about 70 minutes to get from Vienna to the transfer spot, Metro Center (it normally takes about 25-40 minutes). On the way back, it was even worse. They had started to do work on the Red Line, and so the trip from Shady Grove to Metro Center took over two hours (again, normally 25-40 minutes). We were stuck in a tunnel at Cleveland Park for half an hour of that, just sitting and waiting. Apparently, on top of all this, there was "an incident" at Farragut North, and when we slowly crawled past that station, there were a lot of police in reflective vests shouting stuff. When I finally got to Metro Center, the Orange Line trains had been delayed so long, the trains we packed. I had to jam myself in, and stand most of the ride back home. After all this, I was exhausted.

But I had a party to go to. Missie was already riding home with us (she was also on a delayed Metro pickup), and after a short stay at my house, we went to Sean and Lou's 8th (2nd) Wedding Anniversary. See, they got married on February 29th, so they only really get to celebrate every 4 years. I was kind of a wash at the party because I was starting to feel sick as well as tired, but I had fun anyway. I ended up staying un til 2am or something, and left when pretty much everyone else did. I can't party like I used to when I was 20, man. By the time I got home, I felt pretty sick. All night I kept tossing and turning because of my sinus headache, and currently, the headache is so intense, I have trouble spellchecking this because of the spots in my eyes from the sinus pressure pressing on my optic nerves. I don't have a fever, just a sore throat, wet cough, and horrible sinus headache. Bleah.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:20 PM EST [Link]

Friday, February 27, 2004

All Visitors of This Site Must Wash Their Hands

Dedicated to Dr. Andy...

Okay, lesson time. I have been working in a large office since 1996, and I have noticed that certain people just don't get it about washing their hands. Maybe it's a "dirty little piggy boy" thing, but I have heard from women that it's just as bad in the women's rest rooms. Here is how I have broken it down where I have worked for the last 8 years, by offhandedly observing people in the public rest room:

50% - Don't even go near the sink (ew ... they're touching things!)
30% - Wash hands by getting hands wet, drying them (I call these people "Cargo Cult washers")
10% - Wash hands with drop of soap
5% - Wash hands with some soap
2% - Wash hands, with lot of soap, for more than 10 seconds (that's me)
1% - Wash hands up to elbows for over a minute (sorry, that's a bit obsessive)
1% - Also brush their teeth

As for "Cargo Cult Washers," what's funny is they have the idea down, but some don't even get their hands wet in many cases. At that point, pee on your hands is slightly better as an antibacterial agent, but still ... ewwwww! [shudder] The other day, I actually saw a guy who turned on the water, waved his hands at the faucet like he was casting a spell and turned the water off. Did he think this worked? Was he doing it to "make an impression" because I was at the sink? I wanted to ask, "Dude, why bother?" but I'm a coward, so I just shook my head in disbelief when he wasn't looking.

I went to public elementary school in Northern Virginia, and they told us to wash our hands since kindergarten. So did my mother. In fact, all my childhood, from various points, I heard "wash your hands." So now I am an adult, and wash my hands after each time I got to the restroom, before eating, or after I touch some potentially bacteria-laden stuff, like the cat box, preparing meats, or handling pet food. But I am almost in the minority. Where did these people's education go wrong?

I touch computers all day. Keyboards and mice especially. I share these with a ton of other people who do NOT wash their hands, and it grosses me out. I hate the fact that I might be touching the bacteria-laden booger residue or toddler plasma* of a dozen other people who have touched that doorknob.

Why are so many people not washing their hands? It's common sense, especially after you use the bathroom. It's not hard. Maybe they have been doing it all wrong, like they hate cold water, or don't know how to dry their hands, or thinks it takes too long or something. It's not hard at all! Here's a basic step procedure I stole from a kid's site, but added my own notes:

1. Turn on faucet. Use warm water when you wash your hands, because it's better at killing the germs, but also is kind of soothing. But don't burn yourself with water that is too hot, because that's just dumb.
2. Squirt out about a tablespoon full of soap into one hand, or use a bar of soap long enough to cover you hands. Antibacterial soaps are great, but regular soap is just as good, because all soaps suspends germs off the skin surface, allowing the them to be rinsed down the drain. You are also cleaning off any dirt, oils, and other residue that germs can stick to and thrive until you wash again.
3. Rub soap vigorously for about 10-15 seconds. Get between the fingers, under the nails, up to the wrists. Past the wrists is only necessary if you are a doctor or vet or someone working with patients. We have one guy in our office who washes up to the elbows, and I think, "What, are you going to operate?" I think he learned all his handwashing secrets from episodes of M*A*S*H.
4. Rinse soap off. Then dry with a clean towel, or one of those hot air things, until you hands are dry. No one likes touching a wet doorknob, or shaking a damp hand. Drying also removes a few more germs that still clung on through the scrubbing.

Now your hands are all neat and clean. You won't pass germs, and if the soap was antibacterial, germs won't survive on your hands for the next hour or so. You will get less colds, less gunk on your mousepad, and your keyboard won't look like it's been dusted with greasy soot.

*Todder plasma: this was a term I invented back in retail, when I had to clean display cases. Often, toddlers have sticky hands, and when they stick them to smooth glass surfaces, often they peel away with a Velcro-like tear, leaving behind a cloudy handprint of a combination of saliva, mucous, and anything they ate in the last few hours. It's REALLY hard to clean off with Windex, let me tell you

Posted by Punkie @ 09:35 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 26, 2004

It's been a hard day's night...

This morning has been such hell.

So, I had only gotten like 5 hours of sleep in three days, right? One of the problems I have is that when I have gone without sleep for THAT long, I get all cranky, and then I become hypersensitive to noise and light. So last night, I finally get a nap at around 8, then real sleep from 11-8... I slept in late because I had to stay late for a meeting today.

Not a good idea.

At some point (okay, at 12:43am), a huge array of switches went down last night, and I got to work, and all hell was loose. The night people who are usually here at that time said they couldn't get a straight answer out of anybody, but that it would be fixed. The Internal Help desk, which seems to be mostly run by trained chimps, made this translation:

"The network is down" = "You want some servers moved"

So not only was the network down, but someone tried to move the servers, MY SERVERS, but gave up at some point without plugging anything back in. Now, get this, they closed the work request because they couldn't move my servers, and so closed the ticket as "resolved." Huh? And we don't even outsource to India, baby!

All. Morning. I have been trying to get everything fixed. I have been trying to get complicated network problems fixed by people with as much sass and attitude as an inner city schoolbus driver. "I don' haf to do wot you say, a'ight? I don' cahe if yoo know dis box ain't got fo' MAC addresses. Reboot da damn box and get back to me when you goddit fix, yo. No, my sup-a-vyso ain't here. [click]" I don't know where we get these guys. If rebooting the server doesn't work three times, why will the fourth time work? It's not the server, it's the network. Dammit, LISTEN TO ME! People are IMing me they can't reach the servers. I know, I KNOW! I am working on it! "But I NEED the data!" That's not going to make me any faster. "I'm telling on you..." Go right ahead.

My boss finally got involved, and even though there are warning labels and stickers everywhere and threats of death by bunda if we touch anything on that rack, my boss cut the power to all the computer room networking equipment, waited a few seconds, and put it back up. Fixed it. Fixed it good.

Then all this stupid stuff has been happening on top of this. I spilled my coffee on a rather valuable book I needed. In an attempt to unlock my office door, I slip and jam a fingernail against the edge of the doorknob, nearly peeling it off. It's hard to type with one finger all swollen like that. One of my Bionicle Lego guys falls of the shelf and lands in my lunch (shrimp linguini). The water pressure in the kitchen shoots up while I am rinsing my coffee cup, spraying my crotch with water, so all day I have had a damp crotch. My nose starts to bleed for no reason, but only slightly, so it's very scabby and dribbles at random. An analyst I work with got angry at me that I moved some data and they can't map a network drive to it. It turns she was logged in as the wrong user. When I pointed this out, I didn't get a thanks, but an "it's about time!" I have errors on my new server, but I can't find out because my mail reader wasn't installed for some reason. I try to install it, and the network is so slow, it's taking forever.

I want to go home.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:51 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Insomnia

I am having a lot of trouble sleeping these days. Often, I wake up feeling like I am having a heart attack or something. I am gripped with panic, and I think I have swallowed a ton of air, which is indicative of an asthma attack. That's why you see me posting at some god-awful hour. It's not sleep apnea, I've had that before (I felt like I was suffocating), and it's not heartburn because Pepto/Antacids don't do anything. I thought it was my bed, but I had the same problem at Katsucon in the hotel bed. I thought it was my food, but my "diet change" doesn't seem to have changed anything. I am so sleepy, but the only comfort I can get is by keeping my brain occupied by browsing the web, reading, or watching TV.

This started when I worked the night desk in 1998. I was working that midnight-noon shift, and it just totally ruined my sleep pattern. Add to this, the whole "BBS-that-shall-not-be-named" thing happened at the same time this started, which left me hurt, confused, and very angry. I worked this desk for a year and a half, and after I got another job, I was never quite the same. The problem comes in waves, and in the last six months, it's gotten worse. I know it's related to stress somehow, what with work, my grandmother, money, friends in pain, and just a ton of extra stuff going on. I usually get sleepy around 11pm, and then go to sleep, only to wake up around 1am with the feeling of sheer panic. My heart is pounding, I have obviously been breathing hard, and I have this feeling of loss, fear, and uncertainty like I have forgotten something really important. I get up, go on the computer or read for a few hours, then go to bed, and rest peacefully until I have to get up at 6. I am getting about 2-3 hours a night sleep during these waves, and it's tiring me out considerably. The doctor said it was probably heartburn, but I don't have any sort of reflux, stomach issues, and didn't address the whole nagging, "I must DO something," urgency of the whole thing.

This doesn't happen on weekends, or when I am on vacation, but seems to happen a lot when there are stresses in my life, which is why I think there's something psychological attached to it. I just have this feeling like I should be running around, doing something... anything, but housework is next to impossible because I'd keep everyone else awake. So I usually go down to my den, and work on my computer, rubbing my eyes and yawning like a sleepy toddler, until this weird "sense of urgency" goes away. I also have trouble falling asleep, my brain seems to literally need to tire out before it just collapses.

I have considered seeing a therapist about this, but until I have $60/week mad money to spend, that ain't gonna happen.

n33|> m0r 5l33p! |>|5 5uXX0rz...

Posted by Punkie @ 02:46 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

My thoughts on the Buddhist "Materialism cases misery" thing...

Having to worry about possessions sucks.

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine: his house has been robbed. Some skinny kid broke through their basement window and stole a lot of choice items. On another board a few weeks ago, some guy posted insurance pictures from his apartment which not only had been robbed, but the thieves had totally vandalized the place. And did stuff like rip apart what they didn't want, like put all of his books in boxes and poured water on them to ruin them. It was also, supposedly, an insider job with the apartment complex.

The closest I had even come to a burglary was when I was about 11. There was a rash of thefts in our neighborhood, but up until this point, it had only been bikes. About every two years, some ... group of people, I guess, would go through our neighborhood at night, and steal any bike, especially children's bikes, that wasn't chained down. One year they even brought bolt cutters so they could cut through chains. But I wasn't allowed to have a bike, so it only affected my friends. But this one year, there had been two thefts with the same MO.

We became number 3. A neighbor said that our basement door window had been smashed in, and our sliding glass door was open. Actually, they called the marina where my father had his yacht, and the marina owner wrote it on a note and stuck in on our windshield under the wiper. I found the note, and my parents called the neighbor who explained that it looked like a break-in. We drove right home.

When we got home, the place was a mess. All the closets had been opened, and everything had been dug through. My mother had a collection of purses she had been accumulating since the 1960s, and each one had been opened and thrown on the floor (they were empty anyway). My father's den door (which he kept locked), had been kicked in. My room was decimated, and all my toys were smashed, books were torn, and my bed was overturned. There was also a note that they were going to come back and kill me, and there was nothing I could to about it. In our rec room, near the sliding door, were piles of our smaller valuables; clock radios, silverware, telephones, and pillowcases they planned to put stuff in.

The police came and took down all the info, but right away my father got into an argument with the police officer about ... something, who knows. The detectives had a hard time working with my father because he didn't cooperate, and finally they left. The note I got was the clincher. My mother tried to dismiss my claim my room had been ransacked because it was always a mess anyway, but I handed the officer the note, and he said, "Yeah, it's them all right."

"Them," as far as they could figure, were two people who went through the house simultaneously and systematically, looking for anything of value that was fairly small. They also had a "vendetta" against children, would often ransack the rooms and destroy anything of value, leaving threatening notes under their pillows. Judging by the spaces they used to get in, they figured one was very thin. But in our case, something odd had happened: nothing was stolen. It was as if they had fled before they took anything, and the police suspected they piled stuff up to come back for it later. The neighbor may have actually unknowingly caught them in the act. Weeks later, thefts kept happening, and that was how our neighborhood formed a neighborhood watch. Because of this, the thieves were caught, and it turned out to be some older teen and his younger brother (aged 18 and 9 or so, the young one got into the tight spaces). Local boys.

Nothing can compare to the vulnerable feeling of being robbed. It takes away a layer of civility in your life, and gives you a little more daily paranoia to your grave. Probably the worst is cleaning up afterwards. Knowing that your stuff doesn't feel quite like yours anymore. Someone, a stranger, touched your stuff. And took the good stuff. Sometimes there is vandalism, like a swastika painted on your living room wall, destruction of valuable photos, drawers to a valuable antique desk ripped apart, or the years of writing on your hard drive on a computer that is now lost forever. I knew a guy who had locked up his laptop, only to find the thief just smashed it anyway. And you have no one to fight. Most of the time, the police don't really have the time to look, and even if they catch the crook, he or she won't have your stuff any more. It's gone man. And while insurance can replace that TV set, it can't replace your sense of security ever again.

I worry about my house a lot. I keep it well lit, lock up tight when we leave or at night, and keep a sharp sword and two knives by my side of the bed. I have two dogs, who may be small, but they pack a mean bite, and they are very sensitive to noise. I don't have a gun because I don't want to shoot myself, family, or friends by accident, and honestly, picturing myself attacking someone with a sword is comical enough, but with a gun? Whatever. All I'll end up with is having the gun stolen and on the streets.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:36 PM EST [Link]

Is this debate really worth it? It's clogging my mailbox with your ego drippings...

Sometimes I am on mailing lists that don't have many posts. Maybe weeks will go by with no posts, and then someone sends a link, and there's a modicum of discussion before it ends in another few weeks with nothing to say. Sometimes there is steady light traffic with bursts of activity around events, like a convention planning list.

Then there's the unstable lists.

I am not naming names, but I am on a list where recently, a lot of hotheads have been playing tet a tet with each other in the form of fluffed feathers and ruffled egos. In recent weeks, this fairly stable, low-traffic list has flooded my mailbox with scores of daily off-topic chatter, mixed with the bruised and spiked egos of certain people who just don't know when to let things slide. I have been on lists where I have been told I suck, and I just let it pass. Generally people only insult you if they want attention in some way, and if you don't give them a response, they give up rather quickly. When one person does it, usually the list will rally against the "foe," and the foe will back down. But when two people with bruised egos go at it, it become a complex weave of subplots and delayed reactions. And just when it seems like it ran out of fuel, someone who hasn't read their mail in over a week will reply to the first attack, now over a week old, without checking to see that the matter has already been halted, which sometimes starts the whole thing all over again, especially if they drag some second plot into the fray.

"Letting things drop" has become a well-used tool since I have gotten older. I used to be passionate about what I considered was my version of "truth, beauty, and love" in some topic, but in the last few years, "at what price, truth?" has become a louder voice during an argument. Another voice has spawned that asks, "What will this debate gain over what it will lose?" Some arguments are not worth winning.

For instance, a good debate is where facts are exchanged in a tactful manner. You present Idea A, your opponent presents Idea B. You show facts towards A, your opponent shows facts towards B. You refute facts of B, your opponent refutes facts of A. This goes on until you have convinced your opponent, your opponent convinces you, or you agree that you two will never find common ground.

But many debates go this way: You present Idea A, your opponent presents Idea B. You show facts of A, your opponent refutes your facts. You ask for facts of Idea B, and your opponent makes unrelated personal attacks. This is where I will make a choice on where to proceed, and more and more, I just say nothing in response, because the debate will gain nothing. My opponent will most likely NEED to have the last word, so I give it to them. In my mind, I have won because my opponent has not proven his or her case, and tried to cheat by using unnecessary personal attacks, which further convinces me that my opponent's ideas come from an unstable and insecure mind. I have avoided uncounted pointless struggles this way, and even learned a thing or two by maintaining a silence and just listening.

But when I see two hotheads debate, I tune them out. Often I delete whole threads in my mailbox with the same title because of some embarrassing flame war, followed by admonishment by the moderator, response to admonishment, and the moderator getting into the fray without simply ending it with a demand for silence on that topic. What's really annoying is when you see two people who are actually arguing the same thing, yet are too stubborn to admit they agree, because now it's just personal.

Sometimes, it's gotten so bad, I just silently unsubscribe.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:23 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Punkie, Punkie, Year of the Monkey... how does your garden grow?

I couldn't think of a lamer title.

Anyway, another funny thing about me is that I grow great tomatoes, but I don't like them. I mean, I like tomato sauce in things, but I can never eat a tomato slice, or a whole tomato. They are always too... vinegary and bitter. So it comes as a weird surprise to me I grow them really well.

I have mentioned this before in my blog, but we are the perpetuators of the Ancestral Tomatoes. These seeds have been passed down, year after year, through Christine's family since the 1800s. Originally, tradition tells, these were called "Abe Lincoln Tomatoes," although no one quite knows where the name came from (I doubt from Abe Lincoln, I think they were from some strain long forgotten). Well, these things have been grown, eaten, and seeded every year for over 140 years or more. We got them in 2000 from Christine's Uncle Wayne, who is the only grower still alive. We planted them in 2001, and they grew really well, although a huge dry heat wave made most of them crack and split. It was a good thing because in 2001, Uncle Wayne lost ALL his tomatoes when he accidentally over fertilized them. It turns out that giving us seedlings were the only way the strain survived. What a trip and catch! So we gave him seeds from 2001, and he's using them.

In 2002, we had a LOT of seedlings, which we gave excesses away to friends. One friend grew them in pure MiracleGrow, but the plant grew way too quickly, and the fruit came out bitter. Another grew them and they died when they got bashed around in a huge storm. But ours grew and we seeded them for 2003.

I don't know why, but we never got around to making seedlings that year. Finally, I just made my own seedlings very late in the summer, and didn't follow any directions Uncle Wayne had given us about time, water, and fertilizer. I wanted to see what happened. Well, out of the 9 I planted, only 4 sprouted, and two of those died for some reason when they got about a foot high. I accidentally stepped on one while weeding, and it died. But the one last survivor... grew ginormous. Look at it on the right there. One plant took over the whole damn garden. It grew 4 times as large as any other we have had. Hurricane Isabel flattened it, but it did not die... it just crawled up the juniper you see behind it like ivy before finally, the first big freeze killed it. One plant. 40 tomatoes. Many of them larger than a grapefruit. And everyone said they were really, really good. Uncle Wayne said his only grew to be smaller than normal.

So I am the "expert tomato grower" now. I also got cucumber (which I actually DO like), herbs, and some annuals (flowers) to play with for 2004. I am going to try and work on a small garden this year, although where exactly I am going top put the cucumbers puzzles me. Eh, I'll figure it out. I got a seedling starter tray, some small peat pots, and some seedling starter soil. We'll grow the seedlings in the guest room like we did in 2002, and then in May, put them out.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:11 PM EST [Link]

On sickness and sexuality

Today was kind of weird. I can only say my life is never boring.

Last night, my friend Betty called, and said that our friend Bobbie was very sick, and she'd been taking care of her for three weeks. I have known Betty and her husband Jim since the 1980s. I first met them when I was on a panel with them at Evecon 4, and I got to know them when they ran the FanTek art show, the Family Circle, and they introduced me to Christine back in 1988 when she was Betty's assistant. About seven years ago, Bobbie came into their life and cohabited with them. I met Bobbie soon afterwards, and she's a very loving person. Christine, CR, and I would go to their house from time to time for circle or just to socialize.

Two years ago, Bobbie fell ill to cancer. She battled it for a year, got better, and they thought she was in remission, but a few months ago, they found it had spread. She's very sick. So Christine and I went to go see her, and we had been prepared as to what we'd see. Bobbie is very thin, and she looked far older than I ever remember seeing her. I was afraid I'd freak out and cry in front of her, but I was surprised to feel rather uplifted to see her alive, and still joking. She did have periods where she slightly drifted off, but that's understandable with all the chemo. I wasn't freaked out by the whole thing, but part of me is very depressed because I hate it when my friends suffer. She looked so tired, and the prognosis is not good. But we brought her flowers, some candy (she has to keep in calories), and some good cheer. I wish the best for Bobbie, because she's had a hard life, and only now does she seem to be surrounded with supportive people.

Betty and Jim were puttering about because Betty had to leave for some Atlantian "Learn the Mysteries" thing in Delaware, a learning week that Betty admitted she was skeptical of, but knew some other people that were going, and she wanted to see what she could learn from it, if anything.

Like me going to Fantasm. Heh.

It was good to see Betty and Jim again, because it had almost been a year since I had last seen them. We also picked up this tarot deck from them. Ah, the tarot deck saga...

Oh, "that" Tarot Deck saga
Scoot up your chairs, children. This one must be said in a hushed inside voice.

When I first met Betty and Jim, I knew them as artists. I knew Jim was working on a few pieces in a line he called his Tarot deck. They were very powerful and sexually graphic images relating to various pieces of the Major Arcana. A few years later, he announced he was doing his own tarot deck. It was hard for Jim to find a publisher to make a deck out of these images, since US Games Systems, which dolled up the Thoth deck as it was, could never find themselves liable for what would essentially be labeled as XXX smut. Then Jim's first publisher folded (ha ha, card pun), and he had to find a new one. Then he found a guy in Switzerland, but they changed their minds. He kept finding and losing publishers for various reasons until he found one a few years ago, who agreed to do the deck if Jim "cleaned it up a bit." Well, I have known the originals, and seen his changes, and he didn't have to make many. So it's still pretty... well, it's not for everyone. I mean, 90% of the cards are totally without anything offensive, but then there's the girl with the wolf... ahem, never mind.
It was finally done a few years ago. Now, back in 1990, we put a deposit on it, and back then the deck was selling, even though it wasn't done, for $75. A lot of us thought we'd never see it, but put in the $25 "holding deposit" anyway. Including us. I mean, at the time, I really didn't think it's ever get done, but I always want to support my friends in their endeavors, and I never really missed that $25. But when Jim got a new publisher, the cost had gone up considerably. Last I heard, a new deck went for $500. But he said, "If you had put down a deposit for the old price, you still get the old price." He didn't want the final payment until he had the deck of course, so this went on for YEARS. Jim grew in fame, mostly due to his work at the Renn Faire, and various big conventions. Soon, a LOT of people in the alternative fandom community wanted a deck, but Jim only planned to have 500 made. So when Jim told us it was really done, we owed the remaining $50 for the deck, as originally agreed. But it took TWO YEARS for us to get the deck, in a sort of comedy of missed opportunity and bad timing. Last year, we just gave him the check, and said bring the deck whenever. Then it got lost. Then found. Then lost again. Finally, Betty said, "I have the deck, it's in a very important place!" So today we finally got the deck.

It was finally in our hands. It comes in a handmade black wooden box, and comes with its own velvet bag. The tarot deck is really 1 in 500: we happen to have #133, personally inscribed to us. This deck is finally in our hands after a wait of almost 17 years. These large finely-crafted cards are... let's just say unusual, but not unknown to Uncle Punkie's world of influence. Crowley's Thoth deck has NOTHING on these cards. If you don't understand the nature of tarot and its imagery, you might find these cards very disturbing. And some of them are. Very much so. But they are supposed to be, because they explain the various aspects of the tarot in a sexually unique and primitive power format that Jim has been known for (it's a Pan thing). I don't think I could work with such a deck, because I can't imagine doing a reading with someone, and something like the Necrophiliac turns up.

"And your internal influences are the... oh, my... Necrophilia. You are are influenced by change, and a certain use of death figures into it. End of the old, birth of the new. Perhaps you feel you have been going over the same dead end over and over... no, that wasn't a pun. Yes, he is making love to the dead woman on the sarcophagus. Hmm? Oh, yes, I do have barf bags just for such a reading. Here you go. Yeah, I'll wait."

No really. Necrophilia is one of the cards. That was not a joke, there is a pan-like figure making love to a corpse in a mausoleum. A friend of mine who got her deck is trying to give it away because it disturbs her so much. I personally think it's totally funny I now have a copy.

To each his or her own.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:49 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, February 21, 2004

... oh and one more thing: rebates lie.

I might also add that I got pissed off because Sprint sent around an ad for our company that said employees could upgrade our phones for $149/pair. Despite the ad saying, "Upgrade," it meant, "Upgrade for new customers only..." which didn't make sense, until you realize "upgrade" meant "instead of the usual phones we give new customers." Boy, did I feel like an idiot in the Sprint store. Oh, but no worries, I could still get the phones for $149/each... after a $200 rebate. After some extra fees, that would be I'd have to pony up $700 up front, and hope they actually remembered to mail us $400 in rebates 4-8 weeks later. As I look at my "rebate waiting area" in my desk, I see I am still waiting for a $70 rebate from Circuit City, a $40 rebate from Office Depot, a $30 rebate from Best Buy, and several assorted $5-10 rebates from various companies. Truthfully, I have actually gotten rebate checks from time to time, usually ones for the $5-10 range, and a few from Best Buy for even higher, but experience shows that only 1 out of 3 rebates actually get sent back to me. I don't know why I have some of these, the $70 one is from 2002 when I got my cable modem. You're not getting it, Punkie; you got scammed. The best joke was when Office Depot denied a $1 rebate from Bic Highlighter Pens because I apparently sent the form in too late. Let me repeat this another way, they spent $0.35 in postage to deny a $1 claim. Heh. That felt at least a little better.

Rebates are a big scam. I never listen to them anymore. If I get a rebate, great. But I always assume that the price is the price without the rebate, so if they say, "This system is $599 after $300 manufacturer's rebate, " they mean it's $899. Period. If I get $300, yay me, but I won't hold my breath. I'd go into this whole spiel about rebates, but many people already have done it for me. Here's a halfway decent article about it.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:12 PM EST [Link]

Price Obscuring and Junk Mail

There's an old saying that says, "if you have to ask, it's too much." As I go through my junk mail today, I get a brochure from Scotts Lawn Care, which promises my lawn will look great if they take care of it. But like many such brochures, never once is a price mentioned, not even a ballpark price. Is it $40/month? $60? $100? What? No idea. So I never buy from them because I don't want some specialist to come over and give me high sales pressure, compounded with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).

"If you don't take care of your lawn, Mr. Larson," will say the salesguy, "you could risk financial ruin." Or some other such bullwipe. Sorry Scotts, you give no pricee, I give no callee.

ADT was the same way. Scared the crap out of me with their sales pitch. Speaking about how burglars are high on cocaine, and will kill you while you sleep, just because they are jealous of your lifestyle. How we live behind an alley, and that's where 99% of of crimes are committed in our area. But I didn't want to spend several thousand to have a system installed, nor pay the monthly fee, which had a ton of tiny print footnotes about paying a fee every time the thing goes off, even accidentally, plus what 911 charges you for a false call. They didn't tell me what prices were either without pressuring me to a commitment. It was only when I said I distrusted their methods that they told me every time the alarm goes off, it's $50. No thank you.

Salespeople in stores who don't tell me up-front pricing always make me suspicious. They don't know they waste their time with me. I have the advantage of flatly stating, "I simply cannot give you the money, because I don't have it." The reaction is always the same, something about payment plans. They always try and break it down to some ridiculous per day sort of thing. "This ring may seem expensive at $4995, but with our payment plan, that's less that $1000 a year, or only $85 an month. Can you honestly say your wife is not worth $3 a day? That's less than a latte at Starbucks!" Then I can say, "That ring does not seem worth $4995. Can I have it independently appraised?" No, they can't allow me to do that. Of course not. I also try an educate myself before I buy a high-dollar item, and if I haven't, or they give me some off-the-wall reason, it's always stuff like, "Cubic zircona has gone up because the diamond merchants have put an import tax on all fake diamonds traveling state lines..." Uh huh.

If I have to ask, it's because they know they overcharge.

This leads me to another gripe. Going through junk mail is pretty aggravating. I'd say I'm like most people when I say that 90-95% of what I get in postal mail is junk. Here's how it breaks down for me:

60% - Newspaper-like ads, usually called "circulars" with coupons for things I never need
30% - Things in envelopes, usually applications for credit cards, loans, and clubs
5% - Catalogs of something I am actually interested in
5% - Real mail: bills, letters, or orders

The 60% goes right in the trash. I don't need all those things. What bugs me are those ads for something I couldn't even get even if I wanted them, like pool-related stuff. Our neighborhood is not zoned for pools due to the subrock. All you can have are above-ground pools, and no one's back yard is even big enough for a real sized one. I also get a lot of "local business" coupons for crap I never even would want in a million years. Today's mail had a huge 10-page 8 x 11 catalog for wrought ironwork accessories (railings, posts, tables, chairs, and benches). Another for some local overpriced "all natural and organic" food store. Columbian seedless bananas: on sale for $4.95/lb! No thank you, I'll pass.

The 30% really busts my chops. First, the flood of "pre-approved" loans and credit cards. That's unsafe! What of some identity fraud person gets ahold of that mail? That's why I have a monthly credit check service (via American Express). So far, no one has stolen any credit card application, pretending to be me, but I figure it's a thing of when, not if. And some of the terms and conditions are outrageous! 8.956% Interest !!!!!! and then a footnote of "With transfer of new balances only, 23.99% interest thereafter, $55 annual charge, all late payments we claim to have never gotten will default your card to 30.99% interest. Some extra fees may apply. Terms subject to change at our whim... No no no. And some won't give up. I now get 2-3 Discover Card applications a month. Two to three. American Express doesn't get the clue I won't upgrade to a Gold or Platinum Card, even though I told them to stop sending them. Fee for normal Amex card: $80/year. A Gold card: $300/year. And I get....? No. Nothing. And the sales reps that used to call me on the phone couldn't even tell me anything useful except the "status and prestige" of the card, or discounts at places I could never afford to go to in the first place. "Wow, $1200 off a $12,000 cruise to Tusacny, airfare not included." Far out. Thanks, but no thanks, and put me on your "do not call" list... again. Then they want me to get a "Amex Blue" card, because I get "free rewards" on every purchase. That would be great... if places actually took the card, and your "rewards" weren't ambiguous, or things like they offer with the Gold card (except even less of a real value). Even Citibank, a card I use, sends me applications for the exact same card I use. They can't even match up their mailing list database with their current customers! How inspiring. In total, I'd say I get 10-25 credit card applications a month. Some are loan applications, usually off my current equity. "How would YOU like a $128,698.23 check in 24 hours?" they ask. It's always some weird amount, like they are trying to squeeze out every penny. But then I look at the interest rate terms, and see that $128,698.23 goes to $328,877.19 after I pay it all off. Then there is mail that tries to look like something else: a birthday card, a rebate check, or it's blank, like a credit card notice, and you feel a card inside only to find out... it's a credit card application with a dummy card to make you open it. Fuck you, Discover Card. Fooled again.

The 5% of catalogs are my fault, and don't include the ton of catalogs I didn't request, I might add, which I put in the 60%. I have read them less and less these days, because rarely do I need anything in them.

I look forward to the 5% real mail, even if it is just bills today.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:43 AM EST [Link]

Friday, February 20, 2004

Bookworm

I read a lot as a kid. I mean, a lot. I attribute this to my mother's early dedication to me reading without making it a punishment. Add to that I was not allowed to watch TV, nor was I allowed to leave my back yard until I was about 10. I had to do something to keep entertained, so reading it was.

My mother told me by age 2, I could read simple books. I used to doubt this until recently, when I saw a 2 year old this week who knew a lot of the alphabet. I know by 1st grade, I was reading at a 6th-grade level, and by 2nd grade, I was reading "adult books." Most of them were sci-fi and fantasy, but there were also crime drama, mysteries, and books on science and stuff. I used to get about a dozen books from the library every three weeks. When they handed around the "Scholastic Book Club" order form at school, I was always the one who got the most books. There'd be a handful of kids who got 1 or 2 titles, and I was the one who got up to 10 titles. Mostly books WAY over the grade level I was in.

One incident happened in 2nd grade that will always stick with me. I was supposed to do a book report on "a book you like" (as opposed to the usual, "what we tell you to read"), and I chose "Jaws," by Peter Benchley. It was a bestseller a year before, and I had a book club copy. I liked it initially because it had a black cover with a pencil drawing of a shark eating a swimmer, and I must confess, when I got it, I didn't think it was a horror book, but some book about sharks. But it was gripping, to be sure, and I stuck with it even though it scared me a little. Right before I finished it (it took me a long time, like half a school year), the movie from the book came out, directed by then unknown Steven Spielberg. When I gave my report, the teacher was a little suspicious I had not read the book, but instead saw the movie and claimed I read the book, which pissed me off. She called me right in front of class and everything. I said the movie was rated "R" and I was not allowed to see it (which was kind of a lie, my parents took me to R movies quite frequently, but I didn't see Jaws the Motion Picture until maybe 1981 or so), but she rolled her eyes and smirked in the most patronizing way, and asked me to read a random passage and "interpret what it means." So I angrily flipped through the book, stabbed my finger on some random page, and read what I saw. The passage? What horrible coincidence. It was where they discovered the upper half of a woman's torso on the shore, and the guy who discovers it vomits at the sight of the corpse because "her breasts were pressed flat like in a flower book." This got me in trouble, partially because when she asked me to stop, I kept going, partly out of spite, and partly out of the shock value of saying "breasts" in 2nd grade in the 1970s. And I interpreted, all right. "See, the shark had bitten the woman in half in an earlier chapter, and she was skinny dipping, see, which means she took off her bathing suit to swim naked. So when the blood drained from her body, her breasts (pointing to my own nipple) went flat--"

"THAT'S ENOUGH, Gregory Larson...! Please sit down..."

I got recess detention (cleaning the chalkboard) and a B on the report. She never questioned my reading level ever again, though. :)

I don't know how it is now, but in the 1970s, reading was NOT cool, and being a "bookworm," as they called us, was akin to being a social pariah. "Reading ... f-for fun? What are you, a freak???" they would say. I am not sure if it was an intimidation factor or just the book = nerd = different = "beat them up" sort of thing, but by 4th grade, I never read in public. Too risky.

By sixth grade, age 12, I was reading at an adult level. I could read anything, and if it was terribly complicated, I'd have an old beat-up college dictionary at my side. My constant reading in dim light forced me to have glasses by the time I was that age, but my father didn't allow them, so it took three years to finally persuade my mom to get them. Luckily, you can still read books when nearsighted.

I don't read many books these days. I think 90% of my reading is on the Internet, with an accomplishment of only 5-7 printed books yearly, mostly in the form of tech manuals. I also have TV now, and I can watch it when I like, and that's easier on my eyes and brain. I feel kind of bad because I used to be all up on the latest SF titles and such, but if you asked me the title of any SF book that made the NYT Bestseller List in the last ten years, I'd mumble something about Harry Potter, Star Wars, and then excuse myself to silently soak my head in shame. The last few books I got on Half.com had to do with comedy, self-improvement, computers, or a junior adult book I read as a kid, but never got (or lost) a copy. Most of these books lie in our guest room, half-read.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:35 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 19, 2004

Memories: Bigger than a bread box

Last night, I got a box from my friend Neal which contained some rather volatile material: memories of growing up. See, I may have mentioned this before, but growing up, from age 12 to 19, Neal and I sent taped letters back and forth. He saved some of them as a "best of" collection, which he sent me a few years back, and part of me is scared to listen to them. I have listened to a few, and while most of them were goofy commentaries, some were hiding stuff I had kept secret from him because I was afraid my parents would hear me, or confiscate the tapes and listen to my private thoughts.

This is why the idea of a journal or a diary was laughable to me as a kid. What, a record of my private thoughts? Back then? Bwah haw haw! Right...! Even now, as I put stuff on this site, I realize that I should never put into print something I would regret later, or that would piss someone off. This makes the journal a bit spotty, which annoys me, but not so much that I want to say, "You know what Joe Doe did at work today? Oh my god, that fat pothead said that Susan was ugly, when it's obvious Jane is FAR more the hideous visage. I mean, come on, braces at 34? Here come Miss Stove Top Without The Stuffing!" That's hurtful to Joe, Susan, and Jane. When I sent tapes to Neal, I confessed stuff of that nature which seems so petty now. But what I didn't send him was my suicide attempts, my dark murderous thoughts, puberty fantasies, and the fact I was into self-injury. I also didn't send him things like, "I hate my dad" and "My mother is drunk again," because I truly feared if I said something against my family, my parents would find out, and then I'd be banished from ever contacting Neal again. For long periods, Neal was my only friend, in the form of a series of cassette tapes sent back and forth monthly. I think in many cases Neal's letters kept me alive. I even recall one instance where I didn't attempt suicide because I wasn't done with his letter yet; I was on tape 3 of a 7 tape letter. But as an adult, I feel kid of bad when he reads this journal, and calls me and says, "You never told me that. Why didn't you tell me that back then?" Uh ... because I was scared? Also, I am sure if Neal had ANY inkling I used to stab myself in the arm and hands with pencils so many times I *still* have the gray dots in my arm today where the leads broke off... he might have told his mom and dad. And they would have done something. Of course, that would have been smart of them to do that, but back then, the thought I could end my life at any time to escape gave me hope in some sick way. Some the diary of my youth, as presented to him, had many missing pages. But because he sent this stuff back, the missing pages *I* had lost are being filled in. And some of it is quite humbling.

For example, one kid I didn't like in 7th grade was a kid named Hubert "Trey" Garrison. I totally forgot about him. I used to tease that poor dude constantly. So did the rest of the school. We called him, "Hubey," and to make matters worse, he was one of those kids who never knew when to shut up. Like he'd come back with really weak retorts, and that made you want to tease him more. In one letter, I said that I teased him so much, be broke out into a swearing fit, and the gym teacher overheard him, and gave him something like 87 laps around the track (it was apparently a rule of 1 lap per letter per swear word, so "crap" got four laps, "bitch" got 5, and if you said, "Aw, shit, I crapped!" that would have been 11 laps). I wonder how he did 87 laps, he was such a weak, bandy-legged thing. But it was my fault. I incited him to riot, because my retorts were "wittier" than his (to 13 year olds), and finally he just snapped. I was pretty happy with myself back then, but I am ashamed of it now. He probably went on to become a rich software engineer ... or bitter food critic.

So last week, Neal was cleaning out his stuff, and found the box with my old letters and stuff I sent him; a collection of non-tape stuff. He decided to send it to me, since I don't have many tangible childhood memories (thanks to my dad). It's an incredible gift, really, and one that few people get to see about their youth. I opened it up last night, and sifted through some of the top layer. I don't know why I sent him copies of my high school newspaper, for instance. There's a lot of crazy junior high stuff in there, too. I also had an obsession with drawing serpents and lizard-like monsters. A ton of, "Look, I live with FanTek!" memorabilia. My first ever published work is in there, a commentary about crazy substitute teachers in junior high (which had been heavily edited by the newspaper staff, according to my notes). My first play! I wrote it in Drama Camp (yes, Drama Camp, and I had a good time, so sue me), although it never made it to the final presentation because it was a comedy (the directors were more into dramas and musicals). There were photos taken in my senior year of high school, plus the first year I lived in the FanTek house. Heh ... hehe... I have pictures of Bruce and Cheryl BEFORE they were married. Cheryl was in her early 20s, had a curly 80s perm, and Bruce had quite a lot of hair sticking out all over his head. He needed an afro pick, man! Maybe they can bribe me NOT to put some of those on my site. Also more pictures of me bone-thin. Man, I looked like a lollipop: fat head, stick body. And a lot of my really, really off-the-wall humor. Holy crap, some of it is even funny now.

I have only gone through about 20% of it. I confess, I sifted for photos first. I think this journal will have some of it posted in, and some of it scanned.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:30 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Clustermess Tuesday

Yesterday was just a really ... bad day. Well, honestly, I couldn't say that it was all bad. And sadly, many of the parts I can't even mention in a blog because it would inflame a social blunder out of proportion, make some people mad at work, give away a personal secret someone wishes for me to keep quiet about, and I got invited to something I am both honored and a bit queasy about. All are separate and unrelated incidents. Maybe it was just one of those days when everything happens at once. Pardon the vagueness, and years from now, when I read this, I'll go, "What am I *talking* about?"

It started out the day before, when a good friend of mine wanted to have dinner with me. This is a great guy going through some very difficult personal struggles with his family and origins, and the tone of his letter I misread almost as a sort of "I'm giving up, and going to kill myself," which I worried about all day (suspense relief: I was wrong). Then I found out Sean and Louann really needed a baby-sitter the next night, and I had always said I'd help out, so I volunteered. The next morning, I got up, and CR was really sick (suspense relief: he's better today), so Christine had to stay home in the midst of a work crisis (major theft ring discovered). Then I got to work, and something I had been planning for a while ... got denied. Then I got my review and raise, and it wasn't that great. I found out why I had been denied the previous thing, and it wasn't my fault, but made me seriously reevaluate things. Then I found out someone (upper management) was spreading untrue rumors that I was "hard to work with" and "don't listen to anyone's ideas," which I then asked around, and got the response I expected, "Who the hell told you that? You're the only one who cares... blah blah blah you're so easy-going blah blah blah the person who told you that is an ass.. blah blah blah work-cakes." I smile through gritted teeth when I am happy to get a raise and still be employed, and remind myself I have had worse (oh, by once being 24 x 7 on-call programmer for 13 call centers, getting paid squat, and being told I did a poor job but "It's okay, I told everyone that," by my boss who then recorded that in my permanent file, thus assuring promotions would never occur, so I finally quit and got a much better job). Then I got a letter from a good, longtime friend, that stated another mutual friend of ours, who had been in cancer remission for the last year, had gotten ill again. When she had a biopsy done, it showed that not only did the cancer come back, but it had spread to other organs. Requests for prayer were mentioned. Crap.

Then my day improved. My friend who I thought was going to tell me he had given up on his life, did NOT tell me that, and actually has progressed in his crisis, although he had recently lost two friends over it, who I think were assholes and total jerkwad snobs for not supporting him. Their loss. We also discussed how stupid people have pretty much ruined religion for everyone.

Then I baby-sat three kids, aged 9, 6, and 2. Two girls and a little boy. Sean and Lou's children are incredibly educated and well-mannered without being abnormally so. I used to baby-sit children as a teen, with mixed success, and so I got the gamut of a lot of kids. "Not abnormally well-mannered and educated" means that they are smart and polite, but act like pretty normal kids. I grew up with those that were "super-educated" and could quote you Faraday's Laws of Electromagnetic Induction by heart at age 6, and give three real-world examples, but were emotionally stunted at the level of a two-year old, because they never could identify with any kids their age, and thus, never learned valuable social skills. I also knew some kids who were well-mannered to the point of zombies with reflex gratitudes and programmed polite addresses to their elders that suggested they knew that any mistake would lead to a sudden beating with any random blunt object a parent could easily reach nearby. Maybe that's extreme, but it's heartbreaking to hear a kid go, "Yes sir," and then wince reflexively.

"Don't call me sir," said a customer to me once, "I work for a living." Heh. I say that now, although I stopped saying it to kids because some parents WANT their kids to say ma'am and sir.

I feel better now.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:13 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

More on conventions for 2004

It looks more and more likely I will be at Balticon. Not only did they ask me to be a program participant again, but Christine may be running Night Ops. I was going to run a semi-FanTek party, but I simply don't have the money this time around to get a suite, food, run it, and so on. Christine and I have been discussing it financially, and I think we can afford a room for two nights, a place for the dogs, and if we bring our own food, we can afford to eat.

I will be VERY likely going to GenCon this year as well, working under Mystic Station Designs. I have a meeting on the 28th I have to go to where I will get to know the rules, learn more about their gaming products, and so on. I am pretty excited about this. First, I really wanted to go to GenCon ever since I knew about it when I was about 13 or so. I am not a gamer anymore, really, but I feel I owe it to my old self to go. Second, I wanted to be with MSD because everyone there is so cool, and third, I wanted to see how the merchant end of a con works. The only table I have ever worked is Nancy's Buttons, and I haven't worked her table for quite some time.

I am still ambivalent about Fantasm. It's more of a curiosity thing for me, and I don't know if I can justify the cost (travel, room, food). Sean and Lou really want me to go. I think Tiger does, too.

In other news Christine has become a Beta Tester for Looney Labs, or as they call it, a "Blabb Rabbit." She's been playing Fluxx and Chrononaut for years. Pretty spiffy. She also sold a lot of her art at Katsucon, although we're not sure which pieces or how much she made due to some weird snafu in their system where they gave away some of Christine's art by accident, and then they didn't have a total for any of the artists anyway. So she might get a check ... for some amount ... sometime.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:22 PM EST [Link]

Monday, February 16, 2004

Katsucon 10 - Let's Do it Again!

Well, it all started Thursday, right after my last entry. Like 20 minutes after my last entry. Christine got an e-mail that said, "Your son is going to high school next year, so you need to be at this meeting at 7pm tonight to get the forms and stuff." Of course, we SHOULD have known about this weeks ago, but somehow this info never got to us, and had we not gotten that e-mail, we would have been screwed. So I had to sit through a very interesting speech and explanation of inducting students at high school, but I was distracted because I was supposed to be on my way to Katsucon. Christine dropped off the dogs at Gay's house during this, and phoned me to ask if it was over yet. No. It just kept going. And going. And most of it was very important because it had to deal with all the rules and regulations that the county required future high school students to go through (including a "Standards of Learning" upgrade, which was measures by things called, I kid you not, "SOL Tests"). Each department had a say, and I think most of the teachers and staff seemed like bright and happy people. I wish I had been in a better mood. The auditorium was too small for everyone, so I had to get a seat in the back, then the microphone didn't work half way through the talks, so I couldn't hear some of the soft-spoken teachers. After an hour and a half, I just had to leave. They were done with their talks, but one of the vice principals or something just kept talking, and boasting, and reminiscing, and it was like when a symphony is doing their last passage, and you think, "That's the end of the music," and then they have one more stanza, and then you go, "Now THAT was the end -- no, they are still going..."

Finally I just got up and left.

I felt better that I wasn't the only one, but in theory, after the orientation, we had to go to separate classrooms to speak with each department, and I should have stayed, but there was no way. It would have gone on past 10 at that point.

So then we were finally on our way to Katsucon. We needn't have worried, because everyone was running late. Seth, our inventory dude (I forgot his real title), not only delivered stuff to the staff suite, but unpacked a few items, filled the coolers with ice, and put some of the drinks in them so we had cold soda and juices. That was so nice. Then Christine and I got to our room, and set up some of the "After Hours" place in the Presidential Suite, which would be my home most of the con.

Fans were already arriving, which isn't that uncommon for such a big convention. I love fandom. I really do. I love being in the elevator with some teens, and hearing their geeky selves say the same things *I* used to say when I went to cons back then. There is an air tense with happy excitement. Some of the "old guard" have already arrived and staked out their chairs in the lobby. A few stay alone, hooked to a paperback as a shield, watching through their brows, stealing glances at passing fen. Some immediately congregate near or at the bar to boast about conventions past and what they have been up to since they last met. Staff are running around, and you hear the barking speakers of walkie-talkies asking where to put something, where is so-and-so, and the air of a production hangs like a symphony tuning up. Cons are really a social event, and I love them for that. Hell, I never stepped a foot in a video room or a panel all con.

Like doing Rocky Horror, you don't go for the movie, you go for the audience.

I was pretty tired, but a lot of us stayed up for a while Thursday night into early Friday morning.

I woke up late Friday, but not late enough. The hotel was very dry, and it's always dry. Even Tad, our Chief Medical Dude, says every year, "Bring your own humidifier." Hotels are always so dry, but I didn't bring a humidifier, so I snored very loudly and had sinus issues all weekend. My own fault, Tad said to bring a humidifier!

Lunch, provided by the hotel, was pretty bland. It was a boxed lunch, and they didn't have roast beef like they had promised. So it was turkey subs, ham and cheese, and a veggie sandwich. I thought the veggie would be safe, only to find out it was baloney with a lot of tomatoes. At first, I thought it was tofu baloney, but when I pulled it out, no ... it had a rind and was definitely the run-of-the-mill baloney cold cut that kids got in their lunch. I hate baloney. Apparently everyone else got eggplant.

Anyway, I was planning Opening Ceremonies all that day, which wasn't hard, because I already had a plan, so I just needed to confirm the usual "who is going up?" and "do they have stage fright?" Good thing, too, because several people had stuff to add at the last minute. That's why planning OC is more like a guide than a plan: it always changes. For instance, we had a whole OC opening video with CGI and stuff, but a week beforehand, the hard drive it was on got corrupted, and all the work was lost. I have been given a copy of Flash as well as my own copy of Animation Master (I have to get the upgrade) to work on one for next year. I hope I can pull this off.

We got started late, which was partly my fault because I had no idea who was in charge of letting people in. I just made announcements over the mike of "Uh ... when are we letting people in?" Of course, no one knew, so no one answered. Then it took 5 minutes to let people in. We ended up starting 20 minutes late, which ate up all my "spare time" for people who spoke too much, plus took away an extra ten minutes. I had to tell everyone to speed it up, but we still ran 8 minutes over into the Megatokyo panel. But at least I got to meet Fred Ghallagher! He's great. I just happened to be wearing my "3v1l m1ni0|\|" shirt, too. Heh. I am such a fanboy.

Also, there was some confusion as to whether I was Emcee or not. Now, two years ago, I was told NOT to be Emcee, but apparently, this year, everyone (but me) assumed I was going to be Emcee, which does make being stage manager a very difficult job. So I sort of did both ... and did a bad Emcee job. Feh. So next year, I WILL be Emcee, and dress the part, as well as plan my stage management around that (it can be done, it's just more difficult). I will also note that longtime friend Brian Flannigan from the tech crew did a great job, and was very patient with me, even though we were mucking everything up.

Dinner, which was done by the hotel, sucked. I mean, the food was okay, but they tried to pass of Manwich burger meat as bouillabaisse, and from what they charged us, it was an awfully chintzy. It was a small salad bar, Manwich, noodles, and ... cheese tortellini.

Later that night, I had the rare treat of spending some quality time with my friend Andrew Iwancio, and sat by his table and hear him spin on some of his equipment. Andrew is like this street genius, an artist who has the humor of Chuck Barry (from the old Gong Show...? Anyone? am I that old?), and despite the fact he's in his early 20s (I have known him since he was 16), I have always been amazed at his talent and good nature. I wouldn't be surprised if he is an incarnate of the Dali Lama or something. Andy is one of the many friends I have made through FanTek.

I stayed up late again, and woke up late again on Saturday. I had this horrible nightmare that a plane from the airport next to us crashed into the hotel, just missing me, but killing everyone else. It was really livid, too, and I woke up with my heart pounding in my chest. I vaguely recalled also having a nightmare the night before, but I couldn't remember that one. This dream disturbed me so much, whenever the trains rumbled by (our hotel is right on the edge of a major train thoroughfare), part of me though, "Is that a plane going to crash into us?" From the Presidential Suite, you could see the whole Reagan National Airport, and I watched the airplanes land and take off a lot until I felt better. Airports are usually soothing to me, I guess since I spent so much of my first two years of life in them, but that was all shattered on 9/11. Planes look like bombs to me now. But the process of "being at an airport" did still calm me down somewhat. Weird.

Lunch was boxed lunch from the hotel, and I had a turkey sub that was pretty good. The hotel staff that delivered it to the Boardroom were actually very nice. In fact, all the hotel "underlings" were very nice, from bellhops to wait staff. Wish management was the same way.

I had already prepped all the "Whose Katsu" stuff the previous week, so I didn't have a whole lot to do in the afternoon. So I got sent with Louann to pick up stuff from my house (an extra Areobed and games) and Sean and Louann's house to pick up stuff from them. We ended up taking forever because of traffic and other various delays. I got to see Chance, Scarlet, and Keiran, as well as their new nanny, a perky girl named Miranda. When we got back, I had just enough time to change and go to present anime video awards.

I presented two awards for Anime Music Videos (my choice as well as Audience choice 2nd place), but the whole event was terribly confusing because the guy in charge of planning it just threw it together at the last minute because apparently his job screwed up the week he was working on it. Everyone got mad at him. I felt bad, because he's not a bad person, but no one knew what they were doing, or when to get onstage in what order, and no one could read his handwriting. Oh well.

I only had 20 minutes to wolf down dinner, again by the hotel, which had taco shells, flour tortillas, and taco meat that looked and tasted suspiciously like the Manwich bouillabaisse from the previous night. I really missed it when the Staff Suite served food, but the hotel would barely let us serve our own breakfast and anyway, the staff is so huge, that cooking for 300 people is now pretty much out of the question, both in cost and in logistics.

Then there was Whose Katsu, with Pocky, Rob, Kevin, and Sean. It went pretty well. Memorable moments included Pocky doing a press release for an all-nude review of Evangeleon, insults towards people who wear K-mart shoes, and just general silliness. The slides I did went well with tech, who howled with laughter as some of my ideas. I now know they can accept PowerPoint as a medium, which will simplify things greatly for K11.

I was exhausted by the end of the night, and went to bed by midnight, even though the parties were going on all over. I slept poorly, mostly because the diet of bad hotel food and junk food I had been eating. I had another nightmare where I got laid off, but in addition of work keeping all my stuff, they said, "Everything you have learned here is proprietary knowledge, and therefore, we will remove it all." So somehow, they sucked all of the knowledge of computers out of my head, and then I knew nothing about them anymore. I couldn't get a job in retail because I was overqualified, and couldn't get a job in tech because I didn't know anything about how computers worked. I couldn't even get on the Internet anymore or use a word processor to write my book! That dream, which sounds so silly in text, scared me so badly, it traumatized me... I am still reacting to it as I type this with a knot of fear that feels like I am falling into a deep hole.

I woke up Sunday out of this fear pit, and although I had suddenly been asked to do the art auction, I really wasn't feeling good, so I declined. I didn't hear what happened to the auctioneer, but I am assuming that he or she got the Katsu flu. A huge, fast-reacting stomach virus was sweeping the con. It knocked off half the tech crew, and sent one of them to the hospital. As far as I know, I don't have it, and probably won't get it because it seems like you catch it and react to it very quickly. All my stomach problems were definitely an issue with diet, since I have now gotten used to eating better. I gained several pounds, too (verified by scale), and boy, do I feel it. My stomach now HATES junk food, and is very mad at me. Sorry, stomach.

The elevators were so slow, that when I tried to get to the merchant's room, I waited 26 minutes. Three elevators came to the 18th floor, and they were packed so full, they couldn't accept any more passengers. People were sick of waiting for the elevators that were going in their direction, so they'd just get on any elevator with room, thinking, "This will go in the right direction eventually." Finally, I just walked down 18 flights of stairs. I was happy to see I could do it, but my legs felt like rubber afterwards, and are still sore right now. I really, really need to exercise more.

The merchant's room was the same as always. In fact, as expressed by my friend Cheryl years ago, and recently debated on the ACML, what I wanted I either already had or couldn't afford, and everything else I didn't want or need. I ended up spending a total of $26 for a graphic novel (Megatoyko Vol. 2) and two small stuffed critters. CR bought a hat that looked like a cat with money he got from a good report card (the best ever).

Afterwards, I cleaned up the presidential suite and packed for the trip home. I was so tired and my stomach hurt. I was also severely depressed due to the seasonal depression which was irritated even further by being indoors all weekend. I think the con was a great success, but I am definitely starting to feel my age. I had heard a lot of staff members around my age going, "I feel too old for this," and I sympathize. I get tired a lot now. I can't stay up as late as I used to, and just eat junk food, or skip meals, or any of the other stuff I took for granted. Also, all my timing was off. I missed seeing a lot of people, like I didn't get to hang out with JJ, Rafe, or Gail. I saw my friend Steve Moyer like once, and I wanted to spend more time with him, as well as Lije and Brian (Carpenter), but even though they invited me to breakfast, I wasn't able to make it. And while no big disaster happened all weekend, all my days were peppered with huge quantities of smaller, really petty and meaningless problems, that added with my SD, just made me slightly tired and bummed. I mean, for Whose Katsu, I had to pump myself up in my head during Cosplay, and I usually never have to do that. If I had to sum up how I felt about the con, it was just tired. I am very happy, though, that there was now snow like last year.

The evening ended with a dinner at Chili's, where I had some really good garlic shrimp alfredo, and great cheesecake. I felt better after I ate, so maybe the diet had something to do with being tired, too. The lack of a "substantial food" or something. They had a party with the guests going back to the Presidential Suite, but Christine and I had to pick up the dogs from Gay's house, and I had to get up early the next morning for work.

So, all in all. The con was good, even if I wasn't. There were a few problems, but most of mine were my own fault. The staff was great, the attendees wonderful as always, and I met and talked with many people I'll remember for a long time. A team of wild Ki-rin in Gundam battle armor couldn't tear me away from Katsucon 11.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:29 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 12, 2004

Pre-Katsu Show

Man, if it wasn't for my promise to never write about anything specific at work that could come back to haunt me... I have some juicy stuff going on. My work life keeps unfolding and unfolding. Curiouser and curiouser.

But while I have about 20 minutes here, I have time to tell you about my prep for Katsucon. I am mostly ready: I have all my Whose Katsu material ready to go, including stuff for the tech crew, which is a strong improvement over last year when I was doing it THE Saturday of the Cosplay. I have at least 45 minutes of time filled in various game, and some spare if the judging goes longer than expected. All I need now is a buzzer... I found out from Pocky we have confirmation of the other two people, so with Pocky, Sean, Rob, and some guy who I can't remember but I don't want to waste time so I can get this blog out. I also have a slight diagram for opening ceremonies, which doesn't take near so much prep because that always changes at the last minute. The only other thing I have to prep for is the AMV awards, which I just have to present some category (comedy, I think), and my "Judge's Pick," who ... oh, whatever (you'll get that joke if you watch me at the awards).

So, I have yet to pack, but I have to wash a round of clothes that I found the cat AND dogs had been sleeping on, and while I like my pets, I don't want to smell like sweaty cat feet and stinky dog breath. So I have to wash the clothes again. Ugh.

We're leaving the dogs over at our friend's house again, because mean Mr. Hotel won't let us take our dogs. They smelled funny, so we got them groomed. Now they look at nice and shiny. The dogs really like being groomed... well, before and after. They like going to the groomers, but once we try to take them behind the gate, their tails go down, and they try to leave. And they are so happy when we pick them up, and so proud to be clean. I wish more gamers were like that...

[Sorry Ted, that was mean, I know... where did you go on vacation?]

Unless I get bored and decide to call the internet from Katsucon, I probably WON'T be posting a blog entry during the con. I always plan to, but then rarely remember, so you guys have a great weekend, and I will promise to try and remember to take good pictures!

Posted by Punkie @ 05:51 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Looking for sleep and feeling woozy...

So yesterday, I get up, and I am so tired, I am barely able to stay awake. I get some coffee at Starbucks with a muffin, and then I feel better. I get to work, I'm fine, I have lunch, and then around 3pm, all the energy starts to drain from my body like water from a gutter.

By about 3:30, I pass out a few times in my chair. After a few episodes of this, I decide to take an emergency nap. Standing at this point becomes hard, but I lock my office door, and take a 10-minute nap. I wake up, feeling not refreshed, but certainly less dizzy. I walk around for a bit.

About 4:00pm, I start to break out in a cold sweat, and my legs turn to rubber. I have a coworker drive me home, and I go right to bed. I would have slept soundly, but the phone kept ringing, and Christine has some serious work crisis going on. Dogs are barking a lot. I drift in and out of consciousness, and don't remember a lot of last night at all.

I did get up, very sick with a throbbing headache, at around 2:00am, but that was for an hour. I vaguely remember going through e-mail. When I got up to go to work at 6:00am, I felt very tired again. Christine is in Baltimore, so I decided not to risk passing out at work again, like say when I was standing.

All I know is I am exhausted, get cold chills, and can't eat anything without feeling a lot of discomfort. I haven't the slightest idea what's wrong with me. I have no fever, but I do have sinus pressure. Maybe I just need a day of rest or something, but now I worry a lot: Why before Katsucon? Why can't this happen next week? Dammit...!

Slow down, you move too fast...
You've got to make the morning last...
Just falling down on the cobblestones,
Looking for sleep and feeling woozy....
Ba da da da da da da, feeling woozy.... [thud]

Posted by Punkie @ 08:14 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Hypothesis => data => conclusion. In that order, skipping no steps.

Last year, I was in a conflict where I quickly realized that I could not compete with someone else's fantasies. If it's a choice between reality and fantasy, many people retreat into their fantasies, even if they are unprovable or logically flawed. I have always felt that reality is an organism's response to a perceived stimuli, and that perception is based largely on experience.

For instance, paranoia is a control issue. Most paranoid people had very unpredictable pasts, and so they become hypersensitive to change. Human beings, by nature, wish to control their environment for comfort, but if they don't get a steady stream of predictability at some basic level, they never learn trust. So they are constantly in a useless "learning mode" of unease. The only way anyone's brain can deal with this is to make sweeping generalizations, often as "worst case scenarios."

Recently, I had a discussion about outsourcing IT jobs to India. This usually invokes a lot of emotional responses in IT professionals. Some people think it's a bad idea. Some think it's a good idea. Some think it's inevitable, good or bad. But when discussing this issue, I find some people start to exhibit a weird fear pattern. Now, I understand this fear, I had it myself. So I educated myself about outsourcing by reading articles, finding out what works and what doesn't work, and the history of moving jobs overseas. My response to fear is educating myself; I try and make the conclusion ("It's a wait and see, but it will be a continuing trend") of the hypothesis ("What would happen if we outsourced IT jobs overseas?") based on collected data (reading articles, watching videos, and getting varying experience from others). Some already have the conclusion ("It's bad!") and make the data fit, without really studying it.

For example, I had a concern that outsourcing tech to a non-English speaking group of people would result in a lot of miscommunication. I did some research on this and found that most educated Indian citizens speak perfect English, and that's one of the requirements for getting a job at an outsourcing center. In fact, from one of several videos I have seen, they can speak with flawless American midwestern accents. I would not be able to tell if the guy I was speaking to was from India or Indiana with my eyes closed.

The other person ignored this fact, and got straight to his point: Indian techs are stupid. He used all kinds of unprovable "real-world examples," bad parallels, and compounded with speculation, he misconstrued his argument as factual, and then threw in some emotion-response statements like, "It's bad for America, and unpatriotic." He made the data fit the hypothesis, not the other way around. He knew what he wanted the answer to be, so he didn't bother to check out the data, probably because if the data fit, he'd be right, and if the data didn't, he didn't care. When one doesn't research their data, this becomes very obvious by certain arguments they use. People who use facts often say, "In this article, linked here..." or "In 2002, businesses who outsourced saved 30-80% on labor costs when applied intelligently, according to this 2003 article in the WSJ...." People who don't use facts will use statements like, "I met this really stupid guy from New Delhi once," and "Go ahead, outsource all the jobs, and then everyone will be out of work!"

The picture this person painted of an average Indian citizen was some dumb, unwashed and uneducated swami from the gutters of the streets who wore weird clothing and spoke some gibbering monkey talk. I have met many people from India, including former citizens who hated India, and none of them painted this dismal picture. India does have infrastructure problems, especially in urban areas, but the vast majority are pretty well educated. They have a thriving economy, a burgeoning export in media (Ala "Bali-wood"), and I think a bright future ahead of them (in Pakistan doesn't blow them up, that is). Outsourcing tech talent to them is probably a good move for corporate America as well as India, providing India doesn't become too dependant on foreign business (remember the East India Tea company?). Anyway, for those who want to see the discussion, it's here.

But this problem isn't just in the tech industry. I used to see it in retail managers, who didn't bother to try new things because they made up these really off-the-wall counter examples as an excuse to not try anything new. "We can't give away free bookmarks for Christmas," one would say, "what if some kid eats one and chokes? Hello, lawsuit!" People often do this outside of jobs, too, into their personal life. My mother said she wouldn't go to AA meetings because, "They smoke there, and I don't want to catch lung cancer." Now, I'd be a liar if I said I haven't made these mistakes. I used to say them all the time. I see them happen at convention planning meetings, especially among security, who plan for some one in a million shot over some broad big picture scope. To many "what ifs" and not enough "if thens." So I tried to stop such arguments, and my life becamse a bit simpler. I now go by "It is easier to get forgiveness than permission." I had to stop being paranoid to get permission all the time, because some people just won't give it to you, and when you ask why, sometimes they make up these eleborate stories about how using this kind of database once led to a security risk in 1985 or something. Now I just make changes. Recently, after a lot of debate on who was actually using some data I produced, I decided instead of trying to get everyone's permission, I just made changes, and mailed them out. "I'm canceling everyone's login. If you need access to the server, please e-mail me." I got 2 requests for access since then, eliminating 16 whiney people who all claimed they needed all kinds of access they couldn't prove they needed except to make them feel special. It's amazing how much fuss and bother some people make if you ask for permission, versus just outright telling them, "this is how it is." Assertiveness is part of a growing library of confidence at work I am gathering. I mean, I don't want to be an ass, but I want to be at least sensible. So in my example, my hypothesis was, "What will happen if I change all this access?" I didn't know, so the "data" I found out was to cancel access to see who complained. The conclusion was, "Not nearly as many as they claimed they needed, and those that needed it liked the changes."

I have to stop living "what if" fantasies and start living more "if then" realities. Realities based on common experience, not living for the exceptions to the general rules.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:56 AM EST [Link]

Monday, February 9, 2004

Packrat

Sometimes I have to fight being a packrat. Right now, it's not so bad (excluding computers), but being a packrat runs on my father's side of the family. While I was growing up, my father's "study," or home office, had piles of magazines stacked like columns off the floor. I'd say they were about 3-4 feet high per column, and about a dozen columns on the floor, with more in closets. His closet was FILLED with office supplies he had stolen from work. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of pencils (still in sealed boxes), rulers, staples, ring binders, you name it. I was never allowed to go in there, but my mother sometimes "dipped" into his supply. A few times I got accused of "stealing" some of his supplies, which I thought was irony like nothing else. Sometimes the supplies did come from that huge closet, but via my mother, who thought as long as we have them, why don't we use them? When I was about 13, my father made this rule that I was to buy all of my own school supplies, and he STILL would accuse me of stealing his stuff, and then proceed to "take back" stuff I got with my OWN money...

... okay, that was over 20 years ago, let it go...

He also accused me of stealing other stuff of his. I recall he got really upset that I had stolen some voltage transformer, like a huge 40 pound... thing that he got from work. What he needed it for I have no idea, but he was sure I had stolen it. I didn't even know what it was, but I got in trouble for stealing it. Later, my mother confessed she threw it away because it was apparently a huge object that weighed over 60 pounds, and was leaving a dent in the carpet. She had no idea why he wanted such a thing, and she was concerned about his collecting habits. But then again, my neighbor had this collection of old European comic books and toy cars that was ludicrous. They were stacked on uncountable wall shelves and piled in their original boxes all around the house. I always felt that was even stranger.

When Christine and I visited my old house one day, we peeked in through the rec room window and saw piles of old newspapers. With my mother dead, and my father's new wife not being a "houseperson," apparently the whole house just started piling up. My neighbor (the one with all the cars and comic books) told me that my father and his wife had three maids quit because of all the clutter. When they sold the house, I saw it was listed as "handyman's special - new owners must clean" at like 30% below market value. Creepy.

So today, I learned that my paternal grandmother was the same way. She even rescued stuff from the trash, to the major disgust and annoyance of my uncle. I recall hearing from my mother that my father was ashamed at how his house looked, and his room was the neat and tidy room of the house. How... irnoic that he should turn out the same way.

As I write this, I look around my den and see some clutter, of course. But I try and throw away anything I don't need that won't be totally useful. I clean up instead of pile up. But I have taken this as an omen, a warning, perhaps, that I don't want my house to turn out like this someday. After all, I have four cats and two dogs, I think I am partway there already.

Something for me to keep in mind.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:04 PM EST [Link]

Sunday, February 8, 2004

It's only money

There's a saying among investors, "Don't analyze your portfolio daily, it will only drive you nuts."

Yeah. I haven't looked at my stock portfolio much recently. It was rather heavily tech-centric, and I haven't contributed much to it in a while for obvious reasons. I was happy to find out that it wasn't a total loss (it used to be), but it's not that great either. I won't discuss how much I have or what, but I was a bit happy to find out that it had a some money in it. Not NEARLY what it used to be, and that can be depressing. Let's just say it's less than 8% of the value it was at its peak.

At a party recently, I asked a friend, "Why aren't we rich?" and he said the most depressing thing. "I know the exact date I made the mistake. It was December 31st, 1999. I was at a phone booth, considering cashing what I had and rolling it over to real estate. I decided to hold. Right now, I would have been worth $1.8 million." The dot.com bubble burst for him, too, and then he got laid off, and a lot of his investments were stock grants from his previous employer. I figured out what I would have been worth had I sold it all at the same time, and which it's no $1.8 million, I would have not been worrying about money right now, I'll tell you that. I am glad I cashed in when I did, I have a nice house because of that, so I don't feel this sucking loss, but more of a, "Well, crap!" sort of feeling.

It's only money, after all.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:21 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, February 7, 2004

Sales intimidation and the comebacks I have

I hate sales pressure.

I was in sales for about 9 years. Most of that time was spent managing, but sales played a large part. Not only did I have to sell, but I had to train others to sell as well. I never worked in a place that forced me to sell crap, or had me on commission, or compromised my morals in any way. I was lucky.

One person who taught me a lot was a former boss named Phyllis, although she had no qualms about speaking about salespeople in third person in front of them. I recall when we were walking the mall, she looked at the front of a Foot Locker, a sports shoe store, and at three salespeople hanging around the entrance.

"Makes you feel like prey, doesn't it?" she asked. "Watch, I'll go in, and that guy will say hello, and then ask me if he can help me find anything. I'll say I am just looking. Then that guy will ask if I work out." She went in the store.

"Hi," said one guy, "can I help you find anything today?"

"No, just looking," she said without pausing, almost running over the guy's line.

"What kind of sports do you do? You look like you work out," said another.

"Not really," she said. She walked through the store, where three salespeople eyed her over, and then she left. "One of them said to come again, wasn't he nice?" she joked.

I knew why customers said, "Just looking." It really meant, "Leave me alone, don't bother me." I respected that. "Just looking" was a canned answer. Just = only, looking = not buying. There are ways around that, of course. I took the zany approach when the mood swept me. But this won't be a blog entry about making sales. I *hate* sales pressure, probably as much as the next guy. There's nothing more irritating than walking into a store or in front of a dealer's booth and being accosted with "can I help you find something?" or something similar. "No," Phyllis once said, "I have lost nothing." Or even better, "I lost me a good man. How can you help?" Always broke the pattern. I never had the guts to be THAT zany, but sometimes when the pressure is too bad... "just looking" comes out of my mouth.

I used to manage a furniture store. In a mall. People don't go to malls to buy furniture much. They go to malls to buy toys, clothing, and junk they don't need. Rarely do they buy big name items. So I spent a lot of time alone. One of the problems with this is that when I worked at Springfield Mall, we were across the street from the Springfield Hilton. The number one local spot for Amway sales seminars for new recruits. Four times a year, guy in suits and walking mikes would run up and down the stage and pump up the audience to sell Amway crap. Even though they say they are not a pyramid scheme, they really kind of are. That's why no Amway salesman ever says "Amway" up front. They say something like, "I am a whole sale distributor for brand name products." Anything to keep people from fleeing into the hills.

I know. I got them all the time!

They saw me or one of my employees alone in the store, and tried to recruit us to sell Amway. I hated them. I hated them so much because they were annoying, predictable, and so full of crap, it seethed out their teeth. Many of them were not very good, either. Some had bad hygiene, or awkward personal skills that didn't fit the script they had memorized. Here's the script they made for me:

Indicator #1: They come in, and ask about random products. Most of the time, customers have a track, like living room sets, or kid's bedding. No one came in, asked about a lamp, a pillow case, a chair, and a throw rug. Except those Amway guys.

Indicator #2: They thank me for my time, and leave without buying anything. 99% of customers never thanked me, nor did I expect it, so when someone shook my hand and thanked me for my time telling him about a rocking chair, throw pillow, and my sales counter... I waited until he left my store, and then counted backwards from ten.

Indicator #3: 4... 3... 2... 1... and they are back! "I really like the way you sell, I can see you are a man of integrity... blah blah blah salescakes."

First, I listened. After a few dozen of these bozos, I got sick of listening. Then it got to the point I told them outright that I wasn't interested in Amway, even if they had never used the word "Amway."

Amway Dude: I like the way you sell--
Punkie: I HATE AMWAY!!!
Amway Dude: B-but, I never SAID Amway ...
Punkie: Then what is the name of your company?
Amway Dude: Why do you hate Amway, anyway?

They always wanted to know why. I told them Amway sells crap, is a pyramid scheme, and stuff I am sure they have heard a zillion times, because they always had a vague redirected answer for it.

"People don't like Amway because they don't understand the value of what we are about," I envision some Amway pep-talk guy saying on a Jumbotron. "But after you're done with them, they will beg for mercy!" And the crowd goes seig heil^H^H^H^H^H^H wild.

One year, they shifted their approach to, "Don't you want to make a spare $1000 a month? How about $2000? Can you say no to your family when they want to go fishing with dear old dad?" Well, they were trying to appeal to a mark's greed. So I deflected that by dislodging the root: with philosophy.

"Extra money always brings problems. Buddhism teaches us that materialism always brings misery. Extra money would just invite trouble," I'd say, and no one had a pre-programmed response for that. The exit answers ranged from "Okay, good luck with your cult" to "Y-you don't like m-money? Wha...?" It became like a game. I deflected every one of them with each wave. I must have become famous. Someone must have told my story to some High Holy Amway dude, because one day, this happened:

It was a normal lunchtime hour. I knew Amway was in town because the manager of the Leather Factory next to me was making jokes about it. I was with another customer, when two people in very expensive suits came into my store. One was a very attractive older male, and the other was an older female. Both of them looked very well groomed, had wore fancy rings and Rolex watches. I'd say both were in their late 30s, maybe late 40s. They stood out quickly because they dressed way too nice for someone to come into a mall. I know, I have sold furniture to Prince Al Saud, and he only wore jeans and a sweater. So when I was done with the real customer, they approached me, and asked me if I was interested in a business proposition. They weren't like the usual Amway people, so I didn't smell the Amway scent right away. I asked them what I could help them with, and they started a spiel about their company's quest to distribute quality products. At first, I thought they were salesmen for some corporate cleaning systems, and told them my corporate office makes those decisions, I didn't. Then they asked if I was interested in making some side money. That's when I smelled Amway. I told them, "Not really. Buddhism teaches us that materialism... blah blah." They politely listened. Occaissionally they would nod.

All this time, this man had some pager in his coat that beeped about every two minutes. When I was done, he told me some bullcrap story about how he started out in the slums of somewhere, and worked his way up through the chain to become a happy and successful man with mansions, pools, boats, sports, cards, and so on. Then he asked, "Hear that beep?" He pulled out what looked like a pager. "That means I made another $1000 dollars. Can you honestly say that an extra grand a month will cause you material harm?" I guess he thought he got me there, but I wasn't going for that kind of stuff. Years of Wiccan and Buddhist philosophy had the perfect response.

"Well, that just proves my point," I said, with an incredulous sigh of shock and pity. "See, you are so scared of your own status in life, that you have to be reassured by an auditory signal every two minutes to say you are still making money. It's like listening to a heartbeat, hoping it doesn't stop. I could never live that way. I'd lose my friends, never be able to concentrate, and I might get rich, but for whom? Whom would I impress? Nobody, that's who. I'd rather be poor with friends than rich with nobody. I always hear about lottery winners who commit suicide because money only brought them misery."

"But you need money to eat!" said the woman. It was a rather desperate deflection on her part, I thought.

"Yes," I said, "and I already have that. Spending money on luxuries is a waste of time done often by people who have to fill an empty hole in their self-love. Money doesn't fix your soul, man."

"You're good," said the man. "They were right." And with that, he thanked me for my time, and left.

I still got Amway recruits, but I have always been proud of getting rid of them by cutting out their main selling point: greed. I have always felt a pang of guilt, though, "using Buddhism" towards my own gain and such. But it's true, money doesn't buy happiness. I am making almost three times now what I made as a manager, and I don't think I am really any more fulfilled by it.

But in any case, I hate going into a store and smelling the sales pressure like sweat from their brow. I hate that they treat my wife like an idiot, and think because I am a man, I like sports, cigars, fast cars, and my own dick. I hate it even more when I get "blown off" because I didn't make a large purchase. And I REALLY hate snobby salespeople.

I bring all of this up because last week, I got my hair cut. It was a good haircut, but the stylist asked me what I used to shampoo my hair, her response to my reply was a sort of, "Bwah! No way. Oh, my God, what an idiot." I told her I used V05 because it was cheap. "Well, you get what you pay for," she said, framing my hair in the mirror. "I used those $10 bottles of shampoo," I said, "and they never cleaned my hair any better." She asked if I had heard of Awapuhi, like she was preparing to discipline me. She was beginning to piss me off, so I cut her off at the path.

"Awapuhi is a member of the ginger family," I said. "It's an import from India that was distributed eastward through Polynesia, and is a rhizome that grows well in the tropics and is known for its pungent fragrance. Most of the world's farmed Awapuhi grows in Hawaii. Paul Mitchell was the first to add it to his shampoo line in the 1970s, stating that native girls used it to wash their hair. In fact, they used it primarily to perfume their hair, but the envy that many rich and famous American women had on their Asian counterparts at the time propelled his Awapuhi line to the point that he and his business partner made millions of dollars, despite that they never sold their products from retail outlets." I kept going, remembering a Biography Channel episode about him I watched years ago. I also discussed Hawaiian economics, the collapse of the Japanese realty investments in the area in the 1990s, the climate and exports of Hawaii, and of course, Kona Blue Sky Coffee. A regular World Alminac, I was.

That shut her up. It was probably rude and snobbish of me, but she made me mad. But as I said, the haircut was good, so I tipped her well, and I hope she never criticizes another customer again based on shampoo choice.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:46 PM EST [Link]

Friday, February 6, 2004

My Grandmother is doing better

Grandmother Marion is doing better. My uncle sent me an e-mail that's she's being moved to a skilled nursing rehab facility today. Her mind is apparently going in and out of our reality. One minute, she is clear on certain subjects, and the next her brain is reverting back to her early days in Chicago. Grandmother Edith went through the same thing; she thought she was 6 and living back on her parent's farm, milking cows, peeling potatoes, and such. I tried to listen to her, but she only spoke in Swedish, so I couldn't understand her.

Christine and I were talking about maybe not going to New Orleans for our 15th Anniversary like we planned, try and scrape some money together, and try and fly to Sandy Eggo in the next month to see her. Trouble is, I don't know where to "scrape" from. I hate that not having money makes me miserable and makes things so hard. They say money can't buy you happiness, and that's true, but it can make finding happiness a lot less of a hassle. I might just go alone, like I was thinking about earlier. I could swing that. But if I have two or three people, that will double/triple the cost of the flight, we'll have to get a hotel room, then food in California is so expensive, along with the highest sales tax in the country (7.25%), it's ridiculous to even buy a pack of tissues. My aunt and uncle certainly can't help, they are scraping by as it is with two incomes, both past retirement age, and they have been supporting my grandmother's bills in a nursing home on top of all this.

Now you know why my uncle is so mad that my father won't help out. They have been supporting this woman since 1981. I have to counter the shock and callousness of my father by trying to say to myself over and over again that he's clinically insane, clinging to some strange denial that refuses to believe anyone could be that consciously evil. Sometimes I find myself praying to God that he'll get a clue, but then I wonder if he were to have a conscience, would the impact of the memories of what he has done destroy him? Could any mortal deal with that guilt and survive? I don't want to be there when he dies, man, because I bet the sheer negative karma he has built up will echo from the heavens, or collapse into its own gravity, sucking in innocent people from the event horizon into an oblivious shame spiral.

Yeah, I am being dramatic. Can you tell he pisses me off? Thank God there's only one of him in my life.

And thank God my Uncle and Aunt were there to help Marion in the later part of her life.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:18 PM EST [Link]

SNAP!

I hate it when people fight. Yesterday, I was in on a conference call when a fellow employee snapped, and then another employee joined in against their boss. I can only be glad I was working from home yesterday, because I would have wanted to melt through the floor. I knew the rant had taken a downturn when it started with, "And you can report me to HR is you feel it's appropriate..." followed by a stream of abuse that vomited acidic verbal bile and made some flamewars seem tame in comparison. It had a lot of swear words, "dummy traps" (where you trap your opponent with their own conflicting words, leaving them unable to defend themselves without taking a losing path), rhetorical predictions, and just heaps of "when are you going to wake up and smell the coffee???" types of questions.

I can't say some of it wasn't justified, but I take a passive approach when I get frustrated. Like, say I have a project manager who says, "I want you to find all references to PAP/CHAP authentications in these logs." I say, "Those logs don't record such authentications, they record system failures only," and they go, "Just give me every entry you find that has PAP/CHAP authentications." So I generate a report:

From: grig@net.testing.labs.com
To: project.manager.list@listserve.testing.labs.com
Subject: The report project manager IPFreehley requested

Here is my extensive data analysis of all system error logs for PAP/CHAP authentication that Ivan Freehly requested. Normally, system error logs only record system failures, and do not record connection info on any of the clients. An RFC on this can be found here [link] and here [link]. However, Ivan explained that all options must be explored.

Number of error logs searched: 255
Number of days on each error log: 60
Average entries per error log per machine: 12
Total number of errors searched: 183600
Total number of errors that recorded any network issue: 598
Total number of errors that recorded only disconnects: 598
Number of Network Issues that identified authentication: 0
Number of Network Issues that identified PAP/CHAP: 0

This result is in context with the RFCs linked above. A combined log file of all the machines for the 60 day period is available in the common shared folder of our department (4.98 mb). Please feel free to contact me with any further questions.

Grig Larson
Programmer/Analyst
xt 555

I always cc department heads as well. This can have two major benefits. The first is if the manager realizes how stupid the project manager's request was, I may not be asked to do something of this nature again. The second is my name gets recognized by higher ups. This leads to the inevitable, "So you're this famous Grig we hear about!" What if I make some guy look bad, and he gets revenge on me? That doesn't happen that often. Thankfully my company is well-educated enough to recognize an idiot when they see one, and so me reporting them only gives them fodder for eventually getting rid of him.

Now if I sent e-mail going, "What a useless piece of [BEEP]! He can kiss my [BEEP][BEEP] if his cankered mouth spews forth more infectious stupidity from the pus of the ignorant boil he calls a brain, I will set fire to his office chair and beat him with closed fists until he bursts like the engorged tick he is to this company!" ... I'd be back doing retail in a week.

Frankly, I don't care if I do "stupid work" versus "important work" because I get paid the same. I write scripts to parse data, generate trend patterns, and give the report a thorough and professional flair. While I am waiting for things to compile, I go on the web and learn something new. My brain is always busy, and I am happy.

The guy kept his job, BTW. I think because he spoke the thuth, and we've all been edgy lately (what with the recent rounds of layoffs). But man, talk about awkward!

Posted by Punkie @ 11:09 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 5, 2004

And the twists and turns get steeper...

This sucks. What did God do to my life, let some crazy rave jockey take over the turntable? Everything was calming down and getting stable, I don't need this. At least, thanks to this blog, I don't have to explain to my readers a complicated story... you all already know the players of this drama.

Well, I got a letter today from my uncle, and it was a copy of a letter he sent to my father. I'll spare you the details (and the choice language), but it was pretty direct: "our mother is in the hospital, and yet you do nothing." There are times when I think, "Arvid treated me badly, but he treats his own brother and parents the same way." My grandmother, my last living grand-anything, is in her late 90s, and has been hospitalized seven days for congested heart failure. She is not doing very well, isn't very coherent, and her mind is wandering. If she does survive a few more days and shows signs of stabilization, she will be moved to a nursing facility.

My paternal grandmother has always been a little off. I don't have many memories of her, but she has had a hard life. That's about all I know. I used to think I knew a great deal about her, but when I got older, what my mother said, what my father said, what my maternal relatives have said, and what my father have said all tell different stories that vary quite widely. I met her once, when I was 18, and staying in San Diego. She was... okay, but she was known to have her off days. I know she was raised by a crazy aunt who was put away for good in an insane asylum. She raised two kids in a Chicago slum. Her husband died in 1981, and my uncle took care of her until 1995, when she needed to go to an elderly care home. He still pays a lot of those bills.

Not only do I have to deal with my grandmother possibly passing away, but the possibility of my father showing up. There is actually a good chance he won't, so it's not a certain gamble, but I think there's more than a 50% chance of him showing up to the funeral. Then the sparks will fly. My uncle is so mad at him. I am mad at him too, but the fact that he's totally ignoring this situation doesn't surprise me at all. I don't think it surprised my uncle that much, either, but he hasn't seen him since my mother's funeral, and before that... maybe 30 years since my father moved out. My father left his family, and never looked back.

His mother adored him, but in recent years, began to realize that he was not the son she thought he was. In this last week, she called him The Devil. That's quite a change, but it's not helping my aunt and uncle through all this. I asked if they needed me, and they said they were fine, she has a good doctor, and really, what could me flying out do?

I don't know, be there for her? She's never stopped writing me for all these years. I am going to see how her condition goes. If she gets better or dies, then I am going out to California... so since "staying the same" doesn't seem like it is a possibility, I am probably California bound next week.

Man, I feel so messed up.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:16 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 4, 2004

For the love of Boobie...

I don't usually watch sports, but the Superbowl is one of those things you always hear about at work and such, so while I was hacking away at my laptop, and Christine was drawing, we had the Superbowl on as background noise. The commercials were okay (not great), the half-time show was pointless and generic, and for once I thought the game was the best part (after the second half). Oh, did I mention the half-time show?

"Hey," I said to Christine. "It looks like Janet's bodice popped open, exposing a boobie." Christine gave a noncommittal, "Really?" and I was forced to wonder if I had dreamed it up. CBS didn't say anything about it, but when the third quarter started, an announcer made a slight passing about nudity. So slight, it could have meant anything. I scoured the web, but nothing yet. About an hour later, it showed up on Fark.com. So it did happen! Oh well. Weird.

Well, I would have forgotten it right then and there, but thanks to the media, now it's all I hear about. Janet's boobie. Janet's boobie. For shame. Janet's boobie. Think of the children! Janet's boobie. Oh, give it a REST!

Yesterday, my son was watching TV with me, and we came across MSNBC, who had, of all people, Jerry Falwell commenting on Janet's boobie. MSNBC played the (blurred out) clip of the moment over and over and over again. It was so weird and so damn funny at the same time. There'd be Falwell's face, and then the clip, then the interviewer, then some wild-eyed lady, and then the clip, and then Falwell again, and then the clip, and then a spilt screen of the wild-eyed lady and Jerry, arguing about verbal nuances which took a wild spin into sexism ("You said what about boys seeing this, are you saying it's okay to show this to girls?"), and then back to the clip. It was hysterical. My son and I were laughing so hard, tears came down our faces. I mean, they just kept showing the clip, and then condemning it, and then showing the clip again! Over and over, while these clowns discussed morality of our youth. It was like watching a circus where everything was going wrong at the same time.

And the funniest part was the subject. Janet's boobie. What is the big deal? They act like someone executed a child into the flames of Hell or something. The shock, horror, and outrage are really out of proportion.

Janet was born with those. She grew them naturally, like every other woman. They serve as nourishment for babies, and are very useful as a sensual aid for sexual encounters. They belong to her, not you, Jerry Falwell. She can do with them what she pleases. You seem to have no problem that it occurred during a game known for its violence between players. A game where people physically tackle each other. Violence is okay, but show a boobie is disgraceful? Besides, the event also featured misogynous commercials for beer, an ad starring a flatulent horse, and another one for erectile dysfunction drugs. Not that *I* am complaining, but it seems kind of weird that all you can talk about is Janet's boob.

Makes me wonder who you're REALLY trying to convince, Jerry.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:13 PM EST [Link]

In the Jungle

It's been quiet for a while. You know they're out there, but are they close to you? You're not sure whether to leave your foxhole and try and find some better ground, or stay put because they won't see a moving target. Waiting is the hardest part. All you can hear are the constant chattering of the animals. You strain your ears to see if they can tell you something, anything, like where the enemies might be. You know the attacks have been picking up with frequency, but the periods in between them are not as even as they used to be. It's been months since the last gunfire.

Then, suddenly, you hear something. It sounds really close, and you wonder how it got so close without you detecting it. Then the gunfire starts, and you dive into the safety of your foxhole, and pray that the enemy doesn't throw in a grenade and take out your whole platoon. The sounds of ammunition and shouting echo from all around. It's hard to tell who is your friend and who is your enemy.

A golden bullet whizzes past your head. You have no idea if it was meant for you, or just stray gunfire; a random election based on nothing at all but where you happen to be at the time. Many men have taken that bullet. Some went on to do better things, and some ... didn't make it.

And then it is all quiet again. You live for another day. You feel yourself breathing hard, and a cold sweat smears your skin with its clammy fear. You try to refocus and count the casualties.

Yep, it was another "reorganization" today in Punkie's Tech Job. This time was lighter than in recent memory. Only a few people from the West Coast were let go, and they have until Friday to pick up their things. Some people got promoted, and some people got shuffled to new management. There are even more openings. The golden bullet missed me again, today.

So why do I feel so bad? I am sick of this Jungle, that's why.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:38 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Another icy day, another microwave oven...

Yeah, we had this winter storm that dumped about a quarter inch of ice on everything. They closed schools, I couldn't get to work, etc... becoming a routine.

For the last two days I have had a MAJOR sinus headache. I usually don't get them, but I had this painful one for about two days. It was gone by this morning, right in time for my Windows box to get hosed. Long story short, I fixed it, but I had to reinstall half my network stuff, including my connection to work. Bleah.

I got a new Microwave. Microwaves have been around since I was a wee kid. I think they called them "radar ranges" back then. Not many people had them when I was very young, but in the late 1970s, they started to show up in a few rich people's houses, and then by the early 80s, everyone had one.

Everyone but us.

My father was an electrical engineer, a fellow at IEEE. The irony was he didn't want anything technological in the house, especially if it cost him money. I grew up without a VCR, home computer, microwave, modern stereo, or any of the other stuff most of my friends had. This wasn't so bad, really, because I hated my home life for entirely different reasons.

My high school chum Kate had a microwave. It was old, too; one of the original radar ranges. I am sorry to say I blew it up with an egg experiment Kate and I dreamed up. I don't know which part was mine or hers, but we wondered just what happened to an egg in the microwave. We heard it blew up, and Kate said one of her sisters blew up a potato in the microwave, and that wasn't so bad. We put the egg in a heavy glass casserole dish, and tied the handles on with rubber bands. What we didn't know was that when an egg explodes in the microwave, it's as strong as a small bomb or at least an M80. The explosion was so strong, it ripped apart the rubber bands, and blew the knob of the glass lid right through the microwave ceiling. The outer metal shell was dented outwards. I thought it was a lost cause, so when Kate's dad found out about it, I offered to buy him a new one. The conversation went something like this:

Kate's Dad: You what?
Young Grig: We blew up an egg in the microwave, and destroyed it. I am very sorry.
Kate's Dad: Do you know how much that will cost to fix?
Young Grig: I will buy you a brand new one.
Kate's Dad: [paused incredulously]
Young Grig: I looked in the W. Bell catalog, and found a nice one the same size. I will pay for it.
Kate's dad: Y... you'd better! No, wait! You'll pay for repairs instead!
Young Grig: I think it's a lost cause. Besides, you said you thought it leaked.
Kate's Dad: That doesn't give you the right to destroy it!
Young Grig: I said I was sorry, and I will buy you a brand new one, with new features.
Kate's Dad: No you won't, you'll pay to repair this one!
Young Grig: Okay...?

Kate's dad took it out to be fixed. It cost $140 to replace the fan, and fix the interior shell. According to Kate, the repair guy had to find the rare old parts, which is why it cost so much. She also said she suspected her father wanted it to be repaired instead of replaced because he knew it would cost more. Kate's father gave me the bill, and I gave him a check for $140. He was furious when I handed him the check, and I didn't really know why. Kate later told me that he expected a fight of some kind, and that he was really upset about the whole ordeal, but couldn't do anything because I admitted to it and paid for my mistake without complaint. He probably didn't think I was taking the incident seriously. I was, but I didn't think I had any choice but to fess up and fix the problem. I guess I should have wept, told him I didn't have the money, dickered on the price, and called him an unfair bastard. I just didn't think that was right. You make a mistake, you fix it. Oh, well, he didn't stay mad for long.

The punchline is the new microwave I was planning on getting him was over $200. His stubbornness saved me a lot of money.

Lessons learned: Don't experiment in the microwave, and don't make stubborn decision calls without knowing all the variables.

Another twist in my life was that as a wedding gift, my father gave Christine and me a microwave. He also got us a TV (which still works), and our first cordless phone. Made no sense. I can't figure that man out. For a while, I thought maybe he was trying to make peace with me, but then his normal disgust and lack of family involvement threw that theory out the window. I tried for 12 years to try and make up with him because of those gifts, but in the end, I learned he pretty much hated me and that is that. Bugger all. The cordless phone was broken when we got it, I repaired it, but it kept breaking until we finally threw it out a few years later. The TV still works, though, and sits in the guest room.

The microwave was also cheap. It was a Sharp dorm microwave, with really low wattage, like 300 watts. The timer part was broken (it didn't ring when done), but even though it took a while too cook things, it did eventually cook them, and having its own turntable kept us from following the "rotate halfway through cooking" instructions. That microwave was a godsend for many years, so I thank my father for that gift (and the TV, too).

We got a new microwave when we moved to Cartwright Place in Reston in 1996. It was a whopping 800 watts, it was programmable, and cooked really, really fast. I took the microwave to work, but when I got my first tech job, they already had a microwave, so I took it home and it lay in a closet for many years. It was used sparingly in our guest kitchen when we moved to Fairfax, but when I realized it took 10 minutes to warm a slice of pizza in 2003, I knew that its life was over. I tossed it away, with a dedication and salute.

And last week, when the timer on the other one started putting out random seconds in the readout display, cooked food a lot slower than it used to, had more cold spots than the Ice Capades, and was generally looking run down... we saw a new one at BJ's and got it. A Panasonic. 1300 watts. All kinds of features. It automatically senses what food you have and heats it accordingly. It's more complicated than the old one, and I had to read the booklet that came with it to figure it out. The older one was cleaned out and put in the guest room. I mean, it still cooks food, you just have to warn guests about the cold spots.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:15 PM EST [Link]

Monday, February 2, 2004

Random odd facts about me

I had to do my Bio for Balticon's program book, and it got me thinking of a thread I was once reading about "small, little known random facts about me." So, here's my incomplete list.

I have never broken a bone. I have never been arrested, or been in jail, but I have been handcuffed in the back of a cop car, where I learned that I could pop my thumb joint and wriggle at least one hand out of a pair of handcuffs if I ever had to. I once made Carl Sagan smile. I played one season of Little League, badly, when I was 8. I am allergic to corn, beans, and eggs. I secretly want to build Hot Rods. I like Bluegrass, and I want to one day mix it with Techno Acid music. I quit Boy Scouts because I hated my troop members, not any of the leadership. I was mostly colorblind from age 11 to 14, and still have very poor night vision. I have talked myself out of being stabbed twice. I used to be relied upon to talk people down from acid trips (it's never been needed since 1992) because of my "calm demeanor."

When I go to Hawaii, I plan to visit a volcano, and give my respects to Pele. I once achieved a state of "Delta Sleep," were I could sleep 1-2 hours a day and still feel refreshed, and after a few weeks of that, I nearly went insane because of lack of REM sleep. My record (by my own attempt) without food, water, and sleep was 3 days with no water, 4 days no food and no sleep when I was 13, just to see how long I could go. I once lived in a haunted apartment. I have this odd fascination with late 50s, early 60s hip culture with Beatniks, Tiki decor, and Rat Pack Vegas. I have lost my faith that there really is a Loch Ness Monster. I am resistant to poison ivy, and have never broken out in it, even after prolonged contact and hard rubbing. When I was a kid, horses used to panic in my presence. I was attacked by dogs several times as a child, and used to be terrified of them. Twice, dogs have nearly ripped apart my chin (I still have scars).

I enjoy classical music, but it is so complicated, I find it's hard to relax to, and it distracts me. I am fascinated by deep sea creatures. I think Liberace was cool. I am an earth-science geek, especially the fields of geology, paleontology, meteorology, oceanography, and astronomy (of course). I was once accused of being a glutton, and eating raw cookie dough out of a tube, and was very upset by this accusation, yet a few years afterwards, I went out and bought a tube to see what that would be like, and now I love raw cookie dough out of a tube, dammit! I hate raisins, despite several attempts in my life to try and like them. I am happy I am not allergic to antibiotics because buddy, I need them about once every two years, and they have pulled me out of so many serious illnesses and infections since I was a child, that I consider it a staunch ally in my universe. I have a sizable stuffed animal collection. I auditioned for a McDonald's commercial when I was 13, but didn't get a callback.

I once had a mysterious disease when I was 10, where I broke out like the measles, but had no other symptoms (no fever, felt fine, etc.). They never did figure out what I had, but it went away in a week, and came back a few times over the next few years if I ever got overheated (like a heat rash, but tiny pinpoint dots of bright red). I like woodcut drawings from the 1800s. I have an uneasy peace with Disco, since I went a long time hating it when I was a kid. I used to be an Algebra and Spanish tutor when I was in high school, and made some good money for a while. For three years, I also used to be an assistant to a crazy-cool Spanish teacher from Argentina. Yet somehow, my Spanish is terrible, and I can't hold a decent conversation with a Spanish-speaking person. Caray!

Posted by Punkie @ 02:27 PM EST [Link]

Sunday, February 1, 2004

Photo Memories of Being Kidnapped to a Party

I suck at taking pictures. I have said that before. I'm not doing this to be all martyr-like and self-deprecating to be cool, it is a statement of fact I have to repeat so I remind myself that I have to do something about it. It is starting to pay off. Not that I have cool pictures yet, but I have started to at least realize if I want to STOP sucking at taking pictures, I have to actually do something about it. Like analyze why I think I suck, try and get some outsider opinion, and fix what I might be doing wrong. I got that chance last night.

Like I have said before, my life has twists and turns. Constantly. Jan 31st was a type of day I like to think of like Biorhythm Triple-Zero Crossovers: just everything converges on one day (those of you who studied New Age in the late 70s know what I am talking about). I was invited to three separate parties (two of them birthday parties), but I also had a lot of home tasks to do, including getting my hair cut, shopping for badly needed supplies (including a new microwave oven), get the car emissions inspected, and other mundane home stuff that have fallen by the wayside due to sheer neglect. When faced with so many decisions, my family always comes first, so I had decided to do all my home tasks, and not attend any parties. I sent my regrets to my friends, and set a rough plan for Saturday.

So.

Christine and I set out for a busy day of work. I got my hair cut (and I feel SO much better; I hate long hair), but while we were eating lunch at Appleby's, Christine got very sick. We don't think it was the restaurant, because she felt sick before we ate, and she's been having bad problems with her new sinus medicine (she's had a chronic infection since... oh, 1989), but this was the worst bout of sickness she had in a while, and we were forced to go home. I didn't mind, since I felt really tired, and there was all kinds of stuff to do at home anyway.

Then Sean IM'd me. He was going to Kris Trader's party, and REALLY wanted us to come. Christine said she wasn't feeling well, but said CR and I could go. So, less than an hour later, CR and I were packed in Sean's Beetle, along with Sean and his daughter Scarlet, and driving to nowheresville, MD. Some place north of Gaithersburg. At someone's house I barely knew. Just an hour earlier, I thought I'd be doing finances, laundry, and cleaning the kitchen and now I was playing Lunch Money with Bruce, Sean, and Sean's 9-year old daughter, Chance.

The house was at "Brad and Colleen's," a couple I had met maybe once briefly before. The house was HUGE (I'd say 1.5 times my house), and NICE, not like "fandom nice" but like "antique dealer with a hint of fandom nice." Apparently, the house was custom built, but the former owners got busted in a drug charge, and so someone else bought it, refurbished it, and resold it to Brad and Colleen. The house was probably only a few years old, and had some typical "new-home" smell about it. Nice floors, nice furnishings, drop-dead gorgeous kitchen, vaulted ceilings, and more modern appliances than your average model home. Very nice. I felt very outclassed by the house. "Wow..." I heard someone say, "ADULTS live here!" Heh.

Brad's parents used to deal in antiques, apparently, and so did he for a while. He had a lot of swords, shields, and medieval weapons scattered about. He also had this... impressive hand-carved throne. I say impressive because I have personally seen the throne Mary, Queen of Scots, had used, and it wasn't nearly as nice. There was also a huge metal sculpture of a gryphon in one corner, and two 1700s/1800s Quack medical devices that used the modern marvel, "electricity" to cure all ills. One was the size of your average stereo system. That house had a lot to look at.

The party had a few people I knew, but not very many. People I knew were Sean and his family, Kris Trader, Bruce, Cheryl, Mark Mandolia, an a ton of people who used to be in Prune Bran: Chris Ross, Gadams, Allon Stern (who taught me my first Unix), and all of their various wives, fiancees, or girlfriends. Allon and his wife had a CUTE baby! But apart from that, I spent half the time alone, or trying to be part of other people's conversations, and no fitting in too well. Not that I got snubbed in any way, everyone was very nice, but it was kind of weird.

Louann left with Kieran (their 2-year old son) around 9, and left Sean, Scarlet, Chance, CR, and me at the house. I played a little Soul Calibur II on the X-Box, read some Dilbert, had a few random conversations, drank some fruity drinks that Cheryl had made, and then we had the birthday cake candle blowout thing.

Which leads me back to the photography thing. See, instead of having the camera in my jacket, where it wouldn't get used, I carried it with me, which was annoying. Eventually, I strapped the case onto my belt, which added even more gadgets to my hip along with my Leatherman and cell phone. But I did get at least four pictures (one which Sean took of me and Kieran), and one of them was Kris blowing out her cake. I haven't seen how that turned out, but I am proud I at least remembered to have the camera out for an action shot.

The problem with this digital camera, however, is that it is a battery vampire (goes through 4 AA batteries every 40 pictures, or every 25 if you use rechargeables), and when it gets near the end of its battery life, the response time is very slow. It also takes terrible pictures in low light, where everything comes out orangish-umber, sometimes blurred with a slight look of a double exposure. It gets worse if the flash doesn't go off. It also doesn't go off instantaneously; there's like a 1-second delay from pressing the button to the actual picture taking. This makes action shots even harder.

But I got one!

Pictures I wish I had gotten:
- Cheryl making fruity drinks
- Kids playing Soul Calibur II
- The *huge* Apples to Apples game
- Allon's baby
- Brad's marvelous antiques

We left around 1am, but had to wait a long time in the car for the windows to defrost. Apparently, Sean's VR6 has some problems, and he's going to try and get a new car once he gets a stable job and holds it for a while (he's probably going to have one in a few weeks, he's been accepted, and is now awaiting clearance; yay!).

I wish I was able to get to Pocky's Birthday Party, which was one the same date. I had already told him that I was unable to make it, but now I feel guilty that I went to Kris', but not Pocky's as well (Mark had gone, he said it was fun, too). Oh well.

This morning, I woke up with a HORRIBLE sinus headache. This lasted all day, and I had to do what errands I could (including shopping for a new microwave) with this throbbing torture. I can't take sinus medication because of my high blood pressure, so I have to drink warm fluids to alleviate the sinus pressure. Ugh.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:20 PM EST [Link]