Monday, May 31, 2004

Weekend In Memorial: Balticon, Barbecues, and Such

I would like to note that apart from having no roses, this weekend was the best weekend I have had in a while where nothing really went wrong. The only issue was that I have finally accepted my roses, which I have cared for lovingly for the last 3 years, all died sometime during the winter, and didn't come back. And after one of them that had been weak grew really strong last year. I cut into the root ball, and it was dead wood to the core. Oh well. At least new roses are only $9-12 a root.

Balticon 38
Ah, Balticon. That was the big thing this weekend. First sci-fi con since Evecon, and possibly the only one I'll go to for years to come. Balticon has always had a soft spot in my heart because it was my first "big con." I went to Balticon 18 for like 6 hours, but Balticon 19 was my first "con away from home." Hard to believe it's on #38. Last week, my friend Ron posted a letter about how Balticon had gone flat, and I said, "Well, you're not the only one to say that," but honestly? It didn't feel flat this time. I think a lot of FanTek congoers, who would have otherwise been saving their money for Castlecon, came to Balticon, because I saw a LOT more FanTek people there than I had seen at a Balticon in the last few years. Some of us sighed lovingly to the FanTek cons ending, but most of us said, "At least we won't have to be around that annoying Cheryl!" [just kidding, Cheryl, we love you! PPbthbthbttthh!] But seriously, many expected Bruce and Cheryl to show, but I know that both of them are busy with work. It was good to see Albedo, Moggy, Kat, Bomber, Kris, and a slew of FanTek members artists. I will try and have a FanTek party for you next year, I promise!

The panels, for the most part, went really well. Especially the anime and tech panels I did. Into to Anime, Anime Sci-Fi, and Anime Saturation all played to a packed room. I got to know L. Jagi Lamplighter a lot more, too. The Open Source panel was really a success, even though it was in an overheated board room. Almost all my free disks were snatched up, and even my handouts went, which reminded me I should have put my website on them... oh well. Not only were the audience good listeners, but they also had awesome suggestions. The panels on Fandom I did were a LOT of fun, and I got to know Carl Capri as a GREAT moderator. I also made mental note of some of the wisdom imparted from small press authors. The only panel that could have been better was the one of Genre Erotica, which had a scant audience, and only two of the panel people, I thought, were appropriate for the panel: Stephanie Brooks and Sheri Morgan, both published erotica authors. Me? What the hell was I doing there? I did try and push this new gaming supplement, "Naughty and Dice", which Kory gave me as an aide for the panel. If you like RPG, this book is slick, because it's like a "Player's Handbook" to RPG sex in a format that it common to all Open Gaming standards. This book is selling out all over the place, and it was only because of Kory that I was able to borrow a copy for the panel at all. This book is going to be big, and I think it long, long overdue (although, I doubt it would have made it in the 1980s or 1990s due to its... nature).

I actually sold two books as well! MSD will be selling my books at other cons as well, and later this year, I think I will have them publish my second Punk walrus book, which has been "in the can" for like 4 years now. The Tony Bumper book will still be offered to major publishers, however. It's just that MSD is trustworthing to the Punk Walrus series, my baby. :)

I didn't get to sit and lounge with many friend during the con because I was doing so many panels during the evening. I got in late Friday, got my badge, and went to my first series of panels. At opening ceremonies, I was both surprised and delighted that I was one of only a few people mentioned as a guest, with a lot of appalause when I stood up. Gees, thanks guys! I was floating on a frickin' cloud there for a while. I had assumed I would be one in a list of like 50 people mentioned as a byline, but there was the main guest, the art guest, the fan guest, then me and a few other people. I even got a spotlight... wow! I thought my ego would burst. I had to remember the lesson Sherill Abramson taught me back at EveCon 4: "So what?" Maybe we were selected because we were the only ones who actually submitted bios. In any case, I also want to say, again, kudos to Greg Wright, who did programming for Balticon. He did an awesome job. Yeah, I got double booked for an hour there, but I did half of one panel and then half of another panel, so I worked it out. No biggie.

Christine did the night shift ops, alternate of day shift, which was done by the loveable Anne-Marie. Also, I thought Dale Arnold did a great job as con chair, although he jokingly took me "for taking a job I'd never have the courage to do" comment and said, "Oh no, you mean we'll never guilt you into it?" Heh.

So, yeah, I had a GREAT time. Here are some random memories:

- Late Friday night, my friend Steve Weese (and his pal, whose name I can't remember...) and I sat at an abandoned flyer table, and sold "Misinformation" for a $1.00. We actually made $2.75. Then we told "Bald-faced Lies" for a while, because I got bored and ran out of ridiculous lies, like "Daisy Duke was actually the French Prime Minister in 1944," and "David Hasslehoff in in league with giant Spanish spiders."

- Opening Ceremonies had a really awesome intro did to Weird Al Yankovic's "Slime Creatures from Outer Space." The aliens were people covered in fake grass skirts, with giant Styrofoam eyeballs on stalks from green straw hats. Very funny, and for an amateur production, very well pulled off.

- There was a film crew doing a documentary on fandom. They interviewed me and CR on separate occasions. There was also a girl named Gene (Jean?) who spoke with me about Fandom for a while, since she's going to do her doctoral these on it. Neat!

- The only thing I bought from the merchant's room was another belt from Larry Sands (who also does the Maryland Renn Faire). I still have the other 3 I have bought from him since 1986, but I needed one with a wider band more suitable for jeans. I almost bought a stuffed Cthulhu in an MIB outfit, but I reminded myself money was tight.

- Balticon was PACKED. On Saturday, it was difficult to get thought the hallways because there were so many people. I think the lack of FanTek cons and the cross-promotion at anime cons has helped bolster their ranks. I also saw a lot more younger fen, which was great.

- I was mistaken for Gorm. "I know you from Evecon! I love your chainmail class!" a fan of Gorm's said. "Uh, I am Punkie, you are thinking of Gorm..." She looked embarrassed for a second, and then said, "Can you get me in touch with Gorm?" Hehehe...

- Christine sold almost all the art pieces but one in the art show. One even made it to auction! Yay, Christine!

- It became immediately apparent that my theory, "Not many people read my blog," based on the lack of comments, was in error. Everyone told me about what they had been reading here, and how stories I write have touched them in many ways. The word "courage" came up a few times, and I don't want people to think I am brave writing down my thoughts, I think I am just too stupid to know better. Some expressed raw hatred for "Ted," but I tried to explain who Ted was, how I know him, and why he's like that. Don't hate Ted, guys. He doesn't know good attention from bad attention, and he's a frustrated gay Catholic who has to do on-call tech for an evil medical company. I mean, I have seen the scope of his life, and man, I'd be an ass too, if my life sucked that much. Many people were very happy I decided to open up a blog on LiveJournal last week. The Punkadyne LiveJournal Blog is highly technical (which is why I keep it separate from this one). But Christine became annoyed because people told her, "Oh, I know about what's been happening, it's in Punkie's blog." Er... well, I'm still writing it down, darnit. Just stop saying that to Christine, guys. :)

- Oh, and again, her name is "Christine," not "Punkie's wife." Make a note of that.

- Liz, the party czar, gives great backrubs. Also, because of her, I have learned that "jouster sweat" is one of the most vile smells imaginable to come from your boyfriend. Something to do with a mixture of sweat, rust, and horse.

- WB was giving out freebies in the form of Harry Potter Lego sets of the Knight Bus. We got quite a few in Ops, and made slightly raunchy things out of Legos.

Memorial Day
I had to work in the morning (the Internet never sleeps), but that went by quickly. Our friend April and her boyfriend Andy were housesitting, as I had mentioned before. They are staying over today, and we're going try and barbecue, although they are predicting a lot of storms all day. Sean, Lou, and the kids are also coming. The cicadas seem to be dying off, and I have to tell you, in my area of Fairfax, they were a bust. Not many to be found. I saw more in downtown Baltimore (where did they come from, did they fly into the city?) than I had here. I even had a few land on me when we went outside in Baltimore.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:50 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Ask and ye shall receive...

Dog sitter problem: fixed. Like a bad dues ex machina from a poorly written Nickelodeon episode (on any show they produce), after I posted the blog, my friend April from Boston sent me an e-mail asking if she could spend the weekend at my house with a friend to show him around DC, even though we're away going to Balticon. Would we mind? Hell, no! April has stayed at our house before, and she's gone to a beach trip with us, too. Wow, what luck!

Also, two of Christine's staff who were not able to come and help out with security got out of what was preventing them from coming (mostly job-related issues), so Christine has a minimal staff now.

And Greg Wright, who is doing a bang-up job on program planning at Balticon, has been notified of the conflict. There's also introducing me, along with all the other guests, in Opening Ceremonies. That should be cool.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:55 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Lack of manpower

Well, seeing as I am feeling better than I have in weeks, I am in a fairly good mood, despite more problems going on.

We're having problems finding a dog sitter for Balticon. Our usual sitter is gone that weekend in California and our usual backups are either going to Balticon or have some religious/family obligation to fulfill. On top of that, most of Christine's staff for the night shift has either had to back out due to work-related issues or are whereabouts unknown. I got my final, final schedule for Balticon (the one sent to the printers), and it has me doing two panels at the same time in different rooms. The dogsitter one we have two possible leads, the security we're hoping for volunteers, and I'll just miss one of the panels on Friday at 10pm.

At work, I am been terribly busy trying to catch up, because I was sick all last week. I worked some of the time over the weekend to catch up on a new release of my software, which was buggy come Monday morning, but I got the bugs fixed, and this morning the reports are coming in pretty rosy. I'm still behind on fixing user errors. My main job is making sure several hundred machines do all their tests every night, and sometimes people who set them up do so incorrectly. The worst offenders are people who use old images of test machines. See, we have a ton of generic machines, and we put "images" of the OS and software we're testing on them as one big file. When we want to test VendorA with SoftwareB on PlatformX, we have an ABX image which gets copied over to the hard drive and, wala! A whole new system. The problem is with Microsoft Operating systems (like XP), they have so many security flaws and patches, we have to make sure the images have all the patches, too. And some people, instead of using the stock updated images, have their own image which they haven't updated in weeks, maybe even months. So they use that instead, and then we have an XP machine out there with some vulnerability exploit, and that causes all kinds of problems. On top of that, I release software that monitors the machines and makes sure the data goes to a central server every morning, and that may not have been updated in an older image, either. Very often I have to hand-update some machine with my "Best of Punkie's Software 2003" still on it, with links to servers that no longer exist since the last lab move. I have software that auto-updates itself, but sometimes the image is so old, auto-updating no longer works effectively. Then, to make things interesting, we have one or more people (we call them gremlins) who are mischievous and do stupid crap like removing everything from a startup folder, unplug LAN or power cables, mess with or remove essential files on the server, and so on. The software stuff is often hard to trace, because with hundreds of machines, we have mass logins, so finding out who messed with something is very, very hard and time consuming. And they always deny it anyway, even though a majority of "issues" narrow down to two people. The hardware stuff is almost impossible, because even though we have badge-activated doors and locks, they never seem to find who is doing this, even though we have evidence someone tampered with the equipment. We keep threatening "webcam." Thank goodness stealing hasn't been a problem since we moved to the new computer room, though. That was a total pain in the ass. "Where the hell did Server 24xyp go? There's just a hole with some dangling wires in the rack ... god damn it!" Back then, we had a blank check for hardware and a lot of backup equipment, but it was still a pain because we had to waste a day's work to rebuild a new server. Anyway, as you can imagine, being out of it for over a week has left a lot of little errors here and there.

I have been playing a lot of Sim City 4, and finally got the system down:

1. Build lots of farms and a lot of low-density residential places
2. Build low-density industrial places when people fill up residential
3. Never buy any public utility until absolutely critical (like only build police stations after the crime rate drives people out of your city)

This was a breakthrough, because when I first got this game over a year ago, none of my cities ever survived, and I gave up. I started playing it again because our area has had a lot of development, and I needed some kind of cathartic thing to get through it.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:55 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Mowing against all odds

Today was a bad day to be bound and determined to mow my lawn. On top of being weak from a recovering illness, the weather shot up to 95 degrees, with threat of thunderstorms, and all morning, the phone was ringing with various things. Nate and Jen came over, the get Jen's belated birthday gift. It was a stained glass art piece that Christine had made for her, but during Jen's birthday, it wasn't quite finished. Then we got a call from our movie contact, asking, "Hey, want to go to the premiere of 'Prisoner of Azkaban' today?" So I sent Christine and CR to go see it, even though I REALLY would have liked to have gone. But I had to stay, my lawn was now past knee-height, it was going to rain all this week, except the weekend, which is Balticon. There was only one window of opportunity, and I had to seize it! Then our fiend BJ came over to pick up his hat he left here last weekend. He has been without air conditioning for a month! He looked terrible.

On top of mowing in this horrible heat, with my normal asthma problems, my CD player wasn't working properly, nor could I find the proper headphones, so I had to mow without music. Then I came across three baby birds that had fallen from their nest. I couldn't see where the nest was, so I kept putting them in the crook of the tree I assumed they had fallen from. Whereupon they'd senselessly fall out of the tree again a few minutes later. Finally, they stayed. Now, when I have grass clippings, I use them as mulch, but it's hard to put down mulch when your mulching rake has been stepped on and broken by someone who swears he didn't do it. So I decided to use the hoe, but the head fell off (it was an old hoe), so I had to use my smaller leaf rake, but the screw that held the pole onto the head fell off and the rake part wouldn't stay on. So I had to use the big yard rake, which was really a pain in the ass to use around hedges. It was like using a shovel to eat pudding out of a small bowl. But I managed.

It took me about 6 hours, when you total the times I took to rest, drink water, and wait for BJ to come get his hat. Part of the delay was the grass was so high, I had to empty the bag at least half a dozen times because it was generating so many clippings, mulching would have just left dead clumps of grass everywhere. Keep in mind I also haven't been able to eat properly because I can't chew. So I hadn't eaten all day. Luckily, I found some ice cream and chili in the freezer, but the chili burned my mouth, and contained beans, which I am allergic to (I lack the enzyme to digest certain fibers), and the ice cream contained dairy, which I can't have on an empty stomach. So I had to do half the backyard with horrible stomach cramps, and constant trips to the toilet. You have to understand, at this point, it was the principle of the thing. If I couldn't do it today, I wouldn't be able to do it for 2 more weeks, and by that point, my lawn will have turn brown and died. Already, there are patches of yellow-green in my backyard where the grass got so high, it choked off the sunlight to the ground. But I think I got it in the nick of time, and those patches will spring back to life.

My tomato plants look great, by the way. All of them are surviving vigorously, which is a bit TOO successful, because I was counting on at least half of them dying by now. My garden will be a huge green mound by the end of the year.

Hope my friends like tomatoes.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:19 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Punkie Gets Programmed!

Well, we got up this morning, and we were like, "No way... nothing is getting done today. Bleah..." I didn't even leave the bed until 3pm. I feel so lazy. But Christine's shoulder hurts so bad, she can barely move, I am still partially sick and my cough sounds like I'm scraping pancake batter from the inside of a metal pipe, and CR is coughing but claiming he's not. We're almost under quarantine or something. We have no real meals in the house, and by "no meals," I mean we have food, but we're missing essential ingredients to make a meal. Like we're out of bread, so no sandwiches. Out of milk, so no recipes that require milk, no eggs, no salt... you get the idea. Worst? Out of trash bags and dishwashing soap. Our kitchen looks like the end of the party out of the movie "16 Candles." I keep expecting Michael Anthony Hall to be stumbling around my house.

I got my final Balticon programming schedule. Next weekend, we're on our way! For those coming to Balticon, and wishing to see me, I will be doing the following (this schedule is "finalized, but subject to the usual last minute changes" so check your program book):

Fri 5:00 PM Introduction to Anime: Every time I do this panel at Balticon, one person ends up dominating the panel, and since I am not moderator, I can't do much about it. I won't name names, but it has been brought up to me before. Last year was really bad because the girl who stampeded through topics never let the audience participate or ask questions, she just crammed in parts of DVDs and VHS tapes and left the audience confused. I will do what I can to really focus on the people in the room, and not the woman shouting about the AV equipment.
Fri 9:00 PM Is Fandom Still A Community?: Yes. Come see why I say that!
Fri 10:00 PM Fans: Are You Hopelessly Typical?: Mostly. I covered this when I did the "Politically Incorrect" panel a few years ago. They never did this panel again, and I have been forced to wonder if my topics were too controversial?
Sat 5:00 PM Linux and Open Source: An Introduction (as Moderator) Well, you all know how I am about this. The famous Paul Fischer will also be on the panel.
Sat 6:00 PM Beyond Toonami: Really Cool SF&F Anime: I'll be praising the works of the some of the greats.
Sat 8:00 PM Panels from Hell!: I have a ton of stories. I hope to tell two, like "Dick Preston: Any panel with him, even if he's just in the audience, because of a panel run by Dick Preston, and thank God he's interesting," and "Impromptu Sketches with a shy audience and one person who should have been shy but wasn't." Unless she's in the audience (I see her still to this day at cons). Then I plan to back it up with, "A Squid, a can of Tuna, and a bottle of Wesson Oil - Punkie Explains: When you are put on a panel with no warning, no time to prepare, and an exhausted Head of Programming desperately trying to fill time slots."
Sat 11:00 PM Genre Erotica: I am going to get my freak on! Okay, no I'm not. I don't even know why I am on this panel, but I fear backing down will threaten my manhood.
Sun 11:00 AM Has the Anime craze reached saturation?: Yes! No! Yes! Elmer Season!

Posted by Punkie @ 03:45 PM EST [Link]

Friday, May 21, 2004

Punkie Scary's Busy, Busy Weekend

Remember Ed Sullivan? There always used to be an act where there were people plate spinning, and they played this circus-like music while a team of two people kept all the plates spinning on poles, trying not to have a plate fall down and crash. That music is playing in my head right now.

Apparently, going back to work yesterday was a bad idea. I got sick again, and my fever was so out of control, I was shivering, then sweating, then hot, then cold... I took some Tylenol and that helped, but it kept me awake until 5am. So I didn't go to work today, and stayed in bed until just a few hours ago. I feel a LOT better, but I am still woozy and out of it. On top of this, I think I have some kind of infected splinter or something jammed under a tooth on in the gums on the "good side" of my mouth. My "good side" is so called because the right side of my mouth had some of the molars smashed out after bad dental work, which got infected, requiring two root canals, then after I spent $$$ to get that fixed, I was struck in the face by a guy carrying a ladder as I was exiting an elevator, smashing all the repair work. All within a few months of each other in 1996. So, I have a horrible, jagged gap in my right side, which means my left side is the one that does most of the chewing. Yes, I could get bridgework, and when I win the Lottery to pay the $3000 (and that's after the insurance) needed to reconstruct that side of my mouth, I'll let you know. Oh, and it's behind the line of $3000 for a basic set of hearing aids so I stop going "what?" all the time. Right now, I hope the dentist visit is "only" a few hundred dollars, because it's very painful to chew anything at this point. I don't think it's a cavity, because the pain goes to zero if I don't chew for a few hours, and it's not affected at all by hot or cold.

Tomorrow is one of those "triple zero days," as I like to call it for some reason. No, not because of some new-age biorhythm bad luck triple-line cross thing, no, it's my name for those days when everyone schedules an event you want to go to. Like tomorrow is the first post-Katsucon staff meeting. And the FanTek Lego party. And my friend Sean's son Keiran's Birthday party. And, I am still not feeling good, Christine's shoulder still hurts like crazy, and we haven't done any shopping. And the lawn needs mowed like... my yard looks like an abandoned field. The grass is knee-high. So I have to cram all this in on one weekend. It's gonna rain tonight, so there's no point in mowing until Sunday anyway (while the temps are in the 90s!). We're going to try and fit in the Katsu meeting (in Laurel) at 12:30, stay only for an hour, drive to Keiran's (in Reston) by 3:00, then I'll do shopping, and then hopefully I won't be so worn out that I can't get up at 9am to do the mowing before the daylight gets too hot and my asthma kicks in. Unless Christine shoulder hurts so bad, she can't drive.

I really wanted to rest this weekend, after being nearly sick all week. Crap.

Posted by Punkie @ 07:42 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Men are from Earth, Women are from Earth

Pure and simple. If I hear one more flagrant stereotype of a sex again today, I will scream. This rant was started when someone posted a thread about this woman selling all her newlywed husband's "Magic: The Gathering" cards. Now, in this auction, she clearly states that he has asked her to do this because they don't have much space in their new apartment, and he states he doesn't game much anymore. People on this board claimed he's been pussywhipped, like no one would ever dare sell his MTG cards.

I have no idea if he is or is not "pussywhiped" (a term meaning a husband who lets his wife do anything to him), but I find it depressing that so many people would automatically think so. In my case, when I got married, Christine never asked for me to sell my old D&D stuff, but there have been many times I have considered selling it. When you are married, you start a new life together. And for me, gaming was an excuse to be social, and now that I was married, I could spend a lot of my previous free social time with my new wife. I wouldn't have married her if I couldn't stand her. It makes me wonder why some people even get married.

A lot of men make assumptions about women that aren't correct, and women make a lot of assumptions about men that are weird, too. I once thought of doing a performance art film based on stereotypes. The scene would be a pink-themed living room. There is a man, a woman, and a small child. The man is fat, balding, and drooling. He is wearing a baseball cap, tank top, boxer shorts, mismatched socks, and is sitting on the sofa, holding the remote and scratching his balls. The woman is in a pink frilly robe with her hair in curlers, she's behind the sofa, holding a rolling pin, and sobbing. The kid is wearing only a diaper, and picking his nose vigorously.

Man: [loudly] DUUUH...! DUUUH...! DUUUH...! DUUUH...! DUUUH...!
Woman: [in rhythm] WAAAH...! WAAAH...! WAAAH...! WAAAH...! WAAAH...!
Kid: [pounds floor like chimp] AIIIEE!!! AIIIEE!!! AIIIEE!!! AIIIEE!!! AIIIEE!!!

It would just be this for an hour.

What's made it worse is this "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" crap. I have watched a few shows where this guy who wrote the series goes on and on about stuff, using the same vague definitions as dime store astrologers. If I were to write a book, it's be like a pamphlet, and I wouldn't sell very many copies. Here's my relationship advice, In no real order:

- Respect each other's opinions
- Pick your battles
- Hold no secrets from each other
- Communicate constantly
- Praise more that criticize

No matter what sex they are.

The biggest errors I have ever seen or made is based on this assumption: "If I do this, my partner will think this..." I still make that mistake from time to time; I'm not perfect. But my marriage has lasted a long and fairly trouble-free 15 years because we're both logical and pretty rational people. I could not imagine wanting to marry someone I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with. I wanted a partner. So did she. Yes, sometimes we do fight, but it never lasts long.

I find a lot of relationships fail because one has made some pretty incorrect assumptions, who temporarily changed who they are simply because they anted to attract a certain person. If you don't wear makeup normally, and hate to wear makeup, you shouldn't use makeup to attract a guy because when you stop wearing it, he might not be attracted to you anymore. If you are a guy who wants adventure woman, so you hang out around the ski chalet picking up snow bunnies, don't be surprised that she still wants to continue her life of skiing. If the guy sleeps around, chances are, he'll sleep around after marriage, too. If you date based only on looks, you'll be disappointed when the looks change with age. First, you have to determine what you really want, not what society dictates. There are also those who make false assumptions like "Asian women make the best wives," or "Redheads are good in bed." Truth is, Asians and redheads makes the same wifey/sexy makeup as any other group of people.

I have met so many women and men that "defy the stereotype" that I just assume that we're all equaled out in the end. You can make some generalizations based on culture, but those are never reliable enough to be effective or useful for picking a life partner. And the worst has to be those who think that marriage will change a spouse:

When a woman takes a man to the altar, as she goes down the isle, she will sing a hymn: "Isle altar hymn!" - Benny Hill

If the guy games when you married him, he'll probably still game afterwards. If she has a big social life, she'll probably keep those friends. If you don't accept the person as they are, don't keep the relationship up. You'll only hurt each other in the end. I have seen so many bad relationships linger like a dragging corpse because each one hopes the other will change, and for reasons of basic insecurity, hate to give up what they have worked so hard for, because who knows when another partner would come along and accept them for who they are? Well, they don't accept you for who you are now, what's the difference? Give up the sure loss for at least a chance for something better.

But in this case, they guy admit he hasn't used the cards in 5 years, and he had his wife sell them because she knew Ebay better than he did. But a lot of guys (and even a few girls) in the thread wouldn't believe his testimony. "Testimony of a whipped man," they say. Without even knowing these people. Some of the comments are just outrageous, like "It takes up that much space in the closet for 2 binders and two small boxes of cards? She prolly needs to make room for her stuffed animals or dolly collection," and "this horrible woman has found some niche of her new husband's life that connects him to the old ways, and she's out to destroy it." No proof. Now, if the listing said, "We're married, and it's time to get rid of the child's toys. My lazy-ass husband is all whiny and won't sell, but I will do it for him, just like everything else." Then, THEN, I would believe that she's manipulative. But so many people are so quick to judge.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:50 PM EST [Link]

Flying Turtles

One day in 1998, I was walking home from work when something whizzed past my ear from behind and narrowly missed me. I watched it bounce into the soccer field far in front of me. I turned around, half thinking some jerkoff tossed stuff at me from the road behind me, but I didn't see any cars that looked like they contained such hooligans. I then went to investigate what I thought was a rock, and discovered it was a turtle shell. I watched it for a few minutes, wondering if a turtle would come out, but none did, so I concluded it was a dead turtle, perhaps chipped like a tiddlywink from the road. I took it home, and placed it on the couch next to my backpack, with the intent of showing it to CR when he got home from school.

About an hour later, I noticed my cats were REALLY interested in something on the couch, and when I went to look, I saw the turtle was alive, and moving around the couch with a bad limp. Christine totally fell in love with this turtle, and we named it Marie Curie after the famous scientist. We had this turtle for a few months until her leg healed. We kept it in an old Reptile tank that our friend Rogue once kept her Boa in. All Marie would eat was cherries for some reason, which I am sure was bad for her, but she wouldn't eat the turtle pellets or any other fresh veggies or worms we got her. She did lay two eggs, confirming she was female, but the eggs were sterile.

The big joke, however, was how we got Marie. People kidded about turtles flying at me and I think some people thought I was making this all up. Some people made jokes about turtles parachuting from trees and such. Considering I almost died in the manner of Aeschylus Well, here's proof it can happen.

In cicada news I guess no news is good news. I saw one live cicada in our yard a few days ago, and both dogs sniffed it crawling through the grass with great interest for a minute or so. Then they sort of gave up because it didn't do anything. I have seen a few shells, but no more than I usually see this time of year. On quiet nights, I can hear the whir in the background, but it's far away. I have seen more shells on trees in wooded areas, but if I didn't know a swarm was coming, I'd would never have thought anything unusual was happening. On a public list, someone said they were "swarming Fairfax," but she must have a very localized swarm. Maybe our area is nothing but late bloomers. I feel hesitant about declaring this swarm a bust, because that seems like tempting fate, and I am not so sure I want to see a swarm of them again like I saw in 1987.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:45 AM EST [Link]

Life improves

I keep saying it is by will alone I made it to work today. I am only *at* work because I feel slightly less lousy than yesterday, and hope to feel even better later today. Hey, it could happen! The biggest problem is that one of the side-effects I get from antibiotics is slight dizziness and profuse sweating, and add that to my clogged head, and I am feeling really out of sorts. I glad to see that so far, nothing has gone terribly awry in my absence, which means my automation thingees are working very well, and I don't have run around fixing crap like I used to.

There is actually good news in my life. The first bit is a friend of mine who just went to a non-US friendly country (that shall remain nameless) returned safely. She was only there for two weeks, but things are not so stable where she went, if you get my drift. I was worried sick about her, and now she's home and safe and actually had a good time. The second bit of good news is Christine got a raise! The first in 4 years! And it's was significant, too, almost 10%. This will really help curb our longer term money woes.

Christine also went to the Balticon meeting yesterday, which she was not aware was a "meet the hotel" sort of meeting until she got there. It was her, and four other BSFS members meeting with 7 hotel staff, including head of hotel security. Christine has now officially run more con-realted things than I have. She's running night ops through Saturday night, and Sara is running it Sunday night (due to work and dog-sitting issues, we can only stay Fri-Sun). She got a copy of the hotel contract, and this is the first one I have actually seen. The Balticon contract was also there, so we knew what we were entitled to. Christine keeps thinking, "What am I doing with this? How did I get into such an important job? What if they discover I'm a fraud?" What I keep telling her is, "No one really knows what they are doing. We all just make it up as we go along. Your strength is common sense, which is why FanTek, Katsucon, and Balticon trust you so much in charge."

Posted by Punkie @ 09:16 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I am still sick. Bleah.

My lungs are finally starting to clear up, and I am not wheezing as much. My cough is still very deep and wet, but I think I have finally broken the fever. Last night, though, the fever was really bad. I was aching all over and burning up. I slept from about 5pm yesterday to 1pm today, with breaks only to go to the bathroom or drink more water.

CR and Christine are also sick, which sucks, not only because I care about their well-being, but because I have to kind of take care of myself, like I did when I was a kid, which makes me kind of depressed.

Posted by Punkie @ 07:19 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

On the road to recovery

This ENT thing has totally kicked me in the ass. I went to the doctor's yesterday, and while he didn't think it was bronchitis, he did say I was pretty sick and gave me anti-biotics. I have always had a poor resistance to ENT infections, and I am not sure why. Thank God I an not allergic to penicillin. I decided to stay home from work today so I could get better, and I don't want to sneeze and hack lung butter over my coworkers. Blecch.

Balticon is coming up, and I am trying to prepare for it as best I can. They sent all the program participants a letter saying they were trying something new with programming this year, so I am kind of curious how this will pan out. Basically they asked us all, "What do YOU want to see?" because a lot of sci fi cons are reporting lower and lower panel attendance as the years go by. From the list I got, I think only about 6 of us (myself included) gave them suggestions. I think they should find some way to ask fen, "What do YOU want to see?" Christine is running night ops, and has been speaking with the new con chair, Dale, about new ideas. One of the problems was registration, which seems to always be a problem at Balticon, but one of the big issues was how early they shut down, and thus, late coming fen without badges were wandering around in the lobby, annoying the hotel. Now night ops will issue temp badges that can be turned in for real badges the next morning. Christine will also be showing some of her art, if they have space left available.

Also, I am really, really starting to be bummed out there is no Castlecon this year. Or anymore. I saw two FanTek pals this weekend, and I got kind of a deep sigh build up in my chest. I'm still glad Bruce and Cheryl ended it before it ended them, and I am not ever going to wish for it to come back... but I miss it all the same. Cheryl has recently seemed to be in much better spirits, and I think this has been good for them.

My comments sections are starting to get spam. I got a huge load of Viagra spam on some of my older entries a few days ago, so I am thinking about shutting down comment ability on older posts. [sigh] I hate spammers.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:45 PM EST [Link]

Monday, May 17, 2004

My weekend needs Cliff Notes

I've spent a lot of writing time, trying to sort out what the hell is happening in my life. Not in general, just right now. I can't seem to prioritize anything; I have had so much go on. I think it would help to make a list. Here's what's going on at this moment, in no real order.

Grandmother's dead. That's it, man. Uncle Charles and Aunt Angela are handling all the arrangements, with the help of my later Grandmother because she left a pretty detailed list of what she wanted done. She's being cremated, and then her ashes are going to be flown or Phoenix, Arizona, so her ashes can be placed in a mausoleum, next to my Grandfather. This now means both my grandparents are buried next to the only spouses they ever had: one in Iron Mountain, one in Phoenix. Uncle Charles said Marion had left them enough money to get this done with a little left over (which they deserve to keep, in full, IMHO, after taking care of her for 17 years). My father has been notified, but he's not responded. I doubt he cares his crazy mother has died, which is one more stone that he will carry with him to the afterlife. Charles says that there's been a lot of paperwork they are working with, but it will be all settled and she should be in place by the end of this week. My attendance is optional, because there will be no ceremony, and they said it would probably make more sense to visit them later on, after he retires. For the past 20 years or so, both of them have been working pretty much to pay for Marion's bills, and now that she's gone, Charles says he's going to work a few more years then retire.

Fran is sick. Well, we knew he was sick, but he's gotten more sick. Good news is Hospice has been really nice. They got him a hospital bed, bars installed in the showers, and someone comes in and cleans his linens once a week. He has decided that he's going to spend the rest of his short life with Debbie. His death cannot be far off, because I think he's finally accepted he really is going to die. He's been going around, trying to make peace as best he can.

I am sick. I have some ENT thing, which I often get this time of year. Good news is I don't think I have pneumonia yet, because if I did, I would have been in the hospital Saturday. I have a deep chest cold, my throat is swollen up, and the infection in the back of my throat has spread to one side of my jaw, making chewing very difficult. I am seeing the doctor first thing Monday. On top of that, these weird bug bites are covering my left elbow. Only there, and nowhere else. They don't itch or hurt, but they scabbed over. Totally weird.

Artoo, my favorite cat, is sick. The vet isn't sure what it is, so he's on anti-biotics for the next week or so to see if whatever he has clears up. We think he has an ENT infection with a urinary tract infection on top of it. We were terrified he had what Oreo had, but they pretty quickly determined he wasn't blocked. Artoo is 12, and he's now the oldest cat we have ever had. Pookie died at 10, Oreo at 6, and Mikey at 4. So... you know... tick tock. The good news is he seems okay for the most part, and he's the kind of cat that's pretty easy to force pills to.

Christine has injured her shoulder something awful. It started as an aggravated injury from driving so much (back and forth to Florida twice, and to West Virginia three times), but now she can't put her arm over her head and can't lift anything on that side. It even hurts to turn over in bed. Months ago, she agreed to host a party at our house, where friends of ours who sold things (Tasteful Treasures, Pampered Chef, Partylite Candles, and some scrapbook thing) could have one big exchange. Well, all this crap happened on Friday and lingered through the weekend. The parties went well.

Debbie was over for the parties, but also to pick up the last of Fran's stuff, and in the process, fell down the same set of concrete stairs that broke Christine's ankles back in late 2001. Debbie sprained her wrist, scraped the hell out of her knee, and landed on her foot at an odd angle, causing massive swelling. She had to go to the hospital for it.

Sean, in a helpful attempt to cheer me up, had me over at his house on Saturday, because he didn't care if I was sick or not. "Our kids bring home a new disease every day!" he dismissed. Honestly, I was glad for the distraction, which was his purpose. I wasn't worried about getting his kids sick because I think they gave this to me (or actually, to CR, who had it earlier in the week, and then Christine got it, then I got it). Scarlet really banged the hell out of her head running in the pavement. Sean, Miranda, and I watched "Star Trek 3: The Search for Plot--er, Spock," which caused a lot of discussion about scientific loopholes and generally just how bad acting some of these people are.

But Sean was right, Christopher Lloyd makes a hell of a Klingon.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:05 AM EST [Link]

Friday, May 14, 2004

So long, Marion. 191? - 2004

I was going to write this blog entry about how much stress I am under, but as I was writing it I was informed my last grandparent died about 7 hours ago.

By e-mail.

I can't get ahold of anyone. I left a frantic message on my Uncle and Aunt's answering machine. Fuck you, guys, why couldn't you have called? [sigh] I guess that side of the family handles death like Klingons. Hell, my dad didn't find out his father had died until several weeks had passed, and ONLY because of this weird coincidence that we were traveling through Phoenix anyway on a layover to California, why not stop by and see his folks? So my mother guilted him into calling them, and promised it would only be a few hours, and they hadn't seen me since I was 1. So my dad called, and said we'd stop by for a few hours, and before they ended the call, his mother said, "Oh, and by the way, you won't see your father, he died a few weeks ago." I guess I should be glad I at least got the e-mail.

Yeah, I knew she was sick. But the last note was she was holding in there. I didn't get my e-mail until later today, because I was sick in bed. The first letter said she was in a coma as of Sunday, wouldn't last a week. The letter I just got ten minutes ago said she died a little after noon today.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck...

Posted by Punkie @ 08:03 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Dream a dreamy dream

Christine has a really bad cold, and when one of us is sick, I usually volunteer to sleep in the guest room so one of us won't infect the other.

I'm not used to sleeping alone. It's okay, but kind of depressing. I recall on comedian stating that when you start sleeping together, immediately stake your claim for the side of the bed you want to sleep on for the rest of your life because you'll never be able to switch back. And that means if you sleep next to the door, you'll be the one asked to get up and investigate that noise, or be the first eaten by the monster who comes in through the door. At our first apartment, she slept to my right, but ever since then, she's been on my left (for a little over 13 years).

I got sick anyway. I am fighting it off, but it's started deep in my chest which usually means there's no way I will win this. I hope I don't get pneumonia because all my bouts with pneumonia started this way, this quickly. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance for pneumonia, so I am rooting for the healthy 50%. I am taking a lot of echinacea, which usually tips the scales in my favor.

When I am down in the guest room, I have a lot of weird dreams. I had two this time around, although I can only remember the first one. I was with some nondescript friends and their 4-year old daughter. An ex-husband had ordered 3 tigers and a lion as entertainment, and while they originally came with two trainers, the ex took them to a local bar and got drunk. The big cats were pretty cool, but not very manageable; they were huge and heavy and kept sitting over your lap, knocking over things, and so on. Then two of them got into a fight, and while we did our best to keep them apart, the tension just got to be too much, and so they finally went ballistic on each other, and all the other cats joined in. The cats weren't fighting us, just each other, but they were so big and dangerous, we were terrified of getting hit by accident, and they were destroying everything. We fled the house, but then realized we left the 4-year old in there, and we had to go get her. Luckily, the girl was unharmed because she hid behind the couch. I had to call 911, but couldn't get the cell phone because Christine was using it to take pictures of the cats fighting "for evidence." When I finally got to call 911, the operators told us to stay outside in the car, and they would send firemen and animal handlers. While we were waiting, we kept talking with the 911 operator about what a jerk the ex-husband was. That's when I woke up.

I think I remember the first dream because I recall I read somewhere the only way to remember your dreams is if you wake up before they are over. I think that's true, because almost none of my dreams ever have a neat ending, and I don't recall anyone else's having any sort of "story flow" to them, either. I remember some of my "Teen counseling" teaching that had a "dream exercise," where each student tells the group your last dream. You did this for several reasons. Most people will actually tell real dreams, which you can usually tell because they have some awkward flow with logical impossibilities like, "I was at a lake, but it sometimes was a pool, and I was sitting down at this green chair... I think. I was standing, too. I can't remember." Most people's dreams are like that, and you see a lot of fumbling as the logical part of the brain says in their head, "Wait ... that doesn't make sense...!" Then you'll have the person who will make up a dream, and those are pretty easy to spot because they'll have a logical flow to them, often with a moral ending similar to the end of a sitcom. The person tells you this because that's what they want you to hear, either to conceal something, or draw attention to a subject they want to talk about. The trouble is determining which one it is. Then some people never have dreams, or at least claim that, which doesn't mean they are lying per se, but some may also be trying to conceal the horror that is their vulnerable sleep period or maybe they just never get enough sleep and don't ever get into an REM cycle.

Cicada update: Saw partial squashed head of one covered with ants on my driveway [sound of unimpressed party horn]. There were a few more at work, almost all of them are dead. I think the geese we have in our ponds at work are eating them, because their poop has turned from light green to light brown. I am also curious to see how all the upheaval of the recent housing and office developments have affected the last swarm. I recall they sprayed for them, and then we have had all this construction since 1987 around here. In my local area, I think 60% of the woodlands have been turned into housing in just the last 4 years. In one of the Baltimore Sun articles, they mentioned that all the suburban development might have changed the number that will come back, but those that do manage to lay eggs and burrow will find suburban lawns (wide grassy areas under trees) will be a positive ideal environment for the next batch in 2021.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:45 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Books that inspire me

I can't get any work done because there's yet another layoff rumor, but this is pretty centralized, and I think it's around one guy. I nearly snapped at him, but waited until we were alone and suggested that facts point otherwise, but that just made him claim more things. So I outright said that it's pretty irresponsible for him to start rumors based on this, and even if it were true, that he's going to make a lot of other people panic. That didn't work, and he started talking about what he'd do, data-wise, when he leaves. That's really stupid. I also have to add, if I hear one more person use the term, "Writing on the wall" again, I am going to puke.

Then Christine said her job might be in jeopardy. Again, I don't see it. Maybe it's all real, and I am a blind fool. The "writing on the wall" is in an invisible ink. Of course I have been ignoring some writing of another sort, trapped in a cocoon of day-to-day mundane living.

So much for my good mood today. I am trying to force myself to believe that God doesn't hate me, but I am under the influence of evil spirits, but I am not very good at this "lying to yourself" thing people seem to accomplish. Well, at least I can laugh for a while about it. I just wish I could honestly laugh like a drunk without a sad sigh as a chaser.

But it's not the end of the world. I saw Disney's made-for-TV-movie, A Wrinkle In Time on Monday, which was pretty good. I mean, for a made-for-TV-movie, it was pretty good. For the most part, it stuck more to the book than most TV adaptations usually do, although some rather important stuff was skipped, I am sure, to keep it from being more than 3 hours long with commercials. Christine found it gripping, and I must admit, it would have taken a lot to make me wander off. For some reason, seeing this opened up some part of me that had been closed for a while; I'm not sure how long.

"A Wrinkle in Time" was one of my most favorite books as a kid. I still have a copy, like my third copy since I wore out two other copies as a kid. This copy it also worn, but managed to live long enough until I stopped re-reading it at about age 12. I always considered the book to be less a kid's book and more like an adult book, but while I was growing up, it was marketed towards young adults. I think I read it once more when I was 21 or something, I can't recall. Watching the movie, I was surprised how much of the book came back, and how much that book influenced my thoughts towards science at a very young age. It was practically like a bible to me, not so much because of the lesson about love and good vs. evil, but more like fables that Christian kids grow to, like Adam and Eve, and Noah. There are other books that totally influenced me as a kid. Here is a list of some of them.

Abel's Island - A story about a civilized mouse stranded on an island after a flood. I really liked this book because it taught me that even under the worst circumstances, you can survive.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Classic kid's fantasy about a Lion and a broken table, although I have to admit, I never read the other 5 books in the series. I really liked the whole concept of taking a ruined world and saving it. Later, I found out this was a hidden bible lesson. Tricked!

I, Robot - I loved this classic sci-fi book because it explained logical laws, and how they could be applied to different situations. It was like a puzzle. From what I have seen of the upcoming movie, the plot is nothing like any of the stories.

The Dragonriders of Pern - Got me to love dragons and fear string in a big way. I have only read the first trilogy, although I think like a dozen or so books are out on it now.

Lizard Music - Like most of Pinkwater's kid's books, it started a protagonist who was usually a young boy left alone in bizarre circumstances. I identified a lot with them.

The Champion of Merrimack County - A cycling mouse and a bathtub. The biggest thing I got from this book was the lesson that extra burden (the cast) can make one a champion when finally lifted (the cast was removed). Proved true when I started out on my own.

The Enormous Egg - I really liked the idea of having my own dinosaur, but this book made me appreciate the terrible cost this would have.

Alice in Wonderland - And its sequel, Behind the Looking Glass, because I felt I was one of the few kid who truly understood the underlying theme of the book: grow up, the adult world makes no more sense than your own.

Higglety-pigglety pop! - Why spoiled terriers should never do theater. Because I like the bizarre. A Sadnak cult book.

The Illustrated Man - I loved a lot of Bradbury, but this and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" stick in my head as all-time favorites.

Pippi Longstocking - All of the books, because I admired a girl living on her own who didn't need anyone.

Conrad - Christine Nostlinger's book about a factory-made child (who comes from a drum) who gets sent to a grumpy lady who didn't order him. The factory realizes the mistake, but the boy decides to stay. Hilarity ensues.

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing - Made me glad I didn't have siblings. In fact, I read and loved a lot of Judy Blume's books (Blubber I liked a lot as well), but this was by far my favorite.

The Great Gilly Hopkins - Because even though I knew that cherished illusions always led to dismay, it was nice to see I wasn't alone.

Harry, the Fat Bear Spy - Both books, because damn, they were funny.

Doctor Dolittle - Because I wanted to talk to the animals, too.

How to Eat Fried Worms - gross title, but it's a book about a bunch of friends who set up a dare, and the whole thing is rather gripping.

Bunnicula: the Rabbit Tail of Mystery - Vampire bunny. Hah!

Any Encyclopedia Brown Book - Because I loved to solve a puzzle. I usually got them all right, and to this day, those skills have served me well.

Jaws - Well, I liked sharks

One last note: I saw my first cicadas today at work. Only about 5-6 of then, lazily crawling around the ground. I am betting those were the ones already hit by the swarms of starlings and geese we have on our property.

They're heeeeereee....

Posted by Punkie @ 07:18 PM EST [Link]

Good feelings

I have been in a fairly good mood lately. I think if I actually had seasonal depression (which I think I did), it might be lifting. Also, except for the guy getting fired part, I really enjoyed helping a good friend out yesterday. I think part of the joy came from the fact that I felt like I had actually accomplished something. I did some cabling, helped them take down, move, and bring back up a server, and sniff the network for viral activity. I got another thanks this morning about it, too.

I always get a great feeling helping people out. It's not really for the thanks, but that feels good, too. I think it's the feeling that I can affect people's lives in a positive way. I try and do that every day with conscious effort. For example, sometimes, people leave the work kitchen a mess. The most common mess I see are spills around the coffee machine, usually sugar or coffee stains. If I am there, waiting for the next cup to brew, I wipe it up. Sure, we have a daily janitorial service that does that, but I like to think I made their life a slight bit easier. If I see trash on the ground, I pick it up and toss it in the next can I pass. I try to be friendly to everybody, saying hello to people I make eye contact with, and I never ignore or treat anyone like they are beneath my notice. Like the janitors around here. They are usually nice Hispanic ladies, which I always smile and open doors for. I always say hello and good-bye to the guards as I walk past the exits, and try and remember the names of those I see frequently (which is no small feat, they have unusual names and thick accents so I never know if I am pronouncing it correctly). I know they are people, like me, who have jobs as well as dreams, hopes, fears, and memories. They deserve to be treated with the same respect as I wish to be treated.

Sometimes, people ask why I do this. "We have janitors to clean that up," they'd say. "Don't say hi to him, he's just a guard, and they come and go." I guess they wonder what the bottom line is, like I have this quest to be a martyr or something. I always have a good answer for this, and it goes, "Well, I feel everything you do comes back to you three fold. So it is in my best interest to make sure good things keep happening. If I am nice to this guy, he'll probably be nice to the next three people he meets, who will maybe be nice to the next three people they meet, and so on. I figure if everyone did this, no one would be angry. I have vested personal interest in people feeling good around me." I fully believe this is true. I also think that, sadly, bad moods multiply larger and faster. In retail, we had a saying that if you treated a customer really nice, they may tell three people, and each of those may tell another person. But if you treat them rudely, they will tell at least ten people, who will tell ten more people.

Have you ever had a rude person just ruin your whole day? Yeah, like that. You could be walking down the hallway, say "Hi," to someone, and they could turn around and go, "What the hell did you mean by that? No, no, don't walk away from me! Come back! You think you are BETTER than me? HUH? Some martyr who says 'hi' like she's some Mahatma Ghandi? Oh, thank YOU Mother Theresa, for stooping to say HI to some poor downtrodden peon. Thank God I chose THIS hallway to be blessed by the Queen of Holy-ass Greetings. Jesus!" I bet you'd be thinking about that encounter for at least a few hours. You may say it doesn't bother you, the person was in a bad mood or something, but for a while, you'll be rather shaken up by that. And if you're not someone who can control their emotions real well, you'll pass on this stress (at least by tone and semantics) to the next few people you meet. They may not know why they feel so awful, but they'll probably act on it.

One day about ten years ago, I was getting a meal from Burger King. The girl behind the counter was trying to stuff my order into a bag that was too small for it. She had everything packed like a backpack before a 6-day hike into the wilderness, and was trying to get the onion rings in on top of all that. "That's okay," I said. "I'll just carry the onion rings separate." She looked at me from below her brow. "What?" she asked. I felt she didn't hear me, so I repeated what I said, in a friendly tone, "I said I'll just carry the onion rings separate, no biggie." She looked exasperated, and said with a sarcastic tone, "Have it your way!" (their slogan at the time), poured the onion rings into the bag, MASHED THE WHOLE BAG with her palm and tossed it to me. The manager, whom I knew (I frequented this place a lot), apologized, and redid my order. But I was mad about it the rest of the day. Later the manager said she had fired the girl for attitude problems, but I was still pissed off for days because of that one experience. I was out of sorts for days. One rude person had this effect on me. And even though I got an apology, knew the manager by name, and got some coupons, I stopped going there for a long time. I remember that because at the time, I was trying to illustrate this to a trainee.

Now take the guy at Blue Ridge Heating and Cooling. He was a friendly, open guy, who talked to me with respect and humor. I was so impressed by his service last year that when he gave me the sticker to his business, I stuck it right on my breaker box. Good thing, too, because I needed him again this year. And again, he was friendly. I will keep calling this guy with my needs until I don't need him anymore, or he goes out of business. He inspired a loyal customer.

Now think about how that applies outside of retail. Think about everyone you meet, every day. Think about coworkers, neighbors, or just the person next to you on an airplane. What do you have to gain if you treat them friendly and with a lot of respect? If you are the impatient type who treats people this way for immediate gain, like "I'll give you $5 if you go away," you'll probably wonder why you feel so used. But if you give and expect nothing in return, you'll end up with a lot of good stuff in the long run. Like my friends, for instance. I help them out, because I know when I need help, they'll be there. And if I never need their help, then so what? I have lost nothing. I feel being good to everyone around you is building a solid foundation for the future of your success in life (or the afterlife, for that matter). It's like an investment.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:02 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

You are fired

I was out today, taking care of some personal business. It ended early, so I decided to drop in on a friend at work... and I ended up doing tech help. Not that I minded at all, but they got hit with some big Operserv worm because some yutz at work downloaded a ton of porn, and the worm was attached to something. I had heard about this guy before. His machine was constantly being infected with trojans, malware, and all kinds of stuff. I worked for two hours trying to get this machine fixed. I was then asked to provide proof of him browsing porn, and gave them said proof, with dates, thanks to Knoppix-STD and some bash scripting.

The yutz was then fired.

I mean, this guy really had it coming (he had had a long list of issues), but firing people sucks all the same. Thank goodness this didn't happen in front of me, I just sat on a machine in a back office, sniffing the network to determine infected machines. Apparently he denied any wrongdoing, and they used my evidence as proof. He still denied any wrongdoing, but left anyway.

I have only fired two people in my life. The first one was this guy who was in his late 40s and a real loser. He lied, stole, cheated, stole some more, and lied to try and cover it up. So I fired him in mid-lie. He had really dark skin, so when he turned pale, he turned a sickly green color. As he handed me back the store key, he was shaking, and I didn't know whether he was going to hit me or burst into tears. Luckily, he did neither. But he did have the amazing gall to use me as a reference, in which he claimed all kinds of lies (how long he worked, position held, pay... yeesh). The second was a guy I didn't want to fire, but my district manager hated him because, at the time, he was a racist redneck (he has since mellowed out). Trouble was, he was a good salesman, and I couldn't get anyone else to work a mandatory 48 hour/6 day a week job for so little. So my boss had me write him up for picking his nose while he was in the store (he did have diplomatic nasal declogging issues sometimes), which he refused to sign, and thus, I had to fire him. Gees, I felt like a heel. I essentially fired a guy for picking his nose. I quit that job shortly after that.

I also half-fired two other people. I was about to fire this one flaky girl because she didn't show up for work on time (and we're talking hours, or maybe the whole day), and she blamed everything on her ADHD. At the time, she was trying to get Social Security disability for her ADHD, and not getting very far. But the day I was to fire her (for not opening the store all day, on a Sunday, thus getting our store fined $24,000 and killing any chances of getting a profit bonus that year), she sensed she did a major screw up, and quit over the phone. She said it was to make my job easier, and that this way, she could claim to the Social Security Office that her ADHD makes her ineligible to work. They never called me, so I never found out if she succeeded. Another guy I fired, but his best friend was the other store manager, so he kept getting rehired. He was a ska-moshing skinhead who had terrible BO, and he played his music really loud in the book store. He also asked customers uncomfortable questions for their shock value alone, like "When you poop, do you turn around to see what it looks like? Don't lie, I know you do!" He finally got fired for, and I kid you not, catching one of the company owners in a porno theater. Of course he told everyone about it. And the young girl he was with. He even spoke to the owner, shook his hand, and said he worked at one of his stores... geees! I thought he was making it up until the corporate head of security got involved in the big hush-up. I even got "de-briefed" on the incident.

Still, telling someone to their face, "You're fired!" is not easy. If I ever get back into management, that will be the one thing I dread most. When I was assistant manager at the knife store, I had to tell a bunch of people they got laid off. One guy I had to say, "Yeaaah... I know you opened today, but you aren't getting paid for today because the paperwork says yesterday was your last day, and they didn't tell me until I got in at noon." That totally sucked. I didn't blame him for going off in front of me.

Some good news today, though. My AC got fixed. It was the same problem as last year. The guy who comes out is a really cool older guy, as evidenced by his invoice, which says, "Bad dual capacitor again -- THERE IS NO REASON FOR THIS!" Hee!

Also, my first Slashdot article was posted! It was a dumb blurb about something I found called "Pizza Party" (Ordering Pizza from the Command Line) Not only that, but my article was covered on Madpenguin, and even Linux.com! w00t! My 15 minutes of net.fame!

Posted by Punkie @ 10:27 PM EST [Link]

Monday, May 10, 2004

Mother's weekend

Mother's Day has come and gone. We had a good day because Sean and Lou celebrated it with us. We went to the Outback, and then hung out at my house for a while.

This helped me feel better, because, the bad luck streak has resurfaced. I think it's just an aftershock, and things will improve from here on out.

The big issue is that we're real low on money ... right before Balticon and Vegas, which is going to suck. On top of that, our air conditioner has conked out, and I have no idea how much this is going to cost to repair. Last time it was $109. This time? I worry.

Work just officially announced they are moving my department's equipment to some small town called Gainesville, which is more than twice the distance of my current commute in the completely opposite direction. I am not sure if they are moving just our labs but not us (which would be a pain because I'd have to do everything remotely), us with the labs (which would be a pain because I'd lose my office to a pod and then the commute), or just fire us and give the work to an on-site GTC group. I'll know in the next few months. My smile to be employed is cracking my teeth sometimes.

Of course, it's worse elsewhere. A friend of mine just got a job after a year of unemployment and he's working with a former coworker who is now his boss. It's a total, soul-sucking clash of politics. His boss is a die-hard "Kill the Iraqis" gun-toting Republican, and he makes no effort to hide his views. A lot of the people under him are soulless, back-stabbing white-shirts who treat people like dirt, but file official complaints if they get treated the same way. My pal is trying to grin and bear it, because he's getting a lot of free training. But it might all be moot, because he is also thinking of ditching the tech sector, and going into law.

So, I have to keep this in perspective.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:25 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, May 8, 2004

Lazy Saturday

Christine drove Debbie and Fran back home to West Virginia, turned right around, and came back. She was gone about 7 hours.

While she was gone, I planted the tomatoes. To hell with the Cicadas, which, despite many articles on them, have yet to show around here. Maybe they're late. Maybe they all died due to all the construction digging them up. I looked for them, but I haven't seen one brown skin. Maybe next week I'll be sorry I wondered where they were. Sean Lou and their kids came over, and we talked about Vegas, money, and jobs. When they left, I gave them two extra tomato plants. I still have a few left, which I'll probably give to a guy at work who expressed interest in them.

I also fixed my OpenBSD NAT in the guest room. Turns out I didn't have the NAT part uncommented, and my internal_ip had the wrong subnet listed.

I also got the hose hooked up, and looked at the A/C again. I called the repair guy, and left a message on his machine. Then I cleaned off most of this algae which has started to grow onto the side of our house. I know there's some kind of "Vinyl siding washing soap" you can buy to get rid of it, but I had a house brush with hooks up to the hose, and that got rid of most of it. Still, I should wash the house, it's getting a wee bit grimy. I have been washing it every year, but not properly.

I then played Sim City 4 for a while, and got a thriving town started. Sim City 4 usually kicks my ass. It's a lot more complicated that the other Sim Cities. Well, I did really well for a while, and then for some reason, people left in droves, my revenue went down, I had to cut costs, and then I just ended in a death spiral where half my city was burning and most people were left without power. Suckage.

By then, Christine and CR were back. Just as well.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:35 PM EST [Link]

Friday, May 7, 2004

Missing the sad fairies of the underdark...

I haven't been to a Goth club or rave in ages.

I really liked them. I like the crowds and people-watching, mostly. You see a mix of Goths, miligoths, vampires, intellectuals, deejays, potheads, poseurs, wannabes, spoiled kids, and various watchers like me sitting at a bar, sipping my $5 half a can Mountain Dew in 3 cents worth of ice packed to the top of a beer cup. I don't dance, because I respect my fellow dance floor brethren, and don't wish to slap them in the heads with my "sad windmill" or "wading pool" moves, which are probably as outdated as my stonewashed jeans. I was looking at a club site, and I don't even KNOW these places. All the old places are gone, like Traxx and the Landover Warehouse. I wouldn't know what's good anymore, since I usually went with someone else who had a car.

The last rave/goith thing I went to was at some sci fi con a few years ago, and it was lame because there weren't a whole lot of people, and a few that were there were snobby. A mosh pit is not a mosh pit when only two people are beating the hell out of each other, that's just a brawl.

My first Goth intro came at a paltry 13 years of age. I was with some of the drama crowd, and they took me to some place in Vienna which is now I think a cleaners. Back in 1981, it was an abandoned movie theater. Elise (mama hen) had taken a bunch of us to this gig in her older brother's car, a huge boat of a vehicle with a broken back window. We drove past the mall, down to 123, which is Maple Avenue in that area. I can still smell the combination of the clove, patchouli, and carseat leather when I think about it. Elise wore her oversized jean jacket with the holes and the faded etchings of a bong scribbled in black marker on the back. We weren't Goth per se, but we hung around them a lot. With us were Kathy (the voice of conscience), Dawn (the fun patrol), and Julie B (the ear for cops). I have no idea why no one thought the scene wasn't suspicious. I mean, there we were, a bunch of punk and ex-hippie teens around an abandoned building right on a major road on a Friday night. There were open bottle of liquor. Kids who looked younger than me were peering one eye behind long hair, puffing on home-rolled cigarettes, exhaling huge plumes of smoke in the cold autumn air. Back then, Goths and punks were still pretty much interchangeable. Face paint was rare, and usually only a stripe or two under the eyes. The safety pin piercing was popular in the media, but I never saw anyone but one or two people actually wear them in real life.

Inside the theater, there were two parts. The first part used to be the lobby of the theater. The second part was the theater itself, where a local band called "Mantiza" was playing. There were a lot of weird local or small punk bands at that time; Mantiza, Bad Brains, Slug Patrol, Maladiction, Pink Spawn and the Five Spades, Misfits, Puke and the Rabid Dogs, Minor Threat, Blood Bollocks, and Kittenripper. Many were cover bands, giving either a New Wave or Punk spin on stuff. I'd call a lot of what they did as "Heavy Metal," but that wasn't a term used at the time. Most were pretty bad. Sometimes the bands would get into a fight with the audience, which is why we were going. "Mantiza" we legendary for fighting with the audience. Apparently, one of the singers was wanted for questioning over a beating to guy in a club with a mike stand. Mantiza was playing on stage, which was very small, in front of where the movie screen would have been. On one wall, someone was playing a film version (no audio) of Ziggy Starudust and the Spiders from Mars, a weird film with David Bowie and his band at the time. There was a lot of "slam-dancing" going on near the stage, which is only different in modern "mosh pits" in the fact that there was less violence. You could barely hear the band because the acoustics were terrible, and during certain chorus lines of the various shouted lyrics, people would drunkenly join in.

It was chaos.

I'd love to be all badass and say, "Them's my peeps!" but I was 13, a loner, and pretty scared. Kathy came back from the mosh pit, bleeding. She said someone had a knife and was slashing people. She got hit in the temple, and only because of her glasses, did she sustain only a shallow cut. About that time, the band cut off, which wasn't unusual because the electrical jury-rigging was so bad at events like these. In fact, I don't even know HOW we got electricity to the building. I just assumed the former owner never had it cut off.

"Hey!" yelled the lead (?) singer.

"HEEEYY!" shouted the audience back, because I think they thought it was part of the song. You know, the music stops, and people repeat some lyrics, and the music starts up again. Good way to pump the crowd.

"YOU!" shouted the lead singer.

Most of the people started to look at the band, knowing this was unusual. But a few people, just shouted "YOU!" back. Someone else shouted "Gabba gabba hey!" because he was probably high, which made a few people laugh.

"YOU! The fucker in the red jacket!" shouted the lead singer, pointing at a guy who had a ring of people spread away from him like roaches from light. "You have a KNIFE, and you are CUTTING PEOPLE WITH IT! That is very UNCOOL, man!"

A few audience jeers followed. An uncomfortable lingering formed in the pit.

But the singer had some further instructions. "GET THE FUCK OUT!! All of you, grab his ass, drag him out, and beat the SHIT out of him!!!"

People swarmed at this guy, and I saw him dragged out by about 30 people who just wanted a piece of him. Before he got out the door, some people had ripped off his red leather jacket. I saw this guy's head jerk back and forth as jabbing blows punched his head with such ferocity, I thought he had been hit by a bullet.

"That's better!" said the singer. "If any of you ... try any of that ... you'll get a beatin'!" and he shook his mike stand in threat. People cheered. "One two, fuck you!" he shouted, and went right back into the music.

Kathy's cuts were not as bad as they looked, and perfect strangers helped her mop up some of the blood. Dawn stayed with me, trying to make me feel better about the whole thing. She did well under stress, and was always perky and happy when things were at their worst. She was also addicted to heroin, but I wouldn't know that until years later. Dawn and her friends had a great chat about general stuff in the area behind the old concession stand, while some liquor in a bottle inside a paper bag was passed around. I didn't drink from it, but even if I wanted to Dawn, wouldn't have let me. Elise would have killed her. Dawn and her friends really wanted to listen to what I had to say about my home life, and some of them had really good advice, including the old, "You have an excuse for everything." After about an hour on that sticky painted cement floor under broken fluorescent lights, Julie B suddenly came up to Dawn and made the "cut sign" with he hand over her throat and then the "out" sign with her thumb, and Dawn told me to get up and follow her immediately.

"What?" I asked, panting behind my group in the cold air.

"Cops," said Julie B quietly. We never knew how Julie B knew, but she always knew when the cops were about to arrive. You could be just standing around with her, and then she'd get this look on her face, look around, and go, "Let's go." As our car was pulling out onto Maple Ave, three police cars were pulling into the parking lot. Wow. My heart raced at how close I thought we were to getting busted.

We had a few more events like that, only less interesting. Sometimes we'd all go to Rocky Horror in Georgetown and hang out at the Hamburger Tavern for coffee afterwards. Sometimes it was IHOP, where we once got thrown out for a "blow job on a ketchup bottle" contest. We'd also crash into open parties. Rich kids around here would have these huge parties when their parents were away, similar to the big party in the movie, "Sixteen Candles." Dawn always seemed to know where some spoiled frat boy home on spring break or some stupid rich teen who wanted to buy his popularity would be holding their next event. I have to be honest, I had a horrible crush on Dawn. She was very flirtatious and flighty, but I would have done anything she would have asked. She also paid a lot of attention to me in the method of flirtatious teasing. I recall one party where a whole bunch of people dove into the pool, fully clothed. Dawn was wearing a yellow tee-shirt, a black twill skirt, and when she got wet, I saw she didn't wear a bra. The pool was lit from below, and in the dark night air, you could see pretty much everything. Not that she had any shame in it. However, to a pubescent kid like me at the time, that was like shooting an arrow into my heart, but it never went beyond flirting, much to my frustration.

Those days ended really quickly due to a series of events I'm not going into at this time. Suffice to say, it left me bitter for many years, but I have forgiven them now because I have seen a lot of other events unfold which explained a lot about why certain people acted like they did.

Many years went by where I "distanced" myself from the punk culture. You wouldn't have known my past from my geeky high school self. Things got way better for me in high school, which I think I mistakenly thought was a direct result of "no longer being a part of that." In fact, for many years, I denied having any knowledge of punks and Goths, and even stopped wearing black, although secretly, I really wanted to be accepted again. It took sci fi cons to bring me back.

Shortly after I was married, I hooked up with some of them again because they were also part of the BBS community. My friend Suzi was a great influence of this, although to a lesser extent, so was Count Zero. Suzi really understood what had happened to me, and helped me forgive. I started going to clubs again, although only a few times a year, and saw a lot more of them at cons. My friends Suzi, Kangal, Rogue, and CZ were there. We'd hang out at watch people. Suzi hated poseurs, which I found amusing because she always had something really witty to say about it. By now the Goth community was fully split from punks, and while there are always crossovers, for the most part, they are a different breed.

I think I stopped going to clubs around 1996, shortly after I got my first tech job. I just didn't have the time anymore. The rave community was slightly not my taste, although I really, really liked their music (and still do). But the stovepipe hat wearing Seattle wannabes were a bit too much for me to swallow. Also, the fetish community were blending in, and I was really uptight about it at the time. Now I don't care, because I have been working hard on trying to reduce the amount of knee-jerk snobbish "Ewwwww" reaction I used to have towards such things.

Still, I miss the scene. Even though I didn't go that much. I miss the volleyball pits by the smoking area in Traxx, the kiddiez lounging around Landover with the glow sticks. I miss Suzi telling me stuff, like the time some foot fetish guy told me she had "perfect feet" and trying to figure out what THAT meant. I miss Eden's explanation of BDSM, daddy games, and the hanky codes. Count Zero used to find some of the COOLEST people! Kai an Anne K used to have some of the funniest and true observations of Goth dance style. Hell, it was the only dancing I could ever do (although no one does the "pogo" anymore ... shame, really) and get away with.

Anyone wanna go on a field trip with me? Whatever shall I wear?
http://www.vamp.org/Gothic/clublist.html

Posted by Punkie @ 12:06 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, May 6, 2004

They are coming...

It was a hot May of 1987. Senior year of high school. I was walking home from work, and I thought I hear this ... weird UFO-like noise. A distant whir like a flying saucer from a bad 1950s science fiction movie. The sound was distant, but continuous. Since weird stuff happens in my life a lot, I just chalked it up to something I would keep quiet about. I walked through a small patch of woods through a churchyard, and noticed strange dimples in the ground. Like little holes. Huh.

The next day, same area, I was hit by some large flying object about the size of an almond. Then another. I wondered if my shampoo was attracting insects. When I took the same shortcut, I saw a lot of holes, and the tree bark had a lot of those bug skins on them. I was used to seeing those bug skins, but there seemed like a lot. As my eyes adjusted to the shade, I realized that there were a lot of moving things around. I decided to walk around the woods. The whirring was much louder now.

Next day at school, I heard kids talking about the noise, which was much louder now, and you could start to hear it indoors. "My dad says that the 17-year locusts are coming," someone said. I had heard about such things, but never in our area. Then more people started talking about them, and by the end of the day, the whole school was convinced that we were under some kind of locust swarm. When I walked to work, I saw more of these big black things flying about, crashing into everything.

Now, up until this point, I had a phobia about insects. I was terrified of them, and the sight of large bees would have me paralyzed with fear, curling up into a ball, screaming like a stuck pig. Thankfully, I had gone through therapy and had enough coping tools to assess the situation. My mother had now been dead for 4 months, and I was still in shock and denial about the suicide. My mind was occupied, and my fear circuits had shorted out. So I was able to calmly state, and I recall the feeling to this day, "If I don't deny this fear, I will go insane." I had to will myself out of the phobia.

People in my area were transitory, so very few people were around during the last swarm in 1970. The few older people who had been around spoke of a swarm so great, it darkened the sky, but they didn't seem to afraid of it, so I always thought of it as exaggeration.

Then we had a very unusual cold snap, and the bugs all started to slow down. They were still coming up, but they were cold and sluggish. They mostly clung to trees and huddled in huge vibrating carpets. It was like a bottleneck in the release process had clogged, and they just kept building and building up until it warmed up again and ... they were everywhere. I wouldn't say the skies went dark with them, but I'd say the dispersal was about 1-2 every cubic yard, more near wooded areas. The sky was peppered with them. Sections of ground were tilled by the hundreds of larvae crawling from down below.

They were curious creatures. A dark green in color, they didn't so much navigate when they flew; they just sort of flew around until they crashed into something, then flew the opposite way, like some weird kid's toy. The males would emit this terrifically loud whir from some weird vent behind their legs. They landed on people a lot, and if you wore light colored clothing, you could have as much as 3 or 4 on you at any given time. One day, some friends and I adopted one as a pet. He died of boredom during art class.

For about a week, they were everywhere, gumming up engines, getting trapped in everything, and crashing into people's faces, making them trip and fall or run into things trying to get away. Some people freaked out when this happened. Some people just got annoyed. I totally short circuited. For a few days, I was just on the edge of running into traffic to kill myself. My insect phobia was just on the edge of total panic when I was outside, which was a lot. I didn't have a car, and I had to talk from home to school, then work from school, and then sometimes Kate's house after work. But as time went on, the fear subsided, and I grew kind of numb like a thick scar. I filled a jar with them, and lowered a mike into the jar and taped the sounds for Neal. I was going to release them, but then I killed them in nasty ways I'd rather not admit to. They started to wind down, but were still a big problem for about three weeks afterwards.

My high school graduation was during the tail end of this. It was a mind-numbing six hour long event, and having it outdoors, in the summer heat, with all the cicadas, was horrible. Many of them flew into the stadium lights and fried like a big bug zapper. All the poles around the lights were about knee-deep in dead, fried bugs.

All in all, the experience was good. I grew out of my fear of insects at this time. They sprayed from low-flying planes for a while to kill the bugs and "break the cycle of Brood X," but that seemed to make a lot of people sick, so they eventually stopped. But I knew that in 2004, they'd be back. I curiously wondered what 2004 would be like.

Now it's 2004. The news seems to be ready this time. They are almost ready in Cincinnatti, Baltimore, and Washington DC, but am I ready? Are my dogs ready? Wait, did the Baltimore Sun just say they are Atkin's friendly?

Soylent Green: Now people-free! New darker and crunchier formula.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:16 PM EST [Link]

Other people's pain is not entertaining

Fran likes those Judge shows. You know, like Judge Brown, Judge Judy, and so on. I never watch those shows, but I had a chance to in Jacksonhell and again recently while Fran was watching them.

I really equate those shows down with Jerry Springer style talk shows. I don't know how these people remain real judges, because a lot of their attitude and professionalism is sub-par. I have seen real judges, in action, and while they might be boring, at least they are not making sarcastic comments and trying to use trendy and hip language with double entendres and puns for one liners. CR watched them yesterday with us, and said that when he got to go on a field trip to circuit court earlier this year, they told all the kids outright that people like Judge Judy would have been fired after just a day in our county.

The prosecution and defendants are often no winners, either. I am sure that's on purpose, but man ... what ever happened to requiring a suit and tie? Maybe it was never a requirement, but if the prosecution shows up with paperwork, notes, evidence, an outline of events, and a business suit, and you show up in an untucked flannel shirt and plenty of bling-bling ... you are not going to faire well in a court of law. Especially if you keep sheepishly grinning and saying "Your honor, you know how it is..." as a defense for smashing in your ex-girlfriend's car window and stealing her stuff because her new boyfriend said you were all show and no substance.

Sometimes, both people are morons. That must be a great day for those who select the cases for TV. "Wow... a jackass suing an idiot! God LOVES me! Sign 'em up!" I am sure I am being manipulated into wanting to smash both their heads in and going, "Get on with your lives!" Suing an unemployed 19 year old for $2000 of punitive damages because he shot out your car speakers for playing rap music at 130db and leaving the windows open doesn't mean a thing if he doesn't have $2000.

The worst thing about these kinds of shows is I never like seeing people in pain. Even if they "deserve" it. The Springer-style talk shows are the worst because you just have so many people hurting, crying, in anger ... it's traumatic! I don't want to see people fight each other! But I suppose I am in the minority. I recall when CR was 2, and we took him to a hockey game. Christine's old work had tickets they were supposed to give to customers, but the customers hated them so much, they never took them. So employees ended up with them. They were good tickets, too, like the front row in front of the Plexiglas, near the center line. In one of the games we went to, a fight broke out right in front of us. I had never seen adults fight in more than shouting matches at this point, so it was kind of weird to see two fully grown men, in uniforms, wail out and punch each other. It wasn't like the movies at all, it was so freeform and unrehearsed. And it sucked. They fought like little kids, and I mean like 3-4 year old kids. Grabbing, hitting, missing, pulling, and it just looked silly. It upset CR, though, who said they shouldn't be doing that. I distracted him so he wouldn't cry, and the referees broke it up and sent them to their rooms--er, penalty boxes. I told CR they got in trouble, just like he would if he ever did anything like that. I was a mixture of bemusement and angst at the whole thing. It didn't help that people behind us were cheering them on.

The crowds love a fight.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:33 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Navigating the Maze

I have a meeting in less than 2 hours. It's in "The Renoir" conference room. I don't have a clue where that is in this building of little twisting passages, all different. We literally have dozens of conference rooms and "meeting pits." They can never tell you where a meeting room is, like "second floor, near room 234B," no, you have to just know. There are no signs for most of the rooms, and those that do have signs are partially outdated.

My former workplace was also just as bad. They named meeting rooms, printers, and servers after mountains. Like, "We're having a meeting in Denali," or "I faxed the form you needed to the Andes printer." Now, in this office, they had a huge cube farm, with various hallways between pods that changed frequently. And thus, so did the meeting rooms and equipment. You kind of figured that the meeting rooms were the pods with higher walls, but they ran out of lower walls at some point, so that became a red herring. Their reasoning for naming meeting rooms this way was because they moved so much. "We can't have addresses for things that move so much." I am not sure what "so much" meant, because most of the pods didn't move at all in the many years I worked there. Some of the meeting rooms did, but most of them completely disappeared as the were tuned into yet more office pod space. I thought for the average new visitor this was hellish. I mean, you knew where all the stuff around your group was, "The McKinley is that unlabeled area near the kitchen, next to the printers Rockies and Kilimanjaro." But if you were on the other side of the building? Big guess. And sometimes the meeting rooms did move around, so your memories of last year may take you into some other person's office. "Yes?" "Is this the Alps?" "No, it moved three pods down."

Sounds like a Monty Python skit.

My current workplace has them named after famous painters. We have also lost meeting rooms to make way for more pods, but most of the offices in this building are static drywalled places with real doors, so the meeting areas never change. We also have a numbering system, albeit rather cryptic. I mean, it makes sense when you break it down, like "52A:A03," which means Building 5, second floor, A wing, room A03." Of course, the "wings" are arbitrarily divided, meeting rooms don't have room numbers, and some room numbers are out of order amid various "clumps" of pods mixed with drywalled offices with windows. Hallways are not straight lines, but kind of wind around like gaps between Tetris pieces. It is VERY common for me to wander around, fooled by office numbers, and go, "52A:A01... A03... A05... A07... B12... B14... WTF? I need 52A:A09!!! Argh!!!" And then I can't find my way back because starving programmers have eaten all my breadcrumbs. People around those areas are rarely any help because all they know is what's close to them by visual clues near doors. "Turn right at the poster of the Ferrari, then you pass by Selma's office, which has a lot of plants, and then turn right at the second whiteboard, and go through the fourth door from the right, right down a long hallway, and then left at a spiked plant and a picture of our campus from the sky." And then you get lost anyway, because he forgot to mention there were only 2 doors, and the hallway actually goes left...

Posted by Punkie @ 12:07 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Update on new Virginmobile phone...

The phone has been okay. Reception is a bit spotty in some areas, the sound is kind of tinny, but it's acceptable for the price I paid for the phone.

My new phone now gets more calls than my old number did. They aren't nearly as annoying, thank goodness, but once the 550-7000 number abruptly stopped, I still get about 2-3 calls a week for someone who I think was from the Middle East. Luckily, whomever this person was doesn't seem to have the past like Tyrone had. Most of the calls pause for a second, then hang up. A few of them are from some physical therapy clinic reminding him of his next appointment. A few of have mentioned his name (the clinic has a girl who probably reads from a memorized script, she doesn't even register that I said, "Hello, this is Grig..." before going on with the spiel about when his next appointment is), but his name is this long Hindu or Arabic name I can never remember it.

My ringtone for all unknown callers is the spooky title soundtrack from the movie, "Halloween." Heh.

I keep thinking I should be mad, because I pay 25 cents for that call, but I have made so few calls, that if I don't spend at least $20 every 90 days, my phone gets cut off. So far I have spent $11, and $8 of that is in ringtones.

Maybe I should get more advice from Spongebob...

Posted by Punkie @ 01:05 PM EST [Link]

Mother's Day

Finally... I totally aced a Perl project at work, pumped myself full of coffee, and I am now listening to a techno-bluegrass group named Rednex. I am in a good mood for the first time in a while. Of course, I know that means something really horrible will happen soon, but I figure that's God's gift for a reprieve before a big storm, and I'd better take it while the gettin's good.

Mother's day is coming up. Well, I don't have a mom, so that makes things a bit easier so I can focus on Christine. Like about a bajillion other kids, Mother's day for me was a combination of a school art project and then taking mom out to brunch. In my case, it also had the caveat of "if she was sober, and my father was speaking to her." I don't remember mother's days too much, but since it's in May, we probably spent it on that damn yacht. Christine's mother died in 1998, so she doesn't have any worries about Sunday as well. So it's all about Christine, which she deserves because out of the two of us, she's the better parent.

Since we have no spare money at the moment, I am forced to be creative on what to do. I wonder what I'll come up with? We don't have money to spare, so gifts, flowers, or restaurant are right out. I do the housework, so that wouldn't be any different. She's not fond of breakfast in bed. The essential core to this is to celebrate the fact that she is an awesome mother, so whatever I do should reflect that.

In other news, Fran and Debbie are excellent house guests. We had our first dinner on the new table (thanks again, April A), and due to the types of meals we have cooked, what little cash we had left was stretched to cover 5 people several meals through the end of the week. Fran's very tired, of course, and stays on the rec room couch most of the time, watching daytime soaps and judge shows on the big screen TV. He's been telling us about living in the nursing home, where he was probably the youngest person there, and how often he saw people die around him in the scant few weeks he stayed there. CR gets time to spend with Uncle Fran, which is good he gets to know Fran before ... well, you know. I worry about him because it's really cold down there, and his immune system is almost nonexistent. Debbie's also got a severe ENT infection, which worries be not just for Fran, but because CR and I are VERY susceptible to any lung infection, what with our asthma, CR more than I. On top of that, a lot of my coworkers are out with a NASTY bug or two; one that is lung related, one that is stomach related. But so far, so good. [knock on head]

Posted by Punkie @ 11:53 AM EST [Link]

Monday, May 3, 2004

More on presidents... and the parties they hold

I have lived through several presidents from Johnson to W. Bush. My first memory of any president was Nixon resigning. My parents hated him. I recall the following years where people were wearing T-shirts that said, "Don't buy books from crooks" when Nixon wrote his memoirs. Ford was kind of a bumbling old man, and lost to Carter, who, while too smart for the job, went on to become the greatest ex-president we have ever had, IMHO. Then Reagan got into office, and I never trusted him. He lasted eight years, and his wimpy VP followed him, and took us to Iraq for the first time. Then he lost to Clinton, and I kind of liked Clinton. I mean, he had some serious truth issues, but I didn't vote for him for his sex life. He did okay, in spite of everything. I didn't vote for Bush II, and was fairly sore he won. I didn't think Al Gore was a winner, either. I thought Al would be like Carter, and be too intellectual for the job.

I am a registered Democrat, but that doesn't mean much because I don't always vote for party. I voted for Perot, for instance (it seemed a good idea at the time). I kind of feel like the old saying, "No matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected." But I vote anyway, under the "selective breeding" approach.

I can't stand Republicans and a majority of their members (although Senator McCain is pretty cool). They are often rich, old, fat cats who don't give a crap about "commoners" like myself. I think the only policy I like of theirs is lax gun control. I am wary of Democrats as well, because it seems a lot of sex scandals happen with them (Kennedy, Clinton, etc...). They also want to ban guns, a right which even though I don't exercise, I fully support the right for all US Citizens to own a gun if they want to. You never know when the government will rise up against you, and Thomas Jefferson knew this, which is probably a big reason why it's in the Constitution. Also, my father was a staunch Democrat, and he was such a jerk, it will always be a caveat for all political parties for the rest of my life. My father acts very Republican, in the fact he's rich, hates people, works in defense contracting, and is in politics for his own gain. But no, if you ever used that word in front of him, he'll give you the smackdown.

I can sum up both parties by a recent thing that happened to my son. CR was taking the tour of his future high school, and they had various clubs with tables, trying to get future freshmen to join. One of the flyers he got was from the "Young Democrats."

"They had a popular table, man," he said. "They had a lot of people there, giving out candy." He also mentioned the Young Republicans table. "They only had one guy, and they weren't giving out anything, so no one went there."

That's the main difference. I told him, "Democrats love to take your money, and give it out to the people who don't work. Republicans love to take your money..." [comedic sudden end]

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

If I were president...

I realized today, that being 35 means I am old enough to become president. I have often thought I'd make a rotten president, mostly because I am tend to react very strongly about how I feel. I doubt I'd go anywhere in my platform, what I'd call "The Common Sense Civil Servant Platform." I believe it is the president's job to serve the best interests of his people. He's supposed to be a hired employee. The citizens hire him to be in charge of the executive branch of the government. I think we forget that. That's why our taxes pay for him, remember?

Recently, some of our own servicemen acted in a sick and twisted manner by torturing some Iraqi prisoners. Yes, I am sure "it happens in every war," but we're supposed to be beyond that. This isn't just someone getting out of hand and beating someone, this is cruel and unusual to the point of psychotic. If I were president, I would demand to see these people in person. Then I would televise me berating the hell out of them. Then they'd all get life sentences in federal ass-pounding prison with no chance for parole. I would then apologize to the Iraqi people.

Of course, I can see problems with this already. Suddenly tons of people would claim they were tortured, and you wouldn't know the true ones from the faked ones. Of course, I would have never started a war with Iraq, either. Saddam sucked, yes, but with our economy on shaky ground, I would have considered it too costly. Here's a list of other things I would have done that might seem odd to the American people.

- Completely ramp up education. Make it a national priority. Not easy to do in 4 years, but I'd hire a third-party agency to assess the problems on year 1, fix things on year 2, tweak my fixes on year 3, and hopefully by year 4 have something better going on.
- My stand on abortion? Make it unnecessary. Try and eliminate unwanted children by using measures to keep women who don't want children from getting pregnant in the first place. Have a nationwide adoption system for those who change their mind? I wouldn't make abortion illegal, just leave it as a last resort.
- Foreign policy? I'd humbly apologize for our arrogant mistakes. I'd spend 2 months a year on tour, trying to fix what we broke. Support education for young American kids to send them to Europe and Asia ... and the Middle East and Africa when those places stabilize. I'd really try and get American citizens to realize we're not the only country out there, but one of many.
- Military? Readjust spending. I'd cut back on a lot of stuff, but not so much it's crippled in time of need.
- Economy? I'd do what I could to promote jobs. Try and get people working, and those who can't work, I'd try and make them feel useful with volunteer programs. Anyone who is on welfare and is able-bodied would have to do volunteer work. And educate, educate, educate.
- The environment? Pollution = bad. I'd be a thorn in the side of a lot of big businesses, which is probably the #1 reason I'd never get elected.

I'd also push a huge system for day care. I'd study models, like the Dagis system in Scandinavia, with trials in America.

I'd also have weekly "Fireside chats" like FDR had, but instead of the usual Weekly Radio Address, I'd have a more fun "show," and gear it towards the USA Today crowd. I wouldn't make it goofy, but I'd have animations explaining what's going on, and sort of give a summary of my week. "I was in England, doing this and that, and made some friends there. Then I came back to the states and sat with some of my educational advisors. He's a short animation on what we think has gone wrong with educational spending." It would be an hour at most, I'd hire Madison Avenue to promote it, and keep it at a 7th grade level so it wouldn't be too sappy, but not so complicated, the average American wouldn't grasp it. I'd end with "viewer mail" from US Citizens. After the "show," I'd have an hour of questions from the press. Anything I didn't know the answer to, I'd write down, and answer it in the next show. I'd also do a lot of public service ads encouraging people to save, educate children, and generally be nice to each other. I'd also do the talk show circuit once a year.

I'd feel I was elected, it meant I was hired by the people, and buddy, I'd better have some results before I got "fired." But what if "the people" wanted me to nuke Canada? Then I'd have to explain that's not in our best interests. I'd have the gauge what "our best interests" are, and my main handicap there is I assume most people are pretty decent. This concept always leaves me scratching my head when people do evil things.

But I'll never be president, so when it comes to "How will I figure this out?" another part of me goes, "Oh, stop worrying about it."

Still, I hate to just sit and watch my country make a fool of itself because of who keeps getting elected.

If I was President
I'd get elected on Friday,
Assassinated on Saturday,
And buried on Sunday
If I was President.
If I was President....
-- Wyclef Jean

Posted by Punkie @ 10:37 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, May 2, 2004

The Zen of Housework

Well, with Christine gone to pick up Fran in Florida, and CR being gone most of yesterday in Science Olympiad, I have gotten a lot of housework done. I'm not sure why, but I get housework done faster and better alone in the house than any other time. Maybe because I feel I can swear openly.

"Goddamit, who leaves CHEESE WRAPPERS in the TOASTER???"

Friday night, I was totally stressed out because we had run out of money. This came rather unexpectedly, and after drilling down with reasons, it turned out our medical expense now reach over $200 a month, and that's just in co-pays. I spent several hours with spreadsheets tracking all money and money losses, and the same crap I always see is still getting worse: things are becoming more and more expensive. My raises have been marginal, and Christine hasn't gotten a raise since 2000, so on average, our income has only increased 2% every year, while our costs seem to have gone up 34%. When we started living here, we had about $500 extra a month we put in savings. Now, we are losing about $230 a month. Our savings are gone. There were several events that led to this, like the horror that was late 2001, and of course, our recent not-as-horrible-but-horrible-just-the-same events. We're pretty much one emergency away from bankruptcy. Our tax refund has been wiped out already, and if it wasn't for the fact we kind of have to go to Vegas at this point (we already paid for most of it, and Tracie has paid for some of that), we would have canceled Vegas. As it was, I had to make some "devil's deals" with Credit Card companies that we had. Thankfully, I didn't have a high balance on any of them but one, but I got the limits bumped up (they were, by my request, very low, so this was not an issue... I was stunned how easy it was to get your credit limit raised).

Sean and Lou came over Friday and talked to me about money, and Sean had some interesting advice that might work, but might complicate matters financially, because it involves financial juggling that I am not comfortable with. Everyone pretty much agrees I shouldn't get a second job, but I am a simple man, and I just equate work=money. I was just glad to have someone to talk to who would not be affected by my possible financial collapse.

Saturday morning I had to get up early to see CR off to the Olympiad (a dad a friend of his was going to pick him up), and we both overslept. But he made it out, and I got to work. I started with the lawn because it's just growing like crazy. That took a few hours, and I think I finally have the Zen of the lawnmower worked out, and it's not so difficult to start anymore. I do need to get it tuned up, like new spark plugs, blade sharpened (or replaced by this point), and oiled. But I don't have the money right now. But it mows, and that's important. I also replanted two tomato plants to the outside in pots, to see if they would survive. Then storms blew through, and I slept through them. Then I woke up, and saw all the debris, I went, "Oh, crap! The tomatoes!" But they were fine. I think on Thursday I'll plant the rest in the garden.

I tried to call Christine, and the phone was dead. Both lines (Christine has a fax line for work). I called her on the cell, and she said to call Verizon, which I did, and they stated something very alarming: "On April 16th, you asked to have this service cancelled in two weeks." Uh... no! They then stated they had proof that someone, with my wife's name, had called from a Baltimore number saying they were moving and to have the phone shut off on the 30th. I really doubted this, and they had to get a supervisor into the call. But she was nice and friendly, and said the mistake might be on their end because they were lacking a "transit number" (or something) on the order, and suspected that someone else with my wife's name had called for another account, and if the account info didn't match, they wouldn't have been able to do a work order. They had to verify who I was, and then they said that there was a small chance that we would end up with a different phone number! Because, see, we had cancelled, and the phone number was put back into a pool of available numbers on this exchange. They reactivated our voice mail immediately, but said it would take up to 24 hours to reconnect our service, but they would wave the reconnection fee. I got a call only a few hours later from them, asking if it was me. So the outage only lasted about 12 hours, 3 hours from when I discovered it. But what a pain!

I had a huge "To-do" list to clean up for Fran's arrive Sunday (later today). There wasn't a whole lot since we cleaned for Debbie and Penny's visit. Penny is Christine's cousin, and came up to Maryland from Florida a few years ago. She only recently started helping out because she only recently heard about the whole thing, and she's still living fairly well off due to a worker's comp settlement from a few years earlier. She drove Debbie down to our house, and will probably visit here soon again. She left on Friday to go back to her temporary living in Maryland (she's moving back to Florida soon), because she just got a dog (a Chihuahua) who was in the vet's office, which Debbie and Christine went down to Florida to pick up Fran. So the majority of cleaning I had to do was touch-up. I managed to get some more cleaning done that had taken a while to get to, including our own bathroom next to our bedroom. It was amazing how much expired medicine we had. Some expired back in 1999! There was other stuff, too. You know how almost everyone has a "junk drawer?" Well, we have several "junk boxes." I went through a lot of those, and filed stuff away where it's supposed to go, tossed it, or just left it in the box. I got it down from 5 boxes to 3, so I feel pretty good about that.

Well, Fran, Debbie, and Christine just arrived so I'll see you all later.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:56 PM EST [Link]