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Archive for April, 2004
Wow, I haven’t posted in ages. I suppose both my loyal readers are wondering what I’ve been doing all this time. Well, as it turns out, my new position actually has me fairly busy. I’m acting as a filter between the first-level technicians and the second-level specialists. It can get pretty busy. Coursework has also been an intrusion into my glorious webmasterin’ time. Oh, and UT2004 (Onslaught). That last one, too. I mean, especially. When I was able to, though, I blithely ignored my schoolwork and paid work in order to launch an exciting new venture: Microspork. Go ahead. Click on it. You know you want to. Yes, I know none of the links go anywhere. There’s no content except for the main page, at least at this point. I was going for an engaging, attractive, and even somewhat fun look that still said "corporate", or at least "keeping up the pretense of legitimacy". The whole thing wasn’t supposed to take anywhere near the time it did. I figured it would take five days, tops, even with the graphics. Ha. I spent an entire week reverse engineering some weird but free Javascript to make popup menus using DIV tags, and finally figured it out, to my immense satisfaction. "Look upon my works, ye savvy, and despair!" thought I. But lo, it turns out the Javascript features weren’t supported by any other browser than IE. It was broken in Netscape, Firefox, and Safari. Damn, damn, and quintuple heck! Curse thee, foul spawn of Redmond, for not adhering to standards, even if thy features be inadvertently righteous! So I discarded all that effort and made stupid links that go NOWHERE instead. I was feeling kinda burnt on the whole "site navigation" thing by that time. To assuage my pain, I created a few animated .GIFs and broke out with the Bryce, long untouched these many years, for a quick 3D render of a product box that came out pretty well, in my estimation. Now you know what I was squandering my time on. It’s kind of a relief to get it done, even if there’s not much there. I actually have some decent material for new posts here, so maybe I’ll get around to that soon. Unless I tire of destroying Blue power cores, in which case I’ll post sooner than that.
As a confirmed and proud Son of the West, I find it baffling and alien that an Occidental of any sort would choose to settle in a place whose indigenous population has either the temerity, perversity, or desperation to inflict octopus-flavored ice cream on the rest of the world, but he is fluent in their eldritch tongue, had previously married a fair maiden of that island nation, and seems deliriously happy there. He has told me previously that he’s always been mad for all things Japanese, so his work-related emigration can probably be viewed as a karmic reward for his diligence (in learning the language and culture) and generally being a decent fellow. For my part, I am content to merrily engage in lighthearted slander and libel against his adopted land, such as I have written here. One product of Japan that I do dearly love, however, is the haiku, those minimalist (what, besides the Ginza and “Iron Chef” isn’t minimalist in Japan?) poems. Most Westerners know the familiar 3-line, 5-7-5 syllable construction pattern. That’s the one I use, too, poor benighted Westerner that I am. Anyhow, I thought it would be amusing to debase this noble art form for my own ends, namely, that of poking fun at the other thing my expatriate friend is devoted to: Linux. Now, I’m not a Tux-basher, but I just don’t have the time or patience to deal with Linux, and I can’t run my apps on it, so I feel, well, that it’s of rather limited value for an end-user. Anyhow, here are just a few haiku I composed to illustrate my experiences with Linux:
Yes. I am a geek.
Back when I was attending Heald College, I had a final project that I submitted for graduation. It was supposed to have been part of a three-man, comprehensive web hosting project; we were going to set up a website using our own DNS and web servers. The whole thing fell apart because, basically, there was more than one person involved. Privately, two of us blamed the third for sloth and inaction, and he probably blamed us in turn. Hard to say. Anyway, big egos got bruised. At any rate, I fabricated a farcical web hosting company ("Integrated Internet Ideas", or "III"), which, in retrospect, had I put the site up in 1996 instead of 1998, when the blossom of the ‘Net had begun to fade, I probably would have had venture capitalists throwing fistfuls of Krugerrands through my window. I had almost forgotten about the thing, except that I suddenly remembered that I was still paying an old dial-up ISP ten bucks a month for services I hadn’t used for almost a year. I could really use all that South African gold now, considering how well I pay attention to my finances. My train of thought then hurtled off into its normal labyrinth of branch lines and forgotten spurs, when I also realized that this old project was still hosted there, and when I killed that ISP account, so would that small labor of love vanish, piped off to dev/null, thrown carelessly into the bit bucket, consigned to oblivion in a dark, small, anonymous place, as a magnetic head far away in Houston, Texas ruthlessly realigned millions of iron oxide particles on a hard disk. O woe, to be fated thus! I could not bear to be a party to such extermination. I could no more forsake one of my first digital creations than a parent could a suckling babe, or a glutton throw away a bag of chips, were there still a significant amount of crumbs and flavor powder in the deepest corners of the bag. Therefore I sucked it down off the ISP’s servers: you can check out this towering masterwork of late 20th-century gibberish right here.
I stayed home from work yesterday. Sick again. It hasn’t even been the good kind of sick- you know, where you’re not really well enough to go and earn your paycheck, but still alive enough to, say, sit around and play computer games all day, drag a half-gallon of ice cream home from the store, maybe go out to a restaurant later in the day. I had actually thought today might be such a day. Sadly, it wasn’t. Instead, my body made it pretty clear that I was going to stay home to rest and recuperate, and that it wasn’t brooking any sort of argument with the brain that was nominally in charge of operations. I should have taken my cue from earlier in the day, when I figured I’d tough it out and drive in to work anyway. After a quarter-mile of intense discomfort- bobbing up above the dashboard between spasms of abdominal pain to obtain fragmentary glimpses of the road, I cut a quick 180° turn and made for home. I stayed on the couch all day, sleeping. At least, I tried to. Four people came to the door today and rang the bell, jolting me from sleep. One of them turned out to be a delivery driver, since there was a package on the stoop when I finally perked up and ventured outside. One of the others was a callow, pimply youth with some sort of clipboard. Watching him fidget for a while, then leave in what appeared to be disgust, I resolved not to answer the door any more, but still they came, tearing me from the blissful arms of Morpheus. Bastards. When the first telemarketing calls arrived, I had already had enough of interruptions, so I figured I’d play with them a little. Nothing nasty or involved, since I really wanted to plant my face back down on the couch, but enough for a cheap laugh. These calls were the bright spot in an otherwise dull day. The first caller to suffer my wrath was from a phone company. I don’t know how much these thrice-damned phone companies spend on telemarketing, but it seems to be so much, that I’m surprised there’s any money left over for CEOs to steal. The fun began when this friendly "long-distance advisor" wouldn’t take "I’m sorry, but I’m not interested" for an answer. Twice.
Either this person didn’t pick up on the joke, or they actually do have a calling plan specifically designed for people who enjoy spending way too much money. I’d had my fun with that caller, though, and bade them good day. The next contestant was also calling to hawk some kind of awesome new telephone services that included mobile connectivity with something I had never heard of, much less cared about.
I hung up on him at that point before he could indicate whether or not he got the punchline. I didn’t wait around to explain Amish beliefs if he didn’t, and didn’t want to be trapped on the phone as he got the joke, and continued his pitch. The next call was probably the best. Another goddamned phone company. I’d like to take credit for the wit, but I can’t. My wife Sandy had thought of it, and pulled it on a few people already.
After the third poor wretch, I didn’t feel like playing anymore, so I turned all the phone ringers off and set the volume on the answering machine down to nothing. Three more calls came in after that. The first two were canned recordings from a "Mr. Brown" and "Ms. Yolanda", respectively, urging me to call them back at the same toll-free number. These were not sales calls, the messages solemnly said, rather, they were to discuss "important business negotiations." Uh huh. Let me see if if I can reschedule my busy executive day to learn about your amazing business opportunity that was not an effort to sell something. The last call was a recorded message from an overcaffeinated, spastic, ebullient young man who was "surprised" I hadn’t already called him regarding whatever fantastic, money-saving, guaranteed-to-produce-orgasm thing he was selling. I’m never sure whether to hate or pity telemarketers, so it’s generally both- extreme annoyance at their temerity, devolving into abject pity for their crappy job. I always try to hang up before the pity starts, so I don’t buy some useless service out of misguided mercy. Plus, hanging up on someone, though generally considered rude, can be pretty cathartic, and nobody will defend the telemarketers, the whipping boys of the information age. Always remember, that if you think your job sucks, you could be telemarketing. If you’re reading this, and you are stuck calling people on their deathbeds to sell them telephone services, know this: I do pity you. Now go away. |
I was corresponding this morning with a friend who lives far, far away on the monster-plagued, wind-blasted, water-lashed, earthquake-riven, and generally godforsaken scrap of volanic scree that men call Nippon. It seems that he has elevated himself to the lofty rank of Emperor over the wretched denizens of the hardscrabble village where he has established his household.