Friday, August 30, 2002

We're posting like mad over in the forums. None of the regulars went out this Friday night. I find it comforting that we're all so close to the same level of social hopelessness.

Mistress and I are babysitting a drunk friend. Said friend is probably too far gone to drive, but insists she is fine. Mistress and Friend are watching "Friends" in the living room. "Friends" makes me want to drown myself in yak spit, so I'm in here, posting to the boards with all the other hopeless people.

Life is good.

Posted by Keeper @ 10:25 PM CST [Link]

I just had a disturbing thought.

You know those shows on the Discovery Channel and PBS and stuff--science kind of shows, you know, where they talk about the human body or cars or the Space Shuttle or whatever, and there's always some kind of stuff-to-distance or stuff-to-weight comparison made, like, "The small intestine, if uncoiled and laid flat, would stretch nearly sixty feet!" or "The Space Shuttle contains nearly thirty miles of wire and cables!" or "The Chicken McNugget plant produces nearly one thousand tons of McNuggets per day!" or "If the total amount of money in circulation was collected and stacked, the bills would form a stack tall enough to reach to the moon and then halfway back to the earth!"

Like, where the hell IS all of this stuff?! It seems that if we have that much stuff all around us--enough hamburgers are consumed each year in America to circle the globe six times--that we should be buried in STUFF. Yet, somehow, miraculously, I can go outside without drowning in a gigantic whirlpool of the forty billion gallons of Wesson cooking oil produced annually, or being ensnared by the three thousand miles of optical fiber milled out each year.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?! WHY ARE WE NOT DEAD?! AAA!!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!!

I worry about these kinds of things.

Posted by Keeper @ 07:13 PM CST [Link]

I wish there were a way to make Outlook ignore messages flagged with "High" importance. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have the sender of a message evaluate that message's importance is a complete idiot.

We have one particular user who sends every single e-mail at "High" importance. Stop it. STOP IT. YOU ARE NOT THAT IMPORTANT. NOT EVEN THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS SO IMPORTANT THAT EVERY SINGLE UTTERANCE DESERVES A HIGH IMPORTANCE FLAG.

Posted by Keeper @ 03:27 PM CST [Link]

Monday, August 26, 2002

If anyone feels that we should lay off Afghanistan and the Middle East and just give peace a chance, I challenge you to sit through CNN's Flash-enabled tribute to September 11 without having your mind changed. I sit here at my desk at work with something trembling in my breast that can only be described as quiet rage.

Negociation is not an option. Compromise is not an option. The gauntlet is down and all that can possibly remain is death. I say send forth the troops and the tanks and the fuel-air mixture explosives and kill every last son of a bitch who would presume to attack the United States. Fuck the people who believe the war was America's fault. The fault lies with the ignorant savages who aren't content to merely grub and squabble over the shithole desert in which they dwell--savages who look with drooling hatred at our way of life and hide behind a twisted interpretation of a religion already based on contradiction and fantasy.

The first step in preparing a populace for war is dehumanizing the enemy.

Check. Done. I hate them with an automatic, soulless hate.

Posted by Keeper @ 01:42 PM CST [Link]

Friday, August 23, 2002

My father was laid off today.

Life is ephemeral.

Posted by Keeper @ 07:59 PM CST [Link]

Thursday, August 22, 2002

I just had an amazing encounter with the AT&T National Business Services office. They helped me to resolve a major discrepancy in my first cellular bill, and the total call time was less than ten minutes. I'm shocked. After being anally raped by Sprint for so long, I almost can't believe this is happening.

Posted by Keeper @ 01:56 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

While I'm here, I suppose I should talk about birthdays, since I had one of 'em on 9.aug. I am now twenty-four years of age, which should frighten me, but does not. I think when I hit twenty-six--that's the first birthday without anything else to look forward to--I will probably begin to be afraid of birthdays. Twenty-five will get me that big insurance discount (which ought to offset the insurance increase for living in Harris county instead of Galveston county, leaving me about the same as I am now), but twenty-six is the first birthday on that long and lonely downhill road to DEATH.

Woah. That's kind of creepy. Maybe I shouldn't talk about birthdays anymore.

For my birthday this year, I got a few DVDs (Fight Club, UHF, Braveheart, and Star Trek II: TWoK Special Edition), a pretty knife, a 40x/12x/48x TDK CD burner, and some cash. More importantly, my fiancee and my mother came over and decorated the apartment with streamers and balloons, and all my friends showed up shortly after. We went out and had sushi, then came back to the apartment and watched Star Trek II. The love and companionship was almost overwhelming, and I realized that I am truly blessed to have a life like I have. I will recall that moment the next time a luser bitches to me about not being able to print, and I will be serene and calm, and I will weather the storm.

Posted by Keeper @ 09:03 AM CST [Link]

There's a guy over here by my desk, talking to one of the other support dudes. The guy is what we like to call a "walk-up"--that is, he is one of those people who feels that normal processes and procedures don't apply to him. Obviously, the problems of some people are much more important than others. These are typically the people who show up and try to work on the days where we have scheduled outages. When they complain, we tell them that we've been sending every week for the past month communicating the outage schedule, and then every day for the past three days. Their response, invariably, is "Oh, I delete all the e-mail I get from you guys. I'm too busy to read it." Unfortunately, at that point, I'm too busy working on the scheduled outage's maintenance to listen to their inanities.

Anyway, this guy is over here and it seems like someone has fixed his problem, because he's started emoting very loudly about cake. "DAY-UM!", he is saying. "Get that man some cake!" A moment ago, another tech supplied some additional helpful information, and the guy started again. "Hey, all right! Get THAT man some cake, too!"

I am afraid of his mystery cake. I want none of it.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:52 AM CST [Link]

Monday, August 5, 2002

AT&T, so far, is proving more impressive than was Sprint. Through the magic of a single phone call, my phone now works properly. w00t!

Posted by Keeper @ 05:59 PM CST [Link]

Cellular phones. I cannot order one without it being pre-broken for my convenience.

I have just received my spiffy AT&T Wireless-served Motorola V60t TDMA phone, which does not work out of the box. The packing slip recevied from the phone says that its phone number is one thing, and the phone appears to be programmed to think that my its phone number is something else, and that something starts with an area code of 000.

This mirrors my previous experience with Sprint PCS, who also gave me a phone that was broken and/or configured improperly.

I'm talking to the nice AT&T lady right now. We'll see how this goes. The Sprint Saga required multiple visits to the Sprint store.

Posted by Keeper @ 05:54 PM CST [Link]