A beautiful day in the NAY-bor-hoooood…

A good morning

Awakened by Shelly this morning; we’re working on an arrangement that will offer her the feeling of security she needs to feel safe in our relationship–without crossing Kelly’s boundaries. Sometimes, optimism pays. I have a very, very good feeling that we can find a way to make everyone happy.

A good afternoon

Spent a lot of time at the field today. Flew the plane several times; the engine still has a couple of minor problems idling reliably, but we’re making progress. I’m getting the hang of flying, too! 🙂 I want to get a new digital camera and mount it beneath the plane so I can start taking some aerial shots. Now THAT would be cool.

A good evening

Going out to an S&M play party this evening. Bringing THE AXE and the violet wand, and I’m going to be very evil to kellyv. Heh, heh, heh.

Going postal

I spend a good deal of time answering technical questions and troubleshooting computer problems for my clients, most of whom are in the advertising and graphic art community.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with a number of people who are attempting to perform complex tasks–for example, use $5,000 page imposition software–without having even the most basic of computer skills. I charge far too much money to be spending time with my clients trying to teach them to use the mouse.

It’s frustrating. To give you an idea of HOW frustrating, if I were a postal worker rather than a computer tech, my day would probably look something like this:

Hello. Can I help you? You’d like to mail that letter to your brother? Okay, not a problem. Let me see the letter…

Ah, your brother’s name is Jeb. Okay, there’s a problem–you don’t have an address on this letter.

An address. Yes, sir, we need an address. You know, where your brother lives.

No, sir, don’t describe his house to me! That won’t really help very much. We need to know where the house is.

Yes, sir. Where it is. You know, like what city it’s in. What’s that, sir? City. What city it’s in. City…it’s like a town, only bigger.

Ah, he lives in the country! I’m not surprised. What’s that, sir? Yes, I do live in the city myself. Yes, I suppose that does make me a city slicker.

But we still need to know where your brother Jeb lives. Tell you what. Let’s start with what state he’s in.

State. You know, what state he lives in. Um, you know, the country is divided into states, see, and…

Yes, sir. Country. Like, the United States of America. Yes, that’s it! America. America is divided into states, and…yes, that’s it, sir. Yes, you are a “Murican.” Yes, I’m sure your brother is a “Murican,” too.

Now, then. We need to narrow down what state your brother lives in, and…what’s that, sir? Ah, I see, you have an American flag on your pen, how nice. I’m sorry? You have an American flag on your truck, too? I’m not surprised. I bet you have a gun rack in it as well, don’t you?

Ah, you do have a gun rack in your truck? Well, fancy that. But we still haven’t–where are you going? No, sir, I don’t need to see your gun. And you can’t bring a gun into a post office anyway.

Beg your pardon? Charlton Heston? No, sir, I don’t know what Charlton Heston would say about that. But I’m sure he and I would both agree that you really, really don’t want to give me a gun right now.

Focus, please. The letter, remember?

We need to find out what state your brother lives in. State, like Texas, or…Texas. Yes, Texas. It’s a state. Your brother lives in Texas? Good! We’re making progress. Now we need…what’s that? How did I know? Lucky guess.

Okay, I’ll tell you what, sir. It’s time for me to leave, but my friend Bob is just coming on duty, so….Hey, Bob! You want to help this gentleman send this letter?

Problem is, I own the company, so there is no Bob for me to give these clients to…

On the nature of happiness

I had a dream last night that I was arguing on the telephone with ectropy.

Why her? I have no idea. I don’t know her, and don’t have any association with her other than LiveJournal. But there it is.

In any event, we were arguing about the nature of happiness. She was trying to get a gumball out of a gumball machine, and there was one purple gumball in the machine–all the way at the top. Her argument was that she wouldn’t be happy unless she got the purple gumball, but since it would clearly require her to buy all the gumballs in the machine, it wasn’t worth pursuing.

I argued that the happiness isn’t in the gumball, it’s in yourself, and that the secret is to be happy no matter what gumball you get.

I have no idea what any of this means. Dreams are stupid, anyway. 🙂

Wastin’ time

For your amusement. Some of these links require the Flash 6 player in your browser.

Today’s grammer lesson:
http://www.yourallgay.com/

The dangers of beer (excellent animation, sexist as hell):
http://members.aol.com/matt999h/beer.htm

Cute cats, kind of work-safe
http://b3ta.com/sleepy-kittens/

An old classic, Stick Figure Death Theatre:
http://www.sfdt.com/

Ever wondered who posed for all those warning icons and symbols?
http://www.capnwacky.com/warning/

I think I’ve had this guy for a tech support call:
http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/index.htm

Stick Figure Hardcore Porn:
http://www.petting-zoo.org/Hardcore.html

Oh, the pain…

First, the bad news

Woke up last Tuesday with intense, stabbing abdominal pain, which has remained more or less constant since. Doctor’s exam and X-rays haven’t turned up anything yet; the working theory is kidney stones. Going in Friday for a kidney imaging exam.

Of course, this happened concurrently with most of my major clients having major crises…got called Friday by one client whose server hard drive had just failed, with a financial auditor coming in on Monday morning, and of course all their financial records were on the server… sigh.

How the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects child pornographers

Got a bounce email message last week when someone forged my email address on a piece of email.

The person responsible has set up an offshore server for the purpose of trading kiddie porn. Problem is, I had to use some techniques to find out who was doing it and what they were doing that might possibly contravene certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act…meaning that if I report the lowlife scumballs to the FBI, the FBI might want to investigate me. I have my lawyer working on this problem right now.

Just for the record, the DMCA is a stupid piece of legislation.

Is today “Piss Franklin Off Day”?

Is there a sign somewhere that reads, “Hey criminals and bozos, go piss Franklin off?”

First up on the Criminals and Bozos list: the National Small Business Alliance, who decided they’d give me a telephone call and pitch business credit to me.

Problem is, the solicitation call was a tape recording. In Florida (and many other states), using a recording to make a telephone solicitation call is a complaint with the State of Florida. Later this week, I’m going to have to hoof it down to the courthouse and file a small-claims-court suit against them, too. Goddamn bastards.

So then…then…get this. Some jackass sends out a bunch of spam advertising a kiddie porn Web site–and forges my email on the spam! I found out about it only because one of the email addresses he sent the Web address to bounced, and since my email was listed as the “From:” address, the bounce message came to me.

So then I had to stop what I was doing again, track down the IP address of this asshole’s kiddie porn site, and spend 45 minutes on the phone reporting it.

Spammers these days are increasingly forging the email addresses of known anti-spam activists on their emails. No doubt they think this is clever–“Tee hee, we’ll make it look like an anti-spam activist is sending out spam, how funny!” But it’s really, really, really stupid, because if any copies of the spam bounce, the person whose email address was forged gets the bounce notification…and anti-spam activists tend to be really, really good at tracking down the source of emails.

So this yahoo thought he could have a laugh at my expense by forging my email address on a solicitation for kiddie porn, and instead he’s getting a nose full of bees. Bastard.

The world really needs to quit fucking with me, because dammit, I fuck back.

Grr.

At last!

I’m going to see The Matrix Reloaded tonight!!!

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