November 2007 - THOMnottom

I think I forgot the lyrics

We actually caught an episode of “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” – I know, what a fantastically creative name. This is a great show for The Woman because she can sing well and knows tons of lyrics. It’s terrible for me because… well… I can’t sing, and I tend to know a lot of bogus lyrics. So the entire time I keep thinking of Irene Cara and how she would destroy me on that show. There’s just no way I could remind myself that what I sing are not the right words.

Sure enough, eventually “Flashdance…What a Feelin'” becomes an option and the contestant absolutely has to go for it. And as she’s singing the song I realized, it’s not a matter of reminding myself what the real words are. Even for $350,000, with a microphone in my hand and TV cameras focused in on me, there’s no chance that I could resist belting at the top of my lungs: “TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF / AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!”

The world’s laziest spammer

Reading this eloquent example of phishing, I was in awe with how much effort was put into creating such a meandering butchery of the English language. The spammer must have been convinced that if enough words were out of place, the reader would be so confused that money would just flow from him without even realizing it. How diabolical!

I, on the other hand, am the recipient of lazy scams, such as the following:

THIS CARD CENTER WILL SEND YOU AN ATM CARD WHICH YOU WILL USE TO WITHDRAW YOUR MONEY IN ANY ATM MACHINE IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, BUT THE MAXIMUM IS TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS PER DAY, SO IF YOU LIKE TO RECIEVE YOUR FUND THIS WAY PLEASE LET US KNOW BY CONTACTING THE CARD PAYMENT CENTER AND ALSO SEND THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION:

1.YOUR FULL NAME
2. PHONE AND FAX NUMBER,
3. ADDRESS WERE YOU WANT THEM TO SEND THE ATM CARD TO(P.O BOX NOT ACCEPTABLE)
4. YOUR AGE AND CURRENT OCCUPATION
5. A COPY OF YOUR IDENTITY

Did you notice step 5? I got an e-mail requesting a copy of my identity. This guy can’t be bothered with figuring out how to work complicated credit cards and social security numbers. It’s much easier if I just hand over a complete copy of my identity. I’m still not sure if that includes my fingerprints and retinal scans…

Perhaps the next one will include a more devilish approach:

If you desire to have so much fund at cost of little or no thing, please send your soul to the address that included below of this e-mail. Include a S.A.S.E. if you possibly need it back at later point.

Except it’ll be in all caps or something – so I know it’s real…

Another blog bites the dust

Scott Adams has decided he’s going to blog less. That seems reasonable. But now he’s also gotten rid of the full feeds, because the ad revenue just isn’t worth it for him. That’s right, the guy who created one of the most successful comic strips and has multiple best selling books isn’t making enough money off of his blog, so he’s decided inconveniencing his readers will help.

Listen, I get it. Advertising makes the world go round. But that doesn’t change the fact that every ad on his site is already blocked by – surprise, surprise – Adblock Plus. It also doesn’t change the fact that he could simply toss ads in at the bottom of his feeds anyway. And it certainly doesn’t change the fact that a very successful man is complaining to someone who is struggling with a mortgage that I haven’t bought enough of his books to support his financial demands. I’m not about to claim that I’ll never read or buy another Dilbert book again, but he put quite a bit of effort into showing just what his audience means to him all while painting himself as a martyr.

Oh well, that’s one less feed for me to keep up with…

Two heart attacks later…

Ever since the incident which I will not speak of, I’ve become rather obsessive about backing up data and not dropping hard drives – hey, I’ve only dropped two in the last month. Now The Woman knows to stay out of my way and not bug me at the computer with the simple phrase “I”m checking the backups”. In other words, unless you want every memory of your niece and nephew to disappear, just go back to watching TV.

And thus I found myself importing new photos this Sunday morning from the nonstop Thanksgiving weekend. It’s a multi-step process designed to confuse and astound passerbys and leave me with copies on as many devices as possible. And so when device number one stopped working, I got pretty nervous – we haven’t even gotten to the real meat of the process and it’s already bugging out. Of course, it turns out to be my own clumsiness as I partially yanked the USB cable out. After re-attaching, the photos get imported and the process continues with me just a little closer to death.

Then I start the master backup, wherein everything is duplicated onto two more drives in an array. My brain and heart stopped for about a minute towards the end as I heard the dreaded clicking noise. Great! Yet another drive goes belly up! But… why is everything still copying? Hmm… I wonder if that graduation tassel swinging from the side of my monitor could be simulating a failed hard drive sound as it bangs the casing of said hard drive… Well, what’s a few more gray hairs?

When all is said and done, Monday morning I come down to do some less important backups. Oddly, however, the system isn’t letting me view the backup drive. You know, the beautiful RAID array that holds my life. Probably just needs to be restarted… except now it won’t turn back on. Let’s flick a switch… now it’s on and still won’t be recognized… now I’m getting worried. Let’s switch from firewire to USB… wow, there’s everything. And running much more smoothly.

In summary, the universe is out to destroy me and has at least succeeded in taking a few years off of my life.

I may be a wanted man…

If you want to leave a car parked in front of our house overnight, you have to call the cops. We have a two car driveway, so it’s typically not a problem. But sometimes one of us will leave a car in the street until the other gets home based upon exit strategies for the following morning. And occasionally, we are just a tad too forgetful and a car sits out in no man’s land all night.

A recent bout of forgetfulness landed me a ticket. Nevermind the fact that there is something truly disgusting about a township charging you $35 for leaving your car in front of your house when they will also turn around and charge you even more in taxes if you expand your driveway to fit said car. Nevermind that, I was willing to pay the ticket. Except I didn’t know about it for awhile because it blew off of my car. So I get notice that I need to pay $45 now for my lack of clairvoyance, and do so by the 25th – they’ll even provide me with a nice website where I can pay. And if only it worked, I might have actually paid my ticket on time.

Now, according to the notice I have, they may have issued a warrant for my arrest. There’s part of me that wants to not pay the ticket to see if they’ll come for me. Wouldn’t that be marvelous? I could change the tagline for this site to “That guy who got arrested for parking in front of his house”…

Things to be thankful for

Let me just say, that I am totally thankful for the Internet. For it provides us with such fantastic viewing as badly re-dubbed Santana:

There’s a whole selection available, but the Santana one is the best. (thanks to Questionable Content)

Not to mention, where else can you find such hysterical spoofs of Hitler:

(thanks to kottke)

But parody is the backbone of the ‘Net.

Alright, there’s also funny cats, brilliant book covers, and crazy-ass tuba-playing.

In the end, though, all we really want is cats and hamsters snuggling:

(courtesy, of course, to Cute Overload)

Oh yeah, and I’m thankful for family and friends – whom I will be spending plenty of time with this holiday weekend. Happy Thanksgiving all!

What have we learned?

So far, we have learned that I cannot keep to a schedule. I’ve proven this over most of my life but, come on, I couldn’t even link to some kittens or something? Missing the first night was silly. When I skipped this past Saturday, well, I was well on my way to a wine and cheese induced coma. That managed to wipe out Sunday, too. I’m still not even sure what happened on Monday – I think I went to work.

Alright, in reality this whole NaBloPoMo was really about encouraging me to write on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I lost site of the inspirational part and focused on the schedule part. In order for me to get back to writing more – and writing better – I’ve got to get in the habit of writing when I’m inspired. You should be able to figure out when that is pretty easily – compare the stilted, single paragraph posts to ones that meander for way more words than any subject needs. Hey, that’s my style and I’m sticking with it, thank you very much.

I’m most upset that I missed my Sunday Photo. I really need to think about that more before hand – maybe even go out specifically to shoot something. I need a muse…

I cannot emphasize how much I loath this state

If you were keeping score this week, I believe it’s something along the lines of New Jersey 5 Me 0. Let’s see, there was the ridiculously out of the way drive home Wednesday night. I managed to not be able to make it into the City to see Mike Doughty with a friend on Thursday night. And today I drove to Paramus twice – yes, that’s right, twice – and still couldn’t get to the Verizon office in time to switch out my TV box. Hmm, that’s 4 – I’m sure there was a fifth time New Jersey kicked my ass this week… we’ll just give it a bonus point. The state certainly earned it…

High culture for sure

Just an FYI, this blog is rated:

Apparently that’s because I’ve recently used crap twice and pissed once. I guess it’s appropriate then that I write at this level:

I’m guessing for the same reason… So it looks like I should start pandering to my target audience more – 13 and 14 year olds who have to sneak behind their parents’ back to see Weekend at Bernie’s. Hmm, how could I do that?

(thanks to Decrepit Old Fool and Chris)

New Jersey sucks

For the second time this year, I found myself accompanying The Woman for a “musical experience” at NJPAC – that’s the New Jersey Performing Arts Center for you non-locals. The first one was an orchestrated version of Led Zeppelin – which was a lot of fun. This time it was Rain: The Beatles Experience. The group did a very good job impersonating The Beatles, and it was a lot of fun watching the progression from the teeny-bopper pop group to a mature band of psychedelic musicians.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend any of you to actually go there. Why? Because Newark is a shithole. Yeah, I normally avoid words like that on this site but, seriously, how else can you describe 75% of Jersey. NJPAC is about 2 miles from I280, but it’s a royal pain in the ass to get back on going west. Even if I hop right back on the route we came down, there is no entrance for I280 West. This is a common occurrence throughout this lovely state – you can go in one direction but not in the other. You know what another common occurrence is? Not posting signs to major highways. Or, only posting enough to get your confidence up, and then not directing you the rest of the way.

Once again I ended up heading a few miles East for no reason other than there was no decent way for me to turn around and head back home. I swear, it would have been easier to just drive 25 minutes to Hoboken, spend 10 minutes looking for parking, and then take a 20 minute train over to the center – even though it’s technically less than 15 minutes from our house.