Today, a co-worker asked if I wanted to get into a pool of megamillions tickets. It was $10 to get in, and there are approximately 40 people in the pool. I declined and was given the “loser” handsign.

As far as I know, only 1 other person in the office seems to have grasped the concepts of both simple math and human nature. Let’s take these one at a time so that the folks at home understand.

First, the math: The odds of winning the $155 million mega-millions jackpot are 1 in 135,145,920. If your group plays a whopping 400 tickets, there are now 135,145,520 combinations left that could still come up, and you are now splitting the jackpot 40 ways. Same odds, 40 times less money.

My optimism leads me to my second point. Let’s say you and your 39 co-workers actually beat the odds and win. How much of your winnings do you think you’ll have to spend to hire the bounty hunter to extract the holder of the winning ticket from Me-hi-co? And once you do, how many of your lawyer’s $275 hours will be spent getting your rightful 1/40th of the $500 left that your co-worker did not spend on coke and hookers?

I bet you wouldn’t even have enough to talk to Dr. Funk of Tahiti. Drop by my desk, leave a dollar, and I’ll give you a 1 in 100 odds that you get a $4 payout.

And for $4, the Doctor is in.

The Kids Today: Act I
So, we have a courtyard at work where the employees can sit around and enjoy their summer lunch hours. Most lunch times the place is crawling with the 20 somethings and new hires which college has left devoid of any notion of how to act or dress outside the walls of the Delta Delta Delta sorority house. For a people watcher, it makes for an interesting hour away from the confines of the basement that most of us call home for our checks.

Today, a young woman strolled out, sat down, and tilted her head back to seemingly enjoy the summer sun. Then, for 20 minutes, and to the confusion of most of us witnessing, a woman behind her started brushing the woman’s hair.

At what point during the workday, do you get the notion that brushing another woman’s hair at work is not strange?

The Kids Today: Act II
So, we have bathrooms at work now, too. As a matter of fact, I walked into one today on the premise that most people normally do: Walk in, do business, don’t talk or look anyone in the eye, wash hands, and get out ot there before anything grinds to a halt in the 4 minutes that I was away from my desk.

Today, in a seemingly empty bathroom, I was interrupted from my normal programming by someone talking…

Huh? Did you try 5? Oh man. Ok. Did you try 4 then? Uh huh. Ok try 4. Yea, that should work.”

“Oh, those fuckers,” I thought. “They won’t let an admin take 10 minutes to download some brownware without pestering him for help. Where does it end?” As I shook my head in disgust, the conversation turned…

Huh? Right. That’s crazy. Those washers are tiny. Yea. Uh huh. That’s rediculous. I never had to do more than two loads of laundry to wash everything I own. Right…”

Now, at what point during the creation of your grunt sculpture do you get so distracted or bored with the task at hand that you have to call someone at home to discuss their laundry situation?

I will never understand these fuckin’ kids today…

I had a long and winding dream last night that made little sense, and left me more exhausted than refreshed. I could only describe its level of confusion as being on par of that of a movie.

All that I can remember is the end. I was in a small cave looking at myself. I would say that the cave was only 4 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 8 feet deep. On one side was a cot, and on the sand floor was a 1 foot by 3 foot piece of clear painters tarp splashed in blood. I watched myself pick up the front half of a bloody skull sealed in plastic and hold it up in one hand. I then watched myself put it down and crawl over to some sort of meat in the same type of bag. I want to say that it may have been a baby parts, but I can’t be sure.

I then watched as “I” crawled over to the door and sat with my back to the bars that covered the entrance. I could see past myself to the outside which was sunny and sandy as if it were a desert. Then, I watched as “I” crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and became enlightened. I then watched as “I” levitated a foot off the floor.

Then, I was suddenly outside the cave facing my captors sitting at picnic benches outside of a long row of similar caves to the one I had escaped from. I then merged with the “I” that I had been watching. Most of the captors were afraid as I had somehow gained supernatural powers. I could communicate with them all without speaking and sent them all a warning not to attack me. One was not afraid, and attacked anyway.

After a brief volley, I ended up gripping his face at arms length in a deadlock. I had one finger in his eye and mentally threatened him that if he did not let go, he would lose his eye.

He spoke to me in the only words that I can remember from the dream. Through gritted teeth and peering through one open eye, he said that it was a simple feat to threaten to take out the eye, but quite another to follow through. Even though the situation was potentially life-threatening, I couldn’t scoop out his eye.

And then, I woke up with no idea what it all means.

Physical Graffiti, Track 10

• June 6, 1994 I started working for my company.
• June 30, 1994 I swear I won’t be there 6 mos.
• Dec 30, 1994 I swear I won’t be there a year.
• June 30, 1994 I swear that I won’t be here more than 2 years.
• June 30, 1998 I get my 5th promotion in a 5 year period.
• May, 1999: I get my 5th boss in a one year period.
• June 16, 1999 I quit.
• June 30, 1999 I’m re-hired before I can start my new job.
• June, 2004 My 10th anniversary creeps up on me somehow.

…Or something like that. It’s all really a big blur of grey cubicles and e-mail.

In the lonley, cold lab another day.

8 hours in a cold lab with no human contact makes one lose not only his sense of time, but any communication skills that do not involve a keyboard. It will also make one’s joints ache as if one had been left outside overnight.

Road rules
As I was switching from right lane to left on the way to work today, a big ass truck was trying to make a left from a side street and heading for the same spot that I was.

I got there first.

That’s when the truck began flashing its lights behind me, cut into the right lane and sped up next to me.

I blew a kiss to the woman calling me an asshole and screaming out the window at me. My initial thought was that without the cars, this 100 lb woman is screaming at a 210 lb man. My second thought is that I think SUV’s tend to make women and short men more aggressive drivers.

I have been in many accidents, and not once has a guy given me any grief after the crash. We exchange papers and call the insurance company. No yelling. No punching. Just exchanging and leaving. I swear that road rage among women in SUVs is much, much higher than that of men (or people who drive normal sized cars), and I wish there were a study out there that I could check to see if I’m correct.

In my opinion, women in SUVs seem to think that the large hunk of metal that they’re piloting down the road is a part of them, and creates the “might is right” mentality on the road. “My car is bigger, therefore you get out of my way, as I am mighty! Feel my power! Fear my vanity mirror! Grrrr.

The issue that I see is that sometimes people forget that inside cars on the road there are people. And some of those people are completely fucking crazy. And no amount of height in an SUV is going to help when one of those crazy idiots follows them home and chokes the life out of them in their driveway.

Ladies, please do me a little favor and stop trying to make up for your lack of power at home by being assholes on the road. I’m just trying to get to work, which is hard enough.

Can’t we all just get along? Better yet, can’t we all just get topless?

Work Rules
If you want to borrow my time or expertise under the wire to further one of your projects, please try to follow these simple rules:

1. Don’t pass my work off as your own.
2. Don’t throw me under the bus by making private communication public via forwarding e-mail.
3. Don’t ask me to provide you with unlicensed copies of software so that you can learn to do what you currently say you can do by passing my work off as your own and throwing me under the bus.

No Rules
I spent 15 minutes on the phone with an MCI telemarketer, in a vocal selection that can be imagined as a Southern black man. I told him that my favorite places to call were Juneau, Alaska and Tahiti because the people of Tahiti have wonderful skin, and although I don’t really have friends there, I just need to know what the hell they’re doing up there in Alaska. When asked about my phone bill, I told him, “I don’t know 500? 280? My wife handles that.” When He tried to sell me a $55 plan, I lost my mind and told him hat I didn’t have $55, and asked if there was a $10 plan. When He said that I was paying $500, I exclaimed, “$500! $500! That’s crazy!” This loop ate 5 minutes of the call. Describing Tahitians ate a few more.

When I was running low on material, the telemarketer said the word combined, allowing me to act as if he said that he was going to come by. I told him to swing by before nine because I have to go to bed, to which he asked me to leave the door open. I responded that I never leave the door open and he would have to learn the secret knock.

“It goes knock-knock knock… knock… knock…”
“OK, sir if I could just tell you about…”
“Hold on, son. Repeat that back to me so I’ll know you got it.”
“knock-knock knock… knock… knock…”
“That’s good. I’ll know it’s you. Just be here before 9. I’m not one of those nuts who stays up all night.”
“Right. Now, if I could just sign you up for…”
“Sign me up?? Do you have any idea the kind of trouble that I’d be in if my wife knew “that I was using the phone?
“Sir?
“Big Trouble. See, I’m not really allowed to use the phone.”
(slowly) “You’re not allowed to use the phone.”
“No because I’m always calling Tahiti. Have you seen the skin on those people?”

And on and on and on…

I felt kind of bad afterward, but I hope the kid got a story to tell out of it. Yes, I told him to take me off of his list. Yes, I’m probably going to hell.

Car
I drove my car into the dealer to have the brakes and the ABS looked at, and took the train back to work. It seemed very Orwellian on the T platform when the announcement kept repeating to report suspicious persons or activities. The only difference between reality and 1984 seems to be that the tone of voice is more friendly in our version.

Class
I was told to attend a project management course with a bunch of geeks who are the grunts at the bottom of the project management chain. Not only was the class long, uninformative, inapplicable, and ate 3 hours of my time, but it was done in Powerpoint.

You know Powerpoint, don’t you? It’s the way business presentations are done now. It’s the tool that allows the audience to no longer pay attention to the presenter or the presentation. The presenter no longer has to engage the audience and can read off bullets one by one. The presenter reads the page, the audience reads the page, the presenter flips the page, the audience flips the page. Before you know it, 3 hours are over, you put a check next to the “attended” box, and leave the presentation hard copy in the circular file.

The one bad thing that I took from the class was that the woman said that I should be requesting information packets from people who run meetings before I go. Therefore, the theory goes, I can be better informed about the meeting.

My take is that if the person running the meeting doesn’t have a packet, I’m not asking for one. If I have to spend an hour in a meeting, and the meeting holder doesn’t want to prep me beforehand, that’s their fault. I am not going to volunteer a second hour from my work to the presenter’s meeting if they don’t want me to. That is donating unrequested time, which is a waste of my time.

One thing I do love about the end of a pointless class is where the presenter looks for feedback. The audience then sits for a few minutes and politely comes back with positive feedback. The positive feedback that this class generated was, “Well, now I understand how people will be managing things when they tell me what to do.”

Right. Great. A three hour overview to explain why you’re being told to do things. That makes sense.

Tell Me how to do things. Now that would be a useful class.

PS2
Any HD can be installed in a PS2 with a network adapter and will spin up. It’s a neat little trick that is good for Zippo.

Timeline (cont.)
03:30 AM Sent home to sleep
04:15 AM Arrive home
04:30 AM Fall Asleep
05:45 AM Paged to return to work
05:15 PM Left work
10:00 PM Went to sleep

Total hours worked over 2 days: 30
Total hours slept: 1

Timeline: Bigger picture
I am always amazed that not a soul gives a rats ass about my job, until the shit hits the fan. Then for 2 days people come out of the woodwork to admire my ability to wash splattered shit off of the walls.

I like washing the Walls. I like cleaning up messes and solving problems. I like the Pulp Fiction Wolfe character that comes in, dispenses with the bullshit, and cleans up the mess.

“If I’m curt with you, it’s because time is a factor. I think fast. I talk fast. And, I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So, pretty please with sugar on top, clean the fucking car.”

In the middle of the whole thing, when I had 5 minutes to think, I thought, man there are 20 people looking to me for info on 14,000 machines. I’m calling shots that are above my rank. And people are deferring. I can’t take all of the credit at all, but this shitstorm will end, in major part, due to my efforts.

As this happens every 3-6 months, I know that in two days, no one will remember. I’ll still be working in a basement. I will probably never make Senior Wolf, Assistant Vice Wolf, or Vice Wolf no matter what I do. That seems to be the fact that I am now to either face or brush under the rug, spending another 5 years innovating and solving for a series of passovers and 2% raises.

If anyone is looking for a hands-off employee who planned and runs a very, very successful virus program for 14,000 with multiple domestic and international sites, please contact me. In lieu of a modicum of respect, the only thing that is required is decent increases and periodic advancement. Or if you just want to open a bikini car wash, I’m open to that, too.

I am now tired. Officially.

7:00 AM Started work
1:00 PM Although Trend and Symantec knew 2 days prior, a Virus hits for which McAfee has ZERO ability to stop.

My Favorite card
My favorite birthday card was “Every feel like everyone thinks you’re a weirdo? [open] Just wondering.”

On Desire II
(slight continuance on this post.)
A guy kept coming to my desk asking me to say things in Swedish. He seemed so enthusiastic about it, that I brought him in a spare Swedish phrase book I had. After listening to him go through the medical conditions that he had (”Can you help me? I have diarrhea.”) for a relatively small number of days, he returned the phrase book genuinely finished with the language.

I thought, “The easiest way to cure a man of a desire is to present him with an opportunity to attain it.”

I think I will call this Theory of Realized Desire. As there is no such thing as original philosophical thought, it is not copyrighted. Rename it at will, and present it as your own. Now, can I answer the question, “Is it true”?

The Car
For three days, I’ve driven home in the rain with the radio off. It’s amazing how much an hour of silence has freed up my thoughts.

Loaners
Today, loaned one Pete a video game, and the other a Swedish phrase book. Both loans were unsolicited, but accepted anyway.

April Fools
I taped the bottom of everyone’s mouse, and even went so far as to tape a mouse and unplug the keyboard, hopefully causing a double troubleshooting issue. I also unplugged the handset on someone’s phone. Nothing big, but I care enough to prank.

April Fools?
Someone asked me for a dyers.org embroidered patch. As I thought it was a joke, I asked if it was for the back of his dungaree jacket. I think he may have been serious, so it’s really too bad I don’t have one.

Ground on Down
Wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed, wake up, go to work, go home, watch TV, go to bed…

Wake up.
Go to work.

Wake up.
Go to work.

Wake up.
Go to work.

So many of my resources are donated incorrectly, that at the end of the day, I’ve earned nothing but money. And I think I’m working my way from the ground on down.

Skype
I tested Skype from Boston to NY, and got excellent results. An encrypted tunnel, better quality than a phone, and none of those pesky phone charges. I’m sold. If you want my ID let me know.

Damn
Last night, I sat down to watch the Matrix for the first time after moving out of my old house a couple of years ago. It seems that my ownership of the Matrix was merely an impression, as someone left me the case, but snaked the DVD. I imagine that it was the same person that snaked 75% of everything else that wasn’t nailed down at the time.

I can’t prove it, nor do I want to. It’s more fun this way.

State Street Probe
With the pressure to maintain double digit earnings in tough times, I always wondered if something like this would happen. Then again, maybe it’s no big deal. I work in the basement. The words, “Lord of the Rings” float by my desk at least three times a day. I talk to my monitor. (Story)

SOCOM
My eyes were so beaten up by playing the same level in SOCOM over and over last night that I had trouble seeing my monitor. Good times. Goooood times.

Birth
Har den aran, Jenny!

School
On two occasions in the last two days did people find the need to tell me how wrong or ridiculous I was in my blog. When I hear things like that, I think of a peeping tom ringing the doorbell and commenting on his subject’s outfits. It really makes me wonder if it’s prudent to post Shaving 104.

Work
11 years ago when I worked at the Gap, they said that I was doing a great job, gave me a great review, and offered me a $0.10 an hour raise. I calmly told the manager that she could keep it, as I found it was insulting, as it amounted to a whopping $4 a week before taxes. She laughed and told me to sign the paper so that she could put the raise through. I just told her once again that she could keep it, as it was insulting. With a shocked look, she said that no one had ever refused a raise before. I didn’t care about that. The chance to assert that I as not slave labor, was worth more than $4 to me.

10 years ago I, pulled a promotion per year and 8-12% raises per year for 5 years straight. That was good. I also wore a tie and wing tips, which sucked.

5 years ago, when I was working 50 hour weeks at the hands of a poor communicator and even worse task master, my review consisted of my boss asking me what I thought my job consisted of, and offering me a 4% raise. I calmly looked at him and said that I was leaving the building, and if I came back, we could discuss a real number, which we did.

Since then, it seems that times keep getting tougher and tougher. Round after round of layoffs hit us quarter after quarter, and raises have fallen to the level of being virtuallynonexistentt. The general consensus among the man on the street is that we are lucky to have jobs at all. I always thank my boss for whatever raise I get, but when your expected to bust your tail and put in gratis overtime work for less than a 2% raise, one begins to question his own motivations, and wonder how much lower his future expected earnings growth can possibly fall.

I can’t help but think that someone is making a big profit with my help, and at my expense. Did I change, or did the company?

At least I can say that I’m not folding shirts or lying to fat women about jeans running small. And I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Death
I think today was gang up on Jon day at work. I didn’t get the memo, so I wasn’t prepared. CC me next time, fuckheads.

(Reference for Dorks)

HDC
* User experiencing problems with computer shutting down. Music playing from PC.
* Admin dispatch required.
* Level 3 Admin dispatched.
* Level 3 pried up stuck Enter key to stop music. Used air canister to blow crumbs out. Warned user to not eat crackers directly over keyboard.

Socom
This weekend, I played Socom online for the 1st time. Forgot how humans react in video games. The headset, while useful for single player game, is not really required for online play unless you have a strategy (which I never saw) or want to call someone a “Wussy” (which I heard a bunch of times).

On irritating thing about the online play is that there is no re-spawn until the round is over. Another is that people will vote against you (I don’t know what this function is for) just because you indiscriminately throw grenades into rooms without checking for teammates first. Wussies. Over.

Oval Office Interned
Her: I hate my job. What should I do?
Him: I could always use a lackey. Or an Intern.
Her: What does the job involve?
Him: Answer this: Can you go get me some coffee?
Her: Sure. Right after you suck my…
Him: So close. The correct answer replaced ‘you’ with ‘I’ and ‘my’ with ‘your’.
Her: Damn.
Him: It only pays $5 a week, anyway.
Her: Double damn.

Round Tables Turned
A woman walks over to the desk next to mine, and picks up some of those candy hearts from the candy dish.

Her: Should I get you one of these?
Him: If you like. I’ll put it with the others.
Her: They never make any good ones of these anymore.
Him: What do you mean?
Her: You know like “Page Me” or something.
Him: Who the hell pages anyone anymore?
Her: Like “Fax me” then.
Him: Fax you? Fax you? Come on.
Her: Fine, then “2 way me.”
Him: [silence]
Her: I…I…uh
Him: I really don’t think you should be talking like that to me at work.
Her: [runs off]
Him: [to self] I don’t even think I know what parts that involves.

Today was completely frustrating. I was ten minutes late leaving the house because I was making the coffee, which I promptly left on the counter. A resounding “FUCK!” filled my car half way around the Fore River rotary.

Plans got canceled on me because someone forgot that they have a knitting circle meeting or something. I don’t think I have ever been bested by knitting. I would take “washing my dog” over knitting. Fuck it. Whatever.

Upon arriving to work, I found my server was all fucked up, I had no idea why, and the issue resolved itself before I could find a solution. During the hours and hours of fruitless troubleshooting, there were distractions aplenty, increasing frustration levels to new heights. And given that there were new virus threats released today, pressure to resolve was exponentially increased. Pressure + frustration + distraction = Unhappy Jon.

By the time the end of the day rolled around, I just wanted to get the hell out of work. On the way out, a co-worker started singing some sort of song about me, the words of which I cannot recall with the exception of “I hate your face / get the hell out of heeeeeeeeere.”

Albeit amusing, this caused me to steal his hat and ditch it a few cubes away.

Then it started snowing on the way home making a normally nice winter ride into an idiots paradise.

I’m stopping for no reason.
Fuck.
I’m turning left.
Fuck.
We’re all conspiring to make you miss every light.
FUCK.

Once I start spinning in frustration, I start picking apart the tiny issues in my life. Then everything pisses me off.

Houses are too expensive or too cruddy.
Fuck.
The winter is too long
Fuck.
My beard feels good but looks bad
FUCK.

By the time I got to my girlfriend’s house I was beside myself. I shoveled her stairs, left her a note that I was losing my mind, and went home.

There, I ate too many cookies, and took and hour long nap where I dreamed that I was stabbing a guy with a knife and he was stabbing me with a fork. From there I headed back to the GF’s house, to find her angry with me for my nutty behavior. Obviously.

After eating, sitting, and lighting up a fluorescent bulb with static electricity, everything seems surprisingly normal.

I need a new project/distraction. Anyone? Anyone?

Over the last few months, the place I work has been busy putting giant boulders and steel poles all around its buildings, I assume to prevent a truck bomb from running into the building. It looks very daunting and secure.

Lately, I’ve noticed that the security guards have been re-outfitted in black S.W.A.T. uniforms, complete with jack boots. The ones by the gate even have ninja-like masks. It looks very daunting and secure.

The only problem with these security measures is that they are an illusion, which, according to Sun Tsu, is a perfectly valid strategy (”If you are weak, feign strength. If you are strong, feign weakness.”). I would argue that the measures are actually ineffective and possibly detrimental to security.

Let’s start with the rocks and posts: Not only do they call to attention to the general population that there must be something in the building is worthy of protection, but they bring with them a very specific connotation: that of a car bombing. By planting the rocks, ideas are planted into people’s heads, leading to discussion of circumvention of the barricades. With with several large breaks that someone could easily get a vehicle through at relatively high rate of speed without coming near the rocks, the wall is ineffective. A wall is only effective if there are no holes. When there is no wall, there are no holes to see, and lack of direction prevents most people from seeing the lack of a wall as a very large existing hole. The wall actually directs people to look for holes. What once was hidden in plain sight, is now screaming for all to look at the holes in it’s perimeter.

Now that you have the average person seeking theoretical ways to get around your security measures, you need to have guards around, which brings us to the second point: If you’re going to post people that look like commandos, they better be commandos. If I walk around the street in a karate uniform, people are going to assume that I know Karate. If I go to a Karate tournament in one, someone is going to expect that I know Karate, and use a stronger offense expecting more resistance. Then, I’m going to get my ass kicked big time.

See, jack boots make normal, non-bomb toting citizens feel overpowered, but I believe that they would produce a harder hit from someone trained in the soldierly arts, as he or she would expect someone who looks like S.W.A.T. to act like S.W.A.T.. So, when the attacker comes in even heavier than is necessary under the assumption that he or she will be dealing with militarily trained individuals, he or she actually is assured success in a breach. Thus, the jack boots create a bigger mess than they are designed to prevent.

When I’m famous, my bodyguards will be Uzi toting Ninjas, who look just like 90 year old men, compete with white belts and pink shirts. They will also never really look like they’re guarding me, so as not to draw attention to the fact that I might be someone that needs guarding. I’d rather be prepared for engagement, than look prepared for one.

Then again, what do I know?

I need Testers
I like the idea of Port Knocking, and might actually work on it. A friend actually suggested setting it up so that you knock the ports at home, which trigger not a connection, but some form of X-10 control response like feeding the fish.

Yes, there are bigger dorks than me.

PS2 Online Review
1. Point Don’t Matter: I spent 30 minutes challenging people to drag races only to get declined over and over. It seems that everyone is so concerned with their online points, that they refuse to actually play the fucking game. For me, not playing sort of takes the fun out of online gaming. I think I’m going to change my online name to H0tCh1ck or Hug3Jugs to get some games going. Stupid 12 year olds.

2. Cheating Sucks: During the one race I actually got to play, the person that I was playing somehow disconnected both of us just before I crossed the finish line.

3. Technical issues abound: There were two to three instances where I couldn’t join games because the console said that I was already in one. If looking at a screen and trying to join a game is considered playing, then this it the least fun game since 52 card pickup.

Honestly, I find the online gaming to be more annoying than fun due to not only the idiots that you have to deal with, but the technical issues that prevent you from dealing with them in the first place. And at $40, the network adapter is a bit pricey for a device that allows merely the possibility of online play. What ever happened to the good old days where a copy of Quake II, a network card, and nice railgun guaranteed hours of frag filled fun?

Dood
It’s midnight. Do you know where your employee is? This ones still in the basement upgrading a server. Only another couple of hours. It’s actually kind of cool to have an empty building to yourself late at night. It’s so sterile.

Jon dislikes 2 things: going to the mall, and shopping for anything that does not require some form of current running through it to work.

For me, shopping is a military operation: Recon, insertion, target neutralization, and extraction. There is no browsing, feeling fabrics, or even matching. I go in, match the monkey tag on the shirt to the monkey tag on the pants, and buy. I might even go a little wild and match a giraffe to a giraffe, and buy. Get in, get out, see you next year.

I did my recon on the internet, located pants, and headed to the store to buy them. The in-store pants cost $10 more than the same internet pants, and they seemed to be out of my size. Rather than spend the day chatting with the mall salespeople about fabrics and textures, and then unwittingly getting sold something mesh, I aborted the mission and headed to home base to try to snipe the target from the company’s website.

www.ihatefuckingshoppingforclothes.com, click click click, place the order so the commander can go play some video games…aaaannd the website is really sorry, but they have discontinued the fucking pants. Sorry. Maybe you would be interested in this similar item: Mesh shirts $12.99. Ooh, thanks, website. That sounds great, but as I’ve been to Sweden a couple ot times in the last few years, I’m all stocked up on mesh already. Plus, the people at work are asking me to tone down the amount of fucking nipple I show during the day. Like assless pants, I’ve found that mesh tends to send the “tear my pants off” message to the wrong gender. So, to assuage my coworkers and avoid sex with dudes, I just need some simple khaki pants. Thanks for the offer, though. It’s really appreciated. You really know my tastes.

Needless to say, the mission was completely aborted.

To make myself feel better about my lack of pants, I did the equivalent of walking into that sketchy boom boom bar in the DMZ: I started shopping for rebated deals on the net. I usually start at salescircular.com, and slip into freeafterrebate.info.

There were USB network cards, routers, switches, and a feminine cup (whatever that may be), all FREE after rebate. I sat there smoothing my beard, wondering whether I could use all of this miraculously free crap to hook up the ol’ playstation up to the internet, if I’d ever really get the rebate, and if I really cared…

And then I got really, really tired of the whole shopping experience, and logged into work to check on the latest strain of virus, MyDoom

In the corporate body, I am a white blood cell. My job is to keep the body from being infected with things like the MyDoom virus.

13,000 machines.
<10 infections.
2 days.
0.009% infection rate.

This is what I do. This is when I feel like I’m good at something.

Voice 1: Do you trust your deodorant enough to do this to a co-worker?
Voice 2: Get the hell away from me…

Meddler
As the dork who likes to complicate the lives of others, I have set up a blog for my sister so that she can tell you about new ways to use old toothpaste tubes. Now, I have no idea if she’ll even use it, but it’s located at http://recycleitall.blogspot.com. If she does, it will probably make you feel bad about your current level of recycling and make you say quaint things like, “What the fuck?”

Bloggers
As you know, the links on my sidebar are painfully outdated, and are in need of a desperate cleaning. I have removed two of the blogs that used to hang out there, as the good people that run them never, ever, ever update them. hopefully, I will comb the links in the near future. Be sure to hold your breath…

Fuckers
During one round of layoffs, a company that I know preferred to tell people that they were laid off by locking them out of the building. They later decided that the policy was regrettable, and went with the more common ‘walk out.” The walk out is not as shitty as the lock out, but it’s still a shit move. In the last month or so, one of my oldest friends and my Dad have fallen victim to corporate layoffs. Both have nearly insane work ethics.

A couple things that I have learned from observing my Dad:

1. Giving more to a company than they pay you for is a waste of your time.
2. No matter how many years that you have dedicated, how many weekends you’ve worked, how many hours you’ve logged in the air, or how much of your waking day has been spent earning it a profit, the corporation will cut you if it can save a buck fifty for softer toilet paper in the executive washroom.

Coworker 1: Breakfast? It’s Thurday, but the caf has no waffles.
Jon: if (($day eq ‘Thursday) && ($waffles==0)){ print “Nah, thanks.”;}
Coworker 1: Oh God he’s speaking in Perl again.
Coworker 2: Actually, that could be any structured [programming] lanuguage…

Note: after publishing this, I found a perl error and republished. Send Help.

Last week, I tried to take advantage of what I thought would be one of the last warm days of the season. As I sat reading one of my anti-government books on the concrete border between my building and its massive parking lot, the thought crossed my mind that I was kidding myself.

No matter how hard I tried to persuade myself that sitting outside was a comfortable endeavor, no matter how hard I tried to enjoy the sun and ignore the chill of the breeze, it would never be spring. On the same note, no matter how much the books I chose confirmed and reconfirmed my opinions on corporate/government control, I would never be free of it. I was sitting on concrete steps, surrounded by hundreds of feet of concrete in any direction, on the only side of the building that does not fully blot out the sun.

I was also on a lunch break as an employee from said corporation, spending hour after hour day after day, aiding it in my small way, to control more and more resources.

My opinions and my life did not match. I was lying to myself: I was not passing through a warm fall day with nothing greater to employ me than the pages of a book. I was cold, I was alone, and I was more out of place than any of the cars or concrete that surrounded me.

And then as I squinted into the bright, fall afternoon sun, out of nowhere, a ladybug flew toward me. It looked almost blurry and amber as wings carried it through the air, until it took shape, tiny and red on my index finger. I watched it crawl toward the tip of my finger, under my book and out of the sunlight.

And there it stayed.

As I read, I would look at my finger now and again and see if the ladybug was still there. A couple of times it seemed to be cleaning itself, once it seemed to be resting, and at one point it seemed to be trying to decide if my finger was a snack or a stick.

And I was calm. And I wasn’t alone. And I was glad to provide a resting spot for something as natural as a bug in a place where it seemed so out of place.

Coupling
The new show, Coupling on TV is a word-for-word remake of a British show. The American show is just not funny. The British one is absolutely hysterical. The British can pull of neurotic characters better than Americans by a long shot.

Spider
A few days ago, as I sat eating my lunch, my feet sloppily draped across a bench and enjoying the last of the warm, fall sunshine, a small black spider jumped out of a crack in the wood. I looked up from my book to see him trying to sneak up on my foot. It was almost as if it thought that I was to be his lunch.

As I try to refrain from killing insects just because they invade my personal space (I go so far as to guide moths out of the house rather than killing them), I jiggled my foot, and back into the crack he went. I went back to my reading in the warm fall sun. In a few moments I caught motion out of the top of my field of vision. The spider was back in the same position as before. I looked down to the base of the wood to see an ant scurrying rapidly along his scent trail. He didn’t bother with me.

I leaned down, and from the height of a foot or so, gave the spider a cursory examination. It was small enough not to make me move my foot, but large enough that from even that height I could make out a shiny spot on it’s hairy black back. I blew a puff of air in its direction, and it swiftly retreated.

I looked lower on the wood to an ant walking near my other foot, completely unaware that I was even there until I moved my foot toward it. The ant abandoned the path laid before him and swiftly scurried off in the other direction. As I was looking at the ant, the spider reemerged and made a break for my leg from another angle. I pulled my leg away, putting it safely on the ground.

The spider stood six inches from my shoe, and I wondered why, unlike the ant, the spider was almost defiant against a foe 1000 times its size. Then, he quickly leaped three inches off the ground and one inch short of my leg. I brought my leg up and paused. In that pause, I wondered if I should kill it just because it leapt at me. Unfortunately, I knew that if I didn’t kill it, it would simply leap at me again and again. Having my answer, I swiftly stomped the spider to a wet spot on the ground.

Today, days later, I came to the conclusion that for my whole life I have been the spider: defiant, resiliant, and thoroughly intractible. And I surmised that I may always be the spider, and may even eventually get stomped. Though it is merely my current opinion, a much worse fate is that I become the cowering, mindless, mechanical ant.

Man
Let’s say that you hypothetically work in a basement. Say in this hypothetical situation, the fire alarms are tested in the building, and you hypothetically cannot hear them because there are no fire alarms in your area.

Say that your boss and his boss are hypothetically aware of the situation and have been for over six months.

In this hypothetical situation, if there is a fire, you, my friend, could be fucked. You, or possibly one of your coworkers, are likely to die in that basement without the benefit of advanced warning should a fire actually break out.

Now, say hypothetically, you craft a very professional e-mail asking your boss’s boss’s boss, if there is anything that he can do to get a fire alarm installed down there, cc’ing your boss and his boss just so that they are aware of your concerns.

My take is that even though you are trying to define a baseline level of personal safety for yourself and others, your boss will hypothetically chastise you for trying to “jump the chain” of command. He will hypothetically tell you that you should’ve forwarded your concerns to him, who would forward them to the boss, who would forward them to his boss. When you hypothetically express that he already knows about the situation and doesn’t care, he will point out how those above him don’t care either. He might also go so far as to tell you that your e-mail makes it look like management hasn’t done anything about the fire alarm problem.

Hypothetically.

So, if this situation sounds like yours, my advice would be to shut up about it…if you ever come across this type of situation, that is. But, that’s just my advice. And this is all hypothetical. You can do what you want, Spidey.

Equal Fucking Rights
Real situation. Fake Names…

Hoss: “I seriously have to watch my mouth around here. Sometimes, I forget you’re around. I’m sorry, Betsy.”
Betsy: “I don’t mind, Hoss.”
Little Joe: “You know, if you really want equality for women, you should use the same language around men and women. Don’t shield them as if they are weak. If you choose not to swear around women, don’t do it around men, either”
Hoss: “You’re right. What the fuck am I talking about?”
Betsy: [bursts out laughing and whacks Hoss]
Little Joe: “Just remember to open the door for them, Hoss. I heard that they are too weak to pull doors open by themselves.”
Hoss: [surprised] “She just hit me.”

During Christmas 2002, my sister, my girlfriend, and I watched “I Love the 80’s” on VH1 from sun up to sundown. Currently, VH1 is airing “I love the 70’s” which has put me square in front of the tube for 4 hours at a time reminiscing about Stretch Armstrong, Starsky and Hutch, Smokey and the Bandit, the Bad News Bears, and Battle of the Network Stars.

I certainly liked the 70’s better than the 80’s, and given my complete lack of motivation and Turrets like language pattern after this seemingly endless workweek, I believe that I may just spend 6-10 PM on the couch tonight riding out the decade.

P.S. fuck shit ass bitch bullshit bullshit

Call continued
I’m running on a mere 4 hours of sleep, and I’m still at work. I’ve been here for over 12 hours today and still trucking. This is getting to be a habit: A baaaad habit. I forget what day it is. I’m gaining job security. I’m a monkey robot. With a rocket car and buns of steel. I’m a turntablist on the wheels of steel. And they’re all after me lucky charms. Manga-na-hoooooo ee aw ee aw winky muddle nicky nicky charoooooooo. Oh shit. It’s over for me. The exits are located here, here, and here. Please be aware that the nearest exits may be behind you. Save yourselves.

Bad Call
The lawyer called. He is still working on getting me a court date as the ex just turned in the financials that were due last week. I should, hopefully, have a finalized divorced by the end of the year, pending any more issues.

Now, when my lawyer asked if I had any further issues pertaining to the divorce beyond the typical impending tax problems, I asked whether there are implications if the rumor that the ex’s pregnancy is true. He congratulated me, as by law, any baby born to a woman who is party to a divorce is legally the child of the divorced husband, even if the child is born up to nine months after the finalization of the divorce.

If anyone in the world has worse luck that turns to better stories, please instant message me so that I can take you to lunch.

You deserve it.

I got called at midnight for a virus issue, and have been in all night scripting solutions with the magic of Perl. It’s after 7 AM, and I’m hoping to get out of here soon, but it’s pretty cool to be here when the normal shift shows up. Then they get confused because you look like shit, and really aren’t dressed according to the company handbook. For a minute they wonder, “LAN issues, or kevlar?”

I really would like pancakes…or eggs…or eggs and pancakes. I am punchy. Hey, no work today, though, right? At least not until after 3PM, right? Hello? Beuller? Hello? Is this thing on?

Thanks to everyone for all the e-mails, phone calls, and verbal assaults for not updating this site. Back in May, after over a year of blogging, I found that I was censoring, omitting and catering to the audience more than writing a meaningful log for myself.

The original point was to record the events that I forget: To force something honest, interesting and hopefully funny out of every day, no matter how small or insignificant. I want to record all the things that make me happy and make me sad, so that when I’m old I will have confirmation of what a fool I have been.

The last thing that I want to do is hurt anyone’s feelings, but sometimes even unpleasant events need to be recorded. When those events negatively impact people that I care about, however indirectly, I hold back. I edit. I disseminate personal propaganda rather than tell the truth as I see it. I rearrange anger into apology, and boredom into bliss.

When I felt that I couldn’t record, this log became somewhat dishonest. To me, dishonesty is simply a failure of character, and is the one flaw that I work very hard to weed out no matter what the truth looks like.

So, I stopped writing until I felt that I could write again honestly.

Now, I feel the need to pick up where I left off. If you feel that you can’t follow along, please stay behind the yellow line.

Been gone
I just got back from Sweden last night, so today I have been reviewing the weeks mail. I got the following e-mails from the person providing coverage from my projects at work…

Vacation E-mail 1 [Subject: None]
Your job sucks!

Vacation E-mail 2 [Subject: None]
Your job really sucks!

Vacation E-mail 3 [Subject: Welcome Back!!!!]
Hi Jon,
You picked a great week to be out. I’ll never forget this!
Anyway, bla bla bla [crap about work] bla bla.

Thanks,

Co-worker

P.S. (Your job really, really, really sucks!)