Games People Play

The cleaning lady here seems like a nice woman. Too bad that she wears too much perfume. I mean, it’s not like the type of perfume that you’d smell on a younger woman; you know, the kind that gently tickles your nose, and makes you want to get really close to her and sniff her hair when you stand behind her in an elevator, stalk her, harrass her, or other socially unacceptable behaviors? So, each day, at 5:40 pm, I hear her and her jingling keys — coming down the aisles of cubicles — to empty the wastebaskets.

For the last 18 months, or so, she’s been doing the same thing. Now, at first, the hint of perfume wasn’t bad, and it caused me to turn my head. But about a year ago, she began to wear a bottle a day, I think. I mean, it’s bad; I could feel myself starting to tap out. Maybe it’s an allergy? And to make matters worse, she’d loiter around my cube after having emptied my trash can. Apparently, leaving degradable waste in the basket means that the intricate process of replacing the wafer-thin plastic bag must be initiated.

Crap.

Recently, I’ve taken a liking to the term “operation”, as in “Operating Tally Ho has commenced! Confidence is high! Woot! Woot!” “Operation Take Control” started this morning, for instance. But “Operation Relocate Basket” was hatched, executed, and received a high level of confidence earlier this past week. That is to say, “Operation Relocate Basket” involved, well, removing any and all wastebaskets from anywhere near my desk area.

“Well, if she can’t find my wastebasket”, I speculated, “she won’t come around here no more.”

WRONG!

The first night of “Operation RB”, she arrived, and tried to remove a basket that wasn’t there. Fine. How could she know that there was no basket to be removed? The second night, she checked again, and the third, and tonight, as well. “Operation RB”, I realized, was a failure. But, like a corporate Patton, I refused to surrender.

Rule #1. You do not talk about “Operation Relocate Basket”.

So, a new, more complex plan has been rolled out; it’s called “Operation Pavlov”. “If we can’t trick the masses, we’ll condition them. Am I making myself clear, Private?!” Now, I’m no Tommy Franks, but I’d put smart money on “Operation Pavlov” working out someday. Clearly, it will involve “the faith and dedication of The American People”, or maybe just me, but we will prevail.

God Bless Operation Pavlov.

Jesus Built My Hotmail II

It seems that novices to the internet go through very discernable patterns and steps of maturation. A close family member is currently on step three (I myself am on step 11, which means that I’ll be quitting my stupid internet usage in one step or less — just watch!). To clarify, the first five steps of ‘net maturation seem to be:

1. Getting connected somehow, usually with modem, and almost certainly with AOL or Hotmail.
2. Figuring out “how email works”, which generally involves misdirecting email and how to deal with attachments as well as populating email address books.
3. Forwarding chain letters to friends and family members, in particular the lengthy ones about Jesus and/or God, GW Bush and God, GW Bush and War, GW Bush and Taxes, the death penalty, Satanism in Rock Music, Banning Gays from Scouts, etc.
4. Receiving first instances of junk email/spam, and mistakenly replying.
5. Using Google or similar to get the dirt on family members and/or friends.

Now that we’re all in sync, I’ll continue.

As stated earlier, a close family member is on step 3. Just today, I received several God/Jesus-related (forwarded) email messages. Now, I have no problem with Jesus. We’re old acquaintances, although we’ve fallen out of touch over the years. My guess is because of the distance, and perhaps my being unclear of his existence. But me and Jesus? We cool, dawg. We cool.

The thing that bothers me about receiving religious-related email is not the content, but the assumption of the sender that I’d like to read — or be compelled — to read it. And futhermore, each of these forwarded email messages is essentially the same: argumentative, contemplative, criticizing separation of Church and State, subtly discriminatory, illegal, maudlin, or you name it. Given the very specific agendas of these messages, the only responses that the recipients (who then forward along the messages with everyone’s elses $.02 attached in the textual nightmare) are able to muster are: “Me TOO!”, or “I feel the same way!”, or “To Hell with you, Satan!”, or even just, “Amen.” After reading through 500 lines of email headers, forward marks, signatures, “Me TOO”’s, and other gobbledy-gook, I reach the core of the message.

But, in a way, it’s all fair and good. One of the messages that I’d received today discussed how porn is “permissable in our public libraries”, but “Jesus isn’t”. Really?

Well, okay, yes, maybe that’s true … for every time that I look at a nudie photo of Anna Nicole — who’s leaning face-first against a burnt-out Chevrolet Impala — I’ll read your beloved email message, and feel good about it.

Something old, something, uhhh, OLD, and Fuck You Very Much!

At times, I decide to shed the silken cloak of Mac OS X/Darwin/Aqua/userinterfaceland, and take a walk on the wild side. Actually, calling it a wild side is a bit of a stretch. It’s really more the case that the silken cloak is shed, and I reveal (my) crustyness of being a long-time UNIX user. Specifically? I’m willing to go to no end(s) to prove to UNIX — once and for all, of course — that I’m the master and he’s but a wee Lee Van Cleef, ninja ordinaire.

Screw you, UNIX!

Right. So, I started working on a new book project recently. If I’ve learned one thing over the past 7 years of authorship, it’s simple: use the right tool for writing, so you — and nobody else — will suffer later. This group of would-be sufferers includes the author (who has to add changes during the edit/copyedit phases), the production staff of the book company (who have to DO the copyedit and little things like indexing), the content editor, the production tools staff who’ll do any conversions so that the book can easily be transitioned into a printed form, and the reader who knows good typeset from bad. If one of the people/phases above goes bad? The book is shit; it cannot be said in any other way. And when a book goes to shit, I’m afraid that 9/10’s of the time, it’s the fault of the author.

As usual, digressions and I are compatible. I’ll proceed.

Since I’m dealing with a new publisher this time around, this makes the “lay of the land” different. In the past, I had the dumb luck of dealing with a publisher who’d employed an excellent and skilled production staff; this production staff would (with minimal bawking — might I add) take the crappiest of all manuscripts/formats and beautify them. It was truly remarkable. With this new publisher, we’re expected to submit a manuscript that’s basically complete in terms of content and format. And, making matters more interesting, we had only 3 choices as to which tools we’d be able to use to prepare the book. The first choice was to use Frame(Maker); Frame is great, and complete, and I’ve used it extensively when I’ve written books in the past. Unfortunately, Frame is not cheap, and it’s not currently available as an OS X native. Next! (No, not NeXT, either!). The second choice was to use MS-Word, which is available as an OS X native application. Unfortunately, MS-Word has its own set of problems, and — given my experience with bookstuff — I’d hesitate to write a technical book with it. I won’t expound, as I could go on forever about where Word is inadequate, and why I won’t use it for a project of this size/scope. Aside of where it’s inadequate, Word is also pretty expensive. Next! The third choice was to use TeX/LaTeX. TeX/LaTeX have been around forever, and in some ways, I think that TeX/LaTeX personifies the, uhh, flavor of All That is UNIX; it’s a motherfucker, but when you think about it, you realize that TeX/LaTeX is our motherfucker. And, TeX/LaTeX also intellectually superior to all other text processors, right down to its obfuscation by design.

Yeah, fuck you, TeX! And fuck you too, UNIX!

Now, given my druthers, I’d be apt to pop the whole book into HTML or something equally as stupid, ‘tar’ everything up, and send things along when I was done. But I decided that I’m up for the challenge of building a book from scratch; and I’m taking my pal cms along with me for the ride.

Of course, just using TeX/LaTeX isn’t the fun part. Given the length of time that TeX/LaTeX have been around, the distributions have grown, splintered, whithered, moved, and splintered from withering. The first dog ‘n’ pony show? Finding a TeX/LaTeX distribution and building it on my system.

Question: Where do I find TeX/LaTeX?
TeX FAQ: Fuck you!
Question: Are you saying that there isn’t one?
TeX FAQ: You should already know.
Question: If I already knew, I wouldn’t be asking.
TeX FAQ: Fine, check out Knuth’s TeX, GNU/th TeX (for you Stallman fans out there), genericTeX, TexLive, teTex, thisTex, thatTex, and TexMeX. And as always? Fuck you.

Why, thank you, TeX FAQ!

In ye olde days, when men were men, and operating systems were installed from magnetic tape, hacking software to get it to build was par for the course. Yes, somewhere along the way, Charles Ingles was cast off, and was replaced with Charles Nelson Reilly. Men became less tolerance of vi, and abominations of automation — like Red Hat Llinux — were born.

Okay, that’s not exactly true. TeX/LaTeX, like the cockroach, survived extinction, or at least in part. While it’s alleged to have evoled, the rank-and-file cockroach still can’t fly, but my, it’s more than a bit of a pest. 3 UNIX platforms and 3 weeks later, I finally have TeX/LaTeX and all of its (necessary) extensions built. And still, the Tex/LaTeX software build instructions read to me like an infamous line from the movie “Better Off Dead”:

(To install TeX/LaTeX…)
“Go that way really fast. And if anything gets in your way? Turn!”

And all of this, so we can merely write in another format, convert to TeX/LaTeX and write PDF. It’s worth it. The 20 new hairs on my chest prove it. I keep telling myself that.

“Install TeX/LaTeX, dude. Make a gnarly run like that? And girls will go sterile just LOOKING at you!”

Well, girls? Got sterility?

Stupid, Boring Awards

I refuse to watch awards shows anymore, and yes, this specifically includes the Grammy Awards. To me, it’s almost like watching a 3 to 4-hour-long infomercial. I mean, a commerical is what it essentially is, right? Win a grammy, look pretty, sell a million more copies of your album tomorrow.

The most perplexing part of the Grammy Awards, to me, is how nominees are actually chosen. What’s the criteria? Do you have to be on a specific record label? Should you have sold a certain number of copies of your album? Do you have to be sexy? Or just be really, really weird? Don’t know, but maybe the total randomness of it all can be explained by the “Best New Artist” award that’s all-too-frequently given to a musician who’s already made… 3 to 4 albums! This was the case, if you recall, with David Gr[ae]y last year or the year before. “The artist must be new if we hadn’t heard of them before!”.

But the weirdest part of the Grammy Awards has got to be when a relative unknown, well, wins just about every fucking award. Norah Jones was the benefactor of such treatment last night. One “hit” single, one popular album, 5+ Grammy Awards. WOW. And regardless of her success, her music is long-winded and boring. If I want to hear some breathy singer crooning along with the keys, I’ll buy something genuine.

Last night, I did the unthinkable. I chose the “Anna Nicole Show” over the Grammy Awards, along with whatever selections my Tivo had imposed on me over the past 24 hours. And guess what? I thoroughly enjoyed myself! I like to control my intake of mindless material; thank you!

(Re)tail Between YOUR Legs!

I shopped retail today. If only I hadn’t.

If Comp USA was route 93N and it was sub-zero (temperatures) outside, there would’ve been a “urination incident near the accessories! a urination accident near the accessories!”

Seriously, all I wanted to do was (a) enter Comp USA, (b) buy a Keyspan USB->Serial adapter, (c) buy a 9-pin female/9-pin female serial cable, (d) leave Comp USA. But that would’ve been too easy! Within moments of locating the Keyspan USB->Serial adapter, I was accosted by a salesperson. “Can I HELP YOU?!”, they asked. I was taken aback, to tell you the truth, as I wasn’t lollygagging in the store in any way; I was simply taking an item from the shelf, and going to find another one.

Me: Well, I just picked this Keyspan thingy up, and now I need a 9-pin female/9-pin female serial cable.
Clerk: (looking at me with vacant stare.)
Me: This is to connect this Keyspan to the serial port on a (PC) UNIX server. (Oops! I just muddled the issue!)
Clerk: (again, looking at me with vacant stare.) Well, I think that what you want is a 9-pin female/9-pin male serial cable, and you’ll need a gender bender.
Me: No, I don’t think that I need that much. Just the cable.
Clerk: Okay, I’m sure that we don’t have that.

(Trump card: I’d checked compusa.com and had found the cable in question.)

Me: Oh? Where do you keep your serial cables?
Clerk: (pointing) Right over there. But don’t get your hopes up, okay? If you can’t find it within the first few minutes, it’s not there, and doesn’t exist.
Me: OK…

Funny. After walking 5 paces to the cables rack, I found a 9-pin female/9-pin female cable. Even funnier? It doesn’t look a thing like the Easter Bunny!

Now, really, I generally don’t need much help when I go looking (to buy) computer-related stuff. I’ll ask people (I know) ahead of time, and will do research online. It’s nice that these retail stores have clerks/drones going around and bugging customers, asking everyone if they need help. But it’s not nice that after being accosted, these clerks know nothing. This is the second time in 3 weeks that such a thing has happened, and last time it was at a Toys ‘R’ Us.

I’m not sure if I care enough about Comp USA that I’d write a letter to “consumer affairs” in which I’d complain about the (poor-ass) service. But maybe, with a little luck, I’ll write such a letter and get a gift certificate that lets the Keyspan pay for itself.

Dude, You got a Bong (Dell) and Clever Engineering!

I’ve had a few nagging “pet projects” that I’ve been procrastinating with over the past few months. A couple of these projects involved cracking something open (a computer or computer-like device) and upgrading something (probably the hard drive). Now, in general, I try not to break stuff; and usually? My endeavours are successful. Not to say that these projects are without adventure or more-than-implied amounts of danger, but things work out.

The other night was the Tivo project. I was kind of nervous about the upgrade for various reasons, like voiding my warranty after having rendered the unit unusable. Compulsively, I read — and re-read and re-read and re-read — the documentation until I was ready to crack the thing open like a pinata so that I could start my upgrade.

Today’s project (since I have the remnants of the flu, AND I’m also somewhat snowed in, despite snowblowing earlier) was to add the second drive to the Dell. Recently, when recording, I’d noticed I/O bottlenecks when I reached 30 tracks. This could be cured, I learned, by (a) switching to SCSI or (b) putting another hard drive on the second IDE controller. I opted for (b) since I have no more PCI ports to support (a). Nor do I really want to plop down another $1000 to add SCSI to my recording machine. Now, whenever I crack a machine open for the first time — for upgrading things like hard drives, or adding devices like CD-R drives, or what have you — I’m never sure if I’m going to need anything, like more screws, additional hard drive (ribbon) cables, etc. I’ve decided that it’s equally as bad to have to run out and buy things that you’re missing while you’re in the middle of a project as it is to overbuy parts for a project that you don’t need, and have to return later. With squinted eyes, I opened the box, and lo and behold — I needed nothing! Not only was there a nice drive bay waiting for the new hard drive, it also had an extra set of mounting brackets attached to the bottom of the drive bay! I was fucking psyched about this. Further, I was worried about having to split the power, and not having any drive power splitters left. Didn’t need that either! Furthermore, if I ever need to add any other internal devices like other CD-RWs, or DVD-Rs, etc., there are enough mounting brackets for those, too! Wow!

Now, not everything about this Dell is great. I mean, its CD-RW leaves something to be desired, since it doesn’t support cdtext (which would be a plus if you’re planning on releasing audio CDs — which I am), and it’s on-board SoundMax sound module is — let’s call it — shit, and totally useless if you ever plan on doing anything more than listening to MP3s (I ended up disabling the SoundMax and replacing it with 2 other cards which meet my recording needs). But overall, it’s nice to see that someone at Dell has taken the time to assess what a customer might want. Somehow, I think that such eyes for details are sometimes lost. This time, tho. I was happy. I had everything upgraded in under 45 minutes.

Crap, and now I’m out of projects. Maybe I have to start working on that new book everyday. Yes, I’ll do that. Time’s wasting, and we’ve just started!

If You’re Down with Pee, You’re Down with Me.

Somehow, my recent blog entries have tended to go the way of dating or excretion. This one is mostly about excretion.

I had a date this past Saturday. It was fun. Unfortunately, it was also bitter cold outside, and I was starting to feel under the weather. To make matters worse, I had a couple of liquor drinks during the course of the evening, so the ride home wasn’t without its own adventures.

After I dropped my date off, I noted that I had to pee, or at least just a little bit. Further, I also realized that I didn’t know my date well enough (yet) to ask to see her apartment, even if only to use the bathroom. I ended up dropping her off, and taking the seemingly extra-long drive home. Halfway down Highway 93 North, I realized in no uncertain terms, that my bladder was going to explode. If I owned a clunker of a car, accidental urination might easily be excused (later on) by, well, blaming the faint smell of urine on the previous owner. For a two-year-old vehicle? No dice. The best possible excuse for urinating in my truck was “uhh, some whinos must’ve let themselves in when it was parked in the city, and I think that they did something in the glovebox”. Lame lame lame. Further, it’s kind of embarassing to urinate on one’s self, unless one is either a baby or physically incapable of doing anything else.

Driving on 93 North, that night, felt like I was on a super-high-speed Iditerod. “Crap, this is like Alaska”, I thought. To make matters worse, it was getting close to 1am, and I wasn’t sure if taking the next exit from 93 would allow me to find an open establishment who had a bathroom.

I have engaged in many animal (or whino)-like activities as the end product of seeking relief. Without detailing these other activities any further here — or at this time — let’s suffice it to say that I gave into relief-seeking once again. I pulled the truck over to the side of the road, and laughed to myself that this could’ve been a scene out of an R-rated “Footloose”, a film whose premise would be: “public urination isn’t allowed in this county due to the death of the sheriff’s son in a urine-related incident, but a city-slicker pushed the envelope by first urinating in front of his headlights while parked in an abandoned grain mill, and finally, right in the middle of the school prom.” Nice.

After I realized that, like Kevin Bacon, I was standing in front of the headlights with my pants pulled down (well, I guess that “Footloose” didn’t actually involve downed pants), I walked to the side of the truck. Unfortunately, I couldn’t start. My bladder was insulted, probably sitting inside of my body cavity looking stern with its arms crossed. It showed me its displeasure by drip-drip-dripping me pee, until I had to literally force it out. With the stiff winds, I had to keep angling my body so that I didn’t actually pee on myself. All the while, I was hoping that the MA State Police weren’t patrolling the highways that night, or that drunken drivers weren’t attracted to my vehicle on the shoulder like a moth is attracted to a bug light. Thankfully, neither was the case, and I finished without further incident.

I believe that my manhood is nearing completion. Gotta go! Pants down! Pound chest! Beat the drum! Play with fire!

Noopy + hosted sites

Ouch!

Noopy.ORG and friends might be offline for a bit if my provider gets the squeeze from Genuity. It’s possible that my provider will end up moving shop to Level 3, or somewhere else, but we may be offline for a bit.

This is a warning that you may (or may not) be able to reach any of us at noopy.org. pudge.net, taskboy.com or stok.co.uk after tonight or tomorrow — for a few days, or for the foreseeable future. Or maybe there won’t be a problem at all. We’ll see.

Hairesy!

My mother has been assembling photo albums for my sister and I. I received one last Christmas, and another one the Christmas before.

[ NOTE TO SELF: With the exception of house and hot-air balloon pictures, I really don't take pictures of friends and family, but I probably should. Having memory jogged by pictures is actually a pretty cool thing. ]

Only recently did I thumb through one of these albums. The most pronounced things?

1. When I was 15, I was huge, at 6′5″/265, and towered over most, if not all, of my relatives.
2. When I was 15, I had the most incredible head of hair!

As for item 1, that’s still partly true, except that I weigh about 235 (and 6′6″) right now (yes, lowering carbs and eating salads and not snacking can actually help one lose weight), although I should weigh about 215. Whatever. I don’t intend on cruising the beaches in a Speedo, or cruising the beaches… period.

As for item 2, I realized that I have a pretty significant deficit of hair. At first, this realization made me say aloud: “huh”. And then, I remembered how my hair used to be voluminous and terribly unruly. Impending baldness, I realized at once, really suited me. Seriously, when I was 15, I used to curse the fact that my hair was so “puffy”, how it tangled so frequently, and how it formed into a mullet even without me trying to make it so! It also became terribly oily and yucky if I didn’t wash it twice a day.

And further, I simply realized that I didn’t give a fuck about hair at all. I mean, really. Hair is there, or it’s on my bathroom floor. Either way, from my perspective, it’s kind of disgusting, so why should I nourture having-hair fantasies over it?

My prospective dates, I suspect, shouldn’t care about it either. Some will, I’d guess, but whatever. Life is linear. If I have a full head of hair when I’m 60, it’ll be gray, or maybe I’d have I’d have a full head of hair, yet be unlucky when doctors would find a tumor the size of a medicine ball on my prostate (no “ball” pun intended). I guess life is funny that way.

So, for the record, I care not about my hair. I will grunt and groan with the pains of growing one last mullet, but other than that, I’m done.

Rogain’t.