Charing is Caring

http://projecterin.com/

"Just like those fucken' Yank's. Think a pill will solve all their stupid problems."

Goodbye, Blue Monday

My Hero.

he·ro [heer-oh] –noun, plural -roes; also -ros.

1.	a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

2.	a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/ap_en_ot/obit_vonnegut_29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut

http://www.vonnegut.com/

the Bokononist last rites:

"God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God."

Kurt is up in Heaven now.
That was his favorite joke.

It has been years since I cried, but today I cried for all of us. So much poorer for having lost him. Christ, now I've started again.

Daylight Spendings

As every US citizen not living in Arizona has now figured out, we're doing things a bit different this year. Moving the clock ahead a few weeks earlier this season, saving daylight while we're still technically in Winter. For those without the details the United States Congress took well over an hour out of their valuable schedules last year to legislate against the passage of time itself. Of course it was due to the overwhelming voice of the people demanding such things that caused this to occur, not the lazy machinations of a group of senile out-of-touch bureaucrats idling the hours while their jailbait pages are in school away on do-nothing legislation.

Of course there has been a small public gasp regarding this occurrence, as people in the technology field have been quick to point out that human laws hardly apply to pre-programmed computer chips. Some media outlets even referred to it as "mini-y2k" hoping to squeeze a few panic-pennies out of fearful consumers, indicating that just maybe with the right combination of crossed-circuits and incorrect timestamp logs Western Civilization as we know it might lose so much more than a mere hour. The real aftereffects being more along the lines of my cellphone's alarm not notifying me that the clock changed the time automatically while I slept, causing me to groggily check it against my watch (that I had made sure to update update) about a dozen times while half-awake before work this morning.

What really burns my britches about the whole incident though was the attitude taken by our legislative body itself. That the troupe of washed-up ex-astronauts and B-list actors who have been given the responsibility of seeing our nation run smoothly either

a) don't understand the functions or basic operational theory of modern electronics, a HUGE part of our American economy and civil infrastructure or

b) didn't care enough about the possible impact to point out to whomever floated the bill that it might just cause more problems than it addresses and maybe they had more important things to do. Either way: incompetence would be my summary judgement, but maybe that's a little too harsh.

I've decided I should take the time to read through the sessions of the ol' 106th and take a look at the bills introduced in 2k5 and 2k6 respectively. Boring, sure. But maybe it'll make for a good laugh, I'd like to think those senile pederasts are good for something. Stay tuned for more.

I Knew People

Of course, as the intro/bio states, I am a Seattle ex-expatriot. About the time this chronicle was originally conceived I was in the process of fleeing the Emerald City for the warmer and less-sociable streets of Las Vegas. Off to spend my 40 days in the desert, as a few months of bad luck in my bidding of contracts eventually pushed me back in the direction of here. I was only out of town from St Valentine's day through the 1st of April, couldn't have missed much right?

Good friends were of course sorely missed, minor acquaintances as well, plus about every other friendly SoB with whom I'd enjoyed a good drink or a good time. I had a somewhat sizable pile of little scraps of paper I'd left behind, each scrawled with one or more email addresses, phone numbers, friendster account names, etc. Some were simply ignored and eventually discarded, others capitalized and contacted. As is oft the way, a few simply failed to connect me with anyone I knew. One such was an email address with the name "Jeremy" scrawled above it.

I'd never actually known Jeremy's last name. We'd met at a party at his house that a mutual friend invited me to, and we were pretty decent pals. Ran into each other about once a month via assorted social gatherings and had a few good times. I knew he was a wine seller, and that he DJed occasionally. I'd heard him spin once or twice, he was pretty good, although I never remembered his stage name. He never replied to any email I'd sent to that address, but I didn't think much of it. We'd see each other sooner or later, we knew all the same freaks. Eris would handle the details.

11 months later and I hadn't given it any thought at all. Bored at the office hitting the random button on wikipedia waiting for the proverbial bell the whistle. I found myself at an article on King county, and of curiosity started clicking local links, Seattle over to city crime figures over to The Capital Hill Massacre.

Something of a curiosity, this Morbid event occurred just days after I left town. A bolt of psychological lightning I psychically dodged by mere circumstance. No mourning memories or sad epitaphs, now only a statistic in another city far far away. Seeing a list of the names of the victims on a friend's myspace page I was relieved none of the names were ones that I recognised. Of course, sometimes you never find out a friend's last name.

I've found Jeremy, turns out he isn't in Seattle anymore. He isn't anywhere material, really. There's just an entry in a list next to picture of him DJing. A list on wikipedia of the victims of the Cap Hill Massacre. His last name was Martin.

http://www.jeremymartin.org/wp/

I Hear The Presence

Now if only I could score some Opal...

It's Not Stupid, it's Advanced.

For those unclear of my means of sustenance, I do tech support. Everyone in the industry has got some funny "ha ha" tech support stories, and some funny "not so ha ha" tech support stories. I have many, and after yesterday now I have one more, the categorization of which I'm not quite certain of. Read on.

8 days ago MS Vista was released, meaning it's that time of the support cycle when I write a whole new set of training docs for newbs & customers and teach myself a whole new spate of blue language. My company purchased a new Dell computer at the end of last year for the purpose of installing Vista once it's on the market so we can use the system for a testbed. Toward this end we purchased it under a special offer from Dell for a free upgrade to Vista post-release.

I attempted to perform the upgrade via their automated process and hit a snag, my computer's make/model was not shown on the list of units eligible for upgrade and the automated system would not allow the process to proceed. The Dell sales rep and I parted the system out with compatibility in mind, but it is a custom model. No big deal, says I. It's a new process, they just haven't ironed out the bugs yet. Sure.

One gold medal for the hurdles event of the ol' telephone olympics later and Dell eventually gets me to the Vista upgrade dept, he's how our conversation went.

Moi: "Hi there, I purchased a new system listed as Vista compatible in late October and I'd like to perform the free upgrade to Vista now. My customer number is ________"

He: "Oh, um sure. Let me just ask first: this is a test machine, right?"

Moi: "It's not my workstation if that's what you're asking. I'm just installing the new OS to test compatibility with our existing products and start writing our new training docs."

He: "Oh, OK then. Yeah, I was worried it might be your workstation. Didn't want to screw you up. So what exactly is the problem?"

Moi: "Well when I punch my ID tag number into the upgrade page it just tells me that my system isn't on the compatible list, even though when we parted out my system we did so with compatibility in mind. My system's ID tag says _______"

He: "Yeah, when I try that it doesn't work.... hmm, looks like none of my part numbers listed here work."

Moi: "So the page itself is broken?"

He: "Looks like it. To tell you the truth you're the first person who's tried to upgrade."

I had to hit my mute button so I could howl with laughter. I guess that means it is "ha ha" funny after all.