Category Archives: Random

Deserving a Second Look

You may recall that I used to work for the City of Tracy. Used to live there, too. Working at the City was actually one of my favorite jobs, but the opportunities there didn’t match my longer term goals so after three years I needed to move on.

The thing about City work is that it has a unique atmosphere. It’s kind of like working in a temporal vortex where things move at a particularly languid pace and everything is essentially five to eight years behind “modern.” For the most part it’s just a curiosity but for an IT worker it’s actually fairly dangerous to one’s marketability when you’re advertising in 2004 that you have “recent experience with Windows NT 4.”

But what I really miss about working there are the constant internal improvement efforts. Well I guess I should clarify that I miss the friends I made while I worked there, and I miss the way we used to get a particular joy out of finding the absurdities in all these self-important projects, speeches and meetings. At least when I worked there, mockery was kind of a collective hobby in IT.

Fortunately my buddy Ryan is still holding down the fort and occasionally provides me little tidbits that reassure me the silliness persists and I get a chuckle out of his stories. Today he sent me something so priceless I have to share.

To place this in context, each Tuesday there is a City Council meeting. These meetings are aggressively dull and yet they constitute a huge amount of the weekly effort throughout the City’s office-based departments in preparation, co-ordination and post-meeting organization. IT is no exception: The minutes and schedules in particular have to be disseminated by City Ordinance and part of that effort is focused on the official website, which I was once responsible for and I left in Ryan’s capable hands when I departed.

Last night they had a presentation that was given during the Council meeting discussing brand strategies as pertains to the City. It was, as presentations are required by Federal law to be, accompanied by a Power Point slide show. After several introductory slides describing what branding is, how it can be defined, what the City’s core values are and how they should be projected through the brand, the talk turns to character voices.

And that’s when things get weird.

Slide from City of Tracy Presentation

Let me walk you through this. Some well-meaning person decided it was a good idea to use an “urban” voice as an example to explain character voice pertaining to branding. Yet it becomes instantly clear that this person is as far removed from urban culture as you can possibly get without actually living on another planet. They start with some clip art depicting a 90s-era urban youth who appears to be sitting on a toilet only the toilet has been replaced with a pile of poop. On one hand, it’s clip art so you always, always, always get what you pay for with clip art. On the other hand, someone looked at this desecration of “Thinking Man” and thought, “Yeah, that sums up ‘Hip Hop’ culture perfectly.”

But picking bad clip art is hardly worthy of note when it comes to Power Point presentations. What really sets this slide apart from the pack is the text. For the sake of completeness, it is reprinted here:

HIP HOP / first person

Parks & Community Services Summer Program – Marketing Introduction

Come lay cool with Tracy’s summer program. It’s loud and proud. Kids of all ages can blow the summer away. Do arts, do crafts, do games and do music—all for the li’l guys. Tweens can throw on their kicks and do adventures and ‘hoops. They can also do swimmin’, do mad science, do LEGOs, do gaming. Do more!

Note the awkward phrasing that sounds exactly like a 40ish white woman doing her best to impersonate an urban youth. I actually have no idea who wrote the copy, so I’m not revealing anything here. And I certainly don’t claim any authority to urban slag. But “Lay cool?” “Do (noun)?” “Throw on their kicks?” It’s priceless. And it’s just the beginning.

Economic Development – Marketing Introduction

T-town shops boom. We hit Top 20 in Cali. We can’t stop showin’ and growin’. We are the destination for this shoppin’ nation. Plant your jive on 205. We’ve got your beaners… your beamers…your bling bling. Don’t be wack. Get down with Tracy! T-town’s where it’s at.

Apparently hip hop, to the author of the slide, is all about interjecting arbitrary rhymes into casual daily conversation. Even if it is incredibly forced or practically nonsensical. Also, hip hop youths have absconded all their “G”s to use in their greetings with each other and therefore none are left to complete present participles, requiring judicious use of apostrophes. Note also the use of slang that is ten years out of phase like “wack” and “bling bling,” now relegated solely to ironic (intentional or not) use by decidedly un-cool people too old to use them sincerely. The forced inclusion (twice, for reinforcement) of the completely idiotic nickname “T-town” also warrants a mention.

But nothing can compete with the clueless use of the derogatory slur “beaners.” Used to describe illegal Mexican immigrants, it is probably meant here more as a reference to Tracy’s annual summer shindig “The Dry Bean Festival” or possibly some sort of agricultural citation; the fact that Tracy has a large hispanic population is likely completely lost on the author. I imagine this slide being shown in a conference room full of lily-white middle aged cube dwellers daydreaming about their next caffeine infusion and nodding along. The image is juxtaposed with the mixed-company audience at the City Council meeting where the slide appears and a nervous flutter ripples and those same city workers look at each other with confusion.

“What? Don’t people call it ‘Cali’ any more?”

Quick Like Cat

Shortly, as I must join the homeward commute presently:

  • I’ve been making headway on the ironSoap book/formatted archives and I just finished part two. The parts are determined by Google Docs’ (nee Writely) retarded and arbitrary file size limitation of 512K. Anyway, I began working on part three when I realized that the tarball I’ve carefully preserved since I moved to WordPress is half corrupted and my backup files go through September 2002 at the latest. I do have a slew of miscellaneous and ill-labeled archive CDs that I can search through but you can bet this won’t speed up the book’s completion any.
  • My fool-proof strategy for avoiding the receipt nazis at stores who criminally refuse to let you leave without analyzing your purchases as if you were crossing the border with several crates of produce: Pull out cell phone, stride purposefully past while hitting random buttons and pretending to be far too busy to hear their plaintive cries to stop so they can treat you like a thief.
  • I have discovered the purpose for my work-granted ThinkGeek gift certificate (a Christmas present, mind): AirSoft weaponry.
  • Never, ever, ever mix Red Bull with SweetTarts. I’m just saying, I know a guy who did and it didn’t turn out well for him.
  • There is a new poll.

Sidestepping the Magniloquence

I think it would be nice to say, “Hey look, I have a new post. It is well-researched, carefully edited and revised and thoughtfully written.” But you’d probably be like, “Where am I and what happened to ironSoap?” So in the interest of fulfilling your expectations… hastily written bullet points! Ahh…

  • Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. If you are part of a Super Tuesday state, I encourage you to vote. Now, I know that primary elections aren’t as significant as the general election in November so if you skate on this one, I’ll forgive you but only if you promise—and pinky-swear!—to vote later this year.
  • If you do vote tomorrow and can participate in the Republican election, would you please consider Ron Paul?
  • I know people like to say that voting for an underdog is like throwing your vote away but, well, tell that to New York Giants fans. Truth is, you never know.
  • And while I’m sorta on the subject, how weird was that Super Bowl? I mean it was the biggest snoozer of all time until the 4th quarter at which point it became a great game, seemingly out of nowhere. The telling statistic? There were three lead changes in the fourth quarter: A Super Bowl record. I listened to the end of the game on my commute home from work. When Manning tossed that pass for the TD late in the game, I LOL’d. Seriously.
  • You may have already gathered from the Twitter feed (had you been following along at home like I keep telling you), but I finally made my HD dreams come true last weekend. We picked up a Samsung 46″ LCD, got rid of the old 36″ Trinitron, wrangled some HD cable and iced the cake with a PS3/Blu-Ray, an HD-capable TiVo and a Logitech Harmony 550 universal remote. It was a lot of money… so much that I kind of freaked out about it for a little while, but then I caught my first Sharks game in HD and, well, I didn’t feel so bad about it after that. There is more to the story, of course, including a still-ongoing royal rumble with Comcast over the acquisition of a cable card for the TiVo, but I’ll spare you the details until I can provide the epilogue.
  • So… there’s this movie called ‘Sunshine.’ It’s deeply flawed but I think still worth watching. Either way, it basically did for Blu-Ray what The Matrix did for DVD: Sell the format.
  • I have, however, decided that I no longer have any interest in purchasing physical copies of movies. As such I won’t be “upgrading” my DVD collection to Blu-Ray. Aside from the general uncertainty of the format’s future, I just am sick of storing movies in my living space. First we had a pretty impressive collection of VHS tapes. Now we’ve finally gotten to where we have a lot of DVDs. I don’t care to go through the exercise again, so until we all figure out how too handle digital film storage, I’ll stick to rentals.
  • Of course, the PS3 came with Spider-Man 3 (ugh) and also included a 5-free Blu-Ray offer (which I felt obliged to take advantage of) so I will have at least six of the stupid things. But that’s it! I’m not paying for any more.
  • I am also fully aware my resolve has no bearing on the activities of my spouse, who loves to own her favorite movies and TV shows. I guess I better buy a new DVD rack.
  • You know what I think is tacky? That the Cheesecake Factory has ads in their menus.
  • However, TCF makes a mean meatloaf.
  • Nik and I saw Michael Clayton over the weekend. It’s a pretty great flick although I didn’t think so until the very end, and there is still a particular scene that I don’t quite understand once the “truth” is revealed. Or I guess considering what that truth does reveal. Either way, it left Nik and I scratching our heads. Also, it has to have the worst title of the year. Who wants to see a movie named after the fictional lead character? It’s not even some deeply memorable character nor a remarkable/memorable name like Forrest Gump. Michael Clayton sounds like the title of a biopic for some long-ago sports star no one remembers.
  • I would have gone with “The Fixer” or perhaps “The Settlement.” But that’s just me.
  • Snack Watch: So, if you like Sun Chips I implore you to find the “Garden Salsa” flavor, they are exquisite. However, you may also want to investigate Cinnamon Sun Chips (you read that right) which sound questionable but are in fact quite delicious (though more of a standalone snack than a lunch accompaniment). You may also be interested in knowing that the Black Cherry and Almond flavor of Clif bars are especially tasty if you need a mid-afternoon light meal. And I can say with confidence that the energy drink Nos is not suitable for human consumption.
  • On the flip side, has anyone tried Chocolate Chex yet? Nik is too chicken to try them and I’m hit or miss with Chex brand cereal, but I can see it being a fine addition to a batch of Chex mix. Anyone?
  • I’m committed to Lost for the long haul, but I’m terribly, terribly disappointed in the direction they’ve decided to take the show.
  • I have to give some respect to Netflix, a company which had such a terrible site back when I joined almost five years ago that I filed a bug report on it. Now they have one of the best designed, most user-friendly sites I frequent. As a simple example, I indicated to them that I was interested in getting Blu-Ray discs when available. Their system simply confirms that you know what you’re talking about and that you have the appropriate hardware and then it automagically goes in and replaces any movies in your queue with Blu-Ray versions. Brilliant.
  • I loved the book Freakonomics and since I finished it I’ve been following the Freakonomics blog, which often has funny, insightful or thought-provoking posts. Today they had one I found cynical and amusing in all the right ways: Choose a six word motto for the US. My favorite sarcastic suggestion: “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Democracy.” My favorite funny suggestion: “Just like Canada, with Better Bacon.”
  • As much as I love Rock Band, especially the multiplayer, Band World Tour mode is sadly flawed in a fairly fundamental way. And the fact that online co-op doesn’t allow BWT mode is kind of a criminal oversight. Still, I have faith in my Joey Big Hat bandmates to rise above the stupid game limitations.
  • It occurs to me that we need a band logo. And I think you can upload such files into the game and use them as tattoos for your avatar.
  • Excuse me, I have some Photoshopping to do.

The Occasional Taste

I’ve been sick for the last few days with a pretty hefty cold. I thought it was the flu at first because of the general sense of achy unpleasantness and chills, but after staying home on Wednesday and having it not manifest with the usual aches and fever I’m inclined to believe it’s merely an industrial-strength common cold.

I’m still recovering but I’ve been doing a lot of lying around and thinking so I have a few unconnected thoughts and anecdotes to share, in a familiar format.

  • For reasons that won’t make sense unless you’re a gamer who owns an Xbox 360 and an OCD-afflicted psychopath such as myself, I purchased a copy of Madden 06 for under $5 from my local game store and have been simulating thirty seasons worth of games. What’s significant about this is that, according to the software, the 49ers won’t win the Super Bowl again until the year 2033. Just something to look forward to.
  • I’m reading a wonderful book by Naomi Klein called “No Logo” about marketing, advertising and branding. There is a passage in the book that stuck with me:

    The people who line up for Starbukcs, writes CEO Howard Shultz, aren’t just there for the coffee. “It’s the romance of the coffee experience, the feeling of warmth and community people get in Starbucks stores.”

    I guess that’s why I dislike Starbucks. Here I thought they made bad coffee and served them in pretentious and ubiquitous locations. Turns out the make pretentious and ubiquitous locations in which to serve bad coffee.

  • Our band name (comprised of myself on “vocals,” Nik on guitar, HB on drums and Gin as a roadie/groupie, but soon she’ll play bass… I just don’t have another guitar-shaped controller) is “Joey Big Hat is a Bit Much.” It’s completely an inside joke and probably not a very funny one at that. However, it still cracks me up whenever I think about it.
  • The above bullet refers to Rock Band, which Nik bought me for my birthday.
  • However, I’ve decided that this year I will buy a new guitar (I’m thinking Fender Telecaster), Nik has indicated that she wants to take guitar lessons and Lister has indicated that once he returns from overseas he wants to get a bit more serious about forming a jam band so music is on people’s minds. There may one day be a real-life variant of JBHiaBM. We probably won’t cover Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” however.
  • My folks sent me a very kind gift for my birthday which was essentially funds to be converted into San Jose Sharks tickets. I did some digging around and found that you can actually buy unwanted season tickets for a single game through Ticketmaster which seems to be the only way to get lower-reserve seating. But I found that the price differs wildly depending on what team is visiting. For example, for about $60 a ticket I can get lower-reserve center ice tickets (row 25) and see the Sharks play the Columbus Blue Jackets. For those same seats I can see them play the Anaheim Ducks… for $300 each.
  • I’m probably going to see the Blue Jackets.
  • We went and saw Juno on New Year’s Eve. It’s an exceptional movie.
  • Just days before my birthday I went to the eye doctor as a sign of solidarity with Nik, who was going because she’s had terrible migraines for about a month now and her doctor suggested she may be having vision trouble (the actual doctorese-to-English translation of that is “I have no idea what’s wrong, so hows about a stab in the dark?”). I hadn’t had my eyes checked in a very long while so I went along, assuming my vision was still 20/20. It’s not. Now I need glasses. Strangely, Nik and I need practically the same prescription.
  • I have no delusions that people who meet me or pass me on the street are fooled into thinking I’m anything but a nerd. However, for those few who may have been blinded by the ruse, I think glasses ought to remove all doubt.
  • Truthfully, I’m okay with that. However, with my basketball-shaped noggin, hairless pate and the chunky Buddy Holly style glasses I went with, I fear I may end up resembling Dr. Bunsen Honeydew.

Every Once in a Little While

I realize I’ve been neglecting the three people who read this site, but even as I shed some commitments that I made with the best of intentions to free up some time, the crushing demand for my mental capacity remains unwieldy. It doesn’t help that my maximum threshold was… unremarkable to begin with.

I have nothing noteworthy to say, but I feel compelled to stop in now and again to say “hi” as if that compensated for my general malaise. Better that I could produce something of note, but I’m sure you’ve come to expect nothing of the kind. Lo, the bullet point!

  • I started following the Sharks about a month and a half into the season, or, if you prefer, several games ago. They currently sit atop the Pacific Division by a small margin, but they scarcely seem to deserve their position. What I’m more concerned about however is that it seems Sirius satellite radio’s loss of the NHL contract to XM escaped my notice. This development significantly impacts my affection for the service, and the terrestrial alternatives which ought to fit neatly into my driving-heavy schedule are so poor as to be nearly worthless. The general lack of appreciation for the country’s best sport remains a perpetual thorn in my side.
  • Are you on Twitter? If not, please acclimate yourself to it promptly. I realize that the beauty of micro-blogging takes some time to appreciate, but once you accept the elegance of the 140-character limitation and note the wide assortment of update/notification options available, it fits casually into one’s life the way few other technological/social cross-breedings can.
  • Had you been following my Twitter feed (which is conveniently updated on this very site), you would have noted that my Xbox broke about a week after my buddy Foster’s did. I tried to arrange a bait-and-switch scam with him to utilize my store warranty which I fear will expire presently without use. He declined for reasons that are his own, but when my machine broke the point became moot—until it began to be clear that a key component of the exchange (my receipt) had not smoothly made the move across town last spring. Hope still lingers that the mysterious boxes in the garage hold the valuable treasure, but they have become bed and breakfast facilities for several species of repugnant critters who respond to interruptions of their romantic vacationing by scurrying up one’s pant legs and distributing the crawling creeps whose effects last and last, sometimes for days.
  • I had occasion over the last couple of weeks to work on some projects that felt strangely like coding. Wednesday is the day when our weekly shifts overlap so we have double coverage on all shifts and, when the day and swing hours intersect, up to four NOC personnel on hand. Because of this and because we only have two workstations, I chose to pull out my iBook and just do some project work elsewhere and let others handle the task of watching the service. As I worked and switched between Terminal, MySQL, Finder, Safari, Colloquy, Mail and installed various unix applications, OS X applications and generally made a lot of progress I noted that I was feeling something reminiscent, something almost forgotten: Joy, while computing. I’ve been working on Windows machines for about two years now as my primary employment-based environment and while tools like PuTTY, Pidgin and Firefox make things sort of tolerable, I never feel happy to be working on them. I think part of it is also that the work I was doing was similar to the kinds of things I used to do at my City job and, before that, the kinds of things I used to do contractually at home. But the uniting thread was really that I was working in a comfortable environment on something that interested me. That’s been happening less and less frequently the last couple of years and I need to find a way to recapture that because on days when I’m being honest with myself I note that I’m getting dangerously close to burning out in this line of work. What’s terrifying is that aside from muddling through technology work, I’m utterly useless as an employee.
  • We’re heading up to Seattle for Thanksgiving this year, a departure of sorts but one I’m very much looking forward to. I went there last summer and absolutely loved it so I expect to have even more fun this time with additional folks along to appreciate it. And if you think I won’t be getting cream cheese hot dogs, you’re flat wrong. I’m not saying they will replace the turkey dinner, I’m just saying they are inevitable and given the choice between leftover turkey sandwiches carefully layered with gravy-moistened cornbread stuffing and cream cheese hot dogs, the outcome is not predetermined and may possibly result in paralysis. Of the mind.
  • Exercise is my foe. It’s like this: I truly love being active. It’s kind of taken me a long time to realize this, because it suggests something that isn’t precisely true. But when I had buddies at work who were willing to join me and the time to spare, a high point of every day was going to the gym. And all I was doing was light cardio and some minor weight training. Practically the second I switched jobs and lost my daily partners, I drifted away from my daily regimen. These days I try to make it to the gym as often as is practical, but in fact the only consistency I’ve had is meeting my buddy Dave a couple of times on my off days for tennis or racquetball. And yet, again, those activities are among my week’s delights. It’s not that I’m terribly athletic—quite the opposite, actually—it’s that I find the typical awkwardness of purely social encounters dissipates entirely when framed by physical activity. In a strange twist, when either element is removed from the equation the result is remarkably unsatisfying and I prefer to retreat to my default environment of inactive and antisocial. Note that the general benefit of exercise remains even without any social context, and that includes a general sense of well-being and mental clarity, but I cannot apply raw logic to the scenario. For someone who keeps unusual hours and yet spends most of them parked in a chair with ready access to an assortment of free or dangerously inexpensive snacks, the recipe is fraught with peril.
  • My brother, a generally awesome guy, upped his awesomeness factor once again by patiently waiting for me to come ’round on digital music mixing. His steady but non-pressurized acclaim for products such as Reaper ensured that as my inevitable curiosity finally got the better of me, I would readily find details I needed to dabble. Now, granted, Scott is a superb musician and I am… not. But, I have a strong affinity for creative endeavors and this is the kind of tech nerd/art nerd hybrid that touches the soft white underbelly of my soul. At the moment my technical and financial situation makes for a sort of interested observer level of involvement, but it would be the work of a nice bonus check or a few hours overtime to enable some deeper investigation which may result in… well, best not to speculate. But should such a situation arise, you can be certain I’ll subject you to it all.

Police Blotter Report, #1

Nik and I have been discussing the local police blotter via IM for the last couple of weeks. By “discussing” I do mean “making fun of” because our blotter is full of lunacy and prank calls and precious little of actual concern. Unless you’re concerned about getting your catalytic converter stolen.

I’m serious. Those things get swiped all the time in our town.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to try to set up a podcast of us doing it live because it’s pretty funny sometimes (to us, at least) but until I get around to that I had to share part of today’s exchange. Some of the content has been altered slightly from the original, for legibility reasons.

(13:16:47) Nikki Hamilton: okay, so here are my three favorites from the police log today
(13:17:11) Nikki Hamilton: I can’t decide if i want to meet this guy or not…
(13:17:16) Nikki Hamilton: 12:20 a.m.: A man known as “Crazy Larry” was loitering at the am/pm gas station, 3425 N. Tracy Blvd.
(13:17:34) Paul Hamilton: Here’s the general rule:
(13:17:47) Paul Hamilton: If you have the word “Crazy” as part of your name, you’re cool
(13:18:05) Paul Hamilton: If you’re just “So-and-So…. who’s really crazy” then steer clear
(13:18:17) Paul Hamilton: So like Crazy Bob is probably a really cool guy
(13:18:33) Paul Hamilton: But “That guy Bob… that fool is crazy” is bad news
(13:18:45) Nikki Hamilton: heh
(13:18:58) Nikki Hamilton: okay, from the “That is so messed up File:”
(13:19:14) Nikki Hamilton: 7:34 a.m.: Someone in eastern Tracy reported that when she told her father she was pregnant, he handed her a .38 gun and “told her to end it.” According to police records, her dad and her boyfriend don’t get along.
(13:20:07) Paul Hamilton: Sounds like he’s lucky he didn’t hand the gun to the boyfriend and say the same thing
(13:20:29) Nikki Hamilton: yeah, i don’t think that would have ended how he intended it to
(13:20:35) Paul Hamilton: I wonder if that would count as suicide?
(13:21:02) Nikki Hamilton: assisted suicide, a la Dr. Kevorkian
(13:21:14) Paul Hamilton: I like how they threw in the history of the dad and the boyfriend, as if that explained it
(13:21:33) Paul Hamilton: “Ah, I see. He was a total jerk to her because he hates her boyfriend”
(13:21:41) Paul Hamilton: “It all makes sense now.”
(13:21:53) Nikki Hamilton: and last, but not least
(13:22:07) Nikki Hamilton: from the “What kind of gun even holds that many rounds? File:”
(13:22:20) Nikki Hamilton: 12:48 a.m.: A caller reportedly heard 10 gunshots on the 1700 block of Renown Court.
(13:22:30) Nikki Hamilton: unless, of course, it was multiple guns
(13:22:41) Nikki Hamilton: but, what is this, 4th of july?
(13:22:43) Nikki Hamilton: new year’s eve?
(13:22:59) Paul Hamilton: should I be the one to tell you that a lot of sidearms hold 15 in the clip?
(13:23:11) Nikki Hamilton: seriously?
(13:23:15) Paul Hamilton: oh yeah
(13:23:18) Nikki Hamilton: why did i think most guns hold six?
(13:23:33) Paul Hamilton: revolvers hold six
(13:23:43) Paul Hamilton: but most guns aren’t revolvers anymore
(13:23:58) Paul Hamilton: they have a clip you slap into the bottom of the handle
(13:24:05) Paul Hamilton: and they hold a lot more bullets
(13:24:21) Paul Hamilton: Disclaimer: Everything I know about guns I learned from playing Counter-Strike
(13:24:28) Nikki Hamilton: so now people have 15 chances to kill you rather than 6?
(13:24:46) Paul Hamilton: well you really only need the one chance
(13:25:19) Nikki Hamilton: yes, but your odds are much better when a gun holds only 6 rounds, especially if you’re ninja like or the person is a bad shot
(13:25:23) Nikki Hamilton: with 15 you’re screwed
(13:25:28) Nikki Hamilton: no one’s that lucky
(13:25:41) Paul Hamilton: I think ninjas don’t really care how many chances the other guy has
(13:25:48) Paul Hamilton: that’s why they’re ninjas
(13:25:54) Nikki Hamilton: I should train to be a ninja
(13:26:01) Nikki Hamilton: then I would feel so much safer
(13:26:02) Paul Hamilton: you would make a great ninja
(13:26:12) Nikki Hamilton: i’m not so stealthy
(13:26:24) Paul Hamilton: plus, I would LOVE to be able to say “Oh, yeah. I’m married to a ninja.”
(13:26:34) Paul Hamilton: Those cowls are hot
(13:26:38) Nikki Hamilton: more so than a pirate?
(13:26:50) Paul Hamilton: You can’t marry a pirate
(13:26:54) Paul Hamilton: everyone knows this
(13:26:59) Nikki Hamilton: oh. I did not.
(13:27:22) Paul Hamilton: obviously you need to check out http://www.youcantmarryapirate.edu
(13:27:32) Nikki Hamilton: shut. up.
(13:27:35) Nikki Hamilton: seriously?
(13:27:38) Nikki Hamilton: there’s a website?

And Then Things Got Weird

I hang out in an IRC channel for work. Mostly the chatter is work-related, but sometimes it gets… sidetracked. Observe:

17:55:52 Crystal C: phamilton,
18:02:09 phamilton: yes>
18:02:53 Crystal C: phamilton, nevermind, agent was complaining about recent call page not updating…
18:03:06 Crystal C: they had logged out and back in..
18:03:12 Crystal C: the last update was at 1348
18:03:21 Crystal C: but now they all appeared miraculously
18:03:33 phamilton: I have been known to work miracles
18:03:38 phamilton: Occasionally
18:03:43 George S_: lol
18:04:15 Crystal C: phamilton, through osmosis of course :)
18:04:26 phamilton: Ew, gross.
18:04:45 phamilton: That’s not how I roll
18:05:04 phamilton needs dictionary
18:05:18 Crystal C: lol :P
18:06:21 phamilton: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=osmosis
18:06:31 phamilton: No, you’re right
18:06:40 phamilton: That’s *totally* how I roll
18:07:24 Crystal C: Note: Informally, “osmosis” is the process by which information or concepts come to a person without conscious effort: “Living in Paris, he learned French slang by osmosis.”
18:07:25 phamilton: Passing through semipermeable membranes is like my favorite pastime
18:08:14 George S_: say what
18:08:17 George S_: lol
18:08:17 Crystal C: phamilton, ok if you wish work magic the slimy way, thats fine too
18:09:32 phamilton: Slimy Magic… isn’t that a funk band?
18:09:44 phamilton: If not, it should be.
18:09:58 Cathy B__: phamilton i will splain that to them
18:10:05 Crystal C: LOL :D
18:10:56 phamilton: Someone is going to have to splain it to me, I’m not even sure what I’m talking about anymore.
18:11:02 Cathy B__: lol

Now, for the record, I do know what osmosis means in that context, I was only pulling her leg. I just didn’t expect it to get all weird. Also, my use of the tired cliche ‘how I roll’ was completely ironic. Completely, you understand? And yes, my co-workers abuse the ‘LOL’ privilege.

What? You didn’t know it was a privilege? It is.

One that can be revoked.

Trippy

  • I love stuff like this. Recursive!
  • So I’ve been trading games on Goozex quite a bit. One bad thing is that it’s often easier to request that people send you games without their original case and/or packaging. But I like having a case for my games. Fortunately I found this site which in turn directed me to this page on Nintendo’s website where you can get blank, empty DS cases for less than a buck apiece.
  • I also discovered, on that note, that your neighborhood GameStop/EB Games does not sell the translucent green DVD cases that XBox 360 games come in. But if you ask nicely they have a huge supply of them on hand and will probably give you a few of them for free. Slightly less scrupulous employees may need to be greased for a couple of bucks.
  • Hey, lookit some babies eating lemons.
  • There is something woefully disingenuous about a machine that tells me I smell nice.
  • Nothing can forgive me for the fact that I inexplicably love the Go Meat! commercials.
  • Fun with bad translations (note: the ads on that site are a bit dubious).
  • What? No. I mean… I can’t… Buh. Grp. Fi-ie-ie-ie-awt. Ow, my head.

Hope your day is as surreal as mine.