Special Instructions:

Both cats Did not Board well they were very up set and stressed. They were very Difficult to move, clean cage, or feed. They did not recieve a complementary bath because they were unhandleable.

The above was a direct transcript (including typos...say, if it's written by hand it's a miss spelling, right?;)  from the note I left the vet with today when I went to pick up the boyz after going fishing the last three days. Ugh. I am a terrible human, I had a feeling this would happen and last time I put them up I promised them I wouldn't do it again. But since this time I used the vet they go to, I think it was more traumatic instead of less, which was what I was hoping for. But the good news is, the high school girls that were looking after them were very sweet (probably talked a thick line of 'that God!'s after I left), understanding, and still had all thier body parts intact, so that's good. I half-expected at least one of them to be sporting a bloody stump or a random patch of reddening gauze on her body...but no. I even checked Fou's claws, no sign of human tissue or long blonde hair pulled out by the roots. Looks like I avoided legal fees yet again.

Well, I.I.I. employees, your President, CEO, resident bottle washer and this year's winner of the Hit Yourself In The Head With A Folding Office Chair Award is sunburned, tired, and probably has an ear infection, due to lake water. Ah, but that story will have to wait for tomorrow. I must get sleep; I have work tomorrow and it'd be a touch of Konrovian irony to loose my job the day after my 12th anniversary, wouldn't it? Thought so.

Xanga Zane_T_Dark's Weblog 4/25/2002 Thanks for the props folks! I just feel like we've force-fed some of the older citizens of our society a bit of the poison of the information age that they themselves should make the decision on. Drinking from the online chalice does have it's price to extract from all of us; let those who are willing enter that with courage, determination, and the will to win...kinda like Gladiator without all the dirt, sweat, and body parts.

As a footnote to the previous log entry, will all of you who have grandparents AND kids please, please, please just mail them a HANDWRITTEN AND SIGNED letter with photographs of their very own and quit forcing them into the gaping corporate jaws of Microsoft/AOL/Prodigy just to get foto's of the little ones? Hell, my company can build the most reliable computer in the world, but once WinVirus 98, Trojan 2000, or Nimda XP gets loaded on it it's a technical battle of 'Starship Trooper' proportions.. and just plain EVIL! So please, I'm begging you...get up off your dufus, make extra prints, and mail them.

 I might be able to get a computer problem fixed for grandpa, but only because he's sharp as a tack and has the patience of a saint:

1. His hearing might not be so good now, and with today's cordless digital phones, his signal just cuts out altogether and I don't even get static on my end.
   
2. He can't type worth a flip anymore assuming he could in the first place; years of working on cars, construction, taking dangerous saltwater fish off of YOUR fishhook, you know, REAL work, means his hands are more suited for keeping the boogie man at bay and making sure the swing set is fixed when the grandkids come over, not tiptity-typing on a damn keyboard no matter HOW 'ergonomic' it is. If he's a real veteran, he already hates cell phones, voice mail, and long distance charges...and I don't blame him.
   
3. How in the flying rat crunchies is Mimi suppose to share JPEG's with her friends over coffee, hmmm. And don't give me any guano about them printing them out either; they won't look right, the colors will be off, and you can't fit them in an album. Give grandma a break will ya!
   
4. Grand-rents do NOT understand what all the computer lingo is, particularly a EULA (you know, the infamous End User License Agreement?), and that could get them in a heap of trouble. And don't snicker, if publishing companies are riding after old ladies like the Nazgul when they share needlepoint files, imagine what a corporation with real money and influence like Microsoft would do. Not pretty is it? Didn't think so.
   
5. Think of how many sharks are in the online shallows of the Internet just waiting for someone to send an email with personal information in it, put in a CC number to buy craft supplies from an online store...you get the picture. Now think of what could happen if the victim was on a fixed income. Kinda makes ya shudder don't it? No? Well it should.

There are hundreds of other reasons, my point is, let THEM make the decision. Diving into computer userhood is not a dip in the kiddie pool if you have to learn EVERYTHING from the ground up. Once they are up for the challenge, they'll be hell on wheels, but don't make them feel like they HAVE to get online just to blessed keep in touch. You ain't that damn busy, trust me. Again, this is not a rant to make anyone feel bad, I'm just beggin' ya to look at it from the other side and ask yourself how you'd feel if your kids made you learn Morse code or Semaphore flagging to talk to YOUR grandkids, hmmm?

Ah yes. Today, a word about customer service and things technical. Those of you who call customer support and do this, you know who you are. What I’m about to rant on does not apply to everyone.

1. 
   
   You called ME; don’t get this better than thou attitude just because you bought something. Big deal, I just bought a Snickers and you don’t see a new wing being added to the MM Mars building under MY name do ya? No.
    


2. 
   
   No, turbo-geek…I, in fact, do NOT care how many certifications you hold. I care how many acronyms are in your email tagline about as much as I care what Barry Manilow eats on his Grape Nuts…and trust me, you’d need a time machine for that one ¹. I know what I’m doing, you…do not. The quicker we get past this, the quicker I can solve your problem, capiche?
   


3. 
   
   I am SO tired of trying to convince people that I’m right before they’ll even CHECK my solution. Don’t they get that if someone is paying me really good money to do this that I might…just might…know what the hell I’m doing? That your problems are just a droplet in an ocean of problems I deal with every day What do they have to loose in the first place anyhow, it’ll STILL be broken if I’m wrong, not MORE broken, right?
   


4. 
   
   How stupid is it to lie to someone you are trying to get to diagnose a problem. I mean, if you went to the doctor because of chest pains, would you complain that your instep was sweating more than usual, your tongue itched, and your ears were getting hot flashes but leave out that you had a stabbing pain in your chest and passed out this afternoon while raking the yard?
   


5. 
   
   Just because you were the only one in the mailroom to know how to format a floppy disk, don’t cop ‘tude with me please. They may refer to you as the Network Administrator, but we both know the truth. Luckily, if you work with me, we’re the only ones who will.

Well, there are many more, but I don't want to just go on...besides, I feel much better now

¹ In some cases, I would need a working time machine in order to travel far enough ahead in time to find technology advanced enough to make a device sensitive enough to measure how little I care.

Every once in a while, like standing in the eye of a hurricane, life will give you just a glimpse of something profound if you're paying attention.

I just got back from the local Wal-Mart, it was close to midnight, which is really (in my humble opinion) the best time to hit up WallyWorld because the crowds are thinner. Be careful though, because if the store near you is like the one around here, they change cash drawers at around midnight, so keep that in mind and avoid a 15 minute wait in line listening to mom explain why the now-up-FAR-past-bedtime child mind cannot have this ring pop or that package of goop. You have been warned.

So I park the car and get out; I end up parking to the side, near some soda machines and lawn furniture displays. As I walk up, this profound feeling hits me...and at first I don't understand what it was. Then I notice, there is NOBODY around. Sure, there are plenty of cars on a Saturday night, but imagine a scene void of people were there should be some.

No cars on the street, no people walking in and out, no PA announcements; only the sounds of the soda machines and the nearest AC unit on the roof. A light, very nice breeze stirring the parking lot trash amongst the furniture displays in a disturbing dance of freedom. As if all the humans were finally gone and what we've left behind is finally rid of us and can do as it likes. Traffic lights like maniacal druid sentinels of a long forgotten religion, regulating the imaginary passage of vehicles in silent gestures of light and rhythm whose meaning only they still know. Soda machines patiently waiting to be awakened by a small bit of change; change that is perhaps even lying mockingly on the ground just below the slot, a forever unrequited promise that would never be fulfilled. The steady thrum of giant air conditioners, guardians of temperature and humidity majestically perched atop a mountain of steel and glass, their constant mantra materializing itself like a force of will, to keep the elements at bay and bestow the strength of their belief on the food within.

Just as this hollow and desolate feeling is materializing in my brain, reminding me of several scenes in The Omega Man, I turned the corner, and a teenager riding one of the motorized carts in a circle almost hits me, a profound humility keeps me from asking him if he wants to HAVE to use that thing on his next visit, and I realize just how much I miss every day. I'll have to watch that.

I just got through watching an episode of Bewitched last night and only just realized how much I absolutely adore Aunt Clara! I couldn't stop laughing out loud; just something about her warms my heart.

Like this was a surprise...yeah , right. What can I say, the inner rubber duck thing facinated me.

All ducks aren't sweet and innocent and you prove that. You have a nasty streak.

Find your inner rubber ducky.

For all you HALO folks out there, and even those of you who just appreciate a finely crafted bit of humor mixed with some impressive hand/eye coordination, check out the Warthog Physics Experiment:

Warthog Jump: A Halo Physics Experiment

Reality
-Zane T. Dark 4/18/2002

I listen to what you
Want me to hear
Transparent globes of
Sentences, nested one
Inside the next
Each turning on
It’s own axis of reality
I patiently wait
For them to line up
Straining my eyes
To make out the
Continents of truth
But I grow weary
Unable to blink
Fixed on your words
I miss your eyes

So. You ever see something on TV and tell yourself 'Hey, that's a good idea!'..but then other companies begin to do it and pretty soon you start thinking that perhaps if that many companies are doing it that, to be blunt, it probably sucks?

There is a reason for the way our bodies react to the environment around us. It's hot, we sweat. It's cold, our teeth chatter, we stomp our feet, put our hands in our armpits..you get the idea. Well the same is true with gag reflexes and nose wrinkling when it comes to smells. It's our body's way of telling us:

"I don't like it and it's bad"

Our bodies don't have to give excuses, submit action items, fashion feasibility reports, or submit financial approvals to committee. Your body's reaction is "Fuck that, I'm puking!". Well, maybe not THAT reaction, but it does what it does because it has to.

Now, having said that, will corporate America quit with the Martha-friggin-Stewart-don't-offend-my-senses cleaning products already for flying monkies sake! I mean, it only goes to reason that what stank before stank for a reason...it had toxic stuff in it...probably vaporous and easily absorbed through breathing enough of it. So does it make ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER to make it smell good so we take an even BIGGER wiff and exclaim 'Gee, your oven smells terrific!' when the same toxic fumes that were a product of the cleaner doing it's job are, reasonably speaking, still in the damn stuff and now introduced into a deeper area of our lungs that it would never have seen otherwise because of it's now 'baby-fresh scent'?! I mean, this is like disguising nuclear waste by making it look like Grape Nuts™ and then patting yourself on the back and sprinkling it over the landscape like lawn fertilizer.

Don't get me wrong, I like the 'herbal scented' Windex™ that doesn't give me that acid taste in the back of my throat when I use it, or the lemon-scented oven cleaner. It just seems to me that we are, in our own 'in too damn much of a hurry' Amercian way, covering up the symptoms and not fashioning a new solution. Like an oven cleaner that WON'T strip the paint of a battleship or the skin off your child. And I don't believe that we *can't* do this...I mean we have a hair growing pill and a boner pill (but still no cure for AIDS, go figure), I'm sure we can clean our kitchens/bathrooms/lives without chemicals that will eat the lining out of an iron smelting crucible or poison the planet to the point where the cockroaches develop thumbs and start telling US what to do.