Month: May 2003

  • Media Player Schmedia Player


    "Updates are available to make your hardware even more obsolete and make it possible for us to capture even more marketing information from your activities without notifying you. Would you like to continue?"


    "Yes"              "No"


     


    I truly busted Microsoft today, not like it matters even in the most cursory of ways, but I'm arranging my wfm files for about 2 hours. I finally get a cd together that I want to burn, and by the time it finishes 'converting' the 3rd song that DAMN window comes up about 'new updates' for windows media player would  you like to install them now?


    What *now*?...you mean RIGHT now? This very second...don't wait until the conversion or burn process completes..oh of course not...how silly of me, no we can't have that...stop everything you're doing and download our latest coagulation of crap to slap  onto our already bulbous and oozing code like wad of wet modeling clay on the side of Jabba The Hutt's ass. Sure, nothing I was doing was more important than what MICROSOFT wants that's for damn sure! I'll just click on yes, put on some Tracey Chapman and beat the crap out of myself, shall I? CCCHRRRRRRIST!!!!!!!


    Can it be ANY more obvious that this little watchdog reports back to the mothership every time you burn a song to a cd? Oh yea, and it checked for updates while it was walking by the fridge, why not. Oh and why not interrupt that very process with a popup window that advertises to 'upgrade' the very code you're running at the time. 


    Don't get me wrong, I knew it was going on, and when, and where... LONG before now. I mean,  just because you've been cleaning up the dog turds for months and you know he's been eating out of the litterbox doesn't mean that catching him taking a crap in your shoes while you're wearing them with a Dolly Madison dusting of litter still on his nose isn't enough to make anyone a bit flabbergasted even with the painfully obvious.


    I'm filling out a virus report on Norton's web site...just to see what kind of reaction I get.

  • It's Better With The Butterfly?


    Is it just me? I mean, I have WAY too many email addresses; but the only one that gets far and away the raunchiest nudeteenasiansexfetishfistingpeckerpufferpills junk mail is my Hotmail account.


    Now granted, I'm not a *paying* MSN member, so perhaps I'm not privilaged to have my own butterfly...but doesn't that seem a bit like the wolf guarding the sheep?

  • Yesssirrreee, I am now a Certified Cisco Networking Associate Professional Engineering Architect Design Specialist with Cheese, Sour Cream and Tomatos (hereto referred to as a "CCNAPEADSWC Grande", which translated into French, Binary, then have it's vowels replaced with the ones from that goofy Microsoft Outlook font and translated back into English after being copied back down onto a Big Chief tablet by a 4 year old running on 15oz Frappachinno, 3 Ding Dongs, and one of those 5 ft. Pixie Sticks actually spells 'Loser Without A Life'...which, it turns out now that I think about it, to be frighteningly more accruate than it is funny)


    And during this certification exam (and I'm about as certified these days as you can get without having some schedule time in my busy day to play with electricity while strapped to table if you know what I mean) they actually want you to take exam time to make comments on the questions. How crappy is that?


    "Well we gave them 90 minutes to put as many comments on the questions as they wanted."


    ...of course you did, leaving out the fact that you have to actually TAKE the exam in that time as well. Oh sure, there are *only* 60 questions, but you can't go back after you answer one. So you have to answer it AND critique it at the same time. What kind of glue-sniffing trog thought of that one?


    On a lighter note, I just got back from the opto on monday and she says my prescription in my right eye hasn't changed. That's good news, cuz that's the one that little redneck turd hit me with a 5 d-cell flashlight in. To this day, I'm glad the hit gashed open my eyebrow and the blood blinded me, because I'd be in jail for murdering his tobacco-spitting carcass if he hadn't. I had not been till then, nor have been since, so angry at another human being that murder seemed not only an acceptable option but one I would have gleefully carried out with my bare hands. Kinda scared the crap out of myself; and the cop thought I was crying for an entirely different reason. Wait a sec, I said lighter note....<rewind>...Oh yea, they made this 3D model of my retini..or retinas...anyhow, they both look just like a Leroy Neiman painting of an anus. How funny is that?


    So she's explaining what I'm looking at, and I'm digging on her perfume by the way, and she points out my optic nerve and I'm thinking to myself "That may be what YOU call it, but I know what it looks like sugar. And judging by that, my eyes being as blue as they are is just a coincidence, lemmetellya." And I'm nodding politely trying to keep my mouth shut because I'm desparately wanting to tell her that I've been wearing glasses since I was 8 and I know all this stuff, and yes my left eye is shaped like a football, just say it FOOOOOOTBALL...don't be polite and say the cornea has a point to it in the front making several different focus points on my retina, just tell me it's shaped like Madonna's bra. You know you want to.


    So....my left eye needs a bit of adjustment, so with the new prescription I pick out some silver Hugo Boss frames that are very nice (the picking out the frames part is the ONLY part of all this I enjoy in the first place) and head home. The car begins to politely 'ping' at me telling me I need gas so I stop and fill up. When I go inside to pay I get a carwash with it and they give me the slip that has the seekrit code on it to punch into the control panel. *I*, however, don't realize I can't read it until I'm next in line.


    Squint...punch...squint...punch....(angry beep)...Multilply this by about three times and I finally give up and leave the line before I get mauled by the pack of impatient drivers behind me. Once I get back inside and explain that I can't read the slip, she looks at it for a second and without even a 'Hmmm' or a 'Huh', she writes down a number in pen next to it. Once I see the number written and look back at it, I can read it clear as day. I punch in the code and that one works.


    I suppose the moral of all this is that no matter how simple something is, we all need the obvious pointed out to us once in a while, even if it is by a total stranger. Well, that and wash your own car ya lazy bastud.


  • The world of 'firsts' has always facinated me. However, I must admit, with the 'conversational puppy' aspect to my personality I tend to gravitate toward the more mundane and 'left under the couch' kind of firsts. Like...


    The first person to eat Rocky Mountain Oysters...I keep asking myself if they were stranded on a mountain peak and were just feeling a bit peckish not wanting to eat the WHOLE goat and being tired of the same old Slim Jims and Mineral Water they brought with them...or if they HAD eaten most of the goat already and just figgered..."fuggit"


    The first guy with a Prince Albert...looking down and thinking to himself "Sure, it's handsome...but what it needs is something extra...like, oh I dunno. Metal.


    The first person to auto-erotisize...shut in the house on a long rainy weekend, scarfing Doritos too fast and watching Cinimax when he begins to choke in a couple of different ways...


    The first person to realize a need for a parachute....I need to get out of this airplane BEFORE it lands because those baked beans and pork rinds are beginning to mount an assault...


    The first person to use a hair dryer in the tub...giving new meaning to the idea of being in "far too big of a friggin' hurry" if you ask me.


    ...well, I think *I* myself have become a first. It happened by accident I'm sure...or at least I'm *almost* sure because it's rather strange to actually FIND a piece of fried chicken in your clothes when you're changing them into the dryer. Generally speaking. You keep pulling pieces from your underwear, the cuffs of your jeans, shirt pockets, stuck to towels and hiding in socks all the time thinking to yourself...'What the...?????" My mind reverts to scenarios where a burgler breaks in, raids the fridge, and then, finding nothing while rifling my pockets, leaves while tossing the half-eaten chicken down in disgust.* Or a gorilla breaking out of the zoo and on a feeding rampage breaks into the house after tossing through the trash cans outside and leaves to bigger and better things after trying on some Dockers and finding them a bit binding in the knees. Or a wrecking ball coming through the wall...wait a second. That was Sesame Street and the spilled milk on the kitchen table skit wasn't it? Well anyhow, I'm still a bit baffled, but everything turned out well...and after all, it was a very *clean* chicken breast.


    So...No urban legend crap, no 'he said, she said', no Current Affair archive tape with blurry video and shocked gasps in the background or shakey 9mm B&W Roswell Autopsy-esque-pan-and-cut silent film....now you can say you actually KNOW someone who thinks he was the first person to use a chicken breast as fabric softener and who's clothes lived to tell about it.


    It's history. And YOU...Are There.


    *ok..ok..I don't know for SURE it was 'half-eaten' or not, being as how it was washed and everything...but for sake of the narrative thread...