June 2002 Archives

So yesterday, after a long discussion with our credit-card company, the last of the joint accounts is gone. It's a little weird, since I haven't seen my name - alone - on a preprinted check in about five years. Apparently, the credit card company wanted to give half the credit limit to me, and half to the soon-to-be-ex (which would have been problematic, since the card is above the half-way point in charges), on the grounds that "they really don't know where the money has been coming from, it's a joint account". I managed to convince them, finally, that every dime that went to paying the card came from me, I had it before I was married, I'd like to have it AFTER, etc. etc. ... I guess they figured that siding with me gave them better odds on getting paid, which is probably true. So now I'm in credit-card limbo as the new card with a different number is issued and sent my way, and I'll have to change the number I've stored at a half-dozen Internet merchants (invariably, I'll forget which ones, and end up ordering something from Barnes and Noble on the now-defunct card at some point. It's times like this when Microsoft's Passport almost makes sense to me.)

OK, that's a scary thought. I need to go back to bed and sleep that one off.

My daily commute to my office in White Plains, NY is about an hour to an hour and a half, depending on traffic. Occasionally, I am permitted by the powers that be to commute instead to our Milford, CT office, which is - on a heavy traffic day - ten minutes away from my apartment.

The problem is that I'm forced to choose between my sanity, and the time I lose driving my car down the Merritt Parkway.

There's this woman at the Milford office, who sits within earshot of the only real place where I can grab a network jack, who doesn't... shut... up. She must live this horrible sad life because she bitches about every single thing, it could be the temperature of the coffee, and it'd be a big deal to her. I pity the poor woman who has the cubicle next to her. For me, it's once a week or so, but for this poor woman, it's every damn day. A lot of us worry that she'll end up quitting just to save her own sanity.

It's surreal to be a "recently separated guy" attending a family-member's wedding.

Partly you're cynical about the whole affair, especially if (as it was for me) the whole "separation" occurs not too long before the wedding in question. Partly it's the in-jokes you can make.

For example, at my cousin's wedding this past weekend, there was this little book, next to the guest-book. It was a spiral bound book of blank 3x5 cards with a title "Suggestions For Marital Bliss" or something like that, and the guests would each jot something quick in there that they thought would help out the newlywed couple. I stood there staring at it wondering what to put in it. One of my family members commented that if I touched that book, she'd break my hand. I asked "what if all I put in it is 'Don't listen to a damn thing Derek says'?" She thought that might be acceptable, but only that.

Meanwhile, my grandmother, also in attendance, seems to be being kept out of the loop on the impending divorce. The general consensus seems to be that several years ago, when my great-aunt was living with her, my grandmother refused to tell my great-aunt that my aunt was dating and engaged to a divorced man. My great-aunt didn't know for like a freakin year or something that my (now) uncle was divorced. Apparently, the family is keeping it from her as some sort of very delayed punitive action. I promised various members that I wouldn't go out of my way to spoil their weird little game, but that I wouldn't lie either. (I don't care that my grandmother treated my great-aunt like shit, my great-aunt treated ME like shit when she lived under OUR roof, so there's little pity here on that front)

But, said uncle did clap me on the shoulder and welcome me into the Divorced Men Club. I told him I was only a Probate Member at the moment, but soon... very very soon...

That, and I'm annoyed that my cousin doesn't seem to have any single girlfriends she could invite to her wedding. What good is a wedding if you can't scope out the bridesmaids?

If you're not a geek, feel free to skip this entry.

There is NOTHING more annoying to me than a tarball which opens up into "application_name/" instead of "application_name-X.YY.ZZ/" If I find whoever produces such tarballs, me, them, and a claw-hammer are going to have a little chat someday.

I'm off to see if I can rebuild the config files that just got trounced by "default settings".....

People have asked me "Why 'Dredd'? Were you that big a fan of that crappy Stallone movie!?" I'm tired of answering it over and over again, so I'll answer it once and for all, and then just point people at this entry when they ask. ;-)

Come sit on Grandpa's knee, and let me tell you a story about the old days.

Years ago, before the net became popular, before cable modems or DSL, there were BBS's. I was first exposed to BBS's when I was in high school, and (being a big comic book fan, specifically of the British fave 'Judge Dredd' series), I started using the moniker "Judge Dredd" on the local BBS's. Nobody used their real names, everyone had a handle, and that was mine.

A couple years later, I started my own BBS, and it only made sense, given that to the BBS community in the area I was "Judge Dredd", that the BBS was named Megacity One, after the city where Dredd enforced the laws.

Then, the internet started gaining in popularity. I started doing some Internet<->BBS gatewaying, and had hostnames like "megacity.fwi.com" and "megacity.mixi.net". "Judge Dredd" didn't really work in the unix naming scheme popular for e-mail addresses, so I was "dredd@megacity.fwi.com" and "dredd@megacity.mixi.net".. eventually, I decided to stop having to change my e-mail address every time I changed ISP's and grabbed "megacity.org". This was back in the day when you actually grabbed the TLD that was relevant to your use (in my case "org", since I wasn't commercial). megacity.com was available, but I didn't register it, because "bah, I'm not a commercial entity".

And that's the way it's been ever since. At work I'm "dballing", because that's their naming convention, but everywhere else, the login is "Dredd" wherever possible (although sometimes I have to AOLize that because someone else already got "Dredd", so I end up with "Dredd13" or something similar).

Hope that clears up any confusion.

PS - I really wasn't that big a fan of the movie. Dredd NEVER takes off his helmet, not even in the comfort of his own home on his own couch, let alone taking it off in the presence of the Chief Justice.

Do allergies just suddenly appear at some point in your life when you've never had them before? Growing up I never had allergies (other than to one or two pharmaceutical products). As an adult, I'm sneezing my everloving head off every day it's sunny out. I can't understand how my body could just suddenly decide one day in my late-20's "I think I'll decide I don't like pollen any more".

I feel like a little kid crying "no fair!" because now that I'm finally old enough to have a nice convertible and great weather, I can't really enjoy it (because I HATE taking drugs).

So I was reading that, apparently, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruled that saying the Pledge of Allegiance, in schools, violates the First Amendment's "separation of church and state" because the "under God" bit is an endorsement.

Good, I say. I always had problems with the pledge as a kid in school. First, because I viewed it as the school telling me I was wrong for being an atheist (I've been one as long as I can remember, despite having a nice devout Catholic upbringing). Second, because a Pledge of Allegiance is something that is given WILLINGLY, not something that a child is forced to say like an automaton every morning in the hopes that they'll become good little mindless consumers who agree to believe their country is always right, etc. etc.

I know I'll take heat for this opinion among my more conservative friends, but dem's the facts as I see them.