January 2005 Archives

Four words. Are you ready?

Global. Warming. My. Ass.

In October, I gave Boston my advice for how to proceed in 2005. One thing I said rings true given all the off-season announcements coming from the Boston side:

Now, if Boston is like every World Series winning team outside of New York City, the very next thing your team's management is going to do is sell off the entire staff. Again, this sounds stupid, but history shows that all the GMs seem to want to do it. If they do, you should kill them. Seriously.

How many of the '04 Sox's key players are actually left?

There was an article in the local rag about a theft from the local branch of the Charter One bank. Apparently there was a bag of paperwork and check-deposits waiting for a courier to pick them up. That bag was stolen and absconded with.

According to the article:

A letter from the bank to customers who made deposits that day at the Wall Street office said the bag contained "branch work for the day" and that the depositors must "obtain replacement items for any check you deposited on January 14, 2005."

Excuse me? So if the bank loses the paperwork it was given, it's up to the banking customer to go track down the people who gave them the checks and get new ones if they want to actually see the money?

Charter One's letter, dated Jan. 20 and signed "Corporate Security," states the affected depositors received "provisional credit for all deposits made that day" but that replacement checks must be submitted.

"The makers of the checks should be contacted and advised that a 'stop payment' should be placed on the original check as a result of the theft," the letter states. "They should then issue a new check, less any 'stop payment' fees the maker incurs."

So these check-writers -- customers of other banks now also have to pay a stop-payment fee to their bank to account for Charter One's screw-up in security? (Yes, they can deduct it from the amount of the replacement check, but still!) What if you're a retail outlet and have to chase down the several hundred customers who wrote you checks that day? Who compensates those people for their time?

This problem is entirely one of Charter One's making (if you can get to a bag containing all the day's checks simply by throwing a brick through a piece of glass then that's seriously screwed up security). Instead, though, Charter One isn't going to be actually held accountable for any of it. If you can't get a replacement check, you're not going to get to keep the money you rightfully deposited. Charter One essentially pushes the entire cost of the problem on their customer and (even worse) on their customers' customers.

If anyone who has Charter One, who is affected by this, remains a customer afterward, they need to have their head examined.

Today, for the first time since August of 1997, I became the occupant of an office at work. The entire past nearly-eight years have been spent either in a machine-room, a cubicle, or working from home. The Pit Of Despair (and, since I haven't mentioned it lately, I should point new readers at this post from 2003 about the origins of "Pit Of Despair") recently moved from one-half a building in our office park to a full floor of a different building. In the process, I was upgraded from "cube-dweller" to "office-dweller".

There are things I have missed for a long time that I now finally have back in my life -- the ability to turn off the really annoying fluorescent lighting overhead, or the ability (obviously) to close the door when I really need to get work done.

I'm waiting for my big-ass whiteboard to show up, along with my new chairs (one for my desk two for visitors). I also just put in a request with my boss for a couple of flat-panel screens (with the bulky CRTs I've got now, they have to sit in such a way that whoever comes visiting, if they sit in the chair to my left, they're completely invisible behind the screens).

Now, I just need to decide what I want for wall decorations in my office.

I finally noticed within the last week or two I guess, that the two pieces of software I use to maintain my DVD database and my book database, both have export-to-HTML features. (Why it took me this long to notice that they had this extremely basic feature is beyond me).

Now, for most people, obviously, a piece of software to keep track of your books and DVDs seems like overkill but, well, I've got a lot. In the "Dream House I Design Some Day"^TM, there is an honest to goodness "library", complete with the rolling ladder and all that jazz.

Anyhow, if you're interested in poking around "what's cluttering up Derek's shelves", you can take a look at my DVD collection or my book collection. They're also linked in the sidebar, in case you should happen to care. :-)

We are just getting a metric assload of snow. Yesterday there was a point where I looked outside and could barely see the apartment buildings maybe 100' from my living room window, the lake beyond them was "gone" and the forested hill on the other side ... well, that I was certain no longer existed, so thick was the snowfall.

Right now, the wind has picked up, and it's pretty much impossible to tell if the snowfall has stopped or not, given that there's a lot of horizontal movement of the snow. The ruts from the plows last night were in the one foot range, but now with all the drifting, it's pretty much impossible to tell what the "actual" snowfall is. If I look next to George's van, I could believe either 1-inch or 2-foot depending on where I look.

I'm just glad I wasn't stupid enough to volunteer for the "moving of the office from one building to another" this weekend (not that, if I had, I'd've driven an hour south in this shit anyway, but still).

Here's hoping they get this crap all cleared away before the commute tomorrow, or that'll suck majorly.

I've always disliked the vending machine at the office. Although I think it's cool that it dispenses dollar-coins for change, it's got some of the goofiest design decisions. For example, it's entirely possible for a soft-drink bottle to drop down in such a way that it stands up on its bottom, preventing the door from opening.

At least in those situations, though, you can do the "rock the machine side to side until it tips over" game. That's not frustrating, that's just annoying.

Frustrating is putting your money in. Selecting "E7" for Coke, and having it say "Please make another selection"... when you can see that there's product in there. This vending machine has sensors all over the place, to make sure stuff doesn't get "stuck" (e.g., if the candy bar does pass the light sensor, it'll keep corkscrewing a little at a time until the candy bar DOES fall), but it can't figure out that there's a six-pack worth of Coke in there, and I'd really like it to dispense one for me?

From an IM conversation:

Friend: Ever had someone who will NOT leave you alone at lunch?
Me: Heh .. yes
Friend: I'm trying to eat and she just will never leave me alone. She likes to come chat with me while I'm trying to eat. She's sitting like 10' away right now while i'm typing to you. (can't see the screen obviously)
Me: Your IM client doesn't show the "old" conversation if you get a new msg from someone does it?
Friend: Nope.
Me: Then close this window and I'll message you one minute. Get her looking at the screen.

... a minute passes ....

Me: Dude have you ever had someone who will NOT fucking leave you alone while you're trying to eat?

Apparently, it worked. Friend has admitted they now owe me a favor. It's Godfather-like, I tell ya.

So it's a little later than I expected, but I figured that you gentle readers deserved an update (and a bit more honesty) about the recent discussions.

First, there was no joy this weekend. But that's OK, "D" explained to me the whys and wherefores, and it was totally cool. We made plans to get together this evening for dinner and a movie.

After the movie, as we were driving home, "D" mentioned she'd BlogStalked me (a beautiful word I hadn't heard before, not sure if she coined it or not, though) and had read my recent entries, and had gotten a couple (easily understandable) misunderstandings about why I had asked her out.

You see, "D" and I had dated for a while once before, close to a year ago. It ended really badly (and by "really badly" I mean, like totally heinously poorly), and I can freely accept the blame for most of the things that went wrong, both during the courtship and in the closure aspect of it. But she read my blog entries as meaning that I felt desperate, lonely, and was in a "any port in a storm" mood. And I realized that while I've talked to some folks about this in great detail via instant messenger, I hadn't really been detailed enough in my blog, and it was easy to see it that way, so I should probably correct that...

When I refer to my "social ineptitude", it is usually in the context of looking back and seeing how badly I had fucked up something really and truly good. I'm not going to get into the details and specifics, but suffice it to say that my prior relationship, with She Who Shall Not Be Named, had ingrained a lot of "defense mechanisms" into me, and I had not yet really let go of those things. I didn't need to "defend myself" against "D", but I acted like I did, and things were the worse for it.

My rantings about social ineptitude basically all come back to the belief that "even when I do find someone who is great in every possible respect, who is attracted to me, and who I am attracted to, and where we both enjoy spending time with each other, etc., etc., I am bound to screw it up."

And that last part always came back, to me, as "how completely you fucked things up with 'D'".

I wrote this a week ago Sunday, at the depths of my miniature depression about the whole thing.

I knew how I'd fucked things up, and I'd long ago realized that I had to correct those things about myself. I'd been beating myself up about it for months, all the while saying to myself "jeez, Derek, you're a numbnuts, because all the while, you still screwed the chance you had with a really great woman".

That's when it occurred to me what I had to do. I did something "The Old Derek" would have been completely incapable of doing. I apologized. Profusely and repeatedly. I sent her flowers out of the blue in apology. I stopped by her house (which, in hindsight, probably freaked the shit out of her, but she realized my intentions afterwards and was accepting of it) to apologize. I laid it all out there, that I had been a complete dick, that I enjoyed the time I spent with her more than any I'd ever spent with Der Fraulein, and that if she could see her way clear to forgive me, I wanted to make a second try of it.

We both hurt each other on the way out a bit the last time. I'm sure she got hurt worse than I did, so she was (and remains) a little cautious. But she said "yes" to going out and seeing what happens, and that's what was important.

Things are moving a little slower this time around, and that's a good thing. We both know there's romantic interest from the other side, and both sides are ensuring that the heart they laid out on the line last time isn't in for the same treatment it got that last time... That's a good thing, too.

I just have to prove to her now that the "social ineptitude" which doomed us the last time around is gone for good, and that's something I'm pretty confident that I can do.

Proving that when you least expect it... at the depths of recent bitching and moaning about a lacking social life, there were signs of life today on that front.

We'll see what happens.

I keep coming back to a couple constants in my life:

• I hate my job
• I hate my complete lack of a social life
• I live in an area that isn't really amenable to solving either of those problems, because there's no decent tech companies in the area, and if you don't like going to bars, you're not going to meet women in this area.
• I'm tired of fucking moving... the past two years living in Port Ewen has been the longest I've lived in one residence since I moved out of my parents' house over a decade ago.

So I'm pretty well hosed. I need to move, but I don't want to. I want a social life, but seem geographically-challenged and socially-inept enough to guarantee it's not going to happen.

It's a pretty sad commentary on life when the only portion of the entire week that I'm at all happy is on the Friday and Saturday evenings when we all get together for D&D Night. I mean, seriously, how fucking weak is that?! The only time I'm happy with my life is when I'm partaking in the life of a fictional character? ...sigh...

I read an article a couple years ago, about some folks who, on 9/11, decided "this would be an excellent opportunity to quietly walk away from everything, be presumed dead in the attacks, and live a completely new life somewhere else." Man, does that sound appealing.

I've given serious consideration to letting my ass sink way further into debt than it has ever been, taking out massive amounts of student loans, and changing from "part-time Marist commuter student" to "full-time Marist on-campus resident student" ... Living on campus, selling 95% of my crap to fit into a dorm room and calling it a day.

The problem is, that's not terribly realistic. It doesn't solve the fact that, just to cover my monthly debt payments, I have to net about $1500 or so a month. I'd be spending so much time working off-campus that it'd defeat the whole purpose of the change in the first place.

*sigh*

There's this guy I know from work. He talked a lot about how "he can't do this without his girlfriend," or "he can't do that," etc. This was about all sorts of things, not just one or two types of stuff. I always used to be like "Dude, are you married? engaged? freaking living together? No? Then what the fuck? You need to either grow a pair and stand up for yourself," and so on.

Then I bumped into the two of them at Barnes & Noble last night. What I found disturbing after all of it was that I thought to myself, "OK, if I was him and I was getting to date her, then I'd probably be willing to be pussy-whipped, too...."

I find it ... well, a little frightening ... that my sense of my own values was so malleable. Either that or I just really need a better social life than I presently have.

How come all those people who leave flowers and pictures and candles and crosses and crap on the side of the road don't get the same fine for littering as all the rest of us do.

Is it not littering if you place your junk reverently as opposed to just hurling it out the window?

I shipped out some (belated) Christmas gifts to a friend of mine in Canada yesterday. It amazes me how much paperwork is involved in sending stuff that, were I just driving it to Canada, would be simply be dealt with as "No" in response to the "Do you have anything to declare?" question.

Further, the chick at the UPS Store kept trying to downplay item values, even though I know it's not going to come into play because I'm nowhere near the "customs limit" for gift value.

UPS: What's this?
Me: Chocolate
UPS: Value?
Me: About eight dollars.
UPS: How about two?
Me: It's really eight.
UPS: I'll put down two.
Me: *sigh* ... whatever

Ordinarily I wouldn't use Brown, I swore off of them, but my "I'll pay for good service" thing only goes so far... The other carriers only offered overnight solutions (in the $80 for shipping range) as opposed to ground service ($14-15 range)... (although I discovered later, FedEx could have done it as a ground service, it just didn't appear on my rate-quote tool because I hadn't fed it the right arcane checkbox combination or something like that)

How can there be so much paperwork for something that doesn't actually meet the minimum valuation that you have to worry about for import? Who thinks this stuff up, the Department of Bureaucracy and Red Tape?

Well, it turns out that whatever I've got isn't what George had. He had this stomach-flu-like thing which had, well, all the usual symptoms of such a thing. I've just got this nasty hacking cough that I can't shake despite a plethora of cough medicines and drops, and copious quantities of liquid. It's the "throat is completely dry but you're going to hack for ten seconds anyway" cough that does nothing but annoy you because there's no way to make it go away.

And, since I didn't go to work today, I've got no idea if some problems with my work-provided insurance have been resolved, so I don't even know if I can safely go see a doctor (well, I know I can because that's what lawyers are for, sorting out those sorts of snafus after the fact, but "easily" may be a better word there)

I don't foresee myself going in tomorrow, either, not unless this cough radically improves with a night's sleep under its belt. I can't picture that anyone near me would get any work done with me hacking at like 100 dB every ten to fifteen minutes....

UPDATED: from an IM conversation I had with a co-worker

Me: This fucking cough is killing me.
G: I have had it for two weeks.
Me: Not like this.
Me: I sound like fucking Gollum.

... and it's true.

Because New Years' Day was a Saturday this year, I got to take today, the 3rd, as a holiday. Which ordinarily would have been really nice. I had some plans for errands I'd been meaning to do, etc.

Instead, I appear to be coming down with the flu, so basically after I go get my HD-DVR and pick up my laundry (both of which are within like two miles of my apartment) I'll be spending the day pretty much trying not to die.

This sucks.

There are three facts about my TV lifestyle that are relevant:

- I have HDTV from my cable company, because I can't easily get a dish in an apartment
- I love my TiVo, but it doesn't do HDTV
- Time Warner is now offering the HD DVRs

I have mentioned it before in the past (although I guess not on my own blog because I can't find it) that my loyalty is to myself, and nobody else, when it comes to products like TiVo and DVRs. So I'll be getting myself a Time-Warner HD DVR, only because TiVo can't be bothered to actually provide me with a product that supports a fairly standard Hi-Def Cable TV configuration.

I want to give you money, TiVo, but you don't apparently want it. You're content to try and create DirecTV HD TiVo units, even though DTV is about to kick you to the curb, or to try and cater to that minority of people who want over-the-air HDTV only, ... because there's such a large number of people who spend thousands of dollars on home-theater kit, and then grab their signals from the air and forsake all manner of Hi-Def cable networks like HBOD, ESPNHD, etc., etc. ... riiiiiiiight....

Is it any wonder there's questions about their financial solvency long-term?