Cheap Dum Dums

Want to get your Halloween candy shopping done early? Need some cheap long-lasting candy for the office? Or maybe you just like Dum Dums pops like I do…

The Vons across the street from my house is selling a 2-lb bag of Dum Dums for $1.14 after Vonsclub and the coupon on the bag. I’ve already bought two bags and I’m going to keep getting at least one a day until they run out.

While doing exhaustive research for this post, I found this ode to Dum Dums, which contains both the term “Dum-Dums. Are. Completely. Totally. Rad.” and the origin story of the Dum Dums “Mystery Flavour” pop. This story is 100x more awesome than I was expecting, and I was expecting greatness.

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Old AIM emoticons in Pidgin

I’ve been using Pidgin (which was mentioned in the JesusH wipe and re-install Windows guide last year) for instant messaging. I had some problems recently connecting to my various IM accounts with it, so I upgraded to 2.4.3, which seems to have fixed those connection issues. I’ve never liked the Pidgin default emoticons so I found and installed Andrei Neculau’s Original Smileys, which allow Pidgin to use the original emoticon set for each client–in other words, I see Y!M emoticons when I’m talking to someone with a Yahoo! Messenger account. I see MSN emoticons when I’m talking to someone with an MSN account.

Yes, over the last few years I’ve really started to lean on emoticons in instant messaging. This is not something I’m proud of.

Anyway, I discovered upon invocation that the AIM emoticons had gotten animated, weird-looking, and ugly since I last saw them (for example, vs ). Apparently, a new version of AIM has been released since the last time I looked, and AOL has taken this opportunity to update their emoticons. That might look like progress to the kids, but it looks like crap to me.

I couldn’t find a convenient way to get the old AIM emoticons back. I ended up having to find the old ones at elouai.com. I downloaded them, cropped them up–the originals are way too padded–and made the backgrounds transparent. In case you like the old-school AIM icons better than the new ones and want to go to a little bit of trouble:

1. install and activate Andrei Neculau’s Original Smileys.
2. download this archive of the old AIM emoticons and unzip them inside the folder created by step 1. On my system the folder path is

   C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original

   so I created

   C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original\aim_old .

3. open the theme file created by step 1. On my system this file is

   C:\Documents and Settings\dpease\Application Data\.purple\smileys\pidgin-original\theme .

4. find the following text block in the themes file and select it:

   # AIM 6.5
   [AIM]
   ../pidgin-original/aim/smiling.gif				:)	:-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim/winking.gif				;)	;-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim/frowning.gif				:(	:-(
   ../pidgin-original/aim/stickingouttongue.gif	:-p	:-P
   ../pidgin-original/aim/surprised.gif			=-O
   ../pidgin-original/aim/kissing.gif				:-*
   ../pidgin-original/aim/yelling.gif				>:o
   ../pidgin-original/aim/ecstatic.gif				:D	:-D
   ../pidgin-original/aim/moneymouth.gif			:-$
   
   ../pidgin-original/aim/footinmouth.gif			:-!
   ../pidgin-original/aim/embarrassed.gif			:-[
   ../pidgin-original/aim/innocent.gif				O:-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim/undecided.gif			:-\
   ../pidgin-original/aim/crying.gif				:'(
   ../pidgin-original/aim/lipsaresealed.gif		:-X
   ../pidgin-original/aim/cool.gif					8-)
   

5. replace the text selected in the last step with the following text block:

   # AIM 6.5
   #[AIM]
   #../pidgin-original/aim/smiling.gif				:)	:-)
   #../pidgin-original/aim/winking.gif				;)	;-)
   #../pidgin-original/aim/frowning.gif				:(	:-(
   #../pidgin-original/aim/stickingouttongue.gif	:-p	:-P
   #../pidgin-original/aim/surprised.gif			=-O
   #../pidgin-original/aim/kissing.gif				:-*
   #../pidgin-original/aim/yelling.gif				>:o
   #../pidgin-original/aim/ecstatic.gif				:D	:-D
   #../pidgin-original/aim/moneymouth.gif			:-$
   #
   #../pidgin-original/aim/footinmouth.gif			:-!
   #../pidgin-original/aim/embarrassed.gif			:-[
   #../pidgin-original/aim/innocent.gif				O:-)
   #../pidgin-original/aim/undecided.gif			:-\
   #../pidgin-original/aim/crying.gif				:'(
   #../pidgin-original/aim/lipsaresealed.gif		:-X
   #../pidgin-original/aim/cool.gif					8-)
   
   # Old-school AIM, cause newer AIM sucks
   # 2008-07-28, DMP
   [AIM]
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/happy10.gif				:)	:-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/wink10.gif				;)	;-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/sad10.gif				:(	:-(
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/tongueout10.gif	:-p	:-P
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/shocked10.gif			=-O
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/redlips10.gif				:-*
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/angry10.gif				>:o
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/biggrin10.gif				:D	:-D
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/indifferent10.gif			:-$
   
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/footinmouth10.gif			:-!
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/embarrassed10.gif			:-[
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/angel10.gif				O:-)
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/confused10.gif			:-\
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/crying10.gif				:'(
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/nospeak10.gif		:-X
   ../pidgin-original/aim_old/cool10.gif					8-)
   

6. Save the file. Your AIM emoticons should now be the old-school versions in Pidgin.
7. Profit!

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My Second (and probably last) Skydive

After a great first experience, I decided to skydive again today. Jeff and I arrived about 4 PM and I informed the lady that I wanted to do the AFF level 2 jump. During this jump, I am again jumping with two instructors. This time, I would be focusing on turns and forward movement. After a brief review with my instructor, I boarded the plane, excited and eager to execute a perfect landing this time.

The plane ride went off without a hitch, I performed my exit perfectly, did my circle of awareness, my practice handle touches, 90 degree turns both left and right, and moved forwards, before waving off and deploying my parachute. I arched, counted to five, and performed my canopy control checks. I was feeling pretty good about the skydive, how I was more confident and had successfully fulfilled my mental checklist. However, this time the winds were very strong and it was harder for me to maneuver my parachute. I also noticed that I was descending at a faster rate than last time, and that I was way off course from where I was supposed to be. And despite my reminder to my instructor about how my radio was out of batteries last time, I had problems with my radio again. Sometimes I could hear little static noises, but no actual audio came through it. I was on my own yet again.

Because I was so off course, I was really worried about the landing. How was I going to manage to get myself to the landing field when I was descending so quickly? I tried my best to make it to the landing area and was trying to find a clear spot to land. The winds were not being particularly friendly towards me today though, as I thought I was about to land on dirt, but at the last minute, a gust of wind steered me towards the right, and I ran into the parked plane. Yep, you read that right. I. HIT. THE. PLANE. My feet hit it first, then my body ricocheted off of it, forcing my face to hit the plane as well, before falling and landing on my back. I started to get up right away, and saw people running towards me. A couple people yelled at me to lay back down and not to move. I saw Jeff’s worried countenance and was trying to reassure him I was all right.

They unhooked my gear, and the medical staff came to look at me. They asked me all these questions, what did I hit, how do I feel, can I see, hear, etc. I told them I was feeling fine, albeit a little banged up. They helped me up, and escorted me to a bench where they performed more checks on me, in which I passed. My faculties seemed to all be there, but they warned me to stay cognizant if anything changes and go see a doctor.

I had a semi-busted lip from when my face hit the plane, and some blood in my nose (it’s a good thing that I have a flat asian nose because it would’ve been broken for sure), but otherwise was fine. As I was walking back to the parachute packing area so that I could get my jump evaluated by the instructor, some concerned people asked me if I was okay. I smiled at them, “I’m all right.” My pride was hurt more than my physical body. The one thing I had wanted to work on was my landing, and it was the one thing I had totally screwed up. Royally. In front of scores of people, I had rammed into a plane. How embarrassing is that?

As I was waiting to hear what my instructor had to say and write in my logbook, I was contemplating just leaving. Do I really want to hear that I had failed my second jump? Obviously running into a plane means I suck at skydiving. To my astonishment, he cleared me for level 3! His written comment for next time is “Hit plane! Needs extensive canopy control brief before next jump.” Ha ha, I don’t think there will be a next time. I do not want to ever put Jeff in that position again. As much as I have enjoyed it and as exhilarating as it’s been, my brief foray into a skydiving career has officially ended today.

Oh, and unfortunately I didn’t get a video this time so you’re not going to be able to view my craptulacular landing. And I’m doing fine now, but I have a feeling I’m going to be super sore come tomorrow morning…

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Social Security Again

Everyone knows Social Security is busted. Heck, we said it years ago, and nobody accuses us of being deep thinkers. Someday in the not-so-distant future the entire system will collapse on itself and run out of money. Presidential hopeful John McCain does a nice job testifying to the problem.

Last week, McCain told observers at a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers … and that’s a disgrace.”

You know what might help? If people of age who reported $$millions of income last year voluntarily eschewed Social Security benefits. I mean, even for a politician, that’s amazing to me–that this guy can’t do without the 0.3% of his marriage’s reported income that Social Security issues him, while he talks out the other side of his mouth about how disgraceful the system is.

You’re not helping by cashing those checks, Senator, and if you tell me you need the money I’m going to laugh at you. What a dick move.

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Bioshock: Pre-review

Having finished all the Orange Box I cared to play–I tried Team Fortress 2, and it seemed cool, but I was just getting my ass beaten all over the place by my online opponents and I don’t really have the desire to play through that to get to the point where I can actually do something useful in the game–I installed Bioshock last Friday.

I couldn’t get the sound to work. Turns out Bioshock has a problem with sound in Windows Vista. The advice 2KGames gave me had to do with RealTek onboard sound, which I don’t have. After screwing with Vista’s “compatibility modes” for a while I found the solution was to run the game with DirectX 9. If you have to do the same thing, be sure to add the -nointro switch to your shortcut (e.g.

“C:\Program Files\2K Games\BioShock\Builds\Release\Bioshock.exe” -dx9 -nointro

so you don’t have to look at a half-minute of lame unskippable branding before the game starts.)

I’ve only played the game for an hour or so so far. My initial thoughts are that I’m not having as good a time as I did with Half-Life 2 and that the Pipe Dream-style “hacking” of vending machines and turrents is kind of fun but really ridiculous.

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Jury Duty

I served on my first jury a couple of weeks ago. Apparently I’m a bit more respectable than I used to be–showing up at the courthouse in something other than cutoffs and sandals and having gotten a haircut in the last few months might have been a factor there.

While I was walking back to the court from the parking lot after lunch on the first day, I passed a young mother on a bench holding her infant daughter. I pay a lot more attention to babies than I used to so I noticed her bouncing the kid on her knee and thought the whole scene cute. As I walked by I heard mom start talking to the baby in that singsong cutesie voice that people always use when they say stuff like “are you a good booooy? do you want to go to the paaaaark?” to babies.

“Mommy’s going to get a restraining order against dadddddy
So he can’t hurt her anymore”

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I prefer ugly feet

I just saw this commercial for the PedEgg on TV… while I was eating.  It might be the worst commercial I’ve ever seen. 

It’s a cheese-grater.  For your feet.

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My First Skydiving Adventure

On June 29th, 2008 at 9 AM, I found myself walking past the port-a-potties, up the stairs, and inside the registration office of Skydive San Diego. “I have a reservation for the AFF course.” I told the smiley woman behind the counter. She motioned for me to start filling out some forms. Inside the green packet were pages upon pages with little boxes for me to initial and lines for me to sign. Essentially each statement reiterated how dangerous the sport of skydiving was, that no insurance would cover me if something were to happen to me, and that in the event of injury or death regardless of gross negligence on my part or the instructor’s, I waived the right to sue. Just in case I wasn’t reading closely enough, the TV screens parroted the warnings. When I finished signing my life away, I handed the packet back to the woman, and paid the $339 so that I could start my skydiving adventure.

The Accelerated Free Fall training course had only two other takers that Sunday morning. Chris and Hannah were a couple of British newlyweds on their honeymoon. They had just finished a scuba diving jaunt, done Vegas, and wanted to get in a few skydives before jetting off to New York to finish their tour of the states. Both Chris and Hannah were in the British military. Chris had completed 20+ jumps and was on his way to obtaining his A license, but needed a refresher course since it had been 11 months since his last jump. Hannah had completed several static line jumps in the past, but today would be her first skydive. And then there was me, an innocuous looking Asian woman, a 7th grade life science teacher without any skydiving experience whatsoever, who possessed a minor fear of heights (my apologies to those who have witnessed my histrionic fits on the Freefall ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain), who decided as a lark, that it would be fun to jettison herself a couple miles from a perfectly good plane to celebrate being done with her masters’ program.

(more…)

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Paraphernalia rebate from Microsoft

In support of their Live Search search engine Microsoft has unveiled a program where one can get cash back for making purchases online after finding them with Live Search.

I don’t typically use Live Search, so I heard of this program through my favorite hot deals website. They recommend using Ebay in conjunction to Live Search to get up to 35% cash back on qualifying purchases, and quite reasonably note that it’s best to use this rebate for big ticket items like Playstation 3s and Wiis.

I’d like to offer an alternate strategy: were one so inclined, apparently one can also get the rebate for purchasing an industry standard, very expensive Storz & Bickel Volcano vaporizer. If only this deal had come along in my younger, more rambunctious days…

Don’t miss out on your $188.65 rebate from Microsoft for this qualifying purchase!

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Portal

In my previous post about Half-Life 2, Andres asked about Portal. I played it this week.

The gimmick is instead of a weapon that does damage you’ve got a gun that shoots an orange and a blue portal. The orange portal connects to the blue portal, so you can do things like walk through walls to go across rooms or fall long distances through portals and conserve your momentum to fly out the other side like Superboy.

The game is short, but I think that’s the way it had to be, because none of the challenges was particularly hard and there’s only so many ways I can envision setting up puzzles with the Portal gun as the only way for the player to interact with them. I probably got six or seven hours out of this game and I don’t know how I could possibly get much more. There are ‘advanced’ levels that become unlocked upon beating the game; maybe I’ll take a look at those.

The gameplay is definitely innovative, but I found myself really wishing for a real gun like I’d have in Half-Life at many points–not because I needed it, but because I wanted to drop a cap in something all aggressive-like. The game looks just like Half-Life 2, so I’m sure that colored my perception there… I found it strange to be running around and not dodging zombines or antlions.

There has been a lot said about how clever and funny Portal is. I didn’t really find that to be true. There were funny parts but I wasn’t LOLing about much that computer voice GLaDOS was telling me while I was working my way through the game.

In this article about the Old Man Murray guys working on Portal there’s an interesting quote about Portal and Half-Life existing in the same universe and intertwining in the future–indeed (spoiler alert, I guess) Aperture Laboratories is mentioned in Half-Life 2: Episode 2, and Black Mesa is mentioned in Portal, so that’s got to be where things are headed. If I can use the Portal gun and real shoots-bullets guns in the same game, I can’t imagine where the difficulty is going to come from… just shoot a portal behind a bad guy, shoot one safely behind cover, change weapon to something that does damage, and shoot the dude in the back. I’ll be really interested to see how the Valve folks work this out.

Three Pochaccos due to my really high expectations not entirely being met.

Update: I had no idea Mike Patton of Faith No More was in this game. And here’s a download site for “Still Alive”, the song that plays over the credits, which is pretty cool.

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Half-Life 2 Re-Review

Did I tell you that I got a badass new computer a couple of months ago? I’m now able to play video games of more recent vintage than Diablo II for the first time in years.

I got the Orange Box and re-played Half-Life 2 and both Episodes, which took me about a month because I don’t get a lot of free time to blow on video games lately for some reason. I wanted to update my moldy old Half-Life 2 review with some additional information.

* I previously owned Half-Life 2, obviously, and got the Orange Box because I’m a lazy sack and wanted to get all the episodes and Portal without tracking down my old game (which I gave to Woody anyway). I figured when I installed the games Valve’s Steam system would say “ha ha, thanks for buying multiple copies of the same game dummy” if it remembered that I had the games previously at all, but instead it gave me credit for two copies of HL2 and offered to allow me to send one to a friend. I was originally very skeptical of Steam but this is really cool!

* The graphics in this game are awesome. When I previously played it I was plumbing the limits of my hardware; now I can play it at highest res and still get good framerate and no glitching and I enjoyed it.

* I pumped up the difficulty this time around and died more often as a result. That’s a good tip for you l33t gamerz like myself.

* I still thought the end of HL2 was a little more like a cutscene than a playable video game. That’s really my only complaint. The episodes were very fun, and I enjoyed the gameplay a lot more than I remember the first time around.

Five Pochaccos, Valve. Excellent job. I can’t wait for Episode Three!

Post-publication edit: I can’t believe I forgot this one… I live and work near Miramar, and they’ve got those big two-prop cargo choppers that fly around on a regular basis. Lately I’ve left my building at work or the house and heard a couple of those things whomping around, and I’ve reached for my laser-guided RPG to take them down–not because I hate the Marines or America but because I’m so used to blowing up the gunships in Half-Life 2.

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A World Without Nachos

You probably know that John McCain was born during the Great Depression and will, if elected President, be the oldest person to take that office and chase kids off the White House lawn during the annual Easter Egg Roll.   But have you considered that John McCain had to live the first seven years of his life without even the possibility of being served nachos, because they hadn’t yet been invented?  So certainly, between that and being imprisoned in Vietnam, the man has endured more hardship than I could handle.

Also, I have recently discovered that you should not read about nachos when you are dieting.  Damn you Ignacio Anaya!

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The Case for Detroit

First off, I’d like to congratulate the Boston Celtics. They certainly fought a hard battle, and they did well in the playoffs. Boston’s a good team, and they had a good run. However, the leaders of the Eastern Conference should ignore the outcome of the conference championship (as is their God-given right as free men and AMERICANS), and send the Detroit Pistons to the NBA Finals.

Sure, Boston had a 66-16 regular season record compared to Detroit’s 59-23. But you can’t look at the whole season - you have to give the most weight to the recent contests. They both ended the season on a four game win streak, so isn’t it really a wash? And what about the playoffs? Boston lost 8 games in the playoffs, while Detroit only lost 7. Ouch.

Also, Boston’s regular season advantage existed primarily in road games, where they were 31-10 to Detroit’s 25-16. The two teams were nearly identical at home. And who has home court advantage for the NBA playoffs? Why the Eastern Conference champs, of course! So Boston has only performed better than the Pistons in the types games that are going to matter least in the championships. They should be called the Boston Paper Tigers.

Boston has very little high level playoff experience. The Pistons made the conference finals in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and won the conference championship twice during that period. Boston has only made it as far as the conference finals once in the last 20 years. Look, maybe in four more years Boston can amass the Pistonesque experience that you’d need to get involved in such a stressful situation as the NBA Finals but right now it just seems too likely that they’ll crack under the pressure.

For those who say that it would be unfair to overturn the results of the playoffs, I counter that it would be unfair not to take into account the preferences of the people of Michigan. Who cares what the rules say? Rules that ignore the will of Michigonians are like apartheid, Jim Crow laws, female voter disenfranchisement, and the civil war in Zimbabwe. Michigan represents the heart of America… working class white folks who build American cars. What does Boston have? Over-educated, clam chowder-eating, latte-sipping yuppies.

At the end of the day, shouldn’t the Eastern Conference send the team that has the best chance of beating the Lakers? That team, my friends, is the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons know how to match up against Kobe and in fact ended the Kobe-Shaq dynasty when they beat the Lakers in the 2004 NBA finals. 

Rasheed Wallace is ready to lay the smack down on Kobe… just give him that chance.

When you really step back from the hype and look at the facts, it’s clear that only one outcome would be both fair and give the Eastern Conference the best chance of taking home the Larry O’Brien trophy.  I implore you, the leaders of the NBA Eastern Conference… nay, I beseech you… send the Pistons of Detroit to represent you in the NBA Championships of 2008.

Thank you for your time.

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rel=nofollow… metaphorically speaking

I can’t really say anything about this that would make it Google searchable given the, er, unique nature of the item, so just enjoy the back of my head in all its irreverent glory. 

Yeah, thine eyes do not deceive.  That’s suede, punks.

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Second Wind

fivethirtyeight.com does some nifty wide-scale analysis of poll results. According to their work Hillary Clinton has gone from a big deficit on March 6 to a sizable advantage today in her projected results versus John McCain, when compared to Barack Obama’s.

I’m just sayin…

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Pizza Hut: Now Theoretically Serving Pasta

Friday night, we had a couple of friends over for dinner. Michelle and I weren’t going to be able to have time to cook, so we decided to try the pasta from Pizza Hut, since we’d been seeing the commercials on Top Chef and we’re very vulnerable to commercials.

3:30pm: I place an order online for the chicken pasta, to be delivered at 6:30pm.

6:45pm: no pasta. I call my local Pizza Hut (this is the one) and talk to a guy who identifies himself as Aaron. He tells me that the pasta is ready to be delivered but he just needs to get his delivery guy back to the store, so real soon now.

7:15pm: no pasta. I call Pizza Hut again and talk to Aaron again.

“Hi, I still haven’t seen my pasta.”

“It’s going out for delivery now. You should see it any minute.”

“Yeah… so I was supposed to get this at 6:30. I’m not real happy about the delay here.”

“I’ll zero out the charge on this.”

“OK, thanks.”

I’m pretty sure the pasta’s never showing up.

7:30pm: no pasta. I run across the street to Vons and get one of those cooked chickens instead. We eat.

8:30pm: no pasta. I call Pizza Hut again. We’ve already eaten, but now I’m kind of pissed off.

“Hi, I ordered pasta for 6:30 delivery and I still haven’t seen it.”

“Let me look up your order… oh, ok, it hasn’t been made yet.”

“That’s surprising. I was told earlier that it was ready to be delivered. How could it be ready to be delivered if it wasn’t cooked?”

“Sir I’m just telling you what I see in the system. Your ticket is right here–number 128. One chicken pasta.”

“Is it common for people to be told their food’s about to be delivered when it isn’t even made yet?”

“I don’t know who you talked to, maybe it was someone new who doesn’t understand the way the system works… it’s been a really busy Friday for us what with the rain and all and we’re way behind but we’ll get this out to you as soon as we can.”

At this point I should bring up that the dialog in this post is all from memory and condensed a little so you won’t have to read me saying the same thing five times, but as a rule I try my very hardest not to be a dick on the phone to the pizza place. I used to work at a pizza place, you see, and I saw what happened a couple of times to a really mean customer’s order, and it wasn’t pretty. We’ve all heard stories. So I was really trying hard to communicate my rising dissatisfaction in a mystified, ‘I’m so confused, how does this jive with what the previous guy told me’ way rather than a ‘what the hell is wrong with you people’ way.

“It’s been two hours and I’ve been told twice that my food was about to be delivered and now that I find out that this was impossible… I’m unhappy about this.”

“I understand. We’re still really busy but we’ll get this to you as soon as possible, and what I’d recommend is that you call back in an hour or so when things calm down a little and ask to speak to the manager and tell him your situation and we can see what we can do to make it right with you. Just ask for Aaron.”

“Wait, Aaron is my buddy! I’ve talked to him twice! He’s the guy that said my pasta was all ready to go. Now I’m really confused. Is Aaron a new employee?”

“Sir, I can’t explain that but he’s the guy you will need to talk to.”

“OK, thanks.”

10:15pm: no pasta. Damn it, Pizza Hut, come hell or high water you and I are going to see this transaction through.

“Pizza Hut, this is Brandon.”

“Hi Brandon, can I speak with a manager?”

“I’m a manager, sir. This is Brandon.”

“I was told to ask for Aaron.”

“Aaron left at 6:00.”

“He did? I talked to him since then! I had an order of pasta for 6:30pm and I’ve called several times and I still don’t have it.”

“Let me look it up… OK, I show your order as being cancelled.”

“Cancelled? I didn’t cancel any order!”

“I see two orders. Ticket 30 and ticket 128. Both were cancelled.”

“Brandon, does Pizza Hut cancel customer orders without the customer doing the cancelling often? Because I’ve got to tell you as a customer I’m starting to feel very jerked around here.”

“I understand, sir, this is very strange.”

“Who cancelled the orders?”

“Aaron did.”

“I thought Aaron left at 6:00.”

“Maybe Aaron was in his office or something. Aaron has an office.”

“Brandon, as a customer I’m very unused to this type of treatment. I can’t possibly understand how what you are telling me happened here went down.”

“Sir, I’m all about customer service. I’ve got a driver here and we’ll get that pasta right out to you. How many do you want?”

I think I could have told him I wanted five or something, but I just wanted the pasta that I ordered at this point.

“One’s fine, and thanks. What I’m really interested in is figuring out why Aaron told me what he told me.”

“I’m writing your number down and I will get this figured out.”

“OK, and you’ll call me with that?”

“Yes sir.”

10:30pm: pasta showed up. No charge.

Now I never expected to hear from Brandon. Unless Aaron and whoever I talked to at 8:30 were hanging out watching him talk on the phone and giggling, he did fine and it would be truly above and beyond for him to actually investigate this matter and call me back (though it’d also be what he said he was going to do, and he’s all about customer service.) I also get how things can get balled up sometimes–heck, I screwed up a customer’s order more than once at Little Caesar’s. But what I said was “I’m sorry about that, my fault, I’ll fix this”, not a bunch of fabricated nonsense.

Heck, I don’t even mind mediocre customer service from a Pizza Hut because I know the turnover in the foodservice industry–85% high school kids, mean service time of 22 days or so, many of them from a fairly nice neighborhood, who aren’t exactly highly motivated to keep their jobs as opposed to getting fired and finding another minimum wage gig. But Aaron is apparently the manager. What on earth is the manager doing giving me the runaround like this?

I’m not the world’s most ardent Pizza Hut fan, but I do like some of their menu items (quepapas… mmm). I ordered from the branch by my old house every so often, and I always got satisfactory service. But the Scripps Ranch Pizza Hut has managers that make things up. Get your pizza somewhere else.

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Mortgage Crunch, Gas Crunch

The Fed is looking for more action on the mortgage “crisis”. Bob Bernanke has some specific ideas about what to do [via Drudge]

The current housing crises has clobbered some borrowers home prices dropped. That left them with mortgages that are bigger than the value of their home. When that’s the primary problem, Bernanke said the best solution may be reducing the amount that the borrower owes on the loan or some other permanent modification to the loan.

Meanwhile, this article about owners of gas-guzzlers looking to sell their cars at huge losses just to be rid of them also hit the Drudge Report.

Some desperate car dealers and consumers, are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs. Last July, 20-year-old Sannan Nizami, of Lowell, bought a 2007 Toyota 4Runner SUV for $32,000 when it cost about $65 to fill the tank. Six months later, as a gallon of gas soared to $3.50 and more, and tank refills climbed over $80, Nizami put the vehicle up for sale. He posted it online for $27,000 but received no responses for months.

Frustrated and unable to afford prices at the pump, Nizami last month turned over the Toyota to a dealer who only sells vehicles from private owners. Nizami is still paying the $450 loan but now is bumming rides to work with a cousin and worrying about making enough from the sale to cover the car loan.

“I didn’t think gas would shoot up this much. I’m willing to take a hit just to take the pressure off,” Nizami said. “I’ll probably get a really cheap Camry or Corolla. Something that gets more than 18 miles to the gallon.”

In the current ridiculous political-economic climate I half expect to read a statement from Bob Bernanke about how people with cars that get under 20 MPG should be specifically targeted with some sort of financial relief effort such as reducing the amount they owe on their auto loan.

If you bought too much house and are underwater, its nothing personal but I really hope the government doesn’t do anything to provide you relief. You bet wrong, you’re screwed, time to buy Ramen in bulk and cut back those personal expenses or look for a better job. Take your Bear-Stearnsing with pride, keep making those payments and do your part to keep property values as high as they can go. Either that, or don’t, work something out with your lender, sell at a loss, and move to a one-bedroom apartment. Not my problem, and I promise not to make my house’s falling market value yours.

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Politics that matter

So Clinton and McCain want to suspend the $0.18 federal gas tax, while Obama correctly points out that’s a dumb-ass idea for a country that’s trying to reduce its dependence on oil and has some of the lowest gas prices in the world.  But, really, who cares?  I want to know where the candidates stand on issues that really impact me. Take, for example, the anti-Taco Truck ordinance that goes into effect next week in L.A. County.

I fancy myself a bit of a taco connoisseur, and some of the best tacos in Los Angeles come from these trucks. Seeing these trucks around reminds you that you’re in Los Angeles and not, say, Flint, Michigan. Obama’s right, dammit.  This gas tax thing is just a shell game to distract us from the real issue: tacos.

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Dexter at 9pm. PTC has hernia.

Somehow I got on the Parents Television Council Action Alert email list and I’ve been getting outraged emails for a couple of weeks now. Today I heard from them that CBS broke its promise to air “Dexter” at a responsible time and it’ll be aired as early as 8pm on Sunday in some markets!

I want to do my part about issues like these so I used the helpful PTC automation to send an email to the San Diego CBS affiliate.

Subject: Please Reschedule Dexter this Sunday

I understand you are airing your first episode of “Dexter” at 9pm this Sunday. I do hope you’ll reconsider that start time and move it earlier if possible. I like to get to bed early on Sundays to get the week started off right, my DVR is on the fritz, and I’d like to watch this show. Michael C. Hall is an amazing actor and I’m perfectly able to keep any kids of mine who I don’t think should be watching “Dexter” otherwise occupied.

I thought being on this action alert list would be annoying but it’s actually turning out to be a useful reminder service for things like premieres and video game releases. If it’s got the PTC foaming, chances are it’s a product I’m interested in. Thanks for everything you do, PTC!

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Jeff’s thinking about getting back into blogging.

(3:10:04 PM) peasejay: The goal is to make lots of money. That seems incompatible with the hippy open source model that is JesusH.
(3:10:13 PM) peasejay: JesusH is about peace and love, which cannot be monetized, since Coca Cola owns them already.
(3:10:28 PM) landolf10000: jesush has three of hte four letters in ‘cash’.
(3:10:30 PM) landolf10000: think about it.
(3:11:19 PM) peasejay: You’re flirting with insanity.
(3:12:08 PM) landolf10000: yeah but i’m a tease. insanity’s going home with someone else.

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Two great tastes that go great together

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oopsie.

Dre, can you re-post your post? Sorry, somehow I deleted it while I was trying to get rid of some spammers.

My bad.

Also, I think you had glasses in the pic. I heard all the cool kids have gotten LASIK to resolve that condition.

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Gumbel out at NFL Network

Whew, it got serious in here for a week or two.

Bryant Gumbel, play-by-play guy for the NFL Network the last two seasons, will not be returning for 2008. The guys over at Football Outsiders have a post about this, and the comments are 90% “yee-haw! no more getting downs, names, and formations wrong from the play-by-play guy!”

Gone, but not missed. Except maybe by me.

Maybe it’s just me, but in the few NFL Network games I watched over the last couple of years I liked Bryant Gumbel. Liked him a lot. In fact, I can’t think of a team I’d rather have working a game I’m watching than Gumbel and his partner Cris Collinsworth.

Here’s the thing about Bryant Gumbel: he’s not a good play-by-play guy. He does get plays, downs, and names wrong sometimes, and his voice isn’t exactly soothing. But I don’t care if he says “third and 3″ and then it turns out to be third and 2, because I can see the game, given I’m watching it on TV, and I can figure this stuff out for myself. If he calls Frank Gore Al Gore, I’m not confused into thinking the former Vice President has just taken the field. A lot of people get all over Gumbel for these things and it’s not that they’re wrong, I just don’t know why they care.

What Gumbel will do is go outside the box with Collinsworth and even bite the hand that feeds him… I remember a game where a guy got hurt, and it was a Thursday night game where the two teams had just gotten off playing the previous Sunday, and Gumbel asked Collinsworth if five days was too few to recuperate and prepare for the next game. The guy is questioning the wisdom of the scheduling of the very game he’s currently working–the raison d’etre of the entire NFL Network–and he’s doing it on live TV. It was sweet.

Like I said, maybe it’s just me, but I can put up with his mediocre play-by-play ability and even his pretentiousness when he gives me stuff like that.

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and Another Thing…

In reference to the fun Democratic presidential nomination throwdown, Hillary Clinton is taking it in the shorts in the media for a letter some of her supporters apparently sent to House Headmaster Nancy Pelosi:

Pelosi has not publicly endorsed either Clinton or Barack Obama in their hotly contested White House battle, but she recently said superdelegates should support whoever emerges from the nomination contests with the most pledged delegates — which appears almost certain to be Obama.

So I wonder what Pelosi thinks superdelegates are for. If they should always go with the party flow, what the hell is the point of having superdelegates in the first place?

Here’s another possibly ham-handed display on the Clintonistas’ part that I find myself agreeing with. My word, I can’t tell you how much that’s going to disappoint Pop.

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Not Buying It

I’m not a particular fan of Hillary Clinton, but the idea that she’s hurting the Democratic Party by not conceding is horseflop.

• First and foremost, maybe it’s wishful thinking but I hope it doesn’t matter what she does–I’ve got my money on whoever gets the Dem nominationObama over McCain as voters notice he’s old, cranky, waterboard-y and happy to soldier on in Iraq.
• My understanding is that the damage being done is Clinton and Obama criticizing each other down to the wire, and that the preferred outcome for Dems would be their being able to unite behind Obama right now. But any question about the nominee also means Richard Mellon Scaife and His Swingin’ Swift Boaters have to either divide their attention between the two, or wait the thing out like everyone else, which leaves them less time to do their damage down the stretch. That’s a bad thing for the Dems?

  The party got neatly behind Kerry in 2004, against a widely mocked, wounded, significantly incompetent incumbent on the Republican side. All that unity worked out real well.

  Unfortunately, the Democratic party continues to suck. When Dem-controlled Congress isn’t rolling over for Bush on Iraq, they’re pulling their own pathetic popularity numbers and not exactly energizing the masses with their efforts. They shoulda won the last Presidency going away… this time, there’s no excuse for it being a contest (which, like I’ve said, I hope it’s not).


Ma’am, you just take all the time you need.

• You want to see an underdog? How about a guy who has his top ad consultants quit on top of being seven figures in debt and lagging behind actor Joe Don Baker in New Hampshire popularity polls? Those are John McCain’s press clippings from August 2007.
• Even if she doesn’t get the nom–and I agree there’s very little chance of that at this point–maybe she’s got something else on her mind. Is she trying to look as widely supported as possible to further bolster her bonafides for Obama’s Vice Presidental selection? Does she want to get as many delegate votes as she can so when people just look at 2008 delegate counts after President Obama leaves office in 2016 she’ll look like the default choice? Maybe she was all ready to quit, but then she thought about those fantasists who would support Al Gore over her if Obama somehow gets Kwame-cized sometime over the next couple of weeks, and she wants to remain in the driver’s seat just in case. Beats me, but she might have an angle here she cares to exploit.

Everyone knows Clinton badly wants to be President; in many ways she’s built her entire life around this campaign. It’s easy for all of us to give her the sage advice to bow out, but let’s try laying off a little bit, letting her define her own damn exit strategy with her own money, and save our derision for the non-Republicans of America rather than Hillary Clinton if her sticking around as long as she chooses proves to be any kind of factor at all in this year’s elections.

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Schroedinger’s Whopper

I really like Whoppers. I like the flame broiled kind, but I really like chocolate coated malted milk ball kind. If you keep sucking, first all the chocolate comes off, then the malt ball collapses into a whey singularity. Every now and then, however, you get a stubborn Whopper what won’t crush — a chewy Whopper.

I hate these. I don’t even like chocolate that much, so if the malt ball doesn’t collapse then the disappointment is… crushing. However, my wife loves the chewy Whoppers and is, at best, lukewarm about the normal ones. You’d think this would be a match made in heaven, like Jack Sprat and his wife.

Unfortunately, detecting the chewy Whoppers has a pretty destructive observer effect. To put it unnecessarily geeky terms, the Whopper exists in a quantum state of superposition, both chewy and crunchy, until I have eaten it. At this point, my wife is no longer interested in the Whopper, chewy though it may be.

And so it goes. It feels like we’re so close to having my crunchy yin harmoniously complementing her chewy yang, but the problem is no closer to being solved than the day it was first identified.

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Obama Opens Cans of Worms, Whoop-Ass

If you haven’t seen Democratic Presidential Nominee* Barack Obama’s speech on race relations, and you can find 37 minutes to do so, you should. It’s an extraordinary speech. What was so extraordinary about it is that it was not remotely a politician’s speech. He resisted the urge to simplify a complex issue and distance himself from a friend who, when presented in 30 second clips, comes off as an extremist to the working class whites Obama needs to win over. He resisted the urge to patronize. He addressed a complex issue head-on, and talked about the semi-taboo subtext of black/white relations - that many whites think there’s no problem, and many blacks still have a big chip on their shoulders. The speech has none of the qualities that cause people to dismiss him as “form over substance.” I’m just not used to politicians speaking so directly about issues that can’t be described in a soundbite.

Incidentally, as I listened to the speech, I came to the conclusion that Obama has hired Aaron Sorkin as a speechwriter. You could close your eyes and picture Martin Sheen giving a similar speech. However, it turns out that he has hired Swinger’s star Jon Favreau as his lead speechwriter.

The silver pen behind the silver tongue.

Until now Obama’s really positioned himself, without actually saying it, as a “Post Racial” candidate. But this Wright thing really seems to have shaken up working class whites. It all really seems to be about trust… like wild deer, they had finally been coaxed into taking food from Obama’s hand, but Wright is the loud noise that scared them off. They seem to be concerned that Obama is a Manchurian candidate - either a Muslim extremist masquerading as a Christian, or a Black Panther masquerading as a friend to the whites. And all of that goes to show you that we’ve still got a long way to go.

So this speech, this direct acknowledgment that there is justified black anger directed at the USA when the politically expeditious thing would be to shore up the Pennsylvania vote by denouncing his pastor in 30 seconds or less, is really a breath of fresh air. And so he’s become the only politician who’s worth 37 minutes of my time.

*Barack Obama is the Democratic Nominee for president. It’s done. Over. Clinton’s actions since she was mathematically eliminated from winning without destroying the Democratic party have caused me to regret that I voted for her in the CA primary.

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Flamin’ Hot Funyuns

“Dr. Rothenstein!”
“What is it Jenkins? Can’t you see I’m trying to complete a Sudoku?”
“Sir, I think I’ve had a breakthrough on the Flamin’ Hot Funyuns!”
“Give it up, Jenkins. The Flamin’ Hot Funyun is your white whale. You know as well as I do that, despite our early successes with Doritos, Cheetos and even Pretzels, Flamin’ Hot Funyuns have always proved frustratingly elusive. The alliinase enzyme in the Unyun extract interferes with the Flamin’ Hot binding agent. You’re wasting your gift on this quixotic pursuit.”
“No sir! It came to me last night as I was writing up our results on the canned cheeseburger. We’ve been going about it the wrong way. By including Flaming compound in the pressurized Funyun bag unbound, the alliinase enzyme breaks down into its harmless constituent aminos without compromising the freshness of the Funyun. The Flaming compound then binds during transport!”
“Of course!”

Later…
“You know, Jenkins? I kind of thought these would taste better.”
“Yeah.”

(out of 5 Pochaccos)

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Stupid Marketing Tricks

Washington Mutual, everyone’s favourite cuddly fuzzy bank, has a new marketing campaign built around the term “Whoo hoo!” The bank across the street from our house has the banner prominently displayed.

Whoo hoo in the hell thinks this is the correct spelling of the term?

I discover from a Google search that this isn’t the first time the question’s been asked, but what jackoff decided that the utterance “Woo hoo” (W sound, and then H sound) should be spelled with more than one ‘H’?

Let’s work through this: ‘who’ has an essentially silent w. ‘whoooooo’ is how the sound an owl makes is frequently written. In neither case will you get anything sounding like the first part of Homer Simpson’s commonly-used exclamation of enthusiasm.

Meanwhile “Woo whoo!” actually would be a phonetically acceptable way to write the phrase, but then you’re introducing an additional letter that doesn’t serve any purpose and needlessly inflating the length of your marketing campaign’s tagline by over 10%.

Let’s all save some electrons and stop putting w and h together anywhere when we mean to say ‘woo hoo’.

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A Video Movie Could Improve Your Life

As many of you know, I’m a fan of outsourcing. For example, why would you spend hours of your own time making a video movie, when you could outsource it to a professional?

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