If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em

Since I spend so much time making fun of the stupid things other people do, it’s only fair that I point out my own when they happen, and I think one just did.

Remember that email problem I posted about the other day? It’s been fixed because I’m smart, but from the looks of it it was caused because I’m not.

I’ve been out of town since last Wednesday afternoon when the problem started. I got here and realized hey, I’m not getting my mail, which sucked. I thought it was a problem with the provider, because it generally is. When it didn’t start working again in a few hours like it does most of the time, but then started letting me have some mail, I thought it was weird and annoying but still didn’t think much about it. But after a little while I started wondering if maybe I’d been hacked, or whether, and there was no way that this could be possible, I left my computer on at home when I left with my email program open. The same email program that I have set to log into the servers on a schedule and download anything there to my computer. Yeah, that mail program.

So after lots of waiting and cursing and a couple of calls to tech support I decided to change my password just to be safe. As soon as I did, guess what happened. If you said “you started getting mail again you stupid retard,” you’re absolutely right.

But at that point I still didn’t think I was stupid. I thought that I had either foiled a hacker by changing my password to something more complicated, or that it was a coincidence that things started to work right after I did that, because things like that can happen.

So to rule out the hacking thing I called the guy I rent my place from and asked him to go in and see if the computer was on. That was a couple of days ago and today he finally got back to me and let me know that yes, the computer was on and that he had shut it off.

I hung up the phone feeling like the biggest dumbass in the universe and rightfully so. It all made sense. I wasn’t getting mail because my home system was getting it for me. Of course I would get some of my mail, the stuff that I’d manage to collect before the home system did it’s next check. And of course things would start working again once I changed the password, because the home system wouldn’t know the new one and would therefore not be able to log in anymore. Christ, I’m such an idiot.

But on the bright side, at least nobody broke into my account, and anybody who was waiting for a response from me will probably get one once I’m back home. But God, I’m a tool. A tool who’s man enough to admit it, but still a tool all the same.

Why Stealing Is Wrong, And Why Tobacco Might Not Be

A 26-year-old man’s first mistake was allegedly stealing a tractor-trailer rig that had been left unattended with the engine running, police say.

His second blunder was mistaking the truck driver’s tobacco-spit cup for something refreshing, and taking a swig.

The tale of alleged instant justice had its roots earlier Monday, the report said, when the driver of a $60,000 Freightliner left it unlocked and running, with the keys in it, in the parking lot of Sears at Westfield Shoppingtown Vancouver. Inside the trailer was about $15,000 worth of merchandise.

The driver told police he went inside the store to wash grease off his hands.

When he emerged with clean hands, he saw someone making a getaway in the truck. Police soon arrived and learned from the truck’s onboard Global Positioning System that it was at Southeast 164th Avenue and Mill Plain Boulevard in Fisher’s Landing.

As officers converged on the truck Renteria-Martinez called 911 and said, through a Spanish-language translator, that he was choking and needed medical help.

Police said they found the suspect in the truck and took him into custody.

“Renteria-Martinez explained that he was driving down the road when he saw a cup. Without knowing what was in it, he took a drink and quickly learned that it was the rightful driver’s “tobacco spit,” according to the police report.

The suspect was being held on $20,000 bail in the Clark County Jail on Wednesday and is to appear in court Jan. 21.

The Link

Well, I guess now that it actually has correct spelling, as far as I can tell, I’ll post the link to the site I was bitching about. She wants to make custom greeting cards for people with her art on them, and from what I’ve heard, her drawings are pretty cool. I’ll warn ya, the site is still in its pretty primitive stages, but hey, it can only grow. And for those with eyeballs, she has some of her art up there. I hope she does well.

So, if you’re interested, go visit Yvonne’s site and have a look.

Get a spell checker!

I sit here and it makes me so sad. So unbelievably sad. My friend who I will not humiliate by disclosing her website msn’s me excitedly. “I have a business and it’s up and going,” she chirps. “Go to the site.” She gives me the address, and there is very little text on the page, and what text there is is riddled with spelling mistakes! My god! It’s not like she had a giant amount of code to do and lost track of the mistakes. I doubt she did any code at all judging from where it’s posted. She wrote a few lines of text and posted it, and it’s full of errors!

If you’re going to run a business, please, please, have some self-respect and use a spell checker on the material for your business! It might make or break you!

I wouldn’t care most times, I’d just laugh and move on. I just know she has a lot of potential, and it fucking kills me to see that destroyed by laziness and/or complete sloppiness. It’s one thing if it’s on a blog or a fun site. But a business? Come on.

Where the hell did that come from? I’m turning into my dad! Somebody save me!

Emailing Steve

If anybody out there has sent me an email any time between Wednesday afternoon and now and I haven’t gotten back to you, I’m not ignoring you. I’ve been having major email problems and most of my mail hasn’t made it to me. It’s not bouncing back to people, at least not that I’ve heard and every now and then a few will make it through but something has been really really wrong with it so that’s the reason. Maybe I’ll get your messages eventually since I’m not sure where they are and sometimes when things go funny, things show up later but in case they don’t, try sending your message again since things seem to be getting a little more back to normal now. Or you can leave it on the comment board if it’s not overly personal if you really feel the need.

If you’re one of those people who happens to know either my home number or the number at the place I’m staying right now you can try me there since I’m checking messages, or you can look for me on MSN.

Sorry to anybody who might have written to ask for a link if anybody did. Like I said above, try the email thing again and hopefully it’ll work. And in case you didn’t know, yes, we will link to just about anybody provided that you write in a style that could be considered literate and provided that you give us some kind of plug in return, a permanent link on your own blog or site if possible.

Irony

As I look at our new fangled google ads framy thing, I am struck by something that makes me laugh. This is a site run by three people who couldn’t drive if they wanted to, at least I’m pretty sure that Matt couldn’t and if anyone gave either Steve or I a license, it would be a license to kill, and all the ads right now are asking people to donate their cars. I just find that really funny. I guess I underestimate the intelligence of google’s targetting thingy. It knows we couldn’t use a car if we had one, so it’s trying to find a use for them. Just a thought.

Carin Breaks the Site

Well hopefully not, but anything’s possible since I was brave enough to do some site-tweakage, namely, adding google ads. So, call to everyone, how do they look? Do they look good? Being blind and all I have no idea whether they look good or not. So hope they work, and let me know, either by commenting or emailing me. To me it doesn’t look broken, but who knows?

Is This Cliche Or Am I Just A Prick?

Let me start this by saying that if you can give anything for the Tsunami relief effort, I definitely think you should.

I had to put that before I write this because there are some people out there who are a little over-sensitive about this kinda stuff. Even if it is just merely for discussion. I do believe we should help, I donated myself, but this bit of writing may have given the message that I don’t think we should…. That’s not the case.

It seems everytime that we have a huge happening like the one that has just happened in South East Asis a few weeks ago, we kinda go screwy. It happened for September 11 and numerous other events as well. I’m talking about these benefit concerts/games/events to raise money for the relief efforts.

It might just be me but it’s starting to seem a little bit cliche. My main point is about the big concert style telethons they always have where they get a bunch of the top musicians in the world together and have them perform while we all phone in to pledge our money.

Are we really that shallow of a society that we won’t donate if we aren’t entertained first? I don’t think so. I think that a large portion of the population is willing to do whatever little they can to help out without these things. They seem to strike me more as a PR opportunity for the celebrities themselves. To me, I think that anyone out there who was going to donate a small bit to the efforts was going to do it anyway. Without any kind of inspiration from Britney Spears. It strikes me that these are more a chance for a bunch of people with way more money to stand up in front of the world and tell us to donate.

I don’t know about you but I’d say that maybe 1 million of the 10 you made last year on your album is a more helpful contribution than one night of your singing. I’m not saying that none are donating because lots of them have been on the news making very generous donations. In some cases donating more than other countries in the surrounding area to the tragedy.

If it is truly PR that you want. Donate a sum of money, any sum is something, and then get your PR director on the phone to all the papers and TV stations to tell what you’ve donated. That’s fine. At least that is a contribution to the effort, right?

I saw a piece on CNN that talked about how many of these artists do these shows and then don’t donate. Their arguement being that was their donation. We saw them on TV singing and performing so we just assume they’re on board with us but we don’t know if they’ve ever put in a penny. The people with no clean water or food over there don’t have a tv to watch you anyway…. maybe you could spare a couple bucks for them. I’m sure they’d prefer that.

I’m not saying you need to give away 10 and 15 million as some have…. but if the general public can spare 50 bucks, surely you can. I don’t necessarily hold them to a higher standard that they should give more than us, or any at all for that matter, but if you are going to be on the support wagon, you could throw in a few bucks.

Certain things don’t bother me as much. Like the sporting events that are giving half the proceeds from a certain regular season game to the effort. That even was going to happen anyway and someone just decided that all the money from the popcorn sold at the game would go to the effort. That’s fine. If Christina wants to just give half the concession money from an already scheduled concert in to the pot, that seems fine to me. But having these huge benefits with 10 or 12 multi-millionaires on stage telling us to give money doesn’t seem quite right to me. I don’t think there’s enough people in the world saying “I will only donate if Saveage Garden tells me to.” We’re a better society than that. If people feel it is a just cause and have the money, they’ll donate. If they don’t think it’s a worthy cause or can’t afford to give up anything, then that’s fine too.

Right now the ratio of money donated by individuals to that by the governments is something like $4/$1. That’s great. We’re all generous people. but I just think we’re all generous enough without being herded up like sheep by the people we see on TV everyday.

That might be a jaded view, but I personally think it’s a positive one. People deep down are good. I don’t think they need to be given any more reason to donate than that of the original tragedy and the thought that maybe they can help someone out.

Take Care

>Does This Guy Like Anybody?

>I just finished reading this
recap
of the newest RF Video shoot interview with New Jack, and oh my God, it’s unreal. How this guy continues to make money in wrestling is beyond me, but what’s more frightening than that is that people will still work with him.

But if you’re a wrestling fan who is at all familiar with ECW and a little bit with some of the bigger indies, or even if you want to see why exactly he hates the Dudley Boys so much, check this thing out. Craziness, that’s all I can say.