Don’t mind me. Just testing my new blogging software, BlogJet.

Now playing: Third Eye Blind – Semi-Charmed Life – Third Eye Blind

I have discovered that one of the worst feelings in the world is to sit down to bomb the Russians only to find that once the mission is complete and you’re heading home for equipment clean up and storage you have no cleaning apparatus to clean up the left over mission ordinance with. When that happens you’re left with dirty equipment and have to go scrambling all over in search of the vital cleaning equipment that will allow you to complete the job. Each time this happens you swear that you’ll stockpile more of the vital cleaning equipment near home base so that you’re prepared for the next mission. You swear that you won’t get caught with your pants down in the future but inevitably a few months down the road it happens again. From this observation I have come to these conclusions:

1. War is hell.
2. Better mission planning is in order.

[Listening to: Double Trouble - The Roots - Things Fall Apart (5:50)]

I got another Bless You today after a sneeze. Whoa Nelly!!! This could be becoming a trend. That’s two in one week. If it keeps up I may have to start a Bless You counter here on the blog. I’ve got blessings all over the place now. No plague for me. Yippy!!!

Just saw a quick poll on the “Fair and Balanced” channel, otherwise known as Fox News. It was on in the caf when I arrived earlier and I just happened to glance up at the screen. The poll question was whether or not the US should take military action to stop Iran from developing nuclear (or nuculer in Dubya speak) weapons. 51% percent of respondents said that we should use air strikes and remote offensive weapons only. Basically the Bill Clinton method. 40 something percent said we should do nothing. That number is higher than I would have expected considering the “fair and balanced” channel’s viewership. So maybe, just maybe, this whole war thing is starting to wear on people even on that end of the spectrum. Here’s the kicker though. 59% of those surveyed thought we should use any means necessary to stop Iran. I didn’t realize so many fair and balanced disciples were so steeped in the early philosophies of Malcolm X. I’m kidding of course but then again I’m not. Any means necessary? What? 59% of a certain group of people in this country feel that we should do everything up to and including all out war to stop another country from developing something that we’ve got in spades. Give me a break. I know the argument. Iran in this case or whatever country that comes into the argument is unstable and can’t handle the responsibility of having a nuclear arsenal. They can’t be trusted to behave in a responsible manner when it comes to nuclear proliferation. From their perspective I would imagine they’re saying the opposite. They’re saying that the US, the big bully on the block, has nuclear weapons and they are our sworn enemies. What’s to prevent them from launching a nuclear attack on us and wiping us off the face of the earth under the guise of the war on terror? Some piece of paper signed back in the 80′s saying that they’ll get rid of a few of their WMD’s (why doesn’t the UN come inspect our WMDs) and won’t launch them against the USSR or any other country without just cause. In their opinion we’ve broken our word many times. What’s to keep us from doing it again?

Now let me address the other end of the spectrum. I think it’s going to be a very long time before the world is completely free of nuclear weapons. It may never happen. That genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago. It’s unrealistic to think that we can snap our fingers and make them go away. They’re here and will probably play some part in the next world war or major regional conflict. So I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world that we have a few hundred thousand of them laying around just in case. That’s smart. But why do we have the right to have them while other countries don’t? Who died and made us king? It feels like when we were kids at day care. There was always one kid who liked to sit in the middle of the floor and horde all the toys. I’m afraid that that’s what we look like to a lot of people in the world. A rich, spoiled brat with all the toys and no intention to share.

Now playing: Dave Matthews Band – #41 – Crash

Gotta give major props to Current TV. I “discovered” this new channel a couple of weeks ago while channel surfing. I could go on and on about how cool it is but I won’t because frankly it’s 2:23 am and I’m tired. Besides the channel really speaks for itself. Check your local cable or satelite listings to see if it’s available in your area. If it is give it a peek. I promise you’ll be hooked. Heck I may even dust off my Mass Communications (with Broadcasting Emphasis) degree and try my hand at submitting a pod. Don’t know what a pod is? Check out the channel or glide on over to it’s presence on the web, Current.tv, to find out. Good night.

Yesterday wasn’t a very good day. I was on edge and crabby for most of it. It was stressful but that’s nothing new. Stress comes with the territory in my line of work but I’m usually better at channelling and reflecting the stress than I did yesterday. There were no major blowups. I didn’t curse out any customers or anything. (Never have done that even though I’ve felt like doing it thousands of times.) I was just in a generally bad mood. What’s funny is I think I over compensated for my bad mood by being overly nice to the customers. I’m not usually very chipper when on the phones. It’s not really in my nature. I’m a pretty low key guy. When I’m on the phones it’s all business. I’m not rude or even impolite but I’m also not syrupy sweet either. I just want to get in, fix your problem and get out. Boom, boom, boom. 7 years in it kind of has to be that way. Well yesterday I was all happy go lucky on the phone. Service with a smile and all that hog wash which was totally opposite of the way I felt. That made me feel really fake. Made me feel like I wasn’t “keeping it real”. Whatever that means.

I think the bad humor stemmed from my early morning visit to Television Without Pity. They should change the name of the site to snark.com (that’s probably taken but I don’t want to check for fear that it might be a “not work safe” site) because the snarkiness flows like milk and honey there. I love the snarky 24 recaps and the forums but you kind of have to put on your snarky face when you go there in order to attune to the vibe and feel of the site. After doing that it’s kind of hard to snap out of snark mode and back into regular peron mode. The 24 section of the site was abuzz from the latest episode broadcast the night before. Prior to hitting the sack Monday night I posted my thoughts on the new episode just like everybody else was doing. Yesterday morning I signed in to catch up on the overnight posts only to find some dude flaming me about violating some unwritten rule of the forum. Before firing back I reviewed the forum rules to make sure I hadn’t broken any policies. After all I’ve only been posting there for about a week and am still learning the lay of the land. The board rules were silent on the area that I supposedly violated so I fired back two guns blazing. My return post was a full on snark assault. I won’t get into what the bone of contention was but suffice it to say the whole thing was silly. His gripe/flame was uncalled for and my reaction to his flame, while justified, was stupid. Normally I let silly stuff like that go. It’s an Internet forum for pete’s sake. We’re not researching a cure for cancer or solving the earth’s poverty issues. It’s just a bunch of crazy folks blabbing snarky comments about their favorite TV show. I feel silly for letting that ruin my day. I am a grown a** man (to steal a line from Martin Lawrence) after all. So I’ll be tempering my visits to TWoP from now on. I’ll approach it like I approach everything else in life. Laid back. No need to get caught up in all the crazy snarkiness. One last rant on this subject though. The guy who flamed me hasn’t been on the site much longer than me. He’s got roughly the same amount of posts as I do and is at the same low level board member status that I am. That’s what really ticked me off. Who’s he to lay down the law on how things work? It would have been easier to swallow had the rebuke come from a moderator or a long time forum user. Dumb stuff like that is one of the reasons why I usually avoid forums like the plague. Anyway I’m not wasting any more mental energy on this. It’s time for lunch.

Here’s an interesting tidbit relating to yesterday that I found amusing. It turns out that January 24 is officially the most depressing day of the year. Well wouldn’t that just figure? Even though I was more ticked off at the world than depressed I can definitely feel the whole downer vibe of the day. Time to grub. Peace.

I’ve added an update notifications box in the menu bar over to the right. This has been on my to do list for a while. I figure it’s an easy way for my 2 or 3 loyal readers to keep track of the site. When I go through one of my frequent dry spells you won’t get any email notifications which of course means there’s nothing to see here. Nothing new there. It’s when I actually get off my butt and post something that the fun begins. You’ll receive a nifty little email saying that the site has been updated at which point you can mosey on over to marvel in wonder and amazement at my clever wit and turn of phrase. Isn’t that cool? It will also help me to know how many repeat visitors I have. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the random hits I get from Google and the like or the “pity” hits thrown my way from Blogspot but those are generally one hit wonders as it were. I want to see if anybody is coming back. I’m not sure I really want to know that as the number will undoubtedly be depressingly small but I’m curious and think this will be a neat experiment. When the system notifies you that I’ve updated the site I will receive an email telling me how many notifications were sent out. Simple enough. You get your Okiboy jones met and I get my curiosity quenched.

I’ve read the privacy policy of the site who’s providing this service for me. They seem to be on the up and up but this is the Internet so you never can tell. Please let me know if you suddenly start getting way more spam than you normally get or other random occurances after signing up. It’s a free service so I can drop them at any time. Just a simple matter of deleting a couple of lines of code. SPAM is one of the banes of my existance, both professionally and personally, so whoa be unto me if I cause another user undo headache by opening them up to even more spam. That’s the last thing I want to do.

Anyhow, I hope that at least the 2 or 3 of you who make it a point to stop by occasionally will sign up. That way when I go on a mini writing spree like I’ve been on the last few days you’ll know about it and be able to get in on the fun while it’s happening. And when the blog is in the doldrums (which is most of the time as you know by now) you can spend your precious time at other more lively stops on the Information Superhighway. Good night for now.

Why Features Don’t Matter Any More – This article uses the iPod as an example of a highly successful product that took the market by storm by focusing more on the user experience than the technical specs of the device. Consumers just want devices that work without worrying how they work. Being a geek, the ‘how’ of the device does interest me somewhat but at the end of the day I’m the same way. It’s just gotta work. If it doesn’t it’s going up on EBay and I’m buying something else. Simple as that.

Supreme Court Rejects Blackberry Patent Appeal – If the Blackberry goes away it will suck big time. I do not make this statement because I personally own one. Yes on the one hand it’s a really cool gadget that the geek in me would love to have but my company doesn’t deem me important enough to have one therefore I don’t have one. I’m not bitter though. The suckiness of the situation comes in when you look at it from a company-wide perspective.

My company just standardized on the Blackberry platform last year after completing a year of beta testing. Once the platform was approved for company wide roll out, everybody and their Moms requested one. All the muckety mucks have them now. The wannabe muckety mucks have them too. There is no denying that it’s a useful tool but the darn thing has proven to be more of an annoyance than anything from a support perspective. I field several calls a day from one muckety muck or another. The call usually goes something like this:

Muckety Muck: Hi, I’m Joe Blow Muckety Muck, Supreme Commander of the Executive CEO Vice President of the Chairman of the Board for the Whatsit Division.

Me: Hello Mr. Muckety Muck. How may I help you?

Muckety Muck: Yes underling who makes less in a year than I make in a month, I just ordered my Blackberry 2 seconds ago. Why hasn’t it arrived yet!!!

Me: I apologize for that sir. I could be mistaken sir but I don’t believe enough time has passed for your request to be processed. If you’ll give it a little bit more time I assure you that your Blackberry will arrive as requested. The usual turnaround time for these requests is 2-3 business days.

Muckety Muck: I want MY Blackberry NOW!!! Dammit this is unacceptable. I want a PRIORITY ONE ticket entered on this immediately. I want to speak to your superior. You’re too far beneath a person of my stature to be speaking to anyway. Blah, blah, blah. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I think you get the gist. Now imagine that RIM (The makers of Blackberry) is forced to shutdown their service. All hell would break loose then. Muckety mucks would start calling in demanding that we call RIM (I have the CEO on speed dial), force them to ignore a court order and turn their service back on so they can get their email from Susie Smith of Whosit Division while sipping cocktails on the golf course. Muckety Mucks would start jumping off of buildings when they discover they can’t use their beloved Blackberry any more. Then they would call in demanding a priority ticket be put in to investigate why they just jumped off a building. I shutter at the thought. Here’s hoping that RIM and this other little company come to an agreement on settling their patent dispute. I already have enough headaches on this job as it is. The nurse’s office is right next to my cube but I’m sure she’s going to cut off my free pain reliever account any day now. I have dubbed her the Pusher Lady. (I swear the ‘I’m your Pusher (wo)Man‘ song plays every time I walk by her office.)

Here’s one last thing on the Blackberry front before I go. I find it rather amusing actually. Have you ever noticed a peculiar medical condition unique to Blackberry users? I’ve dubbed it Blackberry-itis. It seems to be a more potent, mutated strain of the much older Pager-itis. This condition seems to affect all Blackberry users from the moment they take the little bugger out of the box. Symptoms include a chronic need to check their Blackberry for new messages every few minutes. I’ve yet to come across a Blackberry user not afflicted with this ailment. I’ve seen people check their Blackberry while sitting at their desks in front of their computers with their email client open. These folks are in a sorry state. I wish there was something I could do to help (this hits close to home because sadly my roommate has this disease) but as of today there is no known cure. Users who are forced to be without their Blackberries go into serious withdrawal almost immediately. I bring this up in light of the serious possibility that these sorry sap’s beloved Blackberries may become nothing more than expensive paper weights soon. Can you imagine the mass hysteria that would cause? People going into convulsions, foaming at the mouth, feinting; it wouldn’t be pretty. Who would suffer the most because of this? Why me of course because I’d then get to field calls from the Muckety Muck’s spouses demanding that a PRIORITY ONE ticket be entered to fix their husband or wife “right this minute dammit!!!!”

[sarcasm] I love my job. [/sarcasm]

Giant Jellyfish Besiege Japan – The motherland is under attack by giant jellyfish. Swim for your lives! Measuring in at almost 7 feet long and weighing 440 pounds these things are monsters.

This article really freaks me out. When we first got to Okinawa all new arrivals on base had to attend a safety orientation class. In the class they told us about all the dangerous critters that could be found on and around the island. Habu snakes, sharks, poisonous spiders, you name it. One of the creatures mentioned were jellyfish. I had never heard of or seen a jellyfish before then. They showed a picture of a Portuguese Man o’ War. I’ll never forget that. I found out years later that they incorrectly identified the Man ‘o War as a jellyfish in the presentation but the menacing impression stuck. I was only 11 after all, couldn’t swim very well and already scared silly by the ocean and the beach thanks to Jaws. Scarred for life I was. I’m glad there are no jellyfish here in land locked Memphis, TN. At least I don’t think there are unless they’re this variety. Scary stuff.

With this happening in Japan, I can see somebody making a new Godzilla flick, Godzilla vs. The Giant Jellyfish. Here’s the pitch… One day Godzilla goes rampaging through Tokyo like he’s known to do from time to time. The frightened Tokyoites, having nowhere to escape to on land, flee into the sea. That turns out to be a bad idea though because just off shore thousands upon thousands of killer, giant jellyfish (actually just a couple of cheap looking, rubber replicas) bob just below the surface of the water. As the Tokyoites rush into the water they’re instantly stung, paralyzed, and swallowed whole by the water born jelly monsters. (Actually the jellyfish venom isn’t strong enough to harm humans but these are special, hybrid, mutant, killer, giant jellyfish. Anyway, go with me here.) Godzilla seeing this has an attack of conscience and promptly rushes into the water to save the people and do battle with the gelatinous beasts. There’s only room for one giant, mutant monster around these parts and he’s it. If anyone is going to be eating helpless Tokyoites it’s him. Great calamity and chaos ensues. ‘Zilla is kicking butt and taking names but the jellies have him out numbered so they are kind of at a stalemate. Suddenly out of nowhere Jimmy Carter appears to broker a peace accord. In classic American government style he threatens violence in order to achieve peace. If the jellyfish don’t leave the shores of Japan immediately they will be banished to the shores of China where they face certain death. It seems the Chinese enjoy many jellyfish delicacies and would have a field day with a bountiful supply of giant jellyfish. The jellyfish, fearing for their lives, relent and float off into the Pacific never to be heard from again. The End.

It’s box office gold I tell ya.