Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

The Plague

Random Thoughts

Normally I reserve Wednesday posts for discussions of all things Zombie. This week, despite the title of this entry, I will not be speaking of zombies, unless you count the fact that I have felt like one.

One of the wicked cool things about WordPress, which is what I use to do this blog, is that you can post entries in advance. When I’m in my rhythm, I run about 3 entries ahead, so that on Monday I’m writing Thursday’s post while you are reading the post I wrote on Friday. Now, this isn’t always true, sometimes I just can’t think up or find stuff to write about, other days I’ll sit down and crank out a week’s worth of entries. The best part about this is that it allows (forces) me to think about what I’m writing. Often times I’ll write up an entry and then during the next two or three days while it waits in queue, I’ll think up new thoughts on the subject and go edit my entry. The bad part about this is that if I’m away from the PC for a few days and I’ve accidentally “published” items I wasn’t really finished with, they make it to the front page while I’m not paying attention.

So, a little over two weeks ago, I started feeling a tad under the weather. I wrote up a post for the 5th and one for the 7th, and then I vanished into a cloud of illness and phlegm.

There is nothing so oppressive as not being able to breath. There were days that I felt like someone was stepping on my chest. Of course, that didn’t stop me from trying to go see some free movie screenings. However, not being able to take a full breath and hearing a disturbing rattle in my lungs if I exhaled too deeply was just bad… when I realized that the never-ending pounding in my skull was actually from lack of caffeine, I felt like a complete idiot. Thankfully, the fine folks at Papa Johns will deliver Cokes along with pizza. Also, NyQuil works much better if you get the kind with the alcohol still in it. Its hard to feel sick when you are asleep.

However, illness does have its upsides. We did watch all of season three of 24. Now I’m only three seasons behind. I also played a lot of Dead Rising (hey, look! zombie games!) working my way toward the Zombie Genocider achievement (you have to kill 53,594 zombies, enough to equal the stated population of the town).

There comes a point, though, when you’ve missed all the work you can miss and slept all the sleep you can sleep and driven over all the zombies you can drive over… okay, driving over zombies never gets tiring, but there comes a point where you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. My point is at about 10 days.

Sometimes, a person just needs a break. I got sick, and I let myself be sick because I needed to be sick. Ten days of sick and I was ready to rejoin the world. I’m all better now, and I’m more certain than ever before that attitude and outlook affect your physical state.

What was the point of all this? Oh, likely just so that later I can justify to myself why I failed to reach 50,000 words for the NaNoWriMo by pointing and saying “I was sick!” But then again, I do still have ten days… 5,000 words a day. Maybe…

The Quick and the Zed

Random Thoughts

Its Halloween, my favorite holiday. And just in time for it, a friend sent me a link on how to build a proper Emergency Zombie Defense Station. I’ll need at least two for the house, and one for the office, though I may have trouble getting it through security.

In other zombie news, we have XXXombie, a new comic book about the undead shamblers and the pornographic film industry. If you want to know more, read this, because I’m not going into any details here.

The latest issue of GFW magazine has a nice little article on the upcoming Dead Island. Sounds like a ton of fun.

In my copious free time, I’ve been working on a prototype for my zombie survivor tamagotchi. I really hope to be able to have a playable game by the end of the year, single player of course. Maybe multiplayer if I have time. But next month is the NaNoWriMo, so you might not hear much out of me for the next 30 days, or you may hear alot… depends on how the writing is going.

Thirty-Three

Random Thoughts

Some time later this evening, shortly after eight I think, I will have officially survived thirty-three years of life.

Yay me.

I’m not the kind of guy who believes in omens, or the kind to prophetically announce that this will finally be the year that Fink beats the Stomach, but I do honestly believe that things have to change. I am officially a job burnout. One thing I have prided myself on over the years (well, at least after high school) is my work ethic. I go by the following rules:

  1. A job worth doing is worth doing well.
  2. A job that pays a decent wage is worth doing.
  3. If I accept the job for the offered wage, it must be a decent wage.

By those rules, if I take a job for the money they offer, I’m going to do the best job I can. Right now, though, I am just going through the motions, doing enough work to not get yelled at. I am Peter Gibbons. Even worse, I have noticed myself engineering situations with coworkers to properly lower their expectations so that I can do even less work.

Its a bad situation all around, and honestly its not because I care about the company I’m contracted at, it is because at the end of the day I am disappointed in myself. Add to that, I am officially thirty-three pounds overweight. Maybe I need to be putting a little more stock in these omens and signs and stuff.

My general down turn of attitude has also crept into other aspects of my life. I want a new job, but getting a new job takes effort and I’ve been avoiding it. I have at least a dozen unfinished projects around the house that could have easily been finished by now. I’m sure there is more, but I don’t have the energy to do a full self evaluation right now.

So, my goals for thirty-three:

  • Stop being a lazy shit and get my work ethic back.
  • Stop being a lazy shit and exercise to get my waistline back.
  • Stop being a lazy shit and find a new job that engages and excites me.
  • Stop being a lazy shit and finish some of these projects around the house.

I’m seeing a theme here… guess its time to stop being a lazy shit.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Random Thoughts

I believe in the past I have made it pretty clear that I do not really like most recruiters. And my opinions really have not changed.

Recently, though, one organization could not be bothered to employ the simplest of tools. See, within the course of three weeks I received fourteen phone calls from eight different recruiters out of the same company. Each and every call began the same, “Hi Jason, I’m [insert name here] with [company name] and I found your resume on Monster.com and I think I have a job that you might be a perfect fit for…”

My problems with that are many.

I have been working with this company for over eight months. They have my resume on file, or at least they claimed it would be kept on file. My name has not changed, nor have my phone number or email address. They should have a record of me in their contact database, which should be searchable, and the conversation should have started, “Hi Jason, this is [insert name here] with [company name] and I have this opportunity come available and when I searched our resume database I came up with your and wanted to see if you are still in the market…” Even if it isn’t true, even if they actually did find my resume on Monster because they don’t keep resumes on file, they should maintain consistency.

If the “Most recent contact” is within the last few days, they should say, “I know you recently talked to [insert coworker here] but I came across another opportunity that might be a good match for you…” If they themselves have talked to me before, they should say something like, “Hey, how have you been? Its been [insert time span here] since we last talked…” Maybe even say, “I’m sorry that last interview we sent you on at [insert client here] did not work out, but I think I’ve got something you’d be great for…”

All of this could be solved by using one of the many products available for contact management, like ACT! or Goldmine, Lotus Organizer. I think even Outlook overs Business contact management that will sync with other Outlook clients… or just put it all on an Exchange Server in a shared contact list. Given the job, I could probably even write them a simple contact manager in less than a week.

Either they don’t have a contact managing software, or they have too many recruiters who don’t use it. Which ever it is, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. Eight months and one interview. The results weren’t worth putting up with the annoyance.

Words in the Workplace

Random Thoughts

Someone at work has been bad. Or at least so I must surmise, since I found a little gem of an email in my inbox the other day gently reminding me of workplace conduct. Here is a little snippet:

Work Policies and Rules:
I understand that it is my responsibility to ensure that my personal conduct and comments in the workplace support a professional environment which is free of inappropriate behavior, language, joke or actions which could be perceived as sexual harassment or as biased, demeaning, offensive, derogatory to others based upon race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran’s status or disability. I further agree to refrain from words or conduct that is threatening and/or disrespectful of others.

From this I can only determine that the only appropriate speech at work is to be completely neutral talk about work tasks, which, ironically, offends me. I suppose this is just one of those gigantic cover-your-ass type things where the company wants to be able to say, “Hey, we said it was not allowed and they did it anyway, so you can’t sue us, just the guy who did the offending.” And it makes me sad that our society is litigious enough that companies need to be constantly covering their asses.

Sadly, though, the main thing this email has done is make me curious about who said or did what to who to trigger this particular ass covering. In true cover-your-ass fashion though, I’ll never be able to find out unless it happened to one of my immediate colleagues. But in true office gossip fashion, I’m sure I’ll hear plenty of theories.

Urban Dead – Revisited

Random Thoughts

Nearly three months ago, I mentioned a game by the name of Urban Dead. At the time, I checked it out, messed around one day and then dismissed it. I just wasn’t interested in a web based text adventure.

Things change.

I have been checking out all sorts of games since my recent abandonment of all my usual MMO haunts. With City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft canceled and Lord of the Rings Online only holding on by the skin of its founder price, I really wanted something low impact that I could just play at now and then without investing any time (since any time I invest will be in beta tests or my 360). I stumbled back on Urban Dead and decided to give it a go, this time from both sides of the fence.

Everything in the game is controlled through Action Points, which you earn at the rate of 1 per half hour and you max out at 50. As a survivor, walking from one block to the next costs 1 point, and so does just about everything else. Searching, attacking, talking, entering buildings, etc. As one of the undead, walking takes 2 points per block, at least until you get enough experience points to buy the Lurching Gait skill that allows you to move as fast as the living. The limit of points you get per day means you have to keep track of where you are and how long it will take you to get back to safety. The living don’t want to get caught outside, the dead don’t want to wind up standing alone near lots of people. Really, this is where the strategy of the game comes in.

While the game does contain “levels” and skills that you purchase with your experience points, there isn’t, at least for me, a huge rush to max out and get to the top because this game has no “end game”, its just about survival.

I’m really enjoying the game far more than I thought I originally would, and its totally worth the cost… free. If you decide to check it out, I’m Jhaer on the living side and Reahj on the dead side.

Winning the War

Random Thoughts

I am happy to report, my efforts are showing. I’m down now to getting maybe one credit card offer per week between my wife and I. Other junk has also cut back quite a bit, to the point where usually once a week my mailbox stays empty all day. As my requests to be removed from lists continue to filter through I expect that to get better.

And while I appear to be winning the war, there are some battles I am losing. The Golfsmith is a hateful spiteful company and I call on people to boycott them. My attempts to get removed from their lists have instead signed me up for more lists. I get at least one mailing per week now, correctly addressed to me, sometimes two. In addition, I’ve had to block them on my email since they decided to send me more than one email per day advertising their wares. My attempts to get removed from the email lists have been about as successful as getting off the real mail lists.

They do appear to be the only company so far that has done this. Most companies, at most, will ask for a reason why and I just say “I would prefer not to receive the mailer as I do not shop regularly at your store.” That seems to be good enough. If they press I’ll tell them I usually throw it in the trash and would prefer they save the money and my time and not send it to me. With the Golfsmith it appears that I may have to actually have to go to their distribution office and physically force someone to delete my address from their database.

Rock of Ages

Random Thoughts

So last night I headed down to the HiFi Buys Amphitheater (which everyone around here still calls Lakewood, because that was a much better name) and caught the Rock of Ages show: Foreigner, Styx and Def Leppard.

It rocked.

The traffic was horrible, so we missed about 15 to 20 minutes of Foreigner, but we did get there during “Jukebox Hero” and listened to them run through a few more hits. They did not play “I Want To Know What Love Is”, but then, they were the opening act, meant to warm up the audience, so they stuck to the upbeat rock stuff and that was just fine with me. I got to hear “Hot Blooded” and that’s about all I needed.

Then Styx took the stage. Tommy Shaw and James Young are the only two original members still in the band. Chuck Panozzo comes out and plays with them now and then, but that’s it. Still, they played “The Grand Illusion”, “Come Sail Away”, “Too Much Time on My Hands”, “Renegade” and a few others… they did not play “Mr. Roboto”. I was disappointed. Not with the band, they rocked, but I really wanted that song.

During the break the wife went for a T-shirt and I went for drinks. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The line was slow, because like many venues they get volunteers to run their concessions for a share of the take. Some volunteer groups are good at it, some aren’t. The problem with volunteer groups is that they usually don’t have anyone with them who knows how to fix a beer tap. So, while changing the kegs, someone screwed up and all the Coors Light taps were messed up (1/3 beer, 2/3 foam). No one could fix it. Personally, I could not care less, Coors Light tastes like piss, I just wanted a Coke, a water and one of those frozen daiquiri drinks for the wife. But I was in line behind a bunch of people who wanted Coors Light, people who were already drunk. Now, to save time the volunteers could have quickly put up a sign that said “No Coors Light” and been done with it, but instead they waited until people got to the head of the line. One guy pitched a fit and demanded Coors, so the volunteers sent a guy to another concession stand to get some, this was a bad precedent to set, because now everyone wanted Coors from the other booth without having to go to the other booth. Finally, I got to the window, got my drinks and fled. Def Leppard was already on stage…

Def Leppard is on the road partly in support of the 20th Anniversary of the Hysteria album, and they played a little over half the album. Their set list was exactly as listed here (the other bands varied a bit from the this). Its kind of amazing that these guys still rock so well after 30 years of playing and 20 years since they really hit huge. I’d gush more over them, but really this is just another example, like Poison who I have written about before (and may be going to see again next week), of a band that has managed to last based on the strength of both their songs and their stage show. Joe and the guys really know how to pull the audience in, and with the strength of their hit songs the audience that comes to the show really wants to be pulled in. Did I mention this is probably the most crowded I’ve seen Lakewood since 1991’s Van Halen “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” Tour? It was. Like a tightly packed sea of people all raising their hands, clapping to the beat and signing along.

A great show. I’m glad I went.

Part of the Problem

Random Thoughts

The other day I happened to notice that the main probablynot.com page had gotten a couple of new incoming links. Its odd because, honestly, no one really reads that site, they come here to the blog. But I suppose if you were Googling, since the most recent posts are RSS fed to the probablynot.com root site a person might get directed there.

As always, I like to know why people are linking to me, and what they have to say.

The first link was actually from back in July, so I’m not sure why it took so long to show itself, or perhaps I haven’t looked at my own root site since July 23rd. The site appears to be a collection of book reviews. I’ve seen these kinds of aggregation sites before, and I actually think its kind of neat to be scraped for it. Cool.

The second link looked funny. While the first site was a blog called “Crime Always Pays” and the post with my link was “The Monday Review”, the second site was called “Crime Review: The Monday Critical review”. It had nearly the same information. I say “nearly” because it was the same info, but it had been passed through two filters: the first changed some words to synonyms, and the second inserted some ad keywords. In fact, the entire site is just rife with Google Ads, and looking at the profile of the blogger, he has a bunch of similar sites all designed to draw traffic, collect clicks, and (he hopes) generate money.

Looking deeper, the second site copies nearly every post from the first site, up until August 1st at least… which lead me to examining the first site a little closer and noticing the review of mine wasn’t the only review of that same book to be tapped. In fact, page by page digging through the archives shows that it really is just repeating the same books over and over, slightly randomized. The site is chaotic enough to suggest it is hand made, but repetitious enough to belie that and show its true colors of most likely being a bot generated site.

I hate these kinds of sites. An aggregation post or site doesn’t bother me too much, but these automated Google Ad factories piss me off. And now I’m on one. Worse, in their quotes of me, they quoted my link to the book I reviewed with my Amazon Associates ID, so I may actually make money from this abomination.

The thing that irks me most however is that their link uses one quoted line of my book review and the link back to me does not go to the full review, but to the root site. Even now, that post has already scrolled off the RSS and doesn’t show there. Searching the root site you’ll never find that review, its on the weblog subdomain. My ill gotten traffic is being directed to the wrong place.

*sigh*

Oh well… its the Internet. There isn’t much I can do about it.