Yesterday, I decided I would go out for a drive. I had no particular destination in mind I just wanted to see where the road would take me. I was certain that I would find some excitement along the way. Alas, no such luck. There was no male hitch-hiker who turned out to be a homicidal maniac that I would have to escape from after I picked him up. No female hitch-hiker who would turn out to be a nymphomaniac that I wouldn’t want to escape from after I picked her up. At no point did I come across a road sign pointing to free Blue Beaver Beer down a narrow overgrown trail that actually led to a house where a crazed inbred family would at first seem like nice (but slightly eccentric) people, but who would later try to kill and eat me. Nobody even cut my brake line when I stopped at a small backwoods general store, so that I would end up hurtling down a long winding mountain pass.
It was an utterly uneventful day. When I got home I wasn’t even so much as shaken up because I narrowly avoided hitting some sort large sasquatch type creature. I’m beginning to think that maybe you can’t believe everything that you see in horror movies (not even the ones that are "inspired by actual events). Next thing you know I’ll find out that it’s not possible for a deformed man wearing a hockey mask and wielding a machete to be a totally unstoppable murdering force of nature. That will disappoint Sandi even more than me.
Did you ever pick up some fast food, drive all the way home, and then open the bag and find out you have someone else’s crappy food order?
Did you ever read some fine print, and then accept it, only to realize later that you didn’t even come close to deciphering the lawyer language and you are now stuck with your decision?
It turns out I either misread some fine print or completely missed it when we signed up for our internet provider. We have satellite internet, which isn’t as fast as cable or DSL, but is a lot faster than dialup. It also costs us a fair amount.
The dealer who sold us the subscription told us downloading was unlimited, and the different plans that were available just determined how fast you could receive data. They got it partially correct. Apparently, we also have a "Fair Access Policy" program monitoring us, and it uses a constantly shifting algorithm and data combination to determine whether or not we are ‘fairly’ using the system, or if we are abusing it by downloading too much. If we are in the wrong, we have our bandwidth restricted, for up to 24 hours.
Sometimes in the evening, our internet speed really drops. It could be that we have exceeded our ‘fair’ share of the available resources. And no one can give me an answer of exactly what that might mean to me in particular. Does that mean 3 UTube videos in a row? How about a 32MB operating system update? Can I browse through a bunch of blogs really fast or do I need to read slower so I don’t gum up the works? How in the world can I make sure I don’t run afoul of the Fair Access Policy? It all sounds just a little too vague to me. It’s like a law where the police could give you a speeding ticket based on the amount of traffic and time of day, and there is no set fine, no set speed limit. But you can’t see the other drivers on the internet highway, so you just have to guess.
"Unfortunately, many of these subscribers are not using (name of service) for it’s intended purpose." I thought giving access to the internet and everything on it was the purpose of an internet provider. And I am annoyed with the dealer for not explaining the policies a little better for me.
Here in Alberta, the majority of communities have passed smoking by-laws which ban smoking in all public places. Of course the bar owners whined about the legislation before it passed, claiming it would stop people from going out. Clearly they underestimated the human desire to get falling-down-puking-stupid-drunk in a public place surrounded by strangers while crappy music gets played at a deafening volume. As far as I know the smoking by-law has not affected business at bars nor at bingo halls.
However, I think these laws don’t quite go far enough. For one thing, I work in a lumber yard and quite a few of the customers seem to think that because they are outdoors it’s okay for them to be smoking. Just yesterday, I was helping load up one guy with some concrete slabs. Due to the heaviness of these slabs it requires two people to lift them and because of the relatively small size you have to stand less than two feet apart. This particular customer had a lit cigarette in his mouth while we were loading him, so I was forced to second-hand smoke right along with him. I felt it was highly impolite.
There is another aspect of smoking that I find just as bad. I’ll be sitting in the lunch room at work, minding my own business and eating a sandwich when a smoker comes in and sits beside me. Although they smoke outside, they come in absolutely reeking of cigarette stench. It strongly impacts my enjoyment of the food I’m eating. Naturally, they can’t smell anything since they’ve just been inhaling all that smoke. They are oblivious of anyone else. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have the right to smoke but I think that laws should be passed that would force these people to smoke in such a way that they don’t smell bad after-wards. I envision some sort of a bio-hazard type-suit with only an opening large enough for them in inhale and exhale. That should be sufficient. After all, what if I came to work reeking of beer, what would these people have to say about that?
After reading Tim’s recent How To Be Cool Tip, I started noticing how some people could be un-cool in that way. Yesterday, for example, I needed to use the ATM and there was a guy in front of me who was clearly un-cool. I was watching what he was doing (I politely averted my eyes when he entered his pin number) and I found his troubles to be a bit amusing and irritating at the same time. He punched how much he wanted to withdraw and the screen said he had to enter an amount that was a multiple of $20.00. So he entered $20.00 and then the screen said that amount exceeded the available funds of $0.00. He hit cancel and then proceed to do exactly the same thing two more times. He must have thought he could make the machine do his bidding. So then he tried a different card, and then did the first two steps exactly the same (I guess his math skills weren’t good enough to calculate multiples of $20.00). Finally he got a twenty dollar bill out of the machine, and then the screen asked him if he wanted to continue banking, he pressed yes. Then he pressed the cancel button in order to get his card back. But he wasn’t done yet; after checking the account balance on his receipt he decided to get another twenty dollars. By this time he finally figured out how to enter the correct amount of funds he wished to withdraw; however, again when asked if he wanted to continue banking he pressed yes and then had to hit the cancel button in order to get his card back. I almost felt sorry for him.
Some days when you get up at 4:45 AM, you just don’t want to go on living. You want to end it all just to get some sleep. That’s when it’s handy to stop by Tom Norton’s and pick up an extra large double-double, with a small coffee on the side. It’s the price I have to pay for going to bed too late.
I’m not saying my early morning off to work routine is all bad. Just the part where you drag your a$$ out of bed and think, "What am I doing! The sun didn’t even get up yet." It would be nice to roll over and keep on sawing logs. None of that, though. Don’t want the sleep world tree huggers after me for dream world deforestation.
I have never enjoyed mornings. My Mom used to wake me up by throwing something at me and running away to avoid my wrath. She made me breakfast every morning, and coerced me to eat it before sending me stumbling out the door. Feeling crappy, my stomach turning, yet full of hearty farm breakfast goodness, I would wander down to catch the school bus just after 7:00 AM. In the winter in Canada, this really sucked and it was really cold. Our driveway was really long. I really hated school.
Too bad Mom couldn’t have given me Tom Norton’s magical elixer, an extra large double double. Sure, maybe it would have stunted my growth. But just think of all the changes my improved attitude would have made on my life.
I would have been a little more awake and happier. I probably would have made more friends if I was happy. I would have been able to concentrate a little harder on schoolwork. I would have had to go to the bathroom a lot more!
Yep, there’s no doubt about it. Add up all these changes and what do you discover? With the addition of a big ole coffee in the morning as a child, I would now be the Prime Minister of Canada, or at least the Cabinet Minister in charge of Conspiracies. That’s how big of a change in my life you would have seen. Instead, I am still at the bottom, scraping along like one of those bottom feeding fish in an aquarium, eating leftovers that sink from the top.
I knew that I could blame all of this on someone if I thought about it long enough.
So, on the week-end Tim and I traveled to the Sovereign Nation of Sebekia for a season ender camp out. The snow will be flying pretty soon, so we decided it was time for one last big blowout. Curiously though, it ended up being a very sedated affair. The children, usually quite boisterous, were all just sitting around quietly staring at the campfire. The dogs, despite being let out, hardly barked and didn’t roam very far. Only a minimal amount of Blue Beaver Beer was consumed by the adults (a mere six-pack each). Only a handful of pyrotechnics were set off. Even the Sebekia Royal Family all retired early in the evening. It was almost as though the frost had already set in on our spirits.
I suppose the physical chill in the air might have had something to do with it. However, maybe we were all feeling the change in the air that signaled the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Maybe the leaves of our spirits were changing colours and falling off the branches of our bodies.
Of course it could also be that we’re all feeling stressed out because it’s time to start planning our Halloween costumes. I don’t think I can get away with not dressing up and telling people that I’m supposed to be a homicidal maniac, "they look just like you or me" for a third year in a row.
Let’s face it stalking is a serious matter and no one with good taste would make light of it. Fortunately, while I do taste good I have rarely been accused of having good taste. For the record I’m not really stalking anyone. I mean who has time for that sort of thing. Doing a little Facebook stalking, on the other hand, is just good clean fun. I have been "keeping an eye on" one of my Facebook friends, Leah, for a couple of months now. I check her profile three or four times a day. I like to know right away when she updates her status. I enjoy looking through all of the 62 photos she has posted and all the photos that her friends "tag" her in. Leah was just on vacation, although her profile doesn’t seem to say where (this is one occasion when a little "leg work" might have paid dividends) but she’s back now. One time I joked about how I had some videos of her posted on the internet and then she joked about getting a restraining order, it was so funny. Good thing I didn’t give her the real site address or else that order might have been real too. But I’d better go, I think she’s on-line right now, so I should see what she’s up to.
In the meantime, check out these two videos I found. Kevin Tor does a hilarious version of Hey There Delilah that’s about stalking in general. Then there’s Penn Masala’s very funny video about being a Facebook stalker. Enjoy.
Just a few days ago I mentioned Josh Rimer’s new contest. If you haven’t already done so you should go and check out this video that details it. WAIT! Don’t go just yet. I meant go after you read this post. Anywho, part of the contest was to post a video reply to Josh’s video. So that is exactly what I did.
As soon as I got the idea to make my own video, my imagination went wild. I would get the backing of both a major movie studio, like Lion’s Gate, and a big time producer, maybe Jerry Bruckheimer. I would have a huge ensemble cast of the biggest names in Hollywood. I would definitely need a special effects budget larger than any other major motion picture, and it would certainly have to be done by ILM. I figured I could hammer out a script in about 4 weeks. Pre-production including casting should only take about a year. Principal photography (as we in the industry refer to the filming) would be done within 2.5 years maximum. Then all of the post-production and FX work would only take another 18 months. We would be ready to open nation wide by Christmas of 2012. In my mind it is an absolutely glorious blockbuster that will not only shatter box office records, but set a whole new precedent for how these kinds of videos are made.
Then I sobered up and reality crashed down on me. The cut-off for Josh’s contest is Sept. 1. There is just no way my true vision could be realized in that time frame. So I scaled it down just a tad bit. The result (still brilliant if you ask me) can be seen right here. Just click on this link and you will see my masterpiece.
Well what are you standing around for? Go watch this right now!
I got to thinking about what Tim wrote the other day in regards to his time management problems. I also have a lot of trouble managing my time. My problem, though, is the opposite of Tim’s. I have too much spare time. In any given day I have two or maybe three things that I need to do. The thing is with all that spare time all I do is play Tetris on-line all day, and of course drink Blue Beaver Beer. Even though I have next to nothing to do, I accomplish nothing at all. So all my comics don’t get filed for two months, my computer doesn’t get it’s regular maintenance, I don’t read enough and even my animal husbandry duties end up getting put off. I think what I need is some sort of an agent. He could set up appointments and schedule tasks and then keep badgering me until I get them done. He could also do things like answer my phone and tell the solicitors where to go and how to get there, he could convince my roommate to wash the dishes once in a while, and maybe he could even give me ideas on what to write for this blog. The more I think about it the more I become convinced that’s the way to go. But on the other hand, hiring an agent would probably be kind of expensive. Even if he worked for Blue Beaver Beer, that’s still a lot of extra beer I’d have to buy. So maybe what I should do is get an intern. Someone who’s in college, who doesn’t need to be paid and is doing the job for work experience and school credit. In return, I would have the opportunity to shape the mind of a young person. Unfortunately, by the time they get to college their minds are already fairly well shaped. Obviously I need to get on a little younger. Maybe around ten years old. They’re old enough to use a phone and in this day and age they’re probably better on the computer than I am, plus they’re young enough that I wouldn’t have to share any of my beer with them. I think that’s what I should do, hire a ten year old to be my agent. That way I could spend more time with the weasel; doesn’t he look forlorn?
I have created a time deficit for myself.
I know, join the crowd. Everyone in North America and many other places fill their lives with too much activity. Well, just because everyone else is doing it….
Time for me to reclaim some time! It won’t be easy, but you have to start somewhere. I need a little more leisure time to sit around, relax, drink beer, etc. The first thing I need to do is eliminate this crazy notion that I can do everything. Landscaping in the yard? No problem, I can do that cheaper than hiring someone. New siding on the house? Great, I can learn how to do that. Oilchange on the car? You bet I know how to do that. I can do all these things, but so could someone else, for me. It might cost a little more or not be ‘how I like it’, but I wont have to do it. Some other sucker could slave away at it for me.
Now, why should web design be any different? I have been worrying away at Wordpress problems for a couple weeks now. Net result is, I am pissed off, my results are crappy and I think I might have to start over from scratch. I need to give my head a shake and hire this baby out to someone who can fix it up right. Sure, eventually I can do it myself for less. But is it really cheaper?
So far I have already wasted all of my spare time for the last couple of weeks to learn how to take baby CSS coding steps. And it didn’t make me happy. So I took all my spare time to be unhappy. Sounds great! Why don’t I do that for a few months, and then I’ll be a passable Wordpress theme fixer upper. And I will be miserable.
I think instead that I should pay someone to be miserable for me. I have lots of fiddly little computer jobs lying around that I enjoy doing. There are all these unedited video files I have ready to start into. One of them has been yelling, “Tim, get over here. Please, PUHLEASE, PLEASE work on me! I need to be complete!"
And then there’s the dog. I haven’t been spending enough time with her, and look at her face. She will die of loneliness and boredom unless I get my act together here.
