Category: life

Topics concerning that thing known as ‘real life’ and not virtual worlds.

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Sabotage

For me, the morning routine on the cube farm begins with a trip to the coffee vending machine. This evil monstrosity has been our source of caffeine since that fateful day in July when workmen carted away our beloved coffee urns. Since then, coffee has been acrid and unmistakably mechanical in nature. It’s hard to describe the subtle difference between a cup of freshly-ground coffee-maker coffee and machine-pressed liquid. They are similar, I suppose, but there’s a certain roundness of flavour that the machine fails to capture, and a delicate hint of machine parts seems to linger, unless that’s just my imagination.

There are two flavour selections on the machine’s panel: French and Hawaiian. Despite my expectation of either croissant or ham-and-pineapple, respectively, they taste identically bitter to me — like Safeway brand, but with a hint of WD-40.

When I noticed that both hoppers were empty in the machine, a subversive notion overwhelmed me. I opened the machine and very deliberately filled the French hopper with Hawaiian and the Hawaiian hopper with French. If nobody notices, then I believe my point will have been made.

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Cackling with glee

Warning: techy stuff ahead. Non-geeks may get glazed look and fall asleep.

For months now, bandwidth thieves have been “borrowing” images from my site for use on their own site or bulletin boards. Today I decided to do something about it. I installed an .htaccess file in my images directory.

As you may know, you can use an .htaccess file to block people from using images that are hosted on your server. You can also use it to replace images with another image of your choice. Some people have suggested using a naughty image for this, so that the thief’s site would then become littered with nekkid people. But I’m not that mean. Also, my hosting service provider wisely prohibits pornographic images on this server.

Instead, I made a simple animated GIF that alternates between solid yellow and solid magenta. Anyone stealing my images will now have a site full of irritating flashing squares. Hmm. Maybe I should reduce the rate of the flashing — I don’t want to induce seizures.

Here’s a sample from the Google cache, just to give you a taste.

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The state of my livingroom

In a startling revelation, I suddenly realized that the most comfortable item of furniture in my livingroom is my exercise bike. I now have the desperate urge to throw my IKEA futon frame out my window and burn it in the street. You have a lot to answer for, Ingemar.

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Stimulating storylines

As I walked from the parkade this morning, past the woman kissing the rock, past the McDonald’s (alright, alright… through the McDonald’s), and down the street to the office, I wondered if last night’s episode of Enterprise was a complete waste of an hour of my life. The storylines on this series started so well, with a mysterious person from the future plotting to unravel the fabric of time. As the series progressed, plots became a little thin.

What happened to the thought-provoking themes that were the hallmark of Star Trek? What happened to the edge-of-your seat suspense like when Picard became a borg? Now it all seems so completey… lame. Like the episode where Trip gets pregnant and grows a nipple on his wrist. Now there’s some thought-provoking drama. [heaves exasperated sigh]

Last night’s Enterprise plot: T’Pol, the va-va-va-Vulcan, enters the Ponn Farr during a decontamination routine. What this means, for those who wisely avoid the show, is that a jelly-smeared, half-naked, sexy Vulcan with implants (no, not her ears), becomes a sweaty, crazed sex-fiend who tries to mate with anything on two legs.

Well, on reflection, maybe it wasn’t a complete waste of an hour.

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Please Use Caution! Extreme Frowning Area!

Ouch. My wrist and finger joints hurt. I have blisters forming on my fingers where I hold my pencil. My neck hurts from hunching over my desk. My eyes have gone all wonky from staring at these printouts.

After ten hours of marking up hardcopy (with one 15-minute break) yesterday, I began to tire. Today is day three of these edits. I’m beginning to lose my patience. If you work for this company, allow me to offer a word or two of advice:

  • Do not ask me to start making last-minute additions to the manual.
  • Do not ask me to create two dozen new illustrations by tomorrow.
  • Do not ask me to adjust the width of the template (and all styles) by a quarter inch.
  • Do not ask me to create three dozen new screen captures in XP rather than 2K.
  • Do not ask me to write an entirely new booklet on how to find the other manuals.
  • Do not look at a three-month-old early draft of the help then enter a bug saying that it’s out of date.

If you attempt any of these, you may receive the frowning of a lifetime. Be warned. My frowns can leave lasting emotional scars.