Category: Life

As some of you know, my beautiful wife has a bike now, a biking team of which she is a part, and an urge to ride 150 miles in two days to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I urge you to visit her personal MS 150 page and sponsor her for a couple of dollars.

The more you all sponsor her, the less we have to dip into beer money to meet her goal.

Thank you, that is all.

New technology offers bountiful rewards as Arkon TL 129 His ‘n Her Motion Activated Toilet Night Light will automatically glow red if the toilet seat is up or green if the toilet seat is down, preventing those middle-of-the-night accidents that have caused many marriages to fail or combust in a blaze of murder/suicide glory. However, before this product became available, our marriage was guaranteed safe from this hazard by obsessive compulsive behavior.

You see, we always put the toilet lid down in our bathroom to prevent a flush from spraying germs in festive patterns across the fixtures and paraphernalia in the bathroom and to establish a certain procedure for toilet usage. You always lift the lid and/or toilet seat and then replace it/them when you’re finished. By resetting the Toilet User Interface to a common starting point, we assure that it’s in a known state each time we want to use it.

Our marriage is safe, and we’re not out $30 plus shipping and handling.

Perhaps I should patent the business process of obsessive compulsive behaviors and then make a mint from people who cannot help doing them! Sounds like a better retirement strategy than how my 401k plans have done the last few quarters.

I know we had thought that in the movie of our lives, Lolita Davidovich would be perfect to play Heather, but after some persuasive arguments inadvertently provided by Kim du Toit, I heartily agree we should go with Angie Everhart.

By the way, Everhart, pistols or no pistols, rates A Good Deal Of That And Some Cheese Popcorn.

I, of course, could only be portrayed by Paul Bettany.

Who would be you?

Business 2.0 (who has helpfully decided sometime today to put much of its content behind a subscription, thanks, guys) has a brief (briefer now with everything but the lead hidden away, thanks, guys) piece on trick interview questions.

The article, and the lead (which you can yet see) describes them as “sadistic” and “puzzling” attempts to see how the interviewee fares with “sadistic” and “tricky” and potentially “unanswerable” questions, because obviously that’s the nature of the corporate environment.

As a service to my readers, I have put together this handy list of answers you can use in case the sadistic HR nutbar whips this out (the technical interview guys would never entertain such a fad, right?):

Question: Why are manhole covers round?

Because the manholes are round.

Question: Why are Coke cans tapered?

Before you answer this, challenge the interviewer to prove they are, in fact, tapered.

Bonus alternate answer: To use the mystical powers of the pyramid to preserve the soda’s tooth-dissolving power.

Question: How would you weigh the world’s fattest man without using a scale?

You cannot. The definition of weigh implies putting on a scale to determine the impact of gravity on an object.

Bonus alternate answer: “I wouldn’t.”

Question: How many tennis balls are in the air in New Zealand right now?

New Zealand is 15.5 hours ahead of the United States. Odds are, none right now unless they’ve started middle-of-the-night tennis leagues.

Bonus alternate answer: 1,472 American tennis balls (2,447.62 New Zealand tennis balls). Answer right away, and let the interviewer prove differently.

These answers will prove to your interviewer that you’re decisive when it comes to selecting a plausible lie, which is only reinforcing the impression he or she has gotten from your resume and the interview this far.

As one of the finishing touches of preparing my home office, I am replacing the little scrips of paper and index cards with inspirational quotes upon them to their rightful positions around my desk. For lack of a better topic this afternoon, I shall publish the quotes here, so you can be inspired, too, perhaps even to “ride a century,” which contrary to what it sounds, is not sitting in the passenger seat of a Buick on a beer run.

“Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare current.” (Those who cross an ocean change their sky, but not their soul.)
Horace

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt (thanks to dropbears.com for the cut-and-paste opportunity

“Fortune knows
We scorn her most when most she offers blows
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Act III, Scene XI

Power is only Pain–
Stranded, thro’ Discipline
Emily Dickinson, “252“

“love to wyde y-blowe
Yelt bittre fruyt, though swete seed be sowe.” (Love too widely blown yields bitter fruit, though sweet seed was sown)
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (384-385)

“An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record”
Syliva Plath, “The Times Are Tidy”

My goodness, I feel inspired and motivated to get up out of this chair and go get another beer!

Business 2.0 lists some interesting industrialist and capitalist tours available.

The piece lists some cool factories that offer public tours, but don’t expect free samples like you get in brewery tours from companies like Boeing.

Researchers once again provide a handy rationalization for me: napping is good for you.

My crack feline team, particularly Dominique and Aurora, has often acted as an experiment group by sleeping upon my lap as I spend an hour in the afternoon reclined and, er, working on my astral projection abilities. Typically, I close my eyes and project myself an hour into the future, refreshed and ready for a night of chores or blogging.

Now that napping, too, has proven good for me, I am proud to add it to my daily regimen of healthy vices. Two cups of coffee, two drinks of alcohol, and a nap, and I will live forever.

In this column in Wired, DeLong admits his problem:

In the spring of 1994, I wiped the game Civilization off my office computer. I wiped it off my home PC. I wiped it off my laptop. I threw away the original disks on which it had come. It was clear to me that I had a choice: I could either have Civilization on my computers, or I could be a deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury. I could not do both. It wasn’t that my boss ordered me to – she herself played a mean game of computer solitaire. In this, I was the boss, and I had decided that with Civilization on DeLong’s hard disk, DeLong’s productivity would be unacceptably low.

I, too, have struggled against Civilization since my esteemed spouse convinced me to install it on my old 486. And then Civilization II. And now the accursed Civilization III.

There have been times when I have removed it so I could better discipline myself to spend more time writing than manipulating little civilizations into conquest or other policy. When I have had to rebuild my computers from software or hardware disaster, I have often delayed putting it back on, but the la belle game sans merci hath me in thrall (sorry, Johnny).

I think he says something else in the piece, but I only saw the name of the game before feeling the compulsion to start a game. The CD’s already in the drive, don’t you know?

Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper:

“The true definition of multi-tasking is to do several things half-assed, all at once.”

Compare and contrast our flood with the Rybarcyzk flood.

We’re keeping up with the neighbors, all right. Except Bob doesn’t have an Arkanoid or a Heavy Barrel, and he cannot do an Agent Gollum, so I remain King Geek of Casinoport, Missouri!

Wow, it’s been seven years since G.J. Meyer published his book Executive Blues: Down and Out In Corporate America and detailed how much it sucks to be laid off from a six figure salary and how he couldn’t find a job.

Now Fortune is reporting it’s still tough when you’re white-color unemployed. Especially if you’re white-collar and formerly of high title and high salary.

Once, when I was a young man in college, sitting in the lobby of one of the halls that house classes on the campus of Marquette University, peddling doughnuts to support a fledgling literary magazine, and undoubtedly trying to win the affection of one of the interchangeable English-major blondes, a security guard imitation cop stopped at the imitation doughnut shop and gave me a bit of advice for which my upbringing and general outlook had prepared me: always have more than one potential source of income. Actually, he probably said “Have more than one pot on the fire,” or some other cliche, but as a recovering English major, I hate to repeat it verbatim.

I can, however. summarize the lesson. The gentleman related his life story, or at least his C.V., while eating a doughnut. He hadn’t gone to college, but he’d joined the National Guard. Throughout his tumultous employment career, he’d had the one-weekend-a-month-two-weeks-in-summer pay as well as a variety of part-time positions in addition to whatever full-time job he held at the time. Although his life, to that point, comprised the period from the 1960s to the early 1990s, he’d seen enough ups and downs to know that the world didn’t owe him something since he was present.

Of course, he didn’t have the $40,000 parchment, so one could easily dismiss the ramblings of an overweight rentacop in a grey parka. But when a security guard talks about security, and not just in the physical sense, perhaps one should heed. As both Meyer and the heroes of the Fortune piece could attest, parchments and titles don’t offer true security in a turbulent, evolving world.

Personally, I have held innumerable positions in numerous fields, including printing, shipping/receiving, grocery stores, IT, and magazines. I have a handy mix of blue collar skills and mad money skills. Whatever the job market, I will find something, even if it means something less than what I have now. I have also dodged the bullet of getting an superdooper title. Many cash-strapped companies will give you an esteem-building title instead of giving you a raise. Becoming Vice-Mechanic of Doc-U-Matics would make it much more difficult to simply be a Doc-U-Matic somewhere else, and I have deked when appropriate.

So I doubt I’ll ever have time to write a book or talk to another writer about being out of work and suffering without my ludicrous paychecks coming twice a month. I’ll be too busy working.

(And as my esteemed spouse has indicated, she has some mad 733t skillz at transcription and biscuit making, so no matter how the economy turns, we’ll have a hovel to call home.)

The only gift I could think to give would be another long, long day fishing, maybe 13 years ago.

It was Father’s Day. Love them if you’ve got them. Tomorrow, too.

James Lileks, known to bloggers for his daily Internet column The Bleat, wrote a long piece in 1996 about his mother’s death from cancer. Go forth and read “October at Home“.

And if you want a shorter take on losing a parent to cancer, read my doggerel “But through fifth floor hospital panes….” in an old PDF edition of Prolog. It’s no One True Thing, but it got published.

My dear esteemed spouse asserts that Jewel rhymes with fool and drool. Of course, she’s referring to my NOE (near obsession experience) with the newly techno-confected songstress Jewel Kilcher.

However, I must point out (in a “I am superior, but I am not acting superior” tone of writing) that jewel has two syllables. It rhymes with crewel and, well, cruel, but not fool or drool, or for that matter, joule.

Of course (:: sniff!::), as a former practitioner of “free verse” poetry, you’re not as aware of these subtle distinctions as a writer of real poetry.

Thought for the day:

“Being a marionette is worse, because at least a puppet gets the warm personal contact of a hand up its, ah, bum.”

I AM THE KING GEEK!

Some geeks can do an impression of Agent Smith from The Matrix.

Some geeks can do an impression of Gollum from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

But I have perfected my impression of Agent Gollum. Ask me sometime, and I shall do it for you. You might be asked to provide a token Guinness Draught or two beforehand, and please do not ask me to do it in front of my esteemed spouse.

I am the king geek, and I will creep out any challenger for the title!

(P.S. It’s probably almost as good as the “Dying Tauntaun.”)