Category: Uncategorized

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Maybe We Should Just Bow

I see something in your future. Does your relative have a vowel in their last name?
Friends,

Assorted live versions of influenza virii still inhabit the “spray” emitted from the pie holes of passers-by here at work, so at the moment of this writing, I’m hiding in my office. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am about this, so I’ll start somewhere around the middle: since my asthma diagnosis prevented me from enjoying the inhaled version of the swine flu vaccine, I get to wait for the injectable version to arrive in a week or two. We have also not received the vaccine against the seasonal flu, putting me in a position uglier than an inside-out monkey**.

I’ve always said that the I.T. tomfoolery I undertake daily is 90% customer relations, with only a tiny sliver of my time performing actual technical work, which is true enough. The customer service part is getting harder and harder though, as I spend more of my time asking people not to breathe on me. Or touch me. Or inquire about the last time a sanitizer was let loose upon their desk, keyboard, and the armrests on their chair.

If you need any evidence of how poor a patient I can be, just look back to last weekend. I had injured my back last week and spent the entire weekend laying down on the couch complaining to the puppy dog about how much my back hurt. I also complained to my imaginary friends on Facebook, callers on the phone and the checker at the market. As unsufferability goes, I may have won a prize as the unsufferablist with what seems now as a mild sprain. Should I contract the flu – THE FLU! – I will surely turn into a sniveling, hacking monster. An incapacitated baby-man who will be useless, save for the temptation of the puppy dog to forcibly remove my face for lack of kibble in her bowl at regular intervals.

So I thank you all in advance, or at least I should, for not getting your stuff on me. Also, I appreciate that you’ve received your swine flu vaccination and are doing your part to protect me. Your generosity and sacrifice has not gone unnoticed. Just please keep the mask on for a couple more days, would you?

– bob

** Apologies to Jeremy Clarkson who is not even a right-side-out monkey, but sure can turn a phrase.

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It’s Related!

I'm terrified, frankly.
Friends,

I know that the story about the future conspiring to break the Large Hadron Collider so that we don’t, you know, DESTROY THE UNIVERSE has been floating around. People have mostly dismissed it as either geekery or fantasy. I’ve asked Doctor Morgan to comment on Facebook, but he’s been eerily silent on the subject. Maybe he’s getting paid off with future Euros to keep his mouth shut, but that’s just a rumor.

The future, ladies and gentlemen; it’s not to be trifled with.

Your pal,

bob

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Esteemed, Beloved

Friends,

Yesterday, my lovely sister gave birth to a 9 lb, 14 oz. baby girl named Esmé. No pictures yet, but here’s a sketch showing what we think she looks like…

artist’s interpretation

As you know, Esmé can be used as the shortened version of Esmeralda…

…but I don’t think that’s the case here.

Speaking of Alice Ghostley, I don’t think our little Esmé has anything to do with this person either…

…or even the Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment.

Maybe I’m overthinking this…

Your pal,

(proud new) uncle bob

P.S. This post is our 1,600th. Thanks for hanging in there!

UPDATE: We have an updated post with cute baby pictures. Hooray!

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The World Of Yesterday’s Tomorrow, Today!

Um, it's like a Corvette, except the Olds dealers were sending letters...
Friends,

I spent almost an hour last night with a pollster asking me what I thought of the major car manufacturers doing business in the United States (but no questions about tesla? – ed They didn’t even ask about Fiat. Hell, they didn’t even know that Chrysler owned GEM.). Do I trust the big Detroit 1.5 that we Americans currently own? Not so much. Are they making strides to care for their workers? Aw geez, not really. Technological leaders? They might want to lead their own selves to financial stability first, so no. The big question…

“Are you likely to consider a Buick for your next car purchase?”

Laughter.

– bob

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I Got Yer Diplomacy!

Comrade Chairman, I'll go down to Walgreen's for Odor Eaters. It's no trouble at all...
Friends,

On this day in 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stuck a blow for striking blows and disrupted a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly by striking his desk with his shoe. Prompting this wanton display of percussive footwear was the delegate from the Philippines, who dared accuse the Soviets of hypocrisy. This single event marked the end of the Comprehensive Shoe Banging Ban of 1958 as well as the beginning of the great Race To Make A Lot Of Noise. That campaign seems to have ended with a whimper with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the United States turning its attention to the destruction of the moon.

Shhh,

– bob

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American Business Is Eating Itself: Exhibits 1 & 2

Middle management is terrorizing the city! What will we do!
Friends,

Today I arrived at work and found that the niggling negligible nabobs of network negativity had decided that the company’s web filters needed to block bobtherieau.com as a “Personal or Social Networking” site. Under this logic, isn’t every site personal? Doesn’t somebody own or operate everything? Isn’t whitehouse.gov a personal site? You know, if you think about it. It’s certainly become a social networking site, hasn’t it? But I digress.

I have theories, of course, about why this stifling of admittedly stale content has occurred. Either my cohorts in the IT Department thought it would be a laugh. Maybe they’re trying to be “fair” and block everybody’s personal site equally. As far as I know, that number equals zero, plus one. The final exciting supposition is that I’ve finally been noticed by the pinhead websurfers at Websense, Inc. LLC. WTF. F-U. Maybe I really am somebody! (to be blocked. -ed Yeah, that.) As always, crackpot theories are welcome in the comments.

Welcome to Verizon Wireless. Can I help you?In other brain-dead idiocy news, I spent some quality time at a Verizon Wireless store to get a phone fixed today. Monica immediately threw open the battery cover and condemned the phone as wet, out of warranty, and not replaceable. Oh, unless I’d like to pay $300 for a similar phone (not a replacement, which I found a curious distinction) or enter into a new two-year contract on behalf of the company for a free-ish new phone. It was at this point where I mentioned that she might as well be speaking Mandarin while I could only understand Cantonese. She’s surely writing about this exchange on her Myspace page right now, mentioning that I’m the biggest jackass in the history of her limited contact with humans.

Her third option was to bring an old Verizon phone in and have the service transferred for free. This, being cheaper than $300 by about $300, I bit and rushed back to the office to retrieve some old clunker.

On my return, one of the store managers took my case. He cloned the phone giving trouble, then tried “one more thing,” and fixed it. For free. That’s it. Ms. Wage Slave’s answers involved money for Verizon. The manager spent his time with customer service. It seems to me that if people aren’t persistent, they’re gonna end up with a much lighter wallet when the walk out of that place. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest some training for all of their staff.

Yeah, it’s nutso.

– bob

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Earthquakes Are Real, And Very Freaky

Good heavens, man. They're covered in beachballs!
Friends,

This is becoming tragically absurd. Now a 7.0 magnitude earthquake has hit Indonesia about 65 miles outside of Badung. As you might expect, the Indonesian government is on the case…

“Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited Cianjur, and vowed to free up nearly $500,000 (5 billion rupiahs) for emergency response efforts, according to the state-run Antara news agency.”

That should just about cover it.

– bob

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Old Things

Technology killed the radio star...
Friends,

Yes, the Jeep Grand Livingroom is kaput at the moment, but that’s not the only piece of high technology that had surrendered over the last month. My old 4th generation iPod got cooked in the glovebox of the tiny racecar. When a hard drive says “whirr-click-whirr-click-whirr-click” you know it’s a goner. After my failed attempts at repairs on the Jeep, I broke in to the iPod, which should have been a terrible idea, but I threw a new hard drive and battery in the thing and it actually works now.

By the way, be really careful with the headphone connector. Time taken ruining the tiny wires on the motherboard while straightening them will ruin your day.

– bob

P.S. Why not get another iPod instead of shell out 2/3 of that price for parts? Easy. The old one is the last iPod model that syncs over Firewire and it works with my old notebook.

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Breakdown Season – UPDATED! AGAIN!

Unloved.
Friends,

I’m anticipating a pretty decent snow season this year, so I headed down to the Festival of Dirt to obtained new, non-bald tires. Yesterday, Costco’s tire center gave me the business suggesting a two hour wait after work. I called shenanigans on that idea on the puppy dog’s behalf. She expects her cheap cuts of critter in sauce over kibble at a specific time—well before that job would be done.

Naturally, I took two hours off of work to be first in line at the tire center today. You would assume this because they made me mad yesterday and I’m nothing if not petty.

Costco sent out a coupon book that offers $70 off a set of four, but good gravy are they expensive. I bought the tires, bought some pizzas for the coworkers, and got out. Add a tank of gas to that. Where are we? Six hundred or so?

Then, on the drive home, the engine in the Jeep dies at speed. Dead. Power steering, gone. Power brakes, gone. I coasted into the Mountain Center Post Office parking lot and managed to stop (not assured, btw) before hitting the life-sized fiberglass cow. So I whistled the alert to the passing tow truck, he stopped to ask about the problem, then soon returned with a flatbed.

So there she sits. The once mighty Jeep Grand Livingroom, now just pile of useless sheetmetal, with a new set of tires and a broken wheel stud (thanks Costco!), parked in the middle of my driveway.

I have a thought. Maybe the check engine light is burnt out…

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: Back about fifteen years ago, you could pull codes from engine management computers by flicking the ignition switch back and forth a couple times. OBD-I, everybody. It’s kinda neat to see what the computer thinks is wrong (“too much speed!”) and armed with that information (“engine too fast! yikes!”), I concluded that the problem lie in the crankshaft position sensor.

Aftermarket, I do detest thee...
Now that Fiat doesn’t necessarily care too much about the old cars Chrysler used to make (“too old!”), the aftermarket has caught up and has deigned to reconstruct the vital life-giving sensors to keep old Jeeps alive. Witness this very fragile crankshaft position sensor. One has failed before on the thing, so there’s some history. This tiny tube with the three-wire pigtail is almost a hundred dollars. What’s our tally now?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oy. That thing is really hard to replace. It’s in one of the toughest places to deal with. The sensor is under the firewall cutout for the bellhousing. My forearms are torn up but the sensor has not been replaced yet. Cripes. Maybe I should take Monday off to get the thing done.

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When The Moon Was Made Of Cheese

Friends,

It was on this day ten years ago when a massive explosion in the nuclear waste dump on the moon caused it to break away from orbit and hurtle out into space. Sadly, the brave crew on Moonbase Alpha were never to be heard from again…

Happy birthday Barbara Bain. You don't look a day over 77.
When the initial shock over this cataclysmic event subsided and the damaging effects on Earth’s tidal currents fully realized, the government contacted the aliens to construct an artificial moon and sent it into orbit. I never agreed with the policy undertaken by the United Nations withhold the news of this project from the stupider people to avoid spreading panic, but that’s all water under the bridge now, I guess.

Your pal,

bob

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Jaunty Dumptruck O’ News – Wellness Edition

Is low bridge!
Friends,

In listening to the President’s speech on healthcare last night and reaction this morning, I’ve assembled the Jaunty editorial board and I think we can add important perspective to the debate. It’s this—much like the internet is not a truck, health insurance is not like car insurance.

While the President was saying this…

“And that’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”

I couldn’t help thinking that most states require you to carry auto insurance because there was a very real possibility that your expensive possession was going to be smashed some day by somebody else’s uninsured expensive possession. Your premiums would rise and the offender would skate. The analogy falls down right there unless somebody would like to make the case that health care reform is tantamount to automobile no-fault insurance policies, which I don’t think you can very easily.

A woman interviewed on NPR regarding her opinion of the speech didn’t care for elimination of pre-existing conditions for consideration for health coverage (where do they get these people? -ed My guess is improv night at the dinner theatre.). She likened this to “…while uninsured, driving your car into a tree, then calling the insurance company for a quote.” This is wrongheaded unless people purposely choose to have a pre-existing condition. Which would imply that they’re crazy.

Treatment for which I presume would be covered.

Your pal,

– bob

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Two Sentences From A Book! – Greaser Edition

The Little Jaunty Players
– Proudly Present –
– The Totally Boss Feature –
– That’s Blowin’ Out The Carbon –
– Slammin’ The Door Shut –
– And Layin’ Down Smokey Burnouts –
– Right In Front Of Your Mom’s House –

It’s Two Sentences From A Book!

“In the interests of fostering good fellowship, engaging in a common interest, exchanging ideas and information, and working as a group toward a common goal, hot rodders can form their own hot rod club. All it takes is a few hot rodders to spark the move and get the ball rolling.”

Young punks.