The OH face - seen @ Rich's San Diego 1-ish this morning

So I was out dancing early this morning at Rich's in San Diego. The guys in the club were one thing but the clip they kept putting on the projection screen over the dancefloor was SO much better. This guy was - well, you can see him for yourself in this picture.

The video was nothing but a tight closeup of the guy's face and the tops of his shoulders as he was... pleasuring himself. The run time of the video was about 15 minutes and he gets close a couple of times as seen in the picture.

the vaunted Q phone and its reputation for low battery life

So this afternoon I get an email from a friend in Florida apologizing to several people that her Q phone went nuts and possibly made a bunch of calls before going totally dead.

I know its like her 4th Q phone, almost everyone I know who has one needs to take the charger with them and be aware of where the outlets are in the places they frequent during the day.

The Q is really the perfect landline replacement in that regard because its tethered all the time. You get the portability of the cellular but the landline experience of a wire.

Anyway I jokingly emailed her back saying I could hear the heavy breathing of the energizer bunny as it coughed its last gasp.

My cellphone lit up with a number I'd not seen before in that same area code where she lives. "Did you really get a heavy breathing call?"

"No, it was a joke about your shitty Q phone."

"Oh I was panicking when I saw that - because I put the Q in my bra when I went for a 3 mile bike ride and you very easily could have heard that."

Sweat killed it evidently...

She went on "A few minutes ago it was like the aliens, they took it over and they made a bunch of calls."

I pointed out that "they" could have been what the phone was in between :)

Press 1 to start sucking and Plants That Bitch

I am at Astricon 2007 and am in a forum of nifty things that can be done with Asterisk.

It has been integrated with Roomba (a geeky vacuum cleaner robot) - i.e. Press 1 to Start sucking.

Also integrated have been moisture sensors in plants - i.e. plants that bitch. When the sensor hits a particular value Asterisk calls you and the plant bitches at you through a recorded voice.

Rocky Horror picture show DVD - IN THE CHECKOUT LINE with the candy - whats wrong with this picture?

YES! I admit it - I have a strong bias against people who fake-bake and dye their skin orange in the process. This is a visceral reaction to an executive who I offered advice in the course of a conversation and he came back with "That's not what I asked you." (even though I'd answered his question in the same breath)

I get a lot of shit from people every time I tell them I live in Scottsdale - and damn it, its partially because of these orange people who get out of Scottsdale and piss and whine and generally make an indelible impression on the rest of the world.

So this is the last post for awhile on that topic, I'll slap the sticker on my car and fuckin' get over it and stop boring everyone with my orange-people-profiling stories.

I happened to be in Safeway in FAR north Scottsdale - like Pima and Thompson Ranch, near there. Safeway knows their customers. Depending on the demographic of the zip code the store is in, the mix of items at the checkout counter will be a little different. So I'm in a very very exclusive area and it was early in the morning for this shopping center - about 10:05 am. I ask the gardener in English where I can get a cup of coffee (partially because I wanted coffee and I am too polite to tell strangers I need to go take a shit)

Oh, I just did.

The gardener didn't understand me. No worries, I switch to Spanish and he tells me that hidden behind the fake storefront made up to look vaguely like a southwesternish cast of NYC or Chicago was a safeway store around the corner. Obviously I am taking some artistic license with the translation: deal with it.

So I go in and get my Odwalla Chocolate Protein drink, diet coke and some gum. Yeah, since returning from Uruguay I've gone totally native and I don't put anything into my body that hasn't been processed. My body is a temple - a temple much like a shopping mall with a planned interior and fiberglass storefronts and glitzy signage. Yeah thats it. So yeah, I'm not exactly buying kasha and milk.

In the rack of the checkout line is a copy of the fucking Rocky Horror Picture Show movie along with some other equally deep films. My comment to the cashier was, "All I need is that movie, some bronzing cream and some Fiji water and I'll have gone native."

She got the joke and laughed like hell.

And now I'm done for awhile with my tirades against unnatural chemical skin colors. It's been played out.

taking a stand against rude orange people

In my last job we had an insufferable arrogant orange person to contend with and it looks like I've got another one. I really think the orange dye soaks into their skin and makes 'em unstable. We're in Arizona... why in the fuck can they not just sit their ass out in the bloody buggery sun and then moisturize afterwards?!

This is going on my car as soon as I get it.

A person dear to me is going to court tomorrow for a domestic violence restraining order.

I'm sort of worried about it, not so much about the outcome but because of the stress it will put her through. I wrote this as a creative writing exercise to vent my own stress. Hope you like it.


If Martha Stewart ever wrote (which she wouldn't) advice for abused spouses appearing in court the show might go something like this,

"Good morning everyone. Today we're going to talk about skin care for the abused spouse on her court date. This is Jason, my makeup guy. See that shiner he's got on his left eye? Well that's a real one. He got that shiner from the bottle of Fiji water I threw at him when he neglected to have the correct Clinique product in stock for me. But no matter, Jason has learned his lesson and he gets be on my show."

Jason nods, looking scared of Ms. Stewart.

"Now its no secret that I'm a veteran of court proceedings but it was for something a little different. For my case we needed a media consultant, but for this type of case we need some ordinary household things. We start with some run of the mill supermarket charcoal. Now you smokers out there, beware of the match light variety - and it might irritate your eyes anyway. But anyway lets take the charcoal out of this wonderful charcoal cozy that I had an indonesian woman knit for only 3 cents per day. You can get it at K-Mart of $19.99 and a percentage of your purchase price, (mumbles indistinctly) gets donated to cancer research."

"Anyway, we're going to take this charcoal briquette and, oh, Jason did you bring the mortar and pestle from last night's staff team building exercise?"

Jason squeaks and looks at Stewart in terror and hands her the tool.

"Ah, nevermind viewers we're just going to have to clean it out a bit." She runs her finger around the inside of the tool and it comes up coated with white powder, then runs it across her upper teeth. "I just love nummies, don't you?," as she looks earnestly into the camera. She taps out the mortar and pestle upside down and a quantity of white powder falls out onto the table onto a glossy square corner of a page from this month's Martha Stewart living. "Bear with me while I do this quick little origami project," as she expertly folds the squared magazine corner into a square. She looks offstage as if someone is motioning to her.

"Oh, it seems I have to adjust my lapel mike just a moment - isn't live TV fun?" As she adjusts the mic the bindle gets palmed inside her bra.

"Now Jason we're going to have you fixed up good as new. What's your cover story?"

"Uh, I fell down the stairs Ms. Stewart."

"Excellent lets keep it that way," she says brightly. The mic doesn't quite pick up her unintelligible mumbling in which the words "wire transfer" are vaguely audible.

"We're going to take this charcoal briquette and grind it up into a fine powder. Jason, would you do that for me?"

"Sure." He grinds it up.

Martha takes out a jar of petroleum jelly. She looks at it sort of hard then opens it, cautiously sniffing inside and then looking relieved. "OK, we have the right jar of petroleum jelly, good job Jason. Now hold still."

Jason looks at her with trepidation.

"Would you dump just a little bit of that charcoal powder into the blob of jelly in my hand, dear?" She mixes it together and moves her hand towards her staff member's other eye.

He flinches.

"Now don't move," she says with a hard edge to her voice.

She uses a q-tip to mark up his eye and blacken it and then grabs two silver pens out of her pocket. "Now these are a couple of other wonderful Clinique products, this is called the Quickliner for eyes. List price is $14.99 each at the local makeup counter. If we'd just had one of these in 'roast coffee' Jason wouldn't have gotten to volunteer for this demo for the folks at home. See this lovely navy blue and this violet? We're just going to add some bluish-purple accents to the dark charcoal around his eye for realism."

He flinches again as she adds the accents. He seems to flinch on the lower right side of his body as if he's been kicked in the shin but you can't see them behind the table so who knows....

"There, isn't that wonderful? Can we get a closeup?" The camera pans in and you can see the tears well up in Jason's eyes. "See how they look pretty much identical?"

"Now for the folks at home, this can work on any part of the body. You just have to have some petroleum jelly, some charcoal powder and a couple of these wonderful Clinique Quickliners - again, this one is in navy blue and this is violet. It's perfect for any court date although you should be careful not to get any of this on your outfit of course - later on in the show after the break we'll show how you might remove the stain!," she says brightly.

The camera makes a tight close-up of her face and she says "Now I know for our California viewers some things are hard to get. Charcoal is hard to find, colored toilet paper, things like that. I recommend that you shop at Wal-Mart because they're kind of forgetful about those pesky California environmental laws and ship those things into the state for sale anyway. Those of us in the know who just have to have accented toilet paper for our beach homes in Malibu always shop there! Now don't touch that dial! After the break, stain removal....."

The camera pans out as the audience applauds and the show fades away to a commercial for some kind of morning after pill...

the same 9 year old on beavers

After lunch and the conversation about the 9 year old with a friend with benefits - read the post to get up to speed, eh?

We were reminiscing about Web 2.0 - which I will now idenfity as IT Toolbox. The orange dude is their pompous CEO who's such a prince that when you offer him some bit of advice that is VERY related to a question he's asking you - his response will be a clipped "That's not what I asked you."

He'll also want his horsey-looking girlfriend's macbook looked at "at once" but then throw you under the bus when your boss asks him if the work had been requested during business hours. The specific request was verbatim "call her right away." However, when my boss asked him about the repair being done he changed his tune and said "Well of course it was to done outside business hours?" That tacky spray on tan must soak into your head and alter your memory or something....

But I digress... One of my blog posts was about our former admin assistant at the toolbox. She did an awesome job putting up with the pompous ass she worked for and outside of the office some called her Larry Beaver. (See also a recent post called "Busy Little Beavers" in a different context, that got brought up too in vague earshot of Madeline)

Madeline caught the word Beaver but didn't understand the connotation. She announced that this morning during the triathlon in Tempe town lake that she'd seen beavers in the water. Dara's fiancee started laughing first and said, "Yeah, they were all over the place."

I think I laughed for the next two to five minutes. It was great.

9 years old and has a friend with benefits

I was hanging with my friend Dara and her daughter Madeline today for lunch. Madeline is nine and she has some very interesting 9-year-old ideas about life. For example, puberty is a virus you should avoid catching at all costs because it will give you a fever. And she recently came home from time spent at her dad's house having followed a recommendation from her cello instructor to have a pad in between the instrument and her shirt.

The poor dear, her step-mom improvised with a maxi-pad. What's more she sent the poor child home with it stuck to her shirt! But I digress.

So Dara was trying to get a rise out of her daughter about a boys name written on a notebook with hearts around it. Dara wanted to know if he was Madeline's boyfriend.

Madeline vehemently denied having a boyfriend.

Those of you who know me know that I like to throw the occasional cinder block in the proverbial koi pond.

So I asked the Madeline this: if he wasn't a boyfriend, was he therefore a friend with benefits? I kept a poker face and watched Dara's reaction as she swallowed HARD to keep from bursting out laughing. I was awaiting the response. Madeline looked pensive and said "friend with benefits."

She clearly had no idea precisely what I meant.

Dara was maintaining good self control over either bursting out laughing or I don't know what, but her voice wavered a bit and said, "Well, Madeline, what kind of benefits do you get from (name)?"

And Madeline answered, "Oh, he carries my books, holds the door, stuff like that."

GREAT RELIEF crossed Dara's face and she put her head in her hands to giggle a second before moving on with lunch.

Guess I'll wait for the service pack...

I had occasion to try Microsoft Access 2007 today. There's a trial of it on my computer along with the licensed small business edition that doesn't include it. I was idly curious about what the upgrade price might be - not that I want to develop anything in Access but its a great way to do SQL queries without having to actually write them. Drag and drop, switch views and there it is.

So from within Access it took me to a Microsoft website that asked what country I was from. When I told it, it came back with a custom error message that essentially said "there has been an error please start over" - but the URL showed that I was seeing a 500 error handler page.

Oops. Guess I'll wait for the service pack.

Access 2007 and the "new" office user interface are not at all straightforward either, but it got the job done.

Must be godzilla

Full disclosure: I set my Sanrio Chococat alarm clock just before writing this. What can I say, I bought it in Vegas a couple years ago and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It faithfully rouses me every morning - but its not A-rousing like the pic in the link below.

http://blogpw.gamersweb.it/post/568762/Model-Trains-Fetish-Japanese-DVD.html

This is just weird shit. It's Japanese fetish porn about women who crush model train sets. The link is not safe for work unless you're employed in an adult bookstore or tattoo shop.

Pass it to that otaku in your office - you know, the evil little bearded gnome type who keeps the dolls in his cubicle. Maybe it'll give him a boner.

Thawte-less, or how to bring on a bureaucratic auto-da-fe

(Hint, the last part is Portuguese - think inquisition...)
I've had the pleasure (heavy sarcasm) of dealing with Thawte this week to get a digital certificate issued. Oh my god. It's like dealing with a 3rd-world government agency. They really should send out tchochkes like kneepads with their logo on 'em, it would be totally apropos of the experience.

Ok, its reasonable that they want to verify the government registry of whatever entity you claim to represent. Since the people I'm working with run their business like a hobby farm at times, this meant registering it entirely because it hadn't existed before we got a certificate. So we get the entry all registered with the state we're in...

Thawte wants to verify that we exist through DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE. Now those of you in North America who are in the know about telecome will know that this is a lousy database to query against. Countless telecom companies can post to it and who represents "directory assistance" really depends (literally) on the phone you're calling from. What information you get from "directory assistance" is whatever your telecom company bothered to post and whatever information from the last time the owner of your physical phone line last bought an update.

Ok so in lieu of directory assistance they want a notarized letter. This is where the kneepads are required.

Their "sample" text received with "guidelines" says

Dear Sirs:
I understand that Thawte USA received a request for [a Digital Certificate or a Developer Certificate] ('Product') from (Technical Contact) SPKI Sales requesting that Thawte USA issue the Product to (Company Name) [deleted].

I am the corporate contact listed in the request. I further understand that Thawte USA was unable to validate the Company's telephone number through a third party source (phone book data base or information).

As a result, Thawte USA was not able to confirm that Technical Contact is authorized to request the Product on behalf of Company using its regular verification procedures. This notarized letter serves to replace Thawte's standard verification procedure and confirm and warrant that Technical Contact is authorized request the Product on behalf of Company. I am also representing that I have the authority to make the above representations on behalf of Company. In doing so, I understand that Thawte, USA will issue the Product to Company, which will ultimately enable secure communications between Company and its personnel and/or customers.

Sincerely,

Signature of Corporate Contact:______________________________

Full name:______________________________

Job Title:______________________________

NOTARIZATION

Notary's signature:______________________________

Notary's full name:______________________________


Notary's Seal


Now any normal human being would think that the (parenthetical things) in the first paragraph would be filled in by the writer.

Oh, no... Get it written, get it notarized along with a certification document and fax that off.

Naturally they lose it.

When they finally get one and look at it -

Sir, you altered the letter.

No, I filled in the blanks.

No, you must rewrite the letter exactly as emailed to you and have it re-signed and re-notarized.

(In the developing world this is where you send a small gift, but in the US it's not our culture - we argue. And we did...)

Finally they said,

You have to have the original representative personally cross out the extra language you added and initial it and fax it to us again.

So this takes the place of the small gift. The kneepads are well-scuffed at this point. It's finally judged acceptable (as an alternative to the NANPA directory assistance database I should bloody well think so. (Click the link you might learn something...)

Finally the certificate is issued and...

I forgot the fucking password that activates it.

Fortunately I was able to chat with Zola Mtyhobile (perhaps she's named after Helen Keller's dog?) and she was able to tell me that no one would be able to give me the link to get to the reissue process until 0600 GMT and that I had to call their sales office in South Africa to get it.

I found it in an email.

We come full circle - back to the same friendly folks that validate the documentation originally. I'll bring my kneepads and a cool drink because I think it's gonna be a long session tomorrow...

PayPal, the modern miracle that delivers mucus-free electronic money even after banker's hours

Dear Tim ******* (I ain't sharin' my last name)..

You have an Instant Payment of $3.73 USD from boogertugger...


Wonderful. This nose-picking fellow has sent me a payment for an eBay auction. I don't even have to worry about little sticky passengers on the bills because its all electronic.

Busy little beavers...

Once there was a time when kids would write "wash me" on the dirt of a car window. Today in Tempe, AZ that time has passed - at least for one cunning little runt (or was that running little... well you'll see)

This little tyke (we'll assume Jordan is a boy and thus she's not a dyke) wrote in the dirt:
Hi Jordan. I'm 14 & wet. I am on birth control. U can blow it in me.

The latter part is hard to read due to my quick photography in bright sunlight, I couldn't see what was on the camera screen real well.

They grow up so fast... Precocious little bastards.

Neutron Dan strikes again

Looks like in my former Web two dot oh paradise that I gave up to go work for myself (yaaayy) his Orangeness (spray-on tan, tacky...) has driven away yet another qualified individual who thought that his boss gave a shit about his opinions.

Nope!

a variation on "almost" products like o'douls

I love where the rasta dude peels out at the end of the video... But the feisty old broad with the oxygen tank is even better.