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More phone stuff... You've been warned.

It used to be that phones were pretty simple: you called someone and the phone either rang or you got a busy signal. If it rang, they either answered or they didn't, in the which case you could let it ring a hundred times if you wanted.

They were simpler times, but people wanted more.

First, people were stuck to where the phone was connected. Even a longer cord still meant you had to worry about it getting twisted or decapitating someone who was running through the house too quickly. The answer, of course, was to go cordless. With the early ones, you couldn't go very far, and the person on the other end could usually tell you were on a cordless phone, but it cut down on the beheadings. The cordless phones have gotten better, and there are cordless phones that let you walk a mile or better with a decent connection still. I'm all in favor of that, but why not just get:

A cell phone. The ultimate cordless. Go anywhere, and nertz to the base station part of it. Drive, eat, annoy people - these are just some of the things people can do while on a cell phone. They're a blessing and a curse, I think. A cell phone's the only thing I have, phone wise, but I do like the fact that I can shut it off occasionally.

Phones (both cell and landline) have tons of "features" these days:

• Call Waiting - the most hateful and deplorable invention ever conceived of by mankind. Jerry Seinfeld used to talk about losing the "phone face-off." You're on the phone with someone, they get a call on the other line, and when they get back, they tell you they "really need to take this" and you're done. That's it. How depressing to realize you're not the most important person in their life, even if you already knew it. Confirmation can be a terrible thing. I actually don't really mind if other people use call waiting. It's fine. I don't even mind losing the face-off, but I won't use call waiting. Especially not since there's
• Voicemail - Best. Invention. Ever. Answering machines were cool, but only worked if you weren't on the phone already. Now, if you're on the phone or you're not, voicemail picks up. Sweet! This is my favorite phone feature of the last 300 years, aside from the actual invention of the phone.
• Three-Way Calling - a cool idea, but potentially embarrassing, especially tied in with the call-waiting. Let's say you're a Mob boss and you're ordering a hit on a guy. Let's call him "Al." While you're on the phone with Jimmy "Fishface" Garbanza, Al calls on the other line. You switch over, talk to Al for a few seconds, then tell him you need to go and switch back over to Jimmy...only you don't. Instead, you accidentally initiate three-way calling and Al learns about your plans. Then he "flips," becomes a witness for the government, and brings down your whole organization. See? Bad idea.
• Text messaging - now we're getting into the realm of "cell phone only" features. This is a good one, too. Want to send someone a note but don't have the time for a conversation? Text them! "Hpy Brthdy 2 U" can be a worthy replacement for an actual birthday card in this Internet age, and (in my opinion) can be better. I mean, it shows you're thinking about them right at that minute. A card means "I knew your birthday was coming up, so I got this and sent it to you several days before your birthday."
• Camera phones - not really a phone feature, more a merging of two neat things. Now I have a camera with me wherever I have my phone with me, which is pretty much anywhere. Now I can take a picture of the truck with "I have magical kung fu powers" painted on it the minute I see it, rather than trying to describe it later to people.
• Games - having a portable game system (Game Boy, PSP, etc.) us great, but not necessarily the handiest thing to carry around. Having a simple game or two on your hone is quite possibly the handiest thing in the world. Standing in line? Play a few holes of golf. In the waiting room at the doctor's office? Bowl a little. There are even phones that are being marketed (though not very well) as gaming platforms that allow for multiplayer gaming between phones. Mortal Kombat in the parking lot after church probably isn't the best choice, but is at least an option now.
• Ring tones - I'm not sure why it's so fun to have a specific ringtone for a particular person, but it is. I really only have one special ringtone for one person, a sort of chirping sound. Everyone else gets "Calico Skies" by Paul McCartney.
• All sorts of other things - cell phones can almost replace a PDA these days (especially if you get the cell phone/PDA combo units), what with the scheduling, alarm, and contact info capabilities they have. They are wonderful and everyone should have one.

Two over-long posts about phones. Weird for a guy who only gets calls from like, five people. Huh.

Labels: Seinfeld

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My parents still have the same phone number at their house that I had growing up - at least, from age six on. That's when we moved to the town they still live in. We lived in two different houses in that town, and they still live in the house we moved into in 1979.

I remember as a kid being able to dial other people in the same town by just dialing a "3" and then the last four digits of their number. Everyone in town had a "563" number, and this was just the way things were back then. It was certainly a step up from having to dial the operator and say "Klondike 623" and wait to be connected (much less having to worry about the operator listening in on your phone calls).

Somewhere along the way "they" made a change and then we had to dial the whole "563" prefix before dialing an in-town number. What a pain. It really took some getting used to.

Then the area code changed. All of Wisconsin had the same area code, but now they have three or four different ones. We had hoped we'd get to keep "414" but it got changed. Still, though, we could just dial the prefix and the number for in-town calls. It was when we called people in other parts of the state that we had to wonder about the area code. For the time being, if someone gave you a phone number, you just had to remember the last four digits because the first three were all the same.

That changed, of course. For a while I lived in a town that had three different prefixes. Now I live in one that seems to have an infinite variety of prefixes. No longer can you just remember the last four or five digits. It's all or nothing now.

Add cell phones into that mix and it gets absolutely crazy. For a while, even the three major cell companies that provided service here had distinct prefixes, and you could tell which cell company a person was with based on their cell number. Now you can't even do that.

They say that we're going to run out of available phone numbers soon. There are only so many ways you can combine 10 digits using 0-9. I'd do the math to tell you, but I've forgotten the exact method of being able to figure that out. Phone numbers were specifically designed to be seven numbers long because researchers determined that the human brain could hold seven distinct values in short-term memory at any given time. Add any more to the total, and the brain has to start dropping things. (I remember hearing this somewhere, but I also do not have any bibliography to back it up, so don't blame me if you try to use it in a research paper. You should be reading encyclopedias for your research, not blogs!)

I used to be able to remember a person's number if I dialed it once. I'd just have it and could recall it when I needed to. Then I got a watch that could store phone numbers and I lost the ability to recall phone numbers from my mind. I don't remember if I got the watch because I could no longer remember numbers, or if I stopped being able to remember the numbers because I got the watch. They happened around the same time, so you can draw your own conclusions.

My first "memory watch" could hold 40 numbers. My next one (and the three exact same models of it I bought, one after another) could hold 150. Then I got a PDA which could hold as many as I could cram into it's memory. Then I got a better PDA from work and it could hold more. Then I got a different job and had to give that PDA back, so I just started using and address program on my computer, which could hold even more numbers. It turns out, I don't really know that many people, so I just keep the numbers I need in my cell phone's memory.

Of course, it's not just the person's cell phone number you need. If they've got a work number and a home number, you need that, too. Modern-day cell phones have that all worked out for you and let you put different icons by different types of phone numbers. Most of them also let you store the person's email address and whatever else you might happen to want to store in there.

But it's all electronic.

One good EMP blast from a nearby thermonuclear explosion and that info's all gone for good. Every so often, I like to actually type up and print out a page of the numbers in my phone, just in case.

I kind of wish everyone was assigned a phone number at birth that they carried with them all throughout their life. I'm sure there are those who'd think this was a major intrusion of privacy and yadda yadda yadda, but I'm here to say that those people are just jealous because no one ever calls them. 8 comments

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

-J. M. Barrie

(With a nod to HP.)

Labels: it's been said

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Have you ever had one of those days where you were miserable and everything went wrong and you knew it was all your own fault? 7 comments

It's not a full-sized stream, see?

Training is going...fine. I have been tired, and on two of our three breaks today, I put my head down on my desk for several minutes. Maybe it looked dumb or childish, but it helped me stay awake during the training, so I don't care. We're learning lots of stuff, and I hope I actually remember any of it later on.

I bought a replacement watch the other day - the exact same model of the watch I've worn for the last year and a half. The band on mine is breaking and due to give out any day now, and I can't get a replacement band for it because it's shaped funny. When I bought the replacement, the lady said, "Oh, we're not going to be seeling this one anymore once the stock is gone. They've discontinued the model." Great. So I'll need to find a new model of watch to wear in a year and a half. I'm already stressing about it. I've still been wearing my watch because the band isn't completely broken yet. I almost switched last night because the band is nearly done for, but I noticed that the second hand on the replacement wasn't working. I took it back to Wal-Mart tonight and got a replacement replacement, which I have now officially changed over to.

I was at Olive Garden before going to Wal-Mart, and I think I've decided something: wine bottles are cool-looking. Now, I don't drink alcohol at all, but there is something very, very pretty about unopened wine bottles. The reds and greens are just beautiful, and mixed with the right sorts of plants and vines, they make for neat decorations. Also, have you ever looked at the bottom of a wine bottle? It's got this deep indentation in the middle. I'm not sure why it's there, but I like to imagine it's for people to put their thumbs in while they are pouring the wine. Even if that's not what it's for, it is fun to put your thumb in the indentation.

Princeton (the cat) was here all last week. Dala was upset all week. Nutmeg was a little bothered, but no more than usual. Princeton seemed fine, though his owner said Princeton appears to be quite happy to be back home. This picture is actually from Princeton's visit over Christmas - they never got this cozy this time around:

Finding Neverland was $5 cheaper at Wal-Mart than at Best Buy today, but there were other new movies that were cheaper at Best Buy than at Wal-Mart. I don't get it even a little bit.

My hot chocolate today was too hot to drink, and that's the first time that's happened, like, ever.

Movie count for the year so far: 74.

It's late already and I need to go to bed. I hope you all are having a good week. 10 comments

All of the techs that work for our school corp are going to be in training this week. What this means:

• We have to be in the same room all week with people we usually only see once a week
• I get to sleep in a half hour later than usual
• We'll all be deaf by the end of the week because the room we'll be in will have at least servers running at a time and server fans are loud
• I get to wear jeans to work all week instead of just on Friday
• When I get back to my school a week from tomorrow, there will so much work piled up that I will go stark raving mad and collapse into a drool-emitting pile
• We just might learn a thing or two
• We might get donuts once or twice this week for breakfast
• Blog entries can't be done on my lunch break this week ::shifty::
• My office plant will be in better shape than it's ever been because someone else is watching it while I'm gone for the week
• I need to figure out some way to not doze off in "class," as everyone is expecting me to do so, and it would be very bad if it happened (Everyone's expecting it because it happened last year during a planning meeting. In my defense, everyone was taking a few minutes to work on a group project, and I wasn't assigned to any group, so I was just sitting there doing nothing. Except dozing. I got reprimanded later.)

So it should be interesting. I am curious what sorts of things we'll be learning, but I'm not really looking forward to a whole week of training. It'd be awesome if were going to learn ninja fighting techniques, but I'm guessing it's going to be more server- and network-related.

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I went to the post office today to mail a present to my brother to wrap up with the rest of the presents that the family is giving to Dad because his birthday's on Saturday.

(There will never be a greater opening line than that one right there.)

While I was waiting for the postal person to weigh the package and print the label and whatever else it is he needed to do, he apparently was driven to break the tension and the unbearable silence and was compelled to talk to me about something, anything.

He chose basketball.

I am male and it is March, and those were all the reasons he needed to start with this line: "Well, I heard Iowa's out of it already."

By the time it had registered with me what he was talking about and what, exactly, he had said, I had already said, "Oh, yeah?" which, of course, in male language means, "I had not heard that. I can't believe I missed a minute of the coverage of the college tournament. Please tell me more about it! And, please, don't tell anyone else that I didn't already know about Iowa!"

He picked up his cue and proceeded to make various comments about various teams that had played today, expressing surprise at some and glee at others. I responded with the requisite grunts of acknowledgment and surprise/grief, and even added a "Well, that's why they play the games, because you just never know!" in response to an apparent upset.

I got out of there without my cover being blown, and I resolved to do one of two things: either watch all the college ball I could for the next month or avoid anyone who looks like they might be into college ball even a little. Option #2 is looking mighty good right now.

I do not care for basketball. When I took stats and taped the games in high school, I did it largely as an excuse to travel with the team without having to do any actual work. All my friends were on the team, and I wanted to hang out with them. I remember enjoying basketball a little back then, but I'm sure that was mostly because I knew the guys who were playing. After my stint was over, so was any interest I had in the sport. Sure, I got to see Michael Jordan play a few years later, but that's bigger than the sport of basketball. I just don't care for the game. In fact, I can't even play a basketball videogame and enjoy it, and I've played (and enjoyed!) rugby and soccer videogames!

A cow-orker had me sign up in one of those bracket competitions they have around this time every year. Don't worry, there's no money involved - there's some kind of point system which determines a winner at the end of the tournament. I don't think the winner even gets anything, except maybe bragging rights. His wife has actually won it the last two years, and she likes basketball even less than I do (I'm guessing here).

I normally go through and pick my teams based on where they're from (any team from Wisonsin automatically gets picked), what the mascots are (Banana slugs? WAY better than any old Blue Devils!), or what their colors are (green and white beats yellow and orange any time). That strategy didn't serve me so well last year, and I came in dead last. So this year I used a high-risk system: I chose the lowest-seeded team in any given matchup. If a number 16 was playing a number one, I chose the sixteen. My Final Four this year is made up of all four sixteen seeds.

Note: that will never happen in a million years.

My idea was to get defeated early in the process so I wouldn't stress about after the first weekend. Plus, by using a ridiculous method, I gain some laugh-points with the other people playing. If, by some weird twist of mathematics I happen to edge someone else out (upsets earn more points in the figuring), well, that earns major laugh-points.

In the meantime, I'm working on my "I can't believe that happened!"s and my "They just wanted it more"s. The cats tell me I sound pretty convincing. 6 comments

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, today's the day the Hot Chocolate Counter gets zeroed out.

It's been 155 days since I bought my Barnes & Noble discount card, so that means I've bought a hot chocolate every 1.9 days, on average. If I keep this pace up (and it's likely), I'll buy 110.5 more hot chocolates before my year of discounts is up, for a total of 191. The discount card saves me 31 cents each time I buy a hot chocolate, so the total amount saved would be $59.21, enough for two discount cards and a little left over.

Of course, at this point I would be remiss in my duties if I did not point out how much I'm spending on hot chocolates in a year at the current rate.

Oh, man.

I just did the math, and I ought to be ashamed of myself.

$517.61

That's ... that's ridiculous. $2.71 every other day or so doesn't seem that bad, but $517.61 is crazy big.

Of course, it is impossible to put a price tag on the joy I receive from drinking the wonderful hot chocolate, but I'm guessing it would still be less than $517.61.

At this point, my low-level OCD-ness kicks in and I want to start adding up all the stuff I do: movies, eating out, and ... and ... well, that's about it. I think I'd be too depressed.

Ah, well. It has provided small amounts of amusement for you, yes? If so, it is money well-spent. 3 comments

I saw the coolest thing today. Ever heard of ASIMO? It stands for "Advanced Step In Innovative Mobility," but what it really is is a four-foot-tall humanoid robot that looks a little like an astronaut. Honda tours the country with it (I want to call it "him," but the handlers make specific efforts not to, so I'll try not to as well) and they made a stop at Purdue University. Man, it was sweet.

It is amazing the advances evident in this little guy. He can walk at speeds of up to 1 m.ph., turn while walking, recognize specific faces, kick a soccer ball, climb and descend stairs, grab things, wave, and all sorts of other stuff. They put on a half-hour show, and demonstrated all of these things. It was just so neat.

Of course, it can be a little creepy to think about robots getting more and more capable of doing things. Honda's goal with this is to eventually have ASIMO-like robots in homes helping people who need help - the elderly, the infirm, and so on. Even the height of ASIMO is because of that - his "eyes" are on-height with a person sitting in a chair or lying in a bed. It's just such a neat concept.

Not everyone at the show shared my optimism. Most movies show that robots tend more towards evil than good. The Terminator, as you might recall, was so evil that he came back through time to kill a person. Now there's dedication! Would that humans could focus on a task like that! Then there's the robots in I, Robot - even with the "Three Laws Safe," they got mean and nasty. And, as Tom said on Friday, "Even Johnny 5 had a laser!"

I'm not too worried about evil robots yet. Humans are more than evil enough for me right now. Robots still have a long way to go before approaching human levels of evilness.

Honda has said that by 2040, ASIMO-robots will be commonplace in homes. I think it'd be keen to have one, and I'd like to sign up now. I just hope that, by then, they'll be able to clean bathrooms, because, man, do I hate doing that. 6 comments

The bad part about these entries being timed and dated is that you can see just exactly how lazy I've been.

I'm mulling over a few topics, but if you'd like to suggest a specific topic in the comments section, I'll consider them as well.

In the meantime, join the crowd and order yourself a MadMup.com T-shirt or mug from the store. You'll find the link in the left-hand column. I didn't raise the prices on the Cafepress-suggested prices, so I don't receive a dime of any sales there. My main motivation for setting up a store is so I could order a T-shirt for myself. I figured I'd put it out here in case anyone else wanted to order one, too. So, there you go with that.

You might also notice the "Donate" button on the left there. If you've been dying to give me money but didn't know the best way to do it, now's your chance. Go nuts. I promise anyone who donates any amount of money (and leaves an email address) will get a hand-typed letter of thanks from me.

Princeton the cat is coming back to stay for a week or so starting tomorrow. Some of you might remember his earlier visit. Dala and Nutmeg have no inkling, of course, but it should be fun. I'm looking forward to the excitement.

I am also feeding two other cats for a week or so. Everybody I know is leaving town, so I get to be Cat Guy. They're not coming to stay here, though. They are beautiful and nice kitties, but they are quite shy, and five cats is too many in this small space.

Movie count so far for the year: 63.

Whenever I cut my fingernails, a few hours later I get this strange feeling in my third fingers on each hand. I don't know how to describe it, but it's like an ache or a throbbing or something. Those words don't really describe the feeling all that well. This has happened to me for years, and I hate it. There are only a few methods I've found to combat it. If I cut them right before bed, the feeling happens at some point in the night and I'm unaware of it. I tired the other method tonight, that of cutting my nails right before washing dishes. The dishwater softens them up and seems to make a difference...except for tonight. Grrr. They're really bugging me right now, and I want to chew my fingers off.

We had pictures taken of our improv group last night for possible publication in next Friday's local newspaper. Not everyone was in every picture, so we don't know who'll be published. It's kind of exciting, though, even if it is just our local paper.

I did not go to work today, as I was not feeling well. I slept a lot, and as a result, I'm going to have a hard time going to sleep tonight.

Argh! My fingers! Enough typing! 3 comments

Tonight, while cutting a roll at dinner, I cut my finger with the steak knife. 10 comments

It seems foolish to talk about a site re-design since

a) You're looking at it
b) If you weren't here before the change, you won't care

I still wanted to mention it, though, because the site finally looks like I've been wanting it to look for over a year now. The last change gave me the colors I wanted, this change gives me the layout. There are likely to be a few small changes yet, but this is basically it.

List of changes, for the curious:

1. Color scheme now reflects my current favorite color pair: green and grey.
2. Three-column layout lets me split things up better: left column for internal stuff, middle column for entries, right column for external links (mostly - the hot chocolate counter and webcam are there because they fit better there).
3. Webcam picture can be clicked for a larger version.
4. Email link is now separated from the other links. It's been bad and needs to be taught a lesson.
5. Text size is now smaller. I always hated that gargantuan type.
6. Text in middle column is justified which, strangely, gives it a more professional look.
7. Addition of a "Favorite Posts" section in the left column. These should not be construed as my most popular posts - they are simply my favorite posts of mine.
8. 23% fewer calories per post.

Things yet to come:

1. A MadMup store. Really. Mostly for fun, and because I want to buy a MadMup.com T-shirt myself.
2. A PayPal link. Because every blog needs to have an easy way for people to donate money, right?
3. A webcam archive page, mostly so you can see that the hairstyle never changes.

So there you go. Many thanks again go to Brian A. for all of his work on this. I presented my ideas for the design, he would design it and show it to me, and I would say, "That's good! I like that! Can we change this one thing?" He'd change it and we'd repeat the process. I think maybe he might have slapped me around if we'd been working on it in the same room instead of in Indiana and New Mexico. But he was patient and I love the design.

Now if only I would have more worthwhile content...

Labels: meta

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It was about the time that joerules and I did a combined guest strip for Theater Hopper that I got to thinking about doing a webcomic. It'd be more correct to say that I've bounced around the idea for a long time but lacked two things: a belief that I could have semi-regular humorous thoughts and the ability to draw.

It hit me in the midst of our collaboration that I could maybe coerce someone into drawing if I had ideas...and then I had an idea. I won't go into it (since I might eventually do it and I don't want you to steal my idea), but I described it to Joe and he liked the idea and expressed some interest. We talked about doing a short-run thing and seeing how it went, and that's where we left it. He was busy, I was still mulling ideas over.

That's what I do: I mull things. To death. Currently simmering in my brain are fully-fleshed-out ideas for: a children's book, a movie, a sitcom pilot, a novel, a (possibly money-making) website, and a webcomic. Total things put down on actual paper (or computer screen): about .5, all told. I've got the first page of the children's book written, and a one-page description (treatment?) of the movie written.

Fast forward a few months. I really enjoy Joe's art style. It's fun, professional, and just darn good. I sent him a message and asked him what he would charge to do a comic portrait of me. In response, he sent me the following picture:

Turns out he had done this a few months ago when we first talked about the idea I had. I was blown away by it, and it renewed my mulling.

What's your first thought when you see it? It fits my idea perfectly, but not in the most evident sense. That doesn't make much sense, I know, but it would if you knew! 13 comments

But I've realized that I need to work harder at the conversations and the one-on-one, because people don't generally exist in e-mail.

-Cynical Tyrant

Labels: it's been said

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Downtrodden people the world over will eventually rise up and rebel against their oppressors. It is in the nature of people to be free. The chains they are bound with will be shaken off, the loads they are burdened with will be thrown to the ground. The more you squeeze, the more people slip through your grasp.

History supports this - look at the humble beginnings of the United States: a group best described as "ragtag" grew weary of the demands placed on them by a distant and out-of-touch government, and after a long and bloody revolution they won their freedom and a chance to govern themselves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind." A mixture of youth, energy, and belief are needed to set the wheels of revolution in motion.

High school students, I think, are a microcosm of a nation on the verge of revolution. There are different factions vying for power, with different groups coming into "power" at different times. The factions unite, however, in the face of a greater threat. There is an Arab proverb that states, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Abbie Hoffman said that "the first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it," and maybe that's why high school students generally attempt small things in their struggle to overthrow those in power. While it's true we sometimes hear about something big and drastic happening at a school, for every story you see on the news, a thousand rebellions have been quashed, nipped in the very smallest beginning buds of their existence.

The current battle at my high school is being fought on an electronic field. The repressive powers that be have mandated a specific background image be displayed on all computers regardless of race, creed, color, or location. The logo displayed serves as a reminder to all who view it that they cannot escape the all-seeing eye of what the tyrants in power call a "mascot." Personal desires are ignored and all must conform. There are controls in place to ensure conformity, from disabling the ability to change the background to logging use of specific computers.

Still, the revolutionaries persist in their guerilla warfare. Tactics are varied and shifting, like water rushing against barriers, finding the weakest path and bringing cracks to light and enlarging them. Random pictures show up from time to time in different places throughout the building. Timing and placement would suggest that what started as an act of a single agitator has become a growing movement of dissidents.

In this particular struggle, I find myself on a different side than I might have been fifteen years ago. The fires of my youth have been spent on struggles of my own and I have learned that what George Bernard Shaw said ends up being true: "Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder." Now my energies are put towards maintaining the rule of law, ferreting out those who would subvert it. Conformity, in this instance, should reveal to the patient what the true struggles in life are.

Above all, I would like the current crop of revolutionaries to remember this quote by Huey P. Newton: "The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life." While his death (or cancellation of his Internet or network privileges) might eventually serve some greater cause, he might never live to see the benefits of his actions.

Who knows, though, what echoes shall reverberate from his actions here today? 2 comments