"Quick Question"

Anyone who's ever done technical support or customer service for longer than the 2-week training class has heard those words uttered. Those who have survived said vocation for more than a few months have heard them all too often, from both customers and co-workers. Stuck around long enough to be considered and 'old timer' (ya know.. a year or two) and those words send a shudder of fear through your standard issue Plantronics headset. It usually goes something like this:

"Support Monkey dot com, this is Bingo, how can I help you?"
"Uh Hi. Quick Question for you."
*click* *blam*
"Uh.. hello? You still there, I just had a quick question."
(new voice on the line) "I'm sorry to report your previous support monkey dot com agent has gone.. on break.. how can I help you with your 'quick question'
"Well.. I just wanted to know why every time I go to zombiesluts dot com my screen fills with pop ups making my question my gender preference and then my computer reboots. That should be easy to fix right?"
*click* *(dial-tone)*
The fact of the matter is that in no QQ Scenario is the answer either quick or easy. Any user with the ignorance to start any support/customer service interaction with these words obviously has no idea how deep in shit they are, or how to get out of it. But they've toiled over the problem long enough to contrive a concise, simple phrasing of their shit-bomb question.

Even worse is the co worker who pulls this one out.
"Hey Bingo."
"Morning Chuckles,how was poker night?"
"Quick Question for you: I was trying to create a Shopping Cart from scratch on my website, zombiesluts dot com, but none of the prices in the database are matching up with the right credit card transactions from my transaction server-"
*click click* *bang*
(coughing and sputtering, Chuckles gives one last look, eyes sad and a little confused before darkness takes over)
"Shoulda stuck to poker Chuckles."
As a support proffessional, you should know better than to declare the QQ Scenario. And you deserve everything you get (including a fiery demise) should you ever utter that phrase within earshot of your cohorts. Anyone who is in 'the business' who causally throws that down is obviously a danger to themselves and others.

What you're really saying when you say Quick Question is "I want a quick answer". Wny else would you say that? Those two words used to start any interrogative discourse is a simple statement of how long it will take to ask the question in question. Anyone who does that intentionally is just plain dumb. Imagine doing that for everything.
"Short greeting: Hey Bingo."
"Grudgingly Polite response: Morning Chuckles, how was poker last night."
Yeah nogunnahappen.
So what you're unknowingly doing is using a euphemism you've heard before to help try to create the desired outcome, disguising the true nature of your inquiry.
Having the forethought to contemplate what your question actually is, realize how complicated the answer might be, and use the opportunity to set the expectation of the recipient accordingly is obviously too much to ask for. By falling onto the cliche that requires much less self-awareness or introspective vocabulary analysis, you're just confirming that you don't think about what you're saying.
"Quick Question"
Fuck You.

Idiot's guide to the economy collapse

Fallout from a faltering economy perhaps. Manufacturing quality slips a bit. Goods you used to rely on now cost a little more and have a tendency to be a little shoddier than you're used to.
You must have felt it too. It's the kind of problem we're all facing every day.
I'm talking about the bread I buy at the grocery store. It's fucked.
This is the good bread. The shit you pay $4.00 for now that used to cost $2.50 before the stock market took a high-dive belly flop. The 'premium' shit marketed with every variety of 9-12-18 grain, whole wheat, honey wheat, butter milk, potato, dark rye, farking anything they'll throw in a pre-packaged bag and call good stuff.
There's a pattern lately. Everything looks fine at first, working through the useless undersized pieces near the heel. Those are there to fool you. Once you start getting into the uniform slices you can actually make a goddamn sandwich with, you start to see them.
The holes.
Little bubbles just a bit bigger than the regular texture on the expensive-ass bread. Not big enough to be a problem. Just like it's sprouted little empty eyes trying to see just what the fuck you're defiling it with every time you concoct a brie-bologna-arugula masterpiece. By about 1/3rd into the tar-baby you've got some real shit on your hands. Dime-sized gaps waiting to fuck up your lunch with a handful of mayo squeezing through one of these puss-holes when you land your first starving bite.
I wouldn't complain if it hadn't been like the LAST FIVE GODDAMN LOAVES IN A ROW that ope their crusty lips like the sex doll I left deflated in the closet a few roommates back. I've switched brands, stores, you name it. This swiss-cheese bread phenomenon follows me no matter where I go. One loaf I had ended up with air-bubbles the size of uncut green-beans, rendering 50% of my freakin expensive bread almost completely useless.
Thanks asshole Quality Control guys at the premium bread factory. I'm about ready to give in and just buy the white squares of nutritionless cardboard that my folks grew up on. At least I know I can spread some goddamn peanut-butter on it without puking any back at me mid-breakfast on Monday-fucking-morning.

Tales from the 2 year old

Bedtime. Stories are done, songs are over. Time for lights out.
"No monsters." he says sternly, trying to reassure himself.
"No monsters." I agree.
"Ninja turtles fight monsters!" he says.
"Yes they do." Indeed.
Mom - "Are you a ninja turtle?"
"I'm not a ninja turtle, I'm Miles." he corrects.

What there was.

What there was is still nothing. And so shall be the legacy of the earth.
I was talking to a religious friend of mine. We share a similarity in that neither of us follow politics.I leave the room when the words Palin, McCain, Obama, Clinton or Bush are mentioned, knowing that a long boring conversation full of nothing will ensue. I think the whole system is a waste, that no matter who ends up at the top, the whole system is so watered-down that nothing real will happen. I'll still have my job and my fast food and my cable modem. Doesn't matter who's in the white-house.
Strangely my religious friend's reasons aren't as far off from mine as I 1st thought. According to his beliefs man is unfit to lead man. They will try and fail, and once that time has passed, the proper leader will come down and make it apparent. We are smack dab in the middle of the time when we're trying to lead ourselves and it's failing miserably. That I can see. what I can't see is an end to that in our lifetime. Religuous people don' have a problem with that. They're cool suffering through, waiting for the afterlife for all to be made right.
I'd rather believe we were meant to do someting about it, not just sit around and lead a proper life and hope that I chose the right system to buy into for the afterlife. I think this life is all we got, and we shouldn't be complacent because we thing things will be better when we die.
This coming from the laziest mo-fo on the planet.
I'm not religous. I doubt I'll ever be confident enough to buy into any belief system. I am envious of anyone so convicted in any sytem that they can find solace. Politics and science are belief systems too, just have more numbers behind them. None of those appeal to me either. I quote the awesome 80's move "I don't belive in 'isms I just believe in me."

Hardly Anything

It's been a long time I know.
Every year I have these pipe dreams these fantasies that summer will be filled with trips to the water, lots of hanging out with friends outside, big home projects, tons of weight loss...
Each summer is an experiment in botch. Strange vacations, weird relationships, missed opportunities. Too much time spend indoors, accomplishing nothing.
This year saw some major ups and downs. The movie shoot was a mix of amazingly awesome and totally sucky. I did a round with a major depression, unlike one I've felt before. Gained some weight. Started smoking again (a little). No accomplishments financially or personally. Kept sane only with massive doses of Dr. Horrible and red-bull-vodkas.
But it's starting to be Fall. And fall is amazing. Sunny but cool weather. Awesome colors. Start of schools. Fall always feels like a new begining. September is one long lead up into October. So much good stuff in October. Might just declare the whole month a holiday and disapear in October.
Very little else to report.

The Shoot

It must have been somewhere around 2:00am on the 2nd day. Cables dangled from a hardback book sized satchel at my waist, stretching to the parked Highlander we made into home base, entwined up the makeshift (but every bit as functional as a more expensive) boom, and tethering me to a pair of standard-issue headphones.
This feels like a real movie set, I thought. A slight breeze pushed the unusually cold June air through a few layers of old clothes. At least the actors, tucked in side a beat-up station wagon were spared from the gentle chill of the wind. Two big halogen lights and the scatter from a makeshift police car carved the scene out of darkness. For the entire day before, and the next 3 1/2 days this would be a familiar place. Carefully keeping the Mic-on-a-stick out of the way of the cameras, listening to the almost cliche "Winona, scene 7. 31-32-33-43 take 2" followed by the clap of the slate. The beautiful thing, was I knew what it all meant now. I was a part of it. And no matter how small or disorganized or low budget this was, we were making a real movie.
And let me tell you, this was low budget, disorganized, and I wish it were smaller....

to be continued.

You know it's bad when your dreams remind you of a zombie apocolypse movie.

Warning, undeveloped fiction content.
We can all remember what it was like before, but it's been a while. It's become a world of checkpoints and heavy security. Every time people come together in groups it might happen. Sometimes you can tell. You see someone standing not moving up in line. Not talking. Mouth agape just enough for the soul to escape (they say). If you're watching you can spot them in time, tell their cold stare of change from the dead gaze we've all developed from living in fear for so long. You can alert the guards if you're fast enough, otherwise you just run. Everyone runs then. Only the guards with their thick suits and machine guns go after them. Try to pick them out of the fleeing crowd, the locking gates. Shoot on site, catch a few strays is better than the alternative.
It doesn't happen every day anymore. But every night we dream that the next day might be our last. Could be anyone, any time. No one seems to have found out how it starts, can't tell by blood-type, race, color, creed, hometown, food, drinking water, medical background. We are all at risk of being a new seed, the one who slowly goes still standing with the light fading from our eyes.
END Fiction Content.

I have a prediction.

The Mac vs PC wars rage on. It's been fought in the streets of Desktop Publishing, Art and Music, design vs horsepower, etc. Of course one of the biggest fronts is that of computer viruses and other malware. We won't be discussing the finer points of 'why' today. Simply the fact remains, there is little malware targeted to the Mac OS and a whole bunch out there written for Windows.
If you like you may commence a Mac-PC argument with anyone nearby. I'll Wait.
Done? Good.
Anyone paying attention has noticed that Apple has released their new iPhone. The biggest part of this news is how cheap it is, somewhere in the $200 vicinity. Literally 1/3 the launch price of the original iPhone one year ago. Doing a little math here: cheap(ish) + massive marketing money + actually handy device = everyone within sight of one of those commercials will want one.
I think it's fair speculate that just like the iPod, there will be more iPhone users than Mac users over all. Apple of course has counted on both products to convince people to switch and buy their computers too, but that's peripheral to the discussion here.
Are we all agreed? the iPhone stands to transcend the Mac v PC debate and find its hands into anyone who's got $200 and an expired cell-phone contract.
Everyone ready? If you're paying attention you can probably guess my premonition already.

We're going to see the 1st live iPhone virus drop before we see a significant OSX virus drop.

Not a huge leap I know, but I think that the combination of a unified market share and developer's tools floating around out there will facilitate the malware creators to target the iPhone before the Mac OS.

Breaking the music industry

Make no mistake. If it were up to the record companies every radio/mp3 player/car stereo would have a coin slot in it, and you would shove in a quarter (or more) every time you pushed play or a song came on the radio. With pay-for downloads locked to your computer and DRM in full swing they're getting awfully close.
Fortunately there is change in the wind.
Trent Reznor of Nine inch Nails has made quite a wave in the music industry lately. He's long been known to distribute free downloads of his tracks to make available for remix. Lately he even followed in the wake of the band Raiodhead and released an entire album on-line for five-bucks. (Radiohead used a name-your-own-price model, and the album is no longer available for download.)

Now he's gone even farther and release a full length album for free, in its entirety. The Slip is available now. And you are encouraged to

share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc.

The music industry has been reeling lately because of artists like t.reznor. People who genuinely appreciate their fans and want to give them satisfaction without eating into their pocketbook and their privacy. Who are willing to buck the huge marketing machine that the record labels have to offer. It can be a big risk, but the simple cheap distribution of the internet makes it a much more viable delivery system.
Perhaps moves like this from big bands will start to break down the old busted model that the record companies have been clinging to for way too long now.

Oh and the album rocks. Thanks Trent. For making good music, and making it available in ways few are willing to do now.

Death, Taxes, and Hard Drive crashes.

These are inevitable truths. You must pay the tax man, and you can't escape death. Nor can your computer's hard drive. I can't tell you how many people are surprised by this. Perhaps it's the fundamental lack of understanding about how computers work. Maybe it's my fundamental understanding the makes me wonder how anyone could be surprised by this. At the core it's all about the odds. The moving parts of any mechanical object will stop moving eventually. This could be decades or centuries for something like a well made clock. But for a device that crams more raw data than the Library of Congress, being made in bulk by the lowest bidder in a 3rd world country, it's a no-brainer. The part of your computer with the most moving parts, being put under constant use, is going to fail. And when it does, if you haven't made a copy of everything precious to you somewhere else, then the 1800 family photos will be lost forever.
The only thing you can do is take matters into your own hands. Start b trying to estimate the cost of recovery. How would you go back in time and take all those pictures again? How much would it costs a fancy data-recovery joint to try to mind-meld with your hard drive and extract the data? Try to put a dollar-value on your data. Then realize that for a small fraction of that cost, you could have a backup scheme that would prevent you from having to spend that much money.
Next, learn how to back things up .You learned how to lock your doors and stop at stoplights and make a 2nd photocopy of your tax documents. Backing up is Drag'n'Drop easy in most cases. Simply copying the stuff somewhere besides just the one guaranteed-to-fail is enough.
Get a 2nd hard drive. Invest in one of the on-line data backup places. Use DVDs, CDs, Flash drives. Just make a 2nd copy of your really important stuff.
Keep up with it. Making a back up once is great, and far more than most people do. But you'll want to keep up with it. Make it a routine (just like locking your doors at night eh?) so you alwys have a current crop to use.
Don't forget to check it. All digital media is unstable. Repeat all digital media is unstable. That means every backup device I suggested above has a pretty high chance of failing. Go back and make sure you can get to your backup files. Doesn't do much good to burn your entire music collection onto dvds if they get scratched and unreadable.
Really all we're doing is trying to beat the odds. The chance of any one device going belly up is pretty good. The chance that more than one all go bad at the same time? Less likely. And obviously the more time/money you put into any solution, the less risk you have (assuming you've done your homework and invested in the right scheme).
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go figure out my taxes: a task far more confusing than dealing with with a dead hard drive.

Flaming Depth

The dead midget in the coffin isn't dead. In fact, he's going to wake up right at the most inopportune time and the drugged out dude who thought the coffin was moving and making noises earlier is going to have a total relapse and everything is going to erupt in a frenetic self-concluding crisis-climax-denouement The End.

Work meetings are like a bad indie comedy. Obviously thought out by intellegent people, with quirky banter that can me mostly interesting. But it's usually just a slow, predictable train-wreck. You know the characters: A boss so out of touch all they can do is try to keep up and interject business-class buzzwords at random intervals. Two or three young go getters who talk the most vigorously and engage in the occasional slapstick joke just to keep you awake. Bunch of 'steady bettys' who only understand every 3rd word and don't really want to deviate from 'the way it's always been'. Anyone who's been around the block enough can see that it's going no where, but there's no stop button. You can only hope you don't get caught up in the nonsensical minutia and drag the thing out longer by trying to add any new ideas or common sense to equation.

You rented it, take your licks and hope the disk is scratched. That's the only way you're getting out early.

Summer comes early.

Feels like the long gone days of summer. Summers for some are the peak, the end result of 9 months of hard work. For me summers were always some strange world. Where I almost never felt like I was getting what I wanted. I was a wandering, aimless fool. Just enough of an outsider to even my social group that I had trouble coming up with stuff to do. Couple of adolescent summers away from home and stuck away from what I was used to may have started things off. Or maybe it was the summers spend in daycare or at home under the watch of my older brother? Doesn't matter, the fact is I never amounted to much in the summer months. Even through school and college, I would wind up in strange jobs just outside the world. Graveyard shift, groundskeeper at a music venue, running the pre-show junk at the theatre venue. Now its even easier to do nothing with a whole house and family to take care of.

I blame the fact that so much stuff comes easy. There are those people who start out with everything hard and have to struggle start to finish. Others are the annoying ones whom everything always comes/looks easy. I fall somewhere in the middle, the intelligent people with common sense for which many things start out easy, but reach a point where it takes work to continue. That place for me is somewhere in the C+ B- range. This has managed to get me as far as I am now. Do whatever until that thing gets hard, then bail. Once I hit the 1st plateau of diminishing returns I simply quit and take the consequences.. To this day I don't have the motivation to move into the hard stuff and really chew it up and get to where I can excel. This got me through high-school but not college. Gets me into a good job but no farther, it's the reason some stuff around the house isn't done, why I don't write anything useful, why I don't even get good at the video games I waste most of my time on.

When in doubt I'm a selfish lazy, coward. Never able to take a risk or creep out from the hiding place that is almost circumstance. It's taken me a long time to realize that you need to go out and make things happen for yourself. No one is going to do it for you. Realization or not it still takes effort to go forth. I may be misquoting but Mark Twain had it best "Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there." Summer always brought out the most of that from graduation to September, it's just a dreamworld of should-haves waiting ot happen.

Never trust Thursday.

I had a case of the Mondays, but I drank it all on Sunday night.
Now all I'm left with is the Tuesday eye-crud and Wednesdays cotton-mouth. Friday skipped town with Saturday on hump-day (ironic no?), and Thursday left me with a it's-not-you-it's-me scrawled from last weeks dryer-scuffed pen.
Sorry Thursday, it really wasn't me. It was you. "All you have to do is make it through one more day," you said. "you can do whatever you want with me." We hit it off while the moonlight burned. I followed you through the yellow darkness, waiting for my chance like a college kid begging to give a backrub. You gleamed at me with just enough encouragement, whispered just enough weekendisaroundthecorners into my ear. I bought it all. Paid cash. Cleaned out the bank account. But like a trip to the less-than-a-dollar store, when I emptied my bags later all I saw was a big fat pile of Fuck You. You lulled me to sleep with Wednesdays leftovers and a smirk. I woke up to your letter, a blaring alarm clock, and a dull ache down below that told me the week wasn't over. You do it on purpose, laugh as we are strung along in your sirens song and dash our hopes on the cliffs of Friday. All your Thursday seductions are gone and all we have left is blue-balls and one more day of work.

Reverse Hangover

Ugh.
I didn't wake up feeling like a nightmare this morning. By back doesn't hurt, my head is clear. All this exercise, eating healthy, and reduced drinking isn't good for me. Just makes my mind churn. Used to be I could count on a grumpy haze and some general aches and pains to get me through my morning. Now I feel refreshed and capable. Maybe I'll get over it later, and a nice afternoon malaise will set in.
What's next? Some visible weight-loss and actual productivity? Things will just go downhill from there.

Heath Ledger never visited this blog!

Neither has Brittany, or Lohan, Clinton, Obama, or even Steve down the hall in my office building.

But do you see what I did? By adding the name of a recently headline making celebrity, I (theoretically) instantly made you more interested in reading the rest of the article, despite the fact it has nothing to do with famous people. It's an example of what a good portion of our news media is trying to: trick you into spending your hard-earned time looking at their advertising and other shocking but full of useless information stories. It's a world of trapdoor journalism venomous un-news.

Do yourself a favor. Don't watch the news. Or read the news, or pay any attention to what the mass media has to offer. They have predatory instincts. Waiting with "Man kills 5 puppies, self.. tonight at eleven" lures. Hoping you'll be so shocked you'll need to tune in to see about this latest, most terrible thing. Sure they'll spill the beans, but not until they've revealed their jagged teeth and have you sucked into an hour of coming-up-nexts and how-this-thing-could-maybe-sort-of-impact-you-if-you-were-dumb-enough-to believe it. Before you know it you've lost precious doing something else time and learned very little to help you in your daily life.

On TV, their tactics are desperate. Since no one watches any more, they fill their promos with "...the warning you can't afford to miss." Because you know it's important enough for you to stay up, but not important enough to tell you ahead of time. Any dip in the median climate is a good excuse to huck an ALLERGY FRONT MOVING IN TONIGHT, TUNE IN FOR DETAILS along the bottom of your favorite reality show. Any reason, really to raise their celluloid skirts and jiggle their local-talent legs at you so you'll pull over at the next half-hour and let them hump your braincells out for a ride in your headspace.

The internet is just a tricky game of fishing. Same news being reported, but he who has the most attractive bait yields the most page hits, (and hopefully a place at the top of a large aggregate like Digg or google news). Let us consider the case of two headlines:
A) "Bird flu hits India as Turkey and Indonesia detect cases." -Reuters.
B)"A Pandemic That Wasn’t but Might Be." -The New York Times.
Essentially reporting on the same news, but one is buried deep in the Health News section of a major website, the other is about the 4th link down on one of the most popular sites on the internet.
The best part is none of this is really news, it's the same scare-tactic they've been pitching for years now. The almost-disaster, the what-if, the it-could-happen-to-you, if-we-make-it-sound-really-scary-people-will-keep-reading-it. Sure it pays to be informed about our global apocalypse before it happens, but it would be nice to make up a new one at this point.

I'm not sure about the whole Blogging-as-Journalism craze right now. I have not cast my vote yet. Just because you have an internet connection, doesn't mean I care who you are or what your opinion is (but I'll applaud your right to express it). But at least 9 out of 10 times you aren't trying to sensationalize things or trick me with a clever headline about nothing. The bloggers seem to at least give a shit about what they are writing about.

Just pick a day. One whole day. And stay away from it. The news, the internet, papers, magazines... this blog. Let the poison of redundant newscasting, recycled headlines, and flat-out pointless information seep out. You'll be amazed how little you miss it, and how clear your head is the next day.

I sincerely apologize to Heath Ledger for using his fame and tragedy as an example.

Until next time.
-I'm Dan Duchebag, reporting for channel Sux.

I blame the coffee.

For keeping me up past the allotted sleeptimer imposed by the the ticking clock of a 2-year old resting comfortably on a Nemo-cased pillow. Green lights from the mocking more predictable alarm dare me to close my eyes and pretend Sleep is around the corner, waiting with sand-weighted gloves and a couple of friends to knock the dreams out of me. The black pit (minus the crystals I believe) virtually guarantees that the poor bastards who cross my path will meet a swift red-eyed gaze and swifter hand-off to one of my unsuspecting student-hires. Except for the inevitable elite ones, who's answer only lies locked in my REM deprived grey matter. For them a labyrinth of "hmm, I'm not sure.. let me check with my supervisor." and "I'm going to have to do some research and call you back." waits. Lurking around to find out whoever tried to use those sap-gloves on me and curb-stomp his sorry ass into the starry night.

Beh, not even late enough for the real-good sleep-deprivation shit. The absolute stream of want-to-be-unconsciousness. This is me just trying to scoop off the foamy top off some useless frustration and force it on you like friggin day-old muffins at the coffee shop. Loooook.. it's 50% off. You know you want it, who can resist a good deal. Until you take a crusty like your uncle's jockeys bite and realize how hard you got screwed by that teenager in a green apron (who's getting stock options by the way). Just by stopping by here today you're out about $2.00 of your hard-earned sanity and there's no refunds on stale cynicism. Just rip off the tip jar and throw it at the bikers who always hang out not-smoking by the side-walk. They got your back when they're not sipping dendrite machiatos and quoting Tzara. If they aren't enraged by the spattering brain-change they might just realize they got their drinks all bufuckered by that asshole behind the counter and come down heavy like sand-bags on his worthless machine-gun-mouth-for-an-ass.

Anyhow this is getting pointless tonight. You're all the sorrier for sticking it out this long. And you'll never get your two-bucks back.