How Do You Like Them Apples John Bull?

More proof that America still kicks ass, even in the wake of some moderate financial turmoil. Suck on this Man U and Soccer.

[Picture courtesy of this guy]





I originally found the story in Buisnessweek, but cannot find the link.

Random Thoughts

Last night, at about 12:55 a.m., I saw a commercial informing me that Cox Communications was offering a free preview of NHL Center Ice from Oct. 4 to Oct. 15. Gee, thanks Cox. I appreciate you informing me of the free preview the very day that it all expires. I also appreciate you advertising very early in the morning. See, I have this job now, that requires me to be out of bed by 7:10 (alarm starts going off at 6:15), so I cannot stay up that late anymore. But last night, I could not sleep, so I caught the first half hour of Conan, and caught the ad.

You guys are damn lucky that the 'Hawks are playing tonight.

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The one annoying bit of minutia that annoys me more than every other triviality about Northern Virginians is how they make their left turns. I live right off of a main drag, so I regularly have to make left turns from this road to lesser roads. All of these lights have a green left arrow, but no red left arrow. In fact, there is a sign that says, "Yield to Oncoming Traffic On Green." Yet, people continually sit at the line on green. Wait for the light to turn red, wait for the cross green, then go on the green arrow (unless there is a big break in traffic going the other way).

In the Midwest, we (they) left-turners get out as far as possible into the middle of the intersection, and if necessary, turn left a second or two after the light has turned red. But the first (and sometimes the second and third) folks in line are able to make the turn.

Not so out here. I guess one problem is the positioning of the light. If you get into the middle of the intersection, you cannot see when the light turns colors. This does not bother me. When the cars going the other direction stop, I go. Yeah me.

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How about the economy eh? Being extremely, extremely selfish, I am glad the market crashed. Well not really, but everything was overvauled. But by beginning my retirement account now, when everything is undervalued. Granted, I am only putting in $20 every two weeks (plus matching!) (for now anyway, have not got a pay check yet, so I do not know how much I can afford to put in what with taxes and all that shit), but you have to start somewhere.

Sure, people are not spending much right now, but that is no surprise, what with the stock market crashing and people not paying their mortgages. But I am fairly certain that things are not as bad as 24 hour news would like you to believe. Remember the recession after the bubble burst? Neither do I (you know, other than the fact that I could not get a decent job out of college, but that is mostly because I suck, and I have a job now, so no worries).

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In that same vein, I was going to post something with a headline of "What Credit Crunch?" last week, but never got around to it. Last week I got a text message informing that I had been pre-approved for a $200,000 business loan to get my business off the ground. I was going to talk about how there must be plenty of credit available if someone like me, with no business plan, no idea for a business, no desire to start his own business, and $140,000 of debt with about $1,000 worth of assets, could be pre-approved for a $200K loan, then the economy must kicking ass.

That of course, is crap. There is a credit crunch, namely because Bank #1 does not trust Bank #2. To facilitate this, central banks from across the world dropped their interest rates fifty basis points. Again, because I am selfish, view this as awesome. I think all of my student loans that have a variable rate (vast majority of them), are tied to the LIBOR rate. When the LIBOR rate drops, I am in a good position. Now, with rates so low, I can look into consolidating all of the variable rate loans into fixed rate loans, even though I will be giving up what, 25, 50 basis points to lock in a fixed rate when rates will be going up in the almost near future because inflation will start getting out of hand. Yee-Haw.

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I am up to three primetime television shows now. I blame Hulu. Hulu has all of this seasons episodes of House and Bones and last seasons finales. So over the weekend, I got all caught up, and now I am hooked. God bless you hulu (or maybe not). The third show is Smallville, but I missed the season premiere and the second episode. Thankfully, it is one of those shows where it is pretty easy to figure out what is going on.

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If you have made it this far, I feel that you know owe me something. No, not a kidney or a rib, just some advice. I am not so great with inter-personal relationships, particualry in the workplace.

So, question number one regards e-mail etiquette. I ask Y a question in person, and Y says to me the answer is A. I say thank you and get to work. A short time later, I get an e-mail from Y saying that Y talked to Z and the answer is actually B. Should I respond with a thank you? One of the support people asked me to email her when I got my phone up and running. I did, and she replied back with a thank you. I was a little shocked to read this, but it might just be the culture. So I do not know what the e-mail etiquette is.

Question #2. How does one extricate oneself from a conversation one does not really want to be a part of? I went to drop something off for someone the other day, and she was talking to another employee about something, and they asked me about it and I was sucked into the conversation for a while, until it took a turn to other issues I could careless about and I wanted to leave. In the old days, I would have just left, but apparently this is not the best course of action. I realize I could have lied and said I had a meeting or something, but 1) I am not a big fan of lying and 2) they would know if I had a meeting (I do not have many meetings). So, any thoughts?

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I do not watch any 24 hour news networks, so I am curious if any of them have had economists and other such people (that are not talking heads or reciting the party line) about the various tax, economic, and whatever else policies of McCain and Obama. I am talking graphs with threshold limits. Best case, worst case scenarios. What they can actually do. What they will actually do. You know, talking about the election, instead of retarded things like who won a debate (OK, X won the debate. Why did he win? Because he has a sound economic policy or because he looks presedential. Because you beleive what he says about tax breaks or that he talked about Norma Jean, aged 94, from Buttfuck, Oregon, who has syphillis and cannot afford her medical bills?). Why do people prefer to watch talking heads, blowing shit out the wrong hole, pontificating on how Obama is a terrorist because he knows some dude that I never heard of (and now, have no desire to ever know who or what he is).

I get all of my election news from this nonpartisan site, which, unfortunately, is stuck being reactionary.

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Dear Liberals,

I have heard from many of you your thoughts on McCain's VP selection. I have heard about this ad nauseum. Hell, everyone has chimed in, from celebrities to my favorite sports blog. And you all love talking about Mrs. Palin. Even Jon Stewart loves to shift the focus to Sarah Palin.

I think that this is why McCain chose her. Americans, however ill-informed or ingnorant they are, hate being talked down to. So when McCain picks a Sarah Palin, whose deficiences as a VP candidate are obvious to even Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel, he did so because he knew how you all would react. He knew that you would get all up in arms, cry from the mountain tops about how this MILF would bring this country down. How she has no experience, how her daughter has defied the conservative morality, how much she looks like Tina Fey, how she refuses to answer questions.

McCain is counting on the democrats to destroy themselves yet again. Bush had no business winning a second term, yet the dems nominated Frankenstein and had every body and their brother tell Americans how to think. It is mostly an issue with Hollywood. Most Americans (save the 14 year olds), do not idolize Hollywood. They fear Hollywood. Joe McCarthy may have been ass, but he did bring to light the Communist ideology that pervaded Hollywood. It may not have been even close to half of Hollywood that was Communist, but they had money, and they could bankroll it. They fear that Hollywood has an agenda. And Hollywood has a stigma of free love and drug abuse that many do not want to see permeate the eastern 4/5 ths of the country.

OK, a little off track there, but to bring it back around, when you bitch about Palin, you do two things. First, you alienate the undecideds, who are undecided because they are swayed by retarded things that do not include "the issues." Palin is no Cheney. She is not going to have McCain's ear. If McCain died on Jan. 21, President Palin would be nothing more than a puppet of the Republican Party. She would be given no leeway to formulate policy that did not come from Mike Duncan et. al. Second, you play right into McCain's hands. He likes avoidance. All republicans like avoidance. It is hard for one to reconcile the obvious contradictions in being a republican. They prey on the wealth of the wealthy voters and appeal to the morality and nationalism of the poor voters. How two completely divergent classes can be reconciled is not something that can be done in a soundbite (though it can be done).

Thank you for your attention,

A McCain Voter.

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Nice to get that off my chest. It is likely completely wrong, but I thought I would write it up, since no one reads this shit anyway.

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'Hawks game is about to start. Time for me to get reaquainted with the smooth vocal stylings of Pat Foley.

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And, I got this book in the mail today. I will let you all know how it is.

Numb

The Cubs just lost.

Swept. For the second year in a row.

100 years. This year was supposed to be different.

It felt different. But it was not. Same old thing.

Future generations of psychologists will tell us how irrational it is to cheer for a bunch of highly paid athletic freaks; why it makes no sense for us to pay money and waste watching them play a game. But we do, it is a social thing, it is an envy thing, it is an escape thing.

Right now, I am sitting alone in my apartment, I could not bear to be around people as the Cubbies were swept away again, thinking about how much a Cubs victory would have brought me joy, alleviated me from the pressures of paying back over $120K in loans. But instead, I am feeling the way Derrek Lee and Ramirez and Theriot and Harden and Zambrano and the rest of the post season roster are feeling. There is no envy. Just mutual disgust, depression, and overriding sense of failure.

This was "next year."

The last time I invested this much time into a Cubs team was 2003. In 2003, I had just graduated from college and was working a night job while trying to figure out what to do with my life. The nice thing about working at night was that I could go to bed around 5 a.m. and be up by 1:20 for the Cubs game. If they were playing at night, I listened to Pat & Ron on the radio.* That postseason I paid $300 to see Mark Prior defeat Greg Maddux in person. It was my greatest moment as a Cub fan.

We all know what happened next:




This summer, like in 2003, I was out of state until graduation. This summer, I did not work, I studied for the Bar. I watched or listened to on the radio, nearly every single Cubs game while I studied for the Bar. After the first day of the Bar, I went back to the hotel and watched the Cubs defeat the Brewers (though I fell asleep in the 7th inning. Sorry, but the Bar Exam is exhausting). After the second day of the Bar, I celebrated by watching my Cubbies defeat the Brewers again.

This does not even include the game I went to while I should have been studying for the bar (it would have been more, but money, not really growing at trees). It was 40 degrees outside, and my little Sis and I were sitting directly behind home plate, with the wind blowing in.

After the Bar, I watched every game, until I moved to VA. The next couple months sucked. I went through withdrawal. I had no cable, and a very shaky unsecured wireless connection from a neighbor upon which I "watched" every game I could on mlb.com. Not to mention the traveling. But eventually, I got my cable, but still could only get the games on WGN. I still watched most games on mlb.com with the trusty LAN, and then the Cubs clinched, and I was able to take a breather.

Playoffs came, I was confident. This team was good. Very good. We could score a hundred different ways, we had a great pitching staff, and three reliable arms out of the bullpen. I started ripping on White Sox mercilessly, goading them into talking about a Red Line series, then laughing because the Sox would never make it out of the first round.

Ooops.

I do not know what comes next. It took me a long time to recover from 2003. But this is what being a Cubs fan means I guess.

At the very least this tempers my expectations for what is projected a much better Blackhawks team. I seriously considered dipping into my my slim funds to come up with the money for Center Ice, to watch the Blackhawks (yes, they put the games on WGN, but they will not be televised nationally). They are, after all, the other horribly lost cause of a chicago team.

Ah, well. I am very sad. I will get my comeuppance on Monday I suppose. Until then, I am going to listen to this fifty times:



*I did not pay for the WGN radio feed through MLB, but I cannot imagine what Ron is going through right now.

UPDATE: Al from Bleedie Cubbie Blue says it best

Best Day Ever?

Today I:

• Found out I passed the Bar
• Got this CD in the mail
• Had a two hour lunch with 20 co-workers (though it was kind of shocking that out of the 20, I am the only smoker)
• Obtained my ID badge so I can now move freely inside and outside of the building
• Discovered that me feet do not hurt nearly as bad as on Monday and Tuesday from all the walking in dress shoes
• Bought some beer
• Drank some beer
• Got a bunch of work to do so now I do not have to sit in my office trying to look busy
• Did something productive for the first time in two months
• And of course, right now I am watching my Cubbies in the playoffs (but since it is the first game, I could not bear to be around people because, well, they are the Cubs).

I should have bought a lottery ticket.

Worst Day Ever?

Last night around 6:30 I bought a chicken sandwich from 7/11. Yada, yada, yada, at 3:30 a.m. I was at the local 24 hour Giant picking up a bottle of pepto bismal. I chugged half the bottle before I was finally able to get an hour and a half of sleep. Upon waking I still felt like shit, and chugged the other half of the bottle, and feeling half dead, with a stomach still doing flip flops. Thankfully, for my second day of work, I was able to sit in a couple meetings where there was no way in hell I could be expected to understand what was going on. The pepto did its job and I was able to focus on not falling asleep.

Now, I am exhausted, still feel like shit because the pepto is working too well (probably should not have drunk the whole bottle), but the Bar is tantalizing me with promises of scores being released. At first I thought "late afternoon" would mean four-ish, but as late as six. It is now after six central time and have come to the realization that we are dealing with lawyers here. "Late afternoon" probably means "late after noon," such as 11:59 p.m. I'll give them a couple more hours. Then I need my sleep (though I will likely wake up around 2, feeling not so goodish).

Bar Scores

Word on the street is that IL Bar scores are going up tomorrow. The site is already crashing. Thankfully, what I read indicates that they are e-mailing the scores. Which is good.

We shall see. Today was my first day working as lawyer. Tomorrow, I may be bumped down to paralegalling. Exciting times.

Props, then the opposite of Props

I was driving around the other day and saw one of the most clever license plates I have ever seen. See, here in ol' Virginny, you can choose from an array of different license plates. They even have special plates for out of state universities, such as Ohio State and Penn State (but not my undergrad, you bastards). So anyway, the special plate I saw was this:




If I actually had photoshop or MS Paint skills, I would have just put in the actual words, but I do not, so, the letters on the plate were:

CANC3R

That gave me a good laugh. Then I tried to flick my cigarette onto the top of the car, but science got in the way.

At this point, I have never had more respect for a person I had never seen before, but then I saw the bumper stickers. The first said, "RON PAUL" and something about '08 presidential candidate. The second said "BARACK OBAMA" and something about being a legitimate '08 presidential candidate.

Way to be a single issue voter. I cannot imagine any more than two issues on which libertarians and democrats agree on. What a moron.

I have a lot to say about libertarians (mostly that they are idiots, but including how to make a libertarian look like an idiot), but I am enjoying my last four days before the eternal hellfire of work takes over my life.

Tranquil

It is about half past midnight. I have a Genesee Cream Ale in one hand and a cigarette in the other.* There is a full moon, with a nice crumbly swath of clouds slowly passing through its light, but failing at blocking any of the light. The rest of the sky is cloudless, with only the most persistent of the stars shining through the moon's glow. I am sitting on the second floor deck of a beach house staring out at the Atlantic. The waves, no more than fifty yards away, continually crash, slowly, imperceptibly receding unless you watch them for a few hours, continue their trek to low tide.

To me, this is what peace looks and sounds like.

I could sit right here for hours, but alas, I have to pick my sister and her husband up from the Philly airport tomorrow at 10.

That is ok though. I still have a week to grab hold of this ever elusive feeling.


*I am typing with my nose.

Contrails

Things are always happening. Things happen that we cannot control. Sometimes these are terrible things. Regardless, these things cause change and give you a chance to look at things differently, learn something you otherwise would not have.

On the seventh anniversary of 9/11, there is nothing I can write to help put things in perspective that has not been written about before.

Instead, consider this:

When all airplane traffic was grounded over the United States in the three days following 9/11, some people did not get the chance to stand around shocked. They were given a shot to determine the effect of contrails on the atmosphere.

These researchers reported that

When this is factored in, there is a possibility that [contrails] offset global warming, and this is what we are trying to determine now.

They also note that more studies are needed, and will have to rely on circumstantial evidence. But the importance of the direct evidence as a result of 9/11? Invaluable. Worth 3,000 American lives? Hell no, not even close. But life is happening all around us. I just need to remember to keep my eyes open.

I'm A Dope, and I suck at Golf

My genius knows no bounds. I post a link on my old blog to the new blog and then do not post anything because I am fervently enjoying my last month of unemployment/student status until I become a working stiff for the next 30 years at the end of this month. The thing about driving all over the country and seeing old friends is that it leaves little time to write blog posts, mostly because it is hard to write intelligently when the spirits have made you cross-eyed.

So I will leave with a few meaningless thoughts from the past week to divert you from wondering why in the hell the Republicans are stupid enough to try to purge the inter-tubes of the the Sarah Palin Sports Highlight video.

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I truly suck at golf. I had not played in five years, but still. What a miserable experience. By hole 13 I just said fuck it, and exclusively used my 7, 8, and 9 irons (plus the putter) (and I could not hit the pitching wedge for shit) because that was the only to get the ball to go in the general direction I wanted it to go (though I was dead on accurate with the nine iron to the green from about 50 yards!). It was so bad that I think I am going to scrape some money together, buy a decent set of clubs (I used rentals when I played), and hit the driving as much as possible for the next year just because I cannot stand to suck that much at something

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I think this may be the busiest gas station in the United States.

View Larger Map
I went there four times in three days, at various times in the day and it was like something out the '70s. Well, maybe not that bad, but there was always a line to get gas. The first time I went in, I actually asked the clerk if it was always this busy. She answered in the affirmative. So, if you are ever in Rochester, watch out for that gas station.

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Pro Football Hall of Fame? Meh.

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My grandma, at 92, has finally reached the point where she really cannot take care of herself full-time. My mom asked me for thoughts on how to protect her assets while still getting all the appropriate health care. I gave her a couple of ideas, by my advice mostly consisted of talking to an attorney who is an expert in Elder Law. She did, and he helped out a lot (though my mom is now buried in a mountain of paperwork).

So for those recent law graduates who are struggling to land a job, look into Elder Law. Seriously. It is not sexy or highly profitable, but it is an area that is going to grow and grow. Get in on the ground floor. And, as an added benefit, you are actually going to do something that helps people. Good for all of you altruistic folks.

Goals

Jay Mariotti, Sun-Times sports columnists, has resigned from the paper stating that he now believes newspapers are dead and the internet is the future. So what is his legacy?

If Sox and Cubs fans agree on anything, it is that they hate JM. He was rather universally reviled. The comments on the Sun-Times website show this clearly. Why was he hated? Some think he is a hack writer, some think his points are idiotic, some think he was never accountable for what he wrote, some hate that he had the privilege of access but has not been in a locker room in five years, and some likely think all those, plus some. But he positioned himself as a contrarian and turned that into national fame with ESPN.

He got people talking. He got himself noticed by getting people to revile him. He became infamous when two radio guys launched a website that was basically a takedown of every column he wrote.

Think about that for a second. How many writers can you think of with regularly updated posts about a freaking sports writer? The Sports Guy has a message board devoted to taking him down, Mike Lupica has at least one possibly two (though the second does not seem to focus on Lupica anymore), this guy hates Will Leitch but it is not a frequent topic on the blog, KSK hates Peter King, and there are probably some more out there but it is a pretty elite class of established, widely-read columnists. (Note: Firejoemorgan hates everyone.)

So what does this mean, other than the obvious? People know who Mariotti is. Does this make him a success? There are two ways to look at this. First, he wrote for the Sun-Times. The goals of the Sun-Times are to sell papers and sell ad space, the former obviously contributing to the latter. The first question then is, did Mariotti increase the Sun-Times circulation? This is arguable, I have no data on this. I know that at times Mike & Mike in the Morning would discuss something controversial he had written, and likewise for Mac, Jurko, & Harry. That may have sold a few more papers on that given day, but overall, who knows. The Sun-Times likely thought he did, which is why the signed him to a large contract extension two months ago.

The second prong of this first inquiry is about the traffic to the website. I would assume that he likely spiked traffic on the site, particularly given his national promenance with ESPN and the fact that people like to read and watch things that piss them off (e.g. Bill O'Reilly). So the Sun-Times likely valued him for the increased traffic his columns may have brought to the webpage.

The Second inquiry is whether being reviled is good for Mariotti himself. I would venture to say it is. It got him on national tv. It got him a radio show (which did not last long because it is one thing to spend two minutes reading a column and a whole other thing to listen to him for three hours). It got him a hate webpage. It got him in the news when people fucked around with his wikipedia page.

I do not know if they say this, but they should, "If you cannot be good, be controversial." After all, every story needs a villian.

College

There is a recent article in the WSJ called, "For Most People, College is a Waste of Time." (Note: Not really an article, part of a book by Charles Murray called Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality.) The main thrust of the article is that a BA can be replaced by certification tests such as the CPA. I may be stating his thesis too absolutely, but that does not matter, even when generalized his thesis is jabberwocky.

I am the first to rail against the structure of the traditional high school education, but it does share a theme with post-secondary education. I try to explain this to others, and they have trouble comprehending it. Hopefully, typing it out will make more sense.

You see, school is not about knowing what the colors in The Red Badge of Courage mean. It is about learning that those colors are to be appreciated and can teach you something. School is not about memorizing how to do geometric proofs, but how to think logically through a problem. School is all about learning how to think, not necessarily develop the specific tools for a specific trade (with the exception of trade or vocational school of course). Why do you think "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader" is so compelling? No one expects an accountant or secretary or nurse or supply chain management specialist or salesman or FBI agent to know what a cirrus cloud is. To say "Knowledge Fades" misses the point. Factoids fade, the skills should not.

So what of post-secondary education? Aren't you essentially majoring in a specialty with an expectation to get a job in that specialty? Why couldn't a certification test replace a BA?

If rote knowledge is all you want, then yes, yes it could. You take the guy that memorized a bunch of equations, a few scenarios and used that to pass the CPA, instead of those who struggled through hypotheticals in class and tried to use known formulas in unknown situations. The question is, do you want your professional to be a robot or a professional? How would you feel if you went to your accountant or stock broker (bad example, fuck them), or middle manager and she said to you, "Does Not Compute"?

Why do MBA programs use case studies? Why do law schools use the Socratic method? It is about thinking. Those are advanced methods of logic (though not in the case of some law), which are developed from the analytical skills that one learns in post-secondary education. It is about confronting a problem and learning how to analyze and ultimately solve the problem.

For some? Yes college is a waste of time. But for those who occasionally go to class and learn a thing or two end up learning things they never even knew they learned.

[Afterthought: If not for tuition, I think Murray may be advocating the higher education system in Italy, where attendance to lectures is largely voluntary.]

Ignornance

I have spent virtually all of my life in the Midwest. As such, the term "parkway" meant nothing to me in the first 27 years of my life. Sure I had fleeting experiences with parkways in those years. As a child, and adolescent, and teenager, and young man, my family would regularly take yearly vacations to the Jersey Shore. To get to the shore, it was necessary to travel on the Garden State Parkway. I never thought more of it than it just being a road. In Illinois we had highways, expressways, tollways, freeways, and interstates. For most of my life, I just assumed that "parkway" was just a euphemism for a road with no stop lights where you could go real fast if you got lucky and there was no traffic.

I have lived on the east coast for about three days now and have already been on two parkways (George Washington and Baltimore-Washington) and seen signs for at least one more.

But I am not as ignorant as I once was. I now get on a parkway and I take in the sights, I notice the brick that lines the street, I look at the trees that line the road, I look for good places to drop anchor and have a picnic, I study the bridges to see if there is any nuance in architecture that one unschooled in such things as myself could appreciate, and I notice the height of bridges and wonder if I could make it under in the U-Haul I drove to Virginia.

But mostly, I think of Robert Moses.

You see, I went through 26 1/2 years of my life not giving a shit about the term parkway because I did not know it really meant anything. I never bothered to care if it meant anything. It was just a word. A word for a road. Who cares right? I drive on it. It gets me to where I want to go. What more could I ask?

A hell of a lot more. After I read The Power Broker, I understood that there were a lot more questions about Parkways that I should be asking. There is a whole history as to how they came about. Money for construction being the most important. But how often do you ask what government agency spends money to build a new road? Maybe if you are from the East Coast you have that question, but not us "aww shucks" Midwesterners.

This is one small part of how one very long book changed my perspective of something I regularly experience but never really understood. But had I never read that book, I never would have a second thought about what a parkway is. I would have remained ignorant. When I had this realization, I hated myself a little bit. Why had I never asked what a parkway was? Maybe I had, but why did I not remember the answer?

It is cliche by now, but the old saying is that wisdom is knowing how much you really do not know. I keep striving to know, but to get everything is impossible.

But I have to try.

Dueling Snores

Right now it is about 11:00 p.m. I am exhausted, sitting on the bed in a cheap hotel somewhere in bumfuck Pennsylvania. I am in the midst of officially moving to Virginia. Only three hours away, hopefully. I am dead tired, having had four hours of sleep last night and having spent 10 hours today wrestling with a 14 foot U-Haul.

My parents, unable to see their only son finally leave the nest after 27 years*, insisted on coming along. Sort of. I did need them to drive my car down, but they were coming no matter what. So we got a hotel room, to spend the night because I did not want to spend 14 hours straining my wrists keeping the U-Haul in its lane (though my right wrist is much stronger now thank you). We got, or my mom got and I did nothing to prevent, one room. I was in the room when the reservations were made, and I should have said, "Hey, I will take my own room." But I did not.

This sucks for two reasons.

First, my parents are in my room. It is not like I would have ordered porn or anything, but it is a little, . . . . I mean, I should be self-sufficient by now. If I want my own room, I should just get my own room. Sadly, I am not to that point yet. Keeping another $75 off my credit cards now will slightly help me in the long run. Plus, apparantly you can smoke in PA hotels. My folks quit six years ago. Now, with them both sleeping, I am going to have to sneak out to smoke so I do not wake them up.

Second, I doubt I will wake them up. My parents snore. I mean, they SNORE. It is loud. This is not something you think about at 7 o'clock when your mom makes a hotel reservation. But now that the cacophony of nasal and throat sounds drown out the Olympics gymnastics announcer, I recall the last time I was in a hotel room with them, and I lied awake for three hours listing to a nasal symphony.

So that is what I am. I dude sitting in the dark, with only the light of the laptop and television, listening to his parents snore, as he tries to strike it out on his own.

This will not end well.



*Four years of out-of-state undergrad, two years living 3o minutes from my hometown, and three years at out-of-state law school evidently does not qualify as "leaving home."

That Did Not Take Long

As of right now, this blog is still not "Live." No one other than me knows that it exists. Google has not indexed it yet (I will not bother trying to get it on yahoo or MSN. Seems pointless, though probably is not).

Yet someone has already taken notice of my first post. According to sitemeter, I have had a grand total of four visits since my first post. Three have been from me. The other; well if you read that first post you can guess.

So to follow up, this is my letter to UPS:

Dear UPS (and any other company that provides customer support):

As you have read, I was extremely pissed off when I wrote that initial post. The fact that you sent my package to CA when it was supposed to go to VA sent me off into a white hot rage. Your job is to deliver to packages. Why you failed at this task for the one package I had sent with you in the last four years frustrated me to no end. When I looked up that tracking number and saw where my package was, I was livid.

You see, this is why you cannot outsource customer service (not UPS in general (you do not even have customer service), but companies in general). You do not call customer service when you are happy as a pig in shit. You call customer service when you are about to explode and the poor underpaid rep on the other side [of the ocean] has to deal with it. It is a terrible situation for all parties involved, the provider and the customer. You put me on a line with "Steve" who is actually Indian, you are not getting the customer service experience off on the right foot. You lie to me from the outset, you think I trust you for the rest of the conversation. No it just gets me more pissed off.

But back to UPS. Thankfully, when my overnight package arrived four days late, no harm was done. As soon as I found out, I contacted the recipient, who understood the situation and was very understanding. So no harm, no foul.

But not really. I spent fifty bucks for overnight service, not week service. But by the time I went in today to take of my situation, all the venom I wished to spew had been swallowed into, "eh." So I very calmly explained the situation to the dude at the UPS store and that was that.

Now, the one thing that does piss me off is that the UPS Store Franchise does not have authorization to issue refunds for an obvious fuck-up such as this. See, I do not have my fifty bucks back in my pocket right now. I have to wait ten days to get a check. And what will the number on that check be? Today, I would have taken forty dollars, maybe even thirty, just to have that cash back in my pocket. Now, if you are mailing me a check, I expect all fifty dollars back. You fuck up my package, then you make me wait for a refund, shit it almost makes me wish this whole situation screwed me into a hole so I could sue for consequential damages (which I would get FYI. You overnight a package, obviously it is of utmost importance and should not be sent 2,000 miles in the wrong direction. Second, the only contract I made was with the UPS Store franchise, which specifically disclaimed consequential damages. You (UPS) would obviously know that I am a third party beneficiary of the contract I made with the Franchise and as such, privity is no defense for you).

In closing, UPS, thank you for taking stock of my site. There is no need for your CEO to contact me. As I told the franchise clerk after he said he was sorry that my package was delayed, "Shit happens." Granted my story has a happy ending (once I get my $50), but the fact that you have no customer service phone number on your website still pisses the shit out of me.

But in the end, it is you, FedEx, or USPS. So when I went to the UPS Store today, I also shipped out another (albiet, much less important) package. You can bet I will be checking that tracking number more often (but because it is going only 60 miles, I do not expect any problems. Though that is when problems occur).

Strange

A couple weeks ago I made a post on a message board about a kid named Ben Underwood who is blind, but sees through echo-location. Today, I noticed that With Leather had a post about the same story (from 8/6).

But the thing that caught my eye was when Ufford said, "This week's People Magazine profiles Ben Underwood . . ."

It was odd because it was not this weeks People, but People from July 2006, and happened to be the same article I linked to in the message board post.

I just found that odd. I am not an attribution whore, it was merely a post on a message board. After my post, it showed up on SI's Hot Clicks, and went from there. But the important thing is that the story is getting out. Because the story is pretty fucking incredible.

Note that the follow-up is not so heart-warming. His cancer has come back.

Hello World

This is what I hate.

On Friday I nailed down an apartment 1,000 miles that I was planning on moving in sight unseen. All I had to do was overnight a package from Illinois to Virginia containing my deposit checks. Easy enough, except that it was 3:30 p.m. and I was at my parent's house and my checkbook was 45 minutes away. No problem I thought. I made the 45 minute trip in a record breaking 35 minutes (no traffic at 3:30, go figure), made it to the closest UPS store, and got all my copies and faxes in order.

Then the UPS clerk offered my a choice. The package could arrive by Monday for $30 or on Saturday for $50. Never one to count my chickens before they hatch, I went with the Saturday delivery and promptly informed the apartment people that the package would arrive on Saturday.

Then I forgot about.

I was a little surprised that I did not hear back from the apartment complex on Monday, but did not think much of it. Same thing on Tuesday, though I began to get a little concerned. But I eventually forgot about it and went out for the evening. When I got home, I decided, as an afterthought, to check the Tracking Number to make sure that it was delivered. Yeah, you see where this is going.

On Tuesday morning, my package was sitting in California. Far as I can tell, it is still there. It was supposed to be in Virginia on Saturday morning. Instead of going 1,000 miles east, it went 2,000 miles west and still has 3,000 miles left to go.

So what was I to do? I immediately e-mailed the apartment complex, but that will not do any good for now. It is 2 a.m. there. For all I know, when they did not get the checks when I told them they would, they said screw me (without a phone call because talking to people can be a bitch when they need you to understand a peculiar circumstance), and leased the apartment to a new person. Or maybe they are still holding it for me. I did fax them my application and they said they would hold it for me, but the fact is, they do not have my cash yet, so it is not like they owe me anything.

I checked the UPS website. Apparently, there is no customer service numbers for when your package gets lost. I checked www.upsstore.com, but for whatever reason, the location search is fucked up and does not work. This makes it difficult to even find out if there is any store that is open 24 hours anywhere in the country. This dearth of information from preventing what I really want to know, When the hell my package is going to arrive. I guess this means that I have to call or head to the UPS store tomorrow. I will probably go in person. I want my fifty bucks back (but not if it limits my remedies to only the refund).

So this is what I hate. It is now 1:20 in the morning. And there is nothing I can do. Something is fucked up, and there is no way that I can fix it right now. Everything is out of my control. Nothing is going to change in the next five hours. I can only accept that and deal with it.

I hate this.