Chris & Joy's Critterweb » Rants

We were out of Cheerios, so I had some Gloom-ios for breakfast today

Chris — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:33:41 +0000

After spending most of my early AM hours following my usual blogs, news sites, and feeds, I decided to look for the lyrics to “Aenema” by Tool to add a few lines to my quotes page. Then I wondered if it would be a copyright violation to add the entire song because it just so fits how I feel about the world in general. Then I decided maybe I need to shut down the computer and spend some time outside with the birds and plants and trees, since the Internet is definitely not improving my disposition this morning

So I am off to garden a bit (and fling slugs) then spend some time volunteering at the shelter, and maybe after Joy gets off work we can sit out on the patio, watch the hummingbirds at the feeder and not think about oil slicks, wars, ecological destruction, the economy, genetic engineering, the decline of our culture, corruption, greed, corporatocracy, and things like that for just a few hours.

But here are the lyrics anyway… Just substitute “modern society” for LA.

From the lyrics page on Tool’s official site

Ænema Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of Freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Fret for your figure and Fret for your latte and Fret for your hairpiece and Fret for your lawsuit and Fret for your prozac and Fret for your pilot and Fret for your contract and Fret for your car. It’s a bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits. Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will cuz I sure could use a vacation from this Silly shit, stupid shit… One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied. Learn to swim. Mom’s gonna fix it all soon. Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim. Fuck L Ron Hubbard and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes. Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck smiley glad-hands With hidden agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, Insecure actresses. Learn to swim. Cuz I’m praying for rain and I’m praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don’t just call me pessimist. Try and read between the lines. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t Welcome any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down.

http://www.toolband.com/album/lyrics/aenima.html

Thought of the day

Chris — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:48:43 +0000

I think that all public restroom stalls should be wired with speakers and sensors that detect an occupant using a cell phone. Then, when some obnoxious jerk is carrying on a loud conversation while, uh, ‘taking care of business,’ the speakers should blast the audio from the toilet scene of Dumb and Dumber.

Link: America’s love affair with the car more of a forced marriage?

Chris — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:50:29 +0000

No Impact Man has a good post, which includes the above-mentioned article as well as some other observations. There is a lot of good discussion in the comments as well. We’d heard about the GM antitrust prosecution before, in The End of Suburbia. GM was also responsible for killing the EV-1 electric car. The auto industry has blocked the implementation of emissions and fuel economy regulation, resisted any attempt at regulation, seemingly deliberately stalled on developing alternative fuel vehicles, and of course lets not forget GM gave us the Hummer. And now they want a handout. If it wasn’t for the sheer number of people who would be jobless if the automakers folded, I would say let them rot; as it is I am not sure what the best solution would be. A no-questions-asked handout to bail out their sorry asses is NOT it.

The universe hates us… or something

Chris — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:48:55 +0000

I have been trying really hard to not be negative, but sometimes it feels like we are just cursed…

We took Winter to the vet for her chronic diarrhea last week. It wasn’t an emergency; it’s a problem she’s had off and on for a long time, and every time we tried to schedule a visit, one of the other animals ‘cut in line’ with a more pressing crisis. Anyway, finally we managed to get her in for an exam. We had them run a major blood panel — figuring if we were going to have blood drawn for a basic panel, we might as well go for everything so we would not have to put her through more bloodwork later.

The results came back today. Everything was more or less OK, with one exception – a fairly high positive on both feline coronavirus titers. This means that at the very least, she has been exposed at some point in her life. At worst, it means she is at risk for developing full blown feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) at some point. And the others may be exposed, through her.

It’s not a cut and dry situation. All the test shows is that she was exposed; (BTW this is probably not relevant to her digestive issues) but if I am understanding the articles (link above and another one here) I’ve read and the explanation from the vet correctly, the virus can remain latent for a considerable period of time, able to be spread to other cats or the carrier cat themselves can come down with the disease if their immune system is suppressed, or the virus mutates… it’s a weird virus because the disease is immune mediated, it’s not just a matter of being infected and then developing the disease like with most viruses . If/when a cat does develop full blown FIP, though, it is almost always fatal.

Even though we know that, statistically, up to 30% of house cats will show a positive titer for coronavirus, we can’t help but feel like we have 3 furry time bombs in the house. To say that we haven’t had the greatest luck with animals is an understatement, so the ‘remote’ chance that one of them will suddenly show FIP symptoms and die doesn’t seem quite so remote to us. We’ve had three cats with luxating patellas (common in dogs but not in cats), one die of toxoplasmosis, Nipsy’s asthma and heart tumor, Wednesday’s bladder stones and vaccine-associated sarcoma from the one vaccine she never should have gotten, Simon’s femoral head necrosis that resulted in two hip surgeries and a crippled cat (he also has feline herpes), Olive nearly dying of a reaction to benadryl (which, Ironically, she was given for a reaction to a vaccine)… and more. You get the idea. I think we have good basis for being a bit on the paranoid side.

As far as her bowel issues go, it looks like a food sensitivity or possibly irritable bowel disease… the latter of which has been known to develop into lymphoma. Yeah, rarely, but, well… see above.

Oh, and I found out today that stupid Motorolla charged us $725 on that fraudulent order after all! Argh!!!!! I spent an hour with them on the phone and apparently they will be refunding the money “within 7-15 days” but that doesn’t help our bank account now. The charge went through nearly two weeks after the day all that mess happened, and after the authorization on our account had already expired and been removed. I don’t even understand how they could have done that, when by that time there was no authorization hold and the card in question was closed?

Some days I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream, or just do all three at once.

Yet another shining example of what is wrong with society

chris — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 14:52:02 +0000

Yesterday we were running errands and had to get something from the Staples down in Hendersonville. Since we’d been at the clinic that morning, we came up the back way along Howard Gap Road which avoided the worst of the traffic but also meant we had make a left turn at U.S. 64 which is near impossible on a Saturday.

The first green light brought us to the front of the line, but we didn’t make it through. By the time the light turned green again, a steady stream of oncoming traffic that was not turning prevented us from moving at all. There was a little green car behind us with a woman with ratted-out bleach blonde hair and she apparently blamed us for ‘missing’ the light; she got right up on our bumper, throwing her arms all over the place and inching forward like she was going to pass us.

The light turned green again…more oncoming traffic. Finally we saw an opening because one of the oncoming cars was turning right (64 is a one-way highway at that spot so there were two lanes to turn onto) and we started to proceed forward, but suddenly there was motion to the left as the psycho redneck b*#$@! behind us whipped around to try and pass us on the left by pulling into the oncoming lane. We found ourselves sandwiched between her car and the minivan that had been turning right, had to slam on our brakes to avoid hitting the van because she was forcing herself past us even if it meant us hitting her or the other van.

Hearts pounding, we made it into the shopping center parking lot and pulling in right ahead of us was the @##$&*% who had nearly caused a major wreck. Gee… her little reckless tantrum hadn’t gotten her very far ahead, had it? We were stunned and apalled to see she had two small children in her car, one in the front seat (a very small child, isn’t that very unsafe and I think maybe even illegal?) and one in the back in a baby seat. That was just the final straw for Joy, who was already furious over the whole scene. She pulled over, got out of the car, and stomped over to the woman’s open window.

“Thanks for nearly causing a three car accident back there, with your two childen in the car!” Joy said, then calmly turned around and started to walk away. The woman’s response? “Oh yeah? Well at least I ain’t SLOW, like you!” she brayed. And she continued to scream unintelligible curses at us to impress her fellow rednecks at the Wal-Mart gas station, as we drove off.

What a wonderful example she is setting for her kids; what struck us most was not the lack of regard or respect she showed for everyone else in pulling that stupid stunt, but how little respect she apparently has for her own children’s lives, by endangering them in that manner.

OK, that’s it. Maximum stress level has been reached.

Chris — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:40:56 +0000

I have tried really hard through this whole House of Mold thing to be positive and upbeat and not have a cow over it. After all, I keep telling myself, look at all the people in the world right now who are facing much worse problems? What right do I have to complain because we’ve had to move after only 7 months and throw out half our crap… but this morning I just hit the last straw and feel that if I don’t have a ranting tantrum, then the top of my head might conceivably blow off. So you’ve all been warned. This entry is all about me wallowing in self pity so you’d be best off just closing the page.

We have now had someone out to service the furnace at the new house a total of six times. Well… actually the last time, (which I might point out, was just YESTERDAY) was a routine inspection to make sure everything was working right after the previous five repairs. We’ve had functioning heat for several days, the inspector that came out yesterday hooked up the kitchen duct (which wasn’t tied in to the heat system) and tested things out and pronounced the furnace healthy. We had 100 gallons of oil delivered and figured things were finally smoothed out and we could finish moving the last of the stuff out of the old house tomorrow (yes, there is still more to move) and work on getting settled.

So this morning, when I awoke after an uncomfortable, restless night to find the house oppressively HOT this time, and the furnace running full tilt even though the thermostat was set to 59… lets just say I’m running out of happy thoughts. I tried turning the thermostat all the way down to no avail, all along with me thinking "but that’s my $250 worth of oil that son-of-a-b**** furnace is eating!" We called the landlord, who called the furnace people, and then we had no choice but to leave for work since we couldn’t afford to miss any more of it and the clinic was short-handed. The landlord said she’d come out to let them in.

And then, halfway through the day, still having not heard anything about the situation, it occurred to us… ‘gee, maybe we should have left a window or two open, since it was 80 inside when we left?!’ I called the landlord who said she was on her way to meet them at the house, and she promised to open a window if it was really hot and to call when they were done. But I haven’t heard anything, I’ve left another message for her (four hours have passed) and I am starting to freak a bit. And we still have another hour at least to go at work, plus the half hour it takes to get home. Of course I am highly skilled at paranoia and conjuring up worst case scenarios, so at this point am convinced the house burned down… and feeling very sorry for myself — why can’t we just have some peace and normality in our lives? Why does everything always have to turn into chaos and calamity?

Paradise Lost…

Chris — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:34:02 +0000

DISCLAIMER: this is a sleep deprived rant that probably won’t make any sense to anyone other than me, and probably not even me when I come back and read it later. Read it at your own risk.

Well there hasn’t been much in the way of posting from me lately… been busy with work, studying, and battling insomnia again. Last night was evenly divided between laying wide awake and fitful sleep filled with nightmares, mostly about the new neighbors.

The house we live in, which we have been enjoying very much, is actually a duplex, joined at the garage to an identical one on the other side. And when we moved in, one of my only concerns was the lack of a fenced yard or a divider between the two houses in the backyard. At first we had a very quiet plumber next door who was hardly ever home, and then for a while the other unit sat empty. It was very peaceful — this is a quiet neighborhood and it was nice sitting outside in the mornings and evenings… and then THEY came.

Let me say that I am well aware that a big part of the problem is my being perhaps somewhat obsessive about my personal space, probably because, growing up, I never had any. So the sudden influx of an as-yet undetermined number of small children, shrieking, squealing, and running across our side of the lawn has not sat well. I’m trying hard to adapt — but why can’t they at least stay on their own freakin side of the property? Officially there is a mother and two small children, but I have seen at least 5 or more and that isn’t counting all the beat up cars and trucks that converge on weekends, blocking us in our own driveway (no one has actually parked ON our lawn anymore since we complained) and the creepy-looking men that hang out around the cars and stare at us when we leave the house. The kids come stare in our windows, traipse through the plant beds, and leave their bikes behind our cars, in addition to the aforementioned shrieking and screaming.

I guess if I go on about the loud soccer playing (the belches were a nice touch) outside our window, the small unsupervised toddler that chased the dogs when I tried to take them out to potty one day, the squashed ant-covered moon-pie behind my car on our side of the driveway and the grubby little fingerprints all over both cars, I will just sound like I am being a b*tch — and I probably am. If they want to trample down all the bedding plants on their side, coat every surface in blue silly string, leave broken toy parts, dorito bags, and other trash all over their lawn (or in the case of one plastic chair, halfway up a tree) I guess that is their business. Maybe someday we will be able to afford our own place so we won’t keep ending up in situations like this.

Why I am destined to live on top of a mountain, behind a large fence and maybe a moat, Example 1

chris — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:57:08 +0000

This is our neighbor’s dog. Yes, I know, he is cute. But this is not our neighbor’s yard; in fact, I took this standing in my living room doorway, after I came to investigate the large commotion that resulted from aforementioned fluffy white dog on my porch barking in the window. He had felt he needed to chase away the cats that had the audacity to sunbathe on a windowsill in their own house. Note the lack of (a) a leash and (b) his owner.

This same little dog runs up and down the street at all hours of the day or night, barking like an idiot. One day last year he darted in front of a car to chase after Lindsy, Mojo, and I when we were on a walk. When I looked over to the house where he lived, to see if he’d maybe gotten out of his yard somehow, I was surprised to see his owner sitting on the patio, beaming like an idiot with that "isn’t he just adorable how he thinks he can take on the big dogs" look on her face. Argh.

Frustrated? Me?

Chris — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:51:00 +0000

One of the many new changes that have been implemented at my job (which I used to enjoy) is that we are now using the call ticketing system the large company that contracts our company to provide support for the city we work for uses. (if I lost you with that, here’s the translation: I have three levels of bosses). Never mind that what we do doesn’t really fit the model of what they do, and in fact we can no longer provide them with the reports they want because it doesn’t have that capability. No, they wanted us to use it, so we now use it. If I was leaving tomorrow (I can dream, can’t I?) here is an excerpt of the instruction manual I might leave for my replacement…

1. a Simple Password Reset

Scenario: – User has changed their voicemail password to something they thought was really clever on Friday, and now on Monday they have no earthly idea what it was. We do about a dozen or so of these a day, more after a long weekend.

The Old System:

Open new ticket, which automatically fills in the date and time the ticket was opened. Input phone number and verify address and location auto-filled correctly. Gather callback number if needed. If no auto-fill, gather contact’s location and address. Enter the problem, and the resolution, and select the problem type and the ‘Closed’ option under case status, which auto-fills the date/time that the ticket was closed. Save ticket.

Time spent: less than two minutes.

The New System:

Open new ticket. Input account number and hit enter to bring up our account, wait for address screen to come up (15-30 seconds). Now if this step didn’t work, you will need to open up a screen that shows you every single account the company has, click a letter to search alphabetically, scroll through several screens to find the right account, then select it. Once the location screen has loaded, cancel because the screen contains a listing for every switch, router and other piece of equipment the entire city owns and all you need is a simple address. See if the location is in the dropdown list (which by the way also scrolls very slowly, and is missing quite a few locations) back on ticket screen. If it’s there select it, if not type it in. Fill in contact name, number and issue. Hit save.

Click on timestamps for everything up to ‘Isolated’ and fill in Initial diagnosis, which would be "Password Reset". Click on timestamp over in Current Action and fill in the diary with details. Fill in something for the follow up time and action, because, even though there is no follow up needed, the form will not save without it. At this time, the Resolved and Closed buttons are disabled so you will have to save the ticket, close it, and reopen it two more times.

Find the ticket in the Trouble Ticket List and open it again. Click the Resolved/Fix Timestamp and enter the resolution of "Password Reset." The closed button will still be disabled so you will have to save the ticket again and close it – AGAIN.

Find the ticket in the trouble list and open it again. Now it will let you clear the follow up action boxes if you want. Click ‘Closed’. Save it one more time.

Time Spent: At least 10 minutes, a lot more if the system is particularly slow that day.

2. Searching Call History

Scenario: Caller says "I’ve called twice before on this same issue" or the always fun cryptic "I need you to do that thing they did last time to fix my phone."

The Old System:

Click in the field you wish to search on. Click the search button and enter the search text. Search.

The New System:
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Dream on.

OK, if you are feeling masochistic, you can bring up a search form, enter your criteria, hit ‘Search’, wait for at least 5 minutes while the entire system freezes with an hourglass, and then close the error message that says the search timed out when it finally comes up. Seriously. This has never worked, not once. By then you are long off the call and have figured out some other way to find the info, or given up. If you are really desperate you can sort the ticket list by address and open every single ticket for that address and access the diary for each one, then scroll through all the notes for what you are looking for. Have fun.

Sheesh…

Chris — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 00:47:36 +0000

OK, I haven’t had a good rant here in a while… we’ve been having thunderstorms all day so this one might be cut short but let me try and get this out of my system. Recently I decided to finally update our PC, Firefly, a bit. I replaced the CD burner that died a year ago with a brand new DVD burner — I managed to be practical rather than vain so it now looks a little odd with one beige faceplate on an otherwise black system, but hey, it was on sale, it’s a good brand, and I can actually back things up again now. I upgraded my mixed Office 2000/Office 2002 apps to Office 2003, which fixed a few gnarly little errors I was getting when trying to get Word 2002 to cooperate with the older O2K apps, and I was forced into upgrading Norton Internet Security as well. That one has been a bit of a thorn in my side, as it kept crashing with a C++ runtime error but a reinstall seems to have fixed it.

Those things I updated to fix various errors but I also took advantage of a really good special that Macromedia was running to upgrade from Dreamweaver/Fireworks 4 to Macromedia Studio MX 2004 which added Flash, Illustrator, Coldfusion and some other stuff I didn’t have before. I’ve been pretty excited about that, it’s been a long time since I had any new ‘toys’ and the new versions are much better integrated with each other. So now I have all these shiny new things running, and I noticed something unpleasant. Firefly, who’s been dragging a bit for a while, has slowed to a crawl. Trying to do just about anything (OK, with me its always more like several anythings at once) results in a lot of thrashing from the hard disk and some downright bizarre behavior. And I realized that the minimal RAM that came on this machine when we got it just wasn’t cutting it for all this new stuff.

When we bought this machine I wanted to bump it up to 512 MB RAM at least, but the price was ridiculous. I figured that I could always wait until prices came down a bit and then throw in a couple more sticks. The P4 machine motherboards Gateway was using at the time used Rambus RAM, which was supposed to be the latest and greatest. A year later I priced an upgrade and found that a GB would cost me over $800 and half that was still out of this world. I gave up on it and forgot about it until this past week… prices didn’t come down a whole heck of a lot since then.

My first stop was the PC manufacturer’s web site, so I could look up the specs on the existing RAM I had and determine what I needed. It comes in two versions, I was pretty sure which one I had but not positive. They have a little wizard that runs through and tells you what upgrades are available after you plug in your serial number. It told me there were no available memory upgrades for my machine… um… OK. So I tried their little sales ‘chat’ thingy.

I explained I wanted to upgrade and wasn’t sure if my existing memory was ECC or non-ECC, could they check? Mr. Helpful Sales Guy says he would recommend I upgrade immediately because I only have 128 MB of RAM. I reply no, actually I have 256 and ask again. He replied that they could sell me an upgrade for X number of dollars that will work for my machine. Great, but is it ECC or not? He asked if I wanted to order the upgrade or not. Either he wasn’t answering it because he figured I just wanted to get the info so I could order from somewhere cheaper (guilty on that count), or he just didn’t know the answer, either way he p*ssed me off so I closed the chat window.

Next, I decided to take a look at our local electronics superstore, who I am about to go off on a little so I will just refer to them as ‘that wild-west themed store in northeast Dallas’. I stood beside the board of little price stickers for a good 15 minutes while sales clerks pushed past me to ask all of the people around me if they needed help. I don’t often feel discriminated against, but I *was* the only woman there. Finally a sales clerk who looked about 15 came over and asked the man beside me, who’d been there about half the time I had, if he needed help, and the man said "I think this lady was here first." The clerk said "oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were here with someone." (um.. what’s that supposed to mean? I was waiting patiently while the man of the house handled the ‘technical’ stuff?) OK… biting my tongue, giving the benefit of the doubt… I explained I had some questions about Rambus RAM.

Helpful teenager asks what my question is, and when I tell him, he at least admits he can’t answer it. He refers me to gregarious sales manager type standing over by the order desk. He explains I have questions about RAM and flees. Gregarious salesman is all smiles and asks what type I am looking for, and says "we can sell you 128 MB for X dollars." I explain that I am looking to upgrade by at least half a GB or more and explain that I don’t know if my existing RAM is ECC or non-ECC; say that I am assuming the latter but can I return the memory if I buy some and it’s not compatible? He explains that ECC means error correcting. I said I know that, and he explains that means it has an extra parity chip and I answered that I knew that too, what I didn’t know was the parity of my existing memory, and if all the memory modules had to match or only if each pair had to be the same. He admitted he didn’t know either and wandered off.

I contemplated leaving… I wasn’t even sure I was going to buy anything when I got there… stubbornness won out — damnit after all this SOMEONE was going to deal with me. Helpful teenager wouldn’t make eye contact at this point and gregarious salesman had disappeared. I finally got the attention of a third clerk, another teenager, and when I said which RAM I wanted he said "oh, for one of those older P4 motherboards, right?" and explained that he’d need to check to see if they even had any in stock, as they were discontinuing it. As it turned out, they were out of all the 256 MB sticks except for one pair of one of the cheaper brands. I didn’t bother to check on the 512 MB sticks — he’d uttered the dreaded words "older" and "discontinued" so there was no sense spending more than twice as much to upgrade… I might as well put in enough to make things livable for a while and then just plan on a new motherboard somewhere down the road. And since they were the last two modules, I went ahead and got them.

Seeing that a sale had been clinched, gregarious saleman type suddenly reappears and asks if I would like to have an A+ Certified technician install the RAM for me? I answered "I am an A+ certified technician" and he stood there uncomfortably trying to decide if I was serious or being a bitch (it was both) then wandered off again. The entire experience was capped off by the fact that the sales clerk and I had to go find another order terminal on the other side of the store because "their printer was jammed." The irony of a computer store being unable to clear a printer jam struck me funny but I kept it to myself, the sales clerk checking me out had actually been the only helpful one in the bunch and I didn’t want to give him a hard time.

Installing the RAM was a lot easier than buying it, I must say. Firefly now has 768 MB — triple what was in there before — and is running much faster. A defrag and maybe a couple of other tweaks and we should be in good shape for a while, at least.

Discontinued?

Older?

Gonna pretend I didn’t hear those words.