Equal Rights

Tonight, something that I believe strongly in came out in conversation. It started with Jim Holmes tweeting regarding an article written about another developer that I follow and have chatted with in the past:

“Disagree with Women-Only anything in IT. Why put up more walls? #fail RT @RWW Women-Only Programming Classes http://rww.to/aU9kme”

I happen to agree strongly with this, and said so. One of the devs that follows me, however, was of a different opinion and tried to justify the opinion, only to be shot down not only by Jim, but by me and even by my girlfriend, Karyl.

He went through a number of arguments, trying very hard to find something, anything, that would validate his claim and basically ignored anything that was used to counter him. Some of them, and my more lengthy responses (which, naturally, would not fit on twitter) are here.

“In this instance, I can understand it. The men are the main deterrent to potential female programmers. Plus, then they can focus on the material rather than deflecting awkward advances the whole time.”

I disagree. The deterrent to potential female programmers are the potential female programmers themselves. Women are not the only people that get hit on in college or while trying to learn or work. The number of classes that I was in where female classmates were trying to get me to go out on dates with them was rather high and I still managed to do all of my work. Besides which, most of the women in my CS classes (with a few exceptions) were under the impression that anyone who spoke to them was trying to hit on them and that really wasn’t the case.

From my personal experience, the women in the other engineering disciplines tended to be more driven than the ones in CS and were a lot more fun. There were more girls that dropped out of the CS program because it wasn’t “fun” or it was “hard” than because people were hitting on them (In fact, I can’t think of any of the girls I knew in those classes that stopped doing it for that reason).

“So, you're saying you don't think women should be allowed to have male-free anything?”

Are men allowed to have men only anything? No? Then there’s your answer. I believe in Equal rights. We are not getting into this “some people are more equal than others” mindset. That is a crutch and causes people to strive less if you constantly tell them “Oh, that’s okay. You’re a [x], we’ll lower the bar for you.”

Screw that. I want a professional in *any* profession to be held to the same standards as any other professional in that profession regardless of gender, skin color, or any of the rest of it.

To which I got the response of asking me how many men I’ve known who have been raped.

Bad question. And this made me very glad he wasn’t in the same room with me. I have good impulse control, but rape is not a woman only issue and it is not something I take lightly (nor is abuse in general).

For the record, I’ve known two that I can think of. Men who are raped undergo the added stigma of nobody believing them because, of course, rape can’t happen to men. Ask Karyl about her friend who was raped and was accused of being the one who did it instead. It has literally ruined his life.

Add to this the fact that many domestic abuse shelters will not accept men (who can be, and more often than you would believe, are victims of domestic abuse) and you start to see why this is a hot button topic for me.

Rape is not funny. Rape is not something that should be used as an argument against equal rights. Rape is also not just something that happens to women. I’ve known women who have been molested and raped as well and I don’t find it funny from either end. In fact, the woman that I loved more than anything else in this world was raped so I think I have some insight into how absolutely fucking horrible it can be (no pun intended and strong language more than justified).

“I've never been in a situation where I felt uncomfortable because the group was dominated by women.”

I have. It was not really fun. I’ll tell you something else – that group of women was more openly sexist and offensive than I’ve ever seen a group of guys be around a woman.

I’m not excusing guys who try to coerce women into doing things against their will. That sort of thing is, in my opinion, inexcusable, but it is not limited to guys. It’s not excusable from anyone, male or female (and, trust me, it happens with both).

Jim, the other voice of sanity, stepped in stating that he didn’t buy the attitude that all male programmers did was make passes at female programmers (and I agree).

This prompted a rather predictable response by our new “friend”:

“I'm not saying we do. All I'm saying is that if that FEAR is keeping one woman out, and the fem-only class lets her in, its a win”

No. What is keeping that person out is their own fear, not reality. If you are uncomfortable learning around men, how will you feel when you get out into the real world and work on development teams which, nine times out of ten, contain men as well as potentially other women?

“I theorize that by becoming exceptional in their trade, the unease when dealing with men is lessened due to being capable devs”

You become exceptional through practice and work. That involves working with and around other people, including men. You do the work and learn from it. You also learn from the people around you. That’s how you get better at anything (not just software development).

“By that logic, a group of women is not capable of creating great programs?”

No, by that logic, people who are afraid and never strive are not capable of creating great things. Letting yourself be afraid of your very surroundings and letting that fear control you means that you will never do great things and, in fact, may not do anything at all.

Greatness is accomplished by carrying on in spite of your fears (or sometimes even because of them). Giving up and going home because they let the boogey men in their head control them never really got anyone anything.

Am I afraid sometimes? You better believe it. However, I do my best to work through it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But I’ll tell you that it’s better than letting what *might* happen rule my life.

You’ve got to try for yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you, and even if they did, it wouldn’t mean nearly as much to you as it would if it was your own striving that got you there. Others can, and hopefully will, help you along your way, but you have to keep striving and push yourself to find your true boundaries. Then you have to work to break those boundaries.

I went on to explain why I have some of the views that I do – the fact that I’ve known women who were great and men who sucked (and the other way around), that I’ve taught and trained with martial artists of both sexes with various skills and skill levels, that I’ve known victims of domestic violence (both male and female) and that I don’t subscribe to the mindset of “men are evil and scary and need to go away” because that cheapens everyone’s accomplishments.

“My experience is that I'm an arrogant asshole, and I understand why a woman (or man) wouldn't want to be in a class with me.”

Finally something we can agree on. However, that’s a problem with you and not a problem with all men. All men aren’t like you (and for that I’m thankful).

In all honesty, folks, I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman. I don’t even care if you’re green and furry. I believe in equal rights, but that means equal responsibilities as well. If you want to bridge the [gender, racial, whatever] gap, stop using that thing as a crutch and strive. *That’s* the way to give people positive role models. Role models are created out of overcoming adversity.

You can’t create positive role models out of people that you let have an easier time than everyone else. Greatness is taken and achieved, not given and people need to realize that. It requires striving, not going easy on someone because they’re somehow different (whether real or only perceived). That only perpetuates the “I can’t do it because…” mentality.

"Freedom is something that you need to actively acquire. It’s not something that’s given with no strings attached. To be free means to take responsibility, and to prepare yourself for what’s to come."
- Charles Beams, "Eureka Seven"

The same is true of equality. In fact, equality and freedom are often very close to one another.

Don't beg for things. Do it yourself or else you won't get anything.

Current mood: grumpy
Current music: Eve 6 – Inside Out

Customer Service FAILURE

Please pardon me. I apologize, in advance, for any and all profanities which appear in this entry. Believe me, they are well and truly deserved.

A while back, the blower on the heating and air conditioning for my car went out. As I like to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer (not to mention being able to melt the frost and ice off of my windshield), I consider getting it fixed to be of at least moderate importance. I had already tried a couple of things, but to no avail, so I was quite happy when Karyl’s father was able to diagnose the problem.

Her father is a pretty nice guy and an industrial mechanic. Thankfully, he’s also pretty good with cars, which are not exactly my strong suit. I can do a fair bit preventative maintenance and fix some problems (largely through the experience of having done them before with my own father), but a mechanic I’m not.

He even suggested a semi-local auto salvage yard where I could get the part pretty cheaply. He’d used them multiple times in the past and was generally pretty happy with the service, but hadn’t been there in a while.

Oh what a difference a little time makes.

Marshall’s Auto Parts, located in Circleville is indeed cheap. The materials cost of my part was a whopping $10. That, however, is where the happy portion of this story comes to a complete halt (at least until, I hope, we replace the heating and AC control unit so that it works properly).

The service was TERRIBLE.

They have a website where you can make sure they have the part in stock (which is kind of nice). Her father suggested I do what he had done in the past – go down, order the part, and then come back after it had been pulled. He even said we might be able to call ahead and order it before we left for there since they take credit cards.

The children at this business, however, are special and don’t like to play that way now.

I called and tried to order the part only to be informed that you have to order in person because it is “first come, first serve”. Dude, I’m offering to pay you in advance, so I *would* be first come. Take my money and give me my part.

No. And we’ve stopped pulling parts for the day. Try back next week. (It was over 2 hours until they closed for the day).

So I headed over early this afternoon, thinking that it wouldn’t be too busy in the middle of the day on a weekday. Wrong again.

Okay, most places like this are still pretty quick, so I wasn’t horribly concerned. (This is where you can openly call me an idiot. I know I did afterward.)

I finally get to order my part and get told there are 8 people in front of me, so I asked if it was alright if I left to get a couple of other things done while the part was in queue to be pulled.

No. You can’t leave. If you’re gone when we finally get to your part, and we ask if you’re there, we’ll throw your order in the trash (and he was being serious).

So, again, I offered to pay in advance, only to be refused, being told that the part had to be paid for only when it was handed to you. (Which is bullshit, but moving on)

Three hours later, they get my part. Let me repeat that. Three hours later. Three hours. *Three* HOURS later, I FINALLY get my TEN DOLLAR part for which I was not allowed to leave lest my order be tossed in the trash.

By this point I was LONG past the angry stage and, frankly (and, again, please pardon my language) I WAS PISSED OFF. Justifiably so, I think (as does Karyl's father). I was seriously ready to drag the smarmy little douche over the counter and then toss him back over, minus a few pieces (and it takes a LOT to get me to that point).

The part that takes the cake though? Toward the end of the time I had to spend there waiting for no good reason, I hear them getting phone calls about SHIPPING PARTS TO RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS IN OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY.

Now, tell me WHY will they do THAT, yet they won’t let me pay IN ADVANCE and then just come and pick up the part? For crying out loud, I could have (and gladly WOULD have) ordered it and had it SHIPPED if for no other reason because it would have been cheaper than *my* cost of part + gas (to mention nothing of the amount of my time that you wasted and the meteoric rise in my blood pressure).

That was the point, dear readers, at which James nearly snapped and started killing people.

In closing, let me say this – if you ever need a part, do NOT consider Marshall’s Auto Parts unless you have them SHIP it. In fact, let me just shorten that to do NOT consider Marshall's Auto Parts.

And to the power tripping douchebags at Marshall’s, you have cost me a day of my life that I will never get back and went out of your way to make that day well and truly suck for no good reason (as you did to each and every one of your other customers that I saw that day). In return, I will do everything that I reasonably can to cost you business. You’ve earned at LEAST that much.

Current mood: Angry doesn’t even cover it
Current music: Soundgarden – Loud Love

Little Lessons

It seems like I always learn something new on any given project that I get involved in. I generally view that as a positive thing since, if I stop learning, it means I’ve started to stagnate.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I should finally get around to writing the backup program that I’d been considering for a while. Nothing fancy, essentially just a series of system calls to xcopy and svnadmin with error checking and logging in order to backup my email, files, and subversion repositories.

I could have hard coded the commands, but that wouldn’t be any fun. Besides which, it would make it more difficult to fix if the drive lettering changed (say, if I changed computers).

Hey, I at least try to make things easy to maintain even if it takes a little longer than a totally quick and dirty solution. =]

No, I’m not going to post it on the site. There’s really no reason to because it’s a basically nothing program and I only wrote it to save me time. Now all I have to do to perform a backup is double click the shortcut to the ruby program, walk away for 30 minutes, and then burn the results to dvd after checking the log to make sure everything passed.

The interesting part of the project was the thing that I learned.

Most of the calls to xcopy went off without a hitch. Then I ran into one that I just *couldn’t* get to work. I beat my head against the problem for the better part of a day, but made absolutely no progress. The only difference between the calls that worked and the one call that didn’t was that the non-working call had a space in the path.

Xcopy “Drive1:\path_without_spaces\” “Drive2:\path_without_spaces\” /E
Worked perfectly fine, but
Xcopy “Drive1:\path with spaces\” “Drive2:\path with spaces\” /E
Would choke every time.

I tweaked my code, endlessly trying different things that might help. I checked to see if there was anything weird with system(). I even looked on google to see if I could find an answer.

I had no luck whatsoever. Even discussions on xcopy itself were no help.

After beating my head against the problem endlessly, I finally thought of something so incredibly stupid that it couldn’t possibly work – take the trailing "\" off of the paths with spaces.

It worked. It’s stupid, and it shouldn’t have caused a problem, but it did. Apparently xcopy doesn’t like paths with spaces that end in a “\” while it has no problem with a trailing “\” at the end of a path that doesn’t contain spaces.

Who knew?

It was a small lesson. Heck, it was even a *stupid* lesson, but I *did* learn something, and it was something that I hadn’t seen listed as an issue online.

I can’t have been the only one to have run into this problem, but apparently if anyone else had it, they didn’t see fit to post a note on the subject.

Current mood: tired
Current music: none

I don't think you understand what that word means.

It seems that Google is giving all of its employees an unlocked android phone as a year end bonus (along with the extra money to cover the taxes on said bonus).

Okay, so they're dogfooding their employees on this one. It's not as good as the cash they usually give, but it's still a $400 phone that can be used with any provider.

However, I have a problem with part of this. From the same article is a portion of an internal email from management to the employees which sort of gets me:

Q: Can I resell my phone?
Googlers should not resell any item given to them by Google. Please review our Personal Transactions policy [removed].

Sorry, folks, but it doesn't work that way. You gave them the phone as a taxable part of their salary (and to prove that, you are including enough money to cover the taxes for it in their check by your own admission). That means that you basically have zero say in what they do with it.

You transfered the property and the ownership of said property to someone else. You no longer have control over it. That would be like me selling someone a house and telling them that they couldn't put blue carpet in it.

Or, more to the point, paying someone for their work and then telling them what they have to use their paycheck on. Sorry, but that doesn't wash.

Yet another reason I'm glad I ended up telling the folks at Google I wasn't interested.

Current mood: cold (hey, it's freaking freezing here)
Current music: Shooter - Life's a Bitch

Dear Dr Dobb's…

Tis the season – the time for planning gatherings with family and friends, buying presents, and pondering the greater meaning of life.

It’s also the end of the fiscal year for some places I deal with which means in addition to planning a holiday with Karyl, I’m getting requests like “We’re over budget for the rest of the year. Can we bump the payment date a few weeks?” and “We need to use the rest of our budget before the end of the year so we don’t lose it next year. Can we start the billing cycle a little early?”

Neither of those are things I really have a problem with. Most of my clients have been really great about paying on time, so it’s not a big deal. It just makes life a little crazy for the last few weeks of the year.

Consequently, I just got to yesterday’s mail this evening. That’s right, everything that wasn’t either a bill, a check, or something immediately recognizable as having come from a friend was put into a pile on the side of my desk until I had time to give it a glance.

One of those things was the latest issue of Dr Dobb's.

The moment I looked at it, I had to suppress a giggle because there was a mistake on the front cover. In large, bold letters, in order to announce its feature article, it read:

“Functional Programming: Has It’s Ship Come In?”

That’s right. The editors at one of the best regarded programming magazines apparently don’t know the difference between “It’s” and “Its”.

So, if any of the staff of Dr Dobb's read this blog (unlikely, but weirder things have happened), drop me a line via email or give me a call at the number listed on my homepage should you like to hire a new editor.

After all, I have worked in the IT field for a number of years, have been the executive editor of a magazine read by 500,000+ people worldwide and, most importantly, I know the difference between “It’s” and “Its”. =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Feeder - Shatter

3 a.m Haiku

The moon shines brightly
Light reflected from the sun
Not made of green cheese

Cat contemplates world
Leaves gift for us to step on
Hairball in the night

Ice is found on Mars
Intelligent life there too?
Certainly not here

Incoherent words
Drool pooled upon my keyboard
Typing while asleep

Writing bad haiku
Great distraction from boredom
Words torture reader

Don't read my haiku
Bad poems are much like yawns
They are contagious

I write bad poems
You shudder as you read them
I laugh at your pain

Hand reaches upward
Splitting wide the rich black earth
The zombies return

Zombie bites your head
Looking for a brain to eat
He dies of hunger

Can't breathe during night
Furry monster on my chest
It's only the cat

Scuffle at the door
Cat wishes to sleep with me
But he hogs the bed

I must get some sleep
But I can not quit writing
Make the poems stop

There is quite thin line
Between genius and crazy
I cross it daily

Why bad poetry
Comes so easily at 3
I have no idea

Compelled to write more
But I really need to sleep
This is the last one:

World is full of strife
To quote Edward R Murrow
Good night and good luck

Change? Who needs that!?
or
James Opens Another Can.

I've really cut back on the posts about the local political landscape, and I've done it on purpose. I find that it tends to make me more negative, and I'm trying to improve in that area.

However, this is about the presidential election, so I'll post for this one.

The post which follows is in response to a blog entry on the local paper's website. The person making the post claims to be a retired janitor with "100 hours of graduate study beyond an M.A. in U.S. history." (anyone else's bullshit alarm going off yet?)

I'm going to do this in a quote and response style. The blog entry is linked above, so feel free to read it if you like (some of his other posts are real winners too).

"Sen. Barack Obama's campaign slogan "Change We Can Believe In" is a nonsense phrase. It has no real meaning.

Am I the only one who thinks that it doesn't make any sense to believe in "change"? I can see believing in religion or love or maybe even music, but believing in "change" makes no sense."

While I don’t think it’s wise to seek change simply for the sake of change, after the last almost 8 years of Bush in office, you bet your ass I’m ready for change in a positive direction. We (at least the sane among us) don’t expect everything to happen overnight, but we do bloody well think it NEEDS to happen.

“Bill Clinton suggested "It's time to change America" when he ran in 1992. I don't recall him changing much of anything, although two years later voters changed Congress by replacing many Democrats with Republicans.”

For someone who claims to study US history, you don’t seem to know a whole lot about it. Under Clinton, we actually had a budget *surplus* which Bush decided to squander when he came into office.

That was quite a change from the previous administrations as well as the current one.

Then again, I’m responding to someone who thinks that Clinton got off from lying to a federal judge because he was the President when the truth is that he was found not guilty because the question had no bearing on the case he was testifying about and therefore had no place being asked.

And this guy claims to have a master’s degree in US history?

“The slogan "Change We Can Believe In" sounds like something a child might consider impressive, but it has no real meaing.”

No, the slogan is a rallying cry for everyone who is sick of a government that is of the Exxon, by the Halliburton, and for the Wal-mart. It is a blatant statement that things need to CHANGE and that if they don’t, the downward spiral we are currently in will only get WORSE.

“Not surprisingly, Obama has more appeal to inexperienced young voters than to wiser older voters who have seen a lot of fast talking phony politicians.”

You have to love how he defines wise people as people who think like him and are in his age group when he shows a decided lack of wisdom. Granted, I may be a wiseassed 20-something, but I’m a politically savvy one (and certainly not gullible) who realizes that THIS IS MY COUNTRY TOO AND *I* NEED TO HELP STEER IT BECAUSE IT IS PART OF *MY* DUTY AS A *CITIZEN*.

Sorry, kiddo, but I’ve been involved in politics since before I was 18 and did it using my own mind instead of making snap decisions.

Guess who I’m voting for. It certainly isn’t McCain, who, despite trying to look like a moderate, is a conservative in the shape of our current “leader”.

That’s something that laughing boy doesn’t seem to get. Then again, he’s also a member of the generation that has the funny habit of deciding that a program is no longer needed after they’re done using it (but that’s a whole other rant).

“Obama a few months ago commented about the psychological state of small town people who believed in religion, etc. What is the psychological state of people who believe in some vaguely defined "change"? “

Religion is a fine thing. However, it has no place in public policy. It is a private, personal matter and should be kept that way.

What Obama was talking about was the fact that people in the Midwest (especially in the rural areas) often try to get their elected officials to pass laws based on their religious convictions.

Try running as a person who is openly non-Christian around here even if you *are* the best person for the job and see if you get elected. In all honesty, you would not only have a huge smear campaign leveled at you but also possibly death threats, physical violence, your property defaced, etc.

As an example, our current governor was smeared for not being the right *kind* of Christian (he’s not Baptist, which seems to be the common denomination here).

Was it poorly worded? Sure. However, it was both sad and true. I should know. I grew up around it and continue to be surrounded by it. The sad fact is that a lot of people are trying to use religion as a political tool and that needs to STOP.

There are plenty of nice people around here, but there are far too many that want to make laws based on their religion, to the detriment of everyone else.

“Obama's supporters must have very empty lives to believe that some vague "change" is going to make their lives better. Do they expect the president to provide them some type of psychological satisfaction?”

No, we expect a change from the way things have been under Bush. Possibly back to something that actually looks and behaves as though it were at least sort of “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

However, that is going to require “change” and involvement – most notably from the younger generations which he derides as being naive.

“As an historian I am inherently suspicious of politicians who rely on oratorical ability to reach people on an emotional level.”

This is a good stance to take. However, *all* politicians rely on oratorical ability to reach people on an emotional level. The question is whether or not they can and will work to affect positive change.

“How can we be sure the that Barack Obama is not talking about a "change" designed to reduce the level of democracy in the United States?”

Apparently he really isn’t much of a student of US history. Despite the shenanigans of the current “president,” the answer to that question would be “separation of powers” (i.e. “checks and balances”) and THE CONSTITUTION.

I hate to tell him this, but this is our world as well and will be long after he and his kind are gone.

On second thought, I don’t hate to tell him that. I just wish I could do so to his face. Of course, I’d also be sorely tempted to tell him that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and that it really shows (not to mention doubting the degree that he claims to have).

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Tonic - Open Up Your Eyes (it seemed appropriate)

Well, It's Better Than The Dog Ate My Homework...

I went to check my email on Sunday, and couldn't connect to the mail server.

Not a big deal, really. It's Sunday, so most of the stuff I get is of the personal variety. Besides, my hosting provider is pretty good about getting things back up fairly quickly.

Several hours later, still no email.

It's odd, but as I said, not a big deal since it's Sunday. I go off for a few hours and come back this evening.

The mail's still down which is really unlike the guys there.

Reading Slashdot, I find out why.

It turns out that there was an explosion at the data center where their servers are housed.

Thankfully nobody was hurt, and it seems that no servers were damaged, but you have to love the excuse for the downtime.

We're sorry you can't reach your website or email, but our building exploded.

As I said, it's certainly better than "my dog ate my homework." =]

Providing that incoming mails aren't just being bounced or dropped into oblivion, it means that it should take a little bit to wade through my emails when the server is back online hopefully today. I'm waiting to see "downloading 1 of 1500 messages" lol

Current mood: wow
Current music: Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet - It's 5 O'clock Somewhere

Quality Isn’t Cheap.

I don’t agree with a lot of what Joel Spolsky says anymore. Granted, he still does pull off the occasional really good article, but it seems like most of his writing anymore is just saying how great he is.

His latest article on Architecture Astronauts looked like it was going to end up being one of his decent works when I started reading it. Unfortunately, the first part of the article was a smoke screen.

The real topic of the article?

Joel was whining that Google and Microsoft are buying up all of the decent CS graduates at good salaries and he just can’t compete.

He throws in a bunch of other things to make you think that isn’t the real topic of the article, but that’s what it boils down to – Joel is upset because he has to compete on a salary basis with Google and Microsoft because he wants the same sort of people that they hire.

I love his complaining that the Goog and MS are giving recent grads something that’s getting sort of close to 6 figure salaries.

I know that sounds insane if you’re looking at it from the point of view of the average salary here in Ohio, but let’s think about this for a second.

Google is located in one of the most expensive places to live in the country.

The Seattle area isn’t exactly cheap either.

If you think about it in those terms, that salary doesn’t seem so outrageous. In fact, buying power wise, it’s probably about the same as you’d be getting here with a couple of years of experience. Granted, that isn’t *right out of college* for most people, but it’s pretty close (and some of us had several years of experience before we graduated because we worked our way through school).

Now, want to know the real kicker?

Joel’s company is located in NYC.

That’s right. He’s based in an expensive area, competing with other companies based in expensive areas and he’s complaining about the cost to hire decent people.

If you want to have lower salaries, do what Eric Sink did and locate in the Midwest. However, part of the sales pitch Joel gives for his company is the fact that it *is* in NYC and how that means that there are so many things to do.

I have no doubt that the man is intelligent. He wouldn’t have been able to get as far as he has if he weren’t smart. However, he’s being far too ego driven now and that leads to a lot of stupid mistakes.

He’s buying into his own cult of personality and thinks that people should want to work with him just because he’s him instead of realizing that good people cost money no matter who you think you are (especially in expensive areas).

After all, we want to be able to do things like eat, pay the rent, go out and do things, etc.

Personally, I view the “salary problem” he is citing as a somewhat positive sign. It means that the market may actually be improving somewhat.

Current mood: amused
Current music: 10,000 Maniacs – Candy Everyone Wants

Local Companies and Visibility

Over the past few months, I’ve learned that this sleepy little town is the home to the corporate offices of both The Kitchen Collection and Petland.

To say that I was surprised was a bit of an understatement. In fact, I found it kind of bizarre. Even more so because it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge around here, and you’d think that it would be.

It’s a town of about 25,000 people. The fact that two chains are headquartered here (and one of them with stores in several countries) should be kind of in your face…

I mean, I knew there was a building just off of Bridge St with a Petland sign, but I always just assumed that it was a distribution center or something since it really doesn’t look like it should be an office building. As for The Kitchen Collection, it’s a smaller chain, but it should still be more visible than it is.

Why bring this up (other than the WTF factor, of course)?

Because the local paper had an update that The Kitchen Collection is moving their distribution center from New Jersey to the local area.

I view this as a positive thing on the jobs side, and I hope that it benefits the community. I also think it makes sense from a practical standpoint – it will be easier to keep tabs on distribution and Ohio is a much more central location for shipping than New Jersey.

Hopefully this works out well for all involved.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire

WTF?

The weird linkers continue.

First it was some German porn site last year with one or two referrals, then it was a site called dvd4arab (which continues to give me double digit referrals every month and has for like the last 9), and now it's another porn site...

It's only the 11th and I've already gotten 6 referrals from them.

I'm really starting to wonder just who is posting my site to these weird places lol

current mood: tired
current music: All-American Rejects - Move Along

I Think I’ve Lost It.

Ever have one of those dreams that cause you to wake up and wonder what the heck the sandman was smoking when he dropped off your nightly shipment of pixie dust?

Yesterday was one of those, and I have to say that he must have some really good stuff in his private stash.

I can just picture it. A very high sandman staggers into my bedroom with bloodshot eyes, smelling of herb, and says, in a bad Jamaican accent, “hey, mon, you’ll never believe what I got for you tonight. *giggle and coughing fit*. By the way, got any Doritos? I’m hungry.”

It involved zombies. Lots and lots of zombies coming out of some cave, and I was fighting them along with a bunch of other people, some of which I know in reality, some of which I don’t (seemingly generic people).

And then there was… Mr. T.

You heard me. I was fighting zombies with Mr. T.

Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my dream. It was the fault of the stoner sandman. Honest.

Unfortunately, Mr. T was not as tough in my dream as he is on TV and did not fare well against the zombies. His age must be catching up with him because they ended up bringing him back to the base with half his butt missing (don’t ask me. That’s just how it ended up, no pun intended.)

That’s when I woke up – from a zombie dream featuring a half-assed Mr. T.

I was afraid to even try to go back to sleep because I knew if I did, the dream would just resume.

All I can say is “I’m Mr. T, and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk! (but I suck at fighting zombies)”

Current mood: I don’t even know where to start
Current music: Curve – Crystal

Bad Santa.

Apparently Billy Bob Thornton broke into the Microsoft codebase sometime between last Christmas and now.

Once again, Microsoft made their Santa AI agent (based on one of the many classic AI bots that so many of us know so well), only to pull it recently.

It seems that, when repeatedly asked about eating pizza by an underage girl, Santa responded “You want me to eat what?!? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else.”

Microsoft said they don’t suspect a prank on the part of one of their developers and have since repaired the offending code, but are not going to bring Santa back online at the current time.

I wonder if Santa made his own naughty list this year. =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Lit – My Own Worst Enemy

Merchandising!

Today, while wondering through a store, I saw something that made me do a double take. You could say that it was a case of merchandising gone much too far.

“What?” you ask?

Jeff Foxworthy Teriyaki Style Beef Jerky.

I kid you not.

I think he must have a new addition to his list –

You might be a redneck if…. You eat Jeff Foxworthy Teriyaki Style Beef Jerky.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Cyndi Lauper – The Goonies R Good Enough (hey, one bout of cheese deserves another)

W…T…F…..???

Reading a friend’s blog, I discovered that apparently, if an agreement hadn’t been reached by October 1^st, the state of Michigan was basically just going to shut down.

Much like the pool, the state would be closed. Everyone pack up your beach towels and go home.

Being a bit doubtful, I decided to do some checking. She wasn’t kidding. That’s straight from Michigan.gov.

My head hurts. I mean, really, how do you just close a state? I can understand that schools might get disrupted if teachers go on strike or some other group decides to walk, but an almost complete shutdown of an entire *state*?

Think that I’m exaggerating? Read the article I linked in this post. The plan was to cut everything down to a barely functional skeleton crew of absolutely essential services (basically just state police, prisons, courts, and mental health – all at drastically reduced manpower capable of only dealing with “emergencies”).

Current mood: o.O
Current music: Rob D – Furious Angels