Public service announcement

The following is intended as a public service announcement only. I am not looking for comments, condolances or wisecracks. However, large cash gifts are always appropriate. This is intended primarily for my remote friends – that is, those folks with whom I am not in frequent enough contact, or who don’t live close enough, that they would already know this. In other words, this is intended to prevent awkward moments at parties, conferences, and on IRC.

As of last Friday, according to the court of the state of Kentucky, I am no longer married.

Further discussion of related issues will have to wait for another time, since it’s a little hard to be objective. Or, to quote Stevie Nicks (which, of course, I try to do as often as possible) “It’s hard to be civil, and it’s real hard to be nice.”

Flying moose ears

Yesterday on the way home, I drove behind a car with a license plate “500 ERR”, and wondered if it was intentional.

Which reminded me of something I saw a few weeks ago, and even took a picture of, because it amused me. But I suspect that only Ken, and perhaps other regular residents of #apache, will see the humor in it.

Note, it’s a pretty bad picture, and it may be a little hard to even pick out what I was taking the picture of, let alone why it’s funny.

Tribes and political correctness

I am, once again, having the discussion with some well-intentioned (I assume) person intent of persuading me that the term “tribe” is necessarily pejorative. That it necessarily refers to Africans, and implies “primitive”.

I find political correctness to be abhorent for this very reason. It strives to take things that are in the common usage and cast them as offensive. Thus, we can’t use the word Chairman (gender-specific), patient (should be “person receiving treatment” – patient implies someone is sick, which is offensive), or black hat (racial bias). We are reduced to grunting, because any use of specific terms will offend someone.

I’m not having any of this. Words mean things. If ignorant people find words offensive, then they will just have to get over it. I refuse to cripple my communication skills just because someone is intent on being a victim.

For the record, the people of Africa refer to themselves by what tribe they are a member of. This has been my experience my entire life. The government of Kenya uses the term tribe when referring to the 42 ethnic/social/religious/family groups that live in Kenya. The term tribe is descriptive and precise. It does not imply anything other than what the dictionary says it implies – a group of people who are joined by ancestry, language, history, geography, religion, and various other social and ethnic factors. The word “tribe” prevents me from having to say that every time.

People that try to shoe-horn offence into every nook and cranny reduce us to uncommunicative morons. We’re always walking on eggs about what we say, in case someone take offence.

And of course it’s not just about whether someone is offended. I don’t much care whether people are offended. What’s frightening is that they can sue because they are offended. They can call it discrimination. They can call it “creating a hostile workplace.” They can call it hate speech. And they can sue. That’s bizarre, wrong, and violates my constitutional rights.

All, of course, IMHO, and I’m probably wrong, and I apologize if I offended anyone.

Telemarketers

OK, last one for tonight.

So I mentioned that the telemarketers were calling me repeatedly. And I have a policy of not answering the phone if I don’t recognize the number. If they really need to talk to me, they’ll leave a message, and maybe I’ll pick up.

But I finally answered one of the “no caller id” calls, just to see.

It was a long-distance company, calling to confirm my request to change to their service. They asked for various personal details. I said, huh? They said, please confirm your mailing address, so that we can finalize your order.

I finally got her to stop and explain to me what she was calling about, at which point I was able to persuade her that, no, I did not request that they take over my long distance service, and that, no, I was not going to provide them with all sorts of personal details, and could they please please please stop calling me.

The “no caller id” calls have stopped. It’s been very nice.

rebooting phone, again

After an initial period of hopefullness, my phone started acting worse than ever.

So this evening I went to Sprint, all ready to raise a ruckus and make a scene. I said, I’m having phone problems, and the last two people that tried to fix it made it worse. The person at the counter asked where I wanted the replacement sent to.

This was quite a surprise, and rather took the steam out of my plans to rant and demand justice.

So I guess I’ll have a new phone soon. 🙂

Ghost Rider, finalé

I finally finished reading Ghost Rider, and wrote Neil Peart a short letter thanking him for the book. I don’t expect that he even reads his “fan mail” personally, but you never know.

I found the book to be very good. Lots of good insight, but no attempt to be preachy, or even to present itself as having any answers. There were answers, but only the ones that you already had inside you, and the ones that you are ready to arrive at on your own. I think.

I found the end to be rather rushed and unsatisfying, but, at the same time, it offered the hope that there might be some deus ex machina, even in Real Life. Maybe life doesn’t suck forever. Maybe I’m allowed to be happy again some day.

And so I wrote what is, I believe, only the second fan letter I’ve ever written.

The first one was to “When In Rome”, and they sent me a handwritten response. So you never know. And a letter from Neil Peart might actually be worth something some day. 😉

Anyways, thanks, Neil, for a thoughtful, helpful book. I hope that my healing road will be as successful as yours. If somewhat less expensive.

Sept 11, 2001

I experienced the events of Sept 11, 2001, entirely via IRC. Later in the morning, when CNN.com came back up, I got the little bit of news, as it trickled in, from that site, and also from Boston.com.

So that morning was even more surreal than it might have been had I seen footage on television, or heard it on the radio. I saw digital photos from people living in Manhattan. I saw pictures from a webcam pointing at the Pentagon. I watched as people described what they were hearing and seeing on the news, and discussed various theories of what was going on.

After the second plane hit the trade towers, discussion changed pretty fast. It was clear that it was not an accident. Although, for a while, a number of people disputed the report of the second plane, saying that people were confused, and hearing the first report again.

There was the report of a car bomb at the Smithsonian. Or perhaps it was a the White House. Or at the State Department. And there was clearly something buring at the Pentagon, but nobody knew what that was about.

Then the towers fell. This was monumentally hard to believe. Surely this was not being reported accurately. But then there were photos. Loading painfully slowly, but there were the pictures. It was gone. And then the other one was gone.

Meanwhile, we had work to do. We had a deadline. Ken was sitting numbly, unable to work. I was trying to work, but could not. What could it possibly matter that this customer get their insignificant web site done?

Later in the day, the customer had the nerve to say that they believed that the events of the day would help their cause (political action bloodsuckers), and I almost hung up on them. This was the moment when I started passionately hating this customer, and the main reason that I was not sorry when they dropped their contract.

I’m currently trying to track down someone that has a transcript of #perl (rhizomatic.net) from that morning, since I appear to have lost mine.

… but I wouldn’t want to paint it.

On Saturday, we painted a HUGE map of the USA on Sarah’s school parking lot. Kentucky was about 2.5 feet across, to give you some idea of the scale.

Most folks ignored the instructions to start in the middle and work out, so by the end, I was playing twister to paint Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. And I got lots of paint on me due to certain people insisting on painting south Texas before north Texas.

So, today, I hurt all over. For some reason, I didn’t suffer much yesterday, but today my legs and back hurt, and my shoulders are so tight you could bounce a paint can off of them. But the map looks absolutely wonderful, so I suppose it was worth it.

UNKNOWN CALLER

Over the last 48 hours, I have received about 50 calls from UNKNOWN CALLER. Since I make a firm practice of not answering these calls (I *despise* talking to telemarketers, primarily because I don’t know how to say “No” to them, and because they waste huge amounts of time getting to the point, and invariably call when I’m doing something important) I let the answering machine get it. None of them have left a message, leading me to believe that the choice not to answer was the right one. Still, it’s annoying. What’s most annoying about it is how late in the evening they are calling. I kinda think that 7pm, maybe 8, is about the latest any decent marker should be calling. Many of these have been after 8, some as late as 9:30. That’s just not right.

The Margin Is Too Narrow