lastkrell

A CD version of “Thirty Thousand Feet Over China” is finally available. Buy it now.

If you’re not familiar with The Passions, take a listen. Samples are below.

The_Passions_-_Alice’s_Song.mp3
The_Passions_-_Bachelor_Girls.mp3
The_Passions_-_Don’t_Talk_To_Me_(I’m_Shy)_(7′_Version)_[BONUS].mp3
The_Passions_-_I’m_In_Love_With_A_German_Filmstar.mp3
The_Passions_-_I_Radiate_(7′_Version)_[BONUS].mp3
The_Passions_-_Runaway.mp3
The_Passions_-_Skin_Deep.mp3
The_Passions_-_Small_Stones.mp3
The_Passions_-_Someone_Special.mp3
The_Passions_-_Some_Fun_(7′_Version)_[BONUS].mp3
The_Passions_-_Strange_Affair.mp3
The_Passions_-_The_Square.mp3
The_Passions_-_The_Square_(live)_[BONUS].mp3
The_Passions_-_The_Swimmer.mp3
The_Passions_-_War_Song_(7′_Version)_[BONUS].mp3

I declined an invitation to go to lunch with my boss and a couple of my coworkers. I don’t think my boss was happy about it. I would have gone, but the restaurant he chose has no vegan items on the menu. Even the Marinara sauce has meat in it, which is just plain wrong. Since the place is geared toward meat, and is always packed, they have no incentive or inclination to make a special vegan dish for me, so I’m stuck with what’s on the menu (i.e. nothing). My boss knows I can’t eat anything there because I sat next to him, not eating, the first time he took me there. Sometimes I mention it when he invites me along to lunch, but since it never makes any difference, I usually just decline. Sure, I could sit there with a glass of coke in front of me, while everyone else is wolfing down 16 ounce steaks, but from experience, I know that’s awkward. It’s not a significantly better option than declining. At least this way I don’t have to endure the smell of broiled animal flesh.

If you’re in a group of people, and one of them is hard of hearing, it’s best to keep witticisms to yourself. Nothing sucks the bon out of a bon mot, like having to repeat it. Timing and surprise are vital elements of humor. A comment made at the right moment can get a laugh. The same comment delivered 1o seconds later could fall flat. The same comment repeated every 10 seconds is going to be tiresome. The same comment repeated every 10 seconds, getting louder each time, is very likely to elicit annoyance from the group.

“What the hell were they thinking?”   “Why did they do it that way?”   “Who thought this was a good idea?”
Those phrases are the box cars of the train of thought that chugs through my mind, day and night, on a little circular track, like the one we had around the Christmas tree when I was a wee lad.

There’s no use in crying over spilled soy milk, but you still have to clean it out from under the oven.

Today my boss was trying to tell me that the Federal Reserve’s 85 billion dollar loan to A.I.G., wasn’t a government bailout. He said the Federal Reserve is in the private sector so that money isn’t coming out of the public’s pockets. My boss is confused. The Federal Reserve is an independent agency of the United States government. To put that in context, the CIA, FCC, FTC, and NASA, are some other independent agencies of the United States government.

My boss, commenting on politicians:
“They’re all in it partially for various reasons.”

What the hell did I do, that got me on the New York Mint collectible coin mailing list? What gave them the impression that I want to spend $340 on an Oregon Trail Memorial Half Dollar?

I’m normally very cynical when it comes to politics, but I believe Barack Obama is the real deal. I urge you to vote for Obama in November. Contribute if you can afford it. Before this year, I never contributed to a political campaign. Tonight marks my second contribution to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. My previous contribution was $100. Tonight’s contribution was $150.

Elect Barack Obama to the office of President of the United States of America!

I just made two investments to help provide for my future prosperity:

1. Contributed $100 to the American Civil Liberties Union
2. Contributed $100 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
- Art of War, by Sun Tzu, 6th Century BCE

Due to writer’s strike, I was unable to post items on my website for the last few months. I’m not in the union; it just depressed me. I was despondent over the thought of “reality” shows becoming 90% of television programming.

When was the last time you washed your hands ? Pretty recently, right ? Cleanliness is important to you.
Now, when was the last time you cleaned these ?

• Your computer’s keyboard and mouse
• Your bathroom’s doorknobs
• The steering wheel of your car
• Your phone
• Your keys
• Your wallet
• The handle of your briefcase
• Your TV’s remote control
• The handle of your refrigerator door

Tags are irrelevant. What matters is what you wear, rather than whose name is on the clothes. Over the last 3 decades the tags have been getting bigger and more prominent. Tommy Hilfiger has turned every one of his customers into a walking billboard for his brand name. Just say “No!” to paying to be an advertisement.

A really cute website about caring for pet rats: Rat Guide

This is the entirety of an email sent by one of my coworkers today.
“What do you want on it. I like meat.“

Hardcore tech types think it is simple to maintain their PCs. Maybe for them it is, but for the average PC owner, it is a hellish nightmare. Even for people, like me, who have a good handle on TCP/IP; what a “service” is; what each service does; and whether a given service needs to run or not, it’s still damn difficult to keep PCs running smoothly. The problems being reported about Microsoft’s Vista OS have finally convinced me that it’s time to try an alternative to the Microsoft model. My next computer is going to have an Apple logo on it.
[Krell’s second hand advice: My tech-savvy friends who are familiar with both PCs and Macs unequivocally advocate Macs. My not-so-tech-savvy friends advocate paper and pencils. My cat advocates throwing foam balls for her to chase, instead of wasting time with computers.]

Mahmud, Where’s My Car ?   (comedy)
Bilal and Mahmud, two bumbling martyr-wannabes, wake up after a night of prayer and fasting to find that they can not recall where they parked their vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. With only 8 hours before their scheduled detonation at the grand opening ceremony of the new Shiite Mega Mosque, the pair sets out on a frantic search of Baghdad, looking everywhere for the car bomb they’ve lost. Along the way they encounter transvestite insurgents, trigger-happy private security contractors, a crazed weapons inspector still searching for WMDs, and a zombie Saddam Hussein. Finding their VBIED isn’t going to be easy, but with 72 virgins and 28 pre-pubescent boys waiting for them in paradise, Bilal and Mahmud aren’t about to let a few obstacles stand between them and a fiery death.   Rated PG-13 for language and some sex and drug-related humor.

Janie: “My PC has zero to no connection since Derek changed my settings!”
Krell: “So your PC can’t reach anything on the network?”
Janie: “I can get to stuff most of the time, but sometimes it’s slow.”
Krell: “So there are times when your PC can’t reach anything on the network?”
Janie: “I don’t lose my connection completely, but it’s very slow sometimes.”
Krell: “O-Kaaaay. I’ll tell Derek what you said.”

SAP - proud purveyor of diabolical enterprise resource planning software.
I don’t know anyone who has experienced an SAP implementation and emerged from it with something good to say about SAP.
[In case you were wondering, ‘Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung’ translates to “Systems, Applications and Products in the Data Processing”.

“It’s not my drinking that’s the problem. It’s my wife’s perception of my drinking that is the problem.”
- Justin, my borderline alcoholic coworker

There’s a lot I regret, but I’ve come to terms with most of it. The things that haunt me are the harms I’ve done. They were small harms, and have probably been forgotten by everyone but me, but they still make me sad.

Krell’s rule of thumb # 66:   There is always at least one obnoxious jackass in every office.

In my current office, it’s Justin. Justin likes to play heavy metal at his desk. He doesn’t like to wear headphones. Several people, including me, have politely asked him to lower the volume so we wouldn’t have to hear it. The volume stayed the same. Then our boss heard his music and told Justin to keep the volume down. The volume stayed the same. We’ve been getting progressively less polite in our requests to Justin, but no matter what we say, the volume remains the same.

Being a very reasonable person, and not very selfish, I am ill-equipped to deal with Justin and his ilk. I don’t know what approach will get him to turn his music down. I’m not even sure it’s possible, without resorting to violence or other illegal means. It seems like we’re going to be subjected to Justin’s music as long as he is employed here. It’s incredible how much of a negative effect one person’s anti-social tendencies can have on everybody around them, and how little we can do about it.

The email message below was forwarded to me by a coworker, and it pissed me off. After you read it, I’ll tell you why it made me so angry.

“In our church we have a young man, who was in a horrible accident this weekend. He is in critical condition and needs blood. He is 17 yrs old and his name is Matt Byrd, he is in Kern Medical, his blood type is B- but he can have O+ as a replacement. If you know of anyone in your church or friend who could donate blood to help save this young boy’s life could you please put this out in your church ASAP? If they donate the blood they can tell the blood bank to get it to Kern Medical for this boy. He has so many broken bones and both lungs punctured and No one I know or in the church so far has this type. If you can help put this out there it would mean so much. As a mother you can just imagine this moms panic and pain. If they could also send up prayer for this boy I know the Lord would hear. Thanks Love!!”

That letter made me angry, because I had already read the news report of the accident. You can read the full story here, but I’ve excerpted the most relevant parts below.

“At around 9 a.m., a 2005 Chrysler PT Cruiser driven by Matthew Byrd was traveling north on Granite Road when it crossed over the double yellow lines and slammed head-on against a 2004 Dodge Ram pickup, according to CHP Officer Kirk Arnold. The truck burst into flames…Still inside the burning pickup was Carla Christensen…Byrd and Christensen suffered major injuries”

Not one word of that email requests prayers or aid for Carla Christensen!   They want prayers and blood for the kid who caused the accident, but the woman who had to be dragged through the window of her burning truck doesn’t even rate a mention?!

You’ve got to love that Christian Spirit.

Twenty items or less.
Fifteen items or less.
Ten items or less.
Phooey!   These are the kinds of checkout lines that would get me out of Wal-Mart quicker:

• A checkout line for people whose credit card won’t be declined.
• A checkout line for people who aren’t going to change their minds about products as the cashier is scanning them.
• A checkout line for people who aren’t going to make the cashier wait while they have a chat on their cell phone.

Last week there was an unusual truck accident at work. No one was injured, but it was a big deal because the truck’s gas tank was leaking, and heavy lifting equipment had to be used to move the truck out of the shipping yard.

My office has a view of the shipping yard, so as soon as I heard the crash, I could see what had happened. Because it was an unusual accident, I grabbed my camera and headed out to the yard. [I currently use a 5 Mega-pixel digital camera, with 6x optical zoom and 2 GB of flash memory.] I had only shot a few photos when the lead person from the safety department walked up to me. She said the safety department’s camera, an old 3.2 Mega-pixel model, had only enough memory to hold 14 pictures, and they already used those to document a forklift incident earlier that day. She told me she needed me to photograph the accident from many different angles and get detailed shots of the gas tank, etc.

After taking the photos, I went back to my office and burned a CD-ROM of the pictures, labeled it, and delivered it. I received no thank you. Instead, I was told to go take more photos of the truck. I did so, repeating the whole process. Again, I did not receive a thank you. I cut her some slack though, since preoccupation with the accident may have occluded her manners. However, a week later I still had not received a thank you. Okay, I cut her some slack again, since the whole episode may have slipped her mind during a weekend of drunken debauchery or some such circumstance.

As it turns out, she’s just rude and selfish. On Friday she sent someone to my office to tell me to go take photos of another incident. No “please”. No “thank you”. No acknowledgment that I’m doing her job, and will have to work extra time to complete my own work. I don’t mind helping people, but I hate having my good nature taken advantage of. There won’t be a third time.

The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup is running an English-dubbed version of the anime, BLEACH. The same handful of voice actors they use to dub most of their other shows are in play again with this one. This is by far the worst English dub Adult Swim has presented.

The problem is not a gross lack of quality in the translation or production. It’s that the voices are simply wrong for the characters. I don’t speak Japanese, but emotion, attitude and personality bridge the language gap. The original Japanese voice actors played the characters a certain way. Since they are much closer to the source of the material, and presumably received coaching and feedback from the creators, it’s reasonable to assume that they’re portraying the characters correctly. With very few exceptions, the portrayal of the characters by the English dubbers is nothing like those of the Japanese actors.

Take Ichigo, for example. In the original version of the anime, Ichigo is almost constantly annoyed or angry. He has his tender side, but one of his main defining characteristics is his volatile temper. The English language version doesn’t capture that at all.

My coworker, Justin, fancies himself a hotshot poker player. Last week he took a few days of vacation and drove several hundred miles to attend a big poker tournament. When they arrived at the casino, he and his buddies immediately started celebrating their anticipated victories. They got so drunk that they slept right through the registration process and had to sit out the tournament.

Krell: “Justin, do we still need to keep the old SurfControl server running ?”
Justin: “No. We aren’t using it anymore. But we are slowly migrating people off of it to the new one.”
Krell: “So not everyone has been moved from the old server to the new server ?”
Justin: “Right.”
Krell: “Then that means we still need to keep the old SurfControl server running.”
Justin: “Yes.”

My coworker Janie apparently feels compelled to give a running commentary on everything she does, all day long, every day.

• As she dials the phone: “I have to call this person and remind them of that report. I need that report. They better get that report to me today. Blah blah blah”.
• As she surfs the web: “Boy, this site is slow. This page always takes a long time. It took a very long time yesterday. Blah blah blah.”
• As she opens her mail: “I get so much mail! Look at all this mail! I need to get less mail. Blah blah blah.”
• As she looks through her desk drawer: “I need to clean out this drawer. Where is my stapler? I know my stapler is in here! Oh, there’s my stapler. Blah blah blah.”
• As she types a memo: “I need to get this memo out today. I better copy so & so on it. I think I spelled that wrong. That word is so hard to spell! They should have made that word easier to spell. I don’t have time to deal with it. I’ll let the spellchecker deal with it. That’s the spellchecker’s job. Blah blah blah.

As I may have previously mentioned, my job involves a lot of technical reading and problem solving. I don’t require absolute silence, but Janie’s constant yammering shatters my concentration like a brick through a plate glass window. There is a direct inverse correlation between my productivity and her time in the office. I suspect there is a direct positive correlation between Janie’s time in the office and the pressure at which I grit my teeth, but I haven’t gotten around to measuring it yet.

[Krell’s note: Yes, I borrowed that imagery from Ian Fleming. Before you get all smug about catching that, let’s see if you know which non-Bond novel by Fleming was made into a motion picture. If you knew it was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, you can now feel smug.]

We’ve all seen it happen - The bigger and older toys like Erector Sets and Lincoln Logs beating up on the poor defenseless Legos. Well, no more! BrickArms Lego Compatible Weapons will give your Legos all the firepower they need to leave them as the last interlocking construction toy standing.

I hate the Microsoft Windows operating system! I think the thing that bothers me the most is the way it rearranges my desktop icons at the drop of a hat.

• I change the size of the little arrows that differentiate shortcut icons from regular icons and Windows shoves all my icons to the left side of my screen.
• I apply a software patch and Windows shoves all my icons to the left side of my screen.
• I undock my laptop and Windows momentarily sets the screen resolution to 800×600, shoving all my icons to the left side of my screen.

I keep about 30 icons on my desktop to give me easy access to the applications I use the most. Every time Windows rearranges them I have to put them all back where they were.

Some people have told me to leave the icons where they are if Windows is just going to shove them over to the left side of my screen anyway. That’s not going to happen. I refuse to let the way I work be dictated to me by a machine. Leastways not until the machines are walking around with laser rifles and shock rods.

The number of blogs being written makes it impossible for anyone to read them all. You could easily find any number of blogs that your friends have never heard of. [Such as mine.]   Of course, many of those will not be worth reading. [Unlike mine.]   Here’s one that I think is worth a look: popwink.com.

• Let’s give Desmond a show of hands. Who here is interested in the Little League batting lineup ?
• Janie, I really don’t care what excuses your son gave you for not completing his math homework.
• Desmond, you and Janie have have completely different jobs, so why do you two need to discuss every task you’re working on ?
• Janie, I really don’t care what period they’ve scheduled your son for P.E. class.
• Desmond, why are you standing behind me watching me type ?
• Janie, I really don’t care why your son is in the principle’s office.
• Yes, Desmond, it’s hot outside ! We all know it’s hot outside ! You don’t have to keep telling us it’s hot outside !
• Janie, I really don’t care why you want the school to change your son’s P.E. period.
• Desmond, don’t you have some work you need to do ?
• Janie ! Desmond ! Would you please shut the hell up ? Thank you !

One of my coworkers makes a big deal out of saying, “Bless you!” every time someone sneezes. It irritates me.

Spellchecking should be used intelligently. One should not blindly accept the first correction proffered by one’s spellchecker. Here’s a case in point straight from my email in-box.
“Winston is having intermittent connectivity issues in his office. The problem is spermatic.”
I suppose it’s possible that the author meant to use that word, but it’s such a repulsive thought that I refuse to contemplate it any further than I already have.

There are so many things piquing my ire that I’m having trouble getting one rant down before the next one crowds it out !

Some people think I’m not too bright, or they consider me an obstructionist and time waster. These misconceptions stem from my unwillingness to just start doing stuff without a clear idea of what we’re trying to accomplish and a plan for reaching that goal. I tend to ask a lot of questions that others see as irrelevant. Below are a few of my typical queries.

• What problem are we trying to solve ?
• Are we sure this really is a problem ?
• What end results do we want to achieve ?
• Is this a wise expenditure of resources considering the results we expect to achieve ?
• How do we verify that our solution actually works ?
• Is there a simpler solution than that ?
• Won’t this create more problems than it solves ?
• Can we go back to the current state if our “solution” makes things worse ?
• Who outside of this room needs to know that we’re going to change this ?

I reorganized the Bakersfield photo gallery and added a few new shots.

I need a chorus of Oompah Loompahs at work, singing little songs of admonishment as everyone pushes ahead against my warnings. A few days ago we recevied a set of brand new LAN switches. I said, “Let me read the manuals and make sure the switches are configured correctly before we insert them into the production network.”
“No no no !”, they said. “We’ll lose too much time !”
Personally, I don’t consider learning the capabilities and proper operation of the equipment that we spent tens of thousands of dollars on as lost time. In any event, it wouldn’t have set us back nearly as much as crashing half the network did.

Overheard from a conversation at work: “If your neighborhood is so nice, why aren’t you there now ?”

The guy who sits at the desk next to mine is an idiot. His solution for every reported problem is to increase the bandwidth of the network connection to wherever the report is coming from. It doesn’t matter that I’ve told him over and over again that the problems being reported can’t be solved with more bandwidth.

This isn’t a difference of opinion. It’s a matter of fact. I’ve proven it on the whiteboard and shown how it works in practice. There’s no question about it. Yet, as soon as we get another trouble report, he’s telling the user their network connection isn’t fast enough and he’s going to upgrade it.

My blood pressure is 118/67
My cholesterol is 131 mg/dl

I’ve been a denizen of the corporate jungle since my 25th year. As I’ve navigated that peril filled landscape, I’ve had my share of close calls. More than once I’ve avoided the trou de loup of termination by a mere hair’s breadth. Each narrow escape has taught me a valuable lesson in career survival. From this wealth of knowledge I will from time to time dispense gems of wisdom. Today I present you with a few helpful bits of advice for dealing with corporate executives.

1. Come bearing gifts. Your chances of a favorable outcome increase tenfold when you begin an executive encounter by presenting them with a high tech toy.
2. They want what they want and they don’t care whether or not it’s feasible or even physically possible. Your best hope when asked to do the impossible is to present the exec with a fancy new gadget and hope it distracts them long enough that they forget what they originally wanted.
3. Whatever timeframe an executive gives you for fulfilling a request, you should assume the actual deadline is tomorrow right after the exec has had their morning coffee.
4. Think of them the way they think of themselves - as gods. Specifically, you should think of them like the gods of Greek mythology: petty, capricious and vindictive.

No, the world has not become a utopia. The reason there have been no new rants for the past couple of months is that I have been very very busy. You might fairly ask, “What could be more important than railing against the injustices of the world ? ”

• Updating my resume.
• Looking for a new job.
• Applying for job openings.
• Enduring dozens of calls from job recruiters. [In most of which they ask me if I’m interested in a job I’m not suited for, I tell them I’m not suited for the job, and they act like I’m wasting their time.]
• Flying back and forth between Virginia and California for face-to-face job interviews.
• Suffering through job interviews.
• FINDING A NEW JOB !
• Flying back to California to look for an apartment .
• Finding an apartment.
• Arranging to get the water, electricity and gas turned on in my apartment.
• Packing everything I own into boxes.
• Arranging to have all those boxes carried down to a freight truck.
• Arranging to have a freight truck there when the boxes are carried down.
• Arranging to have my car shipped to California.
• Wrestling with the airlines to get my cats onto airplanes heading to California.
• Getting a friend to travel hundreds of miles to Virginia by train, so they could travel thousands of miles to California by plane with one of my cats.
• Getting a second friend to drive hundreds of miles to pick up the first friend because my car is already on its way to California.
• Thanking Jesus, Buddha, Allah and Zeus that I have such wonderful friends.
• Frantically packing the stuff I hadn’t already packed, when the freight truck driver tells me he’ll be arriving the next day, instead of two days later as planned.
• Rescheduling the loading crew to arrive at my apartment at the same time as the freight truck.
• Overseeing the loading of freight truck.
• Figuring out what to do with the stuff that somehow didn’t make it onto the freight truck.
• Flying to California with one of my cats.
• Driving 100 miles from LAX to my apartment, getting my cat settled in at the apartment, then driving 100 miles back to LA to wait for my friend to arrive the next day with my other cat.
• Driving 100 miles from LAX to my apartment with my friend and my cat.
• Buying all the things I can’t live without, since everything I own is on a truck heading to California.
• Starting my new job, where I have to fix a network that was configured [seemingly] by crack-addicted monkeys from another dimension.
• Getting a call from the freight truck driver telling me he will be at my apartment a day earlier than scheduled.
• Arranging for an unloading crew to be at my apartment when the freight truck carrying my stuff arrives.
• Covering my entire apartment floor with brown paper so the mud the unloaders are tracking in won’t ruin the brand new carpet.
• Trying to figure out where to store everything in my new apartment, which has lots less closet space than my old apartment.
• Dumping out the contents of box after box as frustration mounts from not being able to find anything.
• Slowly -ever so slowly- unpacking and arranging my stuff into a livable environment, and spending 12 hours days at work.

But now that my life is somewhat less hectic, I finally have time to write again. My long time readers [as if !] should be pleased to know that new rants will be coming soon.

There’s a chance that the company I work for will be liquidated. If that happens, I’ll need to find a new job. To learn how marketable my skills are, I’ve been applying for positions to see what response I get. So far it’s so-so. Every company wants an expert in every conceivable area, with 5 ~ 10 years experience doing everything. Frankly, their skills requirements are unrealistic. Anyone who met all their requirements wouldn’t have to look for a job. Companies would be beating a path to their door and only the wealthiest could afford the salaries such a person could command.

Heaven forbid they should train someone to do anything. At some point all these networks will come to a screeching halt, when all the people with experience die or retire. There won’t be anyone to take their place, because they don’t want to train anyone.

There’s a strange thing about talking with recruiters. Let’s say a job has ten absolute requirements, of which I possess 9. The recruiter will start talking about how important that tenth requirement is. It doesn’t matter if I restate my lack of said skill. The recruiter will go on and on about how the company really needs someone who has that skill. They seem to think that if they can impress upon me how vital this particular skill is, I will somehow, through an effort of sheer will, suddenly acquire that skill on the spot.

It’s quite irksome to have someone who knows nothing about my field deciding whether I know enough about it to be a good candidate for a job.

The Man Known On The Internet As Fever606
Through an unusual series of events, I lost a document immediately after creating it. It was detailed and had a lot of formatting. I would have had to recreate it from scratch, which would have been painful, if not for TMKOTIAF. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Fever606 rules !
[Krell’s Disclaimer: No, this isn’t an obituary! Can’t I say something nice about someone without them having to be dead ?! Sheesh !]

Nothing is ever easy.
Well, okay, some things are easy… but not many.

Question: Of the knives in this photo, which can you legally carry in your pocket, in the state of Virginia ?

Answer: All but the smallest one. It’s an automatic knife.   [aka: switchblade]

Automatic knives, no matter their size, are illegal in Virginia. However, in fairness, there is no size limit for the folding knives either. You can apparently carry the biggest folder you can find.

Remember - this is for our safety. I haven’t figured out yet how arbitrariness keeps us safe, but I’m working on it.

Anthony Hopkins:
“I’m just an actor… I just learn my lines, go on set. Do my preparation, whatever that is. Have a cup of coffee. Say hello to everyone…and be friendly. ‘Action’—and then do it.”
[Click here for Carlo Cavagna’s full interview with Anthony Hopkins]

I took a short vacation in San Francisco over the weekend. It was fun. [That was mostly due to the company I had.]

I ran into a little trouble with the flights going there. I ended up taking three planes instead of two. I also had to leave earlier, and arrive later, than originally planned. It would have been worse though, if I hadn’t gotten a message that my original flight was cancelled. If I hadn’t found out in time to catch an earlier flight, I might not have gotten there until the next day. The really bad part about the flight change was that I only got 3 hours sleep because of it. I was tired and out of sorts for the entire trip.

I stayed at the Chancellor Hotel near Union Square. The staff was friendly and helpful. The rooms were small, but very clean. Most importantly, there were no bedbugs. I recommend it.

San Francisco had a lot more drunk & crazy people than I remember from my last visit. There wasn’t a single bus or cable car without at least one foul-smelling whacko on it. Usually that included the bus driver himself. Every block seemed to have a belligerent panhandler assigned to it.

What really surprised me was how early the city shut down. Even on Friday and Saturday nights, just about everything closed by 10:00 PM. That was especially shocking on Haight Street. The exceptions were the bars and restaurants in North Beach, which were open late. However, even there, finding a taxi late at night was difficult. All the museums closed at 5:00 PM.

The climate was refreshingly chilly. It didn’t rain while I was there. Perfect vacation weather.

Coming back, my flights went smoothly. I took a red eye on the way home. I was exhausted. I was sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off, but it seemed like we were sitting on the runway forever. I was still waiting for the plane to take off when they started the beverage service. I was really puzzled by that. I wondered what could be taking so long that they’d serve beverages on the ground. Then I took a really good look out the window. It was pitch black out there, but when I shielded my eyes and squinted really hard I could make out faint lights way down below us. I’d fallen asleep, missed the takeoff, and woken up again, all without realizing it. The plane ride was so smooth I couldn’t tell we were moving.

I put some of the photos from the trip in my gallery if you’re interested in looking at them.

Good News: You’re getting a 6 figure salary.
Bad News: The payroll department is now doing all their bookkeeping in binary.

Good News: A new Republican president isn’t being elected in 2008.
Bad News: The current Republican president is suspending elections.

Good News: We’re switching over to nuclear energy.
Bad News: About 10 minutes from now 1,000,000 kW•h worth is being delivered by rocket.

When in San Francisco, visit Musée Mécanique to stock up on fodder for your nightmares.

Less than 12 hours passed between the time UPS accepted my new hard drive from the dealer, to the time the hard drive arrived at the UPS Center 10 miles from my home. Disregarding the period from midnight on Friday to 8:00AM Monday, my package has been there for 21 hours, and it’s still not scheduled for delivery. I realize that I’m spoiled by the incredible speed with which goods traverse the USA nowadays. I know that 100 years ago it would have taken weeks for a package to cross that distance. Nevertheless, I WANT MY HARD DRIVE !

D-Link’s new line of home networking equipment seems like it was designed to bolster the sales of Netgear’s products.
As you probably already guessed, I let them know what I think of their new product line. You can read the letter I sent to D-Link here.

As I pulled into the Post Office parking lot it began to rain, so I grabbed my umbrella out of the back seat before heading in to buy stamps. When I came out of the post office the rain was torrential. Huddled under the post office’s awning were a number of people who were not as well prepared as me. Among them was an old woman forlornly looking out at the rain. “Would you like me to walk you to your car ?” I asked. ” We can share my umbrella.” The umbrella wasn’t really big enough for the two of us, but the parking lot wasn’t that big either. I could keep her covered and still stay mostly dry. She smiled broadly, told me what a gentleman I am, and gratefully took me up on my offer. Stepping out into the rain with her, I asked, “Which one is your car ?” “Oh my car isn’t in this parking lot.” She replied. “My car is behind the medical center.” During the 4 block walk to the medical center she told me all about her husband’s heart condition, her children and other sundry items. When we reached the car she thanked me once again for escorting her through the rain, and told her husband what a gentleman I am. I try.

Do you get asked questions that you don’t know how to answer ? Questions that there just doesn’t seem to be any good response to ? Well, as always Krell is here to help. Post your difficult questions here and I’ll do my best to provide answers that will keep you out of hot water.
[Note: Questions of a vulgar nature will not be addressed. The Internet has plenty of resources for that already.]

 Bob Dylan …………………………………………………………… Montag from Fahrenheit 451

 Bob Dylan …………………………………………………………… The Doctor from Britain’s Doctor Who

On September 29th, 2005  I wrote about Play-Doh scented perfume. This morning I heard that Hasbro is introducing a new perfume that smells like Play-Doh !   I better get credit for that. On second though, send me a check.

The twenty-ish girl working the register at the drugstore was beaming like she had reached Nirvana, or - more likely - was high as a kite. As she was ringing up my purchases I said, “Your smile is contagious. Like bird flu.” Sadly she had no idea what bird flu is.

If an email starts with, !!!!!This is not SPAM or a HOAX!!!!!, chances are it’s spam or a hoax.

My company receives over 20,000 emails per day. Of those about 1,000 are legitimate messages. The rest are spam. Only five percent of the mail we get is meaningful. This is pretty typical for a Medium to large enterprise. I doubt the numbers are much better for individuals. They may even be worse. Roughly ninety-five percent of the email flowing across the Internet is garbage. Relatively few people are responsible for sending that spam. There’s always some small number of people who screw up things for everyone else. Why are those people like that ?

In movies and TV shows, it’s not at all uncommon for the hero to be trapped in a room that’s rapidly filling with water. The usual scenario is that the room fills completely and the hero must somehow effect their escape while holding their breath, so as not to drown. After watching one of these scenes, I decided to see how I’d fare. After a dozen trials I found that I could consistently hold my breath for 1 minute. My maximum was 1.5 minutes. It seems I’m not TV hero material.

Addendum: In the time since I originally wrote this post, I’ve done a little reading on the subject of freediving. I may be hero material after all. It seems that holding your breath on dry land and holding your breath underwater are two very different things. The differentiator is a fairly astonishing evolutionary adaptation known as the Mammalian Diving Reflex.

If you’re wondering just how long people can hold their breath underwater, you’re in luck. As it turns out, that’s a competitive sport. It’s one of several activities that fall under the general heading of Competitive Apnea, an outgrowth of interest in freediving, which you can learn more about here. The official world record for Static Apnea, holding one’s breath underwater while not doing much, was set by Tom Sietas in 2004, with a time of 8 min 58 sec.

I’m testing a new spam blocker. In order to see if it’s working correctly, I’m spot checking email to see what’s getting passed and what’s getting blocked. This exercise has reminded me that no matter how many times you tell people the company email system isn’t private, they still send totally inappropriate mail through it. It’s not just that the mail isn’t business related. Wishing friends happy birthday or asking mom for a recipe won’t get you in trouble. Emailing an order to your heroin dealer isn’t as innocuous. Neither is using your work email to run an escort service. Bragging to a buddy about your affair with the boss’s wife is downright stupid. Every email you send through your company’s mail system is company property. Take it from me, the company can and does look at them.

Email from my health plan manager’s customer service dept: “Our records indicate your plan has a new ID Number. You will need to register again and establish a new username and password under the new ID Number.” Let’s have a show of hands. Who thinks that email contains all the information I need ?

I was on hold in a tech support phone queue yesterday. They thoughtlessly provided music to keep their customers from getting bored. It was album oriented rock from the 1970’s. Included in the playlist was the Eagles’ song HOTEL CALIFORNIA. It’s six and a half minutes long ! Now I can’t get that godawful tune out of my head. On the other hand, I should consider myself lucky. It could have been LIFE IN THE FAST LANE. That would surely make me lose my mind.

Cherry flavor toothpaste. Cherry flavor chewable aspirin. Cherry flavor cough syrup. Cherry flavor my foot ! I’ve eaten real cherries. Nothing “cherry flavored” that I’ve tried has tasted anything like a cherry.

When I woke up this morning I felt a big damp spot on the blanket. My cat Slinky had dragged a wet sponge out of the sink and carried it up onto my bed, like something he caught during a hunt.

Go to the grocery store. Buy a loaf of bread and a banana. Leave them together in the bag overnight. Come morning the bread will taste like bananas.

This is the song list for one of the music compilation tapes I made in the Mid 80’s. You can see a photo of the actual tape and playlist in the Misc section of my photo gallery. You can even listen to it, in all its glorious low fidelity, if you’re of a mind to. Side A / Side B

Assorted.Varied

Side A
Garbanzo - The Comateens
Destination Venus - The Rezillos
I Got You babe - UB 40 & Chrissy Hynde
Love Is A Stranger - Eurythmics
Come On Eileen - Dexy’s Midnight Runners
Love My Way - Psychedelic Furs
Nemesis - Shriekback
Soulful Dress - Bette Bright
Tonight - Modettes
Tenderness - The English Beat
To Look At You - INXS
Rock-A-Boom - The Revillos
Love At The Pier - Blondie
Anytown - Everything But The Girl
Flashflood - Romeo Void

Side B
Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag - Pigbag
Pretty In Pink - Psychedelic Furs
Boy Trouble - Bananarama
Summer In The City - Comateens
Where’s The Boy For Me - Revillos
Enola Gay - OMD
Walk Into The Sun - The March Violets
Endicott - Kid Creole and The Coconuts
Nkomo A Go Go - UB 40
Never You Done That - The English Beat
Alice - The Sisters Of Mercy
Powerlines - Delta 5
Into You Like A train - Psychedelic Furs

Back when footwear came with those flat cotton shoelaces I might have to spend twenty minutes getting the knots untied, but at least my sneakers stayed on. Now that nylon shoelaces are the standard I have to tie my shoelaces 30 times a day.

Yup. Broken. Couldn’t fix it. I spent 8 hours over the weekend trying, but to no avail. I visited a dozen websites and read hundreds of posts by people who had similar problems but none of their solutions worked on my camera. When I break something, it stays broken !

I put my camera down on a table to move the object I was photographing. When I moved the object, I accidentally knocked my camera off the table. It fell about two and a half feet to the thinly carpeted floor. The force of the fall looked like it was spread about 60/40 between the body and the extended lens. As I picked the camera up I saw the LCD fill with bright green jagged lines, then go completely black. The retractable lens was stuck halfway out of the body. Turning it on and off has no effect save for a whirring noise and the power indicator lighting up. Canon’s website was no help, so I searched the Internet. A lot of people have had the stuck lens problem with their Canon digital cameras. [If the LCD was working, I would probably see an E18 error code in the lower left corner.] There was a lot of advice on how to fix the lens problem. Unfortunately none of it has worked for me so far. No one had any useful advice about the LCD. With Canon’s high repair charges it doesn’t make sense to have them fix it. The only option left is to take the camera apart and try to fix it myself.

Yesterday there was a problem with one of our devices. We were hot swapping a hardware component and the device shut down. It wasn’t supposed to do that. According to everything we knew, it should have kept running along happily through the change. We wanted to know what went wrong. So my coworker and I started going through the logs and looking through the manufacturer’s website for more details about the components and the procedure we’d been doing. From what we found, we formed a theory, but we couldn’t find anything that explicitly confirmed it. My coworker said he was satisfied with our conclusion, but I wanted to know for sure, so I opened a support case with the manufacturer. This morning I mentioned to my coworker that I should have an answer to the question waiting in my email. He just stared at me. When I read the email, it confirmed what we thought had happened. I sent it along to my coworker. Basically, his response was that he knew it all along, didn’t know why I opened a case about it, and I was wasting his time. The amazing part is that I think he actually believes it. He’s done this retroactive memory trick on numerous occasions and every time he acts like I’m crazy. If I work with him long enough that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The thing I love about having a cell phone is that I no longer have to use anyone else’s telephone. I clean my phones about once a week. By my observations, the average person cleans their phone almost never. I say “almost” because the obsessive compulsives out there bring up the average for everyone. Next time you’re going to use a phone, take a good look at it first. Odds are it’ll be dirty, greasy and generally not something you want to press up against your head. Suddenly $60 per month for spotty coverage and 500 daytime minutes won’t seem so bad to you.

This week is not going well for me in terms of inter-personal communications. I say good morning to people and they ignore me. I leave voicemail for folks and they don’t call me back. I send email to someone and I don’t receive a response from them. It’s been getting steadily worse as the week wears on. No one is laughing at my jokes. People are taking exception to things I’m saying and I don’t know why. Yesterday a person I was speaking with walked away in the middle of my sentence. As far as I know I’m not behaving any differently than usual, but other people’s reactions to me seem decidedly negative. Given the circumstances, I’ve decided to interact with other people as little as possible for the rest of the week. I’m hoping the hex, evil eye, voodoo, or whatever it is wears off by then.

30 second video of Slinky savaging a roll of paper towels. (3 MB)
30 second video of Slinky trying to pull my magnet board off the wall. (3 MB)
The frame he’s yanking on contains a sheet of galvanized steel.

Hey, get this. My coworker Dave has been trying to fix some “friend’s” laptop all day. [My guess is he’s getting paid. I can’t see him doing anything for free.] Anyway, the thing has all kinds of weird problems. A little while ago he came over and asked me if I had a USB flash drive.
“Yeah but it’s full”, I replied.
“That’s okay”, he said. “I just want to plug it into this laptop and see if the laptop recognizes it.”
“You mean that hosed up laptop you’ve been working on all day ?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you kidding ? There’s no telling what viruses and malware are on that thing. You’re not connecting my drive to it. ”
Dave abruptly turned and walked away, shaking his head, as if my position was ridiculous and unreasonable.

I built an 82″ tall scratching post and mounted it next to the corner shelf I put up. The combination has proven to be a big hit with Slinky.
30 second video of Slinky going up to the corner platform. (3.73 MB)

Two days ago, if you were to ask me the definition of the phrase “IN STOCK”, I’d have told you it means, “this item is currently in our inventory, readily at hand.” Today my definition is, “We think this item may exist somewhere in the universe, so we’re going to bill your credit card and tell you it will arrive in a week.” Unfortunately the folks at furniturebuzz.com thought wrong. I lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Any day now furniturebuzz.com will feel the full weight of the BBB crashing down on them like a packing peanut. That’ll teach them!*
[*Teach them they can continue their deceptive practices without any fear of serious reprisal.]

Collectively, Human Resources is almost always the dumbest department in any corporation. The reason for this is simple. HR gets all the people who can’t do anything else. All the other departments have some minimum qualifications, but you don’t need any skills to work in Human Resources as far as I can tell. Math ? No. Specialized knowledge like chemistry ? Nope. Skills like welding ? No. Logical thought processes ? Hell no. Hand-eye coordination ? No. Ability to express one’s ideas clearly either verbally or in writing ? Not that I’ve seen. The only traits that seem to be consistent among HR personnel are an inability to understand the simplest instructions, and complete indifference to the cost, time and trouble required to meet whatever “need” they think they have. Here’s an example. HR decided to move from our old building to the new one we just built. They refused to wait until their offices were ready, so we had to set up temporary cubicles for them in another area of the plant. The area they chose had no power or telecom cabling yet. We tried to get them to move to a different area that did have those things, but the HR people were adamant about the location even though they were only going to be there for a week. We had to rent a lift to run the cables because the ceiling was 40′ high. After we finished and HR moved in, the HR manager called us back. The cubicle she had chosen for herself was the one in which we had placed the network switch for their PCs. She said the switch was humming too loudly and was disturbing her. We told her it was just the normal noise of the fan. Be that as it may, it was disturbing her. We said that was not a problem since there were extra cubicles and we could just move her to another one. Alas that wasn’t what she had in mind. What she wanted was for us to move the switch. We explained that would require us to dismantle the cubes and rerun the cables, which would basically be un-doing most of work we had done and then re-doing it, and since the power runs would need to be disconnected too, maintenance would have to be involved as well. She was adamant. We did all that work for no other reason than HR wanted it.

I finally found a bookcase in a style very similar to the discontinued bookcase I’ve been trying to match. It’s made by the same company. This boggles my mind because yesterday I spoke with one of their sales reps and he never mentioned it. I told him how sorry I was that they didn’t make my bookcase anymore and wished that I could get a similar one because I liked the curved aspect, etc., etc. You’d think he’d have said, “Well you know, we have another product line that looks almost the same. It’s the Living Dimensions model from our Intelligent Designs series. Maybe that would work for you.” Whatever. At least I found one that will match my old one. But wait ! Only the 72″ version of that bookcase is available in maple. They used to make the 48″ bookcase in maple, but not anymore. That’s what I call proactive ! The mysterious entity responsible for the discontinuance of all the products I like must have noticed the similarity to the bookcase I already own. They killed it just on the chance that I might buy it. They didn’t take my Internet search skills into account though. I managed to find a store with a few of the maple models still in stock. We’ll see if it actually arrives.

The Windows Systems Admin sent me an email this morning, from which comes the following quote:
“I checked the logs this morning and the file server backup actually finished on Saturday a little after noon, so it [ my route manipulations - K] decreased the time for backup from 2 and a half days to about 10 hours. So that’s much better.”

Every time I find something I like, they stop making it. Salad dressing, shoes, hair gel, whatever - as soon as I find one I like they discontinue it. The maddening part is that the replacement products aren’t just different. They’re inferior. Take, for example, my living room bookcase. It’s an inexpensive laminate bookcase, but it has a nice style. The top isn’t a boring rectangle. Instead, it extends outward in a gentle curve. That small change to the normal boxy bookcase design makes a world of difference. I went to Target to buy another and found they no longer carried that model. After fruitlessly searching online I finally called the manufacturer and asked which of their dealers carried that bookcase. Alas, they stopped producing that style. The customer service rep agreed that it had a very nice look. He didn’t know why they discontinued it. His coworkers didn’t either. Probably no one knows why they discontinued it. I suspect mind control by mysterious agents as yet unknown. It only makes sense. [Like intelligent Design]

The concepts of “rough idea” and “ballpark figure” have largely been expunged from the collective consciousness of Americans. Nowadays salespeople want to tell you the exact cost of a specific product or nothing at all. Of course to get an exact cost you need to know exactly what you’re going to buy. But I can’t decide what I’m going to buy until I have some idea of what the various choices cost. This leads to the slow and tedious process of asking the salesperson for the price of every model with every option. They hate it. What they really want is for me to make an uninformed decision. Like that’s ever going to happen !

We have a remote file server that gets backed up to a server in the data center. A full backup of that server across the WAN took about 92 hours on the 500 kbps link it was using. By analyzing our traffic patterns and using policy based routing with time-ranged access-lists, I’ve cut the backup time in half. Instead of 92 hours, it will take 46 hours to do a full backup over a weekend. No one here thinks this is a big deal. The fact that a weekend full backup now fits within a weekend is lost on them.

Have you ever created something then looked at it in amazement when it was done and thought, “I did that ?!” (In a good way; not as in finding a pyramid of bodies in your living room and having no recollection of the past two days.)

Research at Krell Labs has determined that for most people the smell of cloves has no associations other than Easter Ham and Goth Clubs.

“Everything is peachy. ” Why do we say that? Think about it for a second. Wet, sticky and covered in fuzz. Maybe that’s good - it depends on how you look at it, I guess. It’s probably best not to think about it too much.

Last week Tropicana orange juice was $3.85 per half gallon and Minute Maid orange juice was $1.50 per half gallon. I always buy Tropicana, but I was feeling frugal after my run of Christmas spending. In hindsight I should have paid the extra money for Tropicana or just forgone the juice until it was on sale again. The Minute Maid juice tasted like someone mixed 3 bottles of orange flavored chewable aspirin with 2 cups of sugar and half a gallon of tap water. At first I was drinking it like shots just to get it down, but that ended pretty quickly. After a few days it ended up in the trash. It was the most horrible orange beverage I’ve ever had.

Many years ago I worked the night shift at the financial dept of a newspaper, operating their computer system. Every night I’d bring some snacks and a couple of cans of soda. If I was really busy and didn’t drink the soda, I’d put it in the office refrigerator. Invariably it would be gone when I looked for it the next day. To let my coworkers know that those weren’t free sodas sitting in the fridge, I started writing my initials on the cans. When I came in the next day, the cans would always be gone. Thinking that they didn’t notice the initials, I ran off a bunch of white sticky labels with my name printed on them and stuck them on the cans I left in the fridge. The sodas would still be gone the next day. By this time I knew who was drinking my sodas. It was always the same person. I’d see the cans in his wastebasket and on his desk. He was an accounts receivable clerk with an unpleasant disposition. Arriving early one day, and finding him still in the office, I asked him to please stop drinking my sodas. He just sneered at me and walked away. At that point I decided to make it blindingly obvious to him and everyone else that the sodas he was drinking were mine. I scanned a photo of my face and printed it on some large labels with the caption “Krell Cola - If this isn’t your face you shouldn’t be drinking it.” I figured that would be embarrassing enough to make him stop. When I went in the next day I found the empty soda can on my desk. That gave me the inspiration for the solution that finally resolved the issue. I went in to work early the next day, walked over to his desk and told him that if he ever drank one of my sodas again I was going to beat the crap out of him. He stopped drinking my sodas after that.

A moron at a meeting can usually be identified by something like this coming out of his mouth: “Can you say 100% for certain that the thing you want to do will work ? There’s no chance it will fail ?” It almost always follows someone outlining something that has practically no chance of failing. The moron is trying to show how vigilant they are by asking these penetrating questions. If it comes during one of my less diplomatic moments, my answer will go something like this, “I can’t say 100% for sure that this building will be here tomorrow. For all I know it could be ground zero for a meteor strike tonight. So am I 100% sure ? No, but I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t work. ” Can you tell that I have no patience with morons ? Does it show ?

There’s this guy at work who runs one section of our department. He’s a moron. Every time he comes to me with something he needs done, it’s a crisis. Emergency priority. Defcon 1. Scramble! Scramble! Scramble! It’s because he never plans anything, and never schedules anything. He lets tasks sit around till the requestors start yelling at him, wanting to know why the work isn’t done. Suddenly it’s a big deal. Whatever it is has to be done this very instant. I have to drop whatever I’m doing (usually something PLANNED and SCHEDULED) and take care of his job, because if I don’t he trots off to the requestor and tells them I’m the one holding things up. Since the requestor is usually up against their own deadline at this point they’re ready to take the head off of anyone they see as an obstacle. It doesn’t matter that the situation isn’t my doing. They don’t care. They want their stuff done. Our department head doesn’t care. He doesn’t want the other department heads complaining to him. It’s a lot easier to make me do extra work than to make that other guy stop being a moron, so through the magic of stupidity the responsibility is transferred to me.

I haven’t written anything lately because I had gum surgery a week ago. Between the discomfort and potentially addictive prescription narcotics controlling the discomfort, I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Luckily I was at work all week, so it worked out great.

The latest Burger King ad campaign appears to have been crafted by an undercover vegetarian. That’s the only explanation I can come up with for the extreme CREEPINESS of the giant-plastic-headed Burger King staring in someone’s window as they open the blinds. No one who actually wanted burgers to be sold would create something that off-putting, would they ?

“WW… what ? Spell that for me again. WWW… three W’s ?”
- one of our salesmen trying to get to the yahoo.com website

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball !

If things keep on the way they’re going, pretty soon we’ll be back to using pencils and paper to keep track of everything. Computers will revert to being special purpose devices with only rudimentary ability to be reprogrammed. Why ? Because that will be the only way to keep them from being compromised. The general purpose PC as we know it today is just too vulnerable to entrust with any important information or critical functions.

How do you know what’s buried in the millions of lines of code that make up a business application or computer game ? What got installed with that lastest Flash player update that was required to view the website you’re on ? The recent business with Sony’s DRM rootkit shows that you can’t trust any software you install on your PC. Do you want to do your banking on a PC that could be reporting all your keystrokes to someone waiting to empty your checking account ? How do you know something like that isn’t happening right now ?

The best we can do is place our trust in one or more companies that will test software to see if it’s in any way malicious, hope they never miss anything, and pray our trust isn’t misplaced. Can you think of any company or organization that has shown itself to be even close to totally trustworthy ? Microsoft ? Sony ? The CIA ? Congress ? The Catholic Church ?

How many people would you give a key to your home to ? Yet we let tens of thousands of people have access to our PCs through the software they’ve worked on. Privacy and security are rapidly becoming things of the past. What do you suggest we do about it ?

It’s late October and that means Siouxsie & The Banshees’ album Juju will be getting lots of play in my car and apartment. As the days get shorter, the nights get colder and the trees drop their leaves, there’s no album I enjoy as much as Juju. I’ll never forget the first time I heard SPELLBOUND. I think “epiphany” sums it up pretty well. [Lyrics can be found here if you’re interested.]

The World Wide Web is frightening. It’s the greatest outlet ever devised for people who lack perspective. Every splinter group of tunnel-visioned cranks has their own website. I had no idea there were so many self-centered wackos around. I mean, I knew the number was huge, but it’s orders of magnitude greater than what I imagined before Internet use became common. I just hope they’re too busy blogging to vote or reproduce.