Unintentional performance art

I kind of wish I had the corresponding video for this story, but them's the breaks...

So to set the stage, I'm at work. (I work with computers, it's all very technical and clever-sounding work, but it mainly boils down to playing table hockey.) I've been sick for a few days, and I'm not feeling 100% better yet. I'm mainly at work so I can take part in a conference call with one of our remote workers, halfway across the country. He's wanting to show me and another co-worker what he's been working on, and go over the details. To facilitate this, we set up a Skype call on a laptop - so we can hear each other, and we can see him, and he can see us. Specifically, he can see me, because that's who the webcam happened to be pointing at.

So I realized that much of my duty during this conference call was to look the part - nod in the right places, furrow my brows when appropriate, laugh at the jokes, maintain periodic yet meaningful eye contact with the webcam. Fine. We talk for about 45 minutes, going over computer things, looking through code, all that fun stuff. My cold starts to take over, and my mind begins to wander - not bad, just a bit. To keep myself on task, I become more active - I twiddle my goatee, I have a drink of water, I scratch my face with my pen, then back to the goatee, and repeat. It seems to work - I'm able to follow what's going on, and conclude the meeting without missing a beat. Hooray!

However, then I visit the washroom, and as I'm washing my hands, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Turns out that I was expending too much effort concentrating on what was going on in the meeting, and not enough effort noticing whether my pen had its lid on or not. During my 15-30 minutes of face scratching with my pen, I had inadvertedly given myself a rather intricate-looking facial tattoo in blue ink. I looked like a self-decorated Maori warrior with poor motor control.

So now I'm left to wonder... Who saw it? No one said anything... Did I get away Scot-free? Or was the choked-off guffaw from halfway across the country in response to something other than my goofy thumbs-up at one point? I may never know...

Spam, spam, spam, spamity spam

You know how some spam comes with bizarre titles, randomly put together from extensive word lists, in an attempt to avoid junk mail filters? Stuff like "stone marmalade winner green". I mean, who'd delete something like that? It's obviously about something real, maybe I've won some kind of marmalade, you'd think. Anyway, I got one this morning that struck me as pretty darn funny. It was "Better Life, wine butt". I was intrigued. I mean, here's some spam that's not only trying to cozy up to me with the usual promise of goodness ("Better Life"), but is also being distinctly aggressive, with a blatant (and yet completely creative) insult ("wine butt"). If nothing else, it made me smile, before I junked it.

Skunk ahoy

We just went out for a walk around the block, and lo and behold, what do we get to see but a skunk? It's funny, I know they live around here, and that they're often found within the confines of the city, but it is (I believe) the first skunk I've seen in this neck of the woods. I have seen a skunk on the opposite coast, but that's way far away, and therefore, doesn't count.

Now, it was twilight, and we only saw it briefly, but this is my impression of how it looked:


Pretty nice find for a random evening stroll, non?

Why I'm happy that my microphone doesn't work

In a nutshell, it's because I'm on Linux. CentOS4, to be precise. For those of you who are out of the loop, Linux is an type of operating system, like Windows. However, Linux differs from Windows in three major areas:

1. It's free. You can download it. I've done this with various flavours of Linux - you just download some files, burn them to CD, and then you have your installation disks! Who makes it? It depends on the flavour of Linux you're getting, but in general - nerds of the world, who believe that (at least some) software should be free.

2. It's open source. This means that you don't just get the binary files to install it, you also get the code behind it all. So, if you find a problem or an opportunity for improvement or customization (and if you happen to be a raging nerd), you can fix it your own damn self. It's an empowering feeling.

3. It's bloody hard to use. There have been great leaps and bounds in making Linux a more user-friendly operating system, like Windows, but it still has a long way to go. For example, installing a printer on Windows: plug it in - if Windows doesn't automatically recognize it, you may have to put in a CD and click Next for a minute or two. Done! I installed a printer on my Linux machine, and it took me (a fairly competent computer nerd) the better part of a weekend. However, to be fair, once it's installed on Linux, you'll have way fewer problems with it than you would on Windows.

Anyway, it's #3 that's causing me grief right now. I have a microphone that I'm trying to get working, and for whatever reason, it's just not working. It's not even a complicated one. No power, no nothing. Just a sound card plug at one end, and a speak-into thingy at the other. I suspect it'll be another weekend or two of heavy research and unintelligible command line work before I can actually use it to record my voice. Which is exactly what I'm looking for in a computer experience, but that's just me. :)

Post the 2nd

In today's adventure, Seagull Boy waited on the phone, on hold, to be taken off a mailing list. You probably know how aggravating this can be, but I think I've figured out a way around it. I believe I have found a way to make waiting on hold fun. (I fully expect a Nobel prize for this.) What you do is, at the start of the wait time, have a few options for the type of music you want to listen to. "For John Tesh, press 1. For Weird Al Yankovic, press 2. For Anthrax, featuring Celine Dion, press 3. etc." So right off the bat, you're listening to something of your own choosing, which helps. Then, if the music gets interrupted by that jerk saying how important your call is to them, you could press buttons to have things happen to that person, and they wouldn't come back. "Your call is important to us. You are an inherently valuable customer to us. We worship the ground you walk on. We'd do anything for you, your highness, except perhaps pick up the phone. We think you're just wonderf..." (Seagull Boy presses 3: 'pack of hyenas'.) "... oh ... oh no ... my god, not the hyenas again! No, please, anything but the..." (Screams, sounds of smarmy individual getting mauled by a couple dozen hyenas, followed by John Tesh coming back on.) That's also how you'd change the music. (Seagull Boy tires of John Tesh, so presses 7: Godzilla attack...)

All that waiting has made me hungry. I go now, to hunt and to gather. Wish me luck.

First post

Hello world!

(That's a hint as to what I do for a living. Sort it out on your own time.)

Anyway, this is my first post. I haven't really grasped the concept of blogging yet, so I'm going to go eat breakfast while I think about what to post. (Initial guess: a description of what I will have had for breakfast.)

Okay, I'm back, and I've officially had Nibs for breakfast. They're leftover from the movies last night, I went to see V For Vendetta, which was rather good. The only thing is, I sat on the opposite side of the theatre from where I usually sit, and it threw off my equilibrium or something. I now have a sore neck. Curses. I guess I'm one of those people who is best looking left. Kind of like someone who doesn't like turning left in a car, and makes all right turns to get where they're going. I tried that in my apartment the other day (without the car), and it makes you pretty dizzy, if you do it quickly. However, I was told it was at least mildly entertaining, so that's all right.

I forget what the point of this post was now, so I'd better quit.