Month: May 2006

How’s that for a grabber title? No, not a Graber title, a GRABBER title 😉

Anyway, I’ve always wondered what the relation between religion and sex was. Are there specific passages in the Bible, Koran, Torah, etc that specifically lay out the rules of sex. I know the commandments specifically denounced adultery, and I’ve read passage in the Bible that lay out some silly adultery rules and punishments, but what about other religions?

My personal belief is that since sex is such a strong motivator and need in humans, religious leaders may have used that to help control the masses. These would be unscrupulous leaders, of course, and not an indictment of the religion or other leaders. But I still think that there are so many rules about food and sex in religion because everyone’s gotta eat, and everyone’s gotta, well, you know. So use those to keep the people in line.

I feel that if you’re old enough to make your own decisions, and the other party is old enough to make their own decisions, and you’re honest with each other, then make like bunnies and get’er done. When it comes to children, you have to educate them to EVERYTHING about sex, because they’re going to search out what they don’t know and figure it out themselves. If you can show them the possible consequences, that’s your best chance to prevent pregnancy and disease.

Of course, these are functions that should be provided by parents, with help from schools and such. NOT by the schools primarily. If parents won’t lay the groundwork, all school education will provide is snickers and titters.

Back to religion, I don’t see why God would care who I sleep with until I make a committment to one person to stay faithful to her and only her. And even then, if we had an open understanding of other arrangements, what’s the big deal? I think the biggest thing about sex is honest and open dialogue. In the USA, it’s such a hush thing unless you’re entertaining or sellling. Sex happens all the time, and there’s proof everywhere. Just look in the mirror.

Is there an argument for religion messing with our sex lives that I’m missing?

My $.02 Weed

Friday evening. We have been struggling with an absolutely irritating problem for the last 4 months of getting upstream packet dropping on our cablemodem. after 4 technicians (all of whom assumed they had ‘fixed the problem’) I have been doing a bit of research, checking SNA and upstream currents and finally isolated the problem of being the cable from the house to the junction… kids (and roommates) have been abusing that line for years, shooting it with BB guns, hanging laundry or hitting it with horseshoes (The big heavy iron kind) So the tech comes out, swaps out a cablemodem again, listens to me patiently explain that we have packet drops about every 5 minutes. runs a 1 minute ping test, declares it ‘fixed’ and is on his merry way. as he pulls out of the driveway, we lose 15 seconds worth of packets. Call Comcast “Okay, well, you have to wait for monday to get another tech out” “But he just pulled out of the driveway” “Yes, but he has another scheduled customer” “But he never fixed my problem.” “I am sorry, sir” So, here I am trying to convince this call center monkey to get someone out sooner (Melissa just bought WoW and wanted to try it out over the weekend) and I explain, patiently, and in great detail what I have done to test the cablemodem.

He says “It sounds like your router has a problem with it’s Flux Capacitor (I am not kidding, the guy actually says this.) I of course instantly become enraged and say “WHAT!?!?” “Thankyouforcallingcomcasthaveaniceday”*click* :jawdrop:

Okay, finally call like 6 more techs before I finally get one that doesn’t automatically assume I don’t have a clue how a cablemodem works. The question is this: WHY DON’T CALL CENTERS FIRE THESE YAHOOS???

I mean, the idea of ‘tiered’ technical support for more advanced users and problems has gone completely out the window. Or is this just a Comcast problem? I know a lot of people that call tech support have forgotten to plug their modem is, but… does it seem like too much to ask to have at least one or two COMPETENT technicians available for asking advanced questions for users that know what to ask?

/end rant Man, I am tempted to just buy 200 feet of coax and replace the wiring myself.

Names have been removed to protect the innocent.

I’ve been pretty honest about my feelings in my blogs, especially when it comes to my really strong desire to resolidify waning friendships that time makes distant, not fonder.

Then, a couple of months ago, someone I dated in my last year of high school, first year of college – emailed me (we’ve actually been friendly over the last few years, IMing and stuff) and she had egosurfed – searched for herself on the internet.. and the search brought up a reference in the top 10 hits – to my Livejournal.

She was unhappy – and let me know it. I changed the journal.. its fixed now, and we’ve moved past that and remain friendly. but it was a tense spot in a relationship with a tense past that we maintain because its kind of nice to be able to have a mature passing relationship with someone who you used to be dysfunctional with. Its nice.

Here’s the irony. I posted awhile back about another friend who found her name on barnson – top 10 on her egosurf. We had been friends for years, even into adulthood – but she moved away and when she came back, she seemed to be “busy” when I tried to schedule a lunch or something. Eventually, I began to fear there was a hint I was missing.. so, confused, I stopped calling.

Almost a year ago, I ran into her at a movie, and she said something about her name being on barnson. I explained the site, kind of what we do here, and she seemed cool – although she did joke that she wished I had mentioned that she was highly qualified at at her career and that people should hire her. I told her I would. We laughed, and said we’d get together for coffee as soon as our schedules permitted.

I was ecstatic – and did make a post with a complimentary title, and emailed it to her. The post was about long lost friends, but started with a glowing positive review of her professionally.. a review I stand by, because I’ve worked with her and she’s really talented. The post itself was eloquent (I’ve been told) and positive, and I expected it to elicit conversation, break the 3 year old ice, and.. it didn’t.

I never got a return email. I never saw her after that, and when I discovered a mutual friend of ours had her on MySpace, I invited her as a friend. She never responded. She probably won’t.

I find myself not angry.. just.. hurt – and I feel dumb. Its not like we’ve been hanging out. I do know that somewhere I must have goofed. I don’t know where, and there’s no way to apologize (“Hey (Anonymous), haven’t chatted in a year, didn’t get a MySpace accept, what’d I do?” – yeah, I think its lame too – so cant do that). I just hate the idea that there’s this person who was once a dear friend, who now sees me as someone not to know – and my feelings are hurt. There’s little I can do (except not mention names, I guess) and I feel I have to chalk her friendship up next to lost friends, youth, and old Star Wars toys as yet another thing from my past that was misplaced – that you wish you could find – but seems unfindable, and you don’t quite know when you lost it.

I recently read my brother’s entry on Sleeping Less while Getting More Done, and it was some food for thought.

As many of you know, I’ve worked nights for the past year. For several months, I tried keeping a consistent sleep schedule, and that worked… mostly. Recently, I’ve been “slamming” my schedule, staying up all day Friday so that my Fridays and Saturdays are normal before going back to work Sunday night. Kinda’ miserable, but do-able. It just meant that Mondays were awful, Tuesdays through Fridays were OK (long day on Friday), Saturday was a little sleepy, and Sunday was “normal”, except for that part about leaving for work at 11 PM.

So I did some reading on different sleeping patterns, and was pleased to discover a thing called Polyphasic Sleep. This is just a fancy name for “taking multiple naps”. There are various programs, but they center around finding ways to reduce your total number of sleep hours in order to make sleep more restful and invigorating. The key seems to be setting, and keeping, a schedule. Which, of course, my night schedule didn’t really allow if I was attempting to lead a “normal” weekend life with my family and work graves during the week.

BTW: I think the whole “sleep debt” idea is pure baloney, and have for several years. So any argument which includes this concept doesn’t wash with me, because an ever-accumulating “sleep debt” doesn’t jive at all with my personal reality. One good night’s rest has often been enough to wipe away weeks of short-changing myself. And before anybody jumps down my throat about it, I understand the implications of long-term sleep deprivation. I’m living them due to shift work. My body, my science project 🙂

Anyway, have you played with various sleep schedules, trying to find a good balance? What worked for you, and more importantly, what didn’t?

YUP, gonna just plug away. COME SEE ME!

DEAD HUNT will be premiering on June 3 – ONE NIGHT ONLY – in Baltimore. 2 shows, 7 and 9. This is a fun film, and not only do I have a pivotal role, but all the music is composed by me, so really, this is the one to see! Email me back ASAP if you’re interested in checking it out. Space is still available! Or visit www.Timewarpfilms.com

Speaking of DEAD HUNT – I’ve gotten permission to put 4 tracks of music up on TIMPANE.COM and it includes the classic PsychoKiller, so come on over and take a listen! www.timpane.com/mp3

Also, Shakespeare’s COMEDY OF ERRORS is closing this weekend in Manassas, VA. tickets are 15 bucks, and this will likely be the last play I do before the baby comes in August, so Check it out! I play Dromio of Syracuse, and its the first time since Rocky Horror that I’ve really hammed it up in a comedy, so its worth a peek!

Additionally, there are 2 changes to the TIMPANE.COM site! On the Music page, just by going there, you can hear a collage of music available on the site, and on the acting page my Voiceover demo now plays automatically. People have responded positively, especially to the voice demo, so please check those out.

There is news on the Acting front, I have just become eligible to join the SCREEN ACTOR’S GUILD (SAG) and will likely be doing so in the next month or two. Looking forward to this new chapter in my professional life.

BTW, I can be seen in a commercial in Baltimore (FOX 45 and WB 54) for a mortgage company, and there should also be a Gardiner’s furniture commercial in that area as well – so keep an eye out for those if you’re in that area.

Finally, I’m proud to announce my involvement in the 125th anniversary Gala for the American Red Cross in Washington DC. this is a major gala with thousands of people and even a few celebs and dignitaries, so I’m excited to be a part! Unfortunately this gala is invitation only, but I promise to have stories to tell. Its been fun!

Please feel free to email me, and as always… CHECK OUT www.timpane.com for FREE MUSIC, MOVIES, PICS, WRITINGS, and ART from JUSTIN TIMPANE

Apparenlty some people think they need to get to young people. I am pretty sure this is baloney, but it’s funny anyway.

http://mmoinsider.ogaming.com/data/3889~rumsfeldwow.php

The long-awaited seventh version of one of the best text editors on the planet, Vim, is finally out!

OK, I’m a nerd. Fine, whatever.

The killer features I’m excited about?

• Branching Undo. You don’t realize the usefulness of something like this until you write a full paragraph of your blog, then undo it. Then you write a replacement, including multiple undos, and realize that the previous version was just better. Now you can go back to that undo, branch to it, and re-do the branched undo! Sweet!
• Built-in completion for the programming languages I use most. I’ve been using scripts to do this a long time, but it’s nice to see intelligent parsing and placement built-in.
• Tabbed editing. Any user of Firefox can tell you, tabs make you more productive, period.
• Improved Unicode support. Those of us who use Vim as our editor for gmail, and happen to want to use, oh, say, gnupg, will appreciate this.
• Integrated browsing of remote directories, tar archives, etc.

Anyway, I’m stoked. I use vim at least 2-3 hours every workday (usually more!), and improvements are welcome.

Absolutely hilarious and ballsy to do this to the leader of the most powerful nation in the world when he’s 5 feet from you.

Watch my namesake from Comedy Central absolutely skewer Bush right to his face. And do it well.

Note: You’ll need the Google video player (I think, or maybe just Flash) to watch.

My $.02 Weed

I found this interesting notice posted on the notice board right underneath the requisite FMLA and minimum wage laws banners in the break room. I’m sure it’s old news for some of you, but I was entertained by it 🙂 I thought it was serious until I started reading the examples…

Memo From Human Resources: Swearing at Work

Dear Employees:

It has been brought to management’s attention that some individuals throughout the company have been using foul language during the course of normal conversation with their co-workers.

Due to complaints received from some employees who may be easily offended, this type of language will no longer be tolerated. We do however, realize the critical importance of being able to accurately express your feelings when communicating with co-workers. Therefore, a list of 18 New and Innovative “TRY SAYING” phrases have been provided so that proper exchange of ideas and information can continue in an effective manner.

1) TRY SAYING: I think you could use more training.

INSTEAD OF: You don’t know what the f___ you’re doing.

2) TRY SAYING: She’s an aggressive go-getter.

INSTEAD OF: She’s a ball-busting b__ch.

3) TRY SAYING: Perhaps I can work late.

INSTEAD OF: And when the f___ do you expect me to do this?

4) TRY SAYING: I’m certain that isn’t feasible.

INSTEAD OF: No f______ way.

5) TRY SAYING: Really?

INSTEAD OF: You’ve got to be sh__ing me!

6) TRY SAYING: Perhaps you should check with…

INSTEAD OF: Tell someone who gives a sh__.

7) TRY SAYING: I wasn’t involved in the project.

INSTEAD OF: It’s not my f______ problem.

8 ) TRY SAYING: That’s interesting.

INSTEAD OF: What the f___?

9) TRY SAYING: I’m not sure this can be implemented.

INSTEAD OF: This sh__ won’t work.

10) TRY SAYING: I’ll try to schedule that.

INSTEAD OF: Why the f____ didn’t you tell me sooner?

11) TRY SAYING: He’s not familiar with the issues.

INSTEAD OF: He’s got his head up his a__.

12) TRY SAYING: Excuse me, sir?

INSTEAD OF: Eat sh__ and die.

13) TRY SAYING: So you weren’t happy with it?

INSTEAD OF: Kiss my a__.

14) TRY SAYING: I’m a bit overloaded at the moment.

INSTEAD OF: F___ it, I’m on salary.

15) TRY SAYING: I don’t think you understand.

INSTEAD OF: Shove it up your a__.

16) TRY SAYING: I love a challenge.

INSTEAD OF: This job sucks.

17) TRY SAYING: You want me to take care of that?

INSTEAD OF: Who the h___ died and made you boss?

18 ) TRY SAYING: He’s somewhat insensitive.

INSTEAD OF: He’s a pr_ck.

Thank You,

Human Resources

I have been working for the government for many years now. My wife sent me this email that gave me a laugh today so I thought i would share.

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside-down, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Your taxes are due again – enjoy paying them.

~ How true it is ~