Author: matthew

Ran across an interesting entry over on wired: “I Survived My Internet Vacation. The interesting thing I found out, trying a similar experiment back in December? Real-life stuff falls apart because I wasn’t spending time online, and other real-life stuff comes together because of it.

What’s the longest stretch you’ve gone without access to email or the web in the past two years? One week was my limit, last month.

There is a controversy about a movie shown at the Sundance Film Festival that I thought, given our mutual backgrounds in performing, might provoke some interest:

Rape Scene Storm

A MOVIE showing the simulated rape of 12-year-old actor Dakota Fanning has prompted outrage across the US after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. US religious groups and child protection organisations have called on police to investigate whether the makers of drama Hounddog had violated US child pornography laws with the rape scene.

In Hounddog, the character played by Fanning — best known for playing sweet child characters in Charlotte’s Web and I Am Sam — appears in her underwear, is sexually abused by her father and is raped on-screen by a teen.

It goes on to quote Bill Donohue as saying, “It matters not a whit whether Fanning’s mother, along with Fanning’s teacher or child welfare worker, gave their consent,” he said. “What matters is whether they are an accessory to a crime.”

To deny that these things take place in real life is to close your eyes to the real world. Relatives of mine have been sexually abused while a minor, and it’s startlingly common, particularly in Utah, the sex-abuse capital of the United States. Is it possible to depict these harrowing acts tastefully in film? Or is that a line we should not allow filmmakers to cross in this nation?

We often hear about problems caused by US soldiers in Iraq. We see TV shows about soldiers accidentally shooting the wrong people.

We don’t often see this.

Several of us are on Netflix, no? Jon and I have friended each other via Netflix… go to the “Friends” panel, then click “invite friends”. On that page is a link you can paste here to be friended to exchange movie preferences, notes, reviews, etc.

It’s been really cool, Jon has suggested a few movies to me that I would not otherwise have watched. We can see what one another have rented recently (which is entertaining and voyeuristic on its own) and see one another’s ratings. My queue has expanded enormously after looking at Jon’s Netflix ratings.

Link to make me your Netflix friend: http://www.netflix.com/BeMyFriend/Pd6rxWqsH9ajymrNUc3e

So as a counterpoint to our recent Star Wars post, I present to you:

Wil Wheaton (of Wesley Crusher fame) reviews “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episodes. Wil is the same age as me, and he has become a prolific (and humorous) published writer.

True story from my missionary days:

Some members invited all four missionaries living in our flat over to have dinner. While walking out of the home afterwards, we were surprised to discover a dead cat beside the door of our vehicle.

Being helpful missionary-types, we offered to dispose of the cat for the single mother and the aging, infirm grandmother. We found a shovel and a garbage bag, inserted the rotting carcass into it, and moved to deposit it in her garbage can. “Oh, no,” she said, “I cannot stomach the thought of a dead cat lying in my garbage for a week until the next garbage day. Please, will you take care of it for me?”

So, helpfully, we agreed. We stuffed the body in the trunk and drove away, hoping to find another garbage can nearby. We forgot, however, that the cat was already several days dead and rotting. After driving for several minutes, the four of us realized that the cat, on this hot Los Angeles day, reeked mightily. We had to pull over on the side of the road.

None of us wanted to leave the carcass lying on the side of the road. I mean, we had agreed to give it a proper send-off of some sort, after all. So Elder Reed helpfully suggested that we just shut the trunk on the tail of the stiff, dead cat, and find a good place to dispose of the body. We all thought that was a capital idea, considering the reek permeating the cabin. So after slamming shut the trunk, we now had a large, white garbage bag flapping in the breeze behind our vehicle, containing a vague silhouette of a cat with jaws agape and limbs outstretched in protest at the indignity it was suffering.

“That just won’t do,” said Reed. We looked at him quizzically, and he tugged at the garbage bag. Now, the upside-down, stiff, dead cat was proudly displayed hanging morbidly from the trunk of our vehicle. “That’s better,” said Reed, and we all got back into the car and drove off, much happier with the reduction in olfactory obnoxiousness.

And it came to pass that we did not find any convenient dumpster on our route back to the mission home. We eventually pulled up to a stoplight, and a neighboring van driver motioned us to roll down the passenger-side window.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, “Do you know you gots a cat stuck to your car?”

“Say what?” said Reed, sitting in the passenger seat. “Are you sure?”

“Lemme check,” said the van driver, who backed up, looked at the tail end of our car, then drove back to the stoplight. “Yeah, you gots a dead cat hangin’ out de trunk your car, man.”

“Thanks for telling us!” Reed replied as the light turned green and we sped away.

Well, within a few minutes, we entered the freeway. We realized that, at high speed, the trick of hanging the dead cat out the back was not helping with the smell very much. The odor just followed shadowed us in the draft of our vehicle, wafting in through the windows along with the usual city smells of urine, exhaust, and asphalt.

“I think I have a solution to the smell, and a name for our dead cat,” said Elder Eagar, our indomitable Zone Leader, as we sped at around 80MPH down Highway 101. “I hereby christen this cat ‘Skippy'”.

He pulled the trunk latch, and Skippy earned his name.

Grape Balls of Fire: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/01/grape_balls_of_.html

Seriously, who hasn’t immolated something in a microwave? The cool thing is, this trick only involves FOOD… the stuff you are SUPPOSED to be putting into a microwave! Love what happens when you cover it with a tall glass. Way cool.

Thx to the Shadowguild mailing list for the link.

I ran across a blog at Weary Man which reminds me of me:

I’m Surrounded By Morons!

The one that really hit home for me was the description of “the Trader and The Businessman”, which aptly describes almost every CTO or CIO I’ve worked for…

This is a more broadly defined group set, as several aspects of this type of moron intermingle with each other in such a way as to defy a more narrowly defined catagory. The primary defining factor of both groups can be summed up in one word. Arrogance. Arrogance with a capital ‘A’ written in 104 point type in a very bold font.

Ironically, they are among the more technically astute of the Moron classes. Their failing comes in the form of their belief that they can do no wrong and that their issue must be the most important in the world because it affects their business. Wether that be their online stock trading business, or their VPN to the office, or their e-mail access. They want it fixed and they want it fixed now. Nevermind that there is a hurricane/earthquake/snowstorm related outage that’s affecting ten thousand other people in the city/county/state. Nevermind the fact that if it really was that important, maybe they should have invested in a backup ISP connection. They want you to fix it now because the fate of their entire business and financial future rests on getting connected RIGHT NOW!

And you better get it fixed bub, or they will ream you and your company a new one with phrases such as; “If I ran my business this way, I’d be out of business in a week!” and “Do you think that’s good customer service?” and my personal favorite, “That is unacceptable!”.

Dealing with this group is probably the most difficult of all of the Moron groups. The Trader/Businessman’s own sense of self-importance makes them much more difficult to work with. Largely because they don’t want you to work with them, they want you to work for them. To a Trader/Businessman, every support person they talk with is just an extension of their own workforce. A workforce extension they can treat as poorly as they want because there are no HR concerns to deal with afterwards.

There really isn’t any single best way to deal with this Moron group. I have found that trying to relate to them in a business sense sometimes helps. Throwing around business jargon when appropriate helps put them at ease and can sometimes defuse what is almost always an explosive situation.

Ultimately, making sure there is a Supervisor available to hand them off to is usually the best policy, since thay will frequently be unsatisfied with anything you do if you cannot get them fixed immediately. If you are able to somehow satisfy, even partially, the Trader/Businessman when you are unable to really fix their issue, pat yourself on the back. You have accomplished a truly impressive feat of Technical Support prowess.

OK, I have gotten some clever email scams in the past. I have received lots and lots of “word salad” scams recently, too, like “Parsley indigenous blogger obfuscate!”. But this, by far, is the most incompetent phishing scam I have ever received.

Subject: Notice: Your Online Is Bloked From: “Bank Of America” Date: Tue, January 2, 2007 14:26 To: matthew@… Priority: Normal Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000

The content: this image. The site linked to: http://www.lung.org/boa.html

Note: It’s possible the above image may not show up at some point in the future because of this scam. If you arrive too late to see the image, it’s an obvious screen shot of a Bank of America web page saying “You Online Banking is Blocked”. The reason it’s so obviously a screen shot is that it’s an 8-bit GIF image, with really, really bad dithering. I mean, horrible. It looks like a screen shot of a CGA monitor or something. It’s barely readable.

I know P.T. Barnum said “There’s a sucker born every minute”, but do these absolutely inept phishing attempts actually work? On anybody? Ever?

I’m very irritated at the volume of spam wiggling its way past my filters lately. What about you?

And, of course, following close on the heels of Happy Monday, Happy New Year!

Not much to update, really. I’ve been busy prepping some planes for the New Year’s Day Fun-Fly (better known, perhaps, as the “New Year’s Freeze-out” because the temperature will be in the low twenties while we are there). Had a good holiday season, despite having to work several days in the middle there. I’m certain that, with the new year, regime change in Congress, and other stuff going on, we’ll have more than enough to talk about!