So just barely a little more than half way through the month and NaBloPoMo and I missed posting last night. I have failed NaBloPoMo 2009. And I have absolutely no regrets because I missed it for a very good reason.
Life is all about the choices we make, the actions we take. If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't change a thing about Sunday.
It's been a week now, and I've had some time to reflect and come to terms with the decisions that were made by family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, fellow Californians. I'm referring to California Prop 2 and Prop 8. And there's an undeniable truth that's come to light. My fellow Californians care more about farm animals than their fellow human beings. Don't believe me? How else do you explain this…
(click for full size iamge)
Animals were given more freedom (well, technically, that "freedom" is the ability to move around more comfortably) and a section of the population had their equality revoked and civil liberties taken away. Does that make any sense to you?
Historic indeed. But not the good kind. I can't help but feel that while our country took a step forward, we also took a step back. That's hardly progress.
We live in a world where America will finally have a non-Anglo president, but in a country that still seems content with denying equality and liberty based on differences.
To all the people out there who voted in favor of Prop 8, the ones who voted in favor of discrimination and bigotry, thinking that by doing so they would some how be protecting marriage, family, and children (and I really don't understand the "protecting children" argument) I would like you to answer the following questions:
1. How does divorce factor into your ideals of protect marriage, family, and children?
2. Why haven't you outlaw divorce?
3. Can I get a refund on all the wedding presents I've purchased for straight couples who got divorced?
No, I'm serious! If you really want to protect marriage, you need to outlaw divorce. It's done more to destroy your so called "holy matrimony" than anything two men (or two women) in a committed relationship have done or will ever do.
And, lastly, for those of you who continue to argue that Prop 8 needed to pass to "[prevent] other consequences to Californians who will be forced to not just be tolerant of gay lifestyles, but face mandatory compliance regardless of their personal beliefs" please consider this…
The Bible says "Do to others as you would have them do to you." — Luke 6:31 (New International Version) but if you choose not to be tolerant of me I hope you won't mind if I choose not to tolerate you. I guess I don't really have a choice, they're your rules.
Single Rider Tour 2008 — part seven in a series
Now that my vacation is officially over, I can go back and review a few key things from my trip in a bit more detail. First up, the long awaited, much anticipated Finding Nemo-based ride at Disneyland.
It's easy to say that Pixar became Disney's saviour for animated films. Unfortunately it seems that scaled-back budgets will continue to make for flat ride experiences in the US parks. For proof of this, compare the Winnie the Pooh ride in Tokyo's Disneyland versus any of the US parks. I can't help but wonder how the Finding Nemo ride at Disneyland in Anaheim would have benefited if the Tokyo Land Management company (the actual owners of the Toyko park) running the project.
Starting off my list of disappointments, the wait. The wait for this ride was the longest I would find in the entire park on my visit. Part of this could be that they were only running two subs, which apparently can only travel in tandem, and with the show running as long as it does, the limited number of seats, and the slow load/unload process, it's easy to see why my wait was 40 minutes even though the line itself looked short.
Next up, the subs. Now I'm all for recycling, but here was a chance to make improvements to the original subs rather than just sprucing them up with a new paint job. Other than the difficult and slow load/unload process, the biggest issue with the subs is the size of the viewing portholes. The experience becomes completely compartmentalized, and one you experience by yourself rather than as a family or group. I found this to be very unsatisfying, and a little un-Disney when looking at Disney's modern thoughts on the ride experience. The portholes are so small that if you blink, you've probably missed something in the rich detail in the ride. I'm sure it came down to budget when they were refurbishing the subs. The subs would have benefited by having the tiny portholes replaced by larger viewing windows. Such windows allow the experience to be shared by several people at once, and make it that much more meaningful to them.
My other complaint was that the scenes had so many set breaks that again, if you blinked, you missed part of the story being told. Again, larger portholes would have made for a better storying telling experience.
The animatronics and animation were, more or less, successfully integrated into the ride, though the animatronics seemed a little under animated when compared to the animated elements of the ride and that created a noticeable separation between storytelling elements, and that took me out of the story. This again is a situation where Disney used to be top dog; their animatronics were second to none. Some of these animatronics looked like the belonged in Knotts Berry Farm or any other generic theme park.
I'm hoping that John Lassiter can help the penny-pinchers in the Anaheim park realize that their cost-cutting ways detract from the guest experience and hamper the story telling process&helli;and that's why Pixar has been so successful; to them, story is king.
Here am I as always, still quietly standing in the background, patiently observing the both of you. Together. Indivdually. Impartial to the best of my ability. The confidant to both, though only full-time to one. I envied the bond you shared to the point I questioned its validity. Maybe it was my fault he began to question it too.
He asked me if he was doing the right thing. I told him he was, that he deserves to have balance, security, and happiness. And the only way he'll ever achieve that is by taking control of his life and surrounding himself with the people that foster those needs. In reality, I told him what he wanted to hear, which I hope is also the truth.
Part of me wants to intervene, to ask you how you could be so oblivious about what was going on. But having to ask the question at all provides the answer at the same time. I know it's not your fault. Or his. In the end, you are both moving in different directions. Be happy your paths overlapped and look forward to the time they might cross again.
That's all the wisdom I can impart for now. Good luck you two.
No, not the piercing kind, the kind where you hearing a ringing in your ears. The really annoying kind. The kind that usually tag teams with a pounding headache and a feeling that your eyes might pop outta their sockets. The kind that gets so bad that it makes it nearly impossible to think because all of your focus is driven to that damn sound pressure in your ears.
That pretty much sums up my last 6 weeks. It was also what I was alluding to in my last post. Last week it finally got the better of me and after Betty convinced me that it was probably just Tinnitus that I came to the realization it wasn't going to get better on its own and finally went to the doctor. I don't like going to the doctor. Don't get me wrong, I like my doctor and trust my M.D., but I'm just leary of the modern medical methods that preach healing via antibiotics and chemicals. The last time I had to go see the doctor I ended up on medical leave for six weeks during which I took a total of 5 different antibiotics, each in increasing strength. They took such a toll on my system that my bright yellow Live Strong wristband (you know, the one Lance Armstrong made popular) actually changed color where it touched my skin in a matter of weeks. Freaky! Oh, and my shit didn't stink. Believe me, I'm not bragging. My shit literally didn't smell like, well, anything. (Sorry, was that an overshare?) I don't think I had any living bacteria — good or bad — left in my body after that. But after all that time the sinus infection/walking pneumonia finally met its match.
Flash forward nearly two years and there I am, back at my doctor listening to him tell me the ringing in my ears is most likely being caused by my sinuses. My heart sank. "I'm not going to have to take more damn antibiotics, will I?" I hear myself half-defensively ask. He seemed a little caught off guard by my question until he looked at my chart again and quietly said to himself, "Oh, that's right." I look down at the floor where my stomach had since joined my heart. "Why don't we start you off with a nasal spray instead to relieve the pressure and see how that goes."
So far the spray has been helping but it's now miracle recovery by any means. On a scale of 1 to 100 (with 100 feeling like someone drilling into my eardrums while endlessly projecting every sound imaginable into my head which is being squeezed in a vice while I'm flying in a plane that constantly keeps changing cabin pressure, which is what it felt like last week) I'm down to about a 40 in the mornings and top out around 70-75 about the time I leave the office. Hope that helps to explain why it's been so quiet round the blog for the past several weeks, and why it might continue to be a bit postless for a couple more.
There goes the neighborhood. Well, technically it's the neighbors whom are going. But what they're selling for is unnaturally skewing the home values in the rest of the neighborhood lower. Right now my home is almost worth less than I still owe on it. I'm not sure what I should do. I'm clearly in over my head, and according to this Lifehacker survey titled "Are You Living Below Your Means?" I'll be totally boned (and not in the good way) with just one moderate sized personal emergency. I know I should count my lucky stars that at least I haven't reach foreclosure status yet like so many other Californians, but with the end to this economic (and now emotional) depression anyone's guess, it's often hard to keep one's mind in a positive frame. It's time to reevaluate which is more important, the emotional freedom that living alone offers, or the financial boost having a roommate will provide. Owning this home has turned out to be far from what I had dreamed it would be.
I'm not the complete nancy boy others might mistake me for, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty under the hood with simple routine maintenance or changing a flat — I've even changed a tire on the 101 by SFO on the median shoulder (it's really more of a suggestion of a shoulder than a real shoulder) with cars whipping by at breakneck speeds (not unlike today) — but so help me, I couldn't get the bolts loose to get the bad tire off. Seriously! They were on way too tight and even putting my full weight into it had wouldn't get them to budge. Worried that I might cause the car to fall off the child's toy they call a jack and crush my foot trying to get the bolts loose, I had no other option but to call for roadside assistance. To his credit he showed up sooner than originally estimated and while I filled out paperwork, he took his chances with the tire swap. 
Couldn't I just have a nice relaxing day or weekend? Must it be cut short with a potentially life threatening predicament? Yes, I realize that I'm being a bit melodramatic, and yes, it's really more a coincidence than part of the universe's doing, but it feels good to be able to put the blame on something outside my control. I didn't notice that my roadside guardian angel (whose name was actually Angel, go figure) had come up to me while I was lost in thought. When I finally became aware of his presence I realized that he was apologizing for stripping my nuts. That's funny, I didn't know I had gotten lucky. Then I looked down to see a pair of horribly mangled orbs of metal. My lug nuts! And they were practically unrecognizable. I was a little surprised when he asked me if I wanted him to put them back on and let the next mechanic battle with removing them or simply leave them off. "Um, you're probably more an expert on these things than I am, but wouldn't it be unsafe to drive with only half of the lug nuts holding the wheel on?" I quizzed? He sheepishly agreed and turned to put them back on the car. When he was done he reminded me not to exceed 40 miles per hour and not to drive further than 50 miles on the Radio Flyer wagon wheel of a spare. Thank goodness it's Sunday and absolutely no tire shops or auto repair places are open because heaven forbid people who work 10 hour days Monday through Friday ever want to get some work done on a freaking weekend. Now I can go straight home without the distraction of buying new tires, or picking up the week's worth of groceries that are part of my Sunday ritual.
I have a habit of dwelling on the negative rather than the positive and so it was no surprise that I began to get down about having to take surface streets to and from work, which more than doubles my commute time. Plus with issues at work the next couple of days, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get my tire replaced within 50 miles because I live just far enough from work that one full commute would meet or surpass the quota and I'm not sure I can take any time away from work to get this fixed. While I'm sure things will work out, right now it doesn't seem possible. But, then again, at least I'm not dead. I should be happy to be alive and a stranger's help in getting my nuts off, even if they were a bit too manhandled in the process. Better manhandled than not handled at all, or say the saying goes, right?
Apparently the use-by date is not always a good indicator of when food is about to spoil. I made some stuffed chicken breasts for dinner last night, a few days left before their expiration date, and clearly, I should have used them much sooner. Unless they were bad to begin with. Either way, my insides feel like they're trying to get outside anyway possible…unfortunately most of the time it means I'm trapped in the bathroom, and the rest of the time I'm in bed with brain cramps, a fever, and stomach cramps that remind me of when my nephew jumped on me like a trampoline. Good thing I only had two bites and stopped (they turned out so dry) because I'm just imagining how worse off I'd be if I'd eaten the whole breast. I knew I should have made the corn dogs instead.
I hope this stomach bug passes soon (no pun intended) because I've got a crap-load of work (no pun intended) to do at the office this week and when I'm forced to squeeze it (no pun intended) all into a shorter work-week, well, I get a bit burnt out. I'm keeping the Jell-O cups down for the moment and the Gatorade G2 is keeping me more hydrated than not. Bleh. Ok, that's about all I can muster to write about tonight.
This is Part 2 of my "I'm so in a gay rage right now!" post. If you haven't read the original post where this story began, you probably should read it now or the rest of this won't make a whole lotta sense to ya.
Yes I had no idea how deep my sweet li'l mom had gotten herself into this scam. But as we kept talking, I quickly learned it was even worse than I had imagined. Turns out the site link she had given me was her second online store, her first is what you can see below.
Mind you, it's tons prettier and more professional looking than the first site she had directed me to but it's still nothing but page after page of banner ads that was marketed to my mom as an online storefront. At this point I was speechless. Not only was one group of scammers after my mom, but there's a second set as well. (Just tonight I learned that the prettier site above cost her $7000. Good thing I had just parked my car or I would have driven off the damn road in shock.) Depending on the website being designed, it's not unrealistic to pay about $100/hour for quality work. Looking at the two sites my mom paid for, I simply can't see anywhere close to her getting her money's worth. As a designer myself, seeing this happen makes me physically ill.
My gay rage had mutated into a gay wrath. These assholes are going to pay. I told my mom — now quite overcome with regret and embarrassment upon realizing that she'd been scammed — to calm down and that I was going to look into this other company and then get back to her. Turns out this other company had actually contacted her first and set up the site, and then the she was contact by a second company who convinced her that the first company was run by untrustworthy people and convinced her she'd do better with them, which is how she ended up with that ugly-ass site from the first part of the story. Well I used my interweb research skills to be dead-ended because the first company used a proxy registrar to set up their own company's domain, and tracing them would be very difficult. At this point it was suggested that in addition to contacting her bank and the credit agencies, that she also contact the attorney general for advice on how to get all of her money back. I called her back and she with a crushed spirit said hello. I had her write down her "tasks" and tried to give her a bit of a pep talk as I was rushing into a meeting. She said she'd do what she could and to call back over the weekend when we'd have more time to talk.
During the meeting my mind kept drifting to my mom's predicament. I honestly considered at one point the scenario of hopping on the next flight to where these company's were doing business from (conveniently in the same metropolis) and confronting them in person. Then I remembered that I'm one of the least intimidating people on the planet so I put that in my back pocket as a "plan b."
Over the weekend I did a little more sleuthing to see if anyone else had fallen for this same scam. I've never heard of it before so for all I know it's something that's just starting. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to target seniors because of their lack of actual knowledge of how things work on the internet. My theory is that these scammers would want to do as little work as possible so they'd probably cut corners and just use a template for all of their victims websites. While I couldn't find a similar site to my mom's ugly site, I did find one that was nearly identical to the pretty site. Take a look for yourself.
I don't know if I should be thrilled or worried that I could think like a scammer in my sleuthing. I'll sleep better if I reason that it was just a solid use of logic and psychology. Anyway, I called my mom back tonight to get an update on how she'd come on her tasks, and give her the newest information I had found. She kept beating herself up for letting herself be scammed. I told her she shouldn't blame herself, and that what's done is done and now we need to focus on fixing it. She 's ready to tell them to keep whatever money they've spent and just give the rest back. I told her that's not an option, she needs to have all $12,600 returned but it could be a lengthy battle for it to happen. If the attorney general is a dead end (as I suspect they might be) I told her we need to go to the media, local and then national, and get them involved on bringing attention to this new type of scam…like 60 Minutes or Dateline. Yes I know it's sensationalistic journalism at best, but hell, if it might help my mom get her retirement fund back, and prevent other's parents from getting conned, then it'll be worth it.
Tomorrow morning she's going to call the attorney general for advice. We'll figure out the next steps after that. Something tells me this ain't close to being over anytime soon. And I've still got "plan b" in my back pocket. Stay tuned…
First things first. How much would you pay someone to design an online store where you can sell name brand merchandise, never have to ship or receive anything yourself, never have to handle billing or purchasing, but basically just sit back and watch the "unlimited income" flooding in?
Hmmm… You seem skeptical.
Now, what if I told your website would be professionally designed to look like this, using the latest in design technology:
Interesting! You seem more skeptical than before. Let's continue.
And finally, what if the person cold-called you some random weeknight offering you all this for a "small" one-time investment. On your credit card. And he needs your 3-digit security code from the back of your card to process the payment. Oh, and your social security number for the W9 form. And just a few other personal bits of information to verify your identity.
If you're not yelling, "It's a scam! He's trying to steal your money and identity! Hang up…HANG UP!!!" at your computer display, you're probably my dear, sweet, innocent, naive mother.
Bless my mom's heart, she thought she was making a sound business decision to aide in her retirement years. But she's barely only been online for two years now — and only email at that — so how was she to know scams like this exist or that she could be taken to the cleaners. She only watches Christian satellite broadcasts, so she's not seen the countless Dateline and 20/20 and nightly news stories about identity theft and internet scams out there. Plus, looking back over my whole life, she's always been trying out the "get rich quick" and "earn unlimited income without lifting a finger" schemes that have come along over the years. She's an enteral optimist, where as I, having watched all this happen over the years, am very much not an optimist.
It wasn't until Tuesday night that I learned about my mom's new venture. I was driving when she told me so I couldn't exactly look at it right then or the rest of the conversation would have been decidedly different. And by the time I got home after 11 non-stop hours at the office, all I could do was nuke up some corn dogs and fall asleep while eating them. After years of watching her get rich quick efforts come and go with little collateral damage, I wasn't as worried as I should have been. It wasn't until Wednesday night that I remembered what we'd talked about an I logged on to check out her business venture. The moment the page started loading banner ad upon banner ad my heart sank and I wanted to vomit. Someone had suckered her into thinking pages of banner ads was an "online storefront" and she didn't know any different; she's never bought anything online before. Heck, I don't think she's even googled once!
Adding insult to injury, not only was she scammed into thinking she was joining the exciting world of online shopping and about to make an endless amount of money, but the website looks like shit! Professionally designed my ass, the little link in the bottom of the page pointing back to an online website creating tool proves that it couldn't have been. I've seen better design MySpace pages, and that's saying something. Adding to the nausea was a growing sense of panic and anger…I was feeling the onset of a gay rage. I spent the next 4 hours into the early morning researching as much about the perpetrators of the scam as possible and figuring out how to tell my mom without her thinking I was just dumping on her good idea or making her feel like a fool.
On Friday morning I'd gather as much information as I could and just decided I'd just ask her questions that would lead her to figure out she made a mistake and then help guide her on what to do next for damage control. I had no idea that how bad it really was.
I'm getting all worked up into a rage again so I'll post the rest of this when I've calmed down enough to type without breaking the keyboard and grinding my teeth. Stay tuned…
So a couple weeks ago one of my coworkers got a traffic citation for not wearing a seat belt. To add insult to injury, he got pulled over just a couple driveways away from our office, so all our other coworkers had to drive past him. I got to the office before he did but that didn't keep me from messing with him once he set foot in his cube.
Well, this last Friday I got mine. Literally. I got pulled over for speeding less than a minute after leaving my driveway. I have no one to blame but myself. So, Maverick, when you get back to the office, I'm now fair game for you to make fun of me.
The officer said I'd find out how much I'll have to pay for the ticket in up to two months. Really? Two months!? Just how many tickets are they dishing out these days?
Oh great and wise blogowebospherenet…what's a guy gotta do to correct this recent recurring behavior and keep kitty from krapping on the karpet? I need your help!
Does anyone have any suggestions, short of sewing up his poop shute, on how to reverse this increasing pattern? I'm getting worried that he's going to start pooping elsewhere, like my hard-to-clean furniture.
As promised, here's the non-kitty post… and while it's not exactly breaking news, you'd better have a seat, this is going to be a long one anyway.
What year is it? Oh that's right, it's 1958. Which is why the following is presented as fact rather than misguided opinion:
"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell of this country. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam - which I think is a big threat, OK?"
"Cause what's happening now is they are going after, in schools, two-year olds...And this stuff is deadly, and it’s spreading, and it will destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation."
Not when there's press releases like this.
While I was raised Christian, and even served in our church for several years during high school, it's people like these that have raised severe questions in my faith. I'm so tired of the double standards. I'd call myself an atheist but since it seems like the majority of the population equates atheists with devil worshipers (seriously, buy a dictionary!), I'd do best to settle on agnostic. The doctrine I follow couldn't be simpler ... live and let live, be nice will doing it, and do no harm.
I feel ill just thinking about how this is going to turn into a media circus for the next week or two and give these hateful and hate-filled bigots yet another soapbox to preach their poison from. I just want to go home and crawl back in bed.
14 hours at work, 9 hours since lunch, and that's when I realize, I don't know when I'm getting home, or when I'm getting food. I'm trapped in the drive-thru at In-and-Out. Cars in front of me. Cars behind me. No one is moving. I watch each minute tick away with growing impatience, hunger, and exhaustion. Hell, I don't care if I don't get to order (oh yeah, I didn't even order as after 5 minutes of waiting to place my order at the designated "order here" spot no one took my order and the cars behind me were getting restless) I just want to be able to drive somewhere—anywhere—else! 23 minutes into being held against my will, I finally arrive at the pick-up window and before I can even get the words, "I didn't get to order yet," the kind face that I want to be mad at consolingly says, "I'm so sorry that we missed you, what would you like tonight." And while I still had to pay for my order— a #2 with onions and water instead of soda—the way in which she served me somehow made up for the fact that I my long day had been made that much longer by some snafu that I'm sure could have been avoided.
As unluck would have it, I arrived home to find that Comcast's HSI network was apparently down in my 'hood (which they would not admit to, they never do). All I wanted to do was eat my dinner, catch up on email and news, maybe a little iChatting, and then "hitting the sack" ... before going to bed. :P The network is still down, but I lucked out and managed to find that one of my neighbors must have received a wi-fi base station for Christmas, and lucked out even further because they left it open rather than putting a password on it.
Now that I'm all caught up on news, I think I'm going to skip the email and chatting and other activities on the interwebs and just go to bed. Having put in almost 30 hours at work in just two days, and with the rest of the week looking at least as busy, I'm gonna need as much sleep as I can get. *sigh* Oh how I long for the days of hourly employment and its overtime.
But then I read L'il B's post, and fuck if she didn't totally hit the nail on the head. Guess I'd been feeling the same way, but didn't want to admit it.
Now I'm home, watching "Chuck & Buck", feeling like shit (my cold has returned and it's pissed that I tried to dismiss it), eating a piping hot quart of hot and sour soup to soothe my aching throat, typing this final post for November... for NaBloPoMo. I guess I should feel some sense of accomplishment, but really I just feel mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. And after all, I didn't cure cancer, or fix global warming, or even rescue a cat from a tree (for the record there's no such thing as a cat stuck in a tree, they're just trying to get away from annoying people and come down when they get hungry) ... I just textually vomited the contents of my brain once a day for 30 days in a row. No big whoop.
Will I stick with it? Yes, but not every day. Everything in moderation, right? Besides who wants to read the equivalent of the dry heaves?
Well, I'd love to stay up until it's officially not November any more, but I've gotta shit to do in the morning. And posting here isn't on the list. GKR out!
Oh, and kudos to Sara over at Moving Right Along for the kick-ass "mission accomplished" badge.
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Worst thing about today: Sickies again
Best thing about today: Duh! You read all that drivel at the beginning, right? WTF?! What do you mean "I skimmed it." Lame...
But right now I'm borrowing a page from Howler and going to recap the day as follows:
Worst thing of the day: feeling the funk
Best thing of the day: getting an email from Camp
Has anyone seen my Olympus camera's USB cable? The Vegas pics are trapped in my camera! On second thought, maybe that's a good thing.
Ok, this sucks. I had been thinking about today's post since arriving to work this morning. The office was completely empty. So quiet. About 5pm I get a call from Hootie to head up to the city to run some errands, grab some dinner, and hit up The Mint for karaoke in my old stomping grounds. Now that I'm home, I've completely forgotten about what I was going to write about, no doubt singing Third Eye Blind songs at the top of my still recovering lungs wiped my memory clean. Damn! Oh well, since my contractors are going to be working on the house in the morning I'll need to evacuate again so that'll give me all day to remember the post. Oh, and maybe even get some pics posted.
I swear this will be the last time I use a song lyric for a posting title. Well, for a few days anyway.
Because of the construction going on in the house right now I can't run the furnace as it and the air ducts are full of dust and I'm doing my best to keep the dust rhinos in a confined area instead of setting them loose via the vents. When I woke up this morning it was 50°F in my room. Now 1.5 hours later the room has warmed up to a far from cozy 54°F. Time to go to the office to keep from getting frost bite and/or hypothermia.
Luckily for Betty I'll be able to drop off a Venti latte to her office on the way to my own. I think I'll buy an extra one and just dump it on my head to warm up faster.
Brrrrrr!
