Iron Fist

Really, I am doing plenty of creative writing these days, it’s just that instead of taking place on my blog most of it winds up in the email I send to my coworkers, filled with completely random observations or vitriol filled rants. For example, there’s this oldie, or recently when a coworker asked whether an incident I’d dealt with was fairly typical for my department, I responded with the following:

Dude, that’s pretty much our whole life. Seriously, sometimes working here is like working with handicapped third-graders, only I know that these office types all have college degrees and mortgages, which doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s nothing short of a fucking miracle that someone can get up in the morning, button up their shirt and put their shoes on the right feet, OPERATE A MOTOR VEHICLE AT SPEEDS EXCEEDING 60 MPH WITHOUT TOTALLY DYING, and yet come to work here and call in with something like “I can’t make the door work.” And then you call them back and you’re like “you can’t open a door?” and then they’re all “well, I can open it. But there was this one time, like last week, it didn’t open right away and I almost hurt my finger, ALMOST, but not quite. Also I think we’re out of napkins.” It’s hard not to say, “WTF? Aren’t you a grown-up? Don’t you do your own taxes and feed yourself every day and even somehow fucking RAISE CHILDREN and you’re completely crippled now because there’s not a napkin with five feet of where you’re sitting?”, but if you say that then they go, “I don’t think I care for your tone. I’ve known your Director for like forty years, you know. We were in ‘Nam together.” And then you get your ass chewed.

That’s pretty much it. Okay. How’s your day going?

I write screenplays involving people from other departments on my floor, I write recaps of conversations I have with incompetent people I speak to on the phone, I write pointed rants about pointless things we all put up with in corporate America. Some of it gets sent to co-workers to seem to appreciate my sense of humor; a lot of it just gets deleted.

I write all this stuff because it keeps me sane, also because it beats doing the crap I’m supposed to do for my job. But you know, I’m tired of feeling like my job is draining me of all my creativity. Actually, I’m just tired of going to work.

Therefore, I am calling for Blogger Ditch Day. This Friday! Let’s all ditch work! Call in sick, forge your own doctor’s notes, even use the old “my grandma is in the hospital” if you have to (although be warned karma will probably bite you in the ass if you do, and then it will be your own damn fault when your grandma actually is in the hospital). If you can’t ditch work all day, then just show up for morning roll call and sneak out at your first break! That way you get credit for showing up.

Then, we’ll all meet at the beach! I’ll bring some beer. If someone brings hot dogs and some wire coat hangers we can totally cook them over a bonfire. We’ll crack open tallboys and smoke cigarettes. There might even be making out! (Please note that I cannot guarantee this last one. Also, although I seem to know a staggering number of smoking hot bloggers, please do not ask me if I can “hook you up” with one of them. Dudes, you are on your own.)

Let’s hear it for ditching! In the meantime, you should continue your subversiveness in the workplace by walking around with some monkey themed flair.

See you at the beach!

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On the first leg of my flight from the East Coast back home to the West, I boarded the plane and shuffled along to my seat in the first row behind the first class section. A couple was there getting situated, and taking their own sweet time in doing so, so I went ahead and “ahem”-ed them, and said, “That’s my seat.”

“Oh,” said the woman, “do you mind if I take the window seat?”

When I reserve my tickets I usually request a window seat, because I like looking out the window. Occasionally, I even get some good shots. Plus, I’m not one of those people who feels the need to constantly get up and walk around during a flight. I like my window seat.

But…maybe this lady hadn’t flown out of this airport before, and wanted to look out the window, I reasoned. I gestured magnanimously, smiled, and said, “Please.” Whereupon she took my window seat, fastened one of those cybernetic pillow-devices around her neck, closed the shade, and promptly went to sleep.

Needless to say, I was not pleased.

To top it off, I discovered that my complete exhaustion mixed with the two cups of coffee I’d had in the terminal had come together in the losing combination that left me too scatterbrained to focus on my book, but too stimmed up to be able to even close my eyes. Also, since no one in the forward half of the plane was smart enough to figure out that the two bathrooms near the tail were mostly unoccupied, they kept walking forward to wait for the first class lavatory to open up. With my aisle seat right at the boundary between first class and coach, I had someone standing right next to me any time that the “fasten seatbelt” sign wasn’t on. If you’ve ever wondered what’s worse than being stuck on a plane for six hours without being able to read or sleep, the answer is “being stuck on a plane for six hours without being able to read or sleep and having butts in your face the entire time.”

For the second leg of my flight, I boarded as soon as I was able and seized my window seat right away, determined not to be suckered a second time. I looked out the window for most of the flight home, and was rewarded with a view of Mt Hood as we began our descent.

You can see two previous shots from either side of Mt Hood here.

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OR

Won’t Someone Please Think Of The Children?

OR

You Can’t Say That On The Internets!

the more-or-less absolutely true tale of how my old site was suspended

Friday before last I logged into my website before going to work to see if I’d had any comments. Dave had left one, and I left a reply; I skimmed over my feeds in Bloglines for a few minutes, glossing over some of the news and noting who among the bloggers I follow had updated. The Internet was largely as I had left it when I’d gone to bed a few hours before.

The work morning went along quickly enough, and a little after ten I dropped down by the cafe in my building for a coffee refill, and to use the PC in the lobby to check my site. I was more than a little surprised to find that instead of the regular colors of my blog I found a splash page from my web host announcing that my account had been disabled. I hit refresh a couple of times, thinking this must be some sort of error. When my site failed to resolve, I logged into my email, and found an email from the support desk of what shall hereafter be known as ‘PuritanHost’ with the subject line ACCOUNT SUSPENDED. “Oh, great,” I thought. I clicked on the email, which was short and to the point.

You web-hosting account has been deactivated (reason: call customer support). Although your website has been disabled, your data may still be available.

If you feel this deactivation was in error, please contact customer service as soon as possible.

Well, no shit I felt this deactivation was in error. I dialed the 800 number for PuritanHost listed in the email, and spent several minutes on hold wondering what had happened. It wasn’t like I used my site to do anything illegal. I ran through any number of increasingly implausible scenarios: someone had hacked my account passwords and set up email accounts to send out spam; a malicious script had been introduced to my page; my ftp server had been loaded full of movies by the Russian Mafia to be downloaded by data pirates in Malabar; my site had been demolished by script kiddies and they’d put up a picture of goat$e in its place.

Finally the help desk took my call. The agent on the other end of the line asked for my domain; I gave it to him.

“Uh huh. Okay. What can I do for you today?”

“Well, my account has been deactivated.”

“Okay.”

“I’d like to get it reactivated.”

“Okay. Hmm. Okay. Looks like your account was suspended.”

“Right. Can you tell me why?”

“Uhh, it looks like you used, ah, vulgarity?”

I blinked. Blinked again. Surely I must have heard him incorrectly. “Say again?”

“You, ah, have vulgarity on your site.”

I took a second to process that. “Yeah. Is that illegal?”

“Well, it’s against the Terms of Service.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, it’s in there.”

“FUCK.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Look, okay, look, how do we go about remedying this? I want to get my site back up and running.”

“Well…you can remove the vulgarities you used. Sir.”

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Okay. Listen, what’s the story? I’ve been with you guys for over a year now. What set this off? Were there complaints about my site?” Even as I said this I found it hard to believe. I’m hardly Andrew Dice Clay; I run a fairly innocuous little site for my own amusement, and I drop the occasional F-bomb, but who doesn’t?

“Uh, well, no. I mean, I don’t see that there are any records of any complaints.”

“If there weren’t any complaints, then what set this off? What was the trigger?”

“Well…sometimes we go through the domains that we host. You know. Just to be sure.” And he might have said some more words by way of explanation, but I didn’t hear them. It turns out that as with other forms of sub-lethal trauma, the human brain will black out once absurdity reaches a certain critical level, to save your head from imploding. This is what happened to me as I began to contemplate the fact that, in a world where you can dig up some pretty sick and twisted stuff on the Internet with a minimum of effort, my web host had gone through the trouble to scan through my entire site to make sure that I wasn’t USING ANY NAUGHTY LANGUAGE.

“Fine,” I said abruptly as I returned to consciousness. “I’ll take care of it and call you back.” And by “take care of it”, I meant “pack up all my files and move them to another host without a completely bullshit acceptable use policy.”

That’s why my site has been down this last week. Jenny recommended Laughing Squid, and I zipped up my database tables and pulled all my theme files and have spent the last few days porting everything over to its new home. I haven’t got everything quite the way it was yet — I’ve gotten rid of some old plug-ins and updated others and still need to do a little more configuring before all is as it was. So, bear with me.

There are worse things in life than having your site 86ed by your host because you aren’t always PG-13, but it was still pretty annoying.

Think me getting my site shut down for ‘off-color language’ is a bunch of bullshit? Please feel free to exercise your right to free speech in my comments.

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It seems like the great paradox of the Western world is that our highly advanced techno-economy is able to function as well as it does, considering that our nation’s businesses seem to be staffed entirely by morons and other assorted completely helpless individuals.

Take, for example, my old work. They seemed understanding enough when I told them I was quitting, even though I was taking business away from them by doing so since the contract they had to provide work for my new employers dissolved on the last day I was there. They even were happy to let me work for them an extra week when my new job was having trouble getting all my paperwork assembled in time. But some how this efficiency and diligence didn’t carry over to making sure I got my last paycheck on time.

I had dropped by the offices of my old work about a week after I transitioned to the new job, as my old boss had called to tell me that they had some checks for me. I dropped by and picked up one check for one day’s worth of work to cover the time they forgot to pay me for Labor Day, and another that was a payout of my accumulated vacation hours. I was surprised that I didn’t get my last week’s worth of work on either of those checks, but assumed it would just be deposited to my account the next Friday on the usual scheduled payday.

Well, Friday came and went, and no money appeared in my account. Concerned, I sent an email to my old boss, asking her what the story was.

Corporate automatically sends you your last check when they process the termination paperwork [she replied]. I don’t quite understand what went wrong.

“I don’t really understand what went wrong either,” I sent back. “But that’s okay, I don’t really need to know. Please just send me a check for the week’s worth of work that I am owed, and we’ll call it good.”

Time passes. A week later I send another email asking if they’d figured out yet how to write a check for the amount I was owed.

Well, they are going back and forth at corporate, trying to figure out who is responsible for paying you. I will let you know when I hear something.

“Do they have a check-writing department?” I asked. “Really, I think that they would be best suited to meeting my needs, by writing me a check. I don’t really care who is responsible. I don’t need a CSI: Bureaucracy Land-style forensic break down of what went wrong. I really just want my money.”

By the end of the week, after a few more email exchanges (if you call me repeatedly sending emails asking about the status of my last check an ‘exchange’) I found the following email in my inbox:

The corporate office says they sent you a check in the mail late last week. So you should see it any day now. Thank you.

“Fantastic!” I sent back. “I’m assuming you processed the change-of-address I sent you over a month ago, before my last day, right?”

I didn’t get a reply to this.

The Post Office came through for me and forwarded my last check; it came in the mail last Friday. Rejoicing that I had been paid, I went out to a show that night without giving it another thought. The next morning I sat down and opened up the envelope, and — you know what’s coming, right? — it was for the wrong amount. I had been shorted by a day.

Amazed by the incompetence of this organization, and frustrated by their almost total inability to get a simple thing right like paying me for a single week’s wages, I thought at first about just forgetting about it and saying “close enough”, but then I realized that this would mean that I worked a whole day for them for free.

It’s back to emailing morons again this week. Wish me luck.

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For some reason no other page beyond the front page will resolve tonight. Somewhere between Fantastico Deluxe automatic Wordpress upgrades and FastCGI acceleration and I-don’t-even-know-what-else my site is broken tonight. And I’m too tired to fix it.

ARRRGGH! All I gotta say is those other pages had better be working in the morning.

Update: Now everything works. Go figure. Stupid webserver.

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