So funny I may burst into tears: AT&T, which is probably responsible for more annoying, unsolicited telemarketing calls than any other company in the US, has been selected to manage the FTC’s new nationwide “do not call” list, designed to REDUCE the number of telemarketing calls. Government in action, I guess…
By the way, I forgot to point you toward Mark’s essay on domestic terrorism in San Francisco. It’s a good read; of course, I got to hear it in person, with musical accompaniment…
Oh good God. Fortunately, none of the restaurants I frequent have the audacity to ask me “what kind” of water I want with my meal. I’ve also been very good about not patronizing coffee shops which prefer to argue that they don’t have a “large” size rather than just sell me a fucking cup of coffee…
In my annual review at work this week, my boss commented that I seem much less bitter and cynical than I used to lately. Just thought I’d throw that in…
For those of you who care, I’ve finally posted pictures and text from that LA trip in February…
Going up into the Sierra for the weekend to watch it snow and stuff. Lest anyone get the wrong idea here, though, the closest we’ll be getting to “roughing it” is the fact that we’ll have a VCR but no DVD player…
I do not camp…
Home again. We didn’t actually see any snow, but there was lots of rain. So we played Monopoly and watched movies and cooked out (there’s something wonderfully unwholesome about cooking out when it’s 25 degrees and pouring down rain outside) and it was a good weekend all in all…
Unrelated (I think): why have I been starving all day?
I’ve disappeared for so long this time that people are starting to ask if I’m alive or dead. Since convincing them otherwise would require actually answering email (something I seem wholly incapable of doing lately), I’ve decided it’s time to set the record straight here. Today, I feel somewhere in between…
No, don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong. I’ve just been horribly busy this week, commuting to San Mateo by day and working on a major site redesign for a client by night. Both should be done this week — just in time for me to go on jury duty. Woo hoo…
By the way, penis anyone?
By way of updates:
I’ll try to make the updates a little more frequent soon. Or at least a little more entertaining…
So my jury duty report date is tomorrow, and now I’m pissed because the location has been changed from the Hall of Justice (just around the corner, lunch at home, etc.) to the courthouse in Civic Center (farther than I want to walk but too close to bother taking transit). I imagine that if I make it as far as jury selection, I’ll have some interesting comments about the whole process in a day or two. But I’d rather skip it…
Random:
One of my fellow jurors today adopted a rather dejected look and whined about how none of us seemed to want to go to lunch together because, he presumed, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about but the case, which was off-limits…
Well, duh. This is not a team-building exercise. We DON’T have anything in common but the case. I’m sure all my fellow jurors are very nice people, but the idea that I should have lunch with one or two of them never once crossed my mind. I don’t know these people. And I don’t particularly want to know any more about them than the situation requires…
Are there really individuals who are so socially dependent that they feel slighted if they have to complete the simplest task — say, going somewhere to get a sandwich — all alone? Jeez…
Completely unrelated Fran Lebovitz quote du jour: “Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke”…
One of the primary thrusts of my social philosophy is that individuals have the right to do almost anything they choose so long as it does not cause damage to other people who are excercising the same right. However, there is a disclaimer involved: Just because someone has the RIGHT to do something does not necessarily mean that he SHOULD do it nor does it suggest that he is free from any ramificantions which might arise from doing so.
For example, people have the right to accost complete strangers in the street and nag them about smoking. However, these same indivuduals must realize that doing so might not produce the exact result (“You’re so right. I’m giving up the habit right now on your recommendation. Thank you so very much.”) that they’d anticipated.
| Activity Performed | Potential Consequence |
I thought I’d suddenly become wildly popular, what with the thousands of extra hits on my About Me page, until I realized that they all seemed to be coming from some sort of spider at an IP address associated with Deloitte & Touche. At least I assume it’s a spider; I can’t imagine six or seven hundred accountants per day being all THAT fascinated by my life…
If I’m lucky, there’s only one more day of jury duty in my future…