YOU ARE HERE - 03-31-07
How people found this site. On a Saturday this week, to make room for
'So, where are ya from?' a new feature for the first of every month.


sisterinlaw (UK)
freelance cynic puppies (London)
help me pay for treatment for my cat (Gloucester, England)
bank's reply (Amsterdam)
brotherinlaw and sisterinlaw porn (India)
marisa tomai (New Jersey)
double knot spy (Boston)
little milhouse (Alberta)
the keiths creepy thing from india (New Jersey)
nova scotia film tv (Virginia)
ted reinstein (New Mexico) Love him or hate him, you still search for him.

HERE FROM WORK or SCHOOL?
Aren't you supposed to be working/studying?

University Of Mississippi (From? Well, duh)
National Australia Bank Limited (Melbourne)
National City Corporation (Cleveland, Ohio) A lot of bored bankers out there.
State Of Montana Department Of Administration (Billings)
Publicis & Hal Riney (Escondido, California)
Red Hat Inc (North Carolina)
Board Of Pensions (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Salomon Inc (Brooklyn)
Delta Air Lines (Atlanta)
University Of Virginia (Bridgeport, Connecticut) Swear to God, that's what it says.

Can You See Your House From Here?
New twist and a game for the You Are Here post.



HINT: Wonder if you pick up your coffee at the Morning Dew? Or hang out at the Burke Street Pub or Gatsby's?

Click on the picture to get a closer look. And remember, if you think this is you, give us a shout.

It's Alive!

This might freak some people out, but this is really how it is.



I remember when The Boy was in utero. Having hours of fun, putting objects on my belly and having him kick them off. Even a rotary phone, and those things are heavy.

Mind you, sometimes it felt like a scene from Alien, but most of the time it was cool.

F.C.S.

I know I have to eat better. With more thought to nutrition as opposed to taste. Cuz, let's face it, the two are mutually exclusive.

I don't eat, and when I do it's take-out (since I don't cook) or microwave stuff, since I hate doing dishes and they come with their own. Did I mention I am a domestic goddess?

I don't exercise, I walk to the car. That is it. I avoid the mall like the plague, as it too involves walking. I sit on my ass all day at my computer and all night at work to the point where my ass has actually started to take the shape of my chair. Its a nice looking chair but makes a lousy looking ass.

Seems like anything that is good for you gives me hives.

The Boy tried to blame me for us running out of milk.

I can not believe he is blaming me. "How am I supposed to know we need milk if you leave the empty carton in the fridge?"

"Uh, when you go for a drink, you see that it is empty." His logic astounds me.

"I don't drink milk."

"What? You should, its good for you."

"It's cow juice. The only way I can drink that shit is if I soak some frosted flakes in it first."

Unfortunately, my nutritional habits have contributed to my FCS. This became apparent one night at work when I was suddenly and violently gripped with what felt like a charlie horse in my ribs.

I contort myself in the most unflattering pose you can imagine, trying desperately to ease the pain that I can feel building rapidly. Bunnie looks at me horrified. "What's wrong?"

It looks like I am scarring her, I try and look less traumatized, "Nothing, I am fine. It's just the FCS acting up."

You could tell she was trying to figure out what that meant. After all she has had pretty much every ailment worth having (including gout...I kid you not) and she would know of all the major diseases and she clearly never heard of FCS. With a worried look (thinking this was some rare new malady), "What is FCS?"

"Fat Chick Syndrome."

Blank stare.

"You see, my organs are viewing all this available real estate on the outside of my skeletal structure and they are attempting to relocate."

Measure twice, cut once.

My friend Bunnie and I are both uneasy when it comes to going to the dentist. I was prescribed Adavan because I think my dentist was afraid I might bite him or something. This is nothing compared to Bunnie. I won't get into the particulars but yesterday, during her appointment, they had to take her blood pressure three times.

I was not even aware that they knew how to take blood pressure. Probably something they picked up after taking her on as a patient.

Anyway, Bunnie pretty much works herself up all week anticipating this appointment. After the appointment she is frozen up the ying-yang and 'starved to death' (her words) so she heads over to the Dairy Queen. She has a coupon for an Ultimate Burger. Buy one, get one free. Remember, she is frozen on one side of her face. But she believes she can get 'er done.

She pulls up in front of the DQ. Our DQ is bascially all windows in the front. The place is full and every seat has a view. So, Bunnie is sitting out front, parked with her front bumper up against the glass, coupon in hand.

She is about to get out of the car and get her Ultimate Burger when she stops. She has a problem. She is frozen, her lips are frozen, her jaw is frozen. This may cause a problem.

What to do? She wants the Ultimate Burger, but she is not sure she can manage to get her mouth open enough to accomplish the actual eating of said burger. And you don't want to waste money on a burger you can't manage to get into your pie hole, right? Just like you wouldn't buy a sofa that you couldn't fit through your front door.

But Bunnie has a solution. She looks up at the picture of the Ultimate Burger plastered on the window in front of her, fashions her hands in the form that they would take if she indeed had the burger in them and raises it to her mouth.

Now for the truly attractive part of the process. She opens her mouth as if to bite into that imaginary burger. This is when she she realizes that even taking into account the inevitable squishage of the burger, it just won't be possible to get the ultimate today. No matter how hard she tries (and she tries) her mouth will just not open that wide on its own.

With the experiment over, she gets out of the car and goes in and orders a single burger to take home. It was on the drive home that she realizes why everyone in the restaurant was smiling at her.

Crazy people make everyone smile.

Why the Good Lord needs to thin the herd.

The Best ISP Name Award goes to...

Happy Many out of Belgium. They are a diverse company that offers internet, phone service, heating oil and gas.

I don't get the connection, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Hi, My Name is Evel, and I am a professional student.

"Hi Evel!"

Back in training again. One night under my belt. It was pretty boring as far as training goes. When you consider this product has been around since 2001 you can imagine there are some things that even I already know. It was tough keeping my eyes open.

As predicted, the class is full of the tier 2 and 3 techs from the old project. This being the only tech project left it was inevitable. Problem with that? Most of them think they know everything. And one actually does, we will call her....May.

May is the definition of Geek. She is very smart. No, I mean really smart. Unfortunately that means she assumes you are a blithering idiot.

I drag my feet getting to class. Big mistake. The only seat free is next to her. I don't blame anyone, next to her we are all blithering idiots. This can get on a person's nerves pretty quickly. But hey, if your gonna sit someone next to her, it might as well be me. Since I am probably the only one who will not just sit there and suffer in silence.

Didn't take her long to start 'helping' me. I sit down and start looking for the course material. She actually takes over the keyboard since I am apparently not moving fast enough following her instruction. I let her go, because I am already behind.

This gets old really quickly. Finally, as she is showing me the wondrous feature that is 'up one level'.


Have you seen this thing? What will they think of next?

This is where I snap. (you were thinking it would take longer?)

I give her my best 'do I look like an idiot' face, "I know its hard to believe, but I have actually worked on a computer before."

She calmed the fuck down with the 'tech support' after that. You know, once you get past the whole annoying 'brainiac' thing, she is actually interesting to talk to.

And she has chocolate.

And it's all about the chocolate.

Not a rhetorical question.

What exactly are you thinking?

Girls who post semi-nude pics of themselves on MySpaces. Or a strip-tease on YouTube.

Ya, you might think it is cute now, but have you ever thought of running for office? What do you mean, no way? How can you know that at 15? Well, I guess you have pretty much screwed yourself anyway. Suffice to say that at this point you would be laughed off any ballot except for the Marijuana party. You can kiss the republican nomination good bye.

What about having children? Ever think of how you would feel if you stumbled across a picture of your mother on Plentyofish, spread eagle on your living room couch? (Suppose you could tell Junior that it was the Super Bowl and that's a V for victory. Ya, he'll buy that.)

Unless you are planning to go into the oldest profession, never have children or become the oldest stripper on the planet, you need to think this shit through.

And guys, you are not off the hook. Shocking your parents by having a swastika tattooed to your forehead might seem like the thing to do right now, but unless you are planning a career as a carny, you need to wake the fuck up!

Technology and pop culture today makes it too easy to fuck up your life at a much younger age than ever before.

YOU ARE HERE - 03-25-07
How people found this site.

sister-in-law fucking (Naperville, Illinois and Belgium) Seriously, Dudes, if you met my brother-in-law you would realize that you are absolutely not going to find that shit here.
herndon verginia(Texas)
and another thing (U.s. Patent And Trademark Office, Brooklyn)
shadow pupets (Istanbul, Turkey)
kill drive (Littleton, CO) That's just a little disturbing.
oldsmobile (Washington) Jesus! Someone from the Home Planet found me this way. God hates me. Although I think this might be some sort of bot disguising itself. If I click on the link reference, I get an error. I did a search for oldsmobile on my site and got no hits. There are no posts that contain that text.
american idol update (Mustang, Oklahoma)
bank's reply(Netherlands)
make money (Quebec) Guess the anchor text thing works both ways.
origami (New Jersey)
afghan victim (California)
attitude adjustment (Japan)


HERE FROM WORK or SCHOOL?

U.s. Patent And Trademark Office (Brooklyn) Hope I am not being investigated.
University Of San Francisco (ya, you guessed it)
The Washington Post (Fairfax, Virginia?) I think statcounter has lost its mind.
Amherst College (Shrewsbury, New Jersey)

And another thing...

New twist and a game for the You Are Here post.

I just discovered the visitor map in StatCounter. I am assuming this pinpoints the ISP server that routed you here and not your actual house. (at least I hope it isn't your actual house, if it is let me know and I will take it down.)


Click on the picture for a closer look.

Anyway, the game is...Can You See Your House From Here? If this is your ISP location, Email me.

Even if it is not you, but you know where it is? Give us a shout. No prizes right now, only because it is almost 5am and I am running out of coffee and brain cells.

But if you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Holy Shit! Where are they all coming from?

I am not really sure what happened here. Unfortunately I have done a bunch of things at once, so I will have to try and pinpoint what gave me the jump in stats. Here are my stats for the past week.



However, last night I spent a lot of hours putting 'tags' on a lot of my posts. I think this may have been the deciding factor.

I don't know, but the freakish jump in traffic is making me nervous. Does that make sense?

CRAP!

Missed my Blog Anniversary again. Was March 10th.

Thank God my Blog is not a chick, or I would be sleeping on the couch.(just in case it is, I better pick up some dandelions or something)

So, for those of you new to the place, as of March 10th the Blog is 5 years old. Seems like yesterday. (wow, that was cheesy)

Go take a look at how it all began if you like.

And Happy Anniversary, Blog.

And another thing...

I just realized that my last post was my 1,000th.

Didn't know I had it in me.

Another reason The Boy will need therapy.

I was reminded of a story.

I have to tell you another story first, like a setup. Otherwise this one won't make sense.

When The Boy was about 3 I was trying one day to get his attention. Calling his name over and over and he was completely ignoring me. Finally he turns to me with the snootiest look on his face, like some kind of royal prince and said, "You will address me as Chuck." I kid you not.

For about a month, he would answer to no other name and referred to himself in the third person. "Chuck would like a cookie." Or, "Chuck will be watching TV in his room." Always using that same snooty tone. He would also not wear certain clothes, saying they were not his, they were The Boy's. That sort of thing. He was three.

Eventually he got bored and dropped it.

Fast forward.

When the boy was 6 or so he was being a real demon. Spouting shit like he didn't have to be a good boy. I was not the boss of him, and I couldn't make him do anything. If I touched him he would call the police. (Even then he watched too much Oprah)

Anyway I was about at the end of my rope. When I finally grabbed a hold of him by the front of his shirt, pulled him close so we were face to face and said in my best Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry voice, "You used to have an older brother. His name was Chuck!"

The look on his face was priceless. I could see that he vaguely remembered a mention of someone named Chuck, he just couldn't remember where.

He was an angel....for about a week.

By George! I think he's got it!

John Chow of John Chow dot Com has a clever thing going on. He has initiated a Review My Blog for a free linkback promotion.

His goal is to have his site ranked first on Google for a specific set of search words, specifically “make money online”. He is offering to link to your blog if you review his blog. Making sure that the anchor term "make money online" is in the text.

I think it is a neat idea. After four days he is on page 1 of Google.com for the term “make money online”.

So I guess it was a success. What will he think of next? I can't wait to see.

Sometimes my boundless talent scares me.


BACK STORY:

When I first started in tech support I had a tech buddy. Someone to sit with who would tell me when I was fucking up. We will call him Origami Guy. Mainly because he is constantly doing origami, carries around a ton of paper and instruction books. (For the longest time I actually referred to him as Origami Guy because I could never remember his name.) He makes some crazy shit, and they are getting smaller and more intricate as time goes on.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I developed a nervous habit of ripping paper into tiny pieces while I work through tech support with callers. On a good night it is a small pile, when things get really hairy, I can have a pile a couple of inches high.

This would make me Origami Guy's arch nemesis. Like Superman's Lex Luther. He has even started to hand me paper from his satchel so I don't absent mindedly grab a critter that he has spent the last hour on and rip it to shreds.

Tonight he decided to teach me how to make a critter of my own. When he showed me one he made, small enough to sit on a dime, I just looked at him and raised my hands, "Dude, you expect me to make that, with these man-hands?" I have my father's hands. Very large for a girl. My ring finger is size 11. "I don't have delicate fingers like you, Princess."

This is what I ended up making. Although mine is much better than this one and it hops way farther. I was hoping to bring him over to the dark side, but this is good too.

I spent the rest of the night showing it to everyone and making sure they acted impressed. I am a bully after all.

MeMe!

Meme from Radmila.

So, pick up the book you are reading now. Turn to page 123 and post the fifth paragraph on your blog, or in my comments if you don't have a blog.

Here is mine.

The book is Judge and Jury by James Patterson and Andrew Gross.

Page 123, paragraph 5:

She started back toward having a life with the simplest things. Doing her proofreading, seeing a flick. It was like relearning the steps of life all over again. Telling herself it was okay. To live was okay.

I won't tag either. It stinks too much of chain letter to me. If you want to, do so.(and link your post in the comments) If not, that's fine too.

I have a new toy!

This is my new cell phone. I use Telus Pay & Talk. No contracts. I had let my minutes run out and would have to purchase a $50 card to resume using it at the lowest per minute rate.


I walked into Zellers (forget the Telus store, they have nothing, I kid you not) and saw this little baby on sale for $47.99. I look at the packaging and it says, "$50 airtime credit included."

Huh? I can purchase a fifty dollar card for my old phone or pay less for a brand new phone with the same airtime on it.

It was a no brainer, even for me.

I already downloaded my ringtone.

They call me MOOS
Title will make no sense to anyone outside the company or under 30.

Looks like I have been spared the humiliation of failing at connecting people to the internet on a daily basis. I found out today that I will be working on the one remaining tech project in the center. This means 3 weeks of training starting next Monday.

BIG GIANT HEAD: "Evel, this means you will have been trained for every project in this joint except Broad Band."

ME: "Betcha I could take that call too. I am working on making myself indispensable. You will never get rid of me."

MANAGER: "Congratulations on beating out quite a few other people for the position, there is still quite a list that didn't make it."

ME: "Don't be too impressed. I just know where all the bodies are buried."

I really didn't think I was going to be selected for the project. The Big Giant Head was suspicious of me. After all, I did just happen to have my resume ready the same day they announced we would be working for the Undisclosed Internet Service Provider™. I do have my sources, and I was totally prepared for it. I gave my resume to my manager, about an hour before the meetings started. I did not figure he would be so prompt in doing my bidding that he would immediately walk it down to the Big Giant Heads office.

BIG GIANT HEAD:He looks at me sideways."Are you trying to tell me you just happen to carry around an updated resume in your pocket?"

ME: Angelic look on my face. "I swear to you, it is absolutely coincidental."

BIG GIANT HEAD: "Bullshit." He was not convinced.

He probably thinks I bugged his office.

Get with the f'ing program!

Remember the term 'Sunday Driver'? You know, the guy going 10 miles an hour so he can take in the sights, I guess?

Well, ever since Sunday shopping came around, you can forget that shit! I learned that lesson as I was trying desperately to get myself a coffee today.

Gone are the leisurely drives on a Sunday afternoon. If you really need a cafine fix, you are taking your life in your hands. Mix the elderly sunday driver with the manic shopper and you have a recipe for disaster. Half going 10 miles an hour and the other half weaving in and out of them.

"Blinkers? We don't need no stinkin' blinkers!"

Add to that, the idiot (man) who thinks he needs to be traffic cop for everyone else. You know the one. Four way stop. Everyone (except this crayon) knows how to deal with a four way stop. Look to your right, if there is someone there you wait. Once the guy on your right has gone, its your turn. Simple.

Enter Mr. Traffic-cop-wannabe. He is waving people through the intersection and we are trying desperately to ignore him and with that, hopefully, force him to get with the program. But no! Mr. Crayon-traffic-cop must let someone go ahead of him, thus fucking up the whole process. He thinks he is being Mr. Courteous, when all he is doing is inspiring vehicular homicide.

It was all I could do not to get out of my car, march over to him and slap him across the face with a dead fish. Fortunately for him I was presently out of dead fish, so I just put my head down on the steering wheel and prayed for him to be zapped off the face of the planet. Or some sort of freak animal encounter. Nothing fancy, but I was hoping for some gore.

Remember, I still had no coffee. He really doesn't realize who he is dealing with.

YOU ARE HERE - 03-18-07
How people found this site.

cat flu (Tullahoma, Tennessee)
allstate behavior interview (Allstate Insurance Company - Chicago)
evel (Milwaukee)
and another thing (UK)
sisterinlaw fucking brotherinlaw (India) Dude, do you really need to be that specific with your porn search?
vancouver mermaid (Coquitlam, BC) Someone looking for you, Michelle.
kevin megeney webpage (St. John, New Brunswick)
cpl. kevin megeney (NS)
sneezing bunnie (Ontario)
american excelsior company (Oregon)
sodrel truck lines (Kansas)
wish for a friend (Philippines)
what is another way to call a dentist (Florida)
my cat has sneezing episodes (Ohio)
getting over cat flu (UK)

HERE FROM WORK or SCHOOL?

Allstate Insurance Company (Chicago)
Geico (Washington, DC) Insurance companies fighting over me?
University Of West Florida (Birmingham, Alabama) That is weird, but that is what it says.
University Of Cincinnati (Ohio)

And another thing...

There are a couple places, aside from my reciprocating links, I get regular hits from. So I figured I should give them a shout out as well. Might help some people who are trying to generate traffic for their own site.
MyBlogLog
The Bestest Blog of All-Time

But I guess the best way to get noticed is good 'ole 'word of mouth'. Write some decent content, read other's decent content and lastly? Participate. Lurking will get you nowhere. You think that if you have no witty comment to leave on a blog that a blog author does not want to hear from you? Wrong. Make your presence known. I spend days on end just hopping from comment to comment, following links from commenters. You would not believe the interesting places you end up.

Related to this I have been working on a project. Over the last couple of months, I have been keeping track of my readers. (No, Dude, I have not bugged your house, relax.) I started compiling a list of the origins of people that stop by for a read. Stat counter is great for that because there are so many people that do not comment, a person gets discouraged, but at least you can tell someone was there, even if they don't leave a comment.

So anyway, I figured this is a good excuse for me to educate myself on some of these countries. I realized pretty quickly that I am not even clear where some of these places are on the map. Couldn't place some of them on the right hemisphere even. Had to give up and list them alphabetically.

I have a pretty good list now, with some pretty interesting sounding names, so I will be choosing one every week and will showcase the country of one of my visitors. Maybe yours.

As you can imagine I have gotten a lot of hits from Canada and the US, I will be narrowing those down to States and Provinces. At least I can locate those on a map.

Stay tuned.

The clock is ticking.

"Thank you for calling the Undisclosed Technical Support Team™ my name is blah blah blah..."

"Oh thank God I got through to someone who speaks English." Ya, don't get used to it. "I have been working on this issue for 4 days, with 6 different technicians and I am sorry, I couldn't understand a word the last guy said."

"Ok, what seems to be the issue?"

"Oh, well the last guy had me doing this in the device manager, and that was the same thing the second guy was trying and I couldn't get him to understand that..."

As he was talking I was opening up all the other notes from the other techs. Holy crap. Usually I can look at what the previous tech put in the notes and figure out where he was going with it, but I had no clue. Finally I closed the notes.

"Dave, how about this? I am not going to read any of the notes, you just tell me what is happening. Let's start fresh."

"Ok." He pauses, deep breath."All I am trying to do is watch a video. My audio CD's work but this one will not play."

"Ok, is it a video you downloaded?"

"No I bought the CD."

"Ok, you have it there with you?" I am upbeat, from experience I think I already know this will be a simple call.

"Ya."

"Just read what it says on the face of the CD."

"Yoga For Golfers....Blah Blah Blah....DVD....." That is all I needed to hear.

"Ok, let's pop that bad boy in the drive."

"Ok. Here we go."

"Ok, Wait!"

"What?"

"Your about to hit the little button on the drive?"

"Ya."

"Ok, Tell me what it has written on the face of that drive."

"Uh, Creative. Uh, looks like Dolby. Some numbers and CDROM."

"Is that the only drive you have?"

"Ya."

"Cool, I will be closing this case then as not resolved. Since it turns out this is a hardware issue."

"What? How can you tell?"

"Well you are trying to play a DVD in a CD drive."

"Holy Shit! Are you kidding me?"

"Nope, its like trying to play a 8 track in a VCR, just not going to work."

Closed the case in 13 minutes. But I doubt he was very happy about his experience over the last few days.

Sorry for your loss, but you had better get used to it.