He and I were not that close. I didn’t particularly like him but I didn’t particularly dislike him either. But both of us being consultants reporting to the same manager, he as a mainframe admin and I as a Unix admin, our desks were usually close together, two desks over at the most. I’ve been working here for eleven years and I spent several hours a day everyday within twenty feet of each other for eleven years whether we enjoyed each other’s company or not.
Eleven years is a long time. Some days we joked around – he especially liked to squeeze in the words “viagra” and “KY gel” somewhere. Some days we had nothing to say to each other than greetings. Some days we argued the mainframe or the Unix server was to blame for printing problem – I was usually right. Some days we talked about current events. Some days we showed each other the pictures of pets and talked about them. He didn’t know how many cats he had. Some days we had screaming matches, in one of which the sentences like “Fuck you” and “Go fuck yourself” flew at each other, and as a consequence, we ignored each other for months afterward. Some days he tried to convince me that I should incorporate myself as a nonprofit organization to deduct expense for my dogs. Some days he tried to sell me vitamins. Some days he tried to convince me I should get an expensive hobby and get a tax deduction. Some days he tried to convince me I should get cash for my clunker. Some days he tried to convince me that I should stop eating red meat and more veggies. Yeah, he usually tried to convince me, come to think of it. Not very successfully, I might add.
Several months ago, he tried to get rid of his pennies by leaving them out on top of a long file cabinet next to his desk. He thought some people would take them. To his dismay, people started leaving their own unwanted pennies there and the number of pennies quickly grew. With so many pennies, some people started creating “penny art,” making images of things or just some abstract patterns with those pennies. Of course some others enjoyed destroying the “art.” He couldn’t understand why nobody wanted to take those pennies even after I repeatedly asked him why didn’t HE?
When I came back to work this Monday after a week’s absence, I was told he had been in ICU for 10 days already. He had called in sick the entire week before the week I missed work, so I hadn’t seen him for two weeks. I was told that he had initially gone to the hospital for throwing up blood and it turned out he had been bleeding internally. It had something to do with his liver, and he had liver cancer removed a few years ago – it must have been around the time we were ignoring each other because I had no idea he had liver cancer until two days ago. The doctors at the hospital wanted to transfer him to another hospital for liver transplant but before they could do that, his condition worsened.
He was a friendly enough person. With all his eccentricities and idiosyncracies, after more than twenty years of working at the same place, a lot of people at work maintained a love-hate relationship with him and he had become like an endearing family member. Some people went to the hospital to visit. I had planned to visit him with two other coworkers today during lunch, even though he was not conscious, because we were told that he didn’t have much time left. His kidney was shutting down.
On top of his desk next to a bunch of scattered pennies, now sits a small leafy plant with a yellow ribbon with a card saying “In loving memory of Ben.” He died around eight o’clock this morning at the young age of sixty-five.
Rest in peace, Ben.
Today I happened upon this CNN article, which caught my eye obviously because of its title, “Digging out from $80,000 debt.” I have a lot of debt, and I’ve lost sleep over this. In fact, I was sick home all week last week, and on two days, I had to stay home without any PDO left, which means I would not get paid for those two days. Sadly, losing two-days’ worth of pay creates a problem for me. Heck, losing even one day’s pay creates a problem. So I had to warn a friend that I would need to borrow money in a few weeks. I admit I’m the one who got myself in this situation by buying the house that I shouldn’t have bought, but I just want to make something clear. I don’t spend money on things I really don’t need – clothes, shoes, cosmetics, manicures/pedicures, beauty shops, movies, etc. Most of my debt consists of payments to the vet for the last 2 years with more than a fair share of health troubles for my furry ones. But I digress.
So I started reading the article, remembering the phone number I memorized this morning from a radio commercial about debt counseling service or something or other, which talked about some government debt relief program for people with debt over $10,000. I did google this program in hopes to find something about it from a government source, but I quickly lost patience seeing 12 billion search results are the websites for debt counseling or debt consolidation services. Anyway, I digress. Again. Sorry.
As I was saying… I started reading the article, and yeah I finished reading it. That’s it. The end.
You know I was lying, right? That’s not it and wasn’t the end. Anyways, it was nothing special. The usual story – somebody got herself into this situation, and after transferring card balances from one credit card to another with really low introductory interest rate, she finally contacted a debt counseling service, and after a year, her debt is now $40,000. Half way there. As I said, nothing special. But I did get something out of it. NFCC – National Foundation for Credit Counseling, recommended by CNN personal finance editor. It’s a nonprofit organization with credit counseling service agencies as its members, who meet certain standards and provide no or very low fee services. I surfed the site for a long time, and I think I’m going to try contacting a counselor and see what she/he has to say. The first counseling session seems to be free.
Wish me luck. I tend to get very nervous about things like this and forget the questions that need to be asked or just get tongue-tied, even though I have nothing to lose. It’s the times like this that I want a husband who could and would take care of this kind of stuff. And I would need some good sleep vibes too from now on since I was also reminded of the fact that my mortgage rate is going to adjust in just about four months… Oh Fuck! Crap! Shit! Moose dick! *bangs head on the wall*
With schools back in session in full swing this week, the volume of traffic is also back to its usual horrendous level from a slight lull last couple of months. And with this traffic, the type of drivers who frustrate the living hell out of me are out and about in full swing as well. I’m talking about this one type of drivers who drive me absolutely batty with their inconsiderateness or obliviousness or callousness or spitefulness or simply just viciousness by blocking the flow of traffic – Those who drive in the leftmost lane leaving a mile of empty space in front and with a stretch of cars trailing behind them in utter frustration. When I’ve been driving 10mph slower than the speed limit on the leftmost lane for a few minutes because traffic is moving slow then look up to see all the way over there a mile ahead there is absolutely empty space spread across the highway, the access to which is blocked by a car in each lane driving leisurely at the exact same speed? Oh the things I want to do to those who create the slow-moving wall of cars on the highway!
I don’t know if you heard about the Montana No Speed Limit Safety Paradox:
The desired safety effect from posting speed limits was achieved by removing them.
This paradox came from the results of the study done by Montana DOT, which revealed some very interesting facts such as:
- The fatality rate in highway accidents decreased during the time there was no speed limit.
- More people used seat belts.
- Posted speed limits had either zero or negative effect on traffic safety.
Well, not so paradoxical to me. I think it’s because of those drivers I mentioned above. We all know fast moving vehicles on the left and slow moving vehicles on the right. With a speed limit, people drive as slow as they like on the leftmost lane, and think it’s their right, no matter how other people want to go past them. And I can just hear them say, hey, I’m driving already at a legal speed, you go around if YOU want, but I’m not fucking budging from my RIGHTFUL place. I have the right to drive in this lane! But withOUT a speed limit, these selfish people have to get out of the way since they don’t have the right to drive spitefully in the left lane. So with these these people out of the way and not blocking the flow of the traffic, less people try stupid reckless things with mounting frustration, tailgating, maneuvering to get in and out of lanes literally pushing cars off the lanes, trying to drive as fast as possible to close that gap and squeeze in, towards that promised wide open space a mile ahead of that moving wall. And then if and when they finally clear that wall, they take off dangerously fast to make up the lost time and to shake that frustration off and behind with that spiteful fuck. No wonder the fatality rate decreases and people drive at more leisurely paces that suit them under no speed limit.
I don’t care how fast you are driving. If you’re driving in the leftmost lane at the same exact speed or slower than the other lane(s), you not only create traffic behind you, but also increase fatality rate. People need to change lanes. People need to get on the highway or get off the highway. People need to merge. So a half of mile behind you, people have to drive 40mph on a highway because you are so fucking callous. Get the fuck out of the left lane if you are blocking the traffic flow for fuck’s sake.
A couple of weeks ago on my way to work, I stopped behind a black SUV at a red light on the southbound RT112. The SUV had a sticker that reminded me that 9/11 was not far away. The sticker’s background had a drawing of Manhattan skyline including the Twin Towers and its foreground had a firefighter’s helmet with the number 343 on it. The upper left-hand side was written “In Memory of” and on the lower right-hand side, I read “Dad.” With tears in my eyes, I wished there was a way to let the driver of the SUV know that his Dad would not be forgotten. How can I? I can still see, smell and breathe in that smoke vividly in my mind. But of course there was no way for me to share this with the driver of that SUV. And soon he went on his way, and I mine.
That it is highly unlikely that the driver of that black SUV would read this is an understatement. But in the event that any one of the friends and family of those three-hundred forty-three who gave their lives that day happens to read this, I want to assure you. They will not be forgotten.
I fiddled with this blog last weekend and I finally managed to redirect yoonamania.com to yoonamania.com/blog. So from now on, you can just type yoonamania.com and come to this blog instead of putting “/blog” at the end. Sorry if you were getting errors over the weekend. For some reason, redirect 301 which works fine for some people didn’t work for me and it would go into an infinite loop. I meant to look into this much sooner, but you know me. I’m lazy.
I also finally scripted and scheduled automatic backups of the database everyday instead of doing it manually when I remember – once every few months, which is much to seldom. This was prompted by the recent security alert on WordPress. In case you still haven’t heard, there is a worm going around which is designed to attack earlier versions of WordPress, if it’s not hosted by wordpress.com. If you are using WordPress under your own domain hosted by anybody other than wordpress.com, you need to upgrade it to the latest version, and you need to do it YESTERDAY. And backup your blog database often if you don’t want to lose the whole thing.
This public service announcement is brought to you by the owner of this blog who couldn’t come up with anything to blog about today.
Have you noticed? On the sidebar to the right, under Old Nonsense and above Friends & Family blogroll. Yup, I signed up at NaNoWriMo. If anybody doesn’t know what it is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an organization that promotes writing by challenging everybody to write a novel with at least 50,000 words in it during the month of November.
I found out about it only last year. I wanted to participate and started to squeeze my brain for characters and plot lines. I had nothing – nothing but smoke coming out of my ears. I still have nothing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to even start a thing like that. Plot lines? Nothing that is remotely similar to a plot line ever crossed my mind in my whole life. And characters? Yeah, fat chance I get an idea for any character, being the misanthrope I am. So when November rolled in, thankfully BEFORE my brain exploded, I still had nothing and I didn’t sign up.
Photograph by Ionushi, under attribution license
A few weeks ago, the chatter about this year’s NaNoWriMo started to show up here and there. Only thing I could add to that was I wish I could write or I wish I knew how to start or I wish I could come up with characters and plot lines and so forth. But the other day, Cylithria, who will be doing her 10th NaNoWriMo this November, told me that sometimes she just starts with one person, describing her boring job, etc without any other characters or plot lines in mind, just building on this one character. And the story just unfolds, sort of. The only thing is to write everyday. Well I thought, I can do that. So I signed up.
As far as I understand, you are supposed to start writing on the first of November, and by the end of the month, you are a winner if the word count of your novel is at least 50,000, whether or not the novel is finished. You are not supposed to edit it. You are supposed to just write, leaving typos and all kinds of errors untouched. By the end of the month, it’s supposed to be the first draft of your novel, and in the month of December, you edit it.
I’m encouraged to tell everybody that I’m going to write a novel so that I don’t quit. You know, it’s the same with everything. I mean the use of tactics that employs shame and embarrassment as the motivation to do something. Well, good enough for me. And I hope writing a blog post about it is good enough? Anyway, wish me luck. And if you are also participating, I’m yoonamaniac on NaNoWriMo. Buddy me up!
I haven’t had television for several years now. I mean I have a physical television set covered with a thick coat of dust and collecting more (totally intentional since I think the thick coat of dust will protect the TV set in case of it being knocked over or something despite its size and weight… you never know… it could happen!) in the living room corner but it doesn’t have any input unless I pop a DVD into the DVD player because I don’t subscribe to cable or satellite service. The main reason for that: I loved TV too much. You could say I was addicted.
For the longest time, I had resisted getting cable TV and just used rabbit ears. I didn’t really feel the need for cable TV except for better picture quality and not having to adjust the rabbit ears whenever I changed channels. I didn’t understand why people would complain about not having anything to watch on TV, and these people had cable or satellite TV with several premium channels. I always had something to watch. The show didn’t have to be good. If I started watching a show, I tended to get sucked in no matter how bad it was. Also, I never got sick of reruns even if I had seen it more than once already.
Do you remember my infomercial purchases? You don’t seriously believe I only bought thirteen items off infomercials, do you? I mean, consider the extreme lameness of the things I listed there. There are A LOT more convincing infomercials hawking products that look and sound much more practical and promising. You can infer that I probably watched almost all infomercials out there at the time, and you’d be right. I did. Many times, I could be found watching an infomercial at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Most of the times I would resist the temptation to dial that 800 number and place my order, which led me to watch the same fucking infomercial over and over and over whenever it came on until I finally decided to make the call.
Now you see why I hadn’t needed more channels. But I finally caved in and subscribed to cable TV after watching a couple of episodes of The Sopranos at a friend’s place and got completely hooked. Now there were still more shows to watch, and I started losing sleep trying to watch TV. If you know me just a little, you just KNOW how much I looooove sleeping and so you might understand how much I was addicted to TV. And when I moved to a new apartment with Dish Network, I had even more to watch!
I realized I had a problem, but it was still hard to keep away from TV. All these years, the first thing I had done when I came home from outside was to turn the TV on, and it would be on until I had to go out again or until I went to bed. It was hard to break that habit. And did you know realizing you have a problem doesn’t make you stop loving the shows you’ve been watching? So one day, I canceled the service after convincing myself that it would save me about a grand a year. I missed it terribly for the first couple of weeks, but afterwards, I hardly thought about it except I occasionally missed Late Show with David Letterman, my all time favorite TV show.
It seems there are much more good TV shows to watch nowadays because I constantly see plurks or tweets about TV shows and how much they love them and how much they have waited for the season premiers, etc. But these TV talks have never really affected me other than feeling a little left out. It hasn’t really made me want to get cable or satellite service. UNTIL NOW, that is. Yeah, I have the itch. It’s been itching for a couple of weeks now ever since citizenjaney and some others live-plurked the goings-on of the first episode of What Would Brian Boitano Make on Food Network. And I must say, my eyes were glued on that plurk. Yes, it’s a cooking show and it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever make anything Brian Boitano makes on that show. But it was hilarious just to read about it and I can’t imagine how fucking hysterical to watch the actual show!
I’ve searched the net for a video, but I haven’t succeeded yet. So for two weeks, I’ve been agonizing over this question. Should I get it? I know it’s a lot of money just to watch a 30-minute cooking show, but once I get it, I will be watching more than just one show, so it would be worth it, right?And I would like to know what Brian Boitano would make every week. Is that so wrong? And Letterman every night to boot? That’s a fair price to pay, no? But will I fall off the wagon and devote my already too short time at home to watching TV? Should I, or shouldn’t I?
I was getting sick of orangy theme. So I tried a bunch and temporarily settled on this one. I liked several themes I tried, but there was always something that wasn’t displaying right after customizing each of them a little to suit my needs. There was one theme that I loved even after tweaking it a little. But then when I added widgets, they were displayed hideously. This is quite ridiculous. I thought after installing a score of themes, I wouldn’t have to look for another one for a while. But I guess my search for a better theme continues…
Do you like it better or worse than orangy one?
One night I happened to look up and saw something under the eaves. Since it was dark, I couldn’t quite tell what it was, and I thought some disgusting looking nasty “creature” had taken up residence there. When I say “a nasty creature,” I don’t mean any extraterrestrial being or some creature from a science fiction movie or any such thing. I mean any creature that can be seen in nature that you would rarely see in a city like, say NYC. And I mean it in the nicest possible way.
So the next morning I tried to investigate, but the eaves being about 20 ft above ground, and the “creature” being not huge, I still couldn’t see what it was. A few days later, I zoomed in with my camera, and it revealed it wasn’t just a creature, it was a nest full of creatures with a big fat “S” at the end!
I tell you, I hate nature. I don’t get along with nature. I don’t know why nature wouldn’t just leave me alone. What have I ever done to it except, you know, a lot of things like using dish washing liquid, detergents, cleaning products, driving a car emitting harmful gas, using heating oil, etc… such small things… Negligible really… Sigh…
Anyway, I asked on plurk what to do about it. Some people told me they were yellow jackets, and some others told me they were wasps. I wiki’ed them, and yellow jacket is the common name for a type of wasp. Who knew? I thought yellow jackets were bees… or does it mean wasps are bees? Oh, who the fuck cares, I hate them. I want them gone!
The thing is this. I wanted a way to get rid of those creatures and the nest without using harmful chemical. (You see how considerate I am about nature and environment and shit? But does nature have any consideration for me? Why does nature has to do this to me, huh? I hate nature.) But to do that, I need to get a 20 ft stick, swat at it and haul ass. I know. Where the fuck am I gonna get a 20 ft stick? And if I have a 20 ft stick, where the fuck am I gonna haul ass to, assuming I CAN haul my big fat ass? Ugh. I hate nature.
Oh, and yeah, have I told you I hate nature?
For a couple of weeks or so, I’ve been experiencing <sarcasm> the pleasure </sarcasm> of acquainting myself with a new system monitoring software called Foglight. Being familiar with Patrol, a much more superior product than Foglight from a system administrator’s point a view, it’s depressing to play with Foglight. Hence, the following greetings between me and my boss the last time I met him:
Me: Hi.
Boss: Hey, how are you doing?
Me: Getting depressed.
Boss: Playing with Foglight?
Anyways. I was told I’m going into it with a wrong attitude because I was already completely turned off by Foglight the instant I saw the term “cartridge” being used as one of its architectural components. For all intents and purposes, their cartridges are equivalent to software modules. The term “module” is not good enough for them so they had to create a whole another definition for another word?
You know, that’s exactly the reason I didn’t like Starbucks when I walked in to Starbucks for the first time to get a coffee long long time ago. I asked for a medium coffee. And this guy who was taking my order had the audacity to say in a derisive tone, “We don’t have medium. It’s called, tall, grande and venti.” I stood there speechless, dumbfounded. Finally I answered, glaring at him, “I don’t give a shit what YOU call it. I want a MEDIUM coffee. In case you don’t know, it’s the size in the middle, between the smallest cup and largest cup you have.”
Believe it or not, I had to go through this again and again when Starbucks first came to NYC (after the third time I just stopped going there), and my friends used to complain about the same thing. What? Small, medium and large not good enough for them? Why do I have to learn a whole new vocabulary to order a fucking coffee? Arrogant fucking asses. Fortunately, I was told this practice of correcting the customers stopped pretty quickly.
I don’t know why using unconventional words for conventional things is supposed to appeal to the decision makers on things like this. I wonder if it appeals to majority of consumers. Am I in the minority? Do people really like this bullshit? Is it supposed to be cute?
Serious Stuff. Seriously
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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