Humor

More Blog Spam

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I have a few lengthier entries to share this time, but I think you’ll see the brilliance and decide they are worth a read…

For a start, everyone is welcome to internet marketing. That is beautiful. The young is welcome additionally as the old. The tiny is welcome still as the great. The weak is welcome still as the strong. Everybody is welcome. This makes internet selling a lovely home to remain and enjoy yourself to the fullest. It welcomes an Yank; it welcomes an European. It welcomes an Asian the same manner it welcomes an Australian. It’s indeed a home for all. It’s thus lovely that it will not examine you age or perhaps strive to authenticate, validate, or verify how previous you are. It’s therefore beautiful that it will not think about your temperament; it will not check your family background, community, nation, continent, race, tribe, creed, and tongue before permitting you to hitch the train.

It is likewise a good idea to specify who you desire the proceeds of your life policy to go to when you perish.
And that breaks my heart. Yours too, huh?

And, an interesting group of spam comments that have scrambled the letters in just one word.  Check them out. You could make a game out of unscrambling these.

Being new to social kowterning, I haven’t had time to figure out the protocols so thanks for the tips.

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Very impressive your art. Like to know what kind of paper, snickhetses and sizes. And are those his nibs to which your refer? grin!

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Both books are great, total classics for twriers.

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before you spend your money free advice, i would ccntaot a funeral home and have the ashes moved. you are not exhuming anybody (only a body can be exhumed not an urn)and it is relatively simple to get this done.let your aunt and uncle try to contest the children’s wishes and have them find out how much a standing they really have. none.but in case you need to litigate this any private practitioner can represent you in this matter.i hope this helps you.

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You’re not stalking, you are ipkeeng tabs. Stalking is peering into windows and following the person a few feet behind. Keeping tabs is ipkeeng up with the person online (Note to Graham:  I guess I’m not stalking you after all!)

If I gave out blog spam awards, I think this one would win for its obvious, though warped, reference to many things I have actually written about.

Hi, Janell! I’ve just been romping around in your blog and it’s a feast so many delicious topics. This post about Jeannette Winterson opens some doors for me; I’m intrigued by her approach to alone-ness, how she describes it as springing from having felt invaded in the past. So often we’re made to feel there’s something wrong with us at our core if we truly prefer to be alone most of the time. It’s a relief to know this is normal for some people (if using the word normal ever makes any sense!) Some people consider being alone punishment. Some consider it a reward. And that’s o.k.And I love the way you combine socializing with learning, while discovering ways to enrich your poetry (weaving in what you learn from a show on the Jewish use of trees) now that’s intelligent multi-tasking!I also really enjoyed your earlier post about memoir writing, and was struck by the similarities to writing fiction when you wrote of how vital it is to know what to leave out. This is a lot more difficult than it might seem, to the uninitiated; it’s a mighty effort of discipline and clear sight.This blog is an oasis for anyone caught up in the writer’s life. Thank you, Janell!

 

More blog spam

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I’ve been sparing you the details of most of the blog spam that comes my way – in fact, in the first quarter of this year alone, Akismet has blocked ~850 spam comments for me – thank you, Akismet!).  That said, I am still astonished by some of the comments and can’t help but share them with you.  To another round!

“Most heavy duty trailer hitches are developed employing cutting edge computer aided models and fatigue stress testing to ensure optimal strength. Share new discoveries along with your child and maintain your child safe by purchasing the correct style for your lifestyle by following the Perfect Stroller Buyers Guideline.”

OK.  Who can tell me what heavy duty trailer hitches and baby strollers have in common?

“I to assuredly thrilled to trick payment across your totality trap dividing and look presumptuous to pot-pourri of more without tantamount times reading here. Thanks in days gone on again special seeking all the details.”

I’m perplexed.  “…thrilled to trick payment across your totality trap…”  I consider myself fairly good at untangling warped language, especially the sort that is created by those who do not hold English as their first language, but I’m just plain lost on this one.

“oh happy day, the end times are upon us”

I only hope that when my time comes, I can look upon the “end times” with such optimistic abandon.

The end of my days with Gopher-Man, et al

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Well, it’s official.  I’m leaving the world of Gopher-Man, Longback Guy, Barefoot Boss, and The Chinese Contingent.  Yep, I’ve got a new job.  I start in a couple of weeks.  I have high hopes that this gig will be a better fit for me than the last one was, though based on the many comments I have received about my Gopher-Man stories, I realize this may be something of a disappointment to many of you.  I’m sorry about that, but I hope to find new characters for you when I begin my next adventure in the world of software (this time I’ll be back in the world of Marketing again, too, which holds a lot of promise for ridiculous work related stories).  I will be commuting into the city again, which should translate into many fun-filled tales of crazy BART interactions or observations, but until then, I leave you with a couple entries from my Blog Spam folder for entertainment.

Comment #1:

“I expect that what you say is true, but which one of us can understand all these changes these days”

Comment #2:

“At the same time my two brothers prayed to Mary, cited saints and periodically wandered into very odd doctrines indeed.”

Enough said…

Follow the links

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I recently started following this blog because a post appeared on Freshly Pressed and I thought it was really funny.  I read some more, and this one had me trying to unsuccessfully squelch my laughter at 1 am so I wouldn’t wake anyone else up.  Why is it that when you try not to laugh, it just gets worse?

This post is so thought-provoking, everyone should read it.  It’s about not speaking up, something we’re all guilty of at one time or another, but something we should all work harder to avoid.

If you read my recent post about spam vegetable strudel, you’ll know why I chose this one…

I think I’ve found a new favorite tag to search blogs for. It’s “Stupid.”  You should try it yourself, but first, check out this post about possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of a politician trying to do…

Long Back Guy’s Thanksgiving Story

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One day last week, I wandered into the kitchen for my 8th cup of coffee around lunch time, and found Long Back Guy there.  I mentioned I was going back to Wisconsin soon, and he shivered – violently, actually.  “I am not so good with the cold,” he said, and proceeded to tell me a story of Thanksgiving.

“Long back, before I was married, on Thanksgiving holiday, me and some other Indian guys decide to go camping.  Thanksgiving is nothing to us – we’re from India – it’s US holiday, but we get four day weekend, anyway.  Camping seems like fun adventure!  So, five of us, we choose to go to Grand Canyon.  No idea that it would be cold.  I mean REALLY cold.  Twelve degree!  Do you know how cold that is for Indian person?!”  I smiled at the thought of it, excited to see where this story would go.

“Thing is, no one had any equipment.  We didn’t know to get equipment.  We had cheap, flimsy tent and nothing else.  I was only one that brought warm sleeping bag.  The rest had cheap, flimsy sleeping bag, too!  It was so cold we could not get food to cook on fire.  The heat couldn’t reach from the coals to the chicken.  The cold took it away first!”

Now, I am laughing.  I’ve worked with plenty of Indian guys, and I know how they tend to hang out in groups while they are single, and they really want to try all these American things, but they do them only with each other – so they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.  They are resourceful, though, as Long Back Guy’s story illustrates well.

“We ate by pouring Bacardi on chicken and touching coals so it would flame up.  Over and over and this works to cook the chicken.”

Now, I’m hysterical.  I am picturing these guys hunched over a tiny little baby fire that they can’t really get burning, dumping all their alcohol onto a few kabobs, turning them to charcoal in an attempt to get something edible out of it.  They should have just drank the damn liquor – it would have kept them warmer!

“Eventually, we go to bed.  It is so cold in the night, it is painful, and remember, I have good sleeping bag, but still it is so painful!  I wake up in the middle of the night, maybe 3 am, and see one of my friends.  He is sitting in the corner of the tent, legs crossed, hugging himself and rocking forward and back.  I hear him mumbling out loud, saying something over and over.  “What is wrong, man?” I ask.  “I am going to die,” he says.  “I am going to die in this cold, and I am praying to all the Gods to keep me from dying!””

Needless to say, no one died from the cold that night, but they certainly have a funny story to tell about their bachelor days when they were still new to America.

My boss is a sprinter

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I’ve introduced you a little bit to my boss – the one that takes his shoes off all the time, and uses elaborate vocabulary it doesn’t seem normal people use.  It occurred to me a few days ago that I never shared the fact that he is a sprinter.  The odd thing is that he does his sprinting through the office.  Maybe he also does it outdoors or at a track somewhere, but I kind of think he limits it to the office.  For some reason, he can never remember to bring his cell phone with him, and it tends to ring just when he couldn’t be further away from it.  A conscientious guy that doesn’t want to put anyone out, he will run at lightning speeds through our office, in an attempt to pick up before a caller has to leave a message.  I wonder if he realizes how disturbing it is to hear his feet pounding across the floor as though he’s trying to escape an axe murderer.

Our office is really quite long – in fact, he might even be able to manage the 100-yard dash if he went from end to end.  The first time I heard him, I thought something had gone seriously wrong.  Why on earth would someone run like mad through the office?  I wandered out of my cubicle and looked around to make sure no one was hurt or anything, but found nothing amiss, so I went back to continue staring at my screen.  Now, when I hear his cell phone ring in his office, I know to expect the stampede coming immediately thereafter.  I don’t keep myself in very good shape, so I am probably not capable of doing the 100-yard dash in my office.  But even if I were, and even if I had the unfortunate habit of leaving my cell phone far away from my present location, I just can’t imagine running at top speed to catch it before the 4th ring.  Maybe I should try it – I could certainly use the exercise…

Tales from the office

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I know you have all been dying to hear more about what’s going on with my co-workers.  You are probably especially interested in the small man that is cold all the time, so I will indulge you and share a few more tales.  Well, my impression of the little library mouse has changed.  I now see him as more of a little gopher.  I had to put some thought into that.  Well, I guess I didn’t put a ton of thought into it.  I admit I went to google to find the right term.  I googled “semi-intelligent ground digging animal” and “gopher” was the best match for how I see my freezing office-mate.  Gophers aren’t horrible, but they aren’t great, either.  Those of you that don’t work in software might not be aware of how demanding the industry is.  I’m sure plenty of other jobs have their demands, too, but when you write software for other people, it’s expected to be perfect all the time, and when it’s not, you have to do whatever it takes to make it perfect, day or night, no matter how much time it takes.  As the project manager of software projects, it is compounded somewhat by the fact that you have to do whatever it takes to get others to do whatever it takes – and my office gopher is very good at finding a little hole to dive into whenever it seems we might need him to do what it takes.

Last week, we needed some work done on a Sunday.  The guy that would normally do the work was not available because he had to leave Saturday to travel around the world to be with his ailing father.  Gopher-man wasn’t amenable to working on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and as I thought about it, I decided that was reasonable, so I changed the deployment schedule for our system, which affected tons of other people, in order not to interrupt his Sunday.  On Wednesday, the three of us talked numerous times about this schedule and my decision to move our deployment to Monday.  This would give gopher-man all day Monday to do what we needed him to do in time for me to have the people in China finish the process.  On his way out of the office Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, he stopped by and said, “So, we’re on for Monday.” I said, “Yep.  Have a good weekend.  See you Monday.”  He took a few steps towards the exit, then dramatically remembered he had jury duty on Monday.  I wanted to shoot myself in the head.  I had to run into a meeting, though, and a few minutes into the meeting I saw him sneaking towards the exit.  Good thing we have glass walls to our conference room.  I almost tackled him on his way out.  In the end, though, I really could do nothing, so I let him leave.

When he first mentioned jury duty, I asked him if he knew he had to report on Monday.  He said, “Yes.  I’ve rescheduled it two times already.”  [Insert image of small balding man with large glasses that should come with a sign for his forehead that reads, ‘Objects behind glasses are smaller than they appear.’]   “They wooon’t let me oooout of-it.  It’s really upsetting because I-won’t-get paid, but they said I still had-to-go.”  [Splice in a rather whiny voice for a fifty-something guy that articulates his t’s as though they are ice-picks while also running words together randomly.]  It still seemed odd to me that he knew he had to actually report to jury duty that early.  Normally you call in the night before and listen for your group number, fingers crossed that your group doesn’t have to report.  After he was gone, I brainstormed with his boss about some other solutions to our resource problem, and we came up with only mediocre solutions that none of us thought would work well.  After I got home that night, it occurred to me that maybe gopher-guy didn’t realize he had to call in to check if he had to report for jury duty.  He is not of American origin, so perhaps he didn’t get how the system worked.  So, I called him.

When I got him on the phone, I explained to him that he might not actually have to go to jury duty on Monday.  He insisted over and over that he did.  I patiently asked him to get his jury summons and just look it over a little more closely.  He reluctantly agreed, then lightened up a bit, and I asked him to read it to me.  He mumbled in his accent that I can’t really place, and as he read, his diction became clearer, he read with more emotion, and by the time he got to the part that said, “Call in or check http://www.countycourt.com after 4:30 p.m. the night before your summons date to see if you have to report for duty,” you could even say he was passionate about what he was learning.  With utter surprise and gratitude in his voice, he said, “Oh, so maybe I don’t have to go after all!”

I should try to explain here how gopher-guy talks.  It’s difficult to characterize.  His accent is different than the typical accents I hear.  It’s not Indian, it’s not Asian, it’s not Hispanic – I really have no idea.  But, he cannot pronounce ‘in’ if it is part of a name or other word.  Someone named Dustin would be called Dus-teeeeen by gopher-man.  Heavy emphasis on the second syllable.  He speaks at a slow pace, not because he’s translating as he’s speaking – he speaks English quite well – he is just very deliberate about everything – nothing can make him rush, and he likes to talk a lot.  Sometimes it is all I can do to sit still long enough for him to get the point I knew he was trying to make five minutes earlier.  Anyway, back to the story.

Again, I began to explain this part of the American legal system – getting a jury summons doesn’t mean you actually have to do anything – and he just kept repeating that he had no idea, he’d never done this before, and it was good I made him read it or he would have just showed up on Monday.  At that point, I took a little leap of faith and said, “You know.  I bet the courts are closed for Thanksgiving and the day after.  And I bet that means that they’ve already posted which groups have to report on Monday.”

“Reeee-ally,” he said.  “Hmm….  I wonder if you’re right.” (Spoken with the wonder of a child realizing Santa is coming tonight)

“Why don’t you check,” I said. (Spoken patiently, matter-of-factly, only slightly encouragingly)

“Well, if you really want to wait, I guess I can check now.”

“Sure, I’ll wait.  It’s no problem at all.”

I waited for quite some time as he checked the website, read silently to himself, started reading bits of it aloud, mumbling.  “Just give me a minute….  I want to make sure I’m reading this right….”  More silence.  More mumbling.  More pausing and restarting.  “Group 116.  No, that’s not my group…  Oh, here.  Group 117!  No, that’s not my group, either…”  And so on, until, “There it is!  There’s my group number!  And I don’t have to go in on Monday!  Oh my God, I don’t believe it!  Wait, let me read it again to be sure.  Wow!  This is so wonderful!  I really don’t have to go!”

“Yes, it’s really great, isn’t it?  OK, well, I’ll see you Monday then.  Have a good weekend.”  With that, I finally got off the phone, failing to tell him he might just have to go Tuesday, and settled in to watch some TV and relax.

And that is the end of this gopher-man update.

Blog Spam One More Time

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I was going to abandon these posts, but I had to do just one more when I read this one…

“Okay post, but not the best Ive seen exactly. You should step it up or gulrotkake sunn will eat your position.”

I agree.  I’m guessing I don’t care much about my position and gulrotkake sunn can eat if if he wishes….  Pause while I Google…  Oh man, this gets better!  Gulrotkake sunn means carrot cake in Norwegian!  Thank you, Google Translate!  Apparently Norwegian carrot cake recipes are better reading than my posts.

And since I’m here, this one…

“While you feel about watery things to do within Egypt, your thoughts probably changes that will Sharm el Sheikh in addition to delving on the coral formations reefs, yet it’s not just one desired destination around the Crimson Coast meant for holidaymakers who want to log off your seaside and also inside the fluids.”

I love the combination of technology and watery holidays – log off your seaside?  If I could make it to a seaside, I certainly wouldn’t log off of it.  I’d want to stay, I think.  Inside the fluids – I’m a bit less sure about that one…

Blog spam returns

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Well, the blog spam never stopped coming, actually.  I had a pile to sort through….

Like a Freshman, I’m often performing a search on line for articles which will assist me get further ahead.

Um…  This is probably not the right place…

This is the correct weblog for anybody who needs to find out about this topic. You understand a lot its nearly exhausting to argue with you (not that I truly would want?HaHa). You undoubtedly put a brand new spin on a topic thats been written about for years. Great stuff, simply great!

It’s actually not that exhausting to argue with me.  I’m not that big on arguing.

There is an ending. Just remember that I meant for this to be an art game. I do feel like I spent an inordinate amount of time on the much more traditional gameplay elements, which might make the meaning of the game a bit unclear. In the event you mess around with it though, you’ll discover it.

This is just brilliant.  I love that you meant for this to be an art game.  I’m not so sure that I will discover the meaning of it, though, even in the event I mess around with it.

 

 

The micro-climate of my office

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Not long after I started my new job, I wrote a post on a few other new guys that started soon after I did.  The techie-from-a-cave guy works from another city, so I haven’t seen him since that first week.  The small guy with strong glasses, though, works in my office and I see him every day – well, almost every day.  Sometimes it’s hard to find him because he moves around a lot.  It seems that every cubicle he’s tried has some climate issue associated with it. He gets cold very easily.  None of the rest of us has this problem.  It’s not to say we don’t notice the temperature fluctuations.  We do.  In fact, my office seems to be a tiny indoor representation of the Bay Area climate.  You need to dress in layers because it goes from warm to cool to too warm to a little too cool.  Layers don’t work for the small new guy with the strong, large glasses, though.  In addition to moving his location frequently, trying to find just the right cubicle that doesn’t come with a draft, he’s taken to climbing up onto desks and taping papers and manila folders over the air ducts in the ceiling near whichever cubicle he is trying out.  One day last week I realized he wasn’t in the office – not because I didn’t hear him or see him in a meeting, but because I never saw him climbing around taping things onto the ceiling.  I see him as a little library mouse gopher-man now.  He’s small, and he scurries around climbing on furniture, wearing his strong glasses that make his eyes look larger than they should.  One day I suggested he bring an extra sweatshirt or sweater to work to help when it gets a little chilly, and he continued past me, muttering under his breath that another shirt wouldn’t help because it’s his bald head that’s the problem – he loses all his heat from there.  I thought about suggesting a hat, but thought I might be crossing a line, so I just watched him wander away looking for the perfect place to sit.