10 balls

ch-ch-changes.

1. goodbye again, Mavericks. 2008 COY Byron Scott exacts revenge against J-Kidd, Dirk is still looking for his heart, and Dallas is once again out in the first round. Mark Cuban, its time for the R-word. and i don't mean "reload". the Li'l General is on shaky ground too.
   
   
2. hello again, Orlando. back in the playoffs, i see. shed the curse of Shaq, why don't you?
   
   
3. speaking of Shaq ... bye-bye, Shaq. former MVPs O'Neal and Steve Nash could not stop the Suns from setting, and they may not prevent coach Mike D'Antoni from getting canned either.
   
   
4. Larry Brown takes over the Charlotte coaching chair, with blessings from His Airness The Tongue. how long is he going to stay this time? two years? or until Adam Morrison starts bawling?
   
   
5. let's also say goodbye to Pat Riley, who stepped down a few days ago after un-retiring in late 2005 to coach the Miami Heat to its only championship, effectively sabotaging and pushing out his protege Stan Van Gundy (no matter what the publicists say). now Van Gundy is chasing his own destiny 200 miles away in Orlando, while Miami gets a big chance to pick first in the 2008 NBA Draft due to its abysmal 14-68 record.
   
   
6. Black Mamba ... Black Mamba ... Black Mamba ...
   
   
7. holy crap! Atlanta has reduced playoff series with the mighty Celtics to three games?! Bill Simmons and his pop must be squirming right now.
   
   
8. how long before Denver trades Carmelo "I Think I'm Untouchable" Anthony?
   
   
9. T-Mac seems to have woken up eh? do we still call him "The Big Sleep"?
   
   
10. CP3 ... CP3 ... CP3 ...
    

need a donation

this, specifically.



drop me an email so i can tell you where to ship it, generous souls.

jules pwns jenny

here's a little story about my spring cleaning. deciding to remodel my teeny weeny apartment without spending much (in fact i even gave away stuff), much of the weekend was spent moving furniture around and throwing/giving away stuff. like the CD towers. and the weaker-than-weak stand fan. i'm still weighing on the magazine collection (yes, soon). which then brings us to a few VHS tapes i still keep around. i'm still not done with the cleaning so there's probably a few more lying around somewhere.



so to wit, i kept the blank ones and separated the following:

- Pulp Fiction (solid gold)
- The Usual Suspects (solid gold)
- Striking Distance (back when Horse Face was still a Pony)
- Jenny McCarthy: The Playboy Years (please don't ask)

so i took them all downstairs and left them by the lobby. i had a feeling that the first two would be taken first (this is kinda like the ongoing NFL draft). i mean who would not want those two landmark movies, one resurrecting John Travolta's career and the other putting Bryan Singer on the map? in my case, i already have them in digital format, so no problem. soon, they'll be storing movies inside nanochips in our brain, effectively ending the media storage furniture business.

an hour later, i discovered i was right!!

the Bruce Willis cheap thriller was still there, along with Jenny. poor Jenny.

does this mean nobody wants a piece of Jenny McCarthy? (right, they probably want her sister, Amy)

still a couple of hours later, Striking Distance was gone, and there still lay Ms. McCarthy, lonely and unwanted.

should we cook up a few possible reasons why this happened?

- the people in my apartment have a bit more class and know which side their bread is buttered
- those that bothered to notice the tapes were of the age where the prurient stuff no longer holds any fascination with them
- they already have better copies
- they've seen the damn thing
- they want Amy McCarthy

eventually, the last tape was gone from the foyer, which then leads me to think that i just witnessed a female version of Mr Irrelevant.

actually, we can also explain this phenomenon using the immortal law involving Kevin Bacon.

- Pulp Fiction stars Samuel Jackson as the iconic Jules Winnfield.
- Jackson worked with Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator and A Time to Kill.
- Spacey is the twist villain in The Usual Suspects (if i spoiled it for you, boooohooo; you should've seen this about a million times already).
- Bruce Willis appears in both Pulp Fiction and Striking Distance.
- Jenny McCarthy has not worked with any of the aforementioned actors.
- there is also no proof that she dated any of them in the past.
- neither has her current beau, Jim Carrey, dated or worked with them in the past.


i wonder which of my neighbors picked her tape? hmmmmmmm .....

dribble, dribble

first of all, kudos to my man KG for winning the DPOY award. i still keep my TWolves cap, for old times' sake (God forbid i get targeted by Mike Bibby or worse, the local crowd) - he's the only reason i bought it anyway. Lakers-Celtics for Finals! bring back my early high school daze.

second of all, and the best basketball event so far: Isiah has been fired, and good riddance.

looking back at my predictions last Friday, seems like i'm on track for most of it.

Boston is up 2-0, so is Cleveland and Orlando. i still think the Pistons will whup the Sixers; it just might take the full seven games. i'm rooting for my sentimental favorite, the Magic men, to get past Detroit if that's the 2nd round matchup.

i'm stumbling over with my West side bets, as Phoenix and Dallas are getting schooled and winless through two games. considering that these two traded for past-their-prime superstars (Shaq and JKidd, respectively), it looks like that experiment is going to blow up in their faces. Manu is the Sixth Man of the Year and a damn good x-factor, and Chris Paul is running rings around the Mavs.

Utah and the Lakers are handily winning - a Yao-less Rockets team and a dysfunctional Denver one wont be around much longer. i want a Utah-L.A. Western finals but that doesn't seem possible because of the seedings, unless the Hornets get upset and the Jazz whip the Spurs, probably.

since i don't have cable channels that show the games, i'm content with just checking the scores online. that's okay; there's a lot more to do anyway.

beware of geek (almost)

49% Geek
49%



and i won't survive the moon:
50%

and almost a seventh of a million died while i lived:
132,276 People

and my typing skills are nonexistent:
71

i blame jego for these quizzes.

hoops there it is

2008 NBA Playoffs begins tomorrow.

too bad we're at the NYCC this weekend.


do i have to ... oh well, alright ...

East:
Boston vs Atlanta ... Celtic revival parade will run over the Hawks
Cleveland vs Washington ... Gilbert Arenas will be 0-3 in career series with Bron Bron
Orlando vs Toronto ... i'm guessing it won't be Andrea Bargnani's coming-out party
Detroit vs Philadelphia ... can i imagine a Philly upset? naaahhh.

West:
LA Lakers vs Denver ... really? against an energized Laker team? nope.
Utah vs Houston ... T-Mac will still not get out of the 1st round
San Antonio vs Phoenix ... Shaq vs Duncan? the x-factor will be The Argentinian (sorry, Bill Simmons)
New Orleans vs Dallas ... time to see what Dirk's really made of



fire Isiah! fire Isiah!

green is in

congratulations, time bandit!!! i am now checking the menu for Tropic Zone.

prison break

time to break free of Windows Media Player and iTunes.



an open source love child of Mozilla and WinAmp, Songbird seems poised to be a solid alternative to those media players (WMP needs a bunch of codecs to play other formats while iTunes is notoriously sticking with their own). right out of the box, this beta 0.5 version already plays the high res .MKV files, something you can't do with WMP. this will still be buggy, but so what. i hope they keep plugging away until they get it right.

as i switched to Firefox/Thunderbird 4 years ago and never looked back, this looks like another road of no return (for me).

canine poop

aside from inanities involving dogs, here's what was on CNN.com a couple of hours ago:



on one hand, be glad it wasn't their headline. on the other hand ... is this even news? what's next, "Oprah's cat* has asthma"? i hope you choke on that grease money, CNN.


* ask Gayle King; she knows about that

touchdown

the Bigger Kahuna, Pope Benedict XVI (as opposed to the Big Kahuna, our St. Patrick's Church pastor in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the Biggest Kahuna, the Lord God Himself), has landed today on American soil, the first such visit since 9/11.


among the issues he will be tackling during his visit will be the molestation-via-priest scandal (i expect heads to roll, il papa), pumping up the slumbering and disappointed Catholic faithful, subtly slapping Dubya's fingers for the Iraq mess, perhaps meeting with his potential successors (McCain or Obama), and generally bring sexy back to the image of a Catholic leader (i kid, i kid).

the Pope will be in the Big Apple this Friday, and will celebrate Mass in Yankee Stadium on Sunday. sorry, those tickets ran out as early as last year.

at least just for one day, this dude below won't be the "Big Dog" in that arena. for you n00bs, that's NY Yankees boss George Steinbrenner.


but don't they kinda look the same? they both have German roots, they can be ornery, and they rule over an empire ...

am just saying!

(bless me, Father, for i have sinned ...)

life is a box of ...

scenes from an afternoon along Park Avenue South ...


my boyhood idol (even more than Captain America) - those who want to tag with me on the opening screening, raise your hands.



Will Eisner lives!!!!



i don't care what you say, this is not to be missed as well.


how come no one told me about this?? that being said - photochopped!!! Jenna doesn't look like that anymore.



i read recently in Time Magazine that Howard Schultz has made a comeback to reclaim former glory. even better, he's trying to keep the Sonics back in Seattle (yes please).



i started doodling and drawing my current apartment, and invariably ended up trying to redesign the Iron Man armor. it kept looking like the Halo soldiers though (the paper below had more scribbles by the time i finished).

in case you're wondering ...

there's a point to these pictures. i thought i'd never see them again. and that's because i thought i lost my camera.

you know that feeling when you lost something valuable - let's keep our discussions on the material side of things, ok? - that you can't relax, your mind keeps drifting to it every 3 seconds, and you keep reliving and replaying the sequence of events leading to its disappearance? i couldn't sleep at all last night, after discovering its not in the places i've looked. i frantically emailed my friend time bandit, who's currently incognito in Ecuador to foment dissent and actually put a hit on that pig Hugo Chavez when he visits Rafael Correa, and there was a slim chance the object of my search may be in the stuff i left him back in Jersey last Friday. but none of that made me calm down, not even two consecutive missions in Hitman: Contracts that left a lot of Chinese gangsters and policemen dead, and sent my mass murderer rating soaring.

and then this morning, half-asleep and gears still turning in my head, the light bulb i was waiting to turn on - turned on.

you know that feeling too, right?

i stood up, walked over to a jacket i forgot i wore last Friday ... and viola.

24 hours of feeling distraught. oboy.


whom the gods would destroy, they first make senile.

get the dustpan out ...

... 'cause the sweeping's about to start!

i wonder how Isiah can still manage to think he's going to survive this one. is he preparing the dirt on Jim Dolan right now? or has Dolan secretly bribed all media outlets not to accept any material from Thomas? the next four or five days will be interesting, but more so for the pundits and journalists and talking heads who need to be the first to get the scoop.

one thing good that came out of the Knicks (and the Nets') dismal season - we don't need to spring for NBA playoff tickets this year. gotta save those dollars for other important stuff.

as the world turns

this one's still a secret, because we don't want certain people in our management to know until its ready to be said but ... here's my whisper to the trees in the digital forest ...

congratulations to my colleague, who finally received notice of the approval of her much-awaited tarjeta verde. it took 7 years but i guess that's still a good thing, considering much of what happened to honest people chasing a better life here in the United States since 9/11.

this colleague of mine has been an angel in disguise, having worked with her for the longest time, and being a friend much more than i can expect. i owe her a lot, from getting myself on steady ground when i came over, and to getting my head straight by brokering the idea of settling down given the intricate opportunities provided by the immigration process.

she's had every imaginable blessing showered on her, and she deserves every bit of it. i hope and pray the next one will be a healthy child, as we jokingly keep saying that our work has robbed us both of our youth, and we need the next few years to build our own complete families.

but this momentous event means she can already make the Great Escape ... which will leave this company in the lurch. i mean, hello, i can't take care of everything.

actually, i kind of want to see management's faces when they are faced with the spectre of or her actual leaving. they'll probably think we can still soldier on. pretty soon, when i also take my leave, our clients will be supported by ants or something.




tarjeta verde ... so close, yet so far away.

who is sarah marshall, and why should i hate her?

i've been seeing this all over town, but as usual, i only get to check it out around 8 weeks later.

i thought it was some kind of horror/suspense thriller - turns out its a romantic comedy. the fake blog is a little hilarious, and it reminds of another douchebag blog whose URL escapes me at the moment.

i don't mean to be shilling for the movie, but hey, its Kristin Bell. duh. you won't see me lining up for tickets, but somehow somewhere it will find its way to my torrent queue.

Jesus (phone) walks

so far, my phone hasn't turned into a brick (yet). i keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but not as much like the first two weeks. there was one time it rebooted itself, but that was when i was watching Rambo IV (right during the final firefight). maybe the electronics couldn't take that much testosterone. you wouldn't find the Rambo crowd sporting iPhones anyway.

i haven't really installed much in it, which is actually what you really do when you jailbreak the thing. no games, no handy apps, no nothing. maybe i just really wanted a phone. that works like an iPhone. at a cheaper price.

annoying stuff:
- how the hell do i turn off the autocomplete feature during texting? you have to remember to tap every suggested word to send it away if you don't need it. you won't believe the crazy suggestions it has for the Tagalog words i'm typing in.
- the aforementioned abrupt-exit during playback of some videos. which is kinda expected though since all am putting in is not-exactly legit MP4s. and by the way, the screen is still small!!! (yes, am holding on to my principles)
- no way to create separate photo albums? maybe that's a 3rd party app?
- some call drops, but could that be t-mobile instead of the phone?

the sweet:
+ knows that you are using the phone and when cheek is pressed against the screen, the touch feature is turned off.
+ i have my 8TUV key back
+ despite the screen limitations, i managed to watch a lot more movies here than in my DVD/Media player at home. i've been through a couple of Chris Rock shows, i laughed through The Darjeeling Limited, enjoyed Michael Clayton, updated myself up to 3 episodes of John Adams (that deserves its own post), replayed the Giants' marvelous SuperBowl season, and marveled at the awesomeness of Appleseed Ex Machina (imagine if i saw it on High Def).

if this works for at least a couple of years (the previous Nokia had turned in a service term of three), then it'll be a well-spent $250. still cheaper than similar ones they're hawking over at Radio Shack.

valor

for those who fell (April 1942)

screamadelica

last Sunday, cops came to my apartment (building).

yep, NYPD.


relax. i didn't commit a crime.

finally, someone (not me!) called the cops on our next door neighbor, a single mother with two teenage daughters. this family never fails to have screaming matches at any given moment, day or night.

i kind of symphatize with the mother, who seems to be at her wits end on how to deal with her daughters, who fit the prototypical American teenager - undisciplined, lazy and disrespectful. the lack of a strong father figure plays into that. somehow, she has no recourse but to scream at them. i half expect the elder daughter to come home pregnant at some point.

despite that, the mother seems to keep some of her faith in them. many a time have i seen her at the ground floor, resting with several bags of groceries, and offered to carry some of them up to our floor (4th walkup). she always respectfully declines and tells me her daughters would be coming down to help her. i smile and shrug, and as i leave her to her own devices, i can't help but think that if her daughters cared, they would have gone to the grocery with her in the first place.

so anyway, the cops (i heard their voices calling out and tiptoed to the peephole to check) were making sure the call came from this building or specifically, their apartment. i think one of the neighbors (there's only 6 units on a given floor) anonymously made the call, but nobody wanted to come forward and admit it. what should have been a quiet, lazy Sunday morning got shattered by yelling and screaming (sometimes things get thrown as well, i think) and resulted in a visit by our friendly NY cops on the beat.

i don't know if anything got resolved, but so far i have yet to hear another loud argument from their apartment. but i expect the quiet to last a week, tops.

supplies!

so the real reason i was able to get a Jesus Phone is ... like duh, its a mystery.

i think even if i had the money (which 99.99% of the time, i don't - see post below), i wouldn't be an early adopter. opportunity just slips under your nose, and that's it. so even if Jobs springs his new spanking line of Jesus 2.0s, i'm happily keeping this one i got.


unless ... it turns into a brick.

or it gets stolen.

or somehow it "disappears".

the fine print

everyone has all but called it a recession, but face the facts, and please say it: we're in a recession. thanks, George W. Bush. what a way to bow out of office. i hope you get your dickipedia entry soon (right now might be too obvious).

given the subprime mess, mortgage meltdown, and escalating debt, banks really don't care - they keep offering credit cards to anyone who's desperate, crazy or dumb enough to bite.


yes, am calling you out, Citizens Bank.

see the hooks? less than 8%! not an introductory rate!

but there's always a SMALL asterisk. always look for that.



for any reason?

for any reason??

let's say the CEO of Citizens Bank was doing his duty on his throne, so to speak. in the middle of one long, hard-to-squeeze doodie, he suddenly decides to raise the interest rates to 10%. does that count? or when he fights with his wife, because he has lipstick marks on his bald CEO head? what happens when he gets into an auto accident? what quantifies "any reason"?

(wait, the CEO is a she, apparently)

and apparently, a sector of society thinks that Citizens Bank sucks anyway.



hey, its still 7.99%. right ...?

(like there's a huge difference between 7.99 and 8.00)

baby got back

the rumble is finally back, reports Gizmodo. well, its about time, baby! just roll out that PS3 bundle with MGS4 and i'm good to go.

Flight 11

with the recent news that ATA Airlines has suddenly filed for Chapter 11, i found myself flooded with a few memories and a lot of smirking.

now, ok, am not exactly smirking for those employees who'll be losing their jobs - well, maybe some of them. those in particular responsible for me (and my boss) being stranded in Chicago back in 2002.

to make a short story long (or was that the other way around?), my boss and i were traveling to Minneapolis (home of Prince and the Mall of America) for a demo and for some reason (which is to save on airfares), we found ourselves on an ATA flight there via Chicago. Chicago is just less than three hours away from NY. turns out that was all the flight time we would get with ATA. while we were seated waiting for the connecting passengers to disembark/embark, they just announced they were cancelling the rest of the flight.

it was 4 PM and we needed to be at our destination 8 AM sharp the next day. they were not offering any acceptable substitute flights either, for us to make our appointment. needless to say, we had to get off the plane, out of Chicago Midway, and take an impromptu tour of the Windy City (and it was still winter). we finally found the Greyhound bus terminal (and i assure you, its not a place you want to spend your time in) and took the first available bus to Minneapolis.

i guess if not for this incident, i would not have been able to see Chicago or experience the feeling of traveling through Wisconsin (beer, cheese, McDonalds!) in the middle of the night, or trudge through the ice/snow in downtown Minneapolis, headed towards the opposite direction from our hotel.

and i never got to use the sorry-ass coupon ATA sent as an apology.

anyway, airlines have been an increasing annoyance ever since 9/11, what with the security checks, the elimination of free food, the rising ticket prices and incessant delays (unintentional or not - are you listening, JetBlue?). i already learned by rote and whenever i fly, i already get to the airport with my laptop in one hand, and all of my clothes on the other (including the one i'm wearing).

and with the recent news that the myth of air marshalls is just that ... a myth? who's going to protect us from the crazies now? do we all go United 93 on them?

so, am not sorry ATA has bitten the dust.

also in dire straits is upstart Southwest Airlines, whose cost-cutting may have landed them in deep trouble. i haven't flown Southwest yet, and maybe i never will.

too bad, because they make funny commercials (i guess that's where the budget for safety inspections went). to their credit, not one flight has crashed ... yet.

here are some i haven't seen:

the naked fist

i'm not sure why, but i was vaguely thinking of Filipino action stars from my childhood, and the first name that comes to mind is Dante Varona. maybe it was because of his infamous San Juanico Bridge jump. or because one of my grade school classmates misspelled one of his movies as "Hari ng Stand" (Stunt). or because i used to refer to my pal Jego as Bathala (from one of Varona's flicks, "Kung Tawagin Sya'y Bathala").

doing a quick YouTube search, i only found this parody:


argh! ba't bitin?? it would have been a hit in the magnitude of those Mark Lapid/saging videos.

i'm not sure which movie that came out of. a quick IMDB search yields:


i'm guessing its the second one ...

i think Ramon Zamora faked his death and became Babalu.


i'm not sure if i ever watched a Varona movie. or a Zamora one. maybe on TV. we always had Fernando Poe Jr. of course. and Lito/Jess Lapid. i just wish i had a crystal ball so i can peek back into my baduy past and laugh at what the heck i was watching back then. anybody remember "Assault Squad Scorpio"? (damn i'm too old for this stuff)


who's your childhood retro action star(s)?

Thomas in doubt

finally, someone in the New York Knicks finally displayed some sense and brought in Donnie Walsh to run the basketball operation.

this means current coach and suddenly ex-team President (and all-around sneaky character) Isiah Thomas is now on shakier ground, his atrocious two-year .341 winning percentage not winning any games or fans, turning the once-respected Knicks into a joke. Peter Vecsey has correctly observed that Thomas is now a man without a city.


Thomas used to coach the Indiana Pacers when Walsh was in charge of that team. when Walsh brought in Larry Bird as Prez of Basketball Ops, the Hick from French Lick canned Thomas immediately (even if it wasn't with Walsh's blessings, he sure didn't pose any roadblock).

the first test of the Walsh administration would be what to do with Thomas.

it could happen as early as later today, tomorrow ... Bird fired him the next day, didn't he?

(if this happens, you can imagine Walsh and Bird celebrating in some swanky restaurant weeks later)

there might still be hope for the Knicks, after all.

(no, Ticketmaster, i still hate you)

hire Clyde!!!

(i said, Ticketmaster, i still hate you)

fool for all seasons

on a previous post, i mentioned a customer who's fond of being a know-it-all (but really knows nothing) and likes to point fingers when the going gets tough. turns out i have an email thread where he once again, for the gazillionth time, pissed me off, but i had to maintain a professional attitude and keep myself from sending sarcastic emails, especially since like this pig, i have an acerbic vit. (wait! i actually don't.) one of my bosses did applaud me for keeping my cool, because they all know what a jackass this customer is. whoever said that the customer is always right can rightfully burn in hell right now.

names may have been changed to protect the innocent, words may be substituted for conciseness, but the grammar (and spelling) have not been changed to protect the competent.
-----

so the other day i receive this email from the subject, whom we shall call JP (for Just Pathetic).


Please let me the status of this request. XYZ is in the process of upgrading to Vista/Office 2007.

right away, two things already blew me off my chair. (1) i already replied to this more than two weeks ago. he doesn't seem to read his email, or more likely, he doesn't know how to use email. my colleague once told me JP was in awe of the Search tool in Outlook (true story). oh dear god. so i think his bosses were following up with him, and in his haste to cover his tracks again, rattled off a quick email that (2) showed off his scintillating typing skills. much is lost when communication skllz r lacking. ask the damn txters.

should i "let him ... the status"? let him what? eat the status? change the status?

and don't even get me started with the whole idea of migrating to Vista in the first place. doesn't anyone read? i suspect he bought a Dell PC for his home use, and seeing it was loaded with Vista, drooled at the nice graphics and proceeded to push Vista for all the desktops in his company. he probably doesn't understand all these Mac vs. PC commercials.

so, brushing off the annoying mosquito, i reply with: (bold/emphasis mine)


i sent you the email below 26 days ago.

as you will only be upgrading XYZ user workstations to Vista/Office 2007, you only need to upgrade to patch version NNN to achieve this.

What is your timetable on the upgrade? That was my unanswered question below.
----
When do you plan on switching all user workstations to Vista/Office 2007?


we exchange a couple more emails, all the while with me operating on the assumption that he was speaking of the user workstations, not the application servers. so when the time came for me to confirm that assumption:


I assume your Windows servers containing this application, this application and that application will remain as is, even if the users switch to Vista.


he comes back with a horrifying reply:

I didn't understand you mean by this email


i didn't change anything, i swear to God, i pasted that as is. yes, yes, your brain works much faster than your fingers, but that's a minor point. and here he is, doing the perfect mimicry of a moron. which is like a second skin to him. wait - could it be ... he is a moron?


i try to be helpful, but fearful that i opened a can of worms here (for him, not for me). its like talking to a man who murdered his wife and kids on national TV, only he doesn't know everyone knows. "murder? what do you mean?"


I mean the users will be using Vista workstations, while your (application) servers which are (now on) Windows 2003(?) will remain as is (will not be upgraded to Vista).


hey, i don't claim to be technical (JP claims that he is - true story). that's why we used to have a guy asking our customers these questions. so JP is lucky he's dealing with me.

okay, now, he gets a bit riled up and is probably starting to wonder why he is dealing with a moron like moi.


The servers will be upgraded to Vista/Office 2007, that's the whole purpose of these emails going back and forth.

there you have it, my dear audience. written as plain as day (and emphasis mine).

okay, let me tread on safe ground here. let's make sure we record his statements, and let him entrap himself.


now that you have clarified that part, (my company has) no control over this Application's (the database) and that Application's (middleware) (because they're not our products; our software just plays with them) compatibility with Vista . i suggest you also ask your tech support to check with Microsoft/IBM. From our point of view, we can only control the our application's compatibility issues.

we can do our part on our application and do more tests; however, you would also cover bases on your side by making sure of the tech guys' responsibility to ensure that both Applications can be installed/will work on a Vista box without any problems, since that is the direction XYZ is taking.


was i clear enough? was i polite enough? did i lay the facts (as gleaned from him) straight up? yes, i think i did. the last time we did an upgrade with these guys, their tech guys were scratching their heads not knowing what roles they had to play. either they're also really braindead, or JP did a great job communicating who's going to do what.

i suspect that a lot of the problems they've had with our software had been accidentally or inadvertently, caused by JP. seriously. if XYZ was Iraq, and we were George W. Bush, we would get it right. this guy is a walking, talking WMD. i can't even trust him to create a formula, even though he's been working with our software since the Clinton Administration. he's already an AVP! (Alien Vs Predator)

and they pay these people gazillions of dollars? no wonder the economy is going down the drain.


now it gets better! seeing an opportunity to take down a meek cat like me (i promise, the meek shall not inherit the Earth), JP goes in for the kill: (bold/emphasis mine again)


I think you are missing the point here. Please verify your applications to be compatible with Vista/Office 2007. Please don't pay attention to the other products, since we did not ask you anything about the other products.


in other words, just shut the fuck up, grifter (look! i cussed!), and just tell us if your application is compatible or not. moron!


so, since I missed the point (allegedly), i took my wounds and the emails to my own management and humbly requested to be enlightened.



this is the part where my boss applauds me for being professional. suuuuuuuuuuure. blogging will be my revenge. nyahahahahahahaa!


so after deep consultation with the powers and minds that be, i go back to JP with the following questions:


If you plan on changing your current (Windows 2000) server to Vista (as stated in your previous email), (we need) the following information from you:
1. If using Windows Vista - what service pack and is it 32-bit or 64-bit?
2. What version of the database will be installed in this Vista box and What service pack?


he was probably drunk the day before. now he replies:


The window Vista will be used on the Desktops, the servers will run Window 2008/Office 2007.

Windows Vista is for the new version release for desktops
It will be released with SP1.
The O/S is running on 32-bit version

Please let me know if you need any more information.



wow. did anybody read the first line of that reply?

window Vista will used on desktops, servers will run Window 2008 ...


am not sure if Microsoft makes 'Window Vista' or 'Window 2008'.

but anyway, let's go back to what he said earlier, and you get a free cookie if you can remember without scrolling up or down.






The servers will be upgraded to Vista/Office 2007, that's the whole purpose of these emails going back and forth.

Please don't pay attention to the other products, since we did not ask you anything about the other products.


he's lucky i didn't blind copy his bosses. he'd probably be storming thru our doors right now brandishing a gun and his pink slip.


and i didn't get even a hint of an apology. he probably already deleted the previous email thread (wait, he may not even know where the Delete button is!), just to claim innocence on any stupid statement he "may" have made.

utterly contemptible. and i don't buy the excuse of being ignorant. as the wife rants when she has her own voodoo dolls to push pins into, "they ought to have been gassed at birth". sorry. wait, am not sorry.


this is not even at par with those jaw-dropping moments that JP has exhibited in the past; i forgot more than i remember. for now, i am committing it to the blogosphere, to celebrate the April Fool, nay, a fool for all seasons.

God, i love missing the point.

factory recall

manning the software help(less)desk, you get to meet all sorts of people. of course we all hate the dumbass one. another would be the one who keeps saving his ass and throws you under the bus at every opportunity, to make himself look good with his management (and not get fired). we actually have one who is both.

anyway, i have another customer contact who's kinda a little slow. i think whatever he soaked up from me in the past year or so kind of drains out of him when he pees or something. he's fond of sending emails where "he can't seem to recall this" or "can't seem to figure out that" or "can't seem to remember whatever". God knows, i write up long pages of Dummies Guides and nothing seems to work for him. too bad, he seems like a nice guy. let's call him TR, for "Total Recall".

by the way, i should get paid by the page for writing Dummies Guides. $10 a page sounds nice.


just today i get an email from TR, regarding a parameter fix i suggested two days ago:
----

... this change did not work as per user's email. I've gone back and checked to make sure that the changes were made correctly. blah blah blah blah in any event, it's not working as we had anticipated. can you have a look at this and let me know?

----

i go check and come back with:

----
as per your original email, you said they wanted this in (this function).

now if they're saying another function (which we obviously did not do), can you get a screenshot?

----

so i imagine him reading my email and smiling cheerfully as he typed back (before he probably went off to the local coffee shop and had a latte):

----

I'm following up with the user now and will get back to you.

----

which is what you should have done in the first place, you mook. now let me get back to ESPN.com and stop bothering me.

i don't know, i just feel sensitive these days.



breaking update (within 90 minutes):

here's one he sent just after i clicked on "Publish Post" the first time on this:
----
how can I find out which blah blah blah associated with the following? when I check out the properties for the blah blah blah i see that the blah blah blah, but I don't know how to blah blah blah.
----

so i reply:

you need to check out this this and this and from that, it will tell you which blah blah blah are involved.

it seems more and more that the issue scope is always wider than what they initially tell you.

----

of course he replies:

i'll have a look at calculations and formulas and get back to you.
yes, I agree with you. i've addressed the issue with them that we've been having with the business giving us the wrong information or simply leaving things out of the requirements. It's partly due to various users only having partial knowledge of what the others do, so that leads to some confusion. in any event, it causes more work and frustration for us.
----

us? us?? you mean me!! it causes more work and frustration for me!! there is no us!!

bully

sorry, i got this from Chuck Klostermann in a recent column sidebar for Esquire.

22

hey, if those kids were zombies, you gotta do what you gotta do!

rev it up

Accelerate, R.E.M. (WB)

what? R.E.M.? these old codgers are still making albums? and its not for free? never fear. why are you reading about this then, considering i'm not a member of the select few who are given advance copies? (wink, wink)

Michael Stipe has long abandoned the mumbled vocals of his early days, and going down that way as well is the band's habit of playing slow funeral rock. it's like nobody wanted to rock on since Bill Berry retired. enter ex-Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin. however, this newfound rhythm, which in turn galvanized Peter Buck to let loose with his guitars, threatens to drown out Stipe anyway.

Accelerate is a great and apt title for the graybeards' kind of desperate stab back at the glory days of the Document/Green/Out of Time era. only a couple of songs make it past the 4 minute mark, and 4 of them are actually below three. its almost like a punk record. as Time Magazine's Josh Tyrangiel puts it, " ... it sounds less like a recent R.E.M. album than three men fleeing the scene of a recent R.E.M. album."

despite distractions like these, R.E.M. seems to be ready to go back to the fun days and hopefully retire at the top of their game. they know this, but they want it to be on their terms. like Mike sings on the closing song, I'm Gonna DJ (a post-modern Shiny Happy People of sorts):

hey steady steady
hey steady steady
i don't wanna go until i'm good and ready

cause if heaven does exist
with a kicking playlist
i don't wanna miss it at the end of the world

this record merits a lot more attention than their last three albums combined. my iPod says so.