Every now and then I stumble across several seriously good blog posts in the archive. If I do say so myself, I was in particularly good form between September 26th and October 5, 2006. If I were going to open a “Best of” section, I think four of the five entries would probably be in the running to be included. It’s hard to believe that six years ago I was just starting my start in Memphis… It’s even more surprising that I actually seemed to be enjoying it. What a difference four years and some keep personnel changes can make. Fortunately, no real damage was done, and I’ll always think of West Tennessee as my cautionary tale.
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Size 12…
Strip away the layers of technology, the fancy polo shirts, and khaki pants, and at my heart of hearts you’ll find that I’m actually a remarkably simple man. You’ll find that I’m the kind of guy who does what he says he’s going to do, when he said he’s going to do it, unless there are some truly exceptional circumstances preventing that from happening. The unfortunate side effect of that tendency is that it leads me to have that same expectation for the people and companies I deal with. There are only a handfull of things that make me as absolutely batshit crazy as taking time off, sitting around the house waiting, and then getting a call near the end of the scheduled “service window” letting me know that someone isn’t going to be able to make it out and that the appointment will need to be rescheduled for a more inconvenient time the following week. It’s even better when you call the other company who was supposed to do an estimate and they “can’t find a record of the appointment.” I’m serious. It makes me want to bash my head repeatedly against the nearest cinder block wall – right after I beat someone to a bleeding pulp with their own arms.
To the companies doing business at 866-366-2606 and 877-321-7038, I hope someone here on the interwebs hijacks your phone numbers and ties up your incoming lines for the next week or two. That would save me the trouble and the legal fees resulting from coming over there and driving one of my size 12 Doc Martens directly into your colon.
What Annoys Jeff this Week?
1. Power everything. As a rule I appreciate the power accessories that Toyota has jam packed into my Tundra. What I don’t like is that now that the days have turned brisk, my “automatic” power window has an annoying habit of going down about a third of the way and then stopping. Press the button again and It sluggishly goes down the rest of the way. It’s obviously some kind of issue with the electronics, but it means I spend most mornings hoping that it won’t get stuck halfway down when roll though the front gate at work on some 35 degree, rainy morning. I’m going to try nursing it though another 1000 miles until the truck goes in for its next oil change so I can kill both birds with one trip. Until then, I’m going to nostalgically wish that I could just make the necessary adjustments with an old fashioned hand crank rather than a rather suspect electric motor.
2. A cold dark place. Getting dark at 5PM sucks. It sucks worse when it’s accompanied by the temperature dropping like a stone. When I moved back to Maryland, part of me was happy at the idea of having an actual winter again. As the nights get longer and the ambient temperature gets colder, I’m beginning to rethink that particular part of my rationale. Since this is one of those gripes that there is absolutely no way to do anything about other than turn on every light in the house and throw another log on the fire, this has served no purpose other than making me feel slightly better by voicing my distinct displeasure at the current state of affairs.
3. Something to do. For the better part of the last week, I’ve had the overwhelming feeling that there was something I was supposed to do. I have no earthly idea what that might be, but it’s still a nagging thought in the back of my head. My Google calendar isn’t screaming that I missed anything important and I’m not getting any foreclosure or impending disconnection notices, so it can’t be anything too pressing. Knowing that it’s surely nothing important, though, doesn’t make it any less annoying.
The place to be…
In case you’ve missed it, Sundays are special here at jeffreytharp.com. They’re the day I get to mostly turn my brain off and post some of the gems from a bygone era rather than try dredging up new material. I like to think of it as being like a TV show in syndication, except for the part where people get residuals when those old episodes show up again. Here’s it’s mostly just a good way to get all of my posts back under one roof.
While I was tinkering around with a few settings this weekend, I gave my metrics a good hard look and was surprised to see the total number of posts here steadily creeping towards the 1000 mark. After looking at the number of old MySpace posts that still need to make an appearance and doing some back of the napkin math, I’m pretty sure I’m actually already past that milestone. Nevertheless, I don’t feel right about making that official until I see the official WordPress post-counter roll over that third zero. Even with my five-every-Sunday posts, it’s going to be a few months before we cross that bridge. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be sure you let y’all know when we get there.
Like your average nine-year old, I like having something to look forward to almost as much as I enjoy actually experiencing or getting the thing itself. Since it doesn’t seem like there are any exotic trips or new toys in the immediate future, I’m pretty much throwing my lasso around 1000 as the next big thing. I know Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming, but those show up every year around this time, but how many times can you look back at six years of misspent time on the Internet and be truly amazed that you managed to come up with 1000 snarky, petulant, vaguely inappropriate, and occasionally heartfelt things to say. And it all started because MySpace use to be the place to be…
That’s the spirit…
There’s a lot going on in the world. Between the incredible imploding generals, John Kerry’s name on the short list for Secretary of Defense, Israel chomping at the bit to bomb its enemies further back into the stone age, an impending fiscal disaster of biblical proportions, and a few dozen other odds and ends that are making the news today, you’d think I could gin up something pithy to discuss tonight… but in thinking that, you, gentle reader, would be exactly wrong. No matter how earth shattering or sensational, my official response to most of the day has been a rather disinterested shrug coupled with the occasional “Meh” for emphasis.
After several minutes of in depth analysis, I’ve determined that the harder I look at the world around me, the dumber it gets… and the higher my blood pressure soars. Perhaps it’s best for the world, and for my long term cardiovascular health if I just start ignoring everything that’s going on around me. That approach seems to work well enough for the masses, so maybe if I stick my nose in a book and pretend that civilization isn’t actually doomed everything will turn out just fine in the end. I mean it’s the approach that works for the inevitable 6 out of 10 who can’t find their state on a map or are more likely to follow news for Justin Bieber than Joe Biden.
So in this new spirit of apathetic mediocrity, I bid you all good night. I’m sure I can find something perfectly pedestrian to take my mind off the world. If a good book doesn’t work, I’m sure one of the 87 channels of reality television will fill the bill nicely.
For want of a knob…
Last year I was fastidious about winterizing the rental house. Since I’ve been waiting two weeks now to get the go ahead for a simple repair of the faucet/knob assembly in the bathroom, my level of interest in doing anything over and above the basics is pretty slim this time around. That translates into adding some weatherstripping and insulation and a few other odds and ends to save on the winter’s electric bill. Anything over and above that is just not going to happen. For the last 18 months I’ve been doing my best to treat the place like it was mine. Since that doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, well, if it’s not a hazard to life and welfare I guess I’ll just go ahead and let it fall apart. It’s a pity that it’s got to be that way, but I can’t see myself expecting any less from my landlord than I expect from myself as a landlord. Silly expectations.
Getting good…
After giving a quick read to this Sunday’s Archive posts, I have to admit that I think they’re starting to get rather good. We’re up to September 2006, which is my first introduction to Memphis and the beginning of running myself ragged along the I-40 and I-81 corridors beating a path between work in West Tennessee and the apartment I was still hanging onto in central Maryland. Honestly, I expected this part of the story to be more angsty, but on reflection this was still part of the good times, well before the situation there became untenable for so many of us. Most people look back on things in their past through the filter of their own memory and rely on it to pull together the salient details. Conveniently, I have my own written record of most of my adult life, jotted down more or less as the events happened, to keep my memory in check. It’s been nice remembering that there was a time down there before circumstances and a few individuals conspired to suck all the joy out of life.
Enjoy this week’s blast from the past, late September 2006.
General behavior…
I’m legitimately sorry to see General Petraeus’ departure from the CIA. Whether he’s falling on his sword in a fit of honor, or whether his resignation is cover for something more sinister, remains to be seen. All I know beyond what the media has reported so far is that the United States has lost a tireless servant of the Republic and probably the best example in his generation of what it means to be a warrior scholar. Whatever sins he may or may not have committed in his personal life, we’re all the poorer for his now being on the outside looking in… and for the sake of the country I desperately hope that his resignation is simply a man of honor trying to make amends in the only way he knows how and not the tip of some other, darker iceberg.
All digital…
From the OCD projects file, I’m happy to report that I’m well on my way to ripping, and converting my 400+ disk movie and TV series collection. In fact the bookshelf where those disks live is actually starting to look a little bare, with about half the shelf space cleared off. Let me say up front, that while I’m very pleased with how this effort is turning out, getting it done has become a giant pain in the ass.
I’ve got two DVD drives, one in my laptop and the other acquired specifically for this purpose, running pretty much full time whenever I’m home. The conversion software lets off a distinctive “ding” when each disk is finished converting at which point I dash off like one of Pavlov’s dogs to load a new disk and repeat the process. On the average Sunday, I’m averaging eight disks a day between the two computers. That’s more or less one season of a TV show to give you a little perspective. Weekdays seem net about 4 or 5 disks. That doesn’t seem like much until you start really thinking about volume of data I’m slinging around the house wirelessly.
As of this afternoon, there are 687 GB of video sitting on 2TB external hard drive that’s running as my media server. By the time the conversion is finished, I’m expecting to need a 3TB drive (and another as a local backup), because most of what’s left are high definition movies rather than standard definition TV shows. The future might be in the cloud, but I’m old school enough to want a physical copy of all of my data, even if that doesn’t mean hundreds of DVD’s sitting displayed on a shelf.
By the time you add in metadata, cover images, and deal with the occasional other conversion issue that jumps up, I guess this isn’t an undertaking that most people would want to bother with. I’m doing it mostly because I’m a dork and like the idea of being able to access all my media all the time from any device in the house. If you’re the kind of person who’s already inclined to go give up on disks and go fully digital, the effort may well be worth it to you too. After all, who wants to be bothered by such old fashioned tasks as finding a disk, putting it in the DVD player, and waiting for it to load, when the alternative is just finding a comfortable spot, scrolling through the playlist, and hitting the select button?
What Annoys Jeff this Week?
1. Fleeing to Canada. Despite the ferocity of your Facebook or Twitter conviction, face it, no one is actually going to move to Canada as a result of this week’s presidential election. Even if you did, you’d find a high tax rate, national health care, and an entire province that wants to break away and form its own country. So all you’d actually accomplish is swapping out one dysfunctional political system for another and paying a hefty moving bill for the privilege. Can we all give the hyperbole a rest and start talking about changes we can make here in the real world to start undoing the mess we’ve collectively made over the last 60-odd years?
2. Antique Technology. Using Internet Explorer 8 is pretty much like driving around in a 1979 Dodge Omni; sure it’s technically transportation, but its reliability is questionable and its style is pretty much non-existent. Like the idiot lights on out fictitious Omni, IE8 spends most of its time throwing up security certificate errors, blocking content, and generally making it unbearable to use for anything other than the most basic tasks… and even then it’s slow as Moses in a minefield. It’s always a comfort to know that here in the most technologically sophisticated arms of government, we insist on plodding along with antiques from the last decade. That’s a sure path to effectiveness and efficiency.
3. Mary Jane. If the people of the great state of Colorado want to toke up for recreational purposes, I say God bless. Given this country’s outstanding record of success at enforcing morality laws, my advice to the DEA is just let ‘em go. We can argue all night about pot being carcinogenic, addictive, a gateway to the wild world of opiates and other drugs, but I have a hard time seeing how it’s all that much different than cigarettes or alcohol. Regulate it, tax it, and then let the states decide how, when, and by whom it can be used. Carrying pot as a Schedule 1 narcotic, with heroin, meth, and LSD strikes me as dishing out a $1000 penalty for a $10 crime. In the grand scheme of shit that’s important, sorry, this just doesn’t make the cut for me.
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