nobody asked…

That subject line should increase traffic hereabouts. I’ll keep you posted. But the real reason for this post is to pass along a bit of vital information that I learned last week.

Like all of you, my email Inbox is rife with unwanted spam messages trying to interest me in everything from V1ag.r.a, spelled in a variety of creative ways, to mail order drugs from Guatemala at pennies on the dollar compared to US prescription costs, death benefit and burial insurance on my puppy, every kind of get rich scam you can think of, mortgage and debt consolidation, and of course, the gazillion different ways to grab my hard earned dollars for penis enhancement. [My mama-in-law has actually replied to some of those, to let those poor misinformed people know that she is a female and does not have a penis that needs enhancing. Heh…]

Also, like many of you, I take precautions to keep the buggers out of my Inbox, using a variety of filters at the mail server level and on computers running my favored mail client, Thunderbird. But those spam bastards are clever, always coming up with new ways to get through, by, under, over, or around any defenses put in their path. As if finding ever new ways to bug the living shit out of me will finally make me break down and click the link and reveal my credit card number to them so they can sign me up for the best opportunity in decades to grab some beach-front property on a little known but fast developing resort island in the Caribbean. As if… Right…

Occasionally one of those rogue messages does land in my Inbox where I can blow it away or dissect it to my heart’s content. I just love to see the little buggers squirm and squeal when scalpel is applied to their soft tissues. So last week I had retreived my mail and was scanning over it when this subject line caught my eye:

Average Gain is 302 Inches!!!

On closer examination… you guessed it… it turned out to be a penis enhancement scam. But 302 inches? That’s over 25 feet! I wonder if they supply a hose reel that straps around your waist…

Raging at the sun
Waiting for it to yield to
Whispers in the dark.

1. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
2. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
3. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you haven’t tried before.
4. There is no evidence to support the notion that life is serious.
5. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
6. For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
7. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
8. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
9. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
10. Junk is stuff you keep for years and throw away the week before you need it.
11. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
12. Blessed are they who laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.

Actual conversation I overheard today in a convenience store while trying to pay for a cup of coffee. The young woman cashier was enmeshed in what sounded like a quiet, defensive argument with an olive-skinned gentleman, who I took to be her supervisor. The subject had something to do with an earlier transaction by a woman who was paying for lottery tickets with a $100 bill. As the clerk waved her hands side to side, from the lottery ticket cabinet to the cash register, back and forth, explaining the details of those proceedings, she made a statement in a somewhat higher volume and pitch than she had previously used. This certainly persuaded me…

I know I did it, because I don’t remember not doing it.

The prosecution rests…

[URGENT UPDATE: Dr. Weevil made a comment over at CGHill’s dustbury site (Thank you CG for the memorial link…) that he believes September, 1997, was 10-1/2 years ago and not the 11-1/2 years I mentioned below. I gently reminded the good Doctor that he had obviously not taken three things into account:

1. Y2K
2. Daylight Savings Time
3. Here, we count using the admittedly controversial Tennessee rules.

However, in keeping with my Southern Gentlemanness, I acknowledge Dr. Weevil’s eagle eye and promise not to try improving upon future calculations…]

[Hum to the tune of Simon & Garfunkle’s Sound of Silence … “Hello darkness, my old friend…”]

Have you ever had a wart or mole removed? One that had been with you for many years? One that was as familiar as it was ugly? A couple of weeks ago I had such a bittersweet experience when shutting down the last of the Novell Netware Servers that we built, sold, and supported.

When I got into the business in the mid-eighties, Netware was all the rage for small as well as big businesses. At first it was Netware 2.xx through a couple of iterations. Then came Netware 3.xx, with the almost usable 3.22 being a soft landing spot. But before we could get too cozy with that, Novell in their stupidity wisdom delivered the 4 series, partially in response to a pesky upstart in the network server business, Microsoft, who dominated the desktop, where Novell did not compete. But now, that arrogant Redmond, Washington, gang had the audacity to challenge the arrogant Provo, Utah, group with something called Windows NT Server 3.51, aimed squarely at eating Novell’s Netware lunch in the small and medium business market. 3.51 was about as big a dog as the current day Vista, but it rattled a lot of cages and paved the way for Windows NT Server 4, which ran Novell’s Netware out of town on a rail.

The Netware Server pictured here was IntraNetware 4.11 for Small Business, running on a box built by my little company. Except for shutdowns every 2 to 3 years for replacement of batteries in the UPS (battery backup), this system has stood there spinning, serving up files and managing network printing since September 15, 1997! That is 11-1/2 years, friends! They just don’t make ‘em the way we used to!

Netware was clumsy, cryptic, difficult, ornery, and unforgiving. And stable as a friggin’ boulder. This little single purpose network, with server as described, and three MS-DOS 6.22 workstations, was about as solid and trouble-free as a network can be. There was not a mouse in sight and no internet connection. There was no way for viruses to get in and no need for routine patches and fixes. Life was simple. Life was good. Enter Microsoft…

[All photos can be dimensionally exploded with a single click.]

For the terminally curious, the server box was built around an Intel Server Board with a genuine Intel Pentium 166 MHz Processor, a whopping 32 MB of RAM, and a 1.2 GB Seagate IDE Hard Drive, housed in a heavy-duty server grade enclosure with 200 Power Supply. Network was 10BaseT Ethernet, all 3Com gear. And with that pitifully low horsepower, which would not be enough to display Windows’ opening splash screen, this server ran like a scared rabbit…

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. — Thomas Jefferson

If two negatives make a positive, how many positives does it take to make a negative? Or how many conditional statements make one definitive declaration?

A Tennessean story by Staff Writer and NFL/Titans beat writer Jim Wyatt about the on-again / off-again, almost there / widely separated negotiations for future services of suspended Titans bad boy Adam “Pacman” Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, was quoted as saying something to the effect of…

I can say with a high degree of certainty that this thing probably may or may not come about.

How do you spell doublespeak? How about posturing?

Jerry Jones’ actual words and the full article can be found here.

The way I figure it, I get a free bottle of Jack Daniels every year. Age has a way of diminishing consumption, or at least shifting preferences, meaning I drink far less Jack than I did in my earlier days, but it remains my favorite booze for the occasional celebratory shot. Whether taken neat or on the rocks, it is the perfect way, for me at least, to celebrate — whatever — the fact that it is Tuesday, or my birthday, or that it is not a special occasion of any kind. A bottle of this local product, what we call the nectar of the gods, costs about $20, so a freebie is not to be scoffed at.

A few pennies here, a quarter there, and oh… a dime over there. I make a lot of stops at convenience stores as I travel the highways and byways, sniffing out computers and networks in distress. Sometimes I stop for an infusion of coffee, other times to unload earlier consumption. I frequently pull into a parking lot to use the cell phone in safety. And I find money. Everywhere. Most of it is in pennies, but all the larger coins are there too. Recently, I even found a $1 bill fluttering around in the parking lot behind a branch bank.

Where does this orphaned currency come from. Is it there in the parking lot of the convenience store by accident? Was it purposely left there for reasons I could not understand? Perhaps this is a manifestation of some Intelligent Design scheme that is playing out just for me, with the aim of keeping me supplied with Tennessee sipping whiskey. But mostly, the loose change that can be found almost everywhere can be attributed to teens and young single adults. They have no respect for coinage, don’t want to be bothered with it, don’t like how it weights them down, so they just discard it wherever they happen to be. They throw away money! If it is not plastic or at least a $5 bill, it is trash to them. Don’t believe me? Ask them. Check out a parking lot at places they frequent, after they’re gone. As inflation and exchange rates continue to devalue the dollar, I expect so soon find more paper money. A few $5s or a couple of $10s each week would take care of my chardonnay thirst…

One estimate a few years ago calculated Bill Gates income at about $250 per second, concluding that he would not bother picking up anything less than a $1,000 bill since it takes about 4 seconds to stop, pickup it up, pocket it, and move on. Whether the numbers are close or not, it’s just a silly little story that does make a valid point. But it doesn’t apply to me. I’ll pick up pennies, even out of the mud or dirt of a parking lot. Over the course of a year, I figure my found money totals around $20. My bottle of Jack Daniels.

[The kernel of this post has been knocking around in my head since finding a discarded or lost $1 bill a few weeks ago. Thanks to Joy for helping kickstart it with her post about pennies. Check it out.]

Trudging through life, coping with the day to day challenges and turmoil, we sometimes need a reminder that we too can survive, even beyond all odds. Those little reminders come in various packages. Sometimes it’s a child with a serious affliction who is happy and smiling; other times a warm, frisky puppy that has not a care in the world except to please you; and occasionally it will be the totally unexpected. Such was the case one day last week.

Arriving back at the office in late afternoon, something caught my eye as I walked from the car to the office entrance. Pausing, it took a few seconds for it to register that I was seeing an empty styrofoam cup in the center turn lane of the the busy street out front. There was a push of air from heavy traffic in both directions, causing the little truncated cone to roll in an arc first one way, then the other. The occasional draft of a larger vehicle would move it up and down its chosen lane a few feet. Then more rolling in arcs around its new pivot point until another large draft moved it a few feet forward or backward.

Becoming quickly mesmerized, I stood for perhaps fifteen minutes watching the struggle, the close misses, the movement to and fro. At some point I realized I was cheering the little cup onward in its quest to survive against the impossible odds of the multi-ton monsters bearing down on it from every side. And then it occurred to me how much like life that is. Wishing the dancing traveler well, I went on into the office. Half an hour later after checking email, washing up, and shutting down for the evening, I emerged to find the cup still at it. It had moved about 20 or 30 feet down the turn lane and looked to be slightly damaged, but not enough to keep it from rolling and arcing, performing its death defying dance. After watching a few more minutes, I had to leave the cup to its unique brand of madness, knowing full well that it would be flattened or completely gone come morning.

Imagine my surprise and delight to arrive back at the office the following morning to find the cup, not squashed by one of the many behemoths that passed this way during the night, but intact, resting gently on the grass a few feet from the street. It had a nick, but was otherwise alive and well. I thought of placing the cup back in the middle of the turn lane for another go, but decided it may prefer the resting place it had chosen and worked so hard to reach. Then I was tempted to take it in and leave it sitting on my credenza as a reminder. But such an adventurer needs freedom and would not fare well in captivity. So I left it where it was.

I do not have the cup, but I do have the memory of its struggles and the lesson it taught, which was the same as the message delivered so fervently by the late Jimmy Valvano

Never Give Up!… NEVER!

[This is one of my favorite posts, originally published September 26, 2006. I hope you enjoy it, whether anew or again.]

There are two things that I am as sure of as death and taxes: (1) George W. Bush is a liar, and (2) Keith Olbermann tells the truth. Here is an extract of Olbermann’s comments on MSNBC’s Countdown as he ripped President Bush, his lies and cruel treatment of our soldiers, by fact-checking Bush’s April 10 speech about Iraq.

Last year he escalated the war in Iraq, today he announced that there would be deescalation beyond July, yet somehow stood there with a straight face and lied about how he was withdrawing troops. Now, that was hardly the lone instance of dissembling, tortured logic, sophistry and outright dishonesty in Mr. Bush’s latest sugar-coating of the undeniable and unforgivable fact that he is continuing to arrange for the needless deaths of American heroes.

As reported by Crooks & Liars: President Bush has decided to put a hold on troop withdrawals, but tries to give the appearance that he’s actually reducing troop levels. He also reduced tours of duty for our soldiers from 15 months to 12, but with a cruel caveat — it doesn’t apply to any troops currently in Iraq or those deploying before August. Olbermann rips Bush for saying troop morale would plummet if we were to lose in Iraq by not fulfilling HIS goals, pointing out that some 120 soldiers committed suicide last year alone, and for them, the war is already over.

It seems that Bush is not only a liar, but also stupid enough to think that the American people are still buying it. Only a small minority of his faithful drones remain, the ones who not only believe Bush is somehow a blood relative of Jesus Christ, but who also believe any limp puppet (like the unfortunate sacrificial lamb, Gen. Petraeus) that Bush runs out to read a manuscript of lies prepared by the Whitehouse. One of the saddest parts of this ongoing tragedy is that Bush actually believes “Mission Accomplished“.

Turn the volume up, get your toes ready to tap, and have at it. This is especially for my friend Tamarika, an avid Obama supporter in Philadelphia.

[A big flip of my voting lever for Annatopia for publishing this right where I could find it. I challenge everyone who is in favor of change in our country to grab this and publish it also. This is one we cannot play too much or too often until the battle is won…]

Doing what I do, supporting customer networks, requires a lot of butt-time in my trusty Subaru Outback traveling around the Greater Nashville Metro area, sniffing out problems to fix. Occasionally I see something of vital interest that is granted documentation in these pages, but most of the drive time is routine and humdrum. To puncture the tedium, I listen to a lot of sports talk radio, which is as good in this town as anywhere in the country. There are three stations that I surf through, but most of my time is spent on my favorite, 104.5 The Zone. Their on-air personalities are the best — well informed, covering a wide range of sporting activities and events, articulate and personable — and they have the strongest signal of any, always available wherever my adventures take me.

What’s that, you say? You think the words sports and articulate do not belong in the same paragraph? Well, keen observers, you may be right in general, but not with the specificity wherein I dwell. To be sure, there are some jocks that have pursued post-playing careers in broadcasting, who demonstrate with every parting of their lips and movement of their tongues that the selection committee for Rhodes Scholars has not erred in omitting them from those prestigious awards. Some of the language is so colorful that I note it for relaying on to you, both of my readers. Here for your reading pleasure is a small sampling of what I have heard recently. Enjoy…

• A team or player that is not intimidatable…

• A team or player that out-athleticed another…

• A player has great quickness of speed…

• Both players can talk trash like Charles Barkley, but so-and-so can out-Barkley the other…

• The ubiquitous ath-uh-lete … used by many, perfected by Coach Doug Matthews on 104.5 The Zone…

• This one is used repeatedly (substitute football, baseball, or any other sport for basketball): A player has good Basketball IQ…

• Every player and coach and analyst declares that the way their team can win the game is to execute…

• … the dramaticness of the crash … (4/5/08 — Doug Matthews, talking about a NASCAR crash. I am not putting him down. Doug has forgotten more football than most people ever know. I love the guy, but he does use some language at times that makes me think and go … hmmm …)

• And from the master analogist of the sports world, one of the most articulate, intelligent, and highly respected sportscasters anywhere, Mark Howard of 104.5 The Zone, right here in Nashville, comes this nugget from a recent discussion of how the Nashville Predators had overcome so many non-game and off-season obstacles to make the NHL playoffs: People don’t want to hear about the labor pains, they just want to see the baby.

In all sincerity, I believe 104.5 The Zone and The Director, George Plaster, are to be commended for assembling a stellar cast of personalities that inform and entertain Nashville area sports fans every day. In addition to George and the aforementioned Mark and Doug, the list of inmates and regular guests includes Frank Wycheck (yes, that Frank Wycheck, former Titan of Music City Miracle fame), Kevin Ingram (impersonator par excellence), Willie Daunic, John McClain (of the Houston Chronicle), Darren McFarland, Coach Eddie Fogler (during basketball season), and others. Collectively, they are the best. And as George Plaster says, you can Book It!

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair. — Douglas Adams