yduras

Yahoo has launched it's new 'beta' console, and, predictably enough, so has Hotmail. Being the sort of person I am, I went to see the beta.

Both of them take you to a little customizable 'portal' home page thingy and require another click to get to the actual inbox. Now, if I want to visit portal information hosted by these services, I can go to my.yahoo.com or my.msn.com. That's what they're there for! If I am going to mail.yahoo.com or www.hotmail.com, it is because I intend to read my email!!!

Why is it so hard for these people to figure that out? There is no good reason to put a barrier like that between the user and their email inbox.

Just annoying, is what it is.

Last night, I got to send a one line email to a sales rep reading only "You really owe me for this" and a link to something I fixed that is totally not my job (and he knew better than to ask in the first place.) To this I get a reply:

Thank you very much yduras! Looks great! This is a great help. What’s your favorite restaurant (corporate national) to eat? Thank you again. Good day.

So, the question is, what chain restaurant that offers gift cards should I name?

I posted a question to Ask Metafilter: http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/48358 (text of thw question under the cut)

( Read more... )

One of the commenters, quite sensibly, suggested picking up a book on herbalism, to avoid unfortunate combinations. Anyone able to suggest a good book to have on hand?

bethynyc's post reminded me of the existence of menstrualhut, and I swung over there for a few moments. It's not topical to me right this second, but still a nice female space, and I ducked into one of the conversations.

I was struck that many of the posters mentioned they'd only been menstruating for a few years, placing me in a position of comparative experience. "Holy cow," I thought, "I'm a crone!" Except, in retrospect, I'm not really at the cronehood stage. It's that I'm skipping the Mother phase. I don't mean that I don't nurture other people's kids, but that's not really being a Mother in the whole mystic journey sense.

When you're not planning to spawn, what is it that you are, between Maiden and Crone?

It's still Customer Service Week.

Tuesday swag to date:

• Astonishingly, none.

Tip of the day:

People skills are vital when delivering exceptional customer service, but they must be joined with the knowledge of your products and services in order to produce positive results and satisfied customers.

Yesterday's swag went to grandbuddha - I'm sure he'll come up with a use for it.

Today there was some minor drama as the Customer Relations department is going out for drinks on Thurday, an outing that our group has been included in during past years' CSWeeks. Turns out it is a budgetary issue, not a snub.

So, I need to have more oral surgery. Because it never ends. I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, which means Thursday 14 September 2006. This is good in that Friday is the company picnic anyway, so I'll be missing that much less work accrual. (I've had stuff like this done before. Surgery is Thursday a.m., I'll be a medicated lump Thursday p.m. and I'll be recovering Friday.)

The thing is, this is the sort of thing where I'm going under general anesthesia and won't be allowed to leave under my own power. I'll be going in nineish and probably needing pickup noonish, which lets out people who have to be at work that day. (That 'noonish' is kind of a loose time). I'll be asking around among friends in the real world, too, but... Is anyone available to be 'on call' that Thursday and give me a lift home to convalesce?

Oh, that's paintball weekend after that. Don't know if I'll be attending. I'm not going to be very good company then. Of course, I went to one of the Distant Mirror LARPs the day after surgery once, so it's not unprecedented.

cptsarcasm mentioned last night that he wants to do a run out to see Crank tomorrow night. Most of the time, these expeditions wind up at the Regal Commerce Center 18. Showtimes for Friday are 1:00, 3:10, 5:35, 8:00, and 10:35. Five-thirty is too early and then-thirty is too late. Thus, barring the choice of an alternate theater, I expect the expedition will aim for the eight o'clock showing.

Thus I predict:

• Date: Friday, 1 September 2006
• Film: Crank
• Showtime: 8:00 pm
• Theater: Rte 1 Regal

Feel free to comment or complain or whatever.

I actually feel kind of lousy right now. If it were tonight, I wouldn't bother with the movie (although I don't mind co-ordinating). I'll see how I feel tomorrow.

In the good news/bad news category, at least I can charge the time off for the really expensive and probably unpleasant oral surgery I'll need as sick days.

Speaking of personal days, I have left for 2006:
Personal Days: 5 | Sick Days: 9 | Vacation Days: 2.5

The sick day count is wrong. My two from a couple weeks ago haven't hit yet. So really it's 7 sick days. Of course, I'm not one of those people who uses sick days for anything other than actually being sick, so there's no real danger of running out by the end of the year, even with surgery.

I don't have any specific days in mind for the fall. Maybe I should use that half for the Friday of Southern Exposure so I do not have to fight rush hour Turnpike traffic. The week between Christmas and New Year's is a popular choice and would only take up 4 days.

customer: Why isn't [this product] generating business for me?

I did not say: Maybe you talk to your customers the way you talk to us.

Yesterday, at work, we recieved an email telling us Space heaters are ... not allowed .... Please note that any space heater found in the building will be promptly confiscated. If you have a personal space heater, take it home with you today so that it will not be confiscated..

Now, I should point out that it's the middle of friggin August in New Jersey!

I'm not saying they overcrank the a/c in here (although the pattern of my mood posts from work might imply something), but if you've got a problem with people using space heaters at their desks during the hottest month of the year, maybe it's time to re-evaluate the building temperature control.

Just sayin'

Pluto, we hardly knew ye.

Also, zombi lovers, a metafilter post with many zombi links

For one thing, I am feeling a little better, but I also just clocked my temperature at 99.7. It's a new record!

That's not really why I am going to hell, though.

It's because I just saw an ad for this on tv:

In case you cannot see the image, it's a commemorative coin where you can make a little 'twin towers' popup.

All I could think is that you need to take a catapult and fire this quarter:

to see if it can knock over the popup.

I am now officially going to hell.

This morning I thought maybe I'd slept in a draft.

Now I think I ahve a head cold. Ick. I am stuffy and not nearly tired enough to be this lightheaded.

I can't be sick. I have a backlog from being out last week.

Good news -- I can pick up the plates for my new car today. Which is good, because the temp place will not stick to the window.

Surreal moment of the day: Email from an attorney who's alternate name in his email is set to read 'cornholio'.

I blinked. I read it again. It still says 'cornholio'.

This person practices law.

I'm not 100% sold on the color and text effects on this icon, but it's a pretty good start. I don't actually caption icons all that often, but this phrase just kind of leaped out at me when I saw the image.

So I've driven my brand new car to work every morning this week. I clearly need to get those clear plastic mats for the driver and passenger seat floors. The carpeting's a bit pale. I am sure in a year I won't care, but for now...

Gencon is next week. In order to not work on my character sheets earlier this week, I created this nifty Convention Listing at upcoming.org. Really, check it out -- my OCD is mighty when I am avoiding other work!

The display via google calendars does not 100% work, as events with times on them (as opposed to all-day events) show only on their first day instead of across all days of the event (they still show on the agenda view properly for some reason). It seems to pick up new events, but even when I went back and corrected events to be all-day multi-day they stay displayed wrong. It's still pretty cool, though.

Be amazed at my amazing sorting and categorizing skills! Plus, it's something other people could add their events to, if they wanted...

I had a physical today. My doctor likes to do them about yearly. Turns out I was a few years overdue for the every-10-years tetanus shot. So... I've been shot! I've also been given an EKG, had some blood taken for bloodwork and etc. Apprently my heart and other internal organs are ok, and we'll hear back about the bodily fluids.

I also have a scrip for a mammogram, as paternal gradfather died of cancer of the everything, maternal gradmother died of pancreatic cancer, and mom died of breast cancer. That makes two out of four grandparents and one out of two parents, which is apparently a risk factor or something. Who knew? (For the boys - women are normally supposed to start getting the tit-in-a-vice procedure at age 40. For women with a high risk, we're supposed to start earlier. Yay, me.)

Now I need to find a radiologist on my plan.

I went to see A Scanner Darkly on Sunday, largely to avail myself of the free air conditioning. It was in the "art film ghetto" screen at the Cranford theater. Most often I go there with aiskon, and, normally when we wind up in that back screen, we drop the median age by a decade or two. This time I dropped the median age a bit, until two small groups of young men came in. By the time the movie was over, I was the oldest person there! There's a lot of drug references, and much of the movie is made up of people who are various flavors of stoned having conversations. I'd expected to find the animation style annoying, but I stopped noticing it fairly quickly. It's a fairly literal recreration, and if you know the original source material was written in the 70's, you can kind of tell what was and wasn't updated.

I got a new chair today! My old one was broken, and they did an ergonomic assessment. They say tomorrow I get gel wristpads for the keyboard and mouse. The old broken one was too high and this one is a bit low, as I am having trouble with the spin it around physics. I can never remember which way is supposed to be up.

At my last maintainance, the nice mechanic at VIP Honda suggested that I not put any more money into the car. It's a 1995 CIVIC coupe with more than 160k miles on it, so maybe it's about time. It might be nice to have air conditioning again. I did a bit of research and seems that what I want is a 2006 Honda CIVIC LX coupe (MT). Which is, essentially, the exact car I have now, just a little over a decade newer. Go fig.

I've never had to finance anything before, which will be wacky. Apparently, though, if I finance with the Affinity Credit Union, they'll send someone out to do all the negotiation for me! I'm actually still waffling on whether to get a pre-approval and then go back to the dealership and negotiate, or to just take them up on it.

The subject really says it all.

We'll just have to hope for good traffic karma. Google suggests this route and quoted 46 minutes, but Google doesn't know from traffic. What with leaving at 5:30, It will be a little close making it to the theater in time. Fortunately, I have aiskon's cell number and I can update her on my progress and ask her to pick up a ticket for me. We generally hit the Omega after. I can get her dinner or something.

I haven't started Chapter 7 yet. Chapter 6 didn't have a book flinging moment, but it did have a "that can't be what you meant to say". The passage is a little long to type in, but the upshot is that we are ambassadors to the world from God and if we acclimatize too well, we are traitors and... You know, I thought I'd enjoy a chapter entitled "Life is a Temporary Assignment".

I finished Chapter 5 of the Purpose Driven Life today (I am kinda sorta doing the chapter a day, but leaving it at work, so only on work days).

I had another book throwing impulse at the end of Chapter 3, as our narrator tells is that in our post-death interview, "God won't ask about your religous background or doctrinal views. The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to trust and love him?" Hello! How is that not about your religious background?

In other news, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest opens on Friday. There seems to be some interest in an expedition.

We always seem to wind up at the Regal Rte 1 (Regal Commerce Center 18 | 2399 US 1 South, North Brunswick, NJ) and I am tired of fighting it. Showtimes are 10:00 11:45 12:15 12:45 1:30 3:15 3:45 4:15 5:00 6:45 7:15 7:45 8:30 10:15 10:45. My money's on 7:45. [ETA: But aiskon's is on 6:45.]

Confirmaton to follow. Any questions?

I had a rather small birthday haul this year, although the staff from Dad was rather spiff! I shall have to find a working camera and post pics.

I did come back to vacation to find a gift from a co-worker of Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?.

There's a handwritten note inside the cover: "yduras, Best wishes on your B-day. I really believe that this book will be really useful to you. Enjoy it. God Bless you, - co-worker"

(you all figured out that I replaced the names there, right? I mean, it's not like my co-workers refer to themselves as "co-worker" or address me as sah-ROO-dee or anything.)

According to the preface, one is meant to read a chapter a day and absorb. I have now read the preface and two chapters. I've already had one book-throwing impulse, in chapter one, where our author goes on a bit about how nobody really knows the meaning of life, you can only speculate. Why, even philosophers admit they can only speculate. And then our author goes on to claim "Fortunately, there is an alternative to speculation about the meaning and purpose of life. It's revelation." And I had that same impulse that makes you want to yell at people on tv. Revelation is just speculation with mystical trappings. Just because it came out of your head and you feel good about it doesn't make it verifiable or magically more valid.

I'm cool with the whole "just looking inward leads more to self-absorbtion than purpose" concept here, but the "It's religious and I say so, so it's totally true" bit rather grates.

Chapter One was yesterday. After Chapter Two today, I am supposed to meditate on the fact that God made me just the way I am, it's like that totally on purpose, and this is a thing to be embraced.

Lets see how far I can go without getting fed up and just skimming the thing (or putting it away to gather dust).

That's a funny thing, as I am only online for an hour or so every other day. I have to make it up to town to get online at the bookstore. This is probably good though.

We had the first bit of our family gathering last night. The big one is today. We celebrate my great aunt's passing, and Dad's 70th, and just being family. I am now exactly half of Dad's age. Scary. N is going out and buying all manner of seafood for tonight. It will be all sorts of much.

It's been cold and rainy, so I've not been in the lake yet. I might go in anyway after I go back down.

So far, still looks like we'll be driving back Tues and Dad will be heading back to NM on Wed. No cell service here at all, forgot to bring the charger, and battery is low. Not sure how I will call aiskon to let her know when I'll be in. Suppose email is possble. How sad is it that I do not know my own house number? I'll have to hope my battery lasts long enough for me to look it up and call another way. Or maybe she'll read this...

Drove up to new Hampshire yesterday with Dad. Brother, wife, and baby were already up here. It's nice.

There's no cell reception at the camp, and no landline. We came up to town for breakfast and we've dropped in to the Country Bookseller to check email.

Sadly, there will not be pictures. I pulled out my camera and found the screen was cracked. Still, I am appreciating the cool, and the quiet, and the family. More family will be trickling in over the next few days.

I went into the city and spent the afternoon with Y, which is rather traditional.We saw A Prairie Home Companion and had dinner at a cute little Thai place.

Walking to the restaurant, we stopped in the street when we heard yelling and cheering from two different bars. We went up to one and caught a bit of the World Cup game. Naturally, we'd just heard the response to our goal against Italy. I came home and found we'd tied! Yay, us!

Now I am home and my feet hurt. Maybe later I will watch Dr Who. Does this make me a boring person?

First, Happy Birthday bethynyc.

This weekend, some people of my acquaintance will be camping. Some others will be attending Anime Next. I might hit the con one day or I might not.

Also, this weekend I will be turning a year older. I was thinking of heading into Manhattan to see a friend. Anyone interested in say, a late lunch on Saturday?