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Episode II: Attack Of The Randoms

Another day off, another rambling post. If you kids get us enough readers, I could have every day off and be here every day to entertain you.

Anyway, I saw Episode II today. I will be a good boy and avoid being a spoiler. I do have to say that this movie kicks ass. It is not perfect, but it is far better than Episode I. Go see it and perpare to be amazed.

The new job is proving to be far less profitable than I had hoped. When it comes down to it, I am a far better tech than a salesman. I am good at answering questions, not pushing people to part with money. It turns out that my sales are so bad that the Operations Manager for my department is actually planning on listening in on a couple of my calls to see what I am doing wrong. I don't know if this is standard policy or if this is just her looking out for me (we have been friends for a couple of years). Either way, I am hoping more and more each day that a position opens up in IT.

On that topic, I am finally getting off my ass and making appointments at local tech schools. The whole reason I took this job was the tuition reimbursement was to finally give me the opportunity to study programming. It is about time I started looking into taking advantage of it.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that my dog is way cool. Last Sunday Laura and I were over at the In-Laws with Adi. At one point, my brother-in-law gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. Out of nowhere, my cowardly, submissive dog, who normally goes belly up if you so much as look at her, barked at him. I just think it is cool that she overcame her fears to jump to my defense.

Anyway tomorrow it is back to the pit. Hopefully I will be able to srop by again before my nex day off. If not, I will see y'all Thursday.

Promote the Weirdos!

   I have a dream - it's a dumb dream but it's all mine! My dream is that I figure out a way to make IWDC a paying gig - that it pays me enough where I can spend at least a good portion of my day writing clever posts and giving clever responses to comments and email. It pays me enough that my other freelance projects can fill in the rest of my normal yearly earnings. Right now we have made a total of $0, in fact I'm in the red - about $30 in the hole for the website and domain.

   I hear you out there; you think that since the bubble has burst and the dotcoms have died that this is a major pipe dream. Well, you would be right. But, when I'm sitting in front of my boring PC at work, doing my boring job, admining a boring voicemail network (how George Jetson can I get?) these are the dreams that keep me going!

   The key to doing this is promoting the site - I need readership! I have gotten IWDC on every search engine I can. All of our friends in the blog community have blogrolled back to us. We have a Link Exchange banner, and the more times we show a banner, the more times our banner gets shown. And, our readership is growing slowly. But, I want to add to that!

   Wanna help? I was hoping you would! The key to readership is advertising. But, that's expensive and we have no money. So, I need to do this guerilla-style! I've talked about stickers - I think they are a great thing! If you want a few - just email me your snail mail address. I already have two interested parties, I'll bulk these out all at one time. I plan to print up a bunch, I just had some new ideas today!

   But, we need more than that. Is there a college campus in your area? Is there a part of town where they allow you to post flyers? If there is, please do me a favor, grab one or more of the .gifs off this page. Take it to a photocopier, blow it up as big as you can and post it everywhere you can! Sure, use the office photocopier and paper - just don't get caught! Be creative! If you do something cool - let us know! Take pictures if you can!

   The point isn't to get rich off this, the point is to get the word out to the people! I want the masses to know we're here. I want them to come out, post, and get involved! Ultimately, anything you contribute to IWDC will benefit you - if nothing else you will have more comments to make fun of!

Just what we need ...

   As a reward for all of your future hard work in helping us promote this site,I have added a new Feature - a web cam! Yessir - you can now watch me in all my html-creatin' glory! Enjoy!

Posted by: Jericho - 5/17/02 - 1:14 am -

Is there anything worse than Monday?

   No, really, can anyone think of anything worse? Sure, on an overall scale, single events compared, a Monday doesn't compare to say 9/11 or The LA Riots or Final Fantasy. But, the horror of Monday, it's true, heart freezing horror lies in the fact that they just keep coming! Wave upon wave, they never end, they never tire, they never let up. You get fifty-two of them in a year - if you're lucky, some years are worse. But, it doesn't end there, the next year just brings another load of them. Just when you have defeated one, you know that there are years and years of them ahead of you.

   The average lifetime in the US runs a good seventy years. That means you can expect three to four thousand Mondays in a lifetime - depending on luck. I don't know if I would want to do something fun four thousand times in a lifetime. I mean, think of your favorite movie - have you watched it four thousand times? Do you think you will in your lifetime? Why do we put up with Mondays, then?

   I propose the end of Mondays! There has to be a better way to do this. Let's look at an alternative. The problem with Monday is that it's five days from Friday. So, maybe Mondays could be improved if the week were shorter. Start with a five day week. Three working days followed by two days off. Go ahead, laugh, there was a time when the 40 hour work week was laughed at and people who thought they should have Saturday off were called lazy.

   This is a great alternative! Think how you feel on Wednesday - you only have three days of work until the weekend - in this system, that would be the start of every week! The second day of the week is already the middle! By the time you would normally have a Wednesday, it's the weekend!

   Let's look at the bigger picture. Our current calendar is a mess! Some months are 30 days, some 31, then there is February! Why twelve months? Why Seven days in a week? I'm sure someone had reasons for this at the time - but, oy! It's confusing and silly. The 12th Monday of the year can fall nearly anywhere - you have to be a math whiz to figure this stuff out.

   I propose a simplification. Start with the five day week. This gives seventy-three weeks in a year. So, divide the year in half. Each half year is begun with a holiday week. This isn't as crazy as it sounds - remember it's only five days and we have removed all the random holidays. I hear you out there, 73 doesn't divide in half real well, what about leap years? Simple, the first holiday "week" of the year is actually 2 weeks or 10 days long. In leap years, it's eleven days long, making those holidays even more special! Think of all the holidays and days off during November and December - I don't know about you, but those weeks are less productive than any others I can think of. It would be better to just give people ten days to celebrate whatever social or religious holidays they want and get it over with. Then if you must have months, you have 14 months with 5 weeks per month.

   You would never need to buy another calendar again. The first of the year will always be the first day of the week, the last day of the year will always be the last day of the week. Each month will end on the last day of a week and begin on the fist day of a week. Silliness is gone! School children will play games where one says a number between 1 and 365 and the others will say what day of the week that falls on!

   Leap years will have that eleventh holiday day, it wouldn't even be a day of the week - it's just known as Leap Day. People will give out Leap Day cards and Leap Day gifts - things you would only give to someone every four years! Holidays should be considered free days, they wouldn't even factor into the counting of the year. The first "holiday week" of the year could be called Springfest and the Second could be called Summerfest. Catchy!

   We could get rid of the BC/AD and BCE/CE crap and start counting again. So, I suggest LY as the new calendar name, for Logical Year. We would have to rename the days and months, might I suggest Firstday, Secondday, Thirdday, Fouthday and Fifthday as new day names? They are simple and make more sense than our current scheme. We could go with Firstmonth, Secondmonth, etc. as well, but I'd like to see months (if we MUST have them) named after people. I mean, we currently have months named after Roman emperors (Octavius and Augustus ring any bells?). So, the new scheme would look like this: The Second Fourthday of Einstein, the 59th day of 15LY. The Fifth Fifthday of Ghandi, the 200th day of 5LY. The 7th day of Springfest, 7LY. Leapday, 12LY.

   There would still be about 210 week days in a year, compared to the current 250 to 260. Plus, calendars would be simpler, holidays would be more logically placed, and I bet people would need fewer sick days and "mental health" days because there would be less stress in the system overall - which produces a happier, healthier, more productive employee. Monday blahs and Fridayitis would nearly disappear.

   Ah, well, no one will ever go for logic!

Posted by: Jericho - 5/13/02 - 9:52 pm -

Oh! Just lick that off!

   The other morning I'm on the bus heading off to work. Morning is certainly not my best time of day. The last thing I want first thing in the morning are any shocks or anything that will turn my stomach. The bus ride on I-5 is usually wild enough, thank-you-very-much!

   Just before we hit the highway, near the last stop before the highway, there is a billboard. They must have just changed it the night before. On it was a picture of Steven Tyler with a Milk mustache. Next to him is the caption "Drink this way!"

   I wasn't wearing my glasses, so in my disbelief I ended up staring at this for quite some time - facilitated by the fact that the bus was loading passengers. Once I was sure of what I had seen, I was quite torn. I didn't know whether to laugh myself into a coma or dry heave all the way to work.

   Folks, this is Steven Explicitive Tyler of Aerosmith - a man who is frequently reffered to as one of the "Toxic Twins" - is this really someone you want to represent something as wholesome as Milk? Should we really be taking "drinking" advice from this man?

   Steven, buddy, how many times have you been through rehab? How many of those were for lactose dependancy? Sheesh!

We get hits!

   I've said it before, I love Google! We get some of the most amazing hits from that search engine, here is but a small sample:

• info on who ate oatmeal cookies during the civil war
• nachos project 3 solution - in Chinese!
• how to clean dell laptop - in Spanish!
• forced bra training - The Hell?!?

   Along the way I misspelled the word "public" as "puplic" - we have gotten four hits on that word and I'm not about to take you down that sick and twisted road!

Posted by: Jericho - 5/12/02 -11:06 pm -

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