Engrish from other countries

If you haven't seen it yet: http://www.engrish.com

This latest is from the Novell backup forum, and to be fair, the sender is a Spanish speaker, but it's still dang funny:

Subject: Server toot when Backup and Logger screen caracters

Message: Hi, when backup the server, this toots on logger screen appears this message on atachment.

~grin~

If anyone has ideas on what "toot" translates to, please leave a comment! It's basically all i can do to not reply to the post with something like "yeah, i have the same problem with my server when i feed it indian food. i would recommend beano. phew!"

nip/tuck - who is the carver?

Ok, I have to admit i am totally addicted to nip/tuck on FX network.

Who is The Carver? Here's my guess:

Sean is The Carver. Why? Because he's a fruitloop. How can Sean go to jail and the series continue? That's what Quentin is for.

Who do you think it is and why? Leave me your comments!

Thought of the Day

Give a man a match and he's warm for a minute, set him on fire and he's warm the rest of his life.

Yeah... it's been one of those weeks. Actually last week was too.

Why do telemarketers choose to be so stupid?

First of all, let me say this: I do not hate all telemarketers. I do not think they are evil. I do not think they are all stupid. Which is why I entitled this post with "choose to be so stupid" because it must be a choice.

Secondly, let me say that I work for a company who sometimes provides leads to telemarketers. I suppose if I thought they were evil, that would make me a collaborator to evil, which I may very well be at times, but I don't think so in this situation. Evil should be more fun than where I work. Anyhow, as a part of what I do, I regularly submit "test leads" to our clients, some of which invariably end up at the call center, despite being marked as tests.

Some examples of chosen telemarketing stupidity:

I received a call last week for the "Testonly" family.

A female telemarketer called wanting to speak to "Test Donotcall".

I regularly receive mail for "Hoser Slutskaya" "Test Tester" "Testy Testaroni" and the like.

Now I'm thinking if these people bothered to take 3 seconds to read the words that would be imminently coming out of their mouths, they would have maybe noticed they were BOGUS? It just scares me that that's the kind of concern and care being taken with personal information. It's just stupid.

I'm going to start submitting test leads with names like "Ima Retard" and "Kay Cole" and "Whatchootalkinbout Willis". Those should be fun phone calls. If you have non-vulgar suggestions for me to use, please leave them as comments and I'll be happy to report back how hard I laugh when I get a credit card offer for "Mr. Seymour Butz".

P.S. Yoga is going ummm ok I guess. I think it's going to take more than 8 classes to get me over my Calvinist tendencies. :(

Don't Try Hard, Try Easy

So i have this problem with being innately Protestant.

Am I saying i am a religious zealot? No, but i suppose if i was religious, i'd be a zealot. I'm talking about the "Protestant work ethic" that somehow got instilled in me without me knowing. You know it: If it isn't hard, it isn't worthwhile. Hard work will get you where you want to go. Your value is determined by how hard you work. You must prove your worth by working hard.

This is what i am talking about:

RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD IN ONE MINUTE*
Taoism: Shit Happens.
Hare Krishna: Shit Happens Rama Rama Ding Ding.
Hinduism: This Shit Happened Before.
Islam: If Shit Happens, Take A Hostage.
Zen: What Is The Sound Of Shit Happening?
Buddhism: When Shit Happens, Is It Really Shit?
Confucianism: Confucius Say, "Shit Happens."
7th Day Adventist: Shit Happens On Saturdays.
Protestanism: Shit Won't Happen If I Work Harder. (see?)
Catholicism: If Shit Happens, I Deserve It.
Jehovah's Witness: Knock, Knock, "Shit Happens."
Unitarian: What Is This Shit?
Mormon: Shit Happens Again & Again & Again.
Judaism: Why Does This Shit Always Happen To Us?
Rastafarianism: Let's Smoke This Shit.
Southern Baptist: Send Us Money And Shit Won't Happen.
Christian Science: Shit is in your mind.
Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens.
Atheism: There is no shit.

*i borrowed this from somewhere else, i did not write it. don't send me complaints.


So anyhow, the reason i bring this up is because i am embarking on a plan to work less. Yes, you heard me, i am going to cultivate some slacking. For example, this morning, i took my laptop computer back to bed with me, worked for about an hour and then napped for another hour.

BAD!!!

It was kinda refreshing tho. And nobody knew or cared except me. So what's the harm?

Also, starting next week, i am going back to yoga class, but instead of kickass ashtangapowerhothard yoga, i am doing beginner hatha yoga with the idea that i now have at least two hours per week scheduled to do something EASY.

it's strange how worried i am that i will be able to do something easy. i'll keep ya posted.

to my friends and the President

to my friends from New Orleans:

I am worried about you. Please get ahold of me. You can come stay here as long as you like. I pray you are safe. Please call me or email me!


to the President of the United States:

Which is more important: our problems here at home, or somebody else's problems far away? That's right, bring some troops home from Iraq so we have the resources available to get NOLA cleaned up.

Katrina is a Bitch

Having a number of chums in New Orleans, I am pleased to say that they are all ok and evacuated safely to Texas (Texas? ok). They are planning on being back on Weds, so we'll hear about the damage then. I sure hope everything isn't too damaged and that the worst of it didn't hit them straight on but a bit east. Usually NOLAians laugh at hurricanes and have a party.

Running away to Texas <> party

This deserves a haiku:

Making her landfall
Katrina stumbles in drunk
Hurricanes taste good

how to drink gin

Spent a weekend a while ago with some friends visiting from out of town. Some of the more memorable quotes:

R on his prescription antibiotics label:
"It says here 'May cause drowsiness'. What it should say is 'Don't make any goddamned plans'."

M in the midst of telling a story about getting arrested for a DUI after driving home through town and running all the stop signs and lights on the way to her house. As the cops pull up behind her, she's all friendlydrunk then as she realizes she's getting busted, she's 0 to superpissed in 2 seconds:
"And I'm sitting in the front of his [police] car, and I'm seeing all this electronic stuff, and I'm thinking to myself [vengefully] 'I'm not feeling so good!'"


M calling R from our house to explain what we've been doing while he's been working:
"I've been drinking gin and I am still drinking gin, but it's in orange juice and I can't taste it, so that's good and I'm pretty happy with that."

How to improve the Midwest US

i had a job recruiter call me today. i recently revamped my resume and reposted it on monster.com and dice.com, as we constantly one eye open technical people tend to do, and everytime you renew, you get a spate of calls from headhunters wanting to cram your square peg into the round hole opportunity they have open that day. Don't know COBOL and it died out 10 years ago? I have a GREAT position for you programming in COBOL! In Kurdestan! For less than you are making now!

Anyhow, this poor sod made it clear pretty immediately that he hadn't actually READ my resume or understood it, but just had skimmed it and decided to call, so I thought i'd toy with him.

(after making it clear that the opportunity he had in mind was doing something i dont' want to do in a place i don't want to do it and after telling him we want out of the midwest entirely)

recruiter: i'd like to see if you can come in one day next week so we can meet and i can get a better idea of what you are looking for and we can do some skills assessments. me: That's going to be tough for me to accomodate. I am not in Omaha, and would have to take at least half a day off work to do that. recruiter: (sounding surprised) where are you at? me: i live and work in Sioux City, Iowa. (my address is clearly noted on my resume, and my resume is not marked as confidential. furthermore, he didn't realize he was dialing long distance when he called me? HELLO!) recruiter: oh, that's going to be more difficult then. The opportunity i have is in Omaha (NE). me: yeah...? recruiter: what sort of compensation can you think of, other than a salary increase, that would incent you to relocate to Omaha for this opportunity? me: well, i think installing an ocean and adjusting the climate to something tolerable would be a good start. then we can talk about relocating most of my friends and family. recruiter: ummmmm......

The absolute funniest part is that he called my man, who is also posting his resume, you know, since we're moving and he's gonna need a new job, asking the same questions. What'd my man say? "I believe you spoke to my wife earlier about relocating to Omaha..."

It's possible he could hear me laughing in the background. :)

Attention recruiters: that's what you get for not bothering to read the resume I posted or for not understanding the words in it. I worked real hard on that resume, calling me up and offering me things i clearly stated i don't want or don't know how to do is just going to result in pain. For you.

The War Against TARE

you must watch all three:

http://www.thetoiletonline.com/leaveit.htm


Do not watch them at work unless your work doesn't mind words like "passionate butt sex" and "fuckhead" coming from your computer. Or at least turn the speakers down.

Cameraphones suck

When i first got my cameraphone, i was thinking it would be awesome. What i didn't realize is that pretty much everything funny i want to take photos of needs a zoom. Does my cameraphone have a zoom? hellno.

What happened to my real digicam, you ask? Suffice it to say that I will never buy another Fujifilm camera again. It broke. Again. And now that it's fully out of warranty, it would be cheaper to replace it than to fix it.

So anyhow, the reason i feel like bitching about this is because i saw the greatest dumbass sticker on a car yesterday, and couldn't get a photo of it to prove it.

(in the classic HD logo layout, but some dinkus must have done this themselves)

Harley Davidson Motorcycles
Born to be riden

It filled the back window of the car: a shitty old Pontiac LeSabre, blue.


If you don't see the problem with this, go beat your head on the wall 200 times and call me in the morning.

Train your kids for fun and profit

i just pulled a fantastic mind fuck on our youngest, age 11.

he's colossally lazy, so we have to constantly nag him to do his chores and to do them correctly and to go outside and get some activity and stop watching the boob tube or playing nintendo and such. everyday, over and over, same shit.

so he and i had a little talk the other night because he was whining to his dad that i was mean to him (by enforcing these things) and we discussed how he doesn't like being nagged and i don't like having to nag him and agreed we were going to work together on a solution that made us both feel better. unfortunately the next day this somehow magically got translated in his head as "aly said she was going to be nicer to me and i am not going to do anything differently because it's all her fault"

So i came up with a great analogy to explain it to him:

he has this pocket knife collection that he cherishes so i said: "imagine a situation where i borrowed your knives without asking and got them all dirty. and then didn't put them away, but instead i just left them laying around the house and outside and wherever. imagine you asked me nicely several times to not do that, but i just kept doing it."

he looked stricken (perfect), so i said "that would suck and make you feel really upset, huh?"

he nodded vigorously, still looking unsure, like maybe i was actually going to do this thing,
so then i drop the bomb...

"that's how your dad and i kinda feel when we have to nag you about the same things you've been told over and over again everyday. does that make sense to you?"

ding ding ding!

i sure hope it sticks, but not holding my breath :)

Harry Potter Spoiler

I usually don't join in on spoilers and i never told a soul about The Crying Game, but this is just too much fun to miss out on:

In Harry Potter Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Ron Weasley dies.

There you have it. You knew someone died, now you know who.

It's Ron Weasley, Harry Potter's best mate.

The state of pain management in America

"tough shit" pretty much sums up the philosophy here.

I have a rather major ear infection. My ear canal is swollen shut. My face is swollen up on one side enough to be deforming. It's all red and hot. I am stone deaf in my right ear.

AND IT FUCKING HURTS. A LOT.

Like knitting needle in the ear hurts. Really exquisite pain. Is it childbirth? Well, no, but it does hurt a lot. I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can barely talk, and I can hardly think. I have been sitting around crying. Because it hurts.

So I call my doctor to ask for some pain medications in addition to the antibiotics she gave me this morning which should take effect in 2-3 days.

She won't give me anything.

I'm like "what the FUCK?!"

She suggests ibuprofin or tylenol. Like i haven't already tried that. Duh!

So i say to her phone nurse: "So I am here telling you I can eat, or sleep, or function and am sitting here crying because i am in extreme pain, and you are saying you will not do anything to help?"

Yup. I summarized that one correctly. Ding Ding. Winner.

So now i am still in pain AND royally pissed off. Now i have to find another doctor who is possibly interested in not making their patients suffer unneccessarily. Grrrrrr...

Of Starbucks and Retards

Our local grocery chain, HyVee (we call it "HyPay", or "bigfuckinV"), just opened up a new store down the hill from us, and inside that store they have a Starbucks kiosk.

You'd think that would be a good thing, but the thing about these kiosks is that Starbucks has sold their soul to Marriott or whoever the local operator of food services is, in this case, HyVee itself, so the employees are not Starbucks employees, but HyVee employees.

About who works at HyVee: they tend to employ like 60% of any given town they reside in, and this includes students from age 14 up, as well as basically any retard you've got handy. And I don't use that term as an insult. I mean "retard" in the classic sense, not just "seemingly stupid person of probably average IQ". You'll find them all bagging or stocking at HyVee.

So moving back to the Starbucks kiosk at HyVee...

I walk in (after having received several not very good at all drinks from the other local competitor Caribou Coffee, see prev post) and order a Grande Iced Skinny Latte. I used to be married to a girl who was a manager at Starbucks back in the good old days: I know how to order my drinks with authority. As a result, I also know enough about coffee to be a snob, but I'm not as bad as some.

The cashier repeats my order very slowly to the barista, who is writing it on the side of a cup.




Grande...



Nonfat ...



Iced...




Latte.



Ok, so we have the order in. The barista turns to the cashier and says:

"A latte. That has expresso in it, right?"

I cancelled my order.

Does that make me a coffee snob after all?

Why Hurricanes are better than Tornadoes

Again for, SouthernWench, why hurricanes are so much better than tornadoes. Stay away from Nebraska, no matter what they tell you drunken fools:





view image full size in new window



Hurricanes are slow. You can get out of the way. You can buy beer on the way out. You have days to plan.

Tornadoes just drop out of the sky and f*cking kill you. No beer. Game over.

I rest my case.

Thing One and Thing Two

Wow, it's been a two-blog worthy evening, lemme tell ya. This really almost should be posted on my friend SouthernWench's blog http://sirvansouthchick.blogspot.com/, but since that's hers and it's about stupid things people have said and these are merely funny, here goes:

Thing One
We were in the drive through at Caribou Coffee (Starbucks' local Northwoods competitor) and my man is driving, so he's the closest to the "order here" speaker. I read from the menu what I want as the barista crackles over asking us what we'd like. My man says "just a moment" to the barista and looks to me for my order. I tell him I'd like a "Medium Decaf Lite White Berry with Blueberry" (what is this?).

*COMPLETE BLANK LOOK OF HORROR* comes over his face.
Then he starts laughing and says firmly: "I am not ordering that."

"Is it too gay?" I ask. I know how men feel about frou-frou drinks.

"UmmmYEAH." he replies flatly. "I'm not ordering a 'gay white dingleberry with blue balls'" and in a tiny airy voice, he adds: "decaf".

So I yell my order from the passenger side of the car, laughing. By now the barista is laughing too, and we realize he's heard this entire exchange.

Gay white dingleberry with blue balls. Decaf.
You can't get that at Starbucks, buddy.

Thing Two
We are driving home from previous coffee incident and my man yells "Look! A kidnapper!"

I see on the sidewalk a man walking with a stroller and a young child. Looks like a normal family walk to me, no kidnapper van, no handcuffs, nothing fun at all. I look at my man quizzically.

"Look at what he's wearing." He advises me. "No woman would ever breed with a man who wore black socks with white tennis shoes. Especially not twice. Those are not his kids."

Laughing hysterically, I note that this poor fellow is indeed wearing with his shorts black crew socks with white tennis shoes.

:::::::::::::::::shudder::::::::::::::::

And you thought WOMEN were catty :)


At least we didn't get carded for root beer.

Arubaiku

Poor Natalee...

I wouldn't listen
To a theory from someone
Who was named 'Twitty'

see the real news story here