Douch Bag Test
Aug 31, 2008 Rants
If you own a pickup truck and live in Florida, I’ve got bad news for you.
Florida drivers are apparently known around the country for coming in two flavors: blue-haired grannies driving 45 miles on the interstate with the left turn signal on for 20 miles and senseless idiots riding on bumpers at 90 MPH… in the rain… at night. As a long time survivor of the Florida motorways allow me to confirm this in the most certain terms. Pretty much everyone down here drives like a moron, the only difference being some drive way over the speed limit and some way drive under.
However, there is a special brand of douche bag that I have been particularly annoyed with lately: the Florida pickup driver. Apparently before a person can drive a pickup here they are required to have a portion of their brain removed. The portion removed seems to be the one that controls respect for other human beings. Once removed, the Florida Department of Big’Ol Vee-hickles will fill the empty space with a secondary testosterone gland.
They drive as if the other vehicles on the road are somehow inconveniencing them. They weave trucks made for pulling horse trailers in and out of traffic like a sports car. Unfortunately, since that big ass dualie of yours doesn’t exactly turn on a dime, the rest of us have to ride our brakes when you’re around, because you sure as hell won’t look out for anyone else. They have mirrors so large they could be used as part of a solar farm and yet never even glance in them until *after* they’ve merged. For some reason they routinely seem to drag their 12 foot wide asses into the right lane to pass right at the on ramp, and screw the guy trying to merge, Mr. Truck-Owning-Douche-Bag has got to get to church on time!
If you’re sitting at home saying, “I’m not a douche bag and I drive a pickup truck,” only three possible explanations.
1. You don’t live in Florida
2. You’re horribly, horribly wrong and are, in fact, a complete douche bag.
I’m sorry. I’ve got the results of your Douche Bag test right here and… I’m afraid it’s bad news.
Timing is Everything
Aug 30, 2008 Humor
So, a couple weeks ago I was speaking to an otherwise intelligent but very, very Christian co-worker about the fact she is letting her teen daughter go to the launch night for some new vampire book. I expressed a bit of surprise that she was letting her daughter go to such secular festivities. Her reply: “I don’t believe it, of course, I’m a Christian, but I believe that my kids are smart enough to tell the difference between reality and made-up nonsense like people rising from the grave and living forever and that sort of nonsense.”
Maybe if those pesky vampires waited three days before rising from the grave?
Some Handy tips from your neighborhood Credit Union Representative
Aug 20, 2008 Tips, Tricks & Tutorials
Image by Getty Images via Daylife I’ve been remiss in posting lately and it’s largely because I’ve been spending a lot of time with my always demanding customers. For those of you that don’t know, I work as a manager in the customer service department of a credit union. During these many extra hours of work, I’ve come to one conclusion: approximately 99% of the public is incapable of dealing with their finances without making an ass of themselves.
Even under normal circumstances, the calls I receive are far from organized or intelligent. Now, however, with all this induced panic, things are even worse. So, as a public service, allow me to offer you some helpful hints on how to deal with your finances.
1. Have your account number ready. This is pretty much the bare minimum you can bring to the game. At my credit union, the account numbers are 5-6 digits long. Contained and accessed by these 6 numbers, for most of my callers, is every dime they own. The very least you can do is remember it. It’s not that damn hard! And the next one of you that says “I knew you were going to ask for that,” is going to have my headset shoved directly up your nose. If you knew it, why didn’t you have it?! God damnit!
2. If you don’t know that, at least know something. The number of people that call who only know their damn name astonishes me. I’m not looking up your name because, in case you’ve noticed, Roberts and Smith are fairly common names, douchebag.
3. Don’t call unprepared. If you got a letter you had a question about, have the letter. If you have a receipt that you thought was wrong, have the receipt. If you put me on hold for 10 minutes, the call may mysteriously disconnect. There are literally hundreds of other people behind you.
4. Don’t lie. We can tell. Don’t tell me that you were logging on and checking your account and suddenly something happened to our website and it logged you off and locked you out. I can see all your attempts. I can see your lies and your shame. Careful or I’ll tell everyone in the church you donate to about your sinful dishonesty… and all the porn rentals.
5. Don’t think you are going to get anything accomplished by being a dick. I usually am far less helpful when people act like tools on the phone. I’ll offer hints and tricks for those people being civil. We also can and will hang up on you… and with a great sense of satisfaction. So watch the F-bombs when you screw your account up.
6. English is the language of the land. “Um, I needs to axe me some inquirimies about mah checkins accounts,” is *not* English, Darantavious and/or Latreya. For the love of all that’s holy, it’s called a “Checking” account. And please don’t say big words when you can’t handle them. The word is “inquiries.” Also: people who can’t say “ask” correctly should be forbidden bank accounts… and air. It’s not that hard of a word!
7. “I have a question about some fees…” And that question is: can I have them back? I know it and you know it. Don’t beat around the bush. Ask me politely so I can say no and you can get all pissed and hang up. Oh, and rich people? You are not entitled to them back. No, I don’t care if you will close your account. The last thing I’ll get is your $30 for the check you wrote while knowing the huge deposit hadn’t cleared yet, asshole. And, yes, I am the supervisor, so be quiet. The answer is still no.
8. When we do make mistakes, and we will since we’re made up of actual people, don’t repeat “this is unacceptable” over and over as if fixing the problem is not enough. I’m going to fix your problem… I am not going give you a big cartoon sack with a dollar sign on it for your trouble. When I tell you of a mistake I will also detail how we’ll be fixing it. Say you understand or that you hate us or that you’re taking your money and be done with it. I can only fix the mistake; I can’t fill the empty hole in your soul.
9. When you don’t get your way, don’t threaten us. We will do what we can to make the most people happy, but that doesn’t mean bending our rules just because you’ve been with us 5 million years or have 2 million dollars here. When people say “I guess I’ll just have to take my money and go elsewhere,” over a $15 wire fee we’re all secretly thinking, “Yay! Go! One less call for me!” Please give us a call back and let me know what you think when you find out that every other financial institution in town has higher fees.”
10. This one is really important. You are not a banker. I don’t care who you know or who you worked with or what you read. I will tell you the answer, you will accept it. We will be done. Amen.
So please, the next time you pick up the phone to call your personal financial institution, remember these few guidelines. Remember that the man behind that call is someone like me and that he has done nothing to earn your hatred.
Unless it’s Bank of America. Fuck those guys.
Think of the children…
May 18, 2008 Rants
I have spent a great amount of my life doing some sort of customer service. I’ve done it in person for retail, tech support and food service. I’ve rendered similar services over the phone for both computer tech support and for a financial institution. I’ve done so both as a front line agent and as a supervisor in both cases. Between all my various customer service jobs I’m guessing I have somewhere around 15 years of customer service experience and management. Based on the greeter who sat us at Chili’s today, I believe the time has come for me to share the three following tid-bits with any currently involved in customer service or thinking of it.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t use a voice that isn’t your own. We can tell. We can always tell. When your fake voice is roughly 5 octaves higher than normal, we can *really* tell. This also means trying to use a fake “Disney”-style voice when you’re 16 or 17. I pray you listen, Chili’s girl: whoever told you that ending every sentence higher than you started was
1. A complete idiot and
2. Likely hadn’t figured on you being so blindingly stupid that you’d let your voice steadily raise in pitch… forever. For all I know you’re still rising in pitch.
Also, using the fake voice really loses its intended effect when as soon as you leave our table you turn to speak to one of your coworkers in a clearly audible and relatively pleasant alto. Your voice is fine. Use it. Don’t try to trick us into being happy because it won’t work with that voice… and not just because our ears bleeding really kills the dining experience. Be pleasant, not hypersonic.
Lastly, the fake smiling: you are required to stop it immediately. You simply cannot break into a face-shattering, teeth-clenched fake smile so painfully obvious the blind can see it the *exact second* you pass a customer and not expect them to notice. You also can not stop it the exact moment they are beside you. This technique isn’t just useless, it’s borderline insane. Firstly, in case you haven’t noticed, most people’s vision is not limited to 2 feet in front of them. Secondly, every person in the restaurant can see this and each one of us thinks you are suffering from a horrible, debilitating head injury.
Please, each of you, the next time you answer the phone at your job or greet-and-seat your table, think of the Chili’s girl and how she would change your dining experience. Please, think of the children… and their ears.
Carpentry for Geeks
Apr 2, 2008 Tips, Tricks & Tutorials
I like making things.
This may sound a bit childish. After all, who doesn’t like to make something out of nothing, but with my recent experiments in construction, I find that I really enjoy working with tools and wood in my hands.
(pause for school-boy giggling)
I’ve not done anything truly complex. Everything is constructed of rectangles, no fancy curves (other than my highly inaccurate wood cutting). So far, my faux-carpentry consists of: the wood frame for our raised garden, An entertainment center and a simple CPU stand from the scrap of said entertainment center. While none of these is high art or fashion, I think they’re all stable and sturdy. In the eyes of this uber-pragmatist: that’ll do, pig.
I’ve toyed around pretty extensively with digital 3D construction and while I’ve never been an expert, I’ve found I really do like the precision of it. Every piece fits precisely together with every other piece to the pixel. Every cube is perfectly flat and perfectly cut. Every measurement is as precise as I set it to. As I began to move from the conceptual to the real, I decided to use the skills I learned in 3D work to the real world, after all, it’s the same concept, right?
Not quite. Allow me to tell you the 10 ways that real-world building differs from 3D design. Based on experience, so they must be true.
1. Straight Lines Seldom Are
Circular saws do not make straight lines, you see, if the hands that control them are not accurate. This is something you don’t have to deal with in Bryce or 3D Studio Max or any of the 4 million other 3D design software packages. When I make a cube in Bryce, it’s a perfect virtual cube; three perfect 90 degree angles at each corner. With my 1337 circular saw skillz, straight lines are almost all perfectly curved, and while my math is accurate enough that the correct angle should exist, it almost never does. Also important: you have to line up the same part of the saw at the marks you painstakingly measured each time. Which brings us to…
2. The saw actually removes a line of material as it cuts.
In reality, it takes away about a 16th of an inch each pass. I think it’s important to say this again: the saw actually takes away material from the board you’re cutting thus making it shorter. This is not an aspect of using the saw I’d seriously considered until I started putting together all th boars I’d cut for the Entertainment center. Making cubes (or any shape for that matter) takes little more than a few clicks, 4 shelves? Dupe it 4X! In the real world… well… good thing wood is flexible.
3. I suck at Measuring.
Seriously. Example: I spent quite a bit of time marking and measuring, remembering some ancient adage about “measure twice cut once.” When assembly time came, however the 4 12-inch boards above varied by as much as a eighth of an inch not counting the 16th of an inch they would be off because of the saw blade (see number 2). In 3D-Land all I have to do to make sure a cube is 28 inches high is to take the scale I’ve decided on for pixels to inches and multiply by 28… Tada! My 3rd grade math tells me my object should be 28 pixels high! I win! The ugly reality? I lose at measuring.
4. Sanding, while easier than good texturing, is considerably more time consuming.
I spent a lot of time working with textures on my 3D work, and I found it basically oiled down to finding the right texture to start with and just toying with it till I got something like I wanted. This could take a while, granted, a couple hours, but once it was found: Bam! Repeat ad nauseum. Enter sanding. Sanding basically takes rough, ugly wood (plywood in this case) and makes it pretty and smooth. It does this in a slow and tedious progress wherein you must pass a quickly vibrating object over every square inch of each board a few times… and then repeating the process for each of 5 progressively finer sandpapers. This takes approximately 400 years and is arguably the most boring process in the history of man.
5. Screws are your enemy.
They are not interested in your success. They do not want to be a part of your little construction fun and games. 3D objects don’t need to be connected, they’ll hang in space in the precise location you want them, atom-close to the object next to them, for all time. Real objects must be forced together with sharp, spiteful, objects designed by a masochist who hated carpenters. First, they pretty much won’t go into anything tougher than tissue paper if you don’t pre-drill the hole. Even then, they tend to wander along their own path, usually taking the fastest way to breaking the surface of the board your screwing into, normally in the least attractive way possible. It will either attach the wood or destroy it, and it’s largely a matter of your will versus the screw’s.
6. All plans should be considered “fluid.”
Before I began the entertainment center I modeled it completely in 3D. I knew the exact measurements of every piece. This plan lasted until all the boards we cut, at which point I began to realize the 5 things above. I went back in one night after swearing at the pieces and redrew everything on a few pieces of paper, in pencil, with measurements scribbled in the margins. These measurements were the correct ones. $2,500 computer full of bleeding edge tech=wrong, $0.15 writing implement using 5000 year old technology=right. This is a tough lesson for a geek.
7. Wood comes in many thicknesses.
And neither of the 4 foot by 8 foot boards I purchased was ½”. This fact is amazingly important to take into account with using said wood to build things. In 3D land I can make it as thin as I like. In real life I have to buy the wood as available and re-plan the item to take these realities into account. Simply pretending that the boards are “close enough” won’t cut it.
8. Wood is a solid.
May seem obvious to all upright walking mammals, but not when you’re used to 3D Design. I can pass an object slightly through another object, just to make it look good. In the real world, I have to actually cut something to make it shorter and no amount of forcing will make the wood pieces pass through one another… not even a little. Interesting note, however: seriously heavy sanding is next best thing, if you don’t mind the board being a little wavy. I tried this today. Chalk one up for the fat-man!
9. Large physical objects are large… and heavy.
If I’m building a 3D statue of Zeus made of Steel, it weighs nothing. I can move it anyway with a minor flick of my hand. Spend 5 hours cutting wood and sanding it, however, and when it comes time to start holding these objects together to fasten them and you become keenly aware of their weight. Wood is heavy! Heavy + tired hands does not = precise, even if the boards were actually cut to the proper length.
10. Clean up
In the zany an unrestrained world of 3D design, one does not end up covered in wood chips and dust. A designer will never end up with his fingertips caked in dust while texturing. He will not nearly get hit in the eye with a wood-chip, while setting the length of the wood beam he’s creating. His mouse will not accidentally almost cut through it’s own cord when setting it down just after creating something. Not so much with the real world… if you thought sanding sucked before, sweeping it up sucks much more.
But despite all of this annoyance seemingly built into carpentry, I really, honestly do like it. It’s unspeakably cool to actually use something you made every day and to know that you made it and that you cut each piece with your own hands. I’d love to do more and the CPU case is officially the first sub-structure of the some-day desk I plan on building. I still have a lot to learn, especially about finishing the projects, staining and glazing and all that, but I’m still looking forward to it.
After all, I have a plan… and a fluid one at that.
