Death Star Survivors

2008-06-02T16:29:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it's not butter.

2007-10-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

Reason #69 My Work is Fun

Just had a customer walk in with a used cellphone and said "This used to be my son's phone, but it's my wife's phone now and we can't get in to the voicemail."

So I tried the default passwords and neither worked, but before I called the cellphone provider to reset the password I asked him how old his son was... he was twenty.

I tried the password "6969" and it went right in! Bingo!

The customer was surprised, "What was the password?" so I said "6969" and was going in to change it, when he replied "Cool, we know what it is. Thanks!"

He didn't want to change it! Cool!

2007-09-27T22:01:00.001-05:00

Mmmmmmm, Pancakes!!!

Really short one, so here goes: You know how they use non-food items in stock photos of food? I talked with a guy who did some photo shoots for pancakes and he said they used motor oil instead of syrup on his shoot.

Mmmmmmmmmmm!!! They are even more delicious now!!!

2007-04-01T10:42:00.000-05:00

A little blurry due to excitement surely, but here I am with Elvis Presley. Well, an ETA actually (Elvis Tribute Artist). The interesting thing about ETAs-- and this is not too far-fetched being Palm Sunday/Easter-- is some ETAs sincerely believe the spirit of Elvis enters them during a performance to lend a hand. A spiritual thing. (He probably enters them later when they're in the breakfast buffet line loading up on biscuits and gravy, too.) This ETA is "Mike" and he's from Canada. The tournament was at the Mall of America and Mike was third place. This sucks because Mike truly had the best voice of the final three-- the other two sounded more like SuperKareoke. Mike runs an HVAC company in real life so we talked tech later-- he's a big fan of the late 60s Moncriefe Central Air units: "Their condensers are rugged and bulletproof," Mike claimed. "They'll truly stand the test of time, much like Elvis's Hawaii performances." Yeah, everything was in terms of Elvis or furnaces with Mike. "When I sang 'Love Me Tender,' all I had to do to get in the zone was think of how Carrier's Infinity Series Heat Pump has the maximum Heating Efficiency combined with a volume level as low as 70 db!!!" Right on, Mike! (I mean Elvis!) TCB

2007-03-19T00:27:00.000-05:00

"Hostess CupCakes, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos: A New Theory for a New Age"

So much has certainly been said about the holy trinity of snack cakes-- Hostess Cupcakes, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos-- that I almost didn't even bother writing this, instead deferring to the incredible body of work in society's libraries. But I must say something, if only for my conscience and so I can get out of bed and move on with life: Ho Hos and Ding Dongs are basically the same, and Hostess Cupcakes very similar.

I think Ho Hos and Ding Dongs are just different injection molds and packaging, and while the Hostess Cupcakes may have a SLIGHTLY different mixture, once it's chewed up in your mouth it's probably the same as the others. No idea on SuzyQs... they don't have the outside frosting. More research is needed. Now I can greet the day! (And figure out who sells SuzyQs locally.)

2007-03-07T13:52:00.000-06:00

"Once a Newsbabe, Always a Newsbabe"

I'm still a little confused on the whys and hows, but 1980s KSTP 5 Newsbabe Kirsten Lindquist is a friend of my business partner Dawn. Kirsten was visiting our town recently and gracious enough to pose for a photo with daddy.

Kirsten's site: http://www.kirstenlindquist.com/

2007-03-02T22:06:00.000-06:00

Mmmmmmmmmm-otorola!

Ok, I've stared at this lady holding this phone for the last six months at work. The Motorola W315 is a very popular cellphone, and for many reasons:

It's free

Doesn't cost the customer anything

You don't have to buy it

It's a flip

Free

I'd like to think it's all because of this lady, though.

2007-03-02T21:32:00.000-06:00

Merciful God in Heaven Above!

I missed the announcement that McDonalds had a double Filet -o- Fish available. When did this come out? Why wasn't I notifed? Where was I? Am I the last to know?

Here's the thing-- up until I saw this with my own eyes I only thought of the double Filet-o-Fish as something from a Sci-Fi novel, or the punchline if you were looking for something fantastic, such as this quote by Stanley Kubrick in 1972 regarding his just-released "Clockwork Orange":

"Mr. Kubrick said that film criticism, good or had, rarely affected him. 'No reviewer has ever illuminated any aspect of my work for me,' he observed. 'The only thing remotely possible to altering my view would be if McDonald's announced they could make a Double Filet-O-Fish.'"

New York Times -- 4th January, 1972

See? See?

A double Filet-o-Fish was just fantasy, speculative, or from the future. I remember fondly episode 78 of classic Star Trek, where Spock hangs out in that cave and falls in love with Mariette Hartley:

"I have eaten a Double Filet-o-Fish, and enjoyed it."

Spock, episode 78 "All Our Yesterdays"

See? See? I'm just still amazed. Really. I knew it would happen someday, but not in my lifetime. It's kind of like Christ coming back to earth. Why now? Why is our generation so special of the hundreds of generations before and the doubtless thousands more generations to follow that Jesus would return NOW?

And by the same token, why are we blessed with being able to order a Double Filet-o-Fish at McDonalds? Why is society (humanity) NOW ready for this? What other surprises are coming? The mind reels.

(I only pray our children never take the Double Filet-o-Fish for granted.)

2007-02-19T18:48:00.001-06:00

"Everyone has their 'Thing'"

It happened to me again, as it does a couple of times a year. Am I even shocked anymore? Nope-- I'm honored. It's nice to know people recognize what I'm apparently good at, and respect my experience and hard work and the countless hours of research, analysis, spreadsheets, plotting and graphing...

I got a text message from a good female friend (who is in a relationship) that just said, "Will you make me a porn DVD with good amateur porn on it?"

I'd be more surprised and shocked if I hadn't been asked similar questions before. Today my quick answer was definitely not yes. "I erased all my porn a few months ago" (true-- every now and then there's an elemental need for rebirth and reinvention), which didn't work. I then said, "I'd do ANYTHING for you, take you to the airport, help you move, lie under oath... I just don't wanna make you a porno DVD," but nope. She was persistent.

As I said, this has happened before. Once at a previous company of about 30 employees the president summoned me to his office (this is perhaps around 1995/1996). He had me sit down, then went over to shut the door. Not good. He was the kind of president that was friendly enough, but I never had more than a chatty "how ya doing?" relationship with him. A pessimist like me thinks this is about my flatulence "problem" (I call it my superpower), but instead he opens with this line: "John, I've got a weekly poker game with the guys and I want to show them some Internet porn. Where do I start?" Cool. We talked about subscription models, thumbnails, links, advertising, etc etc. Anything he asked. He was old enough where I could see him needing to ask where to get started. (When I returned to my cube my co-workers were curious what he asked me, and I just said "He told me to quit farting.")

Another time a co-worker (female) called me out of the blue to ask about a sexual term. (I wanna say this was around 98/99, so I dunno if http://www.urbandictionary.com/ was big then or not.) I explained as best I could, she said "Gross!" and there ya go. That was an interesting phone call for me, because it meant she was more comfortable asking me than her husband.

Anyway, so tonight I looked at the video clips on my hard drive from the last few months and picked a few non-threatening ones (nothing with nuns, monkeys or ballet outfits-- I'll save those for the guys in my music group), threw them in a folder and am burning the disc as we speak. Hope they are what you're looking for dad! Ooops, I mean "female friend!"

2007-02-18T12:05:00.000-06:00

I've really been enjoying the show 24 this season... first time I've watched it. Fox.com is so courteous to put all the episodes online (along with my guilty pleasure Prison Break), so I can just click on an episode after work on laptop or wherever and bob's your uncle!

2007-02-16T10:08:00.000-06:00

"Typewriters: Do you have any with an LCD display?"

I was talking to a friend on the phone last night and commented I was going to St. Paul to meet a guy on Tuesday. That sounded suspicious, so I had to explain a little more. I said, "Oh, it'll be quick... I just need to get something from him." Then I realized, gah, that sounds even more crazy. "I met him on Craigslist." Not helping. So finally I explained, "Look, I'm going to meet this guy by his car Tuesday night near Grand Ave and he's going to give me two typewriters." And my friend could not stop laughing. I waited 5 minutes, 10 minutes, got my long white beard out, all that stuff. Still laughing.

That's the reaction I get from people when I say I'm interested in typewriters. They say, "What the heck... TYPEWRITERS?" I'm not obsessed with them (yet), but they've always fascinated me. And I've been pretty consistant, always using the manual kind. There's satisfaction to me knowing that they don't need power... just paper, ribbon and machinery. So I was changing my inside dog kennel around a few months ago, and saw I had used a typewriter (in its case) as a thing to hold up one of the walls. I hadn't used it in five years or so, so I opened it, read the manual (1950s manuals ROCK!), got some paper and started pounding out some stuff: Christmas letters, thank you notes, one-page correspondence. It was very satisfying.

There were a few downsides. I noticed the letters on page weren't uniformly filled-in, it did take a little extra effort to push the keys down, and I type fast so I was getting jammed up occasionally. If only they had typewriters that fixed all these issues!

Enter the electric typewriter! Now it turns out they've had these for a long time, since the 1920s even, and they were made WELL into the 1980s and beyond, so I had some studying to do. I remember the name "Selectric" appearing again and again, so I did some searching and yeah, THAT's the one. That's the typewriter that changed everything. (It's the one with that little golfball thing on it.) The Selectric kept coming up and being referred to as classic design, groundbreaking, and as the New York Times said in 1961, "The new IBM Selectric is Piss-in-your-pants exciting!!!"

Here's a link to some Selectric stuff: Selectric Wiki

Wanting the Selectric, I went to Craigslist and posted in the looking-to-buy area. The responses started to come in and most of them didn't get it, that I wanted a "Selectric model 1" Some of the replies were "I've got some 3s," or "I've got a 1985 smith corona with built-in dictionary" etc etc. Gah. Does this same thing happen with cars? If I ask for a '57 Chevy do people say, "I don't have a '57 chevy, but I do have a 1991 pontiac that has airbags!"

The funniest example to me was a lady who said, "Why would you want a selectric 1? The Selectric 2 has a backspace which erases the last character you entered." That's nice I thought, but I can also use Microsoft Word if I want to do anything serious.

Like The Rock says, you've gotta know your role. And the role for my Selectric is to just turn on once in a while and type a one-page letter. Maybe I'll get a model with a spellchecker someday

2007-02-13T23:20:00.000-06:00

My god, I waited until 2007 to watch Pee Wee's Playhouse. Connect the Dots! La la la! Connect the Dots! La la la!