sometimes the random titles are not so random. i worked late for the first time today at my job. that has to be a record of some sort, almost two months before i stayed pass the allotted hour.
it wasn`t completely unwarranted, i took some time during the day today to go to an appointment [more on that at a later juncture] and i stay in to make up the hours which was fortuitous cause i needed to finish up as much of the job i`m working on to send it the client to peruse. i can`t say for approval because so much info is still missing, i`m not sure how likely we are to make our deadline but the immortal words of men in the trenches everywhere “mine is not reason why, mine is just to do or die”.
i also had my first fun paste up experience this evening. i loathe paste up, i can do it, because when i started in this business that was the way; but i hate the spray adhesive on my fingers, the trimming, the foolish mistakes i tend to make when i`m doing it, forcing me to do it over but in an office this small, you do your own paste up. i managed to avoid the spray adhesive and staple it together, but i think when all is said and done next week i`m going to have to do it anyway to send a dummy to the printer.
two entertaining, albeit frightening tales of the department of homeland security.
round one:DHS vs Montserrat refugees
round two: DHS vs Ted Kennedy
and this is supposed to make me feel safe?
i was a child of the 80s but thank god there are no pictures to prove it. even without the general fashion faux pas that were the 80s, i was the guy who`s mother dressed him, well she was paying so i really didn`t have much choice. although i`m still not sure how i convinced my mother spring for the powder blue suit and espadrilles for my high school graduation.
after i began making my own money, my first serious girlfriend made it a point to find me a tailor. when you have an ass as high and round as mine it`s extremely difficult to find pants off the rack. my other problem at that age is i was tall, thin, with no shoulders; so i also needed to find shirts. all psychoses aside she helped shape my wardrobe and what she didn`t help with, my first wife finished the job.
over the years, i`ve grown; in more ways than one; my shoulders have filled out, i no longer have `bert` arms and i`m more comfortable in my own skin. i can actually dress myself without embarrassing or causing my companions to have some sort of ocular failure. although vic loathes the bright orange t-shirts that i possess, but i think that`s more via association with UT sports than anything else. the orange shirts are a holdover from 2000 when i decided that the navy, grey, black and khaki that primarily made up wardrobe needed to be changed for a more colourful look.
we have official left aohell, after three months of trying.
this account has had an interesting history, i activated it four years ago when i was coming to meet vic for the first time. i was doing website management and needed an account i could dial up from anywhere with and so began a four year relationship than only soured when i tried to leave.
well that`s not quite true, when i came back to Trinidad in 2001, i wasn`t able to check mail with great regularity and discovered on of the many things that pissed me off about aol. if you don`t check mail via the aol client and save said mail, they dump it from their servers, but i stuck through because the account was useful to have, i got email accounts for my mother and daughters and vic.
in the last year i realised i wasn`t using aol to dial up and the real email we were receiving there minimal, so we switched to the minimum package and after i moved here this year we realised that particular $5 a month could be better spent on coffee or food porn rather than displacing electrons with spam.
now begins the saga, i called one fine day in May to say we wanted out; and this is where it begins to resemble an abusive relationship; i told them i had broadband and i wasn`t particularly happy with the service and i wanted to leave. the person on the other end of the phone, begged and pleaded and cajoled me into giving them another chance, for the next three months on their dime and to avoid the pathetic whining on the phone, i caved. about a month later we receive a letter asking us to confirm that we want out, on our dime no less. we fill out the letter and send it back, thinking it`s over and done with.
as if. about a week before our `free` three months for staying on up, we get another letter asking us if we`re sure we want to cancel. duh. on Wednesday night we get a call asking us if we want to return and i finally discovered the key to being rid of aol forever.
tell them you have mac, i told the guy all the software they keep sending is for a PC running windows and i have a mac, and the conversation went like this
“we don`t support that platform.”
“so i have no reason to come back then?”
“no, i guess not, goodbye.”
free at last. although as of this morning i could still use the newly implemented POP3 access to check my mail.
edit
as of today, monday, my account is disconnected including my access to the IM service, but luckily i had all my aim contacts saved in my mac.com account which supports the aim protocol.
i think that was the motto of my high school education. in Trinidad we follow the English school system, that is seven years of primary or elementary education, then an entrance exam to get attempt to get into the high school of your choice. there is automatic placement into government run high schools depending on your scores but the parochial schools are believed to have a better quality of education.
apparently i was a brilliant primary school student, everyone expected the world of me, so they pushed me. they streamed me through my last two years of school to get in line for taking the exam; back then it was called Common Entrance, now it`s call the Secondary Evaluation Assessment or some such tripe. i sat the exam a year earlier than i was supposed to and aced it; scored in the top 97% of students in the country and was on my way to St. Mary`s College, one of the top schools in the country. St. Mary`s College or CIC as it was called, is a catholic boys high school.
i think i started resting on my laurel at the orientation session. it`s not to tell a roomful of 11 – 13 year old boys that they are the best and the brightest in the country, whatever semblance of humility there was in those little ego maniacs goes right out the window. or maybe that was just me.
i spent the mandatory five years on cruise control, getting by on natural intelligence. my ego got the better of me at the end of my third year; when you chose the subjects that you want to do for the rest of your school career; i dropped computer science, because i didn`t think they could teach me anything i didn`t already know, i was an idiot.
at the end of the five year stint, there is an series of exams, like the ordinary wizarding level exams in Harry Potter. my subjects of choice were French, Spanish, Caribbean History, Geography, English Literature and the mandatory English Language and Math. i just managed to scrape passing grades for everything except Spanish which i failed spectacularly and the English subjects which i passed as spectacularly as i had failed Spanish.
there was a point to this post somewhere but it`s seemed to have escaped me, i may come back and clean it up later.
i`ve noticed a lot of people getting their panties in a bunch over the election observers here in November, i find that tremendously amusing. there is a delicious irony to this.
for years in developing countries around the world the US has sent `observers` to monitor elections, in too many cases to mention there have been direct interventions in the politics of sovereign nations. not as spectacular or direct as an invasion in some cases, but attempted coups, strong arm tactics; both on a individual and national level, all of these are in the repertoire of US administrations in the developing word.
so having election observers here is an appropriate case of the chickens coming home to roost. whether people here care to admit it or not the US believes itself to be the police force of the world, although in truth it`s more like a security guard service; because the police would be beholden to respond to all complaints, security guards only respond to complaints related to the interests they are hired to protect.
to take the security guard analogy a step further, this particular firm believes itself to be above the law. this is a subject that is near and dear to me, the most recent former president of Trinidad is one of the people who helped conceive and create the International Criminal Court. it`s bad enough the US refused to be one of the signatories, because it would mean any US forces on `peace-keeping` duties accused of crimes could be tried in a court outside the US, but a number of developing countries were threatened with sanctions if they signed.
this an either or scenario, either the US wants to embrace it`s role as the guardian of the planet with all the associated pitfalls or adopt an insular policy and let the world deal with it`s problems on it`s own. i mean you can`t just stop with Iraq, if the freedom of the Iraqi people was the primary concern, what about the peoples of the Sudan, Korea or any other country on the planet where a dictator is oppressing their people, a precedent has been set here, the job has to be finished right?
this is not a criticism of this administration, this is criticism of the inconsistencies and vagaries of American foreign policy. i can talk about this with some clarity and accuracy, i`ve lived on the other side of the fence, i`ve seen it at work.
for more than a year, i`ve been playing with one of the coolest electronic toys, it`s called iscrobbler. it’s is a plug-in that keeps track of the songs played by your favourite music player and posts them to a server. it works on a variety of players on a number of platforms and is still free.
but you`re probably wondering what is the point of having another bit of info about you online; as side from the cool shit like that RSS menu on the right side of this page [near the top] that shows the music i`m listening to pretty much as it happens without any diddling by me; is hosted by a site called last.fm
last.fm is a personal radio station. i have close 30Gb of mp3s, i don`t feel like taking the drive with all this music to work everyday and i`d rather not put my entire music collection on my work computer either, last.fm is like having my mp3 collection with me, without the stress and a few surprises.
over the last 13 months i`ve submitted close to 9000 tracks to last.fm, so they have a pretty good idea of my musical tastes and even if you don`t have the time or the inclination to go through all that trouble you chose three artist you`d like to hear and they`ll find you a station.
unlike other radio streams you can skip tracks you don`t particularly like, you can click the love button if you`d like to hear more of the same and there is a ban button for songs like the ketchup song that you wish to never hear in life again.
AS and last.fm have gotten a lot of press in the last couple of weeks in wired but their servers are up and running strong and sign ups are open. JS-development implemented my rss feed and had mentioned making it accessible for the rest of JS users but at the time, AS wasn`t accepting new sign ups. i don`t know if this feature will be accessible to all JS users in the near future now that everyone can sign up for an account.
[edit based on a comment i received]
i should clarify, last.fm doesn`t host or share music, they facilitate the sharing of music streams with people similar musical tastes as you self or based on your selections. the only file you ever receive from them is the initial file that allows your mp3 player to connect to their servers.
we got our official notification notice on saturday in the mail, two of them actually. what`s interesting about this approval, upon reading it, i get the distinct impression that they are unaware that i`m currently resident in the US.
this frightens me a great deal, this is the department of homeland security, the people responsible for keeping borders safe. we have filled out multiple copies of the same forms, i`ve been photographed and fingerprinted at least four times at their behest and our expense in the last six months. we provided them with copies of our lease agreement, insurance policy and letters from friends not more than three months ago and they are talking about sending a copy of this notice to the consular office responsible for the beneficiary [me] to process. i`ve done everything legal and above board and they`re clueless, what does this say for the people that don`t want to be seen?
