Anachostic

Halloween Scenes – Bundle Of Joy

Posted by anachostic on October 23, 2017 No comments

America is weird. Only in America could you swap out one bad thing for another in the name of salvation. In this case, Steve was approaching surrender on the idea that Halloween should not be about sugar and should instead be about gifts. Easter had been a trial run of this concept this year and his daughter, Hannah, hadn’t protested at all. A well-raised consumerist baby, Hannah was.

Steve broached the idea one night with Hannah and asked what gift she would be interested in. “BabyGoo!” Hannah had enthusiastically replied. Steve hadn’t even heard of such a thing. Was it like Slime, which came in an appropriate garbage can?

“Dad, geez. It’s the best doll ever. The most realistic baby doll ever made!” The well-raised consumerist baby was well-versed in the marketing language put forth for the BabyGoo. Steve said he would look into it, and later that night after Hannah was asleep, he did just that.

Steve learned that BabyGoo might be the most realistic doll ever, but was probably the most expensive doll ever, as well. But he couldn’t argue with the customer reviews. They were pretty much unanimous in their praise. Most everyone commented on the realism, some saying the doll was almost too real. There was a close-to-even split between people who said the weight of the doll was too heavy and those that said the weight was the most realistic part. Some reviewers said the doll was too floppy, while some people refuted them by saying their dolls were stiff. Someone was trying to organize the data and determine who had floppy dolls and who had firm dolls. Maybe there was a pattern.

The doll itself was being touted by its maker as the greatest thing ever. “The most realistic baby doll ever!” He’d heard that somewhere before. “Anatomically correct” Steve rolled his eyes. “Made with the most realistic materials available” There’s that word again, realistic. This company needs better writers. Regardless, Steve was swayed by the excellent reviews and committed to buy one for Hannah.

At work the next day, Steve showed his coworker, Shawn, the BabyGoo product page. Shawn didn’t have kids and as you would expect, wasn’t particularly interested in the idea of creepy, realistic dolls. “Crap,” Steve lamented, “they discontinued the baby girl model. It was there just last night. That’s the one I was going to get for Hannah.” Steve half-turned to Shawn. “I wonder why it was discontinued.”

“Pedophiles.” Shawn replied flatly.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Shawn!”

“Just sayin’. I mean, they say right there, anatomically-“ Steve furiously threw up his hand, demanding Shawn to shut the hell up. Shawn shrugged and took his leave while Steve took a few moments to flush that entire conversation out of his mind. When Steve had finally calmed down enough to remember that this is something Hannah wanted, he placed his order for a boy doll and returned to work.

Two-day shipping delivered the BabyGoo quickly (in two days, in fact). Steve opened up the package and startled back from the box. Inside was the BabyGoo, the most realistic doll ever. Steve did not disagree with that hyperbole at all. The BabyGoo was real AF. Steve felt himself falling down into the Uncanny Valley as the perfectly proportioned face of the BabyGoo stared blankly up at him, not suffocating in its plastic bag.

“Hannah! It’s here!” Steve called out uneasily. Hannah came running and squealed with joy when she saw the lifeless doll sealed in plastic. Steve didn’t understand this reaction at all. But Steve wasn’t a young girl, either. Hannah thanked her father with a huge hug and ran off to her room with BabyGoo.

“Well, good timing anyway since tomorrow’s Halloween,” he thought as he went back to his computer and tried to put those dead, shiny eyes out of his mind.

The next evening, Halloween, Steve and Hannah left their porch light off and settled down to watch classic horror movies. BabyGoo was Hannah’s guest of honor at the screening. Not paying a lot of attention to the movies, Hannah talked non-stop about how awesome her doll was. It turned out to be the floppy version, Steve noticed. Hannah had to support the doll’s head constantly. Just like a real baby, Steve thought. What a teaching aid that could be.

Hannah talked about how real the doll was. The skin wasn’t like skin, it was a bit more rubbery. His toes were actual toes, not just a molded foot. He had a pee-pee. Hannah thought that was hilarious. You could move the doll’s eyelids, but they tended to open on their own and stayed open. Hannah was demonstrating how to close the eyes and was getting slightly frustrated.

“Easy on the doll, Hannah,” Steve coached her. “It wasn’t cheap.” Hannah paused for a moment, then gave the eyelids one more sharp closing. Her flingers slipped and her fingernail cut the doll just under the right eye.

“Oh no!” Hannah cried. She looked at the damage she’d caused to the dolls face. It was a significant gash, and a thick liquid was oozing out from it. “BabyGoo,” thought Steve, absently.

Hannah thrust the floppy doll at Steve, who reluctantly took it. It was the first time he’d touched a BabyGoo. It was soft. It was also surprisingly heavy. He could imagine the whole doll body filled with the goo that was slowly leaking from Hannah’s inflicted damage. His mind thought quickly. Crazy glue and makeup. BabyGoo was going to have to live with a facial scar. He took the doll to the kitchen table and inspected the damage. He pushed on the cut and felt the structure beneath the skin. A realistic structure, he considered. Very realistic. He pulled back the cut and saw the white frame inside.

With a rising feeling of nausea and lightheadedness, his brain quickly identified the secret to the BabyGoo’s realism. That… is bone. No doubt. It is real. Or it used to be real and it’s just sealed up? Plasticized? And the internal goo? Was it…

Steve ran to the kitchen sink and emptied his guts. Hannah started screaming and crying. BabyGoo remained motionless on the counter, leaking thick fluid from its facial wound.

Steve wasted no time bagging, double-bagging, triple-bagging the BabyGoo and threw the abomination in the trash. Then he reconsidered and threw it in the outdoor trash. Even that wasn’t enough. It had to go. Tomorrow morning, he would take the BabyGoo trash bundle to a random dumpster and get rid of it for good. But now he had to console Hannah.

After a difficult conversation of obfuscating the truth, Hannah calmed down enough to go to bed. Steve was still wired up though. He jumped back on his computer and went immediately to the BabyGoo website. Unsurprisingly, both girl and boy models were discontinued now. The reviews had been updated. Almost unanimously one-star. The BabyGoo’s product description was also updated with a bold disclaimer at the end: “No product returns will be accepted.”

The Search Continues

Posted by anachostic on October 22, 2017 No comments

Today, I treated myself to a nice, long, hot shower. I know at least one person who would say, “fuck yeah!” and at least one person who would say, “fuck you!” to that extended activity. Showers aren’t really a big thing to me. I’m typically always a solo showerer (“Boooo!” from at least one person) and usually, I just want to get it done and get my day started.

Because of my view that a shower is utility and not luxury, you would think my showering hardware would reflect that. You’d be right but oddly, I find myself in a perpetual search for the perfect showerhead. I initially wrote shower head and quickly determined that is something totally different. (“Boooo!” from at least one person)

I don’t recall the showerhead that came with the house when I bought it, and can’t remember when I first swapped it out, but I do remember at that time I had a real bug up my ass about saving as much water as possible. I don’t really know why, since the water bill is really low and my appliances are all water-efficient. But anyway, I bought this ultra-efficient head with a shutoff switch built into it.

41uMWEd8qpL[1] I think I might have experienced this spray nozzle once before in a hotel and I was impressed with the power of the spray while it still used very little water. So I sought one out for myself. When I got it installed, I learned a few things. One is that novelty wears off. If I had stayed a full week at that hotel instead of a night, I would have learned that the sensation of the spray isn’t all that wonderful, day after day. The other thing I learned is that when I used the shutoff switch, the water immediately starts cooling, so when the switch gets turned back on, you get a blast of cold water. Nope, this is not the last showerhead I will own.

89cb9d4f-8aaa-4f18-9118-8cc0719899c9[1] In 2012 (according to sales records), I purchased a Dream Spa showerhead. This head had a major advantage in that it had a hose on it. I don’t know why manufacturers always try to suggest that you will grab the showerhead and spray all over your body with it. I just turn around in the shower. It’s not that difficult, people. However, the hose allowed me to clean the the shower much easier than a stationary head would. Being a typical guy, it was not out of the realm of possibility to run a garden hose into the bathroom to spray the walls down. I’m not saying I did that… often, but then again, I’m not saying I clean… often.

I used this head for a really long time. And I did it in spite of the fact that the shower head designers were complete idiots. What I am referring to is the nozzles. Nothing like having a dozen or so faces staring aghast at your nudity. Don’t see it?

Because the water sucks everywhere in this state and even in my house, I eventually had to replace this showerhead. The limestone and other minerals clogged up, dried out, and cracked the rubber OMG faces, resulting in a suboptimal spray pattern. So I bought another Dream Spa head, one that had even more spray patterns. Honestly, they all sucked. I’m just sticking with a simple outer ring spray pattern until I move on to my next head.

Unrelated to my head problems at my own home, a different problem was occurring back in my hometown motel, where I was last weekend. You know how a lot of faucets have tilt-to-open, turn-for-temp designs? You see them pretty much everywhere.

th1ZY50ZGS thENG70UOQ th8R1AI46X thZLT4YA0K

Well, I was pretty surprised that in the lobby of the motel when I was checking in, there was a large-type printout explaining the proper use of the shower faucet. My assumption is they had one too many people snapping the handles off trying to tilt them to turn on the water. In my own room, they had another educational piece, printed on a high-quality placard.

Contact the front desk if you don’t comprehend what we’re try to explain. Don’t break our damn handles anymore.

Now And Future

Posted by anachostic on October 20, 2017 No comments

You might think there is someone new managing this blog. But no, it is still the same person. I’ve gotten a recent “kick in the pants” to write more. You can see in my history that I’ve posted a few times a month and sometimes when nothing was going on, or when lots was going on, I skipped a month. You can also see that I’ve been trying to post consistently every weekday as of late. This accelerated publishing frequency has necessitated that I dip into old drafts and refine them for posting. Not to worry there, I’ve got dozens in the backlog.

I’ve never been at a loss for ideas, but over the years, it became a significant effort for me to flesh out an idea into a post. It’s the same mechanism I use when writing music (which also has been neglected). You start with a riff, and if you’re lucky, you have a hook. Then you have to form the song around that riff. If you have a good hook, you have to elevate the rest of the song’s parts to match the hook’s quality. If it’s just a riff, you have to hope you’ll find the hook in the creation process.

Having ideas is easy. Anyone can have them. And that’s why Twitter exists. At various times, I considered moving to Twitter because I could get ideas out without having to construct a narrative. But now that I’ve shaken the dust off, I feel more accomplished being able to express an idea and surround it with context.

You’ll also notice that I’m starting to incorporate images and hyperlinks in my posts, where I rarely did before. Actually, if you go way back to when this blog wasn’t even on WordPress, you’ll see more images. So, I’m actually going back to my early blogging days.

On a completely different topic, I recently found out that the excellent blog composing utility, Windows Live Writer, which has been dormant for years and years, finally has a successor – Open Live Writer. This utility seems to be a continuation of the original Windows Live Writer code, just updated to work with current blog platforms. At a minimum, they fixed some issues with publishing to Blogger. It’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t tried it before.

And lastly, a small announcement for the week coming up. I’ve been practicing the skill of expanding a simple idea into something more substantial and to do that, I’ve written a small series of stories. Well, they’re too short to be stories, more like tales. Since it is Halloween season, these tales are all dark. I’ll be posting them all next week. Here’s a preview of what’s coming:

Halloween Scenes – Bundle Of Joy
Halloween Scenes – Everybody Loves You Now
Halloween Scenes – Desiccation
Halloween Scenes – Lesson Of A Lifetime
Halloween Scenes – Peep Show

Burger King Bullshit

Posted by anachostic on October 19, 2017 No comments

It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten at a BK. It seems every once in a while, I have to go eat somewhere just to remember why I don’t go there anymore. Such it was in this case.

This is actually an old story, dug out from some blog drafts I had, but the story deserves to be told. The time frame is sometime in 2014. So then, I’m out of town doing some photography and I take a break for lunch. I have a strange desire to try Burger King. So I stop in and have the dumbest experience ever.

They’re a little busy, so I wait in line for a while, during which time, I consider how I’m going to order. It is always a trial to order my standard meal at BK. I want a plain double cheeseburger in a medium-size meal. There’s no number for that combo, so the order always ends up all screwed up because the counter person can never tell the difference between a sandwich order and a combo meal order. I’m going to throw another wrench into this because they have some new special fries called “SatisFries” that I’m willing to try

So I end up placing my order: plain double cheeseburger, medium-size, with Satisfries. The total is $11. As I hand over my credit card, I’m thinking, holy shit, that’s expensive. When I get my receipt, I find out why. I’m getting a double whopper, medium meal, and an extra order of Satisfies. What the fuck. I won’t care if the whopper is plain and with cheese. Trying to discuss this problem with the brain-dead order-taker has no effect. He says it is whatever I want. What does that even mean? I know it won’t be what I want. It will be what the receipt says. That’s the definition of an order. I’m holding up the line with this stupid discussion, and I don’t want to get into a huge battle with cancelling this order and placing a new one. So I place a new order for only a plain double cheeseburger. He starts to create an order for a double whopper – I see it on the register display. I start getting angry. I say, isn’t there a double cheeseburger? He says no, everything’s a whopper.

Really, now. The moron at the register puts forth a little effort, digs through the menu, and finds what I want. I pay, and the register rejects my card. Apparently, you can’t place two orders in a row using the same credit card without manager approval. WHAT?! So the manager comes over and this issue is taken care of. My receipt shows an order for a double hamburger. “Is this going to have cheese?” “Yes.” “It doesn’t say it will.” This is a disaster.

I get my first order with a whopper I don’t want and two fries. Then I get my second order. I ask, does this have cheese? The manager say yes, then stops and says, you wanted cheese? I said double cheeseburger. This doesn’t say cheeseburger. I know! While I wait for the cheese to be put on, I give my whopper to the person after me. I don’t fucking want it.

Eventually, I get to eat my food and it sucked. Very unsatisfried.

Does My Offering Please You?

Posted by anachostic on October 18, 2017 No comments

Things my cat likes:

Friskies
Feline greenies
Origen original treats
Tuna flakes from PetCo
Pop tarts
Mounds coconut
Peanut butter
Pistachios
Cake
Hamburger
McDonald’s cheese
Cookies
Long John Silver’s fish
Frosted Mini Wheats
Froot Loops (sometimes)
Pizza
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Some types of cat grass
Cardboard boxes (bonus if there is crunchy paper in box)
Bean bags
Suitcases (open or closed)
People visiting
Sticking her paws in my speaker port holes

Things my cat does not like

Spaghetti
Milk
Rice
Steak
Splashing water
Tuna flakes from other pet shops
The other types of cat grass
Paper bags (even if the paper bag is in a box)
Other cats
Stepping on bare skin
The garbage truck

This One Time At Summer Camp…

Posted by anachostic on October 17, 2017 No comments

I made a trip to my hometown, the wasteland, this last weekend. It wasn’t exactly business or pleasure. I guess it would be considered more business than anything else, though. My mom now resides in a nursing home. I don’t think they call them nursing homes anymore. They’re probably called long-term care facilities. Cue George Carlin and his anger over the softening of the English language. But anyway…

I got to see my mom a couple of times. She doesn’t have a lot of stamina for visits and dismisses visitors with a “I want to take a nap.” No problem. I don’t really have much to talk about anyway. But one thing we talked about got me thinking.

In her new living quarters, they have a pretty set schedule with meals, activities, therapy, etc. Some things are optional or semi-optional, but a lot isn’t. When she was complaining about it, I was reminded of my years at summer camp. I thought, my mom’s at summer camp, for the rest of her life.

My first summer camp was an unpleasant experience. It was a military camp far from home that ate up six weeks of my summer vacation from school. I didn’t know anyone there and I was not exactly military material. Your day was regimented into sessions, of which you were allowed to choose things like Arts and Crafts, Model Rocketry, Basket Weaving, etc. Then there were others you couldn’t, like Softball and Soccer. Then there were parades and practice parades, and inspections, and of course, meals. You always went to meals in formation with your entire division. What a show.

And in many ways, my mom’s new life is like that. Some things are optional, or a choice and some you can’t get out of. You go to meals with the same group and sit at the same table with everyone. You are going to do therapy. (They don’t talk about it, but the facility has to perform therapy or they are considered neglectful of their patients and would get fined or shut down.) There is a gift shop/concession place where you can buy things with money from your account (I had that too in camp). Other people can put money in your account for you to spend (just like my parents did for me).

So if my mom is unhappy at summer camp, it’s no different than how I felt in the same situation. Both involved being around strangers you have to become friends with, away from a lot of things that are familiar to you, and made to do things you may not feel like doing. If you’re an independent spirit like my mom (or me for that matter), it’s a nightmare.

While my mom and I discussed the summer camp concept, I finally admitted to her that I almost got kicked out of that military camp in my last year (the last of four) there. I had gone “cabin-trashing” with another camper and it isn’t really a surprise we got caught. We had to spend the time repairing all the damage we caused while all the other campers were at a picnic. I think we were still fed lunch, I can’t remember. And it caused me a lot of ill will with my cabin-mates.

But, the year following that incident, my parents sent me to a different summer camp. A computer camp that was only two weeks long. It was a totally different environment than military camp and I would have gladly spent six weeks there. But it was only a couple of years that I got to go and then I was on my own again.

Unfortunately for my mom, it doesn’t sound like there are other camp opportunities.

Wasteland Highlights

Posted by anachostic on October 16, 2017 No comments

Two trips to the hometown in one year! Wow! I mean, wow. I actually mean, meh. No really, blah. So, to summarize the best/worst highs/lows of the trip, here we go.

Before I even left for the airport, six hours before my flight, my flight was delayed. The flight was already a late one at 7:00pm, now it was 7:30. When I got to the airport, they announced, “your plane will not be arriving until 8:00.” A very odd way to announce a delay, but that’s what they did.

The TSA experience on the way out wasn’t too bad (oh, just you wait for this one…). A couple new regulations (aren’t there always?) to deal with. Everything electronic larger than a cell phone must be taken out and all liquids must be out as well. Ok, no big deal, a couple of Kindles and shampoo. I went on with my life.

At my destination, I went to pick up my rental car at the ungodly hour of 11:30. When I went up to the counter, the agent just stared at me with a big smile on his face. I said, “Hi, I have a reservation” which seemed to break his trace and he said, “that… is awesome.” And I understood. It was my shirt – “Quattro Gato”. Basically, this image here on the right, colorized and duplicated four times over. The agent asked me if I liked cats, had a cat, what type of cat, etc. Naturally, cat people are awesome. And awesome cat people get… Mustangs! Or at least that’s what he believed. Me paying for the cheapest rental car, and wearing a cat shirt, means I get upgraded to the sports car category. I guess I’m ok with that.

I got my car in the lot. There are SO many goddamn buttons on the console and steering wheel. What the fuck. I don’t touch anything. I try to get GPS directions out of the airport to a familiar highway (I always take the wrong route), but my phone has no signal. Finally, I get a weak signal and a route. I leave the airport and immediately get in the wrong lane and miss the proper exit. GPS simply changes the route, without even scolding me with “ROUTE RECALCULATION!”. Not sure exactly how much time I lost in that, but I made it to the motel and fell into bed at 1:30am.

I thought I had everything planned out well for this trip, which meant little to no personal time for me. In the end, I had way too much personal time because my brother kept bailing on our plans. So I saw and did everything I could think of. That’s a very short list in a very small town. And I ended up sitting in my upgraded rental, parked downtown for extended periods of time.

Everything’s closed in the wasteland. The mall lost Sears and JCPenney anchor stores, leaving only The Bon Ton. I asked a couple people I visited, “where do you buy clothing?” The only options were KMart, WalMart, and the Bon Ton. One said Amazon, the other said the outlets (a 45 min drive). How can you live like that?

After only two days, I was ready to get back home. My outbound flight was at 3:30, a time where you either get to the airport super-early, or risk being late. I chose the former, since there was nothing else to do. I got to the airport, returned the car, and chilled in the airport lobby for an extended time, reading.

When I got up to get some lunch, I found out all the food was behind security, so I guess I’m going through security now. I was ready. I remembered the changed regulations, even though none of the agents were making announcements about it. Ha! I was ahead of the game. I put my laptop and kindle and shampoo in a tray and confirmed with the agent that was right. He said the laptop had to go in a tray by itself. Fine. Anything else? Shoes. Oh crap. How did I forget that? Shoes on the conveyor. Then over to the scanner.

I got chided last time about doing a body-building pose when they told me to lift my arms, so I kept it simple. I got out and the guard stepped in front of me. “Anything in your pockets?” I patted my pockets. Oh fuck. My phone. I usually put my watch and phone in my carryon while I’m in line. I forgot. I pulled out my phone and handed it to him.

“Anything else?” I patted again. I had my handkerchief, which I didn’t think was any big deal, my passport, which I sometimes have in my hand when I get scanned, and oh crap, coin change. I pull the change out sheepishly and hand it to him. “Anything else?” Ok, I’m stressing now. My passport? He takes that too. “Anything else.” Uh, a handkerchief? He has everything now. He calls for a bowl from the other agents and sends everything off to get scanned.

“So, you want me to go through again?” I ask. The agent replies in a very annoyed tone, “No. Since you had so many things in your pockets, you’re going to have to be patted down.” Ohhhh FUCK. The agent then goes into a very long and detailed description of all the different ways he’s going to feel me up. I’m somewhat in shock, so I don’t hear much of it. He asks if I want a private room or just do it here. I said here is fine, as if I give any sort of a shit right now.

I have to take off my belt (which should have come off earlier, I guess), and hold it. Not much to say. I got groped plenty around my balls and swiped and rubbed. That might be bad, but hey, they gotta do their job. But here’s the stupid thing. They wiped my hands with some sort of device that probably was checking for explosive residue or similar. Now, if I was a “t-word”, would I have been so stupid to leave my pockets full going through the scanner? Bad guys are smarter than that. I’m just an idiot, and you’re checking me for residue?

I pass with flying colors, gather my shit and get the fuck out of there. The experience ruined my day completely. I tried to eat lunch but ate very little. I wasn’t upset or scarred or anything. Just mad at myself that I was so focused on the details I totally forgot the basics.

The flight back was much less fun than the flight up. Much more turbulence and many more passengers. Two very large women in my row. Idiot children in front of me, and a baby across the aisle.

But I did make it home safe and my cat was thrilled to see me. That’s enough travel for a while, I think.

(Poop) Time And Tide Wait For No Man

Posted by anachostic on October 13, 2017 No comments

Inspired by AK’s post, I thought it would be interesting to provide a perspective from the stall on the other side of the wall. It’s not all fun and games in our world either. While we may be outnumbered by the females, there’s enough of us to cause problems for each other. The problems are exacerbated by the infrastructure at hand.

So here’s the general problem. We have two stalls, one of which is the handicapped suite. You can tell by the visible shoes/feet that the “lowrider” stall is occupied, but there is no way to know if the suite is in use unless you test the door. This is because the door is always closed regardless of being latched or not. Now I consider myself a courteous gentleman. If I must test the door, I stand at a distance and lightly test the handle with a single finger. Today, I had two goddamn hulks trying to rip the door off the hinges to get to me. And I am considerate when I’m inside the suite, too. I bob my leg to jingle my belt buckle. ometimes I clear my throat. Surely hearing something from inside would indicate occupancy? No! Hulk shit now! RATTLE RATTLE.

As is my nature, the problem-solver, I set my brain to work on how this can be remedied. There is no existing way to indicate occupancy, but there is an existing way to indicate vacancy. I employ this method religiously for everyone else’s benefit. The other knuckledraggers here are slow to adopt it, because I think they don’t understand.

The method I employ is to slide the locking latch shut as I leave. The closed latch is stopped by the door frame when the door is closed, leaving the door slightly propped open. You can visually see that the door is open and the stall is available. It’s easy and costs nothing. All it requires is adoption. And so I began planning a campaign to promote this concept to my less-considerate cohorts. I would post some PSA-type flyers in the stall to remind others to prop the door when they leave. I needed some clever ideas, clever slogans. On my first brainstorming, I came up with the following:

With such a marketing campaign, how could I fail? Well, you only fail if you try. I did not go through with the propping campaign. Instead, I started thinking of even more clever ideas.

What if there was a plexiglass “flag” that you could slide onto the latch mechanism from inside? The flag would extend outside the stall. That would indicate occupancy, which is more valuable than indicating vacancy. Because, despite the compelling arguments posted within the stall, you still have to kind of assume that someone may not comply and you have to test the door anyway. And if that’s the case, then door propping is not 100% reliable and might as well not even be attempted. (You have to love black and white viewpoints.)

Another early consideration I had was putting a spring lever inside the latch, which would hold the door slightly ajar when unlatched but wouldn’t interfere with closing and latching the door. I even did the research into what type of metal would be needed and how to form it into a spring lever that wouldn’t simply wear out. A torch was required to heat treat the metal, so I reluctantly back-burnered that idea. (ha!)

Now, the obvious solution to this is to update the infrastructure. It would be as simple as buying a latch that has an open/closed indicator on the outside. You know, like on airplanes. But even though we seem to get new toilet paper and paper towel dispensers on a bi-annual basis, we can’t upgrade the door latches.

Time will tell if any of these things actually happens. Until then, I’ll be jingling in the suite. Keep your ears open.

Resume Retardation 2

Posted by anachostic on October 12, 2017 No comments

A continuation of an older post, Resume Retardation, this is the resume that inspired my “English, Motherfucker…” post. Again, this is an application for a software development position. The applicant is an MBA and a Microsoft Certified Professional. The latter should mean that he knows how to use correct technical terminology, and the former should mean he knows how to use English. Like the previous example, the resume and the work history shows the level of quality you can expect. Get it done; move on; disregard consequences.

Most all of the offenses are missing words, which would suggest editing work done without proper proofing afterwards.

“Managed project management with regards the business logic and conditions, also managed a team of .net developers.” – This needs to be “with regard to business logic…”, missing a word and using an improper phrase style.

“…designing a new system for importing jobs from concept to deployment, 2-month development effort.” – The trailing fragment phrase could be fixed by leading in with “which was a …” or even “a …”.

“Managed website traffic to generate up to 4x more then when I started.” – Then/than is a pretty simple rule to understand. This is Facebook-level dumb. Somewhat better than YouTube-level dumb, but still. Also, not grammatically, the question lingers, “4 times more what?”

“At the time that I started they had only a couple of schools involved, over the course of three years the project grew from a simply website to a .Net Solution with over 200+ schools we were collecting leads for.“ – What an awkward sentence. Much more help needed than simply fixing the “simply” to “simple”.

“Along with developing different methods of posting formats to the online entities.” – Not a full sentence. At all. I mean, this is not a full sentence at all. It doesn’t even have the literary effect my snarky response does.

There’s more to this resume, but I grow bored. When you hit this many errors, there’s not much you can try to salvage. How are people content with this presentation of their professional self? Is it simply a “get ‘er done” mentality or do people really believe that they don’t have time to invest in quality?

In my geographic location, it seems the software market is always hot. But I’m starting to get a better impression of the dynamics of this market. I’m seeing candidates who have had the same past employers. I think it’s the same losers cycling through all the employers in the area and those employers are constantly dismissing and replacing them, giving the impression of a hot job market, when really it’s just the churning of lameness.

The CubeRoof

Posted by anachostic on October 11, 2017 No comments

At work, some time ago, we had contractors doing a build-out of new offices right beside our cube farm. This got me thinking, why can’t we all have offices? Along with this consideration, I am always hearing from the vampires in my group about how horrible the lighting is. Everyone wants the light to be cut to 50% or less. I’m not in that group. I like light. I brainstormed a new product idea to help us all.

Why does a company build cubicles and not not all offices? Some reasons could be:

Cheaper
Layout flexibility
Increased communication, for better or worse
Increased oversight

Why do employees want offices and dislike cubicles?

Increased privacy
More environmental control (light/temperature/décor)
Sense of ownership

So what’s the difference between a cube and an office?

Door
Walls to the ceiling
Windows or lack of windows
Basically, enclosure.

So let’s completely forget about convincing management to let their subordinates shut themselves behind a door. I walk a tight line between being controlling and liberal, and with the co-workers I have, allowing a closed door is simply an invitation to sleep all day.

So if we can’t have doors, we can create enclosure by raising the walls to the ceiling. This, however, would create serious issues with lighting, temperature, and airflow. So, my idea is to lower the ceiling to the cube: CubeRoof.

The biggest design point of CubeRoof would be the modular, minimal pieces involved in the system. Taking cues from both IKEA and ClosetMaid, the CubeRoof system would be cheap and easy.

The first element of any roof is the truss. The truss is comprised of three straight elements and three angles. To simplify the system, there are a small number of extendable aluminum beams, similar to “cargo bars”, in varying maximum lengths. This comprise the angles of the truss and the support beams between them. Then, there are adjustable angle brackets that connect the beams. The adjustability allows any peak or pitch of the roof. The angle brackets have a lip for attachment to the top of the cubicle wall, and a post to accept another beam to connect trusses.

Finally, the roof material is simple nylon fabric sheets connected to the trusses and to each other with Velcro. Having different lengths, widths, and colors provides for an endless combination of roof styles. Light color fabrics for diffused light, dark colors for light blocking. Inset screens for ventilation and panels for adjustable “skylights.” Aftermarket and customizing possibilities could be large.

I would estimate one CubeRoof requiring three interconnected trusses, which would be eight straight bars, nine angle connectors, and two properly-sized roof panels. Of course, I’m not going to build it. That would be for someone much better than me, if you believe in the power of capitalism.

« Previous page | Next page »