American Grimoire

It Pays The Bills

Two computer programmers spend 2 months developing applications, database processes, design plans, and so forth. Three analysts utilize said applications to parse through an ocean of data, painstakingly resolving anomaly after anomaly for several weeks. Thousands of manhours, at least 2 dozen meetings, and countless creative resolutions are poured into a product that is distilled and aggregrated down to this end result:

During one standard Thursday meeting, a mid-level government bureaucrat is presented with a single number: “173.” To which he replies, “That’s about what I expected. Moving right along…”

Quibids.com = Scam

Quibids.com is a scam site that is misleading at best and fraud at worst.

The first misleading tactic is by declaring themselves an “auction.” They are not. This is clearly a lottery where tickets (i.e., “bids”) are purchased. Also, in a real auction, only 1 individual ends up spending money. On quibids, there is 1 winner and many, many losers.

The second misleading tactic is the belief that you (the one bidding) actually stand a good chance of winning a bid. You do not. The winner is someone who is willing to spend an exhaustive amount of time and money monitoring an item. By contrast, consider a real auction. You say you’ll pay X amount for an item. Someone else says they’ll pay Y amount. And so on. Very rapidly you come to a market price for the item. In the case of quibids, you must pay for every single bid and you are limited to only increasing the price by 1 or 2 cents. To put it another way, the winner is required to invest considerable amounts of time and money just to “win.” Example: let us consider an item I recently attempted to “win” on quibids. It was an iPad. The bidding war went on for at LEAST 27 hours (which is when I began watching it…who knows how long it was going on prior to that). If you were a prospective bidder when it started that meant you would have had to keep bidding on it non-stop for over a day and night before you stood a chance of winning. There is no reasonable rationale for allowing a bidding war to continue for that length of time.

The third misleading tactic is their “Buy It Now” option. Soothes your wounds, right? Wrong! This just proves they’re a gambling outfit. People get sucked in with the concept that quibids is an “auction.” This implies they can bid and win on something that they couldn’t afford otherwise.

More to come as I think of it…

Your Identity Online

Many sites ask you these three seemingly innocent questions:

• Date of Birth?
• Gender?
• Zip Code? (or perhaps Postal Code)

The reason is simple. According to a Carnegie-Mellon study, with the above information your identity can be discerned with an 87% accuracy. To put it another way, once a site has the information above, they know exactly who you are…and even if they don’t, they can always sell the information to a 3rd party who will.

Do Americans Have An Accent?

So it occurred to me…do Americans have an accent? After all, the British spawned the language of English, so isn’t their way of speaking the “correct” way? To them, do we have the accent? And I discovered…yes! To non-American English-speakers, Americans do have an accent!

Evidently the “proper” way of speaking any language is entirely cultural and chosen by government and taught via schools. In the case of America, the US at large has been pushing a Midwestern dialect dubbed the GAE dialect (General American English) for some decades now. Also, outside America, virtually all—if not all—ESL classes teach using the GAE. Despite this, dozens of cultural and regional dialects still thrive in the US and over a hundred thrive worldwide. I took the tongue-in-cheek test below and was amazed that it predicted a regional accent that encompassed my birthplace (Philadelphia Dialect) despite the fact that I grew up in the South. Also, I didn’t answer the way I normally speak, I answered “correctly,” I.E., how I spoke when I was in a professional situation. I didn’t even think I had an accent. Fun!

What American Accent Do You Have?

Regarding the GAE: why is the US (and the world) at large, using a Midwestern dialect as the English standard? Answer: TV.

The reason it’s pushed on students nowadays is courtesy of Hollywood! The Californian movie factory produced movies where most actors spoke with a Midwestern accent (because that’s what most native Californians spoke at the time). When new thespians streamed into LA with stars in their eyes, they discovered they had to talk like the preexisting stars/directors/etc to “fit in.” This Midwestern dialect spread to TV and News Broadcasting with Walter Cronkite sealing the deal. Public school teachers pointed to news anchors as the “right way” to speak English…even though they themselves may not speak with that accent, and of course I’m not sure any President has ever spoken with a GAE accent.

And so a Midwestern frontier dialect has taken over our perception of how English should be spoken. Fascinating.

He Wanted To Be An Actor

He wanted to be an actor. He auditioned to almost every agent in NYC’s phonebook and was rejected. He barely scraped by getting money however he could. He hocked his wife’s jewelry. He sold his dog for $50 outside a liquor store. One day he churned out a screenplay after watching TV and started pushing that. For months his screenplay was rejected.

Finally, he got a bite. Someone wanted to buy the rights for 100k! He said “OK, as long as I get the lead part.” He auditioned and was rejected. They told him “stick to writing, you’re not cut out for acting.”

He didn’t sell them the rights.

They came back and offered more. He declined again. He wanted to be an actor. Back and forth it went before they agreed to make him the lead, but he’d only get paid 25k for everything. He agreed.

His name is Sylvester Stallone and the movie was “Rocky.”

P.S.—Afterwards, he waited outside the liquor store for 3 days until the guy who bought his dog came through. He bought the dog back for 15k.

My iPad Review

So I’ve recently had the chance to play around with a coworker’s iPad. I can sum it up with a phrase you’ve probably heard before: it’s a really big iTouch/iPhone. That’s neither a diss, nor a perk, just the truth. Everything you can do with your iTouch you can do with the iPad and vice versa. Likewise, everything you cannot do with your iTouch you cannot do with the iPad. For me, that means I would primarily use it to watch Youtube and/or randomly surf the web late at night when I can’t sleep. Your mileage may vary.

Reading: I can definitely see using this to read magazines. I think it’d be fantastic in that role! For long-term reading (i.e., novels)? No go. It makes my eyes all watery.

Playing: pretty much everything you already know about (i.e., apps, games, music, videos, etc). You use iTunes to load up your iPad the same way you do with an iPod.

Size: it’s smaller than you think. Or at least it was for me. When I held it the first thing I said was “did you get the small version?” The actual screen size appears to be a little bigger than half-a-sheet of paper, maybe at most 2/3′s a sheet of paper.

Replacing a Laptop/Netbook: No one will use this as a laptop replacement.

Overall: I don’t want to seem negative on the iPad itself, because I’m not. It’s a terrific device. However I am negative on it’s price. For the 900 bucks (about 734 Euro) you’d spend for the best model, it’s just not worth it. As a splurge item, I would pay $200 for an iPad (possibly $300) but I’d still think I was paying too much. I definitely look forward to the later versions. I expect them to be much cheaper and far more robust. Hit me up if you have any specific questions!

Fantasy Novel Recommendations

There would appear to be a paucity of fantasy novel recommendations, so I decided to do something about it! Disagree? Have a novel to add? Please give me a comment! I’m always on the lookout for new books.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. It begins with ”Storm Front.” He’s a practicing wizard for hire who rents out a basement in Chicago. He lives with a cat and a talking skull. Great stories.

Simon Green’s Nightside series. It begins with ”Something from the Nightside.” He’s a private eye, and apparently the son of some unspeakably evil being. Gods cross the street when they see him coming, and faceless beings with razors for fingers are constantly trying to kill him…and he has no idea why. At least his secretary works pretty cheaply since he saved her from that man-eating house. Tongue-in-cheek, but incredibly great stories.

“Sunshine“ by Robin McKinley. There is this quiet girl who works at a quiet cafe. Her name is Sunshine and she loves to cook. I am not a fan of vampire books. I never made it through the 1st chapter of Anne Rice’s “Interview with a Vampire.” I thought this would be a vampire book, more so because the bookstore clerk kept gushing about it, but when I got it home I realized it was an incredibly awesome urban fantasy that just happened to include vampires. Very surreal. It’s candy for the mind. I wish I had wrote it.

“Dauntless“ by Jack Campbell. It’s your typical soldier-gets-frozen-for-100-years-only-to-dethaw-and-discover-that-there’s-a-war-between-his-side-of-the-galaxy-and-the-other-side-and-he’s-a-living-legend story. Things look grim, the chips are down, and he’s suddenly in command of an entire space fleet (or what remains of it). I thought I wouldn’t be that interested in this book, let alone recommend it, but somehow it works really well. He continues it with several books. All are awesome and that’s saying something since I don’t really read sci-fi, well, ever.

“Neverwhere“ by Neil Gaiman. This girl can open doors between normal London and *real* London. She’s on the run and about to die at the hands of assassins. She opens a door to “somewhere safe.” Enter a Londonian wage-slave. Great book by Gaiman.

“Stardust” by Neil Gaiman. And hell, “American Gods“  too. The first is about a modern British lad who’s trying to get a girl. Just to get rid of him she tells him that if he fetches the falling star that just streaked through the sky for her, she’ll marry him. And thus begins his quest. Prolly the best Gaiman book. The second book is a modern tale about long-forgotten gods…

“Goblin Quest” is the first novel in a trilogy and is very entertaining. To give a brief synopsis (which is leaving out an awful lot), the lead character is a goblin, huddling in his cave, trying to avoid “adventurers” whose only purpose is to slay his kind…until he “decides” to join up with one such group. Very imaginative and certainly the most different novel I’ve read in a long time. I love how it’s creative, engaging, and humorous (from the goblin’s perspective) and yet serious (when from the…other…lead character’s perspective).

“The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss is a phenomenal fantasy novel. Nothing really new per se (pulls heavily from the LOTR and Earthsea novels, both aging series but worth a read in their own right BTW) but it does same-old brilliantly…which is as much as you can ask for.

“The Magician’s Guild” by Trudi Canavan. It pains me to recommend this, it really does. The author is overly wordy (but nowhere near Robert Jordan’s or Terry Goodkind’s level) which is the main drawback. This is the age-old tale of the zero who becomes a hero. It’s the clichéd story of a poor urchin who discovers she has strange abilities and gets sent to a prestigious school. I really can’t say why I like this trilogy except to say that I’m a sucker for “magic kids going to a magic school” novels. A good read, if you can get around her overly descriptive tendencies.

“The Way of Shadows” by Brent Weeks. I thought I wouldn’t like it but the trilogy had me enthralled. It’s the tale of a slum child who becomes the protege of a master assassin…who turns out to be far more than just a mere assassin. Get it. You’ll love it.

Running The Housewife Gauntlet

So there’s this housewife who lives across the street from me…

So innocent in her 40-something way, right? WRONG! She is the stuff nightmares are made of. I’m like a prisoner in my own home, for when I leave, she’s there, on her porch, like the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

“Roy!” she shrieks in delirious wonder. “Let me tell you about everything under the sun including the name of every blade of grass in the whole world and—”

“Uh,” I look around desperately. “Hey! Isn’t that Ms Marjory?”

I point at a lady covertly darting to her car a few houses away. She’s army-crawling, hoping the Housewife won’t spot her.

“Marjory!” shrieks the Housewife in delirious wonder. “Did you watch the Young and the Restless this week?? OHMYGOD I can’t believe how MAD Victor is!! Let’s talk about it!”

While she’s distracted I manage to make it to the safety of my car and lock the doors with a quickness, breathing heavily, sweat dripping off my face. I glance back at Marjory, seeing her pinned by the harpy-like mouth of the Housewife. I turn away rapidly, lest I draw attention to myself.

I’m sorry Marjory. May God have mercy on your soul.

They Stole My Oven

My bastard apt complex took my amazingly awesome, super advanced, unbelievably cool gas oven. I mean for real, this thing was something straight out of a sci-fi movie. I’m sure it was a missing artifact from the 9th Dimension or something and if I’d only had a little more time I could’ve figured out how to harness it’s vast abilities to shoot lasers out of the range, stop global warming with the broiler, and cure cancer with the little shiny knob.

SIGH

But it had to go, I guess. Despite it’s vast potential it kept shorting out my circuit breaker (don’t ask why a gas stove needs to be plugged in…that’s just part of it’s mystique).

Chuck E Cheese Thoughts (pt2)

Another few hours at Chuck E Cheese over the weekend, another hour or so with my notebook…

1.) Understand the nature of cats and you’ll have a good understanding of the nature of women.

2.) There’s this kid with only one arm running around. Kinda disturbing watching his stump gyrate of its own accord. It’s good he lives in an age when his missing limb isn’t so big a deal. In some ancient tribe he would SO be lion food.

3.) I’m terrible with faces. There are two folks here that I’ve met before and they’re waving me down and striking up a convo with me and the whole time I’m thinking “Who the hell are these people?”

4.) Somebody here named their child “Shine.” Poor kid.

5.) I think I’m going to ask the cashier for her number.

6.) I think men can be broadly classified into two categories: those who wear hair gel and those who don’t.

7.) That girl firing the balls at the Big Mouth 2000 can’t shoot worth a damn.

8.) “I’m not speeding, I’m qualifying.” “Drive it like you stole it.” I hate people who have hardcore bumper stickers
like that but drive slow as shit.

9.) I’m not a fan of people who dress formally in informal circumstances.

10.) I am the only person in this place (that I’ve seen) with a notepad and pencil.

11.) That obese woman over there has the most amazing smile. One second I found her unattractive and the next, I nearly melted. I would do damn near anything for that smile. Just…stunning.

12.) I just tried to write a list of qualities my ideal g/f would have. I gave up. I don’t think there is such a list. I think everyone brings some unique and awesome combination of traits to the table. Qualities that I might hate in PersonX I might adore in PersonY.

13.) I’m 28 years old and I’m still growing up. Sad, really. (EDIT: I’m now 31 and STILL growing up. hahaha )

14.) If you’re an overweight woman, for God’s sake don’t cut your hair short.

15.) You know, as I’ve sat here for an hour or two watching a smorgasbord of society pass in front of me, I’m struck by a sudden, horrible revelation: I think big hair is slowly making a comeback…

16.) Randomly staring at my Chuck E Cheese ticket I realized they’re produced in my hometown of Shamokin, PA!

My Ass…

My ass aches. My legs ache. All of lower me aches! I recently started this strength training dvd. Intense. My legs are deliciously stiff. The lady instructor is totally cracked-out, I expect her at any moment to flex and shatter the tv screen. If she’s not on steroids, it’s just cause they’re scared of her.

Convertibles, My Anti-Creepy

It was a beautiful spring afternoon so I decided to go for a walk. Rattling my bamboo wind chimes, I went out the back door and started meandering in the woods. Almost immediately I spotted a couple of young kids playing around in the brush. Their antics made me laugh, so I stopped and chitchatted with them for a moment. It wasn’t long before a shrill voice called out from the apt behind me.

“Johnathon! Dean! Come back over here!”

I turned and saw a late 20-something woman resting a baby on her hip. I recognized her from the morning bus stop. She looked a lot different without the business suit. Standing next to her on the porch was a younger woman, probably her sister, given the similarities.

As the kids scurried back with many a loud “AWWWW,” the mom recognized me. “Oh you’re that guy with the convertible right? It’s ok kids, you can go back.” She glanced at me with a smile. “I thought you were some creepy guy there for a second.”

I smiled back. “It’s all good, but hey, don’t let your guard down, I could still be creepy…ya know?”

She gave me a look that told volumes about how clueless I was. “You are so not creepy. You drive a convertible.”

“And that makes me not creepy?” I replied.

Both women gave me pitying looks. I sense they thought I was completely dense. “It’s a known fact that guys who drive convertibles or lowriders aren’t creepy,” said the mom’s sister.

“But they can be dirty old men,” replied the mother.

“This is true, but still they’re just perverted, not creepy. Which brings to mind that Mercedes may be anti-creepy too,” responded sis.

“Right, but they’ve gotta be the good-looking pricier ones, not the mainstream garbage,” finished the mom.

The two women nodded at each other in agreement, then turned back to me.

I pondered this for a moment. “But wait, ” I said. “Wasn’t Ted Bundy a lawyer, leading Republican, involved in community affairs, AND he killed tons of people? You can’t get much creepier than being a serial killer, but I betcha he probably owned a Mercedes. Maybe had a convertible too. Maybe even a Mercedes convertible! By your rationale, if he owned said car there’s no way he could be creepy, right?”

The mother didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Wrong! You said it yourself, he was a lawyer AND a Republican. That’s ultimate creepiness. That completely overrides any and all vehicular anti-creepiness.”

“Totally an exemption clause,” agreed the sister sagely.

Life…

…is a team event, even if you are just bench warming.

The Shameful Ghost

So I’m at work and the cord for my headphones is too long, so I wrapped it around my keyboard extender thingee. Well as I moved it must have resituated somehow, because when I turned to answer the phone I nearly strangled myself.

Can you imagine how embarassing that would have been? I don’t even know that I’d have the nerve to haunt my building if that had happened. I’d be the laughing stock of the afterliving community. And certainly no living mortal would be scared of me.