On his way home from the redneck yacht club

I've parked in handicapped parking spaces before. Was it right? No. Was it convenient? You bet. It's not that I was deliberately trying to gyp a handicapped person out of a spot, that's just what despicable people do. Moving on. I've parked in handicapped spaces, but never across handicapped spaces.

Yeah, you're seeing that correctly. This person not only parked in a handicapped spot without a permit, they parked across it in a manner that prevented others from even parking in the adjacent spot. When I lived in Illinois, my family called this "parking like a Hoosier".

Just so you can develop or further your stereotyping skills, let me describe the driver. He was about 5' 10", had on a denim jacket and cowboy boots, and purchased a can of Skoal long cut.

Stupid rednecks.

Aggravated Apathy

Click the title. My lastest personal blog post very much belongs here, but for whatever reason, it is there.

Fuck the handicapped.

Crapper Catastrophe

When I first moved into my apartment, the little flapper inside the toilet was broken. It was an inconvenience, but not a tragedy. I reported it to the office, and they said they would get to it once they fixed the major issues in people's apartments.

Shortly after this, I had a leak in my bathroom ceiling. Maintenance came to fix it, but not before putting a giant hole in the ceiling first. They promised to fix it soon.

Now, about three months later, the flapper and the ceiling hole have been repaired. Unfortunately, it has come at a great cost.

Whatever they did to my toilet seriously fucked it up to the point that it doesn't flush right. I don't know if this made a difference, but they ripped a big hole in the water saver cylinder. For a few days it would flush, but extremely slowly. We tried plunging it this weekend, but it didn't appear to be clogged. Today I flushed it, and it completely overflowed, flooding my bathroom.

To make matters worse, they completely trashed my bathroom. The toilet flapper and other random pieces of who knows what were partly in my trash can and partly strewn across the floor. A big, wet glob of plaster from the ceiling repair was stuck to the floor tile, and chunks of dry plaster littered my bathtub. In short, my bathroom is a disaster now, and I can't use my toilet.

Fuck you, maintenance, I thought your job was to fix things, not make them worse.

Icing

So. Today I can't remember if it was Megan or Gretchen that said someone should post a rant here.

Well here it goes...

In short...blue and white icing don't come out of the squishy bag too well and that pisses me off.

Jewels from the Workplace

Supervisor. Employed for more than two years. You would think that one would pick up a few rudimentary concepts when working in a certain industry for that period of time.

"Corey, this piece of software says PC/Mac on the side. Will it work with like an HP and stuff?"

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"Can I help you find something today?"
"Yeah. I need the cartridge for this printer." ::hands me bar napkin with illegible scribbles::
"Is this an inkjet or laser printer?"
"Inkjet."
::I search furiously through product catalog looking for printer model::
"Oh wait! I think it's on of these big ones." (laser toner, NOT inkjet)
::Looks in different section of catalog. Finds printer model immediately::

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"Do you have the UBS cords for printers?"

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::customer point to 4 binders that another customer had lain down randomly::
"Are these the only binders you have?"

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"What's the difference between these two? Why's this one $100 more?"
"Because they are two entirely different machines."

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"This flatbed scanner is $79, but this printer/scanner/copier combo is also $79. Why would I buy just the scanner?"
"I don't know? Why would you?"

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I really wish I could say this was an anthology of stupidity collected over the course of a week, but these were all today. Guess who the only person on the sales floor was. Guess who had about a brazillion other things to do. Me, in case you are still pondering. My higher-ups need to get on the ball and hire some motherfuckers so I can do my job. I don't mind helping the occasional customer, but when I'm the only one on the floor being pulled between 7 different palsied shit-for-brains morons it becomes a burden.

Do me a favor. Come to my work, ask stupid questions, and await the act of violence that will end both my job and your consciousness.

Why Flying Sucks...Part 3

I thought I had gotten all of my frustration out on the other posts about flying, but my experiences at two different airports last week have led me to yet another post about the perils of flying.

More on Security -
I have already elaborated on how some people can't seem to handle following simple directions shouted at them in plain English by airport security. If you are hard of hearing, ask someone nearby to explain it to you. If you don't speak English, either learn it or get the fuck out. Even if you don't speak the language or happen to be deaf, you can still understand what is going on simply be mirroring the behavior of other people. If the ten people in line in front of you are taking the change out of their pockets, maybe you should too. Idiot.

Also, those that haven't taken one too many hits to the head and do understand these simple instructions need to take the next step and make sure they are fully prepared when it comes time to walk through the metal detector. When the security guard is beckoning you through, that is not the time to remove your shoes, cell phone, keys, watch, belt, pocketknife, hand grenade, and copper anal beads. These items should have been already taken off and placed on the x-ray machine belt. Just because you want to be a slowass and miss your flight doesn't mean I do. My shoes are already off. Get the fuck out of my way.

More on the Pilot -
If you are the pilot of my aircraft, you have one job: get me to my destination alive. As I have already established, you are not a tour guide or news anchor. Likewise, you are also not a comedian. When my plane landed in Denver, Colorado, the pilot's announcement said, "Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii!" This was not even remotely amusing or productive. The only thing I want to hear from the pilot is the local time, my baggage carousel number, and the words "You may now get off of the plane." Also, given the obvious negative IQ number of most airline passengers, I had to wonder how many of them were freaking out thinking we had actually landed in Hawaii. As if the snow capped mountains weren't a dead giveaway...

Meal Service -
Here's one I haven't covered yet. People on flights get hungry. To accomodate for this, the airline usually provides a free beverage and snack of some kind. Delta gives you a choice of several snacks, ranging from chips to cookies to nuts to granola bars. The flight attendants move up the aisle with both the beverage and snack carts until eventually everything is served. I have some issues with the way this was handled on my last flight. One flight attendant seemed to be in charge of drinks, and the other had control of the snacks. Simple enough. Handing out snacks, however, doesn't take quite as long as serving drinks, so the snack cart lady had made it almost all the way to the back of the plane before the beverage lady was even halfway. More specifically, the snack lady had made it to the seat RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME before suddenly deciding that the drink wench needed assistance. First she parked the snack cart right by my seat, but I couldn't reach it to grab anything for fear of waking the rather large woman snoring next to me. Then she snack bitch came back, but instead of feeding me, she shoved the cart back a few rows and then returned to help with the drinks. I had to watch in vain while the greedy people in the back few rows snatched away the Sun Chips I had been drooling over. It was a full ten minutes before she finally came back and let me have something to eat. Bitch.

The Flight -
Sometimes we are lucky and are seated next to an interesting person with whom we can chat during the flight. If you are one of these people, good for you. But just because you want to have a lengthy discussion with someone doesn't mean that I want to hear it too. When engaging in any kind of conversation on the plane, KEEP THE VOLUME DOWN. I have more important things to listen to than the dumb bitch three rows back describing the rules of the Tour de France in detail to the moron next to her. Nor do I want to hear the man across the aisle arguing with his wife about what to do for dinner or which child they with to ritually sacrifice next. Keep your conversations at a decibel level low enough so that I don't have to deal with it.

This is where I will leave it for now. But I'm sure a fourth installment is inevitable after I fly home in November.

The IT NoHelpLine

I work for a large architecture firm. As anyone who works in the field knows, it's easy to get yourself in trouble if you don't keep a paper trail of everything you do. So for the last 2 years I've been filing all my important incoming and outgoing emails in a "cabinet" on our office email network. I've accumulated several thousand emails, all sorted into their appropriate folders and subfolders, and I reference them on a daily basis for one thing or another. To give you an idea of what's in there, it includes:
--Projects I'm currently working on / tasks to complete
--Old projects that I use for reference
--Office information, in case I need to look up where Joe Smith sits or what codes to bill on my timesheet

Suffice it to say that I have a lot of extremely important information in there. So you can imagine how I almost keeled over in my chair when on Friday I opened up a folder and ALL my emails were GONE. For the next five minutes I panicked, opening folder after folder as though the emails might sense my distress and reappear. Finally I came across my Trash folder, which to my shock (and great relief) contained 3300 emails...everything that was missing. Then I looked at the deleted date, and that's when my relief turned to anger. They were deleted at 2 am on 7/1, the Saturday before, when I was not even remotely near the office. It seems that our brilliant IT department had decided to run some kind of cleanup over the weekend, with no prior warning, that deleted every email over a month old. WTF?? So I angrily spent over an hour re-sorting my emails back into their folders. I managed to clean some old junk out along the way and ended up putting about 1800 emails back into the cabinet.

It didn't end there. First thing Monday morning, guess what...there were 1800 emails back in the Trash. Apparently whatever the IT department did is deleting the emails on a daily basis. I spent about 30 minutes dumping them back into the correct folders and then sent a complaint to the IT Helpline. This is sort of an email forum where you can ask a question and the IT people (supposedly) will get back to you. Well, by 4:45 today I hadn't heard a peep from them so I marched myself over to their office, where the last IT guy was just heading out for the day. I asked him about the lack of response and he brushed me off with an "Oh yeah, that's on my list to come talk to you tomorrow. " Nice. So once again I spent 30 minutes sorting my email, knowing full well that they'll be back in the Trash tomorrow, because I'm terrified of what will happen if I leave them there overnight. I really don't have time for this crap. Thanks for nothing, IT jerks.

Car Trouble

If I believed in curses, I would say my car is cursed.

My car was in great condition. Yes, there were a few minor issues with it, but overall the maintenence expenses for it were minimal. Then, in December, I purchased the car from my parents and the following things happened:

1) Chip in my windshield - $40
2) Computer diagnostic and "Check Engine" light repair - $60
3) New tires & alignment - $357
4) Water pump, timing belt, gaskets, temperature gauge & labor to fix oil leak & install parts - $652
5) Consultation & oil change to combat leakage - $38

Now you will probably notice that this adds up to more than $1000. Keep that in mind while I list the other things that I have not yet paid for, or committed to paying for:

6) New headlight bulb
7) Tune-up
8) Bulb replacement in console
9) Repair of weird interior light problem
10) Fuel gauge repair

I'll be getting the headlight bulb, but the others will have to wait until a few more paychecks roll in. In fact, some of them might not get fixed at all because they aren't worth the expense. But why the hell is my car suddenly falling apart right after I buy it? I keep a log of maintenence, I take it in when it is required, and I don't crash it into stuff. And yet it seems to be slowly falling apart.

This is so not fair.

friends don't aggravate friend's allergies on purpose

ok. once upon a time when i was 18, my allergies finally showed up, thanks to the hayman fire out here in colorado. since then, i have been having progressively worse problems with smoke. and not just cigarette smoke, but all kinds. grill fires (which my dad frequently has), woodburning fires, even burning oil in smoke machines and the little aromatherapy thingies. whatever. i started on a regimen of two allergy medications, so that when i had to put out a grill fire, i could without coughing up a lung and my sinuses sealing themselves tighter than gladware. no problem.

well, my last month abroad, after moderate suffering with every european out there smoking, my "friend" came out to visit me. needles to say, we were sleeping in the same room the whole time, mostly my dorm room. said friend has a nicotine addiction, which i made absolutely clear COULD NOT, under any circumstance, be indulged anywhere near me, or my room, and she was not allowed to smell like it, because the smell makes me want to hurl.

unfortunately, smoking also seems to be closely linked to lying. oh no, she said, i only smoke one every other day or so.

THEN HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE FOUR CIGARETTES YOU HAD EVERY FUCKING DAY WE WERE IN PARIS??? every day period, the stupid cow. she made the rest of that trip miserable, but unfortunately, that's going to be a chapter or six in my memoir. she also reasoned that since i take medication, i shouldn't havea problem with her smoking. she has also told me taht i don't actually have this allergy, and that i just don't like the smell.

anywho, i came back home and went to the doctor, because i had been sick the last week with a nasty cough, and it was still around. my doctor, who has been listening rather closely to my lungs for the past year or so, expressed that something had happened. she knew that europeans smoked, but asked if there had been anything in particular that could have caused a problem. 'why yes!' said i.

well. long story short. now it seems that instead of smoke-induced allergies, there's a strong probability that i have smoked-induced asthma, which she has been worried about for the past year, and that one month of stress and smoke finally pushed me over the edge. she's giving me 6 months, but if i still have a wheeze (which i do), i get to have an asthma test of some kind to just solidify what the doctor feels she knows.

excuse me for being pissed, but i was born healthy and with good, strong lungs, and now, thanks to careless "friend," i don't anymore. i know, i can't blame just her, but let's face it. no european spent a month solid blowing smoke in my face.

so if you smoke, and one of your friends says they're allergic, learn from this. we don't make it up for shits and giggles. thank god coloradois going smoke-free in public places july 1. at least some people in the government realize that killing oneself with cancer shouldn't mean killing others with it too.

Waste Your Time at PepsiSmash.com!!

1 in 3 wins, my ass. I just entered 14 illegible codes from Mountain Dew caps, and sacrificed my personal information to corporate America, and I didn't even get a single fucking ringtone.

I better win a fucking RAZR, PEBL, BLWJB, or whatever the fuck else they are giving away.