Kitchen sink of the gods

A very blah and depressive weekend considerably improved by the surprise arrival of the Valley Boys.

The Rudy thing has become the festering evil at the heart of their universe and the poor kids just can't keep talking about it. Hey fairietard, let us know if you ever need any "release", because your "buds" are there for you. We could be workout partners, or something. :-)

The decline of Diedrichs 17th St. continues apace, with almost daily measurable loss of service. They are now incapable of: 1) making coffee 2) removing bottled beverages from a fridge and selling them 3) keeping cups in stock 4) keeping change around or 5) remembering your order for more than 15 seconds.

The staff now consists of middle-aged drug rehab cases with slurred speech who get lost between the store and the dumpster in the parking lot. It's like the short bus crashed into the halfway house. They all display classic symptoms of severe and continued drug abuse (ability to listen to the Eagles all day, slow reaction times, inappropriate laughter) and can happily stare into space for hours without any activity. I liked it better when they had young, sprightly drug addicts working there. It's very painful now, like a documentary movie about head injury victims.

The medication I'm taking to reverse my Dead Guy syndrome makes my stomach hurt all the time and I am grumpy as a result. No, scratch that. I'm borderline enraged as a result. It takes tremendous effort to be polite. The cat has been especially loving and solicitous due to my depression and illness lately, although I'm not sure how having my arm licked is going to fix anything.

I want money and a pretty girl.

a geek funny

Built SpamAssassin from cvs checkout. Got this result from "make test":

Failed 1/41 test scripts, 97.56% okay. -5/301 subtests failed, 101.66% okay.

I guess it's REALLY GOOD THEN!!1!

poem for the day

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water




-- e.e. cummings

It's a fine line between clever and stupid

Many places that have a primary function like: restaurant, radio station, academic department, store also have a secondary function: hangout. These places almost always end up with volunteer regulars who have no formal connection with the establishment but become unofficial residents and take on their own rights and responsibilities.. and powers.

I've seen this phenomenon in places as diverse as a university physics department, several bars, a college radio station, a few schools, and a health food store. These volunteer/pest hybrids spend time in the place for their own odd reasons, end up taking on tasks for which they are not compensated, and eventually gain an inexplicable power.

In police and fire stations this is way too common, and probably just flat out bad for society, since wannabee cops and firefighters are actively dangerous people. Aside from those examples, mostly these characters are harmless and extremely annoying.

At the coffeehouse currently we have one. He's a pretty nice guy, on disability from a chronic illness, who has a lot of time to kill and appears to have some sort of OCD problem. He spends much of his day there and helps out. He constantly cleans up trash, arranges the tables in a tight grid with two chairs per table, and throws away all newspapers constantly. He runs off the teenaged kids who come there to eat their Wendys food and have french fry fights. He appears, in fact, to have declared himself Mayor of the Coffeehouse Patio.

It's hard to say what to think about this. The guy is harmless and pleasant, and means very well. He also, as he points out, needs something to do so he doesn't go nuts. Not being employable plus sitting around watching tv makes you something something. He rebuilds cars but doesn't do this constantly.

On the other hand, it's bizarre and unnerving to watch him go around lining up the tables again and emptying all the ashtrays and asking someone "Are you done with that?" more than once, and giving the employees and the manager advice, and telling some people to leave, and and and. It seems to be getting worse, too.

Any similar stories? I know gordonzola has bothersome cheese geeks at times, and most people who work in computer stores have a few of these at times. Tobacconists collect them, too..