Mad Geek

Well, yesterday was Thankgiving for the USofA and her territories. At least I think it was . . . I saw Santa, some reindeer, and loads of people dressed as elves so it's a tad hard to tell sometimes. It may have just been my naiveté but I somehow remember growing up thinking that Thanksgiving had something to do with indians, pilgrims, and being thankful. It seems more and more as each year goes by, that Thanksgiving is simply known as It's-almost-time-to-shop-day.

While watching the parades on and off throughout the morning (as I floated in and out of consciousness) I saw 5 different dance group, all of whom sucked, performing different skits to Christmas carols. Many of them were dressed as naughty Ms. Santas or elves, but some were more conservative and just went to the Red/Green ensemble. After a few hours of this, a turkey float went by. Supposedly this was somehow significant to the day and the parade, since the turkey (that exact one) was celebrating his 78th time in this annual event. The poor, ugly, and doomed foul was quickly overshadowed by Santa (lol, nearly wrote Satan) riding in and waving to the crowd.

We DID manage to have turkey at the dinners Tine and I went to on this most confused holiday. One we didn't get to taste since it was coming out of the oven right as we were leaving (looked great though), the other we decimated. It was a huge bird, too! A huge, dinosaurific beast of a bird.

But, alas, the post-turkey glow must end. I am sitting here at work, waiting (no surprise there) for calls that are far and few between. Evidentially, when everyone else is out shopping (or whatever) only the dumbest people are left to call me. Each one of my calls has lasted 40 seconds to 3 minutes, and ranges from "Oops, sorry, it wasn't plugged in" to "Are you SURE this isn't the front desk I'm calling?".

Apparently, tryptophan doesn't just make you sleepy!

Well, it has been awhile. Winter has come in hard here in the Salt Lake valley which means one thing; Inversion! For those of you unfamiliar with the term allow me to describe to you the horror that inversion is: there is no wind and every bit of smoke, smog, and filth that we throw into the air gets suspended in a fine fog-like mist that obscures vision, blocks the sun, and generally makes life miserable. It isn't like this is a new thing, it happens every year. But, like so many other things, we forget about it enough that it always seems like the worst we've had in a long time.

Possibly the main thing that has made getting up and going to work in this Smog-o-Death bearable has been the fact that there is a copy of Halo 2 there that we play on lunches and breaks. Some numbers have come through on the sales of this game, released last Wednesday. On it's first day alone, it made $125M in it's US based sales. That's the largest release in entertainment history! Spider-Man 2 was the previous record holder at $120M. So far, they estimate domestic sales at 2.38 million copies . . . that's more than the population of Utah.

Holy. Crap.

Everyone keeps asking me if anything new or exciting has happened lately. In a word, no. I actually lead a very boring life, and so I run out of ammo for this blog of mine as a result. Possibly the most exciting thing that has happened to me recently was the new men's bathroom that was finished in the Student Union building in the middle of campus. It has tile, not cement. The stall walls rise above 4.5 feet (no, the old ones didn't). The floor actually tilts towards the floor drains. And, get this, there are hooks in the stalls for you to hang your backpack up, so it doesn't rest at your feet in the puddle left by a previous occupant! w00t, yo!

Wonders never cease, eh?

This is something that has been buggin me a lot, even more so because it really isn't people's fault. Computer terms can be really confusing, and in an attempt to make people more comfortable with them, many institutions used them in incorrect manners. Up to about 2000, many people were still taught these incorrect terms in actual computer classes. You can imagine it's been hard for people to unlearn them!

Though I know most my friends and family either correctly use these terms or just don't care, I hope that maybe the occasional browser may come across these and learn something.

"I mashed the button on my CPU to turn it off."
Firstly, please don't "mash" anything on the system. It may only be figure of speech, but it makes us techs cringe with fear. Second, the CPU has no button, and cannot be turned off by itself. The button you are referring to is the power button on the front of the computer. The CPU is a single chip inside the computer that you shouldn't be touching. Think of it as a computer's brain.

"No, I don't have a notebook; I have a PC."
The term PC is a little misleading to begin with. It stands for Personal Computer. By that right, it could mean anything nowadays! My phone can be a personal computer, and my PDA would definitely be one. However, PC usually refers to something that is an IBM compatible. A notebook can also be a PC. A desktop can be a PC. A PDA can be a PC. The only things that aren't PCs are Apple Computers. Even if a machine is running Linux (instead of Windows) it is still a PC.

"My computer isn't that fast; we don't have broadband yet."
"Broadband" is a term that relates solely to your internet connection, not your computer speed. Your computer speed is entirely independent to your connection speed. A top of the line computer will run just as fast with a DSL connection as it will on 19200 Dial-Up, it just won't open webpages very well. An old roommate of mine had a 486DX (about 33MHz) laptop that we had connected to cable internet. The computer was slow, the connection was fast, and one had nothing to do with the other.

"Virtual memory is fake memory."
I once had a computer salesman try to sell me something, and he quoted the amount of virtual memory as one of its features. He then told me the above line to explain what virtual memory is. [sidenote: not very good sales technique to try and sell a feature, then turn around and describe it as a "fake" feature anyway] Virtual memory (or Pagefile as it's now called) is a section of hard drive space that is reserved as a back-up in case your system runs out of RAM (or Random Access Memory). It's as real as the rest of your system, it just runs slower. Part of the "fake" myth was due to Microsoft's poor naming of it in the first place.

These are only a few of the misused terms I've come across, and I'm sure many more are out there. As I said before, too, it's not people's fault that they refer to them in this way; it was taught to them . . . incorrectly!

As always, use your new skills (knowledge) wisely.

Well, it came and went. There were no real surprises, and (so far) no big controversies. A major difference I noticed in this election from others was how many people came up and bluntly asked if I had voted yet. More often than not, when they heard that I didn't vote, I heard "Well if you don't care enough to vote, then you shouldn't have the right to complain."

Let's recap some basic voting rights here:
It is no one else's business whether or not you vote
It is no one else's business who you vote for/against
It is a fundamental American right to complain even when there's nothing to complain about

I really have gotten sick of that saying about not being able to complain. Here's a thought, DON'T COMPLAIN ANYWAY! There are far worse things in the world than the guy you don't like taking office. Chances are good that you'd only be complaining if your vote lost anyway, so what good is your complaining going to do?

There are a few people I could understand complaining; my father among them. My dad is not an American citizen, he is a resident alien. He's been living here, legally, for almost 26 years now. He runs a (mostly) successful private business, pays taxes, obeys the law, and is subject to the same ordinances as everyone else. He cannot be drafted, but he can enlist. And he can't vote. Despite this, he rarely ever complains about it. If he doesn't, the rest of you can shut your yap.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to have opinions. And it's good to be informed on current events. And its VERY good to stand up for what you believe in and speak your peace. Notice that no where in there is the word "complain" or "whine". And that's really what we're talking about here.

That's what I think of all this. Remember how it's been raining here for two weeks? That made everything nice and water-logged. I'm quite sure that if there wasn't so much foliage here, most of the Salt Lake valley would have eroded away. Everyone kept telling me, though, that it wasn't going to last; "It's going to be sunny on Monday!" Yup, it's sunny . . . and 25 degrees. So what was a nice soggy city, is now a nice frozen solid city! It took me 15 minutes to get my car doors open this morning. I ended up using my ice scraper as a pry-bar!

Tomorrow is election day. [another blech] I am sort of worried, though, about not being registered to vote. It doesn't matter as far as politics is concerned, as there isn't anyone I'd want to vote for anyway. However, P.Diddy and a select other few rap stars have told me to "Vote or Die".


From this, I can only assume that they have finally snapped and initiated a terror campaign to hunt down and shoot every slacker such as myself. I don't want to die (especially at the hands of rap artists), but they haven't even told me who to vote for! I'd hate to vote for someone he doesn't like and get capped anyway!

Halloween came with no Tick-or-Treat'ers. Some friends came over and we watched Ghostbusters in the dark while inhaling Fiddle Faddle and Doritos. Tine got to sit back in her new La-Z-Boy and basically went comatose.

Saturday we discovered a new Mexican restaurant through my brother. It's Pistol Pete's and its really good for pretty cheap. We ate about 4:30 Saturday afternoon and couldn't think about food again until nearly noon on Sunday!

Sort of makes me want another fish taco just thinking about it . . .