As some of you Tiny Gods may know, I work with my friend Ralph on his podcast: The Zombie Astronaut’s Frequency of Fear. He has compiled an insane collection of old-time radio broadcasts focusing on science fiction and horror. Every couple weeks he picks a few broadcasts to fit a particular theme, then writes a story to wrap around them. It’s pretty good stuff if that’s what you’re into. Like I am.

I’m one of the voice actors and my main character is going to be starring in a short spin-off podcast. He is a mad scientist named Dr. Wilheim Von Martinez and he is going to answer science questions from listeners. Since this new podcast won’t be announced until Ralph and I work some things out, we have no questions to use for the first few scripts. I am asking you folks to help out. Think of some questions and email them to: wilheim.vonmartinez@gmail.com.

It doesn’t matter how simple or complex the question is. If it’s something that is common knowledge, that is acceptable as well. He isn’t going to answer any of them correctly anyway. I want to get in the habit of writing scripts based on random submissions from internet-type people rather than getting to comfortable writing an entire show based on my own ideas. Thanks in advance for anything you guys can send my way.

I have a new job that I’ve been at for about a month now. It’s a desk job, doing clerical work at a stable 9-5 routine. It pays well enough, and I’m provided a computer and lots of undirected, unsupervised time. I’ve been wasting a good bit of that time with random, trivial dalliances (like writing posts to web sites) and doing just enough work to justify my continued employment.

Even with all this wastefulness and attempts to drag out what work there is to do (I do all my typing with the Dvorak layout) I found myself yesterday with nothing to do. This is really not something I’m used to. There always something that needs done that there just hasn’t been time for. I find myself asking a question that I’ve had little need to ask in the past: What do you do when you’ve finished all your work?

It seems like I could ask for more work, but the seniority structure above me doesn’t seem terribly well defined. I know the big boss, but I doubt he spends much time thinking of clerical tasks he’d like to see completed.

So, who has found themselves idly at work? What do you do in that situation? How do you make the best of your time? My biggest worry is that attention will be drawn to my loafing and I will be deemed superfluous .

 

Email:

Dear UPPERCASE NAME,

Your Huntington Online Statement is now available.  To view your Online Statement, please log into Huntington Online Banking and click the ‘Statements & Notices’ tab.  If you have questions, contact us at 1-877-932-BANK (2265) weekdays, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. ET and weekends, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET.

Thank you for banking online with Huntington.

What’s wrong with this email?  Here’s a hint: “Huntington Online Banking” is not, was not, and never will be a hyperlink.  These fecking fools emailed me to tell me that some website (they aren’t saying which) has my bank statement.  Good luck googling for your finances!

Updates on two of my previous Hall of Shame inductees.

Best Buy, and their magnificent service.  My iPod has been sent back out for service. I was having the same old problems of songs skipping, not playing, the ipod freezing, etc. But this time, in addition to all that, when I plugged it into a computer, nothing. So, this time it is sent back out, with a nice written list by me of the problems, as well as the half dozen previous service orders. So, I talked to them this morning, and *gasp* my iPod has been approved for an exchange. That’s the good. The bad? I have to do the exchange at the same store that shipped the iPod out. I’m not in Dayton right now, and won’t be back until mid-december. Their computer systems are all linked, so I don’t understand why I can’t do the exchange elsewhere. Customer satisfaction anyone?

On to Woot. Oh woot, you bastards. After ignoring my emails for two weeks, I filed a complaint with the BBB over their awful service. Not suprisingly, two days later I got my refund for the shirt they didn’t ship. About two weeks later, I notice there is a bag stuffed in the little shelf below the mailboxes at my apartment. Upon further inspection, I see that it is addressed to me, from woot. I open it, and it contains the fourth shirt. What the hell guys? Do you not realize that you already gave me my money back? Or is this some sort of goodwill gesture? If so, it’s not gonna work.

So, closure, more or less, to the two outstanding issues. However, neither is enough closure to warrant removal from the Hall of Shame. Better luck next time.

I’m sure that we are well aware of the seeming propensity for the mentally ill to share their sickness through internet forums. It seems that one of the withdraw symptoms of anti-psychotics is the compulsion to electronically share ones views on music. (I refer, mainly, to the user named “Tramp,” which I assume is in referrence to the fact that he actually is an unwashed drifter who traverses the country by freightcar.) If you peruse his other contributions to that site, any questions about his mental health will be answered.

Though poking fun at this particular nutbar is fun enough, I bring this to the fore with a proposition: I would like other such ridiculous forum postings to be linked to, here, under some apropos tag, so that all may mavel at the shear insanity.

First of all, this picture (via Digg) is really cool: The Entire Star Wars Saga in One Picture.

Second, I think I’ve finally put my finger on what pissed me off about all the stupid coincidences and serendipitousness of the prequel trilogy. Looking at that impressive picture you can prominently see Boba and his papa, Jango Fett. It’s beyond the fact that G. Lucas ran out of good ideas, which he clearly has done, agreed? I was struck, looking at all those characters and summoning up from my knowledge all of the deep interconnectedness of their relations, by the phrase “It’s a small world.”

Granted it would have to be changed to “it’s a small galaxy, far, far away” but still: that’s too small of a network for even a world, let alone a star system or especially a galaxy. In a nutshell, the original trilogy was open and the prequel trilogy closed the system.

A New Hope started midway through a space battle – wow! – and ended with a wild party after the government of the galaxy had been overthrown. There were thousands of interesting characters who you just glance and never see again. It was a complete universe where anything could happen, you think.

The Phantom Menace explains the backstory, reuses characters and plot devices and just does its best to take all the mystery out of the universe that once captivated millions (now millions minus me). All that cool, random shit, we are told, was destiny, more or less. Jango begets Boba. Anakin begets Luke and Leia. And C3PO. Whatever. I just liked it better when all that stuff was left up to my imagination.

And lawyers wonder whey they get such bad reps…

A class action lawsuit was started a few years ago against Seagate, because they based their GB calculations on a factor of 1000 instead of 1024.  So, a hard drive advertised as 100gb by Seagate would contain 100,000,000,000 bytes, rather than 107,374,182,400 had they based it off the actual size of a gigabyte.  So, your 100 gigabyte hard drive is really only 931 gigabytes.  A difference of around 7%.

It’s pretty shitty, and I don’t know how the hard drive manufacturers have gotten away with advertising their drives like this for so long (Seagate is not the only guilty party).  As we start moving to larger sized drives, obviously the difference in the calculations becomes more apparent.  Sure, nobody probably cared too much back when their hundred megabyte hard drive was really only 93mb.  But now when your shiny new terabyte drive is coming up 70gb short in explorer, you wonder, wtf.

My problem is how obscene these settlements are.  If you purchased a drive between 2001 and 2006 from an authorized reseller, if you can provide all the necessary documentation, you are eligible for a refund of 5%, excluding taxes and refunds.  When I was at Best Buy, you could get an 80gb drive for about $30-40 after rebates.  A 120gb drive for maybe $50-75.  Even if you paid full price, you might have paid 100-200 for a typical hard drive.  So if you can jump through the hoops, you might be able to claim $5-10 for this gross injustice.

The three lines in the settlement agreement that really get me are these:

“As part of the settlement, Seagate will make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its retail hard drives.”

So big fucking deal.  So what, now a drive will be advertised as 500gb*, and in tiny tiny print somewhere on the box that asterisk will be followed by a line saying that the size is based off of the 1000 calculation, and that your system may report differently depending on how it calculates a gigabyte.   Unless they are going to start calculating the size based on the correct calculation, this entire case was pointless.
“If the settlement is approved, plaintiff’s counsel will apply for an award of attorneys’ fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.”

So all the people who are ACTUALLY affected by this might get enough to buy their lunch for a day, and the lawyers collect close to 2 million.  Fantastic.  Was there really any benefit to this entire proceeding, other than the layers getting paid?  No, not really, because:

“Seagate has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiff’s claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation.”

So great, Seagate doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong, so obviously they haven’t learned anything here, like that maybe you shouldn’t use misleading packaging in order to push drives!