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Monday, June 30, 2008

Photo Dump

So, I missed posting yesterday, as I'm still trying to fight off a lovely head cold, so here are some 16 of my favorite pictures that I've saved over my browsing time.

















Friday, June 27, 2008

Ethan Brush Fire [pics]

Much talk is being given to the Big Sur fire in California right now, but a state over here in Arizona, we have a nice little brush fire burning in the now dried up Gila River Basin that has now spread to about 1500 acres. Not a small fire, but nothing huge either. Luckily no damage has been done to buildings and no people have been killed, the only evacuations that were imposed were that to people living in the area who may have respiratory problems as the fire is generating a lot of smoke. I decided to take a few shots of the smoke rising above downtown Phoenix 6/26 and 6/27 while I was in the area, here's what I have.

For those wondering, maps are provided on the bottom of the page to show where the fire is buring and where the photos were taken.












Here's the location:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

2 Girls 1 Cup Meets Warped Tour 2008

I couldn't help but snap this shot while I was waiting in line to get into Warped Tour here in Phoenix, someone took the liberty in explaining that girls do in fact poop.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

My Colleagues are Idiots.

The other day I had something happen to me at work that caused me to lose faith in a large portion of the population. For those of you who have followed my blog through the last few months, or anyone who has navigated around it, you'll know I work as a Customer Service Rep in a call center. Not exactly a prime place to find the worlds best and brightest to begin with, but I digress.

My direct colleagues and I already have an air of superiority to begin with since we are a specialty department and always assume the other reps are airheads since they can't seem to understand what we do and do not do, but sometimes something happens that even the people outside of my department or even my company will just put their hand up to their forehead and think, "What the hell was that guy thinking?" Here are a few.

I work in the Fraud department, customer has a concern with charges on their account, transfer them to me, simple right? If only you knew.

Me: "Fraud department, this is Troy"
CSR: "Oh great, did I reach the fraud department?"
Me: "Sure did"
CSR: "Awesome, and who am I speaking with?"
Me: "Troy"
CSR then proceeds to explain the call to me, letting me know what I will be doing when the caller comes through to me.
CSR: "And now before I transfer them through, how would you like to be introduced?"
*Facepalm*

The best part about that lovely exchange is that the rep is not from India, that wonderful human is from our own USofA. Take pride Americans, take pride.

Not to be outdone, our buddies in India like to follow up with this little gem:

Me: "Fraud department, this is Troy"
India: "Excuse me, Charlie?"
Me: "Troy"
India: "Ok Charlie, this is the situation..."
*explains*
India: "Alright, and you're name was Charlie?"
Me: "No, Troy"
India: "Oh I'm sorry, let me introduce the caller"
India: "Caller, Thank you for holding, I have Charlie on the line to better assist you"
*Facepalm*

Here's a good universal one that never ceases to amaze me, fear for your accounts ladies and gents, fear for them.

Me: "Fraud department, this is Troy"
CSR: "Hi Troy, this is soandso, I have a caller on the line who has fraud on their account"
Me: "Ok, I'll be glad to assist, how did you identify the caller?"
CSR: "I didn't"
*This is the fraud department, we actually would like to STOP fraud, not encourage it, thanks*
*Facepalm*

To wrap it all up, I would like to stress the importance of situational awareness, know whats going on before you open your trap, this goes for anyone, even not in the customer service field. If I get done introducing a caller to you who was just had their identity stolen and abused by a family member, DO NOT start the call with, "Hi ma'am, my name is Steve, how are you doing today?"

The threat to America isn't terrorism, it's our own stupidity.

Monday, June 16, 2008

My Gripe About Social Media

Somewhere between my 250th Lolcat and 700th Demotivational Poster, I learned something. There's really only 10 bloggers on the internet that actually come up with new content, everyone simply copies what was already posted.

Maybe it's just me, I use Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and StumbleUpon regularly. So that means that I'm going to see the same story 4 times, but that's not the case. The problem is that if I saw an article on Digg that peaked my interest, I would click it, and then likely Digg it. Then I would start browsing reddit and look, someone linked to a page again, so I make sure I give it an up score. After a day or so, people will start giving thumbs up to this page as they're visiting it from Digg or Reddit and this will cause me to Stumble upon the page, which I will likely give a thumbs up to. This is where it gets bad. Most bloggers want to drive traffic to their page, so what they will do is hop on to the newest internet fad, if it's a Youtube video, they'll post it, if its an article, they will link it. They will then have their page submitted to SU and I will end up stumbling it again, only days later.

I came to this discovery a few months back when the cartoonist that was drawing the pictures that started out to look NSFW and then transformed it into a normal picture. I swear I stumbled it about 15 times in 2 days, it was on EVERY humor blog. The on top of that, it made it's way to the top of every video page.

If someone can point me in the direction of a good humor blog that creates their own content instead of ripping it off, please let me know. I'll subscribe to that RSS feed so fast, your head will spin...

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Google Thinks I Have a Problem

So the other day, I was checking my sites for comments, and just doing the normal blog promoting thing, when I noticed an odd set of adsense things next to my post about the idiot who was driving the wrong way into a handicap parking spot in Must be a Mental Handicap Part 3. Supposedly, I have an anger problem...



If you can't read it(which is likely possible, as it is quite small), these are the advertisements:

  1. Anger Classes Online
  2. Anger Management Program
  3. Psychology
  4. You have anger?
Don't get me wrong, I think there are people out there that could have a great improvement in their lives if they took some anger management classes. The problem is that I dont think google skimming my page should tell me or anyone else, whether or not we should be looking into some anger programs.

It could just be me reading into things a little too much, but somehow, I feel google might be trying to tell me something. Honestly, I didnt think my post came off too much of a rant that would cause google to think I should enroll in some anger programs, but who knows.

And as a side note, I would like to apologize to anyone who viewed that page between midnight and 3 pm EST, as the map was backwards, thank you to my grammar nazi for pointing it out to me.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Must be a Mental Handicap Part 3.

This is part three of the Mental Handicap series, see part one here and part two here.

I need to start carrying around a cheap digital camera to start capturing all the idiots that like to abuse handicap parking spaces. This guy today was an idiot on multiple levels. Here's the thing, I was leaving Wal-Mart today after picking up the necessities (Smirnoff, Jäger, Captain Morgan, Batteries, Cat Food, and Full Throttle) and as I'm pushing my cart out, I see a car coming at me, usually not a problem because I'm in a parking lot, but the problem is that our local Wal-Marts parking lot looks like this:



And I was walking up aisle 4, which means cars should be coming from behind me, not in front of me. So as I'm walking and thinking, wait a second, I'm not drunk yet, this doesnt seem right. Then watching this specimen of human evolution try and park in the handicap spot that is very clearly designed for someone coming from another direction, I wanted to yell at him but decided against it. All the while, he was going back and forth until eventually he was able to pull it off.

The icing on the cake was when just like in Part 1, we see a fully healthy 20 something year old guy emerge from the car and start to walk in. Honestly, he took more time to fight his way into an illegal spot, than had he gone the right direction and took a normal spot, for petes sake it's 10pm on a Friday night, not many people are taking up the parking spots at Wal-Mart.

So, am I a magnet for stupid people? or are there really THAT many dumb people in the world?

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Why?!

There are certain things in this life that just make no sense whatsoever, I tried to compile a list of them, and this is what I came up with.

  • Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are going dead?

  • Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is not enough money?

  • Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars in the sky, but check when you say the paint is wet?

  • Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?

  • Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?

  • Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but duck when you throw a revolver at him?

  • Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

  • What evil SOB put an 's' in the word 'lisp'?

  • Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?

  • Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale? Or a furniture store that's not having a liquidation sale?

  • Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?

  • Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?

  • Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?

  • How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?

  • When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say, 'It's all right?' Well, it isn't all right, so why don't we say, 'That really hurt, why don't you watch where the hell you're going?'

  • Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?

  • In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?

  • How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?

Friday, June 6, 2008

I Shattered My Stove Top With A Mop...

Prior to yesterday, I had a really nice gas powered flat top Range. Today I have a cracked, fairly useless, shit I now owe the property management company a new, Range. Here's how it happened.

I was walking down the stairs and into the kitchen to cook some dinner when I noticed that above the stove, below the fan, there was a giant spider, now, I absolutely abhor spiders and most insects for that matter. This wasn't your average backyard spider, this thing was about as big as the bottom of a soda can. At first I thought it was a moth and I was going to smash it with a paper towel, but when I got close I saw the little bugger looking at me, and I swear it was thinking:

"Come any closer fool and I'll jump right on your face"


I swear, it's legs were slightly crouched and everything, like it was getting ready to jump. As soon as I saw this is stumbled back a few feet and nearly fell over. My first instinct was to grab whatever was close to beat it with. Since it was on the wall, I figured no harm, no foul. The closest thing to me was the mop since the damn cat knocked someones 42oz Thirstbuster on the floor a day earlier, but we'll cover that on another post.

This is where it gets interesting, we don't have your ordinary mop, its a cheapo from Wal-Mart that is pretty much a broom handle with a plastic base which has a sponge attached to it, so it's very hard when dry.

I take said mop and jab it into the wall hoping to kill the damn thing, but it's spidey senses allowed it to run away before the mop came crashing down on its head. It's next move was to run down behind the stove. I made sure this didn't happen because the last thing I needed was to wake up to a giant spider on my face, so I put the mop below it and swing up, launching the spider off the wall and, you guess it, right onto the stove. I try throwing a dish towel on to it to slow its movement around the kitchen, and this seemed to have dazed it. As soon as I see it start to run away I slam the mop down on top of it, taking out the spider, as well as the nice glass top to my flat stove.

Needless to say the advertising revenue from June, and who knows how much longer, will go to buying a new range. Since I'm still in this house for another 6 months, so it's not a matter of saying screw the security deposit and bailing on it. Just another reason I hate spiders.

If you're having a hard time visualizing the mop and stove, here are some links to similar items:

Mop: http://housewares.hardwarestore.com/35-174-sponge-mops/deluxe-cellulose-squeeze-mop-100850.aspx

Stove: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8810851&type=product&id=1206749188946

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

It Doesn't Need to Explode!

Okay, I need to air this because it's getting out of control. Yesterday I filled my gas tank for my little Toyota Yaris, maybe a 12 gallon tank at best. Cost me $40! Luckily I get around 42 mpg in my car so I don't feel it, except I drive 75 miles a day so I need to fill up at least once a week, that gets expensive still.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a tree hugging hippy, but it's time to move away from gasoline. It's outdated, we're still using(albiet a modified version) the same crap we used to power our cars 80 years ago, it's time to move on.

"Hybrid!" You hear people screaming, "Bio Diesel" is another one you hear tossed around, but frankly, it's the same ole shit, pardon my French, but this really irks me. We complain about gas prices because of oil prices, hybrid wont fix that, we still need gas. Bio Diesel wont change anything, because when it becomes popular, the price of corn goes up. It's the same vicious cycle people, and it has no end in sight. We need something drastic.

Electric is a perfect way to go, if only it wasn't a pain. The last thing I want is to get ready to go in the morning and realize that I forgot to plug my car in last night. All the money car companies can bring in if they can find something else, and all the bright people they can recruit, and we still have nothing. Why? because up until now, the combustion engine worked, why change it when we can just modify it. Get over yourself, it doesn't need to explode to power a car.

Now is the time for someone to come up with the next great idea. The world needs it.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

How to be a Good President

Let this be known, this is not advice for Bush, he's too far gone, this is for McCain or Obama, whoever wins in 2008 and anyone after them. I'm not going to go political on you guys, so if you want something to flame the comment section about, go elsewhere, this is strictly humorous or possibly serious, depends how you want it to be.

Here's the list:

1. I would have a person in my cabinet, or even just a normal adviser who is the exact opposite of me. If you're a republican, get a member of the ACLU to be on the board, if you're a democrat, perhaps an NRA member. But the point is, that this person's job would be to disagree with you on everything, causing you to make sure you think of all aspects before making a decision.

2. Run a blog, with the rise of the internet, and as long as we keep Net Neutrality, most people can access the web. Sure, we've had maintream media for some time now, but honestly, not many of them can be trusted, ex. "Liberal Media" and "Faux News". Who to better hear it from them the President himself?

3. On the topic of blogs, have a person, or group of people in charge of blogger/internet relations, McCain had a similar version of this with his 'Townhall' style of campain, but lost it as the race got bigger, but wouldnt it be easier to email ThePresident@whitehouse.gov and have someone read it and then give a report to the president? Goes back to thinking things through before acting.

Fourth, last, and most importantly.

Get my head out of my ass. Sure, I'm the president, but there's no point in having my head in the clouds. The common theme here is that there is no reason not to look around and see what people are saying about you, if you make an unfavorable decision, address it. Guess what, half of the country will likely disagree with what you have to say, and the president that finally does, will have the highest approval rating of any president, EVER.