Have you ever noticed that people often insert an extra “is” into sentences containing wording similar to “the thing is that”? Well, they do. Almost every time. “The thing is is that”. I wouldn’t even say that the “that” is totally necessary, but the double “is” is infuriating.

Yep.

So what’ll it be, Jesus? Christmas, or Easter? You can’t have both. I know you’re just in it for the extra presents (everyone knows that people with birthdays near Christmas get stiffed), but fucking shit — whether you came back from the dead or not in the first place (and you didn’t, because that’s impossible — but supposing you might have), you’re dead as a doornail now. Considering this, you probably don’t merit even one birthday party a year.

I really don’t think that it’s fair that your worm-eaten ass gets to inconvenience those of us that choose not to form deep personal relationships with corpses (seriously, people, that’s pretty morbid) by closing down everything but IHOP multiple times per year. All I got to do today was sit around and stew about my ruined weekend plans.

Could you bastards at least arrange to hold your borrowed pagan fertility festival on the same day each year? For those of use who aren’t Christians (or at least, for me), it’s pretty easy to lose track of the precise date, on account of it holds absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

pigs 1, originally uploaded by mariacaridad.

Sean and I are so over filthy, deadbeat roommates. We’re doing the post-filthy, deadbeat roommate cleanup this weekend. Pro-tip: do not live with filthy deadbeats! Even if they are (ostensibly) your friend, and they’re suddenly desperate for a place to stay. You will hate your life. Definitely don’t do it three or four times in a row, either. Fuck, don’t live with friends, period. You let them slip once, because they’re a little short on rent and they’re your friend, after all… you’ll never see a single cent on time again.

Actually, don’t live with anyone. Hell is other people. So true. Sartre knew what he was talking about.

We’ve rented a steam cleaner to prevent weeds being able to grow in our carpet due to the layer of topsoil that has accumulated. (I still don’t understand the whole American shoes on in the house thing. Is this attitude somehow perpetuated by Stanley Steemer?)

Last night I washed, dried, and then bleached the walls in the empty room — and they’re still grimy as hell. Looking forward to paying to have this place repainted when we move out.

Just a while ago, I started (but could not finish without a sand-blaster) washing the sink full of dirty dishes that was lovingly left for us, all with food baked on and burnt on. Hadn’t even been soaked. Awesome!

(Side-note: I grew up with three siblings, and these days I don’t have many possessions. Both of those factors make me very aware of the things I do own. In doing the count putting those dishes away today, the missing items are as follows: two plates, a bunch of spoons, the lid to a sugar bowl, four shot glasses, quite a bit of Tupperware, and exactly eight forks — including every single dessert fork I had).

I’m about to go clean out the fridge, because it’s full of crumb-filled, squished-up margarine wrappers (ew, can’t believe I even let that filth in my apartment in the first place), “mystery” items, and coffee grounds. I hate everything about coffee. Especially the smell. Especially the taste. Especially cleaning up the coffee grounds from every inch of the kitchen, and the coffee ring and splatter stains on the counter (with bleach — the counter is white). But I won’t have to do it every single day anymore. So one last time only makes me mildly livid.

All this BS (plus cleaning the bathroom, floors, and well… everything else, all the time, because nobody else was ever going to do it), and we still haven’t gotten October’s rent. Definitely worth the hassle… I’m so happy we won’t have to deal with this anymore! And I’m so happy that now that I’ve got a job, I’ll be able to spend some money on buying nice things to put in our apartment without having to worry about them being ruined. Hells yes to no longer living in an apartment that looks like a dorm room!

You now have no excuse for ever saying this to me again, Internet.

I prefer to use their web chat service for support for several reasons. a) No thick accents to deal with, b) I can easily save a transcript, c) if I get transferred to a second person, they can see my full transcript, so I don’t have to repeat myself, d) I still have to wait on hold, but there’s no elevator music. I already went through this process once, and had a “hit” sent to my box, which did absolutely nothing. The analyst tells me that it could take 15 minutes to work. Which is BS, because I’ve gone through this 77 times. The box resets almost immediately — it’s the loading of the menu and guide that take time. I mention that my box was doing nothing, but get booted from chat anyway, and told to contact them again after those 15 minutes. So now I have to do it all over again. I’m number 34 in the support queue. Kill me.

**UPDATE**

I’ve had a lot of hits to this entry with search terms that seemed like others were having the same problem. I began to suspect what was wrong immediately, and 5 or 6 chats and phonecalls later, it was finally verified and fixed. The installer hadn’t added the serial number of the new box to my account, so the signal was blocked. No one at Comcast suggested this to me, I had to suggest it as a possibility to them instead, so you might want to ask about this, if your symptoms are similar. A few of the agents I spoke to were able to see that the serial number wasn’t registered, but pretended that they weren’t able to fix it from their end, or that they’d need to send a tech. Not true, they were just clueless. Call back until you get someone who knows what they’re doing (it might take you a while!)

Shorter description of the symptoms of this problem: Upon first connecting the box to your cable outlet, everything will seem to work perfectly. After the box communicates back and forth a bit with Comcast (I was able to get the menu loaded and On Demand running before I had a problem), all channels may begin showing a message reading “Not Authorized” and “For ordering information, press info”. If you unplug the box and plug it back in, all channels will probably show the “This channel should be available shortly” message, because Comcast will not allow a signal to be sent to an unauthorized cable box.

I hope this helps somebody! Good luck!

I hate it when this happens. Oh, yeah. I finally chose one. I guessed wrong. Dammit.

Ohmigod, so bored. What can I do tonight for zero dollars?

1. USCIS
2. NSLSC/OSAP
3. UPS
4. Comcast
5. Microsoft
6. Dell
7. Capital One
8. Wells Fargo
9. Wal-Mart
10. AT&T

Apparently, AMC doesn’t carry nickels (uh, duh, see the headline above). Presumably, then, they don’t carry pennies, either. And why should they? When a teensy tray of nachos costs $8, and you’re already being ripped off (fer fuck’s sake — maybe get rid of the 9,823,745 flat screens showing a static menu, and charge a bit less), why would anyone care about five cents? And why the hell would anyone care about one cent? They fucking wouldn’t.

There are a number of people passing through my apartment on a regular basis, and three or four or five people here on a regular basis. These people obviously don’t care about pennies at all, because when I go to vacuum (and I’m the only one that ever does it, by the way…), there are 982,734 pennies on the floor. I have to stop every time I find one to bend over and pick it up. The value of a penny is now less than the amount we’d expect to be paid to bend over. Seriously. If someone was to ask me to bend over, I’d demand… at least a quarter. And if you ask me… any denomination of currency that the average person can’t be bothered to reach down to the ground to pick up… That denomination has no sense existing. The sooner we eliminate the penny, the sooner my back rejoices.

If you have a package delivered by the USPS instead of UPS or FedEx, it still won’t get to your door, but at least they let you pick it up at the nearest post office. UPS or FedEx make us go to Buttfuck, Illinois to pick shit up. Buttfuck, Illinois, BTW, is not accessible by public transit, and guess who doesn’t have a car. So our packages are frequently returned to sender. Awesomeness.

And yeah, they just called me back. Guess I’ll be on the porch from 4:45-5:15pm.

I have at least eleventy loads of laundry to do, and they could have been done by now, except that I’ve been having to do them one a day for the last week. This guy is in there every night, all night. He’s not done until 4 or 5 am, so unless I want to wait until then, I have to be sneaky to get a load in when he’s not looking. Because he can’t be polite and use only one machine, leaving one for somebody else. Ohhh, no.

I’ve come to the conclusion that either there are 43 Mexicans living in one of these units, and he’s the designated laundry whore, or he’s got some kind of Mexican ghetto laundry service scam going, or he does in fact live in the boiler room, and figures running the machines all night for $1 each qualifies as rent. Yesterday at 7pm, though, he asked me to hold the door open for him, because he wanted to get his bike. Sounded a bit suspicious to me, since if he wanted his bike, maybe he should have brought his key instead of waiting around outside the laundry/bike room until someone let him in, huh. So I hung around outside for a while. Never came out with a bike, big surprise. Probably just the beginning of his shift. When he’s in there, he flips the deadbolt so the door can’t close and lock.

The other annoying thing is that whenever he’s doing laundry (so, all the time), he stands around outside the room instead of going back inside his supposed apartment. Sometimes with several other Mexicans. Often drunk. Look, guys, it takes a lot of effort to avoid people all day and be this anti-social. Stop making me acknowledge you. All of his laundry bags are numbered. What are the numbers for? Does he have so many kids that he can’t remember them all? And if he ever happens to leave a machine empty for five minutes, he unplugs it, so people will think it’s not working (I, however, am not a moron, and am not fooled). Is he just an asshole, or what.

I don’t know what any of this means. I suppose I could question him one of these days, but I have a strict policy of never talking to people, and besides, it’s much more fun to imagine sinister motives, and get more and more passive aggressive because I have a veritable mountain of dirty clothes chilling out in my room that I can’t do anything about. Anyway, I don’t speak Spanish, and he doesn’t speak very much English.

Sean says maybe he’s laundering money.

Ho ho ho. Good one.

I’m just going to walk around naked from now on. Less freakin’ hassle. As long as I stay inside, anyway.

[I]f you untick or unselect the checkbox of “Always ask before opening this type of file” option before clicking on save or open the downloaded files, the next time you attempt to download a file with same file type or extension IE will automatically start to download and then perform the selected action (either save or open) when finished. [...]

In Windows Vista running IE7 [...] there is no longer an option to reset or change this behavior to the normal default again through the usual GUI.

Whose bright idea was this!?

I was searching Google to figure out where the hell in the menus they’d moved this option, because I sure as hell couldn’t find it. I didn’t expect that they’d have gotten rid of it completely!

PS to the people who will inevitably show up here looking for the solution to the problem… Click the link above. Bleah.

I’ve been getting eleventy-seven of these for the past month or so. My spam filter still hasn’t caught on. Kill, kill, kill.

I know how to handle these sorts of people online — a) ignore them (best option), b) ridicule them (more entertaining option), c) attempt to reason with them (complete waste of time). In person, however, I’m usually at a bit of a loss. How ought I to respond to someone who brings any of these things up in the course of normal conversation?

My first instinct is to hijack the small-talk and start a conversation about science, logic, common sense, and how they person involved has managed to avoid all of these. I don’t usually mean to do it. I think my “mistake” is to reply to them with a phrase like “homeopathic medicine doesn’t work” as opposed to “I don’t believe in homeopathic medicine”. Ugh.

Well, actually. Reply #1 leads to an argument. Reply #2 leads to the response “well it works for me, and it’s better for you than that stuff with all the chemicals in it”, which leads to my brain exploding, and reply #1 escaping my mouth anyway. This just gets me labelled as a know-it-all. A know-it-all who is perceived to be wrong, in fact — the most annoying sort!

Taking homeopathy as an example, most people I run into who believe in it don’t even know what it is! Many of them seem to assume that it is a synonym for “natural” or “organic”, and have been led to believe that both of these are synonyms for “healthy”. Clearly, since healthy is good, homeopathy is win!

Trying to unravel the layers and layers of BS that got someone to the point of believing in something as completely nutty as homeopathy is practically impossible, especially since people don’t like to be wrong, and will usually get angry or demand to change the subject before any reason leaks into their brain.

Should I just brush off subjects like these when they come up, and go insane slowly and silently from having to endure woo quietly, when every neuron in my brain wants to attack it, or should I continue to be the know-it-all bitch. Is there some third option I’ve missed? Getting together every rational person I can find, and evacuating us to another planet, say?

Yes.

Yes it does.

This is pissing me the fuck off.

Forgot yet again that it was bound to happen eventually, lost me all sorts of edits.

Grrrrrrrrr…

Oh, also… I’m back in Chicago for the foreseeable future. Not that I’m psychic, so I can’t foresee very far into the future at all. In fact, I can’t foresee at all. So rather, I’m back in Chicago for the time being, and will be here in from now on with a probability of 1 for the present, and declining at a rate that I don’t know enough about anything to determine towards a probability of 0 at some time in the future. Or something. Whatever. Hi again, Internet.

Why is it so hard to get something delivered?

Why have I had to complain about this 87 other times on this website? (I’d add appropriate links here, but my site is down at the moment, so I’m posting this by e-mail in hopes that it will show up eventually.)

Delivering packages is pretty much the only thing that FedEx and UPS do. You’d think that a business that does one thing would be able to do that one thing reasonably well, and would hire people who have at least one or two of the rudimentary skills required to do that one thing, including:

The ability to count (so I probably shouldn’t be getting calls asking me “I’m at 3943, but I can’t find 3943 1/2″, since anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out that it’s probably somewhere between 3943 and 3945).

The ability to follow simple directions (so when I tell the genius who can’t figure out how to find 3943 1/2 to go past 3943 and try the very next door in the courtyard, I probably shouldn’t get another call 10 minutes later from an entirely different street) (and okay, maybe 3943 1/2 isn’t as straightforward as other addresses — but these guys spend all day every day finding addresses — they should at least be able to figure out that 3934 1/2 N Janssen Ave is not located anywhere on N Greenview Ave).

The ability to read (so I probably shouldn’t have to write a note that says “our buzzer is on the bottom” when our buzzer is clearly labelled to begin with, but when I do it anyway because I have experience with delivery drivers’ limited mental capacities, I probably shouldn’t be sitting in my living room all afternoon listening to absolute silence only to later on find a missed delivery tag stuck to my door, and to be told upon calling the delivery company and asking them to check up on things that the driver explained that no one answered the buzzer — no shit, Sherlock, you didn’t press it).

Hm. Um. Yeah. That’s about all they need to know, as far as I can tell. And yet, they could hire a monkey and get better results. Dear Bob, and they trust these retards to drive company-owned vehicles? If they can’t match “G” on a package to “G” on a label next to a doorbell, is it really safe to assume that they can understand the meaning of a stop sign?

Maybe I need to give up and just leave a sign that says “Dear UPS / FedEx — Get fucked. Just take the damned thing back to the warehouse. I’m sick of playing your little game. We all know I’m going to end up picking it up there eventually, anyway. I will be complaining about you to your supervisor (again) this evening. Have fun with that. I hope you die horribly.”

Seriously, why do they bother sending drivers, when seemingly nothing ever gets successfully delivered to anyone?

Fuck nature.

If you’re using a Chicago Card, do NOT select $30 (or $10) as your refill amount. You’ll be giving up free money if you do.

Back when I got my Chicago Card, I selected $20 as my refill. After a few months, I decided that resulted in too-frequent charges, so I moved it up to $30. Today, I finally noticed on my account history, that I was only receiving a $2 bonus for those $30 refills. Wait a second…isn’t it supposed to be a 10% bonus? That’s what I thought all the ads and marketing said when I signed up…current marketing says $2 bonus for every $20 value added. Maybe that’s what it’s always said, and I didn’t realize it. Who knows…

So, the options are:

Refill $10 Bonus $0
Refill $20 Bonus $2
Refill $30 Bonus $2
Refill $40 Bonus $4
Refill $60 Bonus $6

I replied:

How is $2 for every $20 different from 10% when they don’t stipulate anywhere on their website that the $20 must be loaded at the same time? Seems to me, it ought to work out to the same thing, unless they plan on clarifying their wording.

And this is still fucking pissing me off. No, really. How is $2 / $20 different from 10%? I mean, the only thing I would assume from reading that is maybe they would wait until, say… you put $10 on your card twice. Not that they meant they’d give you a $2 bonus for every literal chunk of exactly $20. But if you load $10 twice, guess what bonus you get? A big, fat zeeeeero. Fuck, shit, piss. Yeah, this probably means I lost out of a whole… not very many dollars before I caught it. But, still.

Pretty lame, Milhouse.