verbosity

Computer, make me a sandwich

(The Power of Speech [andyrut.com])

My motorcycle insurance company has a completely voice-operated automated customer support system. The voice actor did a superb job, having me convinced that I was interacting with a warm body for probably a solid 10 seconds, but the stunning part is the system itself. Not once has it ever misunderstood me, and I've updated my address and made credit card payments using it, all without touching the keypad after dialing. They must save an incredible amount of money with the reduced necessary support personnel, even if the computerized system can only handle the most basic (but common!) tasks. Sure beats phone support that's outsourced to another country where the employees don't speak English so well, and can't understand you either.

My coworker Tim's old mobile phone provider has a voice-operated system as well, but it's atrocious. He even had trouble getting it to hand him off to a human, until he discovered that if he swore incessantly at it, it would transfer him immediately.

"Cock balls smacktard motherfucker piece of shit ..."
Please hold while I transfer your call to a customer support representative.

Plugger

(not a work of Gary Brookins)

Irony: 'I-r&-nE
1 : When a youth crams his Oldsmobile Yacht into a motorcycle parking space, then meticulously plugs the parking meter.

Featureful

(Featureless)

Also, your direct links that I get from RSS are still broken. - adam

So I started digging through Movable Type's RSS template, the "Template Tags" section of the MT manual, and the MT forums. I discovered that MT was doing exactly what it was configured to do:

<description><$MTEntryExcerpt remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>

I decided I wanted my RSS v2 feed to be HTMLized, with the full post instead of an excerpt:

<description><$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$></description>

Bam. Done. MT rules. However, LiveJournal's feed-sucker is brain-dead and ignores the tag, instead believing that I just posted 9 new entries. Sigh.

Murphy's Irish Law, Part 2

(Murphy's Irish Law, Part 1)

Mr. Peck pointed out that by seeking clemency from the city attorney, I greatly reduce the effectiveness (limit -> 0) of that channel should I need it in the future. Since this is a minor infraction that I readily admit to committing, burning my Pleading Card on it would be a waste. Thus, I signed up for STOP class yesterday. By doing so, I am using up my STOP class opportunity for the next 3 years, but it's the wrong frame of mind to plan on being ticketed again. I'd much rather save the big Get Out of Jail Card shot for if I really need it.

Although, damn, you know how much money I would make if I were doing consulting work for 8 hours instead of watching traffic safety videos?

For you Lincoln East'ers: The NE Safety Council had a sign on their wall, indicating that Rudy Stoehr passed away 25 February 2003. I can't say that I particularly liked or disliked the man, but the passing of anyone accomplished and driven to improve others is a great loss, and 64 is too young. May he rest in peace.

Shan's Musik Skool

DJ Shan came over to my house earlier this evening. I must say, the sex was great. And by "sex," I mean the instruction I received in electronic music. No, that's not a metaphor. Shannon came over with the express purpose of laying me...err, the ground work for my electronic music education.

I was raised on some country, dabbled a bit in classical, pop, early hip-hop, and eventually settled firmly into rock, industrial, and some forms of metal, with a smattering of jazz and nerdcore. My experience with "techno" went little beyond what was attached to movies, commercials, and the occasional song that was "mainstream" enough to find its way to my ears through personal channels.

Enter Shannon. I've known for years upon years of her passion for this exploding genre. She spins it even, although not quite for a "living" yet; doesn't seem to be much money in that market unless you make it really big. After another friend of mine pointed me to Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music, I decided to give ol' Shan a ring for some personal instruction. She was not only interested, but seemingly bordering on ecstatic for the opportunity to school this metalhead. Girl's definitely passionate about her music.

After dinner at Imperial Palace -- always excellent, although I didn't care much for the sizzling rice soup that Mr. Peck recommended to me earlier in the week -- I led Miss Shannon out to my pad in BFE. She brought a stack of CDs with her, but they never left the case. Flexing my internet connection, she went to town downloading tracks from all over the genre roadmap. Not 20 minutes into her copyright-pushing excursion (she potentially owns everything she demo'd for me), my land-line rings. I danced out to my living room to see what Mr. Caller ID had to say:

"No way. No bloody way," I exclaimed entirely to myself. "No way in hell Time Warner is watching their pipes that closely. That's not even practical."

With trepidation I answered, futilely attempting to shield the phone's pickup from the downtempo tracks booming from my room. I usually answer my phone by identifying myself, but hell if I was going to do that this time.

"Hello?"

"I see you're a Roadrunner cable internet subscriber blah blah blah sign up for cable television blah blah."! "Blah, buh buh blah."

"No thanks. I don't have television service because I have no interest in watching TV."

I guess the sales lady detected the "I'm not budging even if you offer me your firstborn" undertones, for she ended the call after barely squeezing in a comment about thanking me for my time, or some similar canned closing line. Back to the peer-to-peer networks I went.

The other event of note was that I finally found a track I've been searching for for nigh on 6 years. Not continually, obviously, and I'd completely forgotten about it since $deity-knows-when until tonight. Remember the movie Blade? In one scene, Deacon Frost is chilling in the vampire archives while some cheesy Hollywood "looks good but is complete horseshit" computing thing that's supposedly decoding the La Magra prophecy runs on the workstation next to him. Vampire elder Dragonetti strolls in and begins to chastise Frost, who slowly removes his headphones to bless us with a wickedly twisted drum n bass tune sample.

When the Blade soundtrack emerged in stores, I pounced upon it only to find it was "music from and inspired by the movie," which I quickly learned meant "4 tracks from the movie, padded with crappy rap and other junk instead of the kickin' electronic beats that you might actually be interested in listening to." It didn't have my track, no one I asked knew what the music coming from the headphones was, or even if it was a song that existed outside of the movie.

But I found it, thanks to Google's cache. Source Direct's "Call & Response" from their Exorcise the Demons album. I need to listen to more of their material to decide if it's worthy of purchasing.

Featureless

I wish LiveJournal implemented the TrackBack specification. Then I wouldn't have to post directly in a LJ user's journal to let them know that I commented on their entertaining post using my own site.

...

I don't actually have a comment about the referenced LJ post. Well, perhaps "ROFLMAO."

Arsty Fartsy

The Mac Hall Comics site provides ocular insight into some of my feelings about the Harry Potter material:

Click This Link Now!!!!111one

Boyd's material is occasionally side-busting hilarious (insert link here after I dig through my bookmarks for a favorite), but I visit mostly to gape at McConville's drawings-turned-gold by his digital-art prowess. Venturing beyond mere 2D work, you RPG gamers out there will also likely be interested in his Mog Mod for Morrowind (Moogles, yea!). That is all, as it's late here. Did you read the hat?

Note: I would have duplicated the comic here instead of providing a boring text link, but I only do that if I have permission and I have yet to find any reprinting guidelines on Ian's site. I've wanted to do a post on an old Ctrl+Alt+Delete comic, but same copyright situation, and ol' alias Absath has not yet replied to my email asking for reposting approval. I wish all comic sites laid it out like Diesel Sweeties does.

Murphy's Irish Law

I lost my virginity Tuesday night. Just kidding; I've been pulled over by the cops before. However, the last time I received a ticket I believe I was 16 years old, and it was completely bogus: I would have had to floor it from the corner I turned a mere 2 blocks away, to the speed trap to have achieved the speed they said I did, and I couldn't have braked for the officer standing in the road. Since that officer is still alive, I obviously didn't have the pedal down that whole two blocks. But I digress.

I'm normally a rather meticulous driver. I don't habitually speed, don't tailgate, always use my turn-signals, stop for yellow lights, change lanes to let people merge into traffic, etc. I even consider driving to be a skill worthy of improving on, so I do things like double-clutch even though my transmission has synchronizers, practice heel-and-toeing (that's some tough stuff), and so forth. In short -- and I know everyone says this, but they're all liars -- I consider myself one of the better drivers out there. Murphy had it in for me Tuesday night though:

I blew a stoplight. I was distracted by something (I know I was hunting for parking spaces at that approximate time, so that was likely it), and when I looked up and noticed the light was no longer green, I was moving too fast and was too close to the intersection to make anything other than an ABS-engaging stop full of sound and fury. So I rolled on through. Right in front of a cop.

Officer Witzel was a friendly lady, and we exchanged pleasant words before she headed back to her car to verify all my paperwork. As it's early in the month and quotas aren't due to be filled, I expected to get off with a warning. Negative-o. Not only did I make a driving mistake uncharacteristic of me, but I ended up with an unforgiving officer to teach me the error of my ways. Perhaps I should have cried to elicit some pity.

In any case, I have a few options available to me:

1) Plead guilty and pay $91.50, acquiring a currently unkown number of points on my clean record. Section 1E-3 of the Nebraska manual leads me to believe it could be 3 or 4. Based on those points, it's "safer" to willfully drive well above the posted limits. Hrm, I wonder what kind of behavior is being encouraged here?

2) Take STOP class, which eliminates all the fines, costs, and points of the ticket. I did this for my first ticket. Boring beyond comprehension. It also costs $60 now, which is not significantly different from the full ticket cost.

3) ???

4) Profit!

5) Attempt to plead it away in court.

6) Attempt to plead it away to...the county attorney? I've heard of some groveling procedure that others have used to reduce their speeding tickets, but I'm not familiar with it. Readers, any help?

When casting your votes, keep in mind that my car is insured through my company, so the potential raising of my insurance rates is not a concern.

Oh wise and experienced P.H.A.W., I seek your advice in particular.

Antitrust Check

I got mine:

Did you get yours?

Even if it costs you more than $13.86 in gaseous or liquid hydrocarbons, electricity, or your other fuel of choice to get to your bank, I beseech you to cash your check as a matter of principle.