Earl was gone on business for only two nights. He was just an e-mail or phone call away the entire time.
My week changed for the better just because he walked through the door an hour ago. My spirit soared.
Happiness.
June 7, 2006
Ewww.
Earl doesn’t know this yet but we are never stepping foot in the local chain-run movie theatres again. It’s too gross.
These theatres have been around for three years or so and basically put the other big theatres out of business because they’re the only ones that have stadium seating. The popcorn sucks and they don’t show any previews on the big projection screen in the lobby because the theatre workers find it annoying, but the sound in each theatre is decent and hey, it’s basically the only modern game in town.
The problem with this theatre is the with the advertisements they show prior to the previews. Now, the ads are basically a PowerPoint presentation repeating over and over again, so sometimes you get to see the same ads multiple times before the show starts. I don’t mind the ads for the local colleges very much, especially because there’s a really cute bear in a hardhat working in a powerplant in one of them. And I’ve mentioned before that I despise the ads for Open MRIs. “Sweetheart, I must leave RIGHT NOW and get an MRI. I must GO! Watch MI:III without me, I need to have my head examined RIGHT NOW with an Open MRI!” Well now they’ve added ads for varicose vein removals.
Make me barf my buttered and lightly salted popcorn up.
I must be out of touch with reality or something, but I really don’t see the need to have some person’s nasty looking, bump covered, hairy leg plastered up on a movie screen while a doctor draws maps on it with a magic marker, followed by a bird’s eye view of some new medical gizmo that goes down through the vein and pops them out. Why? Why! Why?
Medically related advertisements shouldn’t exist and at the very least they shouldn’t be up on a movie screen in glorious technicolor. I don’t want to hear that you may get explosive bowels if you take a pill that cures acne. I don’t want to perk myself up with a happy purple pill just because it’s raining outside. And I certainly don’t want a bird’s eye view of the innards of someone’s veins while I’m trying to enjoy my popcorn, strategically balanced diet pop and Junior Mints.
So we are going to the local theatre when we stay in town to catch a movie. I don’t care if they forget to turn off the lights when the movie starts. I don’t mind the fact that the screen is in the southeast corner of the theatre and the seats point southwest.
At least I don’t have to watch anyone getting dissected before the show.
Frustration.
I am truly a blessed geek. I’ve been fortunate enough to have access to computers since 1982. I’ve been given the go-ahead to basically what I want when I get my hands on a computer, so I’ve had more than my share to learn, troubleshoot and play around with technology for a good portion of my life. I realize that many others do not have the same opportunity, whether it be a lack of access to technology or the fact that they really can’t wrap their head around the concepts involved in computer use. I fully understand that, for some it just comes naturally, for others, well, they’re just not wired that way.
In the new and improved department I work in now I’m often working with end users that are trying to that are having any random computer issue. Often the trouble can be traced to a Windows glitch but I do my best to rule out any trouble on our end of the connection before I start blaming Microsoft. I understand that in this corporately run world, Microsoft is the mediocrity that people have settled for and it’s up to us geeks to keep it all together.
Today I had a customer call that was having a problem dialing in to the network. After going through all the various settings on her “new computer”, as she called it (it was running a spiffy new copy of Windows 98) and determining that everything was pretty much set up correctly, I asked her to make sure she has dial tone on her phone.
“Oh, I don’t have a phone anymore.”, she responded, shocked that I would ask her to do such a thing. “We’re talking on my cell phone.”
“You no longer have phone service to your house with Verizon or something like that?”, I ask.
“No. I don’t use it. It’s too expensive.”
“Uh, since you don’t have a land line, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have difficulty connecting to the internet over your _dial-up_ connection.”
“Well I thought you would upgrade my account to go over the cable.”, she offered.
“Um, no. You would need to contact your cable provider for that.” I was doing my best not to go all Bea Arthur on her and get sarcastic.
She hung up on me.
