Geek

Interaction.

The internet is a beautiful thing. When I was sitting at my desk at Digital Equipment Corporation back in 1988, I never dreamed that I would be discussing via electronic means the next Human League album (“Romantic?”) just two years later with a person living in the U.K. who wasn’t even on the same network I was. When I left that job I kept in touch with ex-co-workers via e-mail on AOL (my username was “JP”!). Then the whole web thing came around and the entire planet was connected, with a few clicks we were able to chat with anyone, anywhere. It that was just the beginning.

Luckily I learned very early on that anything you write via electronic means, anything at all, is stored somehow, somewhere and can turn up anywhere at any time. I have mentioned before that I can pull up Usenet discussions I participated in back in 1989 via a simple Google search. One such message barely contained my excitement that the series “Tabitha” was turning up on a new cable channel called “HA”. (It later became Comedy Central).

I love the fact that I can contact people with similar interests and maintain strong relationships with friends in Toronto and Connecticut electronically and with the same amount of ease and comfort level as enjoying a cup of tea together at the local coffee shop. It’s truly a brilliant thing. However, sometimes I think this new generation forgets that all this electronic interaction is permanent and relatively transparent. You find anything on anyone. For example, last night Earl and I had a few chores to do and ended up stopping at Applebee’s for supper. Because I have an eye for these things, I noticed right off that the server was a very good-looking man in a clean-shaven bearish sort of way. I’ve seen him around town before; he’s worked at other restaurants in the past and I’ve seen him at Saranac Thursday Nights. He’s really good at what he does and as I mentioned before, he is quite nice on the eyes. His name tag said “Scott”. The receipt added an “H” to his name.1

When I got home I pulled out my geek powers and did a quick search on Facebook. I now know that Scott is a few years shy of my age, lives not too far from me, is married (and I know his wife’s name too), was in a band in high school and college, has always had a unique thing going on with his hair, has always been a good looking man, has over 150 friends on Facebook from our area alone, including another waiter that I recognised because of his unique facial hair, who I now know to be named Alex (his profile didn’t have much more than that, though).

Far from malicious in my intent but armed with the right tools, I was able to easily find a relatively substantial amount of information on the person I don’t know. I always keep this availability of any information on the internet in the back of my mind whenever I post something somewhere. And I post a LOT of things. When I auditioning for Big Brother 4, one of the questions I was asked was if there was anything that would be considered “scandalous” available on the internet. I replied with an “absolutely”, which is true, which delighted them. They liked that sort of thing.

There are some reasons that I don’t engage in Facebook as much as one would expect. I mean let’s face it, there is a part of me that has always wanted to be famous and have some sort of notoriety, hence my previous career as a radio personality. Truth be known, Facebook itself is a little annoying to me. I’m not fan of those little applets thingees like snowballs flying around and something about green beer. Granted, I like to poke people to let them know I’m thinking of them. However, anyone can find anyone else on there with relative ease. I’ve browsed. I’ve looked up waiters. I have sought out old teachers and classmates. Aside from a select few from my high school years, there are not quite a lot of old classmates that I want to start chatting with again. I do things and say things that I never had the balls to do or say back in those days and quite frankly some would find me and what I’m about startling. This is not entirely a bad thing but a part of me wants to move on and embrace who I’ve become, not who I was.

Given a choice in this whole social networking thing I gravitate toward Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Flickr. I feel like I have more control with both of those services with careful use of groups and content filters, though Facebook does offer similar mechanisms. I really like the simplicity of Twitter (that’s what’s in the sidebar under ‘The Adventures of Machias’), though I tend not to get into the chat room atmosphere of the software (I liken that to having a conversation with a friend by screaming at each other to opposite sides of a restaurant). I state what I’m doing or thinking and leave it at that for the most part. And naturally, I have this blog that I write in with some regularity (without a prune assist). I think writing and sharing through this means (whether it’s words, photos, videos or whatever) is my favourite form of expression.

At age 40 I’m finding myself to be more confident, opinionated and expressive than ever before. I feel more comfortable discussing things that I used to just file away in my head. I think this is a good thing and it is because of the internet allows me to have a voice and a rather loud one at that. Though I’m loud, I’m also cautious. And all this freedom translates well to the old-fashioned human interaction I have in the “real world”.

1I think the inclusion of this “H” is generous in today’s climate (and rightfully so). Just think, before the year 2000 EVERY customer receipt from Ames Department Stores contained the Social Security Number of the cashier!

4000.

I started off the morning with my 4000th Twitter update. It looked something like this.

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Ironically, I was just formulating a blog entry about Twitter in my head this morning. This was inspired by dan’s LiveJournal entry on the subject. I’ll be writing the entry when I’m a little less foggy headed.

Trek.

So I have recently become hooked on the fan-made series “Star Trek: Phase II” (which used to be called “Star Trek: New Voyages”). Made purely for the purpose of loving all things Trek, this series takes place about where a fourth and fifth season would have taken place if Star Trek: The Original Series had continued it’s run on NBC back in the late 1960s. One things that I really like about this series is that several veteran Star Trek cast members have made appearances, including George Takai, Grace Lee Whitney, Denise Crosby and Majel Barrett Roddenberry.

I have always been a Trekker. I have even been to a convention or two in my day (I met Nichelle Nichols, “Uhura”, in Providence, R.I. back in 1988) and I even went so far as to draw a storyboard for a new transporter effect for “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” and sent it to Paramount. (It didn’t make the film, but I got a wonderful response back from the studio saying that they’d consider it for future movies. I still have hope.)

Last night I watched “World Enough and Time”, which featured George Takai as an older “Sulu” amongst the cast playing the familiar characters on the Enterprise. It was very well written and the acting was very good. There were moments that I forgot I was watching a fan made film!

The latest installment of “Star Trek: Phase II” was posted in December 2008, it is the first of two parts of an episode entitled, “Blood and Fire”. The second installment is expected this spring.

The acting, effects and overall feel to the episodes is quite polished. I would love to contribute to the series in my own way, even if I just wore a red shirt and got killed by a mean alien on screen. Nevertheless, imagine my surprise when we meet Ensign Peter Kirk…

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.. and his lover, soon to be husband! And Captain Kirk is going to marry them on the U.S.S. Enterprise!

“Blood and Fire” has roots in an episode originally written for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” that was going to address the big HIV scare of the late 80s/early 90s. The script flows well, the effects are very impressive and the acting is not bad either! Denise Crosby (Lt. Yar from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) appears in the upcoming second part. I am really excited to see how this all plays out.

If you’re interested, take a peek here: Star Trek: Phase II. Live long and prosper.

Effects.

The effects on iChat are fun! Let’s see your AOL do that!

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By the way, that’s a webcam conversation I’m having with greg in Connecticut.

Stubborn.

“I’m not doing that”, the irate voice said on the phone.

“I’m not doing that either”, she continued.

“Nope.”

It’s always a joy trying to walk a customer through a problem that they are having with their e-mail. Especially when said customer is using an old residential dial-up account to send out mass quantities of e-mail to distribution lists holding hundreds of e-mail addresses.

Here’s the thing. When your computer is screwed up and you call the Technical Assistance Center and then get herded up to “Level II”, I am your god. I know what I am doing and I am going to do everything I can to make sure that your life on the electronic fast lane is a pleasant one. I’ll even help you troubleshoot Outlook Express or Outlook, which isn’t even really my responsibility, but I’m a nice guy.

Most of the time.

Once in a great while we’ll have a customer call in ranting and raving and carrying on like someone set their ugly sweater on fire and then they’ll refuse to do anything that you ask them to do so that you can try to figure out what the hell is wrong with their computer.

“I need you to change…”, I start.

“Nope.”

When did it become socially acceptable to be an utter jackass on the phone? The woman that I was speaking with insisted she knew what the problem was. But she didn’t. She was way off base. She didn’t believe me when I told her that she had typos in her distribution list. She didn’t believe me when I told her Outlook was misconfigured. But she knew what the problem was. So I barked at her.

“Well then YOU fix it!”

Um, that’s probably not the right route to take. I put her on hold and did laps around the cubicles for three minutes. I was hoping she hung up. No, she’s too clever for that. So she listened to an endless loop of really bad marketing messages. I gave her another 60 seconds of advertising bliss before I took her off hold.

“I’ll escalate the trouble to another group and someone will be in touch with you.”

There is no other group. We’re it.

Welcome to the place you never want to go to when you’re in search of technical support.

She has been placed in “The Queue”.

Maybe I’ll call her back someday.

Carrols!

My mother just returned from visiting my sister, brother-in-law and nephew in Helsinki, Finland. The first thing she had to tell me was that in Helsinki they have Carrols.

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While kids today eat McDonalds food with their Happy Meal et al as a treat, back in my day we went to Carrols, a New York State based fast food chain that converted all of their locations to Burger King in the late 1970s. I vividly remember Carrols, with their orange and white light globes over the counter and the generous use of the orange and white colour scheme.

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I’m very glad to see that Carrols is still alive and well. Now we have yet another reason to go to Helsinki.

Here’s some information in case you want to geek out with me. Here is a personal lost blog entry from 2001.

Patience.

One of my goals for 2009 is to be a little more patient with customers that are experiencing computer problems, especially when they think the broke the internet or the cat peed on their keyboard. (Both true support calls I have dealt with in the past six months, by the way).

My patience was tested today a little bit and my conversation with a customer caught my supervisor’s attention a few times when I used phrases such as “I don’t know what you mean by that” and “I’m sorry, but error messages usually give a little more detail than ‘the mail didn’t go'”. She called herself jeckel, she was apparently trying to download television shows over a dial-up connection and she wass wondering why her computer was so slow. After explaining to her that she couldn’t download video over her dial-up connection she decided that instead her e-mail was clogged. I assured her that there were no tubes involved with e-mail and Draino wasn’t going to help the situation. Everyone loves a funny tech! Turns out she was trying to send a video to her friend via e-mail and it wouldn’t send (because said file was huge and it would have taken her at least 24 hours to send it.) After walking her through various steps (“click start, yes that’s the green button down in the corner that says start”) I asked her to reconnect to the internet but only if she was on her cell phone as the call would get disconnected otherwise:

“Does that mean I need to go deep?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that…”

[MUTE]

“… and I don’t think I want to know.”

“OH! I click th…. [and insert dead phone here]”

Thank God. She never called back. I hope she went deep.

Here’s a picture of Mean Daddy Tech:
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Socialise.

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Earl and I have spent most of the day busying ourselves about the house and enjoying a low-key New Year’s Day. Chores are done, things are in place to make the second day of 2009 just as enjoyable as the first, even though that includes a regular day of work for me. It’s a good thing I enjoy my job.

One activity that has consumed a bit of my day is playing around with Facebook. It’s more addictive than watching “I Love Lucy” or “Absolutely Fabulous” clips on YouTube! As I type various names of people from my past and present into the search function thingee there, I discover more people from my past and end up trying to make a friend link with them. How many friends will I have come morning? Only time will tell.

I could never get into MySpace because I always felt that I had descended into the two-digit IQ land of adult Fisher Price with that site, but Facebook, whilst basically the same concept, has a more refined feel to it.

Now, you can’t see what I just did, but I just stopped typing a blog entry for just a moment, did a search of another name on Facebook and found this person’s profile. It’s like waving at Tucson right from my keyboard!

I’m going to have to go to bed sooner or later. Right now, the search continues.

Goofing Around.

I decided to goof around with Photo Booth during my lunch hour. I guess I was feeling feisty.

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