Where Have All The Comments Gone?

Okay, so it took me a little while to notice, but did you know that Haloscan archives comments older than 4 months and holds them for ransom?



"Yeah, we gots your comments all right. You's wanna see 'em again? Then make with da money, or we start sendin' 'em back... one vowel at a time."



That's right, until I pay the $12US to become a Premium Member (there's a dirty joke there somewhere, but I'll leave it alone for now), nobody can access the brilliance you fine readers wrote as recently as July. That's ridiculous!



I understand that Haloscan is a free service, and that they can't exactly keep up a high level of service without donations, so I won't argue the point. However...



I've noticed a lot of other bloggers have started using the comments feature offered by Blogger. I was wondering what the ups and downs of it are. Should I switch? Should I stay with Haloscan? Are there better options out there that I just haven't discovered yet?



Help me out people... You are my eyes, ears, and left frontal lobe. Tell me what you think. You just better hope I actually get around to reading the comments in the next 4 months!

The Scatterbrained Monologues

So, I have this friend... I've known him now for something like 17 years, or so, and we seem to be "on the same wavelength" most of the time. We often have long talks about things that would absolutely bore anybody else, but we "get each other". I suppose that's one of the biggest reasons we are friends. However, there are times when he goes off in a completely different direction, intellectually speaking, and just makes me laugh.



The other day, I was chatting with this friend on MSN. At one point, I had to step away from my computer for a while. As usual, I provided the necessary courtesy of a "BRB" message, just to let him know he could stop talking for a bit. But do you think he did? Nope. Instead, he chose to just keep on typing, to my eventual amusement.



Below is an excerpt of what I found when I sat back down at my keyboard. Just to let you know, he was in the middle of commenting on my post "Kids These Days"...

[14:58] Nav: hahaha There is no superwoman. It was SuperGIRL

[14:58] Nav: duh!

[14:58] Nav: haha thats bloody brilliant

[15:00] Nav: the sutext in your blog is rapidly becoming longer than the text itself

[15:00] Nav: bubtext*

[15:00] Nav: SUBtext*

[15:00] Nav: dammit

[15:00] Nav: You cant have bubtext, unless you know a guy named bub

[15:01] Nav: In which case i can understand why you'd cleverly hide the words, instead of addressing them directly to him

[15:01] Nav: If I was anmed bub, i'd want a low profile, for sure

[15:01] Nav: NAMED bub

[15:01] Nav: maybe Anmed Bub is his full name

[15:02] Nav: Hello there my friend. I'm Anmed Bub. And who might you be being today?

[15:03] Nav: Nav once again proves that he is master of the scatterbrained monologue

[15:03] Nav: It's free ascociation day

[15:04] Nav: !! ...

[15:08] Nav: anyway, back to the subtext thing, your blog says more about the disassos... err never mind. woudl ruin the stark beauty of it to flesh it oui

[15:08] Nav: out*

[15:08] Nav: I like to flesh it, oui?

[15:08] Nav: paddon moi, but i like to Flesh it! oui, oui!

[15:09] Nav: ugh. Flesh it. Fl Flesh it real good!

[15:09] Nav: ugh Flesh it! Fl-flesh it real good!

[15:10] Nav: So i was with this babe the other night, fleshing it, if you know what i mean

[15:10] Nav: ayy. It's a Moo point

I dunno... For some reason, this stuff just cracks me up...

Belated... As Usual

Leave it to me to completely miss a birthday, anniversary, or any other occasion that I have a year to prepare for. I'm horrible with dates. Don't get me wrong, I can remember them, no problem... But I'm not usually very aware of the current date, so remembering significant ones is kind of pointless.



I'm the kind of person who really should use those pop-up reminders in Microsoft Outlook to let me know when something's coming. Of course, like most of the sane world, I despise pop-ups of any kind. If one popped up to tell me I should call my brother and wish him a Happy Birthday, I'd probably get hostile and not bother! So, I guess that's out of the question...



I could always revert to an old-style calendar one the wall. During this time of year, those Calendar Shops are popping up in malls all over the place. I guess calendars are a popular choice for presents with some people. I never really understood that, to tell you the truth. Are there any other types of stationery or office supplies that make appropriate gifts for a loved one? How about a stapler? Or a pack of neon colored Post-It Notes? It sure would ease my budget if they were! Actually, I bought a calendar for my girlfriend last Christmas, now that I'm thinking about it. But that was more for the pictures of waterfalls (which she loves). But, I digress...



I don't think a calendar would work for me. There just isn't anywhere that I frequent on a daily basis that would work as a place for a calendar. Naturally, there are places I go everyday... But taking a shower, eating breakfast, or going to bed are not convenient times to be reminded that I need to go say "Happy Mother's Day, Mom!"



I need some kind of reminder that goes with me. And I'm not talking about anything as fancy as a PDA. No, I need something that jumps out at me... Not something I have to remember to use. Isn't that the problem I'm trying to solve in the first place? I know! Why don't I just pin the event of the day on my shirt, like our teachers used to do for the kids who could never remember to give notes to their parents? Yeah! That would work! Picture it...



I'm walking back to my desk from the coffee machine when I suddenly bump into Rockstar. "Hey, Cuppojoe," he'd say, "Why do you have a bright green card with my name on it pinned to your shirt?" I'd shrug and say, "No reason." Then, as I turned to continue on my way, I'd suddenly look back up and say, "Hey! Happy Birthday, by the way!"



It's a flawless plan, I tell ya... If only I would have thought of it in time to remind myself that this blog turned one-year old on November 2. Oh well, there's always next year.



I think I'll go make the card...

Things That Go Hip-Hop in the Night

I must finally be getting old.



There was once a time in my life when I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat and you'd have more luck raising the dead than rousing me. When I was a teenager, my uncle used to get me out of bed on Saturday mornings by using a variety of clever tactics. Once, he set my clock radio really loud, then hid it somewhere else in the room. Frustrating. Another time, he actually threw water on me in an attempt to get me to leave the comfort and security of slumberland. Annoying. On a particularly vicious occasion, he set off the fire alarm outside my room! If the incredibly loud sound wouldn't have coaxed me out of bed, I'm sure the fact that I wet myself would have!



Last night, despite how terribly exhausted I was from the new hours at work, I just couldn't make myself fall asleep at a decent hour. I tried watching some boring TV (we certainly have enough of that in Canada!), reading a book that I'd read already, and, finally, willing myself into unconsciousness.



Nothing.



Well, maybe not nothing, exactly. You ever lie in bed for so long, trying to fall asleep and thinking about a million different random things, then suddenly you are wide awake asking yourself, "Was I just asleep?" Well, that happened quite few times last night. If I had to guess, I'd say I probably finally drifted off around 11:15, a good hour and a half after I went to bed.



And then the fun began.



At 11:45, I sat bolt upright in bed, something I never do. Something had woken me up. Was it the phone? No. How about the 5-year old sleeping in the next room. Again, no. What the..? And then I woke up enough to realize what was going on...



Music.



You see, I recently moved into a new house with my daughter. To be specific, we moved into the basement suite of said house and, lucky us, there are 3 20-something guys living above. Now, I haven't been here long enough to have met these guys yet, but that's okay. So far, they've kept to themselves and I've done likewise. There hasn't been any reason to think that this living arrangement wouldn't work out... Until I heard the music.



I couldn't exactly make out the words to the song, but the drumbeats were coming through loud and clear, making an interesting counter-rhythm to the steadily increasing pulse in my ears as I became more and more angry. It was almost midnight on a Tuesday, for crying out loud!



Unacceptable.



I got up and went to check on my daughter. Apparently, she takes after dear old Dad, since she was as motionless as ever with her pink, plush dog clutched under her arm. Good. One less thing to worry about... For now.



The music wasn't quite as noticeable in the living room, so I toyed with the idea of simply crashing on the couch and dealing with the problem the next day.



Yeah, right.



As soon as I laid my head down and got myself settled as well as one can on a sofa, the song changed and I could hear it as loud as ever. Now I was sure my daughter would wake up any second. So, despite my less than presentable appearance and the late hour, I pulled on a pair of jeans and went to meet the neighbors. I felt like Mr. Roper storming upstairs to yell at those "crazy kids" from Three's Company. I can't really be old enough to remember that, can I?



I can only imagine what was going through that guy's mind when he peered through the blinds on his back door and saw this stranger with a headful of bedhair glaring back at him. I have to admit, I'm impressed that he had the guts to open the door at all... I'm not sure I would! Anyway, it turned out that "Dillon" is a pretty decent kid and he was more than apologetic and willing to turn down the tunes. Turns out, we're so quiet downstairs that he thought no one was home!



So, with that potential disaster averted, I made my way back down to my suite, exchanged the jeans for the pajama bottoms, and crawled back into bed. As you can probably imagine, after all that excitement, it took quite a while for me to settle back down to the point where I could fall asleep...



I think the clock said 1:45 the last time I looked.

Scenes from the Forklift: Caffeine Don't Fail Me Now!

There's been a big shake-up in MSA One as of late. For a few months now, there has been an eerie calm over the place, not unlike the eye of a hurricane. We have been lulled into a false sense of security that is now threatening to break. Indeed, the tides of change have begun to erode the... Oh, enough already! On with the blog...



We used to work from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday. Not so anymore. As of last yesterday, our hours have been changed. Now we work from 7 am to 5 pm Monday to Thursday, and from 7 am to 11:15 am on Friday.



Did you catch that? I said 7 am! Seven o’clock in the freakin’ morning! Sure, we have half of Friday to ourselves now, but come on! I’m not sure my blood even starts circulating before 7:30!



It’s only been two days of the new Torture Schedule, but you can already see it taking its toll. Gone is the spring in our step, only to be replaced with a shuffle that strangely resembles that of a zombie from the Micheal Jackson "Thriller" video. Computers are on, email clients and Inventory programs running as usual, but people are spending a lot more time staring blankly at them as they wait for their synapses to fire quick enough to enable comprehension. The coffee drinkers in the crowd (including yours truly, of course) have gone from having a relaxing morning cup o’ Joe to pounding three or four back like frat boys doing shooters in an effort to kick-start their brains.



You can see it on an individual level as well… For instance, Rockstar, who usually takes orders and rounds up lunch for a select few everyday, started wandering through MSA One grumbling that he was hungry and saying, "It’s gotta be almost lunchtime!"



It was 9:45.



And then there’s Jughead, one of the recent newbies to join our ranks. He’s normally your typical early twenties male… Doing the slow walk, cracking the odd joke here and there, and basically trying to project an air of "cool". Well! Get this guy up and into work before 7, and suddenly he’s like a 9-year old who’s had too much cola and is up way past his bedtime! Now he’s talking a mile a minute, and every second thing is a fart joke… And he thinks he’s funny! It’s quickly becoming obvious that somebody needs a nap…



Even the great Cuppojoe isn’t immune to the effects of this time-shift. No sir! I’m what the common man would refer to as "cranky". Now, I already have a somewhat low tolerance for stupidity as it is, but now that a dose of sleep deprivation has been added to the mix… Watch out! I am totally on the edge with the guys working under me! We are approaching some very important deadlines for commitments I have made to The Powers That Be, and I am constantly having to go back to double- and triple-check work that I thought was straight-forward. Naturally, this has me in a mood that has earned me a few names behind my back, most of them deservedly so. Still, the fact that I had to show a guy how to count to ten today has me shaking, and I don’t think it’s just the coffee this time!



Well, I guess I better cut the rant off there… After all, it is 6:30 in the evening. I should have been in bed a half-hour ago…

Photo of the Week: Hero from the Past

A peaceful resting place instead of the scrapyard.
Posted by Hello

Something Sucks

I am recently led to believe that my blog sucks.



Or so I've been told...



Here's the email I received:



Your blog sucks... I have this huge comment for your Analyse This: The Ringers and it wouldn't post... so here it is



Got a reunion coming up? Or it sounds like you want to randomly run into some old friends, perhaps some nicely dressed ones and tell them about your blog so you have more people commenting on your crazy dreams. What? We aren't good enough for you? Don't you like our comments. I understand we might not be witty enough for you, but come

on, we try! I know how to play volleyball, maybe not as good as some Junior high kids but you don't need to go around telling people about the blog. Before you know it there will be so many comments you won't even notice the little guys who were your loyal readers from the start. *sniff* Please coach, put me in.......



Let me clarify... It would appear that this reader actually enjoys the blog, but has a problem with the commenting system. Admittedly, Haloscan has its limits, but it's free and looks good. I think I'll keep it for now. So, if anyone else is having problems controlling their long-windedness, I encourage you to break your comments down into 2 or more smaller ones.



As for the comment itself... Maybe you're right about the "want to randomly run into some old friends" bit. I dunno. Who wouldn't, right? But what interested me most was the "loyal readers" part... No way do I think of you as the "little guys". In fact, the last part of the comment, to me, comes off as one big Ego Stroke for Cuppojoe... Which I like.



Keep it coming!

Analyze This: The Ringers

There I was, standing just inside the entrance of a Junior High school somewhere. It wasn't a place I've ever been before, but pretty typical none the less... Dark brick walls, large windows with stainless steel mullions looking into the Main Office, heavy orange doors to the outside flanked by wire-reinforced glass... A wide flight of stairs led off into another area of the school.



I guess I was standing in what could be called the foyer or main hall... Anyway, on this particular occasion, there were a number of folding tables set up, some with papers strewn across them, others piled high with file boxes. Evidently, there was some sort of Sign-Up going on, as people were lining up to speak to a girl at one of the tables, then scrawling their names on a sheet of paper.



Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by faces that I haven't seen in over a decade. They belonged to the Men's and Women's Volleyball Teams from my days in College. I have to say, I went to a pretty small college, so I immediately recognized the vast majority of them. The only difference was a change in their uniforms (which they were wearing)... Instead of the snazzy white V-necks with blue collars from 1990, the wore black T-shirts with white volleyball logos on the left breast. Very professional looking.



One of the guys approached me with the expected, "Hey! Haven't seen you in a long time!" I turned to see MW (name withheld, initials revealed), a guy that I also used to play a lot of foosball with. He told me that they were all there to participate in the Volleyball Tournament, which I guess was a part of whatever everybody else had been signing up for. Naturally, I thought this was a little odd... a bunch of full-grown adults competing against Junior High kids... Talk about a Slaughter-Fest! I could see a group of people gathering in the Main Office already, pointing at the black-clad warriors and whispering.



Before I could respond, he went on to tell me that he had been reading my blog lately, and the whole team was considering using it as some sort of forum. I didn't quite understand how they proposed to do that, but I was flattered (to say the least) that they had been reading my blog! So, even though it wouldn't be the least bit fair, I told him I would go talk to the people in charge about letting them play in the Tournament.



As I approached the cluster of people peering out through the Office window... I woke up.



What was that about?!?

Kids These Days

The other day, I overheard a teenage guy talking to his girlfriend on the bus:



"You don't like Smallville? It's, like, Superman when he was a kid! If I was him, I'd beat everybody up! If you were Superwoman, wouldn't you beat everybody up?"



"Why would I do that? Then nobody would like me!"



"But you could make them like you 'cuz they can't kill you!"



What is wrong with kids these days?!? Is this an indication of where our society is heading? Perhaps we have failed our children... Perhaps, in the hustle and bustle of today's corporate-driven world, we have left our offspring to be educated by TV instead of sitting them down and imparting unto them the wisdom they will need to survive.



Lest there be more young, impressionable minds out there that are on the verge of making the same mistake the boy on the bus made, let me set the record straight:



There was no Superwoman... It was Supergirl!



Duh!

Boring Childhood Stories: The Squishy Log

By Canadian standards, I'm from a fair sized city. So, it was quite a culture shock when, at the age of 14, my family moved to a sea-side community on Vancouver Island. Gone were the 24-hour convenience stores, the crowded buses, and the metropolitan sprawl. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by giant trees, swarms of hummingbirds, and the Pacific Ocean itself.

In a place that was in such sharp contrast to everything we considered "normal", the possibilities for adventure were limitless. My brothers, J & M, and I spent almost every chance we got exploring. We'd hike through the nearby forests, wander along the logging roads, or bike down the "highway" to the nearby "town". But the best place to go was always the beach.

Now, when I say the word "beach", one instinctively pictures an expanse of pristine white sand, sun sparkling through gentle waves lapping at the shore. In this case, nothing could be further from the truth... In fact, our beach was rocky, strewn with driftwood and seaweed, and surrounded by jagged cliffs. And, since we were located right at one of the narrowest straits leading into the local harbor, whether the tide was coming in or going out, the water was always racing through there at a furious pace. Treacherous, to say the least.

There were lots of ways to amuse ourselves down on that little beach... Sometimes we'd go looking for starfish, prying their red or purple bodies from the rocks as low-tide exposed them. Other times we'd walk around flipping over large rocks to see how many little crabs were underneath. We even played a game once or twice where we'd put on ski gloves, thrust our hands into a nest of the crustaceans and see how many held on when we pulled them out. Not the highest form of entertainment, perhaps, but we were kids. And, of course, there was always "The Rope"...

At the base of one of the cliffs was a dead tree, the kind without bark or branches... Essentially no more than a slender wooden pole angling out over the water. The thing had to be at least 40 feet tall. Some brave or stupid soul at one point had climbed all the way to the top and tied a boat rope there. So, what we found on our first trip to the beach was the Mother of all swinging ropes. And, until is was washed away, there was originally a massive log right under the rope that we would run along and jump off of to gain extra momentum. It was especially exciting during high tide, when we could launch ourselves out over the choppy water. Naturally, once our parents learned about this, we were forbidden to go near it. Of course, being good little boys, we obeyed this missive (wink, wink).

As I said, the massive log was eventually washed away, and we would always go down to the beach afterwards, hoping to see another in its place. Well, it just so happened that my brother M found exactly that... or so he thought. J and I were walking along with our heads down, probably looking for more crabs to torture... er... play with, when M started wildly calling for our attention.

"Guys! Guys! Check out this big log!"

We turned around to see him standing on top of a very large oblong mass. He jumped up and down a little bit.

"It feels kinda squishy!"

We didn't need to get too close to see, and probably smell, why it felt "kinda squishy"... I think that's pretty much what you can expect from the bloated carcass of a full grown (but recently expired) seal.

I'm Choking Here!

Three simple words: Brush your teeth!



You are a co-worker, a fellow bus passenger, or a complete stranger... And your breath is bad! You stand too close, talk too loud, and project your own special brand of foulness into my face.



Chew some gum.



You pile onions on your burger, choose Caesar salad over tossed greens, or down three too many cocktails with lunch... And your breath is bad! You are oblivious to the stench that emanates from your mouth and causes me to wince.



Have a mint.



You have a phlegmy chest cold, a horde of happily multiplying germs, and an inexplicable inability to cover your mouth when you cough... And your breath is BAD! Your infectious exhalations mount a two-pronged assault on my nose and immune system.



Pop some pills and a breath strip.



You're reading this now and you're wondering if I'm referring to you. In a word: Yes. I don't mean that in an offensive way... I'm not the type to tell you to your face that you stink. But I've been quietly suffering through the putrid waves of nauseating aromas for too long now. Something needed to be said. And that something is:



BRUSH YOUR TEETH!