Jolly

What is it about the word "jolly" that makes it so ripe for twisting to darker purposes? I only thought of this because I had two cartoon bits cross my consciousness in quick succession: the bit from Ren & Stimpy's "Space Madness" that goes "...the beautiful shiny button, the jolly candylike button...", and of course Invader Zim's "Most Horrible X-mas Ever" with the "Jolly Boots of Doom". Is it because we use the word so rarely outside of the Christmas season? Is it because of the way Burl Ives sings it in "Have A Holly Jolly Christmas"? While I'm at it, has anybody seen any other terribly wrong uses for this word? After the two previously mentioned, I'd have high hopes that any further jolly perversions would be good, clean, wholesome fun... :)

Buying for Business

The place I work for isn't quite big enough yet to have a "purchasing" department, or even individual for that matter... as such, I end up buying some of the things we need with my credit card and getting reimbursed afterwards. I can do this because they know they can trust me to be frugal, and I know that they have every incentive to keep me happy come credit card bill time (their lone server guy walking out on them would qualify as Bad).

In the process, I've come across something that, in this day and age, amazes me... companies that don't openly advertise their pricing for goods and services. They expect you to contact one of their sales representatives to get a quote on what you need... even if what they offer is substantially similar to their peers. Today's item for discussion: phone and internet service.

In consumer-land, phone companies and cable companies have product details, base pricing, and any special promotional offers readily available through their website. Turn to the business side of things... and pricing suddenly disappears behind the curtain, to be revealed only through contact with your personal intermediaries to the phone company pantheon.

What's my point? In any given market, there are a very limited number of players for this service... do they really think that any business that would take the time to research pricing online isn't going to put in for quotes with multiple vendors? What should be a simple matter, able to be researched over the course of an afternoon, instead drags out into a multi-day process whose sole purpose seems to be the lining of sales weasels' pockets.

If any phone company rep stumbles across this, you should know: in other product/service lines, I purposely avoid dealing with companies that use this tactic, precisely because the gain isn't worth the pain. If one of your competitors opens up their pricing to the outside world, I might do my current provider the courtesy of requesting a quote at the end of my contract... but that's it.

Damnable Human Frailty

I was planning on taking a long weekend in Seattle, what with work being slower than usual. Unfortunately, it looks like cold&flu season had its own plans. Grrr!

DVD Pick: The Prestige

Yeah, okay, I'll admit it... I should've gone and seen this film in the theater when it first came out. I heard it was good, but I didn't have much in the way of expectations about a story involving a couple of stage magicians dueling late in the gaslight era. If you haven't seen this yet, do so... I was paying pretty close attention throughout, and I still got blindsided by half the story at the very end, but it all made sense just the same. My only gripe... the one that started the whole mess comes out, for lack of a better term, on top. I won't say more than that... just like a magic trick, knowing the secret ahead of time spoils the fun.

Cell Phone Adventure: Hoist By My Own Petard

It's a sad fact of life: I'm getting older. One of the first effects that I've had cause to notice is that my memory is becoming slightly less reliable... not Alzheimer's scale or anything (thankfully!), but just enough to get me into trouble sometimes. Case in point, the latest twist in my Cell Phone Adventure.

Turns out, I forgot that, back when AT&T begat Cingular, that I paid for my old service for a number of months to Cingular before "upgrading" to a new phone, plan, etc. As such, I didn't dig deeply enough into my billing records to see when I actually signed up for their plan... and it turns out that I actually signed up in January 2006... which is less than 2 years... and so, in my final bill, I got a nasty $150 shocker added on (the dreaded Contract Termination Fee).

When I first saw the bill, I was livid, ready to drive into town and raise all manner of hell... then I found the proof of when the service started, verified it, and proceeded to berate myself six ways from Sunday. Then I went and did some calculations, just to see what I had inadvertently done to myself... and it turns out that, supposing I don't use my phone much more than I have recently, I will still barely come out ahead after all is said and done. I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I'd rather be lucky than smart any day.

Digital Distribution

I'm ever so looking forward to the day when you can get anything software-y purchased directly over the Internet and downloaded, if necessary, to the medium of your choice. Today's case in point: there's a game I'm looking to get, that was, in theory, released today. It's the third game in the sequel to a moderately-successful, four-part niche game (the whole series, which includes games, animation, and who knows what else, is referred to as ".hack"). Even though it's a PlayStation2 game, I would like little better than to download it, burn it to a DVD, and start playing right now, but that's not the way the world works... I checked websites for Best Buy and Circuit City, and both act as if none of the games ever existed... I check Amazon, and they grudgingly admit it should exist, and promise to have stock on Friday (and it qualifies for free shipping... waaahoooo... :/).

As a reward for enduring the dentist tomorrow morning, I'm going to hit Best Buy and have a look around... that's where I found the last two episodes of this game in its brief stint on the shelves locally... but I'm just not real hopeful. Here we are in an age where more and more is tracked more and more thoroughly, and I can't even begin to guess if or when I'll be able to find a stinkin' videogame.

Sundering the Bonds of Marriage

Heh, no, I didn't go and get married while nobody was looking... but I'm in the weird position of having multiple friends getting divorced simultaneously, which practically forces me to ponder the whole process and consequences involved. All you Spokane-living ladies looking for a sedentary, reclusive, late-30's gamer guy are still in luck... well, really, if that's what you're looking for, I might well not be looking for you, but I digress... :)

So, marriage isn't quite the "until death do us part" thing it was in decades past, and society as a whole seems to have come to grips with that... or, at least, I can't remember the last time somebody mentioned somebody else being divorced with the disdain that phrase might have brought up in the 50's. That said, shouldn't there be a "streamlined" option at least available these days? I mean, when both parties are agreed that their marriage needs to end, and neither is submitting that the other isn't a fit parent (in the cases where children are involved), wouldn't it be nice if there was a "standard" template, based on relative incomes or some such, that people could agree to for the "major" items, get that signed off on and enacted, then deal with the emotional minutae at their leisure... or, if either party failed to sign off on such, that it would be a big, red warning flag for the other side that things are about to get messy?

One friend is well into the process, was looking for what he considered a reasonable, amicable separation after his wife filed on him, and was accepting of what was going to happen to his marriage... until the wife's plan made its way to him, complete with terms for spousal support and child support that would grind him into the dust... despite their living mere blocks from each other and maintaining joint custody of the children. Another is just starting the process, and is also looking for what he considers as reasonable, amicable separation terms... but is getting pressured by his wife in I-don't-know-how-many ways, but including first restricting his blog from public (non-invited) view, then more recently preventing those people from commenting on what he puts up on the blog. The sad/scary thing is, I can't help but see parallels between the two cases... I can't say "this is the way it is", either intentionally or not, but, from what I've seen, it's like the wives in each case, seeing the end of their marriages in sight, are using the divorce process to punish their husbands and exert as much control as possible while they still can... and a big part of that control rests in the fact that the husbands care so deeply about the welfare of their children.

If there were a basic template available (and preferrably established by state law, so there's only one template to consider for any given divorce), there would still inevitably be problems, but not on the scale I've witnessed to date... get children, housing, and other major property separated and settled as quickly as possible, and allow either party to exclude individual items, or reject the template as a whole... but anything covered by the template should not be able to be revisited at a later date. If that were the case, then there would be a lot less of the petty power games and lawyerly weaseling to deal with in many cases... and both parties would know that there was fun on the horizon in the others.