All You People using Blogger

Hey all you people using blogger! Most especially, those who require a gmail account to even look at your updates, please at least open up to the idea that maybe not everyone has gmail or needs gmail. The missus and I like having email acounts that are on different services, so that I don't have to sign out when she signs in and vice versa.

She's on yahoo and I'm on gmail.

Both services are good, I would go so far as to say they're probably the best options for anyone needing a permanent email address. It works out for her to have the yahoo account as well, since yahoo has the .au but gmail does not, and she's the Aussie in this relationship.

So what ends up happening, is that she has to sign in using my account to view those locked down blogger blogs, and that inevitably leads to confusion because readers of those comments will end up here.

The Octopus

I came up with a name for the new do that's everywhere now. It's the Octopus. Remember the 'reverse mullet'? This derogatory term is used for the wedge cut gone wrong, or sported by people who don't look good in it.

The Octopus is, in simple terms, the do sported by Carol Brady (from the Brady Bunch) for a while, in which the hair is cut short, almost a ball shape, and wisps are left at the bottom, which stick out. This name comes from the fact that hairs on the top of the scalp are cut short, forming a sort of ball or blob at the top, and then long strands of hair, which attach closer to the neck are left, sortof like tentacles.

A lot of attractive girls are sporting this look, at least the ones I see on the train, but to me it's layering gone horribly wrong, and doesn't look good!

Fertilizer

I should go into advertising, I care so much about it.

Today's rant is another lobby ad placed in the Metro. First, none of us are farmers, we don't care about fertilizer, and second, the ad was so smarmy and overbearing as to be irritating, who would actually believe anything that organization is saying?

The ad consisted of a large photo (the entire left half) of little girl eating pasta, very cute, and on the right in beautiful retro font 'Every recipe begins with the same essential ingredient,' then a blurb about fertilizer, and towards the bottom as large as can be 'Fertilizer.' Juxtaposing a word like fertilizer with the image of a cute little girl eating pasta was clearly intended to stick in the mind as a contradiction, but I found the whole ad grating, especially the slick expensive look of it, as though it were done by a very expensive firm charging expensive amounts of dollars.

There's no other information about who is pushing fertilizer, except in the blurb (the fine print, if you will) the web address nutrients(nospace)forlife.org. Not only is a .org listed, but we have no idea what org might be behind this ad, although one can instantly assume it's a lobby.

1) What a waste of money
2) What do they hope to gain?

I can only guess that the lobby has loads of cash it knows not what to do with, so it spends it on a slick ad campaign/website, per agreements with interested parties of course, but seriously, what do they hope to gain? If they were lucky, maybe one person riding the metro out of the thousands each day would have any influence on the fate of fertilizer. Is it in the hope that public opinion is swayed for when related issues are being voted on? I guess that's the whole point of PR, but I still think it's a waste of resources.

McDonald's

Don't worry, nothing happened in November. Nothing.

Today is a rant against McDonald's, and companies like it.

I might should consider myself lucky I can't remember the last time (before this recent time) that I got spam on my cell phone. I have received txt ads, but last week I got a spam voicemail. From McDonald's.

Most of the trash I see on the street, and the trash I saw yesterday in the Metro (where food and drink are not allowed) is McDonald's (not to be read as belonging to McDonald, but identified with the food chain (not that food chain)). You might say their doors are open to everyone, so they can't help what kind of litterbug people eat there, so I'm not sure why I exactly specifically mentioned that except that that particular rant has is close to the surface and burst out because the topic was either litter or McDonald's.

After I told my wife about the spam voicemail she said our neighbor had to change her cell phone number because somehow she was getting literally way too many spams on her phone. Did not clarify whether they were txt or voicemail.

The McDonald's voicemail was a computerish voice saying something like 'hold on for a message' and then a dude that sounded black came on, in conversational tone, starting with 'hey joe, i know you like a good deal..' blah blah for about 10 seconds.

I was mostly just surprised. I had to listen to the message again to understand it because I don't understand black people talk very well, being 1) hearing imparied and 2) Mormon. I got the gist of it and then deleted it, and at the same time wondered to myself why McDonald's would stoop so low? Why are they pushing so much, when clearly they could cease all advertising for a year and people would still flock to the red and yellow by the billions.

I have no conclusion exactly except this theory that while they are charging new franchises exorbitant amounts of cash just for the name, they're probably writing into the contract stuff like "it will be so worth it" and "we take care of the advertising." I'm assuming the estimated value of advertising goes up when applied across a larger spectrum (such as unsuspecting cell phones) and therefore the cash they can extort goes up.


On a totally unrelated note, I was on wikipedia, the front page, which one should never visit lest you actually start reading stuff that makes you read more stuff. I went from Roman Polanski to his rape trial to the Tate murders to the Family members that were convicted. Sickening.

Choice of Car

The car I want to get next is a Honda Civic 2006 or newer. Why? There are many reasons.

1) I am happy with the Civic I have now, it drives well, it feels good to drive, it is reliable, it looks good, it sounds good, and repairs are relatively affordable.

2) I assume that getting another Honda means I will get all the above benefits

3) I like the new styling both inside and out.

4) I also assume I'll never be able to afford a Ferrari.

Now. If I can fixate on a car that easily, why can't I fixate on a career as easily? Here I am in a job that is pleasant, but not exciting. If they stopped paying me I would definitely never come here again. I more or less found this job after lots of searching in tech type jobs, preferably as a network designer and installer. That would be much more interesting to me, and yet, all the entry level jobs for that kind of thing are in help desk for several years eventually graduating up the tiers until such time as I guess I would eventually have a right to design something.

I don't know if networking is my dream any more. It's pretty uncomplicated these days, unless one is a scientist coming up with really new ways to string people together, and yes there's more to be discovered. But on a basic working level, a person simply plugs everything in and turns it on. There is something to be said for someone who knows how to take off the shelf products and use them effectively, but that's not design, that's implementation and working knowledge. I think I found the idea of being a network engineer a viable and interesting career, but as a career, a job, not a life's passion.

I feel like, with my Civic, I could drive her every day and not be unhappy because I don't have a different car. With my job, I'm not unhappy per se, because while some jobs may seem more appealing than the one I presently have, all I can see is the learning curve. Not even a learning curve, but more of a time investment before actually being able to do that thing whatever it is. And I don't begrudge the time investment requirement like I used to . When I was younger, I used to believe that I could do anything I put my hand to, regardless of my experience. I have started to realize, as I have gotten older, that experience does matter in a huge way. Experience, and brains. Brains I have, and ability to learn, I have, but do I have the real desire to be.... whatever it is that I really want to be? What do I want to be? And why can't answering that question be as easy as answering what car I want to get next?

More about Advertising

Remember this post? It was about ads that ran supporting an extension of a tax break for wind powered energy companies. It was created by a lobby group. Big money.

Well big money is at it again, and once again, the motivation behind it is a little odd.

Remember when Phillip Morris, the company that owned Marlboro cigarettes (I'm not going to fact check, in order to represent my garbled understanding, or the way in which my memory remembers to the fullest), or some brands of cigarettes, had an entire ad campaign stating how bad smoking was for you? I assume it was a public relations thing, to say, we know there's a problem here, and we're not part of the problem, we just want your money.

Well Chevron is doing the same thing, there are ads in the metro, with Chevron's logo, with short, handwritten notes and pleasantly serious business types encouraging people to use less energy, to drive less, etc. Is the goal here to confuse? To introduce cognitive dissonance, so that people start to mix up who the bad guys are? It must be Shell or Citgo, I don't see them telling me to drive less.