Things I Know I Know

The Morning News presents IKEA shopping as a video game:

You start this world armed only with a UNIVERSAL FURNITURE-ASSEMBLY ALLEN WRENCH. This is the weakest weapon in IKEA: You will have to hit a person 16 times with it to kill them. So your primary goal in this level is to find more lethal means of dispatching your enemies.

As you enter the SHOWROOM, perform a rolling dodge to the left. Grab a free PAPER TAPE MEASURE and a handful of IKEA EMBLAZONED GOLF PENCILS from the kiosk near the entryway. The PENCILS serve quite well as ranged weapons, but it will take some time to master their use. Before venturing further in the world, stand at the kiosk and practice hurling GOLF PENCILS at patrons as they enter the SHOWROOM. Remember: Hitting the eyes does triple damage.

Now make your way into the main SHOWROOM, using the PAPER TAPE MEASURE to throttle anyone who blocks your path.

As you enter the main area, you will see an EKHARD oiled solid-oak dining sideboard. Quickly kick it apart to acquire the TABLE LEG WITH NAIL.

...via BoingBoing

Posted by debco at 04:11 PM | Permalink

Joel on Software has a good entry on getting your resume read, which reads a lot like advice on getting your story read by an editor:

A résumé is a way to get to the next stage: the interview. Companies often get dozens of résumés for every opening ... we get between 100 and 200 per opening. There is no possible way we can interview that many people. The only hope is if we can screen people out using résumés. Don't think of a résumé as a way to get a job: think of it as a way to give some hiring manager an excuse to hit DELETE. At least technically, your résumé has to be perfect to survive.

...

# Proofread everything a hundred times and have one other person proofread it. Someone who got really good grades in English.

# Write a personal cover letter that is customized for the job you are applying for. Try to sound like a human in the cover letter. You want people to think of you as a human being.

# Study the directions that are given for how to apply. They are there for a reason. For example our website instructs you to send a résumé to jobs@fogcreek.com. This goes into an email folder which we go through to find good candidates. If you think for some reason that your résumé will get more attention if you print it out and send it through the mail, that you'll "stand out" somehow, disabuse yourself of that notion. Paper résumés can't get into the email folder we're using to keep track of applicants unless we scan them in, and, you know what? The scanner is right next to the shredder in my office and the shredder is easier to use.

Posted by debco at 04:05 PM | Permalink

I have pictures :-)

I was expecting, at the least, to have someone else's negatives, but I have my negatives and my CD and I've selected the least frowny-/frightened- faced one and sent it on to Ellen. If I get near my computer with photo manipulation software on it (not this one), I'll downsize and post a picture of Billie from the CD.

She, it need not even be said, always takes beautiful pictures...

Posted by debco at 01:25 PM | Permalink

...okay, not actually, but it's a cooler title than 'Why I Should Never Have My Picture Taken.'

For my story in SCIFICTION (currently scheduled for February 18th--mark your calendars), I have to provide a picture. I'm sure for many this is a simple thing (I'm sure some people already have pictures of themselves just sitting around), but somewhere cosmic entities are laughing because it's taken me a month and I still don't have a digital picture for sending (though I hope--I'd better!--to have one tomorrow).

It all started with getting my picture taken.

I don't like to get my picture taken; it rarely turns out well, but for a story in SCIFICTION, many things are possible. So I get a friend of mine, who's a good photographer to take a picture of me and Charming Billie. It's a hundred million degrees below zero, but beautiful, outside and we decide to do an outside picture. We find a lovely--and really fairly icy--location and while university workers in pickup trucks drive back and forth behind us, we take pictures.

It is very sunny and--as I will find out later when the pictures are developed--although Billie looks lovely, in most of the pictures I either look like I'm really angry or really frightened. This will turn out to be weirdly prophetic of everything that comes later.

After thawing out, I take the finished roll of film to one-hour photo developing at Wal-Mart to get prints and a CD. After about six hours (during which I have dropped in twice to see if my pictures are done), I have prints, but no CD ('our CD burner is broken'). Since I need a digital copy, this isn't helpful. I go back three times on different days, but still no CD burner. Since the photo department is actually in the electronics department, I am briefly tempted, on my third trip back to tell them that I will fix their CD burner, but I figure they don't get paid enough to take crap from me.

So, I give up for a couple of weeks.

Today, I go back with my negatives to see if they can put them on a CD. The CD burner is finally fixed. YAY. And, 'They'll be done by 1:20 PM.' the guy says. Not pushing my luck, I go back at 7:00 PM and the envelope is sitting on the counter. They don't charge me for the CD, because, you know, there were hassles. I collect the envelope, do my grocery shopping and come home.

At home, I unload groceries, feed the dogs, let the dogs out, let the dogs back in and then sit down at the computer and put in the CD.

They are not my pictures.

They are pictures of 'Baby's First Birthday.' Someone probably wants these pictures and they're probably pissed that they got pictures of some weird frowning woman and her Rottweiler. I am not pissed. I have passed far beyond pissed and I'm fairly certain I can hear actual cosmic laughing. I consider sending Ellen a picture of 'Baby's First Birthday,' complete with birthday cake, but figure she might not appreciate the cosmic irony of it all the way that I do.

I go back to Wal-Mart.

Fortunately, the negatives that came with 'Baby's First Birthday' are still my negatives. I leave the negatives and the 'Baby's First Birthday' CD at the one-hour photo counter (this is either really brave or really foolish of me) and, after they apologize for what is most likely someone else's error, tell them I'll pick up the new CD in the morning.

I can't wait to see whose pictures I'll get then.

Posted by debco at 08:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

is what my (work) life is like.

Even accounting for the fact that my boss is actually a pretty good guy.

Posted by debco at 01:12 PM | Permalink

One of my peeves is when someone thanks me for doing something that I absolutely, postively don't want to do (or had already said I wouldn't do) in the first place. I've been thinking about this lately. Sometimes, sure, you do things you don't want to do or said you wouldn't do or, at work, have clear policies that say 'we don't do that,' and it doesn't make me angry either to do it or to be thanked for it. But the difference is whether it's my choice or not. If it is my choice, then, yes, I chose to do it even though I didn't want to and it's something I appreciate being thanked for--I went the extra mile, I did something I didn't have to, I excercised my own autonomy and authority to take care of the problem, whatever it was.

But, if I didn't decide, if my boss (for example), tells me I have to do it or it's something that just comes--a sudden tsunami of incredibly careless, uncaring people--then don't thank me for it. It wasn't my pleasure, it wasn't nothing. And it's the 'thank you' that irritates me way more than the 'you have to do this' in the first place. It's a reinforcer--someone else had the power and I did not and now they want to pretend it was just a friendly transaction.

On the other hand (and just to confuse the issue completely) being recognized for those efforts in some broad sense...well, that gives power back to me again so, okay.

Posted by debco at 01:05 PM | Permalink

If you ever get a chance to live in Iowa, do it just so you can go to a presidential caucus. Like New Hampshire town meetings, it's participation democracy. The Democratic ones (I hear the Republican ones are more sedate) involve cramming loads of people into small rooms, counting off by numbers, cramming into other small rooms, counting off some more, tripping over small children, recruiting people to your candidate, cheering for magic numbers (which mean your candidate is viable) and writing numbers on a piece of paper to give to some guy who you hope is the guy that pieces of paper with numbers on them are supposed to be given to.

But really, the chaos is pretty well controlled. It all happens, despite everything, pretty much as it's supposed to. Even with record turnouts, there's someone directing traffic, someone registering new voters, someone checking people in and someone taking care of basic business. And--and in my opinion, this is one of the coolest things--if you want to be a delegate to the county caucuses, all you have to do is raise your hand and say, 'yeah, I'll do it.' It takes longer than going to a primary site and casting a vote, but you don't have to be a party faithful to participate in the process and you can tell right there, right while you're doing it, how much your vote really counts.

Posted by debco at 08:38 PM | Permalink

Look, I'm not saying that Howard Dean is the best thing that ever happened to politics or even that he's The One for the presidential election in November, but he's creating a movement and it's beyond the 'politics as gamesmanship' that seems to be all the media know how to talk about anymore.

In the last week, I've had a teenager, who's too young to vote, and his mother who came up to Iowa from Oklahoma and a couple of middle-aged men from Texas who've never worked a campaign before, come to my house and tell me why they're voting for Howard Dean. These folks are paying their own way to Iowa and knocking on doors in the rain and the cold because they want to do something to change the country.

And then, there's stuff like this:

Today we knocked on over 200 doors in the winding cul-de-sacs of West Des Moines and helped to sway about eight or ten people, which, while it sounds small, could decide a precinct. Some of our greatest moments today included a visit for nourishment at a Chinese restaurant. A man and his wife came in and immediately asked about Dean. He had never caucused before, but we give him some information and he was on his way to finding his caucus location. A woman in West Des Moines remarked that no one had ever really asked her before, but that she was committed for Dean. So Monday she will be off to the caucuses, hopefully with her husband and the other people that she said she would ‘drag’ there. When I asked her to be a dragger, she said, “Yes!”, which is now my very favorite word. Yes!

and this:

On one of the buses up from Texas, Glenn did a survey: “50 people. 23 had never worked on any campaign before. 13 out of 50 had no health insurance. 11 out of 50 were not employed. It was like a portrait of our country.”

He also told me about people the Texas buses picked up along the way:

• Lisa Coons and her 11 year old daughter met one bus under the McDonalds arches on I-35, 15 miles from Kansas in Blackbell, Oklahoma
  
• A woman from New Orleans saw the buses on the Texas website and took a greyhound to Houston (about 6 ½ hours) to catch the 16 hour bus to Des Moines
  
• Lisa Brodyaga had an immigration hearing at 12:30 in Harlingen, Texas and drove 5 ½ hours to get on the 16 hour bus ride
  
• “Headrush” drove his motorcycle 4 ½ hours from Amarillo to catch the bus in Oklahoma City

But perhaps the best story is the Oakland train trip – after 20 Dean supporters got on the train in Oakland, they made their car of the train the Dean Car, and so swayed their conductor that he wrote a song about Dean. They brought Flat Howard and made sure he got off at every stop.

In Salt Lake City at 2 AM, a young man got on the train on his way to college in Ohio – within a day, he said he wanted to come out to Iowa, but he didn’t have the money for the extra ticket. “But we knew the Dean way,” Renee said, “so within about 3 minutes everyone had chipped in and we’d bought him a ticket to Iowa and now he’s here knocking on doors.”

And this too:

January 16th, 2004 - 9:38 PM We just stopped at a gas station in West Liberty, Iowa after fixing the windshield wiper. It was flying off so we fixed it. I'm in a van with Rod, one of the people from Meetup, and some other folks - Kelly, Barb, and Scott. We've been having some heated discussion (more of a rant than anything) about the Bush administration and how excited we are for a Dean presidency. We also talked about college quite a bit. There's a lot of junk food roaming around the car. This is good, since I don't have any money to buy food. I bought some bars at the Huddle before I left, so hopefully those will take the place of some meals.

And one thing that strikes me about all this--if it weren't for weblogs and the Internet, we more than likely wouldn't be hearing any of it at all.

Posted by debco at 10:16 AM | Permalink

For a number of years I've gotten together with a group of friends who are also writers. Sometimes our relationship is social, sometimes we're a critique group, sometimes we're a place to come and bitch, but in the end we're all writers and that, as much as anything, defines the ways we relate to each other. Early on, we decided that we needed a name for our group and we spent several get-togethers discussing what that name should be, how it would reflect our personality, what others would think of it. Some liked one name, some liked another, but finally after much careful discussion we decided on a name.

Which all of us immediately forgot.

After several years, however, we have a new name. We came up with it in a single evening, more or less out of nowhere, when we weren't looking for a name at all. We have managed to remember it for an entire week. And, much better than that other name (I'm sure), although also much more frightening, it is so the right name for us--

The Rottweiler and Tea Society.

Posted by debco at 08:30 PM | Permalink

I think.

Being back that is. I figure I'm either going to get back to regular posting here or admit I'm giving it up for some specific amount of time.

First attempt is regular posting; at least three times a week to start. After that, well, we'll see.

Posted by debco at 06:55 PM | Permalink