Liloia.com

Why is Geraldo Rivera...

still allowed on television? This is just proof positive that no matter how bad you are at what you do, some other fool will hire you.

TV's Arnett, Rivera Land in Hot Water in Iraq

Where are the books?

Tonight I worked the info/customer cervice booth at the bookstore. I really enjoy this for a couple of reasons. First, I get to move around the store and not stand still behind a register. Secondly, I get to check out tons of books as I clean and look for books that people want. But these pale in comparison to my favorite reason.

Getting to hear people ask really dumb questions about books.

"Where are the black books?"
"What?"
"The black books, by black writers, where do you keep them?"
"Well, what kind of books? Fiction, history, relationships, etc."
"Dunno. Just the black books"
"Well, I apologize but we do not categorize our books by race, was there a specific book/author you were looking for?"
"Omar Tyree" - which is all she said as if this was a complete sentence.

I can't believe that I had to say that to someone...with a straight face. She still didn't see how her question was lame after I led her to the fiction section under the letter "T". I am sure she is still convinced that I was keeping something from her.

Awkward

Today the new trainees from our Shelton, CT facility arrived to begin their two week training and effectively put my friends and I out of a job. In order to welcome them to the group, my boss ordered about 25 pizza's and had us all attend a "meet and greet" in one of the conference rooms. This turned out to be pretty lame, no offense to the new people (besides taking my JOB), imagine 40+ adults packed into a little conference room that was designed to hold, perhaps 10 people. Not a pretty sight. Also, these people were setup in the only chairs in the room along one wall. It ended up being very strange and a lot like the receiving line that you might find at a wedding. We had to rush past them, us standing as they sat and looked up at us nervously, introduce ourselves and say something witty (or at least I attempted to do so). I hate that. I would much rather have spent some time getting to know them and talk to them one on one. Hopefully the next few weeks turn out a little better than that did.

Zelda Rocks!

This weekend I picked up my reserved copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Before purchasing this product I had read tons about it, and one of the things that people were chatting it up about was the graphics on this game. Apparently the developers at Nintendo took a different approach to this game for the look and feel. The graphics are much less like a normal video game and more like a Japanese cartoon in the way that it looks. If you go to the link I posted above you can see the Flash presentation that the company has listed and the images there are exactly what they look like in this game!

The game so far is awesome and the premise is really cool. I will keep y'all updated on it as I progress through the game, but so far this one is a keeper!

Hey. Late Friday night

Okay so Liloia.com is on it's way back to it's level of greatness from pre-database crash. We have 78 entries back on the site, only 550 left to go. So Tara has a great design coming out probably tomorrow or Sunday. I think y'all will like it. Also we need to get those Gillet's posting again. Their site may look like it is ok, but their database is hosed too so they have to start from scratch again as well. We haven't forgotten about you guys! Things have just been crazy here.

News here on the job/work front. I am going to be able to get some time away from the bookstore finally. It's not time for me to be able to quit there yet, that will be coming this summer approximately the end of June.
Starting approximately April 26th or so I am going to be taking a leave of absence from there until May 31st. Isn't that great? Ok, now for the flipside. I will be spending my weeks during May in the lovely locale of Shelton, Connecticut. I'll be helping the company that laid me off, train the new Customer Care team on our processes and procedures. At this point it looks like I will be there for at least three weeks and maybe four. What I am really bumming about is that we were suppossed to take vacation on the Jersey shore with my family during the third week of May right before Memorial day. I think we will still be able to eek out a long weekend of it, but I really can't take a whole week off at that point. Also, I may be verging on my last days of work if I don't find another job, so taking some vacation time then, might not be the best game plan.

I hope to be able to blog from wherever I am, so that'll be fun.

Trying out a new tool

Clay has developed a new MT plugin
(still in beta) that allows you to make posts to your MT driven blog from
email. This is my first test. Honestly, when sitting at my desk at work or
home this really won't make a big difference for me personally, but now I
will be able to write posts from my Palm Pilot on the train and post them to
the site the next time I sync. This is going to be really cool.

Do Not Call Lists

This Spring, Massachusetts began a statewide "Do Not Call" registration for consumers that wanted telemarketers to stop making unsolicited calls to them at home. We signed up immediately of course (we hardly use our home phone anyhow) and are eagerly waiting the approximate 3 months needed for the list to take full effect.

So far it seems to be working well, it seems that there is only one company calling us right now and if they are still doing so in June, I will report them. The results are very nice.

I was very happy to hear that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is going to roll out a Nationwide Do Not Call List starting over the summer that all U.S. residents will be able to participate in. This too will take about 3 months to take effect from the time you enroll, and will only last for 5 years at a time.

In the meantime to find out if your state participates in a do not call registry already, you can check out the DMA page on this topic.

This brings me to my current thought on this subject. I was considering what call lists such as this would do to the telemarketing industry. While I dislike getting these calls, you have to appreciate a group of business professionals seeing an opportunity and taking full advantage of it. If people weren't buying from telemarketers at a rate which made their investors/shareholders/owners pleased with the quarterly/annual earnings, they would not continue to do so.

That said, what would this national do not call list do to their business? Would it put them right off their mark and cause many of them to close? At this point, the last thing the US needs is more people unemployed, right? Well, what is the biggest problem for telemarketers? I would have to say that it would be the percentage of calls that do not result in a sale. This could also be expressed in the amount of time that they have to spend calling uninterested parties.

By developing a "Do Not Call" list, I actually believe that the FTC is helping these businesses. The individuals that will be adding themselves to these lists will very likely be people who 100% of the time respond with a resounding no (if there is any response at all before the call ends).

Therefore if they made 100 calls previously and only made one sale in that batch, imagine the powerful results that are capable if 50, 75, 90% of your "No thank you" calls are taken out of the mix? They will quickly be able to get right to what they do best, which is sell over the phone to interested parties and hit a larger group of those individuals in a shorter time frame. As long as I am not in the group that is getting the calls, I am all for a business doing well.

Any thoughts?

WE WON!!!!!

I am proud to announce that Liloia.com won the 2003 Dilly Awards for "Best Overall Website". We tied with Amish Tech Support for this award, and I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to vote for us! Thanks!

New London School Explosion

You should read this well-written account of the New London School Explosion. It's an event that I had never heard about until tonight and I'm wagering that you don't know anything about it either. You need to read this to remind you that the present hasn't cornered the market on senseless horrors.

And when you're done, answer me this: Would he have had such a long and prosperous career had it not begun with a bang (literally)? Did the disaster launch a career or would some other event have propelled him to journalistic stardom in its place?

Emergency Preparedness

After exposure to radiation it is important to consider that you may have mutated to gigantic dimensions: watch your head.

There are more Disaster Preparedness Instructions where that came from.

DJ Tricky Ricky

Last night just as I was about to leave work, I received a great phone call. A gentleman by the name of Joe Alford called me. He told me that he was calling to leave a message for someone here at my office. I asked him who he wanted to be connected with and he refused. The rest of the conversation went something like this..

Dave - "So you want to leave a message for someone here, but you don't want me to connect you with them?"
Joe - "Yes, that's correct"
Dave - "May I ask whom you are trying to speak with?"
Joe - "Actually I don't know who I am leaving this message for"
Dave - "You don't know who you are calling to leave a message for?"
Joe - "No, actually my name is DJ Tricky Ricky, and I am a bit of a medium, a purveyor of the EEE ESSS PEEE, if you get my groove."

(At this point his voice changed so I will note that by calling him 'DJ Tricky Ricky' for the duration of this conversation)

Dave - "Um, ok. So you are saynig that you have ESP?"
DJ Tricky Ricky - "That is correct sir. And someone in your office is right at this moment, thinking of me."
Dave - "Someone here?" (I said as I stood up and looked around at my coworkers.
DJ Tricky Ricky- "Yes, they are calling out to me. If you could please take my number down, and pass it around. That way they can call me."
Dave - "Okay, so let me make sure I have this correct. Someone here is reaching out to you via ESP."
DJ Tricky Ricky - "Yes"
Dave - "...and you don't know who it is..."
DJ Tricky Ricky - "Once again Dave you are correct!"
Dave - "..and you want to leave your number for them so they can call you back?"
DJ Tricky Ricky - "Yessssah!"
Dave - "Fair enough Tricky, what is your number?"
DJ Tricky Ricky - "313-865-8258, wait wait. I'll be out for a while, so take this other one down so they can call my cell"
Dave - "Ummm, ok"
DJ Tricky Ricky - "Hey Dave can you kick that number around so that person can get in touch with me?"
Dave - "Tricky Ricky, I will do everything in my power to make sure that they find out what your number is"
DJ Tricky Ricky - "Thanks man, keep kicking it!"
Dave - "Um, yeah you too!"

So if anyone was thinking of him, please feel free to contact him. He might be out so leave a message.

I wonder if he knows that I am thinking of him right now, and if so why hasn't he called yet!

CompAtlanta... a computer company with a political agenda.

Take a look at their auction listing page. It states very clearly that:

"At the present time we will not honor bids from Canada, Mexico, France, Germany or any other country that does not support the United States in our efforts to rid the world of Saddam Hussein."

Because this war is clearly going to be won by third-rate hardware companies who keep used printers out of the hands of thrifty Canadians.

Tuesday's Two

Yeah, I know. I said I'd never do this stuff again. But here I am anyway.

1. I always... get sucked into infomercials. Luckily, my phone phobia works as a deterrent to keep the infomercial addiction from manifesting itself in actual sales.

2. I never... finish what I

Bonus:

3. I sometimes... ask people questions that I already know the answer to. Good lawyering or just manipulation? Is there a difference?

Perspective

For anyone who wants to know why we should reconsider bombing Bagdad. Read Raed's blog from the other side of the front lines.

Where is Raed ?

Give LACK a chance!

I don't understand what Somerville has against Swedish furniture. Every time we're in NJ, I attempt to cajole Dave into bringing me to IKEA Elizabeth for some LACK tables and a plate of meatballs with lingonberry jelly. If Somerville were to allow the IKEA, I would spend my dollars Chez Massacusetts instead of NJ. There's a benefit, right?

Residents assert that the store will bring traffic and pollution, but I've been to Somerville and they already have plenty of both. Don't bame cheap futons and end tables.

I recall a few years ago when residents of Manalapan, NJ vehemently protested the construction of a new shopping center on a wooded corner. That center is now one of the busiest shopping areas in the town. I have heard only raves about the Target and Wegman's that fill the area. I'll admit that even I have gone into Wegman's to ogle the $60.00-an-ounce truffles in their mushroom case.

I'll also admit I'm an overtly-biased and proud consumer. But IKEA furniture is light and delicate -- like a patisserie confection. It won't hang in your gut and it won't ruin Somerville. Give LACK a chance.

Butterflies

This weekend we made a trip toThe Butterfly Place in Westford, Massachusetts. I was a bit skeptical about going there at first assuming that it would be a lame trip, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Trevor loved the place and had a great time spotting all of the different species that were there. His favorite one was the "Blue Morpho" pictured below.

Memento Mori - Skip it

I was tempted to turn Memento Mori off about 30 minutes in. I kept it going against my better judgement and it wasn't great, but at least it didn't inspire a rant like The Avengers did.

Here's the synopsis:
Min-Ah finds a strange diary, capable of arousing hallucinations, kept by two of her senior fellow-students, Hyo-Shin and Shi-Eun, who seem to have an unusually close bond. But Hyo-Shin suddenly kills herself, for no obvious reason, and the entire school is shocked and depressed. Min-Ah, however, starts to feel different. It's almost as if she's somehow possessed by the dead girl...

Okay, I like a good ghost story, but the 'posession' in question here was very weak indeed. The ghost girl essentially chases a bunch of whimpering and screaming Korean schoolgirls around a locked school. What was more interesting was the love triangle and the romanticized look at Korean adolescent life (only girls, really). The ghosty part was just gravy. I have no idea how this found its way onto my Netflix list -- and if you're heading down the foreign film aisle, just skip this one.

Old Entries

So like I said before, we are slowly trying to rebuild that which was utterly destroyed. I have the export file for all of our old entries but it is a bear to deal with. Having exported it using Internet Explorer basically turned all of these delightfully rich entries into one long crappy post. The framework for importing them is still there, but it is all shimmy shanked.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to get through this without manually reposting all of it and editing the dates individually, I am all ears.

Guess who's back..

Finally, Liloia.com is back up and running. After 2 weeks of feeling completely naked without the ability to post anytime I see someone doing something completely dumb or interesting we can get back to work.

The entries for the site were all exported using Internet Explorer (I will claim responsibility for that bone-head move) so getting them all back in place will take some time.

The templates for all the pages were lost when the database became corrupted (the whole reason why the site died to begin with) and Tara is going to get working on that. (Thanks sweetie!)

Hopefully the entire site will be back in good form within the next few weeks. All 5 of you who read regularly can rest easy now.

:)

I got the job! Well, sort of

This afternoon the hiring manager for the sales position with my company called me in. She began by telling me how my
boss, and a few other people had given great reccomendations for me in regards
to the open sales position. Then she said that she really liked my background,
yadda yadda. I knew all the news coming up was not good. She then says, "If I
had a position today, I would hire you." Ugh, so good news, bad news. I got the
sales job, but it looks like it could be a few months before the position is
approved for head count and budget. I am looking forward to the opportunity, (it
would be selling small instrumentation and supplies to our research and academic
customers) but because of this situation, I have to keep looking for a job. If I
assume that it is all going to work, I could end up out of a job in May and
hosed. So if anyone has a position that they think I can apply for let me know,
but I think I have a job. This is a weird position for me to be in because I
can't really celebrate, but the news was good today. Any thoughts?

How about that?

Your'e right, Bill.
When the power grid went out in 1503, no one noticed. Go figure.

Thursday Night

Yes. It snowed, again. I think that this is like 800 inches now. I tunneled home from the train station today and thank gosh
I got here in time, because the light on my miners helmet was about to go out. I
think we got about 6 inches of snow today, although they have done a decent job
of cleaning things up already. Along with the snow, we have been getting hit
with a lot of rain each week. The nice thing about rain is that it is melting
the snow. One of the weather people on the news described the rain as a
"de-accumulation of 3-6 inches". Why can't they just say that the snow is going
to melt? Weird. Hey, did you think that I was going to post an entry and not
mention the voting going on at Pickle Juice? No way!
Go vote for Liloia.com as the BEST WEBLOG!!

2003 DILLY AWARDS

Okay, the time has come! The voting has begun for the 2003 Dilly Awards. Please go to Pickle Juice and place your vote for Liloia.com We are in the running for the best Comedy site and best Overall. The listing may have our site spelled as Liola or Liloia so please take a moment to check that out. Pickle Juice Vote
Early, Vote Often, as long as you vote!!!!

Online MM Gaming

We recently purchased "The Sims Online" for Tara (since we were big fans of the
offline versions). After getting it home and playing it a bit, the game is fun.
They give one month free on online playing with the purchase of the game, but is
the game worth an additional $10 a month? I don't think so, perhaps Tara does.
What bothers me, is that these games are asking for a monthly payment, but at
the same time, they are still charging $40-60 for the game itself. EA.com is
floundering in this new gaming market and I can understand why. I don't want to
pay extra for a game that costs the same as an offline game when almost
everything else online is free. Electronic Arts stumbles in online world. The people at Blizzard, who allow online
gaming to occur for free have it right. It may not net the same volume of cash,
but the massive number of gamers that utilize that model prove it's worth. I
realize that Blizzard may more to a pay, basis but there has to be some form of
middle ground that can be met on this, or at the very least these games have to
be created so that they can be played offline as well as on.

Support Peace, Receive Jail Time

I don't understand why it's suddenly a punishable offense to wear a t-shirt saying "Give Peace A Chance." I realize that the man was charged because he refused to leave a mall when asked, but why did security guards tell him he was "acting poorly" by wearing the shirt in the first place?

Web Workers Beware of Job Board ID Theft

If only...

Have you ever been so annoyed with the constant whining by the cast of a TV show that you would love to "take them out" Quake style? someone else got to it first. This professor from University of Nevada has developed a Friends/Quake VR program that will reenact the pilot episode of Friends in the Quake universe. Take That, Monica! Kapow, Chandler! Participants in the game will get the chance to mow
down their favorite characters in this setting over and over again while Ross whines about being dumped by his lesbian wife.

Radiator Cover

Weird People

Pancake Breakfast

This morning we went out with the Morey's to the Natick Community Organic Farm. We were there for their annual pancake breakfast at the Memorial Elementary School celebrating the most recent batch of organic maple syrup which is made at the Natick Community Farm in the "Sugaring Shack". - - A little aside..there are at least two strip clubs that I know of called "The Sugar Shack". One is in Wisconsin and the other is in Connecticut. Perhaps the Organic Farmers should consider changing the name of theirs. We enjoyed some very good pancakes while sitting on tiny cafeteria chairs that were welded to folding tables. It was pretty fun, and Scott had a great time clapping along with the music. We were supposed to go on a tour that showed how they made maple syrup. It was $3 a person, $10 a family (Tara and Ellen were going to pretend to be sisters - heh)but it didn't start until 10 AM so we decided to go for a walk. It turns outthat the Organic farm and everything that they were going to charge us for wasopen and available. So, with a few slips on the ice we stole (pun intended)glimpses at the sap buckets on the trees and a few scruffy looking animals on the farm. The funniest visual at the farm was the goats whose horns were wrapped in duct tape, I imagine to prevent them from stabbing the sheep or small children while no one is looking. Perhaps Tom Ridge should suggest that all the people who ran out and bought it over the last few weeks should donate it to the farm for the safety of the animals (and people) We came home and are making a radiator cover for the bedroom. I will post some pictures of our work later..