Saturday Randomness

Earlier, as it was a nice day and, being Jon, I had nothing better to do, I decided to go for a walk.
In the course of my walking I eventually found myself – again, being Jon, having nothing better to do – idly wandering around an all-but deserted Office Depot.
I saw something that I briefly considered buying, but, given that I didn’t need it and could easily find it much cheaper online if I ever did need it, decided against it, and decided that it was time to make the trek home.
However, I decided that, because I didn’t feel like going anywhere else and I was there, I would grab something to drink on the walk home from the cooler near the register.  With limited options, I went with a diet iced tea.
I got up to the register, and the unhappy older man working there scanned it, grunted, then looked over to the desk where people picked up print orders and whatnot, where two other employees were standing around chatting.
”Pat,” the man said, holding up the bottle, “this one never scans.”
The other man – “Pat,” apparently – said, with a certain amount of disdain, “Just scan something else. They all cost the same.”
The man grunted, walked out from behind the counter and over to the cooler, and spent far more time than was necessary trying to pick something to scan, and I stood there thinking, “Of course this is what happens.”
Eventually, the man came back, pushed the bottle towards me, and said, “Take it.”
”Er, what?" I said.
”I don’t want to do that,” he said.  Then he mumbled something that ended with, “customer service,” and said, “Just take it.”

****

Last night I was sitting around watching some show about supermassive black holes on Science Channel, because of course that’s what I was doing on a Friday night, and just idly flipping around through applications and settings on my cell phone.
Out of curiosity, I hit the “search” button and entered, “Why do I suck?”  This brought up results that included an online quiz titled, “Why do you suck so bad?”
Lacking anything better to do (See “Jon, Being”), I decided to take the quiz.  The results stated that I suck because I’m boring.
I said, “I could have told you that.”

****

As boring as I may be, as I went out for my walk and noticed all of the neighborhood kids idly sitting around on the big rocks lining the cul-de-sac, or riding their bikes in circles, I thought, “At least I have a little more excitement in my life than that.”

****

Last week, inspired by multiple viewings of The Avengers, I started on a four-week exercise program based on the program that actor Chris Evans followed to get in shape for his role as Captain America.
After the first day, I found myself wishing that I could just get a shot of the Super Soldier Serum and be done with it.  I’d even be willing to do without the “Vita Rays” that were an essential part of that fictitious program, the lack of which ultimately causes recipients of the serum to go insane.
It’s a pretty intense and difficult workout.  I take some comfort from the fact that the majority of the (extreme) pain resulting from it is muscle pain rather than joint and ligament pain, which indicates that at least I’m probably not doing more harm than good.
I’m setting my expectations pretty low.  Certainly I don’t expect to end up looking as good as Evans, given that I’m a much smaller person than he is and that he was already in much, much better shape than I am before he went through the program.
Even so, I’ve already noticed some amount of benefit from it.  Not so much in terms of size, but in terms of firmness.  At least, once I press through the doughy layer of permaflab and get to the actual muscles located far below the surface…

****

Each day of the program – four days on, three days off – involves a series of one hour and fifteen minute-long workouts, with an hour of that devoted to resistance training and the final fifteen devoted to cardio.
By the time I climb onto the elliptical for the cardio portion, I’m drenched in sweat and pretty well exhausted, and I think, “You know, I could probably afford to go a little easy on the cardio.  Maybe just do ten minutes, or reduce my speed and the resistance level.”  Then I think, “No.  My stupid body needs to learn who’s in charge here, and it has to know that it can’t expect mercy.”
To drive the point home, I sometimes go for more than fifteen minutes.
Of course, the end result is that getting back upstairs, removing my sweat-soaked workout gear, and engaging in simple tasks like washing my hair become a challenge, as I have very little strength left, and throughout the day, I move with the speed and grace of Tim Conway’s old man character.

****

Oddly enough, one of the more difficult aspects of the workout program is that I have to eat a lot more than I usually do.  Given how much I’ve restricted my diet over the past two years, it’s been a bit of an adjustment, and I’ve been making up for my lack of appetite by seriously increasing my intake of protein supplements.
I had briefly considered following the workout that Robert Downey, Jr. followed to get in shape for his role as Iron Man, but that involved taking in over 5,000 calories a day.  No way in hell.

****

The other strange thing has been that I’ve been getting a lot more sleep than usual.  All week long I got at least eight hours each night.  It’s bizarre.
And, given how ridiculously early I get up in the morning, it means that I’ve been going to bed shortly after I get home from work, which only serves to make me even more boring.

Thanks For Pointing That Out, Amazon

E-mail from Amazon:

Hello Associate,
We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer a sale.

Why not just be blunt, Amazon?

Hello Associate,
We noticed that your blog sucks, you barely get any traffic, the traffic you do get is from people who are looking for slash fiction, information on celebrity brassieres and images of the contents therein, and the marital status and/or height of said celebrities, and further, those unlucky Web surfers who do end up on your blog get away from it as quickly as is humanly possible.  So getting them to click on one of the Amazon ads to buy something is completely out of the fucking question.

P.S.  You suck.

The DOWnward Spiral

Apparently It Wasn’t Just Me Department:
So apparently the Dow actually dropped pretty substantially today while I was busy only paying attention to the tiny little portion of Wall Street that applies to me.
I hope nobody was jumping out of any windows while I was bitching about my company’s 84 cent drop in stock price.
Honestly, I’ll never really understand the stock market. I mean, I understand the basics of how it works and all that crap, but what I don’t understand is the blind panic that causes these sorts of drops.
So there was some stuff with China or whatever. And? That’s a reason to go into a tailspin?
It’s like when it rains here and everyone has to rush out to the store to stock up on water, milk, and beer because, obviously, the fact that it’s raining means that civilization is collapsing.
People need to learn how to relax. If they would, they wouldn’t keep shooting themselves in their own damn feet every time they hear the slightest bit of bad news about the economy. “Oh my god! New home construction is down .01% from last month! I’m ruined! Sell everything I own! Sell! Sell! Sell!”
But whatever.

Watching The Colbert Report tonight I saw a quote from a man who is 107 years old attributing his advanced age to the fact that he’s largely done without sex since he was 30.
First thought: Why would you want to live after 77 years without sex?
Second thought: Oh shit, at this rate I’m going to live to be well over 100.
So the person I was supposed to meet with called and decided that she will e-mail the information I need, then give me a call to discuss some of the details about the job.
I also got a response from Kathleen about that “audition” design I did last week, with some notes on what she did and didn’t like about it. She also sent me a copy of what someone else had come up with. Long story short: I suck.
(In fairness to me, Web site design is not my specialty, and the other person clearly had access to a little more information than I did in terms of content and what the client was looking for, all of which, of course, is just me trying to justify my suckiness. Oh well. As I’ve said many times before, there’s a reason I don’t make a living off of my creative endeavors.)
Still, I’m the one saying that I suck, not Kathleen (though that could just be politeness on her part), and she is still going to show the client my design for him to not like.
Oh well.

Easy Answer

I have an easy answer for the person from Amsterdam, Noord-Holland Netherlands, who ended up here earlier today by asking the question "What can I do to stop being a loser?"
For the most part, it's very simple: do whatever I don't do.
This doesn't apply to all situations, of course, but it's a pretty good guideline if you just think of it as a kind of mantra:
ommmm, do whatever Jon doesn't do, do whatever Jon doesn't do, ommmm, do whatever Jon doesn't do, do whatever Jon doesn't do....

Why I Should Give Up (Even Though I Won't)

When I feel the searing pain in my wrist that accompanies almost every stroke and I think about the pointless hours I've spent hunched over any scrap of paper I could find, and later hunched over my graphics tablet, and how nothing worthwhile has ever come of those efforts it occurs to me that it's probably about time that I just call it quits with the whole drawing thing.
Then I see stuff like this and I become certain that I should.
I'm not saying that I'm going to quit drawing - after so many years it's become the one habit that I probably can't break - but I've become increasingly aware of the fact that it's just never going to pay off for me. I'm never going to have that sudden epiphany in which it all comes together and I take my talent to that level that I've always tried - however half-assedly - to attain.
The fact of the matter is that I'm just not going to get any more talented, skilled, or disciplined than I already am, and my best work is not yet to come but has probably already been achieved.
*Sigh*
Anyway, the point of this mopefest is that I think the pictures at the site linked above are real purty.
And don't worry; I'm sure that you'll continue to see my usual, comparatively cave drawing-like efforts popping up here from time to time, especially if the chiropractor manages to help with my wrist.

Portrait Of The Artist As A Fat Ass

You may have noticed that along with the slightly new look of Threshold I've added a different picture to my profile.
The overall effect I was going for with this new self-portrait was to make it look like something you might have seen in a comic book back in the days before the use of higher quality paper and the advent of digital pre-press technology.
How well I achieved that effect is up for debate, but the one thing that is clear is that I didn't take any steps to make myself look like less of a fat lump than I really am (though I did leave out the gray hair).

I'm The Best There Is At Being A Loser

There are certain things that I can do that nobody else I know can do.
I’m not talking about good things, or interesting things, but rather, stupid, irritating, Keystone Kop-like acts of clumsiness and bungling incompetence.
By way of example, over the weekend work was pretty light, so our boss decided that, as kind of a rotating trade-off, one of us could leave early on Friday and one of us could come in late on Saturday.
As I’d just gotten back from vacation, and Simon was going to be off on Saturday anyway, we opted for Scott to leave early and for me to come in late.
This was ideal, as it would allow me to stay up and watch the “must see” one-hour episode of The Office that I’d recorded the night before without having to sacrifice any sleep.
Here’s where my “talent” for doing things that nobody else can do comes into play.
I stayed up past my usual bedtime watching The Office as planned, then, rather than waking up two hours later than I normally would, I woke up two hours earlier and found myself completely incapable of getting back to sleep, regardless of how tired I was at the time.
This is, of course, after having gone to bed later than usual.
So I’m the only person I know who, when presented with an opportunity to get more sleep ends up getting less.
I tried to get back to sleep for quite some time to no avail before finally just acknowledging defeat and getting up.
After sitting around and doing things for as long as I could stand it, I showered and made my way out into the world and on to work, stopping first for a McDonald’s breakfast.
Naturally I ended up getting to work earlier than I needed to be there (which Scott predicted with 100% accuracy because when it comes to that sort of thing I am exactly that predictable.).
I had to hit the caffeine pretty hard to keep awake for what proved – despite being slightly shorter – to be a long, irritating day.
That night, despite being exhausted, I found myself unable to get to sleep until well after 2, which made for a 23 hour day.
Each time I nearly drifted off there was something odd that shocked me back to consciousness, like a shifting of my pillows that made an unusually loud noise right in my ear, or someone outside (apparently, at any rate) belching in such a way that it sounded like it was right in my bedroom.
Once I finally did get to sleep I only managed to get in about 6 hours before getting up to spend the day not doing much of anything.
I didn’t even get to have my Sunday Tanya Memme fix, as A&E aired exactly zero episodes of Sell/Move this House, opting instead for that Mindfreak guy and a marathon of The First 48.
The night again found me struggling to sleep and up until nearly 3 am, at which point I fell asleep and woke up 2 hours later and struggled to get in another 4 hours.
I’m not sure why I’ve been having so much difficulty sleeping lately. I mean, it’s not like it’s exactly complicated.
Guess I need to take some kind of refresher course or something.
While I was sitting around watching the season finale of Dexter, Kathleen called to ask if I was dressed, tell me where she and Brian were eating, invite me to join them, and inform me that they were already there as she got a cal from someone else just as she was about to call me to tell me that they were on their way there.
This put me out into the world a little earlier than planned, as I was going to go out to have lunch, then go to Best Buy before my appointment with the chiropractor, so this meant that I had to kill a little more time at Best Buy than I’d intended.
After doing so I headed to the chiropractor and continued to try to keep my mind open, thinking about all of the people who talk about chiropractors being miracle workers.
I thought about how much of that might be an example of the placebo effect, but concluded that it doesn’t really matter if it is or not if it gets rid of the pain. I mean, it’s not like we're talking about having cancer and only thinking that it’s getting better when in reality it’s still progressing. My wrist and arm hurt; if simply convincing myself that something is making them stop hurting makes them stop hurting, then what does it matter if it’s just a placebo effect in action?
So here’s hoping that, if need be, I can trick myself into believing that it’s working, thereby making it work.
Or something.
In any case, I have two more appointments this week for work on my neck and wrist.

Why I Was At Best Buy Department:
Since I no longer have VoIP service and don’t have a landline phone, I’m back to using my cell phone as my only phone.
This wouldn’t be a problem except that when I signed up for my current cell service I had VoIP, and so I didn’t need a lot of monthly minutes.
Oops.
I was considering some different VoIP options, but then saw an announcement that Skype was offering their SkypeOut service, which gives you unlimited calls in the US and Canada, for only $29.95…a year.
Seemed like a bargain to me, especially considering that until January 31st they’ve actually lowered the price to $14.95 a year.
For those unfamiliar with Skype, it consists of a program that you install on your computer and through which you create a Skype account, and can make phone calls over your broadband connection. The service is free if you’re only calling or receiving calls from other Skype members. There are various options for pay service, such as the plan I signed up for, but you can also buy credits and make calls at an extremely low rate.
Now, the drawback to this is that, in a standard set up, you have to be at your computer using the Skype dial pad and communicating via a headset.
Enter various third-party companies making Skype-certified products to free you from your computer. There are a lot of different options: USB phones that plug into your computer, Wi-Fi phones that connect to your computer via your wireless network or any open wireless network, or, and this is the option that I went with, adapters that you plug into your computer that allow you to use a normal phone.
I picked up one of these at Best Buy and set it up once I got home. This allowed me to put the dual cordless handsets I’d bought for my VoIP service back into use.
So far I’m impressed by the quality of calls. They’re virtually indistinguishable from standard landline calls.
There are a couple of minor drawbacks, though. For example, while I can make outgoing calls, I don’t actually have a phone number, so the only people who can call me are other Skype users who have my contact information (username). I could add a number that non-Skype users can call, but it’s an additional fee (a service called SkypeIn), and is currently only in beta. Also, the price listed for it is in Euros, and I don’t know the conversion and am too lazy to find out.
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter that I don’t have a number, though, as I have unlimited incoming minutes on my cell.
However, for those interested in using that aspect of the service, the advantage is that you can choose to have your number be located anywhere. Say your mom lives in Chicago, but you live in Paris. Get yourself a Chicago number via SkypeIn and suddenly it’s a local call for your mom.
Another drawback is that as it’s not intended to replace your regular phone service, you can’t call 911 via your Skype phone.
The other minor complaint I have is that even with the adapter that lets me use a regular phone I can’t just pick up the phone and dial it exactly the way I would a normal phone. In order to get Skype to dial the number you input, you have to include 00 + the country code, then the area code and phone number, and then an asterisk at the end.
However, if you put numbers in your contact list you can assign speed dial numbers to them.
Overall it seems like a decent service so far, and I would say that with the $14.95 a year deal (or even at the $29.95 a year price), and factoring in the costs of the SkypeIn service and the equipment (I paid $60 for the adapter I bought at Best Buy; there’s another model that sells online for as little as $30, but I didn’t want to have to wait and have a problem with the company that makes that one anyway, which I don’t feel like getting into here. The Wi-Fi phones can get pretty pricey, but you get coupons for some of the hardware from Skype for signing up.), you’re probably going to save over your regular service.
Okay, I’m done shilling.

The Hot Dog Bun That Broke The Camel's Back

After doing the requisite amount of sitting around doing nothing this morning I made my way to the shower and ventured out, however briefly, into the world in order to do some grocery shopping.
I didn’t buy much but still managed to spend over $30, which was kind of baffling.
After getting home I made lunch and found myself overcome with the frustration that can build up when every last goddamn thing you do, whether the result of the perversity of the universe or personal incompetence, inevitably becomes a life or death struggle.
Adding condiments to hot dog buns should not be a task roughly equivalent to the Thirteenth Labor of Hercules, and yet today found me standing in the kitchen going absolutely bat-shit as the buns refused to stand up, stay open, and not fucking fall apart.
Let me be as clear about this as possible; all I was trying to do was to add ketchup and relish to a few hot dog buns.
That should have been extremely simple and should not have resulted in me standing there with ketchup and relish all over my hands, crumbs all over the counter and floor, and a plate of mutilated buns silently mocking me as I choked on my frustration and did my best to avoid smashing the shit out of everything in sight while screaming in rage at the uncaring heavens.
Of course the goddamn hot dog buns weren’t really the issue; they were just that last little shove that nearly sent me over the edge.
There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer attends a self-help class. The instructor says to the class, “Life is hard, am I right?”
When everyone in the class agrees that life is, in fact, hard, he responds, angrily, “Wrong! Life is easy; you suck!”
So at the heart of it all is the single, all-important question: why do I suck at everything?
I know that life just should not be this difficult, and I realize, too, that for the most part I’m the one making it so difficult.
So what do I do about it? I have no clue. If I did, I wouldn’t be standing around in my kitchen trying to avoid going totally bug fuck crazy over hot dog buns, would I?
And beyond that it’s an area that I don’t really feel like delving into right now anyway.
In any case, after averting the meltdown I took my mutilated hot dogs into the living room and sat down to watch the remaining episodes of Batman: Beyond.
After finishing that I got to work on the flier for the holiday party that my homeowner’s group is throwing in a couple of weeks.
I had an idea that I thought would be kind of cool, but then realized that it was an idea that would work really well if printed in color on quality paper by a professional print shop, but that would not work so well when printed in black and white from a laser printer and photocopied, so I modified things a little and came up with something a little more suitable.
I don’t really like the end result, but I realized that the reason I don’t like it is because it looks like exactly the sort of flier that would be printed up for a community holiday party or some similar event, so in this case the fact that I don’t like it is a good thing.
I still need to send a proof of it out to the group to get their thoughts on it and to spur them into providing me with the remaining information I need to complete it (the actual time of the party and who people should contact to RSVP, along with the contact information for said person).
While working on the flier I realized how much I miss doing that sort of work.
Too bad that desktop publishing jobs pay shit compared to what I do now and that the job market is oversaturated with people much younger and hungrier than I am and whose skill sets are much more current than mine.
So with that being said, let me ask you to refrain from latching onto my saying that I miss doing that sort of work and seeing that as an opportunity to start encouraging me to “take a chance and follow my dream” or something similarly nonsensical.
First up, it’s not my dream. Sure, I like doing desktop publishing work, but it can get old in a hurry. Second, even if it were my dream, as pointed out above, there are plenty of reasons – reasons that carry much more weight than some hippie notions about “self-actualization” or any of that kind of crap – not to pursue such a dream, such as the fact that I like being able to afford to pay my mortgage.
I suppose I could look into picking up some kind of part-time work on my days off. I tried that a few years ago and it didn’t lead to anything, and my skill set is, obviously, even less current when it was then.
Plus there’s always the loss of “sitting around time” that would be involved in taking on a part-time job.
Speaking of which, I have tomorrow off, which increases my available sitting around time for the week. Now that I’ve watched all of B: B, I have to find something to do to fill that time.
Oh, I know what I can do: absolutely nothing, just like I’ve been doing all week.
That should be fun.