2 hours ago
Angry Robot BooksHelp Desk
Working on a help desk, you hear all sorts of stuff. We’ve had people call who obviously have gone off their meds. Others call you and then refuse to listen to or let you finish what you are saying. Most of this will roll off your back after a little venting once the caller is either off the phone or on mute. This post is not about that, however you may find some of the more outstanding examples in the future. This post is about language. Just a couple of examples today. The caller will say something and I either have to get them to repeat because I did not understand or just am not sure I really heard what they said.
When spelling, how the heck do you mis pronounce a LETTER of the alphabet. Example.
R – pronounced aarrr-ruhhh (sometimes two syllables are not enough and a third slips in there somewhere, I just don’t quite know how to squeeze it in for you to appreciate it properly.
When repeating a password provided to a user, this punctuation mark “!” is called an “explanation mark” instead of an “exclamation mark”. Not sure what to say about this, but adults should know their punctuation….
Cthulhu challenges ingnorance?
A counter protest to idiots who showed up in our town once. Odds are none of the people carrying the other signs this was a praody of even knew what the heck was going on.
Sorry I’ve been away
Not promising anything, but we’ll see about some more posts. For now I thought I would point out an interesting hit from another one of those oddly named towns.
Bad Frakenhausen, Germany
Guillermo Del Toro meets H.P. Lovecraft
Folks who know me also know my fondness for H.P. Lovecraft . Usually movie adaptations of his work translate poorly or on the flipside are true enough to be too damn weird. He wrote some seriously strange stuff and is the father of such authors as Stephen King (The Mist), Brian Lumley, and Ramsey Campbell to name just a few. One of the better movie directors of our time (Guillermo del Toro) has filtered Lovecraft’s influence into many of his films and is apparently hard and getting At the Mountains of Madness turned into a reasonably faithful film adaptation. Granted the films he makes aer not exactly mainstream, but neither is Lovecraft. This may be pretty amazing. Here is a link to a Lovecraft specific blog with some tidbits.
Michael Crichton, R.I.P.
Michael Crichton passed away on November 4th from cancer. I’ll let the wiki article give the details of his long and incredibly successful career. I’ll just hit my high points. The original The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, The 13th Warrior (based on the book Eaters of Dead) and good old Westworld.
He falls into the grey area between had a long successful life and died before his time. 66 is an age where it is tough to really say either, so I’ll just let his passing go without saying either. He left his mark and the entertainment industry owes him much.
Stanley Kubric revisited
This is an old Article on the Guardian’s website. I’m pretty sure I’ve read this article before, but have no real sense for how it struck me the first time around. The author has a pretty good handle on capturing the feelings he gets while fumbling around in Mr. Kubrics archive of a house. However it seems somehow obvious to me that he just does not “get it” either. The strange thing about that is the article is the better for it, becasue if it had been written by someone worshiping everything Kubric the reader would miss out on quite a bit.
Jumping on the bandwagon
Not sure if this is really a meme, but it is spreading around some of the folks I follow on Friendfeed and twitter (which has gotten very reliable again) The one hundred pushup challenge. I started this morning, and hopefully by posting I shame myself into completing it. I started out solidly in rank 3 so was not incredibly ashamed from the get go.
Bad day at work!
I wonder if park cleaners get workmans comp?
Please note, some of the images at the site where this image came from are NSFW.
Wackjobs
Idaho Sen. Larry Craig says he will stay in office for the duration of his term, despite a Minnesota judge’s ruling Thursday that he would not be able to withdraw his guilty plea in an airport sex sting.
In related news he has hired Jack Thompson as legal council. Oh and if Debra Cagan looses her job at the Pentagon she might fill in as his social secretary / public relations consultant
Very true if you work on a help desk
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
- Scott Adams