Category Archives: Random

It’s what I do.

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Moving Day: Gremlin Edition.

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I… haven’t been keeping up here like I should, have I?

Regardless, just here to gloat. About a month ago, Shamus Young announced on his blog, Twenty-Sided Tale, that he would be moving and as a result, he would be without internet for several days. Cue much complaining about ISPs and how their service is awful and their policies for changing that service are even worse.

I don’t know what ISP Shamus Young has, but I have Century Link, and today is moving day for me.

I’m posting this from my new apartment. I called the ISP on Monday, talked with the agent for less than half an hour including hold times, and informed them I would be relocating on November 6-10, and asked if they could get the internet turned on over here on the 6th and off over there on the 7th. Agent said “Sure, no problem.”

So let’s see, shall we?
Price: Century Link costs half what Comcast does. Advantage: Century Link.
Service: Century Link gives me 2x the download speed and 0.5x the upload speed that Comcast advertises. Well I guess the difference there is whether you’re watching or hosting. Me? I’m mostly watching. Advantage: Century Link.
Quality of service: I have had ONE outage with Century Link, and it lasted eight hours. Six of those were while I was asleep. I’ve never used Comcast, but from what I hear, their service reliability is, shall we say, spotty at best. Advantage: Century Link.
Changes to contract: I just wrote a post about this. Advantage: Century Link.

Looks like a clean sweep to me.

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Blizzard Adventure

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So, I get up this morning and go to work.  It’s snowing a little, but blowing off the road easily enough.  When I get out of work five hours later, it is to the worst driving conditions of the year.  Ridiculous bad.  Awful.  Atrocious.  And so I’ve decided not to leave my house until further notice.  But what to do with my time?  The weather guys are pretty elusive on when the blizzard-like conditions are going to let up, so I have a lot of time to fill.

snow-2

 

Pretty right?  WRONG.  Utterly horrifying more like.

So, we’ve been meaning to do a craft adventure for a while and I figure this is the perfect time for it.  Milli and I have decided some time ago that it is time for us to build a cardboard city, then dress up as monsters, and then destroy said city.  We got the idea from www.somethingpositive.net (around year 2010) out of the blue one day, and have been collecting cardboard ever since to save up for our own city.  The monster costumes may be beyond our ken, but we aim to try.

And that being said, I’m going to go take a nap instead.

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Thinking Out Loud

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When working on math homework, I would sometimes encounter a problem where either I didn’t know how to proceed, or I thought I had the process right but the numbers at the ends weren’t adding up.  When this happens, it usually means you’ve missed a small detail somewhere, and the best plan is usually to call for help.

The funny thing is that it doesn’t really matter who you get help from, because the first thing you’re going to do is explain the problem you’re having and the process you’ve been using.  During the explanation, you’ll typically discover exactly what you did wrong, and more often than not you could literally be talking to a brick wall and it would be just as helpful as a genius with multiple Doctorate degrees in the field of the problem you’re having.  So if you don’t mind, I’ll just think out loud for a while.  This is going to be pretty dry, and I don’t expect to post a lot of pictures, but we’ll see.

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Day Six: Rainy Day Boxes

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Finally a day off and all I can think about is more ways to not feel spectacularly spent after a stressful work week.  Yesterday I went for adventures, today I think I’d like to tackle Rainy Day Boxes.  What is a Rainy Day Box, I make you ask?  I’m so happy I forced you to inquire!

A Rainy Day Box is simply a box in which you place something that might make a friend or family member smile, then give it to them to help fend off the darkness of depression or even just to ease the pain of a particularly rough day/week/month/year/decade.  The box can be any size and house anything at all, as long as it’s personal and will bring that other person some delight.

So for example, say you have a friend who is dealing with chronic and prolonged depression.  Put something humorous or even, dare I say it?, touching in a box.  Then put that box in another box, mail it to yourself, then when it arrives, SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER!!!  Ahem!  What I mean to say is that you can then decorate the box (or if you used origami to make your own box, that part is covered) and/or write witty, pithy and pleasing things on the outside.  Then give the recipient the instructions:  Simply open when they feel like life has just kicked them at the junction between leg and torso, or if they feel like maybe they never want to leave the house again.  From there, when they finally sink low enough to open the box, you have already buoyed their spirits, and lifted their hopes!  Thus forestalling that 4:00 am drunken phone call we all know and love.

Drunk Lady

“That’s right, friend!  You needn’t be on the other end of this call with a little forethought, cunning, and human decency!”

That is why I, for one, enjoy both giving and receiving Rainy Day Boxes.  For everyone who knows that the darkest time is just before dawn, and it really sucks getting a weepy phone call just then.

Unknown's avatar

Day Five: What Happened To Day Four?

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Life did.  Life, and work.  I’ve been up to my eyeballs in random calls to come into work on my regularly scheduled days off.  I’m mildly disgruntled, but my paycheck rejoices.  More importantly, I’m feeling a little frazzled and low on energy.  Naturally it’s time for… AN ADVENTURE!!!

What kind of adventure, you ask?  It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s something new.  It occurs to me not everyone knows how to adventure like we do, so I thought I would go through a couple of our adventures for the unlearned, ignorant, or just plain new adventurer out there.

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Day Three: Retail Isn’t All Fun And Games

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Sometimes it’s chalk-full of stupid as well.

I work at a cell phone kiosk that abuts an electronics section of a store, so we get all kinds.  The electronic associates and wireless associates hang out and together we have put together a list of some of the more… charming things customers have said.

Prerequisite information:  Both the electronic section and cell stand surround a jewelry counter.  We have an easy-to-spot, well-known uniform.  The only carriers we supply phones for in our location are ATT, Sprint and Verizon.  We have plastic dummy displays because someone somewhere doesn’t like having all their demo phones stolen (wuss).  We do have several live devices that have security devices.

Onward!

  • Asking about TV’s:  What’s the difference between 32″ and 40″ and don’t tell me 8″!
  • Reads my name tag:  Oh!  Connection Center!  Do you work in jewelry then?
  • Eyeing the phones:  So, you guys have a deal that starts in two weeks.  I want it now.
  • Stares at my vest:  Do you work here?
  • We are running an event that waives activation and upgrade fees:  If you are waiving activation and upgrade fees, what if I upgrade?
  • Reading a sign about water resistance:  How much is a meter?
  • Without any frame of reference:  Will this fit in my car?
  • Also with no frame of reference:  Will Sprint work in my house?
  • Looking concerned;  I saw an “on-line only” ad.  Do you have the item in store to look at?
  • Seriously:  How much is this at Best Buy?  Can you Google that?
  • Hands us a demo camera with a security device severed off it:  Your security system is broken.  This came right off in my hand!
  • Poking a dummy phone:  Your phones don’t work!
  • Customer waving a phone case at me:  This is a phone right?
  • Delighted customer:  On the Verizon plan, we’ll have enough unlimited minutes to use all month!
  • Customer talking to her mother:  This is the phone with the megapixels!
  • Setting off the iPhone alarms:  If this alarm goes off again, how do I turn it off?
  • Customer with a device that’s not working:  My phone has been giving me problems.  I was hoping when I came back to a higher altitude it would work right again.  It’s not!!!
  • Picking up some of the dummy phones:  It feels really good in my hands!
  • From a tremendously unappealing customer:  I wish you was my girlfriend to get me on a phone plan.
  • Customer flocking with friends to the electronics section:  This is the electronical stuff!

And that is all the ones that translated easily.  The others mostly only make sense to people who spend all their time in the store watching people do ridiculous things and say hideous stuff!

Unknown's avatar

Day Two

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Does anyone else have twin siblings?  I do.

Fun fact:  If you have twin siblings you may get drafted by your mother to participate in twin studies well into adulthood.  In fact, they still contact us from time to time.  It’s kind of insane, really.

When I was little they would put us through a series of logic tests, math tests, and lingual tests.  Then they would ask a series of really AWKWARD questions.  Usually about if we abused drugs, if anyone touched us, what we think of our siblings and other such foo-fah.  They would compare all three of our results, give us a lolly and send us on our way.

As we got older the cool and fun parts diminished and eventually they just asked even more questions about our mental health (suicidal thoughts, depression and others) and gave us $100 each.

The moral of this story is that if you want $100 several years down the road, have twin siblings.  Also, I don’t always have a point.

Unknown's avatar

Day One

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Today is the first day without your normal gremliny host, so let the pain begin!

So I guess what I really want to ask is if anyone has ever worked much candle gel as far as making better and more comfortable mouse pads?  We (for the purposes herein “we” constitutes clockworkgremlin, Milli and myself) have!  It turns out that ergonomically speaking, one of the best shapes to rest your wrist on while surfing the interwebs is that of two, soft but supportive spheroids supporting the wrist on either side.  If you haven’t got the mental picture yet, we have put together that it strongly resembles upper female anatomy if you get my drift.

So we set out to make some for our own comfort and to see what kind of mischief we could get up to.  Also, it’s really funny to tell other people you made breasts over the weekend.

First, we knew we had to find an appropriate mold.  Not so hard as such things go, but not very easy to locate locally.  We did end up making a trip to our local Hobby Lobby (kind of like a Michael’s or a Joanne’s or whatever you have wherever you are) and picked up several likely-shaped candidates.

Second, we knew that, unaltered, the molds would stick to the candle gel and make getting them out in one piece difficult, if not impossible.  We had a latex coat kit (from the interwebs) and coated two of our vessels as per the instructions and used a silicone coat kit (also from the interwebs and also as listed in their instructions) to coat the other two molds.[Gremlin Edit: I bought both mold kits at Hobby Lobby.][Cupcake Edit:  Semantics!!!]

Third, we melted the candle gel in an expendable pot and poured them into the waiting containers.  Tired of waiting for them to cool, we shoved them in the freezer.  Once they were finished, they were the perfect consistency.  The latex molds initially yielded the perfect shape, but as they continued to cool the latex coating became loose, leaving a wrinkly texture to the finished product that was incredibly visually unappealing.  The silicone coating was initially more difficult to remove from the mold, but the finished product did not have the disturbing loose skin that the latex coating boasted.

All in all, we learned much more than most know about making boobs that day.

On another note, one of the finished products disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.  We can only assume it is in the shadows, biding its time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

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Greetings!

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To whom it may concern,

I have been invited to host while your regularly scheduled program is interrupted!  Allow me to introduce myself!  I am the Spiciest Cupcake, though mostly only because it was in opposition of Candy-Coated Bacon and also decidedly an equally gross flavor combination in the making.  I am tragically and boringly uninterested in the finer points of coding and have been invited to speak of anything else that may take my fancy.  Currently leaning towards a couple of rants about how we encourage poor behavior and a lack of creativity in our society, or maybe just a lovely jaunt through cell-phone land!  My level of whimsy and rage will be the deciding factors.

Always yours,

The Spiciest Cupcake

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Keep the place aired out

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Ideally I’d like to average better than 1 post per day.  Unfortunately, I will be missing for the next few days on account of a wedding in the family, and preparations for said absence prohibit me from sitting down and composing a post with the attention it deserves.

So I’ve hired some help.

If by “hired” you mean “contacted a good friend who has already expressed interest.”  Sometimes being allowed to contribute is its own reward.  So say hello to Spicy CupcakeSpiciestCupcake, she’ll be keeping the place from stagnating while I’m gone!