I have options

Volunteer.

That's what I am. I choose to do the work that I am doing for whatever organization I deem is worthy of my time and effort.

I got asked last week why people hadn't seen me around in a while. Granted there had been some work and minor health issues (nothing major I assure you...that's why they're called "minor") but frankly, my time is what I make of it and if I decide for one day that maybe I just don't want to volunteer my time and decide that I need some "me" time then I'm going to take it.

One person however seemed a little...unimpressed shall we say and actually confronted me with my "dedication" to the organization. I turned around and said, "My time is what I make of it. I could be home now watching amateur interracial gangbang porn and jacking off all night but I'm here instead because I want to be here. If you have a problem with that, then I guess you need to find the nearest copy of Webster's Dictionary and look up the word 'volunteer' and read it very carefully."

Stunned, he said nothing and walked away.

I got home and started giggling knowing that whenever I'm not there, this guy is going to imagine me at home, my pants around my ankles, and a certain film millieu on my TV screen.

I can live with that.

The Password

This was found on the copier machine in my office. I swear I am not making this up as it is an actual document from our IT Security group in Paris. I cracked up reading this. So if you don't know how to create a password this will REALLY help you out.

The Password

• You (the user) choose your password, so it is known only to you.
• You are responsible for the confidentiality of your password
• Choose an original word, based on an algorithm that only you know. We recommend a word made up of a minimum of eight characters.
• Do not hesitate to use (except for the mainframe) special characters and punctuation marks, and alternate upper and lower case.
• Avoid predictable words and personal information that is easy to obtain, such as the name of your partner* or children, birth dates, telephone or car registration numbers, the brand of your computer, or the current month, etc.
• Do not disclose it to anybody, even temporarily: do not give it to technicians working on your PC, do not entrust your colleagues with it, even your boss.
• Never use words contained in any language dictionary or proper nouns.
• Do not use a word made up of the same letter such as "aaaaaaaa".
• Do not record it in an automatic connection process: do not select "memorise password" just to save a bit of time next time you connect.
• Do not write the password on a document located on your desk or that is easily accessible.
• Modify it periodically.

Exception

The only exception to this requirement of strictest security is the password you need to turn the machine on.

For indeed if this password is lost, no-one will ever be able to use the machine again.

The password use to turn the machine on (also called the BIOS password or startup password) should be known to your IT Correspondent or your boss so that if you are absent, the PC itself can still be use.

A few tricks to help you choose a good password and remember it:

• Firstly, choose a sentence. You can take a sentence from a poem or a song for example. (646Guy notes: I SWEAR I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP! IT ACTUALLY SAYS THIS!)
• Take the sentence and take the first letter of each word in the sentence. For example, I always keep my password totally secret could become &Iak(mpt)S& or iakMPTs= or +IAKmpt&s+ etc
• You can alternate letter, punctuation, and numbers. For example: &s&e(c(R&E&t) or 3ci-EL-bl-Eu5
• When it is time to change your password, you can tak the second letter from each word, or move onto the next sentence in the poem or song.
• Whatever you do, do not disclose your tricks!

Remember: the passwords managemed by the mainframe must contain a minimum of 8 charaters. Only letters of the alphabet (there is no difference between upper and lower case), numbers, and the characters & and £ are allowed.

* -- Partner? How politically correct of this company...

Manners Police on Patrol

I've become a menace on the subway.

For some reason, I just snapped this week and got fed up with everyone trying to push their way past me just so they can get to the subway door before me. I've taken to saying quite loudly, "Excuse you" on the trains and...well...gotten a little more personal with them.

Case in point -- While pulling into my train station so I could transfer to my line home, I turned to face the door and waited, along with everyone else for the train to stop and the doors to open. This woman decides that she needs to bump her way past everyone so she's closest to the door. When she didn't respond to my first "excuse you" remark, I walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and said, "You should have said, 'Excuse me.' I would have let you by."

Stunned the woman looked and me said, "I'm sorry."

My response: "That's something else you could have said but didn't."

To say it was liberating to actually say something like that and make the person aware that what they did wasn't cool or appreciated and maybe, just maybe, they could add a little more politeness into their life...well that would be an understatement.

Since then, I've repeated this whole process a few more times and gotten people who were genuinely just frightened that someone would make a point of stopping them to point out that they pushed their way past someone. The truly interesting part of it all is that some people who overhear these small conversations have thanked me for taking the time to do it because they're just as sick of it as I am.

Sgt. 646Guy on patrol. My train lines are covered.

Lost and Found

If you've noticed I haven't been posting as much as I used to.

No more Quote of the Day followed by some snarky post or "woe is me" tale of the current "crisis du jour."

I've lost my mojo in the past few weeks.

I dunno what I've found to replace my mojo but just know that for now at least I'm going to keep on posting but probably keeping up this less frenetic pace than what I used to do five days a week.

The fact that I actually said I had "mojo" to begin with kinda bothers me, too.

Thunk

That's the sound of my head hitting my desk. I want this day over with already.

On the one positive side, I did book my hotel for my trip to Italy. Well at least the part in Florence. For three nights (although I may drop off the last night for more time in Venice), I will be staying at the MartinDago Bed and Breakfast which isn't too far from the train station and has a lot of funky shops and artisan and so forth in the area so it should be a good time for all...

I'd like to use my phone-a-friend....

Well...Kathy never made it into the hotseat. In fact, she never made it to the interview. In fact, had she walked a little slower, she would have made the next cut.

Over 2,200 people from all over the country went down to Orlando for just the CHANCE of making it to the next round of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. Of that 2,200, only 325 people were drawn to be interviewed for the chance to be on the show.

Kathy was #813.

They drew #814.

Oh well. There I was looking at the possibility of staying a higher priced hotel in Florence when I go to Italy on vacation but I'm back to the one and two star hotels. Currently leading the pack are Hotel Casci, Hotel Cimabue, and the A-Teatro Bed and Breakfast. I've already gotten a rate from the Hotel Casci which is near the Duomo and other key landmarks (such as the train station) but I'm waiting to hear back from these two (and some others but these are leading the pack) but really want to see what A-Teatro comes back with mainly beacuse it overlooks the Teatro Verdi in Florence but is all the way across town from the train station...although Hotel Casci has gotten rave reviews from the websites I've been looking at in terms of traveller reviews...and it has free internet so I can send pictures and so forth immediately....hmmm...so much to think about....

Oh well....between that and a few friends telling me I must go to Venice over Milan, I'm considering arriving in the city of gondolas rather than the fashion capital. But if I do go to Venice, then I might have to consider only spending 2 days in Florence and leaving on the 28th so I can spend the 29th in Venice which means I will have about 2 days...one for Florence and the other for Siena...sigh...so much to consider....maybe Bologna...I dunno....

Okay...this could be wrong on so many levels....

My friend Kathy is going to Orlando tomorrow to audition for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and their "Walk in and Win" promotion and guess who is one of her phone-a-friends?

My "speciality category" according to her: Stupid, useless shit that she doesn't know that can win her a lot of money.

No, serious. That's my category. Of course there's the more specialized topics like entertainment, awards shows, figure skating, the mysteries of Agatha Christie, etc that she can call me on but when she asks you which city was originally awarded the 1972 Winter Olympics or what was the longest running musical revue on Broadway and you immediately know the correct answers to both (Denver, Colorado, and Smokey Joe's Cafe for the record), then yes...Stupid, Useless Shit is pretty much an appropriate category for you...

If she wins, I get to split whatever level I got her to (for example, if she's going for 16K, then I win 8K if I help her to that level, etc) but that's just between me and her...I hope she gets on because damn that would mean a real nice trip to Italy... :)

Ugh...

Okay still sick.

And for some reason spending money on Italian language immersions CDs. Okay so it was about $50 for an eight CD collection that will help me learn Italian before I go to Italy...

Is nine months enough time?

Smackdown in the 646Guy Household

I talked to my mom today. Apparently my grandmother, the psychotic one, decided to call a Come to Jesus Meeting between my parents and herself.

Wrong move. She was totally out of her class.

You have to understand one thing about my family and Come to Jesus Meetings -- If you're going to dish it, you had better damn well be able to take it as well.

My grandmother can't take it.

Apparently, she was under the assumption that my father had said he was going to have her put away when all he really said was that she was getting on his nerves (which for her is VERY easy to do). This argument escalated in to a big huge brouhaha where my dad confronted my grandmother with the fact that she doesn't like my mother at all to which my grandmother blamed on an incident involving an antique sewing machine my mother was promised that wound up with another family member but my mother trumped her and told her that it goes father back than that because she knew that my grandmother threatened to actually say something during that moment in the wedding when you "know any reason why these two should not be married."

Okay that to me was news. I knew my grandmother was pretty much a manipulative bitch but even that surprised me.

Now my grandmother tried to talk her way out of that one but my mother trumped her with the fact that she told her nieces this fact before the wedding but held off on telling her that my grandmother also told the same thing to her brother who also eventually told my mother.

Well everything from there came out and it was a big drag down kickass fight and I'm not sure who is talking to who know or if anyone is talking but all my mother had to say was that she was kinda glad that I wasn't there because she knew that 1) I would probably say something very inappropriate and 2) whatever I said would probably be more of the truth than any of them wanted to hear...

I was kinda disappointed I didn't get to be there for it...

Clooney v. O'Reilly

I love George Clooney. I love how he just called Bill O'Reilly on his shit about the tsunami telethon this weekend especially after O'Reilly bashed him following the September 11 telethon.

From Clooney to O'Reilly:

“I don’t make as much money as you, Mr. O’Reilly (a fact that’s easy to check), but I’m fascinated by your use of the word CELEBRITY as if you’re not one... you put on make up, you do Leno, The Today Show, go on book tours, and do junkets, so let’s be clear... you are a well paid celebrity. So all right, Mr. Journalist... come on in. I’m booking the talent for the Tsunami event ... and you, Mr. O’Reilly, are now officially invited to be a presenter ... So what do you say, Mr. O’Reilly ... either you ante up and help out AND be that watch dog that you feel we clearly need ... or you simply stand on the sidelines and cast stones, proving that your January 6 TV show was nothing more than a ‘box of lights and wires’ designed to make you wealthy.”

And O'Reilly had the very very sad pathetic response to show was a fucking moron, loser, asshole shithead philandering sexually harrassing piece of crap of a person he is...the challenge was thrown down and he clearly can't step up to meet it...

“I got a letter from my pal George Clooney today. I don’t think he likes me. After a few insulting paragraphs, Mr. Clooney invites me to be a presenter on the Tsunami telethon this weekend saying I can watch the fund raiser first hand. . . . That sounds good to me but I have to see what the format is. I would like to go over there and check things out whether I make a pitch or not depends on how organized things are.”


What a piece of fucking work you are Mr. O'Reilly. Either piss or get off the pot. If you're not going to be there to "oversee" things as you feel they need to be then shut the fuck up. No one gives a rat's ass about what you have to say.

Ugh...

I hate being sick.

Even more I hate being sick and having to go to work because people are out on vacation and you have to do their job.

Tsunami Relief Fundraiser

Greetings everyone....just so you know, my rugby team, the Gotham Knights will be the featured team at the Balls, Boards, and Blades event at XL tomorrow night. We will be raising money for the tsunami relief efforts in Southeast Asia.

The event is from 7-10pm with 2-for-1 drink specials running for the first two hours. We will have raffle prizes, club t-shirts, and more...

So here's the details...hope to see you all there....

Who: GKRFC
Where: XL, 357 W. 16th Street
When: January 6, 2005, 7-10pm on the second level

Need more info...just ask...

Stop the Voices!

For some reason I have that stupid song from the movie Grease 2 stuck in my head...and since I have it playing on a constant loop through my head I figure I must share the pain...unless you can come up with something else for me to sing...

I'll be yours in springtime
When the flowers are in bloom
We'll wander through the meadows
In all their sweet perfume
And every night, I'll hold you tight
Beneath that April moon

I'll be your girl for all seasons
All the year through
Your girl for all seasons
'Cause I love, yes I love
To be everything to you, just you

I'll be yours in summer
When we're playing in the sand
We'll spend the day together
Making love and getting tanned
And on the beach on sunset
When we're walking hand and hand

If you fall in the fall,
You'll see September can be heavenly
If you fall, say you'll fall for me
When autumn leaves are falling from the trees

I'll be yours in winter when the snow is on the ground
I'll warm you through December and I'll always be around
We'll kiss below the mistletoe when Santa comes to town

Your girl for all seasons
I'll be your girl for all seasons