WWJB? - First in a Series

I am having one of those days where my mind in jumping from item to item and I can not seem to form a coherent thought. This means I have had a couple of stupid-crazy ideas so far today, one of them being compiling a list of things I would buy if I won the lottery. Of course I can't concentrate on this list long enough to make it past the first few items but it occurs to me that this list might be fun to keep therefore I am going to do this list as a series of totally random posts on the Opiate entitled WWJB? or "What Would James Buy?"

Now I would like to present #1 on the WWJB list: A Godzilla Suit.

Why? Because nothing says excess like taking care of mundane chores dressed as Godzilla. Plus I would be about 1/3rd of the way towards hosting my Godzilla-theme party where the attendees have the opportunity to dress as Godzilla and destroy parts of Tokyo.

Random Thought - 2-27-08

In order for this to be funny you need to know that today was Go Texan Day around the office since the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which will be the bane of my commuting existence for the next month, is about to get underway. Thus some people around the office were dressed a little more cowboy than usual.

Earlier today as I was talking with a coworker I heard the distinct sound of slapping coming from one of the lawyers offices and the first thought that went through my mind was, "Man, I did not know that the release of Brokeback Mountain changed the meaning of 'cowboy up' to THAT."

Some days my head hurts me in ways only therapy might be able to heal.

Halloween 1977

I mentioned the FLICKR group Growing Up Star Wars in a linkbloggery post from last month. Flipping through the pictures in this group filled me with jealousy at the awe-inspiring collections of Star Wars toys some of this kids managed to accumulate but more importantly it reminded me of two Halloween costumes my parents built for me or helped me to build. The first was an R2-D2 costume back in 1977. The second was a Yoda costume in '81 or '82.

I asked my mom if she had any pictures of these costumes and as it turns out she had a few of James as R2-D2 which I thought I would share with you guys. Sadly mom has not been able to find any pictures of James the Jedi Master.

Thoughts RE: Twitter

Despite being a geek and loving technology, I tend to be a late adopter when it comes to new technology. I did not own a cellphone until late in 2005 and, despite having owned two of them now, have yet to actually purchase a Blackberry. I did not purchase an iPod until late in 2006. I was not on MySpace until a "friend" created an account for me alleging I was a 16-year-old gay boy from Alaska. Both of my laptops and both of my desktops have been, like both of my Blackberrys, hand-me-downs from friends or, even better, friend's companies.

I think this is largely driven by the fact that I rarely see the utility of all these wonderful toys that people keep releasing unleashing on the public. Another factor that drives this is that I like my technology to work the way it is meant to work and, as intelligent early adopters know, there are going to be kinks which need to be worked out with any bit of tech. Then there is the whole price penalty for being an early adopter and, deep down inside, I am a cheap bastard. But to be honest this has wandered away from the point a bit, which is my somewhat random thoughts on Twitter as I give in and sign up for an account.

I am not certain when Twitter first popped up on my radar. I think it was when one of my coworkers proposed that our team use this to give each other updates on where we were. Since we all have offices within about 200 feet of each other this idea was quickly shelved. (Of course the coworker in question is pretty much the LINUX guy from this TrueNuff Mac commercial spoof and feels the need to incorporate WAY too much tech into our processes. We call him The Complicator.) As Twitter has further penetrated the geek culture to which I pay some modicum of attention it has continued to pop up on my radar intermittently until last month (or maybe it was December) when it finally came up at the office in a legitimate context.

Now in order to answer some of the questions regarding Twitter that came up in this discussion at the office, I find myself creating an account. I was poking around the site when I came across this:

With Twitter, you can stay hyper-connected to your friends and always know what they're doing...Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.

Wait, what? The VERY same product that allows me to stay "hyper-connected" is also a "modern antidote to information overload?" Is it just me or do those two things seem to be EXACT OPPOSITES and, at least to my small mind, mutually exclusive.

Oh well, you can follow me by searching for my name, with initial, or you can view my tweets via http://twitter.com/funkywoodjam.

I think.

WTF Files - Facebook Advertising

I am guessing that the combination of having my sex, male, and relationship status, single, is what drives the almost constant parade of "score dates now!!!" ads with pictures of rather well endowed young women on the right side of the Facebook display. I am willing to suffer through this as they eye-candy is about as good as it gets during the work day, although I have always been a little suspicious of whether the hotties advertised are actually available through the various sites which pimp "Hot Christian Girls," which lets face it EVERY guy reads as "Yummy Catholic School Girls-R-Us" (or is that just me?). They are a little TOO pretty and a little TOO busty for me to believe.

Now I finally have proof that my suspicious were not completely unfounded as this series of pictures appeared on my Facebook page just an hour ago:


Take a look at the girl in the center photograph. Before anything else I have to say that I would LOVE to date a chick who could pull off a form-fitting garment with such, well, curvaliciousness, and I do like the short hair, but she might look familiar to a few of you out there. No? Perhaps this picture will help you out:


Still drawing a blank? Fine, hows about this picture:


Yeah, according to the Facebook advert, the H-O-T-N-E-S-S that is Jolene Blalock, who played the Vulcan T'Pol in Enterprise, is single and Christian. I can't speak to the Christian bit; however I am pretty sure she is still married to her music exec husband, Michael Rapino. (If not, she is welcome to give me a call. I am youngish, available, willing to be a happy house-husband and I TOTALLY make her look even hotter by comparison.

I was thinking of writing something about the attractiveness of dating a Vulcan here, but when I had it done it just made me sound kind of pathetic so I think I will just leave well enough alone; although there is something attractive about dating a girl who isn't going to get all emotional on your ass.

Oh yeah, because I love you guys here is a link to a collection of Jolene Blalock galleries. Don't say I never did anything for you chuckleheads!

Tanked

My original plan for today was to write about my plans for the year, specifically my writing plans, however I just had a phone interview for a job I *REALLY* want and I think I seriously tanked it so I am going to write about that instead.

First let me say that I HATE HATE HATE phone interviews. I like to think of myself as a pretty good interviewer, however over the phone it is very difficult to get a read on the interviewer. In this specific case every time I would finish an answer there was, what seemed to me, a long pause before the guy asked his next question. If we were in the same room I would be able to tell if he actually expected more of an answer from me or was using the time to formulate his next question. In addition I cannot tell how I am playing to the crowd, as it were.

The long pauses after my responses to his questions were not the worst part. At one point he asked what I saw as the greatest risk involved in producing electronic documents, or ESI in the parlance of the courts, and my answer was perhaps the worst answer I could have given. Part of me just watched in horror as I totally went off the rails and gave three mostly contradictory answers. There were words coming out of my mouth and I just couldn't get them to stop. Fuck, I couldn't get them to stop. It was like I had never considered the question before but I have. The risks involved in producing ESI, actually minimizing those risks, is one of the central things I do in my current job. I was so horrified at my answer that I wanted to call him back, apologize for freezing under pressure and give him my real answer. Now it is all I can think about. GAH!

My real answer, for the curious, is that in my view the largest risk with producing electronic documents in native format is that you will end up producing metadata which will be harmful to your case but somehow slipped through the review process without being noticed. This metadata would most likely take the form of tracked changes in a document. When the reviewer reviewed the document the tracked changes were not marked as being on and therefore the reviewer just viewed the final version of the document. When the document arrives at opposing counsel they notice that the tracked changes are available to view and, wisely, take a look at them. There is actually a recent case, White v. Gaceland Coll. Ctr. for Prof'l Dev. & Lifelong Learning Inc., where this very instance could have taken place. The plaintiff claimed that she was terminated in violation of the Family Medical Leave Act and, if I recall properly as I do not have my notes on the case in front of me as I write this, that there was a change made in a job description, or something like that, and that the timing of this change was important to the case. In this case it is very easy for me to envision an instance where her allegations are true however the paralegal who is reviewing the job description documents, which are kept in Microsoft Word for sake of argument, is reviewing them in Summation. The paralegal can either opt to view the document via the Summation edoc viewer (which in my opinion is a pretty piss-poor tool for native review) or via the CTRL+L option which will launch the document in its native application, in this case Microsoft Word. In the case of Summation's edoc review tool, as far as I know, there is no indication that the document has tracked changes embedded in the document therefore should the paralegal review here, and I know plenty that do, the document would be marked as relevant and as it is most likely not subject to any sort of privilege, it would eventually be produced with the metadata intact and NEVER reviewed. When it comes to trial the plaintiff's counsel, if they have caught the tracked changes, can then take apart a witness on the stand or, if the tracked changes are that central to the case, perhaps force a settlement.

Oh well, now that I have said what I really think, I think I am going to go eat my salad and sack out. No real update from me tomorrow evening as I will be at a book signing, however on Saturday I think I will post my plans for 2009.

Instant Karma

I can not remember which one of the multitude of role-playing games had the concept of instant karma. I believe it was the first edition of Shadowrun, however please do not hold me to that. In the game karma points are used to reward players for completing the adventure, good role-playing, and the like. These karma points could then be spent to improve the character or, in the case of instant karma, they could be spent during the course of the adventure to affect outcomes by either adding to the result of a die-roll or allowing the player to re-roll the attempt.

Sunday I got to see what I can only classify as instant karma in action.

I was hauling my butt over to Best Buy in order to engage in a little retail therapy. They were having a sale on a couple of DVD sets I wanted to buy (the 7th season of Smallville and the 1st season of Chuck) and, after thoroughly enjoying my weekend at Oni-con and finding myself laughing out loud at the first episode of Ouran High School Host Club (which can be viewed for free on the Funimation website), I decided it was time to delve back into anime and with the demise of Planet Anime, Best Buy seemed like the best place to go. It was with these thoughts of commerce in mind that I headed out. I generally do not use the freeways unless I am under a serious time constraint or my objective is truly the other side of town. This is not done out of a desire to avoid traffic or anything but rather because I really enjoy driving through the neighborhoods and shopping districts that are around my house. On this particular day I decided to take Binz/Bissonnet down to Buffalo Speedway before cutting over to Richmond. As I was heading up Buffalo Speedway and crossing the south-bound feeder for 59 some douche bag in a jacked-up pickup truck turned from the feeder onto Buffalo Speedway, cutting across two or three lanes of traffic and cutting me off, causing me to have to hop on the brakes.

At about the same time I hopped on the brakes, I hopped on the horn and gave the aforementioned douche bag The Bird.

Douchebaggins, as we shall now call this person, stomped on the gas and accelerated away from me, only to get caught at the light at Richmond where, as fate would have it, we were both turning left. My favorite cock-hobbit once again swung across all the lanes of traffic in order to beat everyone (read: no one) in to the far right lane. As we approached the light at Edloe, El SkiDouche was pulling the douchiest of maneuvers and riding in two lanes. Apparently unsatisfied with just the far right lane he felt the need to ride MOSTLY in his lane and a little in the lane to his left. There was a little swerving involved here as well which, had the vehicle in question NOT been a lifted-to-the-heavens truck, might have indicated the driver was trying to decide whether to stay in the right lane and get stuck in the line of traffic which was waiting at the red light or get in the left lane and skip around said traffic.

I could only watch in amusement as Herr Doktor Douche (of the Long Island Douches, I believe) started to slow just an INSTANT before he slammed in to the rear end of a car waiting at the red light. As I drove past, three lanes to the left, I saw bits and pieces of lights and bumpers spread across the ground and the douche shaking his head after it bounced off the airbag which had, I can only think, violently deployed and pimp slapped him into wakefulness/sobriety.

Now I can not tell you the number of times I have been driving, seen some no talent ass clown driving like this and wished that I was some sort of undercover or off-duty cop so I could drop a little bit of F-U into their lives for being a bad person and in my impotent rage I often think of how nice it would be to see this person get theirs, as it were but this is the only time I can think of where I have had the honor AND privilege to see karma in action*. Only later did two very important things occur to me. First, while karma might have gotten El Douche, the person/s in the other car may have just been innocent bystanders AND odds are that the truck did FAR more damage to the car than the car did to the truck. Second, by relishing the moment I am just tempting fate and that cannot be a good thing. Oh well.

* I have heard a couple of very good stories about karmic payback being a bitch, one of which involves this guy, V, his tent, a friend of mine who shall remain nameless and a WILDLY inappropriate menage a trios.

The New Maths

So Tuesday evening I met a couple of friends out at the Kelvin Arms and after seven weeks of consuming no alcohol of any stripe I thought I would celebrate my success in loosing weight AND making it through Lent without breaking my Lenten abstinence by having a single pint of Guinness. The next morning I awoke to learn:

1 pint Guinness + James = Hangover

This sucks worse than calculus.

James: Phase 2

Around the end of January I had a bit of a breakdown which led to the realization I had gotten away from doing things I love and that I was not happy with where I was headed as a person. This bundle of realizations motivated me to begin a program of changes in my life. The purpose of these changes is to allow me to get back to a James that I like. A James who is more confident in who he is and who is willing to let his freak flag fly.

Last month's obsession with dieting and getting healthier was the first phase in the program of changes I want to make. I decided to concentrate on my physical well-being first since this would be rife with challenges for me and is the single biggest change I need to make. Not to mention that I suspect it will take the longest time to reach my goals in this area.

Phase 2 of this process is getting back to being creative. I love to write however over the past year I have not completed a single writing project besides missives for this blog. I have started and stopped on more projects than I will admit to even thinking about however I have not seen any of them through to completion. I am going to change that starting this month. Beginning with March I want to do my best to produce one work of creative writing a month. Depending on the length of the project will determine how complete it must be by the end of the week. In the case of poems, short stories, and essays I feel it is not unreasonable to have them ready to be submitted for publication by the end of the month, however in the case of my still-dormant Starship Farragut script having the script ready to go out for a first pass by my readers is acceptable.

To this end I am looking for three or four people who are willing to read and critique my rough drafts. The first of which I plan to have done in about two weeks as I want to submit it to the contest detailed below. Contact me via the usual protocols if you are interested in editing my crap. Thanks!

The Fourth Annual Equivocality Writer’s Travel Scholarship

Once again, we’re doing the Writer’s Travel Scholarship. Once again it’s
very simple: you write something, and if it wins you get a round-trip
ticket to anywhere in the world. Really.

In the contest announcements for previous years, I penned elaborate
discussions about why I would do such a thing. Why it might matter. This
year, I don’t feel the need to explain why I think writers need to travel,
and hence why I would want to support that. If you don’t already know,
that’s an even better reason to go abroad. Instead I’ll just say:

I think travel is good. I think writing is good. I think it is important
that writers travel.

As before, I would like to make it clear that I am not specifically
calling for travel writing. Write about your pet dog, if you can do it in
an interesting an enlightening way. This contest is not about travel
writing but writers travelling.

On to the details:

* Applicants must submit a short piece, 10,000 words maximum. Fiction,
non-fiction, whatever, poetry or prose, on any topic.

* Also tell me a little about yourself, where you would go with your free
ticket, for how long, and why. You can’t ever have been to that country
before — I impose this restriction to encourage people to go somewhere
new, rather than using the ticket to visit their overseas girlfriend.
Also, you don’t have to write about your destination. I just want to know
why you want to go there.

* Email entries as an attached document in text or Word format to wts (at)
equivocality (dot) net by April 30th 2008. They will be judged by myself
and my writer friends, the winner to be announced on May 15th 2008.

* To keep things fair, I will not consider pieces I know to be written by
friends or acquaintances. What this means is that if you know me, you must
anonymize your submission (including your email address!)

* Entries must be previously unpublished, there is a limit of one entry
per author, and the ticket is limited to $2000 US. I will work with you to
book the cheapest available round-trip ticket, based on departure and
return dates given to me by the winner. I will try to accomodate these
dates and other preferences as much as possible, but I reserve the right
to shift each date plus or minus up to a week, and to make other choices
such as routing and airline, in order to find the best fare. Other travel
requirements, such as additional destinations or an open return date, may
be accommodated if the winner wishes to make up the difference in cost.

* By submitting a piece, you grant me (Jonathan Stray) limited
web-publishing rights, specifically the right to display it on
equivocality.net and any other sites of I may have some degree of
editorial control over. I reserve no other rights. If someone sees your
work here and wants to publish it, fantastic.

* All decisions are final, and by submitting a piece you agree that I am
under no obligation to award any prize at all. The idea is also to fund a
developing writer who might not otherwise be able to afford to travel, so
please keep this in mind when considering whether to apply. I have no
funding, no committees, no mandate. I’m doing this just because I think
it’s a good idea, so let’s keep it simple