I left a note on my desk that was not meant to be there. Shortly thereafter Wendy read the following when she glanced at it:
I am so sorry to leave like this but I have some matters to attend to. I have grown to love you and I am so thankful for your friendship.
Panic! A love note talking about a break up. From me, or to me?
I wish you all the best in your quest and I hope to one day see you again. Be brave my love, Bobesh.
Wait, what? Quest? Who is Bobesh? And then Wendy looked at the top of the note to read the salutation:
Dear Aerta,
Aerta, you must understand, is the name of my current character in my Dungeons and Dragons game. Bobesh is the name of the character he is having a troubled romance with and who just recently ran off into the sunset leaving only this note to explain her actions. Wendy, being both clever and used to my romantic escapades in roleplaying games (she has played my paramour before) instantly realized what was going on. No need to panic, nothing is wrong.
Nothing at all.
Your husband is going over to an apartment belonging to a girl every week for several hours playing 'roleplaying games' with a group of people you have never met. He comes home with love notes from the girl's 'character' and talks about their 'entirely fictional romance'. To top it off the girl happens to be 15 years your junior and possess red hair and blue eyes which your husband is a notorious sucker for.
Nothing to worry about at all!
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Blogger stats
I am walking tall today. Blogger tells me that on Nov 9 I got 600+ pageviews, which is roughly 6 times as many pageviews as I normally get on a posting day (Blogger only tracks actual visits, not feed readers, so I have no idea what my actual readership size is). I wondered what it could be - was it my article on the health benefits of cutting out wheat? A previous article that people were suddenly passing around?
No, it turns out I was just visited many times by a bunch of useless scammer sites like www.777seo.com.
http://www.777seo.com/seo.php?username=martyxma
This address in particular generated 280 separate hits. I have no idea *why* a couple of different internet scam organizations decided to boost my readership count all on the same day but in looking at my stats I found some other fantastic stuff. A Google search term that brought a ton of traffic to my site:
grassy plain israel
Apparently my old posts on reading the Bible are collecting hits still and the large number of people looking for 'grassy plain israel' information get sent here instead. Sorry folks, I don't think I have what you want. Other big winners were:
villain cough
play with my beard
I can see how each of these gets to me since I have posted about beards now and then and I do talk about villains (it is almost as much fun to say as buccaneers) but these searchers likely aren't pleased with what I have to offer. I expect the last one is hunting for beard porn of some sort but I have no idea at all what 'villain cough' was supposed to find.
No, it turns out I was just visited many times by a bunch of useless scammer sites like www.777seo.com.
http://www.777seo.com/seo.php?username=martyxma
This address in particular generated 280 separate hits. I have no idea *why* a couple of different internet scam organizations decided to boost my readership count all on the same day but in looking at my stats I found some other fantastic stuff. A Google search term that brought a ton of traffic to my site:
grassy plain israel
Apparently my old posts on reading the Bible are collecting hits still and the large number of people looking for 'grassy plain israel' information get sent here instead. Sorry folks, I don't think I have what you want. Other big winners were:
villain cough
play with my beard
I can see how each of these gets to me since I have posted about beards now and then and I do talk about villains (it is almost as much fun to say as buccaneers) but these searchers likely aren't pleased with what I have to offer. I expect the last one is hunting for beard porn of some sort but I have no idea at all what 'villain cough' was supposed to find.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Boneheaded scammers
I got a phone call today from a company promising to help me eliminate my back taxes owed to the IRS. Apparently President Obama is trying to help Americans reduce their debt load so they called me personally! Strange that they called a number *in freaking Canada* for this purpose, but apparently the "US government" is just that incompetent. The random call centre worker who talked to me when I pressed 1 didn't seem to have a script for "I don't live in your damn country, fool." and promised to look into it. The fact that these companies can make money while being this stupid is really sad. Obviously, its a scam; the first hit on Google for "IRS tax debt scam" brought up this page which warns US citizens of companies that claim to be able to wipe out IRS tax debts and are flat out lying.
I have gotten a large number of these phone calls in recent weeks and it makes me wonder if I am on a sucker list. I have never given any random caller any information or money whatsoever but I regularly punch through to a live person to tell them to take me off their damn list already which might well put me on their sucker list just for not hanging up. Generally speaking I don't believe in griefing phone salespeople as long as they are selling real products - newspapers, cleaning companies and others call now and again and I just tell them no and hang up but when a real scammer gets on the line I like to jerk them around. This is an excerpt from a conversation I had a week ago when I got a call right after supper.
Scammer: Please sir can you tell me your VISA card expiry date please?
Me: What company are you calling from?
Scammer: I work for VISA sir.
Me: Wonderful, then please tell me my name.
Scammer: I cannot reveal that information, please tell me your VISA card number and expiry date.
Me: First you tell me who it is you have called.
Scammer: You are the owner of the household sir, now please tell me your VISA card number and expiry date.
We went round and round like this for a couple minutes and then...
Scammer: Fuck you.
Me: You aren't very good at this are you?
Scammer: I am very good at this, I kept you on the line for four minutes and thirty seconds so far.
Me: I have been having a great time jerking you around, it has been nothing but entertainment for me. Since you haven't gotten anything useful from me though it is clear you aren't very good at this.
Scammer: No, I beat you, I wasted your time.
Me: I don't consider entertainment a waste of time, this conversation is better than a movie!
Scammer: Kiss my ass.
Me (sexy voice): Oh, that sounds *hot*. Can you be over here in five minutes for some of that action?
Scammer: *click*
It probably isn't very Stoic of me to relish causing some shiftless thief in India to become really irritated but hot damn it was a lot of fun.
I have gotten a large number of these phone calls in recent weeks and it makes me wonder if I am on a sucker list. I have never given any random caller any information or money whatsoever but I regularly punch through to a live person to tell them to take me off their damn list already which might well put me on their sucker list just for not hanging up. Generally speaking I don't believe in griefing phone salespeople as long as they are selling real products - newspapers, cleaning companies and others call now and again and I just tell them no and hang up but when a real scammer gets on the line I like to jerk them around. This is an excerpt from a conversation I had a week ago when I got a call right after supper.
Scammer: Please sir can you tell me your VISA card expiry date please?
Me: What company are you calling from?
Scammer: I work for VISA sir.
Me: Wonderful, then please tell me my name.
Scammer: I cannot reveal that information, please tell me your VISA card number and expiry date.
Me: First you tell me who it is you have called.
Scammer: You are the owner of the household sir, now please tell me your VISA card number and expiry date.
We went round and round like this for a couple minutes and then...
Scammer: Fuck you.
Me: You aren't very good at this are you?
Scammer: I am very good at this, I kept you on the line for four minutes and thirty seconds so far.
Me: I have been having a great time jerking you around, it has been nothing but entertainment for me. Since you haven't gotten anything useful from me though it is clear you aren't very good at this.
Scammer: No, I beat you, I wasted your time.
Me: I don't consider entertainment a waste of time, this conversation is better than a movie!
Scammer: Kiss my ass.
Me (sexy voice): Oh, that sounds *hot*. Can you be over here in five minutes for some of that action?
Scammer: *click*
It probably isn't very Stoic of me to relish causing some shiftless thief in India to become really irritated but hot damn it was a lot of fun.
The supreme sacrifice
Would you give up your life to save your child's life? A lot of people would say yes and in fact a significant number of them would say that it is something a parent must do. Would you give up somebody else's life to save your child's life? This is trickier, of course, and less prone to emotional hyperbole. Obviously an awful lot of people would choose that a random stranger die instead of their own child; in fact probably the great majority would. How about if the person you have to sacrifice is your partner instead?
Wendy linked this blog post about parenthood which was written from the perspective of a father. He said that after his child was born he suddenly realized that he would be willing not only to die to save his child but also to throw his wife under a bus if that is what it took. Presumably this means he would be willing to murder absolutely anyone to save his child which I think was meant to be heartwarming but mostly managed to be terrifying. I understand the desperate desire to prevent any harm from coming to my child but the idea that I would murder my wife to prevent my daughter's death is completely mindboggling. Even if it wasn't murder but rather just a 'you can only save one of them from certain doom' sort of made up situation I would save my wife. Would I sacrifice myself? I think the answer is no, but that is the hardest question.
I wonder if these values are things that come from inherent personality characteristics or are a product of environment. My father sometimes talked about how his father made it clear that the children came a distinct second behind his wife so maybe these values are passed along within social groups. I don't recall being told explicitly how my parents viewed this sort of situation (and honestly I don't know how they would answer) but I suspect these sorts of values will often be communicated implicitly. It is certainly true in the case of my grandfather, my father and myself that we would take extreme risks with our own lives to save our children. There is a world of difference between extreme risk and certain death though and nearly all parents will do the first but many would not do the second.
Of course much of this discussion is entirely moot because real life very rarely grants us scenarios where we can guarantee saving a life by sacrificing a life. Far more often when these things come up it is a momentary decision made to do something very dangerous in the hopes of saving someone who might survive anyhow. Even more relevant is that what we think we will do in these situations is often unrelated to what we will actually do - few people think they will commit murder when ordered to by an authority figure but in fact they often will. It might be that our answers in the cold, rational state of typing have no bearing at all on what we would really do in the heat of the moment. Saying "I would do the right thing!" is easy but when the knife is in your hand and adrenalin floods your body actually following through is hard.
Wendy linked this blog post about parenthood which was written from the perspective of a father. He said that after his child was born he suddenly realized that he would be willing not only to die to save his child but also to throw his wife under a bus if that is what it took. Presumably this means he would be willing to murder absolutely anyone to save his child which I think was meant to be heartwarming but mostly managed to be terrifying. I understand the desperate desire to prevent any harm from coming to my child but the idea that I would murder my wife to prevent my daughter's death is completely mindboggling. Even if it wasn't murder but rather just a 'you can only save one of them from certain doom' sort of made up situation I would save my wife. Would I sacrifice myself? I think the answer is no, but that is the hardest question.
I wonder if these values are things that come from inherent personality characteristics or are a product of environment. My father sometimes talked about how his father made it clear that the children came a distinct second behind his wife so maybe these values are passed along within social groups. I don't recall being told explicitly how my parents viewed this sort of situation (and honestly I don't know how they would answer) but I suspect these sorts of values will often be communicated implicitly. It is certainly true in the case of my grandfather, my father and myself that we would take extreme risks with our own lives to save our children. There is a world of difference between extreme risk and certain death though and nearly all parents will do the first but many would not do the second.
Of course much of this discussion is entirely moot because real life very rarely grants us scenarios where we can guarantee saving a life by sacrificing a life. Far more often when these things come up it is a momentary decision made to do something very dangerous in the hopes of saving someone who might survive anyhow. Even more relevant is that what we think we will do in these situations is often unrelated to what we will actually do - few people think they will commit murder when ordered to by an authority figure but in fact they often will. It might be that our answers in the cold, rational state of typing have no bearing at all on what we would really do in the heat of the moment. Saying "I would do the right thing!" is easy but when the knife is in your hand and adrenalin floods your body actually following through is hard.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Getting a degree isn't what is used to be
I saw an interesting post today about the declining wages of people with college degrees in the US. The author talked about this as if it were surprising and as if there was a need for the government to do something about it but missed the crucial point entirely. The pay for people with college degrees obviously took a hit because of the weakened economy, just as you would expect for any sector, but also it took a further hit because so many people are going to college/university than ever before - the bar is being constantly lowered. The percentage of people who graduate with a degree has been steadily going up but the actual need for those degrees has not been keeping pace. This is abundantly obvious when you check employment ads and discover that degrees are required for all kinds of jobs that cannot possibly make use of them. When I was applying for my job as a mattress salesman, for example, they were looking for people with degrees. Why in the hell would a mattress salesman need a degree, you ask? Good question.
It is not that I believe that degrees bring no value at all. Completing university can, in many cases, give you a wealth of problem solving skills and ways of thinking that can be valuable to a business. The thing is that just as four years in school can be valuable, how about eight? Or thirty? At some point you must ask what the degree is *for* and you very quickly discover that the vast majority are getting them to advance careers that have nothing to do with the degree in question. However, if you want to advance in any given field you are obviously way better off with four years experience than four years in university. Having looked at the folks in university and having seen what they study I can say for certain that if I were hiring I would be much happier with someone with four years of hands on experience in the field than a degree, all other things being equal.
But all other things aren't equal for the person in question. For example, a person with a degree has a towering mountain of debt and someone with experience does not. Even if someone else is paying for the degree you could still take that money and start a business or invest it while you work and end up with a small fortune to go along with your business experience. This is particularly true if you are in one of the more expensive institutions in the US where you could easily end up $200,000 in debt by the end of your four years; a sum that is daunting to pay off by any measure. A degree isn't granting the respect and job opportunities it used to because so many more people are getting degrees. The world needs bricklayers, truck drivers and salespeople and we need to recognize that those people do not need a degree nor a mountain of debt.
It should be noted that getting a coop degree where you get to sample a large number of workplaces, build real experience and heavily mitigate your debt are a great way to avoid this problem. It is entirely possible to end up with relatively minimal debt, a degree and real experience and this strikes me as the best of all worlds... when it works. Which it sometimes doesn't, as I can personally attest.
It is not that I believe that degrees bring no value at all. Completing university can, in many cases, give you a wealth of problem solving skills and ways of thinking that can be valuable to a business. The thing is that just as four years in school can be valuable, how about eight? Or thirty? At some point you must ask what the degree is *for* and you very quickly discover that the vast majority are getting them to advance careers that have nothing to do with the degree in question. However, if you want to advance in any given field you are obviously way better off with four years experience than four years in university. Having looked at the folks in university and having seen what they study I can say for certain that if I were hiring I would be much happier with someone with four years of hands on experience in the field than a degree, all other things being equal.
But all other things aren't equal for the person in question. For example, a person with a degree has a towering mountain of debt and someone with experience does not. Even if someone else is paying for the degree you could still take that money and start a business or invest it while you work and end up with a small fortune to go along with your business experience. This is particularly true if you are in one of the more expensive institutions in the US where you could easily end up $200,000 in debt by the end of your four years; a sum that is daunting to pay off by any measure. A degree isn't granting the respect and job opportunities it used to because so many more people are getting degrees. The world needs bricklayers, truck drivers and salespeople and we need to recognize that those people do not need a degree nor a mountain of debt.
It should be noted that getting a coop degree where you get to sample a large number of workplaces, build real experience and heavily mitigate your debt are a great way to avoid this problem. It is entirely possible to end up with relatively minimal debt, a degree and real experience and this strikes me as the best of all worlds... when it works. Which it sometimes doesn't, as I can personally attest.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Remembering
The Naturalist sent me a link today to a veteran's thoughts and impressions on the wars he fought in including WW2 and the Korean War. I got to thinking about how I view war and those who go to fight in it. When I was younger I was much more tolerant of war and also much less willing to fight in them - war wasn't such a big deal, I figured, but I sure as hell wasn't going to be involved. My impressions have changed on both fronts, largely based on learning a lot more about the real reasons countries go to war and what it accomplishes. Now my feelings on the issue run a lot like the advice on fighting my father gave me when I was young.
Never fight.
If you have to fight, do anything to win.
I feel like there was absolutely no reason for us to get involved in the great majority of wars that have occurred in the past century. We simply should not be involved in war as even when we go into conflicts with the best possible intentions it is rarely the case that we make things better. There are so many examples of wars that were pitched to the public as necessary and inevitable like Iraq in 2002, Vietnam, and Korea, among others, where the war became an endless morass of death and suffering for both the people living there and the foreign soldiers. We should not be involved in war.
Sometimes though there is no way to avoid it. Hitler's atrocities were not going to stop in Europe - WW2 is by far the clearest example of a war that had to be fought. If a situation so desperate and dire arises that we absolutely must go to war then I should be involved; if it is not worth me risking my life then it is not worth risking the life of anyone, regardless of which side they are on. On Remembrance Day we must remember both the sacrifices that brave people made and also remember that we must only ask for such sacrifices when there is no other way.
Never fight.
If you have to fight, do anything to win.
I feel like there was absolutely no reason for us to get involved in the great majority of wars that have occurred in the past century. We simply should not be involved in war as even when we go into conflicts with the best possible intentions it is rarely the case that we make things better. There are so many examples of wars that were pitched to the public as necessary and inevitable like Iraq in 2002, Vietnam, and Korea, among others, where the war became an endless morass of death and suffering for both the people living there and the foreign soldiers. We should not be involved in war.
Sometimes though there is no way to avoid it. Hitler's atrocities were not going to stop in Europe - WW2 is by far the clearest example of a war that had to be fought. If a situation so desperate and dire arises that we absolutely must go to war then I should be involved; if it is not worth me risking my life then it is not worth risking the life of anyone, regardless of which side they are on. On Remembrance Day we must remember both the sacrifices that brave people made and also remember that we must only ask for such sacrifices when there is no other way.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
A serious contender
Rick Perry is a serious contender for the next president of the US. Part of his platform is to eliminate three US government agencies completely: Education, Commerce and ... hm. In a recent debate Perry managed to completely forget which third agency he wanted to axe and was even convinced by others in the debate to name the Environmental Protection Agency, which he doesn't have any intent to dismantle. It turns out that he actually wants to eliminate the Education, Commerce and Energy agencies.
Here is the rub. The gaffe everyone is talking about is Perry forgetting which agency he wants to eliminate, rather than the bare fact that Perry wants to completely remove 3 critical government agencies! This isn't a joke folks, this is the actual platform of a guy who has a real shot at running the US by the end of next year. Forgetting which agency he wants to get rid of is a hell of a bad sign for a prospective president but it is small beans compared to the fact that he wants to do it at all.
Here is the rub. The gaffe everyone is talking about is Perry forgetting which agency he wants to eliminate, rather than the bare fact that Perry wants to completely remove 3 critical government agencies! This isn't a joke folks, this is the actual platform of a guy who has a real shot at running the US by the end of next year. Forgetting which agency he wants to get rid of is a hell of a bad sign for a prospective president but it is small beans compared to the fact that he wants to do it at all.
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