I mailed a letter today at the post office, and accidentally put the stamps on while I had the envelope upside down. I got back in line to take care of it.
I got to the front of the four-person line, and just as I took a step toward the next available clerk, she peered over her glasses at me as she put up her “Closed” sign, and left the room. Due to the recent headlines, I decided not to challenge her apparent hostile behavior.
When the only remaining clerk was finished with his customer, I stepped up and said, “I accidentally put these stamps on with the envelope upside down. Do you have some kind of decal or sticker I can put over the address to re-write it to align with the stamps?”
I was surprised, but delighted, to hear the clerk say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re on there, somewhere on the front, anywhere, it’ll go through.”
Who knew? [Evidently, he did.] Sure looks stupid, though. Sorry about that, Robert.
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It would appear there is some “brokering” of Brokeback art going on on e-Bay. This one, is currently going for $204.00:
Another “strip” of them (pardon the pun on some of them respectively) can be seen by clicking here.
I don’t know how this might translate to people who don’t, or have never, worked for a large corporation, but let’s just say that there are times when it seems there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to a pay raise (or sometimes lack thereof) even though we are on a “merit pay” system, meaning your salary is directly tied to your performance.
To express this dismay recently, a colleague updated a page on our corporate web site to explain why sometimes it just doesn’t seem to make sense. (Sorry for the quality; it was saved as a gif instead of a jpg.)
I had some minutes before my COM 487 Internet & Society class today, so I stopped at the computer lab in Tompkins. I almost always take the computer by the mailboxes. I noted that my mailbox has been restored. Not far from mine I saw a box marked “Jennifer Frye,” who now lives in Colorado. It contained two issues of Technically Speaking, one from October 2005, the other from January 2006.
Fortunately for her, both of these issues are available online as linked above, and she reads my blog. So she now knows the status of her mailbox.
Of course, the most important of the two would be the January 2006 one, as that’s the one in which my Blah, Blah, Blog article is published. Besides, the 2005 one is a little yellow already.
During class tonight, while discussing the history of computer interfaces, we watched an ad that, though shown only one time ever, in 1984 during the Super Bowl game, is still considered by some as one of the greatest ads of all time. It’s a minute long. Click here to watch it.
During a short discussion about the ad afterwards, it was noted that it was sort of “dig” at IBM, as a “big brother” (hence the significance of the allusion to Orwell’s 1984), and the “drones” that worked there — those white/silver faced folks sitting in the theater in that ad.
At the end of that discussion, someone in the class, a mere child — as most of them are since it’s an undergraduate class — asks, “Why didn’t IBM’s OS/2 make it as an operating system?”
I didn’t speak up then, but later devised a blog entry about it that started off with, “I started working at IBM in May of 1980. Yes — so I was one of those ‘drones’ being depicted in that infamous ad of 1984 that we watched this afternoon in class.” Hey, I resemble that remark.
Dancing was pretty fun tonight in spite of a small crowd.
I ended the evening in a ridiculous conversation with Tracey and a guy named Jason in which we discussed, among a lot of other things, Yahweh and Elohim. (Pronounced eloween like the Kareem in Kareem Abdul Jabbar.)
I was sure that Yahweh could also be spelled with a ‘J’ at the beginning, but by the end of the night, was set straight. As straight as a gay guy can get.
I said, “Oh, I must have been thinking about Chanukah that can be spelled with a ‘J’ instead.”
“Chanukah is spelled with a C or an H! J is not an option,” they cried.
On the way home it finally came to me that it was marijuana I was thinking about. Or marihuana, as it were.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.