PhoneBoy Says

How do you handle phone calls from telemarketers?

I don't get them. Most of the calls I take come in on my mobile phone. It's illegal to telemarket to someone's mobile phone in the US. If one does come thru on, say, a landline, I simply hang up or if I am feeling particularly pissy, I will ask to be placed on their do-not-call list.

If a telemarketer calls my Grand Central number, which I give out pretty freely, they must get through the call screener first. If they do, they can forever be routed into the bit bucket, complete with an "out of service" message.

Over on phoneboy.com, I decided to go into my personal computing history, at least with respect to PCs and Macs. Might be worth reading for some, or it might be a total bore.

Daylight Saving Time sucks
Daylight Saving Time sucks
Daylight Saving Time sucks
ad infinitum

After this week's fiasco at work related to Daylight Saving Time, I never ever want to have to deal with Daylight Saving Time again.

I have two different desk pictures. One is my more "normal" desk and one is a "makeshift" desk I used today in order to focus in on a particular task. You can guess which is which, I hope. :)

One of the regulars in my VoIP blogging circle started a "meme" getting people to post a picture of their desk that they blog from and "name" three others to do the same. Not sure I want to go that far, but to any of my Vox neighbors out there (or anyone else for that matter), feel free to show off your desk!

Did this himself.

What's your musical horoscope? (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Inspired by Stephanie.

I am still working on my "Unrated" project where I am going through and rating all the songs in my iTunes collection. With that in mind, the next 10 songs on the playlist are:

1. Cry Cry Cry by Steve Miller Band
2. You Just May Be The One by The Monkees
3. Smuggler's Blues by Glenn Frey
4. She's A Woman by The Beatles
5. A Great Day For Freedom by Pink Floyd
6. Because by The Beatles
7. Any Kind of Pain by Frank Zappa
8. Once Upon a Time In The West by Dire Straits
9. Don't Go To Pieces by The Cars
10. School by Supertramp

As I alluded to in my last post, I started digging around in my University accounts. I am thanking my lucky stars I was a bit more of an email packrat in those days, as I am finding snippets of some interesting conversations, not to mention some old poetry.

There is some emails I saved from people whose names who weren't on the tip of the tongue as well as some long-time friends. I found some emails from a women's studies class I took. I was the only man in the class, which I have to admit was a little awkward. I also found some emails from one of my English professors who let me into a business writing class that was hard as hell to get into, apparently. Of course, I was also helping him with Word Perfect.

I have to wonder what little bits of debris I am currently leaving in the great Google cache to be unearthed later.

I was going through some old files in my University Unix account trying to look for some of my favorite quotes to answer one of the recent quotes of the day. Instead, I found this "prose poem" I wrote to a girl on April 7th, 1993. There an email time stamp with it, thus why I know when.

Considering that I am now unable to get to most of the poetry I wrote in high school thanks to being saved on an obsolete disk drive format (Mac 800k), this was kind of a nice find. Not quite the vintage I was looking for, but close enough.

A pretty face scarred in her own tears as they burn across her face like a whip -- cracking, stinging, burning. As much as you want to hide those eyes that are red with pain and anguish, I want to stare deeply into them and soothe the streaks of fire that they are churning out. I want your eyes to uncloud for a moment and see that my love for you is stronger than your pain. If only you could see the message your relentless sorrow and fear are forbidding you from seeing that my face aptly communicates; if only you could stop screaming long enough to hear my words; if only you could fight the numbness long enough to feel the warmth in my touch; you might just sleep alone tonight.

What family member do you most aspire to be like? Why?
Submitted by MalieKai.

I don't aspire to be like anyone in my family. I am who I am despite my genes. But I suppose if I were to pick someone, I'd pick my Grandma Hattie. She had seemingly infinite patience and infinite love to give.

It still saddens me when I think about what had happened to who she was after that incident with Uncle Andy. My own personal version of "the long goodbye," if you will.