I’m always a little shocked at the sheer level of bile that gets thrown around on the net (and then laugh because I think of “Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)“.

Good times.

To fix a drip at a valve connection under a sink today, I pulled the valve off and part of the long-corroding pipe came off with it, leaving not enough thread to put it back on. Had to pull apart and replace pipe. The good luck was I only had to go back one connection.

Going to a hike, my car hit a pot hole and punctured the oil pan, which is great fun, and had to be towed back to my mechanic, again, for the second time in four days, the second time it’s seen a tow truck after years of absurd reliability.

I’m probably going to be out $600 for this, bringing my week-long total to ~$1500, or about half the trade-in value of my car.

This is extra-good since I’m unemployed. I mean, uh, writing.

Had a nightmare about being reviewed in the New York Times Book Review in which they liked the book but spent most of the review savaging the typos and minor errors that were included in the advance copy (which was pre-copy edits).

Woke up when the UPS guy delivered the first copy of the actual, finished, off the presses book.

Looked up the ski conditions for Snoqualmie – I’ve got not much time left on the rentals, I’m probably going to be employed soon, and the forecast looked promising. Conditions look awesome.

Throw my stuff into the car, tear off for Snoqualmie.

Ski for a long time. Mostly sunny, some new snow, and the face runs weren’t crusty, but a perfect slushy goodness. Most fun I’ve had all season.

Nearly get horribly mangled or worse when my coat catches on the edge of the chair. Really scary. I’m a little impressed I managed to act reasonably rational in figuring out what happened.

Lost my wallet.

Found my wallet when some good soul turned it in, contents entirely undisturbed. Yay humanity!

Brief skiing.

Planning to get back well in time to head out for my scifi workshop, return to my car, load it up – car won’t start.

Get a jump from security. Won’t crank over.

Call for tow. As phone battery cranks down while I’m on hold, get quoted really long wait time. Head to lodge, have beer. Tow calls, delay. Wait, wait, wait.

Tow shows up. Can’t jump the car with their massive cables etc. For the first time, get to see my Volvo put on a flatbed. Long ride back.

When I finally get home disastrously late, discover a lot of my galley changes didn’t get into the final version.

In the email:
Another job possibility.
A chance to write a piece for… I don’t even want to say it.

Been a weird, weird day.

One of the things that’s made a big difference in my long path from general jerk to occasional jerk has been my conscious effort towards empathy, and to recognize that, as I’ve been told, reality is what you make of it. This means, in baseball writing terms, I have to push myself towards certainty. I think it’s made me a much better actual analyst — I’m not afraid to say “we don’t know how this turns out” and I say “It’s unlikely that we’ll see this” or “there’s no evidence to suggest that…” or to circle a big area like clubhouse politics and say “I don’t know.” This was a great strength as a program manager, too, where being able to gauge perception against evidence and the known against the probable helped make things happen.

It’s really weird because today, I feel like I botched it, in a way — I took a piece of ambiguous information and managed to bungle decisions until I totally blew it. The results were that it generated all kinds of bad events, chaining on down, until there was a point this afternoon where I despaired of ever repairing it.

But it was based at least in part on a faulty assumption. What’s strange, though, is that I bit it, other people bit it without my prompting, and from there, things cascaded. I didn’t think to look at the tenets and ask second questions, and neither did anyone else.

When it all snapped for me, I felt strange for a long minute or two, because I realized I’d spent all day viewing things incorrectly, that when I first encountered piece of information #1, I’d been tired and in a bad mood and then once I formed that opinion. I slipped into the very habit I’ve been trying to avoid for so long, and once I slipped, it took something huge to get me corrected.

Time to redouble my efforts.

From last May

I realized today that it’s probably only a matter of time before a Nirvana song is used to sell cars, or something. Courtney Love, when she’s not trying to claim credit for Kurt’s music (see: the “Old Age” controversy), funds her downward spiral on her share of the Nirvana royalties, and would probably sell “Lithium” to sell Lincoln Navigators tomorrow. The issue’s whether Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic can hold out forever.

As far as I know, yes.

But for the rest of their lives, as long as they hold out and go about their lives (their cell phones purring with the calls from Love’s lawyers asking about potential deals) there’ll be this temptation that follows them, offering millions of dollars if they’ll consent to use of “Love Buzz” in an energy drink commercial.

The advertisers will dog them forever, because for people like me, it’s a cue to pay attention, already emotionally vested. This is why Led Zepplin was such a perfect way for Cadillac to attack aging Boomers with disposable incomes, why today bands are co-opted almost immediately (M.I.A. with all their radical politics selling Hondas, Postal Service tunes hawking whatever): you form your emotional connections to music, and then they’re available for easy switching to a commodity of choice.

Hold out, Krist. Please.

Nirvana’s “Breed” is the music track in the EA Sports Baseball ads. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it: I thought I must be confusing it with something similar, or a cover, or — nope.

This sucks. Thanks, guys. My faith, unrewarded again.

How can the way rebate systems are run be legal?

If a company offers a rebate and punts customer service, it’s in their interest to pay out as few as possible without being sued. It doesn’t matter why they deny your rebate, you have no recourse. There’s really no place to go to complain that they ripped you off.

For instance. When I bought my beloved Mac laptop months ago, I was eligible for a ton of rebates, and I applied for them all, what with being unemployed. So I sent in all the stuff, and I was super extra-careful because I was leaving for my vacation and wouldn’t be around to answer mail for a while. One of them was denied for failure to enclose some random piece of information – which I did. So I called Apple up.

Me: Hey, I just got this denial notice that said I didn’t include the receipt, but I did, and I sent all that stuff in.
Them: Well, we don’t have it, so you need to send in a new one.
Me: I don’t want to be a pain, but this really is someone’s fault on your end, and it’s a ways for me to my nearest Apple Store to get a duplicate receipt… is there any way you can just check my submission? You got the other two things I know were in there…
Them: Nope, the only thing you can do is get another receipt.
Me: Ooookay.

Annoying, but whatever. So then I got a shredder with some rinky-dink rebate at Staples that I totally, entirely qualified for, this time thinking “Okay, 50% chance I get denied on the rebate, it’s still a decent price”. Denied, for essentially no reason: I looked it up and it said “invalid rebate parameters” or something.

Then I got to fight with their people, where I had to point out
1) It was within the date range for the rebate
2) It was submitted within x days of the purchase
…
4) You need to give me my money

I understand why companies give out rebates: if x% of the purchasers don’t remember to redeem it, they make a huge profit. But my experience with these things is that they’re pushing the boundaries to the point where it’s
1) Offer rebate
2) x% of people eligible apply = profit
3) Deny rebate to applicants
4) y% of x% fight the blanket denial = much more profit

It’s fraud, really, on a massive scale, and I’ll spare everyone the rant about law enforcement priorities, but it boggles my mind that Staples and all these other companies you can google to find thousands of complaints about their rebate policies can keep at this. It’s depressing.

When I blew my iPod, I swore for a while. But I don’t have the money to spend on replacing it, especially with no money coming in the door. So I cracked it open and fixed it. It’s actually not that tough if you’re careful and willing to tinker – I searched for other people who’d replaced the hard drive, found some good instructions, and viola, I’m back listening to music a few days later.

Woo-hoo for cheapness.

Book research takes me back to looking through Robert Anton Wilson’s stuff, leads to RU Sirius #78: Robert Anton Wilson Lives!. RU Sirius then leads to number #84: Hal Robins aka Dr. Hal joins us to talk about Secrets of the Subgenii; underground comix, and his latest book, Dinosaur Alphabet…

I recognize Hal Robins’ voice immediately, think “there’s no way” then decide to go look it up. And yup, Hal Robins is Harry S. Robins, and did the voice for Dr. Isaac Kleiner in the Half-Life games, so it turns that without knowing it, I was familiar with his work:
– as a voice actor in some of my favorite computer games
– as a fiction writer and
– with the SubGenius
and knew him, vaguely, from the comic stuff, without ever putting any of these aspects together.

It felt weirdly satisfying, like putting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle I hadn’t known I was working on.