I've mentioned before that my neighbor plays poker for a living. It has not always been his main source of income, but he's always enjoyed gambling. He showed me this video one night after we'd been playing Wii and drinking for a few hours and he asked if he should put it on the net. I said it would be a crime not to share it with the world. It's called The Pissing Video (NSFW) and to set it up, they were just out of college and on a trip to Vegas and had been in the casino drinking most of the night. They were back in their room and trying to find something to bet on. This is what they came up with. It's NSFW not because of nudity (I don't think you can see any "naughty bits".) but because people will come over to see why you are laughing so hard and they might be offended by the subject matter. If you don't like "toilet humor", this will probably offend you greatly. If you don't enjoy watching "drunk logic" at work, it starts out a little slow, but it's still worth the wait.

Our hero has come home from a grueling day at work and noticed the tray on his Wii is pulsing blue light. He valiantly grabs the Wiimote and checks his Wiimail*. He opens the first one just as his roommate walks by.
*Sometimes they just write themselves, folks.

RoomMate: Who's "SiliconJes"?
TL: Nobody. That's SiliconJesus from slashdot, but truncated because I only had 10 characters.
RM: Oh Ok. walks towards exit stage right
TL: (pretending to be offended in an intentionally unconvincing way) How's about you don't read my email over my shoulder, huh?
RM: (nonchalantly, without stopping) How's about you don't display it on a 52" widescreen TV? continue walking and exit stage right

.

.

.

Mr. TechnoLust's German provided by http://translate.google.com/

Hyphy (Bay Area's answer to Crunk) is making some big moves and shaking some things up. If you aren't in the know, Ghost Ridin' is when the driver gets out of the moving vehicle and dances beside or on top of it to loud hip hop music. I guess someone watched Teen Wolf (where he surfs on top of the van) and didn't have a driver.

Anyway, one of hyphy's up and comers is Mistah F.A.B. and he did this joint called Ghost Ride It [Lyrics] with the music from GhostBusters. In hyphy slang, Ghostbusters are cops. SlashChick and all my Bay Area peeps, read the lyrics and see if you recognize any of the slang.

Look who's drivin' it's Patrick Swayze!

As I mentioned, BoA bought out MBNA and caused me some headaches. So after figuring out I have to log into BoA's site with my MBNA credentials to pay my card, I went to Customer Service and sent a secured message to them and provided my email address as a response. I also provided my Usernames (but not passwords) and asked them if they could combine my accounts. Obviously they are both under my real name with my current address. An idiot could look at the two, drool on himself a little and say, "Duh... geez yeah, doze is da same person's accounts." I received this back. Notice the instruction telling me how to get help. EmPHAsis mine.

Dear TechnoLust,

Thank you for your inquiry dated 1/12/07 regarding Other. We will be happy to assist you.

Because your account security is our highest priority, we are unable to process your request through unsecured e-mail. We are only able to perform account maintenance or discuss confidential information through a secure method of contact, one that requires you to enter an Online ID and Passcode such as Online Banking. These methods of contact allow us to verify that a request is from the account holder and not an unauthorized attempt to change your account.

If you have access to Online Banking, please access your account on Online Banking through our home page at www.bankofamerica.com and go to the Customer Service tab to submit your request.

If you are not currently an Online Banking customer, please visit our home page at www.bankofamerica.com to enroll in this free service today. If you are unable to enroll on our Web site, please contact us at 1.800.933.6262 for enrollment assistance.

If you are outside the US please use the number listed above along with the ATT Direct Access Code. For more details on ATT Direct Access Codes and dialing protocols, please visit: www.usa.att.com/traveler/index.jsp

We value you as a customer and appreciate your business. If we may be of further assistance, please contact us again by e-mail. Thank you for choosing Bank of America.

Sincerely,

Email Jockey That Has No Clue
Bank of America

/me's head asplode!

Ok, for all you Wii gamers playing Zelda and wondering how for you are, here's the website you've been waiting for: http://www.twilight-calculator.us.tt/. Be warned however that it considers 100% complete having done EVERY side quest. So I beat the game and it says I'm only 77% complete.

Everything that ties into your credit record asks for a home phone number. I don't have one. I don't have home phone. I don't need one, I don't want one. I'm sure there are a lot of people like me that have a cell phone and that's it. So why do these forms not allow me to note that the number I'm giving them is my CELL phone so they don't call me?

So I have this MBNA Quantum* credit card that I've had since my 18th birthday. My credit limit is $25,900. I hadn't used it in a while, so they gave my a 0% APR on Balance Transfers for a 18 months. This was during the time I wasn't working, and had racked up some credit card debt. Cool, I transfered some money over there and easily paid the minimum payment every time they sent me an email telling me the payment was due. A few months ago they were bought out by BoA, and I saw that I could see my MBNA card on the BoA page, but I still had to go to the MBNA page to pay it. No problem, I have been paying it that way for years.

Last night I got a phone call from an UNAVAILABLE number. I answered even though I normally don't answer CallerID blocked numbers. It was a lady from MBNA saying that she was calling because I hadn't missed a payment in 10 years and now I'd missed 2 in a row, and was I aware that I hadn't paid them. I told her that I hadn't seen an email and I'm on electronic billing. Apparently they switched me back to regular billing when BoA bought them... and it was in a BoA envelope with the words Statement Enclosed printed on it. Oh, yeah, I got that. I thought it was my BoA monthly statement and since I use online banking ALMOST EVERY DAY, I don't look at the paper statement that is 3 days behind at least. So those got chucked in the trash. Oh yeah, and the little thing on BoA that tells me the balance and when it's due? They removed that about the time they stopped sending me the eBills. So I hadn't had a reminder to pay it in 2 months. Not my fault, but not really theirs either. They DID send a statement, just not the way I had asked to be notified. I told her I would pay it today, and she made a note and thanked me for my time.

Last night I went to MBNANetAccess.com like always and I get a screen that says, "You can [read: have to] now pay your bill at www.bankofamerica.com. If you are already a BoA customer, log in and click ACCOUNTS and your credit card will be listed below your BoA accounts." I went there, logged in, and clicked ACCOUNTS and it's not there. I searched all over... not there. I went to the trash can in my room and saw the thing I thought was a BoA statement and threw away. I opened it up and sho'nuff, it's a bill for my MBNA card. Everything on there says BoA and NOTHING says MBNA. I had to check the card number to make sure it was the right one, since I have a BoA credit card I've had less than a year, but its limit is around $10k. So I STILL have no idea how to pay the damn thing, but I did see something interesting.

It appears that since I missed the payment, they cut my promotional 0% APR off early. No biggie, I only had like 2 months left anyway and my Balance Transfer APR is normally 6.99% Oh wait, what's this? The balance isn't in the Balance Transfers column. They moved it to a column called "Other". Which is at 20.72%!!! Fuck that shit. Ok, well, I don't have quite enough to pay it off, so I'm going to pay $1000 of it and transfer the balance to another card with a lower APR. Hey, maybe I can get a 0% promotional APR so I can hold off paying it off until my raise takes effect. Hey look! I got a pre-approved credit card in the mail today and it says "0% APR on Balance Transfers until January 2008". Sweet! Go to their website.

Here's where the "Enter your Home Phone Number" comes in. It didn't have an asterisk, so I left it blank. It didn't like that. I go and put in my cell number and click submit. While "Please Wait... Processing..." is on the screen another Unavailable call appears. I think it's MBNA calling wondering why I haven't made the payment today, so I answer. It's a computer at the bank I'm applying for a card from, verifying the number works. I didn't have to type anything or say anything or verify anything. It just verified someone answered, read me a short message, and then hung up on me. What if I put in a random working number? So anyway, I'm of course accepted, all I have to do is agree to the terms and put in my credit card number for the Balance Transfer and we're set. (I normally don't mention credit limits or financial information, as I consider it rude if there's no point, but I did in this JE to provide context for this next bit of information.) I read the fine print and notice the Credit Limit they want to give me. $750. Did I leave some 0s off my income? Hit back. No, they're all there. Mistype the SSN? No, it's correct. WTFSoF? They SERIOUSLY think I'm going to carry a card with a 3 digit limit? I can't even pay my FUCKING RENT with that. It's completely useless to me. You went to the trouble to CALL MY CELL PHONE to verify me and you offer me Seven Hundred and Fifty Fucking Dollars?!?!? I make way more than enough in a WEEK to pay it that off! I hit DENY only because there was no "SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS SIDEWAYS" button.

*They invented Quantum when every Joe Schmo started getting Platinum** cards. I've heard these cards can have a limit up to $250,000. Who needs a quarter million dollar credit limit?!?!?
**Platinum cards were of course invented when everyone started getting Gold*** Cards.
***Gold cards were invented to make people feel special when everyone started getting credit cards.

Ok, well I know some of you are playing it so I don't want to spoil anything. Umm... the ending is cool. Midna is hott after you break the curse on her. Zelda's like the innocent looking blonde girl next door, and Minda is like the sultry brunette down the street. When she changes, Link (or whatever you named him) is staring at her and she says, "Am I so beautiful that you have no more words?" It's not that, he was just thinking "I have 2 princesses now... THREESOME!"

Ok, so people keep asking how far along they are. I will write a little outline of the quests, but I'll be vague so I don't give away anything.

Find 10 things 4 times.
Find 3 things, but each takes a while.
Find 1 thing.
Solve a puzzle to help Illia.
Find 3 things, but each involves researching how to get where you're going.
Find 2 things, so you can go find Zant.
Battle Zant, discover hidden truth to all this.
Rescue Zelda.
Final Battle. (If you have Great Angel Tears, I'd save them until here. They work WONDERS here.

If anyone has any game related questions, post below. If it contains spoilers, please put ***SPOILERS*** in the subject.

A little background, first... Recently a girl I haven't seen in a while and I were going out to a club and she wanted to approve what I was wearing. I started to show her and she said, "Nevermind, you always look good when you go out, I'm sure you'll look nice." That made me feel good because although I like to dress nice, I've never been one for "Department Store Designer Clothes" (Hilfiger, et al.) and I can't justify buying Versace, Cavalli, Dolce & Gabbana, or Dior. Some of their shit is nice and I'd wear some of it, but mostly I get stuff that's not overpriced and is made well. I do this mostly because I hate clothes shopping. Well not the shopping part so much as the trying on. That's one of the reasons I shop Old Navy... I know my size there, so I don't have to try on everything. That's also the reason if a button comes off a pair of pants or a shirt, I'd rather sew that shit back on than go buy a replacement garment.

There's a lady I work with, we'll call her Smiley, that's happy and flirtatious all the time, so when I get stressed, I go talk to her and she cheers me up. It helps that she's VERY attractive for an "older" lady (she's in her early 40s). She's VERY quick witted and I love bantering with her because it keeps my wit sharp.

Ok, so yesterday I'm at the water cooler, filling up my 1L water bottle. Our cooler is low, so I'm bending over. Smiley is in the break room talking to someone. When I raise up from filling up my bottle, she says, "TL, did you know you have a hole in your pants where the pocket is sewn on and I can see your underwear?" I told her no, I wasn't aware of it and I dropped it because it's not polite to have a battle of wits in front of unarmed people. (StalinsNotDead, I think this is your biggest issue with human interaction, you have to learn to customize your communication to your target audience. I talk WAY different to a CEO than I do my friends)

Later I'm at my desk and she comes buy and puts her arm across my neck, leans in close and whispers in my ear, "What's up Mr. Holey-pants?" I turned and said, "I wasn't going to call you out on this, but you forced my hand... why exactly were you staring at my ass in the first place that you noticed the hole."
"Uhh... no! I was... you were bent over and..."
"Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that."
So we had a good little laugh and went on with our day.

So today I came in and went to her desk. I said, "Do you want to check these for holes too?" and smiled! She said, "Not now honey, I have more important things to do." I said (slightly louder than I meant to, which garnered some questioning stares), "What could be more important than my ass!?!?!?"

Trolling Jamie. I found that comment via Cap'n Splendid's JE.

On a conference call this morning, a user reported (in less than flattering terms) that a software glitch (in late 2006) had "created a bunch of room reservations that I didn't want, and then didn't cancel them all when I told it to! I'm not going to go in and cancel them all by hand!" After throwing together a quick update statement to correct the problem, I did a little investigation. There were exactly 600 years too many night reserved. That's right kids, instead of using the handy little calendar widget to pick the date, this advanced user had typed the date in manually... 29-Dec-2600. Yes they reserved the guest a room from 22-Dec-2006 to 29-Dec-2600 instead of 29-Dec-2006. I didn't write the module that handles reservations, but I am going to add a date validation routine SOON! I've met the people that work in hotels. And yes, I did greatly enjoy politely revealing that the loud mouth user screaming that the software is broken made a mistake, not the software.

http://www.conbinibento.com/2006/06/14/english-and-exercise/

Because "Spare me my life" and "Please Don't Rape Me" are very useful when visiting America!

Anyone else seen these?

I walked over to Beverly's cube because she's cute, friendly, and she has some really nice chocolates on her desk that she offers me every time I come over. :-) So I walked to her desk and saw her typing "For this product, a dozen = 12" on the line note of a Requisition. I asked, "Isn't a dozen usually 12?" She said, "Yes, but apparently the hotel manager that ordered these shower liners doesn't know that, or doesn't know that 127 is NOT evenly divisible by 12." I said, "And I doubt the vendor would appreciate a PO with a quantity of 10.6 on it." Later we decided to change it to "This product is sold in cases of 12." in case the person frequents the front page of slashdot and never RTFA. :-)

Well, that's what Wired says in a story about a Cthulhu movie starring Tori Spelling.

I love sour things. WAY more than I love sweet things. Most "sour candies" are sweet candies with a light dusting of citric acid. So you get the initial "WOW that's sour" followed by sickly sweetness. Blah. So I tried these Sugar Free Ice Breakers Sours. They are sour through and through. If you can't handle it, there's no crunching it to get to the sweet, oh no! If you crunch it they get WORSE! I can help but crunch them. BRING ON THE SOUR, BITCHES! Anyway, I'm looking at the front and it says, "Not a low calorie food." I immediately flipped the box over to see how many calories they have since I've eaten about 20 of them today. 0 Calories. Umm... last I checked 0 was a low as you could go in the calorie department, so why the disclaimer on the front?

The ingredients are SORBITOL, MALIC ACID, and TARTARIC ACID. Then less than 2% of MALITOL, MALTODEXTRIN, ASPARTAME, Citric Acid, Medium Chain Triglycerides, etc, so maybe it's the word FOOD they are afraid of. ;)

The last JE was deleted because it had been up for a short time and there were already people reading into things that weren't there, and a few people just flat out made some shit up. I honestly wonder if people saw that I went to see a girl and just stopped reading because they thought they knew the situation. In any case, I knew when I posted it that there was a high probability that I'd have to delete it, but I risked it anyway. I'm sorry that I had to take the better comments out with the "OMG! TL yur so stoopud, y don't u stp datin yung grls so u don't hav 2 deal with this?" comments from people that didn't know that she's 27 and didn't read the part where we aren't dating.