JBot Mania

Sometimes things happen that can put you in a pretty despondent mood. In these times I have found that music has been indespensible at either promoting much needed tears and anguish or simply accompanying those that are already there and eventually soothing them. If I am lucky enough to have downloaded a slow song recently, that I haven’t yet played to death, that is my guide for the day. I’ll put it on my iPod or play it through my stereo on repeat for hours. If I shower, I’ll bring the laptop into the bathroom with me. If I go down to the basement, I’ll bring the iPod. Somehow that one song becomes my shield. Against what? I’d say most often it is against regret. It doesn’t block out what I am thinking but slows it down a bit and as the playcount grows, the melody becomes more familiar and comforting. It’s the closest I will get to an embrace at these moments. The notes try to erase or to be whatever it is that I am missing and whose absence makes me uneasy, sad, lonely.

Today it is a remake of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Greb Laswell. In the past, others have been “My Skin” by Natalie Merchant, “Half Acre” by Hem, “Feel So Low” by Porcupine Tree, “Bad Dream” by Keane, and “Landed” by Ben Folds.

The comfort of these songs rarely lasts more than a few days, but those are usually the hardest ones.

I came home in the middle of the night
My father says “What are you going to do with your life?”
Well daddy dear, you’re still number one
Oh girls they want to have fun
Oh girls they

The phone rings in the middle of the night
My mother says “When you gonna live your life right?”
Well Mother dear, we’re not the fortunate ones
Oh girls they want to have fun
Oh girls they

It’s all they really want
Those girls, they want to have fun

Some boys take a beautiful girl
Oh and they hide her away from the rest of the world
Well not me, I want to be the one in the sun
Girls they want to have fun
Oh girls they

It’s all they really want
Those girls, they want to have fun

When you let JBot make companywide announcements, this is what you get.

Introducing the Super Admins™

In the past, there have been users who have wanted more from [our site]. They didn’t want to be just Group Admins, they wanted to be Masters of their Universe. They wanted to be able to monitor any teacher or any student within their vast domain. We had been accommodating these Super Users™ by adding them to groups upon groups to satisfy their insatiable need to be all knowing.

Well, this is kind of a pain in the… as you can imagine. So a new feature has been added to [our site] and [our other site] to allow these Super Users™ the omnipresence they so desire, while relinquishing the burden upon us lowly employees.

We have now created the ability for these users to not just be Super Users™ but Super Admins™.

Besides the obvious benefits of self satisfaction and a custom cape, this functionality allows for these Super Admins™ to be just that, super, uber, all knowing and all seeing admins.

Basically, they can do everything a regular admin can do, only to A LOT more groups and WITHOUT having to be a member of those groups.

They DO NOT get any special powers (I neglected to mention that to them and, instead, distracted them with spandex outfits). They are JUST Group Admins with access to more groups.

They can view student work and even send messages to EVERYONE within their vast domain. They cannot delete anything a normal admin could not.

Super Admins™ have to be a part of a Site License, however. Otherwise, their super powers will go unused…

-JBot

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Continued…

When having a debate with someone (or all of society as it may appear at times) don’t cite specific information or those new fangled “numbers” people are using these days. Numbers can lie.  What you should do instead, is cite past examples when people were wrong. Don’t address the difference in methods used to arrive at a conclusion or differences in available data from one time to another, just cite the wrongness - because once you are wrong, you will always be wrong - even if you were not, in fact, wrong, but some guy, say, across the country, whom you have never met and who happens to be interested in the same things as you are is wrong. You might then, in fact, be doubly wrong… forever.

Believe me, this kind of point of view sounds pretty good to people in such a PC society - almost good enough to make them consider what you’re saying as refreshing, you know, because it’s contrary. You will definitely be the class risk-taker and people will hang on your words as if they come from some other orifice than where normal bullshit comes from.

Here’s an example situation:

“Honey, I think the milk is expired.”

“Darling, 10 years ago you thought the mayonnaise was expired and it wasn’t. I fail to see how you could possibly have a valid opinion about the milk today.”

“But it has already turned to cheese and the date on the bottle says last week.”

“Yeah well, sometimes those dates are wrong, and do you honestly know at what point you can really classify that as cheese? Look, you were wrong about the mayonnaise and I am affraid that that makes you wrong about the milk. It really is just that simple.”

God, I wish she knew just how WRONG she had been. Then she wouldn’t dare to be right. 

Our next lesson will be entitled, “The Willing Suspension of Disbelief and Other Coping Strategies For When You Are Not Wrong, Just Not Right”

JBot:
So, I think I overheard something yesterday about something scummy that [EX-EMPLOYEE] tried to do.

Brenda:
HAHAHA what?

JBot:
I think [THEY] tried to get a credit card and put [THE COMPANY I WORK FOR] as the secondary responsible party… meaning that if [THEY DO NOT] pay the bill, [THE COMPANY I WORK FOR] does

Brenda:
OMG hahaha
so funny

JBot:
Apparently it is DISTURBINGLY easy to do

Brenda:
hahahaha hilarious

JBot:
I should make them cosigner on my mortgage

Brenda:
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

JBot:
Sign it with an X

Brenda:
HA!

JBot:
“So who is this [THE BIG BOSS]?”
“Oh, he’s a close personal friend”

Brenda:
hahaha

JBot:
I’d say “We’re like this”, but do nothing with my fingers

Brenda:
Hahahahaha

As I was Stumbling™ around the nets today, I happened upon The Letter Project.

The Letter Project is simple. You ask for a letter, I mail you a letter. That’s it.

I admit that I am considering it. One of my greatest thrills when opening my mailbox is finding an envelope with a handwritten address on it. No matter what the return address, I always open letters that have my name and address in someone’s scribble. I figure that there is at least a slight chance that it was intended for me personally. Heck, maybe it’s from someone that I actually know.

When I open these envelopes and there is, in fact, a letter, I read it. I don’t skim it, like I do email, but I actually sit down and read it. Communications have become so impersonal these days that you can’t help but feel honored that someone took the time to put pen to paper. It’s sadly becoming a lost art, this “writing”.

Every now and again I get a wild hair and decide to compose a missive of my own on paper, rather than keyboard, fully expecting that what I have to say is worth saying, and even more shocking - worth writing. Usually it turns out to be fairly entertaining, although the final result seems much shorter than the novel that my hand swears it has written. My abundance of stunted muscles, used to typing rather than the ups and downs of a pen, makes it pretty difficult for me to write more than one letter in a sitting. My increasingly short attention span and rather fickle mind also make it impossible to write the same letter twice. This all proved difficult for writing anything of signifigance for this past holiday season. In fact, I only wrote one letter. I am quite behind.

I’m now quite tempted to send my little request to The Letter Project and ask for some genuine mail in my mailbox. I COULD finish all those letters that are due my few yearly pen pals but that requires alot more work.

I’m going to send my request and post my spoils here. It should prove as stimulating for you as a scratch and sniff would be over the internet, but maybe you’ll be inspired to request your very own piece of mail. I hope mine comes with some kind of drawing.

If you’re wondering about the author of The Letter Project, amongst other things:

He lives in Southern California and rarely sticks his tongue out at others.

buy more t-shirts. Even buy this t-shirt. 

I don’t love it so much for the design, as for the description.

Fresh out of gamma and filled with Ajaxy goodness, our buzzword-compliant Web 2.0 Tee tells the world you’re ready to be acquired by Google. Or if need be, by Yahoo. Or AOL, if it comes to that. Nothing says, “I might be a billionaire tomorrow (so come home with me tonight)” like this funky, twin-sleeved wonder. Did you lose your shirt during Web 1.0? Wear this one, and pretend you have a future!

Like they say, hide your shame and buy the shirt here.

By the way, ALA is a pretty swank site, regardless of whether you want to be wrapped in their garb.

I was reading some articles about user attention spans and this site came up as a good example of getting to the point on your homepage.

http://www.getmooh.com/

I’m setting it to call my job at 3:00pm to say that Brenda and I are being called to the principal’s office. The “Principal’s Office” being a bar downtown.