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My Wasted Life - March 5th, 2006:

Been busy... that’s what. Well, I know the first thing you’re gonna ask is why it’s taken me so long to get round to adding another chapter in the saga that is my wasted life.

Of course, the fact that you can now actually read this will tell you a little bit about some of the things that have been going on. The monkeys in the website design department got a sound thrashing for their completely shoddy work in the attempt to make the website more up to date and improved in the looks department. Now, I’ve stepped in and made a semi-decent fist of things and got a design that while not the finished article in terms of layout and/or color scheme – at least can be read when people click on it or happen to wander by.

Motorweek is coming...

So… whassup as we prepare for Motorweek. Motorweek? Yes, Motorweek. See… the mighty Motorhead are currently in LA getting together their new album and so have decided to play a few little gigs around town. Cool beans… there’s a show this Tuesday at the HoB (House of Blues) in West Hollywood… then on Friday they play the HoB in Anaheim and finally end the week with a visit to the HoB in Las Vegas. Not sure if I’m gonna make the trip to LV… but it’s so tempting… I just might swing the mighty mustang eastward-ho after the Anaheim show… I’ll let you know.

You know… there’s nothing quite as frustrating as when things don’t work quite the way they should. Take internet banking.

Running an empire of monkeys is no easy task but we thought we’d make it a little easier by doing all the business banking online – sounds like a plan… and a fairly simple one at that.
So… the system works well... for a time at least.

Then we get towards the end of 2005 and it becomes time to sit down and do the dreaded accounts – much like I’m supposed to be doing right now instead of chatting away here. But whatever… so I try to long onto the online banking system and… dan-da-daa!!! I forgot me online password or somesuch. Anyway… the browser ain’t having none of it and tells me in no uncertain terms that me log-in information ain’t cool or something and I’m not coming in. Fortunately, said online banking actually has an option to reset your passcode… which sounds like a good idea. So… I enter the information they ask for… type in a new passcode and… voila… it ain’t letting me in. Apparently the information doesn’t match the information they hold for me.
WTF!!!!

So… I try again… entering exactly the information they ask for… type in a new passcode… and hey bingo… fuck!!!!
I try once more just in case I’m mistyping the number or something… Blammo!!!!
Now I’m incorrectly logged on three times and the system in all its secure wisdom locks down the account... ain’t no one getting in or out of here baby. You little fucker!!! That’s my account… I’m typing in my information exactly as it tells me to do… how fucking dare you deny me... I am god of my world… I demand entry… of course… talking to a computer is like talking to a brick wall… or at the very best, a brick window.
Shit, this is gonna take human interface.

I go down to the branch that serves as the headquarters of my business banking and sit down with some Johnny-come-bank-person who is not the small business advisor who set up my accounts and who at least remembered me – because, hey.. who wouldn’t remember a company called monkey farm… am I right?

Point being… we sit down… go thru the problem… now call me crazy… but this bank – who for reasons of potential embarrassment will remain nameless – has a peculiar policy regarding customer service. You see, if you or I or any other humble customer – who pays their wages and should run their world – need to talk to a human-being about our accounts, we get an 800 number and the need to earmark 5 hours to wait on hold until someone in deepest downtown Poughkeepsie deigns to take our call. But for reasons I can never fathom… if someone from the branch needs to talk to the boys and girls behind the scenes… they have this secret passcode they can enter and a direct line to the bowels of HQ where they can get any problem solved in mere nano-seconds. Only it’s not like that… that’s just a dream in my head. Bank staff has to call the same godless 800 number as I do. So now I have to sit there like a lemon for the best part of an hour while they wait on hold and then finally get thru to someone so they can explain exactly what I’ve already explained… Anyway… the upshot is… after a huge expenditure of my time… we get it sorted… I confirm the online ID… get a temp passcode so we can log-in and then reset with a brand-spanking-new passcode. Sorted.

Of course… history, as those of you who pay attention to such things know, has a habit of repeating itself. A very, very bad habit.

It’s not March, 2006… it’s not only company accounts season… it’s personal accounts season (we’ll deal with this whole ‘season’ issue in a little while…) So, I log-in to the online banking system… but the problem with changing passcodes is that as an old geezer with a brain rapidly turning to mush… I forget the new one… oh shite! But fortunately, said online banking actually has an option to reset your passcode… which sounds like a good idea. So… I enter the information they ask for… type in a new passcode and… voila… it ain’t letting me in. Apparently the information doesn’t match the information they hold for me. WTF!!!!
I get the feeling we’ve been here before.
So I try again… try again… fuck it… the system has locked me out completely.

Once again, forced into contact with the carbon-based life-forms that populate the world outside of the interweb… it’s not nice, but sometimes it has to be done. Which means…? I take time off from wasting my life… drive down to the bank… sit down with someone new… describe the problem, it’s second occurrence and my complete frustration with things… and so… we have to dial the same goddamn 800 number that I could have dialed from home… No joke… we’re on hold for 40 minutes!!!! That’s the bank employee trying to do their job and talk to the bods in central office… 40 fucking minutes… I eventually get out of the bank after more than 1½ hours!!!!!
Yes... we got it sorted, yes I have access to my online banking world again… but seriously people… how fucking inefficient is this goddamn system?

And to make matters worse… here’s the real kicker to the story… you remember that bit about the resetting your passcode online by entering certain information? Well… the one thing we do find out during our 90+ minutes interface… the bank actually holds an additional secret number for me on the system and it was that number that I was suppose to enter in order to be able to reset my passcode… Of course… in their infinite wisdom the gurus at online banking head quarters don’t tell you this when you try to reset your passcode and in all the time I’ve been banking with them, they’ve never actually told me that this additional number existed… or indeed what it actually is.
It makes you wonder how any of these institutions manage to stay in business.

Seasons in the Abyss

Oh yeah… seasons… you might have noticed as I have that time itself is speeding up… it’s a mere blink of an eye these days and your youth is a thing of distant memory… I mean… it’s already March… a quarter of this year almost disappeared into the ether of the past… Which would lead one to believe that it’s all the more important to kick back… pull out a bottle of your favorite and just fucking chillax… Am I right?
Well I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that is seeking to stretch certain days into much longer episodes and thereby blur the distinction between parts of the year so that it all becomes just one long segue from Xmas to... err... Xmas with no discernable gaps in between.
My evidence?

Well, I was in New York the other week and noticed something disturbing on the telly around the commercial breaks.
It was Presidents’ Day... a day to get some time off work if you’re a President I guess… although why the Whitehouse’s current incumbent needs a special day to shirk off is anyone’s guess. There were several car commercials on display all of which displayed the same disturbing trend… as if some higher power were behind the scenes pulling the strings… do the Illuminati really have nothing better to do? And here’s what they were doing… it was no longer a Presidents’ Day sale… it was President’s Week… or Month… or most disturbingly of all… Presidents’ Season. (was that what Cheney was really hunting out there in Tejas?)
Now I could have passed all of this off as some kind of aberrant car sales tactic… but when I returned home (via an 8 hours plane ride!!!!) but then those kindly cut-out gentlemen who expound the ‘brilliant’ delights of a Guinness announced that we were expecting the imminent arrival of St Patrick’s Season.

WTF!!!

You mean one day is no longer sufficient to drink yourself into a coma and turn the rivers green with the slurry of a thousand vomiting binges? It’s all becoming clear… the seeds for this were laid several years ago and we were all caught napping… That commercial where the Guinness boys bedecked in their green pajamas come rushing downstairs to see what St. Paddy has left them beneath the St Patrick’s’ tree (see, the whole thing was a pastiche of Xmas… which has long extended itself from a day into a season…) It’s so fiendish as to be brilliant! We accepted that Xmas could grow from a single day into a season because we love it so and cling to such wonderful childhood memories of joy and excitement that we were only too willing to blindly accept the expansion of a day in memoriam to a bloke crucified on a big ‘x’!!!! (that’s why the flag is a diagonal red cross for those of you unaware)
Now a year goes from Xmas… thru Presidents’ Season to St Patrick’s’ Season… segues nicely into Easter… the ‘Summer’ and then we have Halloween which has been hogging the entirety of October for more years than I care to remember… Thanksgiving which despite only being allocated one Thursday in late November takes us all the way from Halloween thru Xmas which now starts on November 30th – if not earlier…

Christ on a bike!!!!!! I need some time off in between to recover!!!!!!!!!!

Driving Miss Daisy

In the ongoing world of interesting things I’ve seen while driving around LA… t’other evening whilst on the way back from deepest El Segundo… happened upon the red flashing lights of Johnny Law up ahead… I naturally presumed it was just the usual fender bender or ticket hand out… but as I drew closer I could see a whitish cloud in the air (nothing unusual about that down El Segundo way, you might say) true ‘nuff… but it turned out to be a geezer… not an old geezer like me… but more of a geyser as a fire hydrant had come off and there was a fifty foot plume of water shooting into the air.
Quite spectacular.

80 Blades

Remember I mentioned about the new multi-blade shaving thing a couple of posts ago? It was part of the superbowl commercial thing… Well… sucka that I be… I bought one and tried it out. You know what?
Totally shite… complete waste of money…

Maybe it was my own fault but like I said… I hate shaving… so my face usually either as smooth as a baby’s ass or I look like a horribly bald version of grizzly adams…

Anyways… I tried this supposedly cutting edge technology and while my facial hair was a little long it shouldn’t have been beyond the wit of man to shave it off… it certainly isn’t beyond the capabilities of the Mach 3 Turbo!!!! But new razor?

See, the problem is… with five fucking blades... they’re so close together that even the measly-est of hairs just gets stuck between the blades... so a couple of strokes of the face and the razor is completely clogged up and refuses to shave any more… and the whiskers are jammed in so damn tight that you can’t even shake or wash them out.
A big opposable thumbs down on that one.

Fortunately me Swiffer duster works like a charm… dust-bunnies beware!!!