The Buy a New Fucking Computer

You are still doing technical support for eight hours a day. And you have a lot of advice to give to the customers about their issues.

At work, you give them the advice you're paid to give them...but there is more advice to give.

You'd like to start with:

BUY A NEW FUCKING COMPUTER!

If you're using a version of Windows older than XP, then buy a new computer.

If you only have a telephone modem, and you don't have an ethernet port, then buy a new computer.

The Good Things About Your Job

This morning, you had the DVR set to go off at 8AM so that you could wake up to Home Alone 2 on Starz Kids and Family, which is a channel that you didn't even know existed until last night when you set the DVR to "wake up".

The DVR is a perk of your shitty job. You get like 1000 channels, which includes all the premium movie channels (even obscure ones like Starz Kids and Family), and all the Spanish language channels, and all the digital music channels, and all the HD channels, and etc. You also get 6 M of free high-speed internet access. You could also have the home phone service they offer, but it's an inferior product you wouldn't sell to your enemies, so you didn't install it.

There are only two good things about your shitty job. The free services, and the view from your desk.




Here's what the view looked like yesterday:

That's the Robert Street Bridge over the Mississippi River with the St. Paul skyline behind it.

Can you see the tugboat?

Nice, huh? Yeah, otherwise your job sucks ass.

There will be much more about how your job sucks ass in the days to come.

The Sunny Attic

This is Sweetie and you in the sunny attic.

The sunny attic is where you live.

The sunny attic is where most of these posts are/will be created.

The sunny attic is not always sunny, but, when it is sunny, it's a great place to be, especially when Sweetie is there with you.

Sweetie lives one floor below you in Sweetie's room. You both have the same view of Minneapolis, except your view is one floor higher.

The Road Rage

There was an incident yesterday, so today you've decided to take 35W to Diamond Lake Road in order to get to the gym. It's faster that way, so you should probably go that way anyway.

You usually take Lyndale. It's usually scenic and relaxing. You like to look at the houses that line the street, especially down toward Tangletown where they become beautiful two-story structures with ornate windows and brick chimneys and balconies and peaked roofs and carriage houses and etc.

However, Lyndale Avenue has an issue. Most of the time it's a two-way thoroughfare that has one lane going in each direction with plenty of room for parking on each side. Seems simple, right?

Well, here's the complication: Twice a day, during the morning and evening rush hours, Lyndale Ave becomes a no-parking zone, and the parking lanes are then used for the overflowing traffic.

Ordinarily, the fact that any street in Minneapolis becoming a four-lane rush-hour raceway for douchebags is not an issue for you, because you do not drive during rush hour. You've scheduled your entire existence in the Twin Cities around that premise.

But here's where the complication gets even hairier: During the non-rush-hour times, douchebags seem to think that they can use the parking lane as a passing lane. This turns your nice, relaxing drive to the gym each day into a Mad Max movie.

The street is always peppered with parked vehicles, so douchebags are constantly weaving in and out and cutting other drivers off, which is stupid, because the douchebags who do the most weaving and speeding are always caught at the next stoplight just like the drivers who choose not to speed and weave.

So, being the douchebag you are...yesterday, you got caught up in the douchebaggery of it all:

A douchebag in a green Ford Taurus careened up behind you and then attempted to pass. In response, you stepped on the gas. You thought this was pretty funny until you got to the next red stoplight where you had to sidle up next to a gargantuan purple Chevy Suburban (why do so many douchebags in Minnesota drive purple vehicles? Is it a Viking thing?) in order to keep the green Taurus from doing the same. We'll the douchebag in the purple Suburban took that as a challenge and gunned it when the light turned green.

Now, here's the thing: You have a fast car: Nissan SE-R Spec-V. It doesn't look like a sports car, and that's part of the reason you love it, because it's so unassuming, but it has a 175-horse-power 2.5-liter engine, with a six-speed manual transmission, which goes 0 to 60 in 7 seconds.

Anyway, you passed the Suburban like it was sitting still. This, I guess, emasculated the driver of the heavy-ass, gas-guzzling, Detroit-steel monstrosity, so at the next stoplight, he proceeded to not only pull out in front of you at the next intersection to block you in, but then he jumped out of the Suburban and started yelling profanities and flipping you off at the same time.

This would have been extremely hilarious except that he was standing in the middle of a busy intersection blocking traffic and putting himself in a serious mortal-idiot-squashed-by-automobile predicament, and you really don't like seeing people die right in front of you.

Also, although you doubt he recognized you, you know this particular douchebag. He works at the NAPA store down the street, and you occasionally buy auto parts there.

So, the outlook on your karma portfolio is way the fuck down this quarter, and you're certain the cosmos will cash it in any time now. Uhg.

And now you take the interstate, where drivers expect to be passed, and cut off, and raced, and etc. And it's not scenic AT ALL.

The Pizza Luce

Where to start...where to start?

As always, today sucked ass.

You drove by the house after work in case Sweetie was still awake. Her light was on so you parked and went into the house. When you got to her room, you found her tangled in the comforter with the TV and lights still on, but she was dead asleep.

When you flipped off the light, she immediately bolted upright in bed. You said, "It's OK, Sweetie. It's just me. You fell asleep with the light on, and I turned it off." Then you kissed her and told her to go back to sleep.

She won't remember any of that tomorrow.

So, you decided to go out for a slice at Pizza Luce, because it's close and they have half-price pints of beer after 10 PM.

You walked in to find the waitress who has the pink hair and the nice butt (in blue Dickies pants) sweeping and mopping the dining room floor. She had all the chairs up on the tables, and you immediately feel guilty, so you ask the cute girl (with the nose ring) at the counter if it's still OK to sit. "Oh, yeah," she says. So, you wait next to the "please wait to be seated" sign.

The waitress with the nice Dickies butt asks if it's just you. "Yes," you say, "just me."

"Are you ordering from the menu or slices," she asks.

"Slices," you say.

She tells you to order at the counter.

So you go back to the cute girl at the counter, and she gets you one meat slice and one veggie slice, and a pint of Amstel light.

She checks your ID, and you hand her your bank card, which is...uhg...declined. For what reason...who knows, because there's money in the bank. Not a whole lot of money, mind you, but enough to cover pizza and beer.

You say to her, "Ouch. Well, that's never good." And you hand her another card, which immediately goes through, but it's still an awkward moment, and you wonder why, because you have a girlfriend, and you certainly don't need another one of those. One woman at a time is more than enough. So, what the fuck do you care what this other woman thinks? This woman you don't even know. A complete stranger.

You tip her two dollars.

Ego. It's a shitty thing. If you could hack it off yourself with a butcher knife like a sixth toe or a second head...you would.

And with the above thought in mind, you eat your pizza, and drink your beer, and order another beer, and drink that beer.

The Fat People At Work

There are so many fat people working for your employer. It's a good thing they aren't paying by the pound.

You walked past two of them talking outside the door of a conference room today and overheard this:

Fatty #1 said, "...and in the middle is a meatball. Oh, it's just great."

Fatty #2 replied, "Just unexpected, huh? Like cheese? That does sound good."

The fatties at work waddle down the hallways breathing heavily. They sit in the break room eating microwave Lean Cuisine meals and drinking Diet Rite, but you know they go right home and cram Big Macs and Ding Dongs into their gaping maws, and wash it down with Yoo Hoo and Kahlua.

You think, is it just here, or do this many fat people work in every office building?

The Dress Code

You didn't shower today. You threw on a pair of unwashed jeans, an unwashed sweatshirt, and a North Stars baseball cap. And that's what you wore to work. You smell...and you smelled for eight hours at work, because fuck work.

At one point, while peeing, while your zipper was open, you got a good whiff of the odor coming off your crotch area, and it was quite pungent. It made your eyes water just a little. Your coworkers kept their distance.

Awesome.

Tomorrow, the corporate dress code that everyone pretends to conform with kicks in again for four days. Instead of jeans and untucked collared shirts, it'll be untucked collared shirts and varying shades of wrinkled khakis or painter pants.

What a joke.

You’ll be going with the Dickies work pants, and faded Gap polo.