The phone is ringing right now and I'm not answering it. When I'm home by myself during the day, I rarely answer the phone. It's almost always telemarketers. If Jim or one of my friends wants to reach me, they just e-mail or ICQ me instead. Ha! Vindication! The caller hung up without leaving a message. Stupid telemarketers. If that is how you are forced to make your living, I feel sorry for you. If you call my house, and I actually pick up the phone, I won't be rude to you or play one of those "funny games" by asking you if I can call YOU at home. I will just say, "Sorry, not interested" and hang up. But you would think somewhere in these labarynthine databases, it would be reflected that I have NEVER, EVER bought anything from a telemarketer, and they would stop calling me. I think I'm going to start taking down the names of the companies and then writing them letters saying that I will never use their services, and I will tell everyone I know not to use their services, until they stop using telemarketing. Eh, I probably won't do that. But I got all fired up there.
Jim and I went back to the Parade of Homes on Friday night. Yeah, the houses were still gorgeous. No, we still can't afford them. Molly and her husband are trying to buy a house right now. I'm kind of living vicariously through her. They are putting in an offer this week, so everyone send them good house buying vibes so they get it.
Wing Chun pointed out to me that not only do Jim and Kim rhyme, but Mary and Terry do as well. I think we will have to start only being friends with other couples if their names rhyme. We'll form a secret society. Do you qualify?
Even weirder is that a huge amount of my friends are left-handed. Jim and I both are. Mary and Terry both are. Stimp is. Rand is. The list goes on and on. One time in college, we all went out to Denny's and we all went for the lefty seat. For you righties, this is the seat at the far left corner of the table, that all left handers must sit in to avoid bumping elbows with the righy handed diner next to them. After a bit of, "No, I have to sit here because I'm left-handed", we realized that every single one of us was a lefty. There were probably 9 or 10 of us in the group. How weird!
I figured out who my hair disaster looks like, since I don't have a digital camera. I look like Kitty Bartholomew, from HGTV, except substitute bleached blond where she has gray, and regular blond where she has black. If you don't know what she looks like, here's a picture I ripped off from the HGTV website. So there you go. Until Wednesday, this is me.
We went over to Mary and Terry's Saturday night and decided to go get some ice cream. They told us there was a shop nearby, and it was a nice night, so we decided to walk. We get there, and it's closed. But, there was another one not so far away, so we continue to walk. Well, after leading us on the Bataan Death March (OK, it was probably a little over a mile, but I had some crappy sandals on and now I have blisters on the BOTTOMS of my feet), that one was closed too. Or it didn't have ice cream in the first place. So we ended up walking back to their house, getting in the car, and driving to Friendly's. I guess it turned out OK - hopefully all that walking helps to cancel out the ice cream I ate, or something. It also pointed out to me that I really need to get some better sandals.
USAir changed everyone's customer number "because the computer made them". Rest assured that whenever someone blames the computer, it's bad programming, bad design or bad user training. It's not the computers' fault.
Users tend to look right over banner ads on a page, even if it leads to information they are looking for. This is probably why spending on web advertising is down.
Why are television ads for web companies so much better than ads on the web? I think it's because advertising firms have had 40 years to perfect the art of the television ad, and only 3 or 4 years to perfect the art of the web ad. Give it time.
Stephen King got hit by a van and is in the hospital. Mary and I were discussing who has brought more entertainment to your life: Stephen King or Steven Spielberg?
Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be in the next Godfather film. Does this mean he will be too busy to be in Episode II? A lot of people hope so.