Category: Uncategorized

So I installed a SSL for the first time in the almost 21 year history of this whatever this is, mainly to verify myself on Mastodon and see if how this ActivityPub thing works.

During the filming of The Abyss, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio said some disparaging things about my hometown, Gaffney, SC in Rolling Stone magazine.

This YouTube video tells the story of the making of the movie at the partially-constructed-but-never-used Cherokee Nuclear Power plant. It was as the video describes, a “Sh*t Show.” I’ve held a grudge for a long time about what she said, I mean, it’s OK for me to think that but it’s not OK for others to feel the same.

We got a new phone system last year in my office. With that change, we all got direct extensions, and to account for future expansion, we got more numbers than we actually use. Because of this, from time to time we’ll get wrong number voicemail messages on extensions that don’t really exist. From time to time, I clean them off.

The most recent time I did this, I found a gem. It’s from February of this year, and it’s absolutely remarkable. I’ve listened to this about a thousand times, and each time I hear something new. There’s so much human drama here, such a compelling story.

Our cast of characters:

• Lisa, the caller. (She’s traveling, but will be home tomorrow. She’s Dewey’s alleged enabler, though from a remote location. Says she doesn’t really care, but really does. She’s sober much of the time. Almost the big sister.)
• Christine or Scott, the intended caller.
• Dewey. Our protagonist. (Runner up of $1000 dollar phone bills. Careless. Blames someone else for all of her troubles. Gets Lisa to do her dirty work.)
• Tess. (Dewey’s friend, who put the wine bottles in the car.)
• The idiot cop. (Pulled Dewey and Tess over, charged them with a DWI.)
• Grandma Edie. (She lost her house.)

I haven’t had any success tracking down any of these people, but I do know that the initial call from Christine or Scott couldn’t have originated from our office, because the outgoing caller ID from any extension is the main line. What I can’t figure out is how Lisa managed to misdial the number given that she was responding to a caller ID.

Crazy.

But this bears announcement:

So my girlfriend Amanda asked a few months ago that I paint for her something similar to the paintings that I’ve done that hang in my condo. For her painting, I chose a picture of a bridge that I had taken last May when I traveled with her family to Bellville, Ohio. (The place where her parents grew up.)

Now, we’ve been dating for quite a while now, so I thought that I would use this opportunity to include a hidden message that I’ve been meaning to ask now for a few months. I hid the message in the painting using a yellow highlighter. It’s invisible to look at, but when exposed to a black light, the message glows like this:

So several Fridays ago we had planned a weekend getaway to visit friends outside of Atlanta. Amanda took a half day off from work that day to get ready, I left work early to set the stage. I had to get her out of her house somehow, so I called her and asked her to go run an errand for me, which she happily obliged. I went into her house, put the painting on her mantle. I replaced the lamps in the sconces that are on either side of the mantle with black light bulbs.

She came home surprised to see me there, but amazed to see her new painting on the wall. I told her that there was more to it than just the painting. We turned on the light, and we started to decipher the message:

Because of the light in the room, I had to reveal the message one word at a time. (It’s more dramatic that way.) We started reading it… she stopped me when we got through “Amanda, will you…” and said, “WILL I WHAT?!?!.” (Needless to say, she was surprised.) I told her we should just keep reading…

We got to the end of the message, I got down on my knees and repeated the question. She said yes!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h4MFHUfVdo]

I early voted on Saturday at the Green Hills Library, and as I was leaving a man approached me. He looked out of place, like he was campaigning for some Green Party candidate. My initial response was to say, “I’ve already voted, sir.” Turns out he was a reporter for Slate.com, asking folks about their vote in the US Senate race. I explained my contrarian ways, he said that I was the “perfect Slate.com reader.” Here’s how I was quoted:

On the other hand, Tim Morgan, a 30-year-old architect, says he wants the Democrats to take over the Senate. Even though “Ford is depending on me to vote for him,” Morgan says, he can’t pull the trigger–he thinks Ford’s family history is shady, and he finds him a little too packaged. He voted for Corker.

Yes, I know that’s a passive aggressive way to vote. My problem with Ford is that you don’t get elected to Congress at 26 without some sort of special circumstances in place, and the current shenanigans in the 9th district House Race show that those special circumstances are still in play. Of course, Corker was the only Republican that I would have vote for, so at least from my perspective the Republicans made the correct choice. I still harbor a lot of resentment for Ed Bryant from the Clinton Impeachment, though I’m sure he’s a good guy. Coker’s a good guy, too, though it is hard for an architect to vote for a contractor. (And I actually voted for two contractors named Bob.) Chattanooga was already a great place to be before he was mayor, but the biggest reason for me to vote for him was his role in founding Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, a non-profit finance organization that provides low interest loans to promote home ownership in Chattanooga. I worked with this group in college, they are good folks.

For the record, I also voted for the Incumbent, the blogger, I skipped the House race (she’s unopposed), No, and No. I voted for the procedural Metro amendments, but against the property tax referendum.

Sort of related, but on my mind: One thing that bothers me about the new electronic voting machines is that when you enter the precinct you give your voter registration card to a person sitting at a computer. He then looks you up online, and prints out a paper that you sign, giving a paper record that you’ve voted in this election. Then you go over to the electronic, proprietary voting machine, choose your selections, and hit confirm. So there’s a paper record that you’ve voted, but not any paper record of who you voted for. I’m all in favor of the electronic voting to speed election returns, but without some sort physical auditable record of how the votes were cast, how can we know that the results are correct?

I muttered this to the guy at the computer, but he just ignored me.