Latest C.S.I. stretches truth like Laffy Taffy...

I love the show C.S.I. Ever since the first season when we were introduced to our favorite characters like bug-loving Grissom, ex-stripper Willows, man-hater Sara, gambler Warrick and womanizer Stokes, I liked the show for it's mini-mysteries that only science and forensics can solve. Oh sure, the lighting was brighter back then and their equipment budget now makes room for huge full-wall HDTV screens, but it's still a pretty good show.

Bill and I wrote a piece a while ago called, "You can learn a lot from life from watching C.S.I." in which we detailed things like cheating on your lover will increase your chances of dying, being into freaky fetishes increases that chance and others.

We also included this line, "Apparently, it's possible take a fuzzy, grainy surveillance video and then enlarge certain sections with not only no loss of clarity, but a huge increase of clarity!"

This episode, they take that assumption to new and ridiculous heights.

The episode, "Kiss Kiss, Bye Bye" involves a murder at the party thrown by a wealthy ex-showgirl played by Faye Dunaway. By the way, Faye looks like she's had some work done. From the chipmunk like cheeks when she smiled, to the insanely big and bright choppers in her mouth, to the big, fake breast implants, it was a little hard to see when the old Faye started and the new Faye ended. This was not the Faye Dunaway that I remember from Barfly. This just wasn't a make-up job.

That aside, Faye did a great job portraying a Vegas socialite that lived to be beautiful and had just published her tell all book.

The night begins with a dead body discovered in her bedroom. They find Faye's character in the bedroom vault scared to death that she was going to be shot.

Through their investigation, the team examines the security camera footage. One camera's footage show the murder victim being dropped off by a car near the garage. They of course bring a close-up on the license plate and put it in the state database. They find a match. That is not so unbelievable.

The victim is then handed a slip of paper. The team blows it up enough to not only see the small printing on what looks to be an airplane flight ticket, but they pull the bar code from the ticket and decode that as well! This in turn, tells them that the victim was going to fly somewhere that night.

Now it's one thing to take grainy security footage and get crystal clear face images and license plates, but it's another thing to be able to read the bar code on a plane ticket that someone was holding!

Even my wife had to blurt out, "Oh come on! Do you know how pixelized that would be!"

She ought to know. At her job, she had to capture some stills from television footage that was of someone with their head to their waist in the frame. Even those looked really pixelated!

I swear that Hollywood just can't help themselves. Be it from the political lectures you hear 38 minutes after the hour on Boston Legal or the stretching of science on C.S.I.

That reminds me.

In early episodes of C.S.I., they relied on a lot of pretty obvious science to find out who the killer was. They use liminol to turn blood stains blue in almost every episode. Likewise, they used to use GSR tests, gun shot residue, to rule out or implicate suspects as people who may or may not have pulled the trigger.

In this past episode, there are multiple suspects to this murder. Not one of them were tested for gun shot residue! And just when they still had no suspects and were baffled, they then decide to test the socialite's closes for GSR! Of course, the clothes are missing from the huge closet of party dresses, but they do find the ring she was wearing that night. That does have GSR.

I swear this team makes is harder on themselves. From examining crime scenes with flashlights instead of turning on the lights to not using the GSR test anymore, the CSI team isn't getting any pity from me when they complain.

The first time I got fired...

I'd like to think that I was a valuable asset to a lot of companies that I worked for over the years. Oh sure, I can sometimes blow my lid and can easily be distracted by the banter of conversation, which some people (namely managers) don't like, but all in all, I'm a pretty good, smart worker.

That was lost on my boss at my second job.

Like my brothers before me, I worked at a place called the Captain's Table. This was my first job. I worked as a busboy, dishwasher and cook before finally leaving the place. I had gotten my second job through my older brother, Paul. They needed someone to help out and I fit the bill.

It wasn't a very hard job at first. The place I worked at was a steak restaurant called David's Steakhouse. Paul had a friend that we can call Ralph. Ralph had a wife named Sheri. Now Ralph and Sheri bought David's Steakhouse from the original owners. It was stuck in the middle of a nothing town outside of my hometown, but it had a reputation for serving pretty good food, so it thrived on out of town business.

My job was pretty simple. The cooler with all of the steaks was inconveniently on the other side of the kitchen door. On one side was the cooler and on the other side was the chef's area. My job was the take the orders as the waitresses placed them on the order rack, go into the cooler, select all of the appropriate steaks, take them back to the chef's area and give them the order and the steaks. It was pretty easy work. There may have been some food prep work and table busing that went along with it, but it wasn't that bad.

It was easy and I was pretty good at it. I mean, how hard can it be? You only have so many steaks to choose from and the order didn't pile up that hard. As long as the cooks were busy, you were fine.

Where things started to go wrong was my interactions with the other staff. Being a teenager and me, I probably thought I knew everything. That attitude probably didn't go over well with some people.

One of them was the bar manager. On the other side of the restaurant, they had a lounge where people could drink. It was generally not very busy, but Ralph had a lady run it and she, it seemed, had complete control over every aspect of the bar. She even was allowed to set her own rules for how many pops you could have. If she was working and you were thirsty, she allowed you to have only two glasses of pop from the bar. Now I didn't know this at first and on one particularly busy night, I came in after my second glass of pop, which by the way were long and skinny glasses so it's not as if they were breaking the bar's bank, and I asked for another glass of pop.

She shot me a glare and yelled, "I told you kid that you only get two glasses of pop! That's it!"

I was a flabbergasted. I'm not exactly one to take inane rules lying down. When someone tells me something that I find stupid, I have to ask the reason why. So I did.

"Why?" I had the nerve to ask.

She responded with "That's my rule!"

"Well, I didn't know!" I retorted.

"Well now you know!" she snapped back.

I decided to put this policy to the test. I didn't initially set out to do this, but I liked drinking my Cokes. I noticed that on the days that she didn't work, which was about once a week, I whoever was running the bar would give more than two fountain Cokes with no problem, no questions asked. I then figured that if she gives out two free ones, that I would just buy another Coke if I wanted one with my meal after my shift.

The bartender was back one night and I had already had my two Cokes. I pulled out my wallet and with money in hand I asked for a Coke. She flipped out.

"I told you that you only get two pops a night!" she said red in the face.

I was flabbergasted. Here I was, trying to pay for another Coke and she was turning me down?

"I'm paying for this!" I yelled incredulously, or with disbelief for those who don't like big words.

She said that she didn't care and that if I kept asking, she would talk to Ralph about it.

I couldn't believe it. It's not as if I was trying to bilk David's out of money by overusing the Coke gun behind the bar. Far from it. I was trying to pay for one!

My brother, Paul, told me to not worry about it, but if she was told to start shelling out the Cokes, I don't remember. I do remember having to drink water or bring my own in a little cooler for after I got off work.

If Ralph was not satisfied with my work, I really didn't get a warning. I must have been doing something right because I asked for more hours and I got them. I helped carve the prime rib during the Sunday lunch buffet, helped with prep work and even washed dishes. I was multi-talented (being sarcastic here).

Right about the time I started washing dishes for David's is when things started to go wrong.

Maybe it was my teenager attitude. Maybe it was because I over slept one morning. Maybe it was because I asked Ralph if he minded if I brought in a homework book to read while I was waiting for the dish machine to finish it's cycle.

His response: "I'm not paying you to do homework."

Fair enough. I guess he paid me to lean against the dish machine staring at the cook leaning against the prep table because when you had everything done and you had an hour left before the restaurant closed, that's really all there was left to do. Occasionally, when management had left, I would sneak in my boring homework book from English and read it while washing dished. Like I said, multi-talented...

Maybe it was because I came in one week to pick up my check and I demanded to know why my check was exactly the same as the week before. Surely, I thought, this was a mistake. What are the odds.

I went to Sheri to ask her why and she seemed a little irritated when it wasn't an error, I had just happened to work the exact amount of hours for that two-week period that I had the paycheck period before. Since they didn't use a punch clock and you wrote in when you came and left, everything was rounded up or down to the nearest 15 minutes. It was a simple mistake, I guess.

Maybe it was my increasing attitude towards the waitresses. I thought was had a pretty good relationship. They seemed to like me, but waitresses are pretty temperamental. They take shit from the customers for hours on end, the last thing they want to take shit from is a teenage dishwasher. In retrospect, I should have seen this rift coming when I snapped a few times after I thought I had gotten every dish from every waitress before breaking my machine down for the night. I was usually when I was almost done when one would rush up with a tub of dishes saying, "Sorry! Here are some more dishes!" I would groan and put the machine to together. Maybe it was the groaning. Maybe it was me slamming the machine back together. Maybe it was me slamming the dishes into machine after slamming the said machine back together. Who knows?

Maybe it was those above reasons, but I have a feeling it was because of that fateful day in the kitchen with Sheri.

Sheri was the boss's wife and as such, she had an attitude. I've worked at a few jobs where someone's wife works either in a position of power or as another worker. I don't think I've ever encountered one that didn't act like they owned the place because they were attached to the man. Sure, in this case, she did technically own the place, but that not the point! Sheri already didn't really like me because of my daring to challenge that my hours were wrong, so this last incident was the straw that broke that camel's back (not saying she was fat, which I don't recall).

Whenever I would wash dishes, people would come by me all night long to go outside to smoke. That was no problem as I understand that they are the slaves to their masters and must satisfy that fix. Sheri, on the other hand, would walk to the back door and then not go outside to smoke. She would light up literally 3 feet behind my back and stand there and smoke her entire cigarette not saying a word most times.

I don't smoke and I hate being around people that smoke. I always have. Every time she did this, I would either suck it up or move to the other end of the dishwashing machine to unload the machine or I'd put away dishes that were clean. But a lot of times, I would be trying to load the machine and she'd be puffing away, looking out the stupid back screen door for minutes on end. Finally, one day, I kind of snapped.

One one long night that I was tired, she came back to smoke and look out the back screen door like always and I just asked, "Could you please not smoke around me?"

Now what's wrong with that? I asked her as nice as I could and I used the word "please" so it shouldn't have been a big deal right? Well, it was probably because I backed it up with this sentence.

"I reserve my right to free air."

That probably didn't go over too well... Probably not.

I remember her saying something about how that as soon as I own the place, then I can tell her what to do or SOMETHING like that.

I believe it was the next time that I came into work that I checked the schedule and found that I wasn't on the schedule. I was a little confused as I had never been fired before, so I asked someone why I wasn't on the schedule. They told me to talk to Ralph.

Ralph informed me that he was letting me go. While he didn't mention the smoking thing specifically, he did mention about how I was a little rude to some of the wait staff, so he was letting me go.

I was a little irritated to say the least. I didn't even get a warning to cool it. I was just told to leave. This really didn't hinder my wage earning at all because I was also working some shifts at my previous kitchen job and my old boss was happy to have me back for any shift that he wanted to schedule me for.

So that's my fired story. I would like to say that I concocted some elaborate revenge scheme to get even, but I didn't. I even took my prom date to eat there after the fact. What did happen was what I call karma kicking in. I won't exactly say what happened, but let me point out that the restaurant isn't even open anymore and it may have had something to do with the actions of Sheri, who may or may not have funneled over to remodeling their house instead of paying the business bills, leaving Ralph with a huge amount of debt when he finally caught wind of it. (Thanks to Paul for filling me in on the sordid details, most of which I've chosen not to go into)

My thoughts on Brokeback...

While I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain and probably will when it hits video, there's something about it that I can't get out of my head.

Years ago, there was a South Park episode where South Park, Colorado threw a film festival. Cartman makes a remark that indie films are lame because it's nothing but a bunch of gay cowboys sitting around eating pudding.

Bill gays it up at Brokeback Mountain...

By Bill The Evil Twin

I admit it. I was gay after seeing Brokeback Mountain over the weekend. While watching this movie about two cowboys falling in love with each other, a feeling stirred inside me. I was quite gay or how do you say, “happy” after seeing this movie.

Ok. That was rather lame, but I was glad I saw the movie, but not because it was a good movie. It was. No, I was glad I saw the movie because I finally got to see the quote that everybody and their pastor has been quoting. You know the one: the “I wish I could quit you.” quote. This quote was almost like waiting for King Kong to appear in King Kong which he doesn’t for well over an hour into the movie. I think this quote doesn’t appear in the movie until about an hour and forty five minutes into the movie.

It seems like every other Oscar season needs a quote that defines the movie that’s going to win or is nominted for something. You’ve heard them before: the “show me money.” or the “I’m king of the world!” Your co-workers are going to riding that Brokeback’s quote into the ground for months possibly all that year. And from a movie that might even be threatening to them with its man on man gay theme, but that won’t stop them from saying it.

One thing I am enjoying is reading some of the backlash for this movie whether in news stories protesting it or the occasional letter to the editor in the local papers. I read one letter condemning it because it showed boys an alternative lifestyle. I have heard that argument before: the “let’s not talk about homosexuality because it is showing people that this is showing kids that it’s okay to be gay.” Which it is. I think people like this miss the point and quite possibly haven’t seen the movie. The movie doesn’t show the two guys making out and go, “hell, that was easy. Let’s be gay and watch sunsets in each others arms for the rest of our lives.” I think what the movie is saying is that love knows no gender, being in love with the same sex is not easy and it’s really not easy if you’re a cowboy in the sixties. There still is a stigma to being gay. People don’t automatically think being gay is the easier lifestyle or to quote David Cross, “the most decadent”. People are still harassed for being gay and sometimes even killed for being gay. I don’t think heterosexuals have to worry about being killed for having a couple kids and driving a minivan.

My wife and I went to the movie on a matinee which is good and bad. The good: it’s cheaper to go. The bad: old people go and they can be way worse than teenagers. I was kind of surprised to see a packed theatre of old people seeing a movie about gay cowboys considering how conservative Nebraska can be. I was also really surprised when the gay sex scene happened because it was kind of graphic (for a mainstream movie). It was pretty tame compared to other sex scenes you may have seen, but what really surprised me was that no one walked out. I was waiting for someone to do so, but no one did. We ran into a couple of woman in the elevator of the parking garage and one of them thought the sex scenes were too graphic. She might as well have said: “I get uncomfortable watching two guys make out and then have butt sex.”

Another reason I was glad to see this movie: Anne Hathaway was topless in this movie. I have this thing you see. I like to see nude female celebrities. I don’t know why. I just do. I am so glad I don’t have to feel bad about seeing the Princess Diaries anymore. I hope she was 18 then, but she definitely is now.

All in all. I really did like the movie. It was not your typical cowboy movie or your typical love story. I thought the message was pretty clear. Gay love is often not easy because of the world we live in and love between two gay cowboys is even harder. I just wish I could quit people from quoting, “I wish I could quit you.”

I check my spam email...

I still have a yahoo email account that I use for ordering stuff online. Mostly, I use my gmail account because I've had nothing but bad luck with my yahoo account. I don't know what happened, but for a long time it was the only account that I had that didn't have spam (I had several accounts because I was a QA tester for an Internet startup company that has long since laid me off).

Then seemingly overnight, I was deluded by spam email. It was getting ridiculous so when I had the chance to use other email addresses, like through my ISP, I did with better results. Still, I always like to glance at the subject lines of the email addresses. You just have to know that a lot of them are sent by people with limited English capacity. That why funny... (joke on broken English)

For example:

Sender: QuickEbayGift
Subject: Bob EasyClaimYourEbayGiftCard consenting

Now the jumbled letters together don't bother me because I can see where this person was going. You could easily interpret it as "It's easy to claim your Ebay gift card." I'm not sure where the consenting comes in. Are they saying that they are consenting that I get an easy claim ebay gift card? The fact that Ebay only sells gift certificates and not gift card is besides the point. Who's consenting?


Sender: GiftCard depot
Subject: Re:Your $100.00 Malmart gift Bob flashing

Can you spot the several errors here? First of all, the Re: implies that I inquired about my Malmart gift, but we get to the second error, why would I call Wal-mart, Mallmart? You got to love the fact that they misspelled the name of the largest retailer in the United States. That would be like misspelling a Disney email as "Win a Dizney vacation free". The most confusing part? What's flashing that it needs the attention of the subject line??

Sender: QuickE-Insurance
Subject: Bob you are qualify for no physical exam candle

A no physical exam candle? Even if this was written grammatically correct, it would still read, "Bob, you have qualified for a no-physical exam candle." I'm not trying to be funny here. What in the hell does a physical have to do with a candle? It's not like you go into Yankee Candle and they say, "All right, that'll be $50. Please step aside for your physical." Clicking on it, it's spam for what appears to be life insurance, but while there is a mention of no physical exam, there is no mention of a candle. I'm just trying to guess what word the person was searching for. Candle... hmm... Handle? Candy?

Sender: Jack
Subject: Order Confirmation

Order Confirmation from a guy I've never heard of? That's a click through if I've ever seen it.

Sender: Alfredo Cooper
Subject: Meet for Assured Sex?

Would I ever meet for assured sex? If I was single? Sure. From Alfredo Cooper? Probably not.

Sender: RewardDepartment
Subject: , Get a Prime Mutual Prepaid Mastercard today

Being a former English teacher, I love the subject lines that start with a comma. A comma indicates that the speaker must pause. Who starts a sentence with a pause? It would go like, "Hey, Jack. How are you today?" Jack: ", fine. , and how are you?"

Sender: Clyde Peterson
Subject: Supply significant spicery to your aliveness?

Do I want to add spice to my state of being alive? Umm... Sure. The inside is priceless. At the bottom is the disclaimer.

The subject matter was transported to you because you inquired for to be imparted of knowledge of extends from either us or one of us cooperators, if your-person do not need to acquire extends from us once again do not hesitate reach us at this point.

"At this point" is hyperlinked. Curiously enough, none of the images show up and if you try to go to the website, which is http://girlie.thisisamust.com. Nothing comes up. I just got this email today! They are so inept that they can't even withstand the initial waiting period of spamming?

Did anyone notice this on the werewolf episode of CSI...?

Last Thursday, CSI had yet another genetic anomaly show. In the past, they've had people born with both organs, midgets, fat people and other physical/genetic quirks. This time, they had a show about incredibly hairy people that suffer from a genetic quirk that makes them incredibly hairy.

The episode featured a really hairy guy who gets murdered in his house by a silver bullet. It's only after investigating that they find out that the guy's girlfriend had been trying to call him all day. You also find out that he has a sister who is 5 times hairier than he is. She lives in a hidden room off of his living room. It's about a four foot by 7 foot room that has somehow evaded any suspicion of it's existence until now. That is, until the CSI team is doing some investigating and notice a hole with a light coming through the wall. This leads Katherine Willows (Marg Hellgenberger) to discover the sister of the "vic".

Which reminds me, do the police really refer to people that have been killed as the "vic"? It's only saving them one syllable and probably the same amount of time to say it. I'll have to look into that. In fact, I think I'm going to catalog their terms for future scrutiny.

As it is in any of the episodes about genetic abnormalities, people who come in contact with the "freaks" turn into extras from the Elephant Man. They mock the hairy people as people incapable of any normal life and of course, have to take the matter into their own hands by killing them.

This leads me to the loophole of this episode. While it is kind of interesting that someone would make a hidden bedroom for his sister, it is also interesting that someone very important didn't notice it's existence, even while standing in the room.

The victim's killer was the brother of the hairy guy's girlfriend, who was also supposed to be the victim's best friend. She had just accepted his marriage proposal and her family freaked. The brother enough to take the time to melt down some sterling silver, make a silver bullet and shoot the poor guy. Now that's some drastic final solutioning! The Nazis would have been proud.

The angry brother shows up at the hairy boyfriends house. His sister is out of her room and he tells her to go in. Before she can close the door, the brother bursts in and shoots the hairy boyfriend, who collapses inside the hidden room. The angry brother then walks over the hairy victim and mutters "Freak" and leaves, all the while completely oblivious that he had been standing in a hidden room that he had failed to notice the previous times he had been in the house and that the hairy victim's sister is behind the door seeing his reflection.

That would be the first thing that I would notice. I would think, "Freak! Wait a second? Why am I standing in the middle of an incredibly girly room that is behind what I thought was a solid wall? Oh, well..."

I guess you could argue heat of the moment, but he also fails to get rid of the evidence at his house as the police find his silver bullet mold intake with melted silver all over it. I mean, that's what I would do. I'd just leave evidence lying around when I'm still a police suspect.

Briefly saw the Bachelor in Paris...

Don't call me a woman yet. My wife and I were flipping through the channels last night when we happened upon the Bachelor in Paris, which was right before the 10 O'Clock news. We had just missed the rose ceremony, where the Bachelor gives out a rose to all the women that he asks to continue with him on the "journey".

I really don't know who any of the Bachelors were, but this guy is named Travis, and he's a doctor.

So when we came in, a lady named Allie, who is also a doctor started yelling at him demanding to know why she wasn't picked when she's a doctor like him and they have so much in common.

Earlier, she had apparently remarked that she was "ready to reproduce". He said that the reproduction comment scared him because he wasn't ready. I mean, what guy wouldn't be scared off by that comment 60 seconds into meeting a woman. I'm sure he wouldn't be against it, but I don't think he wants a ticking reproductive clock as a girlfriend either.

She cried and lamented that she's tried blind dates, dating services, etc and nothings worked because everyone is intimitated by her career. I think it's the baby thing that's scaring them off.

Most guys are basically scared boys when it comes to marriage and relationships. You need to ease them into the relationship. Unless he specifically says, "Hey, I'm Travis and I'm ready to reproduce," don't come back with that line yourself! Has that line ever worked?

So then they show a montage on what's going to happen this season on the Bachelor in Paris and the women in the clips talk about how great it was to do this in the most romantic city in the world. Maybe I'm a little jaded, but the Paris I saw when I visited didn't really qualify as "romantic".

I'm not sure if it was the smog-clogged streets with all of the diesel cars running around, the dogshit everywhere from people letting their dogs doing their business, the begging gypsies in the Metro stations, the expensive food, the snooty attitudes or the tons of tourists clogging to see all of the sights, but I seemed to have miss the whole most romantic city in the world thing.

I'm actually tempted to watch the rest of the series to see how many girls this guy can get with, how many women think that he's their soul mate, how many women think that their date was the most romantic date or how many times he can say that choosing among all of the hot women is the toughest thing that he's ever done. Yeah, I'm sure that medical school was no sweat. I'm tempted, but I probably won't. I have enough useless crap to watch...

Apparently it's not a good idea to do computer work on a carpet floor...

This Christmas, my wife announced that she had run out of ideas for gifts to get me, so she asked me if there was anything else that I wanted.

Now there were plenty of things that I wanted: a HDTV, a XBox 360, a new CD player for my car, a snow blower, Sirius satellite radio, a new computer, a recordable DVD player for the living room, etc, but she was thinking about the $50 range. The only thing I could think of was a new case for my computer.

I had originally bought a computer in 1997 when I was in graduate school, which I didn't finish because I managed to find a new career path that suited me. Eventually, the computer ended up getting slower and slower because the original configuration was:

Pentium 333 megahertz processor
8 meg video card
8 gig hard drive
128 megs of RAM

It suited its purpose for a while, but as all computers, it had to be upgraded. I upgraded to an Intel Celeron 1.7 Gig processor, 32 meg video card and 512 megs of RAM.

What I should have realized then and should have upgraded back then was the case. By the time I upgraded 3 years ago, the case's power supply was five-years-old. Plus, the case itself was small and not built for the ventilation required for today's computers.

You see my non-technical friends (if anyone actually reads this), computers need ventilation or they will burn up. Today's processors have fans strapped to them to keep them cool. Power supplies have their own fans. Even the video cards have fans strapped to them to keep them from melting down.

Today's computer cases are bigger than they need to be for ventilation purposes. They even have more open vent ports so that you can put nifty fans in them for more ventilation.

After the upgrade 3 years ago, my computer have perpetually acted like it's been stricken with malaria. One minute it'll feel cool to the touch and the next minute it's burning up. I hated leaving the computer on for fear that it would burn up while I wasn't home.

So that's what was on my mind when my wife asked me what I wanted. I wanted a new case for the computer that came with a new power supply.

She asked, "A computer case?" in that skeptical wife tone.

After quickly explaining the above reasoning, which she was probably zoning out, she said in an even more skeptical tone, "All right."

I convinced her that I wanted it done that day, so off we headed to DIT computers. I picked a nice black one that had easy remove sides. I couldn't wait to get it home to move my computer from one case to another. I had also bought a new video card with some money I had been hoarding, so I was even more anxious to try out some games that my computer had some trouble playing. I figured the new video card would help.

I opened the computer on my coffee table in the living room of my apartment and laid it down on its side on the carpet...

Now let me explain something...

I've tinkered with my computer quite a few times either cleaning it out or installing a new hardrive or a sound card that's gone bad and every time that I've done it, I would do it on the bar in my living room that had a nice hard stone tile floor.

This is an ideal location if you're in the house. You want a work area that has no carpet or anything that will cause static electricity. According to Webopedia, circuitry to on a computer component can be damaged by as little as 10 volts, but the human body can only perceive it when it's hit 1500 volts. They also suggest working on an anti-static mat.

I did not...

I had even been warned about this the first time I ever put in a new computer component. My sound was really bad when the computer first came because they were using a real crappy internal sound chip on the motherboard. I had the computer company send a sound card to fix the problem, but I didn't really know how to put one in. My friend from work, Kevin, showed me how to do it.

One of the first things that he told me to do was to make sure that I avoided static electricity. He suggested that if I was to work on my computer on carpet would be to touch something else prior to touching my computer components.

He cited one example in which a guy he was helping over the phone had his new RAM ready to install when he heard a "BZZT!" The guy had shocked the RAM, which was now dead.




I had heard about the dangers but much like I had never believed my parents when they told me that every time I turned the lights on and off that it cost a quarter or much in the way that conservatives dismiss the supposed dangers of global warming, I really didn't comprehend the severity of the problem.

So when I had my motherboard and other components laying on the carpet while I moved them from one case to another, it's a small miracle that I didn't fry everything.

I was trying to work on the floor undisturbed, but seeing as how my wife was at work and I had to watch my four-year-old daughter, Julia, it was hard to remain undisturbed. She was poking in and around the computer and even touching things at some points in the day. Several times, she jumped on my back while I was kneeling over the computer.

I felt the familiar "BZZZT!" of static electricity. And this happened several times.

I didn't think much about it, but I did when, after moving everything to the new box and then starting up the new computer box, the fans whirred, but nothing else happened. Nothing on the monitor. No familiar beep from the computer BIOS. Nothing.

I started to panic a little. I opened the box and reseeded everything on the motherboard. Nothing. I checked every power cable. Nothing. I tried the old video card. Nothing. I even tried running off the motherboard's video port. Nothing.

So I took it back to the computer store and had them run a computer diagnostic, which was going to take 5 to 7 business days before they even got to it.

Therefore, I had to suffer in guilt and panic for more than a week while I fretted about what could be wrong with the computer. I even sought help from a computer tech help forum that I frequent. At first I was a little vague in my details because I didn't think where I put the computer case together was relevant. Finally, when I disclosed the charges from my daughter and the putting the computer together on the carpet, I got this reply.

"LMAO! That motherboard is toast!!"

So in the end, it WAS the motherboard. I ended up getting a new motherboard/processor combination, which is really twisting my arm...

Postcards from Uncle Sam...

by Bill the Evil Twin

I was in the National Guard for six long years. Let me tell you, that was some of the longest six years in my life. Bob should know, he was there. We could not wait to get out. If I had to explain why we did not like “Going Guard”, it would practically fill a book. So from time to time, I am just going to write about it from time to time when the muse hits. I told myself I was going to write about this topic for a long time. Well, the muse finally hit and it hit this last weekend.

I went to the local Blockbuster and rented the movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin. “ I don’t need to tell you it was hi-larious and this in no way is a review of the movie, but what I am going to talk about is the post card that was stuck in the box that the movie came in. It was a postcard for recruiting for the Army National Guard. I just love Army, well... all military recruiting advertising. Like any form of advertising, it tries to pick out the “positive” or “good” or whatever the ad agency at the time told the Army was going to get them their target market. It always tickles me when it come around, so this one made me smile.

On the postcard it says for the headline, “The most heart racing, adrenaline rushing, action packed adventure you’ve ever seen. And that’s just basic training. “ That's funny. I’ve been through Army basic training and the headline should read, “The most nerve-racking, tiring, sleep-deprived, self-esteem sucking 13 weeks of your life. And you get to spend it with a mixture of immature assholes, rednecks and other guys duped into joining. Yep. That’s basic training.”

Let’s examine the card a little further shall we. It says, “Rappelling, driving tanks, obstacle courses, and rescue missions are just some of the adventurous challenges Guard members face.” Let’s take the first thing on the list: Rappelling. I rappelled when I was in the guard. 3 years after I joined and twice on the same day. I admit. It was fun. The next time, was well... there was no next time. But on the card it has a picture of a guy rappelling. That kind of makes it seem like guardsmen rappell all the time, you know, just for kicks and on every mission. Frankly, I have never heard of a mission in actual combat that had rappelling in it. I personally think it’s an activity that was created, perhaps incorporated, into attracting people to join the ranks. I have heard radio commercials about being a guard member for the day and on that day on one the first activities listed was, you guess it, rappelling. I almost wish that was the reason Bob and I joined, but sadly no... we didn’t.

As for the rest of the card. Driving tanks is listed. Driving a tank is easier than driving a car. Why? Because the tanks I drove never went faster than 35 miles an hour and since you don’t actually have to follow any rules of the road, ie: you can drive over most things and not damage it, you don’t actually have to take a driving test for a tank. My “drivers test for a tank went something like this: (Bob's note: Bill actually drove an APC: Armored Personnel Carrier. Big difference)

“Hey Bill. You’re going to drive the Track (that’s an Armored Personnel Carrier) at AT (that’s Annual Training) this summer.”

“Uh... Ok”

End of test.

As for the rest of the postcard, obstacle courses and rescue missions. They are not as fun as they sound. Obstacles courses just shows you how out of shape you are. Rescue Missions are just like combat except no ones dies, you can’t feel bullets wizzing or bombs exploding and you get to quit when the officers say it over. Usually that’s less than 3 hours. Like I said, just like real combat.

By the way, when you flip over the card, it says, “How many DVD’s in your collection give you the opportunity to earn $10,000? Sounds pretty enticing huh? But you know if you think about, most of the DVD’s give you the opportunity to make that much money, just differently. A lot of the DVD’s are like mini film schools in themselves. If you pay attention, you could learn a lot about composition, lighting, acting and even screen writing, that you could possibly make your own successful movies and you didn’t even have to have your head shaved and be shipped away for 13 weeks for constant harrassment and exercise.

If you were to fill out the card, it says on the bottom in italics, “I understand there is no obligation on my part.” For filling out the card, you receive an “American Soldier” DVD and a t-shirt that says:

Army National Guard
Est. 1636
100% American Soldier
Defending Freedom Made in the USA

100% American Soldier? That kind of sounds like an obligation to me. There should be fine print that says, “I understand that wearing this makes me an American Soldier and I am obligated to signing up for six years”

I got kind of curious on why that postcard was in that particular movie. Did the National Guard stick the card in every DVD that was out there? I had rented three other movies and check each one for the card.

The Sea Inside - No Card
Fever Pitch - No Card
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Card!
If you look at “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, you could make an assumption on the type of person that rents those types of movies. All right. I’LL make the assumption. People that rent those movies are 1) male 2) in high school or college 3) possibly single. Fever Pitch is kind of a date movie and no one getting some is going to sign up and be three months away from his girlfriend. “The Sea Inside” is an arty movie and frankly looks kind of faggy. We just don’t want those type to join up. I could totally be wrong on this. The blockbuster staff could have forgotten to put the cards in the other DVD cases. However, I could be right.

It’s not just postcards that the National Guard is using. I read an article where on some Mom and Pop pizza places, they are giving free pizza boxes to the owners to put their pizzas in. On the boxes, it has a picture of a young woman and a message telling about how the government will pay for tuition and other benefits. Again, no queers please. Didn’t you see the picture of the attractive young woman?

Some Guard web sites are offering a free song from Itunes. Yep. One song and all you have to do is put in your vital information and be harrassed by a recruiter just for that one song. Dude, I could have bought you a song. I won’t, but you get the idea.

Well, apparently, these tactics are working better than the postcard. I can’t say they would have worked for me. I wasn’t as against joining the military as I was when I was younger. I just wanted to go to college, but I do know if I had ended up in Iraq for joining up for this so-called part time job, I would have been super pissed.