Not Guilty.

Well, the question for the ages has been answered. Michael Jackson was found Not Guilty on 10 counts today. All that plastic surgery and skin coloring paid off; he must be white.

Unemployed and Happy

I have to tell you, it sure is nice to be unemployed. I thought I'd be a little more freaked out about losing an extra several thousand dollars a month, but I think I'm doing ok with it now. Try waking up at 7:30, grabbing some coffee and falling into the shower around 9:00 some time. You'll understand what I mean. What REALLY blows me away is talking to the stupid people that say "I could never sit around the house like that - I always need to be doing something!" Yeah, right. I've had a week off and I've been busy every day. Hell, I haven't even had a chance to update the blog! Here's what's been going on.

On Monday, I switched over all the utilities both here and in Durham. I'm pretty sure I've now dealt with call centers on all 7 continents, including every province/state in India and the Phillipines. Sadly, I have never interacted with so many incompetent people in my life, save the time I got stuck on a bus with a bunch of volunteers for the Gore/Lieberman campaign. Even worse, you can't understand a word you're saying! Sample conversation after punching 15 buttons on the automated menu to get to a live operator, but I'll spare you the me-love-you-long-time hump-hump bar accent:

"Thank you for calling Direct TV. How may I help you?"
Hi! I'm moving from Portland to Durham and would like to move my DirectTV service.
"Great. And which new premium package were you interested in ordering?"
No, I am moving. I need your mover's package at my new house in North Carolina.
"I'm sorry, I don't know where that is."
What? Who cares?!? I am moving. You have a mover's package that let's me stop service here and continue it again at my new location, right?
"Oh! You're changing locations? Why didn't you say that?"
Whatever.

So, I get off the phone and go downstairs to watch TV. All my local channels have changed and are blacked out. I start flipping around with the tuner and realize that they're set for Raleigh/Durham. I pick up the phone, punch 15 more buttons and get some other whack job.

Excuse me. I just called to have my service moved in July and it looks like you've already pushed it through.
"No, that's impossible. It's scheduled for July 11. I have it right here in your log.
I'm looking at channel codes that all start with RD, with one channel labeled UNC.
"I don't know what that means. I have your change scheduled for July 11."
And I'm telling you that I live in Portland, OR and am looking at blacked out North Carolina channels.
"No, you live in North Carolina and are moving to Portland. It's right here in your record."
NO. I LIVE IN PORTLAND.
"Not according to your record."
Are you kidding me? I know where I live. Now fix my service so I can watch my Portland channels.
"Fine. Does it work now?"
No.
"How about now?"
No.
"I'm sorry. I'm unable to fix your service at this time. Please call all our technical support line."

I'll spare you the tech support conversation because I'd get eaten alive for being a racist. Needless to say, two hours after my initial call, my DirectTV now works again. I still don't know if they put the damn move order in. What blows me away is that I keep reading about these great off-shored call centers where the operators are trained in different regional dialects/accents, so I guess if you're from Georgia, your Indian customer service agent answers the phone with a "Howdy! You shore do have a purty mouth." (see 24/7 and a couple of other companies). Yet, none of these people understand "Hi, I need to move my #$%(^ DirectTV service. Add Verizon home phone and DSL to the mix and you might as well dust off your "I Honk for Hookers" t-shirt and try and get on stage with Benny Hinn, because you're chances are probably better than getting your phone line set up in less than 6 hours.

Ugh. Other highlights of the week. Kid eaten by dogs. Great story. Mom locks kid in basement, using a shovel to keep the door shut, because she's afraid her dogs will eat the kid. Kid gets out, dogs eat kid. After talking about her deep faith in God, Mom responds with "It's Nicky's time to go. When you're born you're destined to go and this was his time." How stupid do you have to be to lock your kid in a basement because your dogs will eat him? 10 to 1 this future Jerry Springer show guest comes out with a book - "The Milk Bone Diaries: Why You Shore Need to Listen to Your Mammas." Not surprisingly, there are no charges being pressed against her.

And, in response to the CNN story on Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, manager of Al Gore's 2000 campaign has officially weighed in on Dean's inflamatory rhetoric. "Privately, people have said they don't want Howard Dean to become the story because we have more important issues to talk about, but publicly we will continue to give Howard Dean our strong support." she said. In other words, Howard Dean is stealing the spotlight and Demos are getting jealous. Wow.

I need a beer. Or three. Maybe I'll even get off the couch tomorrow.

Howard Dean Hates Me

Since his implosion on national TV during the Democratic primaries, Howard Dean has been trying to keep busy as the new chairman of the Democratic Party. After being told that the Democrats didn't want him to march to California, New York and especially not to Washington DC, the man who could have been president has taken his "I Have a Scream" speech to the public at large. As seen on CNN:

Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are "not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party ... it's pretty much a white, Christian party."

Challenged on that during the NBC interview, Dean said "unfortunately, by and large it is. And they have the agenda of the conservative Christians."

"This is a diversion from the issues that really matter: Social Security, and adequate job opportunity, strong public schools, a strong defense," Dean said.

As Howard Dean continues to alienate his party from even MORE of America (which is hard to believe, given they lost both houses of Congress and the Presidency last go round), one has to wonder if this view is pervasive in the party. The Social Security quote is probably the most fallacious and disingenuous. Not only has Bush aggressively been attacking Social Security for the last 18 months, the Republicans have been using Social Security as a smoke screen for the war in Iraq like crazy! Where was that great hero of the Democrats, Bill Clinton, when it came to talk about Social Security? Oh yeah, he was getting blown. Here's the gauntlet to you liberals out there - name a Democrat president since FDR created the welfare state that risked the wrath of the AARP and actually talked about changes to Social Security, much less tried to implement any of them. Yeah, thank you for playing.

I think the most disturbing part of this is the unbridled hypocrisy of most Democrats out there. This country isn't fighting over race issues, it's at war over values. You've got a litmus test on abortion that divides the country in thirds, with one third just not giving a damn. Pointing fingers because of race is an absurdity. Most Americans don't care if someone is black, white, Mexican, etc. - they care if the person is an uneducated boob. I'd love to see Howard Dean sit down for Easter Dinner with some kronked-out, ebonics speaking, bling-bling ghetto rap star or, better yet, some hillbilly in a spaghetti-o stained wife-beater that can recite all of Jeff Foxworthy's greatest hits. Face it. Democrats with money are just the same as Republicans with money - if they can write a check and feel better about something, rather than getting their hands dirty, they will. Quick, let's stop at a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving for a photo shoot. Yet at the end of the day, the churches are the ones out there getting their hands dirty and helping the poor.

And now, the closer. You want to know why you're going to lose the next set of elections in '06, even though the War on Terror has been a stretch and Bush's approval ratings are the lowest they've been in 6 years? Here you go, America, straight from the donkey's mouth:

The former Vermont governor also recently raised eyebrows when he told a group of progressives that Republicans "never made an honest living in their lives."

Screw the Democrats, I'd sooner vote for Pat Robertson. Howard Dean hates me.

Free at Last

It is finally over. The last week and a half has been an absolute blur for me. May 30 was a holiday, so I sat around the house and watched TV. Tuesday was the start of my final week at the firm (and the begining of the KY era for PGE)... and then I found out I would be flying to Detroit to attend my grandmother's funeral. I had 24 hours to transition a massive RFP, 3 projects and a bunch of piddly crap, in addition to cleaning out my office. Did I mention that Wednesday was the final review for my calc final that I took tonight? Ugh. Red-eye to Detroit with a 5.5 hr layover in Dallas. 3 days with the family, flew back with another 5.5 hr layover in Dallas. Talk about painful. I'd sooner watch a 24 hour Larry Hagman/Ms. Ellie marathon that ride on that damn SkyTrain in the Dallas airport again. BBQ on Saturday, church and breakfast with friends, then dinner with more friends on Sunday. Calculus final today. I'm beat. But, I'm done.
Thank ya Jesus.

So, count on a couple of posts in the next couple of days, assuming I get out of bed before 10:00 AM or so :-) Thank you for your patience and well-wishes. Grandma was 97 and lived a great life.