BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’m not a huge fan of chocolate.

I don’t hate it, but it’s not my first choice when it comes to candy and desserts. But then, I’m not much of a sweets guy anyway. Licorice, now that’s one thing… And I mean LICORICE… Well, what I’m able to get my hands on, anyway. I’ve never had any of the really good imported stuff.

But we definitely aren’t talking about that red stuff that kids think is licorice.

And there are certain pies I like.

And certain cakes.

But I really have to be in the right mood. At any rate, faced with a choice between chocolate whatever and a slice of Lemon Chess Pie, I’d go for the Lemon Chess Pie. Faced with a choice between a slice of Lemon Chess Pie and a piece of Fried Chicken, I’d go for the Fried Chicken…

I know, how can a fat guy not be into sweets. Dunno. Just one of those things. But, that’s not really what this blog is about.

When I worked as an electronics technician, I absolutely loved things with moving parts. Why? Because items with moving parts are wayyyyy more likely to break down. Friction, wear, deterioration of plastics and polymer gears, belts, etc. It was guaranteed money. After all, as a tech your job is to fix things. If they weren’t breaking then you were out of a job. It also didn’t hurt at all that I’m mechanically inclined. I can look at a mess of gears, sprockets, belts, motors, solenoids, and the like, and pretty much tell you what drives what, in which direction, how fast, and the reason.

However, this blog isn’t about moving parts either…

It’s actually about a USB device. Universal Serial Bus,  in case you aren’t familiar with the acronym. The device in question – that being a flash drive, also called a thumb drive, memory stick, and several other names – has no moving parts. It’s a lovely little piece of circuitry that contains something called NVRAM. Non-Volatile Random Access Memory. Basically, that means that even without power applied it remembers what you told it. And, you can tell it to forget that and remember something else. Or, remember the first thing AND something else… I all depends on how much capacity your flash drive has.

So why all this fuss about USB flash drives?

Well, as an author who happens to be a former electronics tech, I don’t trust computers. They break. I know this. It’s how I made a living… While I specialized in printers, computers have moving parts too. Hard Drives, fans, and the like. Plus, they think they are smarter than us, and on occasion decide to prove it. Mine threw one of these fits back when I was writing my third novel. I was nearing the end of a marathon writing session – back then they all were, because I still had the “day job” and could only write on weekends. During this particular session I had hammered out close to three chapters of Perfect Trust. I blinked. The screen flickered. Then it turned blue. Then silly words about exception errors and the like popped up.

Apparently my computer had taken exception with something I had written, and in retaliation it crashed. But not only did it crash, it corrupted my saved files, as well as my autorecovery file. Yeah. I lost it all, except for the backup I had made the previous week.

After that painful incident, I began backing up more often – like every few pages or so. Not just saving. Saving in multiple places.  And, a copy goes with me. For years the copy was either on a 3.5 inch diskette or a CD-ROM.

Then I got my first USB Flash Drive.

Small. Compact. Bunches of memory. A place to store all sorts of stuff. And, it fit right in my pocket. This was what I had been looking for. A simple way to carry all of my manuscripts and notes around with me, just in case of a catastrophic failure of my system at home, my notebook computer exploding, and my other backups being corrupt. Basically, it was another layer of redundancy that made me feel better about my redundancy. Know what I mean? Of course, it didn’t account for a CMF – that being a Catastrophic Murv Failure.

Well… It was unseasonably warm that year at PUF.

Yeah… I know… It looks like I just changed subjects again, but keep reading…

I had a workshop to do prior to jumping in the van and heading into town for dinner with some friends who lived nearby. Normally I don’t leave events for that sort of thing, but this was a special case and The Big Kahuna was all good with it. Unfortunately, the person using the seminar venue ahead of me ran over with her workshop. Not a big deal, really, except that what ran over was not the workshop itself, but 30 minutes worth of cleanup. I’m not exactly sure what she had been teaching, but she had all manner of props, etc, that she had to pack up and move out before my class could sit down and listen to me ramble. Among the props were 4,897,236 Hershey’s Kisses.

Don’t ask me. Like I said, I haven’t a clue what she was teaching…

At any rate, as a gesture of apology, good will, don’t kill me, or something on that order, she walked over and thrust a handful of these chocolate bombs at me. I tried to politely decline, not being a big chocolate fan, but she insisted that perhaps the o-spring might want them. Conceding, I took the foil wrapped confections from her, and that was when the initial failure began. A failure that would soon cascade into a full blown CMF.

What was the failure, you ask? Simple… I stuffed the Hershey’s Kisses into my pocket.

Yes. I know. Stupid. Why do you think the title of this blog entry is Stupid Murv Tricks? Don’t worry. It gets “stupider”…

So, anyone who has seen me present a workshop knows that I’m not a “calm” sort of speaker. I’m more along the lines of Morris Massey without the leisure suit (yes, my videos are OLD). If you’ve never seen one of his motivational  / training videos, then the simplest explanation I can give you is that I’m all over the stage. I run, jump, wave my arms, yell, talk, laugh, dance, and generally have a good time. Presenting should be fun. Attending a presentation should be fun. See the correlation?

Anywho, and hour or so later, after generating an enormous amount of fat guy body heat, in the unseasonably warm afternoon, presenting a workshop in an outdoor pavilion, there I was, riding along in the passenger seat of the Evil Mobile as we headed out for the dinner. Johnathan Mentos and Dorothy Morrison were in the back with the O-spring, and E K was behind the wheel, as usual. We were chit chatting, comparing notes and generally “debriefing” as we tend to do post seminar, when suddenly everything turned blue.

Well… not really. But it sure seemed that way, for you see a random snippet of information shot through my forebrain. It took the form of a complex mathematical equation involving the integrity of foil wrapping, ambient temperatures, elevated body temperatures, proximity to such, and the melting point of Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses. All of that was divided by the variable, USB Drive In Pocket.

Unfortunately, my math co-processor experienced a glitch, and instead of completing the equation, spawned a virulent sub-routine from my overall operating system.

My mouth engaged, suddenly announcing, “OH SHIT!”

At the same instant, the snippet of faulty op-system code triggered my motor reflexes and blocked all Logic Services from my brain. My arm flew up, then immediately down as I slapped my palm against my pocket. Apparently the subroutine wanted to know if the Hershey’s Kisses were still there.

Unfortunately, they weren’t. In their place was Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. Prior to the catastrophic failure it had been nestled precariously within the confines of the ultra-thin foil wrapping.

Not anymore…

In the end, the USB drive survived, although it seemed a little touch and go there for a bit. To this day it sort of smells like a toll house cookie…

But the thing is, I’m not a huge fan of chocolate…

More to come…

Murv

Continued from: Here, Have A Sanka ™…

Well, I promised a followup to the Sanka silliness, and here it is. In some ways it’s a bit fitting that this comes in the wake of me posting a status update on Facebook announcing my disdain for folks who do nothing but whine and bitch. Fortunately, I do plenty more than just whine and bitch. Still, everyone needs to let it out once in a while – just not all the time. But that’s a different blog, and trust me, it’s already in the works so look for it in the not too distant future.

But on with “The Bad Place”…

The first thing I should establish here is that I am not in any way, shape, or form afraid of hard work. I spent my summers back on the farm, and had plenty of chores to do growing up. I learned valuable lessons, not the least of which was that hard work does in fact pay off in the end. So, I never considered any place where I worked a bad place simply because it entailed work. I never felt like said establishment(s) “owed” me a job. I would perform my prescribed duties at 100% and if at all possible, push it to 110% or more. I never complained about overtime. In fact, I would often step in and take the overtime – UNPAID on many occasions – before I would expect someone on my team to give up their time off.

Now, with that established, we shall move on…

Before I started making a living – or, trying to, at least – writing books, I was a computer/printer tech. I did this job for a little over 25 years, and made some decent cash in the process. More than I make writing, that’s for sure… But I digress…

For just under 10 years – the LAST 10 years of my tech career, in fact – I worked at The Bad Place…

While it shall remain nameless on the pages of this blog, some of you likely know the place of which I speak. At least one of you, I know for certain, is  also a survivor of its “badness”…

It was, and still is, an ulcer on my life. Fortunately, it is no longer an ulcer on humanity because it crashed and burned not long after I exited the front door of the offices for the very last time – as an employee, anyway. I did go back and have lunch with some of the folks who still worked there because they were friends, AND the only thing that made the place tolerable.

You see, what made The Bad Place so bad was the owner. This guy had a self-centered, paranoid, “the world owes me” attitude that simply would not quit. I realize that a good majority of folks out there are probably saying the same things about their bosses even as I type this. However, lest I cause my dormant ulcer to flare and give me fits because of reliving that mess, allow me to simply enumerate a few of the daily issues with this wingnut and let y’all decide if I’m right in calling it The Bad Place…

I would also like to note that I am NOT making this shit up, nor am I embellishing it. I have witnesses…

1. Some days I wouldn’t have time to swing by the post office, so I would take my mail – pre-stamped, mind you – in with me and drop it in the outbox on the front counter. Many of us did. Stuff like bills, rebate coupons for diapers (the o-spring was small then). Then one day, things changed. Bad Place Boss walked in the front door and every morning would grab all of the outgoing mail out of the box. He would stand at the counter and go through it, sorting it into piles. After a few days of doing this he brought your mail back to you and demanded to know WHY you put YOUR personal outgoing mail in HIS outgoing mailbox. Easy to fix, correct? Leave a bit earlier from home and hit the post office. Well, I did that. When I walked through the door of the shop he was waiting for me. He announced that he had seen me drive past the shop and demanded to know where I had gone. Mind you, besides it being none of his business, I was 30 minutes early to work ANYWAY, so it’s not like I was showing up late. When I told him that I’d gone to the post office he accused me of lying because the post office isn’t open that early. BTW, he continued to inspect the outgoing mail on a daily basis just in case someone dared to put something in it that he hadn’t personally authorized.
2. He would throw away stuff that didn’t need to be thrown away. Like brand new parts. Seriously. A box of motherboards. Processors. The software he used for payroll. Just chuck it all right in the dumpster along with the junk that DID need to be thrown away. THEN, if he saw someone digging through the dumpster (which belonged to the strip mall, mind you) for scrap metal and such he would run out there and threaten to call the police on them. Why? His words – Because they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off of HIS stuff.
3. Weekly trips to the east side… The “east side” is an area across the river known for strip clubs. A minimum of twice per week he would leave at 10:30 AM to go over to the east side for lunch and return shortly before closing time, drunk and smelling like a whore house. Okay, fine… That’s his business not ours… The problem is, he would insist on telling us ALL about it whether we wanted to hear it or not. This also went for the women on staff too. The best part was that in his vocal opinion, we were all going to hell because we weren’t good Catholics like him.
4. Following in the footsteps of the above, twice per year he would go to Vegas for the consumer electronics show. He would leave for a week but only attend the show for 6-8 hours on one day. That span grew shorter and shorter over the years. The rest of the time was spent in sex clubs and with call girls. Again, all good. I’m actually in favor of legalizing prostitution nationwide. I don’t see anything wrong with it at all. But again, I had no desire to be subjected to the graphic details of his exploits with each of these women, all while hearing that I was going to hell because I didn’t believe in his God. Oh, and by the way – he’s married – I assume he still is, anyway – and I often had to have uncomfortable conversations with his wife when she’d call wanting to know where he was at lunchtime.
5. All of the above exploits were on the company’s dime. Yeah. His company, his money. However, when he is spending hundreds – sometimes thousands – on hookers and we couldn’t order parts from our suppliers because our accounts were way past due, it made it hard for us to do our jobs. And, of course, we were the ones the customers were yelling at, not him.
6. Eventually he just went ahead and hired a couple of long term hookers and put them on the payroll. Seriously.
7. When we couldn’t get parts, he would go through the trash and pull out blown parts. As in TOAST. As in NOT WORKING. Done. Exploded. No longer functional. Then he would sell them to customers as new.
8. When an angry customer with an exploded part he had sold them would come back in, he would hide in his office and expect us, the techs, to deal with it.
9. He fired competent employees in order to hire A) A drinking and carousing buddy and/or (most especially) B) The first short skirt that walked through the door with a resume in her hand, even if she had the secretarial and phone skills of a comatose baboon.
10. He announced to the entire staff one day that we wouldn’t be buying anything from a particular supplier any longer. His reasoning? We had bought quite a bit from them over the years and when he had a face to face meeting with our sales rep – a young, pretty individual of the female type persuasion – he didn’t get what he wanted. What did he want, you ask? A blowjob. He claimed she owed it to him for all the product we had purchased over the years. Speaking of blowjobs, he once told me to tell a female friend of mine that he would hire her to be a receptionist, IF she would give him one. In case you are wondering, I didn’t. In fact, I told her to go look for a job someplace else.
11. The daily shout fest. Bad Place Boss was big on yelling at everyone because, of course, everything that ever happened was everyone else’s fault. The company wasn’t making enough money because we were all lazy assholes who were  just there taking advantage of his good graces. The fact that he had bought his staff hooker a plasma TV, paid her rent, car payment, and tickets from company funds had absolutely NOTHING to do with why we had no money in the bank. And, the fact that we were unable to purchase parts for repairs because of said lack of funds shouldn’t keep us from billing customers anyway.
12. The aforementioned billing customers anyway thing – he would insist customers pre-pay for systems they ordered, then he would never order the components needed to build said custom system. Why? Because he would spend the pre-pay money on his hookers and couldn’t manage to pay for the parts.
13. Another favorite that is much like the above – as techs we would sell systems and often times entire networks – several systems, cabling, support, etc – to big companies. The IT folks with these companies would know us on a first name basis and would be waving cash at us, ready to buy. BUT the boss guy maintained control over all bids. Therefore, we would turn in the info to him and he would send out a bid to the company. NOT. We would get calls on a daily basis from folks saying, “I’ve been waiting for that bid for three months. I can’t wait any longer, you lost the sale.”… Believe me, we’d remind him on a daily basis about the bids. He’d either tell us he was getting right on it, or yell at us for bothering him about them. 9 times out of 10, he would follow up with heading out the door to see one of his hookers – of course, he would always strenuously remind us that if his wife called we were to tell her he had an important meeting with the “chamber of commerce.”

There you go… more than a dozen of them for you… I could go on, and on, and on. I kid you not. But this blog entry is long and depressing enough as it is. Sorry to say, there’s nothing actually funny about it either.

At any rate, I think you can easily see why I called it The Bad Place. And, why I am much happier being away from it.

Well, that, and I’m married to the hottest redhead on the planet and have the coolest kid ever. Sometimes, you have to go through hell to get to heaven, I guess…

More to come… (Funny next time, I promise…)

Murv