BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

We have a server based LAN in our house. I suppose it stemmed from being a computer guy for so many years, but since we have several systems, both desktop and notebook, it seemed logical to keep all of the shared files in one place. Over the years of remodeling, etc, CAT-5E has been threaded through the walls, high-speed switches mounted, wireless access points added for convenience, and the whole nine yards. Because of this, the computing power and peripheral device integration in our home has increased exponentially over the years, thereby becoming an important part of our lives where household management and even personal management of my profession is concerned.

Still, no matter how much computing, printing, scanning, or communications power all these electronic devices have, they are still nothing more than machines.

Then something happened that made me question that notion…

“Dammit…” E K muttered.

Her exclamation was followed by several angry sounding beeps, all punctuated by the staccato clicking of something patently plastic in sound. Several more beeps filled the air, then came a hard, bass chord that seemed to say, “stop right there!”

A frustrated yowl – much the same as one would hear coming from an angry Siamese feline – caught in The Evil Redhead’s throat, rumbling back at the noise as if a cat fight were about to ensue. Given the sound, my guess is that possibility was only off by a single letter, that being a K instead of a C followed by an at.

“DAMMIT!” she hissed, this time with far more feeling.

All of this was occurring behind my back – literally…

I was seated at my desk, answering email and generally enjoying my five minute break from being E Kay’s personal lackey. She’s occasionally generous like that. On Christm… I mean Katsmas, she even lets me have a whole 15 minute break, though usually not all at once. There are after all her needs to be considered, and they greatly outweigh my need for a break, or so I am told.

But anyway, I was just entering minute 2 of my serendipitous 5 minute break – the first one I’d been granted since Katsmas, mind you – and her grumbling started. I considered remaining quiet in hopes that she would forget that I was even in the room, but I knew it was a lost cause. E K misses nothing.

Resigning myself to the fact that I had no choice but the forfeit the remaining 3 minutes of my break, I spoke up.

“Oh High Exalted Queen Of All that Is,” I began – that’s what she makes me call her, you see – “What seems to be the problem?”

She let out an extremely frustrated sigh, then hissed back at me, “The network won’t let me access anything. It says I’m a threat.”

It was at this moment I realized our network was more than just a bunch of machines strung together by wires and high frequency signals. It had somehow become the thing computer scientists have been striving to create since the first faint glow of UNIVAC’s vacuum tubes.

I mean, just think about it for a minute… A pile of circuitry and wiring recognized the fact that E K is… well…evil… and it considers her a threat to the network. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that some pretty sophisticated Artificial Intelligence.

More to come…

Murv

…just to be the man who ate a cheese-burr-gerrrrrrr.

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Okay… I know, I know… Enough with massacring the Proclaimer’s tune… They sing it way better than I do anyway.

So, I ran my mouth about my recent travel experience to and from Ohio, nothing new about that. I run my mouth all the time. But, there are a couple of other things I also did this go around.

The first is, I filled out the online questionnaire the airline kept harping about. Usually I don’t do that sort of stuff because I simply don’t have the time, but I figured what the hell.

Now here’s the thing. I did NOT piss and moan. Well, not much… After all, I had already written the 4 part blog about the trip and put the posts into the queue for deployment, so all of my pissing and moaning was pretty much finished. Anywho, to be honest I actually gave them a pretty good review. I even lauded praise upon a gate agent at Chicago O’Hare for her professional handling of a sticky situation with a young pilot who in my opinion was in need of an anger management class. I mean, adults generally don’t throw screaming fit temper tantrums when they don’t get their way – especially in front a terminal full of people… But then, maybe that’s just the way I see things, and we all know I see things differently than most…

But back to that online thing… When the questions got around to asking if I was delayed for more than 15 minutes on any particular flight/connection, I told the truth and said yes.

I honestly don’t know if it was my answers on the questionnaire, or something that the airline took it upon themselves to do simply because they are wonderful people. I’m inclined to believe it is option #1, but at any rate, I received the following in the mail:

Since Ms. Elizabeth Reed, General Manager of Customer Care for NWA was so kind as to send this, I figured that since I had pretty much blasted them – in my own tongue in cheek fashion, of course – via Brainpan Leakage, I should be fair about things and point out that they did in fact apologize, and even gave me an extra 1000 miles on my frequent flyer account.

That’s actually more than I can say for some of the other airlines I have flown.

Now I just need someplace to go. I wonder how far 1000 frequent flyer miles will get me? Of course, if I redeem them and the airplane has an auxiliary power unit malfunctioning, no air conditioning, and instead of sending someone to Sears for a DieHard battery the pilot bribes some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump, just as soon as they can find where they stashed the cables, I think I might have to scream.

But, not in front of a terminal full of people.

The second thing I did involved a hamburger… Well, a cheeseburger to be precise. As you well know, in the installment titled You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That, I took some more of my tongue in cheek pot shots – or in this case slapshots –  at the restaurant chain, Fuddruckers. I won’t go into euphemistic details about my experience there, after all I did just that in the aforementioned post.

The thing that triggered me doing the thing, so to speak – (hey, fancy word usage… that’s why I get paid the big bucks) – was the fact that so many of you took me to task… Well, actually only one of you took me to task (yes, you George) Still, a huge number of you either commented here, on Facebook, or even sent me a direct email to tell me how absolutely wonderful Fuddruckers truly is, and that my experience must have been an isolated incident. Y’all also went on to tell me that I should file a complaint with the corporate office.

Well, I ruminated on that a bit, and while it’s something I don’t normally do, I surfed on by Fuddruckers.com and found their feedback form. I sent them a comment letting them know about my experience, and that I was only doing such because several of my readers had urged me to do so.

Now they are mad at all of you…

Just kidding. Kinda.

But, seriously, within something around 36 hours I received an email from the corporate office, thanking me for the feedback and letting me know it had been forwarded on to the appropriate store. Less than 8 hours after that I received a very nice apology email from the manager of the store in question, and she is sending me a gift card.

I have to say that kind of integrity out of a company is pretty damned impressive. At least, to me it is, because that hasn’t always been my experience with some other chains. If you don’t know which one I’m talking about search my blog for “square hamburgers are evil” and see what you find.

So anyway, next time I’m on the road and have a layover while making a connection – I mean, you simply cannot fly anywhere these days without making a connection in some faraway place, we’ve already established that – I’ll be keeping my eye out for a Fuddruckers. I’m really looking forward to finally having that truly stellar hunk-o-seared-moo-cow on a bun that E K waxed droolific about so many years ago.

And yes, you too, George… 😉

More to come…

Murv