Server Goon » Rants

Facebook Friends

server.goon — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:07:18 +0000

I got a facebook friend request the other day, and I’m trying to decide how to handle it. For those that know me and my family, you will know who this is. For the rest of you, I’ve removed the names to “protect the not-so-innocent”

The request came with the following text:

You told me once it wouldnt matter if [Sister's name] and I got divorc. we would always be friends….I hope the best for [Sister's name] and you. Just sending a request and if you accept would be great to have you as a FB friend.

To which I have started to pen a reply. I haven’t sent it yet and I don’t know if I will.

I also remember (as a boy of 14 or 15) telling you that if you ever hurt my sister I’d kill you. I’m beyond that and I realize that it wouldn’t serve any real purpose. That, and my sister can take care of herself, she’s a strong person even if she doesn’t know it at times.

I do however take a very strong stand about my parents. “Borrowing” a chainsaw that you *GAVE* to my dad and then selling it. Writing a check that could *never* be cashed and to top it off trying to write it out for “a little bit extra” so you could have cash in your pocket.

Well, those are just two things of the things I know about and my parents do not deserve that kind of treatment. Now it’s obvious that mom and dad can take care of themselves. Dad didn’t need the chainsaw, he already has one. And, on top of that he has sons that would come over in an instant with chainsaws in hand to do any work needed to be done.

The check, well, while mom and dad aren’t living a life of luxury, that check wasn’t needed for their survival. They have enough money to buy what they need and if it came down to it, they’ve got six of us that would do everything in our power to provide for them if needed.

What is needed is the feeling that when someone tells them something that they are truthful about it. That when someone borrows a chainsaw it will be returned. That when someone writes them a check out, that they can go to the bank and cash it. Not get a story about how it will “be there next week” or “be there in two days”.

So you claim someone screwed up. Fine, but you shouldn’t have written a check when the money wasn’t there and you certainly shouldn’t have sold something that wasn’t yours.

As with all things, time changes things. I had friends that I thought I’d never part with, people that would always be in my life. But as life takes us in different directions and different paths there are times when you must say goodbye to those friends. Be it that they are living a life that is different from your goals or have simply moved away and you’ve lost contact with over time.

So I said we’d always be friends. I also said I’d kill you if you ever hurt my sister. Some things are said without knowing what the future holds and people change.

I’ve got to say, it feels rather therapeutic to put this out there.

funerals

server.goon — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 01:16:37 +0000

Just for the record, I hate funerals.

Death is a miserable fact of life and one that we all must face. I don’t look forward to the time when my Dad will pass away. However, I have had the honor of living long enough to develop a good relationship with my dad. A good enough relationship with him that we’ve had the discussions about how he feels about prolonging life after the quality of life is gone. We’ve also had a discussion about funerals so what happened today really shouldn’t surprise me.

You see, my Aunt died recently, and today was her funeral. The person officiating the ceremony seemed a little nervous, perhaps it was his first funeral. At any rate, as he was wrapping up the ceremony, my father leaned over to a long time friend and said “When you officiate my funeral I want you to say ‘He lived fast, hard and enjoyed every minute of it… and then he died’” -edit- Just to be clear, my Dad doesn’t live fast, he’s one of the calmest people I know, thinking through things instead of spur of the moment actions. My Dad doesn’t “live hard”, although I’m sure he’s experiences hard times. But I do know my Dad has enjoyed his life and continues to do so. His statement was an indication of how much time he thought should be spent on a funeral. He told me one time that what he wanted in his obituary was simply a listing of born, husband of, father of and died. -edit-

There are many reasons I love my dad, and that is one of them.

Road Rage part 2

server.goon — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:26:47 +0000

First off, wow, been a while since I posted anything! And second, told you there would be another post about road rage (see previous post).

Just for the record, I’m not a perfect driver, sometimes I do *ahem* stupid things. Having said that, I feel it’s fair to comment on other drives and what stupid things they do.

It all started out rather fun, my brother and I was taking a motorcycle trip to see an Aunt and then we were going to put a few more miles and states on the bike (so far I’m ahead with 11 states under my “motorcycle” belt, at some point I hope to have all 50). The first day’s itinerary was to get to my Aunt’s and I would like to say it was without incident, but that would be a lie. It’s also a story for another day because what I’m talking about today happened on day 2 of our 3 day trip.

We were in Illinois on Route 1 when it happened. Route 1 for the most part is a two lane highway with sections that are four lanes. The particular stretch at the start was a four lane highway through a town with a speed limit of 35. My brother and I were traveling at about 50MPH and keeping up with the flow of traffic. That’s when I noticed a guy coming up behind pretty fast in an burnt orange mustang. The lane to the right was clear but he stayed right behind my brother and I. I decided to be nice and moved over to the right lane at which point he sped up to right behind my brother and started honking the horn. When my brother moved over I heard the engine rev and he took off like a speed racer only to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the car that we were following. I immediately thought to myself “what a jackass”.

As we traveled through several smaller towns the guy was never more than two or three cars ahead. We eventually got to a stretch of two lane road and ended up behind the same Mustang. It seemed like it was hundreds of miles, but it was probably only 20 or 30 that we followed this guy. The whole time he was weaving left and right, speeding up and slowing down while following the Chevy truck that was in front of him. At one point, he even had his right hand turn signal on for probably five miles. I told my brother at one point (probably at one of the crossroads with a stop sign) that the guy was just looking for someone to race because there were plenty of opportunities for this guy to pass, but he stayed behind the truck and continued to drive erratically.

Finally I told my brother “we have to stop and let this guy get away or pass him, I can’t stand this much longer”. So, the next good clearing where my brother could see clearly (it was very hot day and the heat from the road was creating an hazy heat wave affect) my brother pulls and passes. He then pulls back in between the Mustang and the truck because he sees a car coming towards us (his original intention was to pass both). I follow my brother’s lead and pull out, as I get even with the Mustang, I hear him kick it down and speed up. (Did I mention the word jackass before?) Well, that just sets me off because it proved I was right about this guy just wanting to race. He probably bought the Mustang to compensate. At any rate, Mustang or no, my brother’s in front of him and my bike is no wimp. As I kick it down a gear I flip the guy off passing him and my brother and pull back in line behind the truck.

I’m sure you can guess what happened next right? Yeah, he’s revving the engine and good to go so he pulls out and guns past us. I see him coming and flip him the bird the whole way past. As he’s going past he’s staring at me and flipping me off as well. So he goes past us (remember the car?) and goes past the truck diving back into the right lane almost clipping the front of the truck and I’m sure giving the folks in the oncoming car a fright.

Regardless, he’s gone and I’m happy to sit behind the truck cruising at 55 because now I don’t have to deal with an unstable erratic driver in front of me. It made the rest of the trip seem so peaceful!

The amazing thing about this is that I usually feel guilty about doing “stupid” things, like flipping off that guy in the car. Really, it wasn’t necessary and I’m sure it didn’t help the situation any. However, this time I didn’t feel the least bit of guilt. This guy was an idiot at best and how he was driving was creating a hazardous situation.

Stay safe, stay sane and keep the rubber side down.

–ServerGoon

Press 1 for 1337, press 2 for English

server.goon — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:08:56 +0000

Kids these days. Spelling doesn’t matter, as long as the other person gets what you’re talking about. If you don’t believe me, just ask my 17 year old son, he’ll tell you all about it.

Admittedly, I don’t think kids should be graded harshly for grammatical or spelling errors on math papers, computer program comments (I actually had a teacher that took off points for not having complete sentences in the comments for a program), physics, art, etc. Now all bets are off when it comes to English class, because that’s what it is all about.

However, if you publish a game, write a paper about your physics experiments or create anything that is made for general population I would suggest making sure your grammar is correct in the final product. Trust me, it’s tough for me and I’m just waiting for someone to point out a mistake on this post.

Prime examples of when it is important to use correct grammar:

When you are trying to make a point or trying to sound intelligent. See
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=274685879861 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=260098416437
and the list goes on I’m sure. In fact I had great fun pointing that error out to my son when he joined the group “Parents call it talking back, we call it telling them there wrong”.
When you are trying to sell something. This is what originally prompted this post and I want to make it clear I have *nothing* against these guys or their site (notice I used the correct version there). I was reading about Blue Collar Bobbers when I ran across this quote. “and ride into the sunset with there comrades”. Now for some reason, this just glares at me. Maybe it because I’ve struggled with it myself so I’m hypersensitive to the use of “there, they’re and their”. Does that mean I won’t buy from them? No, but it does give a certain impression of the type of people running the store. I’m also going to make the assumption that, based off of the design, they didn’t do the work themselves. Chances are someone just wasn’t fully awake and didn’t catch the typo, let’s hope so because I’d hate to be paying someone for a finished product that wasn’t correct.

So, having said all that, I would suggest a remedial course. If you don’t want to do that, how about spending a little time to get it straight in your head in whatever manner works best for you. There’s even web sites out there to help. I googled “there their they’re” and the top hit was a wikihow page, how convenient!

Up next is a rant about “you’re, your and yore”… no, not really, but I’m sure there are plenty of examples of that as well.

–servergoon

Virtual Addiction is REAL!

server.goon — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:18:57 +0000

This really hit me today when I noticed a wall post from someone I know (in the real world). They stated that they’d be gone for the weekend, but not to worry if anyone saw posts from them because they had asked someone to take care of their farm. This is s VIRTUAL farm mind you.

So what is the importance of this? Well, I’m taking classes that are based on technology and education. Part of those classes focus on social media and how the youth of today are more “wired” than ever. With this wiring, comes this chance for addiction. We are so concerned about drug and alcohol use in the youth of today, but what about internet use?

The youth of today run the very real risk of being socially dysfunctional when it come to interacting with with real people in real time. They’ve all got lots and lots o’ friends online, but when it comes to preferences some would rather use the computer as an interface to interacting with their friends than face to face. Of course, this is just based off of casual observations of my son and his friends. Even when friends are over their interaction tends to be around the computer or game console.

And it’s not just the kids. About a year ago CNN published “Five clues that you are addicted to Facebook” http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/ep.facebook.addict/index.html and that’s not the only danger. I’ve seen stories of kids being left alone while parents played online games. Kids left alone to the point of being considered child neglect or abuse.

So, does that mean we should all become unplugged? Nah, but if you can’t be “disconnected” for a day or two without starting to twitch, you may want to take a serious look at your usage.

–servergoon