Monday, January 29, 2001
A phone to wake you by
Ring.
Ring.
Silence.
Roll over sleep.
Ring.
Ring.
Pick up. “Um, hello?”
“Greetings and salutations,” my answering machine said. “This is area code … ” Grumble. Roll out of bed. Cross condo. Shut off answering machine and pick up phone.
“Hello?”
Dead silence.
Grumble.
Listen to answering machine. Mark going on about an exploit
in bind 8.2.2-p5. Know about that. Knew about that for several
months from a cow-orker at work who couldn't locate the exploit.
Ring.
Blink.
Ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey Sean!” It's John, the paper millionaire of a dot com and he's entirely too chipper this early in the … afternoon. “Are you awake?”
“No.”
“But it's four o'clock! What time did you get to bed?”
“Uh … ” My brain hurts. “Eight this morning?”
“You're still sleeping, aren't you? Well, give me a call later on. I know what I want to do for my next big project.” He then hung up.
Grumble.
I hate waking up to the phone.
A penny for a stamp
It's bill time once again, and normally this wouldn't be a problem (well, paying bills is a problem, but I'm not talking about the actual payment part) except that starting January 7TH, the USPS hiked the rate for first class mail up 1¢. It was only six months ago that I finally used the last of my 1¢ stamps from the last pay hike (I had precicely enough 1¢ stamps to cover the remaining 32¢ stampts I had left).
So now I have about 60 33¢ stamps left. Sigh.
So today I made an effort to head off to the local USPS to obtain enough 1¢ stamps to last.
Rob, my roommate went along (as we were going to a late lunch/early dinner afterwards). Parking was a nightmare; no spots left, so people were fighting over spots as people were leaving. The person waiting in front of me was desperate enough to back up, nearly hitting me in order to give enough room for one person to back out. Fortunately someone else left at about the same time, giving me a parking space.
I dove around the ashtray, where I keep spare change. I only had yuppie food stamps (US $20 bills) and did not relish the thought of receiving $19 worth of change in Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. I was able to scrape up about a dollars worth of change.
Walking up to the building we could see a line stretching out the door for counter service. There was no way I was going to wait in that line. We did walk in to see if the stamp machines served 1¢ stamps.
We were in luck. They did.
“One at a time?” I asked. “Not even a book?”
“This is going to be fun,” Rob said.
“You're too easily amused,” I said, dropping a dime into the machine and selecting C-2, the 1¢ stamp.
HOW MANY? PLEASE TYPE IN AMOUNT 1-10: queried the machine.
“Oh cool!” I said. I punched in 10 and the machine spit out 10 stamps in a long paper stream. “Ooh, just like … uh … that game … ” I made motions of tossing a ball underhanded.
“… yea … um … ” Rob started doing the same thing.
“Skeeball!”
“Yea!”
“Just like skeeball,” I said. I dropped in another 30¢.
HOW MANY? PLEASE TYPE IN AMOUNT 1-10: queried the machine.
“Nice,” I said. “Only 10 at a time.”
“Much better than one at a time,” said Rob.
“Yea, lots.”
A mortgage for your thoughts
Each month I swear to myself that I'll deal with my regular mail on a daily basis instead of piling it up on the dinning room table. And each month it piles up on the dining room table and I only get to it when I actually pay my bills.
So it's only now that I learn that I have a new mortgage company.
This is my … third? Fouth? Mortgage company since 1994. I think fourth but I'll have to check my records. If so, then I've had more mortgage companies than banks.
And I've never switched banks. They've switched me.
God I love corporations and their wierd machinations to maintain money flow.
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")