Stop Waiters From Thieving Your Money By Kicking Their Asses

I bet you all saw how to do checksum tips several months ago (I'm linking to Punny because Punny is awesome. Go read it). Something about this has always bothered me. It's not the math; I fucking love math. Whenever I walk into someone's kitchen I always count the tiles along the edges and multiply them together; I can recite a whole lot of powers of 2 in one breath; one time I got a math question wrong on a test and my teacher was so dismayed, he made everyone else answer it wrong too. Et cetera, et cetera. The point being, I love math.

However, I am also a creature of habit, and I always tip the same way: the lowest multiple of $5 that is at least 15% of the bill; 20% if the service was memorable (and I wouldn't forget a memorable service). Yes, that means I tip $5 on $20 worth of food. No checksum required. I'm not about to sit around, paranoid, clutching my bank statement in my hand, wondering if some idiot waiter decided to give themselves a cash bonus. Life's too short to think about everyone stealing from you. When it's obvious somebody's ripping you off, don't rely on some arcane formula where it's not required; this is one of the fundamental aspects of programming, to take the simplest, most elegant solution, and kick the asses of everyone who breaks your shit. Or, you know. Buys themselves a pack of smokes on your dime.

Sure, The Beautiful People Get To Starve

I am so horribly addicted to Hell's Kitchen it's not even funny. Well, it is funny. It's fucking hilarious. It combines two of my favorite things in life: cooking, and hatred.

I could give a shit less whether Gordon Ramsay is a good cook, because he's a totally awesome drill sergeant. He's like R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket, and all of his cooking apprentice game-show slaves are like the guy who commits suicide in the bathroom. I know it's basically The Apprentice meets Iron Chef, but the screaming! Oh, the screaming. Kurt Cobain wishes he had Ramsay's talent.

So, apparently, you get to go to Hell's Kitchen (and not even eat, if Ramsay shuts down the kitchen) by invitation only. It figures that once and one time only in my life I have a small reason to be jealous of the beautiful people. Of course, they play a role I couldn't do anyways- they actually start bitching when they've gone without food for an hour, like they didn't know that they might not get to eat. It's just a big show, people. Treat it like a third date and get a little something before you go to the main event. (If it actually is a third date, well, you'll probably need some skills to eat and masturbate at the same time).

Of course, I know nothing about how the rich pretties live. For all I know, Hell's Kitchen invites might just be a huge prank they play on each other. Oh, fa-ra-ra, I totally got you with those shitass dinner invites. I bet you didn't eat anything all night. Lucky bastards.

Men Are From Seattle, Women Are From Broadway

My girlfriend has some really bizarre ideas about entertainment, and I'm pretty sure she's getting scalped pretty heavily on tickets by some hard-hitting kneecap-breaking gentlemen. In part, I blame all you Las Vegas Californians; shows like O and Mystere and Zumanity and stuff being thrown constantly in our faces when all we want to do is drive down to the Strip and do a little solicitation.

This last time, she waved this letter about some stupid show called Speeding Ticket in my face. As soon as I saw it, I was remembering the huge fiasco that came up from the time she wanted to watch Rent. For some reason, even though I made it absolutely clear to her that I didn't want to see thespian queers running around crossdressing and singing about roaches, she said that we were committed to something or other and that if I didn't cough up a thousand fifty on the spot, something unspeakably horrible would happen. Honestly, I didn't really pay much attention until she explained that she'd somehow gotten us into this situation where if I didn't pay for the tickets, my internet access would apparently suffer, drastically. I think she's a drug user- she's always coming up with excuses for me to pay this exact same amount every single month. I definitely know that it's way more than the price of tickets; I went to the show's website and saw that they were seating people for twenty-one times cheaper than what she said. Unfortunately, all my pills come from her, so I knew I was pretty much stuck paying so I could get my meds.

Anyways, I totally didn't want to see this Speeding Ticket show, which I assumed to be some ripoff of Taxi Driver or The Fast And The Furious or whatever. I asked her how she even found this show, and she said something about me being in Scottsdale, Arizona, and how there were cameras on the freeway. I knew she didn't trust me, driving around in my car. I didn't even tell her I was going to Scottsdale. So now, not only do I have to pay two hundred dollars for some show I have no intention of seeing, I have to tear apart my car and figure out where the hell she hid the X-10 spy cam.

Dear Josh: A Retrospective

Dear Josh:

I was just remembering all the crazy times we've had. I mean, after all, I haven't written you in a long time. You're probably in your room, watching Robot Robot Super Happy Fun (Tentacle Edition) and slowly dying because of your magical diabetes viruses; I'm sitting here at work, being the life of the party (like usual), and feeling just a little whimsical.

I first met you when I started working at Courtesy Call as a teenager, not knowing that place was basically a magical telemarketing sweatshop that I would quit two weeks later. Over the years, we became fast friends, as we would trade video games and I would try not to notice you furiously masturbating to technicolor maidens being destroyed by alien octopi.

Eventually, you met a girl whose name was Natasha, whose mother was one of those stereotypical types: everyone called her Mama, she smoked pot for some vague 'condition', and she'd get the thigh sweats every time somebody mentioned Actual Elvis. Natasha was way too hot for you. We kept hoping the relationship would last forever, because we liked you, but we knew it would never happen, because Natasha was (1) a real girl, (2) smoking hot, and (3) not prone to random squid rape. When she left, you were crushed, and we were there for you. I remind you of this now, because in some later letter I plan on asking you to loan me money.

Oh, those were youthful and carefree days, back when your pathetic wimpy pancreas still had a bit of spunk. In fact, I remember exactly when things turned for the worse: when the police called us and informed us that you were passed out in the middle of the street on Sunset and Mountain Vista. They thought you were drunk. They had no idea that you actually just have a really crappy endocrine system, the kind you can buy in Brazil for a pittance, and your alcohol-like breath was just ketoacidosis, which is a long word for "YOUR ORGANS SUCK".

You've deteriorated over the years, and we keep watching and worrying and hoping your body, like a 1970's Dodge Dart, doesn't just stop working entirely one day. Even though it will. If I ever run into Natasha again, I'll tell her how to contact you, because I know you totally know how to work the pity angle.

So anyways, keep fighting the good fight. I hope you don't die, you know, soon. By the way, save this letter, because all this mushy sentimentality means it doubles as my Christmas card.

Regards,

Teleolurian

HostGator Serves With Active Malice

I am currently using three solutions for hosting sites: this site, which is being handled by Blogger; the Edible Unknown, which is hosted on a blazingly fast Gentoo virtual server on vr.org, and the sites Fancy hosts, which are being handled by HostGator.

Now, a virtual server is exactly that: a full Linux install on a chrooted box which gets fractional processor share. If you know how to configure your own server, running a virtual server is like having your websites personally kissed by angels, perpetually, all over the place. It's comparable to just having your own server in the first place, except you don't have to go colocate it yourself. For forty bucks a month, it's even cheaper than colocation.

Recently, however, certain issues with HostGator are leading me to believe that their servers are actually a networked grid of evil robots who delight in temporarily restricting access to individual files. On top of an annoying $10-per-domain jailed ssh fee, I've been working on applications, only to refresh and get an error that "xxx file cannot be found".

Obviously, the missing files are in plain view on their sluggish servers, and upon (multiple) refreshes, the website grudgingly gives up and lets the app work the way I coded it to, like some pissy cybernetic bear. I'm not enough of a *nix guru to understand how this can happen; every time I install apache on a server and leave it there, it tends to happily serve up all the files in the web folder, all the time. It's mildly annoying to work on a server where things are somehow magically worse at being a server than if you just left everything alone. And of course, there's frequent downtime and sluggish ssh response, but those are things I can deal with, if not necessarily like.

I'll be begging Fancy to move us to a virtual server as soon as possible. I can't say enough good things about vr.org. Love them. As for HostGator? Somebody with the skills please tell me how the heck they managed to achieve such a staggeringly mindblowing level of total and complete incompetence, kay?

Blitzedkrieg

So, our friend Jacqueline was tending bar on Saturday night, and I headed there with the intent to test her skills at a Long Island Iced Tea. It just so happens, I tested her skills at two Long Islands, half a pitcher of Newcastle, an Electric Lemonade, and a rum and coke.

Longtime fans of this series know what happens when the main character meets up with friends at a place that serves spirits: I do incredibly stupid things. An evening that started with polite political debate (fuck watching porn, nationally a black man is beating the ever loving shit out of a white woman) turned into the psycho circus when Jacqueline's intensely competitive boyfriend, Jacob, showed up with plans to show off his alcoholic superiority, like some kind of whiskey gestapo.

There's some defining moments in one's life, and one of them is realizing that you and big Jacob are grasping each others elbows, creating a forearm valley into which a smoldering cigarette is being tossed. At that particular moment, I was so full of besotted fortitude I could have let the thing burn a swiss-cheese network throughout my whole arm before I let go. We all woke up the next morning with lymph-engorged blisters. It was like my body's physical testament to machismo and stupidity.

But damn, those were tasty Long Islands.

How Does Your Garden Grow

Lucky me! I get to teach co-workers to write PHP code, which is a fantastic start- in my utopia, everyone is either a programmer or a steroid-enhanced laborer in the underdepths. Today, I got to start by writing partial code with commented instructions to help them along. My top-secret, broadcast-over-the-entire-internet plan is to start with missing code "mad-libs" and then slowly move on to insanity-causing, bizarre easter egg hunts.

Step 1

/* The bottom line replaces spaces with underscores.
  Instead, make it replace them with ampersands. */
$var = str_replace(' ', '_', $var);

Step 2

/* I'm going to name my baby randomly with one of 
the names in the array $names. I'm already 
deleting the ones that end in Q,
because seriously, whose name ends in Q? 
Shaq, that's who. Delete names that 
start with vowels, please. Because guys
shouldn't have names that start with vowels. */

foreach ($names as $key => $value){
  if (preg_match('/q$/i', $value)){
    unset($names[$key]);
  }
}

Step 3

/* Cthulhu f'taghn! Ia, Ia, Ia. */
$uncomfortable_truths = array(
  "nothing is wrong, go back to work",
  "everyone you know and love hates you",
  "i'm watching you code over your shoulder",
  "is it odd that i sharpen knives during lunch?",
  "well, is it?",
  "i mean, come on. really.",
  "i smell your hair when your headphones are on",
  "i once dreamed i had a tiny you",
  "in my pocket",
  "i'd pull you out sometimes at restaurants",
  "and brush your hair",
  "for hours"
);

foreach($uncomfortable_truths as $spam){
 sleep(rand(3600)+1800);
 mail("you@your.email", "Alert!", $spam);
}

CBYTE Dual-Processor Motherboard

It is the congratulation! Here you are having your very own CBYTE Dual-Processor Motherboard. Allow yourself the breath of victory! It is a thing to own this motherboard. In the follows are the instruction to have you put it into your computer machine.

The Assembling

The CBYTE motherboard is built for dual processor. It is important to have all the processor for your motherboard connecting at the joining place. Never cause your computer to start without every processor, for in doing so your feng shui will diminish and your lower parts will shrivel and recede into the abdomen. It is good spirits for the dual processor to be connected.

Also the CBYTE must have its RAMs. Without RAMs the CBYTE will hunger for remembering. Please do not make the CBYTE hunger in this way, for it is loyal and a servant to you.

The CBYTE is thirsty for memories, but not for cola. Do not sate the CBYTE with cola.

ISA and PCI Expanding

It is certain that you will not use the onboard video and sound modules, for they are lousy. Instead put your own video and sound modules into the fitting slots. If you do not have the network module it is no big deal. The onboard network module is not lousy. Using the 10/100/1000 built in network module will bring no shames onto your family and its name. The pornographies will still have tunnels with which to stream into your powerful machine. It is acceptable.

Setting The Jumpers

The CBYTE comes with the jumper switches set for a perfect harmony with the beep monster enabled and the onboard video, sound, and network modules working like a tiger. If you want the modules of your own, please examine the happy diagrams for changing the system. If you do not want the CBYTE working like a tiger, this is a glorious optionality.

It is harmful to some to hear the beep monster enabled. To remove the spirit of noise from your system, the jumper diagram on page 11 will show unto you the way. It is your motherboard. It must be used in the way which will bring you endless joy. We proffer thanks in the voice of the CBYTE to you. Beep, beep, beep.

So, You've Decided To Kill Yourself

Good for you. You've shirked off the horrible responsibility of living and decided to take your sniveling ass out of the genepool with a bottle of Tylenol IVs. However, just like when you went to the McDonalds' around the corner on a blind date to meet the girl of your dreams just to find out that it was a cruel joke and meanwhile your house burned down because you left your toaster on, there are a few things you should take care of beforehand, or else your entire afterlife could be spent regretting that you didn't manage to do everything you needed to do.

1. Make sure your toaster, oven, back massager, electric blanket, and radio are off. Television is okay.
2. Spellcheck your suicide letter. Nothing is more embarrassing than realizing that you told everyone you ever loved that you are about to 'comit suicide'.
3. Your loved ones, especially the hot ones, are going to need some sort of comfort to deal with your tragic death. And by comfort, I mean my phone number.
4. Those are Tylenol IVs, right? Because you can take like six bottles of normal Tylenol and absolutely nothing will happen. I once had a girlfriend that would take a bottle of Tylenol whenever she saw me, probably out of a fear that she wasn't hot enough. She never died. However, she did cry herself to sleep every night except for when I was out of town.
5. Make sure your underwear is clean. Seriously. Coroners have a hard enough job.
6. Did you make sure to go to the bathroom before your overdose? Did you?
7. Tylenol FOUR, stupid. I'm telling you, you're going to wake up with a bad taste in your mouth and absolutely no hangover at all if you go with that over-the-counter stuff.
8. Are you sure that's every hot girl you know of? What about the neighbor you watch undressing through her wide-open bedroom window every night at 7:15? She might not be able to deal. You know, with her not having a drooling, overweight audience next door. Make sure you give her details on how to contact me. Hey- selflessness is part of my nature.
9. Do you have flowers in your room? Go watch a movie involving suicide. EVERYONE who commits suicide, EVER, has flowers nearby. I think flowers subconsciously cause people to kill themselves, in a ruthless attempt to herd mankind and use their wastes as fertilizer for the brutal florid overlords. Get some flowers.
10. You idiot. Look- drink a fifth of gin and then tilt a vending machine over onto your foot. Trust me, your doctor will give you the right pills to overdose on. I'll wait. You wuss.

Part Of The Family

Reading Joolz' recent posts reminds me why I'm not working with Mike. Mike works at a very large internet apparel company whose name rhymes with Zappo's, and they work very hard to make you feel like part of a big, utopian corporate family.

I hate family. I don't talk to my family, I am horribly confused about what to do around my wife's family, and if the place where I work doesn't want me to go bugnuts at the very mention of me being a part of theirs then I'd better be working for the fucking mafia. The way I see it, all the time companies spend coming up with little get-togethers and team builders to bring people closer together can be used for something much more important- supporting my raging drug habit so I have something to be grateful for.

Where did team-building exercises come from? Well, let's say you work at the most obvious sort of establishment you can possibly work at here in Las Vegas (not the fucking brothels, losers). Let me tell you, working at a corporate casino is the epitome of living your life in total fear. You are reminded how little you mean to the company every day. They have reduced the concept of a pay raise to that of a beautiful insult; they will literally tell you the average pay raise percentage per year and give you less out of spite. The reason they do this is because the corporate casinos could care less how much you bust your ass for them; they care about something called seniority, which is business-ese for "rewarding the people who don't work enough to hate their jobs after ten years".

One day long ago, during the Golden Age of Corporate Fear, your best option was to work for a huge corporation, because people needed benefits to survive. At some point, a company tried a team building exercise which nobody liked, then asked each employee to say how much they gained. Each employee, afraid of losing their lifelines, painted the whole process with glowing praise, and this result was written down as Law in the annals of business history.

Let me tell you something. After three years of being told how expendable I was as a person, I quit my job on the spot and got a job at a small company with zero benefits and paychecks which sometimes disappeared when the business was going through rough patches. I was paid more than I'd ever made previously in my life just because I knew Perl. I never met more than four people who worked outside of the programming department and company rules were that non-programmers had to treat us like gods among men and harbingers of ill fate. I'm sure it sucked for everybody else, but when you're literally being paid to go across the street to the bar and get smashed for six hours straight before coming back and cranking out an application (projected time was always about twenty times how long it took to actually write it), you cease caring about other people. You cease even acknowledging other people have names. And if someone has the audacity to address you by name when they are far beneath your station, you start to do some pretty crazy things. Like inventing team-building exercises to punish them.

That Mario Batali Dislikes Food Blogs

Link

Roommate: Dude, did you see what they said about Sandra Lee on this recipe review?

Mario: Dude, that is so not right. She's a nice person. A lot of people cook using prepared ingredients.

Roommate: There's tons of reviews like these.

Mario: I wish there were some sort of wifi asskicking one could deliver in these situations.