There are many people who hate telemarketer calls. Some of the worst ones are when you get one, and they put you on hold... or worse, when you come home and your answering machine is full of pre recorded messages from telemarketers.

Well, as a person who one time worked for a telephone solicitation company (doing political calls), I can say that from my experience, the easiest solution for telemarketers is to get a digital answering machine. Then, instead of recording your own voice greating, you use the built in computer greeting.

You see, those telemarketers phones are dialed by a computerized dialing system. When you answer, the computer recognizes a human voice, and puts you thru to the first open "live" operator it can. However, if a "computer" (i.e digital answering machine) answers, it assumes that it got the "This number is no longer in service" recording from the phone company, and will drop your call.

Usually this means that there is no message after the tone on your answering machine. The dialer has given up on your number. Other times, you will just get silence because they have dropped your call, but they haven't hung up yet.

Now, not all telemarketers work like that. Sometimes they will get machine, and put you thru to a person. However, that person will hear the machine, and tend to hang up... especually if its a "computerized" type greeting. If you say "you have reached the ___ household", then you have given them more ammo to use against you.

So, if you don't like telemarketers, get a digital answering machine. It won't work 100% of the time, but its better than nothing.

Mental note: Apparently there are racoons in Arizona after all... and they like to hide in my apartment complex's dumpster.

They also like to jump out randomly when people like me go to dump their trash at night.

I also hope they like picking up about 12 shit filled diapers that I threw into the parking lot as I jumped back and ran like a little girl from what I thought was a dumpster gone wild...cause I sure as hell am not going to go back out there to clean up that mess. There might be a mountain lion hiding under the Chevy Blazer parked outside my door for fucks sake.

And lawngnomes like me are so tastey....

There are two kinds of gamers out there. There are people like me, who like to play video games to relax. We like to kick back... and kick ass, in the games we play. To me, the best game of Madden is when I am ahead of the computer 65 to 0 at halftime.

Then there are the challange gamers. The gamers who like their games to be hard. The ones you see on websites who masturbate everytime a new game comes out and the designers make it more difficult to beat than the last version. You see them say shit like "OMG!!! In Tekken 12, you have to push up, up, down, left, right +square, down+circle and then a half circle on the D-pad to throw a punch now! That is SOOOO cool cause it makes the game SOOOO hard!"

I just want to smack those slapnuts. Seriously.

The sad thing is that the game designers listen to those fucknuts more than the rest of us when it comes to game design. Thus, you play a good game that comes out. You beat it. Then a sqeual comes out and you have to risk carpal tunnel just to get past the first level... just to please the fucknut fanboy "My life must be as difficult as possible" gamers.

Lets look at a game like Doom. I used to play it alot. And I admit, it was a challange. I wasn't the best at it, until I got the cheat codes for it. I figured it was freaking hard enough to find your way around the world... so why not have infinate health and all weapons? To me, its more rewarding to walk into a room full of baddies and casually decide how I am going to kill them with my infinate number of weapons, than to try to beat a level 27 times, dying everytime because there are 12 monsters and I have 11 bullets.

Sorry kids, that just isn't my style.

But naturally, that is my son's style. He likes to pick the slowest, dumbest, hardest to beat the game with characters. I imagine he does it for the same reason most dumbshit 13 year olds do it... cause that worthless character LOOKS COOL!

Oye.... says the Dad who spent 15 minutes getting his son past one level....

I had a pretty wasted day. I had to go down to Phoenix for a conference on "Questioning."

What is a conference on questioning? It is pretty much like every other teacher conference. You get 50 middled aged women and like five male teachers into one room. We all sit and listen to a speaker who goes over some "new" idea that as teachers we all covered in our bullshit college education classes. After that waste of time, we do some group projects... which are hard to ignore because odds are you will get stuck at a table with one or two teachers who REALLY get into these conferences and they take them very seriously and get pissed off at the people who don't.

And of course, the conference drags past the release time because those overly enthused teachers have to ask tons of questions, wasting everyone elses time. A conference that could end at 11am drags on til 2 or 3pm because they have questions and comments... and then they can get into debates with each other.

Its such a load of horseshit. I would much rather spend my time in the classroom doing what I like to do... TEACHING. Dealing with the students, running lessons, planning etc. Its that practical day to day experience that makes teachers better.... not feel good conferences.

And naturally these conferences, which teachers like me are sent to against our will, are in large cities. Did you know that the evening rush hour in Phoenix starts at 2:45pm? Its freaking insane.... It is the first city I have ever seen with dual HOV lanes... lanes which are actually used for once.

Oh, and lets not forget the smog....and the 100 degree heat.

And from what I understand, 10,000 people a month are moving into the metro area. So let me sum this up....120,000 new people a year adding to the traffic and pollution in Phoenix. And its only going to grow faster from major projections.

Its going to be rush hour all day long there in a few years. I wonder if the people who live there or move there are ready for that?

Oh well... being stuck in traffic serves as a good excuse to miss conferences... heh.

Ok, I found a new poster to put up. I wanted more color in my room, and I came across a penquine walking in front of a strikingly blue iceburg. It just grabbed me. So I bought it... and I put it in the nice frame where my Bush poster was.

Right now the Bush poster is unframed and in my other classroom. I am afraid to hang it back up without a frame the kids will vandelize it. Some of them hate Bush pretty hardcore. And while I applaud their vocal politics, I did pay 8 bucks for that poster... If anyone is going to draw devil horns on it or turn Bush's face into a dart board, its going to be me, damnit, not the students.

LOL!

I just read a story on CNN.com where some legislators are thinking about passing a law that would require the evacuation of pets in the event of a hurricane or other disaster. One lawmaker lamented on how there were some people who refused to leave if they couldnt take their pet, and pondered how many lives could have been saved if those people could have taken their puppies and kittens.

My question is this: If those people who have the means to leave don't leave because they can't take their pet, why save them in the first place? Ever hear of "natural selection?" When dipshits like that die in a hurricane or tornado or earthquake, we are simply thinning some of the stupid out of the gene pool...

Granted, I may be a bit cynical especually coming from a situation where my ex wife would put her cats above her son... but still. Some people are just plain stupid, and you can't always legislate common sense.

Seriously. If you see a tital wave coming at your freaking house, but you won't leave unless you can take Fluffy with you, then you are a moron... cause odds are if Fluffy had an IQ over 40 and they knew what was coming, Fluffy would abandon your dumb ass and head to higher ground faster than you can blink.

Oye....

I put a poster of Bush quotes up in my classroom. None of them are doctored... and there is no commentary about them. They are all just pure quotes in Bush's....um.... style. My students think that they are funny as fuck. I do to. I put it up to illustrate to my students one important point... think before you speak.

Although its kinda sad that I can use the president of the U.S. to illustrate stupidity so well. Makes one wonder about the average intelligence of the electorate.

Or at least 50.9% of the electorate.

Some of my favorite Bushisms on the poster include:

"I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region."
"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease."
"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead."
"I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically."
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''
"It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."

Sometimes I wonder how those people with Bush bumper stickers on their cars can look in the mirror in the morning and say "I made a smart decision with my vote."

Then again, in Bush's words, perhaps I am misunderestimating them.

I am glad that the weekend is here. I can finally go and get my glasses fixed. The thing that sucks about being in a small town is that the closest place to get stuff like that done is about 90 minutes away. Not exactly a fun drive... but then again, at least gas prices are back under three bucks here.

Maybe they will stay that way... unless the oil companies find another convient excuse to jack up the prices.

Its nice to upgrade things in life... my most recent upgrade was my car.

I just got a new car. I am loving every minute of it. Above 20mpg. A working radio with one of them new fangled compact disc players. The dome light fades out after closing the door like those lights do in a movie theater.

Three cup holders. THREE! Plus one in the arm rest that I can flip back for the use of rear seat passangers.

No fear of my transmission dropping out.

Well, its an American car, so I still have that fear. Hopefully I will have better credit next car shopping trip so I can get a real car from Japan... but for now this will do nicely.

Yah, it is nice to be able to do long road trips, or even long shopping trips again without any worries. I say the rebuilding process of my life is... pretty much complete.

But more on that next time.

Riggity run for the hills cause the gnome is back.

The gnome is gleeful for many reasons. He has a new job. He lives in a new place.

He has knowledge that he isnt supposed to have and the means to act on it at my whim.

Life is good.


More details as the days progress. I have actually gotten interested in blogging again, so I look forward to sharing. Especually during work when things are slow as snot.
Right now, I have laundry to do. I just got a new laundry carrying system in my apartment. I got two of those portable fold down laundry baskets. When one gets full, thats about all it takes to fill the washing machine. It works fairly well.

So how the hell is everyone else?