My stomach is (mostly) back to normal and I actually got some sleep last night, but everything else is still awry.

I've got a slight fever, my head feels like it's going to explode, my sinuses feel like they're packed with sand, and my throat is still very sore.

I hate being stuck with nothing to do. I mean, time off from work is always nice, but a) I need the money, b) I'd like to be able to do other things, and c) TV sucks. I would be going to work today, but we rely so much on vocal communication there that I would be holding up progress. Also, I don't want to spread this crap to the rest of my team or my customers. "Boss Lady" told me to just stay at home today and to call her tomorrow morning at 9:00 to let her know how I'm feeling. I think that as long as my headache is gone, I'm going to force myself to go in to work.

The guys have been handling things rather well, and I'm pretty proud of them for it, but even they would tell you that I am needed in that place to make it run.

So, here goes another day of doing virtually nothing while I attempt to recover.

I didn't sleep hardly at all last night. My joints are all aching, my head hurts, my back hurts, my sinuses have been bugging me, and my stomach is in a knot. I still have a bit of a fever, too.

If I didn't know better, I'd say I had the flu. I didn't go to work today because of it, and I'm hoping to be able to get some sleep here-and-there.

Well, today was a rather long day, but I fear the evening hours will drag longer.

Last night, when I got home from work, the feeling of a sore throat hit me like a ton of bricks. I figure it was most likely an allergic reaction to the pollen and mold that the local farmers are aggravating in the fields, but it's also highly possible that I caught it from work. Yesterday afternoon, "Boss Lady" stopped at the shop to leave us supplies. She had called earlier in the day, and scarcely had any voice, but when she arrived at the shop later, she sounded much better.

I was up rather late last night, trying to complete some necessary tasks, and thus made it to be around midnight. Because of a necessary activity for the business I am forming, I was awake at 6:30AM this morning. It wasn't exactly a short night, but it was a fair amount less rest than I am accustom to.

All morning and all day today, my throat continued to bother me. By the time I arrived home, I was feeling quite lethargic, and my joints had begun to ache. I attributed the aches to the arthritis I am ridden with, but now I am considering otherwise...

As I sit here and author this entry, I have a slight fever, my throat continues to ache, my sinuses are beginning to threaten me, and all my joints are very very sore.

I just tried to watch a movie, in hopes it would put me to sleep. The movie I watched could account for the slightly non-standard form of writing you see here, as Tom Hanks played a very prominent role in the film as a highly educated professor. The movie was a remake of a classic: "The Ladykillers".

Needless to say, the attempt to bore myself to sleep failed, as I quite enjoy the aforementioned film. I am going to try to make my way to bed now, though it is yet rather early in the night.

One final note before I go, I do enjoy Firefox 2's new spell check feature. You should see my entries filled with less misspellings from here out.

And with that, I bid adieu. It is rest for which my body longs, as it is a carnal necessity for my recovery.

Monday: A chance of sprinkles and flurries. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 42. West northwest wind around 10 mph.

I don't know if anyone remembers or not, but...

I HATE SNOW!!!

How many times have you all seen me upset because someone is screwing with my money?

The health insurance policy I had signed up for with American Republic was supposed to bill out on the 22^nd of each month. When I called to cancel the policy the other day, the rep. I talked to said that it would try to bill out on the 22^nd, and if it was able to, I would receive a refund check for the policy amount.

I just pulled up my bank account summary, and saw that the policy was debited on the 20^th, yesterday.

DO NOT MESS WITH MY MONEY!!!

I just read in a news article that Iran won't tolerate anything similar to what North Korea received, when it comes down to "punishment" for their nuclear program.

Condoleeza Rice, I guess, is expected to go have a session with Iran, as she did with North Korea, to try and get them to back down on their Uranium Enrichment program. Iran's response to the matter was, "Imposing sanctions would have an impact beyond the region."

You can read about it on Reuters website, but Google News has a lot more.

I'm sure you've seen this, if not experienced it.

You're sitting in the drive through at McDonald's, waiting for your order to be filled. In the parking lot, a group of young "adults" exits a car. They begin to offer conversation to their buddy, working inside at the drive through window. Statements such as, "Flip those burgers!", "Hey, can I get free food?!", and the like all are offered up as topics of conversation.

Normally, a good employee at such a place will shrug it off and let the cronies walk past. Other times, though, the employee will respond, and join in with the juvenile torments.

Something similar happened to me today at work. A former employee was utilizing the services of the car wash. He tried to start a conversation with me, when he was about 50 feet away from where I was, and even though I had a customer in the shop who I was tending to.

I was the responsible employee and just ignored it.

Back when I worked at Nation Gypsum, I had an excellent benefits package. It included health, dental, vision, and life insurance, as well as a good old 401k retirement plan. Unfortunately, these benefits only took effect 30 days after the start of my employment, and I worked there somewhere along the lines of 58 days. That means I only had my coverage for 28 days. I never really had the need or chance to use the benefits, but I did pay for them.

Here about 3 months ago, an insurance salesman for American Republic got a hold of me at work (long story and I'm not even sure of how it starts). I ended up establishing a policy with him, and it was set to bill out on the 22^nd of each month.

Well, it billed out once, and brought my bank account down too low. In fact, right now I have about $10 to my name (payday is tomorrow). Guess how many days away the next billing will be...

I called American Republic's customer service line today on my way to work and cancelled my policy. I'm just not able to afford my rent, car payment, car insurance, gasoline, food, and other miscellaneous living expenses, as well as an insurance policy that costs me $80 per month and has limited coverage in this particular area. When I told the rep. that, she was very understanding and helpful, and ran the procedures necessary to stop my policy from being billed this next term.

It's very disturbing to me that healthcare is so expensive in this country, but insurance programs, designed to help lower the cost of healthcare, cost nearly as much! Other countries, such as Canada and the U.K., provide healthcare to their residents for free. Why? Because the taxes those people pay are more than sufficient to cover medicine costs.

The U.S. has such a high defecit as it is, there's no way we'd be able to afford public healthcare programs. Everything in this country is taxed, some things even multiple times! Yet, our government is so bloated that we can't afford to take care of ourselves.

It's a common argument that here in the U.S., most employers will provide benefits packages to their employees at a nominal fee. Those making this argument are unaware of the demographics of areas such as Rensselaer, and they don't realize that not everyone works for a high-profit corporation. There are a lot of farmers and small businesses in this area, as well as other areas like it, that can't afford to provide their employees with services such as health insurance. Also, most people who don't live in this kind of a community don't really realize how important the "mom and pop" stores are, or how important of a role that farmer with just 100 acres of land plays in the national economy.

So yeah. I have never had health insurance for longer than 30 days.

Apparently I knew ahead of time that I'd hurt myself and be in pain for a long while.

On about the third car today, after I got to the shop, I was washing the windshield. It's a normal thing that gets done on every car that passes through the shop. Considering we average about 28 cars per day, it's nothing that I'm not used to. On this car, however, I happened to reach the wrong way (or something like that), and everything just went haywire.

The odd thing in this picture is the fact that I picked up a 100lb. tree stump Sunday night at the staff cookout, and that didn't bother me in the least. Placing my foot in just the wrong spot, however, caused me to be in a lot of pain.

I'm hurting bad enough that my eyes have been watering nearly all afternoon. One of the guys at the shop looked at me this afternoon and said, "Looking at your eyes, I can tell you're really hurting..."

I hope I can sleep tonight and function properly tomorrow.

root@boardbox:~# whois important No whois server is known for this kind of object.

Too bad life doesn't work that way. Everyone seems to think they're more important than someone else, or that their issue is far more pressing than anything pre-existing.

Today, I had plans. I was to get up at 9:15AM, get a shower, leave by 10:15, stop by the shop for a quick minute, leave town by 10:30, make it to Lafayette by 11:30, meet my business partner, BJ, by 11:45, head to Indy, register our business with the state government, get back to Lafayette by 2:30, head back towards home, stop by the shop again for a quick minute, then come home and get some things caught up on.

Points of Failure

1. Mom woke me up at 8:30AM to tell me I was going to be late.
2. The visit to the shop took nearly an hour.
3. BJ had other obligations today and we were unable to go to Indy.
4. When I got home, I got about 10 other things dumped on me, dubbed "higher importance than what you're currently doing".

Now, I'm unable to get caught up on my things because of the problems that occurred today, and because some of the things were time-sensitive.

I need another vacation, desperately, so I can get my life straight.

Just so everyone knows, quotes.skudd.com is alive and kicking.

Once completed, moderators will have to vote on the submitted items. Once a certain threshold is reached (probably 90% of all moderators give it a +1), the quote will be approved and displayed on the site. If a quote sits below threshold for too long, it will be rejected.

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006, Tim, Guy who hates bash.org wrote: > > Could it be that my content was not up to bash.org standards, whatever > > they may be? Or could it possibly be that I was the only one in the vast > > emptiness of cyberspace who found it funny? Or maybe it's just the > > over-zealous moderators who take charge in approving or rejecting the > > content... It is unfortunate that something as trivial as a few rejected quotes would be such a point of contention. The truth of the matter is that bash.org receives a very large volume of very bad quotes. One, this increases the likelihood that your quote may not get the full attention of the moderator who happens to get your quote (in a batch of many). Two, it indicates that a *LOT* of submissions generally aren't funny to a wide audience. We routinely get a lot of material that simply doesn't qualify (cliche, regurgitation of past material, inside jokes, very niche humor, and shit that just isn't funny, played out, etc). > > that something as funny as a Monty Python reference had been rejected, Simple assocation or reference to Monty Python obviosuly wouldn't guarantee or qualify for inclusion -- if we approved every monty python joke the QDB qould get old very quickly indeed. > > offended at the thought of such mindless content taking priority over > > "techno-humor". > > well. Additionally, I would like to encourage you to submit your > > moderation guidelines to the public for open review, as it may > > potentially justify the rejection of my submitted comments. As you may have realized, there are no absolutes in our approval guidelines. If you do some digging, you may be able to find some documentation we have released regarding the suitability of quotes (reference: mod application). However, at best we only have very strong suggestions we give to our mod staff (no URL's, inside jokes, self or bash-referencing quotes, timestamps, etc.), but even none of that is absolute. As I have mentioned in past public postings, the mods we select generally have that undefineable gift at being able to select what is bash.org material, and what is not. Overall, we are extremely satisfied with the efforts of our moderators, and stand behind their decisions 100%. If you feel your quotes were of exceptional quailty, perhaps they were overlooked, and I suggest re-submitting them. (this does NOT mean flood the queue). > > My solution to this problem is simple. I will discontinue my use of your > > site, and I will encourage a certain few additional people to do so as Boycott because you didn't get approved? Don't be silly... /blaxthos

...and second message...

p.s. - i don't generally take the time to reply to every piece of mail we get (a LOT), but it seems you took a lot of time and put some effort into explaining your reasoning. While I'll be honest and say that the loss of one (or even a hundred) users isn't going to make a huge deal, I do appreciate your taking the time to express your dissatisfaction and thought it worthy of consideration and a decent response.

This is basically a "letter" to the Bash.org moderation staff. I am not going to email it because I fear I will see something such as, "E-mail message ID #2390572 has been rejected."

Attention Bash.org Staff: In light of numerous recent rejected submissions, I am hereby discontinuing my use of your site. While in the past I found it a place for mildly entertaining content, I no longer receive any joy from my visits there. How, you may ask, could someone not find the "geek" humor found there? How could someone not find the sacreligious entries about extra-marital, homosexual activities funny? Well, up until now, I did find a fair number of the entries hilarious, and I shared them with friends and family. Thinking I could take part in the world of laughter, I submitted similar content as I encountered it, only to find later that it had been rejected. Could it be that my content was not up to bash.org standards, whatever they may be? Or could it possibly be that I was the only one in the vast emptiness of cyberspace who found it funny? Or maybe it's just the over-zealous moderators who take charge in approving or rejecting the content... Regardless of the source of the problem, I find it very appauling to see that something as funny as a Monty Python reference had been rejected, only to find it replaced with an approved entry about fornicating with a holy deity in the Christian religion. While I do consider myself a Christian, I believe in freedom of speech, thus I am not entirely opposed to your posting of such content. However, I am completely offended at the thought of such mindless content taking priority over "techno-humor". My solution to this problem is simple. I will discontinue my use of your site, and I will encourage a certain few additional people to do so as well. Additionally, I would like to encourage you to submit your moderation guidelines to the public for open review, as it may potentially justify the rejection of my submitted comments. I bid you good day, and wish you luck in maintaining such a popular site. -Skudd

Whiney, yes. I'm just sick of it and I'm completely done with it.

I've probably blogged about it before, but meh. It's funny.

Singing horses.

Head over to the Preempted.net forums and take a look at the graphic design contest.