The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

They played “Time Warp” on the radio this morning. Despite the fact that I have never seen RHPC in a theater, and have only seen it on TV a couple of times, I know nearly all the words and sang along. Loudly. And did all the voices. This is because of a combination of things. My dad has a collection of weird music, including the Greatest Hits of the Dr. Demento show, and “Time Warp” figures prominently. It was also one of the perennial favorites at the dances at my high school. We were a bunch of freaks; what can I say? And my friends are the sort of people who… well, you know how most people play the Electric Slide or the Chicken Dance at their weddings? My friends play “Time Warp” instead. We know all the steps, and do them in perfect sync. Add some black lace and bad makeup, and we’d look like The Scene From The Movie. The bride generally does not hesitate to throw herself on the floor, foofy white dress and all, at the end of the song with the rest of us.

It is rather unfortunate for the Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission that his name is Orson Swindle. OK, that has nothing to do with anything, but I didn’t want to give it an entry all on its own.

I would just like to take this time to announce to anyone who may be listening, particularly in the Apple Computers marketing department, that I will grant Apple a perpetual, worldwide, nonexclusive license to use my image to promote their product (specifically as a “Switcher” to Macintosh from Windows), and all they have to do is give me one of the new TiBooks with a three-year AppleCare protection plan.

Endless marketing fodder for something that costs less than $4000. It’s a good deal, no?

Here at work we’ve been getting calls from Verizon, trying to sell us Business DSL under some promotion they’re running. We do need DSL- we’re using dialup right now and it 5ux0r5. (That’s “sucks,” for the non-1337 [elite] among you ). But we don’t have any kind of network. Our computers are plugged into the power outlets and the phone jacks and that’s it. And since we are in two separate rooms, running cabling outside the wall is impractical at best.

But Verizon keeps trying to sell us DSL. So I explained to the woman on the phone today that because we have no network, we can’t use DSL right now (well, we COULD, but it would be two separate connections, and that’s no good). She said, “Um, well, you could get that at any computer store!”

Clearly I am dealing with a rep who has no idea what she’s selling. All too often the case.

So I replied that we would have to have our Ethernet cable installed. She says, “But we’re not offering cable! This is DSL! It’s over your phone line!!”

Sigh.

“I am aware of that, but the computers still need to be plugged into a network. And the cords and cables that form part of that network need to be installed. Inside the wall. So we need to have someone come in here and do that. We can’t take DSL right now.”

She’s going to call me back in a month. *cringe*

So here is my lesson for companies selling technology related products and services….

If you are marketing your product to anyone tech-savvy enough to NEED DSL, much less to the IT decision makers in any company, you really ought to make sure that your reps have some idea what they’re talking about. A broadband sales rep who does not understand the need for a network, or that Ethernet Cable is not the same as Cable Internet Service, is wasting my time. The way to sell things to people is NOT by wasting their time.

Thank you, that is all.

Toyota announces that it’s whole line will have hybrid engines by 2012. Now, if I can just make Miss Parker last that long….

“Holy Mother of the Jackson Five!!” –Wil Wheaton

Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, of the 80s rap group Run DMC, was shot dead in his recording studio at 7:30 PM on Wednesday.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am just NOT a big hip-hop fan. Never have been. But I really liked Run DMC as a kid, and still enjoy their work. Run DMC, along with groups like The Sugarhill Gang, were pioneers of the genre before it was overrun with glorified criminals and started to suck. Their collaboration with Aerosmith was an important moment in modern music, and their display in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is well-deserved.

As a kid, Run DMC videos were among the very few videos my parents would allow my brother and me to watch, back in the early days of MTV when we were young and impressionable. We watched them because they were kind of goofy and fun and Dad would sing along with them and it made us giggle.

Go read this article for more information about the shooting and a brief summary of the positive influence hip-hop has lost.

You may remember that in our preparations for our London trip, Tom and I are both doing some research on London and the UK so that we’ll have a better sense of the history of the things we are looking at. After all, several of the buildings we plan to look at are older than our country.

This morning on the Metro, I finally got started on my London reading. I’m reading In Search of England: Journeys into the English Past by Michael Wood. Wood explores several historical figures and events and how they have morphed from dry history lessons into the cultural underpinnings of England. The purpose of the book is to explore the parts of history that have become such a part of English culture that they contribute to what it means to be English. Really fascinating stuff.

This morning, I finished the chapter on the Norman Conquest in 1066 (you remember, the Battle of Hastings). He describes the debate in English culture, still going on to this day, about whether the Normans are the ones who really brough civilization to the Saxons, or whether the Normans merely placed their yoke of oppression on the established Saxon civilization. Were the Normans cultured Europeans who brought the ideas of ordered government to a savage and chaotic England? Without the conquest, would England still be made up of fragmented tribes of Angles and Jutes? Is the greatness of the British Empire primarily due to the Norman civilization? Or were the Normans really just a bunch of Vikings who had only just learned to speak French? Did they really just burn the English countryside and raise castles in order to better foment their repression on the English-speaking natives of the island?

Certainly, the Normans and English didn’t learn to speak one another’s languages for decades, much less intermarry for centuries. The Normans did insist on holding government proceedings in French, unlike the English tradition of using whatever the local vernacular was at the time- Old English, Welsh, whatever. The realities of the Norman Conquest are actually overshadowed by their cultural influence on the English people. To this day, those primarily descended from the Old English lament the Yoke of the Normans, and those of Norman descent insist that their forbears brought civilization to the savage and provincial Old English.

Really fascinating stuff.

If you’re reading this, it means your ISP’s DNS server has updated and that my server migration is complete. Now that it’s all taken care of, I’ll be installing the Movable Type upgrade, going to work on the template, and doing all sorts of other fun things. Go me.

It’s a nice idea, but that turtle is going to haunt my nightmares.