The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

So, people are all abuzz over the Britney/Madonna kiss on the VMAs.

First of all, people, it’s not a mystery. Two women kissed, ON STAGE. Can you say “publicity stunt?”

Secondly, why isn’t anyone talking about how Madonna also kissed Christina Aguilera?

And finally, my theory on where it came from: Picture Britney standing backstage at the VMA’s in her little costume, trying to concentrate on getting ready to go on, but incredibly distracted by the presence of her ex-boyfriend, the one who spilled her little (not-so) secret to the media. She’s angry, she’s hurt, and if you believe the tabloids, she’s itchin’ to get back at him.

Now imagine Madonna, older and wiser, leaning over to Britney, and with a conspiratorial whisper, saying, “Hey, I know what’ll REALLY make Justin crazy….”

Tom made a new friend at Gnomedex, who has recently appeared in my comments to express his Mac-envy, among other things. He’s a great read, and so I am happy to answer his interview questions. Read on!
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Although I’m probably not AS anti-Microsoft as this guy, the hard drive space erosion alone is reason enough to check out his article on all the files that Windows creates that are nearly impossible for you do delete.

The fabulous Minnesota Meg, sister of my hottie-geek boyfriend Tom, has posted questions for me as part of the interview meme.

The meme works as follows:

1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

So, sign up, and read on for my answers to Meg’s questions….
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So, the DC area suffered major storms yesterday. It knocked out the power at my office around 4:30 PM. Because I hadn’t heard anything else, I got up and went to work this morning.

The power was still out. Not only that, but our hosting provider in Texas was under DDOS attack, so our website (which is our whole business since we provide an ASP service) was more or less unreachable.

Great. So I worked from home today. Which is to say, I got very little done because most of what I needed in order to accomplish anything is on the fileserver at work.

Apparently, our power won’t be restored tomorrow, either. So I’ll be “working” from home again.

I’ll probably make a few calls from my cell phone or something, just to keep caught up. But I’ll be working in my PJs. W00t.

Wired’s cover story this month is terrific. It’s about synthetic diamonds, and how they threaten the existing diamond industry, specifically, the de Beers cartel.

At the risk of alienating certain recently engaged friends (congratulations, by the way), I gotta say this about threatening de Beers… It’s about damn time.

Diamonds are overrated. No, I mean it. Sure, they’re pretty. I’m female, and I like sparkly things as much as the next girl. But let’s look at this practically.

The “tradition” of the diamond engagement ring is not much of a tradition at all- it was manufactured by the de Beers marketing department during the 20th century. Even into the 50s, diamonds weren’t all that commonplace in engagement rings. Previously, other stones had been used because they were rarer.

Diamonds aren’t really all that rare. There are tons of them in some parts of the world. De Beers has created a scarcity where a glut existed by buying up most of the world’s diamonds and tightly controlling the supply.

Basically, de Beers has managed to increase demand through the myth of the diamond engagement ring tradition, and the myth that diamonds are rare and precious, while simultaneously reducing the supply, further increasing the price. And none of that even touches on the questions of “blood diamonds,” sold by African rebels to fund their systematic genocide of other Africans, or de Beers’ labor practices, etc.

At best, this is shady marketing, but even if you adopt a completely laissez-faire position on it (after all, consumers are still doing the demanding, and are still legally buying diamonds), it’s a great day for capitalism when not one, but TWO companies find a way to make the same product, for cheaper, and bring better products at better prices to the consumer. In fact, everyone BUT de Beers should be cheering for manufactured diamonds. Hooray for technology.

I am officially Not A Nice Person.

I have now hung up on the same salesman twice.

The Pitney Bowes guy keeps calling me. To be fair, he knows we need a postage solution. And I haven’t been able to present the options to the CEO so he could make a decision. So the poor salesguy has been left hanging for a while now.

But that doesn’t excuse the fact that every time he calls me, he expects me to make a decision, when I have been quite clear with him that I am not empowered to do so. Last time I hung up on him, it was because he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him when I wanted him to call back. He kept insisting that he would call me the next day, when I was very clear that I wanted a call the following week.

Today, it was back to the hard-sell. First, he was telling me what I want, rather than listening to me so he could find out. Not only that, he ARGUED with me about what I want. Secondly, he blatantly ignored the fact that I am not the decision maker. Thirdly, he ignored my rising and obvious irritation with him and continued with the hard-sell.

He has not yet figured out that annoying a potential customer is a good way to LOSE a potential customer. He also seemed to forget that I am not above hanging up on him if he won’t listen to me.

I tried to be nice. I really did. I work in sales these days, after all. I have to make calls to people who aren’t always excited to talk to me. I understand that it’s hard. But under no circumstances would I behave this way with a potential customer. So I don’t have a lot of sympathy left for this guy. I certainly don’t want to do business with someone who conducts himself with this appalling lack of professionalism.

Maybe I’ll go with his competitor after all.

UPDATE 8/27: The Pitney Bowes guy called back today. He was much more polite this time. Heh.

So, I came up with a great idea for a party I want to throw in a few months, maybe in December.

Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Have everyone over around 10 or 11 AM on a Saturday morning for eggs and pancakes and stuff. I make damn good omelettes.

Yeah, it’s gimmicky. But you know it sounds like fun.

This is sort of a vaguely disturbing, yet intricate and addictive little flash puzzle. The way the puzzle executes sort of puts me in mind of TimeHunt, which I loved until I had to start over a third time, with no meaningful collaboration.

Anyway, I have to go back and finish it when I’m not at work.

There’s a cool article today in the Post about Pittsburgh’s place in history, specifically, the Lewis & Clark expedition.