I want to write a story just so I can have the whole "Is that a threat?" "No. It's a promise." Exchange.

Except it would just be:

"Is that a threat?"
"No. *beat* Yes, of course that's a threat. What are you, slow?"

I'll work it in somewhere along the way.

I went to get dinner tonight with my mom and when we were getting into the car some woman in the driver seat had the door open and was just sitting there, blocking my way. So I hung back for a few and then finally had to wander into the fray and sort of excuse myself so I could get in the car. And she—or was it a he?—looked at me awkwardly and sort of closed their (her?) door before they eventually drove away.

My mom asked what he ("She?") was doing. They happened to be taking the plastic off of new CDs and throwing them on the ground, point of fact.

Now aside from the fact that made him (her?) a total littering douchebag, how much would it suck to be someone whose sex was difficult to pinpoint? It's enough to give you a complex. It would give me one, anyway.

Anyway, I picked up the plastic wrappers they had thrown on the ground and—I kid you not—one of them was a k.d. lang CD.

Yeah... that's a lie.

I got a call today from a customer who needed their logo to be emailed to a sign company. He was acting a little weird, and couldn't help but blurt out that they were going to be on Extreme Home Makeover. He swore me to secrecy.

So, you know, don't tell him I said anything.

Anyway, I was wondering if that would ultimately help the company get good press and more business or if it really didn't work that way. I mean, there are makeover/better shows where they go to a store and you see some really sweet looking furniture and think, "Hey, maybe I should check that place out."

But do people think, "Hey, that roofing job looks super cute! I should track down that random company and see if they'll roof my building."

Maybe they do.

The Jose Chung episode of X-Files is on right now. Classic—classic!—episode. A must-watch.

I saw on the news tonight that the state is offering a $27 million bonus to the company rebuilding the 35W bridge if they come in under time.

Now that's an awesome idea! If it's Opposites Day. Let's just give the company as much time as they need, yeah?

I finally went across the University Avenue bridge (just above the collapse). Not to get all teary-eyed or nothin', but man is it scary looking. Just a massive chunk of roadway at a 45 degree angle into the river.

People all seem to be affected by the bridge collapse in different ways. I was in line the other day and the woman in front of me asked the checkout person if she knew anyone on the bridge when it collapsed.

Now, if you're in New York and it's right after 9/11 where so many more people lost their lives (or, thankfully did not) in the Towers, this is not a question that's completely out of place. But in this instance... not so many people directly affected. Just sayin'.

I thought it was an odd conversation starter.

But this woman does not take the prize for most inappropriate response to the collapse. That prize would go to the author of an article in a newsletter I printed the other day.

The author (I use the term loosely) described how she sat down, turned on the TV, and her "entire world was changed forever" upon hearing of the collapse.

Really? I mean... really? Your entire world? Because your daughter knew of a girl whose mother was on the bridge? It changed your world?

Boring world.

The kicker was that she was a nurse. How'd you like to have her for a caregiver? "You have cancer? Oh my god! My world! It's destroyed! I'm making this all about me! All about meeeeeee!"

Heh. It's the Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek portion of the episode:

"No other object has been misidentified more often than the planet Venus."

Hell, I didn't vote for him.

I'm sitting in the lobby of some random ass car place getting my...

Something's getting fixed. It was broken. Now they're fixing it. Whatever. It's a running theme these days.

Saturday night, my laptop (the planetclaire.org satellite station) took a turn for the worse and is now waiting for its own exploratory whatever. In the meantime I had to pick up a new laptop.

So I begrudgingly went to the nearest Apple store. I don't know why, but I hate that place. And it didn't help that they seemed unwilling to just sell me a damn computer. I needed the most basic little thing available. And I tried telling them that.

Oh no. I really needed to consider the other options. Because wouldn't I possibly need more power in the future? Or a larger screen? Or the case in black? Only for an extra grand?

Which I'm not totally clear about. The bottom line is that unless you're editing large videos, audio, layered PS files, a basic model is more than enough power for most people. And everyone around me was mainly asking if they could download pictures from their digital cameras or if their kid could hook up their iPod to the machine. Who the hell needs a 200 gig drive and 20-inch monitor for that?

Apparently a lot of people. Whatever. Anyway, even though it was "highly unusual" for someone to just come in and buy a machine without talking to an Apple consultant (or whatever the kids are calling them these days) they finally—begrudgingly—sold me a computer. Fine.

I got to my apartment, ripped it open, plugged it in and hit the power button.

Nothing.

No ding. No blue screen. No nothin'.

You know how something is supposed to work so easily and when it doesn't you assume you're doing something horribly stupidly wrong? That was me for a bit. I tried everything. Starting up off a CD, resetting the PRAM, taking out the battery and resetting to factory specs. Anything.

Nothing.

Finally I called Apple and they couldn't get anything more out of it than I could so she told me to take it back to the store. In the pouring rain.

I got back and explained the problem and the guy looked at me and said, "You did all these things in two hours?"

No. I did all those things about four times in two hours. How hard is it to try to push some buttons and try to start a computer? Really?

So he sent me to the back and the woman again looked at me kind of funny and said she would have to take it out of the box, test it, and make sure everything was still there.

Fine. Test away. I was actually secretly fearing that it would start up and that I had forgotten to do some sort of Captain Obvious thing to get it going. That would have been

But it didn't work for her either. So I got a second laptop.

And it's cute. It's a MacBook which I think is geared toward students (I think) but it suits me just fine. I've got maybe 75% of everything installed and I've now got my iPod back up and running.

But I miss my little old Pismo machine. It's sitting next to me looking so lonely. I tend to get attached to inanimate objects, especially those that techonology labels obsolete. It's like some old school beat reporter giving up his trusty typewriter for some new fangled model. So I'm hoping it'll be a cheap fix and I can again use the old guy for some things. I'm tempted to trash OSX off of it and just use it as a Classic Mac.

But we'll see.

I am just plain not having a good week. Or month.

Or, apparently, life at the moment.

The least of my troubles: my fucking iPod is corrupt or grumpy or something and claims I must wipe all traces of my (now apparently gone) music in order to use it again.

Of course, like any good Mac user, I just grabbed a utility to show hidden files and copied all the alledgedly gone files back to my computer. But it's still a bitch to sort through 6 gigs of songs to make sure I have everything. Anyway, music:

Coverage of the bridge collapse has died down at the moment. Soon the people who were lamenting the fact that this dangerous bridge wasn't closed earlier will be bitching about traffic and how their commute has been so terribly affected.

So one of the issues I run into working at the print shop (which also has copy and fax services) is that I tend to notice what people are copying and/or faxing.

Occupational hazard.

And one of the people that comes in to fax stuff on a regular basis is on the losing end of a lottery scam. You know the ones where they tell you that you've won thousands of dollars (in a lottery you've never entered) and eventually it turns out you have to pay some bank a small portion in order to collect.

And I've told her on a few occasions that it's a scam. And every time she tells me she knows what she's doing and I don't know what I'm talking about.

I mean, there's only so nosy I can be without seeming creepy.

Creepier.

Anyway, turns out (as of the latest fax) she's already paid these people $1,500. There goes her "I know what I'm doing." defense.

So, long story longer: you cain't get nothin' fer free.

It's pretty crazy in Minneapolis right now.