You Scored as Stoner. Hahah! You stupid druggie! Stoner 47% Loner 33% Geek/Nerd 33% Emo Kid 33% Prep 27% Hot 26% “Ghetto” 20% Goth 20% Punk 20% Jock 13%

Thanks, QuizFarm!

Parts 1 and 2, respectively, in FLV format. If your computer can’t play them, then download VLC and open the files with that.

Apparently, that weirdo toothpaste company made this video a long time ago to brainwash kids into buying their products, and lately they’ve been trying to remove the videos from the internet out of embarrassment. As you download this, keep this in mind.

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

* AlgorithmicContr is feeling sorry for John McCain.  He’s matching wits with Paris Hilton, and it’s a draw.
<Vargstierna> that totally doesn’t make sense, wits is a plural but two halves only add up to one

I needed the UPS to come by my front door, so I ordered two GB of RAM from Newegg. I’m sure I’ll find a use for it later. It was due to come in yesterday, but I know the UPS, and they know me. They want to be unpredictable, so they delivered it today. But I was expecting this, you see.

So I waited for the UPS man to come to my door. He rang the doorbell, and was instantly put out by 10,000 volts of electricity. I snatched my 2GB of RAM from him, and ran inside. Then I hear the
doorbell again. I grab my UPS tranquilizer and approach slowly…

Meanwhile, in real life, the UPS man rings the doorbell, and I manage to open the door before he scurries away to his cozy little truck.

• “Hey, UPS man!”

He stopped in his tracks, turned around, and said…

• “How may I help you sir?”
• “Where can I get UPS socks?”
• “Uh… Uh… Here!”

With a sweaty hand he shoved a brown and yellow piece of paper at me with the company’s 1-800 number on it.

• “The 800 number’s on there. Take it! TAKE IT AND DON’T TELL ANYONE!!!”
• “Okay, thanks!”

He bolted to his truck and floored it. He wasn’t expecting anything good to come of this.

I picked up my 2GB of RAM off the ground and retreated inside where the UPS spy satellites can’t see me and called the 1-800 number. The woman who answered was not a woman at all but a robot. I had the feeling that she was about to send her toaster boyfriend to fry me if I didn’t give her a tracking number or just hang up.

• ” Tracking number?”
• “That is not a valid tracking number. Please try again or be fried by my laser satellite girlfriends, who are practicing their aim at your dog.”

As my dog was being fried Chicago-style outside, I frantically looked around. Poor little Abby was about well done when I said…

• “42!”
• “That order was placed back before I was just a KitchenAid food processor, you dumb-ass carbon life-form. If you want to speak to another pathetic human, then please say so now in your stupid ambiguous human language.”
• “Yes, please!”

I was forwarded to an actual woman this time. She sounded like a drill sargeant in boot camp.

• “SIR! THANK YOU FOR CALLING UPS SIR! HOW MAY I HELP YOU SIR!”
• “Yeah, hi, I was wondering if I could get UPS merchandise anywhere?”
• “WHAT KIND OF MERCHANDISE SIR!”
• “Well I saw a man driving a UPS truck the other day, and I noticed he was wearing these nice UPS socks. Where can I get socks like that?”
• “SIR! I DON’T KNOW IF THEY ARE OR ARE NOT SELLING SUCH MERCHANDISE, SIR!, OR IF THEY ARE WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE SELLING IT TO CUSTOMERS, SIR! SORRY SIR!”
• “Okay, thanks, goodbye.”
• “SIR! HAVE A NICE DAY SIR!”

She was scary. But this does confirm three suspicions that I’ve had about UPS.

1. They are indeed in cahoots with the military, making this a national conspiracy
2. Not all of the employees are aware of who they truly work for, but some of them know something…
3. These socks must contain some kind of superweapon. I must have them!

I don’t want eBay socks or CraigsList socks. I want UPS socks. Get them anywhere else, and they’ve probably already been decommissioned. I need to get them from the source, before it’s too late.

OSCON was friggin awesome!

Oh, and I went to OSCON.

“But Mr. Tuna, your McAwesomeness, what the cactaur is an OSCON?”

Well, OSCON is a very special event where nerds and geeks and hackers like me from around the world get together in Portland and talk about Open Source Software. I just happened to be a speaker there. My topic was about how FOSS can appeal to teenagers. Here is the O’Reilly page for the talk and here is my talk on Google Video. Yes, I wear that hat everywhere.

I finally got my book today! YAY!

I can now speak to people in a strange tongue and no one will understand me! I will be IMPERCEIVABLE MAN!!!

However, my quest for UPS-branded socks has yet to be fruitful. Here’s the email I sent to UPS corporate:

 Dear Service of Posting that is United,

I was on the way home from a dentist appointment and I was abruptly
stopped by a red light. I looked to my right, and saw a big brown UPS
truck. Oh, what a majestic brown it was with gold lettering and logo. I
looked at the man driving it (you have good drivers, by the way) and he
was nicely dressed in his UPS uniform. The thing that stood out the
most, however, were the socks.

What great socks they were, brown with a gold trim and a nice
embroidered UPS logo above the ankle. They really represent your
business well.

I am wondering where I can get these socks? Do you have them for sale
some place? You should open up an online Merchandise store. You’d be
rich(er)!

I think that you should also know just how quick and reliable your
service is. I ordered a book from Barnes and Noble on Sunday, and your
tracking service says that it went from Kentucky to Phoenix in 20
minutes!!! How do you do it? It is now (apparently) loaded in a truck
and I’ll have it tomorrow. How great you are! I give you my thumbs UPS!

thanks!
-tuna

Well that’s a nice email. I complemented their business and the men and women in brown who serve them daily. But here is the ungrateful, half-hearted response I got…

Dear Tuna,

Thank you for your inquiry.Your comments are very important to us.
Customer feedback allows us to continually improve our services. Please
note that comments such as these help when planning the design and
function of all UPS merchandise and are highly appreciated.
Unfortunately, UPS does not have merchandise for sale.

Please contact us if you need any additional assistance.

Shakira Hanson
UPS Customer Service

What is that??? He didn’t even parse his punctuation correctly in that first line there, which I find extremely insulting. He went on to completely ignore my nice comments about them, and condescendingly reject my inquiry with a simple “We do not have UPS merchandise for sale.”  I must say, those guys are really good at making us bloggers look like geeky little teenage weirdos, learning obscure languages that nobody speaks and trying to get free swag from… what?

I’m not going to give up. I’m going to GET some UPS socks. I’m making a whole category about it.

Hmm… but which one? Elvish is only spoken in the land of ComiCon. Then there’s Esperanto, but only like 3 people speak that, and then they’ll tell you that thousands of people speak it. So I went with the only one that has a Freenode.net IRC channel: Lojban!

So I went down to my local Barnes and Noble and said, “Gimme some Lojban!” The woman working there turned her lady-fro-veiled face to me and said, “We have one item, and it’s preorder-only.” I slapped a $10 bill on the counter and said, “GIMMEH!”.

Meanwhile, back in Nashville, a jumpsuit-clad man was putting What is Lojban by Nick Nicholas in a box.

The book wound up in Kentucky somehow and took the supersonic highway to Phoenix, arriving in just under 25 minutes.

So while it’s in the tubes of my local UPS just out of reach, I decided to attempt to get me a pair of them kick-ass UPS socks (that’s not my leg)!

I called the UPS store in Buckeye.

UPS: Hello, thank you for calling the UPS blah blah blah blah help you?

Me: Yes, I saw a UPS driver the other day and he was wearing these socks–

UPS: You can’t purchase those.

Me: Oh, I–

UPS: Those are for our drivers only.

Me: Okay, by–

UPS: Have a nice day sir. And remember, sir… stay vigilant…

Okay, so I made that last part up. But she wasn’t going to even attempt to do anything for me. So I decided that I would just have to email corporate…

You see, I’m leaving a cliffhanger here. Check back next… interval of time… for the sequel!

Update: Part two haft cometh! Click here.