Ladies and gentlemen, you have but a few hours before April Fool’s Day commences in earnest. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to do a good April Fool’s prank using a computer. Note that if you, like me, have access to a large computer lab, you should only use hardware-based tricks, because individuals will all have different login credentials. Report back when you have completed your mission.

Today is what we call a clusterfuck of epic proportions. (Firefox’s spell checker has flagged clusterfuck, but I don’t care.) This weekend we were helping a friend move down from New York to DC. To live in our house, actually, until he finds a place of his own. Which I’m not happy about, but at least he’s going to find a place of his own, and damn soon if I have anything to say about it. Two boarders was too many already; fortunately we’re still living at the in-laws’ for the time being. Anyway, today was a giant mess.

This morning we started working at around 8:00 or 8:30; he guessed we’d be out of there by noon. Half an hour later, he was standing around doing nothing. I said “do you need something to do?” He said no, and continued standing around doing nothing. So a few minutes later, A asked him if he was waiting for something. He said yes, he was waiting for us to get off the rug so he could vacuum it. A pointed out that things did not have to be done in a particular order, and there was lots more he could do meanwhile. (See, he wasn’t actually ready to go. He had left a lot of things undone. We suspect he spent his time masturbating, smoking weed, and playing video games instead. Normally these are pursuits I would approve of, but not when there are things to be done.) He got all huffy and ordered us to get out and go home, he’d do it all himself. Needless to say this was ridiculous and pissed off A and I quite a lot. She locked herself in the bathroom to cool off, and I went back to packing up his computer. Damn, I wish we’d left when he said to.

He did most of the carrying to the U-Haul while she and I cleaned the place. A lot of the carrying (down two flights of stairs) was done on Saturday, when we had hired two guys to come and help us out with the furniture…but there was still a lot left to be carried. So A and I cleaned and scrubbed…the bathroom, the refrigerator, the stove, the fingerprints from all the light switches and doorknobs, etc. I was working on the very dirty inside of a kitchen cabinet and A was working next to me at the sink when he stopped behind us and commented, “you guys are such good little scrubbers!” I turned around and gave him The Look of Death. He said something to the effect of “I wouldn’t have done that if you guys hadn’t been here” and A turned around and said “So…this doesn’t need to be done?” He said: no, not really. We immediately dropped our sponges and got ready to leave - bags gathered, coats on - and he said “are you leaving TOWN now? There’s so much left to do!” I was about to smack him in the mouth, I swear.

I went and got our car, which we’d parked a couple of blocks away on Friday night. I came back and brought my book for Sex & Gender class and sat with the U-Haul for a couple of hours, because that way he wouldn’t have to keep pulling the back gate up and down and locking and unlocking the padlock. (That’s what I did on Saturday instead of carrying anything - I was the truck guard and A did stuff upstairs.) I sat out there freezing my ass off - it was about 40 degrees both days, with no sun because of all the buildings. Finally it was time to go. At 3:10pm, that is. More than three hours later than he’d predicted, and five hours from when I wish we’d left, when he told us to.

We realized at the last minute that we couldn’t take the regular route to the Holland Tunnel, we had to take the truck route. He was behind us, and I called him and said “did you see we have to follow the truck route?” He said “oh, no! I didn’t see that.” So we led him through it. I don’t know why, but we stuck with him the whole way back to our house. After the final toll on the New Jersey Turnpike, which we breezed through with E-Z Pass, we sat on the shoulder and waited for half an hour until he came through. Half an hour. Wait, I remember why we stuck with him: because he’s a moron who can’t handle himself. He called up after the toll in Delaware and said “uh…do you have any cash? I’m running out of cash.” Apparently he didn’t have enough for tolls - they were costing him more than normal because he’s driving a truck, but he didn’t think to have LOTS of extra cash on hand. So fine, we pulled over on the shoulder together and I ran back with $40 cash. At the Fort McHenry toll, we went through a regular lane because there’s nowhere to pull over and wait after that one. Of course he managed to be so far behind us that we didn’t see him, but we figured he’d catch up. Nope: he’s still a moron.

We were around Catonsville when he called and said this priceless gem: “I took 695 East. Was that wrong?” Instant *headdesk* on my part. I said “Yes.” He said “I gotta go, bye” and hung up. So we had absolutely no idea what happened, what he was doing, or where he would end up. We drove another 8 miles to a rest area just past Route 32, and called him up again. Turns out he was still on 695 because he figured he could just loop around, and he said to go home, he’d find his way somehow. A pointed out that 695 is the Baltimore Beltway. So we told him we were waiting at the rest stop past Route 32, because obviously he needed help getting home. Fortunately that rest area was part of Maryland’s free wi-fi rest stop program, so I got on the computer and started typing this entry. (I’m still typing it, duh - we’re about to cross the American Legion bridge into Virginia.) He finally caught up and we set off…still guiding him…because he’s a moron.

This probably doesn’t sound too bad to most of you, but the guy was already on my shit list to begin with for various other stupidities. A wanted to help him move, so of course I came too. And I didn’t mind it, until today, when he became a complete idiot. God damn, he pissed me off so bad.

OH HAI
I MADED SUM LOLCATS FOR DA CONTEST
THEY NOT DOIN SO WELL IN VOTING
PLEEZ VOTE HEER AN HERE
KTHXBAI

When I saw on BBCool that the Blackberry 8820 is about to be released, I got slightly worried. The article reported that the phone will combine GPS and wifi in one unit, which as far as I can tell is a first for Blackberry devices. If this phone had a camera, I would have been annoyed because it would be my dream phone - and I just bought my Curve 8310 for $330. But when I checked it out on Gizmodo, sure enough, no camera. A lot of commenters seemed to like that, saying that their employers don’t allow camera phones. Only one person pointed out that the Blackberry camera can be disabled at the enterprise level by administrators. I don’t want a phone without a camera; I first had one with my Color Sidekick (man that thing was crap) and I love it. In fact, the Curve’s camera is so good (2MP) that I haven’t used my regular camera since I got the phone - nothing I’ve taken a picture of has been that important. So even though the 8820 will have both GPS and wifi, it’s not for me.

And neither is the upcoming Curve 8330. It doesn’t have wifi. What’s it take to get a quality smartphone with GPS, wifi, and camera?

Well here I am, trying to write a paper that’s due tomorrow morning. I need two more pages. I’ve found an outstanding source, but I can’t exactly have Amazon deliver it to me instantly. I can buy some of the articles in PDF format but that costs WAY more than buying the book.

Tonight the College Bowl coached announced the official team; as he told me before, I am on it. If my wife doesn’t come to New Orleans - which she’s said she won’t - I might end up rooming with a stranger. If that person’s parents also come to the conference, she might room with them, which means I might get to room with gretchenmarie but I don’t know. That would be totally awesome though, I would absolutely die of happiness if we could room together!

Oh, and I totally caught a mistake in the 2005 Academic Bowl questions we used tonight. One of them was asking (basically) what country the Suleymaniye Mosque and Aya Sofya are in. As always, they spelled it Hagia Sophia, but anyway. The picture, though, was of the Blue Mosque. All three are in Istanbul, Turkey. So I mentioned that it was the wrong mosque in the picture. The coach was like “are you sure?” I said yes, I’ve been inside all three, and that is the Blue Mosque! This was the next-to-last question of the night, so after practice several people watched while I brought up my pictures from our trip to Turkey and I showed them that yes indeed, it was the Blue Mosque. I even used Google Images to prove it was not Aya Sofya or Suleymaniye! The coach said I’m probably the only person who would ever have caught that, ever. Haha!

I finally figured out which celebrity I saw in the elevator at the market in L.A. It was either Heather Graham or Marley Shelton. They look kind of similar so I’m not sure. I figure Heather Graham would have had a bodyguard with her, but then again it was in L.A. so who knows? People do weird things in L.A. But I think probably it was Marley Shelton. A minor celebrity, probably - worth a mere $15.69 on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, compared to Heather Graham’s $29.09 - but still, somebody that I’ve seen before and recognized.