I was looking to find a simple wall shelf to put my DVDs on and I found one that I liked on Ikea’s website. If you look at it, it’s just really a piece of wood with a little mounting kit to go with it.

I was excited to notice that not only could you browse individual items but you could also order from them online as well. I filled out the order opting to have my billing address different from the shipping address. Although I did select that option, their system didn’t prompt me to input another billing address. I kinda shrugged that off. I put in my order and I get this email from them:

Due to a high volume of orders, we will contact you to confirm your order with the details about your delivery and total cost within 5 – 7 business days.

I’m thinking, this is really dumb. This is the year 2004 (almost 2005); online stores are nothing new why can’t they rollout a system that doesn’t suck ass? If it were 1997-1999 I think I would be more understanding, but come on. I have to wait 5-7 business days before they even tell me how much it will cost? With the shipping time, it’s gonna be 2 weeks before I get a piece of wood. By this time I was starting to get that sinking feeling.

Then a few days later I get another email from them:

Subtotal: $12.99
Shipping & Handling: $19.14
Tax: $0.00
Order Total: $32.13

Let’s see 12.99 for piece of wood – check. Shipping and handling comes to 19.14…19.14?! It costs more to ship the piece of wood than the piece of wood is worth! I was floored. This is absurd. I called Ikea and spoke to their customer service rep and I told her that I was ordering a piece of wood and the shipping costs…she cut me off and told me that anything that’s made out of wood goes out freight delivery. If this is true, which it’s not (it clearly states at the bottom of the message that it would be shipped via UPS), it would be the most ludicrous thing ever. After I told her that it would be shipped via UPS she said that it was that much because it was being shipped from Baltimore. I could see that; if it was Baltimore, Mars perhaps. 20 dollars to ship a piece of wood; incredible.

Needless to say, I promptly canceled my order.

I mentioned this lunacy to Megan and she said that I was like Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down because of my notable fervor on the matter. Interestingly enough, that dude is my hero and I can totally see myself getting fed up with traffic and leaving my car sitting in it.

There is one thing that I like about this time of year and that’s buying stuff for myself that I wouldn’t normally buy. Now, I know what you are thinking, you’re thinking that it’s mighty selfish of me to buy myself Christmas presents and stuff; well you’d be half right. I’ve spent a pretty penny on other people (besides me, myself, and I) and since no one gets me Christmas presents (ok, ok “no one” is an exaggeration but it’s pretty close to accurate) I get them for myself.

So this time, I got a new desk and a new LCD monitor to go with it. The desk is currently priced at 169.99 on their website but I saw the desk in the paper when I was in Las Vegas for 129.99. Now the 129 price was getting close the language that I speak so I went online and serendipity struck. The desk was priced at 99 with free shipping. Now that’s definitely speaking my language! Needless to say, I ordered it right up. Although the monitor stand, to me, is too far away to be able to see (especially with the resolution that I like to run at) what you are typing, so I put the LCD monitor in front of the “digital dock”. It makes the whole “digital dock” thing pointless, but honsetly I don’t really need to get to my computer that often.

The ViewSonic LCD was spendy but it was totally worth it. It’s the same model that I use at work and I’m completely satisfied with the brand. The difference in quality between the new and the old monitor is amazing. I didn’t realize how bad my old CRT really was until I got the new LCD. The old CRT was really blurry around the edges especially when it was first powered on but this one is crisp and clear the second I turn it on. I absolutely love it.

Oh yeah I did get one more thing but I didn’t buy it. A friend of mine gave it to me. I’ve been wanting a set of Japanese swords (katana, wakizashi, and tanto) for a while but I was going to wait until I moved into a house as sort of a self-congratulations thing but when the opportunity to get a set for free came up, I couldn’t pass on it. So now I’m armed. Home offense baby! 

Ever since I got back from Thanksgiving, where I spent 12 days surrounded by goddamned cats, my asthma has been really bad. For those 12 days when I was at my mom’s house, I basically lived off of my inhaler (Albuterol) to keep me alive but I thought it a bit strange that after a while of being back, I was still having symptoms.

After a terrible bout with said asthma last night, I decided to go to the doctor so that he could hook me up to one of those nebulizer things. He did so (which helped a million) and then proceeded to give me a veritable pharmacy in prescriptions; Serevent, Qvar, Imitrex (for migraines – I snuck that one in while talking about the inability to breathe) and finally Prednisone. The last one is funny because while talking about it, he made a funny face when he got the part about the side effects. Interested in why he made a face, I inquired further about the side effects. He said, “It might do funny stuff”. “What kind of funny stuff”? I asked. He explained, “Among other things, it might make you euphoric, in some cases have hallucinations, and in long term use it might cause psychosis”. I almost laughed in his face because the first thing I thought of was The Simpsons episode (El Viaje de Nuestro Jomer) where Homer eats the Guatemalan insanity peppers (at the chili cook off) and proceeds to have hallucinations which involve a coyote spirit guide.

Here is something to get your mental wheels turning. Is it right for parents to lie to their kids about the existence of Santa Claus? Before you rush and say yes, bear with me.

I remember, way back when, that Christmas was my favorite holiday and the days leading to the holiday was my favorite time of the year. I’m sure that most of the draw was the gift getting (when you are a kid, you aren’t really gift giving), but there was something more than that. There was a sense of nervous excitement from the time Thanksgiving was over until the day itself. There was something about not knowing what you are going to get and what Santa brought by surprise. But more than all that, there was a sense of wonder and a sense that on that one day something magical that you couldn’t comprehend would happen.

I also remember the day that I found out that Santa was nothing more than a tricksy hoax. It was in elementary school and our classroom was out for recess. A bunch of kids were playing on the blacktop playground and some of them starting discussing the rumor that Santa was not real. It all started when one kid asked another “Hey do you know that Santa isn’t real”? The other kid replied in the affirmative and then they decided to tell the disbelievers how the flimflam worked. I kept my mouth shut but I remember saying in my head, “Man these kids aren’t going to get any presents, after all, Santa is watching them right now”!

I inconspicuously eavesdropped on their conversation as they continued their slanderous remarks. They proceeded to describe how we had all been hornswoggled for so long — the parents would hide the presents that they bought themselves using the list that we wrote to Santa and then hide them until the night before Christmas. Then they would wait for the unsuspecting little ones to fall asleep and then they would put the presents out as if Santa had done it himself. At this point, their revelations were starting to make sense and I started to unravel years of deceit and hoodwinking. The straw that broke the reindeer’s back was the revelation that the milk and cookies were probably eaten by the parents or just thrown out altogether. I was reeling! It didn’t seem possible that my parents would stoop to this level of chicanery. I had a mental Luke moment where, clutching to my youthful innocence, I cried out (in my head mind you) “No…NO! That’s not true. That’s impossible”! And just like the first time you watched Empire Strikes Back, you didn’t want to believe Vader was Luke’s father, but somehow in the back of your mind you knew that it was true. I remember being asked if I knew the truth by one of the kids, after it had been spread out before me like so much road kill, to which I coolly replied “Oh yeah, I knew”. That night I confronted my parents, with the hope that it might have all been lies, but they admitted their part in the collusion.

After that, Christmas seemed to lose its luster. The sense of wonder faded leaving only the cold reality of crowds, packed malls, and dense traffic. It’s no wonder that I haven’t felt the “Christmas spirit” since about 1983. I wonder, if I had know the truth from the beginning would Christmas still be a “diamond” instead of a “cubic zirconia”.

I could argue this both ways. I could see wanting to keep the illusion alive for your kids. Ignorance is bliss after all. I also could argue that it’s probably not really healthy to outright lie to your kids and then take the rug out from under their feet. Oh well, just something to think about.

I read my fair share of web comics and all of them are in what I call “gag strip” format. The “gag strip” format usually has about 3-4 panels or simplified characters in which a gag or a funny is dropped in the end panel. Some deviate in minor ways from this but the general format remains the same. The artform really doesn’t lend itself to complex story lines and rich, detailed filled art.

I very pleased when I came upon the comic Alpha-Shade (by way of Mac Hall). The story line, in a way, reminds me of the old Antartic Press comic series titled Tigers of Terra or something that you would find in a Gundam anime. It’s very mature in the ways that it deals with warfare and how it affects the characters. The character development is just getting off of the ground (just because there haven’t been that many strips) but you can tell that the writer(s) are headed in the right direction. As well as the art, well, to me is phenomenal but I think you’ll have to take a look at it for yourself. This is the kind of web comic that I want to do.

I installed a pair of new hard drives in my workstation so I backed up everything that I needed and now I’m restoring it. I setup the share to restore to and set Backup Exec 9.0 to restore some files to that share point. I accidentally forgot to set the write flag on the share permissions so the backup software could write files there. That was my fault but what Backup Exec did is even worse. The software started “restoring” files to the directory and it did this for a good 46 minutes. At the end of that time I received an error message stating that “access was denied” to that share. Why the HELL did it wait 46 minutes before telling me that? Backup software is not a new thing, it’s been around for as long as there has been data to backup. I’m baffled as to why Backup Exec 9.0 has this atrocious bug.

The trailer for the new Batman move, Batman Begins is out now. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve seen a Batman movie trailer without throwing up in my mouth. The site is fairly annoying because when you click on trailer it invokes a popup menu. It seems like Liam Neeson decided to train someone worthy instead of that freaking loser Jake Lloyd. Everytime I see the trailer I think Qui-Gon Jin.