It’s the same device! Why the big deal just because I used a different USB port? This is no small pain in the butt when I’m dealing with my Microsoft (haha!) Wireless keyboard and mouse, which seems to want to install 7 drivers (all with plenty of prompting) every time it sees it and doesn’t remember it.

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We are getting ridiculous amounts of bogus phone calls. Just this morning:

Here’s a bit more of our call log.

We’re already done the donotcall.gov thing so we’re in the middle of our 30 day period, but even after that I’m not convinced that these folks are law-abiding citizens who subscribe to the donotcall list. I’ll probably try telezapping these folks and if that doesn’t work, I might just get rid of our landline. We don’t use our phone a heck of a lot anyway and I don’t want to pay $20 or $30 a month for something that rings 2 or 3 times an hour and disturbs us. Interestingly, neither of us are getting any of this junk on our cell phones.

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Well, I’m not exactly sure what the world needs (”love, sweet love” perhaps?).

But I do know what the world doesn’t need:

• Another cover band that performs “Brick House”.

Here’s the deal. The lady’s stacked and that’s a fact - we’ve established that. Guilty as charged. Anyone who’s been to a bar in the last 10 years is well aware of it. It’s time to move on and cover deeper issues like:

• What the hell is Manfred Mann talking about in “Blinded by the Light”?
• Why is Gwen Stefani singing about b-a-n-a-n-a-s?

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I hate waking up to the sound of a team of leaf blowers.

I don’t know why homeowners’ associations seem to love blowing (pun intended) money on this frivolous expense. I don’t really notice any significant difference in the way the grounds look and I’m sure whatever the effect is, it’s very short-lived anyway. Rather than blow a bunch of foliage around, I’d rather that they do something with the strip of land in front of our place besides growing peet moss in the dirt. Put some sod down, get a little bit of landscaping. Remove the 3 foot wide cob webs above everyone’s front door. At least that has a chance of permanently making the place nicer and maybe even increasing its sale value too.

But then we’re not in the HOA because we’re renters.

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Last night I got a bunch of SMS messages from 1111302000 with insightful comments like “//SVAgIBMQBAAO5UJGo30rG…”. It’s annoying because I pay for incoming SMS messages and because my ringer was off but the Treo vibrated on my nightstands and woke me and my wife up, so I had to put the Treo in another room.

What is this stuff? Wrong number? Message garbled by a character set conversion? Is it possible to get a carrier to blocking incoming SMS from certain numbers?

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Yesterday, we headed up to the city to see Gavin DeGraw give a free concert at Footstock, the after-party for the Bay to Breakers race.

I hate San Francisco. Every time I drive there, I spend an hour trying to park. So this time we thought that we’d be clever and take public transportation. We took the Caltrain from Sunnyvale to the city and then took the Muni N-Judah line to somewhere near the park. In total, it was about 3 hours of sitting on public transportation each way. So in the end, we spent 6+ hours on public transportation and spent something like $30, just to see a concert that lasted for an hour and ten minutes.

Luckily, I had my Treo 650 with me so at least I was able to browse news feeds much of the time when the train wasn’t underground.

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Monday was a doozy of a day and the fun continued yesterday. First, the pager went off about 5 times during a meeting. Then when someone commented on it after the meeting, I jokingly pretended to give an OfficeSpace-style thrashing to it, but did it ever go lightly with my elbow. Well not that lightly apparently, because this seemed to have broke the LCD screen on the pager, which made me want to laugh, cheer, and freak out all at the same time (apparently, these pagers can dish out abuse, but they can’t take it). Luckily (or unluckily?) I was able to go down to the IS department and get another one in 10 minutes flat. Then the pager lie in waiting, mostly quiet, for a few hours (”Crouching beeper, hidden pager”) and then attacked in full-force at around 12:30pm at night, right after it sensed that I was relaxed and ready to go to sleep. When all was said and done, it was 2am and my wife was passed out on the couch, sleeping through the pages and I was an envious, tired mofo.

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