The ravings of a madman

Yes, I think I quoted someone in the title, but it's a loose paraphrase, and I'm not making any money off it, so there it stays. But I am a bit fired up today. Because I had to spend several hours fighting with someone we'll refer to as "ppt," made by some global software corporation that we'll just refer to as "ms." My problem was simple: I wanted to adjust the default blank presentation template to get rid of that horrible font, Arial, which is the default. I also wanted to set a different default background and edit the default settings for inserted text boxes. See, a simple problem (or small set of problems). All I had to do was change the defaults in a program that a lot of people use all the time. Good luck with that, though.

As it turns out, ms has arranged things in the 2004 mac version of this software so as to make it virtually, or perhaps literally, impossible to change the default characteristics of a blank presentation. So, after I had tried about a million different options, all of which were complete failures, I just made a template that I liked and then set the program to offer me that option as a "slide design" in the formatting dropdown menu. I also resolved to stop purchasing products from the company that wants me to use some dumb font that no normal person would ever want to use. So that's part one of my complaints for the day. Feel free to post your solutions in the comments or in the guestbook section.

Part two of my complaints relates to a fact that I discovered yesterday. I've been buying a Brasilian decaf coffee (the roast is done locally, but the beans are imported from Brasil) to supplement my standard daily espresso habit with an afternoon chaser, without all the extra "juice" that caffeine gives me. This particular variety of coffee bean, technically known as Coffea charrieriana, naturally contains no caffeine, so it's supposed to be a great alternative to all the chemically-processed garbage that so many companies still have the gall to call "coffee" once it has been decaffeinated. I started buying the stuff to see if I could handle the flavor, and it turns out to be quite pleasant, at least in the Opus 1 (medium) roast that our coffee-emporium markets. The problem, I've discovered, is that the caffeine content has been replaced, through some [naturally?] defective gene that produces theobromine instead. Theobromine, as we all may or may not know (and as I found out yesterday) is basically the same thing as caffeine, in terms of how it affects the human body, though perhaps slightly less potent. So my interest in avoiding the effects of caffeine by purchasing this naturally un-caffeinated coffee has been dealt a severe blow. Sadly, the news came as no surprise to me, as I've been feeling a bit "hopped up" in the afternoon of late, and this feeling is what led me to research the beans more carefully yesterday. It does come as a relief, though, in that this particular coffee is quite expensive, and causes no end of economic suffering to our family.

Speaking of economic suffering, part three of the whine-fest that is today's blog entry involves the good people down to the revenuers. I had the good fortune of going through our taxes yesterday, and discovered, much to everyone's dismay, that some of the companies that pay us for our services have been less than thorough, or even sufficient, in setting aside the proper monies for federal and state collectors. We owe about what my new TV was going to cost, come August, and so we'll suffer on without an LED 240hz monster for another, unbearable, twelve months. Sigh. We suffer. My, how we suffer.

As my loyal readers are by now fully aware, I like to end all entries, conversations, and activities on a high note, and so I'll finish with the best news of the week. I'm very much looking forward to an upcoming visit to a potential employer, not least because the more I read about the city, the organization, and the position, the more interested I am in finding out how I might fit in there. Sure, I have to be realistic about my chances, and about the other positions that are still dancing around the bush, trying to get their acts together so they can all have a shot at my attentions, but right now I'm really liking the one that shall for now remain nameless. Keep thinking positive thoughts on my behalf, or maybe hoping and praying that we'll all have clarity and wisdom as we face the decisions that we have to make.

Fall Backward?

Well, what I mean is that it's almost time for the clocks to change their time, and therefore the unofficial - but more convincing - fall of Fall is nearly upon us. I don't expect much qualitative change in either the weather or the moods around here, but there is this upcoming election business, and maybe after that we'll finally be able to get on with our lives and stop complaining about how things are or could be or were or should be. All that money wasted, to convince us that one essentially well-meaning politician is wholly good, while their opponent is wholly evil. I'm still not sold on any of that. But this isn't supposed to be about politics.

Somebody stole my lucky pen last week. So I was going to write sooner, but I couldn't, because of the pen thing. Also, check this out (see photo):

"But, Benficafiend," someone might exclaim, "didn't you buy a Taylor 110 off that guy on craigslist?" Indeed. "And doesn't the Taylor 110 come with those crappy Ping p.w. 1 chrome tuners (with the 1:14 gear ratio)?" It does. "So does this mean you bought a brand new, higher-end Taylor guitar off some chump on craigslist for far less than it's worth?" Nay. Methinks that one Taylor guitar is enough for our household. "So you've traded the 110 upwards for a superior model, with gold Ping/Grover p.w. 2 tuners (with the 1:18 gear ratio, and Taylor stamped on the back)?" Wrong again. Maybe stop asking questions now. It's really quite simple: while I was very happy with certain features of the Taylor 110 that we found on craigslist, e.g. the volume, action, and sound depth, certain other qualities left me a little unimpressed, namely the crappy stock tuners and the nasty plastic (tusq) saddle, with it's slightly-off-center intonation. So I have had to invest $40 in some upgrades, which involved replacing the plastic saddle with a bone one that I made and buying the gold tuners from a fellow Taylor-owner on craigslist. I would venture to guess that it's about the nicest Taylor 110 now in existence (because who else would be stupid enough to try to upgrade such a cheap guitar?!).

Meanwhile, the search for a worthy owner of the other guitar that I bought off craigslist continues, mostly because I'm just not really investing any time in trying to sell the poor thing. It's not a hated guitar, just not as nice as the rest of the flock, and, now that the Taylor is around, not a particularly welcome member of the club. So much for things having to do with guitars.

As may be expected, the vast majority of my time is still consumed with the editing and revising and rearranging of the dissertation, which I am happy to say has been building some steam over the past several weeks. Eventually, it will all be arranged into something that people can read all as a single object, but for now it's still chopped up into six different and only-slightly-related chapters. It's getting a little out of control, meaning too long and too involved, but I'm pretty sure it will eventually be as thoroughly ignored as it deserves. After I've cleared that final hurdle, I suppose I'll have a job all lined up somewhere, but I kind of have to do all the work to make that happen, so I've been sending out the occasional job application in my spare time. There are some pretty nice jobs out there, and I'm a fairly interesting candidate, so you might expect a benficafiend to pop up just about anywhere in North America over the January-to-March interviewing season. Or not. I suppose they could just as easily ignore me as give me a job. I'm not really worried about the job market, because in the worst-case scenario, I just find something else that I really enjoy doing, finish writing my second book, and pick my next job offer based on where it is and the quality of students the program attracts. Not a bad situation to be in, if it comes to that. But I'm sure my wife would much rather see me in a new job by August of 2011, so you can all hope and pray us in that direction.

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