complaints

Oh Email, How Do I Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

I remember when I was growing up, I’d hear my mom talk about how much she hated mail every day when it came in. I didn’t understand it. I  loved getting mail. The mailbox was this little slice of awesome that sometimes delivered super exciting things to me. How could anyone hate that? Getting the mail was a high point of each day. A Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moment when you never knew what golden ticket might await you. I still don’t hate mail. I don’t particularly look forward to it, but just because there’s rarely anything there to […]

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The War on Mosquitos Has Been Won(?)

My fight with mosquitos at my house has been well documented. Back in 2008, I phrased it like this: We have Mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos. Like, if Neo from the Matrix was in a blank white room and said, “I need mosquitos. Lots of mosquitos,” he’d been whisked off to our backyard, at which point he would start swatting at his neck and arms, shortly before he was sucked into a bloodless carcass. Some of this has to do with the area of the country we live in. Maine is notorious for black flies–these tiny biting insects that leave huge

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In Which Monty Python Proves It Could Always Be Worse

I’ve had a lot going on in my life the last month or six, most of it less than ideal. There’s been everything from broken teeth to t-boned cars to lost positions at work to broken snowblowers. I’m trying to stay positive about everything, but at times it gets difficult. Just sayin’. And then on Monday someone sent out an email to all students on campus that our university president had died of a stroke. Whoa. It turns out that the email was from a hacker, but it still hit me out of the blue. The university’s going through some

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The Techie Walk of Shame

It’s true. This morning, I had to call the help desk to get my computer fixed. I’m man enough to admit it publicly. My laptop (a Mac) refused to start, and I worked on the thing for two hours before finally throwing in the towel. It had been bugging me to update it for the last week or two, and I finally caved in yesterday and let it run the updates. Classic mistake. So it wouldn’t boot this morning, and I has a sad. I’m now on a loaner computer, which just feels wrong. I’m a one computer at a

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Responsibility is Yucky

I’m on seminary teaching duty again this week, and last night presented itself with a problem. The whole day, the weather forecast had been for 1-3 inches of snow, starting around 8am or so. No big deal. Then last night I checked the weather one more time, and they’d upped it to a storm advisory and were bandying around numbers like 4-6 inches and starting at 5am. That’s a much bigger deal, in my Honda Civic driving eyes. We don’t hold early morning seminary if school is delayed or canceled, but who knew what would happen in the morning. My

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