Category Archives: Humor

eBay is My Playground: Episode 3

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Two weeks after finally selling my item to a US buyer, and barely 12 hours after posting my previous ebay emails, I discovered that the story of this device was not yet finished. I start off here with the initial email after selling the item.

To: Zack
From: mrbobdobolina
Date: October 4
Subject: RE:Payment

Dear Zack,

Hi,

Thank you for your quick payment. I will ship the item out tomorrow. I noticed that your Paypal Address is different from your eBay shipping address.

I assume I should ship to your eBay address:

John Johnson
111 Johnson Street
Jacksonvile JO, 11111

but thought I would double check with you, just to make sure I am sending it to the right place. Our mail goes out at noon (CST), so if I don’t hear from you by then I’ll use the eBay address.

Thanks again.

- mrbobdobolina

To: mrbobdobolina
From: Zack
Date: October 17
Subject: RE:RE:Payment

Dear mrbobdobolina,

PayPal address is correct. I’ve been in the hospital and out of touch for several days. Package will probably (eventually) come back to you. Let me know if/when that happens. Thanks.

- Zack

To: Zack
From: mrbobdobolina
Date: October 17
Subject: RE:RE:RE:Payment

Dear Zack,

Sorry to hear you have been in the hospital. I hope you are well, or at least doing better. About four months ago I was in the hospital due to a car accident, but they only let me stay for a few hours before tossing me back out onto the street where I had to spend a few nights sheltering under a bridge before the anesthesia wore off and I remembered who I was. Fortunately it was in the summer and the evenings were warm. I don’t think I could survive a night outside in the Minnesota winter.

According to UPS (Tracking number: 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 ), the unit was delivered on October 11th. The website status lists it as being left by the front door.

I apologize if I have indeed sent this package to the wrong address. A quick Google search tells me that the the package was delivered a mere 1248 miles from it’s desired destination. That would be quite the road trip just to pick up a package. If I lived in California, I would offer to join you on an adventure to pick up the box. My new car gets good gas mileage and we would probably only have to stop for gas 5 or 6 times, although it would take us two days to get there and back. I have friend who live in Portland and we could probably spend the night at their house.

You really have me at a loss here. I’ve never shipped a package to the wrong address before, I do hope you have some means of accessing the package. If somehow the package does make it’s way back to me, I will let you know right away.

In the meantime, I might suggest that you update your ebay shipping address to avoid further confusion, although you probably know that already, and quite possibly are using it in a devious plot that will help you take over the world. I hope the Avid Mojo can help you in your schemes. I also have plans to someday take over the world, but I’m not allowed to share them with anyone because they are still a secret. If you take over the world before me, I wouldn’t mind owning a small city. I have a few options in mind.

- mrbobdobolina

To: mrbobdobolina
From: Zack
Date: November 14
Subject: RE:RE:RE:RE:Payment

Dear mrbobdobolina,

I finally got up there this last weekend and found the package. Thanks for your kind concern. I’ll fix the address conflict before another eBay buy.

Good luck to you. Avoid hospitals and underbridges.

- Zack

Well, all’s well that ends well, as they say. And it’s nice to finally get these events nicely tucked away. Happy e-baying everyone!

Star Trek Today

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If Star Trek took place today. A short and rough example. (I would be thrilled if anyone made a short film based off this concept.)

To set the scene the star ship is closing in on the first alien vessel ever encountered. This could be first contact.

Comm Officer: Captain! We are being hailed!

Captain: Put it up on screen.

*Video goes up on screen*

Comm Officer: Coming up on screen…

Captain: Greetings!

A slight pause while the Captain waits for a response. The aliens appear to be talking but no sound is coming through.

Captain: Officer, why can’t I hear them?

Comm Officer: I don’t know Captain.

Captain: Can they hear us?

Comm Officer: I think so Captain, but the computer is only recognizing our microphone inputs… it doesn’t appear to see our cameras.

Captain: Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Comm Officer: I’m looking at the preferences, our camera doesn’t show up in the list. I’ll restart the program, but that’ll terminate our call.

Captain: Make it so.

Comm Officer: Okay, program is restarting…

Captain: Tell me when we’re up.

Comm Officer: The program appears unresponsive.

Captain: Officer, we need this system up and running RIGHT NOW.

Comm Officer: Understood sir. I think I’ll have to reboot the computer.

Captain: Make it fast.

Science Officer: Their ship has some very odd power readings sir, but then again, everything about them is… alien…

Captain: Keep me appraised.

Comm Officer: Okay, computer has rebooted, starting up the comm app…

Captain: Patch me through.

Video appears on the screen, with audio. The alien is explaining that they can neither hear nor see them on the screen.

Captain: We are having some computer problems. We apologize.

Comm Officer: Okay, it says we are sending audio and video now. We should be good.

Captain: We should be up and running now. Greetings!

Aliens: We can see your video, but we are unable to understand your audio.

Captain: Comm Officer?

Comm Officer: We’re sending out a high quality signal, sir. Everything on our end is working.

Aliens: The audio we are receiving, we cannot unenvied it. We have developed sophisticated audio, we call it MP3 format. Perhaps your audio is not compatible?

Comm Officer: MP3? Oh, sir… all our ship’s audio is encoded in OGG format! We can read everything coming in, but we only send out OGG.

Captain: BUT NOBODY USES OGG!

Comm Officer: I’m sorry Captain, if I could connect to the internet, I could possibly download an update or plugin?

Captain: Make it so!

Comm Officer: But we are not in wireless range at the moment.

Aliens (Who have been talking this whole time): You appear to be in deep conversation, but are unwilling to talk to us. Your lips are moving, but we hear no sound. You are a strange species… perhaps you are mocking us? We’d like to think you were intelligent and capable of trade…

Captain: Ensign, how close is the nearest access point?

Ensign: Just a few lightyears back sir.

Captain: Aliens! We regret that we cannot send you audio, allow us to retreat and upgrade our ship. We shall return with the information you require.

Aliens: Why do you not talk with us? Why are you leaving?

Captain: Turn us around, Ensign.

Aliens: A rude and obnoxious race! We will not tolerate TROLLING in our UNIVERSE!!

Captain: We’re not trolling, we are having computer… oh, never mind. Comm Officer, turn it off.

Aliens: We shall take this as an act of. *shut off*

Captain: We’ll I’d say we’re off to a good start. Science Officer, show me how to make my Solitaire game show up on the big screen again.

More Accurate Dialogue

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I’m thoroughly enjoying Skyward Sword right now, though my personal dialogue and the game’s dialogue tends to be rather different. Almost need to do a riff track for the game.

Kukiel’s Mother: My daughter is missing! Can you help me find her?

Link: Good news and bad news. Good news is, I found your daughter, hiding out with the town monster. Bad news is that I may have stabbed her in the face with my sword… Only once though… And it wasn’t entirely on purpose… You know what? Actually, I’m going to tell you that the monster did it. Because now that I think about it, it’s probably better for me to tell you that someone else is responsible and I really don’t want to take blame on this one.

Welcome to the future!

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It’s 2012. By now we are suppose to be living a a utopian society filled with flying cars… Yet the state of affairs appears to be severely lacking:

  • Cruise control is not standard issue in all new vehicles. (Neither is air conditioning.)
  • Windows 7 still requires you to paste your screenshot into an image editor to save it. (Yes, I know… Android is even worse.)
  • Cell phone companies still offer plans without text messaging.
  • POP3 not only still exists, but is frequently used.
  • People are still using roman numerals.
  • 3D is apparently still a good idea.
  • People still make lists of pet peeves and annoyances.
  • Netflix still hasn’t invented a “random movie” option, or for that matter, any easy way to sort by category or MPAA rating.
This is my short list of “daily annoyances” and I’m sure I’m leaving things out. What annoys you now that we live in the future?

What else would you add to this list?

The New Server

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Every now and then I like to go back and look through documents I wrote years ago. (Like, 3-5 years.) I usually stumble across a number of ‘gems’ I don’t remember ever writing. While I usually don’t feel it’s my best work, I sometimes find it entertaining, and feel like sharing it with the world.

So here’s something I came up with in 2007, most likely inspired by Dilbert, though probably not as funny.

Also, I think this is meant to be a cartoon, but since I can’t draw, you’ll have to imagine it. If you can draw, and wanted to draw this, feel free. I’d love to see what you could do with it.

Sales Rep: Sir, your company NEEDS a server like this, it is packed with amazing technology. First off, it has plenty of bandwidth so you can connect all your computers to it, and it won’t slow down. It’s got 18 cubic feet of storage space, so you will never run out of room. Plus it has some great custom features as well.

Since most viruses spread through email attachments, we’ve disabled attachments completely, and since most people receive 400 spam messages a day, we also simply blocked the sending and receiving of messages.

But that’s not the best part! Lots of websites have annoying pop-up windows, so the server is set to block those too.

And since some viruses can be downloaded, it also disables downloading of files. Also, bad websites could be a problem, so it disables the downloading of any page.

To prevent hackers, it won’t let anyone log on, change, save or add files, and it reboots every 42 and a half seconds to prevent crashes and data loss.

Boss: How Much Does it cost?

Sales Rep: That’s a good question. I usually sell them for $370,000… but I’ll tell you what. I’ll give it to you for $250,000.

Boss: I’ll Take it!

Main Character: Let me get this straight. You bought a cardboard box with the word Server written on it in crayon, for $250,000?

Boss: It was a good deal, I saved $120,000.

Main Character: You could have picked one up of the side of the street for free!

Boss: Look, he even threw in the cables!

Main Character: I can’t believe my boss bought a cardboard box for $250,000… How on earth did he become head of a company?

Worker 1: Yeah… Had I known he was that gullible, I would have tried that years ago.

Hobo: Hey, that’s my house!

Main Character: What? No, that’s our new server…

Hobo: Server? What is a server?

Main Character: I mean it’s not our server…

Hobo: No, it’s not. It’s my house. I’ve been living in that cardboard box for 3 years, until some one stole it yesterday.

Main Character: Hmm.. tell you what, why don’t you just take it back, and we’ll call the whole thing even.

Boss: Main Character, I have bad news for you…

Main Character: Let me guess, the server is missing?

Boss: No… is it?

Main Character: Um… no… why do you ask?

Boss: No reason… anyway, I just came to tell you you’re fired.

Main Character: What?!?!

Boss: We’re having some financial difficulties… See this server cost more than I anticipated…

Main Character: No.. no.. You are NOT firing me over this stupid cardboard box!

Boss: …and I had to buy some upgrades and stuff…

Main Character: Are you even listening to me?

Boss: And with this new financial advisor I hired, I can’t keep you around…

Main Character: IT’S A %^*& CARDBOARD BOX!!!!

Boss: Besides, you are the most experienced employee I have…

Main Character: Which would make me the least logical person to fire…

Boss: Which means that you have the highest pay, you’re the most logical choice.

Main Character: I can’t believe my boss fired me over a stupid cardboard box. I can’t imagine who would even try to sell a cardboard box as a server, let alone succeed in doing so.

Sales Rep: Can I interest you in a Toaster? It may look like a grocery bag…

Through the filters: FBI SPAM?

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I received this spam message today. It somehow made it through the Yahoo Spam filter. (Yahoo’s not quite up to Gmail standards yet.) Here is my line by line commentary of the letter. (I noted a few of the gramatical errors, but didn’t feel like marking up the entire document, so most are left untouched.)

To: MrBobDobolina
From: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (admin@hzhky.com)

Yup, definitely from the FBI.

Subject: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)!!!

Little known fact, the FBI is a heavy backer of exclamation marks.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Anti-Terrorist And Monitory Crime Division.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation.
J.Edgar.Hoover Building Washington Dc
Customers Service Hours / Monday To Saturday
Office Hours Monday to Saturday:

I’m glad the FBI has such open office hours. It makes me happy to know they are working so hard, except on Sundays. I assume the baddies take Sundays off too.

Dear Beneficiary,

Because the FBI has no idea what my actual name is.

Series of meetings have been held over the past 7 months with the secretary general of the United Nations Organization. This ended 3 days ago.

Yes, I remember hearing about that in the news.

It is obvious that you have not received your fund which is to the tune of $850,000.00…

Oh it is glaringly obvious.

…due to past corrupt Governmental Officials who almost held the fund to themselves for their selfish reason and some individuals who have taken advantage of your fund all in an attempt to swindle your fund which has led to so many losses from your end and unnecessary delay in the receipt of your fund.

Can anyone say ‘run-on sentence’? Also, I’m glad the Government Officials only had one selfish reason.

The National Central Bureau of Interpol enhanced by the United Nations and Federal Bureau of Investigation have successfully passed a mandate to the current president of Nigeria his Excellency President Good luck[sic] Jonathan

Why can’t our leaders have names like Goodluck Johnathan? I would totally vote for him.

to boost the exercise of clearing all foreign debts owed to you and other individuals and organizations who have been found not to have receive their Contract Sum, Lottery/Gambling, Inheritance and the likes.

Now suddenly we are talking about Contract payments, Gambling, and Inheritance? What happened to the corrupt politicians who were forced into compliance three days ago?

Now how would you like to receive your payment? Because we have two method of payment which is by Check or by ATM card?

Gold bricks.

ATM Card: We will be issuing you a custom pin based ATM card which you will use to withdraw up to $3,000 per day from any ATM machine that has the Master Card Logo on it and the card have to be renewed in 4 years time which is 2014.

Current date: Dec. 3, 2011. Clearly this letter is a year old, I hope the offer still stands. Why couldn’t they have told me about this sooner!?!??!

Also with the ATM card you will be able to transfer your funds to your local bank account. The ATM card comes with a handbook or manual to enlighten you about how to use it. Even if you do not have a bank account.

Oh good. Because I don’t have a bank account and I have never learned how to use an ATM.

Check: To be deposited in your bank for it to be cleared within three working days. Your payment would be sent to you via any of your preferred option[sic] and would be mailed to you via UPS.

Say what?

Because we have signed a contract with UPS which should expire in next three weeks you will only need to pay $135 instead of $420 saving you $285

Wait, three weeks from now or three weeks from then?

So if you pay before the three weeks 2011 you save $285

2011 is only three weeks?!?!?! I’m confused. Also, can anyone say “punctuation”?

Take note that anyone asking you for some kind of money above the usual fee is definitely a fraudsters

Those dirty fraudsters. Asking for money above the usual fee…

and you will have to stop communication with every other person if you have been in contact with any.

I’ve been in contact with my mother, does that count?

Also remember that all you will ever have to spend is $135.00 nothing more! Nothing less! And we guarantee the receipt of your fund to be successfully delivered to you within the next 24hrs after the receipt of payment has been confirmed.

Note: Everything has been taken care of by the Federal Government of Nigeria, The United Nation[sic] and also the FBI and including taxes, custom paper and clearance duty so all you will ever need to pay is $135.

There is only one United Nation!

DO NOT SEND MONEY TO ANYONE UNTIL YOU READ THIS:

Ooops.

The actual fees for shipping your ATM card is $420

WHAT!?!? Are you a fraudster?

but because UPS have temporarily discontinued the C.O.D which gives you the chance to pay when package is delivered for international shipping We had to sign contract with them for bulk shipping which makes the fees reduce from the actual fee of $420 to $135 nothing more and no hidden fees of any sort!

Oh, whew! You had me scared for a second.

To effect the release of your fund valued at $850,000.00 you are advised to contact our correspondent in Africa the delivery officer Scott Mandy Will with the information below,

Punctuation. Capitalization. The word “help”.

Email: scott.mandy@yahoo.cn
You are advised to contact him with the informations as stated below:

1) Your full Name:
2) Home/Cell Phone:
3) Occupation:
4) Age:
5) Sex:
Preferred Payment Method (ATM / Cashier Check)

So in order for me to get my money, I first need to give a bunch of extraneous information to someone in Africa. Okay, that makes sense. I like how I don’t have to give an address. Just a name and phone number.

Upon receipt of payment the delivery officer will ensure that your package is sent within 24 working hours.

Working hours. Africa time or my time? Because I’m pretty sure I’m working at all hours. Just like the FBI

Because we are so sure of everything we are giving you a 100% money back guarantee if you do not receive payment/package within the next 24hrs after you have made the payment for shipping.

Yours sincerely,
Miss Donna Story
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20535

Note: Do disregard any email you get from any impostors or offices claiming to be in possession of your ATM CARD,

Like you? Oh, don’t worry. I will.

you are hereby advice[sic] only to be in contact with John Will

Wait, who is John Will?

of the ATM CARD CENTRE

Oh hey! We are British now!

who is the rightful person to deal with in regards to your ATM CARD PAYMENT and forward any emails you get from impostors to this office so we could act upon and commence investigation.

Which office? What address? Because I think I have an email from an impostor.

I honestly don’t know how any English speaking person could fall for this. Is the target audience foreigners?

eBay is My Playground: Episode 2

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I sold an item on eBay to someone who wanted me ship overseas. After haggling over shipping charges, I finally found something he could agree to and sent an invoice. A week later he requested I send the invoice again. 20 days after the auction ended and two invoices later, I sent this message.

To: Shawn
From: MrBobDobolina
Date: September 12
Subject: Payment

Dear Shawn,

I hope all is going well with you. I sent you an invoice for the total, which came to $***. eBay should have sent you a message listing the price of the item as well as the cost of shipping. If it’s not in your email it might be in your eBay messages.

I know you are very eager to have me ship the item out and it is all packed up and ready to go as soon as I receive payment.

I once had paypal freeze my account and when I tried to order something on eBay it took several weeks for the shipment to finally come through. It was very sad in the end, because I had ordered special birthday candles for a surprise birthday party and they came several days after the event. For the party I was forced to use cigarrettes instead of candles and when they were blown out they made a huge mess and many of the guests were upset about the second hand smoke.

When the real candles came a few days later, I tried to hold a second party, but no one came and I fed the cake to my cat.

mrbobdobolina

Sadly, I never heard from him again.

Two days after eBay automatically went through the unpaid item process and re-listed my item, I had an email from someone else.

To: MrBobDobolina
From: David
Date: September 29
Subject: International Shipping

Hi, I was wondering if you would be willing to ship to Hungary?

Thanks.

David.

To: David
From: MrBobDobolina
Date: September 29
Subject: RE:International Shipping

If you are really willing to pay for the shipping charges to ship the item overseas, I would be more than happy to send it to you. However, I recently was approached about having the item shipped to India and the shipping total came to $***.** and I was told that the cost was too high and the bidder backed out and never paid me.

These recent experiences have cautioned my formerly carefree shipping attitude and made me the wiser man that I am today. Although I also attribute my wisdom to both my rigorous exercise routine and my daily doses of vitamins, which most days consists of Vitamin C, D, E, B and usually a handful of M&Ms or the sugar-free Ice Breakers Sours. I’ve recently grown fond of these sour candies, yet I have a tendency to chew them, which is probably not their intended method of consumption. I honestly wouldn’t mind if they came in a sugar-filled version, but they probably wouldn’t sell as well and the last thing I would want is for a large company like Hershey to throw money away on a product only I would buy.

Assuming from your last email that you are from Hungary, I also assume you must be all up in arms about the new ‘chocolate tax’ that has been proposed to parliament. There are a lot of political issues that I find confusing, but I think if more candidates told me how they felt about chocolate I could really relate to politics more. I could actual cast my vote on important matters, such as sugar consumption, rather than silly things I don’t care about such as health care and budget cuts.

If I ever got into government my platform would be all for free sandwiches on Fridays. I really love sandwiches and I think Fridays would be the best day to have free ones. I would also try to switch around everyone’s work schedule so they worked on weekends and had weekdays off. I think this is a good plan, and I know that I would vote for myself if I was ever given the option.

MrBobDobolina

Again, my email elicited no response, but a different person did buy my item and I shipped it out to a US address a few days later.

eBay is My Playground: Episode 1

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Inspired by David Thorne, I have begun making my eBay conversations much more interesting. Here is a recent exchange.

To: MrBobDobolina
From: Ebay
Date: August 22
Subject: Your item sold!

Dear mrbobdobolina,

You did it! Your item sold. Please ship this item to the buyer within 2 business day(s) after your buyers pays.

eBay

To: MrBobDobolina
From: Adam
Date: August 25
Subject: Question

Dear mrbobdobolina,

Hello,
sorry for the delay in emailing you.
I don’t have a paypal account, will you accept any credit card?.
please respond. please email to Adam@******.***

thanks,
Adam

To: Adam
From: MrBobDobolina
Date: August 25
Subject: RE:Question

Dear Adam,

Thank your for getting back to me. I am sorry to hear that you don’t have a Paypal account. It’s very hard to use eBay properly without one. Sadly, I am unable to accept any other forms of payment, as you might have noticed on the auction page, I only list Paypal as an acceptable payment form.

If you head over to Paypal.com you can sign up for a free account and then use a credit card to pay that way.

I would actually be willing to accept gold in payment for the purchased product, but I don’t think that falls under eBays accepted usage policy, and I prefer to operate through eBay and Paypal for all of my transactions.

I recently convinced my power company to allow me to pay my bills via Paypal, which now saves me a monthly trip out to the mailbox. This is a huge time saver for me, because I have a very long driveway and a month’s worth of mail can be very heavy. Especially with the newspapers.

Sorry for any inconvenience, hope to hear from you soon!

MrBobDobolina

To: MrBobDobolina
From: Paypal
Date: August 27
Subject: Instant payment received from Adam!

Hello MrBobDobolina,

You received a payment of $***.** USD from Adam.

PayPal

Facebook Theory

Quote

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There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what Facebook is for and how to use it, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

(With full respect to Douglas Adams.)

Elements of Reality and Compounds of the Imagination

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Disclaimer: This story is most certainly fictitious. To say that it is based on actual events is like saying that your morning cup of coffee is based on a tree from another country. While in some sense it might be accurate, it’s neither completely true nor particularly helpful. The facts have been embellished by imagination to the point where even the small truths that exist need not be believed. The views and thoughts of the characters involved are not meant in any way to express my own or anyone else’s views or thoughts. This is written solely for your entertainment, as well as my own. Please enjoy.

My family has acquired a Chinese boy. The process was significantly less troublesome than buying pigs off eBay, though since I was not exactly involved in the process I can only give you this information from hearsay, which also goes for my knowledge of swine purchases.

We have only acquired him for about 10 months, so comparing it to a purchase should probably be discouraged, for several obvious reasons. The actual process was more like a library rental, or a benign kidnapping… Actually, foreign exchange student is a significantly more accurate description.

Very quickly after his arrival we attempted to initiate him into the traditional American lifestyle of soda, sugar, and excess… Oh, and also hard work.

This foray into hard work was partially practical since it involved chopping down trees that we would use to heat our house over the cold Minnesota winters.

After vaguely explaining the procedure to our new helper, hoping he would pick up more by the experience than our clumsy attempt at speaking our native tongue, we headed into the woods in search of dead trees.

Now, little known to me, our Chinese boy, also known as Josh to everyone reading this story, and known as some other name by people who knew him in real life, had found a live bat in one of the fallen trees.

Being young and unfamiliar with the local wildlife, Josh has played with the creature, taking photos and carrying it around until it had finally bitten him harshly on the finger and he had thrown it into the small stream at the bottom of the hill.

When Josh came to me with finger bleeding, I told him to put his gloves back on and be a man. He probably tried to explain what happened, but his English was poor and my Chinese was worse, and to top it all off I was not exactly in a good listening mood.

Now some people would fault me for not taking a better interest in the foreigners injury, but I would suspect that these people have never galavanted through the forest with a chain saw, pretending it was a light saber. Not that I suggest this action is either appropriate or safe, but I can vouch for it being very, very fun.

We continued cutting away at a large tree and began filling our truck with wood to take back home. We had more than enough wood to fill the truck and we began making a stack to come back and pick up at a later date. As we took a break to drink water and refill the gasoline and oil of the chain saws, we noticed that Josh was missing. We looked around and called once or twice, but we couldn’t see him.

It’s not like we were too worried, he was a fairly intelligent young man, and seemed good with directions. Also, if he was lost, we figured it would be fairly easy to find a replacement, China having a good billion or so people. Certainly there would be no international incident if one of them disappeared.

Just as we were about to get back to work a Jeep drove up and four guys jumped out, each of which waving a gun or two in the air. The sight reminded me of that one movie with the Africa and the guys in Jeeps with guns. For a moment I wondered if they were from Africa.

“Hey! Are you guys from Af…” I started to ask, and was rudely interrupted by a few gunshots fired into the air.

Their leader demanded that we give up our wood. We told them it was ours, but they didn’t seem terribly pleased by that prospect. We tried to insist they didn’t have room in their Jeep, and they then asked us for our truck. The negotiations were going downhill quickly, mostly because they had guns and we didn’t, but they also had better reasoning skills than we did since they had guns and we didn’t.

Within a few minutes we were forced to comply with their wishes, or at least we were about to when Josh showed back up.

To say Josh “showed up” may be putting things mildly. To say Josh “swooped out of the sky in the shape of a five foot tall bat, screaming terrifyingly like a mad man with eight foot wings where his arms use to be” would be slightly more, if not completely accurate.

Our new gun wielding African movie friends expected this new horor movie arrival even less than we did, and we never saw it coming at all. They turned and fled, throwing weapons and insults and curses in every which direction. They jumped into the Jeep and drove off at speeds typically not safe on pavement, regardless of the rough terrain in the woods.

As they left, we turned and looked at Josh, and saw the half human half bat creature slowly transform back into a fully human creature. We gazed relatively uncertainly at him and he stared back at, all of us silent.

Finally, he said “I Batman!”

And that’s how we acquired a small weapon arsenal and accidentally created a Chinese superhero who is part bat who might have rabies.

Travel Math

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I’ve been thinking about math and traveling lately, and have developed a few formulas which appear to hold true for an indeterminate percentage of situations.

For example, it appears that most of the time

And the amount of oncoming traffic is inversely proportional to the speed of the driver, as confirmed by variable speed travel. (That is, the slower you travel, the more oncoming traffic you will encounter.)

This ensures that

where

In short, you never have enough time to pass safely.

Now, when you have people following you, the math is a little bit different.

This is also known as the irritation level:

Which brings up an interesting side note: (The faster the car goes when passing you the more likely that the driver is on a cell phone.)

And finally, the logic:

IF (irritation level) > (posted speed limit) THEN
(speed limit) = (irritation level);
(road centerline) = NULL;
ELSE
(distance behind your car) = 1 / (irritation level);
END IF

In short, I am reminded of what I was told my my driving instructor when I first learned to drive.

“Everyone who drives faster than you is crazy and everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot.” – Pike

Driving, Leveling, Real Life and MORE

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Throughout my life, there are times when I really wish I could know what level I am at. I’ve been wearing the same hat for close to 8 years. Before that I wore different hats all the time. Am I a level 10 hat wearer? Maybe. I don’t know. How can you track these things? What level IT guy am I? What’s my geek level?

I have a brand new 2011 Ford Fiesta and have just passed the 6000 mile mark. As I watched my odometer slowly rise, I realized that in this one area of life, there is a finite and state saving counter. It just slowly works it’s way upwards, to no particular end… just like EXPERIENCE POINTS!

Experience points determine your level, but what system of leveling does one use for driving a car?

Turns out, World of Warcraft has an excellent leveling system which converts rather conveniently to car milage. (At least, up until level 60, then it gets a bit questionable, but is still usable until level 70, where we reach a million miles however, it is rather rare to get to 300,000 miles on a vehicle, so it starts becoming rather irrelevant.)

Here is a chart of levels and experience as found at www.wowwiki.com

Now, it is fair to say that the level of your car does not represent your level of driving skill. Like a character in Warcraft, the car will level independently of it’s driver. You are basically leveling up your car like an item.

My car is new (like starting a new character…) so I’m sure all of you have much higher level cars than myself. What level are you currently at? What do you wish you could level up at in real life?