[sic]

A few weeks ago, in response to my posting on YouTube a somewhat painstakingly and successfully achieved timelapse of a nocturnal cactus flower blooming, I got the following comment from a viewer whose username is 74mr in response to what he deemed my mistake in identifying the plant as a San Pedro cactus:

That cactus is not an Echinopsis or Trichocereus species, it is a Cereus specie. Tricho means hairy and cereus means candle, all Trichocereus flowers have hairy flower stalks, that is a way to ID them. That plant cannot be San Pedro.

Today, as part of Blogging.la’s collective effort in presenting the “Top 25 Greatest Dead Angelenos” an extensive post on one of my favorite of all-time film stars, Buster Keaton, went live after some pretty extensive effort on my part. Not long after I got the following comment from a fine fellow named Don (who came with me for the first 17 miles of my walk across Sunset Boulevard last February) who correctly noted I had incorrectly listed Keaton’s age as 69 when he died:

Umm, if Buster Keaton was born in 1895 and died in 1966, that makes him 70 when he died (well, 70 and a half if you want to get picky), not 69. Unless he did some relativistic travel sometime in the 1940s courtesy of Navy experiments with electromagnetism.

While I disputed 74mr’s robotic assertion of a mistake on my part, I had no such qualms about the factual gaff Don cheekily pointed out and repaired it immediately, explaining its source (”PBS: American Master,” no less) and thanking him for letting me know.

But how I interacted with the critics is not the point. The point is the reaction I’m having to both of them ignoring the overall result of my work and going straight to rather petty points of order. With my timelapse I captured a remarkable sight and did so somewhat by the seat of my proverbial pants not having done much previously in the way of extended timelapse capture. With the Keaton post I provided what I think is a pretty decent overview of his life and career, replete with rare photos, a video montage and a personal angle. Hell, I even snooped around and found an event tie-in at a local theater next month that will feature Buster Keaton’s first film appearance! But none of that mattered to these two. In both cases neither of these commenters could even be bothered to give me even the briefest benefit of an attaboy before zooming in for the neener.

Please don’t mistake this as whimpering that I’m not getting the credit I think I deserve. Pffft. I’m not hungering for validation. But what I am hungering for is insight into what is it that’s allowing this type of nerdish tactlessness toseemingly be more acceptable? What’s happened where it’s more and more OK to be so narrow and unaware? Is it the internut? Absentee fathers? Nutrasweet? Duh-bya?

These two examples certainly do not a trend make, but if by chance the days of “Good job, but…” are going going gone I’ll try to get over it, but it’s gonna take awhile and in the meantime I’ll still be an active proprietor of politeness and encouragement. But I can’t guarantee I won’t be triply tactless in response to any future incidents of inconsideration.

Like most bullshit automobile adornment trends — the pissing Calvin, “Baby On Board” signage, bumper stickers that petulantly demand I accept that Jesus Is God while simultaneously commanding that I Read The Bible — I don’t know where and when they start. All I know is that they can never fade away fast enough to suit me.

The example of this type of stickering pictured below is certainly nothing new, but it’s one I don’t get on two WTF levels:

First off, dude: Duh. You’re driving a beatdown Toyota truck, what the hell else is it going to be powered by? Second off, dude: Nah. I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss the press release crowing about how Toyota’s engines deliver 1,200 horsepower.

And bonus WTF, dude. Hic? Were ya drinkin’ much while applying that lameness to your truck’s ass or is that uneven, off-center warped effect on purpose? Nice!

Powered by idiots.

While I was in Orlando last week, I was provided with a company laptop to use. It was a Hell Dell Latitude, which more appropriately or subliminally should be called L’attitude –French for “the attitude” — because one crucial and malignant aspect of it was continually and predominately a freakin’ pain in the ass and enough to keep me from ever purchasing anything but an Apple machine in the future regardless of the price difference.

Here’s the deal. The Dell comes equipped with your standard standard trackpad with two buttons beneath it, and that’s fine. But then for some reason the makers opted to put an additional two buttons above the trackpad and below the spacebar, I’m guessing not for any other reason than except either 1) there was space available between those two components so why the fuck not hell yeah, or 2) 0.0000021 percent of the population prefers the buttons to be above the trackpad.

What’s really righteous is that the apparent undefaultable default for these two unnecessary buttons jammed up right below the spacebar is that if you double tap them even with the lightest and slightest brush of a touch they do this wonderful thing: they’ll automagically relocate the cursor to wherever the pointer is located. So say you’re in Word or in an email program and you’re typing away and making obligatory use of the spacebar to provide that necessary separation between words — you’re screwed. Because inevitably instead of or in addition to the spacebar you’re going to accidentally brush those blasted buttons enough to send the cursor screaming up or down or sideways away from the text you’re currently inputing to be inserted at a point unknown to you until you finally glance up at the screen and instead of seeing something like this:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

You’re gonna see something like this:

The qpedoverthelazydog.uick brown fox jum

(more…)

Argh! I bought a Mr. Coffee FT Series coffeemaker in July at Costco after our Gevalia maker finally kicked the basket after three long years. In that quarter year with Mr. Coffee, I have gone through three decanters… the third one breaking this morning while cleaning it. With a sponge. Crrrrrack! Fuck!!

Of course in full Hulk Mad mode I lifted the coffeemaker over my head to smash it into 24 pieces glorious on the floor and then the lightbulb went off and I carefully put the unit down in its proper upright position and whipped off an ultimatum letter to Mr. Coffee’s customer service:

In the three short months since purchasing your FT Series coffeemaker, I have broken three decanters. I admit to breaking them. I’m not going to lie and say they just shattered on their own. But I am not a violent man, nor am I inordinately clumsy. I’m basically just a guy who likes a clean coffeepot. And so it’s been that as a result of these cleanings with either a sponge or a scrub brush while exerting no undue force or stress, I have ultimately had to discard the shattered remains of three of your decidedly fragile decanters.

The first one cracked within the first week of ownership. The second one several weeks later. The third – and most longest lasting – disintegrated this morning. At this point I have spent more on cheap glass for your coffeemaker than I did for the coffeemaker. Is this right? No, it’s not. In comparison, prior to purchasing your product this summer I had a Gevalia coffeemaker for about three years – with the same sturdy glass decanter. Go figure.

So here’s the deal: You’re either going to send me a replacement decanter free of charge or I’m going to take a hammer to my useless FT Series coffeemaker, pitch it into the trash and then go to the nearest retailer and buy a competing coffeemaker and I’ll never ever ever purcahse anything made by Mr. Coffee ever again.

I’ll be surprised to hear from them, much less get a new decanter (which would undoubtedly break almost immediately). But I’ll let you know if anything develops.

What is the derivation of RIP? Does it stem from a diehard tradition from back in the day when newspage space was at a premium and obituary typesetters were always looking to save a little time?

Maybe so, or maybe there’s a better reason but in this online day and age, why after a deceased’s name do people drop “RIP” into the headlines or taglines of otherwise considerate and thoughtful online eulogies without realizing how cheap and lazy and hard and cold it looks?

Just wondering.

Last Sunday morning, whoever the putrescent scumbag was didn’t actually steal the entire L.A. Times, just broke into the pocket containing two freebie razors that were part of promo package in which the paper was wrapped.

Upon discovering the break-in I shrugged and let it go not only because at least the bastards left the paper alone and because the idea of a four-bladed (or was it forty?) razor seems silly and expensive to refill, but mainly because I’m a simple dude with simple shaving needs and I’m entirely satisfied with the Gillette twin-blader I’ve been rocking for so many years.

This morning I got up early and at sometime around 7:30 a.m. looked out the front window pleased to find the Sunday paper sitting a couple steps up from the sidewalk, and — my bad — I left it there to have some coffee and sweep up the couple dozen unripened figs that had plopped to the patio overnight, as well as assorted other menial tasks. A short while later out the front door I went only to find the steps empty.

An online request at latimes.com for a replacement was fulfilled within a half-hour, but regardless of how easy it is to get the theft rectified, I’m on the warpath. And whether or not the cheaptastic maggot is the same one that hit me last week or if there’s two such slime-trailing subspecies walking the neighborhood stealing my newsstuff by the dawn’s early light, let’s just say I’ll have the webcam set up next weekend and be ready for some red-handed catching should they feel emboldened to go for a third theft next week.

Stay tuned.

Dear batcheldertiledotcom and missiontilewestdotcom,

You’ll notice first off in the salutation of this letter that I haven’t linked to your respective websites. I did that on purpose because I’m perturbed at you both and ain’t no way I’m giving you any kind of recognition. I won’t go so far as to say you suck because that’s kind of a blanket statement and I’m sure in your own respective ways you guys are great at what you do and really enthusiastic about tile since the word is in your name and all.

But you coulda fooled me with your failure to respond to or even most basically acknowledge in a timely fashion my simple email inquiry sent this past weekend about the Batchelder tile I discovered on the premises:

Hello,

While working in the backyard today I discovered amongst a pile of old bricks a single 4″x 4″ tile with the familiar BATCHELDER PASADENA stamp on the bottom that’s also accompanied near the tile’s center with two 1s, one on top of the other. Through a search via Google I found your wonderful site and I’m curious if you might know whether these stamped numbers signify perhaps a style and/or a lot number, or if it might mean the year of the tile’s manufacture.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Regards,
Will Campbell
Los Angeles

P.S. Our house is an old craftsman built around the mid 19-teens, but somewhere along the way the fireplace and chimney were removed.

Sure, you could argue like it’s 1992 that I’m way too impatient and doubly so unrealistic what with corresponding on a Saturday and expecting someone there to turn around a response so quickly — and I would almost totally agree with you if this were Monday afternoon or even Tuesday morning. But now that we’re midway through the work week and I got nothing from you I think that argument is a little “first-class mail” if you know what I mean. But in case you don’t perhaps it’s important to remember that the flow of information is near instantaneous what with the internut running 24/7 on an uptime of somewhere in the neighborhood of 99.99867%, which means barring a nasty kink in the tubing the email that near-instantaneously arrived in your inbox has been getting moldy for going on 24/5.

And that blows. Categorically — especially when a Google search of “Batchelder Tile” yields you two up near the top of the pile. I mean, if you guys had been buried somewhere three or four pages into the search results I would totally not be holding my breath waiting to hear from the likes of such lower eschelon losers. But you guys, whether you deserve it or not, have positioned yourselves online as the first-click, go-to industry leaders so you should think about acting like it and you can start by checking your incoming email at a highly accelerated and more regular rate and replying to those people who have an interest in the thing you’re selling. Duh! They’re called “customers” (kuhz-tah-merz). Or at the very least enthusiasts (in-thooz-ee-istz).

See, I love this stuff. I love the artifactness of it. I treasure the history. I love that this single remnant shows me the appreciation for quality held by the home’s builder, even if it dismays me that someone came along later and saw fit to destroy it, the bastards. I love the idea that this solitary tile could be one of who knows how many more discards waiting discovery. And I try to imagine what the fireplace might have looked like.

In the meantime growing old and bitter waiting for either of you to have the courtesy to reply to I took a white tile of the same dimensions as the red that’s been hanging around the backyard since I unearthed it last year and whose bottom was still encased in its mortar (thus preventing me from ID’ing it as a Batchelder), and chiseled all that crap off, and wouldn’t you know that one has “BATCHELDER PASADENA” stamped on its underside along with a “5,” whereas the red tile has a “1.” If the white tile had a “1″ in it, that similarity would lend me to hope it somehow signified the year they were made. Instead with the “5″ and the “1″ I’m leaning more towards those numbers representing the tiles’ respective colors.

So in a way maybe that helped answer the question I had. No thanks to you two.

Seeing as how Olympus has had my malfunctioning Stylus 710 for more than a month now and it’s been exactly four silent weeks to the day since I wrote them back suggesting Olympus go take a flying leap after the company wrote telling me they considered the damage to be beyond warranty coverage and weren’t going to repair the unit unless I ponied up $156.47, I called ‘em up on the phone this morning and waded through the voicemail prompts until getting a human voice to find out why the hell they hadn’t sent me my broken camera back yet.

“Do you have a service repair number, sir?”

“Indeed I do.”

Silence.

“And that number would be, sir?”

“Printed right here on the letter I got from Olympus dated May 1 telling me to pay $156.47, which I declined to do because I shouldn’t have to.”

More silence.

“Sir, may I have that number?”

“Sure. It’s 814472.”

Silence except for some keyclicks in the background.

More silence.

Finally: “It says here sir that repairs are being made as a courtesy to you.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

“A courtesy?”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s nice. Any idea as to how long this ‘courtesy’ is going to take?”

Silence.

“An ETA? Perhaps a ballpark guess?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Sir I expect they’re waiting for whatever required part to arrive and will fix your camera when it does.”

“Well I should hope so.”

Silence.

“But you aren’t at liberty to divulge how or when that might be or how long that might take?”

“No sir.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have that information, sir.”

“Because my camera’s in Irvine and you’re in Bangalor, right?”

Silence.

“Or is it Manila?”

“Is there anything I can help you with, sir?”

“You can help me figure out how long I’m going to have to wait for my camera.”

Silence.

“Days maybe?”

“Yes sir.”

“Or weeks.”

“Yes sir.”

“Months?”

Silence.

“Years even?”

“No, not that long, sir.”

“Not how long: months or years?”

“Either, sir.”

“Well that’s a relief.”

“Yes sir.”

“So I can expect the camera fixed and back in a matter of weeks then?”

“I can’t say that for certain, sir.”

“Come on… as a courtesy?”

Silence.

“I think that word means something different to you than to me.”

Silence.

Silence.

UPDATED (5/31): Is Olympus reading my blog? Could be the explanation as to why I answered a phone call on my cell from a Pennsylvania area code (the state where the company is headquartered) at 8 a.m. this morning  to find myself talking to a nice young man named Zeus (not really; but wouldn’t that rock to be named Zeus and work at Olympus?) who wasted no time using that “courtesy” word again in telling me that as a one-time-only deal his company is willing to eat the cost to repair my camera.  Furthermore and more importantly he dispelled the previously elusive timeframe by advising me the unit with full functionality restored would be on its way back to me in five to seven days. Glory to the gawdz!

Dear Olympus,

The only thing keeping me from unleashing an all-out, multiple-front complaint assault about the pathetic level of customer service you’ve provided me in regards to the broken digital camera I sent you for repairs at the end of April is the fact that I didn’t pay for the unit in limbo. That’s right, said Olympus Stylus 710 was awarded me as a result of my winning a “Super Shooter” photo contest sponsored by L.A. radio station KFWB last July in which I submitted my favorite Dodger Stadium moment and they liked it enough to send me the first prize valued at around $300 at the time.

That I didn’t have to pony up my own money for your camera shouldn’t really soften my anger, but it does makes it easier to let go. Still, you suck for your failure to take responsibility and repair the camera still clearly under the one-year warranty.

Overall it was a good piece of equipment before it began crapping out, which was sometime in March when the thing began freezing up after I’d turn it on. Usually powering it down and back up by removing and replacing the battery sometimes once, sometimes two or three times, would restore the camera to working order. But after several weeks of having to do this every time I wanted to take a picture became intolerable and so I contacted your customer service department where a representative said the malfunction sounds like a firmware issue that can only be resolved if I send it in — which I did with all the requested documentation showing the warranty was still in effect.

A couple days later, shortly before I was about to split for vacation, I then get a letter that tersely states:

Upon evaluation we have made the following notes about the product received. We have determined that the terms of the warranty coverage do not apply to this situation due to the following: received in used condition, dents on bottom left and right corners of camera.

Cost of repair (including tax, shipping and handling): $156.47

I turned around a WTF letter of protest the next day that I sent via direct mail to your service center in Irvine and copied it via email to your main customer service address:

Dear Sirs,

I am in receipt of a letter dated May 1 suggesting that I am responsible for the costs to repair my Olympus 710 digital camera because it was “received in used condition, dents on bottom left and right corners of camera.”

I submitted the camera for repair with the understanding as provided by an Olympus Imaging customer service representative that the warranty applied and am appalled at the implication that it does not.

While I did drop the camera in August very shortly after I purchased it (from a negligible height of three feet), it continued to work flawlessly over the next eight months after that incident. Though the camera has been dropped its current dysfunctional state is not a result of that incident.

Whatever is malfunctioning now is Olympus’ responsibility, not mine. But if Olympus is not willing to provide me with a warranty repair then send the camera back to me unrepaired. For the amount you dare to charge I can purchase a new camera and trust me it will not be an Olympus — nor will I ever purchase any product bearing an Olympus mark again.

Sincerely
William Campbell

I figured more than two weeks later when we got back from Europe was plenty of time for you to either reject or accept my demand and if not the camera I’d at least have some sort of reply waiting for me. Nope. There was nothing from either Olympus customer service nor your regional service center. And when I logged on to the Olympus website to check the repair status everything was still the same as it had been with the camera repair stalled pending receipt of the $156.47 you were extorting. It was then that I gave up the fight and went the final online step and checked the box declining to pay the ransom and requesting the return the unrepaired camera. And when the dialog box came up inquiring why I’d made that decision I believe I wrote something to the effect of “Because Olympus Sucks.”

EPILOGUE
In the aftermath of all this and with only a few days left until the arrival of my 43rd anniversary of life on this planet I rationalized taking the paycheck I received for the final couple days working at that gig in El Segundo and getting myself a new cam. Enabling just such a rebound are the fine and attentive folks at Costco who must’ve gotten word of my situation because in my inbox this morning with a subject line of Olympus Blows Digital Chunks! (not really) was a notice pointing me to a 7.1-megapixel Canon SD1000 bundled with a 2-gig memory card for slightly less than a hundred bucks over the $156 Olympus was pining after so adamantly.

File this under trivial, but I just can’t stand when the morning’s dominos fall so off-kilterly. It started well. My buddy and former boss Timothy Hughes sent me a lead toward a gig that we both figured I could kick ass at, so I wasted no time completing the online application and getting that ball rolling toward whatever might be its disposition.

Of course, that process set me back about an hour, which meant I had to get a move on and compact another hour’s worth of stuff (litterbox and food/water bowl duty; iron a shirt, feed the tortoise; shower/shave, get my lunch together; set up the webcam; get dressed) into about 20 minutes if I was going to be able to get out the door with time to bus-train-train it to work for the second consecutive day, only this time so I could report about an hour earlier and thus leave at 4:30, the better to be able to get home in time to throw on my bike gear and roll over to participate in the Bike Winter ride scheduled for tonight.

Most of all that was moving right along up until  I popped open the laptop and tried to fire up the webcam software. But the captured images weren’t uploading via my wireless internet connection and it took me a few precious minutes to diagnose the problem: instead of utilizing our wi-fi, the lapper was doggedly and unsuccessfully obsessing over a neighbor’s closed connection. This despite me having previously set up the computer to access only ours and remember the password so I didn’t have to, which I don’t.

But she’s a 7-year-old machine with more surprises than zebra with a 500-word vocabulary and a tendency to conveniently forget whatever instructions I’ve given and so all the force-quits and restarts just weren’t going to stop her from deciding that the “youngernet” wireless network, wherever that was, was the connection for her. And that meant I needed switch to manual and point her back to ours, but not without the wireless network’s password — which I have written down, but hell if I know where.

Long boring meaningless rant short, it wasn’t after killing some more time with some futile searching for the password that I forced myself to look at the clock to realize that not only was my mass-transit commute window closed, but that I’d now be lucky to get my crap together and get in my truck and put miles on the odometer and emissions into the air getting to work at my regularly scheduled nine o’clock hour.

Of course, thanks to lookeloos helplessly compelled to gawk at a three-car collision cleared to the shoulder on the 110 a couple miles from the 105 interchange the drive was even more frustrating and long, but the good news was that I arrived to work with a full two minutes to spare. The bad news is that I’ll be leaving work at 5:30 and unless there’s some traffic flow miracle that will speed me home in 45 minutes it looks like I’ll be missing out on tonight’s ride.

To make up for the gas use and pollutions loosed and the resultant inability, barring rain I’ll be getting up early and focused tomorrow on nothing but what I need to do to bike with The Phoenix to work and back.