Stalkers

I have one, and this frightens me a little.

How do I know this?

Simple. They (I use 'they' in a hopelessly pessimistic sense) got careless.

Out of my last 24 blog posts, an unknown person +1'd all but 4 of them.

Q.E.D.

Unfortunately, Google is a stalker-enabler; letting people anonymously like your posts. Creating victims like me.

Victimsssss, preciousssss. V-i-c-t-i-m-ssssss.

(awesome, now I'm creeping myself out)

The picture I choose for this post (ironically entitled How to Handle a Stalker), is a picture of a wild-eyed woman who has just discovered a creepy dude at 7 o'clock.

Whether her concern is due to his garlic breath, we shall never know.

But it begs the question. How does one handle a stalker? Especially a virtual online stalker?

As a computer geek, one might think I have all the answers.

I don't.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure where to start. I suppose I could turn off anonymous comments, but that would only serve to bury an unsolved mystery, and I can't have that.

So, clearly, the only proper thing to do is to try and discover who this mysterious stalker is. I have my means.

In the words of the great Sherlock Holmes:

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Well said, sir. Well said.

So, the facts as they stand:

The four posts they did not +1 were:

1. ECD
2. Hindsight
3. Yes, I Found Her
4. Poetry

This leads me to several conclusions.

(skipping Hindsight because it implies a clear dislike of extra-sensory perception, and--obviously--the conclusions I can draw from that are foggy at best.)

My stalker does not attend ECD.

My stalker wasn't wild about my courtship.

My stalker dislikes poetry with ambiguous meaning.

Also, I can probably imply by all this that they don't follow my blog publicly (though I'm sure Edgar Allan Poe would have a thing or two to say about that).

My investigation--though inconclusive--continues. Be on your guard, Mr./Ms. Stalker. I'm on top of this.

+1 this post, and I will applaud your boldness, and maybe even donate a dollar to your favorite charity.

Until next time,
- Daniel

Horizon

The horizon of Verizon. We can see it coming, but it isn't yet among us.

We moved. You probably heard.

But the Internet didn't move with us.

This is bad.

Our rental is supposed to be the Mecca of Geekdom, but it's awfully hard to achieve this when you're browsing Gmail on the monochrome screen of your Kindle.

:Brian, stop laughing about the unlimited data plan on your smartphone:

Frontier is coming on Tuesday to eradicate our shame. 

Tuesday.

That's... what... 30 hours away?

In the meantime, what are we going to do? This morning consisted of fried eggs, cereal, and scattered discussion about the weather, shopping, and interior decorating.

I told you it was dire.

Nathan was so bored that he didn't even bother getting out of bed to tell Brian and I goodbye as we left for church. We texted him instead.

(He decided to stay home and wait for our dryer and washer to be delivered. I commend such courage in the face of a disconnected--almost disembodied--state.)

After church a couple of us tried to visit the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. But our annual pass had expired, so we went and got ice cream instead (thank you, Brian).

I couldn't take it anymore by this point. I went home for dinner (and Wi-Fi theft). The sun was nice, so I sunned myself like a sphinx while checking e-mail and Facebook.

Then, ashamed of myself, I went inside and opened a bunch of cans for my mom.

Seriously though, you never think it can happen to you. Internet dependence. Shame. Re-runs of Daniel Gardner videos on a 4" screen can only occupy you for so long before you go mad. The insanity is only partially (maybe mostly) Mr. Gardner's fault.

Oh, and lest you think I would fill an entire post without a completely random comment: you should know. I changed my typeface to Helvetica. Because Times New Roman makes me want to punch something.

Have a nice day,
- Daniel

Wrongness

Man. Two blog posts in two days. I can hear the tl;dr snipers emerging from the bushes. DIE, YOU VERBOSE MANIAC, DIE.

And... as I throw molotov cocktails back at 'em, I freely admit the obvious.

I'm a voracious writer.

Savage.

Brutal.

My victims die painful, torturous deaths, driven insane by the constant flow of short pithy sentences. My style is a mix between porcupine petting and dinosaur dunking (and atrocious alliteration).

It's a raw world. Dog eat dog. Whether you think of gladiators in the Circus Maximus or contestants in a government-sponsored death match, the parallels are obvious.

What kind of rhetoric carries the day? Shock and awe. The vulgar and obscene. The demonic and obsessed.

What's a Christian writer to do? Start the textual equivalent of the 700 Club?

No. Fortunately, sane alternatives are available, and none of them involve telethons.

Sacred writers have more than a few avant-garde tricks up their sleeve. Assuming they have sleeves. Tanktop aficionados have a steeper hill to climb. Bare-chested writers have other problems, including the risk of blinding their readers with spontaneous whiteness (Earth to males above the 45th parallel. Never take your shirt off.)

I digress.

The trick of many a good writer is the art of... wrongness.

It's like that abstract painting that drives you bananas, yet you can't take your eyes off of it. It's like that weird relative who insists on the multi-hued mohawk. Things that burn your brain.

It's like that with words. Use them well, and people won't be able to concentrate on anything else.

One word of warning. Take this too far and you'll echo in people's minds like that bad car salesman with the tweed jacket and beady eyes.

It's possible to be too witty.

Fortunately, true friends are really handy with super soakers. There's a law about this, the Law of Conservation of Wit (better known as karma in hippie circles). What goes around comes around.

(excuse me, I need to dodge another fusillade of paintball slugs, brb)

PAT-A-PAT-A-PAT-A-PAT-A-PAT-A-PAT

Okaaay. Where were we?

In my defense, there are myriads of modern writers who can push the wit accelerator to the max and get away from the humor cops. However, I always return to one of the old standbys.

Mark Twain, the King of Wrongness (or political incorrectness, depending on who you ask).

With no further ado. The Master...

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Twain, you make me smile. Even without exclamation marks, screaming caps, or platoons of emoticons. You, sir, are the rock star of sarcastic, deadpan humor.

Until next time,
- Daniel

The Three Technophiles

(Sorry Dumas)

A few of you have called me out on the fact that the subtitle for my blog is dishonest. I've been living at home for over two years, yet have the audacity to claim I'm a licensed and independent ex-homeschooled blogosphere terrorist.

This is about to change.

In less than a week, I will--once again--be as dangerous as a church greeter with a joy buzzer.

In this edition of Leaving the Nest (part 2), I'll be moving to a house in Beaverton with two equally dangerous convicts. Nathan "Noreastern" Becker and Brian "Bad Weather" Plett. We will have the entire house to ourselves.

I'm not going to cackle, because that would be cliched. But I will take this opportunity to hum The Emperor's Theme while equipping my G.I. Joe action figure with a jerryrigged phreaking device.

Seriously, this feels like a big relationship commitment. While house shopping, we had a few must-haves on our short list:

1. Closet space for server racks
   
   
2. Pre-installed cable jacks
   
   
3. Good southern exposure for solar arrays
   
   
4. Scads of grounded three-prong outlets
   
   
5. No landscaping

Will this make (some of us) more independent?

Yes.

Will this make (any of us) more social?

:crickets:

Will this be a heck of a lot of fun, or will we part ways as unlikely enemies?

I have no clue. And... honestly... I probably won't appreciate what I've gotten myself into until the first time I trip on a mislaid CAT-5e cable.

Bring on the troubles, trials, and brownouts caused by SETI@home. I'm psyched.

And... lest you think the three of us will be unified in our technophilic solidarity, the OS wars have already begun...

Until next time,
- Daniel

ECD

You think ECD stands for English Country Dancing.

So you've been told.

But really, when you're sashaying down the line to the bouncy strains of a vocalist with helium breath, deep down, you know it can't possibly stand for that.

Instead, I want to posit an alternative expansion. ECD actually stands for Ebullient Compulsive Disorder.

Ebullient brings to mind a vigorous boiling and bubbling. Kind of like the blisters on my feet after five rounds of Post Jig and three rounds of the Virginia Reel.

Compulsive brings to mind... er... :clears throat while checking the ECD Oregon page on Facebook... again:

...moving along....

Disorder is what I'll get if I do one more dip when I'm supposed to be diving. Permanent disability from the head trauma, that is...

...or if I get a particularly sadistic partner who decides to let go in the middle of a vicious two-handed turn. Same result.

Which reminds me. There's a good deal of trust in dancing.

Oh yeah, I'm doing a segue. Try and stop me. :maniacal laughter:

Dancing is like a trust fall with considerably larger force vectors in the XY plane. (translation: catch me or I become one with the pillar)

Dancing is like threading needles with hypersonic missiles.

Dancing is like finding the resonant frequency of wine glasses one story below the dance floor.

:cough:

But, you know, I guess Pride and Prejudice-type dancing grace is awesome too.

Aw Shucks.

Until next time,
- Daniel

(Kudos to Andrew E. for the brilliant alternate meaning of 'ECD')

Hindsight

I promise not to gripe.

...or scowl.

...or throw things around the room.

But I just read the most amazing synonymistic description (yes, I realize that's not a word) of hindsight ever on Wikipedia. It's dubbed the "knew-it-all-along effect".

Things are generally clear and cuddly in hindsight. That's why we sugarcoat things like political history ("when I was a boy"), our mental capabilities ("I knew it takes an hour to drive 60 miles at 60 miles-per-hour. You just didn't give me enough hours to crunch the figures."), and our level of maturity ("Licking ice-coated metal? Who knew, right?").

And, as far as I'm concerned, you are welcome to inflate (or deflate... who am I to judge?) your perception of the past as much as you like.

But... please.

(I'm on hands and knees here.)

Don't play Prophetic History with other people's pasts.

Because, honestly, when Joe Shmo retrospectively prophesies your concrete faceplant, there's only one appropriate response.

WELL GENIUS, WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP ME?

(Sorry about the yelling)

And face it. If you're one of those people blessed with clairvoyance, see impending doom, and do nothing to stop it, you're liable for damages.

You've been warned.

I was once accused of possessing mental telepathy. It was at a Bible quiz meet back in highschool. I was on the stage with my teammates... both girls... who I was desperately trying to impress. We had our hands on a buzzer. Press to buzz and answer the question.

I won't lie. I'm slow as molasses. So, in lieu of signaling the normal way, I pushed the button a full two seconds before the announcer started reciting the question.

BUZZ

He paused for five very dramatic seconds, then called my bluff...

"Unless Team 5 has the gift of ESP (we were being quizzed on the fruits of the Spirit), I'm going to repeat the question."

He had me.

In hindsight, maybe I should have stalled by quoting pi until my heavenly pingback returned.

...or not.

Keep smiling,
- Daniel