Atomictumor

I like fountain pens.

The Missus appreciates fountain pens more than anyone I’ve ever met. She has several and that was one of the first things I ever noticed about her. (One of the first things, mind you.) The Missus gave me one once as a birthday gift. It’s beautiful, black, and heavy. It rests in your hand with some weight.

Here’s one of the best articles on a fountain pen I’ve ever run across. Realivepreacher is somebody I’ve read for several years now. He consistently amazes me by his skill at taking common things and occurences and…reframing them.

The Missus just asked me what I’m going to post about. I said, “rude customers”. “Did you have one today,” she asked. I said “no, but yesterday one came through that was exuding such evil energy, that she had my hands shaking.”

This is the second beligerant patron that has come through the library in as many weeks. What’s up with that? Do people think they’re entitled to “sudden service?” People yell, cuss and act like fools and… it works. It gets them service and that sucks. (Well it doesn’t always work. I have had to kick people out because of their bad behavior.)

The flip side of this is one’s reaction to such knuckle-heads. Some of the folks at work were still talking about it and telling the story over and over. (In all fairness, I’m telling you about it, too. That’s different, though, because this is a blog.) They seemed to be worrying their memory of the event like a stone in a pocket.

I don’t know if it is some sort of Jedi training that one must possess, but a customer service type has to have a certain sort grace. The ability to allow such evil energy to pass by without sticking. That evil energy has to be deflected, or rather neutralized. It will just eat a hole through your stomach lining otherwise. I can feel that nast action sometimes.

There’s the trick. Sometimes I do better rolling with the punches than at other times. So, I have to take it easy with myself, too. Have to lower my expectations, somewhat. Not to expect less of others, but rather not to desire such unattainable perfection out of myself. I’ll expect others to behave as they do, then deal with them as circumstances, rules and regulations demand.

Just don’t be a jerk, come on.

I’m a geek, but I’m an iconoclast. To that end, I like to ignore all of the standard geek warnings:
“Use a antivirus, or your computer will melt!”
“Use a firewall, or the terrorists will use your computer to take over the NSA!”
“Use prophylactics, or you’ll have kids!”
“Secure your wireless network, or Mexican drug gangs will download pron!”
“Don’t use cookies, or your Mom will find out about the pron!”
“Turn your computer off at night, or your house will burn down!”

The list goes on and on.

However, last night I went and did number 4, for the first time, and I feel pretty good about it. Casa Tumor has been broadcasting a weak, feeble little 802.11b signal for a couple of years now, but in the process of getting our second computer (named jiggajigga, for those who have to know) up and running, I realized that the east side has grown up, and there are more wireless networks running around unsecured than mine out there.

So, I surfed around on the unsecured signal (in all honesty, because I wasn’t sure which one was mine and which was theirs, but I’m not normally one to turn down free internet) for a while. The internet looked largely the same as it does on my signal, so I decided to bite the bullet and lock down the fort.

Sure enough, the internet fairies now travelling out of the wireless router to the second computer are now armored little death fairies. Woot.

Now, what ever happened to all that talk of a local network, or municipal Wifi, or something cool like that. That’d be a little sweet, if you ask me.