The Other Sandy

I think one of my neighbors is burning incense. I've been sneezing for 3 1/2 hours now.

So, Harvey Weinstein thinks that Midwesterners are too stupid to watch Snowpiercer and need a special cut of the film to understand it. I wish I were making that up.

Dear Mr. Weinstein,

Have you ever actually been to the Midwest? We have indoor plumbing and electricity and everything. We even manage to congregate in areas called "cities," some of which are of a considerable size and contain things like museums and schools.

So thank you in advance for the "stuff blowed up real good" edition of Bong Joon-ho's SF class struggle allegory, but if you find that it "doesn't play in Peoria," it's not because we're all too stupid to understand it. It's because we're smart enough to wait for the real movie to come out on video.

No love,

Sandy (no, the other one)

Heads up to anyone who still has a Delicious account.

I haven't used mine in a year, but I never got around to deleting it. Tonight I was doing a bookmark clean-up in my browser and decided to pop over and see if at any point in the past year Delicious had become functional again, when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but my real name in full display under my user icon for anyone to see.

I have never used my real name in conjunction with that account ever, so I don't know how they got it. It was not there when I bailed to Pinboard last year. I don't know how long it's been there.

That was the last bit of failly icing on the fail cake. My Delicious account, which I once deeply loved, has now been deleted.

More importantly, if you have a Delicious account under your fannish name and haven't checked it in awhile, you might want to pop over and make sure your real name isn't showing.

Dear World At Large,

Why yes, I do own an e-reader. And yes, I am reading it in public. If you have never seen one before and are genuinely curious, I won't mind giving you a little demo of how it works. I am, after all, a librarian, and anything that encourages people to read is okay by me.

However, please do not misinterpret seeing me reading my Nook in public as an invitation to share with me in great and extraordinary detail your personal philosophy on paper books vs. e-books and how you wouldn't be caught dead reading on an e-reader. I am not recruiting anyone into a secret cult of e-book aficionados, I am not selling anything, and I did not buy this e-reader for you. You are more than welcome to your opinion, but you don't see me barging up to your table to tell you how I wouldn't be caught dead drinking Diet Coke, do you?

I knew you'd understand. Now go away; I'm trying to read.

No love,

Sandy (no, the other one)

It's driving me increasingly dippy that Barnes & Noble keeps sending me emails exhorting me to buy a Nook (I've already got one) with an attached coupon that's only good in store and isn't valid on Nooks or e-books. No, seriously, you want me to buy an e-reader and then, what, use it as a paperweight while I continue to buy and read paper books? To whom does this make sense? How about sending me a coupon for some e-books so I can buy some e-books for my e-book reader? Or is that just crazy talk?

Excuse me while I vent my spleen. You may want to don the special safety goggles.

I'm in Davenport, Iowa, for a farewell BBQ for a friend who is being deployed to the Middle East (again). I chose to drive out tonight and stay in a hotel overnight rather than drag myself out of bed at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. I had directions from Google maps, and I know the area pretty well from when my friends used to live here. So, I got to the place that Google maps said the hotel was. It turned out to be a service drive behind a strip mall. Needless to say, there was no hotel hiding there. I drove around the area a bit to see if the little pinpoint on the map was off by a block or two, but no, it was a residential area. No hotel. At this point, it's very late and pretty much everything is closed.

Then I had an idea. I would just find another major street and find a hotel, any hotel, and ask at the desk. The desk people always have maps of the local area, right? So I found another hotel and went to the desk. And stood there for a small eternity while the sole employee answered phone call after phone call. I should have taken it as a sign that he answered every question with "I don't know" and/or "I can't help you." Guess what he said when I approached him with my problem? I asked if I could use his phone to call my hotel to get directions. No matter what number I dialed on the cordless handset he gave me, the phone rang to his switchboard. No, he didn't know how to forward the call through.

I finally spotted a public computer station and hit up Google maps again. Nope, still directing me to a strip mall. Then I tried the hotel's website. This time the little pinpoint came down about 2 miles west of where I was. Did you know that East 53rd St. is west of 53rd St.? Me either. I suppose that makes about as much sense as anything else that's happened to me tonight.

At least I knew where the other street was. My friends used to live on it, albeit several miles farther down. I drove to the new 53rd St. and found the hotel. I could even see it. It was high up on a hill...with no roads leading to it that I could find. I eventually got turned around and approached from the right direction to see that the street leading to the hotel was unlighted, barely marked, and blocked on one side by a construction barricade. When I finally made it to the front desk of my hotel, I told the desk person about the problem with Google maps. She knew before I told her that it had directed me to a strip mall. If this is such old news to them, you'd think they'd tell people making reservations, "Oh, by the way, use our website to get directions so you don't end up behind a strip mall two miles away." Or is that just crazy talk?

And now that I'm here, there doesn't seem to be any way to turn left out of the parking lot, so I have no idea how I'm going to get back to I80 even though I know exactly where it is--to my left.

Hopefully, this is not a harbinger of things to come this weekend.

Send all the planes you want. I'm watching anime with subtitles. Nyah.

Dear LJers,

LJ has some pretty neat options. I especially love the ability to customize the layout to reflect each LJer's personality or interest. However, when it takes me an hour and a half to download your LJ layout just to get to the content? Your layout may be too busy. I'm just sayin'.

No love,

Sandy (no, the other one)

After waiting two weeks for notification that the car parts I ordered (and pre-paid for) had arrived at the dealership, I finally gave up and called them. The parts manager then bawled me out over how difficult I am to get in touch with and how much I've inconvenienced him. When asked, it turned out that he'd been calling my home number the whole time even though my work number is on file with them.

This happens to me a lot. Whenever I have to leave my phone number with someone (doctor's office, car repair place, pharmacy, car dealership, etc.) so they can call me back, they always ask for both my home and work phone numbers. Then they get annoyed because I never answer the phone at home. They get even more annoyed when I suggest they might have better luck calling me at work, which is where I frequently am during work hours on a work day.

Seriously, why do they even ask for my work number if they're never going to call it? And if they're at work making phone calls, what makes them think I won't be at work too? Do they think they're the only people on earth who have jobs?

"It's a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is relegated to the saps and the dipshits who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

--Tim Kring

Dear Mr. Kring,

I can figure out how to watch it in a superior way. I just can't afford to. Feel free to drop a donation into my Upgrade to Broadband Someday fund.

No love,

Sandy (no, the other one)