mark who?

Hello...and welcome to my exciting life. These are the "older" MY LIFE pieces, collected here in one place. As usual, all material copyright by Me.

Neat Free Stuff

In which I ramble on about freeware (and other) software that I like

My screen (with the wallpaper removed to make it easier to see)...click for a full-size pic

First of all, my web browser is Avant Browser. It’s based on the IE software engine, but supports tabbed browsing (much better than Netscape or Mozilla currently does) and has a very good popup blocker. It’s also skinnable, but doesn’t seem to have many skins available.

Speaking of skins, I’m using Windows XP, but it looks different. That’s thanks to Windowblinds, part of the Object Desktop suite from Stardock (based in Livonia, Michigan...local folks). It changes the appearance of Windows, but can also add things to the titlebar and whatnot; flexible but easy to use.

That thing at the top of my screen is Winamp version 5, featuring the best of versions 2 and 3 (get it? 2 + 3 = 5!). And yes, I’m listening to Skinny Puppy. Everyone should.

That big thing along the right side of the screen is Sysmetrix. It’s a neat program that will display system monitoring information, such as time and date, free space on your hard drive(s), currently playing song information , memory usage, even weather forecast information. I also use Sysmetrix to synchronize my computer’s clock with the Atomic Clock, so I always have the correct time, because I’m an elitist snob.

Down in the bottom-right corner is a handy little tool called Rainlendar. It’s just a simple calendar application, which you can also program reminders and notes into. It’s easy to use, takes up barely any resources, and is available in lots of skins (some even matching Sysmetrix skins!).

Down in the lower-left corner (and also on top of the web browser) is Trillian, which is a nice “chat management program”. It allows you to connect to AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Yahoo! all at once, all within the Trillian program. No need to open a bunch of different programs to chat with your friends. Lots of skins available for this too (I like the one I’m using here because it takes up hardly any screen space) and some nice features even in the free version.

Oh, and that window on top of my web browser is Pegasus Mail, an awesome freeware email application. It works well with any POP email account, and if you have Hotmail Popper, you can even use Pegasus Mail (or Outlook, or any POP email client) to check your Hotmail account!

Recent Life, Part the Second

In which I update readers on my dealings with myself, the “internal struggles”

So I’ve already blabbered about relationships, so what else has been going on? I’ve refocused on shift(less), my electronic music endeavor. It would be right about here that I’d link to mp3.com so y’all could actually HEAR the music. However, mp3.com has (or will very soon) discontinued their artist support and will be shutting down. Suffice it to say, my stuff is a mix between trance, house, and “traditional” Detroit techno. Also HUGE thanks to Steve Kapo at Fylar Designs for the logo, which I love.

Yep, so that’s the music front, I’ve been writing more songs and am now (still) working on my first song with vocals. Not quite sure how I’m going to handle that one, technically speaking, but there it is regardless. And of course, aside from the music, there is the other kind of writing.

During the now-defunct relationship, most of what I wrote was directly related to my significant other. However, towards the end I began writing other pieces, mostly very dark like my early work, trying to vent some of the frustration and anger I was feeling at the time, mostly at myself. Lately I’ve begun “branching” again, trying out different things and even writing two pieces for a couple of “assignments” on one of the poetry newsgroups.

A word about those newsgroups, for anyone remotely interested: don’t bother. The newsgroup I was reading did have some genuinely talented writers, and you could get good, constructive criticism. Sometimes. But all this was buried under floods of petty personal in-fighting, name-calling, and general bitchiness. I got tired of trying to weed through all the garbage (and, no, filtering did not work for reasons I won’t bore you with), so I just stopped reading and posting to it.

I had also started working on a story, a borrowed seed of an idea from the Ninja Burger website. But I’d like to think the specifics are all my own. Hopefully I’ll pick those ideas up again shortly when I feel movivated for it.

To help inspire me, I’ve tried to read some different things as well. I picked up a book of short stories by Haruki Murakami called The Elephant Vanishes. Nevermind that he’s a Japanese author...his stories are, what I would call, surreal reality. He develops very believeable characters in a normal world, then twists this bizarre elements into the world, like a lemon over a Tom Collins. Someone I know who tried reading another of Murakami’s books complained that it was too dark, too pessimistic. I can see that, sometimes the character telling the story echoes shades of Camus’ L’Etranger, but I think it’s all to good effect.

I’ve almost finished Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins. I was hesitant to begin this book, solely on the popularity of the author, but I’m glad I did. He has a wonderfully playful way with words, turning a phrase and laying out subtle puns with the care of a master baker laying out flour for a pie crust. Okay, not the best analogy...the point is, he’s a very fun read.

Recent Life, Part the First

In which I update readers on my dealings with other people

That’s right, it has been three years exactly since I last updated this website of mine. Mainly it’s been through sheer lack of motivation, combined with the strong sense that no one really wants to read about this crap. But with the surge in popularity of all the online journals and “blogs”, I decided to resurrect The Markophone. So, I shall don my logical persona and cover the events of the past three years in roughly chronological order.

2000: After two years at Ameritech, I got a promotion. In April (April Fools’ Day, as a matter of fact) I became the Provisioning Support Manager for the Livonia Centralized Translations Group. I was responsible for writing local instructions and Methods And Procedure documents (to tell the technicians how to do some of the work in the center). I was also a primary level of support between our center and the rest of SBC (now 13 states, not just five). I had to travel a little more, take on additional training, as well as conduct some of my own. I was happy, for a short time.

We were short-handed, however, and my happiness quickly waned. I was expected to have my pager and work cellphone with me all the time, which wasn’t surprising considering the money I was making. Work was piling up, and along with personal problems, I was losing motivation to do any of it. I began a year-long process of utterly screwing myself to the wall, which ended in my “termination of employment” in November of 2002. Needless to say, I still haven’t recovered from that. As far as the money goes, I went from making $50,000 a year to less than what I made in retail before I quit in ’98. Well, I won’t whine about the rest of it. Let’s just say my self-worth plummeted, and it’s still way down there.

In August of 2001 I met a girl, whose name I won’t mention simply to protect her privacy. She was cute, she was fun to be with, and we were in love. Sappy stuff, sure, but I’m a romantic at heart. Well, back then I was. In early 2001, we decided that we had found the person that we each were meant to be with, so we considered ourselves engaged. We saw as much of each other as we could.

And in August of 2003, I left her and ended the relationship for good. I won’t go into the details of what happened...despite all the other personal bullshit I may put on this website, this part is really no one else’s business.

In the spring of this year, the divorce was finalized. I moved out shortly thereafter. I am thankfully able to see my daughter on a regular basis. She’s seven now, and I’d like to think that she’s much better off now that the divorce is final, and she isn’t around two people playing at a fake relationship.

So what does the future hold? Lots of solitude, I would predict. As far as other relationships go, I’m way too bitter and cynical right now to even think about “dating” or anything like that. And that’s as much of an understatement as saying the ocean is “damp”.

Next time I write, I’ll fill everyone in on the creative stuff I’ve been doing, the introspective goodies.

Missing: Two Hubcaps...

I was quite a different person back in high school...and yet, much the same, too. But I was never part of the "in-crowd", never went to parties or dances. As a matter of fact, up until senior year I never even skipped any of my classes. Don't get me wrong; I was no honor student...not by any stretch of the imagination. I was a very lazy student back then, and it was pretty rare that I did most of my assignments. As a consequence, my grades were usually in the B to C range.

Well, when I got to senior year, things took a very small change. Oh, I didn't buckle down and do more work, get better grades. Quite the contrary...I found a reason to skip classes! I met up with a guy that I was friends with back in elementary school, so we did a lot of things together that final year of high school. And yes, I skipped a few classes. Not enough to get me into any kind of trouble, and I was always careful to never skip on the day of a test or anything like that.

At the time, I drove a light blue 1980 Plymouth Volare...The Tank, as it came to be known. This car saw me through many a "winter adventure". For instance, one day I woke up to a fair amount of new snow on the ground, and on the road. I didn't hear anything about school closings, however, so I got ready anyway and left to pick up my friend. As we were driving to school, we started talking about the insanity of holding school on a day like this, with all this treacherous snow on the road. Naturally, it didn't enter into the argument that we were already on the road...it was the principle of the matter. We arrived at the school to find the parking lot full of cars and busses unloading kids in front. They had decided to hold school anyway. So we were forced to take matters into our own hands. We went into the building, my friend got a couple things from his locker, and we left.

We decided to take a little drive. For anyone familiar with the area around Rochester, allow me to paint the picture: we went to school at Rochester H.S., on Livernois Road. We went out of there, into town, and north on Main Street. If you've ever gone north through town, you know that Main Street (aka Rochester Road) branches off at an angle right after the intersection for Tienken Road. Well, I wasn't paying full attention, and didn't notice the change in road direction. Thankfully there were no cars coming, so I jerked the wheel over and we took the left "branch" of the road. As we slid a little on the snowy pavement, there was a loud THUMP, the car shook, and we straightened out and continued on our way. Little did I know that, as we slid making that "turn", both wheels on the passenger side hit the curb, knocking both hubcaps off on that side of the car. We didn't notice that until much later that day.

Then there was another snowy day, but this time we hadn't skipped classes. I was again in the car with this same friend, who will remain nameless to protect the guilty, and we were on our way out of our subdivision. Since this was just a subdivision road and not a main road, it hadn't been salted or anything, so it was a little slick. And there were no cars coming, no one behind us, the Volare had rear wheel drive, and were young and stupid...so I hit the gas and yanked the wheel hard, doing a nice little 180. And again, as the car completed the spin, WHAM! This time I stopped and got out of the car, but this time I had only knocked off one hubcap. So I threw it in the trunk and we continued on our merry way.

The worst one, though, was right on Rochester Road...a scary moment. I remember it so clear, like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday, and my friend and I decided to go to the local Blockbuster Video to rent some movies or Nintendo games (they didn't have Super Nintendo or N64 back then...don't I sound like an old fart?). I had on my Vision Street Wear pants and a jean jacket, and there was a LOT of snow on the ground, but the roads weren't too bad.

Now, back then, the closest Blockbuster Video was the one on Wattles (17 Mile Road), so that's where we were headed. We were driving south on Rochester Road, in the left-hand lane. The road was pretty clear of cars, and we were tooling along at maybe 35-40 MPH. All of a sudden, this little blue Omni darts out of a driveway on the east side of Rochester Road, turning RIGHT in front of us...he didn't even bother going into the left-turn lane, he just shot right in front of us. So I panicked and slammed on the brakes (and the horn, of course). That was a bad move...the wheels stopped, but the car just slid. And slid. And slid some more. We didn't hit the idiot in the Omni, but we did manage to spin in a complete 360, ending up in the oncoming traffic lanes. We yelled and screamed various obscenities familiar to most 17-year-olds, and managed to get the car into the proper lanes before approaching cars got too close.

Since the Volare, I haven't owned a car with rear-wheel drive (by chance, not on purpose), and I'd like to think that I'm a pretty careful driver in bad weather now, even more so after our little "experiments". Please don't try any of these at home.

Ten Years, Part One of Two

In 1990, I graduated from Rochester High School. In a few days, I will be attending my ten year reunion. This may come as a surprise to those who knew me back then...I was definitely less than the social butterfly. One of my friends had a much worse time of things back then, but it wasn't the best four years of my life.

It was an interesting situation. I lived in the same school district for my entire school-going life, so I saw a lot of the same people from year to year. It's funny, because when I think back to some of the names from my graduating class, some of these people went to elementary school with me. So I'd like to think that pretty much everyone at least knew who I was, but the buck pretty much stops there. My school life was strictly limited to the time I spent inside the building, from first to sixth period. I never did any extra-curricular things, nor did I attend any school social functions like dances or anything. I didn't go to a Homecoming dance, didn't even go to my prom, but here I am getting ready for the reunion.

I'm a little nervous, to be perfectly honest. I have a feeling that there's going to be a gap between attitudes. The two main perspectives there will probably be "remember when..." and "what have you been doing"; reliving past moments, and learning what people have been doing since graduation. Personally, I don't really have any "remember when..." moments to share with most of these people, so my main concern is finding out what's been going on.

I'm taken with curiosity...what does everyone look like? How much have people changed? Who's married, divorced, who's still single? Who has kids? Who turned out like we expected, and who turned out to be a surprise? Who's going to get drunk and embarass themselves? Who's happy, and who turned out bitter? Who will and who won't be there?

Friday night, hopefully, I find the answers to these questions, and part two will be an exciting (or maybe boring) account of what happened at the reunion.

Ten Years, Part Two

It's funny...I hadn't really realized that, in order to answer those questions, that would require me to actually "mingle"...be social and talk to these people. And I just couldn't do it.

The reunion was about what I expected, and so much more. A room full of all the same old cliques and groups of people; it felt like nothing changed. There were some inane trivia questions, and a couple poster boards with "Remember When" moments and a collection of things said back in 1990. Not too surprisingly, almost all of the "Remember When" things happened to the inner circle...if you weren't with the popular crowd, like I wasn't, you wouldn't remember any of these. I'm sure some of it was my fault...if I really wanted to be included, I have to make an effort. Still, I felt all the same exclusion of the old days...it was like ten days had passed since graduation, not ten years.

On the positive side, I met up with my old friend Paul, and I saw Dave there, whom I haven't seen in about eight years. We had a chance to briefly get caught up, and exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, so the evening wasn't a total waste. But the curiosity was settled, and I won't feel a need to attend the 20 year reunion. I'd also like to really thank my friend Lyrae for going with me and taking off a lot of the tension...thanks for putting up with everything.

More from the Workforce

In October of 1990, I got a job that changed me forever. That was probably because I was there for over seven years. I won't name the company, but I will say that it was a popular chain of department stores, and that's all I will say. When I first got hired, I worked in the video center, where we rented movies. After a few years, I transferred to the photo lab, where we processed one-hour film orders. Overall I liked the job, but I disliked a lot of the people there.

Working there affected my attitude toward people in a couple different ways. Before I started there, I was extremely shy, and had difficulty interacting with the customers, but that soon dissolved out of sheer necessity. By the time I quit, I was so sick of having to deal with people on that level every day. I still get very tense when I'm in large crowds, and most of that comes from that former job. But working there also gave me a lot of patience in dealing with people, and I learned to control my temper very well. One of my former bosses used to comment on the fact that no one ever saw me get bent out of shape, and I was proud of that. But there were a few times, when I was alone, and I let things get to me a little too much. Those times were very few and far between, thankfully.

We had quite a cast of characters, too. The video center drew its share of regular customers, as did the photo lab. I won't name any names, but I'll go over a few of the more popular regulars...

Mr. L. was one of the video regulars. His big shtick was calling everyone by a nickname, and his preferred name for me was "red" (probably because of my red hair). He was also fond of "buddy", "pal", the whole host of nicknames like that. He had quite a short temper, and once flew completely off the handle at my friend Mike because he wouldn't take an expired coupon from Mr. L.

There was one video regular who could never decide on which video to rent, so he would invariably come up to the counter for the "routine": he would hold up two or three videos, and ask "which of these is more popular? Which of these do people seem to like?" This line of questioning evolved into the one question that we all dreaded to hear, which would quickly be picked up by so many other customers: "What's good?" Beware, if you ask this question of a video store clerk, it's now perfectly legal for them to kill you and stuff you into the store VCR as an example to other customers.

Mr. V. was my all-time least favorite photo lab customer. The pickiest man that I have ever met, picky to the unreasonable extreme. I won't go into the details of what his major problem was, but suffice it to say that he spent about two years away from our lab after dealing with us and not receiving the level of satisfaction that he demanded.

In the photo lab, it was our job to look over the prints before we put them in the package, to see if they needed any adjustment. But one woman in particular had a problem with that. She worked for a realtor, and one roll of film that she had brought in one time had a couple shots at the end that just did not turn out at all. I mean, there was nothing visible at all in these few frames...half-exposed, light leak, etc. So I didn't print those few, therefore not charging her for them. She picked them up, looked through the prints, then started frantically searching the negatives. With a livid expression, she told me that I didn't print a few. I explained to her why I skipped them, and she practically yelled at me to go and print them IMMEDIATELY. She told me, in no uncertain terms, "it's not your job to judge my pictures, you just print every single one." Fine, you crazy woman you. Never saw her again a couple months after this incident.

Then there was the anonymous photo lab customer that summed up the overall attitude of 90% of our customers when it came down to a problem. She had picked up a roll of film that had been double-exposed...in other words, the roll had been used once, then re-loaded back in the camera and used again. She almost threw them at me, demanding an explanation. I took a look at them and calmly explained that they had been double-exposed. She said "that's impossible". I said "apparently not, since that's what we're looking at." She said "how could the roll get loaded back into the camera after it's been completely rewound?" I explained that some cameras don't wind the film all the way back into the film canister, they will sometimes leave a few inches of the leader sticking out, thus making the used roll look the same as the unused roll. She again insisted that that was impossible. So I picked up a picture, which had a pickup truck on one exposure superimposed over a young child on the second exposure. I asked her if she took the picture of the truck. She said yes. I asked her if she took the picture of the child. She gave an exasperated sigh and again told me "yes". So I said, "well, you took BOTH sets of pictures, therefore it couldn't have possibly happened at the processing lab." And this was the moment of truth, where she uttered the words that most people with problems think, but don't always say: "well, I know that I'm right, and you're wrong. Just give me my money back." Yes, many of these people were certifiably insane, but I have no idea how they managed to get to the store.

And these were just the customers. The people who worked there were just as, uh, "interesting":

There was one guy who liked to shoot his own "adult pictures", and bring them in to process them at work. Very classy stuff, let me tell you.

There was the college student who liked to sleep in the lab, in full view of the customers passing by. He was pretty reliable, and even quite gullible.

We had one guy who used to work for the Post Office. He never really said why he quit (or left, however it happened), and he had this habit of washing his hands several times a day, a couple times an hour. He was a very nice guy, but the former job, combined with the borderline compulsive hand-washing, made us all just a bit nervous.

One guy used to talk to himself, and I actually heard him tell himself a joke. At least, that's what I think happened. He came into the lab, alone, and was mumbling to himself, then I heard him giggle and mumble some more, punctuated by a few more giggles. Very odd.

Over the years, I've worked with a pathological liar, an alleged movie director, an Italian horror film fanatic, a guy who thought I could score him some drugs (they don't call me Mr. Tambourine Man for nothing, ya know), lazy students, cocky boss's pets, "managers" with the mental maturity of someone half their age, a couple guys in a death metal band (wait a minute...I was one of those guys)...these are the kinds of characters that sitcom writers in Hollywood would kill for. Sometimes real life is more entertaining than any of the alternatives.

Live in Concert!

Today's story comes to us from November of 1990, in lovely downtown Detroit, Michigan. My friend Paul and I went to St. Andrew's Hall to see a show, the first show we ever saw at St. Andy's. Voivod was headlining, with Soundgarden and Faith No More opening up for them. FNM has just hit it semi-big with the Epic single that year, but they weren't huge yet. It was a pretty cool show, overall, and Voivod definitely rocked, but that's another story.

So it's November, around eight o'clock, dark outside and cold. The wind is blowing, and there's a line of about fifty of us outside the building, waiting for them to open the doors. Now, if you've never been to St. Andy's, it's an old building, with "off-set" floors. What I mean is, the lower level is slightly below street level. There are also bars over the lower level and second level windows. So there we are, huddled out in the cold.

It's about now that Paul notices someone looking out one of the third-level windows at us (no bars on these windows). It's Roddy Bottum, the keyboard player for Faith No More. He's looking at the people in our line and pointing. He steps away from the window, and Mike Patton, the vocalist, comes up to look. He opens the window, leans out, and with a flourish throws crackers out at us, saying something like "food for the huddled masses!" Well, this incensed Paul, so he charges over to the windows, and begins climbing. The bars on the lower levels are making it pretty easy for him, and he pokes his head up to the window where Patton was just standing. Paul raps at the glass, and someone comes out, "what do you want, kid" attitude. Undaunted, Paul says "how about something to go with those crackers?" Patton comes back to the window and gives Paul a squeeze bottle of mustard and closes the window, laughing. Paul jumps down from his perch on the bars and walks back to our place in the line with this huge grin on his face. Almost as an afterthought, he turns back toward the building and squirts a huge line of mustard over the bricks and a few windows. I don't know if he still has it, I haven't talked to him in quite a few years, but he kept that mustard bottle for years after that. And we ended up seeing Faith No More three more times after that, all on the same tour. They played the Fox Theater, opening for Robert Plant. We sat through FNM's set, waited for Plant's band to set up, and left just as he was starting his set. Too bad.

Jobs from Hell

It was the summer of 1990, my first summer as a high school graduate. I found myself looking for a job after getting fired for being almost an hour late one day. You'll never guess what I decided on. That's right...door-to-door salesman! Believe it, sad but true. We sold these encyclopedia sets, with "classic literature" and all that stuff, and we sold it door-to-door. How did I let myself get suckered into this? Well, they told us that we'd make $200 commission on every set we sold. Naturally, I figured selling one to two sets a week would be easy, and I'd have more money than I'd know what to do with (I was young and stupid, what can I say?).

We (one other new guy and I) spent three days in training before actually going out into "the field". We went over all our materials and even had to memorize a little spiel that was supposed to help us get in the door. Right. So, after three days of this, we found ourselves heading out the door on Saturday for the real thing. The new guy and I would pair up with other guys who had been doing it for some time, and learn the ropes from them. Sure sounds good, doesn't it?

We drove for over an hour, out to this tiny little town, I have no idea where we went. During the course of the day, this experienced veteran salesman and I went up to maybe three houses. I didn't learn a blessed thing, besides what small town inn food tastes like, because that's where we spent most of our time, in the inn. Before I knew it, it was Sunday, and I was on my own.

Again, we drove out to some small sheltered burg in the middle of who-knows-where, but this time I got dropped off alone. I was given a designated "territory" and turned loose on this unsuspecting community. But they were apparantly not in the mood to hear my spiel...one woman hid in her garage while her dog barked, while I stood ringing her doorbell. I heard her tell the dog to shut up about four times before I finally moved on. Either she was stupid enough to think I couldn't hear her, or she just didn't care.

Then it rained.

Needless to say, I sold nothing that day, nor did I return to work the following day. I realize that everyone is different, and some people actually like the "salesperson" role, but definitely not me.