I think every neighborhood has them…the problem neighbor. Those neighbors that you really wish would move far, far away…or something.

I have one of those neighbors, and I’ll go ahead and preface that all names have been changed to protect the guilty.

So several months ago, I was trying to get estimates on having my driveway torn out and redone. It’s been pushed up a lot over the years (by evil nasty gumball trees), and does not allow water to drain properly from the back yard down to the street…thus we get a lot of pooling on the back patio and garage area. But this isn’t a story about the project, so I’m going to move through the details quickly.

I finally got a reply from a contractor, Systems Paving. Two reps came out to the house to do estimates, and I worked with them for a few weeks planning the design. We planned to have the driveway, back patio, and front porch and walkway redone with interlocking paver stones, vs. cement.

The project started off, with cement tear out and ground leveling, before the pavers were placed. The work crew spent nearly a week on the project, making sure that every detail was taken care of. Unfortunately, more than one supervisor showed up for the job. Enter the problem neighbor.

In our neighborhood, we have a couple that live near my house, who like to keep tabs on what’s going on in the neighborhood. And they don’t just like to keep tabs, they like to get involved, even when it’s not appropriate.

They yelled at my next door neighbor when the frisbee that he and his daughter were playing with, accidentally went into their yard. And I don’t mean they said “please don’t let your frisbee come in our yard.” I mean yelled at them. When you look up senile, there are pictures of this couple in the dictionary.

And so the paving project was underway, and Verne…I’m going to call him Verne just for this story, although that’s not his real name, decided that he needed to come over and check on the status of the project. He wandered back and forth in front of my house, got in the way of the work crew, talked to them while they were trying to cut paving stones, and generally made a bother of himself.

You’d think it could have been as simple as that, but no. He actually had the audacity to steal sand from the work site. He got one of the work crew to load up a wheelbarrow of sand, and walk it down the street and dump it into his garage. I was beside myself. I was immediately on the phone with the job foreman letting him know about this neighbor and what he had done.

But it didn’t end there. The next day, Verne was over again. This time, right in the middle of the workers. They were walking around him trying to get to their supplies. I stepped outside and had this brief dialogue:

me: “Can I help you?”

Verne: “What? I’m just standing here. I’m on the sidewalk. You don’t want me here?”

me: “I would prefer that they are able to work undisturbed.”

Verne: “I’m on the sidewalk. What’s your problem??”

me: *silence*

I said no more, and continued to just stare at him. He shifted his eyes up and down for a few moments, then finally turned and shuffled off back to his house. Later that evening, I went to the gym. Apparently while I was gone, he wandered over and stood at the foot of the driveway, staring at David, who was in the garage working on a project.

The next day…he was back. And instead of saying anything, I simply walked out on the front porch and stared at him. He finally got the point and wandered back to his house.

The project finished, and I thought that would be the end of his for a while, and you’re perhaps thinking to yourself that I was going overboard by not wanting this person near my home…but here’s the next part of the story.

About 3 weeks ago, just before we left for Victoria, BC, we were at home and noticed two police cars in front of Verne’s house. I immediately called my neighbor to see if she knew what was going on…she hadn’t heard anything yet, but would let me know when she found out. Our little neighborhood watch system works well.

Later that night, she called to inform me that Verne had tried to strangle his wife (of 60+ years, incidentally). He wasn’t arrested, who knows what the cops said or did, but that’s what happened. A day later, the cops were back - presumably to check to make sure Verne’s wife was still alive.

We left for our trip, and came back to find out that Verne had tried to strangle his wife again, and that she had moved out and was now living with her sister.

And so…that brings us to today, and my story of domestic violence in Sacramento. Fun stuff.

Why does facilities have to go geek on us?

Stairs go down. Elevators go down. Servers go down.

Hot water does not go down.

What’s next?

“Jimmy, I need you to reboot that hot water heater for me ok?”

Thanks to J. Bader for this one (I can’t give you a link because it’s from an internal blog system you couldn’t access anyway :-))

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.They say this will never happen again. I have a policy against doing math in public so I’m taking them at their word.

Sitting here on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holidays, I suddenly felt the pounding sensation just behind my left eye, and remembered something I wrote back in 2002. I find it applicable still.

The Book of Webster defines migraine as:

Main Entry: mi·graine
Pronunciation: ‘mI-”grAn, British often ‘mE-
Function: noun
Etymology: French, modification of Late Latin hemicrania pain in one side of the head, from Greek hEmikrania, from hEmi- hemi- + kranion cranium
Date: 15th century
1 : a condition marked by recurrent severe headache often with nausea and vomiting
2 : an episode or attack of migraine
- mi·grain·ous /-”grA-n&s/ adjective

I, however, define a migraine as a shoot me up with crystal meth, throw me to the ground, stomp on my neck with stiletto pumps (which look great when worn with a bathing suit because they help slenderize your hips *snaps to Ellen*), while Metallica plays through seven Infinity speakers attached to my ears (one extra on the left side), and a two year old boy digs out both of my eyes using a rusted fork, while a Shetland pony is kicking my *ss, kind of headache.

In days of Olde when Knights were bold, if a limb hurt bad enough, say a left arm that became gangrenous, you just cut if off, sewed up the hole, and went on living. Such a method would be a bit life-prohibitive in dealing with a migraine. Clearly we see that the most evident solution to a problem may not always be the most effective, not unlike the redeployment pool.

But back to headaches. I know someone who says that she has migraines every day. She loves to pretend she has a migraine just so she doesn’t have to go to work. I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the land of make believe, I like to pretend something good. Like that I’m wearing a huge black cape with tall black boots, and a sassy black top hat, and I’m in New Orleans in the middle of an Anne Rice novel. I’m the vampire Jejune, consort to Lestat and Louis, leader of a vast empire of vampires, feeding on all the insanely boring and tasteless people of the world.

Unfortunately, some people like to pretend bad things, so that others will feel sympathy for them, bake cakes for them, send flowers to them, or let them go home early. I, however, am not a pretender when it comes to migraines. I can’t even imagine how someone could pretend to be exploding and imploding at the same time (if they can they should be in Cirque du Soleil, because that takes true talent).

My style of migraine, which some people also refer to as a cluster headache (because they cluster themselves together for a few months, then go on sabbatical, then come back for more), occurs on the left side of my head. It starts as a dull throbbing, more of a tease-ache, that tells me if I don’t get medicated soon, I’m going to regret it. It then unfolds, like a bad Stephen King novel (yes this is possible, please see exhibit A, the Langoliers). Multiple characters, subplots, climaxes, dénouements, it spreads its tendrils out across the left side of my face (the migraine, not the Stephen King novel), snaking its way into my left eye, my left eardrum, and my left temple.

Sounds become muffled as my ear drum begins to pound to the beat of a symphony gone awry. My vision becomes blurry as my eyes tear, trying to wash out the invading menace (not Dennis, the migraine). My face flushes as if I’ve just heard the most naughty joke ever told. Streaks of heat shoot through my temple causing veins and arteries to rise to the surface, pulsing and throbbing to the beat of my heart. And then, the pain hits.

The pain is not unlike what Cary Elwes went through in The Princess Bride, when he was subjected to the pain amplifier down in the pit of despair. (if you haven’t realized by now, I am the master of obscure analogies)

Once the pain beings, there really is no way to stop it. I am down for the count. My left eye continues to tear, and becomes increasingly bloodshot, as if I’ve been on an all night drinking binge (though apparently only drinking from the left side of my mouth). My left cheek starts to alternately tense and relax, finally slacking into a downward flow as if a stroke has rendered it useless. (Although, since the right side of the body is controlled by the left side of the brain, one would think my right cheek would collapse, but migraines break all the rules.) The blood vessels in my temple strain against the pressure as my heart continues to send blood to the side of the brain that really doesn’t need any more pressure.

And then, the vice is turned. I find myself laying face down, head between huge metal plates attached to screws. Slowly those screws are turning and the plates are moving closer and closer to each other, with my head still between them. I start to feel the pressure building. I’m like a roast inside a pressure cooker. The flames are on high, and the steam is flying out of the whistle so fast it’s gone supersonic. Dogs in the neighborhood start howling and barking as I get closer and closer to blowing my top.

Suddenly, the metal plates are gone. The dull ache has returned. It feels like a torn fingernail, that pulses and throbs, again to the beat of my tell tale heart. The throbbing that won’t go away, but stabs at my senses over and over. And then, the nausea hits.

I rarely throw up (except for the Cadbury Cream Egg incident, which you may recall from the Easter editorial). Even after a night of heavy alcohol consumption (which is usually only on a day ending in “ay”) I never throw up. I was actually born with the anti-hangover gene. While technically a recessive gene, not unlike the gene for green eyes, blonde hair, or hitchhikers thumb, the anti-hangover gene is quite the envy of my college aged friends. Unfortunately, migraine is an “e” word (despite the face that it starts with an M, if you turn the M sideways it resembles an E enough to be considered e-ville), and breaks all those rules, including rules that are genetically encoded in my body.

I’m not sure who came up with the term dry heaves, but whoever they are, they should be locked away in Azkaban (snaps to Harry Potter) for all eternity. Just hearing those two words, dry heaves, is enough to send one running to the nearest restroom. Rarely are my heaves dry. (note: those readers with delicate or weak stomachs are advised that the next section contains vivid and graphic language)

Dry heaves would indicate that absolutely nothing comes out in the process more clinically described as reverse peristalsis (and just to point out how much of a nerd I am, I didn’t even have to look that one up. It’s part of my daily vocabulary). For those who have not incorporated this…

Main Entry: peri·stal·sis
Pronunciation: “per-&-’stol-s&s, -’stäl-, -’stal-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural peri·stal·ses /-”sEz/
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek peristaltikos peristaltic
Date: 1859
: successive waves of involuntary contraction passing along the walls of a hollow muscular structure (as the esophagus or intestine) and forcing the contents onward

Unfortunately, for me, there is nothing dry about a migraine heave. Let us consider for a moment, bile. Bile is a yellow or greenish viscid alkaline fluid produced in the liver, that aids in the emulsification and absorption of fats. I would assume that people who have had their liver removed for some reason would not be subject to dry heaves. I, on the other hand (or on the same hand - I am really not sure why you have to switch hands), have my liver, and get to have what I’d like to refer to as bile heaves. Sounds a lot better than dry heaves doesn’t it?

When my stomach and esophagus start to work in reverse, out comes the bile. A yucky, gooey, not dissimilar to Ghostbusters slime, comes spraying out of my body. The bitter e-ville sensation washes across my taste buds, causing me to heave again. (note: the taste buds have the ability to sense salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami - bile most likely falling into the sour and bitter category) (and that’s umami, not unagi for all you sushi fans who might get confused)

Quickly I down a glass of water, because when I was younger, I was told that throwing up water was better than a dry heave, and old habits are hard to break. The only benefit to drinking water during a period of nausea is that now you have something to mix with the bile before it comes back up.

Personally, if I know that whatever I drink is going to come right back up, I want it to be something that tastes good, or at least can mask the taste of the bile. My choice is rum. Not the nasty Bacardi gold rum, or the little bunny foo-foo Malibu rum that is so sweet I could throw it up even if I didn’t have a migraine…I’m talking about the Lieutenant Commander of rums, no, the Captain of rums. Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum. Not only is this rum so crisp and refreshing that it can be shot or served on the rocks without a mixer, but it has the ability to overpower the bile, and eliminate any bitter taste of green digestive enzyme. The side benefit to using rum over water, is that you get a nice healthy buzz while you remain crouched over the toilet.

Soon the nausea passes and I feel like my body has expended the last remaining ounce of energy left. I’m not unlike the battery on my IBM ThinkPad T40, that is like a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. At this point I either collapse on the bathroom floor, or somehow stagger my way back to my bed or my desk (in the event I am at work during this brutal attack, in which case you may be wondering where I keep my rum, but that’s really not any of your concern right now), and lay my head down and close my eyes. The tears start to stream down my face, as my body can simply withstand no more. I lay there panting like a rabid mongrel dog from a Stephen King novel (obviously Cujo), with small drips of saliva (another digestive enzyme but not one that is produced in the liver, nor one that is green) trickling down my dead left cheek. Obviously, I have my head left side down, otherwise the saliva would be defying gravity to flow down my left cheek, and despite the fact that saliva is a very cool enzyme, it’s not cool enough to break the laws of physics (I can not change the laws of physics captain!).

Coworkers walk by with wide eyes and puzzled looks on their faces, as they see a little puddle of saliva and residual bile from my earlier heaving episode, wondering if they should call for help, or bring me a towel (because at Delta, it’s laid out like that). As I continue to sit, and drool, and silently moan in pain (I’m once again screaming lonely in my nightmare), I realize that now the enzymes (including some leftover rum) are beginning to drip onto my polyester slacks (don’t ask why I’m wearing polyester…perhaps I became a flight attendant in my spare time, who knows). Unfortunately, because polyester is made from multiple esters, and esters being any of a class of often fragrant compounds that can be represented by the formula RCOOR and that are usually formed by the reaction between an acid and an alcohol with elimination of water, I am in the position of having digestive enzymes reacting with acids and alcohols, and a terrible burning sensation ensues on my thigh. (ok, very obscure, I know, but you’ve read this far and haven’t stopped, so I’m trying to see how much I can get away with)

I glance over at the clock and see that’s it’s 8:05am. I lift my head up, send an email to the team, and tell them I’m going home with a headache. Thankfully they all have my address and know where to send the flowers and cake.

I am a very opinionated person. I have opinions about nearly any topic that can be discussed, even topics of which I have no personal interest or knowledge. Actually, the key there is probably the no personal interest. I find that it’s much more rewarding to provide opinions and suggestions on something which bores me.

Unfortunately, people who provide opinions on things about which they know not ,or about topics which disinterest them, tend to be disliked by people who either care about the topic or have in-depth knowledge about the subject. I often find myself on both sides of that fence (this is referred to as biopinionation, or the act of being biopinionated). Though more often, I find myself on the side of knowing the facts, and dealing with a person who feels they know the facts but when in reality, they do not.

In the not too distant past, I was having a conversation with an opinionated friend of mine. I had mentioned to him that I was in need of a follow-up doctor appointment to discuss the new migraine medication that I am taking. My opinionated friend casually mentioned that he didn’t believe migraines really existed, and that people threw the term around too much to describe normal headaches just because they wanted sympathy by telling people that it was a migraine.

Keep in mind, this opinionated friend has never actually had a migraine, and is not plagued by headaches as many unfortunate individuals are. I mentioned to this person that symptoms of a migraine are quite different than that of a normal headache, to which he responded “oh yeah? what are they?” I subsequently advised him that he could feel free to look up the details on migraines online, as there are numerous web pages devoted to the phenomena. He advised that he wasn’t interested enough to look it up. To which I realized that the conversation was pointless if the opinionated friend wasn’t even willing to look up the facts before speaking without authority.

This is the type of opinionated…CRAP…that I am simply unwilling to associate with. It is certainly one thing to talk about something which you have thoroughly researched, or at least, have experienced for yourself, but quite another thing to speak as though you have fact, but in reality have diarrhea of the mouth. (As you know, I’m fond of vivid imagery…whether pleasant or not.)

After ending the conversation with my opinionated friend, I realized that I needed to personally evaluate the concept of opinions. And by personal evaluation, I was required to share this information publicly as my opinion, as it were, and if you will. So, let’s talk about it.

As always, we start with a definition. This definition is not my opinion, it is fact.

Main Entry: opin·ion
Pronunciation: &-’pin-y&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin opinion-, opinio, from opinari
Date: 14th century
1 a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter b : APPROVAL, ESTEEM
2 a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b : a generally held view
3 a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert b : the formal expression of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

Basically what we have here, is a thought or expression that represents the way that the speaker feels about a subject. I believe that flower is very pretty. I think that dress is beautiful. I think his toupee has the same hue as pepto bismal. Each of these is an opinion, a statement which represents my personal feelings on various subjects.

In actuality, another person may look at the flower and be very displeased with no only the colour, but the number of petals, and may be of the opinion that it is ugly. Additionally, the dress may have been made from leftover draperies from an Austin Powers movie, and therefore others may find it to be quite distressing. Finally, the owner of the toupee may feel that having a large pink mass of hair on his head makes him stand out in a crowd. Again, each of these are opinions, diverging opinions, yes, but opinions none the less.

So now that we have level set on opinions, and the fact that two people can have differing opinions, with the possibility of neither having the facts, let us take a look at the many ways we let others know that we have opinions.

Americans, and quite possibly other nationalities (but I can’t speak for nationalities that I am neither affiliated with nor have a vested interest in representing), have a habit of prefacing many statements with phrases such as “in my opinion” or “just my 2 cents” or “I think…“, and other various forms of “hey, i’m getting ready to tell you what I think, which might be different than what you think, but i’m telling you that up-front, so that you won’t get offended and think that i’m trying to speak for you or contradict you but might just have a different thought than you do so just take it the way it was intended as my opinion and not me telling you what to do.”

Why do we need to preface 75% of our commentary with these types of “qualifiers”? Are we that concerned with all this political correctness, that if we do not qualify all of our comments as opinions, the listener is going to take offence at what we have said? In my opinion, it’s just stupid. If I have an opinion, I’m going to state it as emphatically as I possibly can, with no qualifiers, and just let the listener figure out whether I am speaking as fact or not. There is a lot of truth in the statement that if you speak with confidence, whether you have it or not, you will be heard and perceived as having confidence.

I think some of the dumbest people in the world today have the ability to speak and carry themselves with confidence. We, the unknowing and blindly trusting public, see this confidence as fact, and thus believe anything that these people have to say. On the contrary, there are many people in the world who are very intelligent and really do know the facts, but have no ability to present those facts in a coherent manner. We do not vote for those people. We do not hold those people in the high regard. Instead, we vote for the one who can tell us what we want to hear, even though it’s just their stupid opinion.

I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb. Aside from the fact that the world is overpopulated with the wrong kind of people (snaps to Ellen) and our leaders try to turn their own personal opinions into the facts of a nation, we really do have a problem expressing opinions with confidence. Why don’t we just state what we think without the qualifiers all of the time?

Why can’t you just walk up to someone and say “You aren’t very good at what you do. That shirt looks ugly on you, and you smell.” See? I was able to state three opinions right there, without any qualifiers.

Let’s see what that would look like in normal American speech. “Hey dude, just my two cents, but you may want to look for another job, because in my opinion, you really aren’t going to get where you want to go doing what you are doing today. Oh and dude, I overheard someone talking about that shirt. Not that it’s any of my business but it might be a little offensive to some people, especially in the workplace. And dude, don’t get me wrong, but did you go fishing this morning before work, because…dang!“

As you can see, the whole qualifier thing is just really inefficient use of language. Being a proponent of using language to the fullest extent does not mean that one should abuse the language or inject unnecessary redundancy and fluff to make a statement clear. In my opinion, we need to get over the fact that we all have different opinions, and just realize that this is a fact of life. Whenever you say something, everyone around you KNOWS that it’s an opinion, because that’s really all anyone has anymore. We don’t speak with facts. We speak with hearsay, 3rd party relay, and subjective opinions about something we have seen or heard.

I.e. News anchors don’t speak with fact. They provide their opinion based on something that they saw on the video tape footage of an event. Unless they were actually there and experiencing it, they are simply relaying to you their opinion of the matter. They have mastered this art, however, and rarely if ever use a phrase such as “in my opinion, it’s going to be 85F today with a 30% chance of rain” or “just my 2 cents, but if that motorcyclist had been on the right side of the road, he wouldn’t have been hit by that 18-wheeler that crossed the median“.

I beg and plead with you, whether you are an opinionated know it all, or a factual brainiac who researches everything before speaking about it, state your opinion, just the opinion. Leave off those qualifiers that redundantly tell me that what you are going to tell me is just something you thought of 5 seconds before you said it. Because trust me, I will know that you are just blowing smoke out of your butt, but that’s just my 2 cents.

DISCLAIMER

The ideas expressed in this editorial are my own personal thoughts and beliefs. You can feel free to ignore them, or take them to heart, but that’s just my opinion.