What Sco Did

Hello ScoFans!

I've been thinking of writing this post as a "Confession Wednesday" for the last few weeks.. but.. well.. I just haven't really had the time. And instead of let my guilt eat away at me any longer,I need to come clean and get something off my chest... with all of you, my beloved readers, who I know would support me rather than scold me for my actions.

Back on the 8th of June, I went to a seminar for work (don't worry, this post has hardly anything to do with the seminar, in fact, if I weren't reassuring you that this post isn't about the seminar, I would have already stopped talking about the seminar.)

I was the only one from my office attending on this particular day, so I went in, found a seat and introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me. We talked again at morning tea, but I didn't see him during lunch.

After lunch, I walked back into the room to find his books gone. He'd obviously left at lunch time. But he had made a critical mistake.

He'd trusted me.

He left his evaluation sheet with my things to hand in at the end of the day. And he'd left his name on it. And his member number. And his email address.

And he hadn't filled in any of the written response questions. And I had four hours of boredom to kill. (And I was a little bit jealous that I didn't think of leaving during the lunch break. Normally the food is worth sticking around for. Not this year)

Anyway, I filled in his evaluation as follows.

What would you like to see more of in next years seminar?

The pink handout. I like pink. Pink is pretty.

What would you like to see less of in next years seminar?

The yellow hand out. I don't like yellow. Yellow scares me. My sister used to make me wear yellow dresses when I was little. Sometimes when I see big bird, I wet my pants just a little bit. I don't like yellow.

Could you recommend any changes to the seminar?

Don't use the Mission Impossible music when we come in from breaks. You're not spies. You're not sexy enough to be spies.

Do you plan on using the CD attached to today's notes when you get back to your office? If not, why not?

No. I won't be using it. I don't believe in computers or Eskimos. The unicorn told me they don't exist.

It felt good to walk out of that room imagining the chaos or confusion I might cause, or at least the laughter from the person reading the evaluation, without knowing for sure whose life I might touch or in what way they might be impacted.

I do like to think they at least emailed him about his responses to their questions.

It's been a long time since I pulled an anonymous prank, and I have to say, I kind of enjoyed it.

I miss that feeling of not knowing what happens next.


Thinking of you always,


ScoMan

"Narcissitic Personality Disorder",,,,?

Hello ScoFans!

This week, I'm really not in the mood to write much (it's been a long, long week), but because there has been a few posts about quotes and a few about self discovery and what not this week, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and post something that was on Law and Order: Criminal Intent the other night. (Yes, I still watch that show)

This happened just after they arrested the doer of the crime they were investigating this week..

Serena *reading a book*
These individuals often have a grandiose view of themselves and demand excessive admiration (the excessive admiration I receive from all of you is one of the reasons I continue to blog. In fact, it's why I'm writing a post this week even though I don't feel like writing)

They maneuver well in difficult situations, but their self esteem is fragile. Any threat to their self image might agitate or even enrage them. (so it's best you don't threaten my self image)

Zach
It's good how you.. cite textbook. Yeah.. "Narcissistic personality disorder". It's a psychopathology that fits our Patricia to a tee. (I don't like to self diagnose, but there's no denying I do have narcissistic tendencies. Again, it's a combination of narcissism and introversion that result in me blogging. I want people to know how awesome I am, I just don't want them to talk to me or come near me)

Serena
Or a sign of the zodiac. Patricia's a Scorpio. (Sco is also a Sco-rpio. No self diagnosis necessary)

Zach
....... Yeah.. well..... my father would kill me for saying this but... ah... equally valid.



And because a comment I left at "Stir Fry Awesomeness" recently raised the question as to how many bloggers are introverts and how many are extroverts, I've decided to take a sample using you, my readers. You'll notice the nice little poll thingy up the top there, and if you would kindly answer that honestly, a raccoon riding a pig through the Himalaya's will smile.

Thinking of you always,

ScoMan

The Highlight Reel

Hello ScoFans!

C'est le malaise du moment. L'épidémie qui s'étend. La fête est finie on descend. Les pensées qui glacent la raison. Paupières baissées, visage gris. Surgissent les fantômes de notre lit. On ouvre le loquet de la grille. Du taudis qu'on appelle maison.

Sommes nous les jouets du destin. Souviens toi des moments divins. Planants, éclatés au matin
Et maintenant nous sommes tout seuls. Perdus les rêves de s'aimer. Le temps où on avait rien fait. Il nous reste toute une vie pour pleurer. Et maintenant nous sommes tout seuls.

Yeah, I'm just playing with you.

Because there might be some fresh eyes on this blog today, so I thought I would mess with them.. and all of you as well. The bigger the audience, the more fun it is to mess with them.

So why might there be fresh eyes over here?

Well, today I'm being featured at Words of Wisdom as their "Blog of Note"

To save me explaining what exactly that means, I've copied and pasted the following from their site to let Pam and Sandy explain it to you, in their own words.

Words of Wisdom (WOW) is a place for bloggers (women and men) who enjoy reading and writing great content to find each other. What exactly is great content? Great content is blog posts that are thought-provoking and/or insightful. Blog posts that make the reader stop and think and maybe even feel compelled to "join the conversation" by leaving a well thought-out comment. These posts can be serious or humorous. They can be about any topic. But what they have in common is content. Great content.

So thank you to Pam and Sandy for featuring me today, and thank you to Jennee of Cheap Therapy for the nomination.

If you could use a few more blogs in your reader, I recommend the two above.

Being today's "Blog of Note" is a huge honour, and although I'm not going to claim to be or refer to myself as a "hero", I won't mind if you do.

Anyway, I've been following Words of Wisdom for a few months now, and how these BON days work for more people is they link back to a few of their favourite posts to "introduce" themselves and their style to any new readers who might stop by.

Long time readers then go "Psh, I've already read those" and look for the nearest exit.

Medium time readers go "I read that one, that one sounds interesting so I'll read that, that last one sounds pretty shit and I have to get dinner ready so I'll pass on that"

Noobs read any that interest them from the spiel I give. An unbiased spiel. Because I don't like to tell people I'm awesome. I like to let them discover it for themselves.

So, anyway, three of my favourite posts.

(Oh, and just in case you're new to.. you know, the Internet, those underlined highlighted bits are links, and if you click on them it'll take you to a whole nother webpage)

The Girl At The Place Where I Pay My Rent

A post I originally wrote on a blog that my family and friends (and not many other people) read, I have posted this on nearly every blog I had had since.

Of all the posts I wrote on that blog, this one seemed to be the favourite of my family and friends so I thought it would be a favourite of the strangers I have written for since.

When I first posted it my pa texted my mum and he was like "Boom! Ya'll best check out the wikid skillz your boi got yo!", and then he emailed mum the link (she's not tech savvy, she didn't follow the blog) and she sent him a message back "Word"

And so my family and friends I think overreacted a bit, and everyone wanted to talk about what I was writing.

This is one of the reasons I no longer tell family and friends about my blog. I was in my 20's and mum had printed it out and put it on her fridge. It was a weird feeling.

Which was another reason I stopped posting on that blog and for my family and friends- because I then felt pressure to keep up that standard, and I knew I couldn't match it.

So as Eminem might put it, "Stop with the fables, I'm not going to be able to top on this post here"

Backwards Blog My Is This

A post in which I somewhat ditch "blogging conventions" and write just to have a bit of fun.


What Shall We Do With The Drunken Accountant?

I didn't think sailors should get to have all the fun pushing their drunken coworkers, so I updated the classic pirate shanty.

And if you think that was fun, you can join in too! You'll notice on the right there I'm also looking for suggestions of what we can do to the drunken blogger. So click it, add your bit in the comments section and I'll update that as well (looking at the "last updated" bit, I haven't added to it for a few months, so any new suggestions are more than welcome)

As a special bonus, I mentioned Eminem earlier in this post, if you'd like to see me singing some of his stuff you can.

So that's in. I hope any new people that stopped by today found something they enjoyed and if you leave a comment I will work on getting back to your blogs as soon as possible. I always like to return the blog love where I can.

Thinking of you always,

ScoMan

'Cos It Feels Empty.. Without Me

Well I'm back nananananananananana
Eminem- Without Me

Hello ScoFans!

Did you miss me? I've missed all of you. I've missed you so much I'm sitting here at 7 in the morning to let you all know I'm back.. back again.

Some of you know this already but for those of you who haven't heard, I've been battling with Google for the last week.

They locked me out of my email account, out of my blog, out of my reader, out of... no wait, it was just those three.

So, I had to email Google and basically ask the question that had to be asked... "WTF?"

Dear Google,

I tried to sign into my account this morning only to learn that my account has been disabled. Apparently I've violated some "Terms of Service"

I'm not sure what I did, but when Facebook told me I violated their terms of service it's because I made fun of Andrew G. Is this your issue also? I didn't realise he was so powerful.

Not only has my email access been disabled, but my blog has been disabled as well, which I'm sure is causing distress among my many followers. I have dozens of followers. Baker's dozens (They come in thirteens)

So far I have had one of my followers write to me on Twitter and tell me how upset they are. I hope you'll pay for any counselling they require. I don't want to announce publicly what has happened for fear it might cause stress among my other readers.

And Google, I like you. I mean, obviously gmail isn't as cool as Hotmail and your search engine isn't as awesome as Bing, but your blogger website is far better than Microsoft's "spaces". Have you seen it? It's very lame.

Plus Microsoft want to charge me to download a new team into my Blood Bowl game on my Xbox, where if I'd bought the game on PC I wouldn't be charged for that team. I think I will still pay for the download though, because the team is the "Dark Elves". Usually I play as the "Wood Elves", but I find people make fun of "Wood Elves" for being weak ass tree huggers. Nobody messes with Dark Elves though. I hope they have magic powers. Then I will definetely download them.

Wait.. is that how I violated your terms of service? When I posted on that one blog about the Microsoft Songsmith ad? In my defense, that ad is pretty poor, and it deserves to be made fun of.

Anyway, if you could please let me know exactly what term I have violated I would be thankful so I will not violate it again in the future. Not like Microsoft violated me as a consumer by trying to make me pay for the Dark Elves.

I hope we can resolve the matter shortly,

ScoMan

That was last Friday morning (exactly one week ago).

When it came to Sunday and I still hadn't heard from them, I had to email them again, and I was furious, as I'm sure you'll tell by this next email..

Dear Google,

It has been two days since I last contacted you about my disabled account, and I am starting to worry you are using this time to build up a super strong team of Orcs to beat my measly Dark Elves in Blood Bowl, rather than working on a solution to our problem.

People are now becoming frustrated that they cannot access my blog. I have now received up to four Tweets crying out at the injustice of my blog being deactivated, not to mention my email account and access to my Google Reader, which remembers all of their blog addresses so that I don't have to.

I want to know three things.

1/ Why was my account deactivated?

2/ Will my account being reactivated any time in the future?

3/ When is the series Four of Dexter being released in region four?

I hope that we can resolve this matter promptly.

Thinking of you always,

ScoMan

A few more days have rolled by since then and I hadn't heard anything, so this morning when I saw there was one new email in my spam folder I didn't dare hope it was finally a response from Google. I'd been disappointed before. So when it was a response from Google you can imagine how excited I was (I believe my exact words were "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. I'm back baby!")

So what did Google have to say for themselves? What was it that has kept me locked off the bloggosphere for over a week now?

Hello,

Thank you for your report. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have
experienced. The issue you described should now be resolved.

If you're still having trouble accessing your Gmail account, you can reset your
password on the following page, as long as you still have access to the email
address you listed while creating your Gmail account:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd.

If you aren't receiving the password-assistance email after visiting the above page,
please check your inbox and spam/junk mail for an email from account-recovery-
noreply@google.com.

Finally, we've compiled a survey to better understand suspicious activity associated
with Gmail accounts, and we'd appreciate if you'd take a few minutes to answer the
questions. We are constantly working on ways to safeguard our systems, and the
information you provide will help us continue to protect our users' information:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=improve_detection.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

"Suspicious activity?"... I'm not sure, but I think Google just accused me of being a terrorist. Or maybe they think I'm suspiciously awesome.

And yeah, that survey sounds like a good idea. Tell you what, it took you a week to get my blog reactivated and I've got a lot of blogs to catch up one due to being locked out of my account, so I don't know Google, maybe I'll get to it one day. Plus you didn't even mention Dexter.

Anyway, I better keep getting ready for work, I just wanted to let you all know the crisis is over, I am back and I will be catching up with your blogs over the weekend (160 something in my reader.. It's going to be a blog filled weekend!)

Thinking of you always,

ScoMan