1. Big-bang-ballas drivin pimp-rides singing about how they paid their rent or kil't a G
2. Possible crack-mommas singing about getting off crack and caring for their children
3. A man of questionable sexuality walking in the desert with half of his buttocks exposed

1. Donnie sells drugs (hence the business) at school full-time.
2. Donnie has teamed up with the ghosts and has mastered time-traveling.
3. Donnie is a liar.

I am reading User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky.  In chapter 1, Joel talks about a job we held as a "wee Joel" at some sort of bread-making factory.  Through little stories about his experience, Joel paints a picture of a young individual, struggling to learn the best way to perform a certain function.  Through a series of mishaps, this young individual learns from his mistakes, and eventually rises above the yeastish fray to become the champion of the bread-makers!

Above mentioned are the mishaps encountered by this individual, many of which are blamed on either the equipment he was working with, or the lack of his personal experience.  These little annoyances, such as the 'sticky' wheel of the bread cart, or the metal 'splinter' that caught his hand whilst pulling the chain to the 'tub winch', were considered inconviences that affected his mood, eventually built up, and affected the outcome of his day. 

When I read this, it was all very clear to me.  The small things affect your mood, and eventually decide the overall outcome of the day.  Joel goes on to equate this story to UI design in that the user model isn't the same as the programmer model and small inconsistencies can lead to an overall feeling of discontent in regard to your piece of software.  I am on chapter 10, and thus far, it seems excellent, but this book isn't the topic of this post.

I used this example to build a foundation.  To supplement your perception of the direction of this post.  While I would like to talk about my days at Publishers and the daily hell that I encountered there with various, fairly major inconviences that with each new rise of the sun and in the dawning of a new day I saw nothing but sadness and another close to another day in which less than 18 hrs from the present I would repeat on a non-escapable loop with no feasible end in sight... yea, i don't want to talk about that.

What I would like to talk about, is why things just don't work.  As I type this, my computer is crashing down around me, in flames in a brilliance comparable to the summer sun.  Why you ask, such a blaze doth encompass me?  Well, simply put, I decided I would install Half-Life 2.  After an absence of over 6 months, I decided I would play it again after seeing the 'FPS Doug' video 100 times, due largely in part to the burning desire to scream 'BOOM HEADSHOT!!'.  Moving on, after the install, the 'Steam' program that is required to play HL 2, insisted on downloading approximately 1000000000000000 MB to my local drive, from the slowest server (apparently) on the internet.  About an hour after initially deciding that I would like to play the game, the install was nearing it's finish.  When the bar finally crept to 100%, I was greeting by the lovel Half Life 2 splash scree.... oh, no wait a second, I was greeted with a login dialog.  After about 5 minutes of trying every username-password combo under the sun, I was finally logged in.  I double clicked on the Half Life 2 icon and....

What happend next, I can barely believe.  Never, ever, in my 14 years as a computer user turned developer, have I seen, or heard, of something like this happening.  About  5 minutes into the load/init video, a strange smell began to permeate the air immediately surrounding me.  The source of this was quite clear, as it was a smell I had encountered many years before whilst serving time in a spanish prison, awaiting extradition, to Mother Russia. times before while servicing fried computers.  It was my CD-ROM drive.  I quickly removed the offending drive from my computer, whisked it outside, and tossed it in the grass.

Angered, and a little sick from the smell of buring silicon, I sit, reflecting of the situation that occured just moments ago. Needless to say, this 'minor annoyance' may stick with me for another day or so. FYI.... don't skimp on CD-RW / DVD Combo Drives.. in the long run, you might get burned...... sorry.