Steve Gadlin's piece of the Internet

 This post is subtitled, “I apologize in advance to any Chinese people in the room.”

 I found an ad on Craigslist today looking for a Chinese baseball announcer.  I thought it would be fun to respond to the ad, so I sent out this email from the old Stones Throw Films email address that we used for the Project Bridgeport prank.

Greetings!  My name is Steve, and I’m responding to your Craigslist ad for a Chinese Baseball Announcer:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/tlg/587735663.html

I am very interested in this position.  I know baseball backwards and forwards.  I know all of the terminology, and am very familiar with all of the players in the game.

The only catch: I do not speak actual Chinese.  I do, however, speak AMAZING fake Chinese.  A non-Chinese speaker would not be able to tell that I’m not speaking actual Chinese.  From my tones and inflections, they would assume that I am speaking PERFECT Chinese.

I have fake Chinese down to a science.  I would like to apply my fake Chinese to report on local baseball games, especially Cubs games.

Please get back to me at your earliest convenience.  I would like to impress you over the phone with my incredible fake Chinese.

Thanks,

Steve Moore

I did not expect to get a reply… but a half hour later, this email arrived:

Hi Steve,

Please reply with your contact number so we can discuss and go over the job requirement on the phone.

Thanks!

Jason

I wrote Jason back and explained that I wouldn’t be near my own phone this evening, but if he’d give me his phone number, I’d be happy to call him tonight.  I figured by this point he would have read my original email and would recognize me as a prankster.  Instead, he sent me his phone number.

So I called him.

Here’s my job interview for a Chinese Baseball Announcer:

I post this in my final hour as a 31 year-old.  Perhaps maturity is just around the corner.

My buddy Paul O’Toole rang me up a few minutes ago to let me know he just saw me on ABC 7.  They were doing a news segment about the rise of online video, and apparently showed a brief clip of Sasha and The Noob.

Huh!

This video is not yet posted to the ABC 7 web site, so I’m going to have to take his word for it.

UPDATE!!

It looks like the video is now posted! They show a quick clip of Talkin’ Funny right after mentioning Revver. Hooray! I suppose we have some intern to thank. Thanks, intern!

Click here to watch the video.

Paul and I have a big slate of gigs this week.  On Wednesday, we’ll be performing at The Lincoln Lodge as part of a taping for Comcast On-Demand.  On Thursday, we’re back at The Lincoln Lodge performing as part of the Chicago Comedy Awards nomination show.  On Saturday, we appear at The Lakeshore Theater for the awards ceremony itself, and then rush to The Playground afterwards for Don’t Spit the Water.  If you’ve ever wanted to overdose on Sasha and The Noob, this is your week.

Here’s a video of our February 8th performance at The Lincoln Lodge:

Wednesday is my 32nd birthday!  I will probably go out for a bit after DSTW, so swing on by!

I hear it’s pretty cold in Chicago, but it ain’t no sunny picnic out here in Los Angeles.  Last night I walked back to the hotel through freezing rain.  Uphill.  It seems that everything is uphill from my hotel.  The lady at work who booked it must have sorted by altitude.  Not only is everything uphill, but it’s also up stairs.  I’ve traversed enormous staircases to get where I was going this week.  And they all seem to be next to enormous escalators covered with signs that say, “please use stairs.”

I’m here for a conference for the Integrated Media Association.  There are a lot of public broadcasting people here, all convening to talk about the future of public broadcasting as it relates to new media.  There’s an entertaining mix of old world broadcasters and young Web 2.0 fanatics.  During a session, it’s not uncommon to see about fifty laptops out.  Every presentation is served over a bed of clickity-clacking.  I’ve never seen such an annoying use of Twitter before.  Twitter is a program that lets groups of people communicate and chat on multiple platforms… you can send a quick “tweet” via text message or email that then gets broadcast to your “followers.”  I’ve watched eople frantically “tweet” away, eyes never up from their phone or laptop.

Apparently staring at your smart phone or laptop is the new “paying attention.”

This morning I’ll be meeting up with Schadenfreude export Adam Witt for breakfast.  Supposedly Robert Buscemi is in town as well, and will be meeting up with us.  Robert Buscemi is everywhere.  I’ll hit a couple more sessions this afternoon, and then fly back to Chicago this evening.

I miss my little girl something fierce.  I miss both of my girls, but I miss Izzie in a way that’s pretty painful.  I’ll be getting home when she’s asleep, but I have half a mind to wake her up for a nice big hug when I get in tonight.

Here’s one of those big old “I haven’t blogged in a while” posts that’s filled with all sorts of crazy things.

My daughter is growing so quickly.  She’s quite adept at crawling and exploring now.  Sunday at her grandma’s house, she shuffled all over the place.  She’s also pulling herself up to a standing position all by herself.  She’s seeing things from all sorts of new angles.  And this is where things start to move very quickly.  I have a big library of photos I need to post to her Flickr page.  She has been such a cute little darling lately.

I’m going to Los Angeles tomorrow night for work.  I’ll be coming back to Chicago on Friday night.  I’ll be there to attend this conference.  I’m going to miss my little girl while I’m gone!  When I get back to the house on Friday she’ll be asleep, and hopefully she won’t be too groggy the next morning to give me a big smile of recognition.

I think a few days in L.A. will be a good thing.  When I left the house today, my face was whipped by freezing wind.  It won’t be super sunny in L.A. while I’m there, but it’ll sure beat Chicago.  Though this would all be much nicer if my ladies were coming along.

I’ve been doing a lot of Yelping lately, which is why I haven’t been doing a lot of blogging.  It’s an addictive little outlet.

Don’t Spit the Water has been selling out lately, which is great and exciting.  With minimal press blasts this time around we seem to be attracting crowds solely by word of mouth.  And they’re all non-comedy people, which makes it even sweeter.  I suppose this is par for the course with DSTW.  It’s just nice that after 3.5  years, we’re still cramming the space full o’ strangers.

Sasha and The Noob were nominated for a Chicago Comedy Award!  We’ll be performing at The Lincoln Lodge on February 28th for the nomination show, and then at the Lakeshore Theater on Saturday, March 1st, for the awards ceremony.  The award we’re up for is “most innovative.”  We’re going up against fellow Blewtster Ken Barnard, and Impress These Apes 2 contestant Brady Novak.  Methinks we’re going to be schooled, but it’s exciting and cool to be nominated.

Hey, I’m going back to school.  I start a teaching certification program in April at National-Louis University.  This is the same program Becky completed to get her teaching certification after we got married.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for many years, and it’s about to become impossible.  So I’m biting the bullet and going through with this so I can add teaching certification to my tool belt.  Maybe it’ll end in a teaching job, maybe it won’t… the point now is just to go through with the schooling instead of putting it off until it’s too late.

This will mean a very busy week for me in April.  I’ll have classes on Monday and Wednesday nights, and then Talkin’ Funny on Tuesday nights.  As excited as I am about having Talkin’ Funny start up again, I can see myself burning out pretty quickly.

Ah well.  This is the life I enjoy, I suppose.

Sasha and The Noob perform at The Lincoln Lodge on February 8th, 2008.

I worked late last night to help support the station’s election night coverage.  When I got home at 11pm having eaten last at 4pm, I was a little hungry.  Fortunately Becky had picked up a couple of microwaveable meals, so I figured I wasn’t too far from a filling (if not satisfying) supper.

I grabbed the Macaroni Grill Chicken Parmesan and got ready to zap away the hunger.  Unfortunately the Macaroni Grill really wants you to feel like one of their line cooks to enjoy one of their dinners. 

Here’s a note to all manufacturers of microwaveable food.  Directions on the back should look like this:

 1. Take food out of box.

2. Microwave food.

3. Enjoy!

I present to you the actual directions on the back of the Macaroni Grill Chicken Parmesan microwaveable dinner:

1) Vent Chicken Parmesan pouch, place in tray and microwave on MEDIUM (50%) POWER 3-4 minutes or until hot.  Be careful, product is very hot.

2) Vent Capellini pouch and microwave on MEDIUM (50%) POWER 1 minute (or, drop in boiling water for 2-3 minutes – do not vent pouch with this method).

3) Place heated Capellini in microwave-safe dish.  Arrange heated Chicken Parmesan over Capellini.  Sprinkle Shredded Cheese and Parmesan Topping over top of Chicken and microwave on MEDIUM (50%) POWER 1-2 minutes, or until Cheese is melted.  If desired, arrange entree in suitable baking dish and place under pre-heated broiler for 2-3 minutes or until Cheese turns golden brown.

These directions include choices.  I don’t want choices when I’m making my dinner.  I’m not a cook, that’s why I’m using the microwave.  If you give me choices, I will do something wrong, and my food will taste like crap.

I want to shake the hand of the person who makes this food using their microwave (step 1), a pot of boiling water (step 2), and a broiler (step 3).  Cheers, dude.  Stop buying microwaveable meals.  You can buy things in the produce and meat departments now.

I’ve been using Microsoft Money to help manage my finances since before I was married.  I think the first version I ever purchased was just called “Microsoft Money.”  Since then, Microsoft has released a new version every single year, and about every other year I update my own copy for their latest flavor.  I only remember one significant change that I’ve ever taken advantage of… with my first copy of Money, I needed a modem to dial-up and connect to my bank to download statements.  Now that all happens over my Internet connection.  They add all sorts of other features that go completely unused, but I bite my tongue and upgrade anyway.

I had been using Microsoft Money 2004 for a few years, and it was working great.  Then one day last year, while updating my bank statements online, it told me that Money 2004′s online services were now expired, and that I’d need to upgrade to Money 2007 if I wanted to use that feature anymore.  Since Money is basically crippled without online access to my bank accounts, I spent the $50 for the new version.

A few months ago, my computer motherboard fried, as did one of my hard drives.  After building my new machine, I searched all over Microsoft’s site for a way to re-download Money 2007.  Unfortunately, there was a new version… Money Plus!  So the pages for Money 2007 contained broken links, and several emails to Microsoft customer support were returned with unhelpful and confusing “DO NOT REPLY” messages.

So I downloaded the free trial of Money Plus, the latest stupid version that looked just like Money 2007.

This morning, my trial version of Money Plus expired.  A little window popped up and told me, and offered a “PURCHASE MONEY NOW!” button.  I clicked it, and was offered several versions of Microsoft Money to purchase.  One of them, Money Essentials, was only $19.99!  I thought that’d be perfect, since I hardly ever use anything but the essential functions of the program.  Right?

$20.  Not bad.  I filled out their simple little form and was ultimately charged $25 ($5 for the extended download feature, which was automatically added to my cart).  I downloaded the software, clicked through the little installation program, and voila, I could return to managing my moolah and paying my bills from my computer.

I fired it up, and it auto-located my saved Money data file, so that I wouldn’t have to re-enter all of my recurring bills, account passwords, etc.  I tapped in my password, and got this wonderful message:

“Money Essentials can not open files from other versions of Microsoft Money.”

You’re kidding me.  I was led to this product by clicking a button from the trial version of Money that was working just fine.

Well fortunately Microsoft offers up a quick and easy way to upgrade to the Money Plus version without double paying, right?  Or some quick and easy customer support so that a refund could be issued for the useless version?

Nope.  I clicked the “View Support Options” button, and was taken to a page where I would be charged $35 for a telephone support session, or $35 for an email support session.  $35?  To communicate with a human being about the bogus purchase that they led me to make?

The only thing I could do was log back on to their mess of a system and purchase the $50 version of Money (this time I manually removed the $5 extended download feature).  Fortunately that version opened fine, and pulled up my bank records.  I was even able to download proof that Microsoft had just screwed me out of $25.  Oh, joy.

Now look, I’m not Joe Idiot.  I’m a web developer.  I’m “good at computers.”  I didn’t follow any convoluted path or faulty logic to make the mistake I made.  I followed the path of least resistance that Microsoft placed at my feet.  It was incredibly easy for me to blow $25 on software.  I know that it will be impossible for me to recover this money.  Any attempt will elevate my fury to levels that shave years off of my life.  I’m going to have to write this off as an example of “big company wins, little web dude loses.”

This software I purchased for $25 is now gone.  Installing the $50 version deletes all trace of the $20 version.  Sure, I have the installation file, but if I run it, then the $50 version is gone.

Microsoft, you’re a bunch of jerks, and you owe me $25.  You also owe the world an apology for producing multiple versions of Microsoft Money within one calendar year, and charging money for the courtesy of customer service.  If you are going to grow into a behemoth, it is your responsibility to grow in all areas of your business.  To be enormous and take money from millions of people, you must grow your customer support staff to accommodate this swell of customers.

I’ve spent my last penny on Microsoft Money, and I hope this post convinces others to seek out other software as well.

I’m not a football fan.  In fact, I’m a football anti-fan.  But I’m a big fan of the underdog.  So when I saw the Giants take a 10-7 lead with 9 minutes left in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl, I tuned in.

I don’t know much about this game, but I do compulsively scour online news sites, so I know that The Patriots are the polished and unbeatable machine while the New York Giants are a scrappy unexpected contender.  And I know that Tom Brady is the most perfect athlete of all time while Eli Manning is just some jock’s kid brother.

Eli Manning’s last drive was inspirational and awesome.  After Randy Moss’s cocky endzone dance that put the Patriots up 14-10 with 4 minutes left, I fully expected this story to end the way all real-life sports stories end.  Instead, it ended like all sports movies end.  It was an ugly finish, one where every inch counted, but Eli Manning got that football down the field, all 83-yards, for a touchdown.  And when Tom Brady got that ball back, he got sacked and flattened so hard, I sat up and cheered.  And then Bill Bellawhatever, the Patriots coach, marched off the field looking pissed off with one second left on the clock.  Hah!  Sayonara, sucker!

So score one for the underdogs.  This victory, with whatever significance it carried in the sports world, should resonate very deeply with guys like me, whom it continuously alienates.

That last second of football took about four real life minutes to play out.  And when it finally ticked, I let out another cheer.  With its passing, football season is officially over.  And you know what that means.

It’s baseball season, baby!

Babies are babies about everything.