As a pure exercise of letters from the past, let me tell you about something that I encountered yesterday.  One was a first, the other one was an ongoing irritant.  In an effort to make your experience here as interactive as possible, I’ll let you decide which is which.

First of all, open up Microsoft Excel.

Open it!

If you don’t have Microsoft Excel on your computer, just sit there in your smug sanctimony for a few minutes before I move on to item number two.

Got Excel open?

Good.

Pick a cell, any cell.  Don’t let me see it.

Type in the following number and hit ‘enter’:

12345E108

What did it do?

I’ll tell you what it did.  Excel automatically converted that number to display it in what I affectionately call “psychotic mathspeak”.   You’re probably seeing something like 1.23E+112 in the cell where you entered that number.

If you don’t want the number to be displayed in psychotic mathspeak, you have to format the cell to text and then re-enter it.

Certainly it’s a relatively inconsequential event in your life.  It’s not like you always have to type a similar number in Excel.  If you know how to fix it, things can’t really be that bad, can they?

I deal with that phenomenon approximately 2-3 times a week.

Now that you’re sufficiently baffled as to why I would need to enter data like that into Excel on a regular basis, let’s talk about the future.

Take a look at this video.  As I understand it, Microsoft has produced this thing as a peek-a-boo into the very near future.

Did you watch it?

Kinda cool, don’t you think?

Let’s set aside the fact that I have no respect for a Windows phone at this point.  I have no experience using them, but I have and do use Windows.

Ladies and gentlemen, please understand this.  Until the day comes where I can enter a 9 digit number that has “E1″ in the middle of it without Excel getting all smart ass Autocorrect on me by changing it to psychotic mathspeak which I haven’t used since my college days, I have a hard time believing that the fruits of Cabeza del Gates is successfully going to deliver the blue pill born, Matrix like world portrayed in this video.

Just sayin’.

There are reasons which are higher on the rungs of priority, however it’s not really important to discuss those items here.

Just on a side note, I’ve typed a majority of these letters from the past using a virtual keyboard, yet still I can’t help but continue to get pissed off when Autocorrect makes like the government and tells me what I should say.

Back to the subject at hand.

Among the undocumented perks of working with people I’m not related to, other than the aesthetic properties of the occasional denim benefit, the frequent opportunity to mess with my coworkers presents itself on a regular basis.  Be it my fellow comrades or members of management, no sacred cows exist when it comes to exacting the fruits of my twisted mind on the unsuspecting constitution of others.

Lotus Notes Sametime provides a veritable wellspring of material when it comes to messing with someone.  For those of you who have been here since day 1, you know what I’ve suggested when it comes to the “Alert Me When” feature.  Long story short, that one boils down to “flatulent computer”.

That’s not the only thing I do with Sametime though:

Victim:  Hey Randy.  Do you have a minute for me to give you a call?

Me:  Sure.  Ext 1234

The kicker here is that the extension I provide is not my extension.  It usually belongs to one of my cohorts who doesn’t know better.

With one little line on an instant message utility, I’ve messed with two people by causing someone to dial the wrong number.  It’s only unfortunate that I only get to here one side of that conversation when the wrong number gets dialed.  After the call ends, another note comes across asking for the correct extension.

Keep in mind at this point ladies and gentlemen, that I end the prank right there and provide the correct extension.  It’s not like I would provide and incorrect extension again to refire the vicious circle.

*pause for evil laugh*

Email tricks can be fun as well.  The ones I use tend to be subtle enough so as to avoid a major reaction, but impactful enough for the synapses of the victim to misfire.

The most common one is when they send me a series of questions looking for answers from yours truly.  Like I have the correct answers.

Invariably so, I will reply with history, and attach my answers to the original questions.  I make a distinction between the question and the answer by changing the color of my font to blue.  Up above, I’ll actually write the reply.

Hi (insert name here),

Please see my answers down below in blue.

The key here is that I change the font color of the word “blue” to any other color than blue; usually red.

Call me a deviant.

I’ve also been known to send a series of questions, but then set the settings on the message to “prevent copy”.  This essentially keeps my victim from replying with history, or even doing a copy / paste into the reply.

Waves of schadenfreude ensconce yours truly when the butchered response comes back and I subsequently ask for additional clarification.

I try not to limit my shenanigans to an onscreen assault though.  There have been plenty of participants who were the unwitting beta-testers of the foot mouse.  That device is the one which is strategically placed not at their right hand, but at their right foot instead.  It’s wonderful exercise for their big toe to click click away through documents without having to take their hands away from the keyboard.

There’s only so long that I’ll be able to use these tricks before I’m forced to move on to other things though.  Keep in mind that it’s just my attention deficit that forces to me to move on.

Among the ideas I have in mind involve conference room lodging for parties of two in a different office than the one I’m housed in.  In my role, I’m responsible for scheduling a room for these two people to dial in on conference calls which I facilitate.  I’m thinking about reserving a full conference room which seats 24. Just to drive it home, I’ll order full catering.

May I suggest the Chicken Escondido with Rice Pilaf, today’s fresh vegetables and a dinner roll?

Put very simply, it combines the multiple tabbed feature of Excel with the word processing of Word.  Blogs I wrote prior to using this software were previously stored on Word documents and filed in their own directory.  Nowadays I just store it all in the OneNote I’ve created for TharpSter.Org, and have it all readily accessible for future reference.

In addition to the consolidation of resources I rigidly demand in my life (most likely just another sign that I have an obsessive compulsive disorder), OneNote provides on-line syncing which allows me to access my work from any PC.  Add to that the fact that there’s an app for it which allows me to access the seeds of my magnum opus directly from my iPhone.  This has been quite helpful in those times when I found myself nowhere near a PC.  All I do is break out the phone and either list a potential blog idea or even crank one out directly on the phone.  Once I can get to a PC, I can access the content from the sync and publish it accordingly.

You’re probably wondering why I’m wasting your precious blog reading time with a software review, aren’t you?  It’s not like you’re used to seeing me blather about such subject matter here on TharpSter.Org.  The last time I did, I provided pretty insightful ideas about sound notifications on Lotus Notes Sametime.  That particular blog is a few years old and still gets hit on a regular basis.

In summary, software discussion blogs on TharpSter.Org are uncommon, yet have the potential to revolutionize the world.

So I gave you the background on Microsoft OneNote in order to paint the picture about the real subject matter of this blog.  Consider it as taking the scenic route to get to the point.

Did you notice all of the different categories on the iPhone capture?     Did you see the tab labeled “Blog Ideas?  Of course you did.

As I mentioned before, there are times when I get an idea which I’ll need to flesh out later on.  In those times, I’ll enter the idea into the app.

That being said, I now offer the contents of the working ideas I have for future blogs.

Click on picture for larger image

Within a matter of minutes, I had that same device pumping chord after chord of heart thumping music into my ears in an effort to help me regain consciousness.  While doing so, I jumped on the digital scales and entered the day’s weight into an app on my smartphone.

After getting dressed in my workout clothes, I stepped outside with my favorite pit bull in order to get a sampling of the day which was in store.  As I sat out there watching my dog change the landscape of my backyard with the remnants of last nights dinner, I pondered taking a picture of her own version “crouching tiger” with my smartphone.

Instead, I checked the smartphone for the weather forecast.

That was probably a good decision.  Only time will tell though.

Thirty minutes later, I was in the gym listening to more music on my smartphone.  At the same time, I logged the time I spent  on the bike as well as in circuit training.

An hour later, I sat there in church following along in the scripture readings via an app on my smartphone.  My vision has deteriorated in recent years, so reading the small print in a book is much more difficult than reading an electronic version which allows me to zoom in and out.

Once we got home, I turned on the 42″ in order to watch the Texans play.  Throughout the game, I checked the ongoing status of my fantasy football team, salted with periodic updates to my Facebook status.  All of the updates I made or received were on my smartsmartphone.

Later on, I went out to run a few errands.  Before embarking on such a trek, I used my smartphone to check my bank balance.

Now at the end of the day, I sit here typing up an accounting of today’s events right here on my smart smartphone.  I will subsequently upload it to TharpSter.Org as a draft where it will lie in wait for a few rereads and modifications before I officially publish it.

These smartsmartphones are just flavors of the week and have about as much stay power as the Edsel, New Coke, and the Internet.

Don’t subscribe to the hype people.

Nowadays, I use an app on my phone which syncs up with a companion program here on my laptop.  If I should get a flash of brilliance at any time of day, I just break out the phone, activate the app and capture the blog idea.  Later on when I’m writing, I check my ideas and let the verbal brilliance flow.  Easy as that.

It’s the existence of that particular list which puts us here today.

For sometime now, I’ve had one particular entry on that list:  “Everything I ever needed to know about racial profiling I learned from Angry Birds.”

It makes for a wonderful subject matter to appear on the ole website, don’t you think?

Naturally, I haven’t fleshed that one out yet.  Certainly I could make a case for almost all of the birds in that popular game and how they take on the stereotypical behavior of various races of people.  Perhaps because the idea lacks the requisite creative wit needed to appear here on TharpSter.Org is the primary reason I haven’t devoted a whole lot of time to it.

Having just about relegated that idea to the Cranial Flatulence file from where hardly anything ever returns, I had moved on to composing poignant messages about voting responsibly and selling unique items on Craigslist.

Today, a small piece of that idea was resurrected.

Got a smart phone?  Quick, get it out.

Now go to the Angry Birds app and activate it.

Got it?  Good.

Now access game 8-2.  I’ll give you a minute.

*waits*

Welcome back.  I hope you didn’t get to enthralled with the game so much that you forgot about my blog.

Upon activating that particular game, you’re given the image of what the green pigs have done so that you can make an assessment on what you have to destroy.  Make no mistake.  Destruction is the key here.

That’s right people.  You have to destroy a passenger plane and an air traffic control tower.

There’s no cultural taboo against destroying the occasional passenger airline, is there?

Once you’re given your mission objective of what to destroy, you’re then provided with the implements of destruction.

Your first bird is a yellow one.  These little bad boys are good for accelerating directly into your target using velocity as a weapon.  In my racial profiling analogy, I would have likened the yellow birds to the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II.   Their efforts were instrumental in causing extreme damage on plenty of American watercraft.

The next two birds are white ones.  I’m no fan of these ones.  They’re generally slow and stupid, and are only good from dropping bombs.  If you time the bombing right, you can usually get some benefit of the bird flying upward into a structure when it drops the bomb.  Of course there’s no racial profiling there.  White people dropping bombs have never really been demonized for anything, have they?

Your final bird is the black bird.  This one can be particularly nasty because it’s capable of exploding either by timing after impact or by manual intervention.  Naturally, there’s no stereotypical behavior of any race which can be characterized by the strategic placement of an explosive black bird.

Ponder that for a moment.

Okay, moving on.

So what type of reaction is warranted here?

It’s a forgone conclusion that I could give you a wide variety of responses to the lack of consideration which went into the design of this particular level of Angry Birds.  I could use hyperbole to write a gag Onion-like news article which links the game to increased pat downs at the airport.

I could become righteously indignant about it and call for a boycott of Angry Birds.

I could take the approach that tells you to suck it up and get over it.  Google “Angry Birds 8-2″ and you won’t find a whole lot of articles calling attention to the perceived insensitivity of it all.  Instead, you’ll find information on how to beat the level.

I could do all of those things, but I won’t.  Instead, I’ll say this.

Nearly 10 years have passed since the tragic events of 9/11, yet even still I would like to think Americans at large are still just a tad bit sensitive to reminders which take us back to that day.  Just to let you in on a little secret, I still shudder when I see movies like Transformers choreograph some of their battle scenes around the willful destruction of high rise buildings by flying planes through them.

More so, it’s bad enough that goofballs have tried to blow planes out of the sky by igniting explosives hidden in their shoes or underwear.  Where is the entertainment value in simulating such destruction on a stupid game you play on your phone?

Update:  08/28/2011

The following appears on Angry Birds Rio on game 9-11.  This particular level was just recently released as an update to the spinoff of the popular game.

This essentially explains why a lot of the hits this particular blog has received has been resultant of people searching out 9-11 Angry Birds.

On September 4, 1882, when the first commercial power station began providing electrical power to customers within a square mile of its Pearl street location in Manhattan, who would have ever thought the use of electricity would revolutionize the way we live our lives?  Nearly 130 years later, life continues to get a little easier day by day as the laborious fruits borne of this century and the last continue to streamline more and more aspects of our lives.  To boil it all down, the key to simplifying our lives has come to a matter of application.  All of the items we’ve invented over the years to harness the power of electricity in order to perform a specific task serve as evidence of successful application.

But enough of that crap.  You know of the benefits and liberation that electricity has provided to us, and I do too.  I don’t think we need to extol the virtues of Reddy Kilowatt here, even though his disappearance coincides with the rise in popularity of the environmental crisis mongers.  The very power that Reddy embodied represents a very big reason why you’re ensconcing yourself in my comma splices, run-on sentences, and other devices of verbal brilliance.  As such, I should dedicate an entire blog to the guy, but just the mere mention of him will get me some hits on a random Google search.

Recently here at TharpSter.Org, the majority shareholders have upgraded their cell phones.  Previous phones had all of the components and features of an empty soup can, some 20 lb. test line, and some names and numbers written on the white and red label in a medium point Sharpee.  The organization now sports an iPhone and a Motorola Backflip.  Acclimating ourselves to these phones over the last few weeks has fired off a whole plethora of ideas for how the practical use and application of these phones can make our lives even easier than they were out on the prairie over a hundred years ago.  With that, I give you a suite of apps which can be made available for these phones and others.  Patents are pending.  I hope you enjoy.

iThrow –   Are you afraid that you throw like a girl?  If you’re like the paper baseball fan that our President is, then you need some help.  iThrow is just for you.  Designed to build arm strength and accuracy to get that ball completely over the plate from a pitching rubber mounted 60 feet away, this app is quite easy to use.  Just activate the app, and huck your phone as far as you can.  GPS and gyroscopic sensors in your phone will do the rest in order to determine whether you held your arm correctly, the position of release, and the distance in which you threw it.  This application will work best when the phone is taken out of its protective case.  Since capitalism and the free market reigns supreme here at TharpSter.Org, the app will price at $9.99, and be good for 5 throws.  You’ll be burning them across the plate in no time. 

iPick – Admit it.  You and everyone else, at one time or another in your life have picked your nose.  Whether it’s a matter of a compulsive habit or necessity, some of the stuff up in there just doesn’t come out with the simple blow or a wipe from a tissue.  If God didn’t want you to do it, then why did He make your fingers just the right size to get up in there at least to the first knuckle?  With divine inspiration in hand, the iPick app will provide an alternative.  Activate this app and you’ll be given a selection of different noses to grace the screen of your smart phone.  Select the settings button in order to choose whether you’re picking at unsightly hairs, one of those painful nostril zits, or even the primary reason why noses get picked.  From there, pick away to your heart’s content.  The companion version, iScab, is scheduled for release later this year.

iScale – How’s that P90X program working out for you?  Can you not get enough of The Biggest Loser?  Is that treadmill you bought for yourself for Christmas last year nothing but a glorified clothing hanger?  There are times when you’re out and about when you just have to know your weight.  If so, iScale may be the app for you.  Activate this application and you have an instant set of scales in the palm of your hand.  Much like iThrow, this app uses gyroscopic sensors in your phone to provide your weight down to the very ounce.  Just remove the protective case, lay the phone on a flat surface and jump right on.  This application will run you $9.99, and is good for the life of the phone.

iBite – Quick!  Tell me what that per square inch bite strength of your poodle is!  Does your Jack Russell Terrier have the choppers to bite through that smoked pig ear you just bought him at the feed store?  What about that German Sheppard that bit your brother on the leg when he was delivering newspapers?  Was the bite really strong enough to break a bone, or was the drama queen pining for sympathy?  Your phone can now pass this pertinent information on to you in a matter of seconds with the iBite app.  Just activate the app and rub some raw meat over the screen of your phone.  Give it to the dog, and you will receive near instant results as to exactly how strong Fluffy’s jaw is.  Given the coding intricacies of this application, it will run $9.99 per use, and is warranted for the life of the phone.

iPecac – The iPecac app is probably the most medically necessary application you’ll ever need for your phone.  If it hasn’t happened to you before, don’t count on the need never presenting itself for you to vomit.  Maybe you’ve eaten some raw pork, or bad clams.  Aside from the colonic distress that such a happenstance could create, you could be looking at some major problems leading up to your expedited assumption of room temperature.  Add to that the fact that the only way to mitigate the effects of your choice to eat “Pollo Tar-Tar” is to expel the contents of your value meal in as expeditious a manner as possible.  That’s where iPecac comes in to play.  Remove the phone from its case, activate the iPecac app, and shove the phone down your throat as quickly as possible.  You’ll be back up and at ‘em in a matter of minutes after the contents of your gastronomical satiety have been properly dispersed and disseminated on the ground before you.  Who wants chowder?

Be sure to look for these and other TharpSter Apps for your phone very soon.

The software I use to produce and publish the eventual evidence which will ultimately be used in my as of yet unscheduled competency hearing provides all types of statistical data on this site’s readership.  I can tell if the site was accessed directly, or through a link.  I can see what articles are being read and how many times they’ve been read.  Information like this is useful to me, because it tells me what type of material I need to produce in order to create a base of minions who hang on my every word.

Among the features for the site statistics is a section which tells me what search terms are being used which ultimately lead readers to this site.  For those of you who don’t directly type www.tharpster.org in your address bar, I tend to see a wide variety of search terms that get you here.  The terms usually involve subjects from politics to Lotus Notes Sametime, and everywhere in between.  The search term statistics from yesterday yielded the following as the top searches:

Let me repeat this one more time.  The internet is a wonderful thing.  If you participate in a social networking site such as Facebook (the TharpSter fan page can be found here), and you want to express your love and appreciation for a delicious, time saving, cost efficient, ground beef preparatory meal by displaying the product as your profile picture, the internet gives you the option to do so.  If you don’t know how do it, there are plenty of search engines out there which will help you express your love.  Stuff like that makes the internet cool, because if you had wandered into a library as recently as 15 years ago and asked the kindly octogenarian at the information desk the same question, she would have mercilessly rapped you about the knuckles with a ruler.  Nowadays you can find anything out here on the net, regardless of how unique the information needs to be.

The mere fact that someone used that term/phrase and found something isn’t the end all be all about the wonders of the internet though.  It’s the fact that Google comes back with over 45,000 results in .11 seconds.  More importantly (in my mind), was that the word “TharpSter” was not in the search phrase and one of my blogs about Facebook Status Updates made it into the top 10 search results:

For the record, that particular blog has absolutely no instructional value in adding Hamburger Helper to a profile picture on Facebook.  If you’re not quite sure how to update the photo, it’s not too hard.  Just upload a photo and follow the link to set it as a profile picture.  You can also check any of the other 45,299 search results on Google to see if directions are available.

I believe it only to be fair that I should throw props to the good people at Hamburger Helper.  When I made reference to your product in that blog earlier this month, I had no intention of hijacking any potential web traffic from you.  I’ve enjoyed your product for many years now, and I can assure you that there have been many a time when I did in fact “need a helping hand”.  If you should ever want to enter into a relationship with this website which would involve the advertisement of your product, the Board of Directors here at TharpSter.Org would be more than happy to discuss such a potentially lucrative venture with you.  The endorsement agreement I have with Rubber Band BoB’s Rubber Band Balls is not exclusive.  I’m starting to rethink that agreement, as their checks keep bouncing.

Don’t just rest the laurels of Sametime on its instant messaging capability though.  For everyone you add to your own personalized contact list, you get color coded boxes and icons next to their names in order to let you know if they’re available to jibber-jabber.  First of all, there’s the typical circle with a slash through it that is meant to ward off any and every potential instant messenger and other evil spirits by bluntly displaying an admonishment to “leave me alone or I will beat you about the head repeatedly, senselessly, and mercilessly with a three hole punch until you either go look up whatever the hell it is you need yourself or cease to form and deliver even the simplest of monosyllabic utterances.”  The best piece of advice I can give to anyone who encounters the circle with a slash on someone they need to Sametime is to heed the warning.  Don’t send them an instant message at all.  Approaching them directly, face to face, would be better.

The second icon which adorns the names of your instant messaging pen pals is a yellow diamond.  In its own little way, that little diamond tells potential messengers that the slow, sterilizing glow of the monitor planted less than three feet away from the tip of your nose has rendered the contents of your skull so ineffective that you can’t even move your mouse around a little bit in order to let Sametime give others the vaguest of clues that you’re actually active on your PC.  The only hope you have at this point is for the flying toaster screen saver to snap you out of your catatonic state.  The yellow diamond to some extent helps to ward off some messengers, yet its message doesn’t come across as menacing as being beat about the head with a properly weighted three hole punch.  We’ll come back to the yellow diamond momentarily.

The third icon is the beloved green box.  You can go places with this little gem.  Why, you ask?  I’ll tell you why.  Anyone on your contact list who sports this icon is available to absorb whatever you throw at them. The green box gives you the go ahead to hijack whatever semblance of productivity your messaging partner had hoped to achieve today and turn it into an item on their to-do list for tomorrow.  It’s even more fun when you hit them with a deluge of valid inquiries via Sametime, because you can’t be accused of malicious intent.

So now that you have the most basic of understanding about Sametime, let’s move on to one of the more advanced features which will make this utility a source of fun for months and years to come.  I’ll dispense with any disclaimers or warnings about one specific feature, and expect that you will use your best judgment on the matter.  I should point out the fact that if you’re still reading this, your judgment may be questionable.  Just sayin’.

The feature I’m referring to is called “Alert Me When”.  The way this feature works is pretty self explanatory if you think about it.  For those people on your contact list who are in any status other than available, you can set Sametime to notify you whenever that particular individual becomes available after being previously unavailable.  It’s like stalking software for the slothful because you don’t have to keep checking your contact list to see if the target of your attention is available or not.  The nifty thing about the feature is that when your messaging partner does become available, you can have Sametime either put a message on your screen, or play a sound.

You can have Sametime play a sound.

Ponder that for a moment.

Here’s where Sametime gets really fun for those of you who use this program on a regular basis.  All you need is a couple of sound files placed strategically in a shared drive, and someone in a nearby cubicle who doesn’t understand the importance of locking their PC whenever they leave their desk in order to preserve the physical integrity of their bladder after downing an $8 latte at the local hippy-inspired coffee house.

You may be wondering what type of sound files you should have.  If you are, then maybe I should have blocked you from reading this display of verbal brilliance.  I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt though and encourage you to keep reading.  In the meantime, open up a second browser tab or window and go download a variety of sound files which pay just and well deserved tribute to the almighty fart.

From there, it gets pretty easy.  Identify someone who has left their desk without locking their PC.  Access their Sametime contact list and set a series of ‘Alert Me When’ notifications for several people, yourself included.  Set the notifications to play a sound when someone goes from unavailable to available.  Don’t forget to set the “Notify me always for this person” option as well.  Be sure to turn the volume up on their PC so the audible flatulence hits the right number of decibels to get the proper attention it richly deserves.

At that point, you can return to your own desk and intermittently put your Sametime status in available and unavailable to your hearts desire.  Each time you do, your victims PC will break some wind.  The availability of the others on the contact list will perpetuate even more confusion on the victim’s part too.  Try not to laugh too hard when the poor soul contacts technical support to report the issue.