• I was in an art class when I was maybe eight years old. We used empty milk cartons as casts to make rectangular blocks of plaster so we could sculpt them. I carved a van out of my block. Given that vans are fairly rectangular, my teacher suggested I leave the bulk of the block and shape it into a van instead of removing so much of every side to reveal a van deep within. I insisted I knew what I was doing. By the time I had removed a lot of one side of the block I realized she had a good point, but it was too late.
• I know how to calibrate the heads on both standard consumer cassette decks and professional reel to reel tape machines, but I haven't done either in over five years.
• Sometimes I get the jingle from Hamburger Helper stuck in my head. I don't know what, if anything, precipitates it.
• I was a much better trumpet player in high school than I am now. I know the difference is the frequency with which I play, but I also feel like I used to be in love with the trumpet the way I am now in love with the electric guitar. I don't know if I could handle loving both at once.
• I have a theory that there are a lot of things I don't remember about the past, but I can't prove it.
• In fourth grade the stripes on my athletic socks always matched my shirt. That wasn't because my mom dressed me. It was something I was very carefully executed myself. By high school the socks weren't athletic, but I still matched them to my shirt every day.
• My brother once told me that I sometimes repeat his anecdotes back to him as if they were my own. I'm sure he was telling the truth, but I really hope it isn't the case any more.
• There are bands I started to like in college that I didn't bother to listen to when I was in high school because their names led me to believe I wouldn't like the kind of music they played. Rocket From the Crypt wouldn't be included in that list because I didn't bother to listen to them until I was around 29.
• I like calling distortion, overdrive and fuzz pedals "dirtboxes" even though I think it's stupid.
• I'm still addicted to coffee.
• Every job I've ever held allowed me to dress pretty casually. Once I interviewed for a job that would have required me to wear a suit four days a week. I went out and bought four suits a couple days later and then didn't get the job. I knew it didn't make any sense. It's definitely the dumbest $1600 I've ever spent at one time.
• I wish I knew why the spouts on containers of rice and soy milk are so poorly designed. It makes no sense to me.
• People who drop the names of celebrities they've met are not unilaterally dicks. I think it depends on the celebrity. Not that that stops all of my own name dropping anecdotes from being one way tickets to dickdom.
• I've tried unsuccessfully to be a collector several times only to discover I don't really care about having things for the sake of having them. If not for eBay, these learning experiences would have cost me considerably more money.
• I learned how to solder because I was envious of my best friend in high school. I never told him that he had anything to do with my decision to study electronics. That's partly because I forget to tell people things like that if I'm not careful and partly because his skill in that area still intimidates me.
• I don't think I've ever been militantly anything.
• The number I most frequently choose to indicate "a large approximate amount that is not an exaggeration" is 15.
• The first "effect" I ever used in recording: Reverb. How I did it: Record in the bathroom. The second: Pitch shifting. How I did it: Pull the cover off the motor on a cheap cassette deck, adjust a potentiometer and record with the tape sped up, playing the song too quickly. Playback of that cassette on non-modified tape decks made the song the right speed with everything about 3/4 of an octave lower. My voice sounded ridiculous and awesome. Now I own a rackmount processor that can create the same effect. In many ways it's not as fun.
• I identify most with the chimpanzee who has his hands over his eyes.

what's on:
"Stifled Man Casino" (Airport 5 - Tower in the Fountain of Sparks)

• This entry is part of the 4913 haiku project.
• These haiku are related to 5 haiku 68
• Continue reading 4913 haiku with a random entry.
• A brief explanation of the project can be found here.
• Still more reading options with a new, prettier format coming soon!

First they asked why I was uninstalling and let me choose one or more from a list of possible reasons. Then they asked if I had additional comments. I did:

1. I could not turn OFF automatic credit card billing via the web. I had to call and sit through a support operator trying to convince me that I shouldn't turn it off (because I'd risk my security! Oh no!) before he finally switched it for me. That is, in my opinion, a really underhanded, shitty business practice.
2. When my subscription expired I received CONSTANT reminders telling me to renew, and there is NO WAY to turn them off and still use the software. I am not stupid. You only need to tell me once. After that it is MY CHOICE whether or not to renew. Continuing to be badgered with paranoid messages like "YOUR SYSTEM IS NOT FULLY PROTECTED" is insulting. Especially considering that McAfee doesn't "fully protect" my system in the first place.
3. On Windows 2000, when Security Center finally loads, it is the single slowest program I've ever used. I contacted your support to find out if this was a known issue, and I was treated like someone who had no idea how to use a computer. My experience with McAfee support is that your representatives badger as much as your incessant warnings and don't bother to assess the amount of knowledge the end user has before telling them what's wrong. (e.g. I was told to look at System Properties RIGHT AFTER I gave the representative the processor speed, amount of memory, version of Windows 2000 and other details of my system. Why? Because he didn't believe that I really had 2G of RAM. Can you not see why that's inefficient at best and insulting at worst?)
4. McAfee uses a CRIPPLING amount of resources to run, and there's simply no reason for this. I can run Kaspersky on the same box with a resource footprint less than 1/4 the size and all the same protections.
5. I have no need for email protection, yet the McAfee interface continues to tell me that my machine is "not fully protected" because I haven't activated email protection. If I don't need email protection, then why would my protection be compromised without it? ... That's right. It would not be. So again, McAfee has provided me with more useless paranoid feedback. There's so much of this type of feedback that it's hard for me not to start to view it as a tactic for McAfee to sell more products rather than actual helpful information to keep protection at the best levels for the end user. As a result, I've lost whatever respect I had for McAfee as a company.

Just to be clear, in the two years I put up with McAfee Bloatware, I never once ended up with a virus or worm. I dislike your product for reasons that have nothing to do with its ability to find and remove malicious software. It has everything to do with the feature set that cannot be customized or turned off without constant nags telling me to turn it on and the atrocious customer service.

I hope this response is helpful and not simply written off as a rant from an irate customer. I write software and design user interfaces for a living. That doesn't make me an expert, but it does make me a "power user," and McAfee is designed for someone who wants half their resources sucked up by features they don't even need. And that person is not me.

For the record, I think the last paragraph isn't exactly true. Now that I think about it, I don't really care if my response is helpful.

• This entry is part of the 4913 haiku project.
• These haiku are related to 5 haiku 67
• Continue reading 4913 haiku with a random entry.
• A brief explanation of the project can be found here.
• Still more reading options with a new, prettier format coming soon!