Badly Drawn Monsters
A site of nerdery, life, geekism, and monsters
monkeybars aka rungs of peril
Jul 18th
When I was in grade school, we had an awesome playground full of the standard equipment. Â Of course, by today’s standards, the entire thing was a Darwinian death trap, but I think that’s what made it all the better. Â Even as kids, we understood the risks associated with climbing some metal monstrosity above nothing but concrete, and that if we fell we would die and that would really suck. Â Instead of being scary, that was half the appeal.
We had the swingset with really long chains so that you could really work up some speed before you jumped off. Â Woodchips? Â Rubber? More >
ignorance is not bliss
Jun 27th
High school.
I learned what the word “crucible” meant in high school, and to my recollection it’s basically a container used by chemists that ingredients are put into, heated up to an incredible temperature, which changes them into something else. High school is a lot of things, but for me that pretty much summed it up.
By most standards, I did well in high school. I graduated fourth in my class, lettered in two sports, was in the school musical before Disney got their hands on the concept, was on homecoming court, etc., etc. I had a number of good friends that More >
why the draft sucks
Apr 29th
The NFL draft is going on right now. Â I’m a big sports fan, love the football, and still I find the draft a barely watchable experience. Â I don’t really understand the whole concept of watching it on television because it’s quite possibly one of the dullest things on television.
Things that suck about the draft:
- The draft starts in April and is done hopefully sometime before the season starts. Â Teams in theory get 10 minutes a pick, but 32 teams times 10 minutes comes out to about five and a half hours. Â So how does the first round take more than a More >
security question fun
Apr 18th
We support a payroll application that let’s users login and check their paystubs and W2′s and such online. Â If a user forgets their password to this site, there is a little link underneath the password box that says “Forgot your password?” in big blue letters. Â If a user is calling us to get help logging in, this means they have already missed the easiest way to fix their problem (the link) and have instead opted to wait on hold a couple minutes and then frustrate one of our technicians.
In order for one of us to reset the password, there is More >
it’s not just users
Mar 11th
Sometimes even the people employed to be technical support are almost as clueless as the users are. Â At my company there is one guy in particular that should have been fired a long time ago but somehow manages to keep hanging on. Â We all have someone like that in our office, and if they were to get fired today, the only tears shed would be from those who got the news late and missed out on raiding their desk for office supplies.
Here is a ticket I had escalated to me the other day from this person, only edited to remove More >
and the award goes to…
Feb 4th
Since it’s been over a month since I wrote anything at all, this is going to be rusty. Â I’ve never really understood the expression “shake the rust off” because in my experience with crappy cars, if its vibrating so much that rust is falling off the thing, it’s probably about twenty seconds from breaking or exploding. Â Thus my past experiences are making me nervous for what might happen to my brain if I try to hard. Â I’ve already alerted those in close physical proximity to me that if I start shaking too much, they should flee the area.
I’ll be the More >
i’m out of thermal paper, run!
Dec 22nd
On December 8th, North Korea launched an aggressive attack against the South. Â Their weapon of choice? The fax machine.
South Korean businesses received over 80 (!) faxes containing pro-North Korea propaganda.
I am not making this up.
One person was said to suffer injuries from a paper cut, but no lives were lost.
North Korea said in a press release that “[We] will have what we want, or [we] will begin limiting shipments of critical components to VHS machines and Sony Walkmans.
If any retaliation is attempted, [we] are prepared to launch denial-of-service attacks against the largest ISP’s, including CompuServe and Earthlink.”
Left out of the official press More >
furnishings
Dec 20th
Now that I’ve owned a house for awhile and put a lot of sweat into making it a nice place to live, I look back at some of the curb furniture that I had in college and post-college and laugh at how ridiculous it was.  It was completely mismatched, usually fell apart after a year or so, damaged to begin with, and always an eyesore.
Imagine my surprise when an entire store, nay an entire BRAND, is selling the same type of furniture for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Â But at least you get some rancid meatballs when you go there.
Yes, I’m More >
gather round ye olde picture box
Dec 17th
For the past two years around Christmas, I’ve posted about the worst Christmas songs of all time. Â (If you missed those, check here and here.)
But there’s more to Christmas than just crap songs! That’s right, there’s also crap television specials!  Nothing says “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men” like claymation, the official sponsor of Christmas Television. In fact, there’s so many that its impossible to watch them all.  There’s only so many hours in the day, and only so many cheesy shows you can watch before you want to gouge your eyes out.
I’ve compiled a list of animated or claymated shows More >
