Well, it's the last day of 1998, and it's the last day you'll see me around for a while. I'm going to be on vacation until Thursday next week. So Happy New Year, everyone, and I'll talk to you again when I get back.

More telemarketer terrorism stories:

• From Roger B. G.: "Here in New Hampshire we get a spate of 'push polling,' . . . and these calls too tend to come at dinnertime. . . . One week I was fielding the seventh in five days, this one for one of my daughters from a woman poller. . . . I asked:
  • "You're from the XYZ Organization, aren't you?"
  • "Well, yes, I am."
  • "I thought so. Just to save you time, I'll tell you my daughter's political preferences and views now."
  • "Oh, no, sir, I have to speak to your daughter herself."
  • "I don't think you understand. This is a very conservative family where the females are NOT ALLOWED to have separate political views. Just hold on while I tell you what I require my wife and daughters to think."
  • (click)

• From Kim B.: "I worked for a small business owned by a couple. The wife ran the office and received many calls from sales people asking for her husband. She would say, 'Oh, he's working at the north office today. Here's the number.' Then she gave them the number to Dial-A-Prayer. There wasn't a north office."

In the spirit of the season, I'll tell the stories of my own meager efforts at frustrating telemarketers. My stories aren't as classic as the one in the previous journal entry, but I've had some fun now and then.

• Once I received a phone call from a telemarketer who asked, "How would you like to pay 50% less on your long distance phone bill?" I replied calmly that I preferred paying full price. The reaction was immensely satisfying. She didn't have a canned answer for that one. "Um...uh..." she stuttered. "Ok, then! Have a nice day!" It is not easy to get a telemarketer to end the conversation -- if you don't end it, the call will go on forever. I felt pretty good about having induced the salesperson to end it so quickly.

• Another long distance phone company called. I was asked what long distance location I called the most. "I call Guatemala a lot," I said. "Can you give me five dollars a minute to call Guatemala?"

  "FIVE DOLLARS!" he exclaimed. "Oh no, that's way too much."

  "Ok, sorry then," I said and hung up.

• A saleswoman from MCI called. She wanted to know if I wanted to switch my long distance phone company (for free!) and save oodles of money. I said, "Well no, but I work for AT&T -- how would you like to switch your phone?" I regret at having ended the charade there. (She turned me down of course and told me how much she'd save by sticking to MCI.) Next time I feel like doing that one, I'm going to throw an entire blathering sales pitch (in which every other word is "save") back at her.

Any other telemarketer revenge stories out there?

Another dog name:

• From Mike C.: "The best name for a dog is 'Guess.' That way when people ask what the dog's name is, you can say 'Guess' and confuse them."

I would now like to bring up an issue very important to our personal identity and societal security, namely, the issue of annoying telemarketers.

This story, entitled "AT&T" and written and copyrighted by Robert Byron (reproduced here with permission), is forwarded to me by reader Kent M.:

One thing that has always bugged me, and I'm sure it does most of you, is to sit down at the dinner table only to be interrupted by a phone call from a telemarketer. I decided, on one such occasion, to try to be as irritating as they were to me. The call was from AT&T and it went something like this:

• Me: "Hello."
• AT&T: "Hello, this is AT&T."
• Me: "Is this AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Yes, this is AT&T."
• Me: "This is AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Yes. This is AT&T."
• Me: "Is this AT&T?"
• AT&T: "YES! This is AT&T. May I speak to Mr. Byron please?"
• Me: "May I ask who is calling?"
• AT&T: "This is AT&T."
• Me: "Ok, hold on."

At this point I put the phone down for a solid five minutes thinking that surely this person would have hung up the phone. I ate my salad. Much to my surprise, when I picked up the receiver, she was still waiting.

• Me: "Hello?"
• AT&T: "Is this Mr. Byron?"
• Me: "May I ask who is calling please?"
• AT&T: "Yes, this is AT&T."
• Me: "Is this AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Yes this is AT&T."
• Me: "This is AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Yes, is this Mr. Byron?"
• Me: "Yes, is this AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Yes sir."
• Me: "The phone company?"
• AT&T: "Yes sir."
• Me: "I thought you said this was AT&T."
• AT&T: "Yes sir, we are a phone company."
• Me: "I already have a phone."
• AT&T: "We aren't selling phones today Mr. Byron."
• Me: "Well whatever it is I'm really not interested, but thanks for calling."

When you are not interested in something, I don't think you can express yourself any plainer than by saying, "I'm really not interested," but this lady was persistent.

• AT&T: "Mr. Byron, we would like to offer you 10 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year."
• Me: "Now, that's 10 cents a minute 24 hours a day?"
• AT&T: (getting a little excited at this point by my interest) "Yes sir, that's right! 24 hours a day!"
• Me: "7 days a week?"
• AT&T: "That's right."
• Me: "365 days a year?"
• AT&T: "Yes sir."
• Me: "I am definitely interested in that! Wow!!! That's amazing!"
• AT&T: "We think so!"
• Me: "That's quite a sum of money!"
• AT&T: "Yes sir, it's amazing how it adds up."
• Me: "Ok, so will you send me checks weekly, monthly, or just one big one at the end of the year for the full $52,560, and if you send an annual check, can I get a cash advance?"
• AT&T: "Excuse me?"
• Me: "You know, the 10 cents a minute."
• AT&T: "What are you talking about?"
• Me: "You said you'd give me 10 cents a minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That comes to $144 per day, $1,008 per week, and $52,560 per year. I'm just interested in knowing how you will be making payment."
• AT&T: "Oh no, sir, I didn't mean we'd be paying you. You pay us 10 cents a minute."
• Me: "Wait a minute here!!! Didn't you say you'd give me 10 cents a minute? Are you sure this is AT&T?"
• AT&T: "Well yes, this is AT&T, sir, but--"
• Me: "But nothing! How do you figure that by saying that you'll give me 10 cents a minute that I'll give you 10 cents a minute? Is this some kind of subliminal telemarketing scheme? I've read about things like this in the Enquirer you know. Don't use your alien brainwashing techniques on me."
• AT&T: "No sir, we are offering 10 cents a minute for--"
• Me: "THERE YOU GO AGAIN! Can I speak to a supervisor please!?"
• AT&T: "Sir I don't think that is necessary."
• Me: "Sure! You say that now! What happens later?"
• AT&T: "What?"
• Me: "I insist on speaking to a supervisor!"
• AT&T: "Yes Mr. Byron. Please hold."

So now AT&T had me on hold, and my supper was getting cold. I began to eat while waiting for a supervisor.

• Supervisor: "Mr. Byron?"
• Me: (mouth full) "Yeth?"
• Supervisor: "I understand you are not quite understanding our 10 cents a minute program."
• Me: "Id thish Ath Teeth & Teeth?"
• Supervisor: "Yes sir, it sure is."

I had to swallow before I choked on my food. It was all I could do to suppress my laughter, and I had to be careful not to produce a snort.

• Me: "No, actually I was just waiting for someone to get back to me so that I could sign up for the plan."
• Supervisor: "Ok, no problem. I'll transfer you back to the person who was helping you."
• Me: "Thank you."

I was on hold once again and managed a few more mouthfuls. I needed to end this conversation. Suddenly, there was an aggravated but polite voice at the other end of the phone.

• AT&T: "Hello Mr. Byron. I understand that you are interested in signing up for our plan?"
• Me: "Do you have that friends and family thing? Because you can never have enough friends, and I'm an only child, and I'd really like to have a little brother."
• AT&T: (click)

Robert Byron has other stories of this nature at http://robeo.cjb.net/.

More dog names:

• From "GreenJeanz": "How about 'Prozac'? Or 'Wonton'? Here are some more: 'Chapalalooskkadoi.' 'Mashed Patooties.' And last but not least, 'Moo Cow.'"

• From Dave Parker: "This has gone on long enough. You know for a fact that the only name that could possibly suit a dog of yours is 'DOG!' Now post this in the journal and spend pages explaining the inside joke."

Thanks Dave. I really appreciate that.

The inside joke, folks, is this. Not many years ago (something like three, I guess), I wrote a computer role playing game. It was probably the most complex programming project I've ever undertaken, because it was quite involved. It only had ASCII graphics, but I managed to get a 3D view of the maze working, and I had ASCII pictures of all the monsters. (No, don't expect this to appear on RinkWorks -- I don't think it would port to the web very well.) At any rate, the second group of characters I played through had a leader named "Dog." For whatever reason, every time Dog nailed somebody in combat, I'd shout, "DOG!" That's it. That's the entirety of the inside joke. There's nothing more to say.

Sigh.

The new online game Enchanted Forest was released today. I'm particularly interested in the competitive aspect of it. All scores are recorded, so you can browse your own scores to see how you're progressing and/or browse the high scores to see how you fare against everybody else.

At any rate, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the history of this game. Like Fantasy Quest, featured on Adventure Games Live, its original incarnation was as a BASIC program that used ASCII graphics. The trees were represented by 'T's (and, later, one of those extended ASCII characters that looks like a | and ~ mashed together), the spaces were represented by periods, and the player was represented by an 'X'. I made some use of color (as now, blue to show where you've been), but it was fairly restrictive. Commands were typed in using quick commands ("N," "E," "S," "W," or "QUIT") as were the answers to all questions. The first drafts (circa 1990) had only one level. Later drafts (still circa 1990) had five levels. This new web-based version again has only one level (the game is too long, especially when played over the web, with five separate levels) but adds in "level boosters" to escalate the stakes.

The BASIC version was written while I was in eleveth grade in high school. I was one of about six people who took a high school level computer programming class. The class wasn't high on the list of the school's priorities back then, so it was not offered during regular school hours. Instead, it was offered an hour before school officially started. It was fun going in early when the school was mostly empty. The neat thing was that the teacher let us play around with the machines as long as we got our regular work done first. There'd usually be an assignment of some sort, which we'd whip out fairly quickly (most of us learned BASIC on our own prior to this anyway), and then we'd spend not only the rest of the class period playing around but also the time between the end of class and when school started for real. During those hours, I threw together this game, and I ended up getting most of the people in the class to play it, too. It was fun, because I received instant feedback from people as they were playing the game. I got to hear their cries of victory and their wails of defeat, and I got to bound from one player to another to see how the latest games were going. It was tweaked and refined almost continuously for a while, and I kept adding new things to find.

Writing Adventure Games Live got me excited about making online games, and I knew I wanted to do more. The funny thing, though, is that I don't think I ever intentionally decide to port Enchanted Forest to the web. I just kind of fell into it. Late last month I started toying with what it would take to write Enchanted Forest for the web, and my exploration never quite stopped. It just suddenly ended up being a project I was actively pursuing. I started out porting the game more or less faithfully, right down to implementing the five separate levels the original game had. I was pretty much all done last Monday and was tentatively planning to release it the next day when playtesting made it evident that the five level version just wasn't going to fly. So I took an extra day to drop it to one level and add level boosters, then took the opportunity to tweak the board generation routines and so forth to improve the gameplay, then add a couple new rare things to find. I'm much happier with this version of it.

So that's pretty much the story of the game. I hope the gamers among you will find it fun.

Another favorite curse word:

• From "Snibor Eoj": "'Grep!' (Yes, as in the UNIX command.) Sure, you may not think it's a curse word. But it really should be, shouldn't it? It just sounds like an expletive."

May I say that I've had better answers to this question here than Inside the Actor's Studio ever gets?

I've had several suggestions for dog names, and I thought up another one myself. What do you think of "Indigestion" for a dog name? Anyway, here are more:

• From "Salvador Dali": "As much as I like 'Bursitis,' I think 'Quixote' is a cool name. There's nothing like naming your pet canine after an insane literary character from the 1600s, right?"

• From Stephen K.: "'Snook' ('Snooky' would make a fine pet name). 'Poochy' (the pro-active rappin' dog from The Simpsons). 'PaRappa' (the pro-active rappin' dog from PaRappa the Rapper). 'Sanguine.' 'Grasshopper' (then you could change the discussion to Grasshopper-related things more often). 'Stinky.' Hey, you could have the next Market Game Prize be the dog gets named after the winner. 'Issachar' or 'Stephen' would both be good names, though I think 'Ibelieveicanbuy' might be a mouthful. Alex, which is my dog's name, works fine. Actually, her full name is 'Alexandria the Great,' but that's just for formal occasions, like when we hold the meetings planning solar system domination (none of this world-only junk; we think big). 'Gnomey' the gnome dog. Quite frankly I don't know why you'd possibly choose that one -- I just like gnomes."

• From Cindy E.: "Actually I have a dog named 'Blue.' What's great about the name are the commands I taught her. For instance, the command 'Sit' is 'Berry,' 'Stay' is 'Muffin,' 'Drop' (to lie down) is 'Pancake.' So sit-stay is 'Blueberry Muffin.' Sit-drop is 'Blueberry Pancake.' And so on."

• From Joseph S.: "I'd have to pick 'Starbucks.' It has that rugged, outdoors-y, adventurous sort of feel to it that dogs named 'Buck' generally have, except more so. Also, it reminds me of coffee."

Answers to the reader question, "What is your favorite curse word?" are listed below:

• From "Skunk": "'@#$*!'."
• From Jim E.: "'!^%#@'."
• From Matthew T. R.: "'&!!$@*@'."
• From "Moe": "'!@*#$&', because it's applicable to so many situations."
• From James O.: "'@@*$^-bag'. I don't even know what it means, but it sounds cool."

Ok, so none of the answers above are actually real. I wanted people to send me answers I could censor, hence obliterating the whole point of this question, but the only one who actually did that was quoting Nathan Lane's answer to the question on Inside the Actor's Studio. Here it is:

• From Patrick R.: "Nathan Lane said it best when he answered this question. To paraphrase: '@*!#$. That's really the best one there is, isn't it? That and @%!@$^%. Now if you can call someone a @*!#$ing @%!@$^%...'"

The answer from my associate (I've always wanted to say that -- it's almost as cool as saying, "I'm sorry. I have to take this call from my AGENT," which, by the way, is the subject of an I Think rant written more by my ASSOCIATE than me.) is one I didn't have to censor at all, although it looks like I did. But he meant literally this:

• From Dave Parker: "My favorite curse word is #@$! because it is so versatile. You can say '#@$! you!' or 'You son of a #@$!' or 'Blow it out your #@$!.' It's the best curse word there is."

The rest of the answers require no editorial comments from me, so here they are:

• From Brad J.: "'Expletive.' It's usable in polite company, but, with nough force behind it, can be a very satisfying curse. If said properly, even people who don't know what it means will understand that you are cursing."
• From Tyler: "'Bugger,' because I can use it as a adjective, a verb, or an interjection. For example, 'You bugger!', 'Bugger off, you!', or just, 'Bugger!' Not only is it multi-purpose, but it sounds refined due to the British overtones."
• From "Scheherazade": "'Curses!' It covers all of the curses and their euphemisms, yet it is still appropriate for all occasions."

That's the last of the Inside the Actor's Studio questions I'm going to ask here. There are one or two others, but I don't think they yield very interesting answers, so I'll skip them.

Continuing with brainstorming for dog names, I thought up a few more:

• Oleo
• Eggplant "Eggie" Parmesan
• Dishwater
• Aorta

Yet in spite of these suggestions, I'm still leaning towards "Bursitis." Anybody got any better ideas? (I've received a couple so far, which I'll post soon.) Send me email.

Darleen and I would like to get a dog sometime within the next couple years (we're not in a position where we can keep one now), so naturally the pressure is on to think up a name for this dog before it's too late. We're deciding between Aquafresh and Bursitis. Anybody got any other ideas?

While the answers to yesterday's readers are trickling in, here's some answers from Shelley T. that I didn't post earlier because I misfiled her mail.

Favorite sound?

• "Voices. I especially like hearing the murmuring of voices in the dining room after a big dinner when I'm curled up and drowsing on the couch in the other room. Must be a childhood comfort or something."

Least favorite word?

• "I couldn't think of a least favorite word. Perhaps 'dread' would be a good choice. [It] makes my blood run cold, but it describes what I want to say, so I still like it."

Answers to the reader question, "What profession might you like to have other than your own?" follow:

• From Everett K.: "Space Station Janitor and All-Around Gofer."

• From "Ginkgo": "Probably a linguist or professional translator. I've always loved languages. Or maybe professional musician. Or a professional bird. That would be cool, to live my life as a mockingbird or something. But I don't have the genes for that, let alone the talent or training!"

• From "Faux Pas": "I'm an aspiring cartoonist who just happens to work as a web site designer. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to cartoon and haven't had a chance to to get enough material to send off to syndicators. I'd love to be able to actually have that be my real profession. See also: Actors who are really waiters."

• From Patrick R.: "Game designer, as if you can't tell from my web site."

Patrick also has a straggling answer to a previous reader question, "What is a sound or noise you hate?"

• "Rubbing two glass marbles together. You get a similar effect from counter-rotating two cylindrical glasses against each other. Fingernails on a chalkboard doesn't bother me, nor does a fork against a plate, but this does."

The next reader question: "What is your favorite curse word?"

Today is the one year anniversary of RinkWorks. (At-A-Glance Film Reviews has been around since Fall 1996, and The Apogee FAQ has been around in text form only prior to that, but that's it.) On December 8, 1997, RinkWorks came online with only At-A-Glance Film Reviews, Book-A-Minute SF/F, and The Apogee FAQ, and coming soon notices for The Everett Kaser Software FAQ and Computer Stupidities. The Filmmaker's Exam appeared as the first featurette soon after RinkWorks opened. However, it wasn't until April 8 that RinkWorks got its own domain name. Luckily for me, by purest coincidence this was literally days after Internic announced a $35-per-year rate drop in the registration of domain names.

Continuing with the previous string of reader questions, one of the questions in the series is "What is a profession you would least like to have?" We already covered that one last month, but another question in the series is "What profession other than the one you have might you also like to try?" So that's today's reader question. Send me email.

Answers to the most recent reader question, "What is a sound or noise you hate?" follows:

• From Everett K.: "The voice of TV's Roseanne."

• From "scArA": "A fork scraping against a plate, especially a Pfaltzgraff one."

• From Tyler: "I hate the sound my dog makes when she whines. It's driving me to the madhouse."

• From Andy J.: "Nothing on the face of this planet is worse than that really high pitched whine of a mosquito at 2:35 in the morning as it lands on your ear and bites. This is the most horrible sound ever to exist."

I really relate to the mosquito answer. The maddening part about it is when they're whining in your ear, you can't see them -- so you wave or swat at where you think it's hovering, and somehow it never does any good. And sooner or later you make the mistake of swatting your ear, which starts it ringing. Ugh!

I saw Enemy of the State last night. I recommend it. The first preview they aired was for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and I am proud of myself, because I had the strength to bury my face. So now I have heard the trailer but not actually seen it. I refuse to see it before I see the movie, because although I hear it does not give more plot away than what common knowledge already covers, it has to give away certain things about the look and feel of the movie. You see a scene in the trailer, and during the movie you're trying to figure out how the movie is going to get to that scene. I hate that, and I don't want to do that with Star Wars. Plus I don't want the trailer to get me all excited five months before the movie's released. My wife Darleen saw the trailer. She said C3PO and Yoda look funny.

A straggling answer to the reader question, "What is your least favorite word?" follows:

• From "scArA": "My least favorite word? Check the first edition of 'The Book of Lists,' on page 160, under 'The 13 Longest Words in the English Language,' and you will find this entry:

  Longest word #1: (3,600 letters)
  A chemical name describing bovine NADP-specific glutamate dehydrogenase, which contains 500 amino acids.

  (Of course "dehydrogenase" is a pretty bad word in itself. It can be used to describe the mayonnaise that astronauts take with them into space.)"

Any other answers?

Answers to the reader question, "What is a sound or noise you love?" follow:

• From "Marli' Ni'tharn": "The sound of snow falling [and] the sound of a modem connecting."

• From "scArA": "Anything that's ever appeared in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, especially any double take noise (vr-vr-vr-vr-vr-vr-vr), any head shaking noise (de-de-de-de-de-de-de and the xylophone one) and that mysterious 'mmwomp' noise that is often used with disappointing or bad things. If you don't know what I mean, buy Rhino's Hanna-Barbera SFX CD. At a close second is the sound that a Polaroid SX-70 camera makes when you take a picture with it. It's kind of a 'wee-wvrvrrrr' noise, it's hard to describe. If you've ever owned one, you know that they're good cameras."

• From Everett K.: "Standing outside the house on a perfectly still, quiet morning...no wind, no traffic, the world moments away from unfurling from slumber, breathing the crystal clear air...as three Canadian geese fly directly overhead, 20 feet up, and ALL you hear is the beat of their wings on the air.... Maybe it was the moment, but that sound will echo within me forever."

Once again, a fantastic array of answers. If there are any other answers out there, send them along. In the meantime, readers, what is a sound or noise you hate?

The Site Market Game is off, and the trick this time is that you have to lose money rather than earn it. Register today!

The previous two reader questions were, "What is your favorite and least favorite word?" A few days ago, I posted some answers to the "favorite word" question. Since, I've received more answers to this question as well as answers to the "least favorite word" question. I'm going to post them, and if there are any more answers to either of these questions out there, please don't hesitate to send them.

Favorite words:

• From Joseph S.: "'Quantum.' Because no matter how you use it, you sound smart. (Doubly so with 'quanta.')"

• From Snook D.: "'Sanguine.'"

• From "Stormy": "Fun question. 'Sesquipadaliant.' Also, not so much a word but a way of saying a word: 'Sustenance,' [said] with a lithp."

Least favorite words:

• From Joseph S.: "'Taxes.'"

• From Everett K.: "'Anxious' for two reasons: because it is so closely tied to the root cause of most suffering (fear) and because almost everyone misuses it (using it when they should use 'eager,' an almost opposite state of being."

• From Daniel S.: "'Crisis.' I don't know why, I don't know how, but it makes me feel like I've done something wrong every time I say it."

• From "GreenJeanz": "'Phlegm.' I hate phlegm. Blech. Nasty word, nasty substance."

• From "Faux Pas": "Least favorite word? It's got to be something used in meetings. I'm lucky where I work -- when our group gets in a meeting, we don't use the corporate buzzwords. Even the big cheese of our group, the one with the window office, knows how to use clear, concise English to get his point across. But whenever someone from another department comes in, we have to shift our paradigm to visualize the meta-picture, and yeck, I can't even satirize it, I hate it that much. But I have a special place of hate for 'synergy.' That boardroom bastardization has escaped and is being used in the real world. Ick."

• From Patrick R.: "'Pretentious.' I have utter distate for pretentious people, and I'm afraid that it has tainted my opinion of a word that I might like otherwise. Are you going to ask us what our favorite sound is next?"

As a matter of fact, Patrick, you're quite correct. Congratulations for being the first to recognize (and tell me about it, anyway) the series of questions used on the great interview show Inside the Actor's Studio, which is broadcast on the Bravo television network in the evening several times weekly. I'll talk more about the show and the questionnaire later, but for now, readers, could you tell me, please, what is a sound or noise that you love?