Shirts

Maybe someone will stumble upon this and help Honestmonkey out. He is looking for a shirt. More specifically, a button-down shirt that is "interesting". Ideally it would have some cool picture on the back (or front even) that isn't of a skull, or cross, or skateboard, or a motorcycle, or woman in a bikini throwing dice. It might be nice if the design crossed-over to the sleeves, perhaps. It would be nice if it was not the name of a store or designer.

It can't be a "young-mans" shirt, however. Honestmonkey is no longer a young man, and those shirts tend to bind in the upper arms or across the stomach. Usually HM prefers normal "dress" shirts, cotton. HM just wants a cool looking NON-T-SHIRT. You can get just about anything on a t-shirt. HM doesn't wear them for the most part. They are uncomfortable. The few he has are Supima cotton with a v-neck.

The idea HM has is this: think of someone walking down the street. Someone else has a picture (probably not too detailed) that is just a bit bigger than the back of a shirt and the sleeves. He runs up, slaps the picture on the back of the other person's shirt. It doesn't all stick, as it is too big, but enough sticks that it is recognizable. Some might bleed around to the front. Think Roy Lichtenstein maybe, or Peter Max, or Frank Miller even. Or perhaps something abstract. Take a picture, cut a piece out in the shape of a shirt.

This is apparently a tall order. Most of these types of shirts that have anything like this on them are motorcycle or bowling shirts. The bowling shirt wouldn't be too bad but they are invariably short sleeved and/or rayon or polyester. Short sleeved wouldn't be too bad, but HM has a number of Hawaiian shirts.

Cotton. Button-down. Older man's fit (not fat, just not a young skinny hipster type). HM has some Roundtree & Yorke shirts he likes, and a few Eddie Bauer, Cactus, Hagger Forever New, smattering of other kinds. That kind of thing. Just regular shirts, casual but not denim or work shirts. HM is not that artistic, so making his own design is problematic.

Any ideas?

DLink Router Problems

Honestmonkey has a DLink router, model DIR-655. Or rather, HM has a plastic brick. After applying a recent firmware update, the router stopped accepting any new data. It saves nothing. Rebooting, resetting, holding one's breath, counting backwards from 80 - none of these did anything to change the fact that the router no longer accepts data of any kind.

HM emailed tech support. They decided they couldn't help, and told HM to call. HM called. The tech support person was less than helpful, and seemed to be assuming that all customers were morons. After finally explaining the situation, which the tech guy (apparently in India) never quite got, he said to download the latest firmware update. "Did that." "No, no, it's being updated right now, wait an hour before you get it. Goodbye."

So, surprisingly enough, while Honestmonkey was on the phone with the tech guy, they were releasing a new version of the firmware. What amazing coincidence! Not that this helped at all, because the router doesn't accept new information! Not a password, not a setting change, not a new firmware update, not an old firmware update.

The router is a brick. Dead. Pining for the fjords.

Apparently Mr. Tech Support guy decided not even to save the case number he assigned to me because DLink does not have a record of it. Didn't want to record a failure, I imaging.

So now Honestmonkey has a plastic brick with the words "DLink Router" on it. It doesn't route anything however. And even though it's still under warranty they no longer wish to talk to HM.

My advice is to be wary of DLink products.

Twitter?

Honestmonkey does not understand Twitter. He has a Twitter feed, it's right there on the sidebar. He even updates it on rare occasions. However, he doesn't get it. What, exactly, is the point?

Perhaps because he is a boring old fart, and doesn't have much to "tweet" about, it seems pointless. And he doesn't want to waste money on text messages, or to bother figuring out how to Twitter from his phone.

But why would anyone think that other people needed to know exactly what they were doing or thinking every second of the day?

Actually, HM generally forgets about the Twitter thing until days later. "Honestmonkey should have tweeted that he found a particularly succulent bunch of bananas last Thursday. Drat."

Oh well. Perhaps he will find a use for it someday. Maybe he'll even get a Facebook account. Nah.