Bullshit, LLC.

Yesterday I spent a significant amount of time trying to find blogs to follow. I ended up going through other blogs I've read sporadically, reading who THEY followed, and then adding them to my list.

It's somewhat of a relief to find that I'm not alone in all of this. I find myself identifying with everyone I added. I read through about two months' of One in a Blue Moon DC's posts, and was like, "Hey... that's so like ME!" I find myself in the same $#&*ing predicament all time -- meet perfectly nice guys, go out on dates with them... and then I find myself not attracted to them at all. It sucks.

And then, of course, there's the everyday stuff. I had to laugh at Onward and Upward's most recent post, because I through a similar situation a few days ago. Last year I borrowed a Macbook from work that I have yet to return. (It's cool, they know about it.) No one really cares that I've essentially commandeered it, because it's 5 years old and we have a slew of nearly-new Macbook Pros that everyone else prefer to use. Considering my own personal computer is coming up on 11 years old, a 5 year old laptop that's barely been used is considered a huge upgrade.

Anyway, the downside is that the operating system on the work Macbook (why is it that I keep typing Mackbook? Durh.) is considered a legacy system, and I couldn't even install Google Chrome on it. After minimal persuasion, my work recently ponied up the $20 to upgrade the OS. Sweeeeet.

Not-so-fast. The hard drive on this Mac is encrypted, and I couldn't figure out how to load the "unlocker" (for lack of a better term) before the DVD booted in order to install the OS. I had absolutely no luck finding documentation online for the encryption software, because they required registration to their site in order to search the help files.

Being pissed off enough that I couldn't immediately install the new OS, I registered myself using a fake name, and wrote in a fake company. I assumed it was an automated system that would just approve my login and I'd be on my merry way.

The next morning I get a real human being-written email from the encryption software people:

Dear Mr. Frobnitz,
   We were unable to verify your user registration using the company information you provided. Could you please check and resend us your information? For reference, here's what you provided:

First name: Ronald
Last name: Frobnitz
Company name: This is Bullshit.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Dan S.
Customer Support

Oops.

For the record, I found the documentation on a university website before receiving the email and discovered I had to decrypt the hard drive before installing the OS. Easiest way to decrypt? Uninstall the encryption software. Is that really so secretive that you felt the need to guard it behind a registration firewall? Nooo.