Jehovah and Hades: Chapter 4 Complete

Yes, I have finally completed Chapter 4 of Jehovah and Hades. I won't be posting a preview here. I'm eventually going to put the book up for sale on the Kindle so I can't give away the whole story here on my blog. :-P




Other than that, I just have one thought for the coming weeks. Be nice to the retail employees on Black Friday. Realize that most of them are working (in the case of Best Buy starting at midnight) for ridiculously long hours and everyone in the store is going to act like a jerk. They were also taken away from their families early on Thanksgiving to go to a store and serve pushy people who want to buy products that generally have no margin. Also realize that if you threaten to not buy something, they could literally yell back into the line, "Who wants this?" and have twenty people respond. Your couple hundred dollars with an overall five dollars of margin isn't worth it.

I also hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and pleasant holiday season.

Attack of the Mailer Daemon

Disclaimer: This story has nothing to do with Geek Squad. I was helping an old lady that I know with her computer problems.




So earlier today I went to help an old lady with some computer issues she told me she has been having. I try to be a good neighbor when I get opportunities to do stuff like that. She's in her mid-80s and has figured out a lot on her own.

When I got there, she had a list of ten things she wanted fixed on her computer. They were things like "when I type emails, for some reason they delete lines of text or close themselves." I had her type up an email and figured out that her wrists keep brushing the touchpad of her laptop when she types. She has a wireless mouse so I disabled the touchpad for her.

One of her problems towards the end of the list was that this guy kept harassing her via email and blocked her emails from going through. We looked in her inbox and she showed me a few messages from the mailer-daemon. I was about to explain what was going on but she wasn't done explaining the problem and how much of a jerk this guy was so I continued to listen.

Apparently this mailer-daemon guy blocked her emails any time she wanted to send something out to her daughter. She was very frustrated and had sent him six emails in response begging him to let her emails through. She let me read them. I really wish I had a copy of all six. Basically she called the mailer-daemon out for being a jerk, for not delivering her email, for taking advantage of a poor, old lady, and for depriving her daughter of the autobiography she was trying to send as an attachment. (She was also very worried that the mailer-daemon jerk had a copy of her autobiography now and could potentially publish it before she did). The last email she sent even threatened the mailer-daemon with the wrath of a just god who always protected old ladies.

At this point I had to stop her. I was able to keep a straight face somehow. I explained that the mailer-daemon wasn't a person. The mailer-daemon is just an automated response tool that sends you an email when it can't reach the email address you were trying to send to. I asked her if she was 100% certain that her daughter's email address was correct. She was. I then sent a test email from her email account to mine. It went through fine with no mailer-daemon response. At this point I asked her if she would call her daughter and ask her for her email address. After a while, I finally convinced her that the only possible option left was that the email address we were sending to was wrong. She called her daughter and found out that her daughter did have a different email address and had never even had one through comcast (where we were trying to send to). We finally got her autobiography through to her daughter, who confirmed over the phone that she had received it.

So after a good laugh, (I know... I'm a bad person) I decided to look up the origin of mailer-daemons. Apparently daemon comes from demon when its defined as "a useful and helpful spirit." You can look into the full origin of the term here

Jehovah and Hades: Chapter 3 Preview

Chapter 3 is finally finished. I'll give the first three paragraphs here on my blog (keep in mind that I am going to sell this on the Kindle when it's finished, so this is probably the last giveaway). I'll begin work on Chapter 4 some time next week as I have a paper and two mid terms to get through this week.

JEHOVAH AND HADES

BY: RANDALL J. MORRIS

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Randall J. Morris
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or book reviews.

CHAPTER THREE (PARTIAL)

       Hades felt outmatched. There were 12 attack robots surrounding the room that powered on and started moving towards the brothers when Jehovah powered on the lights. “You better shut most of those off soon; I doubt this knife is gonna do much here.” “You scared Hades?” Jehovah asked, not looking up from the computer but allowing a grin to spread across his face. “I need a while and talking to me is distracting. Go smash some stuff like you said you wanted to.” Hades again scanned the room for anything he had missed before. He realized that his salvation was lying on the floor not far from Jehovah: his axe.

            Hades’ axe was one of a kind. For his tenth birthday, his father had tracked down the bearded axe of Erik the Red which was used in his conquest of Greenland and then by Leif Erikson in his voyages to North America. Jacob had experts confirm its authenticity discreetly using the Icelandic sagas and other records before attending the auction. He then spent a small fortune to acquire the axe. It would have cost him even more if anyone bidding had known that the axe was a famous piece of Viking history. It was another two years before Hades could fully lift and use the axe in combat, but he had practiced with it every day since then. It was the one weapon Hades refused to let Jehovah modify in any way.

            Hades tucked the machete into his belt and picked up his axe. An axe this perfect needed both hands for perfect utilization. Hades could think of only one effective strategy for this situation. He was going to find the weakest attack robot, take it down, and then use its carcass as a shield to protect Jehovah long enough for him to shut the others down.

So that's all you get. Let me know what you think and I will keep everyone posted on the progress of the book and when I finally release it.