The Thoughts of Cory LaViska

Cory S.N. LaViska
November 23, 2008

I wonder what sees in me
Something that I still can’t see

A bright and charming, somewhat shy,
Introverted kind of guy?

I wonder why she always prays
For bright and sunny summer days

When all I want is cold and rain
A winter, bleak, and full of pain

I wonder why she always dreams
Of what this thing we call “life” means

To me it’s just the way things are
I never cared to think that far

I wonder why she holds me tight
On every day and every night

Even though I hold her back,
I must admit my grip is slack

I wonder if she knows inside
About the things I try to hide

All the thoughts, the way I feel
And all the scars that will never heal

I wonder if she’d hate me for
All the things I’ve done before

And even if she did forgive,
Is that a life that I could live?

I wonder if this could be real
Her smile, her love, the way I feel

Or maybe things aren’t what they seem
And this is just another dream

My response to a survey regarding my recent experience with Hewlett Packard’s customer service team:

I had a terrible experience. I called to speak with someone regarding my order and ended up with a crash course in Hindi. The guy, whose name was unpronounceable, was completely useless to communicate with an English-speaking consumer. Of course, the product shipped incorrectly because I felt that eating the $15 cost of the disks would be far less irritating than dealing with Ackbar.

Needless to say, I ordered the restore disks because I’m selling both of my Compaq laptops and, after this nonsensical experience, I’m 99% positive I’m going to go with Dell for my new one. At least when I called their support for my Desktop PC, I spoke to someone who was familiar with my native language, which I think is important when you need to communicate with a company for any reason.

Thanks for having great products, but I’ll pass on the cheapened, out-sourced help that not only sucks, but ruins your company’s reputation for being a quality “American” corporation.

Your former HP consumer,

Cory S.N. LaViska

*Some Assembly required

By Cory S.N. LaViska
September 5, 2008

Inside your head and all through your mind
There’s a broken dream that you left behind
It comes in and goes out, but it never leaves
You hide and you struggle, you suffer and grieve

Face to face, but you’re looking away
Pretending it’s night when it’s damn well the day
Refusing to go back because maybe it hurts
You dig yourself deeper, just making it worse

Accidents, apologies, regrets and mistakes
All the memories that made your heart ache
Are left there to live and dwell in your head
While they eat you alive and throw you up dead

But you’re stubborn and still and you won’t even talk
You just gaze at the stars and sneer at the clock
Like you have all the time a man possibly could
To tell her you love her, like you probably should

When you sign up for online classes, you do so via the Internet. That means there are no registration lines and no bitchy ladies telling you the registration form hasn’t been filled out properly. There are no physical classrooms to show up late to, which means there are no boring lectures that you can fall asleep to. Exams are administered online, which means you can take them bare-assed at two in the morning while listening to Queen. Online classes are schweet!

There is, however, one thing that I really hate about them: the obligatory message board. This is where you answer questions to assignments and respond to classmates about what you’re learning in the course. This sucks because part of your grade usually relies on responding to these people, whom you’ve never met, don’t care to meet, and won’t ever talk to again unless, of course, you're afforded the luxury of seeing them in future online classes. You lucky dog.

Let’s think about this. There are three reasons why I take courses online:

• I can “attend” class whenever I want
• I can, for the most part, work at my own pace
• I generally don’t like associating with the people in my class

Perhaps if conversations on the message board were more meaningful than “Great job, Larry! Your post was really insightful” and “Thanks for pointing that out, Cathy, I didn’t think of that before”, I would be more apt to participate. I don’t think I’ve ever finished reading one of these posts without my IQ dipping into the negatives for at least a moment.

I know that’s a pretty mean thing to say, but everyone else in the class has to feel the same way; otherwise there would be more effort and meaning put into their responses.