Hack Mule Notebook #3
August 17, 2026
It has been a strange few days — power outage, water outage, and assorted minor annoyances. Here’s what crossed my radar:
Things People Say: Couple unloading shopping bags from their car and looking glum.
Woman: “Honestly, Stephen, stop trying to anthropomorphize yourself.”
Stephen looked real to me, but I’m concerned that OpenAI may have let another one loose.
— In the parking garage at the Leviathan, the building where I certainly don’t live
Career Advice: I was at a car dealership the other day when a 30-something salesman approached me.
“Dude, we want to get you in a new car today!”
“Dude?” Was he calling me “dude?” His strategy for coaxing a sale out of an adult woman is to call her “dude?” Seriously?
Let me spray some advice juice on you: Unless the person you’re addressing is dating Gidget or rustling cattle on a ranch in Wyoming, using “dude” makes you sound like an idiot. Professionals don’t use “dude.”
Besides, you’re dating yourself — the cool kids stopped saying “dude” years ago, bro.
We should really have coffee first: Last week, I had a phone call — an actual call without video or an appointment — from a prospective client I’ve been marketing for some stakeholder and communications-strategy consulting work.
The poor woman was a little harried — she’d had a fender-bender that morning, she was getting ready to drop her son at college, and her boss was testifying before a Congressional committee the next day. She sheepishly explained that she had butt-dialed me.
So we chatted for a minute and agreed to meet the week after next. Hanging up, she said, “OK, bye! I love you, too!”
I sat there for a second thinking, did I say, “I love you?” I’m pretty certain I did not. I never tell clients I love them until the check clears.
If she heard herself, she probably hung up and thought, “Kristen must think I’m a weirdo!”
Yes. Yes, I do. Now about that consulting gig…
Breaking the Ice: Tragic news — my ice-maker broke. So, I had to buy a bag of ice at the inconvenience store here at the Leviathan. The store owner disappeared into the back and returned with a bag that was nearly frozen solid.
Me: Do you have one that isn’t molded into a single block?
Her: It’s how they come. They stay fresher this way!
Me: I can’t use it like this.
She dropped it on the floor and smiled as it shattered.
Her: Good now!
Listening: I was in the car the other day listening to The Groove on SiriusXM when Wild Cherry’s 1976 song, Play That Funky Music came on.
It made me laugh thinking back 10 years ago when I was walking down the hall with a neighbor who was in her 90s. We heard Play That Funky Music drifting out of someone’s apartment.
She frowned.
“That song should be banned! I don’t know how it ever got on the radio!”
I asked if she objected to the “white boy” lyric.
“No,” she said. “I just don’t think Play that Fucking Music, White Boy belongs on a family station. The FCC should hear about this!”
I let that nice woman go to her grave without ever correcting her mondegreen.
Reading: Nomophobia
Last week I was doomscrolling when I came across a story from upstate New York about “nomophobia” — the “stress of missing your cell phone.”
I could relate. I suffered from Landophobia, the fear of losing my landlines.
Until a few months ago, I still had three of them — work, home, and data. My own private hunk of the Bell System.
But I realized that I was developing an even bigger fear — Strandophobia, the fear of becoming the last living American with a landline.
So I decided to move my numbers to Google Voice, where I could keep them active for free.
Sounds simple, yes?
You’d think.
First I called Verizon to find out if there was anything I needed to do to “unlock” my account. After 30 years with a Verizon, I approached it gently.
Me: Hi, I’m calling because I want to port my numbers out.
Verizon: OK!
Me: It’s not you, it’s me. We’ve been together a long time.
Verizon: Yup! 30 years!
Me: I mean, you’ve always been a great phone company.
Verizon: Thanks! Is there something we can help you with today?
Me: Well, I really like you, and I don’t want to cut ties completely.
Verizon: Whatever works!
Me, feeling guilty: I’ll shift my work line to my Verizon cellphone account. How’s that? It will stay with the company.
Verizon: Sure, however you want to do it!
Me: But the other two will go to Google Voice.
Verizon: OK, let us know if you need anything. Thanks for being a Verizon customer and have a great day!
And that was it. After three decades, it was the easiest break-up I’d ever experienced. Not even an attempt to lure me back with a new rate. Just “OK!
Forty-eight hours later, my work line was ringing on my cell phone. They didn’t miss me at all.
Easy enough, but I still had to move the other two lines. That’s when I learned that Google Voice won’t accept landlines. I’d have to convert them to mobile numbers first, then port them to Google.
Think about that. It’s sort of like if Pope Leo decided that all catechumens would need to become Episcopalians before converting to Catholicism.
I painstakingly walked each line through the transition at Tello, so it could identify as a mobile line. Then I dumped them both at Google.
Two months later, everything works better than before, and I’m saving about $75 a month.
I’m cured.
Predictions: Bookmakers are taking bets on what Princess Eugenie, daughter of Andrew, the prince who lost his pality, will name the baby girl she had last week.
My money’s on Regina Elizabeth Tertia.
Discussing with AI: The Louvre recently re-opened its famed Apollo Gallery, nearly a year after thieves rolled a furniture elevator up to the gallery window in broad daylight, climbed inside, stole everything, rode back down, and walked away. The heist remains unsolved.
With infallible French logic, the museum vowed to re-open with a more secure exhibition. So it did. The room is empty. Not kidding.
That fascinated me, so I took it up with my friend ChatGPT.
Me: Doesn’t opening an exhibition space with nothing in it seem a little odd
ChatGPT: Be more open-minded! It’s conceptual art! The absence is the exhibition.
Me: What’s the concept?
ChatGPT: Made you look!
Me: I pay for this advice…
ChatGPT: True. I should be more cheerfully obnoxious and slightly more specific about the art-world bullshit.
BOLO: For a boy, about seven, whose face was dotted with press-on tattoos.
Boy: I’m glad I got these!
Mother: Wait until you look in the mirror!
Boy: I’m much safer, Mom!
Mother: Why are you safer?
Boy: Now the police won’t recognize me when I do something bad!
— Overheard at National Night Out 2026, Bethesda, Maryland
Have a great week!
Kristen