last few days

so where was i? who knows these days. the last few days have been pretty busy. today was a busy day at work, but nothing overly exciting. just busy. the low-light being a meeting that i prolly didn't even need to attend which wasted nearly 45mins i could have been doing other things that would have been more productive.

so that backs me up to yesterday.

in a word.

SUCKED.

i got a VM from RB which said i had to goto SW from here because there was a high-pitched noise coming from the server room that was generating a large number of complaints. and while there, check out SS's PC as she can't seem to connect to the network.

the high-pitched noise turned out to be one of the batteries in our brand new UPS (installed friday night) seems to have failed. fortunatley, everything plugged into it still works, but i can't move stuff to the working ones w/o taking the entire office offline. would have only taken a few mins, but i can hear the complaints already. fortunately, i was able to mute the offending UPS, and we'll wait before deciding what to do.

so that left me SS's PC. which when i hardcoded an IP addy, it worked fine, but shortly after sorting that out, there was a laptop that was doing the same thing. and then my laptop started doing it as well. my wireless was working for some reason, but if i plugged a cable in, it died. i spent the next few hours trying to figure it out. after looking at the event log and researching, it was looking like DHCP was corrupt and i might have to rebuild it.

so i went to lunch.

after getting back, and doing some more research, it looked to be related to a lack of diskspace on the C: drive of the server (running at about 3MB free - doh) as it happened, the arcserve log was a whopping 185MB so i nuked it and that helped a lot. after stopping the DHCP service, realizing that i didn't have notes on what i needed to do, restarting it actually seemed to fix the DHCP problem. only i didn't discover it until 20 mins later when i looked at the event log.

well, i guess that's a good thing for me, esp if my role is going to shift more into the network/server support side of things and away from the laptops (at this point in time, that is a big WOO HOO!) so i learned something yesterday: LOOK AT THE FUCKING EVENT LOG! it may be somewhat cryptic, but it's a good starting point.

go figure.

sunday was a grey day, but i had dim sum with M, F and F's fried S. it was at a place i hadn't been before, but it was good. altho they need to have a better cart rotation schedule. the same carts kept going by us. M really wanted some of the turnip cake, and it wasn't until we were about to pay the check when she finally came by us. afterwards, we headed over to the Colonial Theater to see Little Shop of Horrors. F's boss got them from the Globe but she couldn't go, so she offered them to people in the office, and F managed to get them. so we had 4 orchestra seat tickets. they were last row orchestra seats (in front of the soundboard) that that's ok. we enjoyed it, and it was a lot of fun. plus Audrey II was cool :-)

so i've managed to see more legitimate thee-a-ter in the last 3 months than i have in the last 3 years.

and in reading thru an article in sunday's globe that was talking about TV and the author made an interesting point - we can read a book, but not several books at the same time (reading 1 chapter at a time) but we can while watching TV. altho he seemed to think that if it was a serial (eg: 24) where things build on previous events, he preferred to watch it on DVD. but i thought it was interesting. i like reading a single book at a time (maybe that's where i'm going wrong), yet i can keep details of a multitude of shows straight w/o getting too confused.

i wonder if it's time for me to buckle under and go tivo...i'd build my own DVR, but it's more effort than i think i'm willing to put into it right now. and i'm beginning to think that getting an xbox might be worth picking up. there are a bunch of games that i want to play, but i just don't have a powerful enuff PC, and i'm not in a position to get a new one, so something like an xbox might be a good idea for me. plus the games that i want to play have been around for a little while, so they aren't the expensive ones either. something to ponder i suppose. maybe if someone would send me an xbox (working of course, don't need the dvd plugin thing) it would help me. i'll even buy my own controllers. so xbox and associated cables. that's all i need.

Read More......

cars

saw/thought/heard a few things in the last few days about cars that i thought were interesting. you prolly won't, but that's ok. i feel like writing about it anyways.

the other night on my way home, i was waiting my turn to get onto the rotary near work which eventaully winds me on my way home and as traffic was going by, i couldn't help but chuckle at a taxi that went by that had a long bag or something caught under it. it made me think of someone walking out of a bathroom with toilet paper stuck to their shoe. i've seen stuff stuck under cars before, but this was longer than your standard plastic bag or newspaper. i thought the image was funny.

then when i got home, i could hear music that sounded like someone's cellphone ringing, so i tried to see if i could figure out where it was coming from. it took a few moments to figure out the tune but the next thing i knew, i was thinking about Wakko Warner singing the states and their capitals (it is set to the tune of Turkey In The Straw). i looked out at my landlords patio to see if that was where it was coming from and then i saw it. a ding-dong cart. an actual ding-dong cart in my neighborhood. it's been many many years since i've seen one trolling thru a neighborhood, let alone my own. the only ones i've seen in recent times are the ones that roll around where M works (apparently the one that drives past her building got yelled at for being too loud). so after a LONG 5 minutes of an annoying midi version of Turkey In The Straw, the ding-dong cart finally moved along.

my next odd car thing happened while i was headed back to work friday night, i saw an explorer pulled off to the side of the road. it looked like it had a pretty bad flat as the back end was dropped down pretty badly. so i continue along my way, not thinking a whole lot about it. i've seen cars on the side of the road before w/flats. about 1/4 mile down the road, i spot a slow up in my lane and i see people moving into other lanes and as the sea of cars parts (literally) i see a car with its blinkers on. oh great, a car is broken down in the middle of the highway. only it seems to still be moving, so i move around it and realize what it's doing - it's following a wheel as it rolls down the road. normally, i'd have a good laugh, but on wednesday afternoon, TK-8103 was telling RB and i about a time where he had something very similar happen to him one day. at least this time, these people could say where the wheel went...

yesterday morning i woke up to NPR talking about how this week GM and Ford announced financial losses for the last quarter (GM was worse off than Ford) and the person they were speaking with was saying that she thought it was quite possible that one of the big 3(tm) in detroit may go away in the future. she didn't think that cars would ever completely leave detroit, but 1 of them will probably loose, and the other 2 will play a lesser role in the automotive world. it reminded me of a paper i wrote for a class several years ago.

in a business class (i forget the name, but it was a summer class), we watched a few movies, including Wall $treet and Roger and Me. the latter if you haven't seen it is Michael Moore's attempt to speak to Roger Smith (president of GM at the time) to find out why the GM plant in flint michigan was being closed. our assignment was to explain why GM made the decision they did. i remember finding it a rather intimidating task, and after spending some time in the library trying to find anything on the subject, i was getting frustrated. (i found out i wasn't the only one having a hard time finding material.) so as the deadline drew ever closer, my frustration grew until i had a conversation with my father and brother. my brother didn't add much, but as an econ major, he was able to help clarify some things for me.

the question dad asked me was two-fold. the first was what did the plant in flint produce? (pickup trucks) the second question was what was going on at the other automakers? at the time this happened (mid-80's), what was the car of choice? it was the minivan. not a pickup truck. in 1983, the dodge caravan was introduced and it served (and continues to serve) as a big people mover. moms and dads transporting kids to soccer games, etc. a pickup isn't exactly practical for this, so the general conclusion of the discussion was that GM recognized that sales of pickups were down. there would continue to be a demand for them, but having the factory in flint open, was costing them more money than was making them. there were other factors discussed, including the influence of the japanese automakers, how the Jeep Cherokee survived being retired (referred to as being "simplified" in the article) in the early 90's (until replaced by the Jeep Liberty). Jeep was ready to retire the Cherokee, but then a new demographic came to be - the kids that were being moved about in minivans wanted cars of their own, so it was the youth market that actually saved the Cherokee.

of course, the other side of the movie is trying to find out why roger smith was getting such a big bonus (nice golden parachute) while closing plants, but it was an interesting exercise that forced me to look at things from different points of views. something i still do now, which can be a big help in understanding why some people's seemingly foolish logic may not be so foolish, unless they are penny-pinching CIO's who even tho things are good, continue their penny-pinching ways to the detrement of us little people.

Read More......

no suprise here...

TigerDirect (computer hardware supply place ala CDW) tried to sue Apple last month over the use of the name "Tiger" and their use of tiger stripes in their advertising.

suprisingly, THEY LOST.

ok, i'm not suprised. i was more suprised that they would even attempt such a silly and frivolous lawsuit.

hell, when i was reading thru the article, the court was rather impressed with the following:

Apple also entered into evidence a survey that revealed only 6% of consumers associated the name "Tiger" with TigerDirect. Meanwhile, the survey of 517 people showed that only 4 people associated the name "Tiger" with a company -- a result the Court found most interesting. Apple asserted that TigerDirect does not posses a protected family of Tiger marks, as defined by applicable trademark law, nor does it retain a valid Tiger mark for computer goods.

you know something? the first things that popped into my mind when i read that is this:

• Exxon - their logo is a tiger
  
• Tony the Tiger - don't think i need to explain this one
  
• Princeton Tigers - i have family that graduated from there, plus a pretty good lacrosse program
  

something told me this wasn't going to fly...and what about the Cincinnati Bungles?

it's times like these where i really wish that courts would fine companies for such foolish lawsuits. say $500k to $1M, and the money has to goto a general education fund that then divides the money for each state based on number of students/number of schools. this way larger states (california) receive a larger piece than smaller states (rhode island). now if all companies that files these frivolous lawsuits were fined in such a manner, short term, it would help the schools with their ongoing budget crunches...

the idea being school districts are not allowed to plan on this as an annual financial windfall, as if it were to actually work, in theory, there would be less stupid lawsuits, followed by a more efficient use of court resources, and that whole "right to a speedy trial" thing could actually happen.

Read More......

long day...

well, my day is nearly done, but i am typing to you now from our newly upgraded network, with fancy gigamajig switches that make the 1's and 0's go even faster.

of course, most users will whine like the whiney twonks they are, but at least we can say with honesty, that things are a whole hell of a lot better than they used to be. even in SW, but they'll whine even more. they always do.

my part in all this was to replace cables and reboot servers, as well as move said cables from old hardware to the new hardware. it was actually a lot more time consuming than i expected it to be, but then i wanted to do it right. there was one blip when i goofed a cable (created that nasty loop thing) but i realized my mistake pretty quickly so there was no damage. i now have a brand new (just about) switch on my desk whirring away (as does RB) so i can now do all kinds of things. like...no clue. access my server at kick ass speeds. yeah. that's the ticket.

the good thing is the one thing that i wasn't looking forward to doing, i actually didn't, but DH and i are going to discuss a time to do it in the future. this needs a little time to allow the afore mentioned twonks clean out some of their mail which some people seem to have no idea how to do. i also discovered (much to my delight) that we weren't in as bad shape as i thought we were, so that helped clear the way for me not having to do it tonight. heh. i'll just be really glad when we get a brand new exchange server...

well, i'm getting tired and i wanna go home.

Read More......

that was cool

just watched the interview of robert plant on charlie rose. very cool. they touched on all kinds of things from Zep to Mighty Rearranger, some of his favorite songs (elvis, arthur lee, brother ray (charles)), etc. well worth watching, and i'm glad i tripped over it.

Read More......

that was rude...

the UPS that is at my feet that powers my server, as well as other things like my speakers, my laptop, etc, decided to shit the bed. apparently the battery needs to be replaced, so that was a rather rude awakening. at least it happened while i was here. i'm sure someone would have freaked out had it happened in the middle of the night.

well, i'll have to see if i can get a new battery for my UPS now...

Read More......

arg...

today is too nice a day to have my ass stuck inside the office. i really can do my job outside, at least some of it...

as RB and i were walking out to the tables for lunch, i was barely outside when i proclaimed that i didn't want to go back in. *sigh*

Read More......

train whistles

are rather annoying. go figure. they are loud and obnoxious. now, i understand why they are, but that still doesn't change the fact that they are annoying.

i saw on the news the other day that my town (and a few others) had let the train whistle ban expire, or it expired and they have to renew the request w/MBTA or something. in any event, i now hear the train whistle while i'm at home, and i can imagine, just how much louder it is as you get closer to the tracks. i wonder if the town is going to request the ban be turned back on. i hope so.

Read More......

to blog or not to blog...that is the question

what should i write about today? dunno. i've been fighting a splitting headache for most of the afternoon. that's always good for a laugh.

dunno...M is on a bizynis trip to atlanta. nice city, what little i saw of it the few times i was there. i guess my biggest memory of atlanta unfortunately was tuesday morning 9/11/01. i have those thoughts posted elsewhere. but all that is rather depressing. i'd rather be depressed about something current rather than over something i had no control over. i do have other less negative memories of atlanta. the coke museum is pretty nifty. a semi-underground mall across the street from there. dinner at some italian place in buckhead that was really good (the 1st time, the 2nd time was a little lacking, presumably our expectations were a little too high the 2nd time around). arranging time to see jennkitty before she moved to the great untamed wild west. so it isn't all bad.

i hope M is having a good day at the client site. she's doing interviews for what they would like to see, and the words "reputation" "on the line" were used at dinner last night. no pressure. really, no pressure. but she and her cohort are flying back tomorrow night, so i'll be picking her up at logan. i'll have to tape lost, as i'll prolly miss some of it, but i she wants to see it too. and i won't spoil it for her this time either. the last time i taped it for her (we had meetings that night) it was the episode where boone died, and i didn't have a very high opinion of the episode. granted, it wasn't really a big suprise that boone was going to die and claire was going to have the baby, but they really could have handled it in a better way i thought.

we had a good chat last night about our day which was nice.

i still need to find my copy of Halo 8...the nifty thing is i have all 19 of them...tho i don't have the deluxe edition of Halo 8. but i'm in no rush for that. unless i can't find my copy, and then i'll start wanting it.

hmmm...what should i do for dinner tonight? now there's an important question. i currently don't have a whole lot in my fridge, in part as i haven't been to the store, but also because i've found that if i have too much food in the fridge, i either don't eat it (and it goes bad) or i'll eat too much of it. i'm trying very hard at this moderation thing and it's pretty hard. some stuff is easy, but other things are really hard.

oh, i know - diet coke with splenda = pretty good. i'll try a side by side comparison of that w/diet coke and coke to see where it falls in my soda rankings, but my first impressions of it are quite positive. hmmm...i was going to point a link to it, but the only one is to plain diet coke (which is on the label). i wonder if we are a "test market".

oooooooo.....

well, i need to get ready to leave. my day is nearly done.

Read More......

when is 24 hours not 24 hours?

when the power goes out apparently.

my usual sunday ritual goes along these lines - waking up and depending on when i wake up, determines when i head out to get my paper. i like watching Motorweek but i'll miss it sometimes if i'm out. anyways, i'll head out to pick up the globe (need my weekly opus fix, and i have the book, it rules, bill drools) and coffee (and often a muffin) from dunkin

well, today was my first morning i was going to go past the Mobil On The Run that just opened, and they were selling gas at a semi-reasonable price so i decided to feed my vee-hick-le. it's supposed to be open for 24 hours, but when i pulled up to the pump, it didn't look like it was working, so i moved to another and that didn't look like it was working, so i headed in. i proceeded to ask the girl behind the counter how to use these new pumps (slightly different design). i was pretty sure i knew how to use them as the basic swipe your card, pump is fairly standard everywhere, but i wanted to make sure. she replied that they had lost power and we not sure how to reset things (it looked as tho the manager went flying into an office as i walked in). the lights were on in the place, so i thanked her and headed back to my vee-hick-le and headed out their back entrance to avoid the traffic light. as i turned onto the street, i saw that there was a firetruck and a truck from the local power company doing work, so i headed over to dunkin' to get my coffee and paper. but when i got there, and took about 3 steps to the supermarket i get my paper at, i saw that it was really dark. so was dunkin'. i did chuckle at the people who did have their coffee standing by the window looking out on the parking lot.

so i headed back and decided to goto cumby farms to feed my vee-hick-le and pick up the paper. and while there, i discovered that they have a little selection of coffees, so that made me happy. the only thing that i don't like about cumby farm's coffee is their cups - they aren't the standard size for cup holders (too narrow at the base) but otherwise, it was pretty good.

well, i may have to go there a little more frequently than i do. distancewise, it's about the same as well as time, so maybe i'll go there every other week. or maybe i'll just start going there. i'll have my choice in coffee flavors. i love my morning dunkin', but i'm not opposed to alternatives as long as they are good.

Read More......

the dangers...

there are times when it really sucks to be on-call. and today, is one of those times. normally, when there is a problem and i am on-call, i'm at least awake, or at a point where waking up is a better idea for me than going back to sleep.

this morning however, is the exception to the rule. last night i actually managed to stay up past 1am for the first time in a while. and given the last few days where i have not seen midnight except thru the backs of my eyelids, i was feeling pretty good. i suppose i only have myself to blame for staying up late. but it's friday night. lots of people stay up late friday nights. anyways....

at 637am i wake up. i look over at my clock to see what time it is and go to roll over when i hear the pager go off. i think the vibrating of the pager is what woke me up, but it wasn't until the annoying alert went off (i have it set to mixed alert) that i realized i was in trouble. so, i stumble around for a few minutes, find my glasses, follow thru some of the morning rituals and then begin the process of finding out who has the audacity to page me this early in the morning.

turns out, it was JB (TC in SW) who managed to lock herself out. i believe the quote was:

"I am SO locked out right now, I can't get into anything"

so i checked, unlocked her and had her reboot her PC and imagine that. it all worked. she also commented that she thought this weekend was supposed to be really nice. i had to bite my tongue to keep from asking what rock she crawled out from under, but i was good. she apologized and we ended the call. i logged it, and looked thru our log briefly to see what the last few calls were for, saved my changes (we keep it in a fairly simple excel spreadsheet) and decided to check a few things before attempting bed.

unfortunately, bed, while warming up nicely in it, wasn't soothing enuff for my now partially functional brain, which was rather confused and wouldn't shut up. so, here i sit, ready for coffee, and tired, hoping that i'll get no more calls. at least i get paid for being on-call.

and in good news, i had my review yesterday. it went pretty well and i was pleased to discover that my boss is STILL pissed about the whole bonus fiasco where i am concerned. the current plan for the department looks to be to bring someone in late summer/early fall to help augment the laptop support side of things while i move into the network support/management side of things. i'll always have a hand in the laptops, but DH thinks (correctly) that i would find the network support/management to be a more interesting proposition. unfortunately, when it came to the question of what changes do i think need to be made, the bulk of the time was spent discussing the resident bull in the china shop and how to deal with her. (yes, i know bulls are male, and the trainwreck is female, but she is most certainly a bull in the china shop. the very expensive china shop. not the cheap ass wallymart china shop.)

so i was pleased with the end result, and i am going to make an effort to be a little more 'matter of fact' rather than let my emotions dictate some of my reactions, which is good advice. especially when it comes to bitchbull. i wonder how many names we have for her now....

Read More......

that was funny

i stopped by chez target on the way home to see if they had a mother's day card i could use (you did remember to get your mom a card, didn't you?) and after sifting thru their selection, i found one that was suitable so i went to pay.

at the register, the girl rang up my card ($2.25) and then asked "would you like to save 10% on your purchase by getting a target card?" i started laughing to which she responded "i have to ask you know". i nodded while continuing to laugh. she took my money and then closed the drawer without giving me my change (a whole 9 cents) which she then rectified.

as i was leaving, i was thinking, just for shits and giggles, it would have been funny to say "yes, i am interested in saving 10% on my purchase". but then, like sears, i'm saving my 10% for when i can make it worth it. like when i buy a fancy expensive HD plasma tv.

Read More......

it's interesting

one of the sites i like to frequent is currently down. apparently, some asshole lawyer (or lawfirm, either way, assholes) decided to take it upon themself to send out cease and desist letters on behalf of the music industry. essentially a nastygram, and in the past, he would send it to the owners of websites.

so, if i am the owner of dippyshit.com hosted on hostingsite.com. i have a file named "u2 - the fly.mp3", so they would send me (on "behalf" of the music industry) one of these nastygrams. (the contents of which i don't know, but i'm sure it is rather threatening)

apparently, they decided rather than try and track down the owner of the website, with the offending file, they decided to send the nastygram to the hosting site. included in the nastygram is wording such that they hosting site has to shut down all of its servers.

so, rather than turning off dippyshit.com and contacting me (the owner of dippyshit.com), they forced the owner of hostingsite.com to shut down EVERY site they host. so including dippyshit.com, they turned off ilovedogs.com, ilovecats.com, ilovemyself.com, and every other website.

the catch is this: the file named "u2 - the fly.mp3" was found during a search of the entire dippyshit.com site from 4 years ago. in fact, as the owner of dippyshit.com, i have repurposed the entire website several times from a music site to a book review site to it's current itteration of extolling the continuing adventures of Dippy the Shit. and in doing so, i have removed all files for the music and book review site, rearranged the directory structure several times so the file is long since deleted.

yet my hosting site (hostingsite.com) is getting a nastygram which has turned off several sites, including the sales portions of ilovedogs.com and ilovecats.com which helps pay for their hosting.

all because 4 years ago i had a single mp3 file.

now, my guess is what happened is the owner of dippyshit.com shut it down 3 years ago, all files were deleted, and now all files on hostingsite.com are legit, but because of that single file, not only i, but thousands of other people have no access to a site i enjoy frequenting.

as i have been pondering this situation, i obviously don't know all of the details, prolly never will, but it got me thinking about this:

what would happen to the web as a whole, if this lawyer ordered sites like yahoo, google, MSN, aol to shutdown all of their servers. i am sure that on each of those sites, there are going to be copies of 'u2 - the fly.mp3' on each of them because there will be some user has the file on there. could you imagine the chaos that would generate?

and what about fan sites that have mp3s of songs that u2 sent to them to post so people would get a taste of the new u2? something like this could be very bad, and lots of people don't seem to understand the ramifications of what they are doing. on either side of the arguement.

hell, even a site like archive.org could get screwed by this lawyer.

that would make me very angry. you wouldn't like me when i'm angry.

Read More......

my foot hurts

a lot.

the outside of my right foot (opposite the arch) for some reason decided that it didn't like me yesterday so whenever i walk or put pressure on it, it hurts a great deal. and i know of no reason why that would be. you'd figure that had it been walk related, i would have felt it either sooner, or in both feet, but for some reason it decided to manifest yesterday morning.

so i limp around the office. fortunately, i don't have to walk too much right now as i've got plenty i can do at my desk, but i like getting up and moving around so it's putting a crimp on my mobile activities.

getting a chance to listed to [WITH_TEETH] finally. i listened to a little on the way in, but i'm only just getting to listen to it again. i've heard some of the songs already in a live setting, so not all of them are alien. most of the reviews i've seen so far have been positive, and they all seem to say/imply that it takes a few listenings before you actually appreciate it.

still mildly miffed at not being able to see them this month, but i'll live. i'll try and get tickets when they come back around this fall. now i need to dig out all of my Halos, rip them and just listen to them from start to finish to hear the entire evolution. i'll even start with the Purest Feeling stuff :-)

that's a lot of Halo.

i'm glad that chez target opens early and that i drive right past it on my way to work. i was thinking about that this morning about how i wasn't really in the mood to stop by somewhere after work to get this because i wanted to hear it now (that's what i want to know, all of it, now, tell me, YES!). (hell, i wonder how i'm going to be when there is new TOOL)

initial impressions are it's pretty cool. it's definately doing to take several listens before i know where it stands, but i like it so far.

just over 2 weeks until Episode III hits. looking forward to that, and TK-8103 is more than ready for it. i'm almost suprised he hasn't started the hourly countdown yet. i'll give him a little time. having clinicians jump all over him (or wag their new boobies in his face) takes time away from the important things. like figuring out how much longer he has to wait before his ass is firmly planted in the theater hooting at the screen.

as much as i'm looking forward to seeing Episode III, i would HATE to be in that first showing because you know that the crowd is going to be hooting and cheering at the screen, and there will be the foolish applause at the end of the movie. i've never understood that.

why do people applaud at the end of a movie in a nowhere theater? i can understand it at premiers where you have members of the cast, but for some random afternoon showing of a movie? give me a break.

anyways, i need to reboot a server and finish things up for the day.

Read More......

ow. ow. ow. ow. ow.

the good news is i'm still alive after walking 20 miles today. it was long, and my feet hurt like hell, well, my entire lower body aches like hell, but M, F and i made it the entire way, and i even have photographic proof. i took pictures of the mile signs as we walked, so maybe i'll post some later.

Read More......