heh

three rights make a left. hadn't thought about that one in a long time, but had to laugh. thanks ant.

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i'm so glad i'm no longer smoking. you always see that rubber lung thing when you are a kid in school, but this is just nasty. this is what i was putting into my system back when?

eeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww.....


Still Smoking? Watch This !! - The most amazing videos are a click away

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random bits

well, the move is complete. that's not to say that everything is as it should be in the new office, but for the moment at least things are quiet. i considered going to the new office today, but opted out which was a mixed blessing. i hate being dragged into other projects that have the cart being drawn before the horse. what a fucking mess that is turning into.

finally got around to seeing Saw IV in the theater last night. i thought it was ok, nothing great or special, just ok. i didn't think that it was bad, but i liked how the first 3 played out and this one had the feeling of trying to fit into them, but didn't quite make it. it certainly had a few moments, but all in all it was just ok. i've always been a fan of the series, but now i'm wondering if there wasn't a bit of shark jumping with this one.

M stopped by last night and startled me a little - i was debating what i wanted to watch on dvd tonight and she opened my door. it didn't help that i was listening to music and completely missed her call so it wasn't until i saw my door opening out of the corner of my eye that i realized what was going on. i rather enjoy being lost in my world of music, and i suppose that's my achilles heel - once i tune in, i tune out the world around me.

while she was here it dawned on my that as of 11/8/07, i am by definition debt free. there will always be bills, but i no longer have any loans hanging over my head as my final student loan payment has come and gone. it was so very nice to see this when i logged in to check on it:

Loan Balances
You do not currently have any active or fully disbursed loans on our system.

it took a few moments for that to sink in, but it's really nice to think that the chunk of change i've been sinking into paying that off now sinks into my bank account. i'll try and enjoy this while i can, but at the same time i also know that i have a new car coming in the coming months (i'm finally fed up with my explorer - i don't want it anymore but will suffer thru the winter to save down payment money to help minimize that loan) and of course once the house hunting starts up again, that's going to put me in debt for pretty much the rest of my life. so i'll have to enjoy it while i can.

weather has turned brisk around here which i suppose is expected for this time of the year. and it looks like the trees around the house which had their leaves up until very recently have finally dropped most of them. it's been odd to see just how many leaves haven't fallen yet, of course they are shades of brown, so it's not as nice as leaf peepers would like. tho i do have to chuckle at a sermon the assistant priest in high school gave about how he enjoyed fall and the fall colors, but how one year in school it was explained why the leaves change color - the are dying and when dying they go from green to the bright vivid colors, etc. anyways, he had a hard time dealing with that as he couldn't figure out why if they were dying were they so vividly colored. eventually it clicked that it wasn't a bad thing as in the spring there was a rebirth and life would return, etc.

i always found it amusing as i guess i never looked at leaves that way. sure i knew why they changed colors, but i never gave it much thought other than to wonder why they'd change to the color they did (yellow, orange, red, etc). he certainly got over it, but it was some time before he shook that memory, eventually relating it to whatever bible story was the subject of that sunday sermon (most likely rebirth or something along those lines). but i guess it's since stuck with me - i still smile a bit when i think about it. anyways, moving on.

Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet is a current front runner for the Molius Album of the Year award (sounds fancy). if you haven't heard it, it's well worth plunking your hard earned money down for.

and on that note, i'll wrap this up.

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huh

go figure. who knew that oprah and i actually have something in common - we both like Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. (that and goldens i suppose)

the rens bought me the book years ago for xmas, and it's one of the few books that i can recall pretty vividly (meaning i really liked it). that question of what books would i bring with me if i was stranded on an island is always answered by my wanting The Dark Tower series, the entire Dune series (old & new) and Lord of the Rings. Pillars would be one of the few non-series books i'd want with me.

it's a long book and well worth reading (and it's not scifi - go figure). must be those cathedrals i seem to have a passing interest in.

Ken Follett is latest Oprah Winfrey pick

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

NEW YORK - Oprah Winfrey went for the big time Wednesday with her latest book club pick, choosing Ken Follett's 973-page "The Pillars of the Earth," an announcement that will likely mean hundreds of thousands more sales for an author with a huge, international following.

Winfrey, whose TV talk show airs from Chicago, called Follett "a best-selling author that everybody has heard of, but this novel is unlike any of his books he's known for around the world."

Follett, a 58-year-old native of Cardiff, Wales, is famous for spectacular thrillers such as "Lie Down With Lions," "Eye of the Needle" and "World Without End," published last month, and a sequel to "The Pillars of the Earth," which came out in 1989.

Follett has called "The Pillars of the Earth," a love story set in England in the 12th century, his favorite novel. According to his Web site, the book still sells around 100,000 copies a year in the United States alone.

"My publishers were a little nervous about such a very unlikely subject but paradoxically, it is my most popular book," Follett writes on his Web site.

"It's also the book I'm most proud of. It recreates, quite vividly, the entire life of the village and the people who live there. You feel you know the place and the people as intimately as if you yourself were living there in the middle ages."

A year after "Pillars" came out, Follett was so popular he agreed to a two-book, $12.3 million deal with the Dell Publishing Company. He reportedly has 90 million readers worldwide and recently signed with Penguin Group (USA), which released "World Without End," for a planned multigenerational trilogy set in the 20th century.

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Associated Press writer Tara Burghart in Chicago contributed to this report.

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unfucking believable.

i got paged at 7am this morning to find out that NStar is planning on shutting the power off to the building where our main office is.

and we have no fucking clue what is going on because we can't seem to get a straight answer of WHY this is, or HOW LONG this will take.

ok, i now have an answer so i'll leave what i wrote alone.

some fucking asshole smashed into a electrical pole around 545am. we lost power while nstar cut us (the building) over to a secondary power feed. they are in the process of fixing the pole and at some point today, when they don't know, they are going to shut the power down and put us back onto the primary power feed.

i'm now waiting for a quick email to alert the agency from my boss and then i'm heading home to hurry up and wait to find out when things are going down and when they do, i'll head back in to get stuff restarted.

just fucking lovely.

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long day

i left home around 930am today and returned at 1030pm tonight.

what a fucking mess.

the good:

• stuff is moved
  
• i have the switches patched (thanks RB)
  
• we have data connections to all offices on both voice and data sides
  
• i'm finally home

the bad:

• the network upgrade didn't go quite as expected. (it's fine now for the most part, but i guess the phones were totally fucked in MN and the guy they had working on the routers was a fucking dolt
  
• i had to replace the batteries in one of the UPS which sucked ass and wasted 2 hours of my life
  
• the 208v outlet has the wrong plug for my UPS (electrical guy will be there in the morning)
  
• the server room is a fucking mess
  
• not everything is wired up
  
• i have to be there for 8am tomorrow
  
• there was no alcohol provided
  
• i still have to reprogram the phones and extensions (ugh...)

i realize that it sounds like there was more bad than good, but all in all, the important stuff from my view is in place and it's now down to the busy work. i should be able to get the simple stuff done pretty quickly and find a quiet corner to reprogram the phone system so with a bit of luck, i'll be out by mid-afternoon. changing the phone numbers is going to take a while - it took me 2 hours to do it last year for some 50 or so users. i have nearly 150 i need to do here, so i'm hoping i can crank it out as long as i'm left alone. if i could, i'd just lock myself in my office in MN and do it there, but i need to be able to test it a bit while i'm there, so i'll see where i can hide.

not much else. LB picked up dinner from cheesecake factory, but they didn't bother to include forks, ketchup or straws. so thanks LB for dinner.

well, i'm tired and need a little mindless entertainment before i collapse in a heap. only to be rudely disturbed by my alarm in a few hours.

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this weekend is going to be long

most likely. we're moving one of our offices this weekend and it all starts tomorrow at noon. at least my piece of the massive puzzle that is this move. in typical fashion, my sleep has suffered as the anxiety of the move gets to me. at least i know that's what it is, and that things should return to normal when this mess is all done.

but at noon i shut down all the servers in the office and start the process of pulling it all apart. and then i need to remove a few of the servers, pack them up and move them to the new office, get them reconstructed and with a bit of luck, all will be as it should be.

yeah, right.

we'll see. but it should at least prove to be entertaining. i have a 4 walkie talkies so the banter should be what gets us thru the mess. we need to think of handles to use while we work. clerks 2 seems to be inspiring my train of thought right now, but i'm having a hard time figuring out who picklefucker would be....

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D'OH!

Led Zeppelin reunion show postponed

LONDON - Led Zeppelin fans awaiting the rockers' reunion will have to wait a little longer.

The band's first concert in two decades, scheduled for Nov. 26, has been postponed until Dec. 10 after guitarist Jimmy Page fractured a finger, organizers said Friday.

"I am disappointed that we are forced to postpone the concert by two weeks," Page said in a statement.

"However, Led Zeppelin have always set very high standards for ourselves, and we feel that this postponement will enable my injury to properly heal, and permit us to perform at the level that both the band and our fans have always been accustomed to."

Led Zeppelin, who split up in 1980 after the death of drummer John Bonham, announced in September they were reuniting for a one-off show. The lineup includes Page, singer Robert Plant and bass player John Paul Jones, along with Bonham's son Jason.

More than 1 million fans entered a draw for a chance to buy one of the 10,000 tickets to the concert at London's O2 Arena, a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died last year. The lineup also includes former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman, Foreigner and young Scottish singer Paolo Nutini.

Organizers said tickets for the Nov. 26 gig will be honored at the rescheduled show.

at least it won't be like the start of the tour in 1975 when he broke his finger then and they continued on. but then it did bring How Many More Times back into the setlist...

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