heh

due to graphic violence, viewer discression is advised

hahahahahaha...i love that. the season finale of 24. my phone is off.

muahahahaha...

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this is pretty cool

especially if i lived in/near Chicago

Chicago Crime Database

wonder how long before Boston gets one...

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the end of the end of the end of the end....

that seemed to be a mini theme for me this weekend.

saw episode III saturday night with M, TK-8103 and Mrs. TK-8103. i enjoyed it a great deal, altho all i could think of when there were scenes between anakin and padme was it was no better than an elementary school play with 1st graders doing the dialog.

A: i love you

P: i love you more

A: no, i love you more.

P: you are so beautiful to me. i love you.

A: no, you are so beautiful to me. i love you more.


*BLECH*

i think i've seen better written love stories in looney toons...

that aside, i really did enjoy the movie, and visually, it was very impressive. aside from the crappy i love you dialog, the only other thing that bugged me was the whole Padme being preggers thing. KS (Mrs TK-8103) pointed it out as we were walking out of the theater that when you are preggers, the FIRST thing that happens is your boobs get larger. (this was independently verified by TK-8103) and they made no compensation for that. she was carrying around a beachball in her belly, but was pretty much flat chested. then, the whole revelation (if you could call it that) where obi-wan asks if the child is anakin's was rather pointless (duh, who else was she seeing? M had an issue with that.) the birth scene was pretty bad too. a few grimaces of pain and out pops a pretty clean infant. a few more grimaces of pain, and out pops a second clean infant. if anything, the one time that padme looked semi-realistic pregnant was at the very end during her funeral procession. AFTER giving birth.

now, those points aside, i really did enjoy the movie (i figure i had better restate that) and it certainly was visually entertaining. you could see how anakin falls, how palpatine manipulates him into turning. the end with anakin and obi-wan fighting was well done, and mixing their fight with the yoda/palpatine fight was well done. i loved yoda's entrance into palpatine's office. R2 provided enuff comic relief, but not so much that it detracted from anything.

like episode II, cut out the majority of the lovey dovey crap and it really was a very good movie. and i have to agree with TK-8103, when it ended, i was wondering "isn't there more? how can it end now? it's too short! i want more!"

it was definately the best of the first 3 episodes, but i will stand by my statement that episodes I & II are a LOT better when you have the whole picture. it really is a pretty complete story about how a young boy rises and then falls. now i have to watch episodes IV thru VI to see the entire picture.

next topic: Dune

i finally finished reading The Battle of Corrin, the final book in the Butlerian Jihad trilogy. very cool and i couldn't help but wonder what caused the rift between the Atreides and the Harkonnen because that's one of the advertised bits of the story. well, when it happens (towards the very end of the book, within the last 50 pages of a 600+ page book), it just smacks you and you understand very quickly. suffice is to say, the phrase "the needs to the many outweigh the needs to the few". even if the 'few' are 2 million people. plus the way it wraps itself up, it shows how with the passage of time, how facts distort over time, as well as how what were made up stories become truths. very cool.

so now it's onto the next book. Robert Heinlein's "For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs" (amazon link). The nifty thing about this book is that it was written in 1938/39, prior to the events of 12/7/41 so the perspective of the story should be a little different. i'm looking forward to reading it.

yesterday, M, F & i went to the Hot Dog Safari at Suffolk Downs. it was an interesting experience. and one where i'm glad to say that i've gone, and i have absolutely no desire to go again. the lines are long, takes forever to get your free {insert food item here} because 1/2 the time is spent letting people cut thru the lines. i think the best part for me was while we were standing in line for our hoodsie cup size turkey hill ice cream, we were able to watch one of the horse races (the 4th one i believe, post time was sposed to be 2:08). first one i have seen since i went to saratoga on my birthday many years ago with the family (good time had by all). had a few hot dogs. kelly's hot dog, not so good. for some reason people around here seem to think very highly of kelly's. for me, i don't care for it very much. and i have given them a few chances to change my mind. every time, they have provided me with a bland and uninspired meal. their onion rings, the batter is nothing more than flour and water and then fried. their roast beef? dry and overcooked. i have yet to have a positive experience eating there. why did i think their hot dog would be any better? i think ballpark franks are better than kelly's...

kelly's and hilltop steakhouse baffle me. every time i have eaten at either place, the food is overcooked, bland and the service (esp at hilltop) is pretty lousy. yet somehow, people in the area seem to think of both in high regard. to hilltop's credit, the supermarket they have is pretty good, and the prices they have on their meats are very good, but they sure as hell have no clue how to cook a decent steak.

anyways, Boston Hot Dog Company (no discernable web presence that i could find) wasn't bad, they had the best selection of toppings (including cole slaw) of the samples we had.

The Sausage Guy line seemed to be the longest, and at the same time, i think provided the biggest 'eh, that wasn't particularly good' moment of the day. he has a reputation down by Fenway Park, but if what we had yesterday was a typical sample of what he serves, that was pretty bad. didn't help that there were no peppers, grilled onions, mushrooms or spicy mustard to help make it more enjoyable.

our favorite hot dog of the day was Pearl. it had the best snap (love that natural casing) and best seasoning of what we tried. a little ketchup and mustard, and you had a good dog.

by this point, we were pretty full, plus we were tired of dealing with the throng of people, so we headed off.

so that was it for my weekend. this morning i arrived at my desk to a rude suprise. some asshole clinician STOLE the power supply that i use for my laptop. in the past, someone borrowed it, but when i got in, it was neatly placed on my desk, cords wrapped up. i didn't like that they had used it, but appreciated that they had returned it before i had returned.

today, that didn't happen, so i asked my boss, BK and KS (not Mrs TK-8103) if they had seen anything, or been asked about a power supply. nope. FL stopped by to ask me an unrelated question and i menioned to him that it had been removed from my desk (the way i had it on my desk requires untangling it from a multitude of wires and fishing it out, so whoever stole it put some effort into removing it).

so, a short while later, i get an email asking DH if he can fill out an incident report, so i obtain one and fill it out and turn it in. i have a few spares that i use while configuring the laptops, so it isn't like i couldn't find one, but the fact that someone had the audacity to fish out my power supply, which by the way is not particularly visible. not only did i have it tangled in wires, but it's out of view with the only visible evidence of its existance being the plug that goes into the laptop. whoever did it a) was desparate for a power supply and b)_figured that i had to have one kicking around.

well, no more. i'm locking it up at night. of course this means that it was returned. sometime after lunch when i was talking to RB or TK-8103, someone left it on my desk, and they put it where i'd find it, but at a quick glance i wouldn't have noticed because i sat down and then saw it. (i knew it was mine because i had a knot tied in the cable)

this seems to be an ongoing issue with our idiot snob clinicians. if they see something they want or need, they just take it. i wouldn't have been so upset if the person who stole/borrowed it had left a post-it on my monitor saying "i'm sorry, but i needed to borrow your power supply. i'll return it ASAP. -guilty party". at least then i would have known who had it and i wouldn't have bothered to mention it to people. but no. no note. so i had to file an incident report. i was discussing this with DH and BK a bit, and they were saying if one of them decided they needed some privacy to make some phone calls or do some "work", they had no qualms of just walking into an empty office and sitting down, and if the person whose office it was happened to come back, would get nasty looks and asked to leave if the clinician wasn't finished doing whatever they thought was so important. i'm sorry, but the offices are given to managers, and you don't just decide that you want to work out of someone's office. BK was saying that he didn't mind if they needed to make a quick phone call, but to set up shop and then be possesive about your invading their territory, that's just plain wrong. but again, it just shows how much the management here kowtows to the union.

i truly believe, that the union that our RN's belong to are doing absolutely NOTHING to show me that unions (on a whole) are a good thing. if anything, they continually reinforce the movie/television stereotype of a union that whines and demands to be treated like a primadonna. i do understand that this isn't the case for all unions, but they sure as hell are doing nothing to help the 'union' cause.

oh well. at least i got my power supply back. and i'll be sure to lock it up before going home tonight.

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hmmm

that was mighty impressive.

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i am prepared

i just finished watching episode II.

i watched episode I on sunday, more in part because fox was showing it and i knew if i watched it, i'd be frustrated at not seeing the whole thing from start to finish.

having read the book for episode III, episodes I & II really aren't that bad, and really do make a great deal more sense, so my feelings towards them aren't quite as negative as a lot of people's seem to be.

i enjoyed parts of I when i saw it (the pod race, the duel at the end w/darth maul) but i could see why people didn't like it. then when i watched II, i could see why people were frustrated. i think it's better than I was, but i, like lots of people didn't care for the whole love story side. cut that out and it's pretty good, but put it in, and it seems rather forced.

watching it just now, i still believe that Lucas can't write a love story if his life depended on it, but watching it from a more objective view, it isn't a bad story. especially how everything fits together. i've seen several references where hayden said that lucas told him very deliberately to be stiff during II.

and i'm fighting very hard with myself NOT to go flying down to the local theater to watch episode III. i'm not going to, but the temptation certainly is there. that's why i have tickets for tomorrow night where i'll see it with M, TK-8103 and KS.

when i finished the book for Ep III, i really felt i understood what Lucas was trying to do. when you have the whole picture, you really do understand the whole story.

it seems almost as tho it is an epiphany. i somewhat felt that when i finished the Dark Tower series. i've invested a percentage of my life into Roland and to reach the end of his journey.

i understand now.

i tip my hat.

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the day draws to a close

so what am i going to do? i'm going to blog.

today was a pretty busy day. we had issues with the clinicians not being able to transfer which i came into, but that seems to have been resolved. not entirely sure if it was something i missed when i did some minor changes to our dbase server, or if it was a switch thing, but it's working now. DH hardcoded some IP addys in the switch which should help with the routing as well, and so far no complaints. i was able to get a work-around to work, so if nothing worked, there was an option, altho i wasn't looking forward to having to dump the fix on the near 200 laptops we have, not that i couldn't script it. but it would still be a pain in the ass.

the other problem was the PCs we have for some pharmacy students were not seeing the network, so that took a lot of time to try and troubleshoot. at first, i couldn't even get my laptop to recognize the network (bad sign) so i traced the wires and moved them around, then it did work. but the PCs wouldn't. moved the NIC in one PC to a different slot, that didn't work. moved the cables to a separate switch that needed to be lit up (no biggie, stole a cable and that was online) and i even throttled the ports back from auto speed to 10mb. that didn't work.

decided to try using a different NIC and after 20 or so mins of dloading drivers, finding a floppy, that did work. undid my changes on the switch. still worked. moved it back to the original port it had been plugged into. still worked.

so, it looks as tho my thought of picking up a bunch of inexpensive NICs might be a pretty good idea. DH seemed to think that was a good possibility, so we'll see what happens. i'd want to buy 1 and test it before buying a bunch, but i'll discuss that with him.

and now, there is finally some quiet time. just got a call from TK-8103 asking what theater my tickets were for (12) which match what his are, so we won't be screwed when we get there. that did present a little doubt in my head this morning as i bought the tix (what if we were in different theaters?) but it was nice to hear that we are in the same theater. saves that awkward "well it was nice seeing you" thing when we are all at the theater. well, time to go home.

later.

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heeheehee...

i have my tickets...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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*

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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.

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