Russell & Kimmy

Well I survived the work day; although I still have superglue on my glasses and it really pisses me off. It really is the small things in life that piss you off; like having a smudge of superglue right in front of your eye. Consequentially it really is the small miracles in life that make life bearable; like having to chase some one off who is hugging you so that you can type. So if you add all the small things together, today wasn’t so bad. It was more like a whacked shin than a kick in the crotch; and I can take a whacked shin over a crotch kick any day of the week.

Speaking of small miracles, Kimmy is watching some concert on KLRU - the amazing part is that the oboe, choir & orchestra were in tune.

Now on to more important things; like my quest to be the #1 rated site for Cannibals vs. Pirates. I want to remind everyone to email the RIAA and encourage them to hire Cannibals. I have already extolled the virtues of Cannibals in fighting Pirates, but remember Cannibals are hungry and Pirates taste good.

Today is just one of those crappy days. I spilt superglue on my nice $300 Guess glasses and am now trying to figure out how to get it off. My contacts are bothering my eyes so I have to wear the superglue obscured glasses. And to top it off I was late to work. Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. The really annoying part is, I am down to my last two pairs of contacts and I don’t have insurance for an optometrist, and probably won’t get it till December. Some days you just want to scream.

In nice news I got my motherboard & cpu yesterday. I don’t have all the spec information with me since I was having such a rushed morning but I promise to post that later. The crummy part is that I am probably going to have to wait a few more weeks to buy the video card since I am going to have to pay for an optometrist out of pocket.

Well I am at work and need to get back to my job and thankfully this day will be over in 12 more hours.

So an EvilCandybar gave me a Linux based operating system called Ubuntu to play with. And just to ward off the cannibals who chase after pirates, Ubuntu is software libre. So far its been interesting and fun to play with, its different enough from Windows so I have to think about how to do things and somehow the damned root keeps foiling me again and again. Just as soon as I figure out what root is I am going to kick its ass. I would upload a screenshot of the desktop and some of the nifty little programs that are included but unfortunately the ftp service is one of those things that is different enough to keep foiling me.

In other news I have decided to play the Google game and see how high I can get my site rated under certain search topics. My main goal is to be the number one site for cannibals vs. Pirates. Once again I feel the need to extol the virtues of the RIAA hiring cannibals. Cannibals and pirates are natural enemies. Now most people think that ninjas and pirates are natural enemies but this is not the case. While ninjas and pirates like to fight each other, pirates are much cooler and more of a bastard than ninjas are and would kick the crap out of a ninja any day of the week. Second, ninjas and pirates don’t even exist naturally in the same hemisphere where pirates and cannibals do. Lastly, pirates are in it for the money and you should always bet on the guy thats in it for the money; he tends to do less stupid things like even the odds or give the other guy a sporting chance. So logically cannibals, who eat pirates, are the natural enemies of pirates. This means that you must give the RIAA a ring a ling and suggest to them that they need to hire cannibals to combat piracy. Its the only logical solution. Not only does it cut down on wasted court time, expensive litigation, and a falling public opinion; it feeds a hungry cannibal and puts money back in the pocket of the artist. So contact the RIAA and let them know that you are for cannibals eating pirates.

BTW (eww look internet slang) if you are approached by a hungry cannibal I recommend that you shoot it.

Now on to more local news. The Harley Davidson big box outlet up the road has put up a Texas flag that has more square footage than my apartment. Its actually a bit frightening. EvilCandybar tells me that there is a bigger one in Wisconsin somewhere, which made me wonder why they are flying a Texas flag in Wisconsin. Possibly its because Wisconsin sucks! And even though Wisconsin sucks, the Harley Davidson flag still scares me; actually those two statements have no logical connection what so ever. At least now I know what Harley Davidson is doing with all the money that its making off of the over priced mid-life crises that they sell.

Say What?!?

That’s right I saw an amazing agile armadillo and those suckers happen to be fast. I had never actually realized how fast an armadillo is before I tried to chase one down in sandals. I was amazed. Maybe the next DC superhero that we need is the Amazing Armadillo; beats Aquaman who happens to be the lamest superhero ever. Look at me, I can talk to fish and am completely useless on dry land. Hmm which brings up an intersting idea, Aquaman swims like a fish, talk like a fish, and can breathe water like a fish; I wonder if he tastes like fish. New amazing fishsticks now with 75% more Aquaman and no dolphin meat; because dolphins are awesome.

Speaking of awesome, the state of our server room is almost sublime in its messiness. I read this nice little article on what not to do in a server room; I think there were about 14 suggestions. Surprisingly enough the only thing that we didn’t do that the article suggest that we not do was to not cut holes in the ceiling above a server rack. Everything else we were doing. Now I am not sure why we are not supposed to cut holes in the ceiling above a server rack, but luckily we weren’t doing it. My personal favorite was no network cable lassos, unless you specifically need a network cable lasso to coral a bovine co-worker. Bovine is not the barnyard animal I would have picked, but I guess it works.

We all dread something. That dread builds like a summer thunderstorm. It billows high overhead growing darker and more ominous. It promises to ruin the day, commanding our attention and demanding submission. Until finally the storm breaks and the rain pours down, and we find that its not so bad.

We have a room in the Bread Factory that I have nicknamed the Knot. Its a fitting name, all the servers, PBX switches, and network cables converge there to form a tangled mess. Normally we would have a nice pretty network room, all the cables would be tied down, all the power supplies would be up off the floor and everything would be perfect. However we would normally have more than two days to set up a network room, so the Knot is a bit messy. Network cables are piled on the floor, power supplies lurk underfoot and nothing is labeled. It is here that BigBear and I were working an OPJ trying to get it up and when Papa comes rushing in with a big problem. About half of the phones in our center suddenly had the local numbers stop working; there was just a fast busy signal when you tried to call in or call out. Thankfully the 800 numbers were still working and Ernestine was still connecting calls, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Two hours pass, I am done working with the OPJ and head down the stairs back toward the prison that is my cube. BigBear meets me at the foot of the stairs and its back to the Knot I go. Evidently he has tried everything to fix the cursed phones and there is only one possible solution left. Yes you guessed it, two of the phone servers are off. So I get to crawl under a rack, get my pants dirty, and trace the power cords back to the power supply that is currently off. We pull it out from under the cables it was hiding under and flip it on.

The one thing that I had been dreading, that some how I would trip/step/break/turn off a power supply had happened; and it wasn’t that bad. It did take two hours to fix but we all got a good laugh out of it. And in the end the dread thundered and roared, then blew away like a summer storm.