Russell & Kimmy

So it has been about a week since I last regaled you with indiscreet ramblings of my life, I apologize and blame the Writer’s Guild for the lack of online content. You will all be happy to know that because I have failed to post bi-weekly I have been smitten with a horrible disease that leaves me achy, stuffy and grouchy; wait scratch that, I am always grouchy can’t blame that on the disease.

Kimmy and I survived the Thanksgiving Holiday. Took a quick (and by quick I mean 3 hours) side trip to Abilene; forgot how flat that part of Texas is. It was nice to see family, it wasn’t too crowded and it snowed 4.5 inches in Abilene on Thanksgiving Day. Nothing screams stupidity like throwing snowballs in sub freezing temperatures while wearing shorts and a t-shirt. At least the t-shirt was cool looking. Alright I apologize for the bad pun, it wasn’t punny and I promise not to make any more. So throwing snowballs in shorts is probably how I ended up with this wretched disease, I also discovered that boys cannot make snowmen. Snowmen are 3 giant snowballs stacked one on top of the other and it is just to tempting to break him apart and hurl him at your foes. Even adult males are not immune to the power of snow; one of my uncles and my dad got into a brief snowball fight Thursday night. Women on the other hand do not appear to enjoy snow. Kimmy’s favorite way to view snow is through a double paned window, preferably next to a roaring fire; she doesn’t mix well with cold temperatures. 

Project Ducky is going down the tubes (no not the internet Mr. Stevens which is full of crazy yet delightful things) and trying to drag me down to a screaming death with it. Project Ducky is a lot like the high school prom, sure it starts off all fun and games but by the end of the night you are surrounded by empty beer cans, suffering from a raging hangover while staring at a date who isn’t as pretty with out the beer goggles and wondering what kind of STD you just picked up. Tuesday night found me at work for some phone maintenance; supposed to be a quick in and out. Supposed To and IS are two completely different things. First there was some slight rewiring of the cables coming out of the switch; wonderfully enough the RGX box that we plug the cables into holds them securely enough to look pretty but not securely enough to actually connect the phone to the patch panel or the servers. Then there was one of the cards on the switch failing which required a quick rewiring of the patch panel; that was a lot of fun. Finally at 11:00 PM I was able to leave work after suffering from loose cables, poor connections, a cranky patch panel and the switch deciding to arbitrarily have problems with one of its cards. Loose cables are the worse, they have bad morals and spread STDs like there is no tomorrow; you have to watch out for them. Dead tired, sick, and in a pissy mood I pull into the apartment complex to find that their re-paving is once again behind schedule and that half of the parking spots in my section of the complex are still un-useable; i.e. they will tow your car. To make things even better every stinking spot is filled so I had to park in the other section of the complex which was about 1/3 of a mile away.

Links:

• Haven’t figured out what this website is for but it is nifty.
• You should be nice to your writers for their tounges are sharp.

So sorry about not posting on my regular Tuesday/Thursday schedule, I was incredibly busy last night. Incredibly busy kicking the forces of evil asses around like a piñata at a Cinco de Mayo celebration.  I am almost finished with Never Winter Nights 2 which makes me sad but I am anticipating the ending, mainly because all of the final boss monsters appear to be undead and I am a cleric; talk  about bone crunching goodness.  And as soon as I lay the smack down on the final boss monster I think I will jaunt on over to Fry’s and pick up NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer and continue with the RPG goodness.  I think in the sequel I will skip the cleric class and try for crunchy wizard goodness; I am tired of riding the religious high horse, plus it is fun being an evil wizard.

Strangely enough I enjoy a certain amount of notoriety at work as a miracle worker.  Things just work when I am around them and things that act up suddenly and obediently fall into line.  My favorite tech fix has to be the mouse I fixed.   I was rushing and busy modifying the IVR, with management breathing down my neck like the red bull form the last unicorn, when one of our sales guys comes over with a problem.  His mouse isn’t working.  I motion toward the buckets, yes buckets, of mice I have and shoo him away.  10 minutes later he is back with some one else for help.  I chase them away and continue modifying the call flow like a samurai bisecting his foes.  Deftly and surly I get the IVR working, the messages all loaded and management satisfied.  Still there is that nagging problem of the mouse…..

“Did you plug it in?”
    “Yes but it doesn’t work and the light isn’t on”
Is it plugged in correctly?”
    “Yes”
“Are you sure?”
    “Positive”
“Can I run you over if you’re wrong?”
    “Err; no can you just take a look at it?”
“Fine” <I unplug the mouse> “can you log in please”
    “I don’t see how logging in is going to fix it”
“Just log in”
    “Okay, there you go”
“By the power of Christ and the internet site where I got my exorcism permit I command the foul Luddite sprits to abandon this mouse and for this mouse to rise again and perform its scrolly duties” <sanctimoniously plug in the mouse>
    “How did you get it to work?!?”
“Exorcism and the fact that once windows loads it can finish detecting new hardware, but mostly exorcism.”

In fact I am at work right now writing this post, shhh don’t tell the bosses; no wait they are all on vacation. It is one of those nice days before a holiday where I will slowly go mad with boredom, absolutely nothing is happening and practically no one is here. At least I have the internet to keep me entertained; I have plenty of blogs that I need to catch up with One of my favorite posts has to be from Greg Mankiw’s blog; economics is everywhereGirl GeniusDead Lands I highly recommend Girl Genius; you won’t be disappointed Well I am running out of steam and I can hear my bosses phone ringing; which means soon my phone will be ringing, lucky me.

Oh and don’t expect a post tommorrow or for the rest of the week.  I will be feasting on the succulent flesh of the turkey and will be to far gone in food coma to type or do anything other than drool and moan about eating too much.

Why do people make promises to do something, and never do it? Why do people say they will call and do not call? Why in the world do I have to be so responsible? Why do I have to make schedules for projects? Why can I not join the rest of the world and pull an all nighter? Because if I did pull an all nighter for a project, another zombie would join the zombie walk on the day of a final. The weekend was full of nonexistent meetings. In other words, two times this weekend, no not once, twice, meetings fell through the cracks of this dreary, yet some what nice weekend in Austin. Friday night was spent at home over a nice homecooked dinner that included macaroni and cheese (mac and cheese, mmm…..), and laughs and that good ‘ole religious lesson of Evan Almighty. Not that bad of a movie, probably the hilarious thing was watching Steve Carell undergo the process of becoming Noah. Saturday was suppose to be a meeting for this long, drawn out project and it did not happen. Instead had dinner with my now engaged big sister, Shawna and Drew at the Alligator Grill. Played hooky and didn’t do anything today, and another scheduled meeting fell through. I proceeded to lose my thumbs and pointer fingers to the cursed chip boards that became silos and buildings for a huge model. After a nice pot of minestrone soup and watching Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and American Dad, maybe its back to the drawing table and trying to cook up genius designs for this project. So the weekend with nonexistent meetings was spent in Austin, eating good food, and getting drunk. Nice, huh?

Finally everything is in order and the Apartment of Russell and Kimmy had finally peaceful.  Let us all take a moment to pray for the continuation of my peaceful existence and a fat wad of cash for me.So last night Kimmy and I cleaned; I am amazed at how messy a 600 sq ft apartment can get with just two people living in it. First we started with the desk.  For some reason my desk becomes the dumping ground of our apartment.  As of right now only the monitor, wireless router, speakers, and phone reside on my desk; everything else has been banished to totes, bins, and various other containers secreted around our apartment.  Kimmy organized the refugees from the desk while I tackled the kitchen and Lucy watched with feline disdain.  After much scrubbing, scouring and hot soapy water I began to understand the need for regular kitchen cleaning.  Kimmy on the other hand was quickly and efficiently organizing and banishing the clutter that had taken over our floor. Finally the apartment was clean and everything was in its place.  Kimmy flopped down on the couch and began to tackle the voluminous amount of homework that she had.  That is when Lucy began to ignore her.  Finally after 45 minutes of the cat walking on her, sitting on her and generally being a pain, Kimmy finally snapped and fussed at the cat; the cat started sulking.

Lucy ignored Kimmy and maintained a disdainful aura; Kimmy was sitting in her spot.  Evidently even the cat knows how to subjugate someone with the silent treatment and it really annoyed Kimmy. 

Eventually the cat and Kimmy made up and we had a good chuckle about it. I went to work this morning refreshed, an hour late and in good spirits.  Unfortunately work was a little pleasant slice of hell.  It started off nice and slow, I already had enough hours for a nice leisurely 5 hour day.  Sadly my day lasted longer than I desired and one of our projects quickly degenerated into project Ducky; it explodes when you look at it cross eyed and mauls customers.  Our PBX is evidently fairly picky and does not play well with a few new servers that I am slave to.  This weekend is promising overtime and cable running; I hate cable running and am not too fond of overtime either.  Although I must admit that it is interesting watching panic creep into meetings as projects start to spasm, makes me glad I am not a manager.  And with project Ducky eating up most of my time I am falling behind on managing phone stats.  Phone stats are magical beasts that occasionally raise their ugly auras from the dark places of the server room and run around intent on spreading doom and gloom.  They can only be banished by magically spinning the numbers till management is convinced that everything is okay and the office isn’t crumbling around our ears.  For once I am going to side with management on this one and blame my fellow coworkers; the alternative is we need more of them (always bad) and they need desks (which we don’t have) combined with tech support from me (which I don’t want to give).  Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Luckily Kimmy and I have no plans for this weekend.   Unlike pervious weekends where I got to visit my Genesys Master and his lovely family (in addition to being a routing master he makes a good chili), or have doughnuts in the park with Cade (why do four year olds run everywhere?), or partying down with the Hobratschs; this weekend promises to be long on boring, leaving me eager for work on Monday.  Who am I kidding, I am going to spend most of this weekend catching up on sleep and flagellating myself for not posting a blog entry in two weeks. 

Out of all the guys I know, I am the only that thinks two females at once is a problem. I think that statement might require that I return my man card; I’ll have to check on that one. California. I on the other hand was wide awake with ideas zipping and crashing in my head like a Nascar race; it could have been the weight of the world resting on the awesome powers of my mind or it could have been the half dozen sodas that I had yesterday, I fear the mystery will never be solved. Anyway, Kimmy was using me as her self heating body pillow last night when Lucy bounded onto the bed. Normally Lucy avoids sleeping on me at night but since Kimmy wasn’t available I became the second choice, there was only one small problem … Kimmy had her arm thrown across me. Lucy tries her usual pawing, head butting, pushing and all other manner of annoying tricks that cats use to get their way but it was to no avail. In frustration she starts tasting licking Kimmy; lickity split Kimmy moves her arm and the cat begins to lovingly smother me wither her flabby fluff. Two women in my bed, a crick in my back and the urgent need to pee, I tell you nothing but trouble.

Speaking of trouble I am having issues with a Seagate hard drive. It was part of an external hard drive but the USB connection crapped out; so I did the logical thing and stole it from work. Got it home with out a problem and began to disassemble it. It was like a monkey trying to disassemble a nuke. First it took me two flat blade screwdrivers, a skinned knuckle, and a lot of swearing to get the outer case off. Then I had to go dig out an allen wrench to disassemble the hard drive enclosure. After that it was only 6 screws and then I had a brand new 120 GB hard drive. I power down the computer, unplug it and slip the hard drive in, increasing my storage space by 150%. Turn the computer back on only to be thwarted by the bios, who is determined to not recognize the new hard drive. After awhile I give up and pull it out. Then inspiration strikes and I dig my U-Storage hard drive enclosure out of a box. It is a pretty sweet little hard drive enclosure, 90% of it is aluminum, 4 screws installs and secures the hard drive, and the back is made of cheap crappy plastic which broke the first time I dropped it. Taking care not to maim the hard drive enclosure further I got the Seagate installed and working. I am now a happy owner of a new 120 GB portable hard drive; it only took most of my afternoon, a skinned knuckle, and the complete trashing of the living room to accomplish this fleeting moment of pleasure.

Hopefully Joss Whedon’s new series won’t let me down.