Yes, one of those days.

You know the ones? The kind where nothing really goes right. Nothing goes very wrong, but nothing really goes right. I shouldn’t even complain, there are a lot of people in the world who have it so much worse than me. But I can’t help it… today everything just seemed to be conspiring against me.

Where to start…

Work? Oh yeah, work is great. Well, not great, but actually shitty. Why? It’s hard to put it in words really, its more of a feel than anything in particular. For example, today we had our one of twice weekly project meetings. We got through the agenda, my boss said that we were done. I packed up my shit and went to my desk, cause I had shit to take care of. After a while, it dawned on me that the other Network Engineers were still in the conference room. My boss had left, I had left but they were still in there. They remained in there for about 45 minutes.

I don’t know what they talked about. What I do know is that what ever it was, they didn’t feel the need to consult or ask me about it. Nor did they feel the need to update me on what ever it was.

Wow. Don’t I feel like an important and integral part of my ‘team?’ No I don’t. Not even a little bit.

My made up club, the shitty blogs club’s domain name seems to be parked at godaddy. The fact of the matter is The domain name and hosting were gifted to me. Same thing for shitty blog radio. I think the SBC domain name expired. The SBR one will be next. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m not 100% sure why it happened, but I’m fairly certain that there is more than a reasonable explanation for it. Hell, I can’t complain about that part at all.

The problem is, since it I didn’t register it, I can’t renew it. Whois shows it as expired, but none of the registration places will let me purchase it. Is this because of a bit of lag in the whole registration thing, or did some one else buy it? I don’t know. I am powerless to do much about it. I could register .net domains, but I’m not sure if it is worth it.

The bigger issue will be when shittyblogradio.com goes… I can register the domain, but I can’t afford to replace the level of hosting I’ve been enjoying. I’m not sure what I am going to do about that either.

At the gym, I was just stiff enough to stop me from running well.

My car was in for regular maintenance, so I couldn’t drive home for lunch. So I skipped it.

So on and so forth.

Just one of those days.

I had plans for this weekend. I really did. They revolved around watching Sci-Fi shows I’d DVR’ed and reading comic books.

There were a few productive things I meant to squeeze in there, but I was ready to do a whole lot of not very much.

Of course, I should have known that couldn’t happen. I’m not very good at doing nothing. Saturday morning I reached the final straw with my PC. One too many little quirky things had happened. I had no doubt what the was wrong.

The computer is almost four years old. The hardware is still very usable, I over-spec’ed it when I bought it for just that reason. But in the course of four years who know what the hell I’ve installed and uninstalled on this thing. I’m a geek, a tinkerer and a bit of a hacker. If there is something new and nifty I’ve probably checked it out. Installed it, tried a few things got bored and forgot about it. The cumulative effect from that alone would cause issues sooner or later.

But let’s be honest. Not everything I do on this computer is exactly on the up and up. Nothing terrible, but I sometimes have occasion to go to undesirable sites and sometimes even brave a download or two. And sometimes I get more than I bargain for.

Whatever the root cause was, I was done with it. I took an inventory of what was installed that I actually use. (Which was a pretty short list compared to what was installed.) I moved the data that was on the C: drive to the external drive. And then I formatted the damn thing.

I seriously considered loading Ubuntu. There are some real advantages to that, but in the end laziness won out. I know what I need in XP and how to set it up pretty quickly. I didn’t want to spend the time or energy configuring Linux to see my mixer and get shoutcast working; or make it see the RAW files from my camera so that I can manage my photo.

I installed XP, the drivers, SP2 and pulled down a shitload of patches. I joined the PC to my home domain and then started installing software.

That’s when things got ugly. I was trying to install a piece of software that I had… ahem… lost the key to. I proceeded to visit some shady sites that might be able to give a key I could use… since mine was… err… lost. I wasn’t having any luck, so I downloaded a key cracker. I know that this is risky business. It wasn’t a cracker but a trojan horse. Fuckers.

To make matters worse my Antivirus engine (but not the definitions) is a couple of years old. It was one that I had a license from my last job. It wasn’t picking this thing up. I went to antivirus.com and used Trend Micro’s House Call to do an online scan. It was seeing the buggers.

I wasted no time downloading Trend Micro’s Antivirus software and installing it. It was able to get a bunch of the bastards, but some of them couldn’t be deleted. I booted into recovery console and got rid of them, but when I rebooted there were new ones. It went back and forth like this until I was able to find where it had changed the registry and hack it out.

At least I think I have.

And I haven’t so much as read a comic book this weekend.

I do hate January. I hate the short, cold gray days. I hate that everything is dead. It’s a stupid time of year. One of these years, I’m gonna say, fuck it and move somewhere that is warm and bright. Florida, Arizona, Somewhere.

I get depressed. I don’t want to, but it seems to be out of my control. I’m sure this has to do with the general deadness of everything. And the lack of sunlight. Every year, I struggle through it.

On the bright side. I have a new toy.

After two and a half years and 100 plus episodes of Shitty Blog Radio, it seemed like it was time for some better equipment. It took me a few hours to get it all working, but after a good test drive tonight, I think I’ve got it.

Of course, new mic or not, Shitty Blog Radio will still suck. You can increase the sound fidelity but it won’t fix the content. You can (of course) tune in Thursdays at 10 PM EST to decide for yourself.

Work has been a drag. Budget cuts and bullshit politics have ground my project to halt. I am beginning to wonder if I am working in the right place.

So, to amuse myself, I follow the Ravens hunt for head coach and watch as the Patriots march on to history. And the good news is… by the time they get there, this god forsaken month will be over.

I’m a dork. I know it. I can’t help it.

I am sitting here in my big comfy chair, tapping this into my new phone.

I took a break to eat breakfast and I think that may be the point.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that blogging irritates me. It seems to me, that blogging should be a way to share your life with the world at large. Instead, it becomes a ritual of sharing your blog with other bloggers.

You end up, at least I did, spending your time connected to your computer doing blog things. You can’t share your life, because you don’t have one.

It may be dorky to update your blog from your phone, but at least you can do it while you are out living your life.

Last week was a long one. Not bad, but long. I can’t believe that it has been only seven days since I was at the concert.

Long hours and a hectic pace at work contributed to this. The fact that one of our ‘team members’ can’t seem to do his job, didn’t help.

I don’t know what’s up with this kid. He’s assigned to be the technician at some of the sites that I am assigned to as a Network Engineer. He won’t close calls. He seems to be paralyzed by the amount of calls out there right now. He works on calls that are more complex for days, with out elevating the call to an engineer or even asking any questions. When he does choose to ask, he sort of just tells me to do his job for him. Meanwhile, his calls keep piling up.

He doesn’t understand that there is more to his job than just knowing how to solve these issues. Unlike comparable positions at other companies, he isn’t assigned a list of calls. He pulls all the calls for his sites out of the Help Desk and addresses them as he sees fit. When things get this busy, being able to prioritize is paramount. He needs to let the complex calls sit (or elevate them) and take care of the simple calls. He should be able to close 15 to 20 calls a day. He is closing about 3 or 4 a day. Meanwhile 25 to 30 calls are coming in each day. This pace will slow down, but by the time it does, he will be in a very deep hole.

I’m not his boss, but I am ultimately responsible for these sites. If he doesn’t get caught up soon, I’ll have to go out there myself (and maybe pull resources from other sites) and bail him out. If that happens, I will have to explain to our boss why I’m out closing calls instead of working on my projects.

This just causes me stress I don’t want or need. I hate it when people don’t just do their jobs. I hate it more when it messes with my job.

One a more positive note, my niece is going to be a senior in high school this year. Her school requires that seniors arrange to have their senior portraits taken by a professional photographer on their own, instead of having one come to the school. I guess she didn’t take care of arranging this when she first found out that she was supposed to, and by the time she got around to it, the photographers were booked up.

My wife mentioned to my sister-in-law that I am capable of taking those photos. And they asked me if I could do it. Last weekend we went out to a few scenic spots and took some shots of her and a few with her boyfriend. I also shot a few traditional head and shoulder shots of her, but I don’t have access to a professional backdrop so I just shot her against a wall. I was able to use Photoshop to cut the wall away and put her in front of a background that looks very much like a pro backdrop.

I thought I did a pretty good job, but this isn’t the kind of photography I usually do, and I’m not really very good in Photoshop (I really need to take a class on it.) I began to become concerned that the photos would not be up to a professional level. I knew they looked good, but there is a reason people pay a pro.

I went to get some proofs printed so we could choose which pictures she wanted to use. When I came back to pick them up, the little girl at the store says, “I’m sorry Mr. Jeckles, we cannot print these pictures.”

I began to panic, I start to try to think of what I might have done that would have caused this problem. Did I do something wrong in Photoshop? Did I use the wrong format? I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong.

“We can’t print pictures taken by a professional photographer without his permission.”

I smiled, thanked her and assured her that she had my permission.

I can’t think of a better compliment.

Today I had the pleasure of attending a mandatory presentation.

It was a motivational speaker. Even for motivational speakers, this guy was awful.

His dad didn’t love him when he young. That rejection stayed with him his whole life. He found that he pushed himself harder to try gain the approval of a distant and cold father. He became successful, rich and women loved him. But somehow it all seemed empty, useless like life had no meaning.

As I sat and listened, all I could think was my Dad was pretty good as far as dads go, but I’m not rich or powerful. Women tolerate me at best. And many days I feel like life has no meaning.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CRYING ABOUT?!?

Almost makes me wish my dad had been distant.

He recommends that I keep a list of affirmations and read them every morning and every night. So I created a list and we will give it shot, starting right now.

I am a great fake radio DJ.
I am a good blogger.
I rule at the help desk.
I can install an OS in no time flat.
I know more about comic book characters than many people know about their own families.

Somehow I don’t feel better.

It’s probably the weather. This cold rainy shit is making me wish I was dead. I really need to move somewhere that is always summer.

He also suggested having my own personal Mission Statement. I can’t believe we paid this asshat to come talk to us.

I don’t know if I’ll have time to play the Ratdog Set before SBR tomorrow or not. I’ll post something if I’m going to do it.

I’d love to tell you all about the concert, but I don’t have it in me right now. Maybe later. It was awesome though.

This week and next are the two busiest weeks for tech support at work. And, of course, management is always trying to find ways to maximize our resources to handle the onslaught of calls we get.

This year, the grand plan is too let the engineers handle the phones, so that the support guys can all be in the field closing calls.

On paper, it’s a good plan. The reality is the support guys will, to various degrees, slack and not keep up with the pace and that some of these engineers aren’t cut out for phone support.

The number one job in phone support, at my job any how, is to address small simple problems and to create calls for larger problems and then route them to the appropriate group. I had to cover the desk for an hour (or so) on Monday and all day today. The engineers I was working with did not get it. They would try trouble shoot complex calls over the phone. I looked over at one point and saw the other engineer logged into a server checking something.

Not me. I can reset your password. I can tell you to make sure there isn’t a floppy in the a: drive when you try to boot up. I can check to see if your user has the correct rights. Anything else: “I’ll create a call for you and forward it to the right people who will help you shortly!”

These guys will help one or two users in an hour. But others will ring through to the voicemail. Users hate the voicemail.

I guess a lot of these guys think that doing this is beneath them and they don’t want to do it. Not me. I think it’s a blast. It’s easy work. I get laugh at the users. And I have fun with it. We have a bunch of seasonal help coming back right now. Many of them already have accounts, but they forget the password.

“Tech Services, this is Jeckles.”
“Uh… yeah. I think there is problem with my computer.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well. I try to login and I get an error.”
“Does the error say ‘make sure you used the correct password’ or does it say ‘I can’t find the server?’”
“It was saying check your password, but now it’s saying my account is locked.”
“Sounds like you haven’t used the correct password.”
“I think I may have forgot it.”
“Forgot it? Do you know that you are the first call for a forgotten password that I’ve had this week?”
“Really?”
“No. I’ve unlocked your account and changed your password to ‘password.’ It will prompt you to change it to something else when you login. Have a nice day!”

I’ll be on the desk all day tomorrow and three days next week. And I’ve been staying late so that I can catch up on the rest of my work. So I’m tired, but it’s okay.

If I have time on Thursday, I may broadcast the Ratdog set before SBR. Perhaps around 7:30 PM EST. If you are interested, that’s awesome. If not, who cares.

Thanks for calling the Help Desk!

We had two massive thunderstorms today. One around lunch time and the other was just a few minutes ago.

I love thunderstorms. All that power and fury shows up out of nowhere. It’s awesome.

With any luck, it will cool things down for this weekend.

Have you noticed the effort to blog daily? It won’t last. My streak will be broken by my backpacking trip tomorrow. Still, I’ll try to post on a very regular basis. Why? I don’t know. I don’t know where these compulsions ideas come from, I just try to run with them.

I should be preparing for SBR right now. Oh fucking well, it’s not like it’s a real radio show.

Okay. The show is over now, I guess I can finish this post. Like I was saying, the show isn’t very good. Listen for yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Also, there may be an tiny bit of profanity.

I really shouldn’t get so caffeinated during the show… It will be another sleepless night for me.

I’ll see you losers on Sunday.

My sinuses are still bothering me. I feel much better than I did the weekend of the blogathon, but I’m nowhere near %100. I can’t breathe. Which makes everything difficult. Especially the gym.

On the flipside, I’ve found a podcast that doesn’t suck. It’s called Podrunner and it’s an hour long mix of techo-ish music all set at a constant beat rate. It’s awesome for running or whatever.

I’ve been told that if I want Shitty Blog Radio to be successful, I have to promote it. It sounds like good advice, but I really suck at self promotion. It seems like bragging or something. Regardless, you should check out Shitty Blog Radio tomorrow night at 10 PM EST. It is the ‘Worst Show on the Internet’ or at least that’s what I’ve dubbed it. What is is mostly is some rage filled nonsense. Or something. Actually, it’s kind of hard to explain. You’d have to hear it.

Thanks to the magic of DVR I’ve seen 3 episode of Star Trek in the last 36 hours. I hadn’t watched good old original Star Trek in years. In my minds eye I had reduced it to not much more than Kirk… speaking in.. intervals that. Make. No. Sense. And paper mache sets, Red Shirted Ensigns and special two handed future punches. It, of course, has all those things, but in spite of that it’s pretty good show. It’s been fun to discover these episode all over again.

Right now I should be packing to go backpacking on Friday. I’m just throwing that out there.

This concept of a two year build up to the Presidential elections needs to be rethought. There is no reason for it. Of course, whenever I say that some asshat speaks out and says, ‘but I love this stuff.’ That’s the whole problem. I can’t help but believe that the only reason this process has spread out like this is to give CNN and FOXNews programming. That’s not a real good reason. There is no upside. It makes campaign insanely expensive driving the candidates into the waiting arms of the special interest groups. Meanwhile they all just dig up dirt about each other. This is a stupid system.

You would think that I would do something fun while I have all this time to myself. At least, you would think that if you didn’t know me. For fun, I’m broadcasting make believe radio on the internet. I suck. But I do take requests.

Other than that, I’ve just worked and watched Star Trek on DVR. I know, you’re jealous. You wanna be just like me. I’m sorry, but not everyone can handle this level of dork cool.

Oh… for the record, Expert Level on Guitar Hero II is fucking stupid hard.

I’m not a gamer. I never have been. I hear my friends talk about spending hours playing this game or another. I just can’t imagine doing that. My kid has an Xbox 360, so I get a chance to try out a game every now and then. I enjoy it for a bit, and then I’m over it. The only game that had come close to holding my interest was Madden Football.

We got Guitar Hero II yesterday. I’ve been hearing and reading about people getting all kinds of worked up about this game and it’s predecessor for some time now. And today, I can honestly say I understand what the fuss is all about. I play guitar. Not as much as when I was young. But still, I can hold my own. I can’t say that this game is just like playing, but it does capture the feel of playing. I couldn’t help but rock and bob with he rhythm as I powered out “Possum Kingdom” or “Heart Shaped Box.” I think I need to just not play it. Otherwise, you may never hear from me.

In other news, my wife took the kids and left me. I love telling people that. They look at me, think about it, decide it seems reasonable, look at me again, think that maybe I’m too calm about all of this and then ask me, Really? I tell them that they will be back in a few days.

They are going for a little more vacation at the lake. I have to work, but that’s no reason to stop them from having some fun. Besides, the kids have been restless, they need to get out and do something. I will do my best not to spend the entire time they are gone, playing Guitar Hero II.

Instead I’ll put my effort into designing an online store. It’s not for me, I have nothing to sell. My brother asked me to give him a hand, and I can’t turn down a challenge this geeky. I’ll tell you more about it, once it is set up.

Oh, and I’m sure this will shock many of you, I’m going backpacking this weekend.

Yes. You missed a block of Disco and Rage on Shitty Blogathon Radio. I know you don’t care. I don’t care that you don’t care. So there.

Mango was there. He eggs me on, you know. He tries to get me to do bad things. Very bad.

I think I have been in front of the PC too long. I mean I’m used to being in front of a computer, but this is relentless. At least I work, I get interrupted with meetings and phone calls and Shutter. All I have here is Geek Blog, Misfitopia, IM and Shitty Radio. It may be making me a bit crazy.

Mango informs me that CBS is broadcasting an XBox360 GuitarHero Championship. This is fucking retarded. Do I really need to elaborate.

Mango is going back to whatever it is that he is doing in Buffalo. So I’ll be back to being kind of alone. Again. He says he’ll be back in the middle of the night. I’ll play Enya and GnR to celebrate.

And maybe some ‘All Along the Watchtower.’

What was it that Tyler Durden said about ‘the Happy Place?’ You know… when he was giving the narrator a chemical burn?

Nevermind.

Captain America is dead.
Shot down in cold blood.

If that doesn’t make you a bit sad, then there must be something wrong with you.

And Marvel, if you think Short-Shipping Captain America #25 will create more ‘buzz,’ you are probably right. But Dammit, why? I just want to be a dutiful little comic book geek and run out collect it. But no. It’s already sold out.

Like he’ll stay dead. I remember back when Superman was dead. That didn’t last either.

I think that it is possible that I’m not really good at this blogging thing. I wonder why it took me two and half years to figure this out.

I’ve been invited to a party in Las Vegas. But I can’t afford to go. It’s just too expensive to fly out there for one weekend.

Doesn’t that just suck?

Don’t answer. That was one of those rhetorical questions.

Today alone, no less than six people reinforced my notion that most people are simply to stupid to be allowed to be left to their own devices.

Remind me to tell you what is wrong with Public Education today, but make sure you have plenty of time when you do.

Also remind me to tell you about my hiking trip from a month ago.

And it snowed. I was really ready for spring. All the signs are here. Daylight Savings is coming. The Orioles are looking good in Spring Training (they do this to more thoroughly crush our hopes in July.) And my narcissus have peaked up thruogh the mulch. Okay, they did that back in January, but you get the point.

I set up MAME on PC. All the better to enjoy Pacman and Burger Time. All I need now is a good, old-school joystick.

Do you ever wish that the Internet was harder to use, just to keep the morons out?

And lastly, I used Puppy Linux to rescue files off of a corrupted Windows Laptop. I’m like a superhero.

I was watching Star Trek yesterday.

I watch Star Trek nearly everyday.

Yesterday, it was The Next Generation variety.

The episode was Tapestry.

Any episode with Q is worth watching, but this episode is probably one of the best they ever did.

The basic idea of the episode is this:

Captain Picard finds himself dead after a phaser blast (or some such thing) makes his artificial heart fail. In the afterlife he is greeted by the apparently omnipotent Q.

Q explains that the reason Picard is a dead is because of the artificial heart, had he still had his human heart he would be alive and well.

Q gives Picard the chance to go back and do it all over again, a chance to avoid the fight with an ugly alien that resulted in him getting a new heart.

Picard suddenly finds himself back in his 20-something self. He’s a Ensign just out of the Academy, out with his best friends from the Academy for one last weekend out, before they go to their first assignments as Star Fleet Officers.

Picard relives the weekend, this time with the perspective of a middle aged, successful Star Fleet Captain. He manages to prevent the fight with the Aliens from happening, and he never gets stabbed in the heart. As a result, he never gets an artificial heart.

Q returns him to the present, and Picard finds that he isn’t Captain of the Enterprise, he is a Lieutenant in Astrophysics who spends his days running reports and analyzing data. He is relieable, but unspectacular. He will never advance beyond this post in this new present.

Q visits Picard one last time. He explains that by avoiding that fight, the young Picard never found his life in danger, never decided to live for the now, never learned to take chances.

Or more simply put, his past, especailly the parts of it that he wasn’t proud of, were intregral to making him into the man that he became.

Q sends him back to his younger self again, this time Picard allows himself to be drawn into the fight, knowing full well that is could cost him his life in the present. Death, he decides, would be preferable to surviving as a man that is a pale imitation of his self.

This episode is great.

I have so many regrets about my past, and watching this episode always reminds me, that what I’ve experienced— good and bad— has made me who I am.

I still have room for improvement. (Lots of room.) But the place for improvement is right here and now, not in wishing that this or that had gone differently.

I have a plan.

I’ve had a ‘home network’ for a while now. But it isn’t much of a network. Mostly a few PC’s and a couple of wireless laptops connected the internet. Throw in a few network printers for good measure and you get the picture.

This doesn’t really cut it for the geek in me. And to tell you the truth, it’s not really working as well as it should for the rest of us either. What we need here is a real network. Luckily, I know I network engineer. (It’s me. Really. I don’t need to find any one else.)

What I have is one P4 Desktop, 3 P3 Desktops, 2 laptops and one 200GB external drive . The plan is this. Take one P3 and make it a w2k3 Server and attach the external drive to it. One of the other P3s is already set up to be a VM Server. I will add a Ubuntu LAMP Server VM and a Windows XP VM. THe final P3 will be set up with EDUbuntu for the kids. My P4 desktop will be formated and I’ll install Kubuntu on it. The laptops are already good to go.

I’ll share out some folders from the external drive. The Printers too.

And then I’ll be set. I’ll be able to work from either my desktop or my laptop equally, my wife will be able to access my MP3’s and I’ll have the XP VM to fall back on if I find something that just needs windows (or the kids do.) I’ll use the LAMP server to work on some PHP/MySQL databases. You know for all that important data I have. Seriously, I see full relational databases in the future for my comic book collection and my movie library.

Why? Cause I’m a geek that’s why.

I’ll bore you with updates as they are available.

I’m in a shitty mood this morning. Of course, it is almost afternoon. This isn’t helping my mood out at all. But none of that matters.

From inside my skull:

I’ve been looking a bit at the new Vista OS. It’s pretty good, of course it ought to be after 5 years or so of development. I have been planning to make some changes to my ’supercomputer.’ Initially, I was thinking of putting some flavor of Ubuntu on it, but now I’m considering Vista. Linux or Vista? There are good reasons for both. I love the whole Open Source thing and the implied geekiness that goes with Linux, but Vista is new and shiny. Plus, sooner or later I’ll be supporting Vista at work, the more familiar I am with the better off I’ll be. At the moment, I’m totally undecided.

I can’t help thinking that we haven’t seen the worst of this Iraqi sitiuation yet.

There are all kinds of playoff implications in todays games. Not only in the NFL but in my Fantasy Football League. So in addition to the Ravens, I’ll be rooting for LT, Jerricho Cotchery and Eli Manning.

Monday Night Football presents me with a unique dilemma Assuming the Ravens win today. If Indy wins, the Ravens clinch the AFC North. If Cincy wins we clinch the Playoffs but not the AFCN. However we will move into Second Place in the overall standings in the AFC. I think I’ll just go with my gut here and root against Cincinattica.

I really need to go backpacking. This mild weather has only made this fact more obvious to me. Spring cannot get here fast enough.

The middle of next week will mark the shortest day of the year. I look forward to it, only so I can start seeing the days get longer again. All this darkness puts a hurting on my psyche.

I hurt my foot while running the other week. Nothing serious, but it does hurt when i put my weight on it. I kept running each day, hoping that it would work itself out. It did not. I believe that my sneakers were the culprit. So I switched shoes, but the pain is still there. And there is nothing more pathetic than seeing a middle aged guy hobbling along in a half run-half limp on the treadmill. I bought some new running shoes this weekend, which in the long run should help. My problem is what to do about the short term. I don’t run on the weekends, so it has had a chance to heal some, but if it still hurts tomorrow, I’ll have to make some choices. Either I just take a week off, I use the Elliptical Machines for a week (which will put less strain on my foot, but causes my knees problems,) or I just keep running. None of those are great options.

Every time I hear about Hilary Clinton getting ready to run for President, it makes me happy. Not for any particular reason, it just feels like a good thing.

I am sick of work. Luckily I’ll get the last week of the year off. Hopefully, I can come back re-charged.

Work. Gym. Sleep.

Sometime it feels like that’s all there is.

I hate the short days and long nights. I hate the gray skies. Even this recent wave of warm weather can’t fix that.

The answer, for me anyhow, is to escape, just a little, every now or then. I have a few avenues for escape. Music is one. My comic books are another.

Of course, any time I try to talk to any one about comic books they roll their eyes at me. I guess grown ups aren’t supposed to read comic books.

But they are a perfect little escape for me. I have a stack of comic books I haven’t read yet. Every day on my lunch break, I read one or two and I read a couple before I go to sleep.

These books let me wonder if Iron Man or Captain America will come out on top in their War. You didn’t even know that there was a war, did you? Will Charles Xavier ever regain his powers? Who is X-23?

Better to think about those things, than to be bogged down by a job that honestly isn’t going anywhere.

Besides Batman, Wolverine, Marvel Girl and the rest are badass.

Is privacy important?

The nature of this question keeps changing. Should we sacrifice a little privacy to make the world safer? To make it more convenient?

It seems that this question is no longer academic for me.

At work we got a new piece of equipment. A network analyzer to go with our firewall. Our Network Analyst, who is responsible for the firewall has been testing it out.

It seems that there is very little information that is hidden from him.

Oh. I know the information has always been there, for anyone with the right tools and enough time. But this has raised the stakes. He can read in near real time what you are saying on IM or what web page your are reading. Who you are logged in as.

If he were inclined, he could know just about anything I did on line, with no more effort than you are expending to read this blog.

He let our Network Engineers know about the capabilities of this device by reading verbatim an IM conversation between to of them.

The reaction in the room was unanimous: Fuck this.

Like I said, we know that nothing is safe or secret in the electronic world. We know that better than most people. We also know the pure volume of stuff happening on the network at any given moment should mean that whatever we do is just part of the noise.

Not anymore.

Of course, the argument always goes— if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Like most old arguments, it’s dead wrong.

Typical Chat conversation:

jeckles:dude
shutter:what’s up!
jeckles:that meeting was lame!
shutter:oh yeah?
jeckles:fuck yeah. you should have heard the dumbass shit that so and so was saying.
shutter:hahahhaha. I know so and so is such a tool… why do they invite him to those meetings
jeckles:to make me nuts, I think

Harmless. Just a little venting between co-workers. I’m sure it happens all the time. But what if ’so and so’ got access to the logs of the analyzer? Yeah. That would be bad.

And even if I refrained from criticizing or insulting anyone on IM, would it still be OK?

No.

Imagine if your boss offered you overtime to work on a project. You declined because you had plans for the weekend. You don’t tell your boss that your plans are to watch all 12 hours of LotR, its none of her business. But when you tell your buddy about your plans and she sees the logs…

What if some one was planning to quit? That’s not illegal or immoral, yet you wouldn’t want anyone at work to no about it before you told them.

The scenarios are endless. The fact remains that recording personal conversations is wrong. It’s probably legal, but what’s legal and what’s right often don’t line up.

There is a need to monitor what happens on a network and to control the kinds of traffic that is on the network. But there has to be a way to do it without spying on your own employees. I’d rather have IM blocked than monitored.

So what happened at work?

We downloaded and install a tool to encrypt our IM. Our Network Analysts blocked our IM. Our CIO said, “You guys can encrypt it? Send me the link.” Our Analyst backed off.

But this isn’t going to go away.

What should you take out of this? Two things.

Protect your privacy. If you think you have nothing to hide, you underestimate the ill will people can possess.

And if you IM me while I’m at work, assume what ever you type is being read. Cause it probably is.

Actually, no one asked.

But I don’t care. I’ll tell you anyway.

Remember that Laptop I was working with? Dell was kind enough to send me a new (or at least new to me) CD/DVD drive as well as a hard drive. And to my surprise, they worked great. Before long I had Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft installed and everything is looking peachy.

I was pleased to see that the wireless adapter was recognized by the OS. I started trying to connect to my wireless network, but there were no options for WPA security. This was no good. I did a little research and found that WPA security isn’t available in the base install of Kubuntu.

I installed and configured Knetworkmanger and tried that. And it looked like it would work. But as it attempted to connect to my network, it hung at 28% and got no further. I tried a number of other things, but the results remained the same until I manage to change enough settings and the networking completely. I got frustrated and walked away.

But I don’t give up that easy. I reinstalled Kubuntu and and began looking around again. It occurred to me that I never actually connected to any network with the wireless card. I turned the security off and tried to connect to the wireless network. Still no dice.

More research. Perhaps the firmware to the wireless wasn’t installed correctly. I found some steps to correct that and followed them. I tried to connect. Success.

I reconfigured the security and tried again.

No dice. It took me a few minutes to consider it, but it came to me that I keep my SSID hidden. I enabled SSID broadcast and tried again. It connected like a champ.

As a matter of fact, I sit here now in front of the TV (Watching The Search for Spock) connected in just that fashion.

I’m sure no one is as impressed with me as I am, but then again, I don’t care about that either.

Did I tell you about my wife’s laptop? I bet I haven’t.

The spot in which you plug the power supply into became loose and as a result, the battery could not get charged.

I get online and chatted with Dell Support, I find that chatting in less frustrating than speaking on the phone with them. e established that she probably needed a new system board, that the laptop was out of warranty and that a new system board would cost 800 bucks.

My wife needs a laptop to do her job. It didn’t take much to justify buying a new one instead of shelling out that kind of money on parts.

This left this laptop in my house, that had nothing wrong with it except that it couldn’t draw power. I decided that I could fix it. And since no one was counting on using it now, there was no problem if I screwed it all up. It looked like I could just re-solder the power jack. And I was ready to do just that until we got a letter in the mail.

The letter said that we members of a class that had secured a victory from Dell for this very problem. In light of this law suit, Dell was very willing to replace the system board at no cost to us. We sent the laptop off and in a week or so it came back.

It sat for a few weeks while I was busy with other things. This week I decided that I was ready to mess with it. I wanted to install Kubuntu on it. I put the install CD in and turned the laptop on and… nothing happened. It seems that the CD Drive no longer worked.

Once again I chatted with Dell. He had me run Dell Diagnostics on the laptop. The diagnostics said the Hard Drive was failing, but the CD Drive was fine. Go figure. He said he would send me a new CD/DVD drive and a new hard drive. The sad thing part is that I don’t think there is anything wrong with the CD/DVD drive. I think it’s the system board. But there is no arguing. I’ll get the new parts, install them and if when the new CD/DVD drive also doesn’t work, I’ll chat with them again.

I can’t complain, I’m getting a lot of service for free on a laptop that was out of warranty.

It’s true, I am a big dork.

Yesterday I set up a VM Server. That is to say, a server that holds a number of Virtual Machines. Wait, you probably don’t know what a virtual machine is. For starters, the cool geek acronym is VM. A VM is a fully functional computer that installed, well, virtually. The entire computer is contained within a single file on another computer. It is very cool technology and it getting too be very popular in industry.

The coolest thing about my VM Server is that it is completely free technology.

I installed a base install of Ubuntu Server on P4 2.8 GHz with 512 MB RAM . And then I installed the new free VMServer product from VMware. Once that was installed , I installed the VMware Server Console on my regular PC. This allowed me to create a few VMs on the VM Server. I started with a Windows 2003 Server install. It works well, if a bit slow. I was hoping to attach my external hard drive to the VMServer and have the W2k3 Server operate it as a Shared Drive, or actually a few different shared drives. But I had some issues with the VM consistently seeing the USB Drive. Having shared drives that aren’t always there is no good, so I put the external drive back on my main PC.

I also installed a LAMP Server in a second VM. This is a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Server. Basically, your standard open source web server. Next up will be a Vista VM. Although I expect that to be terribly slow.

I guess this whole project is kind of a proof of concept thing for me. To really do this right, I would need to max out the RAM and put a 300 GB Hard Drive in.

Like I said, I’m a dork. Nice way to spend most of a Saturday.

At least, later I went out and bought a few comic books.

It’s that time of year again.

It is the time of year that I spend crazy hours at work and do little else.

I’m not complaining. I honestly don’t mind.

Most of the time my department is pretty laid back. Almost too laid back. It’s fun to work in an environment with a little intensity. At least for a little bit.

And besides, they pay me overtime. So bring it on. I can take it. Work me as hard as you want. I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.

The down side is I won’t have as much time to play on the internet. I’m already pretty much an absentee landlord of my stupid little club. Now I’ll be practically invisible. Who cares, it’s a shitty little club any way.

My stupid Internet Radio Show will suffer also. I mean who wants to tune in to hear some freak bitching about how stupid people are? Come to think of it, maybe the show won’t change that much.

I went backpacking weekend before last and I went to lake with my neices and nephew last weekend. So I’m pretty relaxed. I’m ready to be busy. Today I’m setting 20-some-odd High Powered CAD workstations. Woo-Hoo. In case you can’t read the Sarcasm, it’s not very exciting. But at least I brought my iPod with me.

I spent last weekend installing Linux, Xubuntu to be precise, on my test box. I got it running and have been using it since then. I like it.

But I guess that wasn’t enough.

Tonight I Installed the Windows Vista Beta on a Virtual Machine on my Regular Computer.

So now at my finger tips I can work with Xubuntu, XP or Vista.
I’m such a dork.

Vista is going to take some getting used to.
It is different. Very different.

I’d like to be relatively fluent with it long before it is released.

Maybe I am doing all this geekery because I am avoiding making this database I am supposed to be designing.

Writing and designing the web app excites me and I can’t wait to do it. But first I need to design the data model. And that is as exciting as… well it isn’t exciting at all.

Just a week and a half till I go back packing. I think I’m ready. Very ready.

I can’t beleive that the Blogathon was only a week ago.
It seems much longer ago.

I’m a dork.
But you knew that.

I took my ‘extra’ computer and installed Linux on it.
The PC is a 500 MHz Dell with 384 MB RAM. It isn’t exactly a speed demon but it is stable, with decent hardware.

I’ve been monkeying around with Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Well, mostly Kubuntu because Gnome plucks me for some reason. But KDE is a resource pig. I stumbled on to Xubuntu. It is another flavor of Ubuntu but it comes packaged with XFCE as its Windows Manger. So far so good. But then again, I haven’t done anything but set up my IM and start typing this. Of course, that is most of what I do.

As if that wasn’t enough, I installed VMware Server on my main computer. I set up a VM with Kubuntu but I over tweaked it and had to punt. I’ll try again later.

I’d also like to set up a Windows Vista VM. But its seems that I missed my chance to download the Beta. I’ll see if I can’t find some other source to get the Beta from, but don’t tell Big Bill.

My goal here, I guess, is to use Linux for all of my Internet-ing. I have some apps that require Windows, but most of what I do is … well it’s this. We’ll try it for one month. If I am still liking it when the month is up, I’ll investigate Migrating everything I do (at home) to Linux.

This is the first time I’ve made that threat. Something has always come up to piss me off and make switch back. But its been a year or so since I tried, so I’ll give it a shot again.

Just skip this post.
It is boring and unnecessary.

It is never good to brag, to toot your own horn, but this is my blog and I can’t think of a better place for it.
I’ve been biting my tongue and being humble at work.

No one will care or understand.
Geek nerd talk follows, with little explanation or clarification:

We are going to Migrate from Netware E-dir to Active Directories. Since I am supposed to be an expert with the MCSE and all I’ve been working in the planning meeting with the consultants. It’s been fun.

I was discussing a naming convention for security groups with a colleague, when it occurred to me that we could assign permissions to Domain Local Groups and then be able to ‘effectively assign rights’ to Domain Global Groups by adding them to the Domain Local Groups.

We went back to the consultants and floated the idea to them. At first they were like you don’t need Local Domain Groups, this is a Single Forest Single Domain Model. But as I explained that we could use it to ease administration, they understood where I was going, and totally endorsed the idea.

</ geek nerd talk>

The point being, I had an original and smart thought today that will become the way we do our jobs someday.

That doesn’t happen every day. At least not to me.

It’s Monday.

I still have to be at work. I still have to deal with … well everything I had to before.

This blogathon may have made a difference. But life still goes on, pretty much as it did before.

I did get some sleep, but I’m still a bit out of it.

I find my self feeling bogged down.
I have so many projects I’m working on.
Not at work, but my projects.

My home has some Home Improvement needs.

I’m in the process of setting up a few Web Sites.
Two of them are for me.
One of them is for a Business.
I’m not really qualified to call my self a Web Designer, and I’m certainly not a DBA, but that is what I seem to be getting my self into.
I won’t get paid for any of it. I’m looking at like this… If I can get this up and running with no major incidents, I’ll have the clout (and the code snippets) to sell a similar Web App to some one else.

My Blog To Do list keeps growing.

I’ve set up a Linux box (again.) Already I’m plucked with it. For some reason the cursor/mouse never feels like its moving correctly for me in Linux. It makes me nuts.

I want to record a few more Techno things for the Show.

In addition to this blog I have 3 writing projects that I am not working on.

I have a few thousand photographs that need to cleaned up and organized ans something done with them.

You know plus life.
I feel like I don’t have enough time for any of it.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

I collect comic books.

I guess I could just announce: I am a big dork!

I get a few titles; Batman and Robin, X-Men, a few others.
I love it.

When I was younger, I could never afford to keep up with it.
I’d collect for a month or two, but them I’d run out of money and stop.

Something about the way they are put together is perfect.
One picture.
A touch of dialog.
Repeat.

I don’t seem to be able to put into works the simple elegance of it.

I think that I haven’t read the most recent X-men yet.
That will be my treat.
Tomorrow I’ll just relax and read that.

That’s what I do.
I save them.
I don’t read them right away.
When I’m in the mood, I pull out an unread one and read it.

I guess comics are supposed to be kid stuff.

It must be my inner child that likes them.
Funny, I thought I killed my inner child.

I will not be reduced to being grumpy.
I will not.

But they are testing me. They really are.

So, I will focus on some of the positives.

I just got Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder yesterday. I had to order it off eBay. It was worth the wait.

I also managed to drag myself to the gym yesterday.
Going to the gym is a chore. You know the drill. You’re too tired. Too busy. Whatever. So you don’t go. Add to that the fact that my knee has been a mess. So the few times I have managed to go, it swells up and I can’t go back.

But I went. I got on the treadmill and ran. For 30 minutes. Which got me about 3 miles. and my knee… is OK. now all I have to do is go back tonight.

I am working on making a Web App for a Realty Team. The project is way over my head. I’m a network engineer not a developer, but I can’t turn down a challenge.

And YOU GUYS… yes YOU GUYS have blown my mind. When I signed up for blogathon and I was afraid I wouldn’t get 20 dollars in pledges. But no, YOU GUYS rocked my world and and have pledged nearly $300. I hope you realize what a reflection that is on YOU GUYS. There are blogs in this blogathon with more reader that have less pledges. That is because YOU GUYS rock! I cannot thank you enough.

If you want to blow my mind, Sponsor Me!

See. Things are pretty good. I just need to tune out these idiots.

Sometimes my job is just boring.
Now would be a prime example.

Avert your eyes… geek talk follows.

One of the software packages my users use has a proprietary database that stores all sorts of multimedia files. It doesn’t take much to make it get errors. It needs to have maintenance done a regular basis. (I’d explain database maintenance, but none of you care. None of you.)

Last week some idiot, (that bastard that screamed at me the other week, actually,) ran a server utility on the sever while the users were using this package. Ever since their software hasn’t run correctly. I told them to run maintenance.

They say they did but the problem persists.

So here I am running maintenance, which amounts to clicking next and waiting.

And waiting.
And waiting.

One of the tables seems to be FUBAR. Because the database is proprietary, there is nothing I can do but wait to see if the maintenance utility can fix it. If it can’t… well lets not think about that yet.

The point is, I have nothing to do but sit here. And wait. At least I have my iPod to amuse me.

I am bored. And hungry too.
I think I have many days of hungry in my future.
Damn. Now I’m think about food. This isn’t working well at all.

Bored and hungry. This no way to spend the day.

I’ve had a whole day to recover, but I’m still useless. We’ll just blame this stuffiness in my head.

I coasted through work today. Asshole tried talk to me again. I put on my iPod. He kept talking. Some people are very dense.

I was hoping to air out my tent in the sun yesterday. Of course, the sun doesn’t seem to shine anymore. If I waited for the sun I’d have nothing but mildew for a tent.

What is that?

It is a tent in my kitchen, of course.

Luckily, no one around here likes to cook anyway.

I solved a mystery, I’ve been working on for a while. It feels good. (Don’t ask… it doesn’t make any sense… I promise.)

I found a new comic book. It has been out for a few months, but I’m a bit slow. Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder. I was thinking that I should pick up a Batman title, and when I saw that Frank Miller was back to writing Batman, my decision was made. I’ve read Issue 1, I loved it. Some people have panned it for being ‘over the top’ in both dialogs and artwork. Well Duh. It’s Batman. I loved it. I need to find #2, my comic book store can’t seem to lay hands on it, and I’m not quite willing to pay 10 backs for it on eBay (once you figure in the shipping.) Who knows, maybe I’ll have a weak moment.

I am trying to write the account of my hike last weekend, but my brain dead-ness is hampering the effort, I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now it’s off to sleep.

Work sucks. But at least no one has yelled at me today.
I am supposed to set up some computers. They are moving them from somewhere else. And they keep not getting them moved. So I wait.

And wait.

I think I need to go backpacking. Conveniently, I’m going this Friday.

If I make it that long.
I just don’t think that I am cut out for working.

I did mange to teach myself some PHP in my spare time. I have figured out database calls and incorporated SQL statements in to the code. I also figured out encryption and authentication.

Now I just need to decide if I want to bother to set up classes (Object Oriented PHP) or just leave the code all spaghetti-like. It’s not like I’m being graded on this. But I do want it done right. Me and my stupid projects.

With any luck I’ll get this site up and running by the end of the month. What site, you ask. That is a secret. A surprise even. If I ever get it fnished… I’ll tell you about it. Probably.

I guess I’ll go back to waiting now.

Jeckles, the voices in my head say, you claim you’re a geek but all you talk about is backpacking and politics. To satisfy the voices, I offer the following:

Let the geek talk begin. I have had to clean up a lot of spyware over the last two years, at work, at friend’s and family’s homes, even a little bit at home. The tried and true tools I have used are AdAware and Spybot S&D. As insidious as the spyware is, it seems to require both of these tools to clean it all up. The good news is that they are free. The bad news is that, recently, they seem to be unable to get some of the newer malware that is out there. There are anti-spyware software packages you can pay for, but personally I won’t sink any money into them while I can still get the free tools to do the job.

I had heard that Microsoft was releasing an anti-spyware tool. It is in beta right now (and it’s free) so I thought I should check it out. It irked me from the get go, because Microsoft want to make sure that I had a valid version of Windows installed before it let me download it. That really ticks me off. My version is valid. That is not the problem. Get ready for the mini-rant. The problem is the notion of providing support and patches only for valid versions. I am sorry that people steal Microsoft’s products, but that is no excuse to allow those pirated versions to become little cess pools of viruses, spyware, and zombie spammers. The existence of those kinds of boxes will only diminish the security of all the valid Windows installations out there. Mini-rant done, sorry.

Otherwise the tool worked fairly well. It sound some residual files from spyware I had previously cleaned off the test machine. My only complaint is that it categorized VNC as a threat. VNC could bee used maliciously, but is mostly used as a tool by admin types like me. The interface was smooth and friendly. It has a seamless autoupdate feature that is great. Plus it also includes some useful system tools like, a Privacy Tool that let’s you get rid of various temporary files and a System Explorer that gives lots of useful info about what is on your PC. The real test will come when I have an infected machine to work with. For now, I’m keeping it in my anti-spyware “toolkit,” and hoping that it improves as it goes through the beta process.

We all know that Groundhog’s day was once the celebration of some rodent in rural Pennsylvania. Everyone sing it together: The Pennsylvania Polka! We also know that now in the dawning of the 21st Century that the whole rodent thing is a bit too quaint. Groundhog’s Day now symbolizes the existentialist dilemma of having to live the same day over and over again. Put your hand in mine … I hope you enjoyed your day today, because you just might have to live it again tomorrow.

I hope that is not the case for me. Once was quite enough, thanks anyway.

Yes, I went to the interview. I did well, I think. Now I wait and wait and wait.

Enough to make a person crazy.

In an attempt to keep my mind off of all of it; I am installing Gentoo Linux in one of my computers. I had planned to do this a while ago, but as these things go, I got sidetracked. Anyway it is going well. I’m doing the install the most manual way possible, what good is a distraction that is quick and easy. I’ll keep you posted. Yes, I know the blogosphere is holding its collective breath to see how I’m doing with yet another Linux distro.

I haven’t really written about it.  It seems so trivial.  But it has been what I’ve been spending most of my free time on.  (Keep in mind that I don’t have too much free time.)

What am I talking about?  —and how many times do I hear that question in one day.

But what am I talking about.

Mango Radio.

Specifically, my little shitty show on Mango Radio.

If there was any question, and I don’t think that there was, I’m a geek.  What spells geek more than saying, “Yea… I have a radio show on the internet.”

I’m such a dork.

But I like my little show.  It’s not for everyone.  I mean you mom.  (I might, accidentally, use a few words that have four letters and start with F, S or D.) But it’s not too bad.  I talk about a bunch of nonsense and play some music I like.  It reminds me of college.  My Friends and I would sit around and talk about this and that and everything.  And play music.  We would each try to add some music to the mix that was uniquely ours.

This is a little like that.

SBR is one of the only places you’re like to hear Syd Barret or the Bee Gees.  It’s gotta be the only place you’ll hear both.  In the same show.  Not everything is obscure.  Not everything is good either.  But I like it all.  The most recent show featured music from Wheatus, Sneaker Pimps, Kate Bush, Enigma and 3 Doors Down (amongst others.)

In between songs I ramble about this and that.  Some of it makes sense.  Some of it only makes sense to people who are members of this shitty little club.  Some of it only makes sense to me.  And some of it, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.

I did the first show, mostly to see if I could figure out the software I use to record it.  I figured I would record it, give it to Mango and be done with it.  It would give me something to play with and it would give Mango something to launch his station with.

But I kind of enjoyed recording it, and more importantly I knew I could do better.  So I did another.  And Another.  Now it’s gathered it own popularity.  I don’t think that too many people listen… but more listen to that than read this blog.  (Of course if I spent more time updating this blog and less time recording my show maybe I would have more readers.)

I wasn’t going to mention it here.  I like to think of this as a relatively serious site.  Not that all the content is serious, but I don’t clutter it with memes, surveys and other nonsense.  And this seems a bit like nonsense.  But this site is also mostly about me.  And this nonsense has taken up a lot of my time and energy, so it seems worth writing about.

Shitty Blog Radio isn’t for everyone but if you’re curious, check it out.  You can hear it live on Internet Radio on Thursdays.  Go hear for more info.  Or you can subscribe to it as a podcast.

Or you can ignore it. Either way is good.

Where does the time go? Well…

I am still working on getting the rest of the A Week in the Woods, Volume Three story together. Combine that with another writing project and a web-app/database I am trying to put together for a friend, it seems I don’t have enough non-work “computer time” to take care of all of these projects. But I won’t let that stop me.

My son is off to Boy Scout camp. I’m jealous. I remember some real fun times at Scout Camp. When he gets back we’ll be off for some family camping. I’m really looking forward to that, the kids are getting old enough that they can really appreciate it.

I’m in the middle of a huge rollout of new computers at work. We have contracted an outside company to take care of it, but the whole things still has to be managed, plus everything else I do, still needs to be done.

Oh, and I cleaned out my basement. Now I just need to do something with the rest of the house. And the yard. I have so many home improvement projects I’m putting off that HGTV should run a show on the projects the Geek should be doing. Like While You Were Out, but on a smaller and less interesting scale. Paint. Mow. Spray for crabgrass. Paint. Build Shed. And on and on.

On a completely unrelated note, I picked up a cheapo mp3 player. It is no iPod, but at least it gives something to listen to while I’m running. Which I’ve been trying to do in the morning before work.

That’s your quick update of the Jeckles Geek world. I’ll try to get the backpacking story done and maybe another post or two up before I’m off in the woods again.

I finally got of my lazy ass and did it. Got my other computer running Linux. I tried to get Slackware, debian and Gentoo running. A variety of different problems kept that from working for me. So, I went back to what I knew worked. Red Hat 9. Kind of feels like Linux for dummies, but if the shoe fits…

I got it installed. Downloaded Firefox. And I’m ready to roll. Need to get gaim set up to take all of the different IMs. Otherwise I should be set. I get this urge every couple of months, to say to hell with Windows. I’m going all Linux. Why? Cause I’ll never really learn it otherwise. I mean I can function in Linux. Better than most I suppose, but I’m still an amateur. My inner geek screams, Windows is for the computer illiterate. Linux is the way. Your missing the boat son. And I scramble to comply. I am a geek. I want to be able to tune my own kernel. I want to compile packages and update depenancies. I want to know what is going on with my computer, not have some wizard say please wait while I sit back and wait. Assuming that some sort of magic is happening.

So why am I still running Windows? Two reasons. First of all, I support Windows at work. I can’t forget how it works. But more importantly, I have a very nice computer, I don’t want to screw it up. So I don’t go experimenting on it. As a result Linux get installed on some lesser computer and sooner or later I get sick of all the waiting and slowness. What’s going to be different this time? Maybe nothing. Or maybe I’ll be able to get this test installation to take care of my basic needs. Internet, email, IM and Music. Then I’ll ghost the current Windows environment on my Good computer (just in case) and then I’ll put Linux on there.

But just so you know, this post was composed in its entirety on Linux.

Here I sit, listening to XM Radio. Online! They jacked up the monthly rate but threw in the online bit. Not a bad trade off if you ask me. It’s not Mango Radio or anything but it’s pretty cool.

We started to set up SUS Server at work yesterday. And I am more or less in charge of this venture because I have actually set it up before. It did not go too smoothly. When we went to launch the admin tool, which is web based, we get a 401 you don’t have permission to display this page error. Fun. It seems like I screwed up the setup of IIS 6, but I haven’t figured out where I went wrong — Yet.

Baseball is about to start. And I am excited. This is the only time of year to be excited if you are an Orioles fan. By June, all the excitement will be out of it. Daylight Savings Time is set to begin. All of this points to spring. And spring means … backpacking of course. I need to plan a trip soon.

I’m still mulling over the Dish Network thing. I hadn’t done before because the HD equipment was too expensive, but now they are giving the base HD receiver for free. It might just be time.

It’s another rainy weekend, so I will probably post again soon.

No. Really I did. At work today.

Towards the end of the day, I was getting ready to head out. Most of the office was gone. I stopped in to say something to one of the network engineers. He was sitting in front of his computer staring at the monitor. Next to him was the other senior engineer, staring along with him. Not a good sign. They were looking at the console of the webfilter that plugs works with our antivirus solution. Apparently the updates weren’t working. And they were attempting to update it manually. They downloaded the files and tried this and that, but it would not accept the files.

I watched what they were doing and tried to compare it in my mind to what i had done with our antivirus at my old job. They were different solutions but I kept looking and thinking. Finally, I said, why not do this? They were out of ideas, so they tried it. It processed the files and said it was updated. Not bad for the new guy.

I’m thinking of ditching cable and going with Dish Network. If anyone has any experience with them, let me know. Thanks.

Yes it is beginning to be spring. I have cleaned the grill. I have been cooking dinner on it. I love this time of year. I hate winter. It is so dreary. Now it is warming up. The sun is shining more. Soon, it will be time for mowing the lawn and taking care of the garden. The Orioles and playing catch with the boys. And, of course, backpacking. I have a five day weekend coming up, so I am hoping that I can twist my brother’s arm and get him (and the dog) to go on a 2 day trip with me.

I had a killer day at work today. I have been in “training” for the last few weeks. Today was my first day “on my own.” I was able to close out several calls. One of them was very tricky. I could bore you with the details, but I like you. It had to do with the fact that computer would not boot with a USB printer installed and turned on. I found, in the CMOS settings, a “no boot” option for USB devices. Problem solved. Oops, did I just bore you with the details? Maybe I don’t like you as much as I thought.

Anyway, I love solving a problem. It was good to be out there working. I also went to the gym today, for the first time since January. Changing jobs and everything threw my schedule off and it doesn’t take much of an excuse for me to not go to the gym. It wasn’t too bad. I do feel it though. It will take a week or two of going to get back into the swing of it.

New job, good weather, a good workout. My mood is pretty good right now.

Work sucked today. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the job but that doesn’t mean every day will be great. It is a job and some days just suck. Like today. Not that anyone cares about my bad day at work, but too bad. That is the topic of today’s post.

On Tuesday, one of the Novell Servers crashed. Some moron was working on the HVAC in the server room and left the A/C off for too long. The server had a meltdown. This had no direct effect on me, but did cause some excitement around the place. They were able to bring the server back up but the RAID array would not except one of the drives. With the server running in degraded mode, the decision was made to migrate everything to a new server. (Apparently, they were planning on doing this at some point in the future anyhow, but not all the engineers thought that migrating in the middle of a crisis was a good idea.)

They worked overnight, Tuesday and Wednesday to get most everything migrated. Considering the that this was the server that everyone in the main office logs into and has their home directory on, it was pretty transparent to the users. The hang up was the printers. The way the printers were set up, they were going to need to be redirected to the new server and then reinstalled on every workstation. I’m not sure how may workstations that is, but it is not a small number. So today, your fearless geek, spent the day reinstalling printers. All day long. Actually, there were about 5 of us and 2 interns (although, I’m not convinced that the interns actually moved the process forward) We got the first floor done today. Tomorrow floors 2 and 3.

Not only was it tedious work, but the tech who was spearheading this effort was doing nothing to keep it organized. I (and a few others) tried to make suggestions about how this might be done in an orderly fashion but he wasn’t hearing it. So there were techs and interns milling around saying things like, “Did you get this one?” “No, but Bob might have check with him” “Where are the interns?” I am sure that the users were not impressed with this display. I couldn’t handle it. I found some smaller offices where no one else was and just knocked them out. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do the same tomorrow.

So for now you can just call me Super Monkey Printer Boy. Hopefully on Monday, I can be a Support Tech again.

Mango is making a magazine, well a Mangozine. Its all very silly, actually. The whole thing is a satirical response to blogging! magazine which is a stupid idea. Why people would want to pay for a magazine filled with content that is freely available on the web is beyond me. Anyhow, Mango asked my to contribute to his Mangozine and I did. So go on over and check it out. It’s OK this one is free!

These Random Thoughts posts are so not popular, I was tempted to abandon them. But, I won’t my blog, my thoughts, though shit. Without further ado:

The US has pulled its ambassador from Syria and is demanding that Syria withdraw from Lebanon. Not a good sign. Memo to the Bush Administration— NO starting new wars till you finish the ones you have now! And to think we thought Iran would be next. Well don’t rule that out either. Or better yet let’s take them both on. In the regrettable words of our President, “Bring ‘em On!” I think anyone who has read this far knows that I am opposed to war in general. But what I’m talking about here is common sense. We can only engage so many “evil-doers” at one time. Don’t think that Iran and Syria are unaware of this. North Korea knows it too. That’s why these countries are getting bolder. Are strategy of bold talk and unilateral action doesn’t seem to be worrying these folk. We need a new plan. Dr. Rice we are waiting.

And Please can we just shut up about Jose Canseco. Yes, he did steroids. Yes, he knows about others that did. But he hasn’t named any names that are truly shocking. This is not news. This is an attempt by a messed-up individual to cash in. Spring training is starting, can’t we hear about the normal drivel … Can A-Rod step for the Yankees, Can Boston do it again, Will the O’s ever get any pitching?

The NHL, meanwhile, is enjoying more coverage about the pending cancellation of their season than they had all of last season.

I’ve been using the Microsoft Anti-Spyware Tool Beta 1 for a few days now, and Monday it got its first real test. I was looking to download some cracked free password recovery software (stop looking at me like that, a user forgot the password she put on an Excel document. Really. It’s true, I swear) and well let’s just say I got infected pretty good with some spyware. It tried to stop the stuff from installing, but it was unsuccessful, it did however tip me off that something was up. I ran the cleaner and it deleted a bunch of junk. I ran AdAware afterwards and it only found traces of the infestation to clean up. Not too shabby. And big Bill just announced that the product will be free once it is released. Good job Microsoft.

Microsoft has been pressured by the Upstart browser Firefox. The Software Giant says it will not be able to release a new version of Internet Explorer until the next Windows product is released. The reason is that IE is too integrated into Windows for them to upgrade it independently. Good job Microsoft. It just goes to show there was no reason for the Justice department to worry itself over whether Microsoft was be anti-competitive when they integrated IE into Windows. Now, that same move has made it impossible for them to compete. Firefox will release several new versions before the Next Windows Product (Code Named Longhorn, Nicknamed Longwait) is released.

Now that I am on the verge of not working at the place that I currently work at, I feel a little more freedom to talk about that job.

I have been there for six and a half years, which is of note, because I’ve only been in IT for the last four years. So here is the story of how I came to work there:

I quit my job. I broke the cardinal rule and quit my job without having another lined up. It wasn’t a very good job, just