One week, two CLMs (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

I think I pulled an Asok today. IIRC it's not always a good thing to point out that your team could have been making more money than they did... Let's see how this pans out.

Posted in: career limiting move , clm , sla , sysadmin , work

What a difference a job makes (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

This new job at $CLIENT sure is a huge change from my previous position. Of course there's the higher pay which is great and all, but there's also job satisfaction! I'm no longer coming home tired from boredom. These days I'm dead beat from hard and intensive work.

At $CLIENT I'm in a highly responsible position, being one of the few experts on BoKS that people can turn to. Due to our current constraints in the field of personnel our workload is high and we're constantly shifting priorities. I also frequently run into rather intricate problems that require a lot of puzzling over a prolonged period of time. All in all this new job is a challenge!

I also find myself doing stuff that I dreaded a few years back; I guess it comes with age ^_^ These days I enjoy roaming among managers (whom I lovingly referred to as suits not too long ago), trying to find solutions to organisational problems my team runs into.

I guess I like the feeling of having real responsibilities, accountability and a mental challenge. It also helps that my colleagues are awesome people :)

Posted in: difference , good , job , sysadmin , work

Potential CLM in 3, 2, 1... (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Tonight was rather exciting insofar that I've done something I've never done before: I went over my boss's head. Unlike my previous CLM's, this one was well thought out and not just something that could be written off as "Oh, Thomas is goofing off again".

You see, tonight I was called by a colleague of mine who phoned me, as a mate, to tell me that he was going to give $CLIENT an ultimatum tomorrow. If his contract wasn't sorted out by this week, they wouldn't have to bother anymore. Since this gentleman is an outstanding colleague who's learnt BoKS very quickly I really don't want to lose him. And -that's- why I went to my bosses boss, calling him on his mobile around 18:30. We've had a huge workload the past few weeks and we cannot afford to lose people.

In a lot of places this would've been a CLM as it tends to piss people off. In this case things seem to be okay as both my boss and his boss expressed gratitude for my phone call... Let's see if I still have a job tomorrow :P

Posted in: boss , career limiting move , clm , work

When I worked at a book store... (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I am reading a book, a gift from my friend Neal, about working retail. I like the book, although as a former retail manager, I can see what the author's problem is and why he was so miserable. I have always had good customer response on average. My first retail job, I was working Crown Books in McLean. Good ol' #803. I recall the first day I worked there, I was told by an employee, "Remember, Grig: Customers are SCUM. They suck, they whine, and they are STUPID!"

"Wow," I recall thinking, "you must be terrible at your job." And I was right, he got canned after Christmas. It was that over-reaction of his that launched my determination and resolve to have a stronger and more positive attitude. Unlike everyone else, I never let customers bother me. I realized that 99% of the customers out there were nice and polite, and the 1% that weren't, I got even with by being even nicer because there's not a DAMN thing they can do about it. It was like a sick twisted sense of control. The meaner you got, the nicer I was. I got stronger in the face of adversity. It was like I won either way. And by being nice as much as I could, that other 99% started to form a positive loop that could last for hours. Like a combination of riding a wave and successfully growing a very rare and fragile orchid.

And this affected my whole outcome about the human race. I learned:

• The world and its people don't owe you anything: respect, politeness, care, or friendship. You have to earn it.
  
• Treating people like how you wish to be treated doesn't work out so much if you hate yourself.
  
• Mean people are rare, it's why they stand out so much. Don't believe me? Count them one day in a ratio of non-mean customers. I'd be surprised if it's more than 1 in 10 unless you are mean first. Don't take them personally, it's part of the process to make you stronger. It's a test.
  
• Customers are not part of the same mothership, so don't expect the lesson you teach one to affect anyone else. But the next customer is always a chance for a fresh start. You make a choice with each new face that comes up to you. Choose wisely.
  
• A nice act will affect one person who will affect 2-3 people. A mean act will affect at least one person and those around them, who will piss off the next 10 people they see, and those people will piss off 4-5 people, who in turn will probably piss off another 2-3 people each. That's why it's easier to be mean, and why it's the chosen tool of cowards and the lazy. It's also why it's so weak, easily spread, and usually without any real value. Being nice is hard work with little short term rewards, but over time, makes you a hell of lot stronger and in control of your life.
  

That being said, I enjoy humor at the customer's expense just as much as anyone else. We had a huge work table in the back room of 803, where someone had written this skit in permanent marker:

Employee: May I help you?
Customer: NO I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP LEAVE ME ALONE!!!
Employee: Okay, sir.
Customer: [10 minutes later] I can't find anything due to your stupid shelving system!
Employee: I suggest you eat this, sir:
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
[pause for reload]
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **
** BLAM **

The "pause for reload" is what really made it funny for me. This ended up as a Prune Bran skit as well.

I hope all my friends who are still in retail remember to "pause for reload" this coming Black Friday. Posted in: crown books , customers , work

Speaking of overtime... (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Speaking of overtime... Why is it that every time I try to implement a quick fix for a sucky SNAFU in our BoKS environment, I get stuck in the office at night? Every single fscking time! Case in point, last Friday I discovered a rather crappy mixup in our BoKS infrastructure. Nothing critical, but it was causing a lot of people discomfort nonetheless. I stayed late that day to troubleshoot the issue and to formulate a hypotheses on the required fixes.

Today I went over said fixes with my colleagues and at 1500 started the implementation of the first "quick fix". It was supposed to be done with within an hour, but I'm still stuck here. The replica server just doesn't want to do it's work and now I'm waiting for tech support to get back to me I'm looking at my twelfth hour on the job today and I'd really like to go home to Marli and Dana. Hacking and dining at the office just isn't as cool as it used to be. Now I have people to take care of...

Posted in: boks , overtime , snafu , sysadmin , work

What would you do if you got laid off? (Gibberish is my native language (DrFaulken)) by drfaulken

Part of working in the dot-com industry are layoffs. My buddy BushPutin’s employer Pandora suffered some cutbacks about a month ago. Fellow Richmond-based company Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection, which explains the sheer number of CC applicants that have come our way in the last three months. Based on the rumblings around the campfire at [...] Posted in: gibberish , work

Fast, slow, fast, slow... (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Obviously our lives have changed a lot now that Dana's here and with all of the changes our professional lives have gone through. After seven weeks it seems that things are finally starting to ebb out though and there's a semblence of routine to our days. Unfortunately one part of said routine is that I spend way less time on the web and thus my journal gets neglected a little bit. So here's another bulk update :)

Last Friday was killer =_= I'd been making a few overhours left and right all week, but I'd decided to compensate these hours on Friday since we had some visitors coming over to our house. Of course it's obvious that the one day I have an appointment that things get hectic at the office. Out of the five people supporting BoKS there were only two in and one of them (not me) was set to get on his plane to Spain. Of course we just -had- to get a nasty production issue that had me home by 1700 instead of 1400 :/ Mind you, I'm not complaining about the work itself, it's just that life sometimes sends you these planning curve balls.

In contrast the weekend was both relaxed and veeery slow. Saturday we took care of the house and went shopping in Amersfoort. Since we had a little bit of leeway in our spending money we could afford to get Marli a substantial renewal of her post-pregnancy wardrobe. I also got an awesome new coat from Scotch & Soda. I just noticed that S&S; has an outlet store in Batavia Stad, so maybe I ought to visit that place sometime soon :)

Sunday was the "slooow" part. Half of the day was spent watching the Spongebob marathon on Nickelodeon, with the other half being spent on the search for a new house. We're looking for a more modern streethouse, as opposed to the aging apartment we're living in. Almere may be Squaresville, but there's some affordable yet goodlooking houses over there.

Posted in: busy , home , update , weekend , work

2400 miles later (Put together quickly (Haligan)) by michaelb

It has been a busy last couple of months for me with a cross country move and a new job.

I drove across the country (the third such road trip this year) from Frankfort, KY to Alameda, CA to move in with girlfriend, Bay Area photographer Lane Hartwell. Who I’ve had a wonderful summer with driving twice together cross-country, including driving through parts of Route 66. Driving 2400 plus miles with two cats was a test in patience requiring a stop every four or so hours to give both the cats and me a break.

The new job is working as the systems administrator with Crowd Science at their new office in Mountain View ( I do get to telecommute too). It is a great opportunity with plenty of technical challenges to sort out and I’m getting to work with some really sharp people who genuinely believe in their product and work. Like making real changes in the way online research is done. If you are an online publisher and looking for an audience analytics service take a look at Crowd Science Demographics.

The new job included a new MacBook Pro maxed out on memory which makes running some Solaris VMs in Fusion a breeze for testing. Being a Python shop this is letting me get up to speed on it and Django. I’ve always had the opinion of eating your own dog food so I’m planning to build a site using BluePrintCSS as I have it laid out here as a template and migrate over to Django here very soon.

Posted in: featured , python , sys admin , work

My old backup CD (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

So, stodgycat asked me what was on that old backup CD I found in a CD Drive that has been sitting in a box. Well, here's the contents.

• KDE version 3.2 Beta 2. I now use GNOME a lot more because it's the default GUI on Redhat/Ubuntu. KDE also lost with Kwin vs Gnome+Compiz. KDE 4.x also needs to mature.
  
• Install files for:
  
  
  
  • Net Vampire. We used to use this to download FTP files on a schedule.
    
  • Various RSS aggregators
    
  • Various Microsoft Agents animated help things, including my favorite, Peedy the Parrot
    
  • Some Text-to-speech programs. I think I wanted to have news read to me, although I vaguely recall working on a way for Microsoft agents to report errors through VB6 programs I was writing. I succeeded when a parrot told me that war dialers were crashing. Sadly, this turned out to be more annoying than useful.
    
  • A Stuffit extractor for Windows
    
  • An ISO creator/reader for Windows
    
  
  
• Various images of gags and funny stuff I saw on the web.
  
• Some MP3s from a group called "Nullsleep" and some remixes of The B52s
  
• MP3 Background noise that made you computer sound like it was on a space station on a 14 second loop. I had another that made it sound like it was the bridge on Star Trek (OS)... where did that one go?
  
• A series of GREAT films from Antony Searle about relativity
  
• Large Quicktime trailer of "The Matrix: Revolutions." Still awesome.
  
• A weird music video, "FC Kahuna - Hayling." The vocals on that video are done by Icelandic singer Hafdís Huld, who sings one of my favorite songs about having an overly-popular best friend, "It's Hard to Hang Out with Tomoko"
  
• A creepy school film where a girl with Down's syndrome has periods and sanitary pads explained. Link is here, but I warn you... the film will leave you feeling very disturbed.
  
• A letter to Microsoft Training about how bad our last instructor was for VB.Net class. He didn't know VB.Net (but did know C#, and told us they were the same thing), debugged his own code on the overhead and often forgot about us, didn't have a legal or correct copy of Visual Studio on him (but had an old beta version that was broken), and attempted to fraternize with the students, slamming Microsoft and AOL. MS refunded our money and gave us a proper instructor for free.
  
• Backups of my website.
  
• An IM session with some people where I discuss making an AIM Bot for wardialing. I ended up getting code, which I then fixed and assembled my own AIM Bot. This turned out to be more annoying than Peedy the Parrot, and I dropped the project (imagine being forced to be in a chat room that would pop up an AIM window whenever anyone else talked). Later on, this code was stolen by that asshole manager at AOL, who claimed it as his own, and I called him on it in a meeting with some awesome passive aggressive stance on the benefits of Open Source. "See, your programmers took some code I had abandoned, made it better, and now it's in use! Open Source benefits everyone!" Hah. Asshole...
  
• Some wardialer spreadsheets (numbers called, results, 6 month trend).
  
• A few config backups, like some table dumps from MySQL databases, a few httpd.confs from webservers, and some of my code used to reboot wardialers through APC switches.
  
• PDF manuals of some hardware, the HP Splash language, and a Katsucon 10 flier?
  

Posted in: aol , computers , work

Home Again (Stonetable) by Adam

Home from New York City. Short trips like this are always a little tiring. So much activity crammed into a short period of time. This was my second trip to Ad Tech. I’m a techie at heart and don’t consider myself much of a salesman. That puts me in the minority at a trade show like this.

I’ve always had an eye for business. When I wrote software for the tanning industry, I would often talk to salon owners about what they did and what they needed. I even spent several nights working behind the counter, so I understood how their business worked.

Over the years, I’ve become a little more comfortable stepping out of the technical role. It helps that I’m passionate about the work I do and firmly believe we have a technically superior system. I designed it from the ground up and for the last four and a half years it’s been my baby. As the company grows and I step into more of a management role, I delegate more and slowly put the tools into the capable hands of the team we have built and continue to build.

I met many of my clients/partners at Ad Tech or the after party. It’s always a pleasure to put a face to the name. In some cases, there were people I’ve been working with for nearly five years that I met for the first time yesterday.

A good trip, good food, and good people. I passed Diane Neal from Law & Order: SVU on 7th avenue (I’m such a L&O fanboy). I had my first New York style hot dog. I ate my first (and possibly last) oyster. I celebrated Obama’s win in Times Square.

Posted in: travel , uncategorized , work

In the Big Apple (Stonetable) by Adam

I made it to New York City with minimal difficulty today. Court went smoothly and traffic was light, so I made it to O’Hare with enough time to catch an earlier flight. One shuttle and subway ride later, I found the Westin and checked-in.

I met my co-workers for dinner at Quality Meats, followed by 40/40, where we co-sponsored a VIP party for the trade show. A fun night, and I got to meet several people I’d only known via email or instant message.

Feeling a little dead tonight. My original flight was canceled and American Airlines decided they needed to call me at 4:15AM and 4:45AM to make sure I knew about it. Between that and the flight I managed about four hours sleep today and tomorrow’s going to be another busy day. Here’s to hoping the beds here are comfortable.

It also looks like I’ll be staying over an extra day, so home again on Wednesday. I’m already missing Andrea and our menagerie of pets. I hear the dogs have been camping out at the front door all day and night, waiting for my return.

I sent in my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t already, please go vote and make your voice heard. I think we’re on the brink of seeing some real change happen and that makes me feel pretty damn good.

Posted in: politics , travel , uncategorized , work

In the Big Apple (Stonetable) by Adam

I made it to New York City with minimal difficulty today. Court went smoothly and traffic was light, so I made it to O’Hare with enough time to catch an earlier flight. One shuttle and subway ride later, I found the Westin and checked-in.

I met my co-workers for dinner at Quality Meats, followed by 40/40, where we co-sponsored a VIP party for the trade show. A fun night, and I got to meet several people I’d only known via email or instant message.

Feeling a little dead tonight. My original flight was canceled and American Airlines decided they needed to call me at 4:15AM and 4:45AM to make sure I knew about it. Between that and the flight I managed about four hours sleep today and tomorrow’s going to be another busy day. Here’s to hoping the beds here are comfortable.

It also looks like I’ll be staying over an extra day, so home again on Wednesday. I’m already missing Andrea and our menagerie of pets. I hear the dogs have been camping out at the front door all day and night, waiting for my return.

I sent in my absentee ballot a couple weeks ago. If you haven’t already, please go vote and make your voice heard. I think we’re on the brink of seeing some real change happen and that makes me feel pretty damn good.

Posted in: politics , travel , uncategorized , work

It's too easy to put in overtime (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

One thing I have to be wary of are the small hours of overtime that sneak in every day. With our very busy schedule at the office and a veritable deluge of incidents, tickets and projects there is never an end to work. This week I prolonged three out of five workdays without even noticing it!

On the upside this means that I'm actually enjoying my work and the challenge that it gives me. On the downside this means that it's way too easy to accidentally forget the -other- important things in life. I mean, there's a reason why I get up every morning at 0530 and why I start work at 0630! I was supposed to be home every day before 1600, so I could spend some time with Dana before it was bed time! And here I am, hacking away at work, meaning that I'll arrive just in time to prepare dinner. :/

So I have to quit that! Besides, I already realize that I could be putting in three hours of overtime every day and it still wouldn't put a dent into our ticket queue. There's only so much work that one man can do...

Posted in: busy , hard work , overtime , too easy , work

Busy, busy, busy! What have we been up to? (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Things have been pretty frantic the past week! I've been so busy I couldn't even post a quick blurb to my journal ;_; So, let's quickly run the list of things that have happened before I have to run to a meeting.

As I mentioned before, Dana has changed her daily routines. She's sleeping less and she's crying and sulking more at night. She's also changed her feeding habits which has confused the both of us to no end. Of course Dana's only been with us for six weeks, but it's very easy to lose confidence. Seriously, how the heck do you know if you're baby's fine if you haven't even gotten to know what each mode of crying means? *sigh* Of course it's all a learning experience, but it can sure get exasperating at times.

The household is running fine, though I've cut myself a little slack. With Marli still recuperating from her surgery and me back at work I'm not -that- keen on running a perfect household anymore. Sure, the first three weeks were fun, living in a spick&span; house but these days that's just not a realistic goal anymore. Once Marli's recuperated things should start looking up again.

Work has been very busy. Last week I finally got access to our ticket system, only to stumble on a queue of over a hundred and thirty (>130!!!) tickets. Ouch. It doesn't help that there's only two of us working this queue and that the other queue (we use two ticket systems) has a comparable amount either. The good thing about this is that I haven't been bored for one minute, simply because there's just so much to do ^_^ The work's interesting and challenging, the people are nice and diverse and I'm just enjoying the heck out of myself :D

Finally, I've started the BoKS Access Control users group on LinkedIn.com. I'm trying to build a global network of BoKS admins, users and developpers so we can finally start sharing some information. Until now it'd been very hard to get answers to your questions, which will hopefully get easier from now on :)

Posted in: baby , busy , household , update , work

Need work? Want tech? I got it. (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

This is kind of a heads up for my friends out there. Where I work there's been a few new huge contracts, and so they have approved space for some new hires. Basically, I work for a local ISP and data center in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we need a few positions filled. You must be able to pass a background check due to some of our clients. So if you, or someone you know, will be interested in these, please drop me a resume.

Shift Manager: This a job where you'd be in charge of NOC Techs. You'd work with the other shift manager, a really good guy. We need someone reliable and good with managing people. Experience needed in how basic networking and system troubleshooting also work (like, how to test if a T1 is down, how to follow up with vendors, and so on).

Data Center Technician: We need someone to assist all our departments in deployment of racks, physical networking, power distribution, and HVAC experience. Basically, a department would ask you to install something, and you'd do it while making sure the data center stays cool, clean, and presentable during tours. Very hands on. Requires moderate weekly travel around the DC Metro area, like Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Crystal City, and Ashburn.

Programmer: We need a programmer who is strong in Perl, PHP, and Apache web server. Must be good with Postgres and know basic stuff about MySQL, network connections, and the Linux command line, including the bash shell, permissions, and so on.

Tech Support: This is a great entry tech job. It's a shift position which requires REALLY STRONG customer service skills with at least a moderate tech background. I mean, we'll train you the tech stuff, but we need someone to handle work tickets, keep on top of issues (outages, new builds, etc), and generally be a very nice person in the face of stress. Meek, angry, or snobby people need not apply. I got three slots open for this due to recent promotions.

Perks:
- Paid training
- Free pizza/subs on Fridays
- Right off the Silver Spring Metro
- One free colo/IP for your m4d sk1ll Internet boxen
- You get to work with my bad-ass self (I might also be interviewing you)

Interested? Send me your resume to punkwalrus at yahoo. Posted in: work

Almost starting my new assignment (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

About a week ago my contract with Snow ended and my new contract with Unixerius took off. My friend and new boss Dirk had been making arrangements with $NEW-CLIENT a month in advance and so far things seems to be coming together. There's just a little more paperwork and a wad of political red tape to get through. If everything works out I'll start my new job on Monday.

It's nice to make a fresh start though. Slowly I've seen things gather that all imprint the idea in my head that, yes, this -is- something new and exciting!

Yesterday I got my first box of business cards. I've been buying new (and decent looking!) shirts the past few weeks. I got a stack of stationary with the company logo on it. And of course I also got a shiny, new company car. Hooray for that Civic hybrid! /o/

Officially I spent my first week on the contract on paternity leave, to take care of Dana and Marli. This second week was spent on the clock, waiting for the paperwork to clear. And next week I'll finally be able to sink my teeth in! Rawr! ^_^

Posted in: job , new assignment , sysadmin , work

Tales from being unemployed... sort of. (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Essentially I was unemployed from when Chesapeake Knife and Tool let me go in March of 1991 to March of 1993, when I got my job at Cargo Furniture.

But I say "essentially" because I did actually have jobs here and there, but not enough to really cut the edge of poverty. The problem was that daycare for an infant was so expensive that I had to make over X amount to make being employed actually pay more than it cost. And in the recession of the early 1990s, after the Gulf War, that wasn't easy. Especially since most of that time we didn't have a car. But I made money where I could, usually via weekend jobs.

The first one was The Gamekeeper in Springfield Mall. I worked there for their Christmas season, and it was pretty cool. The work was hard because I was on my feet in a small store whih about 6 other employees and a lot of customers. Part of our job was to demo games, so I had to learn the weekly "top ten" which was a list I suspect was generated by corporate with no actual regard to any customer favorites. Most of them were board games, or things like "Jenga" or "Rubiks revenge." There was another game where toy had two small plastic pigs you tossed like dice, and how the pigs landed was part of the game (on the side, feet down, on back, humping each other, etc). But there were some odd things I recall from working there.

Our most expensive item was a self-playing chess set. Using a variety of magnets and motors, this machine would move chess pieces around with a noisy grinding sound. It even had a voice chip indicating moves. We actually sold one to a guy, despite the fact that about 10% of the moves wouldn't happen, and you had to pick up their computer pieces and put it in the correct place.

All the tarot decks were kept behind the register. This was because apparently there was some rumor that all gypsies or people who learned from gypsy lore were to "steal" their first deck. I am not sure why, but that was the rumor. I can't tell you if that was true or not, because they never got stolen in the locked plastic case behind our register. I only recall selling a handful of decks, mostly to teenagers.

We also sold the Parker Brothers Ouija Board. I have felt that someday I will write a piece in my fictional works about the sinister plot behind the maker of "Monopoly" and other board games ending up being the most popular distributor of this communicator of the spiritual world. But thatg will be later.

The tarot decks and Ouija boards were not hot Christmas sellers. The fact that tarot decks and Ouija boards were considered "games" was a little disconcerting. One exception was a guy who came in and wanted to buy all the boards. This spooky man with a goatee and pirate shirt took our stock of 10 boards, paid cash, and left. We talked about that guy for days. He came back when we got 5 more in, and bought all those, too. Then we got 20 more in, and didn't sell another one the rest of the time I worked there, which pissed off my boss.

We had some odd coworkers, too. One girl wore a cape to work. No reason, just that they were "fashionable." I worked behind the counter with a Hindu woman in a large silk sari who did our gift wrapping. She was really good at it, but didn't talk much, so we'd just leave anything on her table, and within a few minutes, she had wrapped it perfectly, even taking care of peeling the price sticker off and sticking it on the receipt. A few times we left random object on her table, and she's wrap those, too. She was like a machine. She also had a CD of "Gregorian Chants" which she'd listen to over and over on a boom box she brought from home.

Our boss drank a lot. He didn't come to work drunk per se, but he did admit that he was an alcoholic and didn't give a damn. "I had whiskey for breakfast," he'd say. "Only thing that dulls the pain of my job: whiskey and Wheaties." I think he was my age at the time, which was the mid 20s. Poor guy.

I recall they paid me some X amount an hour, and if I "made it" through Christmas, I'd be paid a retroactive bonus per hour worked. That was to prevent employees from quitting right before Christamas. Like it was $5/hr and then I got paid an extra 50 cents/hr on my last paycheck, which didn't come until mid January. See, "Christmas help" meant working after Christmas to deal with all the returns, exchanges, and cleanup of all the Christmas crap after New Years. I didn't mind, I needed the money badly. The boss wanted me to stay on as his assistant manager, but they didn't pay well enough to afford day care.

Another job I had was a part time job where I worked at an office. It was on the second floor of this generic office building in Herndon, and I think their name was CFA (Computerized Funding Associates? I think?). I worked a few days a week, usually in the afternoons, and it worked out because I could leave CR part time at a sitter and it didn't cost as much. I got refereed by a temp agency, as I recall, and after a ton of jobs where I went "no, I have no car, I can't take a job 30 miles away in the boondocks," this one came by.

This was a very small office with only about 6 employees. There was the owner, a guy named Bill Price, who was a slightly rotund, red-bearded man who seemed like he was everybody's pal. There was a secretary whose name I have forgotten with oversized glasses and a huge blond wig like Loni Anderson wore in WKRP. There was a mousy girl named Julie who did a lot of the typesetting work, and two other employees that escape me for the moment, but I think one of them was also a typesetter, and the other was a lawyer.

The company had a fairly good idea, and I think Mr. Price called it, "a charity aggregator." If a company wanted to donate money to charity, they could give it to us, and we'd take care of everything for a cut. We'd do the legal filing, prepare things for the company's tax auditors, and even print up booklets for stockholders showing who they supported. So a company could say, "We're a rock quarry and we do strip mining, so we want to donate 10% of our profit to reforestation groups." We'd find those groups, check them out, give them the company's money, and then report back to the company "you donated such and such to these groups, here's info for your tax people, and a booklet to give out when potential buyers want to know if you care about nature."

But there was a problem: Mr. Price wasn't making any money. I don't know why he wasn't turning a profit, since I saw some of the amount this guy had in his accounts, but I have always suspected he might have been stealing from the books.

Part of my job was to take the checks we got in, record them on the books, and they assemble them for a mass deposit. I am not sure why we got so many checks in, but twice a week, I'd process about 30-50 checks for various amounts ranging from $10 to several thousand. Most were from various companies with official ledger checks, but sometimes there were personal checks. And once in a while, a large personal check from Bill Price's personal bank account would come in. Sometimes I'd check back a few pages in the ledger, and find various checks had been erased or the amounts changed and the balance was recalculated. At first, I thought I had made a mistake, but nobody said anything, and so I started tracking my mistakes before I got yelled at. Quickly I found that some larger checks were being reduced, and in some cases, Bill's checks were erased altogether. Finally, I asked Bill about this and he assured me that it was "we needed to balance some things, and the checks ended up in the wrong sorting pile. That check, for instance, was supposed to go in another ledger. Don't worry, it's not your fault."

After that, checks stopped being crossed off or erased, though.

The last of the three and a half months I worked there, Bill was rarely in the office at all. One of the guys quit, and another was a temp who got reassigned to another job. So it was just me, Julie, Bill, and the secretary. Bill had started to use Lotus 1-2-3, and he taught me how to enter the checks in the electronic spreadsheet. This is when I noticed that the checks were declining in number, down to just about a dozen a week, and many times, the largest was Bill Price's personal checks.

The secretary confided in me one day that the company wasn't doing so well. She opened our daily mail, and there were several collection notices. By then, I was familiar with the green cards you had to sign for certified letters, and a lot of our mail had them. Julie didn't have a whole lot of work to do anymore, so she came in late every day. I still did back end work. but most of the time, it was just me and the secretary talking about life and other random stuff.

Then, my paycheck bounced. All our paychecks did, and Bill was very apologetic and paid from his personal account, and those cleared. Next pay period, Julie's paycheck bounced. Bill again paid her by personal check. The one day I came to work and the door was locked. A sign on the door stated that the landlord had evicted us for non payment.

My last paycheck never came. I never did know what happened, but I stopped showing up because Bill didn't answer his home phone.

I didn't get another real job until the job at Cargo. I worked a few times at Nancy's Button table when conventions were close by, because she paid rather well ($6-10/hr in unreported under the table cash!). I also wrote and sold my book, and a few cons paid for my food and hotel room while I toured with them. I also got paid for some spot contract jobs, like some web design and UNIX system maintenance. Many times I did work in exchange for education and experience (thanks to many who risked... being caught... at the University of Maryland to get me some work). Posted in: cargo , cfa , chespaeake knife and tool , gamekeeper , jobs , work

A really good article about how all this mess will affect the tech industry (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Most of my friends on here are either in or closely related to the tech industry during this crisis. This was forwarded around at the office by a manager I really trust, and links like these are part of that.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080929/0426042403.shtml

In the short term, there's still going to be a fair amount of bloodshed, and the downside will impact companies outside of the financial sector, but for those in tech, the good news is that we're probably more isolated than other industries, though certainly not completely isolated. And, since everything is changing so rapidly, you never know what shoe might drop next.

However, in the long run, there is still money out there, and there are still opportunities. People will need to put that money to work one way or another, and rather than freaking out, now is a time to be looking for the opportunities created by this mess, and the tech industry is likely to have a lot of those opportunities. Remember that for every bubble bursting, something ends up getting devalued below its real value. The trick is just figuring out what it is before anyone else notices.

My company is doing fairly well, actually,. We just got two huge government contracts which I am not at liberty to discuss, obviously, but it was enough to reinvest in our core infrastructure before it became outdated, and guess who's on the top of that pile? That's why I am getting the certs, man, while the gettin's good... :D Posted in: computers , linux , tech , work

These boots... (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

I wore them over three years ago when I left $NEW-CLIENT to go work for Snow and now I'll wear them when I set foot over $NEW-CLIENT's threshold once more. Out of all my equipment and clothes, these boots have been with me the longest.

My bestest buddy Menno will recognize them, as they are the same type of boots that we bought together when we were fourteen (or was it thirteen?). They're leather boots that Alpina makes for the Slovenian army and which somehow make their way to dutch army surplus stores. They're nigh on indestructible as this is only the third pair that I've bought. Three pairs of boots in fifteen years! That's a pretty good track record!

These ones are still going strong, but I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to buy one or two pairs to put in stock. I have no clue if they're even sold in the Netherlands any more and I haven't been able to find them on the Internet either. For some reason they don't have a model name or number mentioned in/on the body.

Anywho... I love these boots. They're much more comfortable and much better looking than the standard dutch army boot. Their supple, unadorned leather makes them presentable even in a business setting.

EDIT:
I just remembered. I think the model is called Alpina Combat. I've e-mailed the surplus store where I bought my last pair to see if they still have them.

Posted in: alpina , army boots , boots , work

My riding to work streak is broken. (Gibberish is my native language (DrFaulken)) by drfaulken

I never thought I would be this disappointed to drive my Mazdaspeed3, but it’s true. I have to break my motorcycling streak in order to take Kaylee in for a 12,000 mile service. The streak was 39 work days in a row, almost two months of working! I don’t know what’s more impressive: riding to [...] Posted in: fz6 , k1200 , motorcycling , ride report , work

Tales from AOL: Sprint (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

A post on a board reminded me of one of my "favorite" stories about AOL and Sprint. I used to program AOL's call centers, and deal with Sprint quite frequently during that time. I'd say my assessment of them were mixed.

Because we were one of their biggest accounts at the time, Sprint had AOL liaisons. These people were in a team of about 4-5, consisting of a master account manager and his minions. One of them would usually be technically proficient, but it became clear that although the guy knew his stuff, Sprint did their best to keep him quiet.


First story: Keith Jenkins and his Rough Riders.
In 1997, AOL went down for about 16 hours. Back in those days, AOL actually shut down from about 4am-6am a few days a week for maintenance. So no AOL for YOU! This had to stop when we went international, of course, because that was late morning in the UK and peak evening for Asia. But going international was still on the drawing table back then, so the 2 hour outage was a great chance to fix whatever ailed the system. On this one morning, however, something went terribly wrong.

Horribly wrong.

The story that was told to me was they went from Old System A to New System B. New System B launched and crashed horribly. No matter, we have a contingency plan, which was restore Old System A. But Old System A also crashed horribly. It would seem that when New System B went up, it made permanent changes that Old System A couldn't deal with, so what happened was the entire system because a freakish hybrid mutant that lay in a puddle of melting DNA with warped teeth and grayed-out eye sockets, hoarsely whispering... "Kill... me..."

By 7am, a huge amount of people using to dialing in to get their daily news got some errors; I forget what they said, but apparently it wasn't descriptive enough to prevent people from calling our call centers. The phone queue because outrageous by 9am, and when I got in at 3pm that day, they had anyone with a phone answering the huge wave of angry people. I had stopped taking tech calls for a while, but they told me I still had a headset, sign in, log on, and take calls. Man, people were angry! One woman was crying hysterically her husband was on a Navy ship and e-mail was the only contact they had.

But my misery was short lived. I noticed that some calls had no voice, and other calls dropped unexpectedly after a minute or so. Finally, the whole phone system toppled over like a dinghy filled with 100 Cuban refugees. We were asked to log off, and "Oh well."

By the time I started being a telecom programmer, that event was several months in the past. But it was still our number one beef with Sprint, and one of my first jobs was to sit in on the conference calls with Sprint about what happened. They blamed us, and I had to gather stats to show that we had far more agents waiting for calls than calls coming in, which was usually the other way around. After a few bad conference calls where nothing got done, a man named Keith Jenkins got involved.

Keith was, at the time, head of AOL's Member Services. He was an older guy, and you either loved him or hated him. He was like our Teddy Roosevelt, and he had a team of rough riders around him at all times. Keith and I had a "bonding moment" when I was a callback specialist for a new "Your AOL account has been hacked" queue we were testing out, and him, my boss, and I had to go through a call where it was obvious their underage son was downloading pr0n. So he knew me already and kind of liked me. Keith said, "I am surrounded by bullshit," and demanded a face-to-face meeting with our Sprint liaisons because he felt nobody was giving him straight answers.

So, in AOL style, we rented the finest meeting room in our Herndon office, had it catered (AOL usually had meetings catered), and all of our Sprint people were asked to be there. Okay, they were told be there or else. AOL has a LOT of clout at the time, especially with Sprint. The meeting started with Sprint giving is their interpretation of the events, peppered with complete superfluous garbage that pissed Kieth off right away. This is kind of how the conversation went:

Sprint: So, when we formed back in the 1980s, we had a vision--
Keith: Skip it. Why did we lose calls to our call center?
Sprint: ... um, so in 1995, we forged a contract with... um, AOL. You know, you used to be Quantum Link, and we had --
Keith: Why did our calls go down?
Sprint: That's a very, um, good question, Mr. Jenkins. We have compiled some data that should be of interest--
Keith: Why did your system fail? Were was the point of failure?
Sprint: A system like ours is very hard to see at a microscopic level--
Keith: Why won't you answer the question?
Sprint: It's not a yes or no question, Mr. Jenkins--
Keith: Are you saying you don't know?
Sprint: No, no... see, we have... our network is comprised of [this goes on for a few minutes]
Keith: Let me stop you there, because we're again off track. Where is our interface between you and us? Grig?
Me: Um, well, it goes from several T1's and as far as I can tell, it goes through a MUX and a DMS 250. That's where we stop having control, and Sprint begins.
Keith: What's a DMS 250?
Me: A major phone switch. Sprint owns it.
Keith: Was it working when the call centers went down?
Me: It stopped sending data.
Keith: How many calls per second can the switch take?
Me: Our contract states 45 calls per second.
Sprint: Now hang on.
Keith: I gave him that data, leave him alone. Grig, how many calls were coming in before the call centers went down?
Me: 8 calls per second.
Keith: It never went over 8 calls per second?
Me: No. Usually it's 25 cps, but shortly after 1pm, the calls went from 30cps to--
Keith: I though you said we could take up to 45cps.
Me: It never got that high.
Sprint: You were rejecting calls when the queue was over 5 minutes! That's not our fault!
Keith: Grig, where does the decision to drop after 5 minutes get made?
Grig: On our end. We have to actually *get* the call first to determine whether to drop it or not.
Sprint: [seethe]
Keith: How many calls are we allowed per second?
Sprint: Well, that's compl--
Keith: How many... calls are we allowed... per second?
Sprint: Um... 12?
Keith: That seems far less than 45. How many calls, according to YOUR data, did you allow?
Sprint: [sigh] 8.
Keith: Did anyone ask to lower this limit?
Sprint: YOU WERE CLOGGING THE SWITCH!!
Keith: Isn't it a dedicated switch?
Sprint: Yes. I mean, no. It's COMPLICATED!
Keith: It seems simple to me. So far, it seems like you are not only restricting calls we're entitled to receive, but we're not on a dedicated switch.
Sprint: WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US???
Keith: Pfuh... what you promised?

That Sprint guy was "retired" from our contract after this incident. I recall him hitting the table, nearly in tears when he screamed that line. Very unprofessional. Later Keith (and my boss Lou and his boss Rob) explained to me that Sprint had their back to the wall because they were in clear violation of contract, and we could sue.

Second Story: Sprints Complete Lack of Customer Tact
So we got a new guy to be our main liaison, I'll call Roy. He was far more suited for the stress of the job, but was a little clueless when it came to hosting meetings. After several meetings where we went over call volume and network choke points, they invited the entire programming department to a meeting discussing the upgrade we decided upon based on the events now over a year in the past. Yes, it took that long. We had also gone from 6 call centers to 13 because of the CompuServe merger, plus a few new ones we were outsourcing. Our volume had increased substantially with 10 million members to almost 25 million at that point.

So me, my boss Lou, and two other programmers Liz and Mel were there with me. The meeting started at 9am, and was very boring and droned on and on. It was one of those typical meetings where we kept getting sidetracked on minor points, but at least no one was yelling or confrontational in any way. Just hardware and programming geeks geeking at one another. By noon, however, Lou asked, "Um... not to interrupt, but do we break for lunch or what?"

Roy looked startled, like he had forgotten something. "Lunch. Yes. Yes, we have lunch! Let me go... find ... it." And he left the room quickly. After about 15 minutes, he came back and said lunch was delayed. "About 30 minutes or less," he promised.

By 1pm, Lou asked again, politely (on the weekends, he was a pastor of a church in DC, great guy), "I hate to bring this up again, but I haven't eaten since 7 this morning. I am a little hungry."

Roy, again, looked like he'd been woken up very suddenly. "Yes! let me... check. It should be here by... now?" He quickly left. A few minutes later, he came back with several boxes of Domino's Pizza and a few 2 liter bottles of coke. Some had already been opened and slices were missing. Roy apologized, stating that the staff thought the pizza was for them when it arrived. He asked for some of his staff to let us have the pizza first, and they could have what was left over.

Now, keep in mind, we used to cater from the Marriott to Sprint when they visited. Maybe it's snobbish of us, but when we got some boxes of take out pizza, that was a little underwhelming. We exchanged raised eyebrows across the table. Liz was a little more than put off. See, she was Muslim. She couldn't have pork. And the pizzas were all pepperoni. She didn't say anything, of course, she just declined politely while her decades of religious upbringing were making her quite ill.

Lou was not so calm about it. "Liz can't eat this, it has pepperoni."

"Is she allergic?" Roy asked.

"Not exactly. It's her religion."

Roy looked concerned and sincere, but didn't quite get it. "Well, Liz, can't you eat around the pepperoni?"

Liz shook her head. "No."

"No," Lou repeated, a little sternly. "She can't drink the cola, either, it has caffeine."

"Is that a Jewish thing, too?" Roy asked.

Liz shook her head. "No, I am Muslim. I just can't have caffeine because it gives me headaches. It's fine, it's okay, I'll eat a big dinner or something."

"Muslims can't eat pork?" Roy asked. He had never heard of this, and I think he was trying to sound interested and accepting, but it was coming off so tactless.

"No. They cannot," Lou said. "Liz, you want to leave the room or something? You don't look well."

Liz insisted she was fine, despite the revulsion she was trying to hide.

"I can't drink this cola either," Mel said with a chuckle. "But that's because we don't have cups."

"CUPS!" Roy said. "Let me get some."

Some of the Sprint folks had already left to eat at their desks. Mel, Lou, and I ate pizza, while Liz tried hard not to look put out. The pizza was already cold and greasy. That's when we quickly realized there were no napkins. I had some Kleenex in my backpack I handed around. It felt like some crash meeting in a warehouse more than a proper conference. Roy eventually came back with... assorted coffee mugs. I could tell they were the kind from the communal office kitchen because they all had worn logos and coffee stains. I chose a "clean" one and was dismayed when I poured Coke in mine, an oily film covered the foam that smelled suspiciously like ballpoint pen ink. Roy had probably used someone pen holder. Lou asked if his mug was previously on display in the awards cabinet we saw when we came in. Roy said it wasn't, and Lou commented with a jocular manner he enjoyed the gold trim.

When a lot of the Sprint techs didn't come back, we decided to end the meeting early, having gotten the information we needed for the most part. Lou immediately said, "Meet me at TGI Fridays." And AOL paid for our late lunch/dinner while we all guffawed at the meeting we lust went through.

"I checked the awards cabinet when we left," Lou said, "...and sure enough, the mug was missing." Posted in: aol , work

A long, hard day (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

*yaaaawn* *stretch* *pop!* Ouch! >_<

This has been a long and hard day... We'd planned a few important baby-things today, after which I borked up and booked some work related things as well. "Tightly packed" is one way to describe my schedule.

I woke at 0530 and left for Snow's new office around 0800. Around 0930 I'd have my exit consult with one of the company's directors, thus taking care of some paperwork that needed to be done. Among them is the huge list of hard- and software that I purchased using my IB. We'll now have to decide what we want to keep and what goes back to Snow.

After all of that I had to rush home because we had an OB/GYN appointment around 1130. The echo shows that the kid's still fine and that she's rather slender with long legs. Estimates are that she's between five and seven pounds in weight. The talk with the gyno went pretty easy and it was decided that we'd go for a Caesarian. Personally my preferences lie with a natural birth, but since things just doesn't look right we'll have to opt for plan B.

After that followed groceries, a run to city hall for some paperwork and some more stuff for dinner.

As if that wasn't enough we also had a two-hour appointment at the hospital again around 20:00. We'd get the whole show and tell story of how the hospital handles deliveries and how the whole show goes down. I found it quite remarkable that the whole room was attentive until the anesthesiologist brought in diagrams. Then it was straight back to bio class in high school, with everyone chatting and noone paying attention. Weird.

Anywho... After tonight we are definitely considering going to the hospital in Nieuwegein instead. Their facilities are more modern and comfortable and their opening hours to husbands are -way- better. In Utrecht fathers are only permitted to visit between 1200 and 2100, while Nieuwegein allows you in 24x7. Nieuwegein also offers more privacy.

Meh... I'm off to bed.

Posted in: contract , labor , long day , pregnancy , work

Hanna: rock me like a hurricane? (Gibberish is my native language (DrFaulken)) by drfaulken

Today will be the twenty-third day in a row I ride my motorcycle to work. Not a bad streak, eh? There’s only one problem: tropical storm Hanna is expected to hit my area sometime this evening. With weather prediction being as flaky as it is, that could mean it could show up early while I [...] Posted in: fz6 , motorcycling , rain , work

HE’S OFF HIS MEDS!! (Gibberish is my native language (DrFaulken)) by drfaulken

That’s about the last thing you want to hear on an airplane, right after “ALLAHU AKBAR” and the sound of a dead man’s switch being activated. My co-worker Jumbotron and I were in Charlotte, our connecting point to our flight to San Francisco. Tropical storm Fay was dumping a shit-ton of rain in the area, so [...] Posted in: flying , gibberish , mutant insects , travel , work

More on training (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

It looks like I will be doing more of the LPI track than the Linux+ track. My boss wants me to focus progress on the MCITP and Network+ side of things by the end of the year, so it was discussed (not decided) to drop the Linux+ until possibly next year since "it's really only a basic Linux cert anyway in comparison to the LPI track."

I am really nervous about the exam. I am nervous because in the practice tests, I get wrong answers because I misread the question. This sucks donkey waffles. It's like I know the material, I just test poorly. That CCNA whipped my ass 8 years ago. I remember reading the questions, and they didn't make any sense compared to what I just studied. It was like a nightmare. The fact I got 60-65% was not "better than nothing" because I didn't get the cert.

The RHCE wasn't so bad because at least you can figure out what you did wrong as you are setting stuff up. Not so much with multiple choice/fill in the blanks.

This was the total opposite of what I experience back in school: I never did the homework, but I aced tests. Arg... :( Posted in: linux , lpi , mcitp , training , work

Today's bitter statement (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

My boss said this today, which was "taken from his book of quotations," according to him:

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think...

... ow! Gees... Posted in: work

Price quotes (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I hate it when a vendor won't tell me a price on a web page, and says, "Call for a price quote." To me, that means, "We are ashamed how much we charge and know how expensive we are, so we hope to convince you otherwise with a lot of pushy salespeople." Can you at least give me a ballpark figure? No? You lose.

Now, I know that getting a price quote on a complex thing like, say, a server farm for a web front end and a database back end would not be easy to quote until you spoke with someone on what exactly your needs were. But if you're selling a network scanner appliance, or a firewall, or some other single purpose, single unit device, I don't want to speak to a salesperson. I am gathering price quotes and getting some ballpark figures on a commercial appliance versus something we build here. You have two models, you much have two prices. No, don't sell me on this "value" bullshit, I *trained* people to do that *only* when the unit could not sell itself and we were ashamed of the price.

I have been shocked at prices sometimes. HOW much for that device? $175,000 for mail server software??? Dude! Come on, I could buy several packages of Exchange Professional or infinite Open Source stuff and put it on the highest end commercial server HP sells for that price. "Appliances" are even worse. Most are just jacked up computers in a fancy box, like less than $2000 for parts. And those don't even include license and service fees.

I find the more expensive the item is, the harder it is to get an actual price right away. Posted in: money , work

Truly bad grammar (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I just thought of this random story I often have to retell, and so I am making an entry for posterity's sake.

I used to work at the (late) Cargo Furniture, and the district manager for the South was a spry older woman who used to be a former kindergarten teacher. I think her name was Joyce. Now, personally, I never had an issue with the woman except for her incessant memos. We used to get packets every week from the home office, and once in a while, this woman would have some happy-wappy announcement of some sort, usually having to do with sales contests.

This woman, despite her educational background, was a terrible, terrible writer. Her memos were frequently misspelled, she used a lot of ALL CAPS, extra punctuation, and was the queen of misplaced apostrophes. Here's an example:

ATENTION ALL SALE'S STAFF

Are recent quota contest, is running in FULL GEAR!!! Halfway there, and already we have some AMAZING QUOTABUSTER'S!! Stephane of the Florida otlet is 20%%%% OVER HER AVERAGE QUOTA!!!!! Can YOU beat her score's????? Grig of Springfield in Verginia is 15%%%%%!!!!! There combined score's have rocketed the Estern region over 17%%%!!!

I see sunny sky's, and margarita's in there future!!!

Yeah, it hurts the eyes, doesn't it? Posted in: cargo , grammar , work

A moment of introspection: anti-social? (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

In light of my departure from Snow I've had a few chats here and there, not all of them brimming with positivity. Of course some of my colleagues aren't happy to see me go, but there's also some other stuff that I hadn't given thought.

When asked for a reason why I chose to leave for another company (where I'd essentialy be doing the same work), my knee-jerk reply was that I was missing personal contact. The company has grown rather large over the past two years and I was supposedly missing the personal touch. The reproach that I received was that I myself am responsible for this situation. My lack of motivation for IT, coupled with my ambition of teaching have led to my isolation within the company. Apparently some colleagues even avoid me because of this. Of course, that's a bitter pill to swallow.

Now that I've mulled over this a little bit, I agree with the senior who expressed these thoughts. I agree that I've secluded myself from my colleagues and that I've shown little interest in the company as a whole. I also don't particularly care for all the IT/Linux conversations that happen at each compulsory meeting. Due to my changing ambitions I feel alienated from my colleagues, yet I also feel little drive to connect with them. I guess it's safe to say that Snow isn't the company for me anymore.

I've always been a bit of a recluse, choosing close contact with a tightly knit group of friends over casual and abundant contact with acquaintances and colleagues. Does this make me anti-social? Maybe. But I've also shown on many occasions that I can fit right into any social undertaking and that I can even -lead- on such an occasions (Anime 200x anyone?).

So... Do I feel safe switching from one IT company to another? Of course not! I'd much rather be teaching :) But in this case I think I'm making a rather safe switch, because i will be working with a close friend of mine. Someone I -do- definitely care about :)

Raimond, thanks for making me think. I needed the nudge to wake me up ;)

EDIT:
Let me add my personal conclusion. No, I am not anti-social. If I were, why the heck would I choose to become a teacher?! Teaching, in high school, IT or otherwise, requires social involvement and I am all too happy to give it. It's just that I will now need to re-find the delicate balance at work.

Posted in: anti-social , introspection , social , work

The results of theis weekend: Me, 0. WALL-E ,1 (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

The coffee machine is broke at work again. This sucks, since I have a 8-day sinus headache, I only slept 4 hours last night, and coffee is what keeps me going. I finally broke down and got a cup of coffee at the Korean deli downstairs, which was just awful. Weak, bitter, and it just hurts my stomach. There are two Starbucks close to here, and a Caribou Coffee, but I don't want to have to walk 2 blocks in the morning to walk back to work with coffee that is no longer hot. I may need to get one of those bullet-shaped hyper-Thermoses and make coffee at home if this keeps up.

Man, never used to drink coffee. What happened? Damn you, Sweden!!

In other news, apart from failing to get an iPhone (I think I'll wait until next week until the lines get shorter), I did some more yard work this weekend. After I had cleaned up a lot of the tree waste those cutters left behind, I decided to keep up with the pruning and cleanup. It was hot. I hate working in hot, sweaty, weather because I always gain weight for some reason. I think it's all the water I drink. But anyway, I pruned the hell out of the front yard near my door and one of the rec room windows. It's funny, when you cut down what looks like half an acre of brush, if you make you cuttings short (only a foot or less), you don't generate a whole of of trash bags like you do with, say, leaf litter. When I was done with all the tree debris and the cuttings of various dead branches, and a dozen bushes, I only filled four 45 gallon trash bags. I could have packed them in tighter, but I found out the "heavy duty yard waste" bags I got at Home Depot were weak and easily punctured. I also cleaned up a lot of assorted debris around my house, including some roof repair trash that the original workers left behind.

Then I went and saw WALL-E, which was as good as everyone had led me to believe. Man, I shed a few tears during some scenes. Very well done. A masterpiece. The short in the beginning with the magician's rabbit was also very good, and I think was almost an homage to Chuck Jones.

CR becomes a legal adult in less than a week. Isn't that something? Posted in: coffee , wall-e , work