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

Keeping things cool (Durf.org (Durf)) by Durf

A quick post to note that I’ve uploaded more photos to the Flickr set of shots from Hokkaido. I wrote about what’s happening over on the SWET blog, so I’ll just point you that direction instead of reprinting everything here.

One update to that previous post: I haven’t been arrested or interrogated about the bits of electronic detritus in the hotel wastebasket. Apparently someone here could tell the difference between a broken SD card reader and a left-over missile timing device. Lucky me.

Posted in: japan , work

More from Hokkaido (Durf.org (Durf)) by Durf

I had planned to grab a bunch more photos from my camera and upload them to Flickr, but my SD card reader crapped out last night. So I still have only that first batch up. Here’s one of the delightful Pokemon bus that took us from Chitose Airport to the site a few days ago.

Work has been rough for me and my teammate (we’re working in pairs of a native-English-speaking translator and a Japanese checker/E-J translator). We were in the work room until dawn the first night, when there was a lot of information to get into the system in time for it to go live, and until well past dawn the second night, when there was little to do. Then it was decided that the media site admin room didn’t need to be manned 24 hours a day, so all the teams who were looking at similar schedules for the rest of our time here got a reprieve. There’d better be a bonus of some kind in this for us!

The schedules are friendlier now, at any rate. Today my team is in until around 8:00 in the evening. We have most of tomorrow off, so we might take a walk up on the golf courses and ski runs on the hills behind our hotel and see if we can spot a fox or deer or SDF special forces sniper or something. Photos to follow, if I can track down a card reader! This is the freaking International Media Center, so there must be some sort of support office for photographers that can hook me up.

Posted in: translation , work

Toyako time (Durf.org (Durf)) by Durf

I’m posting this from the International Media Center in Toyako. All the G8 leaders will be showing up in the next few days to chat about world hunger and the price of oil and where Fukuda Yasuo gets his suits made, and then they’ll fly off to new destinations, or back home.

In the meantime I will be sitting in a small, heavily chilled room full of computers and video editing decks and such, typing translations into the press information system. This is what lets cameramen and writers know when to get onto the bus to go to the interview and photo op. Lots of very hard-working folks from the Foreign Ministry and lots of frogs shrieking in the nearby ponds when we close up shop late in the night after keying in 50 or 60 “UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to arrive on government plane at 10:00 on Wednesday” type messages. (I made that example up, terrorists, so you can’t plan your assassination based on my help! Besides, there are about 35,000,000 police officers in southern Hokkaido right now. Give it up.)

The photo is of the media working space last night, before the center opened up officially. Shiny clean desks ready to get abused by the crushing weight of a thousand Dell laptops. Read all about it in your paper next week.

Posted in: japan , work

Best customer service call I ever had (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

... and it wasn't because it had good service, either. I was working for AOL Telecom as a programmer at the time. I worked with another skilled programmer named Ben. Ben had a Macbook of some kind, I think a Powerbook 540 with a "Mercury Modem." We couldn't get it to connected to AOL, it would always crap out around Step3 or 4, which we knew meant was some kind of negotiating issue. "I wonder if the modem is broken or just configured wrong?" we asked. "Hey," said Ben, "we work for AOL. We can call our tech support!"

So we did. We held for about 4 minutes before we got this annoying and arrogant twit. I forgot how he started out, but within a few minutes he was already treating us like dirt. We tried to tell him what we had done, but he was all, "tut tut tut... the master is speaking now. Children be quiet," on us. Finally, as a "penalty," he put us on hold for a few minutes until we decided to do it "his way."

"Oh no," said Ben, with a scowl. "This call will end differently!"

Ben and I had been working with the master call log database, trying to cull some real-time statistics. Using our outgoing phone number, we traced the call to Jacksonville. Looking on the trunk, we traced the call to a card, and used that ID to see the agents attached to it on the Mac tech queue. There was only one. We went to the AOL HR directory, and looked the agent up.

When the guy came back, he asked, "So now are we ready to listen?"

"Sorry, Fred Johnson, agent 52007 in Jacksonville. You have been so rude to us, we have traced this call, and your boss, Paul Smith, will be informed of your unacceptable behav--"

[*click*]

"He hung up on us!" screamed Ben in shocked amusement.

We called back, and got another agent who verified that yes, our modem was probably broken. I drafted a letter, and sent it to Fred and his boss, Paul [names made up, I forgot their real names], explaining who were were, who we worked for, and points of the call we found unacceptable.

We got a letter back from Paul, apologizing for Fred's behavior, and the next day, we got a three-page letter apology from Fred who explained what he did wrong, how he would fix it, and in a form that suggested his apology was done under duress. I don't know what happened to Fred, I am sure he didn't stay long.

But what power that is! Can you imagine if you could do that? Like you call 1-800-COMCAST and when they suck, you could say, "Listen, Ida. I don't know why your boss Melvin didn't train you properly, but I am going to call him and explain what a cud-chewing, corn-chip nail filing dumbass you are..." or "Listen, Sears said they'd send someone here, and since I can see they outsourced it to Cletus Johnson, who is sleeping in his truck at a Burger King 20 miles away from here, I am going to assume he won't be by within my lifetime. You get your boss Roy Ogden to call somebody, preferably Bill Manolo who is watching TV in his repair shop, to get their ass down to my house and fix the air conditioner!"

Now that I think of it, I have always wanted the power to magically appear behind the office chair of various COX Cable employees I had to deal with. I don't know where they were, I assumed by their accent Georgia, but even if it was Calcutta, I'd like to see the shock on their face as I spun their chair around and said, "Look. Hang up the damn phone and come with ME!" Posted in: aol , customer service , work

It's great to know one's work is appreciated (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

As the title of this post says: it's great to know that at least there's -someone- out there who appreciates the work you do :)

Case in point: I've been putting all my college term papers and summaries online and I've been keeping an extensive Wiki with class notes. From time to time a teacher or classmate will suggest that they've had some use for these sites, which is of course quite nice. But last night the aforementioned guidance counselor told me something that made me really happy ^_^

Next year she'll be teaching the second year's General didactics course. Because the course is currently given by one of our somewhat wishy-washy teachers, she was told that she'd have to hunt around and ask people for all the materials. I guess that most of the stuff was never really put to paper. Luckily Lisette knew about my site, found my summary and class notes and was done within a day. Her supervisor was perplexed! :D

So yeah, it's great to know that you're appreciated ^_^

Posted in: appreciation , school , summary , work

An exciting week up ahead! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Man o man, is this week going to be exciting and busy! ^_^

For starters, tomorrow will be completely jam-packed! I'll start off with a morning at one of the schools I'm interviewing with, to get a taste of their atmosphere. After our very pleasant meeting two weeks ago, we wanted to make sure that I like the school well enough before getting down to real business.

I'll then head off to school, which lasts from 1200 until 2000, mixing three different courses with a small project that we're working on. After that I'll meet up with my ever-so lovely guidance counselor, to have a chat about my progress at school. She's been of great help to me this year and I think we can both be pleased with the progress I've made. :)

Tuesday, thursday and friday will be spent at the office, doing what we always do :) I'm working on a rather important project, which consists mostly of paperwork, to ensure the SOX compliancy of $CLIENT.

Wednesday will be a rather special day... I've taken the full day off from work (man, school is really cutting into my vacation hours!), to tackle no less than three interviews!

In the morning I'll visit a school here in Utrecht. They're pretty big on that New Learning thing and I'm quite interested to see how their school works. My classmate Badegul has told me a little about their school and they seem like a rather interesting lot! They're on the up-and-up when it comes to modern teaching methods.

Around lunch I'll pay a visit to Red Five in Woerden. They're the software developers and hosting company behind most of Ephorus' products. I spoke to Ephorus' director a few weeks ago and he set up a meeting for me at Red Five. Maybe I'll be able to provide some consulting on the side for these guys, while I'm working in education. Who knows? ^_^

Finally, in the late afternoon, I'll have a second job interview at a school in Maarsbergen. They only focus on the VMBO level of high school education, meaning that they're focused on getting kids ready for blue collar jobs and the service industry. Their school seems very nice, insofar that it's a bit small and everyone's acquainted. Also, their school's located in an old monastery in the middle of the woods. How cool is that?!

Finally, finally, next weekend will be Snow's annual summer get-together. This year, the whole company will gather on Texel (one of the islands on the dutch coast) to have some fun in the sun and sand. A whole bunch of them are going skydiving, but I opted to take along my homework and to ride my bike around a little bit.

So! Busybusybusy! But I'm actually feeling quite well under all the stress! ^_^

Posted in: college , exciting , job hunt , school , work

More SWET posting &c. (Durf.org (Durf)) by Durf

In the “web” category:

A few quick links to things I wrote on that other site:

One, two, three . . . (on Ryan Ginstrom’s online and downloadable word-and-character-counting utilities)

Facebook gets translated, saves a ton of money (on, well, Facebook and the translation of its interface)

Guerrilla editing on the road (on the wild adventures of the members of the Typo Eradication Advancement League)

In the “life” category:

Sakura is an active, active girl. She gets us up anywhere from 4:00 to 6:00 in the morning, and when she is up it’s definitely time for us all to be awake, feeding her and playing with her and reading her books. She loves to spend time outside, which will be a challenge to deal with once the summer heat hits in earnest. Putting shoes on is the sign that it’s time to visit the great outdoors, and shoes are therefore among her favorite things these days.

In the “work” category:

Japan Echo lost in the bidding for a Cabinet Office publication that would have meant an extra 50 pages or so of translation and layout each month. Mixed feelings here: the job would have helped the company’s bottom line, but it would have been a brutal pace at which to write and edit, and bureaucrats in the central government aren’t known for their appreciation of finely crafted phrases. We would have had to take on more help for the project and we wouldn’t have enjoyed much of it. So . . . whew?

In place of that it looks like we’ll be busy in July, at least, doing on-site work at the G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit. Eight years ago I went to Miyazaki and Okinawa for the G8 foreign ministers’ and leaders’ meetings. Sat in tiny, insufficiently air-conditioned rooms and translated or proofed little blurbs of text to go out on the media info system. The work should be the same this time around, more or less, but a full eight-year cycle in the G8 process brings with it a whole lot of technological advances in the meantime, so I don’t think my dim memories of how to key the press releases in that old system will help much with whatever Hakuhodo sets up this time around. Prep meetings begin next week. We’ll see.

Posted in: life , web , work

Let's play musical chairs! (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Due to a few administrative bork-ups at a higher level, it's been decided that my team at the office needs to move to another building. That's a real shame, because the building we've been in for years is absolutely wonderful. Not only in an architectural and culinary sense, but also in the sense that there's a lot of cool people over there.

Due to some more bork-ups in the delivery of the new/old building we were asked to temporarily move to yet another building. After a lot of hassle and moaning and groaning today's finally the day. We moved to a lovely art deco building in The Hague, whose interior faintly reminds me of my dad's office buildings from the early eighties :)

There's been some griping among the veterans who really, really wanted to stay at the old building. I understand where they're coming from, but personally I don't really mind. I go where the customer wants me to; that's what they pay me for anyway. And $DEITY knows where I'll be in a month or two ^_^

My new desk + chair suck though ;_; They're decrepit and falling apart.

Posted in: moving , musical chairs , office , switching , work

Something I have always wondered (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

When I used to work for Cargo Furniture, I worked 6 days a week. Mandatory. I didn't know this when I took the job, but two weeks into my triaining, I was told that company policy was 6 days/48 hours a week. That seemed highly unreasonable, but when the manager told me "in this comapy, we round by 3" (instead of round by 5, like everyone else), I assumed she was cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

Sadly, when she was demoted after I was there for a month, I was told, yeah, 6 days and 48 hours ir right, but "you rounded by what??" Since I had been unemployed for almost 2 years before, I didn't feel safe wondering aloud if those hours were even legal.

There was always talk about this rule. The first thing I was told was that the Tandycraft Company that owned Cargo was a 90 year old, "good ol boy" corporation out of Forth Worth, Texas. They worked the same hours since 1909 or something. It was explained thusly:

- Some states said salaried workers were based on a 40 hour week, but had issues with only one day off, so you were, on paper, hourly. They said that hourly was figured at an hourly rate, so it was (40 x $$$) + (8 x 1.5 x $$$) = your "salary"
- But you were never allowed to claim overtime. So we filled out time cards with sign in and sign out times, but it was all fictional.

Now, keep in mind, we were only allowed to have a staff of three: a manager, and assistant, and one 10hr/wk part timer. So when your assistant was gone, you had to pull an 80 hour week, essentially, depending on your mall hours.

The second rule was "never talk about the hours outside of work." There was under-the-breath mumbling about the legality of it all, but those who said they'd take the company to court were fired. And since no one ever seemed to successfully sue them, and they had a lot of disgrunted ex-employees, I have wondered:

Was this legal? Can a company do this without any ramification?

Cargo, in any case, is out of business, along with Tandycrafts. But I have always wondered...

318 Posted in: cargo , fnord , work

NOT YUO COOK-EH!!!1! (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Today, I was reminded of an incident that happened to me around 2000-2001 when I worked at AOL. I was still working for International Wardialing with stodgycat, and we worked out of an office that was close to a large meeting room.

Let me just tangent here for a rant long corked up and now useless.  Finding meeting rooms in the old AOL Reston offices was terrible!! The offices all had addresses that 80% of the time were found by following in order, like 1H01 would be near 1H03, for instance. But the meeting rooms all had names of artists, like "Picasso" or "Rembrandt." Plus, the meeting rooms were scattered about the floor plan in random sizes and shapes, so they were almost impossible to find. I HATED THEM!!

Anyway, I was near "Picasso," I think. Picasso was one of the meeting rooms built like a bubble outside our stone walls, and was one of the larger ones. Thus, bigger meetings and occasional training sessions were held there. That meant that a lot of them were catered by SoDexHo, our caterer, famous for being part of the Marriott Corporation.

One day, early in the morning, I passed by a large cart of food outside the meeting room.  That wasn't so unusual.  But there was no meeting within.  About two hours had gone by, and I passed this cart several times.  Alone.  Abandoned.  With a HUGE tray of cookies in a rather sparsely traveled hallway. 

Temptation got the best of me, and on the fifth pass, I swiped a soft chocolate chip cookie.

I swear I never saw her.  But within seconds, and I mean I had just put the cookie in my mouth from picking it up, this harpy came out of nowhere and started screaming at me, like, "Hey.  HEY!!"  I suddenly found myself face to face with a woman who couldn't have been more than five feet tall and a few inches.  She was wearing a blue blazer, and had a short-cropped haircut that coated her head like a black pineapple skin. 

I don't recall exactly what she said, but it was a furious dressing down that boiled down to, "NOT YUO COOK-EH!!!"

This is the best part, though.  She held out a napkin, and made me spit out the cookie in my mouth into the napkin, and hand her back the rest of the cookie.  I complied without question, I think out of shock more than anything else, but a perverse part of be asked, "Is she really asking me to spit out a cookie into her napkin like a toddler caught eating a bug?"

I meekly apologized.  After all, I did steal a cookie that was not mine.  But I got kind of mad and passive agressive when the shock wore off.  I felt her screaming and making me spit out the cookie was really over-dramatic.  So I said I'd gladly pay her 50 cents for the cookie, since obviously she was on a tight budget.

Oh no, she wasn't having that.  Not only did I not get my dishonestly gained cookie returned, she took out a pen and wrote on a napkin, demanding to know my name (which she read off my badge), and wanted to know the name and e-mail address of my supervisor.  So I gave it to her.  I even told her what his office number was, and when he'd be in today.  I again offered to pay for the cookie, and she then said I'd pay for the cookie, alright.  But she'd have it docked from my pay.  And it wasn't 50 cents she'd dock.  Oh no, it was... A WHOLE DOLLAR!!!  I couldn't help but laugh, because she was totally serious.  And that didn't help.

Me: You... you actually asked me to spit out the cookie into a napkin you are now holding. Does this seem a little dramatic? Can I just give you a dollar and have the uneaten cookie back?
Her: You act like a child and steal food, you will be treated like a child and punished as one.
Me: Uh... heh. 'Fair 'nuff, I suppose. [snort]
Her: Your boss, Mr. Dennis Saylor, will hear about THIS!  Then you won't find it so funny!

She got even angrier that I wasn't... I guess reacting respectably.  I just went back to my office, a little angry, but also laughing because it seemed so over the top.

Later in the day, I met my boss, and told him about it. He also laughed, and said the uneaten food was later left in the kitchen, and there were still cookies left.

"But if they call me, I'll tell them I fired you over it, how's that?  That will make her happy.  Clean out your desk, you cookie monster!  Hah."

Dennis was one of the best bosses I have ever had.  Nothing got to that guy, and he was always joking around.  And always had your back.

We joked about it for a while after that.  Dennis would joke I had to give HIM the dollar all the time.  He told me no one ever called him over it, so we're not sure what happened.   I don't know who it was, I think she worked for SoDexHo, and was not an AOL employee.  Posted in: aol , cookies , work

Some more AOL Lore (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

I used to work with AOL France for a while. They were an oddball cast, to be sure. Nadine Grange, the little butch lesbian biker, ran the show in Lens and ran it well. IMHO, she WAS AOL France. She was almost fired for her... well, to be blunt, loud mouth several times. But in the end, they relented because she did so much for AOL France, including get the comparatively very lax southern European standards up to the American ones.

My favorite story of her was this one time Transpac (our French carrier) was hemming and hawing as they usually did to get a connection fixed to Austria. Global One of France had that connection, and for many days, they stalled. And when Transpac stalled, they suddenly didn't speak English anymore. I fucking hated them for pulling that. Global One actually told me, "They guy with the van has gone on holiday."

"You mean all of Global One in France only has ONE van, and they guy who owns it is on vacation?" I asked.

"Yes. Well, it is the weekend, and you know... who wants the Internet over the weekend? It's nice out."

"Can you call him?"

"No... see, he is in Austria, and you know how the connection to Austria is down, zo... he'll be bach Monday, Tuesday at the ... how you zey... lateest."

It was Thursday. And I heard his accent winding down.

I don't want you to think I am calling the French lazy. They are not lazy. The French are highly educated and very hard working. The best way to explain it is that they are not in any hurry. They are very much the term "Laissez-faire," or "let people do as they choose." Relaxed, often late, and while many people consider this to be rude and arrogant... it's not really like that once you get to know French people.

But Nadine knew what Americans wanted. Fixed. Now. She suddenly burst in on the conference call, and hurled a huge slew of curses at the Transpac tech, in French, telling them that she wasn't going to put up with their bullshit anymore. Her voice was very sudden and loud because the Transpac techs spoke so far from their phone's mouthpiece, they were almost lost in the background static noise of their computer fans. So we usually had to turn up the speakerphones to hear them. Nadine's voice hit our ears with the fist of an angry French God, and I recall everyone rapidly turning down their speakerphones all over the NOC in a panic. But she got it fixed.

AOL France closed last year. It's a pity, because they were some damn talented people. But before they left, they made this goodbye video, which I just found on Youtube after having been private video for almost a year. A fitting tribte to a bunch of characters.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PHIDJ5f8sGQ Posted in: aol , france , french , work

Cailin's midnight taxi, at your service (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

In a few days, Marli will get started on her nightly shifts for the NS. This means that she'll get off work around 0100 and that she'll take the train back home by then. She'd arrive around 01:45 by our estimates.

Since we don't want her riding her bike at that hour for multiple reasons and since taxis cost a bundle, it looks like I'll be playing Midnight Taxi (tm) a few days a month.

I can already imagine myself driving around town in my robes! Now where did I put my Creedence tape?



Posted in: commute , midnight , taxi , work

Google Translate on the job (Durf.org (Durf)) by Durf

Some time ago I grabbed this link to write about: Google Translate Asks You to “Suggest a Better Translation.” In a nod to the idea that no, computers aren’t really good at this human language thing, the folks at Google have taken the most business-savvy Web 2.0 step possible: make the users improve your product for you! You don’t have to pay actual translators to vet your output, and as a bonus you can serve ads to the eyeballs of everyone involved in the process.

The news this morning featured plenty of amused commentary on the signs Cubs fans were holding up to cheer on Fukudome Kosuke as he almost hit for the cycle. Asiajin has a nice explanation of what happened here: Google Translate tricked Cubs fans thoughtlessly. It turns out that Google’s toy could have used a bit of that user improvement before someone grabbed the Japanese rendering of “It’s gonna happen” there, which was for some reason ????. Telling your team’s guy “you just got lucky that time” isn’t the greatest thing to do when his bat is just about the only thing standing between you and defeat. Which you suffer anyway. Then again it is the Cubs we’re talking about here.

Update: Commenter Adam Rice has written this post about the Google thing, which, as he notes, promises “perhaps a huge jump forward in improvement over older MT systems . . . but perhaps a huge clusterfuck of unharmonized spammy nonsense.”

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Posted in: translation , work

Today's quote (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

So, at this meeting, we were discussing how XYZ Vendor wouldn't respond to trouble tickets (in fact, their trouble ticket entry portal hasn't been working for weeks). The problem is, they need to renew our license key by the end of this month, which is today, and when you call them, they just open up a trouble tickets and say someone will get back to you.

And they never do.

We have tried mailing and calling several people, including our account rep, who we found quite by accident has a rather hot page on MySpace.

"Let's open up our trouble tickets on MySpace."

Heh. Posted in: myspace , work

Things found in the office printer (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

It amazes me, that people send stuff to the office printer and then just leave them there. I am not sure what goes through the mind of these people.

This is how I roll:

1. I need to print this item
2. I send the document to the printer.
3. I go to retrieve it.
4. Task finished.

This is the part I don't understand:

1. Someone says, "I need to print this item"
2. ????
3. ????
4. Punk finds it in the printer tray or next to the printer.

If it's something generic like printing out a mail with directions to an office meeting, or a snippet of public code, no big whoop I guess. But far too often I encounter things in the printer tray that are far too sensitive for what I'd define as "public knowledge." And it's not like they were *just* printed, I have passed by the printer for days to see some of the following left out, waiting for someone to pick it up, at the various companies I have worked at:

- Personalized medical instructions for some ailment ("Living with chronically draining pus...")
- Gaming stats or scores ("Red wizard needs food badly; Valkyrie has shot the food!")
- News stories of some random local event ("Local woman with wooden leg marries woodpecker")
- Porn (usually pictorial, but also erotic literature, "Softly, he grabbed her hot thighs...")
- Confirmation receipts of some on-line purchase ("Confirmation of your order from Dominatrix4Cheep.com: please keep for your records")
- Personal identity info (W4, credit apps, bank statements, etc)
- Sports betting pools (isn't this illegal?)
- E-mail I wouldn't have shared with anyone else ("John, my doctor has informed me to tell my past few lovers to please go to a clinic right away...") Posted in: angst , printer , work

Hypothesize a spherical chicken (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Many years ago, when I worked for AOL Member Services as a call center programmer, they sent me to Aspect training in San Jose. Aspect was a call center system that tied together agents on phones, incoming phone lines, and the computers that ran a call center. I was getting some rather basic training, and it was obvious on the first day of class that a lot of people showed up without minimal requirements. So I got bored.

One of the "features" of the software was that you could program an LED banner for your call center. AOL didn't have one in their call centers, but many other companies did. They usually scrolled call center statistics (average call time, number of calls per hour, and so on), inspirational messages, announcements, or whatever you wanted scrolling by on red dots. The classroom had one, so I sent it a test message:

"Hypothesize a spherical chicken."

This was based on a button I saw once that joked the problem with applying scientific abstracts on realities is that nature is messy. In the case of determining how many chickens you could put in an enclosed space, you just assumed chickens were perfectly round.

I don't know why I chose that phrase, but when I sent it to the banner's IP address, it still showed, "Welcome to Aspect: Training room 12" I fooled with it some more, until I found the right IP and command to change it. The class noticed it after about 20 minutes, and giggled. I sent it other messages, too. Finally, the teacher noticed, and asked whomever was doing that to stop. I texted, "Okay..." and then "Welcome to Aspect: Home of the whopper." He decided that was fine (he was a good sport).

Later in the day, he asked who was responsible. I said I was. He said, "Were you aware that you sent it to the lobby?" I was not.

For several hours, the banner in the main lobby of their headquarters and visitor's center had been displaying, "Hypothesize a spherical chicken," to everyone. They finally traced the command to our training room. It must have happened when I was testing it out, and had the wrong IP, but the right command.

Oops. Posted in: aol , aspect , banner , chicken , gag , work

No homework this week (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Well damn. Between work, nightly work, filing my taxes and sorting out our temporary (yet rather large) monetary problems, I haven't done one single page of homework this week. :(

I'm gonna have to haul ass this weekend.

Don't worry about those money problems though: with a bit of help from my dad we'll be able to get through to Marli's first paycheck. After that, it's clear sailing. I'm just happy dad's able to help us ^_^;

Posted in: college , damn , homework , money , work

Interesting debate on work ethics (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

Here's an interesting question for you: if we want our kids/students to put in effort in their work, why don't we do the same? Isn't that a bit two-faced?

Case in point: my own studies. It's been suggested a few times that I'm working myself into my grave at school, by putting so much effort into each and every assignment and report.

It's true that, for most of my reports, I put in extra research that isn't needed. Without said research I feel that I'm doing a half-assed job, because I wouldn't completely understand the subject matter. I enjoy studying extra materials from a field that I'm only in the process of entering, because without them I feel less confident. I've even been complimented on my efforts by a teacher or two.

However, now people (both teachers and fellow students) are suggesting that I could save a lot of time by skipping all that research. "Just find the answers to the questions and move on." "Don't bother with all those nice looking reports." "Do you really think someone's going to read a 25 page paper every time you submit one?"

Now, I'm not disregarding their suggestions, because it's certainly true that I could do with a little spare time. Too much work and no play and all that. So yes, I will start accepting 60-70% as a good score as well.

However, the problem I have with all of this is that we would -love- to have our students go apeshit over their course material! We'dn love it if they got totally enthused about maths, or english lit, or PE. So why are we so quick to jump to the "easy road" ourselves? That just feels illogical to me and actually a little bit like a betrayal as well.

Posted in: ethics , good enough , more effort , work , work harder

Nostalgic sadness in the evening (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

So, last night, I went to pick up my AOL furniture that I bid on (with aksident and stodgycat). Two blue/green chairs and a trestle "training table," which is actually a desk. Chairs are awesome, slightly dingy, but that's not unexpected. They WORK, and have all their parts, which is good. One has teeth marks in the armrest, which look like a little child was biting it. stodgycat thought it might have been one of his old chairs that one of his kids had bitten into. Cute. The desk is exactly what I wanted, minus the shelf that went above it (computer folks, think a solid, massive version of the the old IKEA "Jerker" desk). I am very happy with my purchase. The auction staff (a guy and some young woman) were VERY friendly and helpful.

But going through the old Reston building? Hurt. Hurt more than I prepared for. The delivery was via the old cafeteria, which made sense because of the kitchen equipment they auctioned off. You know how when you moved out of a home you'd lived in through many years, and as you move the final stuff, you look back at some old room where your life changed a dozen times, and it seem so weird to see it empty? Like there are still remnants of pictures, poster tacks, a stain from a party, or whatever? Yeah. That (x10). I was so used to the crowds there, and all the offices with the funny and weird things outside of them. People walking back and forth, the hum of the massive computer rooms that surrounded you behind blank walls. The beeping of turnstyles and badge readers.

Like ghosts.

stodgycat wore his old "AOL 7.0!" promotional shirt. Even aksident said, "*I* remember this place! We [her, cheesy_reads and her younger sister] used to wait for dad in the lobby and run around. It was SO much fun!" That would have been the early 2000s, when she was 6 or 7. To her, half a lifetime away. And I can relate.

I started working there in 1999 with my NOC job that stodgycat got me. International Operations. The toughest job I ever loved. I used to wander the building at like 5am with a mobile phone tied to the desk trying to stay awake, looking out at the smoky windows at the duck pond in the early morning darkness.

I am glad I left AOL, but that doesn't mean I don't have many happy memories there. Posted in: aol , building , furniture , reston , work

Learning how to respond to downtime [ma.gnolia] (Put together quickly (Haligan)) by MichaelBiven

Colin from Viddler shares his observations on how to communicate with customers about service downtime. Some excellent free advice here.

Saved By: Michael Biven | View Details | Give Thanks

Tags: work, product management, downtime, outage

Posted in: downtime , outage , product management , work

I am not sure why I am in glee about this, but I am (Punkadyne Labs (Punkwalrus))

Okay, I worked for AOL for a little over 9 years, and 6 of those years were in Reston, which was kind of a “sekrit skwerl “ hidden bunker location for a while. Our Dulles Campus, in all its glorious sprawl, contained all our main stuff, but Reston used to be the main NOC (Network Operations Center), and then a major backup NOC for many years which worked in tandem with Manassas, Gainesville, and Dulles.

Well, they shut that place down in 2007, and I always wondered what they did with it. It’s now a WATER PARK with PONY RID—just kidding. Actually, I still don’t think it’s occupied, partially due to a “major emergency auction” stodgycat alerted me to. They were selling off all the leftover office furniture and the entire cafeteria (sinks, ovens, tables, the lot). Now, I had always liked my office chairs at AOL. I used the same one once for 4 years and it never broke. I also liked the desks we had, which were simple trestle style legs with a fake stone Melanie surface. So I bid on some of them. Pennies on the dollar, literally. $1500 office pods going for $5.

I ended up with 2 chairs and a desk. I bid on a lot more, but some of the auctions got out of hand. A 3 x 4 whiteboard (normal one, aluminum frame, white surface, no pens or erasers) went for $170. There’s buyer’s remorse about to happen. I have no proof of the condition of the items; they used the same photo for every item that was the same, but they did put “minor soiling” or “armrest missing” where appropriate in separate descriptions, and I bid on none of those, so perhaps I am good to go. I mean, I expect some wear of course, with Cheeto stains and pilling of fabric maybe, but it’s the support pistons I am most concerned about. The chair I have in my den now can be described thusly:

[takayla’s work] ===> Interception point ===> [a dumpster in Baltimore]

This piston long gave way, the lever to activate the piston broke off, the armrests are almost bare foam, so I sit at my desk like a I am riding a low-rider motorcycle (cue thumping Chicano music).

I get to visit my old office when I pick them up later this week. Squeeee! Posted in: aol , chair , work

Now I've seen everything (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach

I'm not going to say much about it, but this morning I ran into something that put me right back to my teenage days. Back then, I was working on the side at a local sauna. It wasn't the cleanest of work environments. And now I run into something similar in the server room... o_O WTF?

Cleaning buckets: apparently handy, when you're in a tight spot. >_<

Posted in: seen everything , server room , sysadmin , work