You got the close I got the bank and the crew

sd: oi vey...how do these ass clowns get out of bed in the morning...i
mean perhaps they get a morning phone call stating nothing more that "breath
in breath out breath in....."
rev: The autonomous nervous system is the only thing that keeps
them in operation.
rev: Left to their own devices they'd routinely forget how to tie
their shoes.
sd: or blink...although not all reptiles have that ability
rev: And then come up with a buzzword laden explanation of why
it's better to leave them untied.
sd: its due to my synergistic thoughts on creating holistic business
solutions
rev: "well, it's really a paradigm shift, I'm freeing my mind to
focus on the parametric view by thinking outside the box and not tying my
shoelaces."

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Got my mojo runnin

Mike Patton's new band, Peeping Tom, released their album today. The Conan performance was awesome, the album is better. This is a very accessible album, with lots of good radio tracks in spite of the bizarre lyrics (sort of a given with Patton). It's on iTunes, it's on Amazon, check it out. I've listened to it about 4 times already today. Just gets better every damn time.

Added: to clarify, I think the bizarre lyrics are great, but I know they aren't everyone's cup of tea.

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Did my time, took my chances

have a full range of safety equipment in my workshop. Heavy duty earmuffs, hard hat, indoor and outdoor safety goggles, several pairs of work gloves for different situations, even a pair of insulated electricians gloves. So why wasn't I wearing safety goggles when installing the window AC unit? Carelessness. I often don't wear them unless working with power tools, because they aren't very comfortable.

The AC unit was stored in the garage, wrapped in plastic, and had accumulated some amount of sawdust and miscellaneous debris. When I powered it on, I was watching it to make sure it was working properly. Of course something flew directly into my eye. It hurt enough that I couldn't open my left eye. I flushed with saline several times and even hopped in the shower to get a constant stream going and it was no use. So my wife rushed me off to the ER where I sat for a few hours. I was eventually taken into the special eye room and sat a while longer. The doctor was great. In spite of my uncooperative eyes. My reflexes are so strong that he couldn't pry my eye open enough to get a look. So he doused my eye with a numbing agent, then did a very aggressive flush that involved actually pinning me to the chair to hold my head steady.



This took care of the problem, and he was able to then examine my eye with a variety of interesting torture devices. No laceration, no apparent permanent damage, lots of swelling and soreness. The nurse was not so nice. She hassled me several times about touching my eyes with my hands and in particular rubbing them. Which I do all the time. I hate being told to stop doing something I know I shouldn't be doing.

The ever dependable dockslop picked me up at 11.30 and got me home, and was as disappointed as I that there was no eye patch. The first thing I did after finally having dinner was to order a pair of safety glasses that should actually be comfortable.

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Odds and sods

Dammit. I am working on developing some more complex reports for our ClearCase repository. The bastards used perl for the reporting tool. Goddamn perl. Grrrr.

I've been very busy in my off time lately working on the vacation DVD. I've got everything sequenced, titled, and transitioned. Now it's time to start editing scenes. Slooooooow process. We didn't take near enough pictures, or shoot enough video. We were too overwhelmed by the experience. Next time.

On a brighter note, the Now Show has suggested that Hussein was developing homeopathic Weapons of Mass Destruction, which would explain why they could not be detected.

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Rocking on the sea

"You know that feeling when you lean back in your chair on two legs and you start to fall but catch yourself at the last minute? I feel like that all the time" - Steven Wright

Or at least right now. It was better this morning, but now it's worse. Very odd.

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The load won't fit

I just saw yet another story about someone being glued to a toilet in a retail store. Do people actually not look at the toilet seat before they sit down? It's a public restroom for the love of all that is good! The great unwashed masses use that thing, and you don't even glance to see if there is something nasty on the seat before you sit? There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity, but that clearly crosses far over it.

Even overlooking the basic good practice of placing a tissue-thick paper seat protector down as well as looking where you're about to sit, how can you not notice "Gee, this seat is kind of sticky, perhaps I should check to see what I've just smeared all over my backside."

I have no sympathy for the people who end up in this situation. A mere second of looking before you leap, as it were, would prevent this from happening to them.

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Danke schoen

griz:
dev> Here's the plan, including the servers (software) that we need for this product.
dbas> great.
dev (months later)> there's a lot here. you guys should probably start getting the QA environment built a while before we're ready to deploy our solution.
dbas> wait. you need SERVERS to run this on? We never planned for that. Where will the hardware come from? Who's going to buy the licenses?
dev> Ok - here is everything we know about the server requirments and possible configurations. Here are white papers. Here is an MS consultant to talk to. Here are the performance/availability requirements
proj mgr (1 week later)> so - have we got the server stuff figured out?
dba> what - you wanted servers to put this stuff on? we didn't plan for that. How do you want it configured?
dev> repeats previous analysis with smaller words and more pictures
VP> so - let's have a meeting to discuss what the server configuration needs to be
dev>
dev (1 week later)> OK, here's the MS consultant again. Here are the server needs from the dev veiw. again. Here is what the white papers say about performance and HA and server configurations
network engineers & dba> so - how do you want it configured.
dev> Here are the scalability & performance requirements, here are the stats on current use. I don't really care, and wouldn't presume to tell you how to best configure hardware to meet these needs.
dba (1 hour later)> I think we need another meeting to discuss possible server configuration & what dev's needs are.
dev> I don't FUCKING CARE.
griz: I need a jpg similar to the bunny with the pancake on it's head to express that idea.
matt: I'm pretty sure there's a german word for it

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It'll phase, it'll flange, it's fast, it's flexible

A few bands and albums I'm currently enamored with and may someday get around to writing reviews of:

Gram Rabbit
Very quirky and slightly country tinged (not crossover/redneck woman crap, real classic country) alt-rock. The singer is vaguely reminiscent of Gwen Stefani, but less affected.
Tool - 10,000 Days. It's Tool. Heavy and kickass
Snow Patrol - Eyes Open. I don't like it as much as the last album, but it's growing on me. It seems like every other song is great.
Joe Satriani - Super Colossal. This is his first album that's interested me in some time. The podcasts of 'the making of' probably helped spark that interest.
Minus 5 - It bothers me that I'm finding bands classified as alt-country appealing. I like to think of them as Wilcoish.
Flowfessionals compilation - It's got flow. I'm down with that.
Kira and the Kindred Spirits - Fun Danish garage rock, though she has more than a little torch singer in her.
Jahi - Serious MC with intelligent lyrics and great flow. Stress is the cousin of death.
Arctic Monkeys - UK rock with no pretense of depth. A rock version of The Streets.
We Are Wolves - Crazy Canadians. Hard rocking screaming electronica.

Also, the Indiefeed podcast has introduced me to about a dozen other artists I want to hear more of:
Brain Failure - Chinese punk rock
Arkitekt - just plain old rock
Taxi Doll - ambience heavy pop
The Evil Queens - Big heavy rock
Komputadora - Weird electronic/rap
Phenomenauts - Fun electro-rockabilly
Bling Kong - Cheerleaders. Really. Clearly started as a joke, and might still be. But it's a funny one
Mad Marge and the Stonecutters - Rockabilly with a vicious edge.
Ahab Rex - Glam era Bowie meets Trent Reznor
Asobi Seksu - Interesting mix of Japanese and English lyrics, music mixes 50's pop and 90's grunge.
Mountain Con - Kinda like Franz Ferdinand, but interesting.
Pinker Tones - Devo meets Super Mario Brothers with a latin flavor.
Lesbians on Ecstasy (I will not google them from work) - Very cool electro-rock.


Very very disappointing: RHCP - Stadium Arcadium. Of course, I haven't liked much that they've done since Mother's Milk.

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The flowers insatiable passion turns into a circus of debauchery

So now that all server are under the stewardship of the Web Farm we have only limited access to logs et al. Reproducible errors are a critical part of debugging. Not having direct access to logs is an impediment to finding out what the hell is going on. Also java errors tend to cascade to dozens upon dozens of lines per instance. Note that the person most familiar with this code is on vacation. And the MQ administrator is also on vacation. And our deadline was last week. It's been a good day so far.

Fortunately we have an SA and some developers with strong problem solving skills.

And on the same day the users realize that critical jobs in production haven't been running for two weeks...

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C is for cookie

Via KD: Comment, and I shall give you a letter. Go back to your site, and write ten words beginning with that letter, including an explanation what the word means to you and why. I was given C

C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.

Cornbread. Ain't nothin wrong with that

Colbert. 'Nuff said.

Confluence. As in the confluence of MooreWatch's personal troubles and Michael Moore's new movie.

Contraindicated. A nice way of saying "That's a stupid and possibly illegal way to do it, you know that, right?"

Configuration. It's what I do. And I'm getting pretty good at it, I think.

Chinese. I can feel the distance. It's a tough topic. Huge market, highly authoritarian government, ancient culture, and the potential for transforming the world economy. More people in the world speak Mandarin Chinese than any other language. Yet we don't teach it in our schools. This is probably a mistake.

Creationism. Even the Vatican has dismissed Creationism. If it is not falsifiable, it is not science. For the same reason that astrology, homeopathic healing, psychic surgery, dowsing, and ghost hunting are not science.

Cat. I have three, they are a lot of fun.

Chocolate. Mmmm. Chocolate.

Charlatan. Bonus word. People pushing 'alternative medicine', people ripping off retirees, gullible new agers, and so many others. They piss me off. If it works, it's not 'alternative' medicine. It's just medicine. Just as there is no such thing as 'Eastern' and 'Western' medicine. There is just medicine.

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Overload, down the drain

Ah, sometimes life is so funny. The owner of MooreWatch (an anti-Michael Moore site) is having to shut down because his wife's health care expenses are consuming too much money for him to afford the web hosting anymore. His ad revenue is way down because Moore has been very quiet for months.

Why has Moore been quiet? Because he's been focused on his latest movie, about the awful state of healthcare in America. Perhaps he'll feature the owner of MooreWatch and his wife in the movie...

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Music is life

I think I've got the intonation set right on the classical guitar. A few samples. I really need to practice more, as these are a lot sloppier than I would like.

Soleares (Cordoba)

Farewell (Malmsteen)

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See these eyes so green

t has not been a great night. Storms do that to me, of course. Tonight however something much stranger occurred. I was awoken by a bizarre sound coming over the baby monitor. It sounded similar to a cat yowling, but it was not one of our cats; I know their sounds. I got up to investigate only to find that it was coming from outside, and was so loud and intense that I could hear it through the monitor even over the noise machine.

It sounded like the it was fighting something, and it didn't sound quite right for a cat, so I decided to investigate. I grabbed my mag and went outside and looked around, but it was nowhere to be seen where I had heard the sound. Then I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye, and got it in the light from a distance of about 100 feet.

It was definitely cat-like, but didn't match any breed I've seen before. It stood probably 17-19 inches high at the shoulder, and it's tail looked to be slightly longer than it's total body length. Light tan with some spotted markings, short hair. I didn't get a great look at it's head unfortunately. It looked more like a civet than a cat, but it was way way too tall to be a civet.

Possibly a racoon? Not likely. Racoons have shorter legs and much longer hair. And the brief glimpse I got of the face showed no mask. I also considered the possibility that maybe it was a fox, but the ears and snout were much to short for that.

If it makes another appearance I'll try to get a picture.

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The moon is full and the stars are bright

I have a coworker who has been pining for a Saturn Sky for at least the past year. They are finally out and in the showrooms and ready for sale. One problem that dealerships have been having is that they are only allotted two per month at best (The factory they are produced in shares production with the Solstice and Pontiac gets the majority of the line availability). So the local Saturn dealer decided to take the limited supply/high demand situation and make the most of it. Not by jacking the price up, but by offering their first two to the highest bidder. Anything over MSRP will be donated to a local adoption/foster care group. Gotta love that.

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