It's not like we make a whole lot of money

Podcast mania. The commute gives me a nice block of time to listen to things like Freethought Radio and Grammar Girl and the newly (to me) revamped Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. But the one I'm most into lately is the Bands Under the Radar one. There are a ton of 'unsigned bands' podcasts, and even more 'bands on label x' podcasts. Meh.

BUTR has the distinct advantage of blocking multiple tracks from each artist with some background info by the host. And the host only picks bands she personally likes, whereas the label ones they put any band on their label that has a current release. The downside of BUTR is that the host needs to start listening to Grammar Girl...

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Pass the plate around, friends

saw this quote a few weeks back, and it neatly encapsulates my thoughts every time some Pampered Chef or Amway subsidiary pimp is trying to push their MLM* products on me or my wife when we clearly have zero interest.

In fact, I've used the saturated market comment many a time. These are sales gigs. If you are not a phenomenal salesperson, you're not going to make any money in an oversaturated market of average quality products that are generally premium priced. It's basic economic theory (or econocic as my darling Boo says. Yes, she talks about economic theory. Don't all 2 year olds?).

This isn't to say they're selling crap. Except the Amway subsidiaries, who go to great lengths to hide their ties to Amway, which really are crap products at crap prices. They are selling perfectly serviceable if unremarkable products at mildly inflated prices. I can go online and find comparable products (e.g. oXo instead of Pampered Chef) for generally about 80% of the price of the MLM product.

What I really want to know, however, is this: Why is it overwhelmingly women who do these? Is it because they can do it part time on their own schedule? That certainly makes sense. But I don't know if that's why. I work near Union Station. I see the conventions that come through town. The MLM ones have a ratio of about 10-12 women for every man. They are usually well dressed, look like any other business professional, and quite a few of them work at it full time. Why is it mostly women?

*I know people hate the term MLM, ...

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And there was nothing I could do

As part of my Monday morning rituals I go out in the garage and get my bike down for the week. And yet again my tire is flat. This is getting tedious. Were I smarter I would have gone out at 6am and got it down so there would be ample time to repair it. Now there is not, so I am once again going to have to take the bus. And the new bus schedule sucks a good deal more than the old one.

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Nothing is being done

Hit shuffle, hop on the bike.

Stop the World - Clash
My Life - KRS One
Impossible - Christina Aguilera
The Street Parade - Clash
Pearly - Radiohead
Out Come the Freaks (12" Remix) - Was (Not Was)
All Stripped Down - Tom Waits
The Long And Winding Road - Beatles
Heart Pound - Dilated Peoples
Little Wonder (4/4 Junior Mix) - David Bowie

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The world's not easy the blind man said

I was talking to my mom last night and she mentioned that she'd been at the cemetary on Monday for the anniversary of dad dying. I don't think anniversary is really a good word for something like that. I don't have a better one, but I don't like that. She said it was good to go. She spent some time at all the family plots there. Her parents are both buried there as well, and many other grandparents and aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles and cousins whom we reckon upon dozens. She walked around the rest of the cemetary as well, which she'd never seen much of before. It's a pretty small one. My best friend and I used to play there growing up.

It's hard to believe he died 9 years ago. So much has happened in that time just within the family. He really has missed out on a lot. We were never particularly close, and once I moved out of the house after college I only saw my parents once or twice a year at most. Even less as I moved further across the country. I think I missed out on a lot of good perspective and insight that I could've gotten by talking to them more during my twenties. Obviously I can't talk to him anymore, but I try to talk to my mom every week now. I sometimes wonder what dad would've said about moving to Missouri, or having kids, or the house that we bought, or any of a thousand other things I've done since he died. I think a lot like him in many ways, so I sometimes think maybe my views are similar to what his would've been, but then I really don't know. My mom often says I sound just like him when I offer my thoughts on many of the things we talk about.

I guess he had more of an impact on my formative years than I thought at the time. Being a pretty typical teenager I was convinced that I was nothing like my parents, and felt the need to define myself in contrast to them. Which was idiotic. As I get older I identify with them more and more, and see more and more of my dad in how I react to so many things. I am not my father, but I am influenced by him in both positive and negative ways. Only took me 37 years to figure that one out.

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No sex in the champagne room

There's a reason it's called Cracker Barrel.

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The idiot bastard son

Our Exchange server became unavailable around 10.30. This happens a lot, so no cause for alarm. Then the ClearCase server went missing, which is a massive problem, as certain types of files can't even be opened local and edited if you aren't connected to the repository when using Rational Application Developer. Hell of a feature, that.

Being the genius I am, I emailed tech support about the ClearCase issue. It was about a half hour before I realized that I am a moron.

Unrelated: This guy deserves some sort of award for proper use of the cliche phrase "You've been served."

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Bicycle, bicycle!

I've had three flat tires in the month or so I've been riding to work. The barista I see a few times a week who also rides to work looked up while I was telling my co-workers this and said "We really need to talk." A guy in line behind me (as well as Kevin) opined that there might be burrs on the inside of the rim causing it. As it turned out the problem was more basic: multiple thorny brambles.

I don't go off the road at all, so I'm guessing somewhere on the sidewalk between my office and the Civic Center Metro Station is where I'm hitting these. The first one I got while riding a dirt path down to the station rather than taking the long way, which is why I suspect the subsequent two came from the same general area. I am considering switching to Union Station instead, as it's about equidistant.

So I repaired the tube again this weekend and put it back in the tire and got the tire back on. While I was tweaking the front brakes I could hear the leak on the back tire. What the hell? I had to pull the whole tire off again and go inch by inch over the inside of the tire until I found a stray thorn. Ugh. This morning I got up and was pleased to see the tires still full of air.

I got on my rain gear (this will take some adjusting to, as it makes me warmer than normal while riding and also makes access to things like wallet and keys more difficult) and headed out. I got about a block before I realized that my brakes were too loose. Since that's probably not good in the rain I promptly turned around and got out the tools and tightened them up. Hassle though the rain gear was, it was nice to get to work completely dry. I'll need to get a mudguard for the rear tire, and possibly a larger backpack.


And probably the only time I'll ever use a Queen quote.

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That's a toad, not a frog

Froggy-goes-a-memeing*

1. what's the worse thing you've ever thrown up
Taco bell. Nasty

2. what's your favorite far-side comic strip
Geez, all of them. I particularly like the one with the scientists at the chalkboard and in the middle of the equation is a big cloud saying something along the lines of 'magic happens here'.

3. what would be a good mortal blog challenge
Get mentioned on an a-list blog

4. how should i spend the 10 poison/health points i won yesterday
Go for the front runner (other than yourself, obviously).



*c'mon, that was funny.

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I keep my head low, I stay in the know

come in to everyone in a panic because the gov people are screaming that NOTHING RAN ON FRIDAY NIGHT EVERYTHING IS BROKEN OMG IT'S ALL BROKEN THE SKY IS FALLING. As it turns out only two fairly minor processes failed, all of the other 23 ran just fine. My first thought was "Wow, for a bunch of accountants you're all really bad at basic math." Which I said out loud.

In a related matter, the Web Farm uses a big name enterprise software tool to monitor the status
of servers. In a meeting on Friday they were touting how they had gotten one of our recurring problems under reasonable control by monitoring server health every 5 minutes so when the app server -> db connection went stale (a core problem with the app server for the last three major versions) they could catch it within minutes. So on Friday just before nightly processing the app server-> db connection went stale. Guess how many minutes it took them to catch it?

Go ahead, guess.

UPDATE:

My response started off with "Except that it wasn't even our only downtime in the past 6 days. And it lasted 3 days and 6 hours."

It was actually a trick question. They never noticed, the users told them on Tuesday morning (monday being a federal holiday) at 6.10am. So the claim of 5 minutes appears to have been at best wildly inaccurate.

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Taking care of one another U and me

finally understand what the Combined Federal Campaign is. Good idea. And there's a ton of food out there today. And a lousy band. I mistakenly assumed that CFC was something only federal employees could participate in, but that does not appear to be the case.

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To mad dog your tilt-a-whirl

t is hectic time at work lately. Really nutty hectic, interrupt driven mania. It's amazing how often I have to ask whoami lately. Trying to do too many things at once and of course they're all top priority. As our sysadmin said "Root means never having to ask permission."

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No surface,all feeling

I was all sent to rant about the tv schedule change screwing up TiVO and what a bummer it was to miss The Amazing Race. Then I noticed it was October. Yes, it took me two whole days to notice that. Every year I support the Race for the Cure, as well as any friends all across the country who are out there trying to raise money and awareness. One of my very best friends from high school lost his mom a few years back. It was very rough for him I know, and it was so sad to lose such a great woman. She was a wonderful voice of reason chiming in to temper our insane teenage plots and plans.

Check out the National Breast Cancer Awareness site, learn more about Breast Cancer, and if you blog you should go pink.

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What they do in Washington: they just look out for number one

With apologies to the Capitol Steps who did something similar for Tom Foley...

Hang down your head Mark Foley
Hang down your head and cry
Hand down your head Mark Foley
You've got to go bye bye

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