Saturday, March 17, 2007
The feeling of IT |10:30 PM| This is some naval gazing, probably offering some tiny insight into what drives me, but you can skip it.
There's this (too be expected) wonderful relief when some kind of massive problem solving I'm doing goes well. This is especially true if something during the process has gone horribly awry, I'm in over my head, and there's a deadline. Recent instances of this have been fixing Chris's computer (not as much "over my head" just complete confusion as to what the fuck the problem is, and having to use illogical problem solving to fix it, deductive leaps, what have you) fixing those blackberry servers, the lightbar incident, and the 74-134 test.
With Chris's computer I had to fight the computer to the point that it was giving me an error I even recognized (NTLDR not found) that took an hour. The rest of the time was pretty standard until it stopped booting, with a can't-be-possible error message. I ended up making some completely bizarre changes to the BIOS, (Because that was all that was left, configuration wise) and it worked. The relief was so great at the repair that to be comfortable, I had to lie down, and stare a ceiling fan for a bit. This is not usually an option in a professional support enviroment.
With the lightbar, I got money, praise, the joy of a movie going well, blah blah.
The blackberries I covered in that other post.
The relief is a mixture of "aw shucks" humility, since I didn't call upon training or any other "real" qualification. I jumped in, broke some stuff, figured out what worked, and stumbled around, did some research, projected confidence I didn't have, and came up with an answer. It's a lot like the time I got stuck under a windsurfer. I knew not to panic, that I had plenty of air, go any direction but up, and I'll live.
That's why the relief can't be compared to some kind of Freudian concept that may be occuring to some people. It's more like the relief of not dying, of getting back to a normal mood.
Editing time stamp to indicate when this occurred to me.
(0) comments
Weekend with only a few fuckups |12:59 AM| Friday:
I had left my cellphone over at Chris's place at some point, which crippled me communications-wise. "Oh but there are pay phones, office phones, etc" right, but when you don't have anyone's phone number memorized, these other phones are just as worthless. Yes, yes, I'll start memorizing phone numbers.
Went downtown to watch some of the concerts that were peripheral to SXSW, but the bands we went out to see ended up cancelling on us. (I could not find a parking to save my goddamn life, even the "trick" space on the other side of the highway was filled. That's when I made the connection that the building that I've been using [thanks to a favor I performed ages ago] is goddamn 501 studios. Holy crap.]) Spent a long time at side bar, which is comfortable and does not play their music at ear piercing levels. One advantage (to me) of having a huge influx of people downtown is that they form a very fluid and mobile crowd. I really enjoy running at nearly full speed along/on sidewalks filled with people, seeing how long I can go without having to come to a full stop.
Bought horrible sausage from a street side vendor, whose advertising was being done by a (homeless?) guy with very few teeth. Toothless was very enthusiastic, and his cook was lucky I was so hungry. This reminded me that I must continue to prepare for the BBQ I'm throwing on this coming Saturday. I did track down the beer sausage recipe from Geekygrrl, it's a bit more simple than I expected:
1. Boil six pack of beer.
2. Soak sausages.
3. Put sausages on grill.
Cass was "workin'" the dude at (club name?'s) who had come down from Brooklyn to help with do it yourself bands. I tried to hit on the lead singer of that chick band but she was really busy loading up for a show in an hour. Cass was able to secure 95% of the band organizer's eye contact. "I win" she declared. Of course she did. I'd like a more even playing field next time.
Chris listed the issues the chick band had (Drummer has no confidence, is not setting his own beat, the lead singer has no presence, isn't comfortable up on stage, they need approximately 7000 hours more practice) and told me how John wanted me to mix for Naked Empire. John thinks I could do it, which is great, but I can't mix for shit right now. If I went and trained at a mixing board dojo under the tutelage of a bald man who beat me daily, then maybe, I could pull it off. I'd love to try to fake it again, long enough to learn, but I don't know if I have the time before they start to need to record.
That was friday. Editing time stamp to indicate.
(0) comments
Thursday, March 15, 2007
GREAT WORK ASSHOLES |11:50 PM| I came home to a powerless house. I assumed that the power had been cut for non-payment, even if I'm not the one paying that bill.
A call to the electric company revealed that power was supposed to be on. I had checked the breaker box, but the woman on the phone led me to another, outside, near the meters. This is when I found out my back door was unlocked (I always keep that fucked double bolted)
As a side note, none of these boxes were locked. I could have shutdown power to any apartment in the complex.
I powered my house back up, went inside, thought "I'll bet those idiots were working on the A/C, cut my power, then forgot to turn it back on."
I hit the A/C, my breaker box started making funny popping noises, and the one out side jumped to "off".
Fuck.
This all means that my A/C is still off, which means I get to sleep with ice cubes wrapped around my neck, AND I get to worry about my house burning down. (Cass and Chris were nice enough to let me spend most of the evening at their place)
I'd just cut the power, but without the heater the fish will die in about 4 hours.
I'm going to bed.
(0) comments
Cables and Toes |11:44 PM| Note:This entry was supposed to be posted earlier, but some idiotic stuff happened. It'll be detailed in the next post, probably above this one.
I was tempted to make some kind of "toe cable" pun for the title, but I'm much better than that.
I have a policy of always helping people jump their cars, if it's at all possible. My buddy Ian calls, says he needs to borrow the cables, that he'd bring them back that afternoon. I'm fine with this. I've probably already written in this blog about my history with jumper cables.
I do not hear back from Ian that day. I do not hear from him the next morning. That afternoon, I get a call from an Ian that is using the "I fucked up voice"
Ian: Brendan, I'm sorry, I've got some bad news about the cables.
Me: You melted them, didn't you?
Ian: Yeah, how did you know?
Me: How did you hook them up? Did you go positive/Positive, Negative/Negative?
Ian: Yeah, isn't tha
Me: Nope.*
Ian: How am I supposed to hook them up?
Me: Positive lead on Booster goes to positive on dead car, Negative lead on booster goes to the engine block/other ground point on the dead.
Him: Oh. Man I'm sorry
Me: It's okay, at least you didn't blow up the battery.
*Yeah, I think I cut him off, for humor purposes. I'm a dick sometimes.
New policy: I'm jumping the cars from now on. If you need a car jumped in Austin, give me a call. My response time may be up to 8 hours, though.
Ian's not an idiot, he's very intelligent, he just didn't know how to hook up the cables. Seeing as I recently set a bunch of wires on fire when I was trying to hook up a light bar, I have sympathy.
Next subject, my toe. I was having issues with the nail, the kind of issues that really, really fucking hurt. The nail, digging into my flesh, had also disabled a nerve that controlled/communicated with the right side of the foot in question (the left). This made balancing difficult at best, and I had to compensate with all the muscles on the left side, so now they're all pulled to hell.
Bitch bitch bitch. It comes down to Doc Pops yanking my toe open, and digging around again. Which, thanks to some weird issue with the anesthetic not fully working (that is until he jammed that sonavabitch needle directly into the nail bed, and even then it was mostly effective) I had quite the experience when he started digging around.
I was howling every so often, and he'd stop. It got to the point where I just started yelling "Finish it jesus fuck just finish don't listen to me!"
This all made the most recent nipple piercing seem like a walk in the park.
Now my toe is sitting in a post-op boot, and it feels about 100 times better than it did yesterday, or the day before.
(0) comments
The feeling of IT |10:30 PM| This is some naval gazing, probably offering some tiny insight into what drives me, but you can skip it.
There's this (too be expected) wonderful relief when some kind of massive problem solving I'm doing goes well. This is especially true if something during the process has gone horribly awry, I'm in over my head, and there's a deadline. Recent instances of this have been fixing Chris's computer (not as much "over my head" just complete confusion as to what the fuck the problem is, and having to use illogical problem solving to fix it, deductive leaps, what have you) fixing those blackberry servers, the lightbar incident, and the 74-134 test.
With Chris's computer I had to fight the computer to the point that it was giving me an error I even recognized (NTLDR not found) that took an hour. The rest of the time was pretty standard until it stopped booting, with a can't-be-possible error message. I ended up making some completely bizarre changes to the BIOS, (Because that was all that was left, configuration wise) and it worked. The relief was so great at the repair that to be comfortable, I had to lie down, and stare a ceiling fan for a bit. This is not usually an option in a professional support enviroment.
With the lightbar, I got money, praise, the joy of a movie going well, blah blah.
The blackberries I covered in that other post.
The relief is a mixture of "aw shucks" humility, since I didn't call upon training or any other "real" qualification. I jumped in, broke some stuff, figured out what worked, and stumbled around, did some research, projected confidence I didn't have, and came up with an answer. It's a lot like the time I got stuck under a windsurfer. I knew not to panic, that I had plenty of air, go any direction but up, and I'll live.
That's why the relief can't be compared to some kind of Freudian concept that may be occuring to some people. It's more like the relief of not dying, of getting back to a normal mood.
Editing time stamp to indicate when this occurred to me.
Labels: IT Magic
(0) comments
Weekend with only a few fuckups |12:59 AM| Friday:
I had left my cellphone over at Chris's place at some point, which crippled me communications-wise. "Oh but there are pay phones, office phones, etc" right, but when you don't have anyone's phone number memorized, these other phones are just as worthless. Yes, yes, I'll start memorizing phone numbers.
Went downtown to watch some of the concerts that were peripheral to SXSW, but the bands we went out to see ended up cancelling on us. (I could not find a parking to save my goddamn life, even the "trick" space on the other side of the highway was filled. That's when I made the connection that the building that I've been using [thanks to a favor I performed ages ago] is goddamn 501 studios. Holy crap.]) Spent a long time at side bar, which is comfortable and does not play their music at ear piercing levels. One advantage (to me) of having a huge influx of people downtown is that they form a very fluid and mobile crowd. I really enjoy running at nearly full speed along/on sidewalks filled with people, seeing how long I can go without having to come to a full stop.
Bought horrible sausage from a street side vendor, whose advertising was being done by a (homeless?) guy with very few teeth. Toothless was very enthusiastic, and his cook was lucky I was so hungry. This reminded me that I must continue to prepare for the BBQ I'm throwing on this coming Saturday. I did track down the beer sausage recipe from Geekygrrl, it's a bit more simple than I expected:
1. Boil six pack of beer.
2. Soak sausages.
3. Put sausages on grill.
Cass was "workin'" the dude at (club name?'s) who had come down from Brooklyn to help with do it yourself bands. I tried to hit on the lead singer of that chick band but she was really busy loading up for a show in an hour. Cass was able to secure 95% of the band organizer's eye contact. "I win" she declared. Of course she did. I'd like a more even playing field next time.
Chris listed the issues the chick band had (Drummer has no confidence, is not setting his own beat, the lead singer has no presence, isn't comfortable up on stage, they need approximately 7000 hours more practice) and told me how John wanted me to mix for Naked Empire. John thinks I could do it, which is great, but I can't mix for shit right now. If I went and trained at a mixing board dojo under the tutelage of a bald man who beat me daily, then maybe, I could pull it off. I'd love to try to fake it again, long enough to learn, but I don't know if I have the time before they start to need to record.
That was friday. Editing time stamp to indicate.
(0) comments
Thursday, March 15, 2007
GREAT WORK ASSHOLES |11:50 PM| I came home to a powerless house. I assumed that the power had been cut for non-payment, even if I'm not the one paying that bill.
A call to the electric company revealed that power was supposed to be on. I had checked the breaker box, but the woman on the phone led me to another, outside, near the meters. This is when I found out my back door was unlocked (I always keep that fucked double bolted)
As a side note, none of these boxes were locked. I could have shutdown power to any apartment in the complex.
I powered my house back up, went inside, thought "I'll bet those idiots were working on the A/C, cut my power, then forgot to turn it back on."
I hit the A/C, my breaker box started making funny popping noises, and the one out side jumped to "off".
Fuck.
This all means that my A/C is still off, which means I get to sleep with ice cubes wrapped around my neck, AND I get to worry about my house burning down. (Cass and Chris were nice enough to let me spend most of the evening at their place)
I'd just cut the power, but without the heater the fish will die in about 4 hours.
I'm going to bed.
(0) comments
Cables and Toes |11:44 PM| Note:This entry was supposed to be posted earlier, but some idiotic stuff happened. It'll be detailed in the next post, probably above this one.
I was tempted to make some kind of "toe cable" pun for the title, but I'm much better than that.
I have a policy of always helping people jump their cars, if it's at all possible. My buddy Ian calls, says he needs to borrow the cables, that he'd bring them back that afternoon. I'm fine with this. I've probably already written in this blog about my history with jumper cables.
I do not hear back from Ian that day. I do not hear from him the next morning. That afternoon, I get a call from an Ian that is using the "I fucked up voice"
Ian: Brendan, I'm sorry, I've got some bad news about the cables.
Me: You melted them, didn't you?
Ian: Yeah, how did you know?
Me: How did you hook them up? Did you go positive/Positive, Negative/Negative?
Ian: Yeah, isn't tha
Me: Nope.*
Ian: How am I supposed to hook them up?
Me: Positive lead on Booster goes to positive on dead car, Negative lead on booster goes to the engine block/other ground point on the dead.
Him: Oh. Man I'm sorry
Me: It's okay, at least you didn't blow up the battery.
*Yeah, I think I cut him off, for humor purposes. I'm a dick sometimes.
New policy: I'm jumping the cars from now on. If you need a car jumped in Austin, give me a call. My response time may be up to 8 hours, though.
Ian's not an idiot, he's very intelligent, he just didn't know how to hook up the cables. Seeing as I recently set a bunch of wires on fire when I was trying to hook up a light bar, I have sympathy.
Next subject, my toe. I was having issues with the nail, the kind of issues that really, really fucking hurt. The nail, digging into my flesh, had also disabled a nerve that controlled/communicated with the right side of the foot in question (the left). This made balancing difficult at best, and I had to compensate with all the muscles on the left side, so now they're all pulled to hell.
Bitch bitch bitch. It comes down to Doc Pops yanking my toe open, and digging around again. Which, thanks to some weird issue with the anesthetic not fully working (that is until he jammed that sonavabitch needle directly into the nail bed, and even then it was mostly effective) I had quite the experience when he started digging around.
I was howling every so often, and he'd stop. It got to the point where I just started yelling "Finish it jesus fuck just finish don't listen to me!"
This all made the most recent nipple piercing seem like a walk in the park.
Now my toe is sitting in a post-op boot, and it feels about 100 times better than it did yesterday, or the day before.
(0) comments
View My Stats
-->
