Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Excuses to stab |12:21 AM| I have a temptation to carry around an Epi Pen (Not really) on the off chance I could get to stab some guy in public, but have it be for the greater good.
"Man, I want to stab a guy today. Oh shit! Anaphylactic shock!"
Then I stab them.
I should mix the epinephrine with heroin, that way I own their life AND they're addicted to the junk I would sell them.
Or maybe I just haven't slept comfortably in about a week thanks to the A/C being shit.
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
.css crap, .png's have fallen |10:02 PM| I'm still playing around with cascading style sheets, and I had to give up on a few things to keep this site working with IE6.
IE6 hates .png's, hates relative font sizes, and hates our freedom. I had to change the background for this page from a neato, full color .png to a shitty, 256 color .gif because IE6's support for .png is crap.
I'd usually say "Fuck it" and let people go get a real browser, but in this case I wanted to fix the problem, not stick to an ideal.
Also, the tooltips should be working again. In some cases, when I link to an image, or have some kind of side note, instead of the old method of a little asterick and a note at the bottom of the page, I use a bit of code like This. Just mouseover the link there, and it should pop up.
I can also throw thumbnails into these tool tips, like the post before this one about Thomas's tattoo.
Next up is refining line spacing. I'm playing around with the settings to avoid the "Wall of Text" effect I sometimes have when I just rant and rant in here. It'll also mean I have to adjust what line breaks do, and start actually paying attention to the function of the <P> tag. Yes, I had to go look up the control codes to make > display properly.
I fixed up the menu, and made the proper adjustments to give it an honest to goodness relative path. Hooray!
Now all I need is to move it to the side of the window, like where a civilized person would put it. Also, divs are so goddamn cool, but I haven't had time to implement them in a reasonable way.
(1) comments
Saturday Night Resurrection |8:02 PM| My name is Brendan, and I'm an idiot that allowed his normal social circle to shrink a bit.
A good first step on rebuilding my social network was dropped into my life in the form of Thomas* "Goatboy" Reidy. He's back from the dead.
He died, at least to my social circle, a while back, a year or so after he was married. He'd been dating his later wife since the time he and I worked at Road Runner.
In the beginning, all had seemed swell between them, even if the house they purchased as an unmarried couple seemed like a bad idea. On top of that, the house became quite a zoo, with 4-5 cats, a wolf dog, a Rabbit*, and even a goddamn raccoon.
Problem was, Thomas's wife was a bit unstable.
After some big huge drama-filled fights, during which most of my friends and I found ourselves on the non-Thomas/wife side, we lost contact with Thomas. We rarely, if ever, saw him, thus his status became "might as well be dead to me".
Recently, the marriage went to a level of unrecoverable shit, and now Thomas is back, with a wonderful new girlfriend, a (no joke) high school sweetheart named Katie. He seems a lot more healthy, and I even get to seem him occasionally.
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Saturday And Ulcers, no blood whoring |12:59 AM| I'd stayed out a little late the previous evening, and though I was awake in time, I didn't go and sell blood plasma like I intended. I didn't feel like falling down dead later in the day when I'd be pushing myself. I also knew if I was on my game later, I'd earn a lot more with an independent contracting gig I had scheduled. Losing a shit load of my body water mass to the Vampires would not be great for my cognitive powers.
As a side note, Wonderlust says that when I get tired or depressed or really driven, my message style changes distinctly. Each sentence has one subject. The next sentence has another subject. I express few ideas. I become focused on a single project. I become like a telegram. I hadn't noticed. When I went back and read old email exchanges, the difference was easy to see.
2pm rolled around, I went to the client's house, and found no way to get in. I didn't want to jump his fence (thought that'd be rude, and I'd land about 8 feet down in mud. Great.), he wasn't picking up his cellphone.
I managed to get in touch with him later, and came back. The fence that I couldn't jump, and was locked, was defeated if you reached through the bars. Great work, learned helplessness through courtesy! This is the second time in a week and a half that courtesy has handcuffed me. Next time I have a situation like that, I'm breaking more rules.
The gig seemed pretty straightforward. Update a couple of blackberries, update a server for DST 2007, fix a few things around the office. More and more IT issues sprung up as I was there, and I defeated them all. The first blackberry was updated without a problem, the server was updated with only a little hiccup. (I did my reading, did the homework, researched the problem, applied the patch, bounced the server....and it stopped responding to remote desktop. I projected confidence. "No problem!" I squeezed myself in behind the rack, hooked up a borrowed monitor, keyboard, etc, and found a single error state. Cleared it, the whole system came back up. My heart resumed beating. Relief should have been sublime)
I fixed the printer, tracked down some passwords, verified the importing of precious contacts into Outlook, and even changed the default address book list.
When I fixed the calender issues, my client declared I'd just proven myself, and there was an odd/awkward high five. I was riding high. We'd already tested the Blackberry fix, I'd patched now 5 of the things, now it was time for the primary one. The one upon which his business hinged, the one task I had been specifically brought out to fix.
Of course, the patch failed on this one. Of course.
I'll save most of the details, but it took 2 and a half more hours of research, fighting the system, reading forums, downloading patches, and finally a harrowing 25 minute install process, but I fixed it. FIXED IT.
When that little SOB Blackberry popped up properly, I was on cloud goddamn nine.
Looks like I picked up a regular client, and he wants my help once a weekend or once every other weekend. Screw blood plasma, this is my supplementary income.
Once again, I ride out as a independent IT contractor. This time it shouldn't ruin me.
(0) comments
Excuses to stab |12:21 AM| I have a temptation to carry around an Epi Pen (Not really) on the off chance I could get to stab some guy in public, but have it be for the greater good.
"Man, I want to stab a guy today. Oh shit! Anaphylactic shock!"
Then I stab them.
I should mix the epinephrine with heroin, that way I own their life AND they're addicted to the junk I would sell them.
Or maybe I just haven't slept comfortably in about a week thanks to the A/C being shit.
(0) comments
Sunday, March 18, 2007
.css crap, .png's have fallen |10:02 PM| I'm still playing around with cascading style sheets, and I had to give up on a few things to keep this site working with IE6.
IE6 hates .png's, hates relative font sizes, and hates our freedom. I had to change the background for this page from a neato, full color .png to a shitty, 256 color .gif because IE6's support for .png is crap.
I'd usually say "Fuck it" and let people go get a real browser, but in this case I wanted to fix the problem, not stick to an ideal.
Also, the tooltips should be working again. In some cases, when I link to an image, or have some kind of side note, instead of the old method of a little asterick and a note at the bottom of the page, I use a bit of code like This. Just mouseover the link there, and it should pop up.
I can also throw thumbnails into these tool tips, like the post before this one about Thomas's tattoo.
Next up is refining line spacing. I'm playing around with the settings to avoid the "Wall of Text" effect I sometimes have when I just rant and rant in here. It'll also mean I have to adjust what line breaks do, and start actually paying attention to the function of the <P> tag. Yes, I had to go look up the control codes to make > display properly.
I fixed up the menu, and made the proper adjustments to give it an honest to goodness relative path. Hooray!
Now all I need is to move it to the side of the window, like where a civilized person would put it. Also, divs are so goddamn cool, but I haven't had time to implement them in a reasonable way.
Labels: Site Status
(1) comments
Saturday Night Resurrection |8:02 PM| My name is Brendan, and I'm an idiot that allowed his normal social circle to shrink a bit.
A good first step on rebuilding my social network was dropped into my life in the form of Thomas* "Goatboy" Reidy. He's back from the dead.
He died, at least to my social circle, a while back, a year or so after he was married. He'd been dating his later wife since the time he and I worked at Road Runner.
In the beginning, all had seemed swell between them, even if the house they purchased as an unmarried couple seemed like a bad idea. On top of that, the house became quite a zoo, with 4-5 cats, a wolf dog, a Rabbit*, and even a goddamn raccoon.
Problem was, Thomas's wife was a bit unstable.
After some big huge drama-filled fights, during which most of my friends and I found ourselves on the non-Thomas/wife side, we lost contact with Thomas. We rarely, if ever, saw him, thus his status became "might as well be dead to me".
Recently, the marriage went to a level of unrecoverable shit, and now Thomas is back, with a wonderful new girlfriend, a (no joke) high school sweetheart named Katie. He seems a lot more healthy, and I even get to seem him occasionally.
Labels: ThomasR
(0) comments
Saturday And Ulcers, no blood whoring |12:59 AM| I'd stayed out a little late the previous evening, and though I was awake in time, I didn't go and sell blood plasma like I intended. I didn't feel like falling down dead later in the day when I'd be pushing myself. I also knew if I was on my game later, I'd earn a lot more with an independent contracting gig I had scheduled. Losing a shit load of my body water mass to the Vampires would not be great for my cognitive powers.
As a side note, Wonderlust says that when I get tired or depressed or really driven, my message style changes distinctly. Each sentence has one subject. The next sentence has another subject. I express few ideas. I become focused on a single project. I become like a telegram. I hadn't noticed. When I went back and read old email exchanges, the difference was easy to see.
2pm rolled around, I went to the client's house, and found no way to get in. I didn't want to jump his fence (thought that'd be rude, and I'd land about 8 feet down in mud. Great.), he wasn't picking up his cellphone.
I managed to get in touch with him later, and came back. The fence that I couldn't jump, and was locked, was defeated if you reached through the bars. Great work, learned helplessness through courtesy! This is the second time in a week and a half that courtesy has handcuffed me. Next time I have a situation like that, I'm breaking more rules.
The gig seemed pretty straightforward. Update a couple of blackberries, update a server for DST 2007, fix a few things around the office. More and more IT issues sprung up as I was there, and I defeated them all. The first blackberry was updated without a problem, the server was updated with only a little hiccup. (I did my reading, did the homework, researched the problem, applied the patch, bounced the server....and it stopped responding to remote desktop. I projected confidence. "No problem!" I squeezed myself in behind the rack, hooked up a borrowed monitor, keyboard, etc, and found a single error state. Cleared it, the whole system came back up. My heart resumed beating. Relief should have been sublime)
I fixed the printer, tracked down some passwords, verified the importing of precious contacts into Outlook, and even changed the default address book list.
When I fixed the calender issues, my client declared I'd just proven myself, and there was an odd/awkward high five. I was riding high. We'd already tested the Blackberry fix, I'd patched now 5 of the things, now it was time for the primary one. The one upon which his business hinged, the one task I had been specifically brought out to fix.
Of course, the patch failed on this one. Of course.
I'll save most of the details, but it took 2 and a half more hours of research, fighting the system, reading forums, downloading patches, and finally a harrowing 25 minute install process, but I fixed it. FIXED IT.
When that little SOB Blackberry popped up properly, I was on cloud goddamn nine.
Looks like I picked up a regular client, and he wants my help once a weekend or once every other weekend. Screw blood plasma, this is my supplementary income.
Once again, I ride out as a independent IT contractor. This time it shouldn't ruin me.
Labels: IT Magic
(0) comments
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