…aaaaaand the worst week at work in a long while comes to an end. Not only was the week in general far and away busier than usual, but the busiest day (Friday) was the one I was scheduled to work a double shift (16 hours). followed by today, a mere 12 hours. I hope next week choses to be less of a shitstorm. I wouldn’t bore you guys with details even if I wanted to.
Ok, I’m done bitching and moaning about it… I need a good weekend, so I had to get that out up front. I hope all your weekends are going well. mine is just starting, but the fact that it’s here is good enough at the moment =P.
Funny things happen when the internet gets applied to real life.
So there I am, chilling with my bad self at Quizno’s. I’d ordered my tasty Black Angus sub and made my way into the traffic jam in the parking lot. The road planning of this plaza sucks, and there’s usually a wait to get out, with the line trailing back into the parking lanes. This blocks in parked cars for non-trivial amounts of time, and sometimes unfortunate people have to wait to even get in the traffic jam.
I was sitting in the line of cars and some asshat starts to back up… into me. I honk to let him know that there are in fact cars behind him, and he is perhaps being hasty with his actions. he yells “Move your damn car!” at me. This confuses me since there are very obviously cars in line before and after me, and I wonder where the hell he expects me to move. Perplexed and slightly miffed at his attitude I yell “Die in a fire!” back at him. This was more out of reflex than anything. His jaw drops and he just stares at me. It occured to me that he has probably never heard this expression before, and that it is an abnormally wicked thing for one person to say to another in earnest. He was certainly not aware that it’s a standard substitution for “fuck you” on the internet. Note to self: keep internet on the internet. The “norms” are not ready for the kind of casual wrath that forum dwellers sling at eachother. He didn’t have a retort for me, other than a look of complete shock on his face. Traffic started moving again and we both went on our ways. I felt bad for a few moments, until I remembered he was going to reverse t-bone me out of complete stupidity. At least I didn’t couple the common “eat razorblades” with what I’d said, I suppose.
Linus Torvalds celebrates Talk Like a Pirate day in patch notes:
Article, Clicky
It’s a short article with some snippets of patch notes, where Linus mentions the “keel-hauling” of bugs and that sort of thing. Yeah, it’s geeky… but the snippets in the article are amusing.
Avast! Today be international talk like a pirate day! I expects ye land lubbers to be talkin’ like a pirate, or we’ll be keel haulin’ the lot of ye scurvy dogs!
iggdawg – so I’ve been on hold with Cisco for just over an hour now.
iggdawg – I can;t think of many cooler ways to spend a saturday morning
deimos – and their answer will be to reboot it
deimos – or upgrade to the latest ios
iggdawg – the thing is, I have a field engineer on the other end
iggdawg – who’s been waiting 40 minutes now to be released =P
*** iggdawg is at work
iggdawg – he finished the job he’s on in the time I’ve been on hold
deimos – you work for a telco?
deimos – if so, don’t you have secret priority phone numbers for cisco support?
iggdawg – I work at a NOC, we’re partners with Cisco. I have some numbers, but it’s only to get VISE engineers mostly
iggdawg – for dispaches and stuff
sideshow – Jesus christ
sideshow – an hour on hold?
sideshow – fuck that
sideshow – Stab a bitch
iggdawg – it’s funny cause I’m not even the customer really. we just get paid to organize the dispaches and shit
iggdawg – so I’ve got this field engineer on site waiting to be released, and my phone is tied up the whole time
iggdawg – all set now though. about damn time
iggdawg – I used the time-honored method of calling in and using the wrong options just to get to a human.
dubbz – hah
iggdawg – I liked the “stab a bitch” option, but we don’t have remote stabbing implimented on these phones
————-
A note on “using the wrong options to get a human” on automated phone systems… AT&T is by far the worst company to open and chase tickets with. They try as hard as they can to keep you from talking to someone. When you open a ticket, you talk to a machine. you give it the circuit ID, you speak your name and number, select what trouble you’re having from a menu of like 4 options (no, it’s not adequate), and a few more pieces of info. it rattles off a ticket number. when you call the number back, it gives a generic update when you input the ticket number. it will not give any detailed information.
SO… we here at Dimension Data have figured out how to get a human on the line. when you call in, there are 6 options. The first 5 cover whether it is a voice or data circuit, what type of trouble it is, etc. the 6th option says “If you are calling from an Alaskan location, please dial 6”. if you hit option 6, you get directly to a human with no wait time. WTF kind of crazy deal does alaska have with ATT O_o? we here at Didata are very frequently from Alaska.
So I was trying to install Java on my FreeBSD machine for a few reasons. it sucks when something is amiss with the installation of an app. normally it’s so smooth, just one command. Sometimes big companies, Sun for example, make things harder than they have to be. Because of some licensing bullshit, you have to go manually download a bunch of install files (normally FreeBSD gets them for you), and put them in a specific directory. after agreeing to a bunch of stuff on their webpage. then you can compile like normal. mostly. an error came up, and with some searching I found out it was a common issue. I had to go to a file in a very remote directory (/usr/ports/java/jdk15/work/control/build/bsd-i586/gensrc/sun/nio/cs/StandardCharsets.java) and remove 3 lines of code in a file whose header says “This file was mechanically generated: Do not edit!”
So basically I had to go to the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
then it all went smoothly.
As I merrily pulled out of my driveway about 10 minutes late or so on this wonderful friday, I realized I was almost out of gas (because I was too lazy to fill up on the way home yesterday). So with a big “oh fuck I’m going to be late” smile on my face I leisurely made my way to the gas station. Up until this point in the story, any reference to me being anything but wrathful, hurried, and groggy (yes, at the same time) was a farce. But upon pulling into the local gas station, my mood turned for the better as I was greeted by this:
clicky
This put me in a good mood until I got a few miles into the pike. but hey, it was cool for a little while. I saw an even cheaper price for cheapo-grade gas at a ghetto station on the way in… $2.59 … I hope this trend continues.
So I made a little weathermap page. It just took some creative surfing… and borrowing a snippet of html from a guy at work…
http://www.iggdawg.com/wm.html
It’s just 2 images with a sexy slimming black background. One of the northeast (since we’re the quadrant that matters) and one of the whole country. The images are animated and update every 15 minutes or so. It’s handy if you want to see encroaching weather at a glance but don’t want to have to plug in your zip code and deal with ads or golf/ski reports.
So I went to a Hannaford’s yesterday to get some foodstuffthings. I was in the section where they have dried japanese marine stuffs like sushi seaweed wrap and stuff like that. On all the marine grass/vegetable/seaweed stuff they stated “certified organic”. I know I’m not 100% up on marine farming practices, but last I checked it would be perhaps an exercise in diminishing returns to… um… fertilize the Pacific Ocean. Considering the abundance of seaweed in, you know, the sea… it would surprise me to find out they had actual marine or brackish kelp farms or something like that. why make artificial environments for something so abundant. and so, why state something is certified organic when it seems *unlikely* that any other variety exists?
Recent Comments