The Iggblog

We got a new receptionist a while ago. The old one, Nancy, was the best. The new one, who we refer to as Nancy v2.0 (nancy was less a name and more a job title), is less cool. She complains any time she has to do something other than sit and answer calls and is a little off the deep end to boot. Admittedly the “dawn in the dishwasher” incident earlier this week was not real cool for her to have to deal with, but she got the building maintenance people to take care of it at least. Anyways… Concerning Nancy v2.0:

(09:08:17) iggdawg555: wow, I just heard the crazy receptionist lady having a conversation with someone in the mailroom
(09:08:27) iggdawg555: I walked by and she was the only one in there
(09:08:39) echanchisai: o_O;;;;;;;;
(09:08:39) iggdawg555: she was talking to herself, in 2 different tones of voice
(09:08:42) iggdawg555: =x
(09:08:44) echanchisai: r u sure???
(09:09:00) iggdawg555: yeah, only one way in or out of ze mailroom
(09:09:10) iggdawg555: creeee-py
(09:09:16) echanchisai: maybe someone was behind something
(09:09:47) iggdawg555: it’s small in there, nothing to be behind really =x. I did a double-take because I was surprised.
(09:10:01) iggdawg555: she went off on someone last week for spilling yogurt in the breakroom too
(09:10:06) iggdawg555: she’s a little odd
(09:10:28) iggdawg555: she sent out a company-wide email about not spilling yogurt in the future too.

One of my coworkers, we’ll call him “Neil” to preserve his anonymity, just wolfed down the most lethal breakfast sandwich I’ve ever seen. Sandwiched between 2 bagels were 2 eggs, a slab of sausage, cheese and 2 hashbrowns. Deathwish, anyone? Would you like an 8oz glass of oil on the side to wash it down? Apparently it’s “one of his favorite things for breakfast”. Maybe I can get in on his will if I’m real cool to him.

Mother of all creatures

http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/10/18/1442218.shtml

“CNN is carrying a story about a school in Boston which has have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they’ll get hurt and hold the school liable. According to the article, some elementary schools in other states have similarly banned “unsupervised contact sports”. A parent was quoted as saying that her son feels safer now and that she’d witnessed enough “near collisions”.”

I’m all for “safety first” and all… but TAG??? what kind of kids are they planning on raising? “horseplay” is a part of growing up. Soon they’ll ban basketball because it’s too “racy”, and baseball because it promotes swinging a weapon-like object. There’s a line when it comes to safety, and tag is nowhere close to it. really, banning a playground sport because people are _almost_ getting hurt.

A few recent conversations with different people prompted me to make a quick post on nuclear fusion energy. if nothing else, I can link to this when people have questions instead of reinventing the wheel every time I’m asked about it. Sorry if you don’t care about this (even though you really should). Several of my friends routinely ask me questions about fusion and nuclear energy in general, this isn’t really for them since curiosity is a good thing. This is for the people that come at me with malformed ideas about how the process works, accusing me of supporting destroying the planet or some asinine crap like that.

FAQ –

OMG Nuclear energy is DIRTY you will pollute the planet to death you hatemonger!!1:

This is not at all the case. The waste product of the reaction is inert helium, which can be safely stored and shipped off to be put to any number of industrial uses. Nuclear fusion produces neutrons, which will “activate” any surrounding materials (such as the husk of the reactor), making them radioactive. After 100 years of operation, the amount of radioactive material produced would be negligable compared to 100 years of operation of a standard nuclear powerplant. The effect on the environment of fuel-burning powerplants (coal, oil, gas, etc) after 100 years is massive compared to the small amount of material that would have to be contained. The neutrons emitted can in many cases be re-used to make more fuel for the reaction, thusly increasing the reactor efficiency.

Nuclear power plants MALT DOWN and kill everyone for miles!

It’s not possible for a hot nuclear fusion powerplant to melt down. In a conventional nuclear fission powerplant like we have today, a chain reaction can occur if too much fuel gets too close to too much other fuel. The name of the game is containing the reaction to keep it stable. if the containment fails, *bad things* happen. In modern powerplants it is very difficult for this to occur, but technically it’s still possible through sabotage or whatever else (see also: ninjas). In nuclear fusion however, the situation is reversed. the fuel doesn’t want to react with other fuel, and it actually takes a 12.5 shit-tons of energy (shit-ton is an english unit) to even get the reaction to happen. there’s no possibility of a race-away situation where containment is lost and everyone dies. If containment is lost, the reaction just stops. There will never be a nuclear meltdown with a fusion powerplant. The big problem with getting fusion to work right now is that we can’t get more energy out of the reaction than we put into it. Current research is aimed at increasing the efficiency to get positive output from reactors.

Nuclear power fuel is radioactiuve and kills Bambi

The fuel for fusion reactors is deuterium and/or tritium. these are just heavy isotopes of hydrogen found in nature (Seawater). Tritium is the most desirable for fusion reactors and is typically extracted from the waste water of conventional nuclear fission powerplants. Yes, it basically burns off waste from other nuclear power plants. radioactive materials need to be handled during the extraction of tritium from this waste water, but tritium itself is not terribly harmful. Also, tritium is used in nuclear weapons. So the more tritium we convince countries to supply to be burned for as fuel in fusion plants means less is available for use in weapons.

If you value the envoironment and the planet at large, you really should support nuclear fusion. It has nothing to do with current “conventional” nuclear power plants. It is safer and cleaner than most oil/coal/gas powerplants. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

If any of you randomly find yourselves in a position of authority concerning what database solution your company uses, and you find that one of the options is Siebel, run. Don’t walk, run. I’ve never had so many problems with a piece of software before. The interface is counter-intuitive and convoluted. This is assuming of course that it actually functions. It’s a web-based app but will only work on IE (sorry, firefox users). It requires you to run several patches behind current or it will not function. It also requires you to use a version of Java that is several versions old. Calling it a “tool” or “solution” is an affront to anything that has ever been properly described using those words.

end rant.

Could somebody please tell me what the fuck North Korea has that they think we want so bad?

Dear Kim Jong Il,

Nobody has any interest in invading your silly little country! we don’t care! you have nothing the civilized world is so interested in that we would want to invade your country! you’re really not that cool. We can afford to procure your precious canned clam and mushroom products through conventional means. You do not need to build a nuclear arsenal to protect your stores of fermented cabbage. If you can think of any reason someone wants to invade you any time soon, please let the rest of the world know. Because honestly you’re confusing the crap out of the rest of us.

thanks,
Igg

When Spellcheck isn’t enough…

Clicky

Cliffnotes: GRAND HAVEN, Mich. – Ottawa County will pay about $40,000 to correct an embarrassing typo on its Nov. 7 election ballot: The “L” was left out of “public.”

The roommate and I discuss it:

Roommate: tee hee
Roommatey: PUBIC
Me: I wonder what one would vote for on a pubic ballot
Me: I guess it would be like a seedy hotornot.com
Roommate: pubic or not pubic!
Roommate: its a zoomed in shot of someone’s body
Roommate: and you have to figure out where i tis

My car is black. black like “that color nobody in their right mind should buy a car in because it can’t be kept clean” black. When I was buying my car it was sort of a race against time to get myself into a new car before the transmission in the SVX gave out (which was a rapidly progressing situation). I ended up with my little black civic because it was the only 2-door 5-speed civic in… well.. all of the dealerships in New England. I want it 5-speed for obvious reasons, and 2-door because the 4-door models have beige interiors. If I’m buying a new car, it’s not going to have a beige interior. sorry.

I washed and waxed it yesterday, and the car looked pretty damn good. For the second time ever. The first time being the day I drove it off the lot. It’s true that black cars always look dirty. I really wish it was silver. it still needs a claybaring (or however the hell you would conjugate that) to get rid of some old wax rings and some wierd mega-dirt spots that refuse to scrub off on the side. other than that she looked pretty damn good. definitely needs the claybar and another coat of wax before winter. But she will look good for probably another day till the dew settles tomorrow and attracts every bit of dust and dirt that gets kicked up off the road on the way to work.

but hey, at least I don’t have an automatic with a beige interior. I’ve got that covered.

I’ve heard the phrase “so and so puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us” a few times recently. I’d like to note that I put my pants on both legs at once. I set them on the floor and leap into them, landing with both feet simultaneously. Then I pull up both sides at once. I mention this because I don’t want to be grouped with the lowlife types that put their pants on one leg at a time. seriously, that’s kind of weak.

I just got a call from a very concerned network duder at a company we monitor. He stated all their switches were bouncing up and down, and that someone was doing an IOS upgrade (IOS is the operating system on Cisco routers) on all his devices. He’s having major issues at all points his network was “broken” and “dead in the water”. He had no ticket numbers for anything… without a ticket there is no work to be done, so this tipped me off a little. He doesn’t have the names of anyone he talked to. He just knows that his entire nationwide network has gone to shit, and he needs someone to breathe fire at.

After a hefty amount of troubleshooting and soaking crap-ass attitude, it turns out that they didn’t in fact have a nationwide network issue that was crippling his network. He had a voice quality issue. at one location. not router or switch in his entire network had gone down. ping times to each device were low, and I had access to all of them. he had a single voice quality issue, due to plugged bandwidth. They really need to get someone other than Chicken Little over there to watch their network… and find out who is downloading porn and plugging up their lines. You know, before calling us up and giving us crap for “destroying their network”. I have to wonder how some people even have jobs in the first place.