Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

Review of Sigler's Latest

2010-09-12T14:18:00.001-04:00

I'm not much for sports. The other posts on this blog should pretty well make it clear that the areas of the human brain which can be dedicated to professional sports stats and rules and changes and strategies have been filled up with science fiction and fantasy, with quite a bit dedicated to the differences between 1st and 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons. That said, I've recently finished the second book in Scott Sigler's Galactic Football League series, THE STARTER.

The book is set in a future where humans and aliens play an extremely violent version of Earth football. The various sentient species involved in playing and watching these games devote enough of their violent energies toward the sport that the ever-present threat of inter-species war is averted.

That alone would have hooked me on the series, but there is quite a bit more.

I pre-ordered the book from Dark 0verlord Media and am quite impressed with the presentation. It is a solid hardcover with beautiful cover art on the dust jacket. As with THE ROOKIE, there is a beautiful glossy, full-color insert with team trivia and amazing logo art, as well as a season schedule. My daughter noticed me reading a book with a football on the cover and I told her about the alien angle, which completely answered most of the rest of the questions. The remaining,"What is that red stuff splattered across it?" was answered with an honest "It's blood." She immediately looked down at her own book, something about middle school angst or something, with a look of utter boredom and vague disgust. But she has a book report due, so she will muscle through it.

I got back to THE STARTER.

I read THE ROOKIE a couple of months back. Before that, I'd listened to it in an episodic podcast format. I totally recommend them both.

Anyway, THE STARTER. The lead character is Quentin Barnes, a 19-year-old football prodigy from the Purist Nation, a collection of xenophobic planets who keep the populace subservient to the government with brutal punishment and a religious indoctrination preaching fear and hatred for all non-human species. In THE ROOKIE, Quentin's first contact with these other races is a very interesting character study into the process of overcoming preconceptions in general as well as rising above a less-than-perfect childhood.

Quentin is a lot better about it in THE STARTER. The hatred still pops up now and again, but mostly because Quentin has a very well-developed rage issue. For anyone who has read any of Sigler's other stuff, it isn't a surprise that he can make a character with rage issues three dimensional and even likable. No surprise, but remarkable.

THE STARTER covers the Ionath Krakens' first season in Tier One (the most prestigious and brutal level of the game) with Quentin as the starting quarterback. The games are extremely well written. As someone who knows very little about the game, I not only had no issue following the action, but actually found myself a little anxious as clocks ran down and just about any time the ball moved. Off the field, the action is also fast-paced, with Quentin spending more time with his teammates, visiting new planets and having extremely tense encounters with gangsters. Oh, yeah. The whole football system is pretty much owned by organized crime.

I don't know when the next book will be released, but I'll be pre-ordering it as soon as there is an option to do so. To my fellow geeks, I can assure you that THE STARTER (and THE ROOKIE) are fully accessible to football-impaired readers and are amazingly enjoyable reads. I want Ionath Krakens associated action figures. I want GFL miniature tabletop football games. I want to see a big-budget CGI masterpiece of a film version so I can bitch about the changes or the fact that they had to tone down the violence from the books for American audiences.

The podcasts are available on iTunes or at scottsigler.com. If you haven't already, download a couple and enjoy them. But you should also buy the book while you are there. Quality modern science fiction is too rare to not support.

Nature is a Mother

2010-09-10T08:34:00.000-04:00

While watering the herb garden yesterday (I mean, of course, hunting or fishing or playing some type of full-contact sport) I found this hornworm. The little white sacks all over it are the cocoons of wasp larvae which are, even at the moment this picture was taken, eating the insides out of this hornworm.

Eventually, the larvae eat enough that the caterpillar is immobilized somewhere that the conditions are right for them to finish developing. They leave a reflex system intact so that the zombie hornworm will batter potential wasp predators with its own head. Later, they emerge from the hornworm's body to breed and lay eggs on another hornworm.

I looked all this up because I've apparently been sleeping too much lately and needed some decent nightmare fuel.

You'd have a hard time finding a bigger advocate for nature than me, but screw this. Zombie caterpillars? Larvae eating the insides out of a living host creature? White dreadlocks of evil draped across the unknowingly already dead young of the Carolina Sphinx moth?

I've got enough issue with what people do to each other to have to also deal with nature pulling this kind of stuff.

Oddly Enough

2010-08-17T10:45:00.001-04:00

If I want to walk into a game shop on an official Dungeons and Dragons Game Day, pick up a character sheet and some dice and play the freaking game, I have to leave South Carolina. Overall, I'm not opposed to doing that, but it bothers me in principle.

I could hit a Magic: The Gathering tournament, but that would involve the purchase of multiple decks of cards, learning a new set of rules, and playing a card game in a room full of people who strike me as either too enthusiastic about a game or too far off their ADD medication to actually play a roleplaying game.

This is an unfair perception I have of the Collectible Card Game scene, but it is my unfair perception so I'm keeping it.

My classic, old-school, pencil-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons game fell apart long ago. I haven't played World of Warcraft in over a year. I want to play a game with a story, hang out with other geeks, drink gallons of diet cola and throw some funny-shaped dice in joy and anger.

This is a personality type thing. There is a twitch factor involved in gaming, unused brain cycles or something. This is less that than an almost primal need to communicate with like-minded people and conquer imaginary objectives.

Stranded in the gaming desert as I am, I've been reading a lot. I've always done that, I guess, but in the absence of the bi-weekly time sink of a gaming session I've been really abusing the hell out of Amazon Prime. I've even started downloading eBooks for my Kindle App for the instant-on book need which is too immediate for two-day shipping or a 5 minute drive to the bookstore.

I picked up the hardcover of Scott Sigler's THE ROOKIE. I listened to the original podcast of this violent scifi football masterwork and wanted to show my support in anticipation of the sequel THE STARTER. I know nothing about football that I did not learn from this series. I suspect an NFL game would bore me with its lack of aliens and death. Of course, most things bore me with a lack of aliens and death.

In keeping with my long-standing anti-The Great Gatsby stance on literature, I try never to read anything which doesn't have either dragons or laser swords. This is, I realize, opening myself up for a horrible assault of crap books, but I've managed to avoid the worst of it.

(Actually, at times I embrace the worst of it, since as I've written before some of my favorite stuff is pulp written in the first half of the last century on a pay-by-word basis. Howard, Lovecraft, Burroughs . . . Same characters, different loincloths.)

But the good stuff is out there and hasn't been optioned for a 3D spectacular yet.

Naomi Novik writes an incredible series, Temeraire, around an alternate history Napoleanic Wars with dragons. I've picked this up in paper and in Kindle format and love it.

JC Hutchins has recently published the hardcover edition of 7th Son, which is an amazing story impatiently waiting for a big name actor to rise to the challenge of playing eight parts, an Alpha and seven distinct clones.

I've even gone back to old books I read as a child, Robert Jordan's Conan saga and Piers Anthony's Sos the Rope, for example.

But I want, no need, to play a game. Dungeons and Dragons Online is a possibility. Let me know if anyone is interested in joining me there.

Transitions

2010-06-26T10:23:00.001-04:00

It's not you, it's me.
Well, I guess it's a little bit you.
MacBook Pro, we've been through a lot together.
When you first came to live with me, we had that awkward time of getting to know one another. I, a long-time Windows guy, struggled at first with the concept of running without a virus scanner and you, a graphics and multimedia beast, struggled with the idea that I wanted the aspect ratio on my digital comic books "just so", even if it was not optimized as well as you'd like.
Like any true sitcom friendship based in diverse needs and backgrounds, we grew to trust one another.
I shared my contacts and family photos and eventually grew comfortable enough around you to double your RAM and swap your old hard drive for a larger and faster one.
Those were good times, old friend.
Lately, though, we've had incidents.
Your trackpad is less responsive, in general, regardless of how much I'd like it it to . . .You know . . . Track. Which is pretty much all we need it for.
MacBook Pro, your USB ports were always on, ready to deliver data in either direction at any time. Now, sometimes they just shut off, killing transfers in mid-bit or just disconnecting at random.
These are really just quirks, and you learn to live with those minor faults. Who needs Bluetooth, right?
But these processor errors. . .
Look, you have an Intel Core2 Duo, man.
You should be able to acquire spinlocks whenever the hell you want, right?
So why the frequent crashes, MacBook Pro? What's up with that?
Don't take it personally, but it is time for you to take it easy. I won't bother you with coding my constantly growing work scripts in all their complexity. I'll move my music and photos. And my comics.
Why don't you just scrape some websites for me, fling anything I'd like into an email and send it to me. You can also keep track of my iTunes stuff, share it out to the other, less legitimately exhausted Macs around here. That'll be your job, and I hope it is enriching. I'll check in from time-to-time, sure. There are programs you know which only run on Macs, plus that picture you chose for me as my login image is a nice glimpse into past me, powering you on for the first time and talking to Nathan on the phone. Good times.
Me? I'll be fine, eventually.
I do most stuff on my iPhone now, anyway. Like this letter, for example. And email. And Twitter. And Facebook.
And I used it to buy another laptop. I can't lie to you, MacBook Pro; you know my preferences too well. But I also couldn't order a new laptop from a browser running on my old one.
I'm respectful enough of our history to not track the shipment through you, either, so don't worry about that.
This isn't easy for me.
Once I can spare the downtime and work comes through with another brutal weekend which allows even more brutal billing, I'll purchase the parts needed to bring you back up to the performance standards we both deserve.
Have a good retirement, buddy. You've earned it.

Wrong Number

2010-05-23T21:47:00.002-04:00

Someone texted me thinking I was "Brandon". The numbers I supplied are all frozen yogurt places:

Received May 23, 2010 8:04:44 PM +1803556xxxx
Is dis brandon sweatt it out

Sent May 23, 2010 8:05:22 PM +1803556xxxx
Hey

Received May 23, 2010 8:06:21 PM +1803556xxxx
Lol u kno who dis is

Sent May 23, 2010 8:06:58 PM +1803556xxxx
No

Received May 23, 2010 8:07:24 PM +1803556xxxx
Juston

Sent May 23, 2010 8:07:53 PM +1803556xxxx
Hey, Juston. How you doin?

Received May 23, 2010 8:09:30 PM +1803556xxxx
Man sumthng wrong wit u,but gud i guess man i had got my old fone bck n i aint have nooo numbas n i just got urs 4rm jordan

Sent May 23, 2010 8:10:52 PM +1803556xxxx
Cool. Glad you got it back.

Received May 23, 2010 8:12:08 PM +1803556xxxx
Man dat sound kinda gay boo

Sent May 23, 2010 8:12:35 PM +1803556xxxx
Gonna head over to YogenFruz and bust out with some creamy berry yogurt. Wanna come with?

Received May 23, 2010 8:14:00 PM +1803556xxxx
Lol man wat u tlkin bout

Sent May 23, 2010 8:15:05 PM +1803556xxxx
Fro-yo! Rich in calcium to keep my bones strong. Maybe some wheatgrass. You know.

Received May 23, 2010 8:15:57 PM +1803556xxxx
U high?

Sent May 23, 2010 8:16:24 PM +1803556xxxx
Maybe.

Sent May 23, 2010 8:17:44 PM +1803556xxxx
They got sprinkles.

Received May 23, 2010 8:18:24 PM +1803556xxxx
It seem lke ay wats tate numba again

Sent May 23, 2010 8:19:14 PM +1803556xxxx
Lemme know if you want yogurt

Received May 23, 2010 8:26:49 PM +1803556xxxx
Man i dnt want n0 yogurt

Sent May 23, 2010 8:27:22 PM +1803556xxxx
K

Received May 23, 2010 8:29:45 PM +1803556xxxx
Wats tate numba

Sent May 23, 2010 8:31:37 PM +1803556xxxx
223-9543

Received May 23, 2010 8:39:03 PM +1803556xxxx
A wats lace numba

Sent May 23, 2010 8:40:53 PM +1803556xxxx
(803) 771-0061

Received May 23, 2010 8:57:00 PM +1803556xxxx
A u kno reggie rhett

Sent May 23, 2010 8:57:17 PM +1803556xxxx
Yeah

Received May 23, 2010 8:57:50 PM +1803556xxxx
U got his numba

Sent May 23, 2010 8:58:44 PM +1803556xxxx
957-7444

Received May 23, 2010 9:01:11 PM +1803556xxxx
Wats da area code

Sent May 23, 2010 9:01:24 PM +1803556xxxx
803

Received May 23, 2010 9:02:19 PM +1803556xxxx
Naw it aint 803

Sent May 23, 2010 9:02:53 PM +1803556xxxx
That's the number I have

Received May 23, 2010 9:03:55 PM +1803556xxxx
O

Received May 23, 2010 9:16:55 PM +1803556xxxx
I beleve u given me da wrong numba aint nobody txt me bck

Sent May 23, 2010 9:17:39 PM +1803556xxxx
I texted you back!

Received May 23, 2010 9:18:43 PM +1803556xxxx
L0l bside u but u cumin t0 sk00l 2mara

Sent May 23, 2010 9:19:04 PM +1803556xxxx
You know what makes me feel better? Frosty creamy frozen yogurt, extra cookie bits.

Received May 23, 2010 9:20:50 PM +1803556xxxx
Dude wats wr0ng wit u

Sent May 23, 2010 9:22:10 PM +1803556xxxx
I'm probiotic, deep down.

Received May 23, 2010 9:23:21 PM +1803556xxxx
Man d0 y0 girlfrnd g0t sumthng t0 d0 wit u actin lke diz

Sent May 23, 2010 9:24:12 PM +1803556xxxx
You got a problem with soft serve? Don't hate, man.

Received May 23, 2010 9:25:42 PM +1803556xxxx
Man wh0 iz diz

Sent May 23, 2010 9:25:54 PM +1803556xxxx
Don't call right now. I'm knuckle deep in chocolate chips.

Received May 23, 2010 9:27:02 PM +1803556xxxx
Wh0 iz diz

Sent May 23, 2010 9:27:07 PM +1803556xxxx
BRB copying this into my Facebook status

Sent May 23, 2010 9:28:13 PM +1803556xxxx
Healthy teeth and bones are no laughing matter

EDIT -- The texts continue:

Received May 23, 2010 9:28:19 PM +1803556xxxx
Man wh0 iz diz

Sent May 23, 2010 9:29:03 PM +1803556xxxx
It's me!

Received May 23, 2010 9:29:53 PM +1803556xxxx
I need a name

Sent May 23, 2010 9:34:51 PM +1803556xxxx
Dude, you have a name

Received May 23, 2010 9:37:08 PM +1803556xxxx
Man remind me t0 whip y0 ass 2mara

Sent May 23, 2010 9:38:47 PM +1803556xxxx
Remind you? You know what helps with poor short-term memory? Dairy. Have some frozen yogurt.

Received May 23, 2010 9:57:47 PM +1803556xxxx
Man wh0 iz diz n st0p fukin wit me!

Received May 23, 2010 10:34:12 PM +1803556xxxx
A wat u wearin 2mara

Sent May 23, 2010 10:38:22 PM +1803556xxxx
I'll be wearing whatever your mom puts out for me

Received May 23, 2010 10:39:27 PM +1803556xxxx
Lol dats funny u a bitch

The Price of Mobility

2010-05-03T09:39:00.000-04:00

The book on the left changed my life.

Actually, that isn't true.

The book on the left illuminated my life.

Well, that isn't exactly true, either.

The book on the left took the summers of my childhood, spent on the gulf coast, and put them in the context of a larger world of aquatic (and terrestrial) life.

I spent a good portion of every summer on the coast of Louisiana. Since then, I have been to prettier beaches. I have seen clearer water. I have enjoyed more pleasant weather.

But I haven't experienced an ecosystem anywhere like that of the north gulf coast.

Sure, the sand is brown and the water matches. The surf shops are all adorned in faded neon and they do more business in cast nets than board wax.

But I've watched crabs swarm into traps. I've dragged a net through algae coating a tire and caught a hundred red-and-white striped shrimp at a pass.

I've seen porpoises chase schools of fish and been on the docks to see huge shrimp boats dump tons of fresh seafood into ice-filled metal tubs.

And I've walked the beach at night and seen the lights of the oil rigs far closer than the horizon.

My grandfather used to take me out to them on his boat. We'd leave before sunrise and ride forty miles out to tie ourselves to one or another of them to fish. He would check the current and the wind to make sure we were on the side not about to get smashed into a pylon and we would drop our lines a mile down and wait, sometimes sitting in water as smooth as glass and other times in eight-foot swells. The fish seemed especially prone to going after our squid bait just before a storm.

We would very often pass oil tankers making their ponderous ways between the rigs.

I remember a couple of visits to the beach where I didn't find tar stuck to the bottom of my feet afterwards.

On the gulf coast, this is just the way it is.

No system is perfect. The oil companies have done a pretty good job overall at containing most of what they pull up from under the floor of the gulf.

I do notice that with BP's latest explosion they seem more concerned with reclaiming as much of the lost crude oil as possible and that seems to be delaying the clean up an awful lot longer than they should be allowed to delay.

I've seen the culture that has been built up around the seafood industry on the gulf coast. There is a respect for nature there which isn't based in what they heard on NPR or saw on Animal Planet, but on how they live. I also know that the catches have been declining for decades and that a single bad season can send a lot of boats into foreclosure and end a lot of multi-generation businesses. They have closed parts of the gulf for fishing in reaction to the oil spill already. If this oil makes its way to the wetlands the fish and crustacean population will be impacted for decades. There isn't a fine BP can pay that will fix it.

I've read all of Jack Rudloe's books. He lives on the gulf coast, an environmentalist among people who would never call themselves that but who share the same core reverence for nature.

It would be good if we all shared it.

Free Comic Book Day 2010

2010-04-30T09:09:00.001-04:00

One day per year, my friends.

One day when the veil between the normal and the geek grows thin, when traffic between these realms is made possible and entities from either side pass over and frolic among the unlike.

One day for the feeble breath of a dying paper-based industry to cry out in despair and harsh judgement of a generation which has moved on to electronic media.

One day for parents who have long abandoned the daily trials of dragging superhero plot lines and futile quests for holographic, short-packed collector's edition cover art to share these joys and burdons with their young.

Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow, my friends.

Find a store, grab some printed material and promotional awesomeness and share the bliss with your children or, if you lack your own, with the children of some parents who won't likely press charges.

There will be kid-friendly stuff in addition to the awesome stuff.

I'd expect some Iron Man stuff from Marvel and some Batman stuff from DC, but smaller publishers use this day as an annual showcase for their work.

Traditionally, I also buy a couple of comics to support the store hosting the event. I look for comics which will never be made into movies and will never have associated toy lines clogging the aisles at Target.

A comic book store on a Saturday is a magical place. Step carefully, respectfully into the domain of the geeks. It will not disappoint.

Oh, and seriously . . . Don't wear a black t-shirt to a comic book store unless you've earned it.

They can spot a poser like a continuity error.

2010-03-07T22:35:00.000-05:00

Prime Candidate

2010-03-03T09:36:00.001-05:00

When I first heard about Amazon Prime, I'll admit I didn't see the appeal.
Amazon has always shipped for free, in my mind anyway. For well over a decade they've delivered just about everything to me for free as long as my order was over $25, so I delayed ordering until my shopping cart was over $25 and then waited a few days for my stuff to magically appear.
I imagine it was much like the magic of fire brought to primitive people, or magical boxes which could capture an image and the associated soul. Over time, my internet-hardened standards became more jaded. My very connection speed improved past a frenzied 56k speed-boosted dial-up into an always-available multiple MB connection and the change removed what remained of my patience. My sense of wonder failed as well. The magic of the whole purchase, wait, acquire process was revealed as a cheap parlor trick, loud noises and flashing lights meant to frighten with no real guidance from the ancestor spirits.
I no longer remember the contents of my early orders from Amazon.com, only that the boxes were delivered amid the loud popping noises of the Earth's crust hardening, cooling like a car engine resting at last in a crowded mall parking lot. And avoiding mall parking lots was definitely one of the major benefits of using the internet for purchases.
Long ago I became used to going online for book purchases and electronics and clothing and, in some cases, food. I also became accustomed to spending $25 or more in order to get stuff shipped for free.
Amazon Prime has changed me.
I can't walk into a brick and mortar store anymore without checking for competing prices online and wondering if I can wait for shipping. And Amazon Prime has removed the $25 minimum and replaced it with free two-day shipping. It actually removed a restriction and added a benefit.
I have to tell you, internet: One time, I ordered a book from Amazon from inside a Barnes and Noble because I didn't want to carry a newly purchased book to the car.
For four dollars I can upgrade the two-day shipping to overnight. This is as close as a human can get to having internet superpowers.
With great power comes great responsibility, though. One time I accidentally ordered a paperback through the one-click purchase feature on my Amazon iPhone app. It isn't that I didn't want to read it. I'm sure I will. I just didn't need it in two days and felt pretty bad about having Joel (our UPS guy) drive down our street to deliver a single paperback. Oh, also I've learned the UPS guy's name. Because I see him a few times a week now. He's kind of like my sidekick in my battle against the forces of not having anything to read. He acts unenthusiastic about it, but I can tell he appreciates it.
My ability to read people is apparently undiminished by my never leaving the house.

I Don't Tell You How To Do Your Job . . . .

2010-02-05T09:05:00.002-05:00

. . . Okay, maybe I do, but this isn't about that. It's about a work-related conversation:

Me: Where do you keep that policy template I sent you?

Someone completely unimportant: Oh! I hid it! Click on this icon in the taskbar, and then you should see it.

Holy crap! You have like a billion things crammed in here!

Well, yeah. I like my desktop clean.

But it makes working impossible.

Just a little . . . harder . . . I guess. I just hate a cluttered desktop.

How is anyone supposed to find anything?

Look at your desktop! It's a wreck!

My icons are sorted by date, file type and project.

But you can't see the background picture!

Cramming everything into this little double arrow icon isn't cleaning. When you tell your child to clean their room and they just push everything into the closet and wedge the door closed, do you call the room clean? Is that how you parent?

I'm having the network team kill your internet radio.

Family Time

2010-02-01T12:54:00.000-05:00

NetFlix was hooking us up very well, actually, until season five.
Most afternoons we'd gather around the television in the living room under a too dense mat of cats and watch, together, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I had watched the entire series on my own while I waited on Shana and Gwynyth to finalize our move and rescue me from the horrible hotel I was living in.
But this was different. This viewing prompted discussion not only on the proper method for dispatching a vampire but on human relations and the role of women in society and the correct verbing of nouns. That is what most Joss Whedon works are about, after all.
And then, after we'd slogged through the first couple of seasons with their hyena people and preying mantis monsters, NetFlix failed.
Season 5, disk two, LONG WAIT.
But we couldn't skip it, right? I mean, I know everyone was in a hurry to get to the musical episode and everything but even the preying mantis episode gets mentioned again. Watching episodes out of order is just bad form.
So, after gazing at our suddenly unsatisfying DVD collection and dreading even a brief break in what had become a family ritual over the course of about a month, I did the reasonable thing.
Amazon.com delivered the Complete Chosen Collection of seasons 1-7 the following day, and balance was restored.
We have since started watching Angel, the Buffy spin-off, since none of us had seen it and Firefly was disturbing and complicated and difficult to explain, not to mention really, really dark at points.
But Angel is only five seasons, and on the other side of that is a glaring abyss of non-Whedon. Bad TV is way worse than no TV.
We aren't the type of family that sits around and puts together quilts, really, but sharing an experience, especially with discussion, has become a needed part of our evening.
I'm not hooking cable back up, though.
There is entirely too much crap television.
Maybe I should pick up some fabric squares and thread, just in case.

Fun With Statistics

2010-01-13T08:30:00.002-05:00

And when I say "fun", I kind of mean "mind-numbing horror".
While the numbers aren't well-published, over 100,000 people go missing annually in the US. This number does not reflect abductions by family members, victims of natural disasters, or any case where people have a pretty good idea where the missing person might have gone. This number is people who just vanish.
Further, it does not include people who, for whatever reason, aren't on "the grid". Homeless people and illegal immigrants are rarely reported missing, though empirical evidence would suggest a higher likelihood of just such a disappearance among these populations.
It is possible that some of these missing people just made a break for it, started over, severed ties, but there is no way anywhere near 100,000 could make that happen.
Please feel free to check these numbers on the FBI website. I'm not posting a link to a government website. That gets a person on a special list, probably.
Anyway, we can extrapolate from the over 100,000 "just missing" cases annually that an additional 50% go unreported from communities which historically don't report these things. Wait. That's too high. Let's go with 20%. I personally think it could equal the number of reported cases, but lacking evidence we will use a safe and reasonable number.
If we agree that 120,000 people can just freaking vanish in 2009 in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, I think it is frightening enough.
This breaks down to .04% of the total US population, just gone, every year.
Statistically, 32 people from my graduating class in high school have just disappeared.
Most of these cases get little publicity for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is common enough to not really be news-worthy. The second is that as the majority of these people are never found it makes us feel less safe, unsettled.
In more remote areas, the number of people who vanish is even more terrifying. Millions of people vanish in Africa annually. Some are the victims of war. Some will turn up again years later in refugee camps. But there are a lot of people vanishing in more peaceful areas of the continent as well.
While the numbers are harder to dig up, and even harder to verify, there are a lot of people doing population studies in Africa right now. How sustainable are the resources available for the surviving population? How much sprawling wilderness should be converted to farmland?
And these studies aren't limited to the human population, either.
In the Serengeti National Park, poaching is still an issue impacting animal survival, as is the availability of drinkable water and foraging area.
Unchanged, as near as we can tell, for millions of years is the rate of loss to large predators. Annually, and concentrating on adult herd animals, .05% of the population is lost to predation.
The rate is close enough to our own .04% loss to beg the question, could something unknown be culling the human herd?
Is it possible human predators are making this large an impact on our own population and leaving no forensic evidence of violence?
I don't personally believe people are smart enough as predators to pull off that particular trick.
All this is just numbers and extrapolation and fantasy, sure. But reality meets a dark place among these statistics.
I think I'm calling off my research project now.

Unnatural

2010-01-11T08:50:00.002-05:00

I've been fairly regularly freaking out lately.
Since moving to South Carolina, I've been doing my best to come to terms with the differences between Columbia and Houston.
At the moment, the most noticeable thing is that it is freezing. Wait.
Literally freezing. Outside. Sometimes during the day.
Our driveway ices over. With ice.
Trees change colors seasonally. I'm so used to pines and live oaks whenever I pass a section of forest with great sweeping swaths of crimson and gold leaves, my first thought is that there is some disease -- Tree Blight, perhaps -- eating the forest.
And what's weirdest is that I pass sections of forest all the time.
There is a state park a couple of miles down the road.
Since moving here, without even entering the woods themselves, I've seen foxes, otters and (believe it or not) beavers, just running around outside like they own the place.
These creatures are endemic to zoos.
Everything I know about the natural world clearly puts these creatures in the "zoo and plastic toy" category along with lions and unicorns. But they run wild here. And sometimes down the middle of the four-lane road closest to our house.
Thankfully, the humans who live here generally drive more slowly than an otter runs.
The point is, if I wanted to watch Animal Planet I wouldn't have canceled cable TV.
When I was growing up in West Texas, wildlife had the decency to stay outside of town.
Of course, the desert creatures that live in West Texas wouldn't, as a rule, want anything in town. You couldn't buy liquor there unless you drove to the end of town east of the train tracks. I'm not sure animals are big drinkers, anyway. I actually don't know much about what animals want, I guess.
The safe thing to do, given my lack of knowledge about their motivations, is to assume they are hostile. That's not just safe, really. It's the American thing to do.
I've been researching the latest in snare technology. Oddly, aside from the substitution of polyester cord, there has been startlingly little advancement in snaring in the past eleven thousand years or so.
Don't we have some kind of task force looking at this issue? Where the hell are my tax dollars going?
It is a sad, sad day when I have to pepper my yard with snares designed in 500BCE by Proto-Europeans.
Why don't we have inflatable snares? Disposable ones? USB-powered snares, maybe?
Sometimes I think it is no wonder we are losing the war on nature.

What I Do

2010-01-08T08:04:00.003-05:00

I hope my utter lack of details has left many questions as to what it is, exactly, that I do professionally.
I like to think it conjures an aura of mystery about me.
I do know that my family has no idea what I do, only that it involves computers.
When we lived in Houston, one of Shana's friends wanted me to meet her husband since we did the same kind of work and would obviously get along.
We met and talked. I told him what I do and he explained that he is actually a medical doctor who wrote and supports a program which sequences and indexes DNA, the very building blocks of life itself, to work out complex treatments for diseases and extend our lifespans.
There was a moment of stunned silence from me, after which he added,"Of course, that just means my family calls me whenever they can't print."
Wow. Our jobs are somehow fundamentally identical.

Anyway, I have a group of developers. Here is a picture for reference:

I don't know what their code does, technically, and the end result is some kind of math or something so I'll be the first to admit I don't care. However, I currently need them to test it.
I can't do this for them, and I'm not their boss so I can't make them.
Their boss has been emailing me directly about their progress in testing everything. While he can apply the needed pressure, he'd rather not. He has asked me to prod them into action.
So, this morning my job is, effectively, poking a bunch of cats with a stick and hoping that the outcome is that they all move, or at least shift, in the same, and desired, direction.
As my own research, I tried this on a couple of cats we happened to have laying around here.
Of my three test subjects, one bit the stick, one rolled over and rubbed her cheek against the end of the stick and one did not take any action at all. Perhaps I need to poke harder, but she looks so adorable all curled up and sleeping.
I suppose that is the issue I have with this whole process. I can't bother a sleeping cat, who statistically speaking probably spends upwards of sixteen hours per day sleeping. Bothering a human to do some testing of stuff they probably broke anyway is easier, but in principle exactly the same.
I hope this sheds some light on what I do, but not enough to pierce this oh-so-sexy veil of mystery.

Gaming

2010-01-07T08:46:00.000-05:00

It's been six months since I quit playing World of Warcraft. Six months since I completed a quest. Six months since I trash-talked a battleground. Six months since I carried out complex Damage-per-second calculations while weighing the overall appearance of a new piece of gear. Six months since I defeated the forces of evil. Or good. Well, a lot of that depends on perception.
It has been a hell of a lot longer since I rolled dice in an old-school pencil and paper gaming manner.
I am, however, a gamer.
This isn't an activity or a hobby, really, not in this sense.
Gamer is a personality type. It's almost a condition. There are theories that it comes from wasted brain function, like unused cycles on a CPU endlessly burning through SETI calculations. The brain needs this downtime because of the way it is wired, or something. A diversion from the heavy lifting normally done during the course of a day. The imagination is rarely tapped in a conventional workday. Or it isn't appreciated if it is. At least it isn't appreciated by Human Resources.
Others say the twitch-factor is the key. There is only so much hand-eye action going on in ordering a latte and typing emails, so that energy is redirected towards slaying virtual dragons.
It isn't like this energy could be spent in other areas, either. This is specific stuff, completely incompatible with anything grounded in reality. And, if untapped, it becomes toxic. Probably.
I've joined the ranks of casual gamers. I'm not sure it's working, but it is within the boundaries I've set for myself.
A couple of minutes of diversion on the iPhone a couple of times a day and I can almost totally avoid the shakes.
Something like 145 million people over the age of 17 play these little puzzle games, word games and strategy games with no pressure to grind experience or join raiding guilds or haze the n00bs.
The majority of these people probably wouldn't call themselves gamers, but they play at least an hour a week to get counted, usually between four and six.
There are over a hundred million users on Farmville and over 50 million invites for it on my Facebook page.
These numbers amaze me.
The people they represent are our grandparents, co-workers, strangers in shopping malls and the guy that repressed his homoerotic urges by joining the football team in high school and beating up on smaller guys.
And all of us move around letters or colored blocks or bump each other off in Mafia Wars, for the most part making no contact with others of our kind within the game space. Because that is what is missing in casual gaming. I get no human element in it. The familiar faces are absent.
With massively-multiplayer the multiplayer element is what completes it, cinches the addiction, keeps me coming back to check in with people I know there.
And sometimes get them all killed when my cat decides to clean her ass on the keyboard while strategy is discussed.

Skills

2010-01-04T09:00:00.002-05:00

First, knitting is like crazy-hard.
I've got the part where a series of slip knots makes a row of stitches. I actually even have one of those rows of stitches all neatly lined up across a knitting needle. After that, though . . . Um . . . Well, I have a row of stitches.
Any help you can offer at this point would be welcome. I've looked at various online diagrams about making the transition and reversing the direction to add the second row of stitches, but none are at all helpful. The YouTube videos also all seem to be either filmed from way too far off or recorded at triple speed.
This hand-knitted Snuggie project is going to take forever if I don't find someplace to buy a thirty-five foot long knitting needle.
We picked up drapes for the floor length windows overlooking the pool. That water-filled hole is pretty depressing during the winter months and the glare was horrible on the TV. Anything which obscured the CGI on the Sony is a bad thing. It has been fixed.
Work is ramping back up to production speed as people return from vacations. I'm becoming more adept at the paperwork involved in delaying progress at a large national corporation. This is a skill every I.T. person should embrace.
One other thing on the to-do list involves a call to the home warranty people.
I need someone to verify our wiring.
Quick end-of-the-year math tells me we've gone through four wireless routers, a microwave, a refrigerator, a dvd player, a desktop PC and two televisions since moving in. This, coupled with the fact that odd electrical fields have been resulting in nighttime hallucinations and there are places where I can stick a pin to the wall using magnetism as opposed to any pin-insertion technique leads me to believe something may be wrong with the way our wiring is . . . Um . . . wired, I guess.
At any rate, even if I had the equipment to test for that, it would likely explode if I plugged it in. It is better for us to call professionals, or at the very least people with the right type of insurance.

2010

2010-01-03T23:33:00.003-05:00

So far, 2010 has been 100% composed of spending time with the family, watching SciFi, and sleeping in.
While I knew the whole time it wasn't sustainable long-term, I enjoyed the absolute hell out of it.
Gwynyth goes back to school tomorrow, and I resume my commute before she boards the bus, but I will drag my relaxation kicking and screaming into the meaty part of 2010 if it kills me.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Resolutions

2009-12-30T09:06:00.003-05:00

I'm not about to share my resolutions for 2010 with you, internet.
I've seen your capacity to mock a person's stunning failures. Hell, I've frequently participated in mocking a failure, myself. You'll be getting no such ammunition from me.
What I will do is analyze my resolutions from last year and compare them with the results so far. I do still have a day or so to finish up everything.
I was going to lose some weight. My fast food diet from my initial solo move to South Carolina had me seriously considering purchasing the domain name PrettyPlusGeekyThing.com.
Status: Done
I'm going to hold off on that domain name purchase for a while.
I intended to reduce my gaming time and spend more time reading.
Status: Also done
I canceled World of Warcraft (holy crap I miss it sometimes like digital crack) and tear through whole series of paperbacks at a rate which has me combing multiple bookstores every week to keep up.
I was going to learn the guitar.
Status: Incomplete
I made it through about fifteen minutes of the "How to Play the Guitar" DVD before becoming frustrated beyond capacity at the entire tuning process. However, I want to stress that I still have about a day to make it through Stairway to Heaven before I put a check mark in the "FAIL" column.
Unfortunately, Stairway to Heaven is about eighteen hours long.
Making the house (which I pretty much bought just for the location) habitable was also on the list.
Status: A nice try. I actually have a check box for that. Effort is key.
We painted. We painted several times, actually, and then hired people to paint correctly.
We moved furniture around. We worked on the decaying deck. We relocated Gwynyth to the guest suite and set up an office and studio in other rooms. We replaced appliances and bought about a million candles. We added cabinet space to the kitchen.
Overall, the net effect is not unpleasant.
I have not yet found a local retailer for a solid gold toilet, and South Carolina has really squirrelly laws about sales taxes on out-of-state everythings, so the gold spray paint is going to just have to learn to stick better to ceramic for now.

2009 . . .

2009-12-26T23:45:00.004-05:00

Well, what did we expect, anyway?
Looking back, 2009 was everything our first year since 1993 as a culture without Zima should have been.
However, looking back is about the only comfortable vantage on 2009, so bear with me for a post while I do that.
As cold winds ushered in a bleary start to 2009, I was enjoying month seven of a five month long contract in South Carolina.
That math is what we consultant-types like to call "Contractor Math". While I've honestly never had a use for any of the Algebra 2 information (of which 71% helped me graduate High School, to be fair), contractor math is a representation of the real numbers behind imagined results. It is a way of loosely encapsulating the actions required to fulfill a need, real or imagined, which can only be satisfied by hiring extra people.
These types of projects often have definite end-dates but nebulous results. To further complicate the math, often one of the first jobs assigned to the newly-hired consultant is defining the end result of the effort.
During the course of the project itself, more and more responsibilities are handed over to the temporary consultant, who watches his contract end date come and go like any other day.
Eventually, either boredom or greener pastures prevent the consultant to from accepting a full-time position.
That really is the story for 2009, and in fact the story of the entire aughts decade.
I've been riding the consultant wave for over ten years from place to place, solving problems, uncovering bigger problems, pointing and laughing at unsolvable problems, and splashing off to the next desk with a paper sign with my name on it.
In the spring of this year, having decided to paint the house to our liking and settle in to allow Gwynyth to finish school in the decent system we'd found for her, everything went to hell at work.
Hours were cut for everyone, leaving all the consultants, to whom hours are the only source of income, in a precarious situation.
No overtime? No reason to work through lunch?
Coupled with our lousy contract health insurance, I had little choice to but to seek employment elsewhere.
Then summer happened, early July specifically.
I'm not going to detail a lot of that, but summer sucked.
I consider it a bit like an emotional disemboweling followed by recovery process hindered by the regular application of rock salt to the wound.
In spite of this, I am recovering, and was able to apply for work again with a reasonable chance of making it through a phone interview without crying by September.
So I started the consultant math over again at a new place at the end of that month.
I've gone from one of the largest health insurance providers to one of the largest banks in the country, but from my view both places (and all places) make the widgets which drive our national economy.
And pay my mortgage in exchange.
I'm ready to put 2009 behind me, to learn and to grow and to move on.
2010 will be better.
2010 will be better.
2010 will be better.

Treasured Memories

2009-12-09T22:53:00.002-05:00

Basically, the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise has been re-imagined. Like they rebooted Batman from nippled-batsuits to Christian Bale killing ninjas and we all get to pretend the bad things never happened.
Except we are talking about chipmunks.
And not talking about the chipmunks that were, in favor of only believing the new, canon, CGI chipmunks that are is, I am certain, comfortable.
I'll confess I haven't seen the newer version.
This is good for any number of reasons better documented by film critics, but bad because it dredges up the old series for me without a new vision to cover it back up again.
I may have to see it.
There was a Saturday morning cartoon in the 80s. I remember it in flashes, like a nightmare.
Correct me if I'm wrong in this:
The chipmunks themselves are basically the Jonas Brothers but, you know, rodents.
They make a ton of money for their record label in the days before music piracy and have been assigned a "handler". David Seville, this poor bastard, has to look out for their well-being between concerts and studio sessions where they cover pop hits of the era in shrill squeeky fashion.
In the 80s cartoon, Dave was softened, nicer, more concerned with the chipmunk's development and emotional well-being.
Also, there was a rival band of girl chipmunks who were basically the regular chipmunks in drag.
There is very little obvious sexual dimorphism in rodentia. So little, in fact, that the addition of lipstick is about all it takes to completely swap gender.
Anyway, while 80s Dave was concerned with life-lessons and (I assume) making sure the chipmunks eat enough fiber to keep their ever-growing incisors from jacking up their singing voices, he sometimes became exasperated with his charges.
He would yell.
This pales in comparison to the original version from the late 50s and early 60s, where Dave yelled a lot more.
And it isn't like Alvin was just a child. He was a child and a wild animal with no real reason to know anything about human society and the rules being thrust upon him and his musically-gifted siblings.
I remember, as a child, considering the very real possibility that Dave was abusive. And I assumed he drank, though I can't seem to come up with any concrete evidence of that.
These are the impressions I was left with of the whole David Seville/Alvin relationship.
I'm hoping they cleaned that up a lot before flinging it at another group of children.

I guess, most of all, what I'm trying to say is that during an average workday, I'm not thinking about actual work 100% of the time.

Pretty Geeky Gift Guide

2009-12-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

As a people, geeks are not easy to shop for.
We are individuals, sure, but one of the defining qualities of geekhood is a factor of obsession.
In this facet, it doesn't matter if the individual is actively working in technology, accounting, or professionally teaching martial arts - His or her obsession unites the individual into geekdom. We embrace the obsessed individual, and we silently weep for those who have to buy them gifts.
I want to help, because another identifying factor in being a geek is a fundamental inability to express ourselves.
For years, I've watched my family labor over this obstacle. There are tons of geeky options out there to confuse the gift-giver. You will have to, at some point, identify your strain of geek. This is key to selecting a proper gift. You wouldn't want to give a replica TARDIS USB hub to someone who isn't a Dr. Who fan. Unfortunately, this will mean you'll need to let down your carefully constructed audio filters for a couple of minutes until you hear a common thread. Once you've identified them, I've got you covered:

Star Wars Geek:
The "Impossible Shot" t-shirt is made of a blend of cotton and win. It features a classic image, an almost inside joke, and absolutely no reference to the newer trilogy.
You absolutely cannot go wrong with a Boba Fett Hoodie. You'll know if your geek has one already, because you will never have seen him not wearing it.
Tauntaun sleeping bag. No description can do that justice.
Fanboys is a movie which can probably only fully be enjoyed by Star Wars nerds, though there is some bleed-over enjoyment for Trek people.

Speaking of Trekkers:
A classic replica phaser is always going to be appreciated. Easy to wrap, difficult to identify, endlessly amusing due to the lights and sounds it produces.
If you are more concerned with pleasant sounds, I must recommend Brent Spiner's CD. It's unfortunately a collectible now, but your geek will be amazed to hear Commander Data's Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart, I promise.

Firefly Fans/Joss Whedon acolytes:
Your browncoat set would absolutely love a custom-built replica Serenity. They've had their favorite show jerked out from under them after 13 episodes. They deserve this.
Or you can give them a few extra episodes with a graphic novel.
Just be careful with your geek. They've been hurt before and are likely to be a touch emotionally fragile.

Architecture Nerds:
Wow. Anyone buying for these people has been screwed for a while, huh?
Luckily, Lego has you covered this year. Lego Guggenheim? I think so, yes.

Battlestar Gallactica:
How about a vintage-style propaganda poster? Or, if you'd rather a more containable, less displayable gift, consider Marion Call's Firefly/BSG tribute CD.

Dungeons and Dragons Geeks:
You can't go far wrong with a dark t-shirt, honestly. A nice set of chrome dice would also rock, loudly, and late into the night. An Order of the Stick graphic novel is another solid choice. The one in the link contains strips never seen online.

Zombie Geeks:
Monster Island is a great read, as is World War Z. If you are willing to participate, the Zombies game is fun, for serious.

If you are stumped for identification, or your geek is particularly afflicted with a wide variety of obsessions, consider an elephant-squid messenger bag, a t-shirt crossing genres spectacularly, or one that detects WiFi signals.
The choices are out there. Don't stress.
Another defining characteristic we share is that geeks are going to appreciate your effort in this. The big thrill will definitely be that you took the time to listen, even for a few seconds, while we blathered about something completely meaningless to most.

The Meaning of the Season

2009-11-26T20:53:00.002-05:00

GeoTagged, [N35.05142, E80.96487]

Hopefully by this time most of the food is gone, the games are over, the conversations with family are all past that awkward "Mom, I'm going to Clown College" announcement phase, and we can all get down to business.
For me and mine, traditionally this business involves waking early to push some elderly people down in order to save a couple of bucks at Target.
Wait.
I mean we have special family time together to reflect on all of our various blessings.
Whatever line you find yourselves in for bargain electronics on Black Friday, try to keep something in mind:
You know that music they play in all these stores? The same crappy Christmas music that has been so annoying for the past couple of weeks?
The age-old standards which, after three notes hit that tender area at the base of the spine and send pain shooting out to the extremities, prompting a primal purchase or fight response in bipeds?
The people working in these stores have been hearing it for hours every day. They will continue to do so for the next few weeks. To them, these songs have entwined themselves around their inner ears, compressed, impacted, and their cheery notes register as a dirge.
Be kind.
They got up earlier than you did and their punishment is unending.
Good luck to you, my retail laboring friends. December too shall pass.

On New Moon

2009-11-23T09:09:00.004-05:00

We (I) felt it important that we (we) take Gwynyth to see New Moon on opening weekend.
While the thought of being surrounded by swooning tweens does not in any way appeal to me, (in fact summoning flashbacks of seeing Titanic in the theatre with Shana, not expecting DiCaprio's heartthrob status to have such a profound and loud impact on the young girls in every other seat in the packed theatre) it is like a rite of passage for Gwynyth. And if Gwynyth will be swooning over anyone in any movie, I'm going to be right freaking there with the cold bottle of ice water at the ready.
I have read all four books. I have also read The Host, a completely unrelated novel about the fall of mankind to an advanced alien society, written from the point of view of a member of that advanced alien society.
Certainly, it can be argued that the major plot lines of the Twilight novels at best set unreasonable and/or dangerous precedents for young girls. It could also be argued that the main character, Bella, is almost unbelievably clueless most of the time.
What can't be argued is that Meyers tells a pretty damn compelling (and best-selling) story which appeals to people in a lot of different age groups. And, to be fair, loose ends are generally tied to major plot points later in the story, weaving the whole into a cohesive and (damn it) well-crafted story about growing up which happens to also involve vampires and werewolves.
New Moon follows the plot of the book pretty faithfully, which means that it plays out pretty much like an extended Abercrombie and Fitch commercial. With fight scenes.
The CGI is passable, but only because that isn't what the movie is about.
Bella's human friends seem to openly mock her, and the concept of the plot itself, which provides some relief from all the angst.
At one point, while walking out of a monster movie, Bella's friend Angela (EDIT: Actually, it was Jessica. Thank you, E to the H in the comments) announces that people say zombie movies have deeper meanings about consumerism, but that they are, in fact, just dumb. I prefer to believe that Angela is there to speak to us, to grant us her wisdom from beyond the screen, and to endow us with the permission to just go with it.
Okay, Angela.
When I looked to the other seats in the theatre, I tried to see the potential in that swooning, giggling mob.
Sure, the shirtless werewolves were swoon-worthy. There were several grown women in the audience who actually cried out at the glory that is the abs of a seventeen-year-old.
But most of the geeks I visit with have nothing but disdain for the whole Twilight phenomenon.
I'm not saying they should read the books. If they wanted to, they would.
I'm not even suggesting they NetFlix the films or buy the special edition Barbies.
What I am saying is that the same crowd, for as long as I can remember, has always said that there aren't enough girls into the same geeky things we are into.
Not enough girls play Dungeons and Dragons and not enough girls are into computer gaming and not enough girls read fantasy novels and know comic books.
But here was a film about vampires and werewolves which made more money opening than The Dark Knight made. And girls drove those ticket sales.
Please, please, my nerdy friends, do not wail about the lack of girls into fantasy in one breath and say "Twilight sucks" with the next.
Make no mistake. Twilight is a gateway drug, my friends.
Someday, perhaps in a year or two, your local comic book store may have to install a ladies restroom.

Speculative Fiction

2009-11-16T17:36:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I happen to catch the beginning of what's cool. Since I don't have the luxury of cable TV to keep me up-to-date about these things, I prefer to think I am just gifted with Divine Knowledge of the Awesome from time to time.

Other trends I miss completely. Mostly, I remain unbothered by these things. I don't dress trendy. I've had the same haircut for years. I can avoid conversations about popular TV shows since I've been doing that about sports forever.
I do feel bad missing out on the important things, the things I should know, the life's blood of the geek community. When I miss the new awesome there, I feel helplessly clueless. A noob. An outsider to the outsiders. Like a person with a job shopping at a comic book store.
I picked up Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind within the past few months. I enjoyed the hell out of it and gave it to a friend before starting on the other twenty-odd books in the series. I'd missed out on the release of a severely geeky book by decades, the start of a series, and read it entirely before realizing that the second season of the TV show based on it just started. Damn.
I follow Jim Butcher on Twitter. He is an author who tweets late at night about how long he has been writing and how awesome the book will be, and I liked him enough to pick up the first book in his Dresden Files series.
How did I miss the gritty pulp fiction detective series where the main character is a wizard?
A whole series of books!
And it was already made into a TV series on SyFy and canceled.
Is there no geek mailing list I can join? Where is the "Hey, Geek! Read this!" newsletter?
It isn't like our kind strikes up conversations in book stores, you know. Any discussion in a comic book store invariably becomes a debate about pre- vs post-crisis Batman and whether Wolverine could kill Superman.
For the record: It would be a draw.
Tired of missing out on stuff, I picked up a new Star Wars novel and just started reading it. Death Troopers is the story of the crew and inmates of an Imperial prison barge who happen upon a derelict Star Destroyer filled with dead, yet still animate, Stormtroopers. Stormtrooper zombies, if you will. And I, for one, will.
Now, for those millions and millions of people who only know the Star Wars story told in the trilogy, it may seem odd. Even to those who admit to having seen six theatrically released Star Wars films may call it a sacrilege. For those eleven-hundred dedicated fans who happened to see six live action films and The Clone Wars CG movie, it would be quite a stretch to wedge zombies into Star Wars mythology.
Even for the 200 or so who have seen seven films, bought the DVDs, read the comics, read the novels and celebrated with custom body art, Stormtrooper zombies chasing convicts through the darkened corridors of a Star Destroyer with not a single Jedi in sight might seem. . . . oh I don't know. . . . not freaking Star Wars at all.
But I don't think anyone would hesitate to call it awesome. How can it not be?

Megashark Vs Giant Octopus

2009-11-08T18:48:00.001-05:00

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:42:39 PM To Shana
Come watch megashark and ultraoctopus with me

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:44:15 PM From Shana
Are you freaking joking?

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:44:16 PM To Shana
Because listen: megashark vs superoctopus

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:45:19 PM From Shana
You said you were putting your phone on the charger and never came back. I don't need this shit. (Image of a winky face)

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:45:46 PM To Shana
I said I'd be in here charging my phone

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:46:00 PM To Shana
Jane wants you to see this nature film

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:46:09 PM To Shana
About the ocean

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:46:33 PM To Shana
Shana, I watched the preview

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:46:46 PM From Shana
So?

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:46:56 PM To Shana
Shana, megashark bites a plane. In flight.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:47:31 PM To Shana
I'm not playing around. Megashark fucking bites a plane.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:47:46 PM To Shana
Come in here and watch this instant queue style

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:49:33 PM To Shana
Did you see my text about the plane and what megashark does?

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:49:46 PM From Shana
That is dumber than Heidi Klum.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:49:56 PM To Shana
Because I'm not sure why you aren't in here

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:50:05 PM From Shana
Garrick, this worries me.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:50:22 PM To Shana
We live miles from the ocean

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:50:23 PM From Shana
I don't want to see it and I'm not coming in.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:50:32 PM To Shana
And rarely fly

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:50:40 PM To Shana
In a plane

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:50:40 PM From Shana
As a matter of fact, I'm going outside.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:50:53 PM To Shana
Which megashark totally would bite

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:50:56 PM From Shana
Then I might sleep on the couch.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:51:05 PM To Shana
(Image of a squid)

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:51:17 PM To Shana
(Image of a fish)

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:51:19 PM From Shana
You can't make me watch bad films.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:51:26 PM To Shana
(Images of a wave, a fish, a plane, and an octopus)

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:51:30 PM From Shana
I won't enjoy it.

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:51:40 PM From Shana
I'll just resent you.

Sent Nov 7, 2009 9:52:02 PM To Shana
(Images of a heart, a wave, a fish, a plane, and an octopus, plus another heart)

Received Nov 7, 2009 9:52:05 PM From Shana
Resenting you.... Starting.....now.

10/15

2009-11-03T08:55:00.002-05:00

The official government story says there was no boy in that balloon. But a growing number of Americans are demanding the truth about what really happened on 10/15.

If you accept the CIA’s version of events, the whole incident was merely a misunderstanding. A joke, really. The kid was in the attic all along and everybody got worked up over nothing. After all, what parent hasn't created a fake media frenzy by pretending they have an endangered child, right? Well, I know what I felt was real. The terror and confusion of that terrible afternoon were too vivid to be wished away by the Big Lie Machine and its profusion of Smaller But Still Pretty Good Sized Lie Machines.

Just look at the facts. As I saw on the spare computer I keep in my taxidermy studio, the “balloon” in question spiralled lazily through the crisp autumn sky, its silver foil glistening in the Colorado air. But I’ve watched enough Road Runner cartoons to know how a balloon behaves when punctured in flight, especially in the American West. A real balloon would’ve either zig-zagged quickly and crazily around, slamming into various rock outcroppings along the way, or simply fallen straight down like an anvil. So that begs the following question: This so-called “balloon” wasn’t even a balloon at all, was it?

Now, let’s look at the landing. The world saw – or thought they saw – the “balloon” bump gently to Earth in a freshly plowed dirt field. It looked realistic enough to me, thanks to NASA’s experienced team of special-effects experts. But I bet I could find a Professor of Balloon Physics (let’s call him Dr. Herschel McGee of College Academy University State Tech) who would say that such a landing could only be executed by a trained balloon pilot. Why is the so-called “scientific” world so terrified of what Dr. McGee has to say?

Also, that field looked suspiciously flat to me. Have we forgotten that Colorado is known as the Rocky Mountain State? I guess whoever mocked up this hoax missed that day in 6th-grade geography class.

But here’s the most damning piece of evidence. Remember when everybody crowded around the fallen “balloon”, and a nation waited breathlessly to see if the boy would emerge okay, only to be told that there was nobody inside? Thanks to the simple fact that I have paused and rewound the footage of the original broadcast hundreds of times and watched the whole scene in hi-def frame-by-frame QuickTime magic while making my tribute music video, I was able to see that, on the contrary, there were actually hundreds of children being briskly spirited away from the crash site into an underground passageway located directly under the so-called “balloon”. Skeptical? Come over and watch it. Or buy yourself a copy of Hot Air: Puncturing The 10/15 Conspiracy, my fearless, eye-opening DVD documentary that will forever change the way you view fearless, eye-opening DVD documentaries.

They say there was no kid in that “balloon”; I say there were hundreds of kids. They say the kid was actually hiding at home in his attic; I say the kids were led down into the bowels of the Earth to toil in the FBI’s underground LSD mines. Examine the evidence on a neutral, objective DVD documentary and you can only reach one conclusion. And no, wiseguy, that conclusion is not that I need to go back on my meds. Whatever my lying fraud of a doctor says, I feel just fine this way.

Edit: Hello, Internet.

I've reviewed the comments which are queued for moderated posting. This post seems to have struck a nerve with certain online communities.

It may be best, for the sake of all parties involved, if we keep this stuff to ourselves for now, okay? I mean, no sense tipping off the lizard people in the black helicopters, amirite?

The truth is out there, friends.

Way, way out there.

I Have Become Carver . . .

2009-10-29T09:45:00.003-04:00

. . . Destroyer of Gourds.

I light a candle in each one for you.

Every Halloween, it is the same.
I wait for the black of night to fall. I make my way to the Old Murphy pumpkin patch just outside of town. Once inside the fences, I look out over the field, admiring the crop.
It is then that I reveal the blades inside my bag. One by one, I remove each of the terrible implements from their wooden display block, admiring their fine stainless steel and full-tang construction that not only offer me confidence, but comfort for the awful task at hand.
And then my dark work begins.
The pulp and the seeds spray and splatter. The ease at which the flesh of each pumpkin separates under the edge of my steely friends causes a manic grin to crawl across my face. And as I carve and slice my way through the madness, I think of you, killed by that truck of pumpkins so many years ago. That horrible horn, the squishity-squish-squish of that awful murder under the pulpy mass of the Orange Menace, they haunt me still. Only this yearly ritualized squash-icide can halt that horrid scene from playing in the theater of my mind night after night.
It ends when every last gourd in the field has felt my wrath. There, among the muck and the slime of the patch, I sit among the carved pumpkins, all glaring at me with your face, tears streaming down my pulp-stained cheeks. Their maddening song has been silenced.
I then gather my tools and return home, satiated for another year.
Now, we are at the end of another October. The horrible yearning for pumpkiny death begins anew.
I hope you can hear the screams of the Cucurbita, and that they please you as much as I.

The Next Batman

2009-10-27T09:45:00.008-04:00

Also, if you ever feel the need to start a fight on the internet, posting the image above will do it no matter the audience.
Since Gwynyth has been enjoying our Superhero movie collection again recently, I've been giving them a lot of thought.
Well, not Daredevil. But the other ones.
The Dark Knight was a fairly perfect Batman movie, and making a good Batman movie without churning up all the muck and history of the source material is pretty much impossible.
One also has to consider the prospect of making a movie which will sell action figures, which means both kids and geeks must be interested.
And we can't forget the Batman's arch nemesis is short an actor now, so future movies will need to do without the Joker attempting to communicate his crazy to Batman's crazy.
Plus, Christian Bale is off ruining other franchises at the moment.

Isn't there a Machinist 2 in pre-production somewhere?
What I thought I wanted at first was a return to the very early days of Batman, where he wasn't trying to save the whole city. He was just stopping bank robberies and beating up pimps.
This concept lends itself more to a return to Batman on television.
Or maybe not, on closer review.
Adam West is a busy guy.
So I started to think about a Batman TV series without Batman. It's been done, after all.
But Birds of Prey was bogged down by having someone besides Batman fight Batman's enemies. Also, the ratings sucked. What a Batman show without Batman needs is solid freaking ratings.
Back in the pre-Robin days, Batman was always swinging into crime scenes, punching bad guys, and swinging off. Sometimes a good punching was all a classic thug needed to clean up his act.
The other thing the good old Batman would do is hand out business cards to the less hardcore criminals who responded to the punching (or even just the threat of a punching) especially well.
These business cards could apparently be redeemed at Wayne Industries for one (1) career change and meaningful employment, signed Bruce Wayne.
He gave cards out to muggers, shoplifters, and hookers mostly, but it would be awesome if they were also given to people who were crazy beneath the level diagnosable in a quick swing-punch-lifechangecard kind of way.
And that is the basis of the best possible Batman-free Batman TV show.
Wayne Enterprises Human Resources.
You've got Gotham City as a backdrop, Batman swinging and punching and leaving, and the poor slobs at Waynetech placing the ex-criminals into cubicles and assigning tasks.
Think of it like a highly-rated office comedy, but with serial killers and hookers.
So The Office, meets Dexter, meets Desperate Housewives.
It is the perfect storm of can't-miss televised awesome.
Also, the Mad Hatter could totally work in the Mail Room.

I've been working from home a lot, lately, though I hear there is a desk somewhere which actually has a nameplate. And the nameplate actually has my name.
But I haven't tracked down the building yet. Maybe Thursday?
Anyway, major stuff is going down this week as we ramp up for Saturday.
My costume is mostly ready.
A pumpkin is sweating nervously on the kitchen floor.
And I've put up a fake Sex Offender sign in the yard to deter trick-or-treaters (the neighbors will thank me later for lower property taxes). I don't hand out candy. Halloween isn't about tooth decay and childhood obesity.
Halloween is about acting like an idiot and freaking out the normals.

Except somehow less like my job.

In Memorium

2009-10-26T08:46:00.005-04:00

Let us take a moment to pay our respects to a fallen giant.
Long before your favorite Parent Teacher Organization configured the RSS feed on their blog to keep you up to date on the meetings you would rather skip, before you were forced to abandon whole email addresses to purge an Instant Messenger contact list, and before your mom started following you on Twitter, a service existed and was embraced by the semi-technical.
GeoCities allowed anyone to make a website, and people did.
Almost 28 Million users were active per month in 2002, which isn't bad considering Yahoo had purchased the service in 1999 for a mere $4 billion. In 2002, that was a substantial percentage of total Internet traffic.
And without the brave features pioneered by GeoCities, I have no doubt that the current face of social networking would be a bleak and desolate place, devoid of embedded music files, tiled backgrounds, and spinning animated images.
In the course of allowing everyone to design their own webpage for free, GeoCities also amassed what is arguably the largest collection of awful color combinations and "Under Construction" images with little working guys, all backed up nightly and served up to meet the high-traffic demands of the day.
GeoCities bravely told the growing throng of internet users,"Come here, you! There is room for whatever the hell it is you think looks good right here on our servers!"

"Whatever your technical ability, design certification or taste, we've got a place for you." And people came, making GeoCites the third most visited domain in 1999, right after AOL and Yahoo.

Apparently, 1999 was an extremely dark time for the internet.
15MB of free storage online was a pretty sweet deal in 1999, though. You could cram dozens of images into that.
Fortunately, InternetArchaeology.org is stepping up to save what it can for posterity.
My daughter has grown up in an Adobe Flash world. It is comforting to know that she will still be able to visit an animated Gif in an online museum in the event some school project requires it.
AOL and Yahoo, huh?
It's amazing anyone stayed online at all.

Job Responsibilities

2009-10-20T15:29:00.002-04:00

When I was told I'd be working with a "special needs" business unit, I assumed the definition was the standard.
I expected that sometimes they would blow up their equipment.
From experience, I thought they would overwrite vital data with crap and then fling blame.
I entertained the possibility that written instructions should, perhaps, be read in reverse for the purposes of functionality.
All of these things I have seen.
What I had not seen, and did not expect, was that they would not be nice about it.
I've worked with difficult people. If elaboration is needed I suggest hitting and archived post at random and running with it.
I am not what one would describe as "thick skinned", and I tend to take a lot of stuff personally which maybe I should not.
At the same time, repeated where-the-hell-are-you-i-needed-this-thing-done-twenty-minutes-ago instant messages while I'm on the phone with my manager are not the key to wringing a response from me.
In fact, since I was on the phone with my manager specifically about how obnoxious they were, I felt it was a more valid use of my time, overall.
The key in this case is the proper re-direction of fault. Geek Fu is less about technical ability than it is about using a user's mass and momentum against them.
"Why don't you answer your desk phone?" when I don't actually have a desk was not a question I could answer in any way except, "Given that I've gotten so little documentation from your developers I'd prefer all contact from you to be written and not verbal so that I can create my own documentation by copying and pasting."
Of course, it also helps to find the place in their code where a file is sought in half a dozen non-existent locations in the half second before the server blue screened.
I'm still quite often driving 90 miles to work and 90 miles home.
I also have not located a place in my part of South Carolina which has decent coffee before 6am.
This is the price of having a job in finance, I suppose.
Or, perhaps in a past life I burned down an orphanage and karma has chosen to catch up with me here, in the southeastern United States.
Stupid karma. There's nothing to do here north of Orlando.

More Updates

2009-10-13T09:30:00.003-04:00

First off, if you've recently purchased the Veggie Tales Bob & Larry Cookie Cutter, be extremely careful when you frost the actual cookies. It can make all the difference between a wonderful birthday party and a restraining order.
Also, it should be noted that 'poking' someone on Facebook is considered a legal violation of those restraining orders. Some judges have absolutely no sense of humor.
Most judges, actually. I blog this in order that these lessons can be learned here instead of in court. Here is much less expensive, even for the paid subscribers.
If you aren't following me on Twitter, you may be missing out on whatever random crap I encounter in the course of a normal day. Sure, there is a sidebar over there with the last half dozen or so, but since Miley Cyrus quit, no one has anything better to do than listen to whatever inane stuff I can squeeze into 140 characters. I'm totally followable @PrettyGeeky, as featured on io9 for my brave stance on our latest noble military efforts.
Perhaps most importantly, Internet, I've learned a few more important facts about working in this building in downtown Charlotte.
The Coke machine (Coke Zero, for the win!) happily accepts my bank card, $1.25 at a time in exchange for ice cold 20oz drinks which fly at me through an elaborate soda roller coaster and robotic arm. The whole process makes me giggle and clap my hands, each and every time. This disturbs the normals. I love disturbing the normals.
Also, the building's sliding glass access doors open slowly from the outside following a badge swipe but very quickly from the inside in reaction to motion. It is too fast to kick them from that direction. So far.
Lastly, if the people who share the break room refrigerator on the 12th floor don't start packing some decent lunches I'm going to stab someone. For serious.

Pumpkin Flavored Awesome

2009-10-12T12:39:00.000-04:00

The new job is certainly interesting.
I've been made responsible for a high-demand business group. This means a couple of things.
It means that all aspects of the functionality of their varied applications are flung to me first for resolution.
It also means that they users are a whiny bunch of asshats who have gotten the idea that they are entitled to some measure of attention.
Strangely enough, I've held this exact job in the past.
The key isn't solving the various application issues. A few can almost certainly be knocked out pretty easily.
It also isn't getting the users to send valid information about their errors instead of "some application on server 11 blew up" so that a baseline can be established including valid activity parameters, though that would be nice as well.
The absolute must-do in this type of role is to reset the user expectations, first to the limitations of modern computing ("No, the server cannot do your laundry while it calculates your spreadsheet adjustments if you never, ever let us schedule it for a reboot") and second, most importantly, in the responsiveness of their assigned consultant ("Oh, it did 'it' again, did it? Awesome. Please send me the data I requested the last time 'it' happened, in addition to the same data for this occurrence, and I'll see about getting you a better diagnosis than 'it crapped out' this time. Once I get back from lunch, probably.").
The tightrope to walk here is in not ever sending a response to them that is more vague than the request they flung at me. As long as I have a use for the data I demand, there is no reason for it to not be provided.
This is my core skill set. People-hacking.
The other great thing is that I laid all this out in the interview, so no one on my side of the technical fence should be at all surprised by any of it.
The drive from Columbia it Charlotte and back to Columbia every day sucks quite a bit. It is easily my least favorite part.
Hopefully, the house will be on the market soon and we can begin our final drive to Charlotte.
I can endure until then. Some days I work from home. Today, for example.
Today I was productive without pants until about 10:30am, when I needed something out of the car and it was cold and rainy.
After that, the pants seem to have quelled the earlier productivity, though the correlation wasn't made until after lunch, when I'd again dressed the part of working from home.
Why did I take my pants off after lunch? Because I'm a professional and there is a certain standard I like to acknowledge and subsequently ignore.
Pumpkin-flavored everything makes all of this infinitely easier. It's like falling off a log onto a large orange gourd, given the proper no-sugar-added enhancements.

How I Spent My Unintentional Late Summer Vacation

2009-09-21T20:10:00.001-04:00

This is a picture of the work I've been doing on the deck.
It's pretty hard work, actually.
Going from that uniform brown to the realistic gray weathered look takes an insane amount of detail work.
Fortunately, I've got time.
When last we discussed my job in South Carolina, I mentioned that they had decided to stop paying for overtime. Not the time-and-a-half bit, but any hours over 40.
In order to make that work, I was spreading hours out across the week in sprinkles, driving home for breaks, working odd hours in the middle of the night and weekends, and still putting in an average of 50 hours.
So, last Monday I re-activated my online resume and braved the crap economy.
Friday I had an interview and offer. The economy isn't as crappy as we'd heard, I guess.
The non-paying crappy hours job featured $800 a month in insurance premiums, plus about $1000 in prescription costs and then some junk they just don't seem to cover, such as illness or well visits. That, in addition to my pay cap, has left us in a pretty dire financial situation.
It looks like the new job pays a bit more an hour, has $400 insurance, and (supposedly) covers medication with something called a "co-pay" or some nonsense I don't understand.
I put in notice at work and was not escorted from the building with a taser pressed to my kidney, a career first for me.
After consulting my new headhunter, I was told I could start work today. I set my exit date accordingly.
Then, computer stuff broke at the new job.
The new job can't make an access card for me until the 30th, so I have 10 unpaid days off, which will do very little good for our current financial state.
The other interesting complication (and the reason I've been weathering the deck) is that the job is 70 miles away in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'll be commuting until we unload this broken-down, outdated, poorly-designed money pit and officially move there.
Um.
Does anyone want to buy a house in Columbia, South Carolina? It's . . . uh . . . Charming.
And the deck looks fan-freaking-tastic.
So this week I'm getting the house ready to go back on the market. I'm hoping the location (seven minutes from the largest employer in the state) will make it leave our possession very quickly.
And that is my update for the 21st of September.
Everything is fine here. No problems.

Why?

What have you heard?

Technology

2009-09-06T13:40:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N34.09296, E80.87153]

I just got an "are we there yet?" text from the backseat.
Compared to the standard voice-driven communication method, it may have actually been more grating.
I kept my response to the standard. "Yes. Hop out."
Of course, I Tweeted it at her, and her phone won't pass along a Tweet, so she'll have to wait until we get home.

Breaking

2009-08-29T09:17:00.001-04:00

Local blogger kills useless muse. Film at eleven.

I'm working on a real post.

2009-08-22T20:14:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N34.09425, E80.87010]

So, Internet

2009-08-18T09:18:00.000-04:00

You thought I'd be gone for good, didn't you? Sure, I've spent the last six weeks trying to wrap my feelings around what happened between us, to come to terms with your absolute failure to meet my needs. Internet, we have a lot of history. Your dank recesses were my music-filled sanctuary, your auction sites my source for amusing odds and ends, your reference sites my out-of-body information storage facility.
But your stunning betrayal caught me off guard, Internet. I've come to terms with it. As much as I depend on you, you aren't to be trusted with my feelings. So, I've carted them off and attempted to squish them with a heady cocktail of denial and alcohol. And rage. Yes, warm, comfortable anger has been my armor, absence from you my shield.
I no longer play World of Warcraft. Webinara has been handed off to a friend and I have no need to carry on her exploits. I no longer contribute to discussions regarding my hobbies or career. This post is the most we have spoken in a month and a half, Internet. I wish I could say I've missed you, but my feelings for you have forever changed. You left me hollow, Internet. You will never again be granted the power to do that.
It is my own fault. I let down my guard, granted you the access to my emotional well-being. Your password no longer works.
I'm tougher than you expected, Internet. I'm tougher than I expected. I'm going to be okay whether you like it or not.
I'll resume sharing my feelings here as soon as I feel up to it.
Heheh. I said "feel up".
Maturity and respect, Internet. That's what separates us.
To my human readers, sorry I've been gone so long without a word of explanation. Let me just say that the Internet made a terrible mistake and I'm trying to forgive.
Thanks for all the emails. I'm pretty sure I've responded to them all, but please let me know if I still owe you a cryptic response.

Uncomfortably long hugs,

G

?

2009-07-03T18:17:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.88338, E77.03968]

Can someone explain, please?

Smithsonian

2009-07-03T17:30:00.002-04:00

The dinosaur museum

Gwynyth is sad there is no gift shop

2009-07-03T16:14:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.88909, E77.04913]

WTF?

2009-07-03T16:03:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.88802, E77.04263]

2009-07-03T15:56:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.88983, E77.04064]

Not Just A Cookie

2009-07-03T12:42:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.89820, E77.03798]

"Official Cookie of the FDIC".

Also, Gwynyth just learned that the "National Mall" has no stores in it.

This was less funny for her than for me.

Go, America!

2009-07-03T11:55:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.89117, E77.03645]

/giggle

2009-07-03T11:46:00.001-04:00

GeoTagged, [N38.89196, E77.03385]

Some Portuguese Water Dog Poops Here

2009-07-03T11:25:00.002-04:00

A Break

2009-07-03T10:51:00.001-04:00

I'm still playing with the blogging software. The picture is where we are.

New Phone

2009-07-02T18:57:00.001-04:00

It looks like I can totally blog from this phone. Technology doesn't always suck.

In Which Nature Begins To Get All Up In My Business

2009-07-01T07:07:00.005-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I found a bat clinging to the brick outside the back door at work. Adorable. Probably rabid, but adorable.

The urge to poke nature with one's finger is difficult to overcome at times like these.
I immediately called a co-worker who was at his desk at the time. I wanted to keep my eye on that bat, and leading my co-worker down to personally look at a bat only to find it gone would be disappointing and crazy-seeming.

"Look! A bat!"

"You called me on the company cellphone for this? Sweet!"

"Should I poke it? I was thinking about poking it."

"Hang on before you poke it. I'm going to get a picture with my cellphone."

"What if poking it startles it? It could fly away."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Sunlight kills them. Turns them to dust and stuff. I think I saw that on Animal Planet."

"I'm pretty sure that isn't bats."

"You're right. That's I.T. people."

[laughter]

[fist-bump]

"I'm poking it. I sent Shana a picture and she wants me to get this bat for her."

"Okay. Go."

"One more picture, in case they need it for identification at animal control or in the emergency room."

After that, the conversation became mostly shrieking and "It's in my hair! It's in my hair!"

The Hobbit Movie

2009-06-30T08:10:00.003-04:00

After the crazy success of the latest Transformers movie, I've decided Michael Bay should just make all movies from now on. For the good of the economy.
Towards that end, I've gone ahead and created the story board for Michael Bay's The Hobbit.
My contacts in LA are pretty limited. Actually, I just know Pam and Andrew, to be completely honest.
This is fine, though. Since 'The Hobbit' has been long overdue for an update anyway, recasting the dwarves as professional dancers just makes sense. Finding a picture of Andrew on a motorcycle sealed the deal.
I hope you enjoy it.
I also hope Pam and Andrew don't kill me.

Click for larger images:

Deadlines and Delays

2009-06-29T08:18:00.003-04:00

As you have seen me nearly constantly complain, the expectations placed on geeks in the corporate environment are ever-changing.
I see it kind of like one of those awesome Japanese game shows.
There are requirements put on the contestants at the beginning of the show. Then, as the good TV progresses, the people that made those initial requirements ramp up the difficulty by adding restrictions and conflicting requirements to the original ones.
The whole time, some guy is screaming at you in a language you don't understand and the crowd in the studio audience seems almost frothy with hunger for your failure.
At the end, if you are lucky, you get dunked into pudding and are able to make your mortgage.
This weekend, the hard-and-fast, OMG-do-it deadline for the latest Microsoft patches arrived. The people who tested the patches and pronounced them "fine" on Thursday decided on Friday afternoon that they were possibly "not fine". There was no evidence that a problem had turned up, but just in case they went to upper-upper management and forced a delay. They wanted the weekend without reboots.
Upper-upper management granted the delay. Later today upper-upper management will wonder why vulnerabilities are still showing up on our scans. I promise, they will.
Since powerful government types will expect the patches to be in place by Thursday, we get to force them all into place Tuesday and Wednesday night.
We are required to be at our desks a certain amount of time every day. We are limited to working eight hours per day. The patches must and yet cannot be deployed immediately. After hours is acceptable once the restriction lifts, but after hours for who? We have users in Hawaii.
Drive this riding lawn mower over this giant log suspended over a pit filled with grape jelly within the next 45 seconds or we will release the bees.
What's that? We already released the bees?
While you drive across, gather up the bees and place them in this sock. Points will be deducted for lost or injured bees.
Hang on, let me finish dusting you with this pollen.
Go!
Wait!

Last Night's Depressing News

2009-06-26T09:27:00.001-04:00

June 25, 2009 we suffered the loss of a national treasure. I was notified by text message and noted absolutely no coverage in the press. I will honor him in the only way I can, with a poorly researched post on Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng.
Best known for his acting ability in 1996's break out hit Space Jam, Michael Jordan never found the widespread validation he so richly deserved from Hollywood. He was left to work out the rest of his career doing commercials.
Before that, he was signed to play minor league baseball in 1994. He had a brief professional baseball career for the Birmingham Barons, a Chicago White Sox farm team, batting .202 with 3 HR, 51 RBI, 30 SB, and 11 errors. He also appeared for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the 1994 Arizona Fall League.
Before that he worked for Nike. I can't recall specifically what he did but I assume he made shoes or something.
Since I couldn't find any mention of his death, let alone the cause, I am left to guess that he was slain by ninjas seeking to increase their honor or space aliens attempting to prevent their destruction as prophesied in Space Jam.
Either way, one doesn't go from being a simple cobbler to playing minor league baseball without racking up a ton of enemies.
Sadly, it was only a matter of time.
Let us remember Jordan as he would want us to remember him -- Pitching MCI and playing golf for the love of the game.
Goodnight, sweet prince. You will always be #32 in our hearts.

Our Governor

2009-06-25T08:55:00.001-04:00

By now, most of us are aware that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was not, in fact, hiking earlier this week. Unless that's what the kids are calling it these days.
This type of event serves to remind us that we are all fallible. That even our highest elected officials are subject to the same flaws and insecurities that plague the unelected masses.
This man, who famously carried live pigs into the Senate chamber as a protest about pork-barrel spending makes mistakes like anyone can.
His wife, though, is nothing like my wife.
If she were, he might have run off to Argentina to meet his girlfriend, but he would never have returned.
A wiser man would have just stayed in South America. A quick Google search has taught me that Argentina is the world's third largest producer of sunflower seeds. The right thing to do, if Mark Sanford's wife is anything like mine, is to just start planting some sunflower seeds and lay low, take on an assumed name, and start over.
I know that all his stuff is still in the Governor's Mansion, but if Mrs. Sanford is anything like my wife there isn't much left that can't be bought back off Ebay (good luck getting that shipped to Argentina) or picked up off the Governor's Lawn (after the flames have been stamped out, of course).
According to the published story, Mrs. Sanford has been aware of this situation for five months.
After five months of wearing a cup and guarding my neck at every moment of every day, I'd be ready to flee the continent for good.
Some people have said that returning and admitting wrong-doing is the right thing to do, but in this case, the "right thing" flew out the window months ago at least.
There is nothing to be gained by returning to South Carolina. Trust me, I live here. The food isn't great, no good concerts ever come here and you can't buy booze after 7pm EST.
Argentina has a whole musical about it.
Flee, Mr. Sanford!
Harvest sunflower seeds and refer to yourself as "Marco".
He should be removed from office for exhibition of such poor planning if nothing else.
What kind of cover story is "taking a hike along the Appalachian Trail", anyway?
The best thing would be for him to see that as a self-fulfilling prophecy, throw some canned goods into a bandana on a stick and wander off into the woods.
History will tell us whether his return home was brave or stupid.
I just know if it was me, they'd finally put the question to rest when my remains were found several hundred years later and identified using dental records.

New Look

2009-06-24T09:18:00.001-04:00

You can see my new glasses in my profile picture.
I specifically requested something "more nerdy" than my last pair of small round frames.
I also wanted some with cable temples since the part that wraps around my ears keeps them from falling off when I look down. This is key, since I spend most of my waking time not paying attention.
I did not anticipate the reaction this change would cause in those around me.
Overall, it has been positive.
Sure, my daughter screamed in horror for fifteen minutes or so until Shana made her stop. You'd think she had found a spider.
My co-workers have been harder to quiet.
Though it has been a couple of weeks, gazes meeting my own are still bewildered. Everyone looks like they are trying to place my face with one they know.
To date, the reconciliation images pinned to the outside of my cubicle include Conan O'Brien (not the Conan I was going for, to be honest, but okay), Clark Kent, and Noah -- the cheerleader's dad from Heroes.
There is also a picture of Steve from Blue's Clues but that is left from the day I wore a striped shirt.
But the odd looks continue.
"You look like someone", is something that I hear (no joke) six times a day.
"Brad Pitt, I know, I get that a lot," is my stock response.
"No," their heads shake slowly as they continue to stare,"that's not it."
I think it is.
Or Arthur Curry, mild-mannered alter ego of Aquaman, Sovereign of the Seven Seas.
Functionally, the glasses keep my eyes from burning after hours of reading documentation on computer monitors.
Fashionably, they are a distraction, a mystery wrapped in an enigma smothered in delicious smoked cheddar which is stunning -- not in the sense that one refers to an attractive person as "stunning", but in the sense that people stop and stare at me like I'm a familiar stranger, unable to finish thoughts and incapable of not changing the subject to what celebrity I resemble.
I would expect that strapping something new to a face would cause the face to look different, but these glasses have been more like strapping a stun gun to my face and headbutting my way around the office.
Which is undeniably awesome.

Conflicts

2009-06-23T07:56:00.003-04:00

During the actual project, things worked differently.
When a server was out of compliance, I fixed it. I worked odd hours and flung patches and settings and generally did things.
Now that the project is complete, our day-to-day activities are being forced into the framework of a procedure. Previously, this procedure was something I'd heard about from time to time. Whispers in darkened hallways spoke of paper trails and action items. They sent shivers along my spine, but passed quickly, dispelled by coffee.
When the process of putting our work into these procedures began, I was content to watch in silence. I hoped (in hindsight, foolishly) that my job would be the same except that I would need to supply back-dated paperwork about everything anyone noticed.
I have been more wrong, but not often.
After the official kick-off meeting celebrating our successful conversion to procedure, I found out that I was in charge of it. This is the penance for not paying attention, internets. Responsibility.
And with great responsibility comes great pain.
I got notified that some of the servers in my care needed a software update.
According to process, I told an analyst that a patch was required. I picked a date for completion (at random, to be honest) and waited.
Someone found testers. Some of these testers were pissed that I requested a patch. They said it would break the application they built and that they wouldn't allow it.
Now.
I'm responsible, right?
These people use my servers for their crappy application which a patch might break.
According to process, now I have to fill out a ton of extra paperwork about how we will not be deploying the required update since it will break someone else's crappy application.
And my "bad" numbers go up and stay up.
I have to attend extra meetings and submit to auditor interviews and waste a ton of time justifying their issue since we have their software on my server.
That is the procedure.
The procedure is not telling the developer that he has until my randomly selected original completion date to get his bug-riddled, unsupportable, ancient and slow application off my servers or that I would enjoy breaking them with my patch, apparently.
Action items for today include wedging a line entry for "threats" into our procedure documentation.

Long Weekend

2009-06-22T08:10:00.004-04:00

With my family away for the weekend for a Girl Scouts trip to Savannah, Georgia, I had a plan.
I was going to see Transformers 2.
You know what? It isn't out until Wednesday.
My desire to see robots punching each other was salved with a viewing of Terminator Salvation. The ointment is imperfect, and it's cooling relief temporary, but we work with what we've got.
When I got home, I decided another viewing of the first Transformers was in order. What if I'd forgotten a key plot point? To be honest, I wasn't sure there had been any.
This is far from a criticism. Movies where robots fight each other really only have a plot to move the action between scenes of robots fighting each other.
In case you don't feel like watching it again yourself, I'm publishing some helpful reminder emails from the Help Desk at the Department of Defense to catch us all back up:

June 15, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: all_users@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Introduction

Hello everyone,

My name is Josh and I'm looking forward to working with you. I just transferred in so I'm sending this quick email to assure you that I'll be here to make your computing experience here a good one.
Also, please remember to leave your workstations powered on at night so that they can download approved software updates.

Thanks,

Josh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

June 28, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: all_users@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Information

Hey guys,

I'm getting a lot of questions about this so I figured I'd just drop an email.
If you are getting messages about your email box being full, please drag some old email to a USB flash drive to free up space.
Note: Moving messages to your 'Trash' folder doesn't free space unless you also empty the 'Trash' folder.

Thanks,

Josh

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June 28, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: all_users@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Retraction

All,

I've just been informed that USB drives are a security risk. Do not bring them into this ultra-secure location.
I just assumed they were okay, since there is a pretty easy way to turn off USB ports on the computers and that hasn't been done. These decisions aren't made by me.
Anyway, consult the mail retention policy in your department handbook.

Thanks,

Josh

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July 1, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: Human_Resources@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Issue

Judith,

A lot of users are requisitioning multiple cellphones, like two and three a week.
Getting all these set up in the system is taking up a lot of my time.
Can you draft a memo instructing everyone to please not hand their phones to Agent Simmons? He takes them apart in some weird way, maybe adds parts or something?
It's pretty messed up.
Could you maybe also ask him to quit doing that?

Thanks,

Josh

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July 3, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: all_users@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Equipment Control

Guys,

I've got a lot going on right now, but there is no such thing as an audio computer virus.
If it is a regular virus, just run the virus scanner (you can find it near your system clock) and you should be all set.
The sound is not going to 'hack' anything. That is impossible.
However, DoD regulations forbid the storing of audio files on our equipment, so please remove all MP3s by the end of the week.

Thanks,

Josh

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July 3, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: all_users@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Concerns

All,

The main entrance to the facility is closed at this time due to the incident. Please continue to submit your ticket requests through our remote access solution.

Thanks,

Josh

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July 3, 2006
From: Jburkley@dod.gov
To: Human_Resources@sector7.dod.gov
Subject: Unpatched systems

Judith,

I've been complaining since I started about the lack of software security updates on that big man-shaped computer downstairs.
If I get written up over this I'm going to be severely pissed.
The Secretary of Defense uses a Mac. I'm not patching that either.

Thanks,

Josh

Never Let HP "Fix" A Mac

2009-06-19T08:46:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night I tried to change the settings on my HP Photo Printer. I needed to connect it through USB instead of over the network shared by a Windows machine.
The printer software refused my request.
In fact, it refused my request so hard that it demanded a re-install of itself.
No big deal, right?
Printer software gets swapped out all the time.
Except this printer software encountered an error. It was unable to install due to a permissions issue.
Now, there was no permissions issue. The software was running as me, and I'm allowed to do whatever.
Sometimes the permissions database gets a little stale though, and running a clean up and verification is something you just do on a Mac.
However, the HP software attempted to do it instead.
A few hours later, I found myself purchasing a new hard drive and downloading a beta copy of Snow Leopard, having lost my original install media in the move.
Yesterday afternoon I discovered that Snow Leopard doesn't fit on a DVD, so I went back out to buy an 8GB flash drive.
After booting from that, I was able to install an operating system on the new hard drive.
But wait!
Possibly due to the OS upgrade, my AT&T Aircard would only work without the software required to use it. So not at all, really.
By 8pm, I had committed to another 2 years of wireless internet in order to purchase a new AT&T aircard.
And then we got sandwiches, because that seemed the thing to do.
The important thing is this: I have my computer back.
Also, Snow Leopard (even in beta) is awesome. Unless you have an Option GT Ultra Express internet card, in which case it sucks a little until you replace that.
I missed you, internets.
I'm so happy to see you.
Let's never be apart again, okay?

I Thought I Had Enough Cash

2009-06-17T08:10:00.002-04:00

Since Shana has been working later in the afternoons, a lot of things I never had to deal with have become my responsibility.
In most cases, that means that a lot of stuff isn't getting done at all, but I've managed to step up in a few key areas.
Gwynyth has made it home from summer camp every day.
The house has not burned down or suffered a plumbing catastrophe I had anything to do with (though the washing machine may be leaking - I'm honestly afraid to look).
And Tuesday we went to the farmer's market as Shana did every Tuesday last summer.
Gwynyth had been before and she had a list of things we needed.

1. Milk - One Gallon, "Happy Cow"
2. Gooey Butter Cake - As many pieces as she can stack on her arm

There were stalls everywhere with people selling all kinds of stuff, but Gwynyth stuck to the agenda.
Until we saw the blackberries. Man, those were huge. They were like mutated blackberry professional baseball players fused together into an unholy abomination of juicy awesomeness.
And Shana was out of peaches, which the market conveniently offered.
Someone was selling lemon pound cake. Gwynyth wasn't going to just let that go by.
Somewhere she had acquired a bag of some kind. This bag began to swell with baked goods.
By the time we arrived at the milk, I was scraping the last of my vending machine Diet Coke stash from the bottom of my pocket under the cellphones in order to finance it.
Amazingly, without knowing how she managed it, I ended up carrying the stuff to the car. I mean, one minute I was digging another quarter out of my pants and trying to not drop some peaches and a cellphone on the ground and the next I was carrying a gallon of milk, two bags of fruit, about eleven pounds of sugary baked goods and (I think) flavored honey to the car.
It all happened so fast.
I think next week I'm just giving Gwynyth forty bucks and the keys to the car.

Our Ongoing Efforts

2009-06-16T08:55:00.003-04:00

We have only a few weeks left to fix every single issue the assessors turned up during the audit. If a single finding remains, our entire business model will collapse under a flood of "unable-to-do-business" paperwork and associated fines.
Jobs are on the line at the largest employer in the state. The price of failure for my friends and co-workers is the total ability to make their mortgage payments, which would snowball in our delicate financial environment into a plunging value for real estate across the region and a corresponding drop in the revenues generated for our schools, jeopardizing the educational future of a generation.
As you might expect, we are bored almost out of of minds.

Hippies and . . .

2009-06-15T08:46:00.000-04:00

Sudden Life Choices

2009-06-11T08:10:00.004-04:00

Gwynyth told me a little after 6pm yesterday that today is Carolina/Clemson day at camp. We own no paraphernalia associated with either school. Since that would instantly identify us as outsiders, we had no choice but to dash out and buy an appropriate shirt.
Shana still hadn't made it back from her full day of shooting kids at a high school, so Gwynyth and I were on our own to make this vital life choice.
One can embrace either school, or both (to an extent) but to choose neither is an impossibility in the charged atmosphere of Columbia, SC.
This is not a decision which can be reversed either. One cannot switch allegiances later. This is like a tongue piercing. You can remove the metal, but that hole is always going to potentially catch spaghetti.
Gwynyth gravitated to the standard t-shirt for the University of South Carolina. I refused.
"Why can't I have it?" she asked.
"It doesn't matter."
"Is there something wrong with it, Dad?"
"No. I just don't like it."
"It is the only one with pink letters."
"Doesn't matter."
"I like it, Dad. It's simple."
"No way."
"It just says 'Cocks'. What's wrong with that?"
At that very moment, Shana called to let me know she was leaving the high school.
She asked what we were doing, and I replied that I was trying to steer our daughter to Clemson.
Gwynyth wouldn't budge, though, even after I told her the Michael Stipe debate story I heard from Joe.
In the end, we settled on a maroon shirt (though the lady running the store corrected me by saying "garnet") with a palm tree and the phrase "Carolina Girl".
I'm not sure if that officially counts as picking a side in this great conflict. Whenever possible, I prefer to delay this kind of thing.
On the other hand, I did pick up a new shirt for Shana.

Summer '09

2009-06-10T09:09:00.002-04:00

We've added a step to the morning routine to accommodate our varied summer schedules.
I've been taking Gwynyth to day care. I mean, "Summer Camp".
I drop her off before seven and head to work for a several hours, then pick her up in the afternoon.
She was hesitant at first, but grudgingly is accepting it.
"You guys said I always make friends and fine, I did, but that doesn't mean I like it." and "I made you a key ring and we had chicken nuggets for lunch -- But there was some boring stuff, too." and "The pancakes this morning were very small."
Brutal, isn't it? I'm a monster.
She is spending her days at a rollerskating rink. In other news, there are still rollerskating rinks.
So several hours a day, my daughter has wheels on her feet and no formal training.
Today is one of two "Water Days" a week, in which the children are given access to a Slip N' Slide, probably without a wheeled lead in but to be honest I didn't ask.
In short, if we can get through the summer without my leaving work to pick up my child at the Emergency Room, it will have been semi-miraculous.
I assume Fridays are archery and lawn darts day, followed by bleach-filled water gun fights.
When I freaked out a little yesterday Gwynyth tried to use reason on me. "Dad, how many wallets do you need? You don't even carry one because you are afraid it will make your butt look lumpy."
"All of them," I replied, "I need all of them."
Eventually, she will learn that trying to reason with me is futile, but until she does I will cherish these moments of childlike optimism.
We spend our afternoons in less-structured activity to wait for Shana to come home.
Gwynyth and I enjoy a good, solid, scheduled lack of structure. We thrive on it. She watches TV and I polish my wallet collection or look at kitten pictures on the internets.
And we wait.
And Shana works quite a bit longer during the day than I do, so we wait for a long time and try not to crowd her when she gets home, though our efforts are usually unsuccessful.
But this is our routine now.
We adapt. The ability to cope with boring afternoons and to dodge falling lawn darts are survival skills we have honed over the past two days to a razor point.
This afternoon I have to figure out how to get a bird feeder made from a pine cone and peanut butter into and out of my car without making a mess.
Life skills are what Summer Camp is for.

I Broke My Own Rule

2009-06-08T10:35:00.003-04:00

I've done the unthinkable, internetz.
Gwynyth is fascinated by our family history. She asks questions about it quite often and there is only so much I've been able to tell her.
One story I have never told here has managed to make the list of her "introduction go-to" stories when she meets new people.
She loves the story of John Pass who, together with John Stow, founded the Liberty Bell.
It is a fabulously patriotic story on the surface and so the surface is about as far as Gwynyth goes on that one.
The truth is a little more fun for me.
Once upon a time, in 1751, the Philadelphia Assembly ordered a bell for the State House from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London.
I assume it was an Amazon Deal of the Day kind of thing, and that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry has moved into making those doorbells you can program MP3s into, because this bell cracked as it was being hung up for the very first time. Since the returns policy at Whitechapel Bell Foundry included the possibility that the broken bell would be eaten by sea serpents and wind up at the bottom of the Atlantic due to witch activity, the Philadelphia Assembly asked Pass and Stow to fix it. And by "asked" I mean "paid", and that part is important.
Pass and Stow fixed the bell by melting it and then mixing copper into the metal at a rate which increased the strength of the bell quite a bit. Unfortunately, it also made the bell sound horrible.
To be fair, Pass and Stow were not bell-making guys. Why compete with the Whitechapel Bell Foundry monopoly at a time when people still couldn't get their horses shod through Ebay?
But they offered to try again at fixing the bell.
And by "offered" I mean "demanded money". And by "money" I mean as much as ten times the original quoted amount.
The Philadelphia Assembly paid it, Pass and Stow restored the original metal ratio and the bell didn't crack again until well after the warranty had expired.
This began, as I tell my daughter and management, our family's history of doing consulting work for the government. "If you aren't part of the solution, there is probably good money to be made in prolonging the problem" is actually on our family crest in Latin. Or at least the family crest I designed myself with crayons I borrowed from Gwynyth. And by "borrowed" I mean "rented", since she is her father's daughter.
Gwynyth is less interested in Nathaniel Holloway Pass, who was granted land in North Carolina by the King of England in the 1740's for helping put down an insurrection of the "savages" and later distinguished himself (alongside his son) fighting off our British overlords during the revolution kind of like Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" only he was probably less drunk (and since it was before World War II there was no Holocaust to deny yet).
Anyway, before all that the Pass family seems to have been all over Europe so tracing the history is hard even with Google.
What I did discover was that John Pass came to Philadelphia by way of Canada (since beavers don't need metal work done, I assume). Before that, he was in Ireland. And he studied metalwork from a master smith in Malta (and presumably the art of creative billing in Sicily).
The name Pass is an Americanization of either "Pasce" from the region in France or "Pace" from the Latin for "Peace".
Wait! I was going to explain about the rule I broke. Here it is:
I wanted to know more about Maltese history, since there is a connection there and either name origin could be placed there prior to the whole North Carolina/Canada/Ireland/England era.
So I picked up a book with neither dragons nor laser swords and a read it.
"The Religion" by Tim Willocks tells the story of the Siege of Malta in 1565. It is historical fiction, well outside my literary comfort zone.
The knights were holed up on a tiny island in the Mediterranean and attacked by thousands and thousands of Muslim troops for months. I find it not unbelievable that one of these knights (or a native of Malta) would choose the name "Peace" after that siege ended. There is still debate today about whether or not the knights had been "asking for it", I, for one, think the answer is "prolly".
The story was fascinating, but even as I read it knowing logically where my genetic heritage was likely to be, I found myself drawn to the Jewish characters in the story. There were several, since Jewish people participated on both sides of the conflict in every possible role from slave to Military Advisor.
Of course I would find this interesting personally, but I doubted there was any reason to suspect there to be a genetic connection there.
Until I found someone online who had been at this Pass family research far longer than me.
She put forth the theory in 2003 (which is about as recent as this theory gets) that the name Pass is an abbreviation used by Jewish settlers to disguise their heritage in England prior to 1657 (when Cromwell decided letting Jews back into England would be good for the economy). I doubt I could make that up.
So, the Pass family could have been in Malta as natives, pilgrims, slaves, or knights and they could have come there from any country in Europe, western Asia or north Africa or been there during the construction of the Ġgantija temples (the oldest stone structures on the planet) during the Neolithic age (c. 3600-2500 BCE).
It would have made things much easier for me (and Google) if ancient people had taken a break from dying of various plagues to just jot down some freaking records.
If they had, I'd be a lot farther into my research into what Darth Vader was doing between "Shadows of the Empire" and "Return of the Jedi".

Sunday Post

2009-06-07T16:23:00.003-04:00

I just went to Target.
We were out of cat food and diet cola. The absence of these things will cause yelling later, so I opted to avoid the trauma.
I wheeled the cart to the back of the store and wandered through the Star Wars toys.
Then I visited the cat food area and grabbed a crate of the mixed poultry formula preferred by those animals in our household who eat this canned junk.
I meandered through the DVD section looking for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 3-7. I was disappointed in the fact that they were, as always, nowhere to be found.
The Coke branded stuff was still priced at four for twelve dollars. There was only one Coke Zero, so I made up the rest in Cherry Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
On my way out, I noticed that the weird techno-awesome mechanical corkscrews were on sale, so I grabbed one and thrust it into the cart.
One aisle over, I noticed a bag of Doritos. Two flavors in one! Zesty Taco and Chipotle Ranch! Since Shana uses chips as a tranquilizer, I grabbed a bag of those, too.
In front of the register there was a cold bottle of Mountain Dew Game Fuel Horde Red (with a blast of Citrus Cherry Flavor). Into the cart it went as I pulled up to the register.
I watched my items move across the scanner from the corner of my eye as I navigated the menu on the card reader. As I was loading the last twelve pack into the cart, I noticed that my well-worn World of Warcraft weekend shirt was covered in cat fur from an earlier nap-related encounter with the cats. Three of them, to be specific.
The teenager held the receipt out to me and I took it.
I looked again at the assortment of items in the cart, the state of my shirt, the fact that my just-cut hair looks like I've been sleeping all day in the reflection off the drink cooler, and back to the Doritos, bottle opener, diet cola, and cat food in my cart. Items I had willingly purchased, all at once.
"My wife is very pretty," I told the check out girl, "And my daughter is reasonably well-adjusted. Most of the cats aren't even mine. The chips aren't even for me."
"Do you want this Mountain Dew Game Fuel right now, or should I put it in the bag?"
"I'll take it," I told her, beaten.

No Casual Jeans

2009-06-05T20:10:00.001-04:00

The plastic cap protector thingy on the bottle of chocolate milk I got with my lunch said "PULL TAB AND TEAR AROUND" -- so I did.

Within five minutes I was out of breath, I had chocolate milk stains on my pants and I was banned from the cafeteria for life (which, to be honest, was not listed as a possibility in the employee handbook).

More importantly, it is our 11th wedding anniversary.
I still have trouble believing that, as does anyone who has ever met either Shana or myself, separately or at once.
We've come a long way from charging diapers on a Discover card to have enough money for food to our new home with kitchen amenities which force constant decisions on what take-out to get (My vote? Burritos.) and our army of poisonous spider minions.
We've geographically come a long way. A time zone, even.
And I still think I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
The traditional gift for the eleventh anniversary is Flan, with the contemporary one being Jell-O. At least according to the Food Network website which tracks these things.
I went a different direction, but I hope it works anyway.
Happy Anniversary, Shana!

Mercenary Work

2009-06-03T09:09:00.000-04:00

The word came down this morning that overtime is no longer approved for my group. Since I tend to do a lot of my work under cover of darkness and in buildings devoid of witnesses (as any good tech ninja does), this means I have two choices:

1. Work enough to get my job done, meet all my obligations and cause no harm to befall my employer. My billing for time halts at 40 hours (generally sometime mid-morning on Thursday) but I continue working for the following two days and into the weekend.

2. Drop everything when my desktop clock has ticked off 40 hours and flee the building, leaving meetings in mid-babble, not responding to emails and shutting off my phone, and ignoring an ever-growing mound of things undone.

Anyone care to guess which option I have chosen?
Since option one is the revenue equivalent of swallowing a live spider for me, this should be just about the easiest pop quiz ever.
Nonetheless, please slip your answers under the door and I'll return your grades Thursday afternoon, from home.

What We Don't Say

2009-06-02T08:55:00.001-04:00

Shana left the house super early this morning to attend a shooting at a high school.
Well, she's doing senior portraits.
But there was a lot of talk during orientation about not referring to the photography session as a "shooting" and to not discuss "shooting kids at a high school", which I find an amazingly hysterical use of orientation time.
I've also not been helping since I tend to ask questions like,"So, did you shoot a bunch of kids in the face today?" and "Was the school shooting everything you always dreamed it would be?"
Walking into a school gymnasium with duffel bags filled with equipment and then shooting kids is the way Shana will be spending her day.
My job sucks.

Not To Spread Panic . . .

2009-06-01T06:39:00.002-04:00

. . . But I've been doing a little research into this whole deadly-spiders-under-the-house thing.
The general response at work has been along the lines of "calm down" and "I really think booking a hotel room is a little overkill" and "I'm sure that you can't actually hear them through the floor" and "why are you breathing like that?", but seriously, there are many spiders living under my house right now.
The whole substructure of the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Headquarters and Remote Poisonous Creature Research Center and Panic Distribution Hub is crawling with tiny spiders which skitter around looking for human flesh to melt.
My panic is entirely justified. If there is a level of panic which qualifies as "reasonable" then that is what I have.
It isn't like they don't bite people.
It isn't like the natural habitat in the display for the animal at the Houston Museum of Natural Science isn't a boot.
Had I not developed the habit from living in scorpion country of banging my soles together before putting on my shoes I would no doubt already be dead.
As horrible as these little beasts are, they are no Phoneutria nigriventer, to be sure, but if it were you can be certain I'd have already attempted to enact my "OMG KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!" plan.
That spider regularly travels in bunches of bananas (to which I am thankfully allergic), is released in the gardens at London hospitals and cannot be killed by freezing, boiling or microwaving. It is uncertain that they can be killed at all in fact and probably exist as immortal, remorseless killing machines who want to feed on our pre-digested internal workings. (citation needed)
Even the brown recluse is resistant to pesticide fogs as the spider tends to cling to the corners of the woodwork. Killing the prey insects and starving them out is also impossible, as recent studies show that the brown recluse prefers to dine on dead insects, anyway. Fogging creates a buffet for them, an act of kindness which is returned by the delivery of oozing wounds.
I'm not sure I'm that into the whole "infinite splendor of nature" business, to be honest. Normally, I'm a live-and-let-live kind of geek.
I should not be pricing gas cans, volume discounts on liquid soap, and bundles of rags on the internets, yet that is what I find myself doing with a good bit of my evenings lately.
The sink in the kitchen works splendidly, though.

Anyone Want to Hear More About my Pipes?

2009-05-29T08:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the plumber and I discovered that the too-horizontal drain pipe connected to another completely horizontal pipe behind the wall.
He decided to drill straight down into the floor of the cabinet and run a new drain line. This took several hours more than anyone anticipated.
However, the dishwasher empties itself of water after running and the icemaker no longer drips waste water onto the kitchen floor.
Also, he told me that when he opened the door to the crawlspace he needed to immediately smash and kill two brown recluse spiders just inside the door, then another about halfway to the sink (ten feet away) and another two nesting among the drain hardware under the house.
He told me he turned down a job on Wednesday due to these spiders which actually had fewer of them than we do.
While I'm happy the sink again works and the appliances no longer randomly flood our kitchen, I'm a little concerned about this poisonous spider issue. And by "a little" I mean "almost unable to go into the house because the door is fifteen feet from the crawlspace opening".
We have two possible courses of action:

1. Put on elbow-length rubber gloves, use a smoke-blower to put the spiders near the opening to sleep, then activate bug bomb foggers and hurl them like grenades under the house.

2. The same thing, but replace bug foggers with partially depleted uranium, thus counteracting the effect of a rotting spider bite with the side-effect of superpowers.

Or, I guess, we could move. But that seems like such a waste, what with our sink now working and everything.
I'm going to check for radioactive materials on Ebay. And, um, you know, work.

It Seems To Have Not Been My Fault

2009-05-27T07:38:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I met with a plumber. One look under my kitchen sink and he was almost offended.
Now, I'd made quite a mess under there. It was ugly. I'd patched and filled and poked holes and puttied over them in search of the leak in the water filter for about a week with no success.
But he said that was all fine, if totally unattractive. In fact, since it was inside a cabinet it was almost acceptable.
The problem was our lack of adherence to "The Code", which as near as I can tell is a religion practiced by people who know how to use tools.
Our kitchen drain violated several tenets of "The Code" and bringing it back in line with doctrine seems to be important towards getting used water to exit the premises.
Whoever installed the garbage disposal put in a giant one. The output for it is actually lower than the output in the wall for the drain itself.
This left water sitting in the pipes which I liberated with a drill by messy accident over the weekend.
According to "The Code", water must exit the pipes via gravity when possible. It makes sense in a Newtonian kind of way, but I decided to not try to blend my science with his zealotry.
As for the actual filter (a nice three-stage reverse-osmosis unit) he found no fault in my connections. All the fittings I was certain were correctly . . . fitted . . . were.
The leaks were coming from dozens of tiny holes up and down the length of two of the factory-provided hoses.
As I expressed my confusion, one of our cats jumped into the cabinet and bit down on one of these hoses, hard.
I'm not 100% sure she is the source of the holes, but she is smugly certain that she has defeated the brand-new water filter which, of course, needed to be replaced.
The plumber will be back on Thursday with (I assume) a large hammer and several smaller hammers to redeem our pipes and obtain from them assurances of their adherence to "The Code".
One of the things I'm noticing about "The Code" is that there seems to be very little emphasis placed on charitable works.
Or kind feelings towards tiny domesticated felines.

Wisdom is in the Running Water

2009-05-26T08:10:00.001-04:00

After a little over a week of no cold water in the sink and constantly replacing the absorbent towels in the cabinet, I broke down this morning and called a professional.
The last thing that leaks seems to be the faucet on the new water filter.
And the dishwasher.
And the icemaker on the other side of the kitchen which I swear I was nowhere near at any time.
The thing is (and it isn't as important to establish blame right now as it is to just resolve the current issues and move on with our lives) when I pulled out the instructions for the water filter and it wasn't exactly like the pipework under our sink, I should have stopped.
My father once told me that a person can fake being a doctor, they can fake being a lawyer, they can fake being a competent and concerned I.T. security professional, but one cannot fake plumbing.
I wish he'd told me this before I took tools to my pipes, but now I know. And you can't fake timing, either, apparently.
In discussing this with my father we briefly toyed with the idea of blaming the plumbing disaster on burglars. It certainly looks like the work was done by someone with no marketable skills who would turn to a life of crime.
To be fair, it looked a lot like that before I ever started working.
Here is something I learned:
You can drill into PVC pipe. The contents of that pipe, which have been washing out of the dishwasher for a number of years, are unpleasant. You can make a passable seal on that hole, too.
Be careful when applying the sealant, though, since when it drips down onto lower joints which were shaken loose during the drilling process there really seems to be no fixing that.
I'm going to meet an actual plumbing professional over my lunch break and I'm going to bear his entirely justified laughter at my expense.
I'm just glad he didn't come out on Memorial Day, since that would have made my expense an additional 250%, easy.

Family Movie Day

2009-05-23T17:11:00.002-04:00

- A Short Play In One Act

Ticket Counter Lady: How can I help you?

Me: I'd like tickets, three, to . . . the 1:30 showing of . . . Night at the Museum.

Ticket Counter Lady: That show is sold out. We have seats available at the 2:00.

Me: How is availability to the 1:45 Terminator?

Gwynyth: No!

Shana: I hate opening weekend.

Me: Come on, Gwynyth! It's like killer robots with The Transformers and Batman!

Gwynyth: No! Night at the Museum is EDUCATIONAL!

Me: Sure, until killer robots take over and you need to know what to do and all you've got is what Robin Williams told you to do as Teddy Roosevelt. Robin Williams! Not Chuck Norris!

Shana: I told you opening weekend is always a bad idea.

Me: Three tickets to the 2:00 museum thing.

Ticket Counter Lady: That'll be waaaaaay too much money for this experience. Or, really, any experience.

Working From Home

2009-05-22T11:59:00.003-04:00

"Hello. I mean, 'Tactical Services, how may I be of service?'"
I'm working from home today.
Really.
Actually working.
From home.
I've been working with remote computing technologies for more years than I care to count and this is the first time I've been allowed to partake in the wonder of spending a workday outside of the office.
By "wonder" I mean "increased productivity", of course.
And by "increased productivity" I mean "my giant umbrella-festooned drink could use some more crushed ice".
It's a casual jeans Friday at the office.
That would be overdressed for the current standard at Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng World HQ, at the moment.
To much information, perhaps?
I'll ramp down the productivity to compensate.

Even More Pictures

2009-05-20T07:47:00.006-04:00

Since the last couple of days have been all so terribly confrontational, I thought I'd share some crappy camera phone pictures.
Please keep in mind that the process for taking these is always the same. I see something. I wrestle my phone out of my pocket and navigate the complicated menu to the camera section, I attempt to zoom (though my camera has no such feature) and I snap the picture while saying "the internets must be made aware of this".
Here is the latest batch. I brightened the important bit of this first one using Acorn.

The owner of this Mitsubishi is either a fan of irony or is trying really poorly to compensate for something. As a bonus, this picture includes a bit of the back of one of the buildings where I'm working. For most of the past year, I spent most of every day in the dungeon under this particular building while the normals drove their not-quite Italian sports cars out in the sun. Suckers.

What the crap is this? My best guess is that it is some kind of skink. The head was actually that weird reddish color, too. This guy (about as long as a standard brick) was hanging out by the front door of the building where my cubicle is. After I took the picture, he charged at me and I . . . Went for reinforcements. And to find a scientist specializing in radioactive monsterism.

As part of the "Heath and Wellness" initiative at work, I (and everyone else, I hope) have been invited to a number of lunchtime nutritional meetings (which I have made a point to skip).
This is a two-pronged plan to get everyone to make better dietary choices which also includes tagging the cafeteria vending machines with "Fit Pick" labels.
When Cool Ranch Doritos make the "Fit Pick" cut, one has to assume that every other choice in that vending machine is laced with cyanide-packed bacon.
In my experience (and I've skipped out on so many nutritional lectures I ought to know), delicious does not always equal healthy.
A couple of weeks ago if you put a dollar in the machine and selected 127, the machine would rock forward and slam itself into your forehead. I guess removing that choice is a step in the right direction at least.

Oh, hey. There is a picture of a Warcraft Orc on the right. If you click it, Mountain Dew has promised me awesome things.

I'd click dumb stuff for you, internet.

Apology

2009-05-19T07:47:00.004-04:00

Dear Internet,

I should have known that any reference to Star Trek in the same post as Star Wars would result in a recurrence of the hostilities.
While the argument (Trek vs. Wars) is the oldest online argument, the wounds which remain are still bloody. They ache like a phaser blast set to stun and irritate like the sand of Tattooine which gets everywhere.
For some reason, I was still surprised by the reaction in the comments yesterday. I was more surprised last night to discover that I, too, had participated in the harsh words and harsher sentiment.
What I was trying to convey yesterday is that the new Star Trek movie is an homage, not just to Speculative Fiction in general, but to the greatest Speculative Fiction franchise which will ever exist. No offense intended. Far from it, in fact.
The tribute was appreciated. Not to mention long overdue.
I was just trying to say that for the first time in recent memory, someone had made an effort to make Trek watchable. This is good, really!
Trek is finally starting to overcome the bitter history of having a Frenchman Captain of the Enterprise. Of course they'd need to borrow from Star Wars to do so. It was the logical choice, and Spock would be proud.
Side note: Did the Romulans use laser swords, or were laser swords just implied? I can't remember at the moment.
Anyway, like I said, no offense was intended. The effort required to overcome the damage done to the franchise by John De Lancie was monumental and I appreciate it.
To clarify, yesterday's post was an official Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng endorsement of Star Trek. Take a loved one.
If they are ten, like the loved one I brought, they will bring up the references to Star Wars about the time Kirk rides a motorcycle up to the spaceport and it looks like a wretched hive of scum and villainy. And construction robots.
It is a brilliant re-imagining.
Pointy ears! Who doesn't love pointy ears?

Live long and whatever,

G

Rebooting Trek

2009-05-18T07:11:00.003-04:00

Okay. I saw the new Star Trek movie. Everyone please just calm down.
Not only did I see it, I took the opportunity to take my daughter to see it. Gwynyth had never seen Star Trek in any form. I picked a team years ago and have been firmly in the Star Wars camp ever since.
But.
A total reboot of the series? Erasing 40 years of history, television series and movies and comic book tie-ins in a single swipe? No need to explain references to obscure episodes to the uninitiated? I couldn't pass that up.
Neither should any of my fellow Star Wars fans.
Sure, Star Trek is a solid movie, appreciable science fiction. And fun.
But Star Wars fans can also take comfort in the knowledge that Star Trek rebooted is Star Wars. So we were right all along.

Spoiler warning:

Wash dies.

The opening scene is a large ship shooting at a smaller ship.
Then there are scenes of a rebellious farm boy who never knew his father.
Then an older, wiser man tells the farm boy about how cool his father was.
There is a bar fight with aliens.
The wise old man then tells the farm boy he has to go on a fancy space rescue mission.
Then the bad guys destroy a planet.
The farm boy meets an adventure partner and they don't get along at first but you just know eventually they will be the best of friends.
The wise old guy gets taken out and the farm boy has to figure out the rest of the mission on his own.
So they form a team and take out the giant space super weapon.

I'm not saying . . . I'm just saying.

Star Trek, as re-imagined, is a comforting trip back to the late seventies for Star Wars fans.
It kind of made me want to watch Eragon again. That was another pretty good movie which was better when it was just Star Wars.
But I decided to just watch season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead.
May the Force be with you, Trekkies.

Also, I'll buy it on DVD, foshizzle.

On Our Own

2009-05-15T09:55:00.000-04:00

Shana has gone for the weekend. While we have hopes that she will return, Gwynyth and I are doing our best to maintain some semblance of normalcy and dignity.
Of course, neither of those traits is dominant in our genetic makeup.
Last night Gwynyth stayed up past her bedtime watching a vampire movie with me, if Twilight can be considered a vampire movie.
I picked up Underworld: Rise of the Lycans for later this weekend just to make sure we have vampires totally covered.
I asked Gwynyth what she'd like me to cook for dinner last night and she replied that I should "cook" something from somewhere that has decent ice cream. She is well aware that my cooking is different than Shana's cooking in that my cooking involves yelling into a metal-shrouded microphone from within my car.
Before this evening's activities begin, Gwynyth will clean her room. We discussed this while I made her lunch this morning. Last night she "made her lunch" but I discovered only a single bag of Cheetos in her lunch bag this morning.
Whenever Shana leaves town, we get a little crazy.
Without her calming influence we tend to take on projects which are well past our abilities to complete and make messes which are outside our abilities to clean without separate, complicated projects which are again well past our abilities to complete.
In less than 24 hours, everything has been removed from under the sink and the water no longer works in the kitchen.
Or the bathroom on that side of the house.
Or (I suspect) the sprinkler system.
But I have everything under control.
If one defines "under control" as "holy crap what do I do what do I do?". Which is a perfectly reasonable definition as far as I'm concerned.
Side note: My particular disorder, which involves a compulsive need to hand-wash whenever I've touched something like plumbing under the sink, when combined with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder and a non-functional kitchen sink, can result in some delightfully slapstick moments of flailing and running which Gwynyth is desperately trying to capture using the Apple iPhoto camera.
It is safe to assume that by Sunday afternoon we will likely be entirely feral creatures, hissing and snapping at each other, living in fear of the light and unable to communicate with each other or non-modified humans in any method which does not primarily consist of grunting and pointing.
We have been through this, but never without a support structure of friends willing to leave food on the front porch and call to work our communication skills.
Shana, if you are reading this, um, everything's under control. Situation normal.
Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you.
How are you?

Spreading Illness

2009-05-13T08:46:00.000-04:00

My co-worker has a head cold. Possibly it is just allergies. Either way, he's pretty miserable.
Yesterday I suggested that it is probably Swine Flu, a comment that yielded more laughter than I thought it merited.
Anyway, after that had died down, I told my sick co-worker that Encyclopedia Dramatica had an entry up for Swine Flu pretty immediately which listed symptoms including "causes people to get perma-banned IRL".

"IRL?" he asked.

"In Real Life," I offered.

"Encyclopedia Dramatica?"

"That's 4chan's Wikipedia."

"4chan?"

"They make most if not all of the memes on the interwebs."

"Memes?"

"Um, like a goofy internet joke. Like Rickrolling. And lolcats."

"Rickrolling?"

"Sending someone to the YouTube video for Never Gonna Give You Up instead of basically anything else."

"Lolcat?"

"Are you serious? 'I can has cheeseburger?' 'I has a flavor?' 'Ceiling cat is watching you masturbate?'"

"This is awesome. It's like you are speaking a different language."

"All your base are belong to us?"

"What?"

"I can't believe I just explained rickrolling to the last person on the planet who might actually fall for it."

I sent him a list of half a dozen links or so in the hopes of being able to better communicate in the future.
Fostering better internal team communication is a vital part of the security process, after all.
This morning he looked a little more ragged than he had yesterday. It was not related to his ongoing Swine Flu issues.

"I looked up from one of the pages you sent me to and noticed it was 1am. That didn't stop me from reading, but I did notice."

"Then my work here is done."

Monday

2009-05-11T07:18:00.003-04:00

After closely reading reviews for the new science fiction epic, I have decided to not go and see it.
There is no mention of lightsabers anywhere. There are no references to pithy Jedi wisdom. No reviewer has awkwardly flopped sentence structure around like Yoda.
I can only conclude that this latest Star Wars movie is about as far from the original as possible without using Jar Jar Binks.
Not. Interested.
After last week, I'm pretty sure I'd fall asleep as soon as the lights in the theatre dim anyway.
I just submitted a time sheet to my agency with seventy-one hours on it.
As I'm sure I've complained about, not all of it was related to our audit.
The audit stuff kicked off on Thursday with some meetings.
On Friday we were scheduled to begin submitting scan data at 1pm, but the pre-scan meeting ran until after 5pm and the post-meeting scan ran until 8pm. I got home at about 1am Saturday.
I was probably supposed to work last night, but I couldn't bring myself to check.
Especially not with a fresh copy of The Ruins demanding to be watched.
I like Belize. I've always wanted to go. When a horror movie set against the backdrop of ancient Mayan ruins fails to dim a person's desire to visit, it may have failed.
While I know the "official" sequel to Donnie Darko is S. Darko, I prefer to think that The Ruins picks up right after to tell the story of what happened to Donnie's girlfriend. Of course, there is also 30 years in between the stories and the girlfriend hasn't aged that much, but I can write that off to creative storytelling in Hollywood.
I also correctly identified that character as the one who survives when she asked to remain in the resort reading and then put on her glasses. These are the hallmarks of "the one who lives" in horror movies.
What I did not foresee was nature of the monster involved. If I had, I would not have picked up the movie at all. I promise.
It was enough to make me begin to haunt spoiler sites in order to know what I'm getting into before starting the process of watching a movie.
Thus, I can tell you that Star Trek is not reported to have scenes revolving around the political machinations of powerful Sith lords or fumbling Jedi flirtation. Therefore: No sale.
This week my plans include . . . Um . . . More audit stuff. This process is a pretty massive pain so far. I plan to console myself by having solid gold toilets installed at the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng World Headquarters.
According to my hours, those are overdue.

Revenge

2009-05-07T08:55:00.004-04:00

"This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is about to expire . . . "
I get two calls a day from these guys. A lot of people get these calls.
I've requested to be removed from the list multiple times and it hasn't worked.
I've been told that the database for that is having issues and to bear with them while their system glitch burns up my cell minutes every day.
If you punch the codes to talk to a person, they refuse to give you a call back number.
Here, internet, is their number:
(949) 475-9500
(800) 499-5711
If you've been bothered by them, I recommend calling them and offering to sell them a warranty on their computer system. I've done it half a dozen times today and will continue to until I get bored with it or they give me the access to fix their database issue (which I suspect is related to the fact that they don't actually have a do-not-call database).
If you have a modem, I recommend configuring the 800 number as your dial-in number and setting it to "unlimited retries".

Things Come Up

2009-05-06T08:36:00.002-04:00

Another dead-on perfect image for the blog!
Excuse me for a moment while I pat myself vigorously on the back.

As you can see by the diagram provided, we had some slight system malfunction/uprising at the beginning of the week which resulted in my having spent about 27 hours on the clock this week when I arrived at my desk this morning.
In all that time, I did no audit prep work at all and the auditors are here today.
I've got more overtime scheduled over the next few days to manage that effort but I'm also hoping to wedge a nap in there somewhere.
My co-worker was out yesterday with a possible kidney stone. He returned to work today with percocet which he refuses to share. I thought we were trying to have a team in here, but I guess that was just my misconception.
I even tried reminding him that management specifically told us that they wanted a pain-free audit this year. There is no more efficient way to ensure that, in my opinion, than through the distribution of prescription strength medications specifically designed to alleviate discomfort.
Anyway, stuff was broken and I needed to spend an insane amount of time at the office fixing it or at home ignoring my family while I'm logged in at work barking into my cellphone about how long it has been since I slept.
The official answer to our technical issue from the vendor was a resounding "I don't know, what do you think it is?" which was possibly even less helpful than it sounds.
Okay.
Audit stuff.
I've got three days of work to cram into the time before lunch.
Can it be done? Sure.
Can it be done without the users experiencing quite a bit of pain? No, since I swiped the bottle of percocet when my co-worker hobbled to the restroom and I'm not sharing.
Time to unplug my desk phone and start making some progress.

Security is a Button Press Away

2009-05-05T06:51:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I completely fail at picking an image for a post. This is not one of those times.
Seeing as how our big damn government audit (BDGA) is underway, I thought I'd take a moment to share a little bit about the methodology involved in looking at a computer and declaring it "horrible" or "adequate".
There is a giant building somewhere. I imagine it is gray with long vertical windows which are perpetually dark. Deep within this vault-like structure is a room with a couple of Windows XP workstations and possibly a Windows 2000 server with a database on it.
Tending to these machines is a small group of nerds. I use that term with affection. On some level, these are my people. On another level, they are only there day after day in the interest of getting a check. Come to think of it, they are my people on that level as well.
Their job is never-ending. Their responsibility is to develop a check for every existing security vulnerability and add that check to an executable program. This is stored on a "Gold Disk" which is distributed to companies with an interest in also getting checks from the government.
When this CD is inserted into a computer and run, it produces a complete listing of every security issue up until about a month ago. This disk is constantly updated.
When we are advised of new requirements in security, we analyze the systems and determine applicability, then schedule testing for the changes we think are necessary to bring us back into compliance.
This is a time-consuming process which involves interaction with our users. Thankfully, all user interaction is handled by a separate entity, the Testing Coordinator.
Anyway, one day a copy of this disk was given to Management.
He noticed that there was an additional button at the top of the main screen. "Remediate" the button read.
"Why aren't the security guys just hitting that button? Why do they even waste time with the "scan" button at all? One button remediation is the key to our compliance issues forever."
There is indeed a "remediate" button. And pressing that button will put in place on the effected machine every setting on the disk.
And so it was proclaimed that a script would be written to deliver the payload of the "remediate" button to a group of computers. It was not proclaimed to me, or I'd have giggled a lot while carrying out the directive.
The reason we don't use the "remediate" button . . . The reason no one uses it . . . Is that it works too well. Every setting. Every security option. No exceptions. No exclusions.
The immediate effect is that user logons are disabled, since allowing people to log in to a computer is certainly a compromise of security.
Remote administration is disabled, since that, too is an issue.
Permissions are set on the file system disallowing remote connections and locking out everyone but the local administrator. That account is automatically renamed to something else and the password is changed - Also in the name of security.
A number of other settings take effect before the system is too locked down for the script to continue to run.
The end result, in this case, is that every computer touched by the "remediate" button script was instantly only part of the infrastructure as decoration.
They all needed to be formatted and re-installed before they could be used again.
There is a button for "scan" and there is a button for "remediate". There is no button for "holy crap undo undo!"
Manually reviewing the security findings with the use of this disk is part of the job.
Using the "remediate" button on the computers of people who annoy me is just a bonus.

May the Fourth

2009-05-04T08:10:00.003-04:00

. . . Be with you.
It's Star Wars Day, officially.
Hot on the heels of Free Comic Book Day.
Thanks to everyone who thought to send a card. You guys are the best. With the holiday itself being wedged between the release of Wolverine and Star Trek, this whole time of year has taken on a feel of its very own.
Ancient people believed that the border between the realm of the living and that of the dead grew thin at the end of October and the beginning of May. This allowed ready commune with the spirit world at Halloween and May Day. It also created a secondary market for marshmallow peeps in spookier shapes, but that must be considered a side-effect.
This time of year, for geeks, is a lot like that.
Strange arcane energies are welling up from some dark basement of dorkiness to infuse the realm with Vulcan hand gesturing and long, drawn out debates about the fall of Anakin Skywalker.
As you can probably imagine, my very bones ache with the delicious not-pain of it.
Of course, it is starting to look like I'll be spending all of this coming week wedged up at work, hacking away at system settings and making registry information all line up like the government expects.
I'm cool with that.
I've got a ready supply of soda and almost unlimited access to action figures and companions who share my interests in speculative fiction.
This job requires an obsessive compulsive drive to make spreadsheets from different sources identical and an ability to multi-task into discussions of Klingon philosophy and Jedi platitudes. I, um, have that.
I'll Tweet as I'm able and post when time permits (which has a pretty good shot at being a lot, since I'll likely spend most of my time waiting, anyway).
Keep it geeky, internets.

Free Comic Book Day

2009-04-29T09:18:00.002-04:00

There is a store locator on the site. It is Saturday. You have no excuse not to go.
The whole situation may be made more convenient with the presence of a child to drag along with you, but you can show up without one without raising any eyebrows. If you must have a child as a cover, I recommend picking one up on the way. They wander around department stores all the time and seem to have no price tags or UPC marks so I'm pretty sure you can just walk out with them. Just be sure to bring them back to where you got them before you have to pay for college.
Anyway, I've made a point of calling attention to this event every year in an attempt to drive some traffic their way. This is when publishers put out some of their best work to gain new readers. Also, there have been free toys every year! Free toys!
Okay, while you are there, pick up a few comics the host stores are selling. All that traffic is useless to them if they make no money. Also, there is a lot of good stuff crammed up in those shelves.
Since the Wolverine movie is coming out this weekend and some people still haven't seen it, this is the perfect time to catch up on your Wolverine before hitting the theatre/bittorrent site.
You must read the original Wolverine miniseries by Claremont and Miller. Wolverine heads to Japan to explore part of his history there. Also, he fights ninjas. Like thousands of ninjas. This comic is largely the source of most of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mythology. Before they had their own movies and toys, they were a Wolverine spoof.
While not a Claremont story, Wolverine: Weapon X is pretty essential reading as it tells the story of all the things that happened to Wolverine when he was a Canadian military experiment. Also, I learned that at one time Canada had a military, so the book was educational as well. Side note: Is Canada still open? Anyone know what the hours are?
The Essential Hulk Volume Five contains the first appearance of Wolverine (in issues 180 and 181, conveniently bound into one volume with a bunch of other less awesome stuff). Back then he was already "Weapon X" but his costume was . . . different. Anyway, it's worth a read.
And while Claremont is again not responsible for this (though he's all over the Wolverine brand) the Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon is composed entirely of snarky dialogue, character analysis, and solid, undiluted awesome.
The major plot is completely dumb on a lot of levels, but the comic works as Whedon proves that campy sci-fi crap is not what comics are about anymore. That is the backdrop for the interactions of the characters. And Whedon seems, to me, to get Wolverine.
Okay.
So you have time to plan around it, find a store, and gather a kid (or not) to attend Free Comic Book Day. I don't want to hear any "I've got a wedding to attend" because I've given you enough notice to convincingly fake sick. None of that "the flower beds need to be weeded" nonsense either. Weeds convert CO2 into life-giving oxygen, you eco-terrorist. And don't try that "I'm not a nerd" excuse, either. You've read this far. The Geek Boat has sailed, my friend, and you are on deck.

Eight Days to Go

2009-04-28T07:50:00.003-04:00

For the past year we've been moving towards the official audit steadily and meticulously. In the case of Government approval for information systems, we've been aiming at a moving target the whole time. Settings change in the official requirement and new updates are released with a frequency that rivals Stephen King novels.
On May 6th, the auditors are due to finally arrive.
At that point, we are unable to change anything. Our days are spent assisting with the scanning and answering extensive interrogations about processes and the work of our team.
Once they give us the results of the scan, we get to fix everything on it. Immediately and frantically. And then there is another scan and more interrogations about the stuff which showed up on the first scan, how our processes failed and which team member is responsible.
Each finding represents a line item on an Excel spreadsheet. To give you an indication of the volume, last year Excel could not display everything they found wrong. There was an actual email circulating about how things were going to be better this year, not because we were in better shape -- Just because Excel 2007 can display more data than 2003 could.
All this goes into a massive file somewhere along with pre- and post- on-site remediation efforts.
During this process, we can't leave. Food (or food-like substances) gets brought in and we remain at our desks, enduring the questioning and frantically fixing every single stupid thing.
To prepare, we've been doing our own scanning. All eyes are on us, the new group, with the full expectation that we will botch this as fully and awfully as everyone else always does.
As of this morning, our total number of unique findings is 22.
I'm pretty sure even Excel 2003 can manage that one.
My concern at this point is that if we aren't up here fixing stuff for four straight days with no break, how can I pad my hours to make up for it?
I'm sure I'll find a way.
One doesn't remain a consultant for this long without picking up an ability to bill creatively.
And mercilessly.

When Procedure is the Desired Result

2009-04-27T07:29:00.003-04:00

When I started working here, there was an initiative to standardize access by job roles. On the surface, this is a fabulous idea.
It defines responsibilities and allows for smoother configuration of the accounts of new hires.
The problem is the transition.
Several people on my team have been with the company for a decade.
During that time, they have accumulated accesses they no longer need by definition but still use as a learned component of their day-to-day jobs.
My manager is one of these people, and since this whole project ties in with our groups role in the company, he has been tasked with making it happen even though it is something he does not want.
According to process, he assigned a project manager to the task and sat back.
This project manager diligently began documenting roles and responsibilities and access lists and submitting paperwork. The my manager found something else to take priority and pulled her off the access project to work on that.
He assigned another project manager to take over the access initiative. This project manager needed quite a bit of cross-training and catch-up information from the first, but once the transition was complete, he too began to document things and submit the proper forms to make this change a reality.
However, as frequently happens in large and complicated environments like this one, something came up. My manager pulled this project manager and set them against the new task, assigning another to replace him on the access standardization initiative.
Again, there was a period of cross-training and catch-up. This third project manager found some inconsistencies in the process which had existed from the start. She began the process of correcting these, starting with the beginning of the project timeline. Since some of the original requests are over a year old, they need to completely be re-submitted for review. Further, the error makes a good case for a re-evaluation of existing gathered data sets, prompting a review of those.
Closing his office door behind me, I asked my manager if he knew that the project had just been effectively rebooted, delaying the end result well past the deadline established in the project budget and calling the whole future of the effort into question over paperwork errors.
His answer to that question also clarified a few questions I've long held about corporate life:
"Oh, I know. Why do you think she is the Project Management Team Lead?"
"Does she know that is why she is the Team Lead? Because she is the preventer of progress?"
"No," he was smiling,"If it were intentional complication it would be considered sabotage. Her intent is pure, so everything is good."
It is possible, internet, to be promoted specifically for not getting things done and more for not getting things done in a spectacular manner while adhering to the letter of the corporate policy manual and ignoring its spirit.
While this fact brings a strange warmth to my heart, I suspect that is because 10+ years on the inside of this kind of place has left me a hollow shell of a person who delights in turning processes against themselves and each other in corporate policy gladiatorial death matches.
I also suspect that the standardization project has just gotten a resounding thumbs down from the crowd.

Saving The Planet

2009-04-23T07:12:00.005-04:00

I hadn't planned anything specific for Earth Day. I generally chop up plastic six-pack rings and drop cans and bottles in the recycle bin, but Earth Day is about making an extra effort on one specific day before climbing back in the massive domestic SUV and driving out to some private land to shoot at forest creatures.
Accordingly, I decided to not use electricity for an hour last night.
I did plan to continue using my share of oxygen from the atmosphere because there is only so far I am willing to go for the planet.
I gathered a pile of candles and shut down my laptop and cellphones at 9:21EST last night and grabbed a notebook to record the process.

9:21EST -- After watching the screen go dark, I immediately wonder if anyone else is performing this ritual in honor of the planet. Before realizing it, I've typed "www.goog" on the unresponsive keyboard of my powered-down computer. Research will need to wait.

9:22EST -- I can totally do this. It's an hour, right? And I have a book.

9:24EST -- One of the character names is familiar. I turn again to the darkened screen to hit Wikipedia to find out if this character has been in another book I've read, or if I've possibly already read this book and just don't remember it. The laptop is still closed.

9:25EST -- How much power does a laptop really use? Not like I can go online and check. . .

9:31EST -- I found a magazine I haven't seen before. One of the models is scary with super dark eye makeup. She wears a wool dress to the beach for some reason. I suspect she wants to sell me something, but without being able to go to the freaking website on the ad I will likely never know.

9:36EST -- I shut off some stray lights in other parts of the house. There is still some light from glowing LEDs and flashing "power off" indicator lights.

9:45EST -- Is it cheating if I just go to sleep? Again, the impulse hits to ask the internet if there are rules about this kind of thing.

9:54EST -- Okay, seriously. I recycle. I drive responsibly. What has the planet ever done for me?

10:02EST -- If the ice was already made, is it cheating for me to put some in a glass? Also, how "green" is the vodka production process?

10:05EST -- I found food coloring. Candlelight sucks. Vodka is now definitely "green".

10:10EST -- You know what the problem is? It's dark outside. Today was so beautiful. Tiny white puffy clouds, temperatures in the mid seventies, a light breeze. It was hard to stay cooped up at work. All I wanted to do all afternoon was skip out, head home, fire up the laptop and browse the internet for adorable kitten pictures. I wasn't done with that until dark.

10:14EST -- If I were actually going insane, would I know? What would that feel like? I miss you, WebMD.

10:20EST -- I can go a minute without looking at the clock. Sixty seconds. No big deal.

10:20EST -- One, Two, Three, Four . . .

10:21EST -- Begin transcribing my notes into this post. Still shaking a little, though. Stupid planet.

Guilt Brownies

2009-04-22T08:44:00.004-04:00

I asked a co-worker what his plans were for Tuesday. He said he had off-site training. Something about moving cheeses, but I wasn't really paying attention.
The point is that I figured it was a cover.
I just knew that he was going to go to "off-site training" just before the big surprise party celebrating my first full year with the company (and, it must be noted, the second longest stretch with a single employer since I entered the weird world of Information Technology). It was almost too easy to guess, but I told him that he was good and that I wouldn't tell anyone that I knew and that I was fully capable of acting surprised.
I even demonstrated:

"Oh! I had no idea! You shouldn't have!"

"What are you talking about, Garrick?"

"For me? I thought everyone had forgotten?"

"Seriously, man. What?"

"Presents? And cash? How did you know my favorite things?"

"I'm going to go back to my cubicle now, Garrick. Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm okay. And now you know it is no big deal that I know about the party."

"What party?"

"Exactly."

A few minutes later he came back. "This is bothering me. Did I forget something? Is it your birthday? I can see you circled the date on the group calendar but there is no label. Just a picture of a kitten. What does that even mean?"

"Don't worry, Dave. I'm cool. I don't know anything about any surprise party and you totally didn't give it away."

"Seriously. What the hell are you talking about?"

At this point I began to suspect that he wasn't playing the surprise party game. "Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my start date. Did you really schedule an off-site cheese meeting and completely forget to plan a massive party in my honor with cake and pie and balloon animals but no clowns because they creep me out?"

"Um. Yes?"

And with that, I knew he was telling the sad truth.
I showed up to work on Tuesday anyway, because I'm paid by the hour.
However, Dave stopped by my desk on the way to his cheese thing. He gave me a big box of brownies (which I shared with the row of people participating in some weight-loss contest) and fresh cut flowers (which I took home and placed on the mantle out of the reach of the cats who are horrible and eat plants and the cables for brand-new noise-canceling headphones).
And you know what? It was even better than a party for one simple reason:
I got to bill my time for it.

I Find Your Standards Unacceptably Low

2009-04-21T08:55:00.005-04:00

We have a set of servers which must be kept up to Department of Defense standards at all times.
If compliance slips, horrible things happen. The details of this horribleness have never been spoken aloud. Nor should they be.
The threat is omnipresent regardless of details.
We have another set of servers with security requirements not spelled out by the government. We can do what we want there, within reason. This was the first group of servers we built to replace the most disgustingly screwed up bunch of broken servers when I started.
Since we had no directive from the Department of Defense, I put them in according to my own ideas of security.
Users have no rights to the local drives. They cannot view the registry. They cannot open a command window. They cannot right-click.
These specific guidelines do not exist in the Department of Defense guidelines. As a result, they are not configured on those servers, even though security is technically tighter.
This company is big. Officially it is the largest employer in the state. The data center is the largest in the state and in the top 2% globally.
There are also many, many levels of management. The CIO is so far removed from my group that only one guy I work with has ever even seen him. To say that there is no direct line between my group (or any I.T. group here) and the CIO is not exactly true. It is just that the line in question crosses half a dozen firewalls and a DMZ.
This is why I was surprised on Monday when my team lead burst into my cubicle before coffee and said my manager needed me in his office immediately since the CIO had an issue with me, personally.
See, once upon a time the CIO didn't like having individual applications published to him. In the old servers, he got a published desktop which looked just like his own.
When the applications were migrated, so was that published desktop.
The issue turned up when he logged in and couldn't do anything with that desktop because of the security measures I had put in place just because I liked them.
The first words I ever heard the CIO say were over my boss's speakerphone: "You said that self-important jerk who took away my rights on the server was here -- Where is he?"
My manager said, "He just walked in."
Oh. So I'm a jerk right from the start. To the CIO. Where do I go from there?
I got a "Shush" gesture from my team lead as I was starting to ask exactly what access he was missing, even though I had guessed exactly what the access was already.
I was asked exactly why I had over-hardened servers people needed to do work on.
I was able to reply that the servers were hardened according to industry standard best practices. I also offered to set up his own server somewhere where he could do what he wanted. I'm all about security, but the government doesn't care about the network I'm putting that server in and I enjoy getting paid.
The CIO seemed satisfied and hung up, leaving just a Director on the phone with my manager.
"I'm going to see if I can get that Post-It note off his desk now," the Director said.
"Post-It note?" I have no idea why I asked. I wasn't even sure it had actually been out loud until I saw my team lead gesture wildly about something. It was actually a full-body flail.
"Yes, Garrick," the Director explained,"When he asked who was responsible for the security on his server the CIO was given your name. Traditionally, he writes down names he collects on Post-It notes which he sticks to his desk for follow up. You do not want to be on one of his Post-It notes."
"Can I have it?" Before coffee, I have less than no impulse control, internet.
The Director, to his credit, laughed as he said,"If you want to get into his office and get it yourself you are welcome to it."
I turned to my manager, who ended the call and gave me a look.
"No, I will not give you a PC repair kit and send you into the CIO's office to collect a Post-It note with your name on it in his handwriting after you engineer some kind of issue with his machine. Please just set up his access and make sure he doesn't call again."
As my team lead and I walked back to my desk, I asked him how my manager knew what I was going to ask for.
"You're starting to get a reputation around here."

Poor Planning

2009-04-20T07:18:00.001-04:00

You asked for it. Here is another way awesome World of Warcraft post:

I meet a lot of people when I play WoW. Most of them I'd be perfectly happy never meeting again. Those that are not complete and utter jerks make my "friends" list, and there are enough of those that the in-game list frequently fills and must be purged of people who haven't logged in in a while.
Knowing nice people is good, but not having faces to associate with names (faces other than the generic orc or elf mug) they tend to get forgotten as individuals from time to time.
These aren't the people I play with every week. Those people I know by their real-world, meat space names.
The people on my friends list are in another category. These are not "friends", they are people that annoy me less than everyone else on the server.
Anyway, a few days ago I got a message in game from someone I didn't immediately recognize. I checked my friends list and they were not on it. Since the message was more than the standard "lol fag", I guessed that at some point I had annoyed this person less than everyone else on the server and made their in-game friends list.
We chatted back and forth for a little while. I had a raid to attend and this person was running a few quests.
They were nice enough. Not nice enough to make my own friends list, but nice. Space is at a premium on that thing.
I attended my raid and went about my virtual life for a couple of days before hearing from this person again.
Then they sent me another message while I was gathering some babies from one tribe to deliver them to another (long story there, but it may have been the right thing to do) just to say hello and find out how I was doing.
Again, we chatted for a few moments before I had another raid to attend (fully 80% of my time in-game is spent in raids now, with the other 20% spent preparing for raids).
I was getting a little creeped out by now, cursor hovering over the "ignore" button on this guy. People can work their way off my friends list, but ignore is eternal.
He sent me a message while I was actually in a raid, ignoring the auto-responder which should have told him I was in the middle of something with no time to chat.
"Guess what?"
I switched Webinara over to auto-attack and (against my better judgement) responded with a "what?"
"Guess!"
Internet, I play games online. A lot, to be honest. "Guess" is not the game I pay $15 a month to play.
"Um . . . You got a flying mount?" I'll admit, I've lost touch with what lower level people do.
"No!"
"Exalted reputation with someone?"
"No! Well, kind of."
I switched targets and cursed in meat space about n00bs. "How do you get kind of Exalted?"
"I'm getting married!"
Oh no. I was completely afraid that this conversation was going to head somewhere which would make me uncomfortable. Again, I hovered over "ignore".
"Congratulations." I said. Because that is what you say.
"Not in real life. In game!"
Aw, crap. With that, this officially crossed over into a couple of areas I find weird.
"That's awesome," I lied, switching my attention back to killing a very frightening giant spider-beast.
"I want you to attend, Webinara, because you are one of the nicest people I've met."
Shit.
"I'd love to attend. Just tell me where."
The giant spider-beast died. There was cheering around me.
"I have to buy a ring first and find some Tailor who can make a tux and wedding dress."
lol fag
"That's too cool. Talk to my friends Mairick and Moatte. They can make the clothes you need." I mostly wanted to fling this attention at my real-world friends Darrell and Todd. To this day, I have no idea if either can sew an in-game wedding dress.
Side note: I miss you guys more than this story indicates.
I had hoped he'd spend some time doing that. My hopes were crushed when he sent,"I know where I want the wedding to be."
"Oh?" Webinara was concentrating on loot at this point. Of the 80% of in-game time I spend raiding, 99% of that is spent worrying over loot.
"Scarlet Monastery Cathedral."
This guy needed someone to lead the way into Scarlet Monastery Cathedral, kill all the monsters which would try oh-so-hard to end his newbish life and that of his bride, wait for the corpses to vanish, then hang out by the alter to pick off any stragglers who show up during the ceremony.
Now this is a wedding I can get into.
"That sounds lovely." I was really running out of encouraging things to say.
"I need a cake."
If everyone in my guild was not already logged onto a character I know, I would swear someone was attempting to punk me.
However, being the repository of in-game trivia, I told him about the cakes sold by one of the vendors in Dalaran.
"I'm not high enough level to get to Dalaran." He seemed so sad.
"I can mail you one," I offered, thinking it might soothe the burn of my waiting for him to log off and putting him on ignore.
"Thanks! Just bring it with you. I want you to plan the wedding."
WTF?
"I'm a horrible planner of anything," and I am,"You'd be better off hiring one of the professionals in Orgrimaar."
"I haven't seen those." he answered.
I haven't either,"Oh sure, you see them in trade chat all the time. Very reasonable rates."
"But I like you and I want you to be a part of this. Look at the ring."
He linked the ring to me. It was a [Wedding Ring]. No armor bonus, no agility buff, no attack power. Just an expression of nerd-love.
"Just let me know where to be." Webinara is a sucker for romance. And n00b jewelry.
Please remember that I still have no idea who this person is and how I might know them.
The following day I got another message. Apparently, he had assembled his guild outside the gates of Scarlet Monastery Cathedral and they were waiting for me.
I had no notice. I hadn't picked up a cake and those things show up at the vendor on a timer.
"Now?" I asked.
"Yes. We decided to elope."

/ignore
/logoff

Maths

2009-04-17T10:09:00.004-04:00

900 posts, internet!
That's a pretty freaking insane amount of content, but I have to justify my blogging salary somehow, I suppose.
Let's review, shall we?
Does anyone enjoy the "discussions with my brain" posts?
More or less World of Warcraft talk in the future?
Has anyone figured out what my function is at my day job? I mean, besides me as of this week?
Would you prefer more technical posts or more where I disclose my interactions with co-workers and random people who happen across my path?
Anyone in the medical field (or regular viewers of Dr. Phil) care to offer up a diagnosis?
Feel free to leave a comment below with favorite or least favorite posts from pages gone by or email your opinions to geek_@_prettygeekything.com.

If you are new to the site, welcome to the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Experience*. For anyone who has hung out for the past 900 posts . . . Whoa . . . What can I say? I'm really, really sorry.

Thanks,

G

* No formal welcome is implied by this statement on behalf of Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Diet Cola Disposal Group and Tourist Mocking Enterprises. Further, any and all experiences referenced as "the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Experience" are at the sole risk of the experiencer. For the purposes of proper documentation of the experiences experienced, the standard internet pics-or-it-didn't-happen qualifier is in effect.

I'm on it! Wait. What?

2009-04-16T07:25:00.003-04:00

Tuesday the 21st will be the official first anniversary of my employment at my current company. Since I was made to jump through all kinds of hoops to get my badge access extended I must assume my contract will be renewed.
As remarkable as a that is in itself (I've requested a party with cake) the most amazing thing happened yesterday.
I had a meeting with my manager where we discussed my roles and responsibilities. Essentially, we went line-by-line over the job description I threw together months ago as a goof.
The end result is that 51 weeks after starting my job, I have been told what it is that I do.
The 51 week honeymoon is over -- Time to start cracking user skulls (maintaining control of the user acceptance testing process) and looking at LOLcats (tracking the latest trends in activity of various Internet subcultures).
While fifty-one weeks may sound like a long time to be administratively adrift, I have spent that time doing actual work. It is just now all divided up into stuff I do and stuff I farm out to other groups.
And, to be fair, fifty-one weeks is actually a record amount of time to be without a job description.
This job description beat the last record by a full eighteen months, the previous record holder having been Reliant Energy which told me after two and a half years what stuff I should cross train my overseas replacements to do.
Oh, but I trained them so hard!
And I'm pretty sure when I was done none of them had retained the skills to use a mouse.
Anyway, next week "Year Two" kicks off. If I were Batman, I'd totally be fighting The Reaper and dealing with Joe Chill before getting retconned, joining forces with Robin, then having the whole thing written off as null and void after the DC Universe re-sets itself. Again.
But I'm not Batman, which is pretty good for the whole Batman concept, were I to honestly examine my behavior, look deep inside myself to evaluate my motivations and core ethics. Which I'm not.
Both as a matter of my personal "No Self-Examination" policy and because it is not in my job description.
Hmm . . . "Not in my job description" has a pretty nice ring to it.
I'm going to create an email signature now.

Access Control

2009-04-15T07:30:00.004-04:00

I returned to my desk after lunch to find the other 50% of Tactical Services alternating between laughing and sobbing.
"I can't work." He told me.
"I know," I answered, "I'm not into it today either."
"No," his eyes took on a manic gleam,"I can't log in anywhere."
As the Earth-bound Avatars of Security, an inability to log in to the servers is like having our wings clipped, like vampires waiting on an invitation to enter a home, like Superman confronted by a Kryptonite wall. Or like me confronted by a Kryptonite wall. That stuff is carcinogenic. And likely heavy.
Anyway, this story rightly begins several months ago when someone asked us (Tactical Services) if we were in favor of keeping the number of users in the Local Administrators group small. Of course we are, and while we are at it can we keep the users off completely?
Well, that change went through yesterday at noon and it seems our approval meant a merciless culling of that group. Including our own access.
Obviously this couldn't stay that way, but the person who administratively approved the change was out of the office, so revoking the order was impossible. Further, we in Tactical Services felt comfortable in yelling about our inability to work but not in approving our own access rights countering a Managerial order due to the obvious conflict of interest.
It was decided to sling us into another Administrator group on the server.
As Tactical Services is the group responsible for granting access to the servers, the request to restore the access came to us. Of course, since our own access rights were the ones missing, we had no technical way to restore them. We would need the access we had in the first place to restore the access we had in the first place, turning the whole situation into a slightly less nerdy episode of Dr. Who.
Internet, this went on for over four hours. No kidding.
At one point I was asked to do work. It needed to get done. Not having the proper access to let me do it cleanly and according to best practices, I hacked the change into place.
I then sent an email to the group that removed my rights informing them that if they planned to remove the access for the Access Control group, they should be more thorough since I apparently still had way more ability to change something on a server than they intended.
But that was wrong of me, a reaction to the ridiculousness of the situation itself. And pretty funny.
At one point we had one group with approval to make the change but no rights and another group with the rights to make the change and no approval. There was no Corporate mechanism to form up into the Voltron of Productivity, so our little robotic lions were left on their own, growling at sudden noises and wondering who invited Pidge to the group.
My access works this morning. I have seen no paperwork documenting the changes needed to make that happen, or of the changes needed to have removed it in the first place.
I'm not new enough to actually expect that documentation to materialize, so I've been writing up my own and setting it as the desktop wallpaper on those servers, lest someone forget the terrible, terrible mistake they made.

Window

2009-04-14T07:59:00.003-04:00

Last week the meeting invitation for the weekly Monday morning staff meeting contained a special addition.
What, it was asked, was our problem.
What hinders our progress? What gets on our nerves? What process halts progress?
I thought about it most of the weekend, since not having a problem outside my control firmly places the blame for any future shortcoming firmly in the area of "my fault". That, unlike every other area of my life, is an area I strive to keep completely clutter-free and spotless. Even if that means I have to just put down new carpet and stomp the lumps flat.
Anyway, the meeting progressed as normal until ten minutes from the end when the discussion began about calling the meeting off early and getting back to work.
But I prepped! I never prep!
"Hang on!" I looked up from my doodle of aliens attacking a tank,"You asked what we would change and I have an idea!"
All eyes turned to me.
"I did some research and learned a little local I.T. history. Eight years ago there were fifteen servers and less than a thousand workstations. It was decided that these machines would be patched and upgraded on Sunday nights between 5pm and 9pm. And everyone was happy. Today, there are three thousand servers and almost seventeen thousand workstations. The outage and upgrade window hasn't budged. To make matters worse, everyone shares this Sunday night outage window. If we patch something and run into issues, the email server is down and we can't pull up contact information for the application owner. If we finish up at nine and want to submit our time for the week, we can't because the mainframe is down. Also, the volume of servers and perceived time-compression makes everyone rush through everything at a time when we can't contact anyone to test before starting the business day on Monday morning."
In retrospect, I should have spoken with my team before voicing this. I didn't ask anyone their opinion and I didn't spend any time examining the feelings of my fellow geeks.
Also, change doesn't happen here overnight. Obviously, the outage window is set in the stone of corporate procedure somewhere in a loose leaf binder labeled "The Way Things Are". The fact that that binder has a picture of the original Knight Rider on it has little bearing on anything.
Side note: Mr. Hasselhoff, how about releasing another album here in the states? I think Americans are desperate enough for it to work now.
Anyway, five hours and sixteen minutes after leaving the meeting, my concern was addressed by management in an email to the team.
Our outage window is from 5pm to 9pm n Sunday nights. However, if we don't get it all done we can also patch at any other after-hours time provided we send an email to the Change Management Office.
Effectively, the whole week is an outage window now, if we want it.
Speaking as an hourly consultant, I can only hint at the number of new pairs of backless business casual shoes in my future:
Thousands.

A Weekend Away

2009-04-13T08:22:00.002-04:00

<===This is not our picture.
Anyway, we spent Saturday on the beach and wandering the streets of Charleston.
Sunday, we went to the highly-touted Boone Hall plantation.
We thought Gwynyth might enjoy a look at a house with no access to cable TV.
Boone Hall has the longest oak avenue of any plantation. It was very impressive. And the drive through the oaks and up to the house itself revealed a picture-perfect example of an antebellum plantation.
We walked up the the hospitality center and scheduled ourselves for the first tour of the day.
We learned almost immediately that this house is not the original house.
That's fine. The Civil War took a terrible toll on South Carolina and we would be naive to expect big fancy houses to have been immune.
But then we started to hear about the history of the plantation from Bob, the tour guide.
Apparently, the house in the picture above is the fourth house on the site.
The guy that built it bought the land from the owners (who had switched from producing cotton to making bricks, anyway) during the great depression (brick sales having waned along with new construction, I assume) for $55,000.
Then he (a Canadian) tore down the third house (a tiny, authentic little thing) and built the mansion in 1935 according to the Hollywood vision of what southern plantations should look like.
What?
The whole thing is a reproduction of a misconception? And we paid $17.50 each to get in and have our hopes dashed?
There was a "Slave Street" with the servants quarters all nicely restored to their typical squalor and the smokehouse on the grounds was built in the 1750s, so that was cool.
We watched a guy speak Gullah, which was also pretty neat.
We learned that the plantation itself was the largest source of pecans at one point (before a hurricane knocked down all but two trees) and I imagine it kept an iron grip on the national candy industry. Without this estate's influence, millions of people would stop at truck stops every year to purchase nougat logs, most likely.
Gross.
We also saw no ghosts, though that possibility is just about the only reason I ever go to places where the cell signal is poor.
I also learned some very unpleasant things about okra which may result in my never eating it again. In fact, I'll just go ahead and put that on the list of vegetables I won't eat right now next to cucumbers (taste like chlorine) and raw onions (texture issues).

Over to the right

2009-04-10T07:56:00.000-04:00

Everyone!
Since I wasn't feeling quite enough attention focused firmly on me, I opened a Twitter account.
You can follow me (PrettyGeeky) through whatever you currently use to track tweets or from the handy gadget on the sidebar.
The issue I've found is that I already seem to completely spill everything in the form of a blog post, so I'm still trying to figure out exactly where Twitter falls in the scheme of my eternal information distribution network.
I have not, to date, installed an application on my phone for mobile tweeting, but I think it is only a matter of time before that happens.
I've embraced Facebook, I participate in a number of internet forums, and I Tweet and blog for one simple reason:
Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Amalgamated Aspartame Disposal and Panic Surfing LLC is a fully-transparent enterprise.
I never want the American people to question where our Federal corporate bail out funds are being applied.
The trip to Disney is a fact-finding mission, internet.
Quality blog posts cannot be churned out reliably from last year's Macbook Pro. That is an established fact.
My many herbal supplements serve to keep my brain actively producing the ideas which fuel the dreams of the readers. And also keep my prostrate healthy. But those are separate pills and I fully intend to break that out on the spreadsheet I am putting together on the advice of council.
I need not detail the amount of Federal money we spent on facial cleansers, exfoliation treatments, and gels made from the butter of endangered mammals which keeps my skin supple and radiant. This is an expectation my readers have, and I will not let them down.
Especially in these trying economic times when the rosy glow of my complexion may very well serve as the only light of hope for so many.
I bear that burden willingly in my baby-soft hands, internet.
Anyway, if you are the type to follow people on Twitter, feel free to follow me. Apparently it is not stalking at all, legally speaking.
I will, in turn, Tweet as often as I find it interesting.
Thank you again for the tax dollars keeping us afloat in sweet, sweet cash. You know. For the good of the nation or whatever.

Another Training Session

2009-04-09T08:06:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon my whole team trudged up the hill to the tower building to meet with someone from another team to discuss the anti-virus product.
I thought the point was to go over our recommended settings and exclusion lists. There are directories which should not be included in virus scanning. They either change too often or they are set up in a way which is self-isolating and having a scanner constantly try and fail to scan them is a terrible drain on system resources.
We did not have this discussion at all.
The problem with dealing with people from other technical teams here is that the seem to assume that their team is the only technical team, so they tend to speak too slowly for me to remain conscious.
The whole ninety minutes could have been saved had the guy sent an email which said:

Go to this directory, install the application, you have read access only but you can look at how everything is set up and email me if you have questions.

Instead, we got walked through mapping a network drive and installing an application.
At one point, I had to stab myself in the palm with a pen to keep from saying,"Wait! We accept the license agreement? Is that true everywhere? Is that why, in the past decade, I've never ever been able to install a piece of software at home or at work?"
This was a knowledgeable guy, but he didn't bother learning about his audience before talking to them.
I regularly get called to speak to other groups about whatever the hell it is that I do all day.
I always start with a quick check for their technical proficiency so I know how to go about explaining things.
I do this by lying.
At the beginning of my speech, I throw out some falsehood as fact. When discussing printing for remote users I like to go with,"All print jobs are converted to PDFs by the software, copied to our PrintSecure holding facilities in Bangalore, then transcribed line-by-line into a printer driver language compatible with the printer model on the user's desk."
This is nothing like what happens. "PrintSecure" doesn't exist, nor does any facility in Bangalore which my company has dealings with.
If the audience calls me on it I laugh, explain why I lied, and proceed to speak "Geek" with them. Surprisingly, knowing they have passed some bizarre screening seems to make them happy, which is just the kind of audience you want when you are explaining why you aren't going to help them.
If they do not react at all to my lie, or nod knowingly at one another as though they had engineered the real-time driver creation print solution themselves, I'm free to spend the rest of the hour saying whatever the hell I want, spinning our environment into a unicorn-powered magical wonder network. I still get to tell them why our group won't be helping them, but instead of the actual technical reason I get to tell them it is because we can't get budget approval for the gold-plated rocket pony I want.
Ideally, this will someday result in a signed purchase request making it through various layers of management and the eventual delivery of my rocket pony.

Anyway, apparently if you want software to install, you need to accept the license agreement. I honestly hope that helps someone, though I doubt it will come as news to anyone reading this blog.

Other Jobs In I.T.

2009-04-08T08:18:00.000-04:00

I've suffered disk drive crashes plenty of times, and I'm guilty of not backing stuff up.
I actually have several crashed drives at Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng World Wide Amalgamated Corporate Head Quarters which I intend to keep until technology develops to revive them, much like I intend to have my own head frozen in the event my daily exfoliation and moisturization process begins to deliver less-than-stunning results.
Anyway, I have felt, both personally and professionally, the loss associated with a data repository failure.
While I have always turned to friends, co-workers and alcohol (sometimes a combination of the three) in order to deal with my grief maturely, I had wondered, until this morning, if there was a more well-defined mechanism.
It turns out there is for clients of Drive Savers, a company which specializes in data recovery.
I think the technical process of recovering data from failed hardware is fascinating and I've often considered moving into the "Data Recovery" business, but mostly for the off chance that the data which needs to be recovered has simply been stolen, leading me on an action-packed chase across the globe after an international band of data thieves with accents so I could make smart-assed comments like Bruce Willis would do. If Bruce Willis was into data recovery, you know.
Apparently Drive Savers is not hiring action heroes at this time, unfortunately.
The point I was originally flailing at is that they do have, on staff, full time, a professional "Data Loss Counselor".
This person basically listens to the customer as they discuss their loss. Working in data recovery, they can also recommend options to get the data back. In the event this is impossible, however, the Data Loss Counselor is also a certified grief counselor.
In an interview she said she hears from distraught people constantly, sometimes from one panicked I.T. guy one day and then from another at the same company on the next day because the first guy got fired and all the broken stuff got turned over to someone else.
It must be enormously stressful to hear from users in this kind of distress all day, every day, as a function of one's job.
It also has to look seriously sweet on a resume.

Tuesday

2009-04-07T08:18:00.003-04:00

Since Microsoft releases patches once a month on a Tuesday, there is a regular security meeting to go over those. They only do that on a single Tuesday each month, but the meeting here is every Tuesday, recurring until death.
The process in these non-Patch Tuesday Tuesday meetings is the same every time. We look at scan results, argue over the validity, promise to fix any straggling servers before Friday (even though the outage window is Sunday night) and then spend 45 minutes discussing how this process (the meeting process, not the patching process) is being refined.
One of the more interesting meetings concluded with the meeting organizer asking everyone if they felt like they had gotten good use of their time in attending the meeting.
This was the meeting organizer.
There could not be a more loaded question in a corporate environment without violating the code of conduct for sexual harassment.
The answer, of course, is "Yes. Time spent here in this meeting was time well-spent. Let us take the information we have freely shared and venture forth into a new age of improved I.T. functionality." I mean, that is the answer since I'm a consultant. If I were full-time I'd have answered with saliva-laced profanity.
After that meeting, we have a meeting with our management to discuss what was said in the first meeting. After that, there is a closed-door session where we go over what we said and heard and what that looks like in comparison to current corporate rumors and/or reality.
A few hours later, there is a conference call with the participants of the first meeting to discuss progress, even though any actual progress would have happened at the expense of our uptime agreements with our customers.
Then an email is sent summarizing the conference call.
I can't decide if this would be more or less funny if I were making any of it up so I'll just put a picture of John Stamos here.

Problem Solving

2009-04-06T07:56:00.002-04:00

A meeting first thing on a Monday morning is pretty brutal, especially when it is early enough that the first cup of coffee isn't over and people expect a person to know what he is doing this week.
But this is an every Monday thing and I've taken to writing down my plans on a Post-It note on Friday so I can hand it to whoever sits next to me on Monday so that they can just read what I planned.
If there are questions, I can generally answer them. Or at least grunt knowingly, which seems to accomplish the same effect -- That of making the questions stop.
When the topic switched mid-meeting to why a co-worker was taking three days off this week, I snapped to full consciousness.
I've been fascinated for the past year with the wildlife dwelling in the greater metropolitan Columbia area.
I've seen foxes and deer and an otter, all without having to get out of range of a Starbucks.
But my co-worker is taking part of a week off to snake-proof her yard.
There is apparently a product called "Snake-A-Way" which is sprinkled around the perimeter of the yard. This prompted me to ask what would happen if the snake were already inside the perimeter. Would it be trapped there? Growing ever more hungry and bitter?
These questions were not well received, amazingly.
So I led the meeting into full-on problem-solving mode.
The take-away from this particular meeting is that there is no solution readily commercially available.
However, our official recommendation was for her to purchase an eagle or, depending on the local laws which we (admittedly) did not research, an owl.
When she said she owned little yippy dogs the solution of adding a large avian predator was even more appealing to some members of my team, while disregarded by a separate dog-loving faction which advocated burning the house to the ground and renting an upstairs apartment in the university district.
The other thing which came from the meeting was an action item for Management to reschedule the Monday meetings for after lunch for some reason.