Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

Yesterday I learned something very sad about myself.
I arrived at work and grabbed a few cups of coffee. I built a server and rigged it up for its role in the infrastructure.
As I was sitting down to review some open issues a co-worker stopped by, gestured straight down (the direction of the Skyline Cafe) and said, "Caffeine?"
I nodded dumbly and followed him towards the elevators, planning to pick up my customary 80 ounces of Coke Zero, 20 for right away and the other three bottles to maintain their cool in my laptop bag/drink cooler for consumption as the day progressed.
We entered the cafe and I stumbled to the cooler.
There was no Coke Zero.
Furthermore, there was no Diet Coke.
There were Diet Dr. Peppers and Diet Mountain Dew, but no Coke-branded colas.
I walked behind the shelves and looked at the stacks of bottles, figuring even room-temperature Diet Coke is better than no Diet Coke at all.
There were none there.
I tried to remain calm.
After my co-worker made his purchase, I went back upstairs and had another 20 ounce cup of coffee.
As I finished it, someone asked me a mildly technical question.
I realized that both my liver and my brain were powdery dry.
The same co-worker that had gone to the cafe with me earlier noted the blank yet panicked look on my face. He made some polite excuses and escorted me to the stairwell.
"We don't usually come this way," I weakly protested.
"This time we are," he said, matter-of-factly, "And I doubt you are in any condition to argue."
He was right.
He badged us through the doorway to the executive floor and I followed him into a room I'd never seen. There was a tiny refrigerator in there containing eight canned Diet Cokes. He swiped one and gave it to me.
I drained it before we made it back to the stairwell.
About an hour later, there were warm Diet Cokes stacked up in the cafe downstairs. I bought four.
Until this morning, I had no idea how fully addicted to caramel color and aspartame I really am.
Quickly (hydrated with Diet Cola) I formulated a plan in the event this should happen again.
I'm leaving.
It is really for the best. I'll get in my car and drive somewhere with Diet Colas. I'll come back, but only after I feel human again.
I'm all about "Business Continuity" and "Disaster Recovery".

Okay. On to other things:

I found some stuff that may come in handy.
First, if anyone gets some kind of techno-something as a gift this holiday season and (for whatever reason) it doesn't work and you find yourself thumbing through the manual for the tech support phone number, there are ways, even in the understaffed holiday season, to skip through all the computerized screening mechanisms.
GetHuman is the first stop in getting through to an actual person when calling tech support. It has a full listing of the various hot keys and catch phrases that will get a person needing support connected to a living human providing that support in as little time as possible. Go Team Shortcut!
The second link is possibly less life-changing even if it is more fun. ComicVine has a listing of superheroes that (according to my half-assed research) seems pretty accurate. It has galleries and histories and an index of power comparisons.
I did find one mistake which I will correct here:

Let me make this clear . . . Jean Grey died in issue #137 of the Uncanny X-Men. Any later appearance of Jean Grey is a filthy, stinking lie.