Sometimes I <3 The Phone

Hello, Mr. Pass, this is (redacted) your Aetna representative. Thank you for holding. How may we assist you?

I'm not sure. We keep submitting claims and you guys keep kicking them back denied.
This specific call is in reference to claim number (redacted), though it also applies a couple of times a month since May.

Let me pull up your record. One moment.

[Hold Music, Light Jazz, Piano is a bit . . . Jarring, pre-coffee]

Alright, I have your information. We can't pay on that because the condition is pre-existing.

But it isn't. I was covered through my last job. And the job before that. And a few back, actually.

You need to submit a certification of prior coverage.

I did, to the fax number (redacted) on July 30th. Would you like me to fax the receipt for that?

One moment, let me check your records again.

[Hold Music, Light Jazz, I hold the phone away from my head]

We have no record of that fax.

You should look again.

Can you re-send it?

Why, if it didn't work last time?

I really can't help you in this case unless you submit the proper forms.

Okay. I understand.

Is there anything else I can help you with?

Well, since I called you, I know what you do for a living. You don't know anything about me, though and that seems rude of me.

(uncomfortable laughter)

See, I work for [company name deleted]. I'm in Information Security. One of my jobs is providing guidance on litigation involving the Heath Insurance Privacy and Portability Act of 1996. The other things I do are less pleasant. I'm enjoying this role a lot and look forward to having you as my health care provider for the duration of this assignment.

Hold please.

[Oddly, there was no music.]

Great news! I've found your fax!

Imagine that!

I've re-submitted your claim.

And all claims back to May?

Yes. All claims back to May. You should have a new explanation of coverage and a check within 10 days. Is there anything else I can do to help?

Not at this time. Thank you for your help.

I've Pre-Ordered

This game is the reason the Nintendo Wii was invented. It may be the reason video gaming was invented. I say "may" only because of the miraculous advances in medicine in the 80s when researchers finally discovered a cure for Pac Man Fever.
I've long wanted to wield my very own lightsaber. Mostly in staff meetings, sure, but it is a persistent ache, deep in the geekiest inner core of my being.
There have been games in the past where it was possible to use one, but the controls have always been more about mashing 'A' than slicing the controller through the air.
This has created a certain distance between reality and the lightsaber in game, a distance which has grown less with newer technology to be sure, but a tangible distance separating the lightsaber from a blissful geek.
While I've avoided demos and screenshots of The Force Unleashed, I was inadvertently exposed when Gwynyth dragged us into a Gamestop last week.
The demo itself is a couple of cut scenes and a single level of game play.
I could not help but pick up the controller. It . . . called to me.
I think it must be like when Shana passes a red sign in the mall which states "40% off the already reduced price".
I would assume the feeling is the same, like having one's soul exist as a string from head to foot gently but insistently pulled in a direction on an almost subconscious level. There is no reason to resist the pull. There is no desire to, either.
Darth Vader instructed me to kill a bunch of people using my Force skills. I was totally on board with that.
In fact, even without the pep talk from the Dark Lord of the Sith, I'd probably have been pretty okay with it.
I swung the lightsaber around a little bit and destroyed a couple of droids. Gwynyth was shocked and disappointed with me.
"Dark Side, Sweetie," I explained, patting her on the head while using the Force to pick up a crate and smash it into another droid.
She stopped watching at that point, which kind of makes the rest of this okay.
I reached the end of a hallway and was informed that I could use a Force push to open the door.
This door did not slide gently open. It bent in the middle, crumpled like tissue and fell in. On top of a Stormtrooper.
The next Stormtrooper was a little quicker, managing to fire off a couple of easily deflected blaster bolts before I got the targeting right to pick him up and toss him off a catwalk. He screamed when he fell.
After wiping the wet, hot tears of sheer joy out of my field of vision, I entered a hangar area of some kind.
There were TIE Fighters and large crates and a lot of foolish, foolish people shooting at me.
I picked up a large box of something and flung it at a group of them. Most did not get back up, the survivors I hurled into hangar walls and TIE Fighter hulls.
At one point, I picked up a Stormtrooper and threw him into a large group of other Stormtroopers, then into a wall, then through a Transparisteel window.
Force lightning took care of a few of the stragglers and a few more fell to the red twirling blade of death I had become.
As a gamer, I feel it quite likely that my whole gaming life has been leading up to that moment, right there in some random Gamestop, long after my family had moved on to some other store with a gentle "I've got my phone" whispering against the back of my consciousness as the only sign that I was alone.
Force lightning crackled against a bulkhead as I slammed an engine housing into steel doors in front of me, battering them loudly, the backswings punctuated by the panicked sounds of the Stormtroopers on the other side making plans to defy my advance.
How dare they!?!
Do they not see what they are up against!?!
Do they really believe their pathetic technology can stand against the power of the Dark Side!?!
Part of me knows they do not. They merely make plans because that is all they know. They are unenlightened creatures clinging to the faint hope of their own possible survival.
That part of me is the inner geek, finally swinging a lightsaber around.
The inner geek does not intend to stop.
Later on in the game, I gather there are other locations and enemies. At some point, a rancor like Jabba's must be defeated. And there are other Force users to defeat. But I could be happy if the whole game was set right in that first hangar area if only it didn't completely run out of Stormtroopers so fast.

Oh, No! Saturday Post!

Something must have gone terribly wrong!
I don't drag politics into Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng.
Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng is too pure to get down in the mud with the scumbags and fight it out.
Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng is about the high road. Not specifically taking the high road, mind you, but just keeping tabs on its location in case I need a speedy escape.
However, McCain's Official Blogger just said nasty things about my people (paragraph 4), so I feel obligated to respond.
It is possible "Official Blogger" Michael Goldfarb doesn't check his facts any better than the all of the Unofficial bloggers (small 'b'), but I'd Google before hitting 'Publish' just in case.
He obviously forgot about Ziggurat-Con, which was all about awesome because a bunch of troops deployed in Iraq (about as far from Mom's basement as an American can get) wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons and a bunch of gamers back home sent them gear for that. They even got rulebooks, dice and supplies from Hasbro (who currently owns Dungeons and Dragons).
Thousands of people in the military play games, online, console and pencil and paper. McCain claims our troops as his base, but obviously only the ones who do not roll dice around with their friends.
I'll give him credit, Goldfarb's apology is pretty epic, but the sad fact is that Obama has had a booth at every major gaming, sci-fi and comic book convention since he announced his candidacy. McCain has made no effort to reach out to us at all. His first acknowledgement of gamers came in the form of an attack on his website.
If he'd like us to get out of the basement and vote, he should ask. Hell, we can vote absentee during a roll for initiative. If there is a grapple check to be made, anyone not directly involved can head down the the polls and wait in line while that gets worked out. Holy crap, grapple rules in 3.5 are a freaking nightmare!
Anyway, my anger isn't lonely anger.
Here is Hasbro's response.
I'm still amazed, I suppose, at the ignorance some people have about gaming and gamers.
My Mom lives in Louisiana. If she even had a basement it would totally flood due to the high water table.
For the record, this is not an official Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng endorsement of Obama.
It is a specific "OMGWTFNOOB" directed at McCain.

More Office-Speak

I count any week where I learn a new office catch-phrase to be a total waste of 40+ hours, regardless of what was accomplished during the rest of the week.
Internet, this week has achieved fail.
We have an odd situation in the project.
Our new environment is coming online, but the old environment is still running.
No one on my team has ever been involved with the old stuff, but the team responsible for maintaining it has moved to distance themselves from it.
The old stuff is no longer being watched by anyone, and the patching has dropped off completely.
This responsibility has been batted around for about three months by people two levels of management above me.
By definition it still belongs to the old group.
But it also belongs to me, also by definition.
When this occurs, if a consensus cannot be reached, a MOU is generated.
"MOU" is my sparkling new word.
The Memorandum of Understanding is a kind of one-sided contract lining out responsibilities between two groups of people.
I think it may be pronounced "mauw" as in "mouse", but the "e" may change that. So it could be "moo" as in "mousse", but there is still that extra "e" thing and also "mousse" is french, which isn't even a real language, probably.
French is more of a code for making fun of Americans.
So while I'm not sure if it is "mauw" or "moo", I'm pretty sure it isn't "Mao" as in Chairman.
But anyway.
This resolution-generating document seems to require no strict guidelines for establishing cause or justification or truth, rather the first team to get the MOU through the approval process wins, having achieved Understanding first.
While this quest for understanding seems completely Zen on the surface, there is a lot of turmoil in getting the wording non-confrontational enough so that the document can be exchanged between members of upper management.
Normally, these elusive staff members only communicate by means of fruit basket, so the flinging of words marks something special indeed.
As it turns out, true Understanding is also totally optional, and masking the document with technical terms (or possibly french) can actually accelerate the process.
While I hate learning new buzzwords, I think I can truly embrace a document where speed beats accuracy and winners and losers are clearly established by email time stamp.

The Wall . . . It Is . . . Perhaps . . . Not . . . Natural

Please note the One Coat Guarantee.
We've used Kilz brand paint for just about ever.
It isn't that we are particularly brand-loyal. It all comes down, in the end, to just hating to repeat ourselves.
Shana and I like to place paint on a wall, wait for it to dry, then hang stuff on it and push the furniture back into place.
We are not about painting a surface, waiting, then painting the same surface again, then repeating the whole wait/paint process until the job is "over".
We paint and we get on with our lives.
Kilz has been really good about enabling our lifestyle in this way.
In Houston, our bedroom went from white (yawn!) to vibrant, angry red in an afternoon. Gwynyth's room went from the same boring white to lavender in a similar time frame.
Our old family room went from big long white walls to four different earth tones in a single pass.
Going into the de-yellowfication process for the new Global Headquarters, we were confident in the ability of Kilz to reduce the number of steps involved in the same way they always had.
And yet.
Covering a yellow with a darker color seems like it would be pretty easy.
Getting a black Sharpie stain out of a white shirt pocket (no pocket protector jokes, please) is pretty much impossible, while initially covering a section of the white 100% cotton broadcloth with black pigment is almost laughably easy.
The same applies to walls, since white walls and white shirts co-exist in the same segment of reality.
The walls in the Global Headquarters do not exist in this same space.
The first "coat" of Kilz was more of a pizza stain quality than one of uniform one-coat coverage.
Yellow would bleed through red. A lot.
The second coat would also bleed through, if we waited a crazy amount of time for the first coat to dry. If it was at all tacky, the first coat would peel up around the roller, exposing yellow ever-so-slightly pigmented pink, like brain matter, but flattened.
The third coat achieved something like uniformity, but only if we applied enough paint to actually form drips on the wall.
In all, it took about five coats.
A total of four gallons of one-coat coverage, not-cheap paint for one room.
The three trips to the paint store were made tolerable by timing them during the tedious drying cycle.
We debated for the first several hours of the project about what could cause it. The humidity is lower here. The airflow is good. The walls were clean and free of texture.
The roller and brushes and edging tools are all exactly the same as the kind used in Texas.
It was a total mystery.
By the second day, the discussion died away in favor of resigned sighs and occasional grunts of effort as the ladder was dragged around the room again or someone decided that jumping with the roller against the wall was an acceptable way of getting another coat on the high-up parts.
I've decided to go with the traditional response to the unknown. In the case of non-sticking paint, I've come to the tribal decision that the walls are haunted.
Bad spirits dwell there, no doubt.
Our total lack of goat sacrifices has resulted in arduous labor forced upon us by the drywall ancestors.
Sure, you could say that there might be an issue with the overall surface and lack of prep, but there are millions of years of tradition which firmly put the blame for the unknown on hostile spirits.
And possibly yeti.
Though I personally think paint would stick pretty well to a yeti.
If you were going to paint crytozoological creatures.
Which I am not.
I doubt the Loch Ness Monster would take paint at all, what with the glossy black hide.
You could totally coat a chupacabra, probably.
Not that I endorse that.

This One Time I Was Honest In A Meeting

With a project the size and scope of the one we are currently undergoing, there are bound to be a lot of meetings.
After all, we are migrating a whole lot of servers and consolidating down from five separate farms to seven and from 450 servers to a slim-and-trim 500 or so.
Okay, so the "consolidation" part of the migration isn't going so well. I'll schedule a meeting about it to see if that will change anything.
The point is (and I can't recall the last post where "the point is" came in anywhere under six-hundred words into it) we meet a lot. We do it to make sure that we get everything moved from the old into the new with the exception of the problems, flaws, concerns, poor design choices, compliance issues and fire hazards.
This is our shot at fixing the stuff that annoys the break-fix people.
I was understandably disappointed to be involved in a discussion where it was decided that we would keep and old and insecure idle-time-out setting because we didn't want to inconvenience the users.
Hold up a minute.
"We didn't want to inconvenience the users?!?"
I'm not on the "Convenience Team".
I'm not a member of the "Usability Help Squad".
I have never endorsed an organization known as the "Coddle the Users and Give Them Hugs Department".
I'm in Security.
Sometimes, as a joke, I run it together: "I'm insecurity". And then I follow it up with "Are you sure you meant to wear that sweater with those slacks? Well, okay, if you say so."
This is what I do, damn it.
Anyway, while I was disappointed to be involved in the discussion, please imagine for a moment how upset I might be to find myself on Tuesday morning in my third actual meeting about it.
I said, "In addition to server consolidation, this project was supposed to remedy long-deficient security settings. If we don't do this now, we are wasting our chance to fix something."
I also said, "We have no control over users at home, this setting gives us a low-impact way to limit access to authorized users."
Later on I said, "If someone opens a screen full of sensitive data and then gets up to get another Venti Latte, a stoned and slow Barista could inadvertently provide a window of opportunity for some identity thief to make the haul of a lifetime right there in Starbucks."
Towards the end I was reduced to, "This is not the last migration. There is no 'Migration to End All Migrations.' Someday, maybe soon, something new will come out and we will repeat this process right down to the meeting level. If you think we won't be at this conference table again, or possibly one with a plasma top which displays network topology in a hologram and dispenses espresso, you are kidding yourself."
And then, I closed with, "I hope in the future meeting about this issue someone brings cookies because then at least we'd get something out of it."
The admin added it to the meeting minutes, so I specified that I like chocolate chips.

My Window -- Let Me Show You It

We have a set outage window at my company.
Every Sunday between 5 and 10pm, we can do whatever patches and upgrades and fixes we need to do.
All the users expect this outage, and none of them is surprised to get booted off the servers.
On Sunday, I needed to apply some patches manually to a few servers. Our automated patching tool has been disabled and the guy who normally patched the servers was not available to do them.
I logged into the first server half an hour early, downloaded the patches and placed them in a network folder so that I could run them on all the servers.
I applied the patches at exactly 5pm. It was beautiful. There was no error message and I was able to reset the file preference which the Microsoft patch broke.
I can honesty say that of all the patches I've ever applied, this set was firmly in the top 50 in terms of smoothness.
I logged out of the server and moved on to the next.
Login: Fail
Not like "Your password is wrong" fail, or "You do not have rights to login" fail.
Like "Unable to authenticate" fail.
My login information was not moving past the server login screen.
I used my own account instead of the administration account.
I used the administration account with a purposely bad password.
I used a totally made up account with no password at all.
The error message never changed.
Someone, somewhere, had turned off some authentication functionality as part of the same 5pm to 10pm outage window I was using. This is fine. This is the time we are all supposed to use. It just prevented me from doing my job for 5 hours.
I went to email the people in charge of that part of authentication. Unfortunately, email was down as a part of the same 5pm to 10pm outage window.
Seriously.
I kind of got a little twitchy at this point.
See, process is supposed to help us with junk like this. Process coordinates our I.T. efforts and forge us into a shining sword of productivity and efficiency.
Or, in the case where we all share the same outage window, it uses the same sword to cut us all off at the knees. Productively and efficiently.
In the end, I had to actually drive in to work and apply the stupid patches by hand, using time-honored techniques brought over from the Old Country.
The end result is the same, I suppose.
Security is assured across the enterprise thanks to the tireless dedication of nerds committed to working odd hours.
And bill for it.
Mercilessly.
As though I had been personally wronged, somehow.