First, I'd like to thank Ted for the contribution of Coke Reward points. When the human body is as completely devastated by diet cola as mine is, every bit of progress is a much needed step towards being able to drink actual fluids again.
Yesterday we discussed data security for the servers we are decommissioning all over the world. Most aren't worth shipping back to Houston for resale, but we can't just toss them into some landfill, either.
I mean, we could toss them in a landfill (mercury, lead, rare earth magnets and all) except that someone could potentially get possibly sensitive information off the hard drives.
Any mention of that and my inner voice instantly screams, "Must protect the data! Must protect the data!"
In fact, that stupid internal scream is what makes me hang on to paperbacks I've already read and back up (sometimes in more than two places) MP3s I'd be embarrassed to admit to owning.
The fact is, we don't need the data on those drives anymore. We copied it other places before the servers were powered off and they have been off long enough for anyone missing anything to yell about it by now. We could erase the drives.
We could boot the servers and format everything, but unless we erase and overwrite every sector seven times, I will never sleep peacefully again.
My co-workers know this, so they offered to go with the "giant magnet" option. In this process, we get a giant magnet and rub it all over the drives vigorously until we are happy. Unfortunately, no one here seems to have a giant magnet or really know where to get one and if we did, we would never want it on the same floor as our actual production servers.
"Isn't there a more violent option?" I asked. To be truthful, this is also the question I ask in any meeting where I possibly drifted off a bit and traded paying attention for organizing my mental list of stuff I'd do if lightsabers were real. "Isn't there a more violent option?" fills just about any uncomfortable silence quite nicely while triggering the self-preservation instincts of the others in the meeting so that no one questions the skull and kitten doodles on my note pad.
Manny said that in the Navy they use axes and sledgehammers to totally destroy old hard drives and, more interestingly to me, they keep the sledgehammers and axes next to the computers at all times in case the facility is overrun (by, I assume, radioactive zombies of some kind).
And then I took a moment to think of the enormous self-discipline of our geeks in uniform serving in the armed forces.
If we kept axes and sledgehammers next to our computers . . .
Let me just say I'd void the hell out of some warranties just about every day. In fact, I'd probably carry the hammer around with me everywhere. And I'd give it a name, too. Like "Smashy" or "Big happy object that makes the beeping stop" or "The Key Launcher".
I'd probably be known as "That guy with the hammer" at work until I eventually took a bad swing and broke the handle. Then I'd become "That guy with the big freaking ax".
Hopefully, by the time the ax wears out we will be able to purchase actual lightsabers, which would be more efficient and cooler looking.
I'm all about more efficient and cooler looking.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
I'll try my best to avoid spoilers, but I can tell you right now that my best isn't very good.
If you haven't made the soon to be constitutionally-mandated trip to see Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean 3 yet, you may want to skip this post until you have.
I've done some informal research among the geeks at work who have seen the movie. My own opinion seems to be off, I guess. That is generally to be expected, though the way my opinion is off makes me a little uncomfortable.
Usually, my opinions of a film's shortcomings run along the lines of "not enough explosions" or "it would have been more awesome if the main character had been a ninja". A bit of trivia: That last one was my actual review of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
So what offended me about the third pirate movie?
Certainly, the duelling was amazing.
There were almost enough CGI effects and weird creatures to infest my nightmares for a suitable period of time.
To top it off, there were quite a few times when sail-powered wooden ships exploded like tanker trucks filled with jet fuel and frozen concentrated orange juice, so even that base was totally covered.
Sadly (and this confession has resulted in several opinions of me being lowered among my fellow geeks -- and geek cred takes time to build) I was upset by the ending.
This is your final spoiler warning!
How, after inflicting the boring romance between Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner upon millions of people for three freaking movies, can they end it like that?
I may be alone in this opinion. In fact, from what I can gather, I'm the only one who hated it that much and, as some have hinted, I'm a sap.
But seriously! That's the end?
I hate cliffhangers, but if that is what this is, I'll embrace it as a good one. If (and only if) they make a part four (and since people stand in line to push money at Disney for this franchise as though that money were infested with scurvy it is a possibility) I can come back, renewed, tri-cornered hat jauntily askew, stuffed pirate on my shoulder spouting microchip-embedded profanity for all to enjoy, to buy the giant tub of popcorn and enjoy it again.
If not, and the series ends like this, I have no choice but to pretend that the second and third movies never actually happened. And I liked them! It will make me sad to cram them into the already crowded denial section of my mind. But I will do it. I'll make room somehow. Perhaps by admitting that certain advertising elements of the McDonald's campaigns of the late 70's actually exist. Whoa. When I can type that without shuddering as though someone marched across my grave, maybe.
To sum up:
Pro - Sword fighting
Pro - CGI awesomeness
Pro - Explosions
Pro - Implied ninjas, expressed pirates
Pro - Almost too much Johnny Depp
Con - The freaking ending made me want to kill and kill and kill
If you haven't made the soon to be constitutionally-mandated trip to see Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean 3 yet, you may want to skip this post until you have.
I've done some informal research among the geeks at work who have seen the movie. My own opinion seems to be off, I guess. That is generally to be expected, though the way my opinion is off makes me a little uncomfortable.
Usually, my opinions of a film's shortcomings run along the lines of "not enough explosions" or "it would have been more awesome if the main character had been a ninja". A bit of trivia: That last one was my actual review of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
So what offended me about the third pirate movie?
Certainly, the duelling was amazing.
There were almost enough CGI effects and weird creatures to infest my nightmares for a suitable period of time.
To top it off, there were quite a few times when sail-powered wooden ships exploded like tanker trucks filled with jet fuel and frozen concentrated orange juice, so even that base was totally covered.
Sadly (and this confession has resulted in several opinions of me being lowered among my fellow geeks -- and geek cred takes time to build) I was upset by the ending.
This is your final spoiler warning!
How, after inflicting the boring romance between Elizabeth Swan and Will Turner upon millions of people for three freaking movies, can they end it like that?
I may be alone in this opinion. In fact, from what I can gather, I'm the only one who hated it that much and, as some have hinted, I'm a sap.
But seriously! That's the end?
I hate cliffhangers, but if that is what this is, I'll embrace it as a good one. If (and only if) they make a part four (and since people stand in line to push money at Disney for this franchise as though that money were infested with scurvy it is a possibility) I can come back, renewed, tri-cornered hat jauntily askew, stuffed pirate on my shoulder spouting microchip-embedded profanity for all to enjoy, to buy the giant tub of popcorn and enjoy it again.
If not, and the series ends like this, I have no choice but to pretend that the second and third movies never actually happened. And I liked them! It will make me sad to cram them into the already crowded denial section of my mind. But I will do it. I'll make room somehow. Perhaps by admitting that certain advertising elements of the McDonald's campaigns of the late 70's actually exist. Whoa. When I can type that without shuddering as though someone marched across my grave, maybe.
To sum up:
Pro - Sword fighting
Pro - CGI awesomeness
Pro - Explosions
Pro - Implied ninjas, expressed pirates
Pro - Almost too much Johnny Depp
Con - The freaking ending made me want to kill and kill and kill
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, somewhere between the smoking grill and the pool transformed into a kid-filled splash-fest, I relaxed.
You may have heard a great noise, like a mighty redwood tree struck years before by lightning finally splitting down the middle and crashing to the loamy forest floor below. That would have been my shoulders reversing their previous course towards my ears and settling, once again, at "shoulder-level".
We visited with friends and watched the kids not drown for about eight solid hours. Then we went home to sleep the sleep of the guiltless, to wake up refreshed and ready for a short week crammed with awesome.
Yes, I gamed over the weekend. I found the Arathi Basin so filled with n00bs I spent much of my time frustrated and cursing my own team for having allowed the Alliance to gather so many resources time and time again.
I tried to enforce a "strategy", and when that idea fell by the wayside I settled for a "plan" which was honestly at one point replaced by my "directive" (and even later "suggestion") that my team mates not die so much.
It seems that even that bit of advice was largely ignored.
You may have heard a great noise, like a mighty redwood tree struck years before by lightning finally splitting down the middle and crashing to the loamy forest floor below. That would have been my shoulders reversing their previous course towards my ears and settling, once again, at "shoulder-level".
We visited with friends and watched the kids not drown for about eight solid hours. Then we went home to sleep the sleep of the guiltless, to wake up refreshed and ready for a short week crammed with awesome.
Yes, I gamed over the weekend. I found the Arathi Basin so filled with n00bs I spent much of my time frustrated and cursing my own team for having allowed the Alliance to gather so many resources time and time again.
I tried to enforce a "strategy", and when that idea fell by the wayside I settled for a "plan" which was honestly at one point replaced by my "directive" (and even later "suggestion") that my team mates not die so much.
It seems that even that bit of advice was largely ignored.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
We attended one of Gwynyth's swim meets yesterday.
I suspect that Gwynyth's stopping to turn to the side of the pool and smile at us may have hurt her time overall, though the other team was what we "in the business" refer to as "weak".
Frankly, it is a wonder there aren't regular drownings at that team's practices. I attribute that to the possibility that their pool is shallow, or perhaps drained of water before they enter.
And then, just before Gwynyth's final race, the sky opened in south Texas fashion, soaking the spectators and sending the competing team into fits of water fear, further cementing our team's eventual triumph.
It may seem a tad harsh to speak this way about children, but they claimed an "athleticism". They dared to issue a challenge. They have been taught the folly of this, and I doubt we will hear such talk until, perhaps, district.
I suspect that Gwynyth's stopping to turn to the side of the pool and smile at us may have hurt her time overall, though the other team was what we "in the business" refer to as "weak".
Frankly, it is a wonder there aren't regular drownings at that team's practices. I attribute that to the possibility that their pool is shallow, or perhaps drained of water before they enter.
And then, just before Gwynyth's final race, the sky opened in south Texas fashion, soaking the spectators and sending the competing team into fits of water fear, further cementing our team's eventual triumph.
It may seem a tad harsh to speak this way about children, but they claimed an "athleticism". They dared to issue a challenge. They have been taught the folly of this, and I doubt we will hear such talk until, perhaps, district.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Yeah, so I don't think the power structure shift lasted as long as anyone expected it might, but the way it ended surprised even me.
You see, I work set hours. The only joy of getting to work early is getting home at a decent hour, and when our intern suggested a 24 hour rotation between the three of us, with him pulling a co-shift with one of us during intern hours of 9:30 to 2:30, I lost it a little bit and said something along the lines of:
"I'm going to cut you some slack. Trust me, just shut your mouth, turn around, and walk away.
"Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else -- word one -- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a great machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this Fear Engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
"When it begins, you will hear the sounds of children screaming -- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my darkness before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
"I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."
Or something.
It took very little time to get my desk chair re-adjusted to the hottness.
You see, I work set hours. The only joy of getting to work early is getting home at a decent hour, and when our intern suggested a 24 hour rotation between the three of us, with him pulling a co-shift with one of us during intern hours of 9:30 to 2:30, I lost it a little bit and said something along the lines of:
"I'm going to cut you some slack. Trust me, just shut your mouth, turn around, and walk away.
"Up until now, I've been polite. If you say anything else -- word one -- I will kill myself. And when my tainted spirit finds its destination, I will topple the master of that dark place. From my black throne, I will lash together a great machine of bone and blood, and fueled by my hatred for you this Fear Engine will bore a hole between this world and that one.
"When it begins, you will hear the sounds of children screaming -- as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of nothing will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving crows. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my darkness before you are incinerated. Then, as tears of bubbling pitch stream down my face, my dark work will begin.
"I will open one of my six mouths, and I will sing the song that ends the Earth."
Or something.
It took very little time to get my desk chair re-adjusted to the hottness.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Wednesday featured the return of our intern -- Long may he reign.
I, for one, welcome our new intern overlord.
Yeah, so now that he is handling the technical decisions, I've had time to concentrate on my "lifting of things" abilities, so I guess it is working out okay.
Do you have any idea how many flapjacks it takes to fill a large cardboard box? The staff at IHOP was supportive at first, but they made me wait in the parking lot towards the end of the process. Also, they only look light and fluffy. That box was quite heavy.
I had to carry it in myself, since the cart was being used to deliver the multi-monitor set up for our intern in the area formerly known as "my cubicle".
It's alright, though, because the carpet is softer and less smelly than it looks and I can always use the corporate wireless, even though it is dog slow and has no external internet access.
This is only really a problem when our intern has me watching an Ebay auction for him. At those times, I can just plug in at the port in the storage closet. We can't let him get bid sniped, after all.
An intern needs a kayak, obviously, for reasons I'm certain he will share with me in his own time.
I need to go and rub this painful "smile ache" out of my cheeks before I cramp up.
I, for one, welcome our new intern overlord.
Yeah, so now that he is handling the technical decisions, I've had time to concentrate on my "lifting of things" abilities, so I guess it is working out okay.
Do you have any idea how many flapjacks it takes to fill a large cardboard box? The staff at IHOP was supportive at first, but they made me wait in the parking lot towards the end of the process. Also, they only look light and fluffy. That box was quite heavy.
I had to carry it in myself, since the cart was being used to deliver the multi-monitor set up for our intern in the area formerly known as "my cubicle".
It's alright, though, because the carpet is softer and less smelly than it looks and I can always use the corporate wireless, even though it is dog slow and has no external internet access.
This is only really a problem when our intern has me watching an Ebay auction for him. At those times, I can just plug in at the port in the storage closet. We can't let him get bid sniped, after all.
An intern needs a kayak, obviously, for reasons I'm certain he will share with me in his own time.
I need to go and rub this painful "smile ache" out of my cheeks before I cramp up.
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