Last night was National Night Out and our neighborhood met in a driveway less than a block from our place. It was good to visit with people who have lived in the neighborhood as long as we have, especially if we've never seen them before ever.
We got to exchange stories of mysterious police activity and complain about the lawns of those people who didn't show up for the gathering. They never edge, those slackers.
Of course, this wasn't an issue at the house hosting the party.
I'd gone over the evening before to drop off a table and some chairs and the guy who lived there was mowing in anticipation.
I've been disturbed by the image of that lawn mowing event for over 48 hours now and I can't shake it. I've tried to Google what I saw and while I've gotten some information I haven't yet found a compelling reason why.
Back in the day, I mowed. I've employed the same technique since childhood -- mow around the edge and then use compressing, rounded squares until I need to loop around trees.
The guy who hosted National Night Out mowed his lawn on a diagonal.
It wasn't like semi-random, just-run-from-corner-to-corner diagonal, either. There was a precision in the diagonal lines which bordered on the surgical. There were exactly four inches of overlap in each pass and I'd suspect that a protractor placed anywhere on the sidewalk would have shown the razor-straight lines were each precisely 45°.
So I'm stuck somewhere between admiration for an admittedly nice looking lawn and what seems to me like a perfectly logical fear of a neighbor who obviously has some type of yard-related compulsion.
I get the idea that he sometimes wakes up from a deep sleep to rush out front with a flashlight and a survival knife to look for any section which has grown at a rate which surpasses the rest of the lawn. And then, that section is punished or the slower-growing section is called out for its laziness.
He seems nice, though. Anyone who just showed up last night and didn't see the mowing the day before probably just thought it looked lovely. And it did to anyone unaware of the unnatural methodology employed in attaining the look.
I think it is possible to know too much about the people we live around. As a general rule, I like to stop learning before the names but right after the mental check box which is labelled "Lives in the House with the Near-Constant Police Tape Border -- Yes__ No__ Sometimes__".
Anyway, I've decided to leave people to their bizarre compulsions. While it is a near-certain sign of some deeper psychosis, I just have to have faith that the door locks will hold.

Bogflare Needlers Killed: 270
"Captured Firefly" found: Not so far

It is no big secret that I like geeky stuff.
What I like even better than geeky stuff is when geeky stuff gets crammed into other geeky stuff to combine into something even more awesome and geeky than one would expect.
This is like the guy in the Jedi Knight robes at the Star Trek convention. That guy couldn't get a date to save his life, but he is none-the-less brimming with his very own cool.
One of these bizarre intersections of geekiness is the source of my current project.
While waiting for the rest of my guild (INNKEEPERS RULE!!!!11!!!!!) to catch up with me in World of Warcraft, I've decided to devote my time to acquiring something rarely seen on my server.
I did a little research and discovered that one of the most recent patches added a pet as a rare drop from a specific type of monster. This pet doesn't actually help me in any way in game. It won't fetch things, fight stuff for me, or do tricks to amaze and delight the drunks in my favorite in-game tavern. The non-combat pet in World of Warcraft is as close as a person can get to owning a real-life cat.
The cool part is that the pet is a firefly which will forever buzz around my character impressing the n00bz with its glowing abdomen.
The less cool part is that the pet itself is rare. Very rare, actually. People that track this sort of thing for a living (and there are those people) figure it at approximately 0.04% of kills. So, other than randomly killing one of these. . .



. . . And having the "Captured Firefly" just be there, the only choice is to kill them over and over and over until I get it. And over and over. Its the only reasonable way.
I can confirm the estimate of 0.04% looks pretty accurate. Last night I killed 136 Bogflare Needlers and have absolutely nothing to show for it. The "Captured Firefly" seems to be the only interesting thing they ever have, so it is a pretty boring grind.
My quest is now a self-imposed exile. I will not leave the marsh without a pet firefly. I will have other characters mail me ammunition and pet food (for my brave hunting cat companion), and I will travel back and forth across the delicate habitat of the Bogflare Needler until they give me a firefly or vanish forever from the ecosystem.
Why would a person do this?
And more importantly what does this have to do with the collision of the terminally geeky World of Warcraft and some other geeky franchise?
The text on the "Captured Firefly" cage reads, "Still flying . . . "

Bogflare Needlers Killed: 136
"Captured Firefly" found: Nope

So, Monday, we meet again.
I don't think you have any idea, Bane of the Work Week, exactly with whom you are messing.
I slept last night. I didn't stay up playing World of Warcraft (which is my Sunday night tradition) in anticipation of the new expansion pack which will be released not even a full year from now. I must prepare for that event, but I knew today would require me to function at 80% efficiency, at a minimum, and that calls for sleep. And caffeine.
Today, I'm working on our web-filtering. As it stands now, every user mouse click is monitored -- until they make a secure connection. At that point, everything falls into the "Non-HTTP" bucket, so banking, secure check-out, and off-shore gambling sites with SSL login pages are all the same to us.
That has to change.
And if the software we have isn't doing it correctly by noon I have to find another software solution.
Good times.
Better times are to be had at the Up To Bat web comic. Not only has Belinda the snake taken on a much-deserved larger role in the story, I've been immortalized in in comic form as well.
While it is all in good fun, Andrew has actually given me a new idea for caffeine delivery which has me scouring Ebay and half a dozen quasi-reputable importers in an attempt to reproduce it IRL.

Two quick things:

The first is the Scottish page for Wikipedia. I'm all about the free and open sharing of information on the internet, but this page looks to have been entirely written by Groundskeeper Willie. I've tried to be fair to my co-workers in Aberdeen so far, but all bets are off after this. I'm all for the "Respectful Workplace". I've got a stack of "Course Completed" sheets from "Respectful Workplace" workshops. But Seriously.
"Gettin Startit"?
"Scotland's Ceeties"?
"Airt an cultur"?
The second thing is that the massive problem with spam could be forever solved . . . by kittens.
I knew it.

Casual Jeans Friday!
In addition to celebrating with denim, I get to deliver wonderful news!
In the past I've been burdened by consuming fluids which serve no purpose:
Water to brush my teeth? No caffeine.
Tofu bar only serves organic "tea" made from hemp? No caffeine.
My coffee has caffeine, but what about the half-and-half in the coffee? No caffeine.
I've come to fear the day when a combination of these events will occur, resulting in the perfect storm of me passed out somewhere until the authorities arrive with some expensive non-over-the-counter stimulant.
I can erase that caffeine withdrawal coma from my list of paralyzing fears (Which has been updated, for anyone keeping score at home, to: 1. Clowns, 2. Spiders, 3. Haircuts, 4. The DVD release of Bosom Buddies: Season 2 will be delayed again. ) with a simple bottle of this stuff, worn on a lanyard around my neck at all times.
It says keep away from children! This stuff is perfect for me because I love keeping away from children. They advise that no one drink it straight! It can be added to milk! Caffeine -- In liquid form to add to anything and everything!
I can use it with vinegar and cayenne to make caffeinated hot wings, people.
"What's in the queso? Oh, some cheese, a few peppers . . . and pure, liquid caffeine!"
This + Duncan Hines = caffeinated brownies.
You know, my addiction to sleep could be totally cured by this breakthrough.
To be honest, I've started to become a little freaked out by that whole sleep situation. One minute I'm reading a zombie novel in bed, then I close the book and pass out for hours. I'd see a doctor about it, but I've been managing this illness with an alarm clock (two actually) and I can't figure out what kind of doctor to call.
Those days could be all be behind me at last. With a steady supply of PURECAF, think of all the work I could get done! Hell, I could blog three or four times a day!
The Alliance would eventually give up on ever entering Alterac Valley (and rightly so)!
I could finally get our MP3 collection alphabetized by mood, as I'd long planned.
I could take up a hobby! Like selling hand-carved wooden unicorns on the internet!
I could learn to carve wood into the shape of unicorns!
Yes, the creation of liquid caffeine in consumer format was step #4,366 in my master plan for world domination. Everything is falling into place.

I took a sick day yesterday. As a rule, I prefer not to be sick when I do that and yesterday was no exception.
If I'm going to be ill and miserable, I may as well go to work. However, who would waste a perfectly healthy day by going to the office?
While I did have legitimate reasons to stay home on Wednesday, there was also quite a bit of time to stress test our newly switched Comcast internet service.
We had Time Warner here, but Comcast took it over. This means a couple of different things which are not being hammered at the entire Houston market through every media outlet.
First, they cut us over to the Comcast subnet during prime traffic time. This required a reset of my router to completely switch to their subnet, but I only tried that after giving up on the light AC infested support call I made which seemed less "very important to us" the longer I remained on hold. From call volume, I'd guess their change surprised a lot of people.
The second thing it means is that while the Time Warner people had finally given up on selling us TV service, now the Comcast people are calling to find out what we pay for our satellite TV service to entice us to switch. It takes a while to communicate that we have no TV service and haven't for quite some time and also (more importantly) that we don't miss it. They seem really excited about a great new offer on TV service, and I'll sign up for it as soon as they can just answer a few simple questions from me. I sincerely enjoy asking these questions.
First, why are there so many home shopping channels in the first part of the line up? I know the answer is that the cable company gets a bigger commission if the shopping channel is lower on the "dial", but the CSRs seem allergic to admitting this. Invariably, they try to tell me about all the ESPN choices I can make, which I can generally deflect by asking what "ESPN" stands for.
Second, I ask if we can do without the 30 or so Spanish language stations. I've explained that we don't speak Spanish and that if we wanted to learn there are probably better ways than watching Sabado Gigante.
This leads to another round of "But you can get Lifetime, A&E and the Independent Film Channel" because my ESPN deflection has obviously triggered lines from the "Male user doesn't watch sports" section of the script.
Then I ask if we can buy by the channel. I know we can, because the technology is a part of digital cable, but seriously the cable companies don't want that. In fact, I'd imagine the only people who wouldn't mind people buying by the channel work at Animal Planet because I think we can all agree Shark Week is worth the whole rest of the year.
Okay, so this triggers a "but it is only $30 a month for the first 3 months" kind of thing, which I find reasonable and agree to -- provided the CSR can make one final assurance.
The deal killer: "But," I ask, "Can you guarantee that there will be something worth watching on? I mean, we had like 180 channels before and it was filled with absolute crap. Anything worth watching we pick up through Netflix or watch on the internet, so why would I pay $30 to have commercials added back in?"
Every time I'm off the phone and back to whatever I was doing before within 30 seconds of asking that. We've been called three times since the switch. I hope to soon know how many calls it takes to get us on the "Don't Bother" list.
I also played a little World of Warcraft. You know, like I do.
I ended up getting one of these:




Now I have to wonder if they read my blog at Blizzard.

So Monday night I made a global change to some server settings. According to process, I burned incense, made half a dozen posts on the official support forum (EMPLOYING TEH CAPS LOCK & MISSSSPELLING OPSHUN) and waved my lucky chicken foot over the hardware.
My manager asked if I'd heard anything from the users yesterday and I told him that in ten years of doing this I'd gotten only one "Hey, everything is going great, thanks" email from a user and that their silence in this case was an indication of success.
He decided to call them (any user who has complained about the issue in the past six weeks) to find out what they thought about the change.
To their credit (and I hate extending users credit more than I hate actually learning their names), most seemed . . . happy.
My manager continued to make these calls for most of the morning. Secretly, I suspected he kind of got a rush out of talking to users who weren't angry about some issue and his ability to set the topic to something which was working well and then hang up after asking his question was a big motivating factor.
Late in the afternoon, I was summoned into his office so that he could announce this success in front of our VP of IT.
The VP wanted charts and graphs proving that performance was better and said that user testimony was valueless as a data capture point.
"What if I have three pieces of toast before logging in and everything is great? And then I have pancakes for breakfast another day and everything is working wonderfully? But then, after a night of drinking and staying out I wake up with a headache and log in and decide it is working horribly? User perception depends too much on outside factors we can't reliably quantify."
There was nothing for me to do but offer to write a "best practices" document making pancakes our officially supported architecture.
I don't think he found that as amusing as I did, but I don't have any way to track that other than by his reaction so my assumption may be invalid.