Confession

Next weekend Watchmen is finally being released in theatres.
I have no interest in seeing it.
Sorry about that.
I know I should. I have a keen awareness of my responsibilities in all areas geeky and I know, fundamentally, that I should technically already be paying homeless people to wait in line for tickets on my behalf.
But I can't muster up any enthusiasm for this movie.
It isn't that I haven't tried. I loved the graphic novel. It was fresh and groundbreaking and cutting-edge in 1986. So was Top Gun, a movie now remembered mostly for the homoerotic beach volleyball scene which appeared out of nowhere.
As comics go, Watchmen was widely accepted as art -- A work which to this day is a defensive geek's go-to answer to literary snobs who claim that comics are only for children.
But as a movie, I don't think it can translate well.
You can look at photos of every piece of art in the Louvre, but since photography was not the original medium something is lost in the middle.
In the case of a comic published for a readers living in a time when Cagney and Lacey was on the air (when TV itself was "on the air" for that matter), I think the loss will be context. The story itself may be too large for film.
Since I can be reasonably sure any review will start with "The special effects were good." and later end with, "but the special effects were good", I'll just wait for Netflix to offer to send it to me.
This makes me a little sad and I feel more than a little lost.
A major comic book film is being released and I'm not going.
The whole thing may just be my reaction at Hollywood's ongoing assault on my childhood.
Are there no original ideas left?
Gore Verbinski is remaking Clue for some reason! It's too soon to remake any movie which originally had Tim Curry in it.
And the same article mentions "Monopoly", "Candyland" and "Ouija" all being flung from board game to film with no regard to how any of us feel about it.
The Neverending Story is being re-imagined even though both sequels (yes, there were two) made less and less money.
Total Recall is getting a do-over, too. Total Recall would best be forgotten. To be fair, they could revisit it in two ways will would make me not shriek in outrage.
First, they could leave the film as it is mostly, reworking the special effects with CGI and creating an "Enhanced Director's Cut" or something. CGI could to wonders for the Governor of California pulling a large object out of his nose and . . . You know . . . The scene with the mutant lady.
Or they could go back to Philip K. Dick's original 1966 story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" which was the basis for the film, loosely. So loosely, in fact, that the protagonist doesn't ever actually go to Mars. They changed it so much that the short story became a screenplay which became a novelization by Piers Anthony which was released a year before the film itself.
Just tell the story like the author did. The budget would be tiny and anyone but Keanu Reeves could pull off the lead.
Or, someone needs to create a kick ass screenplay about fighting robots in the far future made out of junked cars by space rednecks.
Again, anyone but Keanu Reeves for the lead.

Not Improving My Image

I had an over-sized, traditional laptop bag. It held my laptop with a couple of inches to spare on either side, plus the power supply, my cellular card, half a dozen pens, some printed documentation, sugar-free gum, a couple of spare hard drives, assorted cables (USB, ethernet, firewire) an LED book light, wireless mouse and adapter and, sometimes, my lunch.
There was a lot going for that bag as far as utility.
On the other hand, it was massive.
I could hardly get it down the cubicle row without bumping it somewhere. And it weighed a lot, even empty.
I've been looking for a replacement for well over a year, but I hadn't found the right bag.
There were some which looked awesome and lacked some function I needed and there were plenty which provided the proper space for my stuff yet were at best a lateral move in terms of fashion.
Then I found a backpack from Built NY.
In addition to being waterproof, the thing looks to have been built to save the electronics no matter what grim fate befalls their carrier.
There is the main laptop pocket which my Mac just squeezes into, a side pocket which holds a few small items (like the power supply) and a tiny pocket on one of the straps which holds my cellular card and (if I bend it) a pack of gum.
It weighs next to nothing and stretches to hold whatever I cram into it and the wide straps don't make my shirts wrinkle.
The thing which most drew me to this case, however, is that it was offered as one of the final big prizes from MyCokeRewards and that made the price (in this case free) worth the risk.
I could not get the army green pictured above, but preferred black anyway.
What I did not realize until I crammed my laptop into the thing before taking it in to work for the first time is that it doesn't look like a laptop bag at all.
The low-profile, matte black, utilitarian backpack looks like nothing so much as a bullet-proof vest.
Even empty and piled on the floor of my cubicle it seems to leak a sinister energy.
I've had two separate managers stop by to ask me how I'm doing while nervously glancing at the bag.
Co-workers who previously inquired if my old laptop bag was bulky enough have been almost ominously silent with regard to this bag.
The strap across the chest which is meant to connect the shoulder straps in front for ergonomic purposes even looks like some kind of holster mount just hanging there.

Training yesterday was everything I expected it to be.
I was a little late to the morning session since I was still working the issue from the day before, so I had to grab a seat up front.
Also, there was no coffee.
And the whole morning session was devoted to things which I picked up on the mean technological streets starting almost a decade ago.
The fact that these circumstances followed a World of Warcraft raid which lasted until midnight the night before made staying awake the accomplishment of the day. Not that I accomplished it, just that I assume it was the thing which may have been expected of me.

Training

I'm in training all day today. I'm not sure exactly what I'm being trained to do, but lunch is provided so I'm pretty cool with it.
All day yesterday was spent on the phone with Microsoft, pointing out the way their various technical articles conflicted with reality and in some cases the rules of grammar and punctuation.
They were, as one might expect, reluctant to admit to either charge.
Additionally, I had another career milestone moment in which I dropped off a separate conference call by saying, "I have to cut this short. It looks like I have to walk up the hill to the tower building and kick (other conference call participant's name deleted)'s ass."
By the time I'd arrived, the other participant's opinion on the matter in question had changed, so I missed the opportunity to add physical assault of a co-worker to my resume/police record.
Sometimes the promise of physical violence is enough to end workplace discord. I occasionally long for the moment when application of violence is required.
If anything interesting happens in training, I will definitely be surprised enough to blog about it.

Wiki-something

I use Wikipedia all the time.
In fact, it is entirely possible that sometime in the very near future I will have mentally off-shored most of my knowledge to this online repository of information.
My daughter has a project due on The Stamp Act, so I visited the relevant Wikipedia entry in order to refresh my memory. Since I haven't really looked at the Revolutionary War in years, I'm comfortable that the summary provided by Wikipedia will get me through this.
After the project is turned in, I can forget everything about The Stamp Act again to concentrate my mental powers on the day-to-day needs of life -- Like "What night is Lost on?" and "When was the last time the Litter Robot got some human attention focused on the repository chamber?"
Sometimes, however, Wikipedia fails me. Take this entry for example. That's not even readable. And this entry on Access e-Gov might cause a person's head to explode (citation needed).
I have decided, in light of this type of entry, that Wikipedia is hard. So hard, in fact, that the stress of potentially happening across on of these head-exploding articles had me looking for a safer source of online facts and pseudo-facts.
Fortunately for all of us, Wikipedia is way ahead of the game here. They have anticipated my need by giving us all a different site for knowledge.
Simple. The articles at simple.wikipedia.org have never caused anyone's head to explode (citation needed).
It isn't complete. There is no page for The Stamp Act. Instead, it offers this page on the Revolutionary War.
There are some good bits of information crammed up in that article.

"The American Revolutionary War was a war fought between Great Britain and the 13 British colonies in America. The war took place from 1775 to 1783. The American Army (Army of the colonies), led by Chuck Norris, defeated the armies of the Imperial Empire. The colonies became independent."

I learned something already. Following the handy link to "war" turns up this awesome bit:

"War is contrasted with peace, which some people define as the absence of war."

That's nice. I can totally see that on a bumper sticker on a car I'd key.
The part about Chuck Norris is pretty enlightening, too. I've long marveled at the ability of our colonists to defeat the organized might of Great Britain and now it just seems so much more the probably outcome.
I had to follow the link to Chuck Norris.

"He was in the television series Walker, Texas Ranger, and the 2004 movie Dodgeball."

That's it? What about his role in The American Revolutionary War? I guess there is still some work to be done on some articles.
The one on cats is pretty complete:

"After licking their fur, cats sometimes get hairballs. This is pronounced like 'marbles' with an 'h'."

"A young cat is called a kitten."

"In this masterpiece, a lonely cat, Grizabella, needs some motivation. All the cats in the junkyard try to make her feel better, the Rum Tum Tugger hires Magical Mr. Mistoffelees to do the job."

Also, Chuck Norris.

Muzjiks

Mu·zhik also mou·jik or mu·jik or mu·zji - n. A Russian peasant. Worth 79 points in Scrabble if you happen to end up with the proper tiles. Whenever I play, I always end up with at least three of the same tile and an "o". I have no idea why that is.
Muzjiks was not the Official Scrabble Word of the Day on Sunday, though. Oh, no.
The word of the day from Sunday is right here:
Sometimes online dictionaries can be great. Writing a script which pulls a random word, generates an image out of little wooden letter tiles and then puts it on a webpage on a Sunday afternoon with no human interference is possibly the greatest thing ever.
Some poor webpage admin probably got in quite a bit of trouble over this little oversight. I'm sure it wasn't made any better by the giggling, but what are you going to do?

There was no post on Friday because we are still doing our self-assessment thing at work.
We had over a hundred machines to scan Friday night and the process as defined by regulation is a little time-consuming. You would thing processes created by the Federal Government would be super-streamlined models of efficiency, but this one seems to have slipped through the cracks or been designed by Canadians.
Basically, there is a team of Government types which creates a standard test which is run against a computer. When it finishes the scan, it displays results in a neat little graph.
There are "Passed" and "Failed" and "Not Applicable" results and results which are returned "Unknown".
The "Unknown" answers come from either things which are too new for the scan to validate them or they are just unable to be discovered automatically. These are things like door locks and corporate policies.
However, "Unknown" (while the legitimate result of the scan) is an unacceptable answer. So someone has to evaluate each Unknown and mark it "Passed" or "Failed" or "Not Applicable". Once all the answers reflect reality, the scan results have to be saved to a location on the netork for later review.
The truly sad part is that a very simple script can put the correct answers in place and save the results, making it possible to automate the entire process.
However, that isn't allowed.
I have a theory that automation is forbidden specifically because it enhances efficiency and thus violates some secret Federal policy, but I can't find anyone to confirm or deny this.
Let's not forget that a Federal order explaining the price of cabbage once took 26,911 words. I've never seen an entire receipt from a grocery store come anywhere near that, cabbage or not.
These are the same people which dictate our scanning procedures.
Thomas Edison said, "There is far more danger in public monopoly than in private monopoly, for when the government goes into business, it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meet -- and that is the first requirement of business."
I think we can all agree Scrabble is a lot more fun than Monopoly anyway.

Story TIme

We had an "Emergency" meeting yesterday about some file association issues certain users were seeing. Since we had experienced a similar issue before which had been corrected through Group Policy, it was the perfect time for me to share a story I picked up in an email forward.

The amazing story, as shared by me in a 2pm meeting yesterday:

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.
He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.
Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times, then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter could not help wondering if this was the same elephant.
Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.
Probably wasn’t the same freaking elephant.

So, while the file association issues seemed the same, in this case they were related to something entirely different and, most importantly, not my fault.
I hope this story has touched all of you as profoundly as it touched me.

On The Graceful Receiving Of Gifts

I try to be grateful when someone gives me something. This is generally pretty easy, that sincere feeling of appreciation, especially when the gift is something that I've wanted.
However, sometimes my natural tendencies toward paranoia rise up and I begin to seek out the motivation for the gift.
I suspect traps often where there are none to be found, but I'd rather move cautiously through the jungle of Corporate America than find myself unexpectedly at the bottom of some spike-lined pit.
Since I started this job, I've wanted the ability to control our own fate through our network.
The idea that separate groups control different facets of our environment irks me.
There has always been plenty of stuff I could control, but since I couldn't control everything it always felt like leaving part of our network integrity to chance.
However, I got an email yesterday afternoon from the team which manages the Active Directory infrastructure for our whole company suggesting that we break off our servers, groups and users and manage them ourselves. It went as far as to say that we should lock them out.
I'm all about that, but I wanted to know why there was such a sudden policy shift.
As it turns out, last week some of our security groups were deleted by the Active Directory team during a standard clean-up.
They didn't know what the groups were for, they didn't ask, and we had users unable to connect for a few hours while everything was made right again.
So while total control of our network destiny is something that I want, making a decision based on this error and many, many others like it is just wrong.
And I said so in a meeting this morning.
When they proposed, in person, that they be allowed to wash their hands of the problems in the environment they essentially built, I found myself unable to smile and nod and appreciate the gift.
"That's fine," I said,"My email inbox is constantly full. My replies are frequently abrasive, abusive and (according to some sources) illegal to read aloud in polite company in South Carolina. I'm going to turn over rights to my mailbox to your team. If anything personal turns up, let me know and I'll review it. Otherwise, the responsibility for everything coming in or going out of my mail client is now officially yours."
When this was met with laughter, I continued:
"I'm a terrible driver. Here are the keys to my car. I'll let you know when I need to be driven home this afternoon."
There was unconfortable silence I filled with:
"I'm horrible at personal interaction. Here is the password to my Facebook profile. Please keep everyone I know constantly updated with how things are with me. Don't expect me to waste my time providing you with these updates, but I will be extremely angry if you get anything wrong."
Taken to an extreme, their proposal was clearly illuminated as an attempt at dodging responsibility.
Illumination is another gift which is rarely appreciated.