Monday, October 24, 2005

One of the uber-paranoid, humor-impaired network guys just wandered through here, looking for the person who plugged in a network cable to one port on the switch and then plugged the other end into another port on the switch, thereby creating what he referred to, five times in a row, as a "fatal configuration". He looked like he wanted blood. I considered making some joke about testing out the network loopback functionality, but he'd probably think I was serious and ask me if I'd submitted a change request to the approval board.

Posted by Keeper @ 02:55 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Attended multiple hours of meetings today, including one meeting where my presence was completely unnecessary. Somewhat ironically, that meeting included a notice on the WebEx shared workspace that we should all "Have a propensity towards velocity and urgency to move forward. Ask yourself, 'How can I help drive it?' ", which is not quite the most retarded thing I've ever heard, but it's definitely way up there, sounding almost like something that could have come out of the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator.

The higher I rise in my profession, the more telecons become part of my daily activities. I despise telecons. People struggling with web-enabled shared applications, talking on top of each other through the speakerphone lag, and the one guy who's fallen asleep without muting his phone so he's snoring into everyone ears--fabulous. All of it.

Dreamed last night that I died in my sleep, but my spirit/ghost/whatever was allowed to stick around for a few hours and coach Teh Wife through finding me dead. I was supposed to tell her that everything was going to be all right, help her get dressed and call 911, and in general just hang out until the ambulance arrived to set the machinery of death in motion. It was a tough dream.

Posted by Keeper @ 01:05 PM CST [Link]

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Hiring a fucking landscaper is proving a considerable frustration.

The first landscaping we had done was on our back yard. The F&SN Critic and his wife found a guy they were happy with who re-did their back yard, and so we contacted him with enthusiasm. He came out and we consulted with him for a while and he seemed to understand exactly what we wanted--he did some quick pencil sketches and some planning, and promised to deliver unto us some "completed drawings" in a few days. When the drawings came in, they appeared to be 3rd-grad level map pencil scribblings, with a lot of stuff on them we didn't ask for.

Still, we pressed on, having him fix the drawings, and after we'd agreed on a price his crew showed up and made lots of mistakes and did things apparently at random. He eventually fixed most of the issues, but was frustrating to work with because his less-than-native grasp of English made it difficult to ensure we were getting across what we wanted to get across--we said several times, "Do this one thing," and he agreed, but when it came time to do that one thing, he did something completely different, and when we told him, "No, do the thing we told you to do," he would act confused.

Landscaper number two, this time for our front yard, again came with high recomendations from someone else, and he showed up with his assistant to do our estimate. He looked like he knew what he was about, but kept suggesting plants he'd like to have us buy, though we already have a huge stock of plants awaiting planting. After our initial estimate visit, he promised to have us a plan drawn up in a week or so, and never called us back. Multiple phone calls and voice mails have yielded no response from him. I can only assume he died.

Landscaper number three started out great--he was really positive and confident, listened attentively to everything we said, and had a good understanding of what The Wife and I wanted done to the yard. He took pictures of the places where we wanted bed expansions (a first!), and seemed like he was going to be a joy to work with. Unfortunately, he called us back after our estimate and said that he'd had a number of commercial jobs come up, and he wouldn't be able to get to us until late November, which is too late to put plants in the ground.

I have just finished making the appointment with landscaper number four, and The Wife and I are feeling a crushing mixture of disappointment and defeat, even before the estimate. How hard is it to get someone to come do some fucking landscaping in this town?

Posted by Keeper @ 10:38 AM CST [Link]

Friday, October 7, 2005

And now the Snowbirds are practicing their show! One of them just blasted over the parking lot and set off car alarms.

This is a cool airplane day.

Posted by Keeper @ 03:57 PM CST [Link]

Crazy-awesome. I've been watching F-18 Super Hornets do insanity-flips and crazy stuff for the past half-hour.

Posted by Keeper @ 02:41 PM CST [Link]

Awesome. The Gulf Coast Wing of the Commemorative Air Force is doing their Pearl Harbor re-enactment directly outside my window. They are only the latest in a parade of aircraft that have been practicing for the air show at Ellington tomorrow. I have totally not been getting any work done today because I've been staring at the pretty planes.

Posted by Keeper @ 11:18 AM CST [Link]

Thursday, October 6, 2005

It all started with this

It' s a picture of a thirteen foot long python who ate a six foot long alligator, and then burst because the alligator was just too damn big for it. Yesterday, Ryan sent a link to that pic around in e-mail to me and Massurah and a few other guys, and was all like, "Dude, check it out! Woah! Exploding alligator!"

Ryan's a cool guy--we usually eat lunch with him, and he's part of our poker playing cadre. We also josh him, constantly, about his sister. Now, I've never met Ryan's sister, I don't know Ryan's sister, and I've certainly never paid Ryan's sister for sex--but whenever Ryan's in the group, the thing to do is talk trash about his sister. I don't even know how this started, but that's just the thing to do. So, in the spirit of this, I replied-to-all and said, in reference to the snake exploding because the alligator was too big to fit inside of it, "I bet Ryan's sister could have made it!"

Unfortunately, also on the CC: list for the original message was Ryan's dad Ron, who also works here with us. I can only guess that since his name looks so similar to Ryan's, my eyes skipped right over it in the CC: field. Ryan replied back to me, and said, "Nice one, dude--should have checked the to: box before you replied, though."

I thought fast, and immediately re-replied to the original message, saying "And by that last comment, I meant that Ryan's sister, being a fine, upstanding lady with a strong interest in conservation, could have saved the alligator and the python both, then relocated them to an appropriate nature preserve, thus ensuring peace and harmony!" However, I fear the damage was done. Ryan's dad sent me another e-mail, quoting the "I bet Ryan's sister could have made it" message, and said, "What was that supposed to mean?"

I issued a public apology, and so far nothing else has been said, but this morning Massurah sent out an IM to everyone concerned, save Ryan's dad, that said "Remember that time when Lee said Ron's daughter could successfully felate a six-foot alligator - to his virtual face? Good times."

I think it's going to take a while for me to live this down.

Posted by Keeper @ 10:17 AM CST [Link]

Monday, October 3, 2005

I think I'm a bad person.

Several days ago, inspired in part by a general disgust at the Internet in general and a special hatred of "personals" web sites specifically, I created an account over at Yahoo! Personals. Google Images provided some photographs of a cute, but not unbelievably cute, young female who became my avatar, and I typed out the profile description so that it matched what many guys would want from a net-savvy woman (smart, pseudo-techie, undergrad degree, living alone far from home, not prude but not slutty, and unafraid to speak her opinion), and sat back to see who I could snare, toy with, and laugh at.

Why would I do such a thing? It's difficult to explain, and I'm not all together sure of the underlying reasons. Certainly, spoofing a profile for the express purpose of to deceiving and toying with an unsuspecting Romeo is mean-spirited; that I would choose to spoof a female profile is Freudian at best, and downright weird at worst. As to that, it's a matter of numbers--there are way more guys looking to meet women online than the other way 'round, and so I would have a better chance of ensnaring someone with whom to toy if I went with the odds instead of against. But the "why"--difficult.

I spent a good thirty minutes typing up all of the reasons I could think of, but they all distill down to one thing--I am an arrogant ass, and though I strive for politeness and civility, the annoyance and bitterness I suppress must occasionally come out some way. So, I ensnare and make fun of losers on the web.

The problem, though, is that I couldn't go through with it. Two weeks and 157 e-mails later, I can't bring myself to respond to a single one of them; I see the pictures and read the words that these guys wrote and I am struck by their simple honesty--even the dirty ones.

Perhaps I should be relieved that I don't have it in me to so purposelessly hurt another person.

Posted by Keeper @ 08:43 PM CST [Link]