The Bush Disaster

Saw this on Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog this morning...

Huh?

One of my coworkers sent a note to a local ISP inquiring about T1 availability. The response came from the "DSL Manager" and is as follows:

Hello,

I'm just repling to the email I received about the DSL request/check and that we don't offer T-1 at this time and not sure when we would but we can do the /30 just not the t-1 we do have DSL speeds though if you wanted to use one of our DSL speeds we can go up to 7.1M/768k.

Clippy would have had a stroke.

Tiny Bubbles Bottoms

I work from home which generally is great. Sometimes the kids are a little rambunctious when I'm on the phone, but I can stop that by flinging the office door open and scowling at everyone while simultaneously pointing at the phone in my hand. Works every time. For about a minute.

The other day I was on a call with Microsoft support trying to assist a client of mine when the following transpired:

My Daughter: MOM!

My Wife: (in the distance) WHAT!

My Daughter: DO I HAVE A TINY LITTLE BOTTOM?

My Wife: NO! YOUR BOTTOM IS JUST THE RIGHT SIZE!

Nice.

Dear Ms. Music Teacher:

As children move through the elementary school process, some "music teacher" decides they need to learn to play the recorder.

Once the student has perfected "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and the "music teacher" can no longer stand the sound of the instrument, it is brought home and discharged into a toy box or child's bedroom.

Later, it is discovered by a younger member of the family. Unaware that the finger holes allow for note changes, this youngster will parade around the house blowing a singular, shrill note. She'll tell you that the name of her song is "Ballad For A Springtime Morning", but the ballad sounds more like crowd dispersement technology developed by DARPA.

Eventually, dad accidentally steps on the recorder and it breaks into a hundred unusable pieces of colored plastic.

I wonder if 15th century fathers accidentally crushed recorders, too? How has it survived? Is the recorder the cockroach of the musical world, able to survive whatever is thrown at it?

A Little More About Music

I decided a long time ago that I was tired of seeing music in venues that didn't give me any opportunity to interact with the musicians. No more festivals, concerts, arenas, etc...

I went to see the North Mississippi Allstars a couple of years ago at The Showbox in Seattle, and was surprised when, after their last song, each band member walked along the front of the stage shaking everybody's hand and thanking them for coming out. I bought a couple of beers for the Son Volt keyboardist and got to talk about their recording process. Had conversations about death and dying with Willy Vlautin of Richmond Fontaine. And, most recently, received the following comment to my last post about The Dexateens:

Hi Brendan

Thanks for the kind words about the record! That's the kind of response that makes it feel like we did something worthwhile.

(Please don't post this unless you just want to. "Comments" was the only way I could find to contact you.)

I sent a follow-up email and received permission to post the comments, and I do so because I think it's important to point out that musicians like The Dexateens or the other bands I mentioned really are connected with their fan base. And it's important to support that. Buy the CD, go see the shows when they come around, drink a beer so the proprietor is happy, get a t-shirt.

The Dexateens

One of my favorite bands to listen to is The Dexateens from Alabama. They just released a wonderful album titled "Lost and Found" that I've been singing along to in the car, hearing in my head when I'm at work, humming, etc... It's one of those albums that quickly worked its way into my head, and I'm happy it did.

The album is being released on the net to be downloaded - they ask for a donation in return. I encourage you to give it a listen and throw some money their way. You'll enjoy it.

Foxit -vs- Adobe

Encountered something weird the other day...

A client called me to come and address slow printing issues with two AutoCAD engineers. One engineer uses AutoCAD to make a drawing, and for archival purposes, prints the drawing to PDF. Another engineer needs to print this PDF to add to a reference binder for a presentation. While printing the PDFs to their OfficeJet (networked, 64 MB ram), they noticed that the size of the file ballooned from 2 MB to 250 MB in the queue. Then, ten minutes later, the page would start to print.

I understand that PCL printing will use the computer to decompress and render the file to the printer, versus postscript passing the job to the printer. Some forums suggested using postscript to print PDFs that are slow. But there's no postscript driver for this printer.

Adobe was current - v8 with all patches. On a whim, I decided to install my new favorite pdf reader, Foxit, to see whether there were performance gains.

Interestingly, the file size grew to only 50 MB from the 2 of the original file, and printed much faster. We tested with various files, multiple files being printed together, and other combinations and the performance remained much better than Adobe.

The more you know...

Yikes. A Whole Month.

I hate for a blog to me the proverbial monkey on my back, because then it sorta defeats the purpose. But it kinda got that way. It's a guilt thing. I drive around and think of things to write, but think, "Sheesh. It's been so long since I've written anything, why bother?"

Then later, I'll admonish myself for the self-defeating banter from earlier. This goes in circles.

So to beat the voices in my head, I find myself here typing.

So - I did obtain my CCNA cert. I'm happy about that.

Work has been busier than shit, which is good and bad.

The weather's starting to improve here in the northwest, and it's starting to stay light into the 6 o'clock hour.

I haven't been playing enough music lately - not by my own choice. It's really bumming me out though, as it's really my primary mental catharsis.

My four-year-old is learning to read, and it's really exciting. Her desire to learn is crazy. I come in the door from work and the FIRST thing out of her mouth is, "I want to play the word game, daddy!" Word game is what she calls sitting down with me and having me write out words for her to practice reading. Tonight I changed it up though and had her write the words I said to her. Dr. Seuss type words: pop, mop, hop, fox, dad, mom, dog, cat, etc... she's getting good though.

That's all. Over the hump. Back on the horse. Sent the monkey packing.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

My stepson just acquired his license. Here's a snippet of a conversation we had the other night:

Stepson: "I'm tired of driving my sister around everywhere! She never even says 'thanks'!"

Me: (looking incredulously back at him)

Stepson: "I know, I know..."

Oh, how I've waited for these days...

I Guess I'm Not Done

Exactly.

Now, though, even some of the photographers who make their living chronicling every step of her meltdown are beginning to examine their consciences, and their professional ethics. One British photographer based in Los Angeles, Nick Stern, became perhaps the first to make a public stand when he quit his job with the Splash news agency a few days ago because he could not bring himself to cover Britney another day longer.

"The Britney story is no longer about Britney," he said. "It's the media circus surrounding her... It's not journalism. Sooner or later, someone's going to get killed. Possibly Britney herself."

Effing Snow Days

An inch of lame snow, roads are clear, and the kids are home all day.

CCNA Bootcamp

Employer may be sending me to obtain CCNA certification at a "boot-camp" (five ten-hour days of training that allegedly prepare you for the test.)

I'm kinda nervous about this.

The Baby Gate 6700

The other day I was tricked into doing computer work for an individual, not a business. I don't normally do "residential" work anymore as it just eats away at the little free-time that I call my own. But an employee of a business I service told me he uses his computer at home for work and that I could bill his employer. So I was kinda stuck.

I was met at his house by his mother-in-law, who was at home with this guy's baby while he and his wife were at work. She took me downstairs and introduced me to the misbehaving computer (hard drives were defaulting to PIO mode instead of DMA due to a timeout scenario - fixed by editing the registry).

When it was fixed, I wandered back upstairs. At the top of the stairs I found a pretty substantial baby gate. Steel and tall - not the flimsy plastic lattice-looking ones - and there was no obvious way to open it. Since I was standing on a step that was lower than the floor, climbing over it was impossible. I just don't have that kind of reach. After rattling it around for a few minutes, the mother-in-law finally came out with a just-awakened baby and opened the gate. Pretty embarrassing.

Getting Warmer...

It's a start.

UPDATE: Apparently the link died pretty quickly, and I'm WAY too lazy to hunt around for an updated one. So, to paraphrase, the LAPD are starting to crack down on the paparazzi that stalk celebrities. I mentioned this because of my revulsion at the Brittney-stalking.

That's all I'm gonna say about that.

What If I Can't?

Twice in one day I've received emails from people whose signature line read, "Make it a great day!" or, "Have a great day!"

It's not so easy to "make it a great day" when you're spending half of it on the toilet, now is it?

Sheesh.

Flu Pandemic

Thank your lucky stars!

The "Pandemic Flu" has struck, but has been localized to our household. I think we're taking the brunt of it for the sake of humans everywhere.

First my four year old developed symptoms ranging from copious vomiting to even more vomiting. Once she even vomited on me - my favorite aspect of parenting.

Like some sort of vomit relay race, the pandemic flu was passed on to Jennifer. She spent 48 hours in bed *demanding* that I take care of the household.

Now the barfton, er, baton, has been passed to me.

So cut me some slack if I haven't written in a few days. Here's a video to entertain you:

Societal Decay

I don't really care what you think about Britney, what happened last night is disgusting. I don't even want to link to the pictures taken by paparazzi.

That we as a society feel driven to observe the failings of others makes me really upset.

"Thirteen Cities" - Richmond Fontaine

One of my new favorite albums is called "Thirteen Cities" by Richmond Fontaine. Each successive record builds on the one prior, but they each stand alone just fine, too.

The instrumentation is more complex, but never annoyingly so - just these really nice layers of pedal steel, effected guitar, harmonicas, and so on.

The lyrics are pretty disturbing, too:

Driving down 25 towards Las Cruces
We saw a flipped over semi
We pushed in the windshield and pulled the guy out
Left him laying on the side of the road
Then my friend said we gotta leave
Before the cops show

The name of that track is "$87 and a guilty conscience that gets worse the longer I go".

The only track that detracts from the album is "Lost in this World" which, lyrically fits in with the rest, but musically does not. I've given it several listens, but each time I come away thinking of "Lick My Love Pump", Nigel Tufnel's piano ballad.

That's as much as you're gonna get for a review.

The Future Of America

A verbal exchange in a chain restaurant's bar between Jennifer, the bartender, and myself.

Jennifer: "Where's your drink menu?"

This restaurant is known for creative mixed drinks in funky glassware.

Bartender: "We don't have a drink menu anymore 'cause we went corporate. Sorry."

I can't figure out what one has to do with the other, so I ask, "What does going 'corporate' have to do with a drink menu?"

Bartender: "I have no idea. It's what they told us."

School Sports

Sometimes I'll be in a conversation with another guy and a football (or other sport) reference will arise, like "I remember when I played football in high-school..." I nod knowingly, but fraudulently. I played only geek sports in school. I don't get to live vicariously through my kids.

In middle-school, I was on a bowling league. Had my own ball and everything. I rocked the lanes, man. There's no way my daughter is going to take up bowling unless we could get her a leopard-print ball.

Then in high-school, there was a pool table at our apartment complex and I played religiously. I played at the apartment complex, in billiard halls, wherever I could go. Bought my own cue. Got pretty good. Again, not something that I can work into a conversation with other guys. Pool is NOT a contact sport. There's no gruff Billiards Coach for the Billiards Team. So, as you can imagine, this aspect of my youth has become dormant.

Until last night.

Met up with a friend and decided to have a beer at the local tavern. He offered to buy a game of pool.

I smoked him.

Unhappy (and just a wee-tiny-bit competitive), he threw two more quarters down.

Smoked him again.

Now unable to face his family unless he can redeem himself, we played another game - and he won this one. However, being beaten two out of three wasn't satisfactory. He needed to even the score.

Two more quarters. "I *will* gloat if I win this game," I told him.

Smoked him a third time. Three out of four. Yesss.

Twenty years after putting down my cue and forgetting my rather embarrassing sports past, I was finally able to relive my glory days.