Go, Bill, Go!!!!!

No, not Bill Clinton. No, not Bill Gates.

Bill Cosby.

In this article on CNN Bill goes on the rampage, yet again, against victimization and lack of personal responsibity. I found his comments to be quite insightful, and very true. I completely agree with what he had to say. You can't fault him for being honest.

For instance, it'd be completely assinine of me to sue an airline because they forced me to pay for an extra seat because I'm fat. And suing the airline over the way they didn't make you pay for the extra seat for one leg of the trip, but they did for another is simply no excuse. You're fat. If Southwest asks for you to pay for the seat where the rest of your fat ass is, don't argue. Just do it. Consider yourself lucky that Southwest didn't charge you for the seat on the other leg. And, if the plane really isn't full enough to have warranted the price of the extra seat, go get the refund that Southwest promises.

Nicole and I are both big, fat Americans. As a result, I paid for 3 seats for us on the trip to Japan. I do this on every trip we take together, and I buy an extra seat on every trip I take. It's expensive, yes, but it's comfortable for me even if nobody was sitting in the seat next to me.

I feel that realizing your own faults and working to acknowledge them, rather than blaming someone else for them, is a good sign of personal responsibility.

Time to stop the rant... I feel better now.

System administration 101

1. Never perform a major system upgrade on a Friday afternoon (or Friday, for that matter). If it goes wrong, it is unlikely (unless your SLA says otherwise) that your vendor will be able to provide a fix for you by the end of the weekend.
2. Know your support contract. Again, if your SLA (service level agreement) says support is only to be provided at specific hours, don't expect it otherwise.
3. If you're performing an upgrade, make sure you back up your configuration beforehand.
4. Never tell the support agent that you're "really good at [insert Unix system here]" if you didn't perform #3 above. You'll be put on mute as your support analyst goes to laugh his ass off.
5. Realize that if your upgrade fails and requires a hardware replacement, you will not get it until Tuesday because your vendor won't be able to ship it until Monday.
6. Your vendor's developers are people. If it's a gorgeous 75+ degree day in Seattle, they'll do whatever they can be out of the office at 3pm.

Yes, I ran into a customer yesterday who must've not been paying attention during his sysadmin course. He, as a result, will not have a working server until Tuesday at the earliest. Should the upgrade have failed? Of course not. Should he have been performing an upgrade on a Friday? Of course not. A bad situation all around.

I wish developers would build in a time check in their upgrade tools (that'd be run against a server in their timezone). It should prevent upgrades on Fridays after noon. It should only allow upgrades Monday thru Thursday, realistically...

So anyway, the first month and a half at the new job has been going well. I'm still working hard to learn the products, and I think I'm making progress. It doesn't hurt that I have a good background in Linux support, so there's been less of a learning curve. I'm feeling good so far. Yay me.

Paycheck

I don't usually review movies, but I feel I need to warn people away from this awful piece of crap. You've been warned. Keep reading for my feelings on this abomination.

First, I haven't read the Philip K. Dick story. I'm sure it was a lot better than the movie.

So anyway, Paycheck is John Woo's latest attempt at a blockbuster action flick. The concept is very interesting, but let's never let John Woo direct another flick that should've relied more on sci-fi rather than action. I really wanted to know more about the tech behind the story rather than watching cars explode.

Speaking of lame action effects, why do we put up with it? I mean, why can't Hollywood leave the lame-ass 1985 action movie effects in 1985? Really... cars do NOT just explode when they run into things. If I hit you really hard on the chest with a broomstick, I doubt you'll go flying 15 feet through the air. It'd take a lot of force to do that. Seriously.

Oh, and the movie's set in Seattle, but obviously filmed in Vancouver, B.C. For those that see the movie, let me clarify some things - Seattle does not have a subway system (Vancouver, B.C. does); Seattle police cars aren't nearly as futuristic looking as the ones in the movie (they did get the police uniform right, though); and 6th and Pine in Seattle is not an industrial area - it's downtown! Oh, and Seattle's downtown core is not as dense as Vancouver's.

So, if you want a decent John Woo action flick, go see M:I 2.

I wish I would've seen The Last Samurai instead.

Stupid Cable Modems. Stupid Comcast

From 4:30am this morning to just about an hour ago, the Internet at the house was down. The cable modem was synched up, and the router, a Netgear WGR614 (4-port 10/100 switch plus 802.11g) had grabbed an IP via DHCP. But, my OS X box, which does DNS for the LAN just was not able to do lookups or get out to the Net. Frustrated, I just left it alone and went to work. Throughout the day, I periodically tried getting to it via ssh, but no luck. No response on port 22.

Came home, dinked around with it, and just finally plugged the modem into the Mac. Voila, the fucker got on the Net, and was able to go everywhere. Plug the modem back into the router, release the IP, renew, and try again. No go- damn thing just keeps getting the same IP assignment. Oh, and get this, it's on a completely different network than what the Mac had gotten.

Finally, I just set the option in the router to use my Mac's MAC address and that fixed the problem. The router just got the same IP and network assignment via DHCP that the Mac had got. But, I wonder, does Comcast now limit who can get on the network, based on MAC? Do they look at the manufacturer bits in the MAC address to determine if one's disallowed? Why was I getting two different network assignments for each device?

As Nicole mentioned, Comcast might have an IP range set aside for abusers or routers. That way, when they ask for your IP, they'll know you've somehow violated their ToS or are using a router. Of course, I'm just conspiracizing here, but ya never know.

Stoopid Comcast.

Ignorance

I take my job seriously. I've worked this tech support job for almost four years now and I've worked very hard at helping my colleagues out with their problems.

In that time I've been responsible for some initiatives to try to organize some knowledge we have in our department. We don't have a true knowledge base, per se (too expensive), but we do have an internal email archive, a customer facing web message board, a laboratory environment where people can go to test customer configurations, and lots of documentation on an internal site. I've been responsible for either setting up or maintaining on a day-to-day basis all of these.

Sadly, the only thing that gets used frequently is the laboratory and the customer-facing messageboard. The documentation I've written, or the emails archived hardly ever get looked at. It's just easier to ask people for information rather than do a quick search in the archive. This frustrates me to no end.

I've put a lot of work into all of those initiatives and instead of them being used, people complain about them. Now, not everybody complains, just certain people. But these are the same people who constantly ask me questions instead of taking some initiative and checking the database first. These are the people that would rather bitch about procedures and tools we have to use instead of working with the tool designers to fix them.

So today, after one of the whiners got thru cracking a couple jokes about the email archive, and proceeded to ask me for help with something, I told them I didn't know and referred them to the email archive.

Well, guess what. I probably did know the answer to the question, but I was too pissed off to help them. And I still am.

Update: I'm not pissed off anymore. I explained the situation with my co-worker and we're cool now.

Alabama, land of RIGHTeousness

I've mentioned cases like this in previous journal entries, but I'm hugely opposed to ANY religious artifacts being on display at a government institution, building, assembly, or what have you. I'm all for separation of church and state, and I believe there is no place for religion in government. Alabama, of course, is no exception. Listening to Roy Moore speak is like listening to the Segregationist Gov. Wallace speak in the school door. I can just hear him saying "10 commandments in the rotunda now, tomorrow, and forever!"

Hey Moore, my girlfriend tells me that the Bible says you should kill anyone who works on the Sabbath. Why isn't this allowed in the constitution, or in Alabama state laws? Why are you a judge? I thought that was forbidden in one of the 10 commandments. Aren't there other rules in the Bible you should be following?

So I'm ranting, but really, this right-wing bullshit has got to stop, or I think I'll seriously consider moving to a place where society progresses, not regresses.

Here's another interesting opinion, from Slate.

I welcome discussion on this, pro or con, flamebait, or not.

We're home...

So, two weeks on the road have brought us back to our humble abode in Seattle. It's great to be home, but now we have to return to real life and unpack our gear.

We came back to a different color house (the owners decided to paint it two days after we left)! Instead of the little red house we had, we now have a white house. I'll get photos up soon.

What really sucked is that when we came home almost all of the windows were sealed shut with paint. I managed to get the bedroom window unsealed, which gives us our window fan again (thank goodness), but the rest will be a chore. Fun fun.

As soon as we passed into Idaho, the Washington drivers slowed us down. I just don't understand why they don't understand the concept of stay right except to pass! I want to pass all of them, because yes, I'm in a hurry. Just move the fuck over and let me by. I won't tailgate them or flash my brights at them (although I'll think about it), so just they should stop it with the "2 mph faster than the next lane over" crap, and move over. I want to go fast!

Anyway, the road weariness is taking over and I need to get to bed. It's going to be so nice to sleep in my own bed tonight. It's nice to be back in Seattle. It's right where we left it.

Damn crappy [insert country here] software!

After reading this article over on Salon, I wonder if you'll hear me sometime in the future complaining about crappy software primarily programmed by outsourced programmers.

I think it'd be nice if there were some sort of information available with the software that said "some outsourced programming from India, Ireland, Russia, etc. was used in the creation of this software." Of course, I don't think it'd do much to change my buying habits, considering I drive a German-designed, Mexican-made car, but still.

I've been lucky, so far. My company isn't outsourcing any programming or support jobs to other companies/countries. But, I have had been on some calls with other companies that do outsource to other countries. I'm not knocking the competency of the other programmers, I just worry that programmers could be going the way of the skilled laborer of yore.

If outsourcing really takes off and India becomes a major white-collar industrial power, are we going to start bashing them like we did Japan back in the 70s-80s-90s?

15 items. Do you get it? Do you?!?!

Fucking A.

I went to see X2 this afternoon. It was great. Afterwards, I needed to do some grocery shopping for Nicole. I go to the local Fred Meyer to do all of my shopping, and I like to use the U-Scan after I'm done gathering my loot.

There's a big sign above each unit, which I'm sure nobody reads, that says 15 item limit. And, these units require a little bit of manual dexterity, as you have to scan the barcodes, and then place them into a bag (gasp!). There was this 20-something blonde having difficulty with the machine.... okay, no biggie, happens all the time. The problem however was that she had at least 20 items to scan, perhaps more, and she'd already scanned at least 10. I'm number three in line waiting for people to finish up, and she's holding everybody up because she's got so much to scan, and because she can't follow simple fucking instructions on the machine. Argh!

The U-Scan is a wonderous device, if you know what you're doing. It's quick, efficient, and you can get in and out of the store quicker than having to go through a normal checkout line. But that efficiency has rules. To all the illiterate idiots out there - read the fucking signs! The U-Scan has a limit of 15 items. The express checkout line has a limit of 10.

Seriously.