I'm in the wrong business.

In order to ingratiate myself to management and colleagues alike, right after our local data center was moved to the UK for "consolidation" I built a local file server. This held various software builds available via resumable FTP. Since Windows Exploder has never been able to move 12GB of data across even a 10 fibre channel connection, this pleased everyone.

Sunny weather poll
x-posted to da brog.

I am the (proud?) owner of a first-place medal. In bowling. My 5-man team's combined best score never exceeded 730 and yet we beat the other seven teams at a $MeegaCorp-sponsored evening out at a bowling alley. It wasn't because the others sucked even worse than we did.

When I was sent off to summer camp as a kid, I was provided with reading material consisting primarily of Archie and Richie Rich comic books. I wasn't allowed to take books like Principles of Orbital Mechanics because "they might get ruined". More importantly, I was geeky enough that I didn't need the aggro and torment my bunkmates would've heaped on me for the entire month had they seen me reading such things.

Summer camp poll

x-posted to da brog.

Imagine what things would be like if a major truck manufacturer -- let’s call it Peterworth – were to function like $MegaCorp. If Peterworth wanted to get into the automobile manufacturing business, it might make sense for them to purchase Maserati. It's a high profile manufacturer, a market leader in its division, and Peterworth would stand to gain valuable technology as well as aerodynamics and design engineers. However, it would be absurd for Peterworth to then insist that Maserati use the Cummins ISX engine for production vehicles.

But perhaps Peterworth’s managers might respond that the 11-liter Cummins truck engine offers 530 horsepower while Maserati’s top engine only puts out 405hp. If management’s only goal was brake horsepower and they ignored everything from design to weight to fuel usage we would at least understand the reasoning behind such a bad decision.

Snackfood poll
x-posted to da brog.

...and the rest of all you Googlies: Turn off that fucking geotracking already! When I go to Prague and need to use your site, I can't fucking find anything! I don't speak Czech and I don't know which fucking link is the one which will give me your goddamned page in English!

Geotracking is stupid. That's why most of us gave up on it a decade ago, about three and a half weeks after we figured out how to do it with some JavaScript and cgi. That's what the fuck cookies are for. If I don't have a cookie, default to the goddamned locale for the TLD I entered in my browser. If I wanted to see the results from google.de or google.co.uk I would've typed them -- and not google.com -- into the fucking browser. Do you have any idea how many fucking expats there are in this country? Stupid question; of course you don't or you wouldn't do this.

Geotracking poll
x-posted to da brog.

A picture rather than the usual thousand words.

x-posted to da brog.

Current Location: Near a high tower
Current Mood: Murderous
Current Music: Billy Bragg - Back to Basics

So the conf call is over. I was right. Had I not had the logs beforehand we would've been completely confused and gone in the completely wrong direction based on their verbal descriptions. But just before it began...

Puppy poll
x-posted to da brog.

No, I didn't go to Donnie's Happy Place. A couple weeks of pneumonia followed by a vacation during which I caught a cold gave me enough time out of the orifice that I actually arrived today in what could almost be termed a state of "calm" (for values of boolCalm < "mania").

Inside three hours my blood pressure has returned to its usual value of astronomical-over-gargantuan.

Poll inside.
x-posted to da brog.

After four hours of conf calls with people so stupid the only reason that they don't check the level of gasoline in their cars with a lighter is that flicking a Bic without a 14-page PowerPoint explanation is beyond their feeble mentalities, I finally got home. In trying to relax I hopped on #husi at slashnet and got into a chat with others facing the same sorts of hell that I do. Thanks to aph for sparring with me and making me laugh in a moment when all I wanted to do was deepen the my-head-shaped-dent in front of the keyboards.

x-posted to da brog.

When I joined the Navy many moons ago, I quickly learned that the name of the service was really an acronym: Never Again Volunteer Yourself. It was a lesson that I continue to forget.

"Hi, Monkeys. $MegaCorp has a new support contract with Microsoft and we don't talk directly to Blackie and his department anymore. Instead we follow $MSprocess. We need a couple volunteers to be our internal contacts."

Military poll

x-posted to da brog.

My married-with-kids colleagues, annoyed last night that we couldn't get into the strip club because the doorman didn't like the fact that I was wearing Adidas and not Florscheims or Ballys, are now thanking me. Under the cold light of sobriety they realise that had we indeed gone in, they'd be regretting this morning a lot more than they otherwise do with just the two liters of Starkbier each one drank last night. I'd had three; maybe I was a bit wobbly, too.

Strip club poll.
x-posted to da brog.