Richard Chamberlain in “Slogan”?!

After a hell ride to Portland, Maine last night, Dr. Miss Nell and I had a fun time at this cozy food/brew/folk music place in South Portland. While we’d originally intended to see a Portland Sea Dogs minor league baseball game, and enjoy the fare of the stadium while doing so, the weather was ass (and I was late due to a horrific accident and non-moving traffic on the Maine Tpke), so we had to stick to a food-only plan.

For future dates and variety, the mind of evil Nate is conjuring up an idea about road-tripping to see John Mayer in concert.

As usual, this evening was not without its extremely amusing moments. Nell has an excellent personality, and is also quick and funny.

Somehow, the conversation turned to 1980’s fashion. Actually, I think that I made a crack about cleaning the bathroom while wearing a flourescent yellow Ocean Pacific shirt. And the conversation meandered into the territory of shirts like “Frankie Say: RELAX”, “Choose Life”, etc. From this, this classic dialog was born:

Nell: And don’t forget the “I’m with Stupid” shirt.
Me: Oh yeah, the one with the arrow that pointed to the person next to you.
Nell: Yeah.
Me: And there was another one with an arrow that pointed downward, but I don’t remember what it said.
Nell: I’m with Stupid.

*laugh*

Unfortunately, There’s No Real Shock in Buzzwords

I’ve learned that in System Administration (Systems Engineering, whatever you’d like to call it), sometimes the business requirements drive technical implementations. Fine. It’s not my money, so I probably don’t have a say when it comes to spending it.

But what gets really — let’s call it — whacked is when non-technical businessfolk (let’s call them “managers”) try to get a grasp on technology. Worse yet, it’s when managers try to come up with answer to technology when technology has failed.

For example, a server fails. Some manager somewhere has calculated the precise amount of money that’s lost for each minute that the server is unavailable. What he’s calculating, you can’t be sure, because it’s apparent that the person who’s come up with the metric has never logged into the system in question. But regardless, when people have a dollar figure in mind, a dollar figure that involves a loss, the same people will crowd around your desk and demand answers the second that a system appears to be unavailable.

While it’s certainly their right to get answers, you’ve got to be careful with the first words that come out of your mouth, because these words will — I guarantee — never be forgotten. For example, we were having a problem with filesystem corruption in the fall of 2001. While I tracked this problem down to a system misconfiguration (which lead to the corruption), the word “corruption” was stuck in the heads of these managers forever. With any hiccup, I’d have a conga line of upper management parading around my desk uttering “corruption”, asking about “corruption?”, and otherwise “corrupting” my personal space.

I could only imagine if my first explanation of the problem was that “the hard drive is filled with candy!” “The hard drive is filled with candy?!”, they’d remark. And after the machine came back online, I suspect that some plebe would be required to put new “no food in machine room” signs everywhere near all of the servers in our data center.

The hard drive is filled with candy, indeed. You should see the tape library that’s filled with Fruity Pebbles, and the air conditioning units that are filled with marshmallow Fluff.

The latest buzzword is “firmware”.

A few weeks back, the IBM team had a problem with firmware on some disks, and a bunch of data went south. Their diagnosis? A firmware problem.

The problem with their firmware problem?

It became my firmware “problem”. The fact that managers everywhere believed that I should also upgrade the firmware on my non-IBM systems so we wouldn’t have the same problem. The conversations I had went something like this:

M: Nate, did you hear about the firmware problem that the IBM team had?
Nate: Yes, I did.
M: Do you think that you should look into upgrading your firmware?
Nate: What kind of firmware?
M: What kind of firmware might there be to upgrade?
Nate: (thinking VERY hard for an answer that would get me off the hook) Not the same firmware that the IBM team had a problem with.
M: So, there is firmware on your servers, then?
Nate: Sure.
M: Then, don’t you think that it should be upgraded?
Nate: No.
M: Are you sure that the same thing won’t happen to your servers than what happened to the IBMs?
Nate: There are never any guarantees, but I have a hunch that we’ll be okay, seeing that our firmware is supplemented with candy.

Soda, Bang, Hit the dirt!

My office building is littered with security guards: front desk, back hallway, walking the cubicle farm, every floor, etc. By and large, with the exception of walking around and asking you to show your ID at the front door, these guards don’t do a hell of a lot. Well, that is, unless you count congregating at the front desk, talking on the phone, sleeping, playing solitaire, dimming the lights afterhours, and listening to (loud) music as securing a premises.

For whatever reason, these security guards seem to be of the security-guarding-as-career lot. I often see the same people over and over, as I have for the past year. One of the stranger ones is this guard who I’ve nicknamed “the hep cat”. Miss “hep cat” wears her pants really high underneath her blazer. And when she walks, her head kind of wobbles. Yes, literally wobbles, probably succumbing to the weight of her undoubtedly unstable and evil thoughts. I’ve created a list of infractions of the hep cat, which include:

1. Reading aloud
2. Talking to herself (really loud)
3. Seemingly being angry about something all the time, and talking loudly about whatever it is to her co-workers in an indiscernable foreign language — while in the public view at the front desk.
4. Humming songs that only Alex Haley would find interesting.
5. Holding the elevator doors open while having a conversation with someone on the outside (yes, I’m the one who’s stuck in the elevator while she chats).
6. Being too much like “Angel Heart” Incarnate without the naturalistic sexyness of Lisa Bonet

I mean someone, somewhere must think that security guards are a good idea. It always seems to be the case that we see security guards somewhere, and it’s almost always the case that they’re catching up on their reading, napping, or tidying of the front desk. Ignore the fact that you see a burglar rappeling down the side of the building with your underclocked PC, monitor, and desk lamp — at least you have a clean front desk, and a semi-literate public in uniform.

As you know, I’m a man who likes my snacks. Or, to put it another way, I’m no stranger to snacks, as my waistline indicates. My current favorites are caffeinated soda and wheat crackers with processed cheddar in between them. I’ll get these snacks each day at 2:30pm or so.

We have a noisy soda machine at work. For a can that costs $0.75, one would hope that it would be delivered with but a whisper, but our machine lets it loose in a fashion that makes you wonder if Slim Pickens has been riding your can from the rack to the chute.

Today, security and snacking intersected at an awkward angle.

Me: (putting coins into machine)
Machine: (CLANK! CLANK! BANG!)
Me: (retrieving soda from chute)
Hep Cat: (running into snack machine room) Is everything OK?!
Me: (ignoring Hep Cat as I attempt to retrieve my crackers from the other machine.)
Hep Cat: Excuse me, sir? I need to see your ID.
Me: (ignoring Hep Cat completely)
Hep Cat: Sir?
Me: (Shooting dirty look at Hep Cat, who I’ve seen more than a million times over the past year.)
Hep Cat: Is everything OK?

I see a burglar, but it’s OK. He’s not brandishing a Mountain Dew.

Please Passive the Aggressive.

In moving to a new home, lots of stuff has transpired. Most of this stuff involves money being consumed, as if I was shooting rolls of coins down a steep incline, or down a chute if one was hanging out of my ass.

Most of these expenditures can be controlled, like buying window coverings, bathroom fixtures, appliances and the like. Some of these expenditures, while inevitable, come without warning. A perfect example of this is my landscaping. Currently, my “yard” is (literally) rocks and sand. Therefore, landscaping was necessary.

So, I brought a couple of landscapers / irrigation contractors by to get some quotes. And then I decided who I’d like to do the work. Of course, the builder had to do a number of things before we could start adding things like lawn and sprinkler systems. Time was wasting. Money was being spent.

Enter… communication breakdown!

(cell phone rings)
Landscaper: Nate, the land. You have to talk to the builder and tell him to fix the grading!
Me: Ummm, okay. I’ll do that next week when I’m back in town for the closing.
Landscaper (who’s now yelling for no apparent reason): NO, YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW!
Me: Wait… why do I have to do it now? I’m out of town until the closing. I’m homeless until then.
Landscaper: Listen, we started the work according to plan. We have multiple 10-wheelers coming in and dropping off the dirt. We just don’t have anywhere to put it!
Me: And when did I tell you that you could start the work?
Landscaper: Well, we’ve started it already, so we’re moving forward.
Me (to myself): FUCK.

The landscapers did the first phase of their work, then came looking for their money. Now, I didn’t really want to fight about whether or not they were supposed to have started the work in the first place. The work was already done, so the point was probably moot anyways. The question became: “how could I get them their money in the most efficient way, while being able to pay my current set of bills?”

And sure enough, the phone calls started a few days after the bill had been delivered. They went something like this:

Landscaper: Nate, when will you be dropping by with your payment for the work?
Me: It’ll be a few days, and I’m going to have to pay half now, and the rest over the next couple of weeks (following the due date that appeared on the bill).
Landscaper: Well, we told you that we’d expected payment when the work was completed.
Me: True, but your bill says that payment is due by X date.
Landscaper: Not to fault you or anything, but we need the payment ASAP.
Me: I’ll bring you payment for 50% on X date.
Landscaper: OK.

Sure enough, on the day before X date, my cell phone rings.

Landscaper: Nate, just wanted to know when you’ll be by tomorrow?
Me: About 1:30 or 2pm.
Landscaper: And you’ll be bringing a check for the amount of $X?
Me: No, for 50% of that amount.
Landscaper: Well, payment was due when the work was completed.
Me: The bill says that payment is due by X date.
Landscaper: Okay, so 50% is coming with you tomorrow?
Me: Yes.

On X day, I head out to the landscaper’s. Of course, I can’t find the guy anywhere. So, I pay one of his underlings the amount for 50% of the work. I see the guy on the way out, and say hello to him.

On my way back home, my cell phone rings again.

Me: Hello?
Landscaper: You didn’t tell me that you were going to be paying 50%.
Me: I told you yesterday, and the time before that.
Landscaper: Not that it’s a problem or anything, but you didn’t say that you were going to be paying 50%.
Me: Yes, I did. Why else would I pay you exactly 50%?
Landscaper: Like I said, it’s not a problem. I just wanted to make sure.
Me: Make sure of what?
Landscaper: That you paid 50%.

Behind Every Realtor is a Sun (Microsystems) SE

This is a really whacked recession. It seems to be the case that people are losing jobs everywhere, but (in my opinion) I’ve seen an incredible number of people who work in the technical field lose their jobs, too.

And why didn’t I just called them “technical professionals”? Yuh huh. Read on.

I’ve seen some really good people lose their jobs in the tech/computing industry. Unfortunately, and sadly, loss of jobs doesn’t necessarily correlate to quality in the remaining workforce. Somewhere, I think that upper-middle management has determined which salaries to cut, and not which people to retain. You probably already know this.

<insanely-boring-paragraph>
A few weeks ago, we needed to perform repairs on one of our Sun Microsystems Enterprise-class servers. For whatever reason, we had been shipped a — let’s call it — fucked-up system configuration. Basically, with certain Sun (enterprise) servers, you can’t have both (dual, fibre-based) HBAs, (dual) gigabit ethernet, and internal (fibre-channel) drives. This means that if you want a reasonably redundant configuration (while having the number of processors and memory boards that you want), you’ll probably be forced into using external drives. Further, if you want to have niceties like internal tape drives, and external devices spread across controllers, be prepared for pain.
</insanely-boring-paragraph>

Long story short?

The tape drive in said server never worked. I mean: EVER. This meant that while we could do backups of the machine, we’d always have to reinstall the OS from CD since with Solaris 7 and gigabit ethernet interfaces, we couldn’t merely plumb the devices and restore over the network. This was painful. Specifically, this was paining me greatly. In my mind, there’s nothing more stoopid and pain-bringing than needing to re-install the OS from install media if you don’t have to. Between the re-install, patching, etc., you’ll have probably ended up wasting half a day just putting the OS back in place. Horsep00!

Thankfully, Sun was so kind as to send an SE onsite, in hopes that we could get the tape drive working once and for all. Mind you, we couldn’t change the hardware configuration of the machine, so the SE would need to be crafty enough to come up with a solution — likely at an OS-level.

Unfortunately, the SE was a turd. We had many conversations like this:

Me: Ah, okay, so we booted single-user from the CD-ROM and the tape drive works this way.
He: Great! So, I guess that my work here is done. The tape drive works.
Me: No, it isn’t. That doesn’t explain why the problem occurred, and obviously we can’t leave the system in a state where it’s booted single-user from the CD-ROM.
He: It’s because your hardware configuration isn’t supported (by Sun).
Me: Before I started working here, this is the configuration that Sun wrote up for us.
He: Well, uhhh, maybe we should call Sun support and open a ticket.

And this went on and on. I should note that I tried all kinds of horrendous shit, like dumping the (working) tape devices from CD-ROM to one of the disks. Nothing worked. To make matters worse, the SE sat there slumped in his chair, and didn’t have anything to offer. On days like this, I wonder why I even bothered putting on pants before I came to work.

Finally, I was hungry. I ordered some food. The SE didn’t want any. Of course, like all meals where someone isn’t eating, the SE just sat there and watched me eat my Texas Chili Fries. And then the conversations started up again.

He: So, how long have you been an SA?
Me: For 7 or so years now.
He: That’s good. I’ve only been an SE for a couple of years.
Me: Oh yeah? What did you do before that?
He: I was a realtor.
Me: (nearly choking on chili fries) Oh. And why did you make the change?

As of this very second, the tape drive is still broken. Perhaps we can make a listing on Ebay, and maybe the SE could close the sale for us.

You might be selling a house in Eastern MA if…

I put my Natick house on the market in April of 2002, in the beginning of the second week to be exact. After having been on the market for 6 days and approximately 60 visitors (30 at open house, and 30 in the first week), I received an offer on the house. Given that I just closed on the sale of the house last week, you are correct to assume that the original offer and the offer that resulted in a full-term sale were by two different “parties”.

Anyways.

If you don’t know anything about the Boston market, let me offer an executive summary: It’s great if you’re speaking only of making a profit, and a sanitation worker’s summary: it’s completely fuckin’ insane, man!.

Here’s my top 10 list of things that transpired while my house was on the market (yes, these things were all a result of having people parading through the house):

1. Burning of the midnight lamp. Actually, make that, burning of all lamps for as long as humanly possible. Realtors clearly have poor memory retention, even worse than my Commodore 64 ever had. It was not unusual for me to go away over a weekend, and find that all of my lights were left on for an entire weekend.
2. Cat Barf Fever. Yes, it’s like that stoopid song by “the Nuge” (Ted Nugent) in a way. Cats barf sometimes, my cat being no exception. Coming home and finding cat barf tracked all over your kitchen floor and throughout your home is something else entirely.
3. Going Boom. I don’t understand why someone would tweak my circuit breaker during a showing, but when that happens, my machines and ‘net connection will suck from the teet of the UPS. And if the teet is sucked for too long? Net go boom.
4. Danny Devito Loca. One day I owned a digital camera. The next day, I didn’t, although my house was spotless. Thank you, Maidpro!
5. Crack (ass) of Dawn. I don’t understand people who request 9am showings on Saturday. What could they be thinking? Did I oblige? Sure, most of the time. I mean, I wanted to sell the place. Did it piss me off? Oh yeah.
6. Body blow! Body blow! Blow to the head!Realtors, they who often cannot comprehend the obfuscated on/off design of lighting control, are also hesitant to explore the art of signing in/out when they show your property. In its stead? Business cards. I believe that I’ve collected over 100 business cards of the various brokers who’ve been in the Natick house. The worst type? Those business cards which advertise a lower-priced property that’s in the same neighborhood of the house that you’re selling. What the FUCK is that jive about?
7. What, no cake? I learned that someone who’d attended one of the open houses not only didn’t like the dog, but also seemed put out that I hadn’t provided food.
8. Get your lock box, get your lock box, baby! I love coming home to find, that inside of my porch, is a keypad for the lock box that’s affixed to my front door. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a problem. It became a problem, however, when I realized that the realtor had scribbled their 4-digit pin on the back of the keypad that they’d left sitting near my front door. I broke into my own home 3 times just to confirm this.
9. She’ll be riding 6 white horses when she comes. Yes, white horses and white ponies, too. It appears that cocaine abuse is rampant in realty. Or maybe it’s reefer madness. Can’t be sure, but I’ve never seen people move their mouths so quickly without saying anything that’s really important.
10. Thank you so much! I’m not sure what ‘thank you’ really means anymore, after having dealt with realtors for the past 4 months. I mean, a realtor saying ‘thank you’ to me is almost like having a stranger tap your penis after you’ve finished pee’ing in a urinal. “Oh, don’t want to fight with you, you freakin’ molester, but thanks for tapping my penis nevertheless!”

I’m Not Building these Homes for the Money!

Okay, so, selling my house is done. Fargin’ finally! And JH Christ, could the biznatch who bought my house have extracted any more money out of me? Don’t even get me started on her. Lawyers.

Editor’s note: Yeah, that also explains the large gap in between entries in my blog. Sorry! I’ve been bursting at the seams wanting to write something.

As of this very second, and for the next 2 days’ worth of seconds, I’m living with my parents. Very George Costanza-esque, you might think, but things have been pretty healthy. We haven’t had any arguments, and not once have I had sex in their bed (or anyplace else in their home — for that matter). In fact, I’ve been “homeless” since last Friday afternoon, when the Natick house closed, and, well, the new house in NH wasn’t quite finished.

As with all of my trials and tribulations, I seek the punch-line. In this case, it came last Friday afternoon, c/o the builder of my new crib, who remarked to me: “I’m sorry that we’re running behind with your house. You know, the market here in NH ‘really took off’ a few months back. I’ve been building these homes like crazy. I’m not even in it for the money. I just want to get these homes built!”

Three words: No fucking shit.

Now, call me crazy, but isn’t my Tony-Soprano-lookalike-of-a-builder pulling my balls a little bit hard? Surely, he must be. I just reviewed my purchase and sale agreement, and nowhere does it state that the house was intended to be free. Nor does the attached “covenant” for the development mention the builder’s rampant idealism. (That is, I’d expect clause 11 to state: “As an idealist, the builder would like everyone to have free homes, but as a limited edition, you’ll have to pay for your’s!”) Well of course it wasn’t. It’s not like he built it out of sugarcubes or femur bones or anything. It’s not like the local brothel hangs a sign out by the road that reads “free sex”. And I’m sure that the person who’s offering “free puppies” isn’t actually running a brothel.