Diary of a Wolfeman

The day after the previous post, I got a bit of a shocking email:

Someone at Symantec had seen my post, and then emailed me directly about it.

(stunned silence)

I have no delusions of grandeur here, I have seen my stats and I know that roughly 5 people ever read this blog – so I’m betting that someone in the PR dept over there must be tasked with Googling daily for bad press, and they must have showed it around the office, because I got more hits that day than I have in the past two months.

The thing is, the guy was genuinely trying to be helpful, and not once did he request that I take down the post, so I will give them an “E for Effort” in trying to resolve my issues. Of course, since I keep my professional life and my electronic alter-ego strictly separate, I had to reply in generalities, so I don’t expect to see any immediate change.

There is always hope for the next version, though.

Installed Backup Exec v11d for a client yetserday, after finally jumping through enough hoops to register the serial number so I could download the product. (That was a hell all on its own.)

Get everything installed, and try to run a LiveUpdate – keeps failing on the first file. I figure we just need to reboot the server one last time, so I do so and go home (it was already after 5).

Today, I run LiveUpdate again – fails on the second file. Info box says I have to restart LU – so I do. This time it sees that the 1st update downloaded, and goes straight to #2 and finishes. Fails on #3.

And again on #4

And again on #6 – with another LU restart in between each failure. Somehow, it managed to make it all the way to number 8 after this, so it starts installing the updates. Another window pops up, this time saying the BE services have stopped.

O.o?

The box then brings up the BE “login to media server” box with a button for “Services”. Clicking this gets me a window with several buttons, one of which is “Start all services”. Clickety. Chug-chug-chug, click on OK. Then it makes me log back in to the media server, and of course it hasn’t saved the password. Once that goes through, it pops up 11 (ELEVEN!!) informational windows saying it restarted the various services and that I will need to reboot to finish the update.

It then goes through this same ridiculous process for EVERY FUCKING UPDATE IT INSTALLED.

And we paid how much for this barely functional piece of shit that can’t even re-start its own services or download an update without handholding?

Just shoot me.

Back when I was 17 and in high school, I met this gal AH at an SCA event about a 2-hour drive from home – turned out she lived about 10 miles from me in the next township, and we ended up hanging out on weekends. (Yes, we dated too, but it went nowhere – we just were better friends.)

Anyway, up until this point I had been introduced to the idea of the Transformers only peripherally – I had seen commercials, but not the cartoons due to lack of cable. One or two of my friends may have had them, but it just never really came up, you know? Come to think of it, aside from Saturday morning cartoons on the Big 3 Networks, I hadn’t been exposed to decent animation either.

AH, on the other hand, was a huge fan of Anime in general and a BIG Transformers freak. she sat me down at her place one weekend and we went through her entire collection of video tapes – nothing huge by today’s standards, but remember I was just a hick kid who had never seen this stuff before. She didn’t have more than about 6 episodes of Transformers, but the ones she did have led directly up to the movie, which she also had. I was stunned, enthralled and completely taken with the genre, but the Big T got me the most. (I’ll admit it, I cried a little when Optimus died and again when Hot Rod became Rodimus Prime.)

That Sunday, we took several cans of Krylon black and grey primer and re-painted her classic 1970 Dodge Challenger. (Did I mention AH was a serious tomboy who had a rockin’ musclecar?). We painted the main body grey, but the hood and trunk lid were done in black. Then we put on the coup de grace – a two-foot wide Decepticon emblem in silver on the hood, with smaller matching emblazons in black on the doors.

That Challenger had been christened “Zioticon” for a couple of years, but now he had the badges to prove it, as well as a really good artist rendition of what he would have looked like transformed.

If you haven’t guessed it, AH was a huge Transformers geek too. :) She even had an original die-cast Japanese import Megatron that looked real enough to shoot in pistol form.

So, with that kind of history behind me, you can bet your britches I went and saw the new movie on the 4th.

I fucking loved it!

This is the only comic book / anime-turned-live-acting movie I have seen in … in … in FOREVER that not only didn’t suck out loud, I actually LIKED it!

Yes, there are a couple of scenes lifted directly out of other movies (the girl in the bedroom for one), but with a bajillion movies out there, it’s hard not too. The acting was good, the writing and dialog were good, and the effects were damn convincing.

Okay – there are those of us out there who still wonder how the hell a three-ton car can turn into a 50-foot tall robot heavy enough to leave footprints in pavement, but we can shut the brain up during the movie.

And yes, I cried a little during some of the combat scenes. Bite me. You go watch it and come out completely dry-eyed, then we’ll talk. Whatever you do, see this movie. It’s worth the money. (But sneak in your own drink – $4.00 for a soda is frickin’ robbery.)

It’s amazing how getting a non-computer-related hobby will cut into your posting about nothings.

I have been making some pouches with a couple of different closures for practice out of that new leather. It is a little thin for pouches in the long run, but they look good. One goes to the Ratboy because it actually came out pretty good, but the second is more than likely going to be taken apart and used as a template – I got the belt loops in the wrong spot, and it can’t be fixed without leaving visible stitch lines.

I’ve got the skirt and mug frogs down pretty pat at this point. For those of you who don’t know, in the re-enactment world, a frog is anything that allows you to hang something else off of your belt. Originally used for swords and daggers that had scabbards without the means of attachment, we’ve been able to think of any number of things that you want with you but don’t necessarily want to carry in your hand.

A tankard or mug is a perfect example – once you’ve drunk it dry while wandering merchant’s row, where do you put it? Why, you hang it off of your belt via a mug frog. A skirt frog attaches a pair of D-rings to your belt which you can use to hold your skirts out of the mud.

At this point, I normally carry three knives, a belt pouch, a mug and my portable butt-can. Once we get into garb, some of us look like Batman with all the crap we hang off our belts. I want to put on anything else, I may have to make a bandolier.

Last payday, I put in an order for a full side of 2-3 ounce leather for pouch making, as well as some additional tools. I figure I should be able to turn out three or four more pouches easy by the next event, along with a few other items I have been protoyping, like bondage bracelets and forearm bracers.

And don’t look at me like that – if you can buy it at the mall, it ain’t kinky anymore. Hell, these days bondage cuffs are pretty damn vanilla, as evidenced by this.

(Which would be useful for those geeks wishing to re-create the scene where Darth freezes Han in Empire. But I digress.)

And that digression has pretty much derailed my train. Where the hell was I? Nevermind, this is a good place to stop. Talk at ya later.