Diary of a Wolfeman

The Lady Tolerant and I have often thought about where to go and what to do on our evenings together, and we’ve gotten into a bit of a rut, going to the same places and doing the same things. Being unhappy with the result, we have embarked upon a great Quest to visit and catalog the various Pubs, Dives and Watering Holes this great city has to offer, and possibly discover the best fish & chips in town.

Now, we prefer the idea of the traditional English or Irish pub, but sometimes an establishment can’t really be labeled. For the sake of argument, a “Pub” will be defined as any bar that has even vaguely English or Irish decor, serves beer imported from the UK, and serves fish & chips.

A “Dive’ is listed as any bar that is not a “Pub”, and does not cater to … well, anyone really. Dives are typically dark, smoky, and inexpensive, and staffed by great characters who don’t take any shit.

A “Watering Hole” is focused on the drinking part of the theme, with only the most rudimentary menu items listed. You don’t go there to eat, you go there to drink.

Note that you did not see the word “club” in all of that – because I hate clubs. Once the music has reached a certain volume, ny brain ceases to function and I would not be able to review it. And I don’t dance.

As examples, The Rose & Raindrop was a great pub, until they sold the damn building to a bank. Across the street from there, My Father’s Place is a great Dive. I have not found a local Watering Hole yet, but I’m sure you could figure it out.

These establishments will be judged upon the following categories:

Location (where is it, how to get there, parking, etc.)
Food (quantity, quality, variety)
Drinks (again, quantity and quality)
Atmosphere (decor, music, attitude)
Service (you get the idea)
and of course, Price. (one “$” denotes $10 spent on a meal and drink for one person)

Grading is on a scale of A to F, just like in grade school. There is no scientific method here, just the impressions of myself and Tolerant, so I can’t tell you exactly what constitues each grade. To get an ‘A’, though, an establishment will probably need to be pretty stellar.

The first review is coming soon…

There has been much ranting on a number of boards I read recently regarding the sad state of general intelligence in the world today and specifically about the lack of general knowledge people have about their computers. Computers seem to be the one thing in this modern society that the general populace feels they have no need to know the operation of.

No employer will hand you the keys to a company vehicle before first making sure that you A) have a Driver’s License and B) have or have had auto insurance. Not so with computers – they will ask if you know what you are doing, but will generally offer some very quick training if not. That’s it – there is no test to make sure you actually know what the computer IS before they set you loose on one. Arguably, the computer has the larger potential for costing the company money, yet there is no standard of knowledge required before issuing you one.

This amazes me.

Having watched heads of IT try to turn on a computer by repeatedly stabbing the power button on the monitor, however, you’d think I was beyond amazement, but there ya have it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to put an end to the ignorance in whatever small way I can. So without further ado, I bring you…

Wolfe’s Guide To Computer Operation 101 – Hardware

1) This is a monitor:

A monitor does one thing: it displays the image generated by the computer. It may be a CRT and be big and bulky, or it may use LCD technology making it slim and flat.

It is NOT the computer itself.

2) This is a computer:

Note that it has a CD drive in the front of it – as a general rule, if it is bigger than a copy of Harry Potter and has a CD tray, and is not a DVD player for your home, then it is a computer.

This is the part that actually does all of the work. While it may have a dial-up modem built into it, it is still not a modem, it just uses one.

There are many brands of computers available on the market today from companies like Dell, Gateway, HP, and Compaq. If you buy a computer from one of these brands, it will be running a Microsoft Windows Operating System unless you tell them otherwise. They make it very hard to tell them otherwise, so you can pretty much take it for granted that you are running Windows.

3) There are several versions of Microsoft Windows (or just Windows) available. The one you will most likely encounter in the business environment is Windows XP Pro. At home, you will find Windows XP Home or Media Center Edition, or Windows Vista. It is possible to find Vista in the business, but most companies were smart enough to avoid it thus far.

You should too.

If you are not sure which version of Windows you have, reboot the computer and watch the monitor. A big logo should appear on the screen before it gets to the Desktop telling you which version you have.

4) These are dial-up modems:

Internal

External

In older systems, you plug the phone line into this device to gain access to the Internet. If you have a modem, you must also have an account with an ISP. You gain access to the Internet by first having the computer tell the dial-up modem to call the ISP and log in. Once that is done, you may launch a Web Browser to view web pages in.

5) This is a network cable:

More specifically this is an Ethernet cable, but calling it a network cable will suffice. It looks very much like a phone cable on steroids – it is generally thicker, and has more pins than a phone cable. It will not fit into a dial-up modem like the ones pictured above. This is how most modern computers get connected to networks and from there to the Internet.

If you use one of these, your Internet connection will likely be always on, meaning you do not have to dial the ISP first – you just launch a Web Browser.

6) It is the Internet, not the Intarwebs, nor is it Internets (plural). These other two expressions are only allowed on LOLcat images.

7) This is a LOLcat site:

I Can Has Cheezeburger

LOLcats are pictures of cats with funny captions that make us laugh. If you don’t get this, I don’t want to know you, for you are obviously a lower form of life.

8) To view a website full of LOLcats images, you will need a Web Browser. There are a number of different browsers available, but the one you will most likely encounter is called Internet Explorer. It is the big blue “e” icon on the Desktop.

If you call Tech Support, they may ask you to go to a specific website. This is done by typing the address of the website into the Address Bar of the browser. If you look at your screen right now, you will see a place that says “http://thecyberwolfe.com/blog/…” – that is the Address Bar. If you click the mouse in that area, you can delete whatever is there and type in something new. When you are done typing, pressing the “Enter” key on the keyboard will take you to the address you just typed.

This will do for the 101 course. Next, in the 102 course, you will find some tips for what to do when something doesn’t work.

Mental note: when setting up a new mail server, double-check your spelling of names. Because sure as shit, the one name you mispell is going to be the one person who will neep about it incessantly until you go through and clear the names cache out of every email client in the organization.

Luckily for this particular idiot, there are only 5 computers in the org, so it didn’t take that long. But still.

Oi.

I stopped in to fill up the tank and get a drink after work yesterday and noticed that the mini-mart had removed a rack of goodies and replaced it with a huge Budweiser display and a couple stand-alone knick-knack racks. Then I looked closely and saw this:

You’ll have to forgive the lousy picture (camera phone), but if you look closely you will see that it is one of those t-shirt racks that has a picture of the shirt next to the bin. Look even closer, and you will see that the entire thing is devoted to shirts extoling the virtues of Christ, done up to look like trendy shirts that you see hipster kids on Hawthorne wearing.

No shit – one of them even duplicates the Starbucks logo “Sacrificed…for your sins”

Needless to say, this gave me a serious WTF?!? moment. It got worse, however, when I went up to the counter and saw the ‘Royal Blunts’ rolling tubes (which no-one has ever used for tobacco – note the website), the big rack of ‘Energy’ pills (otherwise known as OTC speed) and the (I am really not making this up) “Screaming O” brand vibrating condom rings. And don’t forget all the beer next to the shirt rack.

Apparently, their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

I was looking at my living room the other day and realized that the current vacuum at Chez Wolfe was just not cutting it. Between my hair and Zoe’s, that poor old Royal was choking out. So, off I went to Stark’s Vacuums on Grand.

I’ve been drooling over the Dyson models, just because I appreciate fine engineering when I see it, but am a bit shy about dropping a minimum of $400 on a house-cleaning tool – no matter how well-engineered it may be. I explained this to my friendly sales rep, and laid out my requirements for a new machine:

• Bagless
• HEPA filter
• Upright with onboard tools and extension hose
• Powerful enough to dig the cat hair out of shag
• Less expensive than a Dyson

I can’t remember the gent’s name, but his face kind of fell at that point because they don’t carry much in the way of bagless vacs other than Dysons. I was walking out the door when I spotted this funky looking Hoover: the Z upright.

The idea behind it is really kinda funky – it is a crossover vac. It folds in half from what you see in the picture so that it sits like a canister. The handle pops off and becomes the hose attachment point, and it comes with an extension and a brushless hard-floor tool. Or, stand it up and use it like a regular upright vac. A panel opens up on the side to reveal the cord and tool storage, and all the settings are electronic so it’s dead easy to operate.

We gave it a quick test on the sales floor and it looked like it would do the job. The real selling point, however, was that it was on sale for $139. Sold!

The final verdict: my carpets are now clean and biege, instead of dirty and black from cat hair. The cat, of course, is pissed, because she had put all that effort into shedding all over everything and now she has to start all over again :)

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.