Diary of a Wolfeman

The day was perfect – sunny and warm, despite the lack of leaves on the trees, with just a hint of breeze. The Pookster and I sought our prey with care, approaching on foot from downwind. We were amongst them before they knew we were even there.

We chose a likely pair of candidates, and quickly dragged them back to the car and secured them in the trunk. They were so stunned they didn’t even struggle as we hauled them, nor did they scream in fright as we closed the trunk. A perfect nab.

Back at our hideout, we cleared a workspace and laid down newspapers to prevent stains on the furniture and floor. Then we carefully selected our tools – knives, for the most part, but we included some large spoons and a comtainer for the messier parts to come.

The first stroke of the knife is always the hardest, but once you get the blade in, sawing further isn’t that hard. There is almost always that small moment of queasiness, however, when you reach for the spoon, knowing what comes next.

The container was not up to the task, and had to be emptied between victims, but the procedure went smoothly. We are both well-pleased with the results. I had considered something more complicated for my own, but my partner in crime beat me to the punch, so I opted for a more traditional mutilation. She always has been more artistic than I. (The eyebrows on mine are her idea, in fact.)

Click the link to see our handiwork – if you dare!

Muahahahahahaha!!!! Read the rest of this entry »

And you shouldn’t ask it to come in.

Ok, that is a pretty fast opinion. I installed it last night and gave it a quick trial – literally less than ten minutes. I only gave it that long because that’s all it took for me to realize it sucked.

First and worst is the layout. Yay, they got tabs – but they put a row of buttons in the tab bar that can’t be moved elsewhere. It can be slid to the right to hide it, but it includes the “Home” button, so at least one button will always be there taking up tab space. The rest of the directional controls are spread out across the toolbars, and you can’t move any of them either.

Some might say this is a bold move, but it seems pretty stupid to me. Any device or piece of software should have all of the navigational controls in one spot. Look at your tape or CD deck – Stop, Play, FFWD and REW are all right next to each other. Why should my browser have Forward and Back in the top left, Refresh and Stop between the Address and Search boxes where the Go button should be, and Home on the tab bar?

Let’s get back to those tabs again. Yes, they have them, and you can even save a collection of tabs into a bookmarks folder. Cool. The problem they still have though, is that you can’t open more than one bookmark at a time still. One of the most-used features on my Firefox install is the “Open In Tabs” extension. How could they have missed this?

Speaking of extensions, there is a selection of them for download – although I can’t imagine a real use for any of ’em. Oh – and not all of them are free. Yep – you could pay up to $30 for a freaking browser extension! Gaah! Ok, that is actually a misnomer – these are not fast-and-light browser extensions like you find in Firefox and Mozilla. These are stand-alone programs, most of which display information to a toolbar or sidebar in your browser.

Top the whole thing off with the fact that someone found a security flaw less than 24 hours after releasing the product, and I highly recommend you avoid IE7 for at least a couple months.

So the Boss gave Da Roomie and I a new wireless firewall to play with – something that has some real security to it, compared to the Linksys model we have been using to date.

Installation wasn’t too much of an issue – I have used this model before, so it was just the usal jumping-through of hoops. The real fun came when I went down to the garage and tried to get the laptop online.

I had taken special pains to keep the setting the same, as I couldn’t remember at the time the name of the obscure file I had had to edit the first time I set this up. Still, no luck, even after a half-hour or so of bashing on it.

This morning, I gave in and booted the laptop to the Win2k install just to check my daily webcomics, when wouldn’t you know it? It didn’t work in Windows either! Now we’re getting somewhere!

It turns out that the Orinoco card that I am using is the culprit, due to them being cheap in the driver code. Orinoco cards only use the WEP key for encryption, not for authentication like everybody else. According to the article on the forums, I only need to change one thing on the firewall to make it work. So basically, to use the shiny new security device, I have to disable half of its security.

Dontcha just love standards?

Well, now that I have a real job again, I can add a new wifi card to the list. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll just dig a used lappy out of Craigslist or something while I’m at it.

…will still probably stab your thumb.

Okay, so I’m up way too late reading again, and decide to check blogs before I crash and I notice that Firefox 2.0 RC2 is out. So, clickety-clickety it is installed and now I have to test it. Low and behold, Da Roomie has done a likely meme.

–Sidebar– you ever notice how mispelling a single word can really mess with a meaning? I have a bad habit (as do many others) of spelling and as nad, which turns “Low and behold” into something only a dear friend should do.

I told you I was up late.

Anyway, on with the meme: Namings

1. YOUR SPY NAME: (middle name and current street name)
James San Rafael. Yes, it definitely could have been worse. I used to live down the road from Troll View Road. Then again, there is a “Skywalker Street” in Las Vegas.

2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your dad’s side, your favorite candy)
Edward KitKat? That would be a no. I should go with “Butterfinger” instead, and go into slapstick.

3. YOUR RAP NAME (first initial of first name, first three or four letters of your last name)
D-Cro. Or should it be D’Cro? D’Plane? Yes, get off that aircraft right now.

4. YOUR GAMER TAG: (a favorite color, a favorite animal)
Black Wolf(e). Yeah, that was tough.

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
James Laguna – as in Laguna Beach, CA

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother’s maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet’s Name)
Cro Rcy Zoe. I dare you to say it out loud. It helps to use a bad Engrish accent.

7. JEDI NAME: (middle name spelled backwards, your mom’s maiden name spelled backwards)
Semaj Ycrep. Sounds like a symptom of some nasty disease. Please get me penicillin.

8. PORN STAR NAME: (first pet’s name, the street you grew up on)
Hmm…first pet was a female Elkhound named Gretchen. We’ll go with her pup and say it was Barney Hamilton.

9. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The”, your favorite color, the automobile your dad drives)
The Black Kenworth. I am a semi-hero. Beware my 18 Wheels of Justice!

10. YOUR ACTION HERO NAME: (first name of the main character in the last film you watched, last food you ate)
Scooby Tacos. (Pookie and I watched a Scooby-Do cartoon movie.) Prior to that was Tomb Raider, so then we have Lara Tacos. Mmmmm…Lara Tacos…

Sleeeeepysleepysleepy…..

CLIENT: Our internet is spotty as hell, and the ISP says everything is fine on their end. Any ideas?
ME: Hmmm…reboot the router for me.
CLIENT: Ok, the lights are coming back on, looks like normal now.
ME: Okay, I’m in. Let me nose about for a bit and I’ll call you right back.

Poke poke poke…hmm. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, let’s check the firewall logs. What’s this? Intrusion Prevention System says it has been fending off attacks? From inside? MEDIC!

So we dispatched a tech, and he brought us a present this morning: a horribly infested laptop, the many infections of which were swamping the network in attempts to propagate themselves to other machines, or phone home or whatever. Needless to say, little 128K fractional T1 line was not up to the task.

Neither was our 2.5M DSL line at the shop, as we found out when Mr. A+ plugged the damn lappy into our network – on the internal side.

Yet again, I am amazed at how someone with a certification can get one. A very stupid mistake. I can only hope that our systems were hardened enough to prevent infection.

Boy, I guess I’m a bad blogger – it’s been a whole week since my last post.

We had a bit of fun for Pookie’s birthday this year – as a happy coincidence, we had the Pirate Festival to attend down at Cathedral Park. This turns out to be a pretty decent place to hold an event of this size. The space is pretty open, so at first glance you’re thinking there will be no shade – there are hardly any trees. Then you remember that you’re directly under the St. Johns bridge, which happens to run East-West, Leaving a 40-foor wide swath of shadow right down the middle of the park.

On hand was an actual sailing ship and many, many, many people dressed as pirates. I had no idea there were that many in the area. Sure, the SCA has drifted toward pirates lately, but this was a bit surprising.

Good points included some good music, dancing and plain ol’ fun. A bunch of those inflatable bouncy places for the kids to tromp on, face painting and other child-friendly delights. For the adults, there was an “Ale Garden”, and most of the music was more adult-oriented.

Bad points included a lack of easy public transport combined with lousy parking, a $15 cover charge and long lines for everything. I mean hour-long lines. It seems that not a single food vendor had any idea how to staff an event like this, and they were taking forever to get anything served.

They are saying next year they will extend it to two days, which will be good – give them more time to make a profit, maybe they can lower the cover charge. In 3 year’s time, the event may grow large enough to be held down at Waterfront park.

I seem to have forgotten to blog for almost a week.

Well, things have been going pretty smoothly at the new job. Met a few of the clients and looked over their situations, and am pretty pleased with the level of quality and consistency in the systems. It’s always easier to take care of something that was designed well to begin with.

I got things switched over to my new permanent laptop this week, and while it is pretty cool, it isn’t quite as cool as the first one I had :( It did however, allow me to find a problem in some Terminal Services software – it can’t draw the windows correctly in a widescreen format. Makes for some interesting issues.

It’s been different at home too. With the new work schedule, I can’t have Pookie over on weeknights anymore, since it would be too much of a strain on her to get up that early. It’s a bummer because I see her less, but the days I miss out on are the ones where we were always rushing to get home, cook dinner, get her into the bath and then into bed. Not exactly “quality time”.

I don’t know quite how it happened, but we have aparently gotten another set of party-neighbors. 503 B somehow just attracts ’em, and now I have to figure a way to shut them up so we can all get to sleep. Wheee.

Yknow, a couple of tear-gas grenades would at least chase ’em out into the street…

-Or-
Parts of a Play That Has Never Been Written

My buddy BJ back in ‘Vegas was into theater – the tech and production side, not the acting. We would sit and laugh over tales he had from the shows he helped run, and we got the idea to do a sort of “Noises-Off-Knock-Off”, a bunch of behind-the-scenes scenes. The only problem was we couldn’t figure out how to string them together. Tolerant just gave me the idea that each scene is from a different play in a community theater that will put on just about anything. Here’s a sample:

STAGETECH is stage left, heaving on a rope that goes up to the ceiling.
DIRECTOR and PRODUCER are stage right, loudly arguing about a piece of scenery. They call STAGETECH over to get his opinion. ST is busy, but sees they won’t be put off.

ST: Frowns, looks around, spots FEMALE STAGEHAND, visually sizes her up.
ST: “You! C’mere for a minute!”
FSH: Looks up, drops what she is doing and walks over.
ST: “Hold this.” Hands rope to FSH, turns and walks towards DIR and PRO
FSH: “Ack!” as she rises slowly to the ceiling. ALL turn to watch.
ST: Looks at FSH, looks down at his paunch. “Damn! I gotta lay off the doughnuts!”

——————-

Stage left: two ACTORS and STAGETECH are working out a fight scene.
Stage Right: DIRECTOR and ACTORS are arguing over dialogue. Horrid Brooklyn accents abound.
ST pushes ACTOR1 aside and takes his place to better demonstrate how to throw a believable punch, goes through routine slowly with ACTOR2 a few times.
ST: “Okay, let’s try it again at full speed.” ST and A2 begin routine, it looks pretty good. DIR and ACTORS get a little louder.
About halfway through fight routine, ST clocks A2 loudly across the jaw, A2 goes down in a heap. Silence on stage, then ACTORS rush over to check on A2.
ST: “I said dodge LEFT you twit!” Throws hands in air and exits.

So for the past two days I have been dealing with my impacted wisdom tooth, which is slowly crushing the teeth in my lower-left jawline. “Painful” is too mild a word. Take a red-hot poker and place the tip at the base of your jaw just below your ear. Now brace the front of your mouth on a brick wall and have someone stand behind you with a huge-ass jackhammer and drive that fucker forward against the poker as hard as they can.

Now multiply that feeling by about 10, and you’ve got what I was feeling last night. Seriously. It got so bad at one point I was actually considering using my handy Gerber multi-pliers to rip out one of my molars, which would at least make room for the other remaining teeth to move around a bit. I actually had the pliers in my hand.

Tolerant, however, came to my rescue! Having had similar pain issues in the past, she had a couple prescription-grade painkillers in the medicine cabinet that she brought over for me. That Angel actually walked over to my house at 11 o’clock just to deliver them! These cut the pain enough for me to get to sleep, and that’s when my funky pain-tolerance system finally kicked in.

I don’t know how it does it, but my brain is able somehow to simply ignore nerve input when it needs to – this has come in very handy at times, lemme tell you. Once the meds cut the pain enough for me to sleep, my brain must have decided that the nerves in question were malfunctioning and severely reduced their say in how lousy I was going to be feeling. By morning, I was only suffering mild discomfort, the sort which is easily handled by Excedrin and friends.

I’m not totally in the clear yet – one of my molars has been tilted forward, which means my teeth meet earlier now and in kind of an odd way, and this is the most sensitive tooth currently. I have to be careful eating, but I can get by. In a week or so I will have adjusted to it and will be fine until the next shift in pressure. With any luck, I’ll only have to go through this one more time before December, when my insurance will start and I can go to the dentist to get this permanently fixed.

In the meantime, though, if you see me pacing the hallway with pliers in my hand, just knock my ass out.

A couple weeks back, I went to a “Roadshow” put together by those prats up in Redmond that consisted of an RV with a about 500 pounds of computer equipment installed, and driven by some old coot who “demonstrated” some of the technologies available. Complete waste of my time.

Sure, they had an install of Windows Vista to show off, but they put it on an old laptop lacking the horsepower needed to show off the new pretty Aero Glass interface, so what we really saw could have merely been an artist’s rendering for all I know. The coot in question hadn’t bothered to keep up on the latest news, admitting that several of the guys back at HQ had given him a bunch of reading material that he “hadn’t got around to reading yet.” It’s bad when your audience is informing you about the features of your product.

Today I went to a conference put together by SonicWALL, maker of firewalls and other related products. A team of 5 guys who all seriously knew their stuff and had an actual presentation to give. The whole spiel was about as close to 50-50 sales / technical as they could get it, but unfortunately they mixed the whole thing up during the day. Would have been better, I think, if they had separated it out more so that the techies and sales guys didn’t have to sit through the whole thing to get what they needed.

On the bonus side, the Westin Hotel (750 SW Alder) laid out a great spread for lunch, including some of the best cheesecake I have ever had. I was almost licking the plate clean.