Diary of a Wolfeman

So there we are, me and my supervisor sitting in the SonicWall Roadshow when the bit about “gold Partner Requirements” comes up. My supe gets to thinking about his own expired rankings and gets the idea we need to send someone to training. Just so happens there is one this week…

You guessed it: Da Wolfie goes in for another vendor-sponsored cert. Okay, in their defense, this is a useful class all on it’s own considering how many of these firewalls we support, and having additional alphabet-soup on my business card will certainly never hurt. It is, however, a little daunting that the class costs $1300!

No pressure here, Wolfie, but you’d better pass on the first try.

Oi!

Today has been a real swinger of a ride, lemme tell you.

I spent the entire day today and most of yesterday working on a project for one of our clients who has a bad habit of waiting until the last minute before calling us in to help. The project? Build a completely new network for a new start-up subdivision of the parent company that will eventually break off on it’s own. The timeline? 3 or four weeks. When does he call us in? Two days before it i supposed to be running.

Fucker.

What’s left to do? The domain is built and the users have been created, but the Exchange server is barely functional. There’s no definite IP address in use, and we need to get additional IP’s from $ISP. We need to build a VPN, and then configure two routers for the whole thing to flow through.

Worse than anything, however, is that it all gets dumped in my lap. (The guy who normally would handle this account is conveniently busy elsewhere.) Yeah, I can muddle my way through a lot of stuff, but I don’t like working under a deadline that will get someone else in trouble for not meeting – so I’m just a wee bit stressed.

It also doesn’t help when the IP the client tells you to use is in fact the IP of his Gateway, and all of his DNS has been configured wrong to boot, so nothing will be officially usable for 48 hours from when I figured out he fucked that bit up.

That was 2:00 this afternoon.

I just about blew a few fuses, but with the help of a couple of my teammates (including Da Roomie) we got it all done.

So, I pack up my shit and run the hell away before he can call me back. When I get to Tolerant’s, I realize all over again that she is simply the Best Girlfriend Ever.

To wit:

She went shopping at lunch to pick up stuff for dinner and dessert.
She was mixing me a drink when I walked in the door.
Dinner was already cooking – beef tips in gravy over mash with corn, yum!
Some of my favorite music was playing to a happily hypnotic visualizer.

Inside of 15 minutes, I’m parked on the couch with my feet up, a drink in one hand, dinner in the other, and my sexy librarian snuggled up beside me. Dessert consisted of about 2 hours of cuddling and creampuffs with sliced bananas topped with Cool-Whip and chocolate sauce.

I am a lucky bastard.

Thom was kind enough to reply to yesterday’s rant, and my response has outgrown the comments area so I’ve brought it up here. Here are Thom’s thoughts:

Hey f*ckwad

Next time you go cherry-picking for stats to back up an opinion, at least make them contemporary. It’s not 2001. And a side by side of gun violence in totality in the U.S. and UK might round things out a bit. An increase, for example, of 1 to 2 per capita would mean little against say a drop of 4,000 to 3,999. Understand?

You like guns and you think they should be legal. That’s your position and you deserve it. I like guns, don’t shoot like I did when I was younger, but I always liked it. The question is: Would a sigificant drop in deaths by gun in the U.S. be a worthwhile trade for more restricive gun laws? If it’s reasonably showable, I’d say yes. People who have experienced gun violence in their family or among friends overwhelmingly do. They deserve that say, without derision.

Now, my first thought is this: dude, don’t hold back. You want to call me a fuckwad, go right ahead and spell it all the way out. Don’t censor yourself somewhere they still allow free speech. I’m an asshole, and I will freely admit it.

Okay, I didn’t choose a contemporary report because there isn’t one. I was specifically looking for crime stats in the time period after the English law went into effect, and plainly wrote that the numbers were for the two years after the law change. The date of the report does not change the validity of the information.

The point of the post was to point out to people that other countries have tried banning handguns, with little effect. Since I so plainly stated the two-year mark, one could hopefully be smart enough to infer that I am speaking in the short-term.

I specifically do not compare the UK to America because of the vast difference in the size of the two nations, and the differences in culture. The UK is slightly smaller than the State of Oregon in land area, but has a much greater population – over 60 million, compared to Oregon’s 3.4 million. That kind of density does not exist in the U.S., with the possible exception of New Jersey. I don’t have the background necessary to estimate what differences in culture are the result of that population density, so I did not compare the two nations.

It is likely, however, that a disarming of the American law-abiding public would leave them at the mercy of the lawless who retain their weapons. I have been unable to find a decent breakdown of gun violence by legally obtained vs. illegally obtained handguns, so I can’t estimate what that rise in violent deaths might be.

There is aso the point, however, that it doesn’t take guns to kill people. That maniac could have walked in to a roomfull of people with a baseball bat and done similar amounts of damage. A fast man with a kitchen knife could arguably have done as much as well.

And the rest of the world hasn’t had the best luck with gun laws. Russia, for instance, has very strict gun laws – and a horriffic murder and violence rate, most of which is not gun-related. They just kill each other with something else. South Africa has tough gun laws, but the criminals still have access to them so crime rates have not gone down as much as you would hope.

Perhaps I should have been a little more pointed in who I was railing against. The bereaved certainly have the right to voice their opinion for stricter gun control. My complaint is with un-informed celebrities, clueless media hacks and others of similar ilk spouting off about stuff when they haven’t done the research to back their opinions. People like Jack Thompson and Dr. Phil, who were trying to lay the blame on violent video games before we even knew who the asshole was in the VT killings.

The top problem, the Big Issue, is that people end up wanting to kill other people. It is my firm belief that if people were just a little bit kinder to each other, shit like this wouldn’t happen. There are simply too many people in this world who don’t give a shit enough to notice that the boy from next door is about ready to snap and go haywire.

No law can possibly help you if you cannot muster the gumption to ask someone if they are ok. In the long-term, an increase of human decency and kindness is the only thing that will bring the violence in check.

Dear $diety I sound like a hippie.

I am getting REALLY fucking tired of the anti-gun fuckwads getting up in everybody’s faces and blaming guns for violence.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Take away the guns and they will use whatever else comes to hand. A baseball bat is just as deadly.

I’m also tired of people pointing to Jolly Olde England and saying “See? They don’t have any guns! Why can’t we be like them?”

Here’s something for you: guns haven’t always been illegal in the UK. When they did ban handguns in the late 90’s (due to a primary school shooting in which 16 were slain), it didn’t help – handgun-related crimes actually went UP 40% in the next two years.

Australia has run into the same exact problem: they took the legal guns away, but the criminals kept theirs. People can no longer defend themselves, and are proving to be easier targets.

The problem here is that society has gotten to a point where personal responsibility for our own actions is not enforced. With the massive number of people around us, it’s too easy to find a scapegoat for our own actions. “Daddy didn’t love me enough” or “they didn’t make it hard enough for me to get a gun”…

BULLSHIT!!!

YOU pulled the gun, YOU took aim and YOU pulled the fucking trigger.

Everyone has choices in this life, and each individual is responsible for those actions.

If you want to ban something to save the children, BAN STUPIDITY. Base stupidity has probably killed more people than any other cause in the history of Man. Require prospective parents to pass an IQ and general knowledge exam before being allowed to reproduce. Require them to have gainful employment and $20,000 in savings to cover the hospital expenses.

If you give a standard teenager a car, they will more than likely treat it poorly. If they have to work their asses off to buy that same car, they will more than likely treat it with respect and take care of it. If you required the same sort of work to become a parent, chances are that they would put more effort into raising that child, and do a better job of it, leading to a better world in the long run.

You want fewer violent acts in your world? Be a better person and help others to be a better person. Stop looking for someone to blame. Or if you really want to look for someone else to lay the blame on, start with a mirror.

End Rant.

Okay, I gotta ask: just what the fuck is up with the pedestrians in Downtown lately?

Today, I had to stop and wait for a footie to clear the crosswalk on my green at 5 consecutive stop signals. And not just a few seconds as they made the last couple steps, either – these tards were barely halfway across when the green tripped. Worse than that, the last one was a dude in an electric wheelchair!

You’re thinking “Oh, cut the guy some slack!” but no – he was rolling fast enough that I would have been running to keep up with him, and I was halfway into the intersection when he blazed up from my left. I was in the far right lane!

What really pisses me off is how they don’t even look at the cars stopped at the intersection – they just stroll along like we’re not even there, with that whole “I’m walking and not polluting the air, so you can just wait for me” attitude. Well, listen up, treehugger: I AM polluting the air with my car, and you making me wait is dragging it out even longer. You want to save the planet? Then get the fuck out of my way so I can stop burning fuel at idle.

Look, folks, let’s get something straight. When the crosswalk signal shows the white “man walking” icon, go ahead and cross.

When the red “Halt” hand starts to flash, it means you need to clear the crosswalk. Those already crossing should step right along, those who have not begun should stay put.

When that red hand turns solid, it means “stay the fuck out of the street”.

When the light in front of me turns green, I WILL GO. If you are in front of me, don’t give me that pissy glare and amble on across, I want you to jackrabbit those last three steps.

In ‘Vegas, (and it’s one of the few things I miss) the law states “the pedestrian does not have the right of way when the walk signal has turned red.” That’s right. If you are out of the crosswalk or crossing against the light, and you get run down, the law thinks it was your own damn fault.

Mind you, they also gave the footies about 30 seconds more walk signal because they knew the corners are crowded. So they were nice about it.

Me, I had my own way of helping them hurry up. I’d plant my left foot on the brake and my right foot on the gas. When a 6000-pound land-based aircraft carrier like my old Plymouth lurches at you with the front end twisting from the motor’s torque and the 400″ engine growling, you get the fuck out of the way. When the above happens and you look in the windshield to see me grinning in that “mmmm…rOaDKiLL!!” way, you teleport, leaving nothing behind but the faint whiff of ammonia as you piss your pants.

I swear my next car is going to have a great big cow catcher on the front with salt and pepper shakers attached to it for easy seasoning.

My first pair of glasses: purchased at a major retailer, got them in about an hour and a half in 1995.

My second pair of glasses: purchased at a smaller boutique, got them in three days back in 2000.

This pair? Purchased at a high-end boutique, and it only took them…

Almost three weeks?

I admit, I do like the new specs so far. Extremely light, comfortable to wear, and the big difference is I can once again read something from across the street. But c’mon! I watched the show on Discovery where they demonstrated the process of manufacture, and even if you start with a bag of raw sand it only takes three days to make a lens. Starting from manufactured stock, the process is a few hours even with all of the modern scratch coatings and Transition features.

Apparently this lab’s standard process is two weeks, but they fouled the ‘scrip on one lens and had to re-cut, adding another 6 days. This is just a bit ridiculous. What’s the guy doing, grinding by hand?

Okay, yeah, I’m jumping on the bandwagon here with this post, but I will not link the original article because it already gets enough traffic – which is what I’m here to talk about.

Road rage comes from people not knowing how to drive being in front of people that DO know how to drive.

I grew up in small towns scattered about Southern Oregon, which collectively had less than 25k people, LOTS of twisty back roads, and LOTS of rain. I learned how to surf the same way any Oregonian kid does: by driving a small car with bald tires in a howling deluge. (1977 Subaru GL wagon floated on 1/4 inch of water, but stuck to snow like glue. Go figure.)

I have been driving (legally) for almost 19 years now, and have never caused an accident. The most serious accident I have been involved in as a driver was the time that poor girl slid into the ass end of my ’74 Plymouth in ‘Vegas at a stop sign during a rainstorm. I wiped the paint off my bumper, but she had relocated her front end over a foot to the rear.

None of my skills matter at this point, though, because the moment a single drop of water falls from the sky here in the Portland Metro, you remember that about half of the people on the road DIDN’T grow up here, and haven’t the foggiest notion about how to drive in the rain. Nevermind the fact that they’ve been here for several years at this point, they can’t seem to figure this shit out.

Where a sane and skilled driver would slow down 5mph or so and lengthen his following distance, these people freak the fuck out and drop to about 30mph. This causes all the folks who CAN drive to crawl up on their ass, and in very short order you have a big pile of idiocy doing a bumper-to-bumper crawl down the 26.

In clear weather, I can get home from work in 30 minutes during rush-hour traffic. At anything more than a sprinkle of rain, it goes up to an hour, sometimes as bad as 1 1/2 hours. To. Go. 20. Miles. No, less than that – it can take that long just to get to the Tunnel, which is still a couple miles short of home.

An hour, sitting there with some asshat in an SUV shining his headlights DIRECTLY INTO MY BRAIN all because the fuckheads in front can’t figure out that the rough pavement they are driving on is DESIGNED for better traction in wet weather and they don’t have to slow down this much.

On top of that, those hundreds of SUV’s around me are being driven by one person with no passengers, taking up as much space as they possibly can without upgrading to an actual semi. Me, I drive my car to client sites, so I have to drive. Most of these idjits just drive because they can’t be bothered to take the train. Heaven-fucking-forbid they walk the two blocks from their house to a bus stop. NOOOoooo, they NEED to drive that behemoth to work and take up MY road!

THAT is what causes road rage.

I am a Techie – I build things. I have a degree in electronics, an understanding of explosives, rocketry and engineering and all the machining skills necessary to construct and mount missile launchers on my car. Do you know why I haven’t done it yet?

Because then I’d have to drive through the debris field created by me blowing your slow ass back to wherever it was you learned to drive and out of my way. As soon as I can figure out how to completely incinerate your smoking remains before my tires get there, then I will be a lot calmer.

What’s that beeping noise coming from your OnStar console? That’s the missile-lock warning. Get the FUCK out of my way.

It’s kinda funny – I get annoyed when I go to read my favorite blogs and webcomics and discover that they haven’t updated…and I haven’t posted in forever. Time to remedy that a bit.

Work:
I feel I have now fully investigated every way in which you cannot resurrect a deleted email account. The short story is that if the computer has been nuked, and the server has deleted the account, the only way you are going to get that Exchange mailbox restored is to either spend money or time, take your pick. With a couple of software tools out there costing less than $1000, it will probably be cheaper to buy the software than it will be to build a virtual server and mount a backup of the database.

Luckily for me, I was able to log in to the original workstation, configure Outlook 2003 to launch in off-line mode, and then export the mailbox from the .ost. Un-luckily, I spent about ten hours of headache getting to that point by going at the problem the hard way. This comes from not having done it before and not having any training in the mysteries of Exchange 2003. Now, I know, and you can bet your sweet ass I won’t be walking that fucked-up road again. A bit of advice: if there is not a need, under NO circumstances will I ever delete a mailbox or profile for 30 days. And even then, I’ll wait another 30.

Home:
Cruising right along. Things are going pretty well for us here at Chez Wolfe, and I’m enjoying the peace. The Rat is working and being a good lad when he’s about, Pookie is dealing with her little bro well, and I still have The World’s Best Girlfriend. Now the “New and Improved” model, with wonderfully BLUE hair!

This is not some wimpy-ass Anime-style sky blue, either: this is deep, rich and vivid, and damn near glows in sunlight. This is definitely a WOW! color, and it looks great. A round of applause for Chop-Chop the Stylist for a job well done :)

I’ve got a little “New and Improved” going on around here as well. I managed to snag an appointment at an eye doctor last week, and then took Tolerant there Saturday to help me pick out my new specs. I have fairly simple requirements in specs – they should fit, and they should be lighter than what I have so they don’t hurt my nose by the end of the day. Tolerant came along to keep me from looking like an idiot.

The shop in question is Eyes! On Broadway and I’ll give them a little pimping because the doctor was not only thoroughly professional, he was even more of a perfectionist than I and extremely patient. They will be getting return business from me. The only bummer is that they don’t have their own lab on-site, so it will take about two weeks for them to build my new specs.

It’s hard for me to spend $375 on something and walk away from the store without it. Yeah, that’s a lot of scratch for something you don’t want scratched, but I got the transition tint and a frameless design that weighs about nuthin’. If I ever get tired of how much these ones weigh, I’ll have to either get contacts or surgery.

Considering how much time I had spent the other night in front of my CRT at home working on the aforementioned email problem and getting both stress and eyestrain headaches, I thought it would be a good idea to invest a little more in keeping my eyes from getting any worse by replacing the that large chunk of radiation.

So I dragged tWBGF with me down to Mecca and bought a flatscreen. A friggin’ HUGE flatscreen – 22″ wide format, DVI inputs, 5ms response time. And it’s bee-yoooo-tee-fulll, lemme tell ya. Two years ago, this would have cost about twice as much as it did, so I’m glad I waited until now to buy it.

I had also planned to build my Sweetie a new computer this year, but she worked hard to convince me that I shouldn’t spend that much money on something she doesn’t use that much – hers is old enough that nothing short of replacement will speed it up, but she doesn’t need all that much more power with her current usage habits. So, I’ll build me a mostly-all-new computer and rebuild the old parts into a new machine for her. After all, the motherboard is only a couple months old since I RMA’d the predecessor, and I haven’t stressed the rest of it out that much.

So, the new box will be AMD dual-core and faster, but otherwise basically the same. RAM and mobo will be replaced with the move to a socket AM2 proc, but I am staying with 2GB of memory. The DVD drive is being replaced due to it being elephantine: it won’t forget the last DVD you used until you reboot. I’m replacing the video card as well, since the move to the new display has made DarkStar One a little finicky. Just too much monitor for the card, it seems :)

I read a review from a G.I.in Iraq who claims Newegg shipped his gear to him there in 7 days, so I should have mine by the end of the week. Looks like next Sunday will be spent worshiping technology :)

Well, the tax man came a-knockin’ last week, and Da Roomie and I managed to get a loop of rope around his ankles when he wasn’t looking. A short time later, we had managed to shake a nice stack of quarters out of his pockets, so there is playtime and toys in the future.

And, of course, my car payment. The bank FINALLY sent me the information about where that payment is to be sent – I was getting worried. Of course, I still haven’t got the registration paperwork from the DMV.

On the toy side of things, it’s time for Tolerant to get a new computer. I’ve finally talked her into getting DSL, so she should probably have a machine that can make better use of it. As for the rest, I’m torn between a new flat-panel to replace the gargantuan CRT on my desk and possibly going SLI on this rig, or some other combination of upgrades. It isn’t really needed yet, but I keep thinking about it. I had planned on building a new computer outright next year, I should probably just wait.

I suppose the real hard part is going to be picking up Tolerant’s new gear and not getting stuff for mine too…

So, I did take the SBS Exam last Friday, and passed! WooHoo, 788 out of 700 needed!! YAY! Now I get to learn the Secret Handshake!

More importantly, it means my boss didn’t waste money on business cards, as he already bought me a box with the “MCP” tacked-on at the end of my name. So now everything is all official-like, and I can truthfully call myself a Network Engineer and a Small Business Specialist.

Of course, I have mixed ideas about that terminology – in my mind, Engineers build stuff like bridges and roads. Me, I just plug stuff in and make it work. “Software Engineer” is truly a travesty of terminology, as these people are Programmers and should be called such. The whole thing just smacks of a PR move.

Now, no offense is intended here, I’m not dissing anyone’s skills. I just think you should call a pot a pot, and not a Heated Surface Meal Preparation Device.

Know whattamean, Verne?

Of course, the major dictionaries and Wikipedia all disagree with me. Shrug.