Lost and Found

Some days is seems like Facebook has become the worlds greatest and most useful Lost and Found on Earth. On other days, it appears to be more of an entertainment avenue providing billions of bored office workers across the globe endless hours of entertainment while they attempt to look like they are doing actual work when ever the boss walks by.

Ever since I was guilted into joining Facebook about a year ago, people from a past life in a podunk map dot of a town have been crawling out of the woodwork and inviting me to be their friend. Many have been people I was at least remotely interested in getting to know again after an almost 15 year lapse in communication and readily accepted their requests. Some have been people I always wondered what happened to after parting ways post graduation, and a few have been from people I never liked back then and would rather see a death notice for them than accept their request. Thankfully the latter of which has been very small in numbers, though Facebook keeps telling me I should send them a message or a friend request in its not so subtle way almost daily. Luckily those too can be ignored.

I have gone through the cycle of adding everyone who sends a request, except for those I have good reason to ignore, searching for people I was actually interested in reconnecting with, and recently purging my friends list of all those with whom I am no longer interested in being in contact with, or in some cases never really was interested in the first place. I now reserve my friends list for those with whom I actually know, am related to in some way, work with but still consider more than a coworker, and miscellaneous others I wish to remain in contact with via the Internet. My lost and found box is now well under 100 friends thanks to this new policy.

I have also considered abandoning my Facebook profile more than once over the last few months but instead have simply managed to log in less and ignore it most weekends. The more I use Facebook, the less I use Facebook. By that I mean daily usage. In the beginning, when it was all shiny and new with new things to explore and play with, I was on the site every day for multiple hours throughout the day. Now, I generally log in once a day, but not always, and often I can go an entire weekend without ever checking in to see what my friends are up to. I also try to update my status message at least once a day, in the beginning it was way more than that, but even that I don’t always manage to accomplish. When I was on vacation last November, I had Internet access daily, yet only logged into Facebook once or twice the whole trip. When I go home, there were more than 500 updates for me to read through, almost all of which were simple ignored or deleted rather than spending the time catching up on what I had missed while I was out of touch. Some things just aren’t that important.

But every once in a while, this little lost and found box on the Internet, the place where just about everybody with a minute or two of computer access knows to search for someone they lost along the road of life, comes in handy. I lost touch with someone I considered a good friend and probably the most intelligent person I knew my own age growing up. A well read, forward thinking boy who chose to rebel in high school by not cutting his hair for his last two years of school, a rather ingenious decision on his part I might add as it drove certain people crazy to see a boy with long hair in their little town. We had some of the same interests and worldly views and managed to spend a lot of time hanging out after school in high school in the craziest of places, the local library! We even shared the same mentor for a while, and I’m certain Jack would love to hear from him again as well. It’s not a name that has been brought up in our conversations over the last few years, but I know he too thought a lot of this kid and would be interested in hearing where he is now and what he’s been up to over the last 15 years.

So I guess since all things happen for a reason, the friend request today from my former partner in crime at the library, the one male friend I had growing up who was just as “quirky” as I was most of the time and never once judged me for being different that the herd, just might be the reason I haven’t abandoned Facebook yet. That little lost and found box has resulted in rekindling a friendship with someone I vowed never to speak to again and still can’t remember why, has helped build a stronger friendship with a few others in my current life, and now has turned up a long lost friend I was convinced I would never hear from again. It’s settled, Facebook stays, though I will probably continue to spend less and less time on there as time goes on. The shiny toy has lost a bit of its luster and become more of the tool it was originally intended to be.

Well at least I still have a word processor

So I have a little time on my hands again, we’ll get to why later, and decided to update this thing for a little change. This makes twice in a week … see I am improving!

School is finally nearing the end for this year, I have a grand total of exactly 8 days left of these two pain in the a$$ classes and then I can officially begin summer vacation. The work load has been way more than I wanted to do for this session, but still manageable. Thankfully I excel at writing, even in the college paper and essay realm, and the only issues I ran into were lack of interest in the subject, Geography, and a professor who is IMPOSSIBLE to pleas in Cultural Diversity. I have yet to get full credit on one single assignment outside of weekly participation and one of my six weekly quizzes. That was pure luck since it’s a 10 question quiz with exactly 15 minutes to complete, I simply managed to beat the 25% odds on every question and guess correctly the few I didn’t honestly have an answer for. I always was good at pulling a good test score even when I hadn’t read a single word of the assignment for the week, nice to know I can still pull that off once in a while.

The tail bone is healing, slowly, but I managed a short ride on the motorcycle over the weekend. Unfortunately, the cruiser style of bike I have puts a tone of pressure on the tail bone area when you ride and, while it use to be comfortable, with a fractured tail bone it hurts just to sit on the darn thing. Add in the vibration of the engine and road surface and I was ready to get off after just a few miles in the saddle. It’s less painful today than is was over the weekend and hopefully I will be able to ride again soon. If not, I did a little research for a seat cover that will resolve this issue for me and just might have to buy an “old man seat cover” for the saddle until this heals fully. In any case, I will be riding again by May 16, though not participating in the River Ride with the crew that day; 200 miles just won’t happen that soon for my tail bone.

I still haven’t written another word on my next project, nor have I done a dang thing about getting another agent for Unconditional. I contacted someone who may act as an editor for me, but she is extremely busy and nothing has been finalized as of yet. I am tempted to just self publish the damn thing with lulu.com, buy the ISBN number, stick with on demand printing, post it on eBay and Amazon.com, and be done with it. BUT, would it really sell on Amazon.com with a listing of thousands of books on there? My gut tells me know and that I should stick to hitting the virtual pavement and dig up an agent. For the record, so do those that are in the business and have read it. They claim I just haven’t hit the right agent’s inbox yet. Well DUH! If I had hit the right inbox by now I would have a signed agent contract and they would be working on a publishing deal for me. Instead, at least I have written it and those who it was really written for have read and enjoyed it. That counts for something I suppose

It’s up, it’s down, it’s UP …. No wait, it’s down again!

That statement was heard frequently at work today as the Office Internet connection bounced from functional to offline for the better part of the day. Thankfully, our crack team of communication experts, okay I can’t even type that with out chuckling, was on hand to resolve the issue in no time flat, or uphill, or downhill, or whatever elevation change you can think to plug in here. Seriously, the internet bounced between usable and dead for a little over two hours today, spending most of that time period in the dead column, and people noticed. At the same time it was reported that our firewall locked up cold and had taken out three of the five facilities outside our corporate office that have a constant live connection to our building. Coincidence that the internet went down over the same interval? Last I knew, the connections to the facilities were restored, the firewall was still running, and our Internet connections was flaky at best … Thankfully its up frequently enough that I managed to get a little work done thins afternoon, and then it dies again and I had to start over. Got to love our dependence on technology and the Internet.

It came, The internet survived, NOTHING HAPPENED!

So April first came, and went, and the world continued. What did we learn? Sadly the answer for 99% of the citizens of this country that answer is NOTHING!

For weeks the news media has been hyping up the latest virus threat set to detonate on, of all days, April fools Day. The detonation day alone should have been a clue for most people, but then we tend to believe whatever the news media tells us. Let the panic begin. Much like the last handful of virus scares that the news media reported for weeks prior to their suspected “detonation” Confickr was a spectacular dud. The virus is real, and it did in fact adjust its code, but the world didn’t end. The Internet didn’t crash, the sky didn’t fall, and corporations world wide continued business as usual in spite of all the media reports telling us all about how these things may not function.

This reminds me of another wide spread media panic about ten years ago. Back then they called it “The Millennium Bug” or “Y2K Bug” and, just like way back then, the business world was aware of the problem months if not years before the media ever got a hold of the story. Coders patched holes and found ways to detect Confickr back in August of 2008, when it first arrived on the scene in its pre-April fools form. This, by the way, was the third generation of the little bug which has been a known detectable virus by all major anti-virus applications for much longer than the media has been hyping the latest version. So why all the hype? Are people really so ignorant of the technology they rely on for daily tasks that they will believe anything the media tells them? Or are they so afraid of the technology that they believe one day it will turn on us and take over the world ala Space Odyssey or iRobot style? Seriously people, if you are that paranoid do us all a favor and cut the phone, cable, and electricity lines connecting your home to the grid. Become a hermit with a bomb shelter.

In other news … Winter quarter ended yesterday, Spring quarter starts today. SIX WEEKS FROM NOW I WILL BE ON SUMMER BREAK!!!!!!!!!

Ahh the joys of being dependant on technology!

So what do you do at work when the infrastructure fails and you can not connect to anything on the network? In my case, I field phone calls for the first ten minutes, then laugh at those who didn’t figure out they couldn’t get on the network 30 minutes after it went down. Play a little pinball, some spider solitaire, and eventually decide to work on some homework only to discover it requires the Internet, something I can not connect to.

Sometime around 9:00 this morning the 2nd floor of the building lost all network connectivity, and thankfully it is not part of my job to fix it. I work on servers and PC’s only; we have two Communications guys who are responsible for cabling, routers, and switches. This is excellent news for me on days like this though some days I wouldn’t mind sharing those responsibilities, mostly because the network would run so much better if the current head of the Comm Team would streamline a few things. But I digress. As I type this, it is now almost 10:00 AM and we still do not have the issue resolved. When trying to get updates from the Comm Team about what the problem may be or when they estimate it will be resolved the only answer we can get is “It’s not working!” My instant response to him was to scream “DUH!” inside my own head and bite down hard on the tip of my tongue to keep from verbalizing my true feelings about the man, it is a place of business after all and I do have to work with Mr. Personality for a few more years.

So now that I have become bored with the limited selection of games available on my PC, have discovered I can’t even work on homework because it needs Internet access, can’t get on the Internet or any server in the building, and can’t even check my e-mail I am at a loss for what I CAN do. Lucky for me, some time ago I loaded Microsoft Office locally on my system, for most users here we run it from the server and technically, mine should be set up the same way. I do not recall loading it locally, and probably should reload it to match my user communities setup after this is over, but I won’t. Today having it installed locally is my saving grace and is keeping me from being bored out of my mind. At least with a word processor that works and my thumb drive handy I can write to fill the gap in productive work time. I can now legitimately spend some time typing up this entry and then move on to crank out another few chapters in my new project. If the network stays down long enough maybe I can finish this first section yet this week, MAYBE.

UPDATE: 10:45 AM … one hour 45 minutes later, we’re still down with no ETA on a resolve though we do now know it is hardware related. Too bad Management wouldn’t pay for that 2hour response time Maintenance agreement, I think we got stuck with the 24 x 7 one which, while better than Business Hours Only, means they have 24 hours to resolve the problem after we call it into the vendor. Oh, and last I knew we had no spare backbone equipment either!

UPDATE: 11:30 AM … we’re up, oh wait … maybe … or not! Apparently they are narrowing down the issue but about 10% of us who are on the affected hardware are still down and the other 90% do not have reliable connections. And so I continue to write and play Spider Solitaire on the companies dime.

UPDATE: 11:45 AM … I was able to do something productive for about 5 minutes, then it died again. Who knows how much longer this will be, but we now know which piece of hardware is taking down the rest of the segment … I suppose that accounts for something … …

UPDATE: 12:20 PM … and we’re up … not 100% certain of the cause but it appears hat the nooB plugged two active network drops into a hub creating a loop I the network. Ethernet doesn’t like loops! So he’s been educated on networking 101 now and the better question is why it took 3 and a half hours to trace down the problem. But, that’s an issue for the Comm Department to tackle with the Director if IT in a meeting this afternoon.

You wanna’ know how bad the economy has gotten? . . . Even the mighty Blue is making significant staffing cuts!

That’s right folks even Microsoft, the biggest of the big, richest of the rich, is cutting staff for the first time in its history. Yes I said history!

Microsoft, suffering from a downturn in PC sales is finally beginning to feel the blows our economy has taken in recent years and are yet another sign of how bad it has gotten across the board. The good news, I’m sure they are from the Vista Development team since it’s replacement should be on the market by years end!

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So I have noting left ... Apple will soon no longer be evil

Okay, I admit it I’m a computer geek who stands firmly on the PC side of the world. Or at least I did. I’ve been playing with computers in their IBM clone form since about 1984 and, except for a way cool pinball game on the old Apple IIe system, I’ve never cared much for anything Apple ever produced. Years into my paying computer career, long about 1997 or so, I got my first real taste of the PowerMac systems and their quirky OS(operating system). It’s a fair guess to say that my initial foray into the Mac world did not go well, even left me wondering why in the world anyone would buy one most of the time, and it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth with the high priced software and hardware and limited abilities to do what I needed them to do.

In the years that have passed since then, Mac’s have evolved both in hardware and in OS reliability and features. I have changed jobs a few times and managed to get away from all things Apple related for a few years before coming to my current position where I am the sole supporter of our limited MAC supply. It is not a primary duty and in fact, was not even a duty of mine until we suffered a tech support head count reduction and I was the only one left who had ever worked on or with a Mac system for more than an hour of my life. That’s when my dislike for all things Apple related began to grow into a healthy hatred.

I have spent countless hours searching the Internet, banging my head against the wall, and on the phone researching solutions to annoying issues with our five, soon to be six, Mac systems over the last four years. In all that time I have gained a ton of new knowledge about the way they work, seen their OS evolve with each new release, and could, if I were forced to, spend and entire week doing most of my job duties on a Mac system rather than a PC. I say most because there are still some things Mac’s just can’t do and will never be able to. There are some Network Admin utilities I use to support our Microsoft and Linux based systems that, to be blunt don’t run, can’t run, will never run on a Mac and trying to use some sort of virtual PC emulator on the Mac just seems pointless, though admittedly it may work. In my continued work on the newer models and software versions, I have to admit that Apple has grown on me a bit and, should they ever stop pricing themselves out of the market I might consider owning one.

My last remaining stance against Apple is their iTunes/iPod phenomenon and deceptive licensing and pricing schemes to date. Most people I talk to can’t tell the difference between an MP3 player and an iPod and just assume that in order to get any digital music one must download it from iTunes. For those of us in the know, iPods were an expensive toy that must be cracked to be useful and while cool, were quickly tossed aside for other brand MP3 players with less hassle and strings. As players like the Zune, Zen, and Sansa began to gain market share their users quickly found out that all those iTunes songs they had paid for could not be loaded on their new players, because they were not iPods. Software was developed to resolve this and iTunes downloads were hacked and made available for free on the limewire and gnutella networks for the rest of us to share. So while Apple’s hardware, the MacBook and Mac Pro desktops were growing on me along with their OSX versions, their greedy iTunes and iPod debacle kept me firmly on the side of PC. Though I do side with Mac in every single commercial including the Mac vs PC duo, particularly when they slam Vista, Microsoft’s weak attempt at a new version of Windows. But now, after a lifetime firmly on the PC side of life, I find my reasons for hating, or even disliking Apple and all that they produce slipping away. Today they announced the end of their deceptive digital rights management in all iTunes downloads (what prevents them from being played on any device and for an unlimited amount of plays and copies). This means that Apple has torn down my last barrier, my last solid argument for why Mac, iTunes, and iPod’s are evil. I suppose in this New Year I should turn a new leaf and admit publicly that Apple isn’t all that bad. For those who prefer their toolbars with an apple instead of a Start Button, who like their shortcuts to be called an alias, who use force-Quit instead of Ctrl-alt-Del … I declare a truce!

Apple Press Release Here

a few of my favorite geek things

A few of my favorite coder t-shirts from thinkGeek.com ... in case anyone is looking for the perfect Christmas Gift for the other geeks in their life.

English Translation: If at first you don't succeed, Try, Try again

English Translation: Do or Do Not, There is no Try

English Translation: There's no place like Home

English Translation: It's a SQL Query to return all rows from the table USERS where the value of CLUE is greater than 0 . . . Notice the last line states no rows could be returned!

Light Dawns on Marble Head

For those who missed it, the title is a quote from 1988’s Cocktail starring Tom Cruise. His character falls asleep in a college business class and the professor shouts “You, fifth row, blue shirt, WAKE UP!” to startle the sleeping student awake followed by “Ahh Light dawns on marble head.” as he finally stirs from his slumber.


So after three late nights in a row spent slaving over this weeks Java code, and eventually giving up in the final hours before it was due to turn in something that at least would compile thought not run properly, I hit the wall of defeat. I staggered off to bed around midnight and quickly drifted off to sleep once I managed to find a comfortable position next to Jen. Unfortunately, that was not the end of my Java nightmare as I spend the night dreaming in code, Java code. I awoke the next morning wondering if I had gotten any sleep at all and managed to wake up enough to dress, grab a bottle of Mountain Dew from the fridge, and drive myself to work. While sipping down some cold caffeine and flipping through one radio station after another searching for something to keep me awake on the drive, I had an epiphany! Somewhere in between listening to 96.3 WDVD and 89X’s morning shows, the solution to my Java woes was crystal clear.

I arrived at work on time, no small feat given how tired I was and the traffic I had to drive through to get to the office, and worked through my morning routine of checking voice mail, e-mail, and server status. Then I booted up my virtual machine and plugged in the thumb drive containing my homework for Java. In ten minutes or less I managed to tweak the code based on the idea that came to me on my way to the office, compile it, and … It WORKED! I might be a programmer after all.

Still on my high from resolving the problem I zipped up the working code and shot off an e-mail to my instructor telling him I had resolved the issues I had with the assignment I had already turned in and the working code was attached. Now I just have to wait till Monday to see if I get full credit for the assignment or if in my excitement that it all worked I missed some small detail in the code conventions that will not affect its performance but will affect the grade based on neatness and documentation of the code.

Java Brain

After the last five days of Java class I am dreaming in broken code and everything I write seems to look like this:
Might be time for a little break from Java programming. Too bad I have two more weeks of Java I and then six weeks of Java II before I can take that much needed break!

Music on SD - the death of the CD?

So at the young age of 31, it will be 32 next spring, I remember getting music on 8 track, Vinyl, Cassette Tape, and of course the current method of Compact Disks but Micro SD Cards? I guess it stands to reason that if the way of the future for music is digital, iPods and MP3 Players being the preferred devices to listen to these days, the industry needs to rethink it’s distribution methods. They have set up online music stores like Rhapsody,iTunes, and Amazon Music where you can download and listen to digital music by the song or the album, and it seems that everyone but the artist has gotten rich off this plan. CD sales are slumping as the consumer prefers to pay only for those songs they like rather than an entire album worth of songs they may like just to have a copy of that one great single they heard on the radio last week. To combat this phenomenon, digital media sales in store fronts all across the country that will drop right into just about any computer, cell phone, or digital media player with ease. It’s a move I thought was a bit strange at first. Then I remembered how odd it seemed that I could get the entire contents of a CD on a small memory card to take along in my MP3 player, only now I won’t have to waste time on the download or conversions. They will be purchased in MP3 format all ready to drop into my Sansa and hit the road. The times, they are a changin’

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