Category: HT archives

Someone sent me a VP submission that had a relevant story, but the link was to gay porn. I thought the URL was just mis-typed, which got me searching (carefully) for a substitute link, and I never found it, but I did find this Flash animation, which makes me want to learn Japanese, but not in a betterment of self way, just in a Mr. Sparkle way.

Not working is an awful lot like drinking.

You start with a small dose, and you say to yourself, hey, that was alright, ok one more dose, and then it’s back to work. The next thing you know, hours have passed and nothing has been done. Currently I’m in that weird “coming down” zone where I feel kind of like crap and I’m mixing working with not working. Weird, yet vaguely pleasurable.

I’m not talking about job work. I was busy the whole day. I’m talking about after paying work work. You know, in that timeframe where people relax. I miss relaxing. Tonight’s little bender doesn’t count, because I’m actively relaxing, which requires effort. For the record, I’m supposed to be writing a vegetarian article for a newsletter, but I just discovered that I got the name of a state wrong on a VP article, so I’m a bit shaken right now.

The world of actual work is fun. I have to interview people tomorrow. Folks, this is why I use a name like “Herman Thrust” – I don’t really want some stuff tracked back to me, at least not by prospective employers. It’s pretty astounding what Google knows, but some people just can’t wait to shoot themselves in the foot. Personally, if I was to write up a resume, I’d think a bit about whether or not I want to list a web site among my contact information. Sure, it might demonstrate technical knowledge, but the content might skew perceptions before I had a chance to meet with people and convince them in person that I’m a raving lunatic. Having reviewed several resumes lately, it’s pretty clear that not everyone shares this view, and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. I am, after all, a professional. Uh-huh.

The closing link of the day is CelineDionBlog.com: “This “Blog” is for Celine’s fans to chat and share thoughts about a great singer and person. So explore the site, start discussions, and have fun!“. It’s running on SharePoint. There are no discussion items. There are no cool articles. There is one member, and it’s not Celine.

I’m trying to hire someone at work. The HR department is ever so helpful, and they have a new web-based recruitment system that manages workflows or something. Anyway, some guy sets me up and sends me a note with my username and password. As part of my ultra-tough stance on security, I change the password to something I can’t remember. Days pass, and I finally have to get into the system because I’m tired of doing the work of the person I have not yet hired. Obviously, I can’t get in.

The original email had instructions for what to do in this situation. I am to dial a 1-800 number, press 1 for english, 2 for employee something or other, 2 for something else, then 1 or 2 to speak to a real live person. I do this. I get to the real live sounding person. I explain my problem. She transfers me. I get to the next person. I explain the problem. She also transfers me, and this time I get voice mail.

It’s the voice mail of the guy who sent the original email with the instructions.

He didn’t return the message. My phone number was probably too simple.

In other news, I’m now completely blocked from personal email access at work. This is probably a good corporate policy, and I’m too busy for it to really bother me, but I know that I’m going to receive something in the next 48 hours that needs my immediate attention and can’t wait until I get home, so I’m saying it here: I can’t read my email from work. See, if I sent out a mass email, it’d seem really egotistical. Here it’s perhaps mildly obsessive compulsive.

23 percent of men claim to have faked orgasm. That sounds about right. It’s one of the best ways I know to get some space in a crowded bus or elevator.

The URL FuckRightOff.com is redirected to Conservatives.com. I’m just saying, is all.

While Bachelor University didn’t happen due to AngelA’s surprise return (hurray for me), I did manage to get most of the new VP pages to validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict, which was pretty cool. Most of the remaining changes are in the user management parts of the system, along with a few minor stylesheet adjustments. The beta subdomain has been registered, and while I’m still saying December 1 for the first look, it’s starting to feel like I’ll actually meet the date.

I also updated AngelA’s C.V., and somewhere along the way this page got past the validator for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, so as you can see, I’ve been busy, and Bachelor University would probably have been something about making my ass not hurt too much on this damned plastic chair.

Somehow in the midst of all that, I declared yesterday to be a snow day, because, well, it was snowing. There’s a weird mix of excitement and exhaustion that fills my head at the site of the first significant snowfall of the year. I think the exhaustion is from repressed memories of shovelling or walking, because downtown condo living means I can be outdoors for a total of 45 seconds a day if I feel like it, but I’m usually enjoying the fresher air. The smog freezes to light poles, see.

Today’s Link of Great Fun is, um, the I can eat glass project. Sometimes that vegetarian phrase guide just isn’t specific enough.

A fair-sized family came into the veggie RC yesterday, and never let it be said that vegetarian children have low energy levels. Within 2 minutes they’d managed to begin disassembly of the floor. I felt a little guilty playing cop, but I think it was mostly my training in the sciences exerting its influence. For example, I had to stop one experiment when the two boys discovered a bicycle tire pump. I heard “Ok, wait a sec”, then I turned around, and (somewhat predictably), one boy had the pump raised up and ready, and the other had the hose in his mouth. It would have been fun to watch, but we’ve got too many lawyers in this city…

If it wasn’t so expensive, I think I’d enjoy law school. A lot of my programming ideas start with thinking about a particular API call and how I could use it in an interesting way. Law could be like that, with every statute being assigned a score directly related to how annoying I could be through its creative application. Maybe that’s a common thing and they actually have a course dedicated to fart law. It’s probably restricted to senior level students though.

After reading this, all I can say is, you’re going to see a whole lot more articles about pant trees and fish that know jiu jitsu around here. Who knew it was that easy to influence the minds of children?

It would seem that the fileserver problems have been resolved, but the real test will be when I get home and see if my email is working again. VP’s database-driven design reduced most of the impact, but all submissions are sent through an email form, and it’d be nice to see what news items I’ve missed.

Thanks to the restore process, I don’t think I lost any code, and only one entry was sacrificed. That entry had a comment from Shawn, and for some reason it’s now attached to this entry, even though the count is 0, so now Shawn is giving technical requirements for a skin irritation, I guess.

Speaking of the skin thing, my science experiments are progressing. The latest theory is that it’s due to a particular article of clothing, so now I wear kilts to work. Just kidding, I could never forsake my pants.

Regarding Shawn’s technical specs for VPC, yep, I’m thinking big. It may be a moot point though, as I’ve just about finished negotiations for an IBM laptop, as long as I get some work done this weekend in trade. This weekend’s a good one to work, because AngelA’s left me again, so it’s time for another round of Bachelor University. Maybe I’ll tie this weekend’s lessons to my newfound interest in biology. Just as well, since last night’s dabbling in chemistry (*hic*) has convinced me to avoid the subject for at least a day or two, if you know what I mean.

Tonight I’m planning on some overdue personal downtime. Now that I have cable, instead of buying or renting something to zone out in front of, I can watch all the stuff I taped through the week. This won’t really take that long: I tried to tape 5 shows this week, and I managed to get 2. Hurray for me. Those EyeTV gadgets are starting to look really good. Did I mention that my VCR isn’t Y2K compliant? At Thrust HQ, we party like it’s 1985.

Whenever something bad happens at my hosting service, the first thing I think of is that it’s something I did. This time it looks like I got lucky, and it was some fileserver or something, but we were down for 12 or 14 hours or something and the restore is from a few days ago, so we’ve lost a few posts and a few comments, and they might return (probably stomping out this post) as the work progresses in the data centre. Who knows. Ironically, the only automated backup I do is for the MySQL databases (except this site, which uses local files), which don’t look like they were affected by the problem. I can’t say for sure, but it looks like I only lost about 20 minutes of source code, which is pretty lucky, and should serve as a nice kick in the pants to get going with CVS and automated backups of the repository. On the weekend. Maybe. I also need to get home insurance, and I’ve been reminding myself of that for months too.

Assuming that this post stays, and kind of speaking of insurance, I’ve developed this weird skin irritation in a non-erotic (well, this is me we’re talking about, so let’s say “less-erotic”) part of my body, and it’s itching like crazy. Is it an allergy? Hives? Flech eating bacteria? I don’t know, but rather than go to the doctor (I’ve already been once this year), of course I decided to use myself as a science lab. After eliminating various foods from my diet with no luck, I’ve gone with the “cover it up with a bandage” approach, in case it’s just staying irritated because it can’t heal. Brilliantly, I decided to shave around the affected patch so the bandages wouldn’t hurt as much when I peel them off. I think that itches even more. As an added bonus, picture what will happen if I break down and go to the doctor:

Doctor: Yep, that’s a weird skin thing you got there. And hey! It’s generated a bald patch!

Me: Um, no, that was me.

Doctor: What, you made the skin thing?

Me: No, I, uh, shaved around it. You know, science.

Doctor: Wouldn’t that make it itch more?

Me: Apparently, yes.

More rants tomorrow, assuming I still have a web host. They do great work, but all it takes is for one member of the team to crack and decide that “fire cleans everything”…