Now, I’d like to say something just to start conversation with this pretty young woman, but what does one say to a perfect stranger? “So… you like… stuff?” “You’re getting chinese? Me too!” Those are some fantastic first lines right there (protip: they’re horrible first lines.)  And I think this is one of my major social weaknesses: In groups of people, I don’t want to say something for the sake of saying something.  Whenever I speak, or ask a question, or do any kind of communicating, I want it to mean something.  It either has to be funny, or informative, or insightful or intriguing.  Speaking just to speak is, in my opinion, a waste of time and (for the most part) dull.  If you remember Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, you may remember a quote by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, who said “the ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”  He was referring to Jar Jar Binks, who, during the course of the movie, would praddle on about trivial and mundane things like  “Brisky Morning Munchen” (seriously, wtf is a “brisky morning munchen”?) Being Jar Jar Binks is something I actively try to avoid, and should I encounter someone who brings nothing to the conversational table, I usually try to avoid them.

… and there’s the paradox.  By refusing to offer up conversational fluff (which I consider worth nothing), I’ll instead offer either little or nothing at all.  While others contribute an equivalent of nothing, I can (and do sometimes) offer absolutely nothing; Both are just as bad, and thinking about it now, I’m probably a hypocrite for thinking the way I do about this.  The pretty young woman and I were in the chinese take out place with no other customers for a solid 4 minutes.  We said absolutely nothing to each other before she got her food and left.   The fact that I didn’t want to say anything stupid (and, let’s be honest, if I was going to force out “so what are you getting?”, it would’ve sounded forced and awkward (and for those that know me personally, me being awkward is par for the course)) led me to saying absolutely nothing at all.

The end result?  A pretty young woman and I share 4 awkward minutes in a chinese take out place, having said nothing to each other, and we’ll probably never see each other again.  As the saying goes, “FML.”

I was asked to look at a Compaq Presario desktop that’s gone bad. System turns on, but nothing on the monitor. Doing some quick checks and some basic troubleshooting, my first thought is “bad motherboard.” Check the support docs on hp.com, follow directions therein, but no change.

At this point, I decide to get an HP tech support rep on this, because I strongly believe the issue is hardware and that some piece of hardware needs to be replaced. The chat opens quickly (no queues = good), and one of the first things the rep asks me is (paraphrasing here) if I can feel a hard drive spinning sound. As it turns out, I am in fact capable of feeling sounds, seeing music and tasting feelings (or, if you prefer, hearing food. It’s all the same joke, really.)

The tech eventually determines that the issue could be the graphics card, which I agree is a possibility. She then asks if the “system is warranty”. Oh, online chat, how I love you, because I know if I had to speak with this person on the phone, I’d have a hard time doing one or both of the following things:

1. understanding whatever accent this person has and/or
2. holding in my disgust of this person’s inefficiency of communicating in English when her job is to communicate efficiently in English.

I respond to the script-reader that I don’t know if the system is under warranty as I don’t own the system and I’m only doing support for it. Apparently, I may have set off a red flag, because after 5 minutes of waiting, I get asked if there’s any other issue I have, and after responding “Nope, no other issues.”, I get the standard closing before she abruptly disconnects (which closes the chat window before I can copy and paste the conversation.)

Now, beyond the design flaw of force-closing the chat window without the user’s consent, there are 2 possible issues here. Issue 1 is: “If you don’t know if the system is under warranty, I won’t help you further.” Investigating into this, I found that unlike business accounts, there’s really no way to check the warranty status of a home or home office system online. While it’s annoying, I can at least understand why that’s the case (I’m guessing HP business accounts usually purchase direct from HP, and HP would keep track of the serial numbers of the units and keep track of the warranty info; home user systems would be purchased through a third party (Best Buy, CompUSA, etc.) and the warranty would have to be purchased by the end-user to establish a start-time for the warranty.) So while I can’t fault HP 100% for this issue, the rep gets a thumbs down for not explaining that without confirmation of active warranty, she can’t continue. It’s good to keep customers in the loop.

The second possible issue is “if you’re not the owner of the system, I won’t help you further.” Again, I don’t know if this is the reason due to the lack of information conveyed to me by the rep, but I would imagine tech-to-tech calls are not that uncommon and that it wouldn’t be unheard of for someone other than the system owner to call tech support.
All in all, a sour experience with a HP live-chat tech support representative. Moral of the story: DELL RULEZ OMGWTFBBQ.

*breathes in*

Like most top 40 radio hits, Hey There Delilah is a simple song; the lyrics are easy to understand, the rhythm is soft and uncomplicated and the singer’s voice compliments the guitar background to create a nice harmony. Despite all that, there’s a flaw in the song I only noticed recently.

*breathes in*

I don’t exactly know when I noticed it, but after I did, the repeating flaw was the only part of this otherwise good song my ear could focus on. I heard it once and now whenever the song is playing, I anticipate the flaw and point it out to anyone in earshot so they can notice it, too. Then those people can obsess about it and tell all their friends about it.

*breathes in*

Just in case you didn’t figure it out by now, the flaw in the song is that THE SINGER TAKES A HEAVY BREATH BEFORE EACH VERSE OF THE SONG.

Jesus Fuck. A perfectly good song ruined by the singer not hiding his breaths and either the band or the label not doing some post-production to take out the offending noise. The Plain White T’s should take a lesson from Tay Zonday, writer and performer of Chocolate Rain; he knows how to professionally produce songs.

By the way, I just checked their official web site to make sure the singer doesn’t have some kind of weird disability that would make me look like an asshole, but I was assaulted with the song and had to pull the plug on my computer before the singing part started. But, I’m thorough in my fact checking, and their MySpace page confirms he’s perfectly capable of singing the song the right way and just didn’t.

(Preemptive: You may say that him breathing into the mic adds to the whole “this song is really sad” vibe, but I still think it sounds stupid and distracts too much.)

My cousin owns a business. He needs to be able to scan 300 work orders at a time and store the images. To facilitate this, he purchased a new Gateway laptop (Vista pre-loaded) and a HP LaserJet 3055 from BestBuy. When I set up everything, we ran into a difficulty. While HP has print drivers for Vista, scanner drivers were noticeably lacking. Too bad BestBuy didn’t tell us this when we made the purchase. We had to figure out that it doesn’t work with Vista by going to hp.com and not finding the scanner drivers on the product page. Finding compatible hardware meant going to the manufacturer’s site and browsing each potential product for Vista scanner drivers. That’s not convenient at all, and every place I went suggested this course of action for determining what to purchase, as not even the many sales reps we spoke to could definitely say whether a printer was supported or not. Imagine someone not tech savvy trying to make this purchase and having to do this. It would be impossible.

Finding hardware that Vista supports while on a time deadline is a pain in the ass. Why can’t shit just work when it gets released? Why release an OS to everyone at the same time? More to the point that’s relevant, why is the completely new OS bundled with EVERY NEW COMPUTER IN EXISTENCE when THERE’S A GOOD AMOUNT OF HARDWARE UNSUPPORTED? Yes, I do realize that there’s going to be issues, but should it not be the consumer’s option to upgrade to the new OS at his or her convenience, not force the upgrade prematurely and make everyone batshit insane dealing with all sorts of issues?

I don’t even know what I’m pissed at, but I’m pissed at something and something should be done. Damned if I know what though.

Where: McGuire’s Restaurant & Comedy Club
When: Thursday, 11/16/2006, 8:00 pm (1627 Smithtown Ave, Bohemia NY – 631-467-5413)

P.S. This blog entry gets exported to facebook by design, and my privacy settings are set to allow all note posting to show up on the facebook news feed. This is also by design. So, if you’re reading this on facebook, it’s because I’m letting you. If you’re reading this on my blog, it means you cared enough to know what’s going on with me and my life, and for that, I’m appreciative. All that said, should you find out about this, and you want to know more info or how I did, do not hesitate to contact me.

I was very much saddened to find out some high school friends of mine did not bother to contact me when I posted the video of my first performace. They decided to acted shocked and surprised amongst themselves even though my contact info is out there. And, while I can’t be too sure, I’m betting they weren’t laughing at my material, but at me personally. I know they will eventually come to read this, so to those people that said somethng about me and thought they were doing it behind my back (here’s a thought: if you’re going to talk about someone, don’t do it on MySpace, where that person can see everything you post), all I will say is that I initially took the high road when confronting you (i.e. I didn’t confront you at all, opting instead to leave a brief “Thanks for noticing the act” message on their MySpace pages.) However, after ample amount of time has gone by and still no word from any of the guilty party, I’m officially laying it out there: you’re all fucking sad, gossipping little twats.

I never thought I’d say that about people I once considered friends, but so it is. They’re welcome to contact me and correct any misunderstanings, but I doubt they will, because I don’t think there is a misunderstanding, and they probably don’t care what I think about them, which I’m ok with as well.

I recently took a Civil Service test for a higher position: an oddity about my career track within the context of Civil Service is that the exam for technology positions consists of a resume submission and a take-home exam.  The take-home exams questions do not test a candidate’s practical knowledge; a question on the exam may be something like “Please list the number of years (0, 1 or 2) in which you have experience in the following:

___ Hands-on experience in mobile microcomputers
___ Local or Wide Area Network Administration

Please describe your experience in these areas.”

As you can see, an exam like this doesn’t really test the applicant: for the most part, he or she can just write down all the good numbers and fake the rest.  It’s really kind of a bullshit selection method.

That said, I took one of these “tests” some months and scored an 80 out of 100 (minimum passing score of 70) for a grade 19 position (starting salary somewhere around $39K).  My rank on the resulting list, however, was 87.  86 people scored higher than me on this test, meaning in order for me to be “reachable” (procedurally possible to be selected from the list), 84 people have to be either hired or removed from the list. That’s lovely.

I recently got back the test results from an equivelant position: I scored a 90! That should be pretty good, right?

My rank on the list: 87. Again.

Fuck. That.

So, it was either yesterday or today that the popular social-networking website Facebook made some cosmetic and functional changes to their site. Most people first noticed the home page’s layout was altered to make room for the page’s new addition: the News Feed. Contained in this section is changes that any of your friends made to their profiles, relationships, and any posting to other people’s walls is also logged on your news feed. If you like information about what your friends are doing, saying and what their current TV show is the moment it changes, the News Feed is exactly what you want. However, if you’re scared of being cyber-stalked, the News Feed seems to be the bane of your existence, since if someone wanted to know shit about you, they’re only 2 mouseclicks away from knowing anything they want about you… oh… wait… they’re 2 mouseclicks away from knowing anything about you that you’ve given them permission to know anyway. While I do agree that cyber-stalking can be problematic, the critcism of the News Feed is completely off-base only because the News Feed doesn’t tell you anything you can’t already figure out, and anyone protesting this new change clearly didn’t grasp the ramifications of signing up for Facebook in the first place.

When I log onto Facebook, one of the pages I check first is the “Friends” page, which by default, displays all my friends who have updated their profiles recently. If someone interesting is on this list, I’ll click their profile and take a cursory glance to see if something obvious changed (as an example, if I’m looking at a girls profile, one thing I look for is the Relationship status. Yes, I’m pathetic, and you don’t need to tell me that.) If I can’t find the exact change, I’ll look at the profile as a whole and eventaully, leave that friend’s page and go to someone else’s. With the News Feed, I’m told exactly what was changed, and if the value wasn’t deleted, what it was changed from, and what it was changed to (editted 11:21PM EDT: it only highlights the field with the new value). With the News Feed, the time needed to find info about my friends is shorted. The News Feed isn’t giving me any information I couldn’t have figured out myself; I can’t see changes to profiles I can’t view anyway; there’s absolutely no downside to the News Feed if you know and trust everyone on your friends list, which may be the root of the problem…

Many people on Facebook have lots of friends. I’m talking in the hundreds. Before the News Feed, anyone of these people can see your profile (which you create yourself and have full control over) and use that information as they see fit. The News Feed now keeps all those people updated on exactly what you change. Again, it’s a convenience for the users of Facebook. Whatever was there is still there, the only difference is that I know about it faster. If you happen to have 500 friends, then 500 people now know that you like Panic! At the Disco. If you only have 150 friends, then only those 150 now know that you broke up with your girlfriend, and again, it’s not like they couldn’t figure this out before.

The bottom line: if you’re not comfortable with other people knowing stuff about you, who you talk to, what you like, then remove yourself from Facebook. You provide the information on the caveat that the people specified in your privacy settings can see it. If you’re feeling uneasy about what info is out there, restrict the availablity of it, either by removing untrusting people from your friends list, or by modifying your privacy settings. This “problem” has always been around, it’s only now manifested itself as “The News Feed”. Take away the News Feed and the problem is still there; it’s like spraying Glade potpourri spray on a week-old dead rat sitting in the middle of your living room. While it doesn’t smell anymore, there’s still a deceased rodent on the floor, and there’s that leftover stink. Well, take away the News Feed, and there will still be a stink of this problem, because nothing will be changed by taking this new feature away.

A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin — and know she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this webpage.

Appreciate.

I am the controller of my own destiny.  I am the master of my own domain.

Some days, I wish things were different, or that I did things differently, or that circumstances allowed me certain opportunities.  I have to stop wishing about things like this, because that’s all about allowing my destiny to be in fates hands, and that’s weak.

So, here’s my declaration, for everyone in internet-land to read:

Fuck fate.

Fate will take your life and ruin it when it doesn’t have to be ruined.  Just “going with the flow” will doom a person to mediocrity and failure.  That’s not for me.  I need to know where I’m going and what I’m doing.   Leaving my life to fate is the same as giving it to a malevolent emperor; it will be pillaged and wasted, all of its potential thrown away for the wrong reasons.

Once again, fuck fate.  I’ll lead my own way now.

Actually, I can’t make that claim in good faith, since the only Quizno’s sub I ever get is the Turkey Ranch & Swiss, but by god, if crack came in some kind of food form, this is it. I mean, this is the king of all sandwichs. It lords over all other combinations of breads, meats, cheeses and condiments.

Sadly, I’ve been recently deprived of Quizno’s. You see, there’s only 1 Quizno’s within driving distance from where I work (if I were to get full hour lunches instead of 30 minutes, there would be another one as well.) The food there is just as good as other Quizno’s, but the service is a couple of steps below incompetant. The last time I went, they didn’t mark the sandwichs after they wrapped them up, which resulted in people not getting what they ordered; they would have to delay the line and open up the sandwichs to determine which one belonged to which person and then close them up. As a result of this, the end part of my TRS got burnt since it was backed up.

This time around, there was a leak in the ceiling by where the line started, AND they had no whole wheat bread (the bread of champions and people who like to poop) AND they were going ridiculous slow; it was 15 minutes till I had to go back to work and I didn’t even place my order yet.

They’re nice people and all, but I have little time to waste. I’ve never walked out of a food place because of bad service, but this was wholy necessary. If you have a Quizno’s nearby that has competant people, by all means go for it. Otherwise, not worth it. Sorry Quizno’s of Hauppauge.