The Empirical Manifesto

Buying a PS2 for my boy Saturday. Mostly just to play all the old PS1 games, though I do want to get GT4...

Rec'd my Netgear FR328S today. Will hopefully have configured in the next few weeks to get my Solaris box back online. Might be getting a little help from almost-offical CCNA unixwolf.

Slept like a baby last night, and the night before. That's always good.

Smoked a micro-brisket this weekend. Haven't found any 20lb. briskets here yet. Used 'Jack Daniels smoking pellets' along side my hickory chips. It was a little over cooked (3 hours smoking, 2 hours at 200-degrees foil-wrapped in the oven) but I was unsure how long to cook a brisket so tiny.

Watched JSA: Joint Security Area with the wife this weekend. It was my second viewing. I didn't notice any 'second storyline' during the second viewing, but I did come to understand the ending. Good flick. Drama.

I'm not mopey, I'm 'non-enthusiastic.'

Enjoyed the movie Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Val Kilmer's lines were the highlight of that movie. He was fantastic, and I always enjoy the penal system letting Robert Downey, Jr. out to make a movie. "I don't think you'd know where to put food at, if you didn't flap your mouth so much. Yes I think you're stupid."

So I noticed SCI-FI was playing 16 episodes of Amazing Stories, which I missed on laserdisc when they were available. I tivo'd them all to later burn onto DVD until I read in Sci-Fi magazine that they've just released the DVD-Box set. Damn. Might have to pick those up instead.

So last night, as I was still in the smoking mood, I smoked some bratwurst for about an hour, then grilled them up to finish. Had them with grated horseradish and a Californian Pinot Noir. Most excellent.

Rec'd a request to photograph my Minolta X-700. I asked, "Which lens?" The answer was a 50mm, or something understated as to not overhwhelm the subject of the shot, the body of the camera itself. I dug out my camera and lenses to put it together for the shot, but couldn't find my 50mm lens. Hmmm. Thought maybe I'd sold it...then I remembered:

We were having a garage sale. We'd done pretty well. I started to get bored, and hot. So I started drinking. Next thing you know, I'm hugging my next door neighbor and giving him one of the X-700's with the 50mm lens!

Moral of the story:
Always stay sober at your own garage sales.

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore.

Tonight my wife marinated an enitre bag of boneless chicken breasts in olive oil and a variety of spices, and de-silked and wrapped 5 ears of fresh corn in foil with olive oil. I set my bag of Jack Daniel's Smoking Pellets on one burner at high, turned two on low, and kept the other off. Atop the burner which was off, I laid out the corn, and smoked/grilled the breasts on the low burners. About halfway through, I turned the burner under the corn on low as well. Pulled the chicken off at 180-degrees. Enjoyed with a (Californian) Barefoot White Zinfandel.

Everything was perfect, but the corn had no 'smoke' flavor to it, so....will consider 'grilling' the corn sans foil next time.

As long as there is injustice, whenever a Targathian baby cries out, wherever a distress signal sounds among the stars, we'll be there. This fine ship, this fine crew.

I was given a simple task: Order business-DSL for my two sites, for a wireless implementation project off domain. No problem. Unfortunately, most telecom's refuse to publish their phone number online. *sigh* Once that hurdle was overcome, the order process was just as easy as when I used them for my home setup, and, as it turns out, just as fux0rd. My boss was pressuring me to get this accomplished quickly, as we were behind on project deadline. Great. Why something they don't involve me with until it's dropped in my lap is my responsibility, is, I suppose, why I'm here. I was downright gleeful when I was told the installations could proceed as early as the next day! My boss would be pleased. We use our own cabling company, so the would follow up the next day to extend the line from the DMARK to the server room, both sites. That all fell apart this morning. Come to find out, they'd only scheduled one site for the line to be run, even though I'd scheduled our vendor for both places today. And when I called about this, I get the run around, along with the news that my office was responsible for the self-install modem which would be shipped separately? I didn't order a self-install modem. Why was I told I could get a quote when someone else told me you don't give quotes? I didn't give you shipping information or an 'attention to' contact for a modem delivery. HOW DO YOU DO BUSINESS WITH BUSINESSES? I just wish, sometimes, people on the other end of the phone would take more responsibility. I run across it every now and then, and it's always refreshing. If I passed the buck like these people do, I wouldn't have a job.

It's like throwing gasoline on a flame.

Spoke to Bill for 30+ minutes yesterday. It was the most fun I've had in weeks.

Are you enjoying your Kep-mok blood ticks, Dr. Lazarus?

The reason I enjoy watching Office Space is because it has a tendency to shift my paradigm and see work in it's proper perspective, for a time at least. It usually wears off, but damn what a new outlook on life and work when you show up (late) the next day after watching that movie.

You know, with all that makeup and stuff, I actually thought you were SMART for a second.

So I've been shopping for a mac mini for galinda822. Funny thing about Apple - they set all the prices in all the stores. You cannot buy an Apple without Apple telling you how much you will pay for it. An interesting news article on chrisbarrett77's personal site blog in which Apple announces that Best Buy will start selling Macintosh computers. Unfortunately for us consumers, that means nothing at all, since the price of Apple computers at Best Buy will be the same price as everywhere else you could ever think to buy an Apple. Because there's no competition in price, there's no 'best' place to purchase. And another Apple oddity: Whenever they release a new or faster product, the old product it replaces - STAYS THE SAME HIGH PRICE AS THE NEWER MODEL! Fantastic. So, let's take stock of what we know: Brand-spanking new Intel 'solo' core mini's with half a gig of RAM and aircards are $599. New older-model, busted-assed G4 mini's with 256MB of RAM and modems are $599. Used mini's are $599. Hmmm, whatever shall we get her? Grrrrrr.

Sorry, I was - door was a little sticky. Did you see that? I'll get one of my boys up here with a can of WD-40.

A couple of weeks ago I posted concerning the number of comments I have rec'd on this site ordered by lj user. While most sane persons view this as an interesting but totally useless tidbit of triva, other, less sane people begin posting multiple, single-word comments to drive up their ranking. Riddle me this, Batman - How can you drive up your ranking if I begin deleting multiple, single-word comments?

Well, the Protector got super-accelerated coming out of the black hole, and it, like, nailed the atmosphere at Mach 15, which, you guys know, is pretty unstable, obviously, so we're gonna help Laredo guide it on the vox ultra-frequency carrier and use Roman candles for visual confirmation.

I called Covad on the status of my installation. I was told, "They canceled the installation." Hmmm. I asked, "Were they going to contact me to inform me of that?" Apparently I'm 17,000' from the CO, something they were unaware of until they tech actually checked the line from my residence. Grrrr. So I called Charter Cable. 3.0Mbps down/256kpbs up. It's getting worse. But at $42/mo. Something I suppose I could live with. So I ordered it, forgetting I needed a static IP. *eyeroll* A quick call to Charter and I was told they have a 5.0Mpbs down/512kbps up! FANTASTIC! Only $8 more a month! However, I still can't get a static IP with my cable modem because of "new laws" unless I get a business cable account, which is a "considerable" difference in price. *sigh* I can't win here. It's a racket! So I call the business-side, and of course, they aren't allowed to give me any information at all. Only to take my name and number and wait for a call...

OK. So the Charter Sales team called me back. It sounds like their business-class connection is Top-Notch. I don't ever call a 1-800 number, rather, I deal directly with my sales guy. They set my speed 'slightly-higher' than anticipated, to survive a 5% fluctuation, and I have business-class service (unlike the Boyd Ranch Data Center 640/640 SDSL where there were zero SLA's and they treated me like a residential customer...) I get my static IP, and unlike DSL or residential cable, my connection is not shared. FAN-FRIGGIN-TASTIC. However, the only thing standing between me and them, is price. Here's how it breaks down:

512/128 $ 70
1.5/256 $ 85
3.0/384 $110
5.0/512 $175

Not what I would call conservatively priced, and I cannot afford the $175 a month, but with a two-year contract, they'll give me the 3.0/384 for $100/mo. Now then: Do I revert back to SBC and get the same speeds (2.4/350 actual) for $75/mo. or order this cable connection? Both are 2-year contract.

In other news, despite the fact that I am neither Catholic, nor Irish, my wife required me to wear green today, to lessen the temptation of the 300 women here to 'pinch' me.

Also, the new Dr. Who is premiering, which I am watching only because there is no BSG tonight. I bid you all a FANTASTIC weekend.

Eric



Wife called. SBC was threatening to disconnect our service due to non-payment (when I had my DSL deactivated, I told them to remove all charges; Furthermore, I instructed my wife to pay them only pur phone charges, no matter what she was billed....this left a balance of $83). I called SBC, had the $83 removed from my bill (free-modem & installation with expert (read static-IP) package) and while I had them on the phone...had them reactivate my DSL. Ta-da. Fast forward a month or so, and I'm right back where I was, with one minor change: I'M THRILLED ABOUT IT THIS TIME! 3.0/384, static IP, $50/mo. Life suddenly has possibilities again.

So I'm having this issue with my new DSL service. I ordered 3.0Mbps down/1.5Mbps up with 8 static IP's. However, I've only been seeing 400kbps up. So I call in a ticket today with SBC. They inform me I only ordered 384kbps up. "That's a mistake," I explained. "I was with a sales representative for nearly half an hour crafting my order. I would never have accepted 384kbps up." So I get passed on to sales. "We don't offer anything higher than 384kbps up." Nice. I cancel my order. I have the equipment scheduled for pickup. I have them remove all charges associated with anything from my bill. During the overly-lengthy confirmation for pickup process where the non-English speaking associate got my phone number wrong SIX TIMES IN A ROW, I'm browsing SBC's web site and find what? Upstreams up to 608kbps! (My 640kbps SDSL at the Boyd Ranch Data Center proved long ago that connection wasn't exactly *dazzling* - but hey, better than 348!) So I ask to be transferred to sales. She reads the entire history of my order, including the reasons for my disconnect today, and ensures me that I can get between 1.5 and 3.0 Mbps upstream. I'm instantly furious, and then doubtful. "What's the downstream on that?" I ask. "Three eight-four." she tells me. I scream inside my head. What a bunch of fuck-ups. She conferences billing in. For and extra $100 a month, they'll give me 384-608 up. "How often is it lower than 608?" I ask.
"We can only guarantee 384, sir."
"Fine, what percentage of the time is it 384?"
"We can only guarantee 384, sir."
"Theoretically, you could provide me 384kbps 99% of the time with 608kbps spikes 1% of the time and still charge me for the 608 price?"
"We can only guarantee 384, sir."

Asses.

I have no broadband, and no hope of broadband. I'm going to go home and eat worms.

STL is really starting to piss me off.

quark went down again between 0815 and 0825 this morning.

Lost power at the hotel again yesterday between 1500-1800.

Wife and kids safely arrived just prior to midnight Tuesday night.

Have been attending two, concurrent three-day offsite meetings, providing IT support. (This usually means dimming lights and advancing power point presentations for executives...)

One of the hotels provides wired internet access in the convention area, at $100 a connection. Alternately, you can connect to the wireless throughout the building for $10 a day. To counter this shameless practice, I installed a wireless router on the wired end for $100, and in turn broadcast my own wireless signal to 85 CIO's throughout the convention area. It was a great success.

Tony, if it was another power outage, would you mind plugging quark into the UPS? Thanks pal.

Eric

I'm 36 today. For my birthday, I built myself a FreeBSD box from my old gaming box. Installed Big Sister, but that turned out to be a huge pain in the ass, so I compiled Big Brother instead. The devil you know.... I stared at the Big Sister config page for an hour. I got Big Brother up and running in 4 minutes flat, including compile time. http://paris.darkvoyager.com/bb it's even got xirr on it, but Tony didn't want the client running. Stayed indoors all day listening to music and drinking Gin & Tonic. It's nearly 1700 and I'm thinking about sleeping. The wireless internet here has been stable all weekend. The manager ordered some newer WAP's for the closet which serves this hallway. I'm guessing that will also upgrade their 'g' from 54 to 108Mbps. It matters not to me, all my boxes are running off one of Tony's old 100/base hubs. And yes, there are collisions. I packed my switch away somewhere else I'd be using that.

I've heard of SecureBSD. This is my idea of SecureDARWIN:



So I got Big Sister to come up anyway. Sorta. Anyone who clicks the link above, depending on where I am in the project, will either get one page or the other. This ain't an exact science here people. I'm getting very sleepy...

Rod was at work all weekend working on his servers. Poor bastard.