Work or tedium or time in a cold dark dungeon tomb
All I do every day these days is package software up for distribution on our network. The company I work for has approximately 40,000 employees From WinZip to some piece of junk called FreePipe (it isn't free) we have to bundle them up so they install silently from the network because the management doesn't trust the users to wipe their noses on demand. And, for good reason. The users can't wipe their noses on demand. The users who know what they are doing, or think they know what they are doing, are the worst. I end up doing the same thing every day. The can't use what the vendor put together. WinZip, Microstation, Microsoft Office, and other big name software companies must just not know what they are doing, because the users and management want something different. “Lets move the shortcuts”, “Can we change the default save folder?”, “Why won't this sore on my ass heal?”. It never ends.
I sit there all day and chase DLL errors and disconnected shortcuts. I write Visual Basic Script to move those shortcuts and modify the registry to change the default save folder. I remember when one of the managers asked if I would like to get into software packaging. This was a couple of years ago. I thought it would be interesting and teach me to program. Well, I learned to program VBS. I learned to make faces on the phone while helping a person so I don't jump down their through because they are asking for something stupid that will take my time and not help anyone get their job done.
I don't want to package software. I always wanted to be . . . a lumberjack, I mean a programmer, with my best code guide by my side, leeping from project to project. . .

Oh I'm a programmer yes sir-y.
I'm a lousy code monkey.

I fall out of bed, I write some code.
I get dressed to meet the bos.

I lie to the client about deadlines.
Because, really they are lost

. . . (I'm going to have to finish this one sometime)

Sleepy me
I was to go out with some friends last night and have dinner. However, I fell asleep. I travel to another realm when I sleep. They called and I sat up, looked at the phone, and didn't answer it. I just watched it ring until it stopped making noise. I do this allot when I'm asleep. Please forgive me if you are the one on the other end of the call.
Well, we are off to lunch in a minute, so its all good.

War
Iraq says the war is going well on their side. Of course it is. Like Vietnam, Iraq does not have to beat the US to win the war. They must simply survive. Vietnam recently had a border dispute with China. You know China, seven million man army, willing to through them at just about anyone who pisses them off, that China. Vietnam won the dispute. Don't mess with Vietnam. Iraq sits in a similar spot. They don't have the resources of China, but they do have the will to do things that the American army is not willing to counter. That counts for allot in war. It is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog. It is also the dog that is willing to bite the other in the nu-nus.

WARNING - Geek speak
So I have this 333 MHz Pientium II sitting under my desk running Mandrake 8.0. I use it as a SETI machine. I'm trying to share the CD-ROM through Samba. I can't seem to remember why I haven't done this before. It is funny how I will leave a computer sitting there running something for weeks. The trouble is, Linux is so trust worthy that I forget to check on things. Anyway, so I start messing with SMB trying to figure out why I haven't done this before when I run smack into the trouble. The monitor on this old machine only supports 800x600 Maximum resolution. (Burt, this is one of your old monitors.) That should be enough, except Mandrake Control Center slops over the edge of the screen on all sides. I'm lucky I can close the program at all. Come on guys (Mandrake). Give me a break. You know this operating system is used on old computers.
It is far to draining to move a monitor from another machine over tot this one. It is in a hole under the desk and hard to mess with. This is the reason they came out with flat panel monitors.

Overnet
Overnet is a software that allows peer to peer P2P file sharing. I use the software. It is punchy and annoying. The one thing this experiment in P2P has taught me is that P2P is horribly unreliable. The connections are unreliable. The files are unreliable. The people are unreliable. The network is unreliable. The software is unreliable. However the rewards are great. If you check it out, do it at your own risk.

Link
SlashDot is the source of most of my news. More than half the interesting stuff that happens in the geek world shows up on SlashDot.

Link
Are Programmers Engineers? I am not an engineer. This link brings up the no degree thing again. I can't tell if this is being thrown in my face allot lately, or if I'm just paranoid about it and noticing it more often.

Link
User Friendly is another of those links I visit every day. I visit Dilbert most ever day too, but it is too mainstream to publish.

Day One
Me
Who am I? I perceive myself as a non-degree programmer. It's funny that it is so important to me that I do not have a degree. I tried to get one, but I couldn't get past physics and accounting. The trouble was the same in both cases. Both classes require allot of memorization of formulas and rules. I am legally blind an a bit dyslexic on top of that. University is just not my cup of Mt. Dew. It has always gotten to me though. I've noticed most of the people I hang out with now have degrees. They mostly have children too. That is another story.
Why a blog?
I don't have a clue. I just feel it needs to be done.
The business
Our url is www.Tpro.com I'm starting a business with some people I know. We will provide software development and technical assistance on networking to small to medium businesses. The company I work for now is hurting pretty badly. I don't know how much longer they will be around. There have already been a couple of rounds of layoffs. Soon the powers that be will cut too deep and the infrastructure will slip a gear. The couple of guys who I'm going into business with are very good. They have heads for business. I'm a code monkey. It is extremely exciting and scary to jump into a venture like this. I wouldn't do it unless I believed in the group involved.