Jokes

What do women and rocks have in common? You skip the flat ones

You know you work for the government when .. * The process becomes more important than the product * You don't see anything wrong with attending a meeting on a subject you know nothing about * You feel you contributed to the meeting just by being there * You stop raising issues/problems because you know you will be the one answering them. * You fly first class across the country to attend a conference with 100+ people to discuss the fact that the project does not have enough money * You work for an acronym, on an acronym, and your job title is an acronym * You understand the rationalization of an acronym composed of acronyms * You know that the location of a meeting is directly related to its importance. (1) A meeting at Fort Hood requires a subordinate or a contractor (2) The same meeting at Lake Tahoe requires your personal attention * you've sat at the same desk for 3 years, done the same thing for 3 years, but have had 3 different business cards

More Sore Back
Last night I went out of my way to pay good attention to Elle. When she was just running around being a kid, I gave her a hug and kissed her head. I tried to play along for a minute in whatever fantasy world she had concocted. It paid off. When it was bed time she tried to throw a fit, but the wind was not in her sails. I laid her down and she was out like a light. Even when she woke up this morning at like 2:30 or something, she cried. I went in to console her. She couldn't go back to sleep, but when I got up to leave, she just laid there. She did not cry. I don't know if she fell back asleep or not. That might be the secret. Pay good attention before you have to pay bad attention. It won't work every time I'm sure. Nothing works every time. She could get away with murder if she just did it quietly and didn't leave much of a mess.
Oh, the back. When I laid her down to go to sleep, I laid down on the floor to wait. Man, when I went to get up, my back had locked up. I nearly cried out when I stood up.  Nat had an anti-inflammatory to help the pain. It worked too. Hey, this family thing is not as bad as I had always imagined.

Work
I had back to back unrelated meetings canceled today due to a massive meeting about my department. I think the meeting that pulled away all the directs is to justify the existence of my department. What I think happened is one of the new high-up folks (we have had some shake ups lately) saw a line item with my department name in it. Now, they are getting the 1000 meter level view of the place to figure out if they want to abolish us in the name of cost savings. I've been here eight years, yet I'm still contingent. I've worked for, well, now three contract agencies and sat at basically the same desk the whole time.

Get a Mac

Even though I'm a security guy going on 22 years now, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else's. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My two day-to-day laptops (two, for 24/7 backup) are my business machines. I don't need them to do a whole lot - except work reliably, which is why I am fed up with WinTel. ... I want my computer to function every time I turn it on. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office, e-mail, browser, FTP client and some multimedia toys. Regardless of format, they should work without crashing. I live on the 'Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory. In the WinTel world I need an assortment of third-party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That's just crazy. Why does WinTel have these problems? I have heard all sorts of explanations, and I don't subscribe to any of them. I've come up with my own (hopefully rational) reasons WinTel will fail - and has to fail: NetworkWorld

Basically, this guy is fed up with all the disasters that befall MS-crap-OS every five minutes. I consider myself a power user and I still find myself in trouble daily. I have a Linux box at the house and I have not had to do jack to keep it running. I have two (now three) MS-crap-OS boxes and I have to run constant security/spyware/virus software just to keep the damn things afloat. PC-Magazine was saying for people to get duel processor machines so one processor can keep an eye on the other. That thought makes me sick.  The article above has some good points. Go visit the blog too. They are doing a real experiment.
I work for one of the huge companies with over 50,000 nodes on the network. I'm telling you 95% of the computing power people need is (email + web surfing + Office + moving files across the network + (multimedia / 2) + (PowerPoint * 2) + CADD ) all times the square of the  ignorance level of the individual user. That's pretty much it. Linux does it all. Mac's do it all. There is this thing called Citrix Server that allows any other computer to use a MS-crap-OS machine remotely. That means the any all the silly folks who write software that is not compatible with truly multiple platform (MS thinks different versions of their software count as multiple platforms) can use one of these Citrix Servers to host their trash. Problem solved. Go away MS-crap-OS. We don't need you. We don't want you. We are sick of you. Die Die DIE!!!
Sorry, I got carried away there.
I know what is coming. I'm not stupid. MS-crap-OS wants to make the X-Box into the home media machine and home computer. The home computer part of the X-Box will only run MS certified software to ensure security and privacy. Only MS will have access to your personal data, and God knows we all trust MS.