Log 2010-12-22

Early Morning

Got up. Watched the local news. Don't remember anything that was said except warm and wet today, cold for Christmas Day.

Showered, got ready. Still not waring wrist watch because it bights in to my skin. Feels funny not waring a watch. I couldn't check what time it was at the bus stop today because I didn't want to get my phone wet.

Morning Commute

Nat was crashed when I left the house. I walked to the bus stop. Traffic was light, but people were screeching their tires and honking at each other more than normal. People seem distracted. Someone pulled over this morning in a black full size truck to offer me a ride. I declined. I wish people understood that even if I know you, I'm not taking the ride because I'm not sure who it is. Identify yourself. I'll still decline to discourage you from doing it again, but it makes life easier for both of us.

Not sure why, but I noticed the broken curb today around the landscaping at the bus stop. it looks tacky and I wondered why they decided to go that route. There is a 2x4 sticking out of the ground from an illegal sign for the donut shop from a couple years ago when the placed opened. The plants look wild. The trees are choking to death from unneeded supports. It is sad.

The bus ride was quiet. I thought I had missed my stop, but nearly got off a couple stops early. This is a bad sign for the day.

The plan was to video this morning. I thought about running across Westheimer and walking down the levy. It might be quieter, but it is too dark at the time in the morning that I'm over there. It was sprinkling too. The grass would have been wet. I didn't have anything to say. I have an endless number of excuses. Video didn't happen.

Morning

I road with the security folks up the elevator. They were jovial and said good morning. Pretty cool folks if you ask me.

Had to hunt down paper towels for the lunch room. Kicked off coffee. Listened to a couple of the hardware engineers talk about how unreliable some high dollar equipment is. It is from names you would have heard of. It is shit and it is the only game in town.

Went back to my office and actually got some work done. It was easy at first, but I started getting Christmas-itus before 10:00. I have another may to go after today. I may be in trouble. here.

Some computers, though physically in place and doing their job, needed to be put in the correct virtual list to make sure the network knows what to do with them. In the process of doing this I found a computer that is either schizophrenic, or has a doppelganger. Had to track that down. This took longer than the original task. If I tried to rename the computer, it said the name was taken. If I removed the old computer name first, it recreated the old computer name. I had to rename the computer to something else, then remove the old name, then name the computer properly. This requires removing rebooting between every step.

In the middle of the renaming fiasco, I helped a guy replace a board in a computer. We had to move the computer sitting on top of the one we were after. I really hope that didn't blow the tests. I popped open the box, swapped the card and closed the box. We then lifted the other running computer and shoved the one we modified back in place. When I started at this company, I was told not to touch hardware. At some point, I started touching hardware. I was never told at any point that it was OK to touch hardware. There is no way I could do the job I do without touching hardware.

I text Adam, who took the remainder of the year off with "Having a party. Wish you were here."
He comes back with "Really, a party?"
I answer "No, I'm messing with you because you bailed."
I should have sent "Yup. The big boss is leading the conga line. I think he is drunk." That would have made Adam call me even if he didn't buy it. That is a rare thing for him.

Lunch

Skipped lunch to get more work done. Could have gone later, but it was too late by then.

After Noon

Someone killed a computer and it refused to boot back up afterward. I sat there running a bunch of different diagnostics until I decided it just needed to be restaged. Next time, don't lock it up and garbage the OS. Wait a minute. I run a bunch of tests. I check the hard drive, no errors. I start poking around and checking the network connections close by. All the machines seem to be connected and pining.

If I remove a piece of hardware it starts booting. I am not sure what is causing this issue, but heck with it. I uninstall the driver and send the guy a message what I did and where things are. He was in the middle of a bunch of tests so things might have been in a strange state. I'll leave e it to him to take it from here.

A guy came in who was worried because his Linux ID was wrong. He was worried because it looked like his user ID had been wiped or something. It turned out to be OK.

Someone borrowed a USB key.

I had to upgrade the new guys's mouse. Somehow, I had given him a really cruddy mouse. I ended up trashing the old one. It was just that unusable.

At some point I got a call from Nat that Elle was coming back. She had been hanging out with her dad. Nat had to hurry and finish wrapping a couple gifts for Elle before she turned up. I figure she had about fifteen minutes when we disconnected.

The big boss handed out free cookies in the lunch room. They weren't the cheap crappy stuff either. Dang taste. I would have been happy with a bag of Oreos. He announced the bounty over the intercom. I thought the building was going to fall over with the stampede.

I snuck past the lunch room a bit more often than normal and snagged a chocolate covered pretzel, or left over cookie. Surely, I was not the only one.

We recently had a change in our email system. This has been an opportunity for stuff to break. One of the folks had an email issue where an old reply to address was being used for them all of a sudden. This was one that had not been used for a long time. It took me fifteen minutes to track down where the reply to field is in Thunderbird. It is, by the way, right at the top of the account settings window. To be honest, I was not at the top of my game this Wednesday afternoon, two days before Christmas.

I looked up near the end of the day and realized it was an hour later than I thought. What happened to that hour? What did I do for that hour. There is no forehead print on the monitor. To home Kelly. To home and family.

Evening Commute

Natalie gave me a ride home from work so I would be around for a guy to come by to pick up some videos she does not want any more. Thank you Jesus for FreeCycle.

Evening

Waiting for the guy to come get the videos.

Guy came. Gave him the box full of old VHS tapes. He was happy to have them. Win win.

Looking at new computers. May be a bit for that.

Nat is making chicken noodles for dinner. Then it is off to bed. Back up for last day of work tomorrow for the year. Yay me.