Posts from — August 2003

From CNN - “Like cogs and gears on a colossal clock, Earth and Mars will soon synchronize their orbits, bringing them closer to each other than any time in recorded history.”

Space.com has great articles about all the happenings. They will post images of Mars tomorrow taken by the Hubble telescope.

I’ll be out there tomorrow morning before working looking up at Mars, weather permitting. They say the view will be spectacular for a little while after tomorrow’s close encounter.

“Hey Mike, what are you doing for the Labor Day weekend?” Nuffin.

Free Tech Books: “Your guide to free online computer books, lecture notes, documentations and references.” I like free.

I got to bring the Crossfire home tonight. Boy was it fun to drive and even more fun watching the people look at the car. There are pictures in the Gallery.

“…when this baby hits 88 miles per hour you’re going to see some serious shit.”

Well everything is back to normal after the blackout. The power is working and we can drink the water in the house without boiling it. I don’t understand all the fuss about not being able to drink water in the house. I just to the backyard and drank from the garden hose. It had a rubbery taste but it was better than nothing. They said we couldn’t drink from the taps in our house but never said a word about the faucets outside. Am I missing something?

I need one of these at work to plug into my laptop. Actually I could use several of them to keep cool.

The Retail Alphabet game keep me busy for a while. It’s fun trying to guess what letters are used for the different brand names and logos.

“Think of an object and the A.I. will try to figure-out what you are thinking by asking simple questions.” This game of 20 questions is quite uncanny most of the time. Let me know if you can stump it.

Hey… the basement pictures disappeared from the Gallery. I’ll have to post them again.

Last week started fine. I was working a short week, leaving on Thursday for our first vacation of the year. Because of family issues, schedules and other things, we haven’t been away all year. We were very excited to finally be going somewhere and make up for it. Then it happened.

Tuesday at lunch, I get a page from Gary saying his people got hit with a virus. By the time I returned from the cafeteria, all of our people had it. The entire group, and most everyone in the building (as big as a small city) had the Blaster32 worm. This was very bad.

For the next three days, we scrambled to update all the users in our area. This meant spending at least 30 minutes per workstation updating them to service pack 3 for Windows, then the worm patch and the removal tool. At first the process wasn’t working and it was taking way longer than needed. We came in to work early, left late and had a miserable time getting everyone up and running. I’m still wondering why a corporation of this size doesn’t have some type tool that would have pushed these updates AUTOMATICALLY to the users. We could have told the users to simply reboot their computers and sat back while the patches were applied. I just don’t get it. “All I’m asking are sharks with freakin’ laser beams attached to their heads…”

Chrysler is trying to save money by not turning on the air conditioning. It was horribly hot and muggy throughout the entire crisis and it added tension to an almost hopeless situation. What do you do when 300 people are asking you to fix their computer AT THE SAME TIME? I was hot, aggravated, tired and more stressed than I had been in a very long time. It wasn’t a good week.

On Thursday we managed to get things under control. Without the help of my tech friends, I would never have been done. I am extremely grateful for their assistance. Things were almost back to normal so I left for the day to begin my vacation at 3:45.

On the way home, I cheerfully listened to the radio trying to forget the past few days. I was so happy to finally be out of that hot, humid and aggravating place. Then the radio went out. Next I noticed the traffic lights were out. I tried to call home and the cell phone was out. Everything was out. Fortunately I was almost home. I made my way past two more intersections that were all fouled up. The idiots on the road have no idea what to do when a traffic light isn’t working. “Treat it as a four-way stop” they always tell us. I guess I was the only one that listened. It was a huge mess but I managed to get home without any problems. Pam was already there, she left work at noon.

We didn’t understand the scope of the problem until we turned on the radio. As we listened, we realized our vacation plans were slowly being cancelled. The pet sitter wasn’t able to come over, we didn’t have gas in our car and couldn’t get it anywhere and the failing sump pump was threatening to flood our new basement.

I have some blackout pictures in the Gallery.

And I was still hot and miserable and stressed out. This wasn’t a good week.

Windows running slow? Go to Tweak3D to get some ideas to get it running faster. Black Viper is another great source of information about optimizing your computer. Did you know Windows XP loads unneeded processes that slow down your computer? This site will tell you what they are all for and if they can safely be turned off.

While you’re at it, head over to Bandwidth Place to test your Internet connection speeds. I’m always thinking my cable modem speed is slower than hell but every test I run here (and other places) show it to scream right along. I guess I’m just impatient.

Next, make sure your computer is secure. Visit Rootsecure to be “informed about all the top security news stories.”

Don’t get caught. Here’s how to avoid being the target of a lawsuit when you download music from the Internet. - from The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Stay and checkout the rest of their site. It’s packed with all sorts of useful stuff.

The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King trailer is out. Crap. We have to wait until Christmas to see the movie. I wonder when The Two Towers is coming out on DVD. Well Amazon says it’s August 26th. Excellent.

This may be the last time I mention The Basement Project. Why? Because it is FINALLY done. The carpet was installed last Tuesday and it looks great. It’s a completely different area down there with a nice floor. Last night I installed the video system (it sounds awesome) and tonight we’ll start moving in the furniture. Then I’ll take some pictures and post them in the Gallery.

Add this to the list of things that piss me off: people that don’t use their blinkers. Wait. Have I mentioned that before? This morning on the way to work I was behind some crapmobile who couldn’t use his left blinker. That’s because the light was busted out. Idiot.

So I got a copy of Halo last week for free. I’ve never played that on my X-box. Cool. Then yesterday someone gave me a copy of the new Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic game. Very cool. I’ll install the X-Box in the new media room and have a great time playing these games.