Monday, March 31, 2003

What a pain

Last week, I started to get this pain in my left side. At first, it was minor. Then by Friday, it hurt fairly bad, so I stayed in bed most of this weekend. I was waffling between whether it was a gastric ailment, or some muscle I pulled. Speaking for the muscle side, I had been lifing a lot of computer systems the past week, but I made sure to protect my back, and I wondered if doing so, I pulled a muscle in the front. But for the gastric side, I have had a lot of bloating and pressure when I eat. Since there was nothing else going on, and Tylenol and a heating pad helped, I assumed it was a pulled muscle. I was looking for gastric symptoms, like pain increasing/decreasing when I ate and so on. None of that. It's not appendicitis, either, unless my appendix moved to the left side of my body.

Well, I came to work today, and was not feeling well. I was very tired, and so I grabbed a cinnamon bun and a Sobe Nirvana drink to kind of wake up. Moving around hurt a lot, but when I ate, the pain shot up seveal notches, and as I type this, the pain is pretty unbearable. Before, the pain only hurt when I turned or moved, but now it hurts most of the time. I had Christine call and make a doctor's appointment. It's now very difficult to stand up, walk up stairs, and as food moves through my stomach, I can feel it.

My fear is that I got a hernia, or my ulcer pal (whom I have had since age 12) has finally ruptured. Either is not an pleasant thought.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:29 AM EST [Link]

Friday, March 28, 2003

Another blessedly dull weekend

Well, it's another weekend coming up.

Christopher is entered in the Olympiad Science Challenge next weekend, where his team has to drop an egg from a height without breaking it, only using an assortment of items presented, like some soda straws, a sheel of paper, tiny rubber bands, and some tape. I'm spending all day Saturday with this down in Alexandria next week.

But this weekend, a friend of Christine's is coming over all day Saturday.

Sunday, I think I'll snooze.

Hopefully, I won't have to use This tool for my review.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:22 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Dumb Things My Work is Doing

I am lucky this is all I have to complain about at work:

My company fills my voice mail box with junk. Mostly stuff like, "If you are in the Dulles Office, be sure to stop by Room Blahdeblah and see our Motorola rep try and sell you things and get free foam stress balls," (I am not in, or ever near the Dulles office) and "We're releasing a new beta product not related to your job at all, and in fact, will probably mess up your machine, but do us a favor and install it on your laptop so it will never work again... for the company!" Recently it's been, "We know we had a lot of layoffs, but fill out your annual morale survey. We swear it's confidential, even though you have to enter in your SSN and office number as proof of who you are." I asked for more donuts (currently, we don't get any), just to see if I got contacted about it.

My company, which could do with saving some money, is spending a ton of it for security upgrades. Now they're installing an additional layer of gates and guard booths all around my building. I don't think this cost is justified. Of course, I wasted my comments section on asking for more donuts. I am going to leave when they start arming our guards.

Our coffee here sucks. It's not totally undrinkable, but it requires a lot of creamer and sugar to make it okay. I am happy, though, that it is free. I recently found out that the coffee sucks on purpose, because the cafeteria sells a better brand (I think Starbucks), and are charging $2.50 for a large. No thanks. Free coffee is good coffee, even if it's bad, in my book. But recently, some people have been leaving half-empty bags of gourmet coffee in the kitchen, and I am not sure who these kind people are, but recently, I have had some good cups of coffee, for free, because of them. Thank you, whomever you are.

I also saved my company possibly another $180,000 in the next two years by getting a better bargain on hardware. I got our current supplier to cut his price nearly in half. I made a note of that, and made sure everyone else knew about it. Hopefully, it will put a dent in all those security booths we paid for.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:37 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

BURNINATE!!!

Trogdor!! Trogdor!!

I have no idea why I think "Strongbad" is so funny. It's probably some dumb 12-year old part of me. This part, though, is hysterical. TROGDOR!!.

Work has been busy. I have been making Perl scripts while moving equipment from the old Lab to the new computer room and working a lot of 12'ers. I am particularly proud that I have written some programs that will save a lot of work in the move. One bitchy thing is that when we move switches, you have to reprogram them. You have to change the IP address, what ports everything is attached to, the switch finger info (where it is, who to contact, and so on), and other stuff. I wrote a program that can automatically calculate, based on IP address, where it is and how to set it up. Neat! Yay me! Something that used to take 5 minutes now takes 10 seconds. A coworker here, Charles, has this saying that is so true: "I am a programmer because I am lazy." This means many programmers don't want to do rote work, just write something that does the work for them.

My stomach seems to have calmed down a lot, partially because I found an over-the-counter medication that actually works, and now I am not losing so much sleep as before. Although last night, my cat Artoo barfed all over my side of the bed and I had to sleep in the guest room, and I couldn't get steady sleep because I missed sleeping next to Christine.

In other news, I have this fear a friend of mine is burning out. She runs this volunteer-based forum, see, and wanted to be on vacation for one month. She left the forum to some other moderators for some much needed "me-time," and then the Iraq war started. The forums became a flame fest of hot anger, and some people decided to bother my friend while she was on vacation, "telling" on the other forum members. She had to get back early to extinguish the flames, and she's understandably furious. I can't believe this. They bothered her, on her time off, because they got mad at someone?

This happened to at least three BBSs I was on in the 1990s. Three sysops totally burned out. One sold the BBS and the other two just shut theirs down with angry letters stating they were sick of everyone fighting among themselves. I wrote a short story a few years ago (unfinished and definitely unpublished) about a BBS based on one of these. In this story, a hugely popular BBS mysteriously goes down after a flame war, and the sysop says, "That's it, I'm not your Mom, I'm shutting this down." Ten years pass. Some of the members still hang out with one another, but most have moved on to different lives. Then they start getting murdered, one by one. Can they figure out who did it? What happened to the sysop? No one can find her. Did she do it? Was she a victim? Did she even exist in the first place? The story is about the changing of people's lives from high school/college into adulthood, a bit about the technical industry's change from the 80s to the 90s, the online masks we wear, and of course, gruesome murders.

I don't want this sysop to burninate... :(

Posted by Punkie @ 12:54 PM EST [Link]

Monday, March 24, 2003

Boring Weekend... thank God!

I must say nothing really awful happened this weekend, which makes for a dull diary but a happy weekend. Okay, one thing did happen, CR had terrible asthma, and thus we had to miss a friend's child's birthday party, which kind of sucked, but that's more whiny than tragic. CR is better now, he went to school today, so that's good.

Friday I had gotten so little sleep the night before, when I got home I went to bed, and stayed asleep until late. Then I watched TV until I fell asleep again. Saturday was similar, except I played Quake 3 Arena for a while. I got the game over a year ago, and didn't care for the single player mode, but recently, I have been playing bots in a "Catch the flag" mode, and trying to learn the console. I actually played with some Internet gamers, and *didn't* get clobbered seconds into the game. I was actually doing pretty well in this one server where the guy had made the gravity very low and the game speed really high. That was a lot of fun. The game is a lot more fun when you are challenged, not slaughtered, although it's hard to feel bad that the REASON you suck at the game is lack of practice. That shows my life has other things going on. I am not sure whether any long term goal involving "ruling at a video game" pays off. I mean, whatever happened to the guy who beat everyone at Pac Man in 1983? But it's a great tension releaser, running around, blowing people up.

I also downloaded the new 3.2 version of Knoppix (self-contained Linux on a bootable CD), and the new 9.0 version of Slackware Linux. I keep meaning to look at Slackware as a distro, because everyone brags about it. I have Debian (all 7 disks), but I have to figure out how to get it on a system that does not allow booting off of CDs. That's the same reason Gentoo and Peanut Linux has evaded me as well.

BTW: You want a Punkie recommend? Try tomsrtbt, bootable Linux on a floppy. It makes a GREAT rescue disk, and I use it at work a lot for systems where I need to test raw network connectivity. We have a lot of systems with no CD-ROM drive, and this is a godsend sometimes. All CLI, of course, but if you have a bootable CDROM only, and at least 64mb RAM, go with Knoppix. Seriously. It's worth the download. It's impressive.

Sunday, I spent mostly in bed with Christine, watching the Sci Fi channel marathon of "Dune," since I hadn't seen their version, only the David Lynch version of it released in the 1980s. I am not sure which version I like better. I would say this one followed closer to the book series, but that is a hard series to put on screen, with so much internal dialogue going on. I think I'll reread it again, if I ever get trapped in a time warp with all the books, because that's the ONLY time I'll have to read them.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:16 AM EST [Link]

Friday, March 21, 2003

"I'm doing fine!"... [No I'm not... liar!]

One of my first lessons in customer service was "The customer does not care about you. They ask 'how are you doing?' as a form of greeting, not as an actual question. You respond you are doing great, not anything else." This was ingrained into me, and once in a while, I do run into someone who has not learned this lesson.

Clerk: Good morning, sir. How are you doing today?
Punkie: Fine, thanks. How about you?
Clerk: TERR-ible! My cashier has been out sick, and I have to cover her shift, and so my girlfriend is going to go out with her friend Mandy instead, and then they are going to talk about me, and when I get back to the apartment, she'll be all, "I am so mad at you." And I'll be all, "Why?" and she'll be all, "You know... you're a GUY!" Us men gotta stick together, right? Ha! Women... So anyways... last week, I was cutting my toenails and notice the weirdest thing...

That was an actual conversation I had with a store clerk at the mall, except it was much longer.

I have gotten maybe 2 hours sleep. I think my ulcer has finally done me in. I can't eat anymore without becoming ill. I won't go into details, but I should see a doctor, because now I can't even sleep without getting ill. I think that Gasto-enteritus I got in December really screwed some basic thing up with my digestive system. On top of that, I had really awful coffee (7/11) that spilled on me three times, and the third time was when the cup committed suicide. The Styrofoam seam on the cup split, and spilled hot coffee all over my front, pants, leatherman, office door, and rug in front of my office door. Luckily, my trash can was there, and got most of the coffee. My hand hurts, but I don't thinks it's a serious burn. It's just a little red and stings. It also got on my donuts, which were now sticky and damp. When I bit into my jelly donut, the jelly shot from the donut onto my keyboard (luckily, not IN the keyboard). I had to seriously clean my desk and keyboard, then wash my hands. When I went to wash my hands, I forgot I had the burn, and when I put my hand under hot water... yeowch! I was in a pissy mood.

Then someone I didn't even know walked into the office kitchen, and said, "Hello. How are you?" It was a cheerful, optimistic greeting by a perky morning person. Thankfully, she was light in weight, because when she fell to the floor after I snapped her neck, it was quiet fluttering noise instead of a heavy thump that attracts the guard's attention sometimes. No, no... actually, my retail reflexes kicked in. "Great! How are you?" I said, just as cheerful. She put her lunch in the fridge. "Great, thanks! Well... off to work. It's Friday! Yay!"

I don't know who she was. It was amazing how I just said, "Great! How are you?" because wow, I was not great, not cheerful, and in fact, very angry at the world because I spent money for bad coffee I didn't even get to finish and got a burned hand in the process. Plus I had wet clothes (luckily, dark colored, so the stain isn't as obvious). But even though I haven't had a retail job since 1996, it's still a reflex.

But then I felt bad. I had lied. Even worse, lied to a complete stranger. I never thought about it before, and now I am feeling conflicted about my reality experience that people who say "How are you?" don't want a diatribe or a play-by-play of terrible events unless they really know you, and really care. But then there's the feeling of, "You lied. You actually told an untruth, the very thing you strive to rid from your life." Then I think, why bring her down? She was cheerful, and thus, did make me feel a little better. Then the feeling of, "Oh my God you lied and then felt good about it! You used her, you sick bastard." Then it went back to "you didn't use her any more than just feeling better about oneself through self-reinforced opportunity to feel better..." Back and forth this went, until my stomach was in knots.

Maybe it's the lack of sleep.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:24 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Do you remember where you were when...?

10:15... last night. March 19th. I was ... watching "Whose Line is it Anyway? on ABC Family. I thought for a moment during the show I should look at the news, but then I thought, "Why bother?" I knew it was inevitable. I forgot until the Daily Show when John Stewart urged people to stop watching him, and watch a REAL news show. I love him. He's awesome.

So I did ... and then there were missiles launching from ships. Not a whole lot of info, but we had made the first strike. I don't know Judo or Karate, but I recall some wisdom from a Judo champ back when I worked at the knife store: "Never be the first one to pull out the knife in a street fight." He also said, "Never be the first to attack, it exposes a weakness. Wait for the other to attack first, it's how I have won most of my championships. If everyone believed this, no one would ever fight, and we'd be a lot better off."

Of course, I am disgusted. I am ashamed my country's leader did this. It's bullheaded, ignorant, and all I have to say is they better find some evidence, concrete evidence, that Saddam had some sort of illegal weapons. I am not sure what's worse, the fact we may find out we are right when Saddam uses them against us, or that we were wrong, and all this poo-flinging was just a lot of monkey jabber from a very poor leadership decision on both sides. I have seen more intelligent gang fights. Hell, I have seen more intelligent fights between my own pets!

But what does anyone care what I think? Polls say we agree with the war and hate Saddam by at least 51% (source: AOL/CNN). I can't say I liked him, he was an ass, and definitely up there with Hitler as far as abusive expansive power. The world is full of jerk leaders like him. But I think patience would have worn him away far more than us going in there and doing whatever it is the hell we are doing to get rid of him.

I also feel personally vested in this because my cousin Shelly is over there. I hope she's okay. She did really well for herself. First she joined the military, then became a dental hygienist in the Army, worked at the Pentagon, and even met President Clinton. She got deployed from Germany months ago. Now she might be in a trench somewhere with a helmet and a gun, fighting a war because our leader's got this daddy complex.

Don't bother me today, I am listening to classic Billy Idol and in a bad, funky mood.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:20 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Happy Programmer

I have spent the last few days deep in PERL. I am typing this as my brain takes a break, but I have been instructed at work that a MAIN priority is to write this PERL program, after months of delay by other projects. Finally. Real work.

I do programming in several stages. First, I get hard-core, defined lines of what I am supposed to do. No "make this program chart blah" is acceptable. What is the input? What will be the output? Who will be using this data? What are you doing this for? What defines a demarcation for you? Knowing this before you write the code makes it more flexible. Like for instance, if someone says, "I need a program that counts how many calls on this system report a bad TCP/IP stack," I ask for ALL the error codes. That way, when they go, "Oh, and how about count all the calls that report a Carrier Loss?" all I have to do is redo an equation, because I was already counting all possible outcomes. I learned this after a project where I was asked to sort two items, errors and non-errors. I had a simple program. Then it asked, "Well, how about how many errors per hour?" Total rewrite, and wasted time.

Next, I write a skeleton of the program, something I call "The Plot" (where data is called "The Characters," I guess). All my programs have descriptive logging functions built in from the beginning so when something breaks, I know where. As I go through each plot element, I check what I have done, and fix any new errors that crop up. I also see weaknesses in my plot, like "Well, what if someone wants the data in another format?" It's easier to change this while you are building it, not six months later when you have forgotten what the hell you did. Once the plot is fleshed out, and the program works, I release it as a test candidate. I ask people, "Tell me if this is what you are looking for as output?" I get comments back, hopefully. I used to work with one person who never gave me any feedback when I asked for it, but yet would complain only at meetings ... months later. What a pain!

I then start to flesh things out, look for "what if some bozo does this with it?" Like recently, someone started to change the spelling of the carrier. It used to be "SPRINT." Then they changed it to "SPRT IP," but only on SOME of the data. Of course, my program thought they were two different carriers, so they started to generate reports for "SPRINT" and "SPRT IP." Luckily, I had made adding these "oops" factors easy, and with one line of code, made "If the data says SPRT IP, it really means SPRINT." I also deal with capitalization, because some people will have data that says "Sprint," "SPRINT," and "sprint," and I have to plan for that. Then I deal with "what happens if the program or data gets corrupted?" Like I get data in a different format suddenly? Well, sadly, I just do a "Can't figure this data out - Ending program," and then get notified by the program before anyone else notifies me. I try to make my programming proactive.

After I have released the program, I do maintenance work on it. My logs help me figure out the real-world problems I hadn't thought of. Like when the network is down, what happens to those systems mounted with data network shares? How will my program deal with that? Or when someone spells "SPRINT" wrong? Or when someone moves the data to a different area? You'd never believe some of the stuff that creeps up.

Last, I try to be as user friendly as possible. Recently, I wrote this line of code:

sLog(1," ... $test_path NOT found!");
sLog(1," ... $system_name may not have written tests for this day - check $system_name");
sLog(1," ... check to make sure of correct spelling, capitalization, and path mounts (smbfs/nfs?)");

This is a fairly descriptive error with even some helpful self-diagnosis suggestions. On some of my Visual Basic programs, my dialogue boxes have things like, "Error #2006: Pathfile to data not found. Please check your path file, without trailing backslash, and start again. If this error persists, click 'Send to clipboard' and paste error it into an e-mail, and send it to [my e-mail address]." What gets put in their clipboard is the last few lines of the error log, which will have a very descriptive series of events. That way, the user doesn't have to cut and paste, or try and remember or spell things they saw on the screen. I really try and make my programs as helpful and friendly as possible, and keep the end user in mind. Sure, I could just end the program without a peep, and let them fend for themselves, but that's mean and unfriendly.

This is why I get chosen a lot for programming at my company.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:15 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Punkie Needs to Heed Warnings from Friends

My life is full of examples where I should have taken heed of what my friends said about someone. You know, "So-and-so is crazy, stay away from them." I usually give people too many chances. Because of this, today, I found out I am a few bucks short on a business deal gone sour with a friend I was warned about. This isn't a major blow, financially, but this is a painful sting.

Let's call this friend Karen.

I can't go into detail because it's one of those gray areas where I am dealing with someone a bit unstable who might take umbrage on me personally and on my friends. Since I won't mention the real property involved, let's say I rented something with Karen's former roommate, with the agreement that she would pay me back. Now, technically, I did use this item, and had for many years. So did the former roommate, and every year, we rented it together. Every year, I was paid back. But now Karen has taken over this property and not only won't pay up her end of the bargain like we agreed for the last few months, and quite frankly, was rude and accusing of my intent. I would have rented the item (for myself) anyway, but I got a letter stating that "I don't recall ever agreeing to anything, and to be frank, this is unwarranted and it would be irresponsible of me to pay it." Karen could have said many things. "I cannot afford it," would be one of them. I suspect this is the real reason because Karen's business did not make much money this year. She could have just declined before I paid for it, because I would have found another renter.

I probably wouldn't have even posted about this, but for the fact that I am slightly pissed about being accused of possible fraud. Of course, it's not a WHOLE lot of money, and really, I still have the item, and so haven't totally lost anything. Should have I gotten it in writing? Probably. But I was a trusting person. I think I am more hurt about the sudden backlash she gave me, like I am trying to defraud her or something.

I had been warned about this friend for about 2 years. This friend was "irresponsible," and "controlling." This friend has already driven many people away, but I never had anything to say about this person until just now, because what this person did was never to me. But I should have seen this coming. Luckily, I only lost a few bucks on a deal. I am not going to fight it, because it will only make things worse.

Still... .. bitch.

Posted by Punkie @ 07:53 PM EST [Link]

Thoughts of War

Meanwhile, back in DC, there is a angry man with a tractor in one of our ponds. While chaos rains down around me, I think of a phrase from an old filk song by Frank Hayes:

Don't start an interstellar war; it has no helpful uses.
When someone asks you 'what's it for?', you'll only make excuses.
If thirty trillion folks get hurt, you'll go to bed with No Dessert!
Don't start an interstellar war...

Posted by Punkie @ 08:31 AM EST [Link]

Monday, March 17, 2003

General Good News

I just have to say, that's it's been a little over a week and a half where nothing majorly bad has happened to me or my friends. It's been calm, I have been able to relax more, catch up with myself, and actually get some work done. In addition to the yard work I mentioned in the earlier post, I got some badly-needed housework done, including a lot of "low priority" annoyances. Like:

- Worked on OpenBSD (already posted in detail)
- Yard work - partially done. I still have to clean up some of the darker areas of the back yard, and work on the front yard. But a lot of leaves, garbage, banches, and twigs were removed.
- Garden tilled. Waiting to plant tomatoes.
- Bills. Caught up. Still no credit card debt, so all we owe is a house payment.
- Got Widget fixed. He's healthy (his "problem" is now cured), got a shaved belly, and a little tattoo.
- Replaced light bulbs. This includes repairing two fixtures in the guest room.
- Got Internet and servers up in the guest room. LAN cable provides Internet access for guests now.
- Some more den cleaning. It's still a mess, but now things are being put away in boxes, and neatly stacked in cloest. Vacuuming has started.
- Might get back on "Franklin-Quest Planner/Palm Pilot" plan. Life will start to get organized again.

Yeah, I know. I feel the same way: "Saying things are calm temps the Fates and invites chaos," but you know, I have to stop living that way because it got to the point where when things were okay, all I did was worry about the future, and it never helped. Even if shortly after this post, something terrible happens to me or one of my friends, I will do my best to remember how thankful I was during this short calming period. As they said in Alateen: Sometimes you have to just live one day at a time.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:18 AM EST [Link]

The Toddlers of Dune

I just thought of that. "Elmo say, da wohms ah da spisse!" Okay, enough jocularity. I feel I should give a shout out to my homeys in the sci fi house, yo yo. I made an effort and saw the Sci Fi channel's first part of the mini-series, "The Children of Dune." I was kind of bummed I missed their attempt to do "Dune," so I made a point to watch. Now, I haven't read the series since I was ... oh, 13, 14, something like that. And I recall the books were dry and dull. I was more of a Bradbury and Clarke teen, so Herbert took some getting used to. I read "Dune" (the first book) a few times in my life, but the rest of the Dune series only once. So when I saw this ... it was really like seeing it for the first time.

I have problems with complicated stories, and I had my share of problems with this. I had to recall all the houses and what happened, and who Muad?Dib was. But I got to up to speed, and with the exception of some people I could not figure out for the life of me, I thought the series was actually pretty good. I plan on watching it tonight, to see how Muad?Dib's kids turned out (I guess Muad?Dib was killed by a worm in the end there, but I think they left his wandering open-ended).

When I was reading these books for the first time, I recall how it was supposed to be an (rough) allegory for the nation of Islam. Tolkien's "Lord of the Ring" series was supposed to be a take on World War 2, as well, and while that is hotly debated, I don't hear ANYONE comparing the Dune/Islam (travels of Mohammed) parallels, so maybe the people who told that to me were full of crap. Or maybe that's common knowledge, and I am just out of the loop.

I really need to go back and reread some of these books as an adult that I read as a kid. I am such a different person now, I would have a lot better perspective. While I was growing up, and Sci Fi was still considered a niche market, Dune was heralded as one of the Greats, up there with "Fahrenheit 451," Asimov's Robot and Foundation series, Terry Brooks' Shanara series, and of course, Tolkien. So when the movie came out...

My friend David was REALLY into the series. I mean, he loved it, so when the movie came out, we went to go see it at the Tysons Corner Roth's 8. He hated the movie. I thought it was okay, although the strange new-age guitar riffs were a bit too new for me, but I didn't think the movie was all that bad. Apparently, it rode that fat line between "caters to the geeks" and "caters to a mass audience." It failed at both. David was so livid, it kind of amused me. It was my first understanding of how fandom reacts to any movie made of a book. In fact, the only time I never saw this was Harry Potter, which was overseen by J.K. Rowling herself, so I mean, if fans complained, it was against the writer (although Kurt Vonnegut has often lost debates with college professors about his own books, so maybe it's not assured when you are an author). David could not stop talking about how it stunk, and it truly, deeply, offended him that I didn't think it was so bad. About seven years later, when I was unemployed, I saw the "Director's Cut" late at night on HBO. I thought that was even better! Later, my son and I saw it, although he was about eight at the time, and remembers none of it. But I recall he was totally engrossed in it. See, as a side note, I had an old "Spice worm of Arrakis" action toy that my son inherited, so now he KNEW what they meant, and I tried to explain what the spice meant, and he claimed he understood. Now, I will tell people the movie is good on its own and it has great atmosphere, but does not exactly follow the book. This starts many arguments in fandom, especially about Baron Harkonnan (who in the book was a deceptively kindly old chap who looked like Santa Claus, not an ugly bloated man covered with boils). But, in the end... "Take it easy kid, it's only a movie." - Ham "Intergalactic Wise Guy" Salad in "Hardware Wars."

Posted by Punkie @ 09:24 AM EST [Link]

Tale of Weirdness - Working at the Book Store

I used to be manager at Crown Books #854 in Rose Hill, Alexandria back in the late 1980s. Crown Books is gone now, but I carry many fond memories of working there. And some that were not-so-fond. But many make good stories.

Selling Porn Mags
The previous manager HATED selling porn. Crown books didn't have a lot of porn, but we sold Playboy, Penthouse, Hot Talk, Penthouse Forums, Club, Velvet, and a handful of others. The previous manager had them behind the counter, which saved a lot of woes, but some men would beach themselves like seals over the counter to have a look. I had my regulars. Two of them were cops.

Back then, I had a pole up my butt about porn. I was so against it. I still don't enjoy it, but now I support the right of any individual to enjoy porn because hey, it's a free country. But I hated porn not only because I was a prude, but because of the trouble it caused when my district manager told me to "get them from behind the counter and out with the rest of the magazines so we can make money." Grrrr... Well, he was right, we went from selling just a handful of issues a month to well over a hundred. It quickly became my top selling series of magazines. But it had its problems.

The first series of problems were underage kids. Now, the magazines were in the direct line of sight from the register, and up high on the top row of the rack. But somehow, kids managed to grab them and sneak them to the back, where they'd hide them by putting them in large books to save for later. So frequently, they'd be saved in large art books, coffee table books, and even large kid's books. Not only did this piss off customers, but also would split the spines of the books, forcing me to return them. What a pain in the ass!

Whenever kids would crowd around that section of magazines, you knew they weren't looking at "Hot Rod Monthly" or "VW Custom," but as soon as they got a whiff of one of us coming, they'd ditch and scatter. One day, I caught some of them.

It was a bunch of boy scouts. I'd say 6-8 of them, aged around 12-14 or so. It was slow for a Saturday, and sure enough, these gaggle of brown shirts came in, and made a beeline for the mags. They positioned themselves in a tight cluster, with the taller boys serving as lookouts. I discretely removed my name badge, wandered to the back of the store, then slowly went up to the magazine area, pretending to be a customer. Sure enough, they were reading porn. One of the lookouts noticed me, and started warning the other kids, but they were too slow on the take, and when they saw me right next to them, they tried to put the magazine back so fast, they ripped it nearly in half. I grabbed two of them, one of them who had been holding the magazine. I told the rest to go get their scoutmaster to come to retrieve the others. They fled.

I took the two boys to my office, and made them sit on the stoop leading to the register area. And I waited. And waited. One was a small redhead, who started to cry the longer it got. The other was an dark-skinned kid (possibly Hindu) who was turning green with fear. Once in a while, I'd say, "If your scoutmaster doesn't come back, I'll have to call the police." Man, I was mean. But then an hour went by. Then an hour and a half. My cashier said, "I think they've been abandoned." My plan had backfired. Now what? I wondered if I'd have to get the kids to call their parents. At two hours, it was getting late, and the sun had set. Finally, just before I contemplated actually calling the police, a large dark-skinned scoutmaster ran into my store. Yep, it was his dad.

The man was large, like tall with broad shoulders. He was furious. But not with me, thank God. I explained what had happened, and he was very apologetic and humble, but as he screamed at the two kids, I heard his side of the story. They had been coming back from a day trip somewhere, and stopped at the 7-11 around the corner for some refreshments. There were two vans carrying all the scouts, and when they left and did head count, the scouts whom I sent to fetch the scoutmaster made up that the two missing kids were "in the other van." An hour later, at another stop, it dawned on the scoutmasters that two kids were missing (one of them being his son). After freaking out for a while, and sorting out who was with whom, they managed to get a mumbled confession from one of the scouts what had happened. So he had to drive all the way back to my shopping center (they got lost, too), and pray that he was going to the right one. Luckily, we were the first one they stopped at.

I recall thinking what JERKS those other scouts were. Damn, that is the worst kind of abandonment. The man had already assumed that the police were involved (he was told they had been caught shoplifting, nothing about porn), and he was relieved I had not "overreacted." He paid for the torn-up magazine, plus the wrinkled Spin magazine they had been hiding the porn with.

We also had other porn problems, and one of them was an employee at the Roy Roger's in our shopping center. It was obvious he was kind of slow, and on his lunch break, he'd read the magazines and ... sometimes masturbate to them. Like right there at the magazine rack. In his store uniform. The police had been called on him several times, be he always ran off before the police arrived. I had been lucky only to HEAR about him for months, but sadly, one weekday, he came in when I was alone in the store. He grabbed a copy of the magazine, started to flip through it noisily and quickly (like how an angry person might flip through a phone book), then he'd reach into his pants, and... flap flap flap went the Roy Roger's apron. EWWW! I was so mortified, that I screamed at him to get the hell out of my store. He instead ran into my back room, I guess, to run into the alley. But my door was locked. So he locked himself in the bathroom. With the magazine. I called the cops, but before they arrived, he ran from the back room, and fled out the front door with the magazine. When the police came around, I was in such a tizzy about it. I demanded they do something because, dammit, he kept coming in and wacking off! I even called Roy Roger's, and demanded to speak to his boss (that went nowhere). I filed a formal report for "lewd behavior" and they went to go find him. I don't know if they did, but he never came back. Years later, when I worked elsewhere, I was stunned to find out he rode my bus to work, and worked in my mall, too. I never made eye contact with him, but I never visited the Greek food place he worked at, either.

Shoplifting
We had these "anti-theft" scanners in front of our front doors, but they were horrible things. First, they went off all the time. Like for people with strollers, umbrellas, or just any large quantity of metal. And if they went off for too long, they'd "burn out," and we'd have to have some 3M tech come out and replace fuses and stuff. The plastic that covered the scanners got bumped into and hit so many times, they split away from the metal, and they were SO ugly. Needless to say, they only worked about a third of the time, and finally, the company stopped trying to fix them.

I only stopped one shoplifter, and this was a girl, probably about 12 years old. It was the middle of a very slow day, a Wednesday, if I recall correctly. The store was empty, and as I was sitting in my office turret when she came in. Now, the first thought was, "A kid in the middle of a school day?" Alone? And she was looking nervously about. She was a kind of gangly girl, a bit on the tall side, with blond curly hair. She had this large, turquoise duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She headed towards the isles where we sold "Sweet Valley High" books (pap pop lit for tweens). She looked around, didn't see me, and started stuffing handfuls of books into her bag. She didn't even look at the titles. I thought, "She is so bad at this, I wonder if she's a decoy?" But no one else was in the store. So I busied myself near the entrance, and waited. When she got to the doors, I stopped her, and said, "Are you going to pay for those?" She immediately burst into tears, and I mean, bawled and bawled that she was so sorry, and would never do it again. I dumped out about 40 paperbacks from her bag and handed back her empty bag. Having learned my lesson from the scouts, I sternly told her, "Never... EVER come back in my store again!" She sniffled an agreement and quickly left.

I kind of forgot about it until winter. It was a busy night of the Christmas season, and there were a lot of people in my store. As I was counting out a register drawer, I heard a scuffle by the door. A woman was fighting with her kid, insisting she come inside. The girl said she'd wait out in the cold, even though she didn't have a jacket. The mother was upset, and demanding she come in the store. At first, I thought, "Some girl who doesn't want to look like an uncool nerd by being seen in a booms tore." Then we made eye contact. It was her, the curly-haired, sticky-fingered girl with the turquoise duffel bag. She got more and more urgent, I guess figuring if she didn't flee, I'd tell her mom. Her mom finally gave up, and went into the store without her. I never told the mother, but I'll never forget that girl's look in her eyes. Hey, she kept her end of the bargain! :)

The punchline to my shoplifting alertness was when my store got inventory that year. I nearly had a heart attack when they said, "We estimate you have lost over $20,000 of merchandise last year." But then was told, "That's 3% of revenue. Very good! That's way below normal. In fact, you're the best store in your district." Hee! I was later told a lot of the "loss" was also accounting errors and "employee drift." I didn't know what he meant by that, and he said, "Keep it that way." Later, I was told that meant employee theft, and several of my cashiers and assistants were, in fact, stealing from the store. How did I find out? Long after I stopped working there, they admitted it to me. Man... I missed out on a LOT of free books!

Perks
I heard it's different now, but Crown Books used to use distributors to count some of the titles, and then they'd come to me with an order recommendation. They were called book reps. They were super-nice people, always ordering too many things I'd have to pare down. One day, one of the ones working for Random House (one of the BIGGEST book distributors) asked me if I got my "titles?" I said I didn't know what he was talking about. Well, he took down my home address, and said there'd be a package waiting for me soon. Weeks later, I got a box of books. All really weird titles, too. I asked another manager about this, and he told me the secret.

Crown Books only allowed "best of backlist," that is, titles that sold well. Nothing obscure. They only wanted books people would buy and not leave linger, taking up shelf space for other better-selling books. I already knew that, but the reason I was going to get "free books" was that the distributors wanted to put some more obscure stuff on the shelves. So what managers did was if they got a book they didn't want, like some "History of Lint in Europe" for $14.95, you'd take it to your store, and take home a book that you wanted for $14.95. You got what you wanted, they got their titles on the shelves... and it was all under the table.

Soon, I was on a lot of those lists. I got a lot of books, and traded them in. I'd say 60% of my current book collection is from that period. I still got them after I quit, too, but then I couldn't trade them in. I gave away a lot of those books.

Also, if you wanted a new paperback, you tore the cover off and kept the rest. That was wrong, but we all did it. See, when you return paperbacks that didn't sell, to get credit, all you had to do was tear off the cover and send them the cover and throw the rest away. That saved on a LOT of shipping. But we weren't supposed to KEEP the books, see... or give them to friends... ... oops.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:16 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Master of his Yard - plus Wireless hacks, Cody Banks, and KDE success

I got to really look at the back yard for the first time in ... months. Since late November, I have either been houseridden, working too hard at work, sick, or the back yard was a pile of snow. I got to actually do some yard work on this nice day. Most of my yard work consists of this pattern: work, rest, survey, repeat. I feel a bit foolish during the "survey" part, because I feel like some sort of Daniel Boone. But I am not looking for "them rebbits, 'coons, injuns, an' bars," but for signs the house is about fall apart somewhere. My house has been good so far, but this time, I noticed some dry rot around the trim of two doors. I also found the source of the leak into my rec room. The winter's ice had forced the crack open wide enough to be noticeable. I hope I can fix most of this.

Sometimes, Christine and I go out to Starbucks together. Today was so nice, we decided to do this. We sat in there, talked about some things, and then watched people.

Later, we went to take CR to a movie, and we saw "Agent Cody Banks," a film with Frankie Muniz (from the show "Malcolm in the Middle") and Hillary Duff (from the show, "Lizzy McGuire"), two teen heartthrobs currently. CR wanted to see it. It was... okay. It was very typical of any kid's movie. It had bad, stereotyped acting. The bad guys were all scarred, angry, mean, and had an evil mountain base with a female voice computer counting down stuff. The CIA was some sort of sleek-black place with the latest in technology, and agents worked in almost minimalistic cartoonish settings as interesting as the inside of a locker. Lots of Segway scooters, I guess as part of their product placement. It was interesting to see this film from the CIA I knew to what the public things the CIA or FBI is. I mean, the most important meetings are probably held in old, boring rooms at a big laminated meeting table with coffee stains, torn up chairs held together with duct tape, and drywall that hasn't been washed since 1977. Not sleek black rooms with holographic displays. The movie wasn't *terrible*, but it's nothing to write home about, either. I also decided Segways were pointless. The move about as fast as people walk, they take up more space in hallways, and seems like an expensive solution to a problem I am not sure was worth noting, anyway. They just seem like an invitation to more accidents with pedestrian's ankles.

We also went to our friend Roberta's house last night. She had been inviting us over forever, and we kept not being able to go because our life was in chaos. She has a nice house, and has done a lot of her own work on it. Sean and Lou-ann were there as well, and we all talked for six hours about the war, relationships, and the stuff my friends and I usually talk about. It was a good time, and I was glad to see Roberta's house finally, even if I did have another migraine wave.

ALERT- GEEKY PART
Non-geeks may skip the rest of this entry, although the bit about wireless should serve as a red flag to those of you contemplating stuff.

I noticed that our Starbucks now finally has 802.11b available. I contemplated how easy it would be to hack, based on study I did for work, plus stuff about networking I already knew (thanks, Cisco!). To hack a wireless LAN, you have to get pass three things (assuming they have the brains to actually set up security blocks, you never know with retail):

1. Break the 128 bit encryption
2. Hack a username and password
3. Spoof MAC address

See, as I have read online, #1 just tales time, unless you get #2 first via social engineering or something (some people are so stupid when it comes to protecting their info, I read on one site where someone just looked over another's shoulder). But I also saw one site that claimed they did broke 128 encryption to a cafe in 5 minutes, so you could be parked in a car near the Starbucks. Then you set up a packet sniffer and get a login and password for #2. You should also be able to get #3 the same way. Chances are that Starbucks doesn't even check for #3 because what if a customer brings in a different laptop? But it would be good to spoof this anyway to confuse a back trace. Wireless is so easy to hack, I'll probably never use it in my house except to have it on only when I need to use the laptop elsewhere or for friends at a party.

I am real proud I got KDE to work on my home OpenBSD system. Here's what I did, in rough order:

1. Installed OpenBSD 3.2 from FTP
2. Installed ports from "/pub/OpenBSD/snapsnot/ports.tar.gz" (this is where my audience gasps, I know)
3. Installed bash and samba
4. Tried to install KDE. Got "C compiler cannot create executables." WTF?
5. Realized that I installed "snapshot" instead of "current"
6. Deleted /usr/ports
7. Downloaded "/pub/OpenBSD/3.2/ports.tar.gz"
8. Tried compiling KDE. Got some package error with "arts3"
9. Did a delete_pkg on "arts3." Reinstalled.
10. Got compile error. Would not let me compile.
11. Deleted /usr/ports/arts3. Tried to add_pkg.
12. Got a "cannot find Makefile."
13. Now also, several shell commands stopped working. The "ps" (print jobs) command was one of them.
14. Got mad, realized I probably hosed my system. Flat reformatted and reinstalled OpenBSD 3.2 because I am too lazy to figure this out.
15. At work, I was installing KDE on another system, but after 5 hours, got a "postgresql" error. Doing "/usr/ports/databases/postgresql/make all" and then "make install" fixed this.
16. When I got home, I made sure I went to "/pub/OpenBSD/3.2/ports.tar.gz"
17. Made bash and samba again. Then made postgresql and then KDE.
18. At home, KDE "make" took *14* hours to compile on a P2/450 mhz system. Only maybe 10 minutes of that was actual downloading stuff (I was on cable at home). At work, on a P3/600 mhz system, it took about the same amount of time (I was on a LAN with a fat T1 pipe). Jesus Jumping Frog! What a commitment.
19. Tried to start KDE with "startkde." Got X authentication errors.
20. Did xf86config to made an X86config file. startkde = X authentication errors.
21. Made a ".xinitrc" file in my root directory with only one line: "startkde"
22. KDE starts! Yay! Then in 640 x 480, which is WAY too small. Luckily, I remembered I could increase the resolution with "control alt (number keypad) plus" to cycle through resolutions. Did setup.
23. KDE not only works, but it set up my sound card! I NFS-mounted my Linux shares, and played mp3s and mpeg movies.
24. Tried to "make all" for Mozilla. Got an error that "mozilla-0.9.3 is marked as broken: core dumps in dynamic library constructor." The Mozilla web page had no help. That's okay, KDE's Nautilus was a pretty good replacement.
25. I installed Seti@Home. Because if the machine is on, and I'm paying for it's electricity, it's gonna WORK for it, man!

So that's what I did, in rough order. I showed you my mistakes so when you get the same thing, you'll know how to fix them. Again, don't e-mail me for support. I am just doing this as a "gee whiz" hobby plus to get some secure servers at work. To do:

- Get user account on my system to be able to run KDE. Right now I'm getting authentication errors and "KDE cannot find the necessary files" errors from the user account. I think if I change my user to the "wheel" group, this will fix it.
- Find a place for this box. My den is too hot with only 3 systems running, and it's cold outside. In the summer, this could be unbearable.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:11 AM EST [Link]

Friday, March 14, 2003

There's a big bug going around.

Okay, it's been about two weeks since I was last sick, and everyone around me since Wednesday has been really ill. Five of my group of seven are sick at work. Several people in my hallway are also sick, and I have heard more coughing and sneezing today than a hospital. Many of my friends are sick, too. Germy, germy, germy. But I seem to be sick-free for once! Yippie!

Posted by Punkie @ 02:44 PM EST [Link]

Rude Tech People

I am going to rant, and I have the perfect example to prove my point. Take a look at this thread. Pay attention to users "Blow Fish" and "elb." Keep in mind neither are moderators, and they are just normal people. Don't worry about the technical stuff, but pay attention to some of these phrases:

come on... you can try a bit harder.
If that's too "techie", I suggest you consult the "Examples" section, where it even fills in the italics for you.
i'll say it again. in bold to see if you pay attention: this is no free technical support.
so, you did some searching... didn't hurt, did it?
(sigh)... Sheep can't fish.

All the poster "Mal" wanted was some sort of simple answer, and what he got was attitude instead. I am going to focus on this "Blow fish" guy for a minute here.

I know his type. I have worked with people like him before, and I can just picture this guy in my head. Sometimes, when you or I think of how bad things are, think of how bad they must be for him. My friend Cheryl once postulated that people who act immature can trace this behavior to the exact time when something traumatic happened in their lives. Someone who acts like he's 13, like in this case, probably stopped growing socially around that age because something traumatic happened to him. And now, as an adult, he's still 13 in his attitude.

He's also scared. A lot. Notice how he clutches onto his knowledge. For instance, I *love* to share what I have experienced. I mean, this blog is a perfect example. A lot of programmers also love what they do, and almost boast their accomplishments to each other. There are two programmers I love to work with at my job, because they always share what they know. But some don't. Some have become greedy with their knowledge. I once met a guy who told me, "Never document. Always choose obscure ways to do things. That way, they can't fire you because they can't replace you." That's not true*, as I found out with the guy who said that, who was fired, and his "time bomb" in the SQL database didn't go exactly as he planned. That guy was a jerk. Blow fish is also a jerk in a similar vein, but since this is an open forum, a discussion for newbies, what does he have to gain by being this way? Dominance. And the only person who'd want to dominate such a forum anonymously would be someone whose real life is full of fear and lack of control.

Tools of people who need to feel this superior are patronization, sarcasm, indifference, and plain arrogance. His parents treated him this way, so he feels this is the appropriate way to treat others below him. His parents probably didn't have good parenting skills, and so tried to compensate for it by just forcing authority instead of explaining any rationalization behind their methods. Probably because they didn't want to expose their insecurity about parenting, or were just insecure in general. So now, as you see, Blow fish does the same thing. Instead of proving his superiority by just saying, "I did it this way, ha ha!" he holds his cards to his chest. Now, if it was just insecurity, you'd think he'd never post at all. But he didn't. He kept posting. And posting. Without giving up any of his secret knowledge. He CRAVES the attention, and doesn't care about the OpenBSD thing at all. It's not about what he knows, but how much better he looks that you.

Of course, sadly, his social skills notwithstanding, his immaturity gets in the way. First of all, his grammar and sentence structure. He uses all lower case letters, which I guess saves a step. His sentences consist of brief phrases, but oddly enough, his punctuation is mostly correct. I recall an old detective story where the sleuth guesses the ransom note left with poor spelling was a ruse, because the person who wrote the note knew proper punctuation, and thus was probably an educated person who was trying to look stupid. I think in this case, this person is impatient (a lot of us programmers write all in lower case, it's good coding), but probably has at least a high school education, if not some college as well. He values his intelligence. But is scared to death someone might be smarter than he is. Next, he quotes Black Sabbath as a .sig line. Okay, now, I may not care for Black Sabbath music, and I think Ozzy Ozbourne is kind of sad, really, but I am not in position to judge someone who loves his family and had to deal with the things he did. But to quote old 1970s rock lyrics like it's some sort of rebel elitist ... let's look at this, shall we?

Is your mind so small that you have to fall in with the pack wherever they run? is a line from Black Sabbath's song, "After Forever," from their album, "Master of Reality." It's a weird song, because the lyrics don't match the song style, but the lyrics are about someone who claims that God is real, and patronizes those who think he's not. The poetry used is almost similar to an evangelical rant, and the writer obviously believes that... well, here's how the song ends: "Perhaps you'll think before you say that God is dead and gone / Open your eyes, just realize that He's the one / The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate. / Or will you still jeer at all you hear? / ...Yes! I think it's too late!" Pretty preachy "booga booga" stuff. Now, I could take two lines of thought here. One, he likes this song because he's sure that God exists, and we're all sinners. Or more likely, two, thinks the line is really cool, and doesn't really know the song very well. I say more likely because he likes the "sheep" reference elb made. He probably has no idea about the history of Black Sabbath, just that they had cool guitar riffs and scream a lot, and made his parents mad. Possibly he likes the "booga booga" fear factor, and would also like to quote Alistair Crowley with "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," or "When walking in darkness... Do not try to make the Sun rise by self-sacrifice, but wait in confidence for the Dawn, and enjoy the pleasures of the Night meanwhile..." That sounds bad-ass from someone who wore black, too.

Keep in mind, that not only did Blow fish actually feel these things, but he posted them in an anonymous, public forum. He took time to write them down. That's the key. I admit, there have been some times I wanted to say, "Dude, you are so dumb," in a tech forum, but I keep silent because that doesn't help to say that. I gain nothing, and would look stupid. Blow fish bypassed that checkpoint, which explains the type of person he is. Of course, his online bio is empty, which while may sound symbolic, it's probably because he doesn't want people to find him. Then they'd know what a dork he really is. He's safe behind that wall of anonymity, flinging poo at passing tourists. My uncle says he works with people like this in the government all the time. Apparently, it's not something you automatically grow out of.

The icing on the cake with this joke is that elb, in *his* superiority complex, actually misdiagnosed the problem. My mother said "those that know the least yell the loudest," and that certainly proves true here. At least I own up to what I don't know. Timothy Leary said it best when he said, "My three favorite words in the English language are 'I don't know,' because every time I say that, I learn something."

I'll put Leary up against Ozzy any day.
_
* You can't get promoted, either.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:45 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, March 13, 2003

On Having No Parents: Chores

I always wonder to myself whether I am a good parent or not. People say I am, but I am always scared that I just can't cut it in the long run. I have almost no role models to speak of, and unlike a majority of the world, I can't go, "What would my parents do?" because before that thought completes, this thing of, "Ugh! No no no... that's a BAD thing to think of." But you can't base a parenting philosophy on what NOT to do. I just go with the "get him ready for real life, try not to scar him too badly, tell him you love him, and hope for the best." That seems flabby and weak to me.

I have always felt like an orphan, even when I had both parents. My mother was a wonderful woman, don't get me wrong, but she had a terrible disease: alcoholism. My father was not a nice person, so I barely feel any conflicts with him, except for the nagging, "Why didn't you like me?" sort of things. But his voice is still there, "Because you're dumb." My mother though, never said very many unkind things about me. She really wanted to have kids, but my father didn't. She had one. He resented it. My mother told me that having me was a risk she was glad she took, but it came at a horrible price: her marriage. Heavy stuff to hear when you're, say, 11.

I was reading on some thread about "what chores did you have as a kid?" and I wanted to reply, "My life." Honestly, though, that's pretty dramatic and boo-hoo of me. So I tried to think literally. What were my chores? Well, it's pretty much what drove me to a state I am in today. My chores are to clean up after people.

I must have been about eight or so when I recall my mother's drinking got bad enough to realize that something was wrong. This would have been 1977. I am not sure how bad it was before then, and I have often wondered if something happened then that changed her, or something changed in me and I began to notice. My maternal grandmother always held to the belief that it the drinking started when my mother was in Italy. The water where she and my father lived was so undrinkable, that they were forced to drink wine with everything. That sounds apocryphal, but she was right about so many things I thought were wrong, that now I am not sure what to think. She predicted I'd be into computers when I poo-pohhed her with, "Oh, grandma, that's just a hobby. The only people who get computer jobs are mathemeticians with 8 years of college or something." So maybe she was right about the drinking. But from about age 8, I started to take care of of my mother. In Alanon, they called in "enabling the behavior," because I did the classic textbook stuff: I covered up for her, took care of her, and tried to live the lie that everything was okay.

First it was a few times a year, then a few times a month... and the worst it got was about once a week, on average, with binges lasting up to ten days or more. By the end, she was so brain damaged that even when sober, she was sitll kind of in a daze. My mother was the local drunk, and I was the guy who picked up after her. My father didn't, and I don't fault him for that, because it was a terrible job I wouldn't wish on anybody. The cleanup, the apologies to people she called at random, and dealing with what was essentially my ward took up a large part of childhood. Part of the cover-up was housework.

See, I learned that when housework didn't get done, my father's anger got worse. I surmized it was because it reminded him that things were NOT normal, and his control fetish fueled his anger more than anything else. So when my mother was in her "weeping drunk" phase (just before the target "pass-out" phase), I cleaned up her vomit, kept clothes on her, picked up the stuff she knocked over, and tried to keep her from the head of the stars (where I feared she might fall down and get hurt). It was like taking care of a very large toddler. At first, I wasn't allowed to have a key to the house, but after neighbor protested I kept showing up at their house, hungry, I was given my own key by age 10. I got home around 4pm, and my father got home by 6pm. In my head, I can still hear the sounds of the sqeauky suspension on his 66' T-bird. That meant showtime!

From 4-6, I did what chores I thought made the house look like it was cleaned. I mean, when my mother was sober, she did a great job doing what used to be called "housewife duties." But when she was three sheets to the wind, I basically went through the motions, not really having much of a clue what I was doing. I cringe to think of the jobs I did. I ruined clothes by washing the wrong kinds the wrong way, I was terrible at vacuuming, I never dusted, and I ruined a lot of plastic stuff in the dishwasher. My mother never really taught me how to do it right, either, because then she'd have to admit I had to take care of her. I also used to have a chore, sometimes requested by my father, of "find the bottle." My mother got real good at hiding liqour. She hid it in teapots, vases, in bedside lamps, boxes of paperwork, old winter coat pockets, toilet tanks, hollowed out areas in walls and in the mattress, and places you'd never believe unless you also lived with an alcoholic. It was always good when you found the bottle, because sometimes, you'd just find the alcohol, and you'd have to figure out how to pour it out of whatever it was in.

When I heard my father's car bouncing up the driveway, I ran to my room, and hid. I never knew what was going to happen. Most of the time, nothing happened. He came home, went right to his den, and locked the door. Or went to his recliner in the rec room, and read the newspaper or a magazine. Sometimes he'd make this weird burping noise with his lips, a nervous habit he had. Sometimes I'd hear the electric hand massager go on for a few minutes and then go off. I never really knew what he used that massager for, but he also subscribed to Playboy, so I kind of made assumptions. The burping or massaging was a good sign. He would not come for me today. But if my mother was still in the weepy/rage stage of drinking, it was like being under fire in the trenches. How angry would she make my father? Would my housework be good enough? Did I get his shirts ironed right? Did he notice I accidentally washed one of his silk ties, ruining it, so I hid the evidence? You never knew. So many times I was scared half out of my wits when my father would burst into my room, fuming, and scream at me about something he thought I'd done. He was usually right, he never accused me of much I hadn't done, he just was very opinionated about my work. Always in the negative. Always had to bring up how stupid I was until I discovered by playing really stupid, like going "duh" and "I don't know" and hanging my head in shame actually placated him.

My father never wanted to buy a mower, so we hired a local kid to do yardwork. I occaisionally raked leaves or shoveled snow, but not often. I had no brothers or sisters to babysit, just my mom.

Posted by Punkie @ 08:04 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

More Geekiness - Using Ports on OpenBSD Made Simple and Stupid

I have been having a lot of fun with OpenBSD and ports over the last few days. It's a FAR simpler way to install things, once you get to know what the hell you are doing. It's been so hard to find a "hold-your-hand" way to install ports and install simple stuff. I will attempt to do that here.

Q: How do I install the bash shell on OpenBSD?
A: It's simple, go grep ~8762lksoh/ :: noc:98qwnbd2o7nz and use the gate applet in the "tal_serv" group (assuming you have activated as a named service) and then do a "make" then "make build$SET_ENV_PACKAGE[$name_of_sysd.pref file]" to NOCperfs on the "geminii" and then grep noc-boop | tek fran ... you DID install tek fran with port 3.2 on the cascade array, right?

Okay, that was a joke. Bit it illustrates how frustrating these last few days have been. I am going to try and hand hold you through this BS. Let's say you installed OpenBSD, and now want the bash shell.

1. Get the ports package. You must be in root, preferably "su" or "sudo"

# ftp ftp.openbsd.org
# login in as "anonymous" and ignore the snarky comment the follows
ftp> password is an e-mail address. Any will do.
ftp> cd /pub/OpenBSD/3.2/ (assuming that 3.2 is your current build)
ftp> get ports.tar.gz
|#### [Download percentage. As of this date, it's about 6.5 MB in size. Wait.]
ftp> quit
# mv ports.tar.gz /usr

2. Now install it

# gunzip ports.tar.gz (wait)
# tar -xvf ports.tar
[A lot of stuff will scroll by for a few minutes]

3. Clean up your mess.

# rm ports.tar

4. Okay, now we're going to build it

# cd ports/shells/bash
# make
[A lot of silliness will appear on the screen... a lot. And it will keep going longer than I think is necessary for just bash, for God's sake. But it will stop after a few minutes]
# make install
[More stuff, only not nearly as long]

5. Now, assuming you didn't get errors, let's add this to our shell list. Edit /etc/shells with whatever editor you like, and add the path for /usr/local/bin/bash

Now you have installed the bash shell! Whoopee! Hrmmm... Punkie make BASH! Grrr...

Most other stuff will be as simple. I am told. Please don't e-mail me with some error you got, because I will just laugh and go, "I have *no* earthly clue! Poor bastard..." I successfully installed samba this way, too, and as I am typing this, I have waited for several hours to build KDE. Man, this is on a work machine, too, a 1.2 ghz box. I can't imagine how slow this would be on a P166. I am afraid.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:46 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

"So, what's that, a bat or something?" International Weirdness.

At work, we ... okay, *I* have been doing a lot of work with our Puerto Rican office. They are testing phone lines out there, and we're having problems. What sorts of problems?

Let me tell you, from a US-born international perspective, you really have to be relaxed when dealing with people from other countries. Stuff happens outside the US you just couldn't believe. Now, if you are dealing with the UK, Canada, or Australia, it's not too bad. You ask for something to get done, it gets done. Germany and the Netherlands are the same way, although for them it's "out by 4pm" and to get late night people to come out is like pulling teeth.

That leads me to France. The French invented the "laissez-faire" attitude which comes from the imperative form of a phrase meaning to let (people) do (as they choose). It's a philosophy characterized by a usually deliberate abstention from direction or interference especially with an individual's freedom of choice and action. That is, "Eh, let it go..." So getting work done in a socialist country with 35 hour work weeks is sketchy at best. This isn't to say the French are lazy, it's to say they have a different work ethic. They don't have this urgency that Americans have. Well, in general. Individuals are different, of course, but the sum of the whole tends to lean towards slow work progress and isolationism. I had critical tickets open for weeks where people had no phone service during that time. In the US, it would get fixed within 24 hours, barring weather or other weirdness. In France it's like, "Well... Marcel, see, he's in Austria, and won't get back until Thursday, and then I am off until the next Tuesday, and the guy with the truck is on another job until Wednesday anyway..." No, you can't get someone else. And frankly, they don't care how mad you are, they WILL hang up on you. To deal with the French, you have to make it worth their while. Bribes are common in France.

A lot of other countries are lacking in response for other reasons. It could be their own form of laissez-faire, but often, it's just the sheer lack of qualified people. I mean, people joke in the US tech world about dumb techs, but in Italy or Spain, it's a dearth of knowledge and qualified teachers. I am not sure if that's their fault, but I noticed that the closer to the equator you get, the slower you can get work done through the local people. Again, it's not because they are dumb, but they lack the kind of infrastructure we here in the states have taken for granted. Bad roads, underwhelming governments, and just where they are...

See, people are one thing. People can change, get better, and so on. But Mother Nature is another deal entirely. The Philippines is a good example of how Mama Earth can ruin a good day. I have lost feeds because of sharks and volcanoes there. Once, a shark bit through a vital cable. Volcanoes have earthquakes which break lines or skew microwave towers offline. Sometimes just a cloud of ash will ruin everything. Or the land literally moves up or down or to the side, taking dishes out of skew or ripping apart lines. You can't lay lines over a lava flow!

Same with the Amazon. The southern part of South America (Argentina, Chile, Peru, etc.) feels cut off from the rest of the world because of either the Amazon basin or the Andes Mountains. The first company to successfully lay fiber across that land will make millions.

Plus, when you add in the cultural differences, doing International business, especially in the tech field, can be problematic. But you can also make good friends with some really cool people. In fact, making friends, sending bribes (like American goods, candy, that sort of thing), and such can REALLY get stuff done a lot faster. Heck, even *I* get bribes, and although I don't need them... I don't discourage German chocolate for ANY reason.

But ... once in a while, a guy from Puerto Rico might come by, look at your stuffed plush Cthulhu doll, and go, "What is that... a bat?" Ever try to explain Lovecraft in less than a minute to a Puerto Rican? Aye, dios mio!

Posted by Punkie @ 06:01 PM EST [Link]

Monday, March 10, 2003

Funny animated shorts plus... some more geekiness!

A few weeks ago, I saw the funniest animated short I had seen since Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (which has new episodes coming this month!). It was called The Venture Bros. and was a totally desrespectful jaunt that poked fun at Johnny Quest, the Hardy Boys, and 50s hygeine icons. Basically, it's like a Johnny Quest-like spoof, with two totally niave brothers who end up in some pretty perverted situations. The evil ninja villan was hysterical, because he only wanted the super weapon because he was sexually attracted to it. It's done by the same people who did, "The Tick, and I hope they have more episodes. Here's a clip, where Brock beats up and ... er, defiles a mummy.

Have an old Commedore 64 lying around? I used to, until my son poured toothpaste all over the keyboard. I still have an old Atari 1040ST, and have been dying to use it for something. I am not sure why, it's kind of this weird fetish I have to get really old systems doing modern things. I mean, I still have a dumb terminal and a 2400 baud modem! I can't bear to throw things away until they are TOTALLY useless. The problem is, you can't get these systems to do anything but play their old games... providing the disks still work! Well, now someone has gone and done it: they created an Multi-tasking Operating System for the C64 that even has TCP/IP and web browser capability.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:18 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, March 9, 2003

Slacker!

I am in a good mood today, although I didn't really do much. I got to slack. While attempting to clean out my den, I got sidetracked with other stuff. You know, you pull an item out of the box, and go, "Hey, I have been meaning to get to that..." Here's been my thrilling weekend:

- Christine watched the entire second season of "Queer as Folk" on DVD.
- I did two loads of laundry.
- Fixed CR's printer. He had the wrong settings (print to file).
- I upgraded Samba on my main Linux file server, and fixed that damn "Cannot read home directories" bug.
- Chatted in my favorite chat room: 3WA
- Played Quake III, lost badly... to bots. I so suck at those games! I can't even beat bots, much less real people.
- Browsed web. Laughed at the funny parts.
- Set up my Lava Lite on my new (used) SMC switch. It was the Lite I had at work, a gift from Christine, but after Sean was canned, I didn't thinkit was appropriate to have fun at work anymore :(.
- I found my QuickCam Pro with the beige ring is NOT supported by XP or Linux. Boo! :(
- I found someone made a Win2000 hack for it. Yay! :)
- The Hack is an older version of the driver, which had these "Christmas Light" bugs in it. Boo! :(
- Plus I had to find another third-party capture program. Boo! :(
- I found a great one! Yay! :)
- I got some computer file housework done (deleting duplicates, renaming to user-friendly names, etc.)
- I got some e-mail cleaning done. Some of you who have not gotten replies yet may get them soon!

I took Ahfu for a walk. We went to PetSmart which he then peed on their floor. It was dog adoption days for "Have-a-heart," so I bet his was not the only pee. But that's just rude! I couldn't find a sales person to get me a towel to clean it up. In fact, I couldn't find a salesperson at the register until I found an adoption person who found the manager who found a cashier! I don't know how that place stays in business... it's always pretty empty, and the staff looks like apathetic teenage rejects.

I bought a "Spanish Harlem pimp rockabilly punk shirt" off a guy from eBay. Just the title was enough to sell me. But it was cool-looking, too! Zebra stripe collar, silver martini glass buttons. Expect to see me at all the parties! At first, the seller's Paypal put down $15.50 shipping! Yowch! Then he e-mailed me back, going, "Oh no no... that's way too much!" He's refunding me the difference.

Someone bought my book, and Paypal didn't let me know until I bought the shirt that I had a $8.20 credit. Doh! This patient person ordered it back at the beginning of February, and hasn't said anything yet. Man! I sent him some mail saying I'm mailing it out tomorrow. Poor guy!

Posted by Punkie @ 09:32 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, March 8, 2003

Snow Damage as it Happens to Others

It was 60 degrees Fahrenheit today. Hard to believe, just a week ago, we were up to our ass in snow. I took my dog for a walk with my son today, and surveyed the damage at a slow, walking level. There wasn't much, but what there was, there was bad.

A neighbor lost his entire deck.

Several neighbors lost mailboxes to the snowplow. Now that's just dumb, couldn't the snowplow see them? And the plow must have hit them pretty hard, because two of them were ripped right out of the earth, cement anchor and all. One of them was snapped in half, jagged torn wood on both ends. It's not like they were on a bend, or blind corner. They were just one here, one there, along a long, straight road.

The snowplow also hit us, but not directly. See, our backyard leads to the alley of the shopping center behind us. Literally. I mean it's back of my house, back yard, tall single row of trees, fence, alley, back of shopping center. I could, from my deck, throw rocks at the back of the shopping center. That fence is a small wooden picket fence about 1-2 meters tall. When we first moved here, the previous owners said everything up to the trees was ours. But the trees and fence were the property of the shopping center. Shortly after we moved in, the fence was bashed in by someone backing up. I called and called and called until the number got disconnected. So my and my buddy Travis went into the alley and fixed it. While we were there, some cops stopped us to check and make sure we weren't doing something illegal, and I explained why we had to fix the fence (dogs escaping, teens using my yard as a shortcut, leaving my gate open). They said THEY would call the shopping center, and a few months later, they totally replaced the fence.

But a few weeks ago, the snowplow pushed so much snow into the fence, it just burst open in several places. I mean, the damage was more than just a break of pickets. Like the mailboxes, the force was so great, it ripped the support posts from the ground. Crap.

I have the chain my dogs up now. Until the fix it, because I am not having my dogs wander that alley. And Ahfu would. He's an explorer, and does not look back. He's already escaped and gotten lost once. Plus, I will soon have people using my backyard as a shortcut again, especially during Spring Break and the Summer, when there's nothing for kids to do.

Ugh, I have to find these people and have them fix the fence. Or I'm going to put up a stone wall like how some other neighbors have.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:26 PM EST [Link]

Friday, March 7, 2003

It's the weekend

It's Friday 2:43pm, and I am sitting at work with not much to do because anything I start I'll have no time to finish in the last hour. I am feeling slightly better mentally, partly because I am making headway with my OpenBSD project (geek... geek...), and partly because I know I have NOTHING planned for this weekend. Well, I do, but not anything that I can't slack off from.

I'd like to get my den set back in order. Right now, stuff is all over the place, and it looks so untidy I never want to spend time in there. My closet looks like it is vomiting technology into my den. I want to set up my extra machines that I have been fixing, and try to get them headless so I won't have to have a monitor on to run them (for power and heat considerations). Then put them in a place where they are out of the way, or at least look neat and tidy. And I want to clean off my work table, it's almost over a foot deep in junk.

One small rant: it seems that some people in fandom (who talk loudly in restaurants) think East Coast Science Fiction Conventions are better run than West Coast cons, and that the Japanese would hold a terrible Worldcon. [sigh...] Come on, man! We're all adults, here. Not all cons are like East Coast ones, sure! I'll agree to that. But that doesn't mean they are better or worse, just different. Viva La Difference! (or something)

Posted by Punkie @ 02:43 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, March 6, 2003

Moderating Panels in Fandom

I posted on BWSMOF a sort of gag about being a moderator, and I wanted to share it with the rest of you See, there have been times, as a moderator, I have had to wrestle the control back from one or more audience members. It's not easy. I mean, sometimes you want to scream, "Shut your bloody gob!" but that's not polite or friendly. It's like:

Fanboy: [raises hand]
Panelist: You have a question about female authors?
Fanboy: Yes, how come there are so many lesbians in science fiction?
Panelist: Er, well, I don't know, I have never counted.
Fanboy: There are approximately 226!
Panelist: Characters or authors?
Fanboy: Both.
Panelist: Interesting. I don't know. Next?
Congoer: I was wondering if you have read Marion Zimmer Bradley's piece on--
Fanboy: There's another Lesbian! See?
Panelist: Congoer was asking a question, please wait your turn.
Fanboy: You never answered mine!
Panelist: I did, and I said I didn't know.
Fanboy: Then why are you on this panel?
Moderator: I think this discussion on sexual preference has ended. He is on this panel because he's an editor for a science fiction magazine which recently posted its "Ten Great Women Authors of Science Fiction" article to much acclaim.
Fanboy: Then how come he didn't know there were 226 lesbians?
Moderator: He does not have to account for his lack of knowledge on the sexual preference on anybody, this is a topic about female authors.
Fanboy: All lesbians *are* female.
Panelist: So are pregnant people. I am not discussing pregnant authors, either.
Fanboy: Lesbians can't get pregnant!
Moderator: Congoer, what was your question again?
Congoer: I have... uh, forgotten.
Fanboy: I have one!
Moderator: Is it about lesbians?
Fanboy: Not exactly...

Then there are those who talk and talk and talk... there's one guy, I won't name because I like him, but he's often on panels. But when he's on a panel, the panel becomes all him. Same if he's an audience member. The trouble with him is not that he's dull or arrogant, but so damn interesting that no one can bear to hijack the panel back on topic. The places he's worked or lived in, the people he's met, and so on. When I have done programming, I always put him on a panel alone, because no one else at the table will get a chance to speak (and, thankfully, no one seems to complain, either).

Posted by Punkie @ 03:19 PM EST [Link]

Techy Geeky - X Windows on OpenBSD

I got X Windows to work on OpenBSD last night.

Yeah, sure, some of you go "oh, that's EASY!" but for me, it's all still new. I learned by trial and error and almost no useful help on the web that xf86config works on OpenBSD (I could never get it to work on Linux). It's a hand setup, and here are some notes I'd like to pass on for those of you who are frustrated at the lack of adequate FAQs on X Windows and OpenBSD 3.1:

- To configure X-Windows, you had to install it first. I did on OS install, but that may not have occured to you, because by default, no X-Windows stuff is configured.
- When you get the root prompt after everything is installed, type xf86config.
- It will wlak you through the steps. I hit "enter" through most of them, installing defaults except for the monitor refrash rate and horizontal frequency (usualy on a sticker on the back of your monitor) and the video card. It helps to know EXACTLY what video card you have, because they helpfully offer a list.
- If you have a serial mouse, the driver is /dev/cua00 (assuming it's on COM1). This is never explained to you, and I had to wrestle it from some rude people on a board. I also found out for a PS/2 mouse, you need to select wsmouse for "Option protocol", and /dev/wsmouse0 for "Option device." Yeesh. It took me an hour at work to wrestle THAT data from Usenet, which are full of rude and unhelpful people (I didn't ask, I watched others get slapped down for not knowing how to compile their own C code).
- To run, type startx
- It would default to 640 x 480 no matter what I entered in as "primary screen." To change it, hit control alt + ("plus" on the numeric keypad) to cycle through the resolutions.
- I downloaded and/or played with xeyes (pair of eyes looking at you), xworld (picture of Earth from sun), some other stuff, and installed seti@home and samba.

Installing Samba on OpenBSD
Real easy. This is how I do it:

- At prompt, do lynx http://www.samba.org and scroll down and hit your country (in my case, USA)
- It will not have appeared to change, but it did. Scroll down and select "Download."
- Again, the screen does not seem like it changed, but it did. Scroll down until the link "samba-latest.tar.gz" is highlighted, hit enter, when it asks you to download or cancel, hit "D", and then when it asks, hit "save" and save it as samba-latest.tar.gz.
- It will download to your root directory
- When done, quit Lynx with Q. Do ls to see where it is.
- At command prompt, type gunzip samba-latest.tar.gz. It will decompress into a TAR file.
- At command prompt, type tar -xvf samba-latest.tar. It will decompress into a a series of subfolders.
- Type cd [name of directory, like samba-2.2.7.a or something]/source
- In the source directory, type ./configure. Wait a long while.
- When you are back to the command prompt, type make. Wait some more time. This may have taken over 2 hours so far on a 133mhz machine with old hard drives (as I know all to well).
- When you finally get to the command prompt again, all you have to do is one more step. Type make install. This will also take a while, but probably not nearly as long as the first two. Now it's installed!
- Of course, you have to make a smb.conf in /usr/local/samba/lib. Use your favorite editor, although vi is probably all you'll have so far. I won't go into how to use vi, because it's evil and reminds me of working on bessel.umd.edu, but it's like the lowest common denominator in most *nix/BSD installs. Here's a very simple and basic smb.conf you can cut and paste to use:

[global] ; This is for global variables, stuff that affects the whole samba server ; Put your computer name here netbios name = OBSD_SRV1 ; Put your WORKGROUP name here workgroup = HOMELAN ; This is what shows up when you browse: %v is samba version, %L is netbios name server string = Samba Server %v on %L ; This HAS TO BE SET TO TRUE if you want Windows 95/NT 4.0 on up to accept samba logins or you'll get a "$IPC" error in Windows encrypt passwords = True ; Where to put your log files. %m is the name of the computer trying to connect to you, and is very handy for troubleshooting log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m ; This makes samba go a lot faster socket options = IPTOS_LOWDELAY TCP_NODELAY ; This is an example of a shared directory ; Name of share (that shows up when browsing this computer) [files] ; Description of share comment = Shared Files on %L ; Path of directory you want to share path = /usr/pub/files ; Allow people to only read or read/write/delete files? read only = No ; List of valid users. Note: these people must have an account on the machine PLUS a password in smbpasswd valid users = admin punkie krakken bobotheclown ; List of users to block (safety measure) invalid users = root bin daemon nobody named sys tty disk mem kmem users dfarris

Of course, there's a LOT more you can do with this file, I didn't even touch [homes] or [printers] but this is a basic thing to get you started. A full description of how complicated and wonderful you can make this file would be here.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:01 PM EST [Link]

Just Back Away...

Remember the Asshat I was talking about previously? Well, he's out to "take me down," apparently. He's "called" me on another story about someone who tried to break up my marriage (long story, over ten years ago), and while I might have let that slide, two people have now told me he's sent them private messages "proving" that I am a liar. How? Links to you-know-where.

Okay, now I have two theories on this. One, he is from the old board or knows someone who is, and STILL has a vendetta for some reason. Or two, he's not associated with the board at all, but found the link back through my page or a search on Google or something. Either way, honestly, is pathetic. I mean, once it gets to going behind someone's back to prove what a fraud they are, especially if it's not something that even affects you, it's a power play. A desperate, childish power play.

Of course, now I have to decide what to do next. I could ignore him, which is what I did for so long at the old board, which made them mad, and try harder. Eventually, they E-mailed all my friends and called them dykes, losers, or pretended to be other people saying I was saying stuff about them (including coworkers, like "Punkie is out for your job. I heard him tell your boss you came to work drunk. Just thought you should know..."). That was over four years ago. When I think back to those days, it's almost parallel. I am on boards during a bad period of my life, where the boards are a good support. I am being called a liar by one angry dude.

Being called a liar is like an Achilles heel for me. At the age of 18, on my own, starting a new life... I was DETERMINED to be an honest, totally truthful person. Yes, I had to learn that honesty can be painful to others, so I also had to learn to be constructively honest, not like, "That dress makes you look funny." This is what led to the "half truths" philosophy in my earlier blog post. But I spent the first 18 years of my life in some fantasy land where my parents determined and changed reality almost weekly, where denial was the main staple that tried desperately to hold everything together. It was like an oath, like never smoking, drinking, or taking illicit drugs. I was so BURNED by lies I could never predict (or even remember), I was determined that I would never go back to that kind of lifestyle again. But sadly, it seems that people lie a lot. A few years ago, I learned they lie a LOT more than I could have ever imagined, sometimes (and this astonishes me) people lie for no reason (or at least, any reason I can figure out). And this has made being in the real world very difficult at times. Like now.

I know the advice I always give, "Those who accuse and shame others for behavior often are trying to deny it in themselves." You know, like how some preachers say sex is a sin, but then are found later in a hotel room with a prostitute. Some call it hypocrisy, but I call it projection. Either way, it doesn't help.

A friend with the handle "Poodle" assured me I was taking the high road by not slamming down this jerk, and I trust what she has to say because she's wise and fun to be with, but then there's the advice, "never let someone treat you that way, it only sets the precedent for further similar treatment." But then I think, "anyone who has ever denied lying always looks like they are lying anyway, no matter what the truth is." It's a perception game, and since I can't control others' perceptions, it's a game I cannot win.

Unless I quit while I am ahead. A lot of my friends reading this are laughing at me. "You? Lie? HAH!" They know I don't, and they know what a big deal I make when I am lied to, I take it so personally. Most would advise slowly backing away, and just leave the boards before a repeat of you-know-where happens again. But I'd miss my 3WA buddies so much! Then again, do I want to go through that online hell all over again? Especially right now, with all the other stress I have?

I have no idea what to do, but I am taking a step forwards with this blog entry while thinking of taking a step back. Thus, I am going nowhere, and that sucks. Just step away... slowly...

Posted by Punkie @ 09:10 AM EST [Link]

Wednesday, March 5, 2003

Being all Techy-Geeky - Alternate O/Ss and Why I Use Them

This part of the blog is really technical. You may skip it if you don't want to hear anything about computers or installing alternative operating systems. Once in a while, I'll be posting like this for my technical friends.

My foray into non-Windows O/Ss started back when I was programming for a PDP/11 and some Atari 8-bit... wait, that's too far back. Let's gloss over the BASIC, FORTRAN, and LOGO I did in the 1970s... and the C64 and Timex Sinclar ZX80 of the 80s... and, hell, I didn't really program much on the AtariSTs... and let's stop in 1990, with my first real Unix account. It was on the Bessel box at the University of Maryland. It was Solaris System V, and I made neat shell scripts. Wheeee! Okay, seriously, let's start just a few years ago when I was aware of Linux.

When I had an AtariST, some really high-end, massive geekinoids talked about something called "Minix" which ran on the ST, but I had no idea what that really meant. Well, from Minix came one of the first Open Source projects, Linux. Okay, if you read this far, you probably know all about Linux, anyway. My first was Red Hat, version 4.something which my friend Nate gave me in 1998. I never got it to work. I gave it another go when I got RH 6.0 for $19.95 in a "discontinued" bin at BJ's Warehouse, and I got THAT to work, but other than the command line, I never could figure out the GNOME environment. But I started to use it at work more and more, and now, it's 2003 and I have some stuff to talk about!

What's not running WindowsXP at home is running Redhat Linux, Mandrake Linux, or OpenBSD. I have run both on a variety of machines at work and home, and here's what I have to say about them all.

Mandrake Linux - Highly Recommended for Beginners
The best feature Mandrake has, IMHO, is it's super-simple to install. The worst is that it installs a lot of stuff by default, and if I knew Linux better, I am sure I could explain why things seem to run more slowly on a Mandrake box, although it's essentially the same Linux. I wouldn't install Mandrake on a box less than 400mhz, if for anything, the installer itself is a massive graphics hog. I have one machine that runs Mandrake, but it's a backup file server, so I am not on it that much.

Redhat Linux - Recommended for Most People Serious about Linux, but Slightly Lazy
This is the best middle-ground Linux installer I know of. It's not super-simple, but it's not too complex, either. The installer defaults to text if you have less than 64mb of RAM, but that's not a bad thing, really. It does have slightly less options on a custom install, but by then, you don't care. I have my main Linux box (primary file, SMB, DNS, and NTP server), plus a bunch of "Gee whiz" boxes for all the terrible experiments I do with spare parts. Let's see, we have Osana (old Dell Optiplex 450mhz), Keiichi (P2/400 I built), Jabberwok (P/166mmx I built), and possibly soon Mononoke, an old Dell P166 Win95 box I kept for some old Win95 hardware I just got rid of. My son also is running Redhat 8.0 on Belldandy, an old Dell 733mhz customer "overstock" (someone custom ordered it, didn't show up, Dell sold it to me for almost cost). I gave him Linux so he wouldn't be able to play games in his room (it's for serious homework only). I must say, Redhat's 8.0 is the best yet, and I like "Bluecurve," for a GUI (modified KDE) even though some people don't.

OpenBSD - Recommended for Paranoid Security Freaks Who Have a Lot of Time on Their Hands
I first heard of OpenBSD from a friend who wanted some networking advice at a New York hacker convention (H2K2). He wanted some DHCP and security advice for some server cluster he was going to demo there. I'm not going to ask what he actually did there, but while walking him through ifconfig, I installed OpenBSD on a spare machine here at work. It ran super fast on crap hardware, and our lab is always getting hacked. Not one of them crashed. Installation was easy. So was installing samba and even seti@home. Right now, I am STILL working on this system, but if I can get them configured right, and get KDE going on them, it might replace Linux. The biggest problem is community support is crappy and sparse. Right now I have two systems at home running OpenBSD. Gryphon, a cranky AMDK5/133 frankenputer, and Alice, and pretty ancient Dell OptimaLE overclocked 486/133 box.

Yeah, I have a lot of boxes, or "boxen" as the geek world calls it. Not many GOOD ones, but then again, I don't have the money to just go out and buy new parts for my "hobbies." Most of them are not even on or plugged into anything. I have a KVM switch I got off of Ebay (and had to fix), but it only had 4 working ports, leaving only one port to play with at any given time unless I want to hook up a second monitor and man, my den is hot enough with three boxen and one monitor running.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:33 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

More Cable SNAFUs - The History of Punkie and TV

Mysteriously, yesterday, the cable modem went back on all by itself. In the time since then, it has gone up and down. This morning, it was down, but as I type this, it's back up again. The previous cable techs said I needed to have a "dedicated pull" for the cable modem, and so someone is coming to my house today to do just that. Then someone came to our house yesterday to survey our back yard to lay the new cable down when the ground thaws, because right now, we have a temp wire snaking across the grass, over the sidewalk, and down the hill in the back to the green dome.

Of course, we have to take off work to be there. Today's the "big day" with the dedicated pull, replacing old and decaying (literally) cable, as well as fixing the horror of several Y-splits in our attic. The cable TV has been good, we're finally getting all the channels upstairs, and since they laid the new cable in the back, it's clear! I have lived with slightly staticy cable for ... gosh, since we came here in September of 2000. The static channels would move around, but the old "split" between the old A and B channels were the worst. Sometimes channels 50-60 were totally unviewable.

When I was growing up, we didn't have cable. Not because my father disallowed it (which he probably would have, I was never allowed to watch TV), but because our neighborhood was real snobbish about those green domes. See, back in the 1970s, if you wanted cable, a small green R2D2-looking dome was put in your front yard, and that was so gauche for the Southridge Neighborhood! My word! Well, I nevah! Finally, in the late 1980s, they relented, and cable came to our neighborhood in 1987. Green domes were finally "approved" by the Southridge Nazis, and the irony is, once they were finally put in... cable came out where you DIDN'T have to put in green domes anymore. If they had just waited another year...

Down the street, in the Tyndale neighborhood, my best friend Kate had cable. As a teen, I spent a lot of time at her house, watching cable TV while we did homework. So I finally got to see MTV, Nickelodeon, and other channels. We had it on MTV a LOT, and I recall videos started to suck around 1986 or so, with big hair bands, bubblegum R&B, and whiny crooners who cheaply just showed videos of them in concert. BOR-ING! Come on, we wanted videos with a story or at least a sense of humor. Something freaky.

Christine grew up with cable. They had it in their house all the time. She grew up with the TV always on, and always something to watch, because her home town was small, in a valley where TV reception was just not possible, and there was nothing to do anyway by hang out by Johnson's store, asking random strangers what their names were. Because of this, her TV viewing carried over to our marriage, and we watch a LOT of TV. Even if we're not watching it per se, but doing other things like laundry or something. Then, by extension, so does CR.

Growing up, I was not allowed to watch TV. We had two TVs in the house: a luggable color TV in my parent's room, and a small black and white one in the kitchen. My father only let me watch PBS, and that was a "rare treat." When my father was at work, my mother allowed me to watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, but quickly, I started to watch some of what she was watching, which were a lot of cop shows like Dragnet, Adam 12, Barnaby Jones, Baretta, the Hardy Boys Adventures, and Quincy. When my father was out of town, she let me watch even more, like the Love Boat/Fantasy Island combo on Saturday nights. By the time I was a teen, I was watching TV when my mother was drunk and my father was away. This was necessary, socially, because all the other kids watched a lot of TV and it was part of their lifestyle. As a young kid, I was a total pariah in part because I didn't know who Charlie's Angels were, nor had I seen an episode of S.W.A.T., The Six-million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, the Hulk, Saturday Night Live, or any kid's cartoon on Saturday mornings. I didn't know who Scooby Doo was until I was 14 (1982). The Amazing Spiderman? Pah. But by the time I was a teen, I was so much on my own, I watched TV every chance I could to catch up. Luckily, a lot of this stuff was in syndication already.

Finally, after the Child Abuse trials and the court-ordered psychiatric treatment in 1985, my father just abandoned me in disgust. At a garage sale, I got an old portable B&W TV for my bedroom for $10. It sucked, but had its own charm. The tube was almost shot, and someone had spray-painted the case a Harvest Gold color to match their appliances, but I loved it! My mother knew the neighbors that sold it to me, and when she told them how funny it was that I didn't care and loved the TV despite all its fault, the woman apologized immensely that I had spent $10 of my own money on something her husband was supposed to throw away. She then "traded" the TV for another generic, no-name, drugstore-sold B&W TV. I don't know where it came from, but the sticker on the back was all in Korean. The front only had "STS-50" for a logo. I have no idea how old it was, but it had a crisp, clear reception and that little TV worked great until 1994, when the tube finally blew. Great buy for $10!

Of course, my son does not have these problems. I would have to say, while I hated some of the shows he used to watch (Barney and Friends, Power Rangers, Catdog), most of them were pretty good, and I didn't act like TV was beneath him. I didn't even mind Pokemon, because he was into Pokemon before it hit the US, and got in when it was still cool, and in Japanese. Right now, though, he's been grounded from TV until his grades improve.

TV that I watch now is mainly Comedy Central, Discovery, TLC, and HGTV. I used to watch CNN Headline News, but since the AOLTW merger, their quality has gone right down the toilet into the sewers with Fox. It amazes me how bad and junior-high quality of writing it has gotten. But that's another rant; the cable guy is here and I have to post this before I lose connectivity.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:33 AM EST [Link]

Monday, March 3, 2003

Stuck in Traffic and Cool Pals on Tractors

Today, we got stuck in traffic for almost TWO HOURS on a normal 20 minute drive to work. No idea why, because after a long stretch on West Ox road with little to no movement, we finally turned around in someone's driveway, back tracked back to Fairfax County Parkway, where we sat in traffic some more. I got in work super-late, and my wife missed an important meeting. I have nothing more to add than to just vent.

Thank goodness when I got to work, nothing horrible happened over the weekend. Mondays are usually the point where something that went haywire while we were all gone. But this Monday was a good one, and all that happened was some random network events and a reminder I needed to get off VB+Win and start writing tools in perl.

My buddy Travis got to shovel snow with a Bobcat for ten hours. Here's a pic. He always gets to do cool stuff. My friend Bruce also has a HUGE tractor/loader, and went around shoveling people's driveways in the past few weeks (for free, because he's nice that way).

Posted by Punkie @ 09:12 AM EST [Link]

Sunday, March 2, 2003

Lying: When you are accused

The other day, someone publicly accused me of making up a story about a friend of mine who hid her GPA so she could get boyfriends under her premise that "men don't like smart women, they feel intimidated." Of course, this "callout" was from a guy. He claimed I stole the plot form a movie called "Angel," which is a movie about how a student made money by being a prostitute by night. I haven't seen the movie, but he linked to a page that was rating the video release. I recall his exact words, "Did you learn of this when you both were working for Her Majesty's Secret Service?"

I don't get accused of lying much, so I never learned how to handle it. There's the intellectual path that states it doesn't matter what someone else thinks as long as you are honest and keep on the path of truth and justice, and while I try and keep on that path, it bugs me all the same. My life is weird enough without making up stories about people I know. I mean, if I were to make up stories, I'd claim to be rich and successful and that sort of thing. But the fact is, I don't need to.

I also learned years ago that some people can't be made to change their minds. Back when I was in retail, I had an assistant who did not believe I knew someone called Rogue. Such a person was surely the imagination of a creative and childlike mind, he thought. So one day, I asked Rogue to drop by. My assistant was stunned, to say the least. I asked her to tell him stuff I said about her, and she was great and patient. He had never met anyone he considered "abnormal," and for days he was kind of scared, like his universe had been smacked. Finally, he decided I hired an actress to dress up like Rogue just to make a point. Like, whatever! Then some Crunchland citizens decided I was TOTALLY making up my life. I mean, everything, wife, kids, book, fandom, the whole thing. They "called" me on everything, and no matter what proof I furnished, they didn't believe me. I learned that really, in the end, some people HAVE to believe what they want to. My parents were like that. I can never honestly say I have never lied, because by the age of 12, I had learned that it wasn't the truth that mattered to my parents, it was what they wanted to hear. This PISSED me off to no end because they could shift their reality, and all I had was my memory. I got in more trouble telling the truth than I did lying. I swore to my future self that when I became an adult, I would NEVER lie or live this kind of life again!

I have no idea how anyone could sustain an entire lifestyle of lying, like how pathological liars do, because... Jesus, how can you remember what you said to who? Gads, what a horrific database that would be. I can barely remember what I ate yesterday, much less a huge stack of lies and personas that being a PL would require. So I stick to truth, thank you. A LOT less to remember.

Of course, then there are dodges and half-truths. I have told my share of them. Being someone who doesn't lie because of moral belief and convenience is really, really hard in today's world. Here's an example of two major tactics I have used:

The dodge:
Person: Tell me what you think of my poetry!
Punkie: I am not a good judge of poetry. Ask someone who is.
[or]
Punkie: I am sorry, but I have to go. I had a wonderful time.

The true half-truth:
Person: Tell me what you think of my poetry!
Punkie: I thought it was a collection of words artfully arranged [art is subjective].
[or]
Punkie: I enjoyed many parts of it [the pauses, and especially the part where you were finished].

These never work well against those who TRULY want to know how you feel. "What did you like best about my poetry?" would rat me out like a flashlight in the chicken coop. So even though I didn't make up that story about the girl who hid her GPA, I still feel on the defensive. "Of course it's true," I want to scream. "Why the hell would I make up such a tragic story?" Then I spend time reexamining my own memories going, "It's true, right?" All because some dude wanted attention. Asshat.

Posted by Punkie @ 05:25 PM EST [Link]

MHS SF&F Club - A Tribute to a Band of Irregulars

I think it's about time I start a story about my youth that does NOT suck. I am sick of seeing my posts about how my life used to suck as a kid, so I am taking a break; damn what makes "good material." But on a board I am on, someone asked about good high school memories, and I have one that stands out really well.

The McLean High School Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, or MHS₂F₂C as I tried to get everyone to call it ... but it never caught on. It was my first foray into a social life, and a bridge from theater into the fandom community. They were a colonial rag tag fleet continuing their flight from Mundane tyranny in a search for the lost Fandom, while fleeing planet Earth. Boldly going where no fan has gone before. The Force was with us and our cry of "We is no longer ordinary," could be heard during one of our many parties or hotel rooms.

I don't know much about the history of the club, except it started in 1975 because the "Literary club" was pretty much all sci-fi fans. In fact, we thought for years we were still the "official literary club," even though years later, another one popped up in my Junior Yearbook with only two Korean girls as members and no teacher sponsor. Well, no one ever bothered us about it.

Our sponsor was Mr. McAffee, a biology teacher and possible ex-hippie who signed our authorization forms and never showed up to meetings. He would say, "I don't want to be seen with you weirdoes!" but in a loving way. I mean, he liked us, but chose not to "fraternize" with us, hinting that he might get in trouble for doing so. But he was our blank check, really, to the school.

I first saw the club in my freshman year, and it was so chaotic and people were screaming and I frankly got scared and excused myself. The theater people were constantly crossing over, and one of my first bridge friends was Julie Bratten (skinny, fashionable Bill Joel fan) and Kirk VanQuill (the wonderful flaming guy who mowed our lawn). Kurt took me to the 1983 World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore (Constellation), and left me with some filking Trekkies under a flight of stairs for three hours. I was all of 14, and scared silly. So when I saw them as a club, I was scared for the same reason. I was too serious and easily weirded out. Kurt later told me that he left me a goal (he graduated in my freshman year) to "round up all the loners and misfits like myself and find a band of my own." I also left theater that year, because our teacher Mr. Duncan was a total burnout. I never returned to the stage until I was 20 years old with the group "And the Prune Bran Players." So the next year, my sophomore year, Julie and her friends Britta Carlsten and Amy Polk persuaded me to give the club another try.

I am glad I did. I loved it. It became the starting point to all my life.

Memories are sketchy now. I have some old newsletters packed in a box somewhere, and I dug them out. I haven't seen them in YEARS ... and boy do they bring back memories. We didn't have a lot of Newsletters, because ... well, as the old Fanzine people probably remember, usually by the second issue of ANYTHING, the editor was already begging for new material.

The first one on this small pile I see is dated "20-XIII-1984." I mentions we're going to see the new films of the time, "Buckaroo Banzai," "Baby," "2010," and "Dune!" A hint at last years "Alberto Mousse fights" at a convention is mentioned. Whomever was the editor at the time mentions that her and her friend "Jan" are designing tee-shirts with the "Purple Tangerine" logo/mascot our club had. We even had a song about it, sung to the tune of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine."

The third issue mentions me for the first time, as their Evecon 2 liaison. Ha ha. Boy, what foreshadowing. By Evecon 4, I was guest artist and panelist. Thanks for giving me a chance, Bruce and Cheryl! More issues mention the same themes that teen fans at the time were going through: More begs for submissions, an editorial on how disorganized we were, debates on who was really in charge of weekly meetings, and tons of photocopied comic strips from Bloom County (before Opus was the star), The Far Side, and any comic strip that even barely mentioned anything science fiction related. Then no newsletter until I took over the club in my senior year.

Let me back up a bit. My sophomore year was my intro into fandom. Julie, Britta, and Amy sat be down before my first con away from home, Balticon 18. For nearly two hours, they taught me the basics of fandom, tolerance, and some part they called "love triangles," which was really more about general con romance stuff that happens to teens. They pumped into my head stuff I still carry with me today, like my first introduction to real homosexuals (both sexes), tolerance towards other modes of thought, and the oft-used "nod and smile" approach to listening to crazy rhetoric. Other tips were not so white hat, like how to fake only a few people living in a hotel room when there are really over 12, how to keep the soda machines from running out before the con's end (put an "out or order" sign on them), and some stuff about drug use I probably should not mention because it may implicate some people. Most of my "back street" knowledge of "deviant" sexual practices (now just considered kinky) were from these talks. While 95% of the stuff we did was typical geeky sci-fi related activities, it seemed I was thrown into a world of young teens who had the knowledge and experience of most seasoned adults. I *thrived* with these people. They were *my* people. They seemed more real to me than anything else in my life, and quickly, fandom seemed like my home and the rest of the world was some play I had to act in.

Because of this club, my first club (paid for) was Evecon 2. First club event away was Balticon 18. First con away where the parties got out of control was Disclave 85. What was odd was our club paid for these activities with money we raised. The money we raised went to pay for con memberships, hotel rooms, and party "necessities." I can't swear to it, but I have always suspected some of that money went to pay for liquor. I never drank, but some of the members drank quite a bit at parties, although that was more a McLean "bored upper middle class" thing more than a fandom thing.

We did have rules for being in the hotel room at cons. No liquor or drugs allowed, although I suspect some people had stashes of whatever in their suitcase. Not that they needed it, because the con parties never carded. I mean, they'd clip your badge to show you were under 18, but most of us used the "party stickers" (some parties gave stickers, and it was some sort of game to see who could collect the most stickers on their badges) to cover those corners up. Even Disclave had fee "bheer" (beer) in their con suite for the longest time. No one ever guarded those taps. We also had a rule, by internal request, of "no romantic congress allowed." We had a sub rule that said "anyone engaged in romantic congress will be allowing us to point, gawk, make comments, and rearrange bodies for a better view." Only one person broke that, and he left after the "make comments" stage.

Funding came from annual school fundraisers that every other school club got. We usually sold a LOT of candy because we always got the "cool candy" (M&Ms), and we sold it relentlessly. While in my sophomore and junior year we were not among the top sellers, in our senior year ... we cleaned out. We sold almost two pallets of M&M's because of two good ideas. First, our stupid principal, Mrs. Lodal, made it a rule we could no longer sell the candy during school hours (it was competing with our new cafeteria vending machines). So most of the clubs did the honorable thing, and tried to sell door-to-door with limited success. We simply went underground, and it was like we were drug dealers. I kept a supply in a hollowed-out notebook, while others kept them hidden in jackets or their purses. We each sold almost a box of 50 count M&M boxes every two days because demand was so high and supply was so low. The next brilliant idea was using our friend Jason Aufdenberg at Marshall High School (a rival school) to also sell them. They didn't have a sci-fi club, and the students he sold to didn't know or care. We had more money that year than we knew what to do with. In the end, we had a HUGE dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, and spent the rest on a huge amount of Silly Putty we used to make a bust of someone I have since forgotten (no matter, Silly Putty in that amount can't hold it's shape against gravity anyway).

We didn't just go to cons, we also went to movie premieres, dressed up in crazy fannish costumes. We also went to Rocky Horror, but in the interest of some of these people's parents, I won't go into how their daughter learned 99 names for venereal diseases in a rhyming love couplet. We would dress up funny, go to some mall, get stared at, get asked questions by mall security, and finally end up at some IHOP or Lums somewhere, drinking coffee and having jokes about giving blowjobs using catsup bottles.

In my senior year, I was at my height of geekdom by being elected Vice President. Okay, how I was elected was strange. The previous year, a bunch of graduating members declared I was the next year's president. But no one remembered next year, which slightly pissed me off at the time. They held an election, which considered slightly unfair because, like most clubs, we'd lose 40-50% of our members by the third meeting, and all the freshmen didn't know who anyone was, or the "old legacy" left behind. But the president they did elect... I can't complain. His name was Mike Hoffheimer, and his primary campaign was "if elected, I promise not to show up to meetings." He won by a landslide, leaving only 3 votes for myself and a girl named Stacey Scott. We both ran the club that year, sometimes having a friendly battle of power. We often said the person in charge was whomever could yell the loudest that day. I ran the newsletter, and it died after two issues because no one submitted anything (sound familiars?). The last issue, dated October 1986, stated we were not participating in a "school club parade" because the "McLean reads the comics" theme was a lame idea, and nobody liked the idea of having school spirit crammed down our throat.

Sadly, the club fell apart after my class graduated. When the class before our graduated, we lost almost 80% of our core members. These were the people that drove the club into doing weird and fun stuff. Stacey and I just didn't have the ... wild streak in us to promote such stuff (thank God for Mike). We ran on inertia, and when we graduated, the club lost all but a handful of members, and almost had to start with 100% fresh blood. [Warning: the following is based on sketchy rumor and poor memory] I heard from the few remaining members it got lame, meetings were rarely attended, and finally, the school clamped down on us. It seems our sponsor, who hated the principal, either quit or was forced to resign. No one would take our club, and since there wasn't a core group to keep it going ... it died. I have also heard it came back two years later, but I haven't heard anything since.

I miss those guys. Stacey is now Stacey Lanzilotta, and Mike is now a successful artist in Maine, married, with kids. Kurt Van Quill works at UCSF as an assiatant professor of Ophthalmology. I wish I knew what happened Amy Polk, Britta Carlsten, Donnalee McLeod, and Julie Bratten. If anyone knows, can you e-mail me?

We is still no longer ordinary...

Posted by Punkie @ 04:44 PM EST [Link]

More snow... no cable

It's like a foot of snow again. Winter storm warning until noon. Last night, I watched it come down and pile all over the bags of trash I have on my deck. The trash is there because due to the weather, trash pickup has been sporadic at best. You never know how much trash your house generates until there hasn't been trash picked up in a week or so. Of course, that party we had last weekend generated a lot of trash on its own, so it looks worse because of two bags of Styrofoam plates and cups. I can't go to work because the car's get get onto the street. More work missed. I called their "Weather hotline," and they are open today, which is insane. The whole city's shut down again: schools, malls, government offices...

But not Cox Cable. We got this info in the mail that said, "Digital Cable is coming to YOUR neighborhood about... oh, NOW!" Of course, it came in a large blank envelope marked "Urgent - Open immediately," so we thought it was one of the MANY credit card applications we get. Turns out that it was a warning: if you don't upgrade to digital, we're cutting you off. I guess I'd be more upset if I didn't want digital, but we'd be trapped here with no cable. So...

... we had the install guy here on Friday. The schools close, but the cable guys shows up. Cox is eager to get our business. So eager, they can't seem to hire anyone who is either competent or speaks English comprehensibly. And all of them fuck up our cable each time. This one fucked up our cable modem, left the doors open all the time, letting in cold air and one of our cats in the attic, and when he parked in front of our house, he blocked the only plowed lane our road had at the time (he literally stopped his van right in the middle of the road for the four hours he was at our house). He wasn't a bad person, really, he was obviously trying very hard, but his skill set was very limited. For instance, one of his primary methods for trying to fix something was to turn it on and off over and over, as if the fifth time he turned the cable box on and off, it would work where the first four times had failed (it will probably surprise no one that this method didn't work). The last set of guys we had to install the cable modem drilled holes into our walls to string wires through them, and after he did that, his mates informed him that was wrong. After her drilled the holes. In our walls. We still have the holes. Plus, ever since they started working in our area over a year ago, many channels don't come in very well, they are all grainy and fuzzy. Cox told us that we had to upgrade to digital to remove that, and when we got digital on Friday, we were told it was the wiring in our house, which has been replaced repeatedly by people telling us that was the problem. Now we have only half the channels on our upstairs TV, grainy channels on our upstairs and downstairs TV, and our cable modem is out. Christine, the family strongarm, raised hell with Cox. They are sending someone over on Sunday because, again, we are told they have to replace the cable wiring in our house. I hope they send someone who knows more than I do on how this setup works, because the last few guys I had to tell them, "No... we're not buying a new TV..."

The only reason this diary was updated was thanks to AOL. As reliable as a phone.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:03 AM EST [Link]