Low Speed, High Drag

Okay, I opened the CoH (City of Heroes) website to get the URL to put in the previous post. I finished that one and went back to that page, thinking I'd see what their forums look like. Not only do you not have an account on their forums after you create an account on their site, but it took three tries to get it created successfully. Now it's taken my account creation and I can't log into it to get into the forums.

Lame. Very lame.

The guys working on the game are obviously not the guys doing the website.

"webmaster ne programmer/IT_knowledeable_anything;"

Lame a$$ IT wannabees who call themselves "webmaster" while knowing nearly nothing about computers. We had one of those around here somewhere (one of the few comments I put on here about people at work).

Too. Much. Food.

The housewarming party Saturday went very well. Turn out was better that I feared and yet I still bought too much food! Everyone seems to have had a good time and he house is actually still standing. Now for one for the work gang next Saturday ...

Ryan's Taurus is gone! Woo Hoo. In searching through the boxes for Xbox games that Jack's boys could play I found the box from the top of the dresser so I spread it all over the kitchen counter until I found the keys. Jessika's friend and her father came over quick like and they hauled it away (it started but they couldn't drive it).

The new bbq (or as Imoen says "bbqp" although I'm not sure on pronounciation) works well but I forgot to put a can under to catch the grease. We set it up in the garage since it rained off and on most of Saturday.

Sunday I went out to get City of Heroes. It was a bust trying to get my credit card info into it, apparently because some of them (despite my having given them the new address and them now sending the statements to the new address) haven't updated their records. After much mumbling and growling it finally took one of them. Not a terribly high speed operation, their web stuff. Every time I clicked a link it told me that my ActiveX settings were preventing their page from displaying correctly. So I put them in my trusted sites list and it then told me it wanted to download and install an app and no matter what I did it continued displaying that message. So even before I start playing the game I'm not impressed by the professionalism of the company.

However I finally got into the game and got playing and it was pretty fun. It could be that it's just a new game but Erik came on later and even though he was level 13 and I was 4 it let us group together by me becoming his sidekick, and fighting at level 12. Not a bad idea. We fought 5th columnist, witches, thugs/outcasts and so on. Keeping Paragon City safe for strange people who run around waving their arms in the air all the time.

Woo Ya!

The food for the game tonight was great. I took off work a bit early because I had no idea who long it would take to fold the wontons but I got enough done and everything turned out fine.

Oh and the game was a blast too!

Blamo

Okay I talked a few days ago about how we had 38,000 more kids in town now but last week I managed to avoid most of them so I didn't really notice it. I even managed to avoid the insanity that is their parents driving around town with no idea where they're going (so they stop in unexpected places because they think they've missed their turn, etc.).

Now they have to go to class and are settled into their apartments so traffic definately shows us that there are more cars out. <assorted comments about traffic and drivers have been done to death around here>

The house is furnished enough now that it feels like a place I live. Routines have started and even been procrastinated (I should have vacuumed the carpet on Sunday, it's "shedding" again). Gaming is even setup. The fence contractor managed to put in the posts on Friday but it was too rainy yesterday for them to finish it (I presume). Today it's supposed to storm too so we'll see.

The housewarning party is Saturday but I don't have that many RSVPs. I guess I'll just buy food assuming lots of people are coming and if the turnout is low then I'll have groceries for a month.

Work is slowing down some. Yesterday it was hard to stay awake in the afternoon but I have some things to do while I wait for 2 more ports to be turned on so I can finish installing two new servers. But I keep forgetting to bring my lunch. D'oh

Shazam!

I'm turning back into a sysadmin these days. Yesterday we went over to the production floor and I installed a new server, set up the KVM SIP and restored our base image to it. Today I finished up most of the other user stuff necessary and turned it over to the customers. Today I was over there again starting the process again on two of our kerberos servers. This time I didn't take over but started from the beginning, requesting ip addresses from network, got to request the ports be turned on, we racked one of the machines and we need to do the other tomorrow or next week. I backed up images of the current servers in preparation to restoring them to these two new machines and then we'll turn them on. These will be a bit more high profile/important since they'll be authentication machines.

Now I need to start transforming my notes into some documentation.

A failure to communicate

I had a fence contractor come and do an estimate earlier this month. I didn't want to keep the dog chained in the backyard too long, she starts digging if she gets bored or too hot. I thought we'd scheduled it to start tomorrow, the 20th. So this afternoon I called to find out if I needed to be there and it turns out that I apparently didn't make it clear to him that I wanted to go ahead with it so he hadn't scheduled it.

Fortunately he can start next Monday instead of tomorrow so it's not too bad. Or perhaps I should say not as bad as it could have been.

My test results came back just about the time I was going to call the doctor asking if he was ever going to give me a refill on my lipitor prescription. It reported that my cholesterol was down to 188 (from 240ish when I went to them about 2 years ago). If I can trim off this extra 30 pounts (okay, it may be closer to 40) then my numbers should get real good.

We have a guild rancor hunt scheduled for tonight in Galaxies. Hopefully I should get a few tens of kays of meat from it. I made Teras Kasi Master last night so I won't be in for the experience too. But I get a head shot now which is supposed to make me even more formitable, as well as upgrades to my unarmed strike and my knockdown.

The master bathroom seems to be outfitted okay so now I need to see what the other bathroom needs. The laundry room is good, the car fits in the garage (still need to "build" the gym in there), the living/dining room is got some bare-bones stuff. So as soon as the fence is done I think it'll be time to schedule the house-warming/thank-you party.

Got to go, have to put more hydrochortizone on my arms, they're starting to itch like crazy.

Thirty-eight thousand more people ...

Who don't pay attention to what they're doing. The students are back so don't drive if you can avoid it and don't even think about going to Wal-Mart (their evil anyway). Going out to dinner will probably take a lot longer too.

The "Back-2-School" rush doesn't seem to be much of a rush yet but it's still only day 3 in the two week ordeal.

The fence contractor comes on Friday and I need to call him and find out if I need to be there for anything. The dog is the only thing I can think of.

Damn

My arms are itching like crazy now. And the rash is spreading. Perhaps it's time to call the doc and see when I can get an appointment. Or maybe I'll wait for tomorrow and see if the cream at home (1% hydrocortisone, which is the same as this CortiCool stuff I have at work) works better than this stuff. Arggghhhh

Another good night

I won't make any comments about work during the day since it's back-2-school season and it can only get worse, but I got the doorknobs installed on the door between the garage and the house with little difficulty. I rearranged the garage contents and then Erik came to pick up the carpet and help me install the new showerhead. The later took all of 15 minutes and now I have a lockable door between the house and the garage, a new showerhead and can park the car *inside* the garage. Woo Hoo!

Urrggg <scratch><scratch>

Well it was a good weekend mostly. Saturday I got up in time to pick up the chipper/shredder I'd reserved but Erik wasn't in such good shape (and we had planned on putting it in his pickup) so I rescheduled back 2 hours. Brand was ringing my doorbell as I came out to go over there so we got the paperwork squared away and then Erik arrived. Well it turned out to be a towed machine (a big honking sucker) which we hooked up. Breakfast at Broadway Diner then home to work.

We got all the small trees cut down and put into the sucker and it turned out to be a good thing we got such a big one. John and Becca came by to help me haul the old carpet to the dump and Erik reminded me that he wanted some of it to put in his garage workshop so they took one roll and all the padding. Woodsmall came by to do the mowing and I rented three films for the evening. The internet was still down (it had gone down Friday evening while I was playing Galaxies) so I watched "Kill Bill, Vol 2" and "Intolerable Cruelty". The 2nd Tarentino one wasn't as bloody as the first (which was a good thing) and the other was cute and pretty funny ("Your Exposed").

But Sunday I discovered that I'd been handling something I was allergic to, a rash all ofer my forearms. It's still here but not too bad. Watched "Lost in Translation" (a good film with a host of hidden meanings) and finally got the Xbow working to try Pirates of the Caribean. A fun game but my first mate killed me and my ship was sunk twice. The second time I'd done better and sunk one of theirs first. I did get some strap wrenches but couldn't get the shower head installed so I'll ask Erik for help tonight when he picks up the carpet.

Overall good, got a bunch of things done, but itchy as heck!

"Keep the fridge stocked with Coke"

So many of my rants are spawned (at least the title and the beginning) but the stupid commercials I hear on the radio while I'm getting ready for work. The latest is from Coke. Some kid arrives home (not his home but his friends) and the friend's mom greets him thinking it's her son. He decided to come over and wait for his buddy to get done with soccer practice. More kids arrive looking for him, seemingly because they know his mom keeps her fridge stocked with coke. The theme is that you should keep coke in the house because you never know when your friends will drop by. Okay, not a bad concept. Except that mom and dad bought the coke and it's not their friends who are drinking it! Dumb. Not as dumb as other commercials (the Sonic guys on TV are very nearly the definition of stupid and "Mr. Wendy, unofficial spokesman" for Wendy's is a close second) but still pretty damn moronic.

Anyway the game went well, as long as you understand when this crowd gets together (especially after having been off for so long) that they get easily diverted. The humor level was just as low as it had always been and Lorie got embarrased by the lewd jokes but was awarded the Gay Mistress (Andy regained his title of Gay Master which he was awarded at the Retreat) title for the best lewd joke of the evening (after having tripped a sonic trap which rang a gong she made a joke about the size of Grindel's "gong"). We aren't playing next week since Andy is out for vacation before he has to start year 3 of Law School, but we're going to go every Wednesday until we finish Book 3 of the trilogy. Even every week it still may be several months before we're finished since (SPOILERS) they've only just entered the Tomb of Lost Souls and have to get the undead Legion, return to Corvis and win the fight with Raelthorne's Skorn Army.

Unpacking is progress but not nearly fast enough. I still haven't found the keys for Ryan's Taurus but I've got one of Erik's daughter's friends lined up to take it once I get the title from him and we get it opened. Apparently this fellow uses working together on "project" cars as a way to bond with his kids, pretty successfully too it seems. This weekend Erik is helping me clear out the foliage around the back (wire) fence so the fence contractor can install the wooden fence starting on the 20th. John and Becca are coming over to help me take the rest of the old carpet to the dump so the garage will actually be open enough to park the car in. Now to get the other half of it outfitted as a workout area/workshop.

Work is busy since we have bunches of stuff to get finished before school starts. In fact I should be relocating several folders of user web junk out of apache's htdocs folders instead of typing this. Got a few persistent remedy tickets finished including some obscure php stuff, some mysterious tigerlink problems and some stuff that I could actually fix. School starts on the 23rd and we (our group) aren't supposed to help with installs this time around. Our job is to "keep stuff up" supposedly but we'll see how this plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Last of the ... things

Okay the cleaning people were supposed to be at the old place this morning. I had to go to Green Meadows to get some blood taken for more tests (liver enzyme I think this time, my lipitor expired and I needed more) then I was supposed to meet them with the check. They weren't there by 0915 (for a 9 o'clock appointment) so I went to work.

Now it's just furniture shopping and unpacking. And Faris went home to St. Louis this weekend so I won't be interrupting anyone.

The Iron Kingdoms game will restart next week with Andy's return but we don't have a regularily scheduled night yet but it's only a matter of time. Not sure whether the other game will be Vampire or Fourth Age.

Warp 10, Mr. Sulu

Okay, it's not unexpected that I got pulled over yesterday for speeding again. Got a ticket this time but I felt most bad about the motorcycle cop since the heat index yesterday was over 100. Not much fun!

And then that evening when Lorie and I went shopping for a bedspread I left my wallet at Target. Thanks goodness the clerk put it up in the customer service area and I could get it back nearly immediately.

I finally called about getting my phone switched over and, of course, they tried to sell me more services and to get me sucked back into the Long Distance treadmill. Now I need to call the clinic and arrange for the blood work the doctor wants me to take so I can get my lipitor prescription refilled.

Oh, and I have a roommate now. Lorie knows this doctor who lives in St. Louis (with his family) who is here for a fellowship. He was living with a few frat boys but they bailed on him and he didn't want to sign another year lease when his fellowship is finished in three months. So she was looking for someone who wanted a roommate. While my house wasn't (and still isn't) in any condition (IMHO) to rent out a room, all he wanted was a place to put his bed, a shower and a washer/dryer to do his laundry. He spents most of his time at the hospital anyway. So I agreed. His name is Faris Al-Gabar (my spelling of his name is probably terrible), he's originally from Iraq but he's been in the US for 12 years so far. He seems smart and a hard worker (which it seems other doctors at the hospital take advantage of, he nearly kissed me when I got my computer reconnected to the internet and he could send an email he needed to send without going back to the hospital - where someone would dump 6 hours of work on him). Okay he didn't nearly kiss me but he was pretty happy about it!

Cheese Tossing?

I put this here because I'm sure, given my reputation, that Erik or Brand or John or someone will point out the link on Dave Barry's blog about Cheese Tossing. It's kind of buried inside the piece. My best guess is they're talking (being a British site) about Cheese Racing since you're supposed to toss your cheese onto the grill during the launch (apparently called 'the cast').

Now what have I forgotten?

This morning it was changing my voter registration. I was purposely intending to make sure I voted in today's Missouri primary in order to do my part to ensure Bob Holden (our current governor who had cut 175 million from education last year) earned his epitath ("One Term Bob"). I wondered whether telling them that I had moved was a wise thing to do before I went it but it wasn't nearly as painful as I feared. And at the new polling place they actually had a sheet with my info on it (probably from my changing the address at the Post Office last Monday).

So I filled my ovals and cast my vote. But I wonder what else I've forgotten. I know there's something but nothing pops into my head yet. The cleaning service comes in on Friday and I need to go over tonight to put out the big pile of trash bags for tomorrow morning. I have to be in the house from 5 to 7 to meet the cable guy and get reconnected to the internet (as bad as Mediacom is).

Other than that it's unpacking again and again and where did I put X (the keys to Ryan's other car, the antenna for the TV - although I won't need that after today I hope).

Done!

Well Saturday the move was finished. I cleaned out the food in the fridge after vacuuming the inch of cat hair off the carpets in the last two rooms. Now is the question "where did I put ?"