Life is a State of Mind : ideas, thoughts, rants

Damned Spammers!!!

Vermin spammers! Over the weekend they figured out how to get by the older versions of WordPress with older versions of Akismet spam filter module/plug-in, so I came home from dance competition to discover hundreds of spams in my WordPress blog’s moderation queue and thousands that had been blocked.

Making things worse a few guest blogs I help friends run had the same problem. So I upgraded to WordPress 2.1.2 (thanks to DreamHost for making that a “one click” per blog install) and huge thanks to the WordPress team for including the upgrade to Akismet plug-in 2.0 in that install. I am hoping that shuts down the vermin.

Makes one glad that LJ handles all this stuff for you… My LJ blog was completely un-impacted by the burst in spam activity over the weekend. Yay LiveJournal!

Breaking into my own office

Second day into the third week in the new office at work (Sterling/Dulles CC4 6B:J06) and there is a new form of irony that I find amusing enough to share. There were not enough open cubes to go around to all the people who wanted them, so a few of us have to share double offices with another person. The “offices” are made of the same stuff as the modular cubes, but the walls go all the way to the drop-tile ceiling: metal and plastic frames with metal, glass, and fabric snap-in panels to make “walls” or “windows” that happen to be chest high for cubes and floor to ceiling for offices.

People snap out the glass, stuck decorations between the glass panels and snap them back into place for in-wall aquarium effect, or for trophies and/or toy dinosaurs. Others take a glass panel and put it back to back with an opaque panel to discourage light getting through, or trade with people who like more glass and light.

The second day Cliff and I were in our office, Bruce G snapped out one of our wall panels from the outside and punched through the matching inside panel as a joke attack on us. We all had a laugh after the initial surprise, and then cliff and I left that panel out to enjoy the better view out the 6th floor window. For three weeks we’ve had a perforated office.

We were never issued keys to the office door, which does lock. The fact that it locks we find silly because it is so easy to snap the panels next to the door knob, reach in, and open the door from the inside. We decided we’d never lock the door and we just would not store valuables in the office.

Sunday night the security guards decided to start locking the door. Yesterday I was tired so I borrowed the master key from our department AA to get in to start work. Today I just climbed through Bruce’s decoration of our office (the perforation). I don’t really want to start carrying another key, I’d much rather have a cube.

Between 6 flights of stairs and a climb through the belly high “window” in our office I am getting a regular work-out now. Perhaps I will appear less “prosperous” in the future.

2007 03 20 snolan Personal Comments (4) Permalink

New Phones

Gah! Two weeks of work-hell straight and my neck is twisted out of shape from being on too many long conference calls where I have to talk and type at the same time. I don’t have a headset on my old plain old telephone at home. The trusty old Motorola i85s (Nextel/iDen) mobile phone I inherited from Erci is many years old and stopped taking a charge.

I decided to throw money at the phones and plow through the stupid daylight savings time change workload as best I could.

I am pretty happy with the phone situation I ended up with: I have a new AT&T model 992 “Speakerphone” with standardized 2.5mm headset jack (yay) and it works very well. I even figured out how to put pauses into the speed dial so it can dial me all the way into work’s most commonly called conference call numbers. Yay!

I also have a brand new Motorola i580 (Nextel/iDen still) mobile phone. This is my first Bluetooth capable phone, and it already works well with the Prius (though I am still trying to figure out how to transfer all contacts instead of just one). This i580 is heavy, tough as nails, gets good strong signal, has full duplex speakerphone and standard 2.5mm headset jack (as well as aforementioned Bluetooth).

A lot of people wonder why I stick with Nextel, instead of something 1) thinner, 2) sexier, or 3) laden with smart features. The simple answer is that for me a phone must work well as a phone. I have a camera and a PDA already, so those features on a phone are a waste. No phone can compete with my camera as a camera nor my PDA as a PDA. The thin and feature laden “smart” phones out there are a waste of time and money in my opinion, because most of them break all too easily and make horrible sounding calls. As to the sexiness of a phone… uh – people need to get a life. A phone is just a phone. I am happy Nextel and Motorola remain focused on what is critical: excellent call reception, clarity, contact list, full-duplex speakerphone, standardized headset jack, and recently – bluetooth for car and more headset functionality.

Work is beginning to calm down a little now that we are on Eastern Daylight Time and management finally realizes there is nothing to worry about, and I can enjoy long conference calls with my hands free.

2007 03 13 snolan Personal Comments (3) Permalink

Election 2007, PWC perspective

I usually publish a simple list guide to choices in a given election, and was already working on one for this year’s state and local elections when I found that Craig Vitter beat me to the punch with this excellent guide for Prince William County (thanks Craig)!

Craig is also going a bit farther than I do and predicting the races.

2007 03 06 snolan Virginia Politics Comments (1) Permalink

Office Moves

Well, I got comfortable in my office again, so the company is moving me to a new building. This will be my 10th office move (11th office) at AOL. I’ve been pretty lucky and usually got nice places to work and great people to work with. Packing today was mildly depressing because I will miss all the fine folks in Reston whom I have loved working with regularly. The move offers several benefits, and a few drawbacks.

2007 03 01 snolan Personal Comments (0) Permalink

Tuesday Night

Tuesday night Erci and I celebrated the 14th anniversary of our marriage. It just does not seem like that long. We get to celebrate twice a year because we did the legal transaction about 8 months before we pulled together the big scary public ceremony. We’ve had a fabulous adventure together so far.

Fourteen years ago she was a database administrator at the Defense Intelligence Agency, actively fighting with rattan in the Society for Creative Anachronism, cooking medieval foods for her friends and household, bicycling, already involved in La Belle Compagnie, traveling to NATO (Brussels) and London quite often for work, and she had ferrets (I still miss Mudge and Newt).

Back then I was still in the United States Air Force on active duty, stationed at the Pentagon, flirting with everyone in the SCA, tinkering with my Amiga computer, running, playing occasional games of pickup football (the kind with goalies) with locals, and bicycling all over the Washington Area. She was unstoppable. She amazed me. She still does.

We’ve lived apart (the USAF sent me to freakin’ Omaha for about 7 months of enforced separation). We’ve been in tiny apartments, a small townhouse, and two very large homes. When I got out of the USAF my income jumped so much that I literally paid more in taxes for 1995 than I grossed for all of 1994! We gradually got less involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism as we got more involved with La Belle Compagnie and as we got very involved with ballroom dancing. She pulled me into La Belle, and I pulled her into Scuba diving, and Marine Aquariums. She helped me re-discover Buddhism. We’ve had several more ferrets, and now a cat and several aquariums. We’ve traveled to England, Jamaica, Mallorca, Greece, Turkey, Curacao, Cozumel, Belize, Bonaire, Japan, the Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Michigan, California, Arizona, Nevada, and New York together. She has become a chef, part-time, while continuing to be an amazing IT professional at work. We have had the opportunity to build our dream home. She is still unstoppable, and I am still amazed.

Tuesday night we went to Le Tire Bouchon, a cozy and quiet little traditional French restaurant in old Fairfax. There were ony two other couples there at that time, and one couple finished and left shortly after we got there. We had excellent food, good wine, and got to talk a lot (mostly about work, but talking about anything is fun with her).

She remains my partner, sharing the awesome adventure of life with me as an equal. Sometimes she leads, sometimes I do. We are incredibly blessed and fortunate to have many, many close friends. She’s cooking up another Windjammer cruise to someplace warm and exciting.

2007 03 01 snolan Personal Comments (0) Permalink

Roemmelt for Delegate!!!

Yippee! Bruce Roemmelt (Firefighter, educator, veteran, 2005 candidate) is running for Virginia House of Delegates for the 13th district again. As many of you know, I am very proud to have worked in Bruce’s 2005 campaign to unseat Delegate Robert Marshall (who is way too concerned with what goes on in my private life for me). Please consider helping Bruce win election this November. Visit his website, contribute, volunteer, and help get him elected.

If you live anywhere in Virginia the outcome of this election matters to you, as Delegate Marshall is the author of the hateful marriage amendment that passed last year and Delegate Marshall just tried to sneak a law onto the books that would make contraception illegal in Virginia (HB2797, thanks Kenton).

2007 02 21 snolan Local
Virginia Politics Comments (3) Permalink

Thankful Thu… er Fri… er Saturday

Oops – Was really was writing again to express how thankful I am to be on a terrific team at work, and then work got away from me (I am oncall again this week) and I did not leave until 10pm Thursday. However, Friday was page and interrupt free (yahoo!) and that meant serious focus time to prepare for next week’s major switch-over to a new primary server (big complicated procedure involving about 18 people). I was able to go over the entire plan, line by line, and make lots of improvements from the past switch-over. That is a very nice feeling, the confidence that big scary change is completely under control and all the risks have been mitigated.

Capped off a long day revising the plan at work with wonderful evening of dancing at The Ballroom Studio in Centreville. We still love dancing at Tysons Corner Arthur Murray studio as well, but Friday night is Tyson’s newcomer night, and Darryl Adams and Michele Kearney have a wonderful deal on two group classes and a practice/dance party for only $25 that is too good to refuse. Anyway, last night the group classes were Paso Doble and Argentine Tango. Paso is the dance I did not know enough about to name, but was what I was picturing in my head when we first went to Arthur Murray for lessons in the mid-1990s. I have always thought I wanted to know Paso, but it is not easy, and I am simply not getting it. I don’t hear the music transitions, and can’t keep up the act of being a toreador for very long withouth laughing. Argentine Tango is the dance I did not think I would like at all, but it seems to be sticking now. We had a lot of fun dancing, and the party was excellent afterwards, even if I was tired from a long week of being oncall at work.

I am really, really thankful I am part of such a great team at work, and have recently turned down a few unsolicited offers for much more money because I am really happy where I am at. I guess the market for experienced UNIX systems people is picking up again (I’d stopped getting recruiter calls a few years ago, but they are calling again now). The bottom line is I like my job, I like my boss, and I really like the people I work with day to day a lot. We are moving to the Sterling (aka: Dulles) campus (CC4, 6th floor) in early March, and I have mixed feelings about the move, but the people will still be great. You can’t ask for much more than that.

2007 02 17 snolan Dance
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Chantilly UPS Sucks

Erci and I like wine. We like wine from several places, but we are particularly fond of wines from Bonny Doon Vineyard in the mountains over Santa Cruz, California. We like Bonnie Doon wines so much that we tried to join DEWN (their wine of the month club) way back when it was illegal to ship wines via mail-order into Virginia. We did a little research and discovered that the reason it was illegal was because the big alcohol distributers did not want to give up their monopoly, and that this retarded law (written by alcohol distributer lobbyists, and passed by Virginia’s notoriously retarded legislature) was hurting Virginia wine makers and small out-of-state wine makers alike.

We joined the “Free the Grapes” campaign which took a while but eventually got the stupid law repealed and now it is legal to mail-order wines both to and from Virginia, much to the delight of everyone except the monopolistic alcohol distributers… they may find my lack of sympathy disturbing. We were finally able to join DEWN and try some of Bonnie Doon’s eclectic wines about every other month.

UPS has very attractive repeat shipping rates for small businesses, so attractive that many small businesses will only use UPS for all their shipping. It is simpler and cost-effective, and I applaud both the small businesses and UPS for a generally good arrangement. However, it does limit choice; and I’ll get to how that can be a problem later.

There is another law, designed to protect minors from getting their hands on alcohol, that states that none of the shipping companies can leave packages with alcohol without the signature of an adult of drinking age. It’s a pretty strictly enforced law, and I blame none of the shippers and carriers for following it, the penalties are rediculously high for violations.

Erci and I are both professionals who work in office buildings, pretty long hours. The chances of any delivery catching us at home are next to negligable. We simply are not home that often. in a perfect world this would be no problem, we could notify the shipping companies that we are never home, that they can save themselves a trip and simply call us when a package comes in and we can stop by the warehouse on our way home (it literally is on the way home for UPS, Fedex, USPS, and DHL) and sign for packages. Fedex and USPS both do this routinely when the shipper says signature is required and provides our phone number. For some reason the Chantilly branch of UPS is not able to do this simple and time/effort saving trick.

Chantilly UPS insists on putting the package of alcohol, clearly marked with our phone number and the fact that we are almost never home during the day, on their delivery truck. Invariably they leave a sticker on our door with a phone number to call UPS and warning us they will only try twice more to deliver and that after that it will be held at warehouse for only 5 days. Annoying, but we can deal with that. We call UPS’s 800 number, go through voice menu hell for 10 minutes, and instruct them to hold the package at the warehouse for customer pickup. Warehouse is on the way, and warehouse hours are much better than delivery hours.

Every two months the shipment comes in from Bonnie Doon. Every two months we get three successive days of stickers on our front door (they ignore the phone calls and keep trying to deliver). Every two months I call and go to the warehouse, only to find that they have continued to try to deliver and the package is not there for me. It would be funny if it happened once. Every two months makes me an incoherent ball of rage. This last time takes the cake:

Thursday: 2/8 come home to find sticker, call UPS 800 number and instruct them to hold package.
Friday: 2/9 go to UPS warehouse Chantilly… they do not have package, it’s “on the truck” again, sure enough – sticker on door with “2nd notice” on it
bastards
Monday: 2/12 I don’t bother going by warehouse, and sure enough we get 3rd sticker marked “Final notice” – I call again anyway and instruct them to hold at warehouse for customer pickup
Tuesday: 2/13 – snow day, astonishingly I am working from home all day!!! No UPS delivery truck. Great – they finally are holding it at warehouse…
Wednesday: 2/14 – second snow day, again home. UPS truck goes through neighborhood, stops at three neighbor’s houses (I was shoveling) and not at ours – great, package must be at warehouse.
Thursday: 2/15 – more important errand
Friday: 2/16 – I go to warehouse to pick up package, guess where it is…. On the #&*%&A%$ truck!!!

To hell with Chantilly UPS, they can take the wine and shove it. I call Bonnie Doon and reluctantly cancel the standing order because they can’t switch to another carrier and UPS Chantilly are a pack of idiots.

2007 02 17 snolan Local
Personal
Wine Comments (10) Permalink

Mad World

I finally broke down and bought the expensive original soundtrack and score to the movie Donnie Darko. I selected the British import version of the CDs because it has all the classical music and the ’80s pop that was remastered specifically for the movie and gave it such a haunting edge. The variation to Michael Andrews’ “Mad World” song is worth the expensive price of the double disc set all by itself. You can get “Mad World” elsewhere (Tears for Fears did the most popular version), but I like this version best of all.

If you are curious about it, you can hear the 30 second samples for free on iTunes Music Store (fire up iTunes, which is free for Mac and Windows, go to the iTunes Music Store, search for “Mad World”). Several versions come up, and they are all good (I have the Tears for Fears version on CD too). Something about the quieter, slower version by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews is the most hauntingly beautiful though… decide for yourself.

BTW; if you have not seen Donnie Darko the movie, and wrote it off (as I did) as another silly teen flick, give it a chance. It is mind-twisting Sci-Fi set inside an ’80s teen flick… awesome. Really twisted in much the same way Body Heat, Eternal Sunshine, Memento, Body Double, The Crying Game, and other films are. You might have to watch it three times to catch on to all the time loop paradoxes. Thank you very much to those friends who insisted I get by the silly teen reputation and watch this film (yes, it’s a film, not a movie). Oh yes, and it stars a very young and handsome Jake Gyllenhaal and has his super-sexy sister Maggie in a bit part as his sister too. Lots of eye-candy.

2007 02 17 snolan Movies
Music
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Life is a State of Mind