I think that I've finally discovered why many people hate traveling - the packing.
Packing sucks - especially when you have to pack for a week-long trip.
I've got to take clothes for five days, plus "spares" in case of any kind of mishap, plus street clothes/bumming around clothes for my off-time/downtime.
I've got to pack up my laptop and associated gear.
I've got to make sure I've got a gun, with all of the appropriate accessories and gear.
And, apparently, I've always got to do it at the last minute, right before I need to go to bed.
Beyond the fact that I need more clothes simply to reduce the wear on what I've currently got, it sure would be nice to not have to run a couple loads of laundry just so I can pack enough stuff for the week.
Of course, that's my fault, since I always find more important things to buy than new clothes.
Winning the lottery would solve a lot of my problems...
And another 400 miles on my car.
Ugh.
Fortunately, next week, I'll be in the hotel for the entire week.
I'm not particularly looking forward to being away from home/bed/everything else, but, at the same time, I'm glad I'm not going to have to make multiple trips everywhere.
I'll be leaving to Lincoln City on Monday morning, and not having to drive back until Friday night.
It's too bad I didn't have a few more bucks - I'd go hit the casino up and waste some money.
I'm going to have to plan a trip with my friends, and have a casino-night get-together.
Who's game?
I was just offered a position as Network Administrator!
Woot!
I *think* that I'll start in about two and a half weeks, but we'll see.
How freakin' badass is that?
So, I spent today in Waldport, hooking up a bunch of computers in an area far too small and completely unprepared for my visit.
Loads of fun.
That town sucks.
Don't get me wrong - it's an absolutely gorgeous town, with an awesome bridge over the Alsea Bay.
It's just that there's nothing to do there. I set out to find lunch, but save for the obligatory seafood places, there didn't seem to be anything readily available and obvious.
At least Coos Bay/North Bend have enough of a population to justify a few things, like a mall, movie theatres, pool, the dunes - all kinds of things, really.
Newport and Lincoln City are really bumming me out...I'm visiting there for extended periods of time, and I want something to do, rather than just sitting in the hotel room on a slow-ass internet connection with a crappy TV.
Quite honestly, there's really no way I could move out there.
You know, I love my car, and I really like driving, but my desire to not get another speeding ticket now impacts my fun driving the windy mountain roads to the coast.
It also adds to my travel time significantly...
Some enterprising pilot needs to charter his Cessna out to a few people, and organize an air-shuttle to the coast.
Hell, I could drive out there on Thursday (like last week), fly home on Friday, and fly back on Monday, driving home later in the week.
That would rock so much...
Of course, there's probably some stupid federal regulations that would prohibit this, just like there is for anything that's handy.
Man, it's so nice here today.
I really wish I could find a nice, big, inexpensive place - and convince my friends to move out here, too.
The beach and sun is just gorgeous outside my back door right now, and I love the ocean smell.
It's too bad I can't convice the powers that be to spring for the hotel for the weekend, as well.
Woot!
So, I just found out that my coverage of the various coast facilities has been extended.
As of Thursday, I won't be back to a valley site for nearly a month.
Man, it's almost like a double-vacation.
I truly do enjoy the people I work with, but I can't lie - I'm not going to miss my main facility's hectic schedule and impatient users.
So, I'm flipping channels, and while I normally ignore the Maher's sycophantic broadcast, I stopped on it today to witness Carl Bernstein make some amazingly astute statements about the Democrat party.
A while later, they started talking about Hillary Clinton's candidacy for President of the United States, and were commenting on her relationship with her husband.
Maher made a statement of "what couple that's been together for 25 years HASN'T fooled around?"
Is this what today's Democrats thing about family values?
The fact that after a statement like this, you morons would maintain your support of a mouthpiece like Maher is astounding.
Oh, yeah, and he also said that Republicans are afraid of science.
Fuck you, Democrats. I am beyond tired of your idiocy.
The new facility is all setup!
I'm going to have to be there Monday morning, first thing, bright and early so that I can assist with any issues that they might be having, but at least the main setup is done.
Such a relief.
Now, I'm going to bed.
So, I finally started watching the American version of The Office.
The previews really didn't interest me, as it was released well after I had already became a fan of the BBC version.
Fortunately, a co-worker conned me into watching some clips, and I got hooked.
There's definitely some pretty blatant borrowing from the BBC version (at least, early on), but the American edition has established a flavor all it's own.
I've finished Season One and Season Two, and just picked up Season Three last night. Season Four starts in a week or two, and I'm almost ready for it.
Great, great stuff, and it's already outlasted the BBC version, which makes me quite happy.
WATCH IT!
So, a new facility is being setup, and I've been tasked to ensure that all the workstations and printers are setup and configured.
I did a walk-through of the site today with the manager, and was oh-so-pleased to discover that we need an additional 4 printers and 7 workstations that were never mentioned by anyone responsible for this crap.
Did I mention the facility opens up in 7 days?
Or did I mention that a bunch of other critical components (cabling, etc.) wasn't even purchased until late last week, and only because *I* discovered it hadn't been?
Why am I being paid peon wages, yet doing the job of more senior personnel?
It's funny. I interviewed for a different/better/higher position inside the organization last week, and my department head "caught" me waiting for my interview.
A brief interaction with this person left me flabbergasted. They actually had the nerve to get an attitude with the idea of me leaving the department.
Hello?! Below-average wages + no management support + duties outside the scope of our position + no established advancement track + frequent berating for issues caused by others = Unhappy/jaded staff.
Of course, it's really not as bad as it sounds, but it's not good, either. The fact of the matter is, only one of those things listed above would have to change to make me want to stay in the position - the pay.
Money is a great incentive to retain people. It's bewildering that the organization has two great examples of staff that have been adequately compensated so that they'll stay in the position they hold, yet they seem unable to grasp that doing the same for other staff members might actually allow them to keep talented, skilled and knowledgeable people where they're needed.
It's not rocket science...
I need to figure out a way to gain the restfulness of sleeping all day, while not actually doing it.
I got up this morning around 9:00am, wandered around for about thirty minutes, and then went back to bed.
I got back up around 2:30pm or so, BS'd with the roomate, and then went back to bed until 8:00pm-ish.
Watched TV for a bit, and now I'm about ready to go to bed for the night.
What a productive day. I love the sleep, I hate the wasted time.
Ugh.
So, I started running Ubuntu about a week ago. I started with 6.10, but let the updates do their thing, so now I'm on 7.04.
All in all, not too shabby, but the "wow" factor just isn't there for me. I've seen some different screenshots of various environments, and the GNOME interface (at least the one in Ubuntu) just isn't doing it for me.
I'm thinking about burning a Kubuntu ISO, and refreshing the machine with that, to see how it goes,
I was also debating PCLinuxOS, based on a recommendation from a commenter here, but I've got a problem with that distribution on some kind of level.
It looks quite spectacular, but when I was researching, I stumbled across an article comparing it to a few other distributions and considering the article is endorsed/sanctioned by the group behind the distribution, I don't know that I'll even bother with the distribution.
You can read the article yourself, but my main problem are the blatant lies and fanboy bullshit in the article. It's quite obviously written by someone who is smitten with the PCLinuxOS distribution, but from the start, it's complete bullshit.
The attempt at establishing credibility by the spurious claims of "running a computer institute" aside, it's quite obvious (if you've even spent five minutes in Ubuntu) that this jag-off hasn't touched the distribution, or is just making up crap about it to justify his personal preference. The fact that the distribution maintainers would publish (or endorse) this tripe is beyond obnoxious.
The sad part is, I'm not even defending Ubuntu. As I stated above, I really don't have any vested interest in it. I'm not that impressed with it, save that it was a remarkably clean, easy, straight-forward install. Linux distributions have come a long way since I last used Slackware, and I'm quite impressed with the capabilities of the community to build such an easy, hands-free installer. I'll give Ubuntu credit on that front (though, I'm quite sure they're not the only ones doing it).
We'll see how things go.
I'm going to drop Kubuntu on here, probably next weekend, and if I don't like that, I might try Fedora (if I can choke down the old Slackware-fueled animosity I had/have towards Red Hat).
PCLinuxOS? I'm going to have to be REAL unhappy with the other alternatives before I use that particular product.
Twenty times faster than Windows? Give me a fucking break.
Argh.
I seriously hope that the sickness isn't coming back.
What sickness?
My hobby-fad sickness.
I have a few different hobbies, and they all seem to cost way too much money:
Arcade Games
Firearms
Radios
Automobiles
Computers
Music/Audio Equipment (mostly automobile-related)
I seem to rotate through these at the most inopportune times - usually before I see a particular project through to completion.
I have a number of arcade games (full-size cabinets) in various states of disrepair. I have a number of gun projects that are far from completion. My radio collection (which wasn't cheap) is sitting around, waiting for me to buy some of the final components needed to make use of them. I want to do more with my vehicles. I need/want to upgrade my computer. I want a new stereo in my Vic.
All of this costs a metric fuck-ton of money, which I don't have.
Right now, I'm on the computer kick, which is, for once, not seeming to cost me a ton of money.
Sadly, though, it may lose ground in the battle for firearm stuffs, again.
I've been pretty lucky on the firearms front. I love my collection, and I definitely want to finish the projects I'm working on, but the cost of ammo these days has tempered my desire to spend any money on that set of projects - until the news of the latest Indiana Jones movies.
For a variety of reasons, Indiana Jones (and, to a certain extent, the Mummy movies) have got me wanting to get my 1911's fixed up, want me to get a pair of Browning Hi-Powers, want to get me some cool older revolver stuff (especially a nice pair of those sexy Chamelot Delvignes, if I can find them)...
Hopefully, for the time being, I can keep the monster down, and actually finish one of these hobby projects (the current one being my workstation "upgrade"/rebuild, and the build of a Windows Server 2003 machine/domain)...
Argh.
I need to find a job that I can do in my sleep, so that I can have money just for the hobby stuff.
So, unless you're a fan of the lowest-common-denominator tripe like "American Idol", you've likely never heard of this complete nobody.
Piers Morgan is a British newspaper hack. In 2003, he was the editor for the Daily Mirror, a job he was fired from due to, among other things, publishined obviously faked photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. During his tenure at the Mirror, Morgan published a slam on President Bush, documenting how much of an idiot Bush was, because he couldn't ride the "idiot-proof" Segway scooter.
So, yeah, the guy is a piece of shit, AND a treasonist.
Ouch! The moment Piers Morgan broke three ribs falling off the Segway he said was 'idiot-proof'By JAMES TAPPER
Last updated at 08:29am on 2nd September 2007
If he didn't believe in karma before, Piers Morgan must surely do now.
The ex-newspaper editor, now a columnist for The Mail on Sunday's Live magazine, took great delight in making fun of President Bush for falling off a Segway - the two-wheeled, motorised, gyroscopically balanced scooter that, its makers promise, will never fall over.
His paper, the Daily Mirror, ran the headline in 2003: "You'd have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn't you Mr President." It added: "If anyone can make a pig's ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can." So, it seems, can Mr Morgan.
He broke three ribs after falling off the Segway at 12mph in California - just three days before he was due to make his biggest TV appearance to date, as a judge on the grand final of reality show America's Got Talent.
Quite what he was doing on a Segway - labelled 'the geek machine' by critics - Morgan has yet to explain, but these pictures reveal the moment of the undignified crash.
He can be seen cruising comfortably along the promenade at Santa Monica beach. Inexplicably, his delicate sense of balance fails him. The Segway swerves to the right, mounting the kerb. Morgan's 'toned muscular, tanned, superfit torso' (as he describes it) continues straight along the road but sadly his feet remain planted to the rogue Segway.
Inevitably he falls victim to gravity and crunches on to the baking concrete, where he lies, agonised, until a companion can come to his rescue.
He had to be taken to hospital to be patched up, but despite his misfortune, Morgan made it to the TV studio. His celebrity friends have been chortling at his expense. Simon Cowell has urged people to make Morgan laugh because 'it causes Piers absolute agony'.
Writing in Live magazine this week, Morgan is rueful about the comments on Mr Bush. He says: "Since only he and I appear to have ever fallen off one, I think the makers of the Segway can probably still justifiably claim the machines are "idiot-proof"."
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...
On another note, what the hell is Segway still doing in business? I mean, come on - the things are just retarded, and for all the idiocy about how fat we are in the United States, like these dumb pieces of shit help.
And for $5000-$6000+ ?? Get real. Only idiots buy these things in the first place.