My birthday is this Saturday. I think I'm a bit too immature to be this old. All the same, feel free to buy me cool stuff. ;)
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Vince had a bad case of Rotten RAM today and he won't shut up about it (hehe). Damn Red Capers...they always find something to complain about, even if it is a fixed PC.
My Boys, my precious IT brethren, had my back today. There?s no better feeling than knowing other people, with the same take on things, will be there to stand up with you, beside you and for you.
They then topped themselves even more so and gave me my birthday gift a few days early to make me smile. I am now the proud owner of an Antec Lanboy case that I have been desperately wanting fo rmy latest build project. I was almost brought to tears (before you even think of making that smartass comment, yes, it is possible). I love this case! 10lbs of pure sharp and sleek design.
Yeah, today was a good day indeed.
You got everything to keep you warm?
I don?t have time to be sick.
She?s like you, ya know, with the mouth and everything...
A real blonde, like us.
We have to laugh?
Or get off the pot?
I have a new joke for you?
Yetta and Sade?
I tell the priest my clean jokes?
There?s a branch for every bird?
Like you, giggly?
Don?t drink, don?t smoke, don?t date Italians*
Like I says?
A nice little Jewish boy marrying a Catholic girl?
It happens.
No time to rest.
You happy?
*Most of the women in the family have married Italian men.
My Grandma will be 83 years old this year. She came to this country a long time ago to escape communism and find a better way of life but continues to send care packages of bubble gum and clothes to our ever growing family in Slovakia. She loves America, so never speak ill of this great nation in her house. She talks to everyone and knows every person in the entire state of New Jersey. She can recite recipes for any possible dish known to man. My Grandpa, now 89 years old, and she live on their own, in the house they saved pennies for and find sanctuary in their large backyard garden. He calls out the bingo balls for the Knights of Columbus every Wednesday and she cooks truckloads of pierogies for church fund raisers. I love and admire my Grandma. I?ve been fortunate enough to have many strong women in my life to model myself after; Grandma is one of them.
"I wish to become the owner of -insert email distribution group name here-.
I need to rule with an iron fist. Thanks."
Classic.
An odd issue ye ol Princess stumbled across this afternoon I wanted to share with you, dear reader. Not because I do in fact, find it strange and interesting, but because I hope you can shed some light on this one?
The Old Timer and I were taking a lovely stroll through the hallways and a user stopped us with the issue in question. It sounded simple enough, so sure, let?s go take a looksee and be on about our day. The user wants one of the function keys to act as a shortcut for a command line window. Smooth. I can handle that. No so fast, lil Miss Fix IT! After about 15 minutes of trying to figure this simple task out, I was beginning to worry. I didn?t want to resort to a hacked workaround, especially when I stated, ?So, I can get it to work on F12?how?s that?? His response, with a smile, was ?Sure, F9 would be great!? Oh no pressure, no pressure at all! I knew he was joking, but he was right. He wanted something specific to work for him and it?s my job to find out the solution. So here we go?
The problem is this?.the shortcut portion of the properties window will not accept F9 and even if acceptable, F12 no longer functions properly. Hmmm quite the head scratcher as there are no open programs or windows to dictate why F9 or F12 are not acceptable choices. After much thinking and quite a bit of laughter between The Old Timer and I, we decided to reboot. Rebooting has served us well over the course of our IT years, but we did it out of entertainment more than anything. Upon rebooting, I was now able to input F9 in the proper field and alas, it worked! I can?t explain why a shortcut would need a reboot, especially on a XP system, but hey, things like this happen from time to time with computers. So here?s a shortcut that will now function, but if copied or altered in any way, it ceases to care what I tell it to do. Get this?I renamed the shortcut, but it would no longer work. Why would renaming a shortcut have that kind of effect? I wasn?t renaming a program executable here, it?s just a shortcut! We soon discovered that in order to get the renamed shortcut to function again, we had to reboot! What the fuck? All that being said, the user now has the functionality he was searching for and a shortcut named, ?F9 Me!? It?s a good thing I wasn?t more creative with my naming scheme, eh?
We went to see Bob Dylan Friday night at the Aragon Ballroom. It was my first show there and I must say, I was quite impressed with the venue. Every other year or so, Dylan does a small club tour. I suspect there were approximately 1,500 people who attended the show, so it was fairly cozy compared to the typical stadium show. Within these select few, it occured to me there is quite a diverse array of Dylan fans.
We setup camp in an area which shortly thereafter became the Hot Chick section (not qualifying by default, by any means), but the Hot Chick section none the less. This was certainly a factor for the young college boys in front of us and some of the more swingin old timers, so watching the dynamic develop was quite interesting. The sudden flock of pretty girls to the boys with all the smoke, then their sudden departure once it diminished into thin air. The bored blonde whose man decided he would pay no mind to her, despite her beauty, and focus on Bob and the fellow Dylan geek, a more plain girl, standing next to him. The older, more tired crowd reminiscing how they would be up in the thick of front row center if they felt their knees would hold up long enough. The young girl who is sending blatant signals to the dark and brooding boy with the more aggressive and outgoing friend?unable to shake the friend?s advances, eventually giving up on her original goal and heading into the arms of the friend who decides her attention was worth working for. Then there's the predicted return of the flock towards the end of the show for more good time smoke and ultimate false hope for the college boys.
It was a great show and although I admire Dylan?s work, the crowd watching entertained me immensely.
There?s just something about getting into the thick of a technical problem that gets your blood pumping, your mind all abuzz and your energy flowing. You pick up the phone, you hear the problem and think to yourself, ?Aw man, how am I ever gonna resolve this? It?s just not possible.? So you go about the usual suspects and pray your brain will catch up with your words so you will have something earth shattering to bring about to save the user?s day. Man?I live for this shit!
Interesting issue on tonight?s episode of ?Stump the Princess?. A call came in from the IT department in one of our other offices (don?t ask why). I pick up the phone, hear the issue and immediately crumple. The tech explained their user can?t connect to the mail server through his mail client. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, here?s the fuckin rub: the user connected to the domain with no issue and could browse about to his heart?s content, the account was in good standing and we could even ping the server via IP & name, so we had to throw those theories out the window. What the hell was going on?
The machine had recently been victim to a lazy hard drive, so a new one was called to action. It had been imaged and transferred over, so it was quite possible that was the source of our lil bug. We tooled about, flushing the DNS and performing other house cleaning functions to narrow things down. After removing the machine from the domain and adding it again, we discovered it was taking a more than reasonable time to populate into the mix and play well with others. Hmmmm?
Alas, The Brain came up with the final and quite simple solution. I was impressed, yet again. Care to guess what that solution was? Lunch goes to the individual who can guess it correctly?come on, what do you have to lose?
I have been contemplating going to E3 this May, but I?m not sure if I can swing it. I would really like to go and it sucks I have to take vacation time to attend, but I?m not on a game team, so it?s a bit understandable that I don't get the work-related free pass. All the same, I think it would be a blast, so it?s something tooling around my head at the moment?
It?s official?I?m uber fucking excited about baseball season. I printed and posted my Astros schedule today and now?now we wait.
The latest book on my nightstand is a book called, ?Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing? Once I finish it, I?ll give ya'll a rundown?