greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Geekery

  • All platforms, eh?

    Craigslist, usually a treasure trove of job postings, is almost a dry well this week. One of the very few recent entries in the main category I check even turned out to be, let’s say, miscategorized. (“Work from home! Type things for us!” Er, no.)

    And then we have what might have looked to be an interesting job opportunity…

    Part of the technical support team for a state-wide data communications network connecting WAN to LANs.

    Been there, done that. It’s a contract gig, but if that’s what it takes to put food on the table…

    The team is responsible for network security, disaster and recovery, video, voice and data communications, protocols, software and hardware products and peripherals…

    Neat. Sounds like a well-rounded JOAT kind of gig. Just what I’m looking for!

    …that run on all platforms including Mainframe,…

    You don’t capitalize that, sir. It’s not a proper name, it’s a generic noun. So what type of platform is it? Inquiring minds jobseekers want to know.

    …Microsoft Exchange,…

    This is correctly named in the posting, but whether it’s a “platform” is a flamewar discussion best left to people with more idle time than myself.

    …Microsoft Windows XP…

    Also correctly named, this is only a “platform” at the desktop level. Consider this not so much a boneheaded selection but more as a part of the pattern to be revealed.

    …and Microsoft Server 2000.

    Aha! I now know their definition of “platform.” It’s “anything with an M at the start of its name.” Problem is, they named this wrong. It’s Windows 2000 Server.

    Here’s the thing. If you’re advertising “all platforms,” you might want to include concrete examples of platforms that don’t originate in Redmond, Washington. No UNIX or variants and derivatives are listed, no Mac, nothing but the mysterious “Mainframe”…

    Duties: […] Configure client software, i.e. ODBC drivers, Outlook and Exchange e-mail access, protocols, adapters, and TN3270 host emulation.

    …which I suspect is an IBM AS/400 (great merciful heavens, why not just say so?) based on that TN3270 emulation notation. This makes me wonder why they’re not using 5250 instead, though.

    Of course I’ll never know, because…

    This position requires a valid driver’s license. Travel throughout the state may be required.

    In this instance, I think it’s for the best. Don’t you?

  • Feed me, Google.

    For a good long while now, I’ve used Feed on Feeds as my aggregator of choice. It requires a bit of setup on the webserver end, but I like tinkering around with my webserver. All went well up until the point we were forced to move to a new server, and then another problem cropped up with one of the software upgrades to said new server.

    I didn’t notice the latest problem until this evening. It’s the first time I’ve logged into the server itself in quite some time. (To make note of the glorious uptime we’ve finally achieved would be to invite disaster, so I won’t.) Looking in my home directory, I was horrified to see thousands of files named “update-quiet.php.XXXX” where the X’s are numbers anywhere from 1 to 2800. You see, I was forced to switch from using ‘/usr/bin/GET’ to using ‘wget’ for running the FoF updates, and the ‘wget’ utility pretty much insists on creating a local file. Ugh. (There’s now an entry in my crontab to clear those files periodically, but still. Ugh.)

    FoF has given me other problems over the months, and since there’s not been an update to the software in ages, I pondered alternatives. “Hmm,” I thought, “what about that Google feed reader they were making noise about a while back?” When they first announced it, I tried uploading my exported feed list to it only to get a response equivalent to, “Huh?”

    So imagine my surprise when I went to look at “my” Google Reader page and found that it’s been quietly pulling down entries for… well, however long it’s been since I gave it my OPML file in the first place. (Memory isn’t my strong suit.) I had to go through and clean out some feeds for sites I don’t read anymore, and add in a few new ones, but other than that… it’s alive and kicking, and surprisingly slick.

    For the foreseeable future, then, I’m going to let Google be my web-based aggregator. If it does at least a good of a job as FoF and without the headaches, I’ll make the switch permanent. If anyone else wants to give it a whirl but lacks a Gmail invite (are there any of you left without one?) just let me know.

    Epilogue: The very moment I tried to post this entry, the server crashed. See what I mean about mentioning that month of uptime? Argh. I suspect the only way to stop the crashes is to double the RAM again… but that’s another $20 per month that I can’t afford right now. Shoot me now?

  • Why Spelling Counts

    Issue 7 of the City of Heroes (and Villains) game came out today, so I’ve rolled a Thugs Mastermind named Carmine Santiago. (He’s dressed mostly in red, and his biographical data reads, “Where in the world IS he…?” This is all Geoffrey’s fault. Heh.) As I was rolling through the Tutorial Zone, I noticed a fellow neophyte villain sporting what seemed like an odd name…

    Me: Zion’s Furry, eh? Is that “Furry” or “Fury”?
    Zion’s Furry: Furry.
    Me: So Zion has you dressing up in animal costumes? Interesting.
    Zion’s Furry: [Disconnecting in 29… 28… 27… 26…]
    Me: *snicker*

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take my new thug-wrangler for a spin…

  • Your Bad, Geeky Pun For Today

    A little bit of geek humor to make your day complete:

    “May the 4th be with you.”

    Go on. You know you want to use this yourself at some point today, don’t you? Don’t you?

  • Weekend Bits O’ Random

    Here are some tidbits of life, geekery and what-not:

    • I may, in fact, have been able to salvage the images from the old gallery after all. (First I thought I had them, then I figured I’d lost them, now I think I have them again. We’ll see…)
    • On top of being unemployed, rent is going up. Whee. As a side note, I have about a month of money left. Also, whee.
    • The kids came over today, and we took the opportunity to introduce Kylanath to Settlers of Catan. She had herself a fine, fine streak of Beginner’s Luck Skill and won herself the game. Go figure. (Mind you, the kids both were one point away from winning when the end came. Go, kids!)
    • It’s possible that the firewall trick I used to potentially prevent brute-force login attacks on this webserver is responsible for the server’s periodic unavailability this past week. I’m going to try another technique and see what happens.
    • The job opportunity I really had my hopes up for seems to have dried up completely. That’s a damned shame, really, ’cause I wanted that job badly, and not just because, you know, I’m freaking out about finances. Grr.
    • I’m hanging in there. Barely sometimes, though.

    I could really, really stand for something good to happen. You know, just for the variety.

  • Dining Distractions

    To kick off the reconstructon of my gallery, I would like to share with you a couple of silly images I snapped this afternoon with my Treo 650’s “camera.” (I use the term loosely; it’s only slightly better than the 600’s.) For starters, I got quite a laugh out of this fortune cookie fortune, especially when paired with its packaging.

    “An old friend will introduce you to new people and pleasures.” This, from a package labeled “Lucky Boy”? Oh, my.

    Later, after suffering what could most generously be described as “lackluster service” at Gustav’s, this is how I expressed my disappointment:

    The prime rib french dip was quite tasty, but that’s about the nicest thing I can say about our dining experience this evening. (Why did I have ketchup bowls available to use for the eyes? It’s hard to say, considering we both told Jacqueline, she of the overdone makeup, that we didn’t want any for our fries, thanks.)

    And, before anyone mentions it, yes I know there’s a way to turn the date stamp off. That is, I know that now. Future uploads from my phone… that is to say, pictures I take in the future which make it into my gallery will lack green numbering. (I have one or two pictures saved that will make great future posting fodder. Bwahaha.)

Calendar

April 2026
S M T W T F S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  

My Links