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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • One for the kids, two for the Sci-Fi geeks

    I suppose there are worse things I could be doing with this space than to highlight amusing webcomics I’ve been reading lately, right?

    First, one for the rugrats: While VG Cats is often tasteless, disturbing and generally Not Appropriate For Children, occasionally there’s an entry that I can share with anybody. Under this heading I present Exhibit P, for “Pokemans.” Having played the original Red, Blue and Yellow versions, it’s nice to see that very little has changed over the years. (To understand the reference in the comic’s title I direct your attention to Exhibit M, for “Cat Macros.”)

    Next, one for the Sci-Fi geeks, especially those who also don’t care for door-to-door proselytizers: Home On The Strange has a pair of delightful entries (#211 and #212) up this week showcasing the debate on whether Jesus Christ or the last of the Timelords makes a better saviour. (I’d tell you my favorite line from the two strips, but that’d be giving away the punchline.)

    There you go. My work here is done, at least for now. (Oh, if only my work week was done…)

  • Literacy Meme, Belated

    Well, it took me just about long enough to get to this, didn’t it? I’m going to use Mari’s version as my base, ’cause she based hers off of Lil’s rendition, and the idea is to keep adding on, so… yeah.

    Oddly enough, I was able to add on, to the tune of two Stephen King books (I know, I’m as shocked as you are), one Russian literary work (by Solzhenitsyn, who I placed right after Dostoyevsky), and one other additional author because dammit, his stuff is among my favorite reading material of all time (Raymond E. Feist). That way whoever lifts my list will have just that much more material to work with. Cue maniacal laughter, here.

    That said, I chose not to add Anne McCaffrey. That’s more work than I really want to go to at this point. Sorry. Anyway, let’s get on with the meme itself, shall we?
    (more…)

  • The House Finally Landed

    A bit more than a year ago I made a comment, quietly, just to my friends, that a particular person involved in a rather unpleasant incident had painted a target on their backside with a caption reading, “This Person Is Trouble.” I predicted that it was only a matter of time before the Powers That Be at a particular place of business decided to insist that this very special individual go away.

    It’s not often that I make accurate predictions.

    Ding, dong, the witch is dead fired. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go revel in the shadenfreude for a while.

    (If you have no idea what I’m talking about? It’s okay. You’re not really missing out on anything.)

  • Depressing Political Stuff

    Feel free to ignore this post if you’re (one of the following)…

    a) …going to take me to task for my political views. I’m not here to engage in a debate. I just found a particular interesting article online and wanted to link it. That’s all. You aren’t going to convince me that I’m wrong, and I’m not going to convince you likewise.
    b) …fed up with the state of things in general and don’t want to add more fuel to that particular internal fire. The following link contains very little that’s actually news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but the presentation and conclusions are noteworthy.
    c) …hoping for snarky commentary and/or amusing anecdotes and/or silly memes from Yours Truly. Nothing like that is on tap at the moment. It’s been that kind of week month year, I’m afraid. I apologize. Maybe later.

    Still here? Okay, then go read Ending The Empire.

  • Spider-Man 3

    I’m coming late to this party, but not as late as I am to the TMNT party. (Yes, that’s a review I should have gotten around to weeks ago. Whoops.) Please note that I’m making no attempt to hide spoilers here. It’s my firm belief that nothing I say here will “ruin” your enjoyment of the movie, but if you disagree with that on principle then you should probably wait to read this posting until after you’ve seen the film.

    I’ll wait.
    (more…)

  • The Joys of Managed Services

    I love our managed services platform-of-choice, Kaseya. It allows me to run complex scripts, remote control machines in a number of ways, and generally stay on top of all the fiddly bits involved in keeping disparate groups of machines in peak condition. Because computers take everything literally, however, sometimes you get “critical” alerts like: “The amount of installed RAM on Machine X has changed from 3327MBytes to 3326MBytes.”

    Someone stole one megabyte of RAM! Quick, to the Batmobile! (Or, maybe not.)

    Then again, sometimes the best platform in the world can’t save you from the vagaries of the server vendor. Take HP (please! ha ha) and their instructions for monitoring drive failure. “Watch for Event ID 1214,” they say, and then when the drive fails the actual logged error shows up with Event ID 1202. It’s not even that their instructions are wholly incorrect, as the last time a drive failed it did use the “correct” ID. Unfortunately, last night’s drive failure at one of our biggest clients used the “wrong” ID.

    Guess who looks bad when we “drop the ball” in such a fashion, eh? Oh, I’ve fixed that one. Now I just have to wonder how many other little traps are waiting to spring…

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