Author: Karel Kerezman

Mouse Identification Training
The product is called “VMware.” It is, in effect, a server that allows you to host a number of virtual computers on a single machine. The geek value for something like this is through the roof, which makes the following instructions found in the upgrade documentation terribly amusing.
8. Select your mouse.

Here are some helpful mouse identification hints:
- If the connector is round, your mouse is a PS/2 or a Bus mouse.
- If the connector is trapezoidal with nine holes, it is a serial mouse.
- If the connector is a flat rectangle with a slot, it is a USB mouse.
I’ll grant you that their instructions are wholly accurate. However, I question the judgement of the person who thinks (s)he has any business at all installing or upgrading a sophisticated piece of software but doesn’t know how to tell one type of pointing device from another!
17 July, 2006
It’s that time of year again.

Blogathon 2006!

I can’t participate this year, unfortunately. I just came off of nearly four solid months of stress and panic and am now adjusting to a whole new kind of job and the new sleep schedule that comes with it. So. Who’s going to take my place, eh?

Do it for me. Do it for Cat. Do it for whatever charity you see fit. Just, do it!

12 July, 2006
Bizarre Coincidence, Wot?

This week marks the 17th anniversary of my arrival in Portland. I moved here from Concrete, WA when I was 17 years old, so I’ve made the Rose City my home for an entire half of my life now. Before Concrete (the town in which I spent my senior year) I spent a brief time in Anacortes, WA preceeded by another brief stint in Des Moines, WA. Oddly enough, my girlfriend currently lives in Des Moines, albeit not on a small boat like I did. My junior year (and my absolute favorite year of school, ever) was spent in Bellevue, WA and my sophomore year took place in Kent, WA.

We moved to Kent from Hillsboro, OR after Mom hooked up with her newest husband at the time. Now, here’s where it gets weird. I attended Poynter Middle School, located just off Cornell Road. Our apartment was right across Cornell from the school’s athletic field. (I used to watch Robotech in the morning until the moment the credits rolled, at which point I’d grab my things and scamper at high speed so as not to be late for school.)

Yesterday I started work at Resource One, which is located… well, let’s just say it’s incredibly close. Check this out:

(Image courtesy of Google Maps, with minor edits by Yours Truly)

The green arrow is my current workplace. The blue arrow marks the approximate location (it was a long time ago, so maybe I got the wrong building) of the apartment that Mom, Sis and I lived in… about twenty years ago. The purple arrow indicates the middle school I attended at that time. (For reference, if you could “scroll” the image above so you could see what’s just off to the right, you’d find the Hillsboro airport.)

Consider that I’ve barely set foot in Hillsboro more than a couple of times since I moved away, and then consider that I’m now working a figurative stone’s throw from where I used to live. Freaky, isn’t it?

6 July, 2006
Morning person? Me?

I face a number of challenges in my new job. For instance, I need to learn one arcane system around which our tasking and billing revolve and another slightly less arcane system around which my primary job description revolves. I also need to learn and become comfortable with the process by which I accept, resolve and document individual tasks. There’s also the matter of tracking what I’m doing (and for whom) for any given quarter-hour of the workday.

All of this pales in comparison to my biggest challenge, however. You see, it turns out that my schedule is to work from 8:00am to 5:00pm each weekday. Factor in the hour and a half of transit time (walk to MAX station, wait for and catch MAX, ride MAX for about 50 minutes, walk from station to office) and that means I need to get out of bed no later than twenty minutes after five o’clock in the morning.

5:20 in the A.M.? Are you kidding me? I’m going to be a zombie! I may be getting home at nearly the same time that I used to when I worked at “that other place,” but I’m getting out of bed a whole two hours earlier.

Well, maybe I’ll adjust beautifully. I won’t know until I try. Suffice to say that the prospect is daunting, which when added to all of the other daunting parts of my new job results in my having to fight down the occasional wave of feeling utterly out of my depth.

We’ll find out, won’t we?

6 July, 2006
Employed!

No more “unenjoyment” for this little grey duck! I just received and accepted a job offer, and I will probably start work Wednesday morning. I’ll go into more detail about the gig itself when (and if) I’m sure it’s appropriate to do so, but suffice to say that it’s an in-the-office job managing servers and systems from an administrative and troubleshooting standpoint, and serving as a “first contact” support mechanism for clients. The pay is comfortable, the job will be challenging (in terms of both initial adjustment and long-term activities) and I get to set the standard (and develop the processes) for what amounts to a new kind of job position within the company.

I have some experience with that sort of thing. This time around I know what to look for right from the get-go, however. For instance, I’m already thinking about how I’m going to document… everything. (You think I’m kidding. Hah!)

Maybe my overall stress levels won’t go down very much in the immediate future, but at least it’s a positive kind of stress, the “do I really think I can do this?” kind instead of the “I’m doomed I’m doomed I’m doomed” kind. Three and a half months of “I’m doomed” really took the joy out of life. I want my joy back.

(Hey, maybe in a few weeks I’ll be able to afford more RAM for this webserver. Cool.)

Bye bye, job hunting. Hello, new challenge!

3 July, 2006
Highly Motivated

This’ll be it for today. That’s not a guarantee that I will (or won’t) make more tomorrow, mind you.

First up we have a trio of posters inspired by City of Heroes screenshots I found on my computer. I hope that the humor is accessible for non-gaming folks:

The last entry for today has a bit of backstory. If you don’t know how I came to be “the little grey duck,” the following poster may confuse you:

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite phrases was “not this little grey duck!” It got to the point where people began calling me “ducky,” which (of course) caused me to drop that catchphrase like a hot rock. The damage, however, was done. The “ducky” has been following me around ever since. When the Internet Age began, however, after bumping up against a few all-too-popular pop-culture nickname choices, that “little grey duck” came to mind after long consideration and… the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s all about turning lemons into lemonade, right?

29 June, 2006