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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • Where oh where has my little day gone…?

    So I staggered out of the office a little before 9am, having put in damned near 23 hours straight. Yes, the voicemail system works. Whew.

    I only vaguely remember the long hike downtown (stupid frelling bus service on Macadam anyway) and the MAX ride and the walk the rest of the way home, let alone the staggering into the bedroom and shucking clothing to collapse on the bed.

    I do, however, remember waking up at about 2:30 drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. Man, my room gets hot in the midafternoon. So I got up and stumbled downstairs with a book to read and grabbed a bite to eat.

    My accomplishment today? I finished off that massive volume of Arthur C Clarke’s short stories I picked up a few months ago. Good stuff, mostly.

    Then I decided to go have a real meal. Mmmm, ribs.

    Now? I’m taking it easy, but in a few minutes the roomie and I are going to attempt to make better use of our living room space by virtue of assembling an “entertainment center” cabinet to put all of my equipment in. This… should be fun. Heh.

    At least now I’m awake enough for it.

  • Twelve hours and counting…

    We’re upgrading the voicemail server tonight. And so, I’ve been here for a bit more than twelve hours. I don’t know when we’ll be done. Even better: I need to be here first thing in the morning, no matter when I’m allowed to leave tonight, because of the general state of panic there’ll be among the rest of the staff about how to access voicemail and faxes.

    Are we having fun yet? Huh?

  • Blondestar

    via Tech Support Comedy…

    Blondestar (mp3)

  • Odd name for a quiz, but okay.

    You know that if Lil’ takes it and then Mari takes it that I’m very likely to take it too. So, according to the Jenny Turpish Slapped Me quiz… and if that’s not the oddest name for a quiz yet, I clearly need to get out more…

    Wackiness: 44/100
    Rationality: 44/100
    Constructiveness: 74/100
    Leadership: 28/100

    You are an SECF—Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a hippie. You are passionate about your causes and steadfast in your commitments. Once you’ve made up your mind, no one can convince you otherwise. Your politics are left-leaning, and your lifestyle choices decidedly temperate and chaste.

    You do tremendous work when focused, but usually you operate somewhat distracted. You blow hot and cold, and while you normally endeavor on the side of goodness and truth, you have a massive mean streak which is not to be taken lightly. You don’t get mad, you get even.

    Please don’t get even with this web site.

    Er, okay. Can I try that again, please?

    Wackiness: 44/100
    Rationality: 38/100
    Constructiveness: 72/100
    Leadership: 28/100

    You are an SECF—Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a hippie. You are passionate about…

    Blah blah blah, okay, whatever.

    Weirdo quiz. *sigh*

  • Wait, you want me to do real work?

    I rolled out of bed much like usual… late and groggy. I made it to work on time, fueled only by a toasted english muffin.

    And was promptly hauled down the street for a “little cleaning project.”

    You see, the Promotions department(s) clean out their storage sheds about every two years. This involves calling in a dumpster, usually, and this time was certainly no exception. Fired up with inspiration, my boss decided that we, the Engineering department, should also clean out our storage sheds. Woo hoo, fun!

    Hurricane (the “remotes guy”) and I hauled stuff out of both Engineering units all morning and a bit into the afternoon, aided by a number of Promotions interns from 94/7fm. We even took the time to sweep the floors and reorganize things a bit.

    Did I mention we ended up calling in two more additional dumpsters?

    Still, it was not quite the kind of work I’m used to. I’m home now, covered in dust and dirt and sweat, sore in various odd places, and more than a bit groggy. I don’t regret it, though… I can tell my body needed the exercise, and I managed not to overextert myself. (Well, the truth of that will be told in the morning by how sore my back is. Hmm.)

    This sort of thing is most definitely not in my job description…

  • If at first you don’t succeed, do something else?

    I finally assembled all of the spare parts. Motherboards, processors, RAM, hard drives, power supplies, video cards. Somewhere in all of that silicon and plastic would be the genesis of a new, albeit clunky and kludgy, Linux-based home computer.

    Alas, it was not meant to be. After hours of testing, only one combination of CPU, motherboard, power supply and video card would achieve anything more than the barest sign of functioning… and not one combination would even POST. Argh.

    I ranted in frustration for a short while, and then I decided to turn my attention to something else geeky, something almost equally worthwhile.

    I attached the cassette deck to my new receiver!

    And that didn’t work out very well, actually. It turns out that, according to the manual for my Panasonic A/V receiver, one cannot record audio or video from one analog source to another. Helluva “feature” if you ask me, but that’s okay. I worked around it through the simple expedient of attaching the tape deck directly to the computer.

    The roomie and I then spent a happy few hours combing through our respective cassette collections and pulling off songs we’d long been yearning to have in digital form. He went for an XTC song and a few tracks from a band I’d never even heard of (the name of which now escapes my recall), and I plucked B-sides off a couple of “cassingles” in addition to a couple of stand-out tracks on otherwise-forgettable albums. (Let’s face it, David Gilmour’s old solo album really only has one good song on it.)

    I love that living-room PC, lemme tell ya. Not only does it make a great myHTPC platform (all the better to watch anime with), but thanks to the LiveDrive hardware and CoolEdit 2000 software I was able to pull in audio from those old tapes and clean it up in a jiffy.

    The results speak, as it were, for themselves. So, who wants a copy of a B-side track from the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe album released back in ‘89?

    ABWH – Vultures (8 megs, Ogg)

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