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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • Past, Present, Future – Round Seventeen

    I’d like to begin by welcoming the dozens who arrive here via The Memes List, and remind you (politely, ever so politely) that you are encouraged (very, ever so very) to leave a comment (it’s the “quack me up” or “wisequacks” link at the bottom of any given entry) so we all (okay, just me, to stroke my ego) know where to find your answers (assuming you don’t flee in disgust swearing off the whole thing as a bad job).

    Was that silly enough for you? No? Good. Let’s proceed, then.

    PAST: I can’t believe you used to do that. I mean, really. Didn’t anyone tell you that you shouldn’t? The mess! The smell! We won’t even go into what could happen if you got caught. You didn’t get caught, right? Right?

    PRESENT: If you were faced with the choice right this minute would it be the leafy green homogenized free-range cajun-style, or the scented glossy well-coiffed hardwood islander variety? Hurry, hurry, we don’t have all day!

    FUTURE: The language barrier has largely been surmounted, but the passive-agressive alien race with the lovely aquamarine eyes and the poison stingers and the remarkably prehensile appendages still has so much to learn about the myriad cultures of homo sapiens. You’ve been called in as an expert on the obscure subject of…?

    For the record, as if anything said here counted as a valid method of tracking reality, I don’t smoke anything. I don’t even like smoked salmon all that much. If you want to share the silliness with your readers then I suggest you link back to the PPF using something that looks a lot like http://greyduck.net/ppf/ or whatever it translates to in your extraterrestrial tongue. Or speech-assist appendage, anyway. Sheesh, you aliens are so damned weird anyway. Why can’t you just have two arms, two legs and one set of genitalia like the rest of us? Freaks.

  • No, I’m the stupid one.

    It wasn’t Fisher, it wasn’t our own corporate guys, in fact nothing at all happened.

    When someone in our building tried to send email out to someone at KWJJ after the time when the corporate team had set up our mail system to accept KWJJ email, is it any wonder that our mail system assumed that mail destined for kwjj.com should stay in the system?

    The fact that this only dawned on me this morning while on the phone with my corporate boss (who was understandibly upset at the accusatory voicemail I left him yesterday) is not exactly one of the highlights of my work week.

    I suppose I can take some small comfort in the fact that the corporate guys didn’t think of it either, and were quite baffled by the failure to send email to KWJJ since Fisher hadn’t changed the MX records yet.

    Oops. Once again, Karel overreacts without thinking things through. It seems to be a bad habit I need to work on breaking.

  • Grr. Argh.

    Bite The First:

    So we’re given a budget for new computers, since the machines currently at JJ aren’t fit for bringing onto our network. That’s all well and good. I went to our wonderful CDW rep and asked for a quote on enough computers to equip the people coming over, and enough Netware licenses to get them on our server.

    And then I asked her for a bigger quote, adding some machines and network switches to the mix. I looked at the final quote, called it Good, and fumbled my way through the paperwork to get everything ordered.

    Two hours after I faxed over the purchase order, I looked at the quote again and noticed something lacking: The Netware licenses. Gah! Dumbassed me! A frantic bit of phone tag later, our wonderful CDW rep promised a fix, and disaster was narrowly averted. Didn’t help my frame of mind much, though.

    Bite The Second:

    The plan for migrating the “former Fisher folks” onto our email system called for Fisher to make the change to the email domains tomorrow, after confirming that everything was ready on our end.

    For instance, it would be unwise to repoint the domains if the new email server doesn’t have the accounts set up, wouldn’t it? And since I’d only very recently received the list of accounts, I was spending the afternoon entering those to the server.

    One of the ladies from the business office came to ask why emails to folks over at JJ were bouncing back. I looked at the bounce message and sure enough, Fisher had already made the change. Gah! Dumbassed Fisher! I scrambled back to my workstation and cranked out the rest of the addresses, and now all I can do is hope that there weren’t too many bounced messages.

    Mind you, now we have a bit of a problem. Even if mail is coming here now, that means nobody over there can get to it. It looks like we’ll be making the WAN change earlier than we’d planned.

    Which doesn’t help my frame of mind much…

  • Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!

    After nearly six full months during which it came be known to its participants as the Amish Tech Support Live F***ing Forever Pool…

    … we have two, count ’em two, deaths that count as scores for some of the players.

    Please note that we here at The Little Grey Duck do not make a habit of celebrating the death of other human beings. Unless, of course, those human beings really really piss us off. This is all in good fun, and the humor-impaired can jolly well bugger right off.

    To follow the fun and frolic, click the provided link, or use the handy “Death” icon down at the bottom of the left-side column.
    Amish Tech Support Dead Pool

  • Happy Birthday To You (Two)

    Birthday The First:

    Say hello and a belated happy birthday to Dawn, who turned a year older on Tuesday. I wasn’t able to attend her birthday celebrations, so I can’t tell you how they went.

    Birthday The Second:

    Say hello and a belated happy birthday to Lilith, who turned a year older on Wednesday. I was able to attend her birthday dinner last night, the write-up of which is available at Mari’s thingie.

    Should it worry me that they’re both into Neopets and purple things? Perhaps…

    (Update: Argh. It’s just my luck that I link to their websites and Diary-X is down. Double-argh, since both of them are on D-X. Hey, another coincidence?)

    (Update II, Electric Boogaloo: And what was up with that waitress, eh? The one who insisted I looked like her co-worker, John? And had to invite other waitstaff to stare at me in amazement? Not to mention her determination to fill me with liquor. Wow. I mean, she was nice and cute and all, but still. Weird stuff.)

    (Update III, The Search For Spork: There, are you happy now, Your Imperial Highness? *smirk*)

    (Update IV, Humpbacks R Us: Diary-X is back. Go forth and leave them happy birthday comments. Yes, that is a direct order, damn you!)

  • Age of Mythology rocks!

    When Wendi came to pick me up from work yesterday, she had Hannah as well as Nzhone with her. Sure enough, a while after we got home Hannah’s parents Amy and Michael came by. We talked and talked for a while, and the discussion of games led us to the idea of trying for some multiplayer Age Of Mythology.

    A bit of backstory might be in order. You see, I have loved each iteration of the Age Of Empires game series. Each is better than the one before, and the Age II expansion is one of my favorite games of all time.

    So here comes Michael offering me a chance to dive headfirst into the latest Age game. Woo hoo!

    Long story short, we got it installed and networked, and the four of us (Amy Michael Wendi Myself) played a game through. I came through with a Wonder win, though technically Wendi finished her Wonder first (but had it knocked down, whoopsie!).

    Yes… I have a new toy… mwahahaha!

    (Gaming addict? Moi? Say it ain’t so.)

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