Via AccordionGuy, we have an air bubble suspended in a water droplet attached to a leaf. Afterward, we learn a few things.
It could only happen in space
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Low-gravity environment produces art.
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Just a little bit about me, and about my kids.
I wrote up a large-ish posting for one of the 3WA forums, then realized it would be perfect journal fodder. So here you go:
I’ve always been your basic easily-amused borderline-immature type. Why, just the other day I scored 69% pure on a 500-question purity test. Oh, the irony!
Spoonerisms (“scooter crew,” mwahahaha!) have always been part of my stock in trade, as are cheap puns and sex-based humor. Making fun of road signs and reader boards is a hobby. (On the side of a U-Haul building, where an “H” had gone missing: “Custom Itches.” Priceless.)
And then I became a father. And my children learned to speak. And life became ever so much more amusing!
We call them chipmunks, by the way, not farts. No, I don’t remember how that started.
I honestly, truly believe that my ability to act silly with my kids and bring out the silliness in them is my strongest parental skill. Let’s face it, my wife and I are both scarred survivors of childhood, having been unpopular introverted types. It’s painfully obvious that our son is a true child of ours, and so we are doing everything in our power to give him the confidence (and sense of humor) to help him survive what will unquestionably be his toughest years. Encouraging the responsible use of his remarkable powers of comedy is part of that preparation.
(In the past six months, I don’t think I’ve gotten the last word in. Not once. He’s ten years old and already funnier than his dad. I try to contain my jealousy…)
As for the little girl… we don’t know where she came from or how. She’s one of those instant charmers, a naturally gifted social goddess who has almost no enemies but creates enemies among those who vie for her favors. She’s nine going on fifteen. Whee.
This has wandered wildly OT, but let me try to get back to the point.
Among the dozens of silly names and games are Meep and Koosh, being a finger to the tip of the nose and a flat hand on the top of the head respectively. Random meeps and kooshes are part of the repertoire of affection in our household.
And then one day my daughter, the one who had never before shown signs of incipient comedic chops, got her hands on the Nerf “baseball bat,” bopped me on the top of the head with it and announced, “I am the Exe-Koosh-ener!”
I couldn’t see for the tears in my eyes after that one. Ah, was ever a father more proud of his progeny?
You’re so Immature! -
Mari’s Meme, “What would you do for?”
So here’s my answers to Mari’s “What would you do for”:
1 US Dollar – Say anything to the person giving me the dollar.
10 US Dollars – Say almost anything to some other person.
100 US Dollars – “You just bought yourself four hours of prime Grade-A tech support, my friend.”
1,000 US Dollars – Shave my head bald.
10,000 US Dollars – Wear a funny costume and stand in Pioneer Courthouse Square singing a bawdy ballad at the top of my lungs.
100,000 US Dollars – Wear nothing and stand in… well, you get the idea.
1,000,000 US Dollars – Tech support and odd jobs for life for you and your friends.
10,000,000 US Dollars – Move anywhere in the world and do the odd job tech support gig.
I could probably have come up with better answers, but it’s late and I’m distracted. So there. And in half an hour, the PPF cometh…
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Gracelessly Admitting Defeat
Let’s skip the “ado” and go right to the email I sent to my Corporate Boss a few minutes ago:
The story so far: Last summer, strapped for network storage space on the main office network, our hero researched alternatives and chose a Network Attached Storage device (the Snap! server) over attempting to upgrade the second RAID array in his existing Netware server. This solution cost about $2500.
Late last year problems arose; the Snap! server began a monthly cycle of crashes, costing the office a day of downtime on every occurrence. This became increasingly unacceptable, and Quantum’s tech support was lacking. (“We have no idea what’s wrong with your machine. We’d send you a replacement, but we don’t have any.”)
After one crash too many, more accurately two crashes on the same day, our hero swallowed his pride and admitted his mistake in choosing the Snap! appliance instead of expanding the Dell Poweredge server’s storage capacity. Hard drives were ordered, to the tune of about $1600.
Then the other shoe dropped. It is impossible, according to Dell, to delete only one array from a Poweredge 2300. One must remove all arrays, then recreate. This would mean fully reinstalling Netware onto the core office network server. All of a sudden, the “upgrading the Netware array” solution has become utterly unworkable.
The problem as it stands: Live with a day of downtime every month, in addition to the other problems the Snap! appliance is causing? Spend somewhere between two and five days attempting to recreate the Netware environment we currently enjoy, with no guarantee of completion date or even success of any kind? Drop another big bundle of cash on Some Other Solution?
I’m at a loss, and so I’m punting this up to the Powers That Be at the home office. I look forward* to discussing this at some very near date.
Yours, etc.
( * Okay, that’s a lie. I don’t look forward to anything involved in this giant ugly snafu anymore. I’m ashamed and disheartened at the whole damned affair. But we need a solution, so I’ll carry on until we have one.)
There are days when just being me is enough to wear me out. This is one of them.
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The BlogShare Reset Cometh
I stealthily added the BlogShares button over there on the left side a while ago, when I discovered that for some reason my site had “cracked $1000” and was thus available for share trading.
Today I learned that there’s a reset coming as BlogShares prepares to go live on May 1st. Accounts and cash balances are to be preserved, held shares are not. So I liquidated.
I think I did pretty well. I bought shares in J-Mo at 44c/ea. and sold ’em at $2.35/ea., while The People’s Republic Of Seabrook cost me 98c/ea. but sold for a very nice $18.62 per share. And then there was the cashing out of my own pitiful little website’s shares, all of which leaves me with a net worth of $3,593.95 to carry into the reset. Not too shabby, eh?
Now I just need to figure out how to crank up the worth of this site. Ideas?
BlogShares -
Random Post-Weekend Entry Du-jour Thingie
First, the weekend. I didn’t do anything. No, really. On Saturday I started and finished a scenario in Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Unless you count making a top high score as an accomplishment, I accomplished nothing Saturday.
Sunday wasn’t much better. In the morning I started a brand new Assassin in Diablo II. By nightfall she was a level 21 in Act III and had points stored up in anticipation of hitting level 24 so she could start dumping points into her two main traps. Yes, I’m trying out a Trapper build. I’m astonished at how effective traps can be, especially compared to the cumbersome and somewhat buggy Martial Arts skills. (“What do you mean, I right-clicked on the monster and nothing happened… again? Argh! Stupid charge-release skills!”)
And then it was Monday, and while two days of hardcore gaming hadn’t entirely cured the anxieties of eleven straight days of work, it had numbed me to the point where I didn’t resist heading to the office. This is probably a good thing. I didn’t accomplish anything at work today, either, except resolve two stupid email-related problems.
You see, Lancelot has been replaced by Mass. (Yes, the box I had so much trouble with recently is now almost fully operational.) Today I intended to install Courier IMAP. I followed the instructions, installed the software, ran the start-up command as instructed… and could not log in from any machine at all. Argh!
Almost five hours of starting, restarting, reinstalling, poking, prodding and cussing finally led me to try the other startup script provided. Voila! Gee, it was so effing easy…
But wait, there’s more! After telling all of the other servers to start sending their little alerts and what-not to Mass, I realized that Mass was incapable of receiving email. “Huh?” It had worked before, and at first I was convinced that the firewall was screwing things up. No, of course not. See, had I thought at first to look at Qmail’s logs to see if it was detecting connection attempts, I’d have known that I’d broken one of the configuration files shortly after bringing email online. For the want of an ‘=’, the server was lost…
And that, folks, is how a guy like me blows an perfectly good eight-hour workday straight to hell. Sad, wot?
To highlight my utter sadness quotient, I was prodded into taking a 500-question purity test. (Look at Lil’s current NOTD; I’m too lazy to copy and paste linkage tonight.) My dear friends all scored in what we shall call the “lower half” of the percentile range. Not me, though.
I’m 69% pure.
On the one hand, “sixty-nine, dude!” On the other, how can my friends stand to be around someone so relatively square? It must be the power of contrast. That, or my stunning charm and personality.
No, that wasn’t meant as a joke, so you can stop laughing now. Thanks.
And now for more gaming fun. Alex and I spent a very enjoyable hour or two this evening playing Team Holomatch in Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. He and I put on our Johnny Bravo models and went around killing Gauron, Janeway, Seven of Nine and The Tick. Repeatedly. Much laughter ensued. Think of it as a father/son bonding experience. “Woo! You totally smacked that little fairy, didn’t you! Ah, that’s my boy. Hah! Did you see that shot? Damn, I’m good.”
Anyway, tomorrow evening I’m to spend the evening with Lilith, Geoffrey and whoever else happens to be at their place. I’m looking forward to it, oh yes indeed. Talk about incentive for peeling myself out of bed in the morning!
And that’s just about enough out of me for tonight. It’s amazing that I approached this entry expecting to only produce three or four paragraphs. This proves once again that I’m entirely too enamored of my own cleverness and the sound of my voice. Then again, if you weren’t just a bit impressed by it, you wouldn’t be reading this. If you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed smug now…