It’s three, three, three galleries in one! Take a look at The Working Life, a collection of images from around Entercom Portland.
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How the not-very-mighty have fallen.
It never ceases to amaze me that I can be so often amazed at what I see on the television when I go into the lunch room. Last time it was that steaming pile of excrement known as “Passions.” Today… something almost scarier.
The pitch must have gone something like this: “I have a great idea! Let’s take a semi-famous prop-comic from the 80’s and build a really crappy spot around his most famous bit of schtick! It can’t fail!”
So here’s Gallagher, yes that Gallagher, the center of a television commercial for Northwest Title Loans. He smashes words with his sledgehammer! How droll. Oh, but wait, he’s also digitally composited into a watermelon-shaped cartoon car!
Okay, so I’m not in sales, marketing or programming. Even I know that this is a hideous assault on all that is decent and holy. More to the point, I can’t see it working to create a positive impression of the business in question in the minds of the viewers.
Oh, crap. I’ve been in radio too long. I’m starting to think like them. Heaven help me.
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How stories become sagas
First came the word that twenty Compaqs were due, all loaded (down) with Windows XP. Then came the knowledge that our anti-virus system required an upgrade in order to support Windows XP.
And now… I have to engage in a comprehensive upgrade of the IBM Client Access software, both on the AS/400 itself and on the majority of our hundred-or-so desktop PCs.
According to IBM, one must run Client Access V5R1 with a service pack or (preferably) V5R2 in order to support Windows XP clients. We’re running V4R4. I now have a support request in to get the appropriate media to upgrade Client Access. Even if it shows up tomorrow, it’s still going to be the middle of next week before I can even start rolling out these Compaqs. And I don’t expect it to show up tomorrow, since Encoda Systems hasn’t bothered to respond to my support request yet.
Did I mention that nine more of the streaming servers will be arriving next week for me to prep? And that the top brass want those machines prepped and shipped off, oh, about yesterday-ish?
The XP rollout just went from annoying to infuriating, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it today but wait for other people to give me what I need. (Like, say, a cot in the next room, all the cocoa I can drink, copious amounts of chinese food, big stacks of music, and new versions of Norton Anti-Virus and IBM Client Access.)
Smart money says I’m working right through Christmas. I’m still taking Wednesday off to see Two Towers, though. Especially the way things are going lately.
Don’t mind the maniacal laughter, folks. It’s just Karel, trying to gather up the shreds of his sanity. (“You can’na fool me, there ain’t no sanity clause!” – Chico Marx, from some Marx Brothers movie. Possibly ‘Night At The Opera,’ but I’m not sure about that right now.)
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Work interferes with journal. Film at 11.
Monday: Spent until almost 2:00 desperately looking for a fix to the AS/400 issue only to find out it was a bad port on the 3Com switch. Unplugging the jack — yes, just unplugging the Cat-5 cable from the switch — caused the switch to fully reset itself. Whoops. The AS/400 is now jacked into a D-Link switch and so far I haven’t heard any complaints since. Could this be the second 3Com to go south this year?
Tuesday: Department Heads meeting in the morning, Access Control computer rebuild the rest of the day.
Of course there’s always the usual collection of small fires to fill out any given day. But that’s why you haven’t heard from me this past couple of days. And don’t expect things to get better any time soon.
Why?
The Compaqs are coming. The Compaqs are coming. Twenty of them, any time now.
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The daughter of all games.
Any computer geek worth his discarded ‘386 carcass knows about Scorched Earth, the self-proclaimed Mother Of All Games. Thanks to an enterprising (or at least supremely inspired) geek over in the U.K., you can play Scorch in glorious 3D!
No, really. Unlike so many other 2D-to-3D conversions, this one plays almost exactly like the original, and is just as much fun. You simply must try out the 3D version of Funky Bombs.
Many of the weapons from the later versions of the original game are present in some form, but batteries and the ability to move the tank haven’t been implemented. I’ll be watching the development of this game closely… almost as closely as I watch for the next Diablo II patch.
Scorched 3D -
They’re here, staring at me. Waiting.
Nineteen of the twenty expected new Compaq computers arrived today. (We already knew that the 20th machine was backordered. It’s okay.) They run Windows XP. I need to get them prepped and distributed as soon as I can so I can get back to the PD Streaming Project.
“But wait! No, really, wait. Sorry, Karel, but you can’t start prepping these machines until tomorrow. You see, the version of Norton AntiVirus you have isn’t recent enough to support XP. You have to wait until morning, by which time the folks at Corporate should have been able to push out the new version to your servers.”
Tomorrow morning I’ll be hitting the ground running, trying out Tapscan and the other Arbitron software in addition to figuring out the best way to install the Groupwise client. It should be… fun. Yeah, fun. Uh huh.
Oh yeah, and I’m going to snag one of these bad boys for my own evil purposes. Which is to say, I’m going to keep an XP-based machine on hand so I can learn the ins, outs and quirks. Color me strange but I don’t want to spend the next year making tech support visits where I look like a clueless newbie. I make a fool of myself often enough as it is, you know?