Saturday, January 8, 2000

Nothing New . . .

 . . . to report.  Weird day of errand running but, that's about it.  Brian bought a new computer battle game of some sort at Costco this afternoon so I'd be amazed if any of us sees him the rest of the day.  He's going to help a friend/neighbor move tomorrow and has to be up at the crack-o-dawn on a Sunday to do it so that should be interesting.

Later that same night . . .

Repair on Laptop Update

This morning, about an hour after I got to work, I had another BSOD episode.  When I reopened the system and closed my files, I re-booted the system and put another SAR into the IS System.  Darryl, the SysAdmin who came over to fix the computer on Wednesday, came over to explain the cause of the first BSOD and what was happening today.  (In addition to the BSOD exception error, I also had a system lock-up where a Ctrl-Alt-Del-- 3-key salute didn't work!!)  He talked about memory chips being fried even though it was a new hard drive and, if something is trying to write to those memory chips, its going to get locked up or go into an exception error because it can't write to it.  (Does this make sense to you?)  Anyway, on Tuesday, when I'm not in the office, he's going to take my laptop and tear it apart, find out the problem and, hopefully, put it back together.  He was surprised that mine is the only ThinkPad 600 in the department; everyone has a 600E.  There is a "spare" hidden someplace but only the director knows where it is; if needed, I'll have them configure that one for me and, once again, transfer my files to a second hard drive.

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New Eyes

My new glasses came in today and I picked them up this afternoon; I've had them on for an hour and it is definitely becoming more interesting as time goes on trying to become adjusted to them.  I need progressive lenses because I really have pretty good distance vision but EVERYTHING is a blur up close. Now nothing is a blur up close unless I don't have my head tilted the right way to accommodate the progression of the lenses.

So far, I've adjusted the tilt of my monitor, the keel of my mouse pad, my chair and my chair again.  My right shoulder already hurts from the difference that the adjustment of my mouse pad and height of my chair has made for the muscles in my right arm.  I'm having to adjust my head quite often so my neck is getting a little stiff, too.  Hmmm, Brian and I decided to make it a snacking night instead of real food.  Now that I don't have to cook, maybe I'll haul out my new knitting needles (size 17!) and see if I can strain myself some more!

Timing

Actually, the timing of a sore shoulder couldn't come at a better time, if there is such a thing as "good timing" on pain.  Next Tuesday, as a reward for the hellacious quarter-end we had last week, we are all going to a day spa for pedicures, manicures, facials or massages.  Before you get too excited about coed massages, don't!  I work with women which is why we can do something like this in the first place.  But, since tomorrow is my regular nail and pedicure day, I'll be opting for the facial and massage, thank you very much!  So, just in case my right shoulder doesn't get used to the position of my mouse pad, at least I'll have a massage handy next week.  Ahh, the life, eh?

As much as I complain about the stress and the hours of this job, I really enjoy the heck out of it!  Next month, the CFO is taking us someplace that is requiring them to buy tickets in advance-- they won't tell us what it is but say that we have to dress nicely and will be gone from 11am to 8pm.  Personally, I'm hoping for a theatre matinee in the city (SFO) but, we won't know until next month some time.  I'll keep you posted as the events unfold.

Silly Idea

Since I was on the subject of Star Trek last night, a few weeks ago Brian said something about not knowing if I had a name for my computer or if I just called it whatever rolled out of my mouth when I was ticked off at something it did (read: operator error that I won't ever admit).  I've been thinking about it since then and decided that men have very silly ideas and one of them in particular is naming inanimate objects.  I have never been one to name a car but I'll betcha Brian's got a name for the Blazer he drives to work and, of course, there's his computers, "grendel" (the former "L-Cow") and "grinch".

If I had to think about it and had the chance to name my computer, it would probably be after the Star Trek character, "CMDR.MONTGOMERY 'SCOTTY' SCOTT".  Scotty's character has always been a bit of a humor catalyst to me: when I was younger and watching the original television series in re-runs, I always found it amazing that he could find a new way to say that the Enterprise was about to "tear apart at the bolts"!  Scotty's character in all of the movies (yes, we own them all) is one that has grown over the years from where they started him in the series.  In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", two of his lines in that movie are my obvious favorites: when he picks up the mouse to "talk" with the computer and when the whales are beamed aboard the ship.

So, on that note, Scotty's about to be shut off for awhile and I'm going to try to get used to my new glasses.  Maybe more later as the night progresses, ya never know.

Repaired!

Unfortunately, without so much as a Post-It^tm note, when I arrived at work this morning, my computer was fixed. Fortunately I didn't have to play hide-n-seek to find my computer either-- it was located exactly where it was supposed to be when th SysAdmin and I discussed its condition last night.  I don't know what the problem with it was but I've sent an email at the suggestion of my in-house knowledgeable MIS Manager to find out why it happened.  They replaced the hard-drive on my computer approximately a month earlier and these new problems have only just begun in the last week so I supposed it is possible that the two are related.  We'll see what Ori has to say and I'll update you with anything significant, if it is reported.

Zounds of Sounds!!

Last weekend, when I was being particularly urked by John Cleese, Graham Chapman and various and assorted Monty Python sounds exiting Brian's machine, I went exploring for some .wav files of my own.  If you'll recall, I'm a Star Trek (TOS) and Star Trek: Next Generation enthusiast.  (I can't say "fan" because I know people who are a whole lot more fanatical about it than I am.)  Well, I went to my favorite search engine (www.go.com) and did a search on ".wav"-- THOUSANDS of files came up so (and this is the function that makes it my favorite search engine), I went to the "search within" radio button, flicked and typed: "Star Trek" and came up with fewer thousands of .wav files.

The URL that I chose to investigate was "Star Trek in Sound and Vision" at http://www.stinsv.com.  There is a virtual (get it?) plethora of .wav files from all of the main characters, television series, and movies!  A true treasure trove . . . now, whenever I open a program, Data says "Saddle-up, <click-clack> Lock-n-load." and when I close a program, Picard chimes in with "Get us out of here-- maximum warp!!"  I have various "actions" also quoting a line from William Shatner's appearance on Saturday Night LIVE and, of course, Spock's llap.wav.

Statistics

Here it is January 6, 2000-- just SIX (6) days into the month and my statistics for the website are at almost half of what they were for the WHOLE of last month, with hits occuring from more than 80 unique sites including Australia, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea . . . really great!! Especially for the people from around the globe: Welcome!!  Thanks for stopping by and feel free to come by and read or comment any time.  Always feel welcome to write an email or, if you'd prefer, just come back and soak up the atmosphere-- you'll always be welcome here!

Header?

I hardly know what to call this part of my update tonight:  Do I call it "The Big BSOD"? Or maybe "It Finally Happened"?  Actually, I can't use the last one because it happened last week, too, but I was on a deadline on a killer contract and couldn't wait for the IS department to resolve the problem.  What problem, you say?  Well, I had a Blue Screen of Death today!!  At least, I think that's what its called.  I made the mistake of MOVING my mouse (no, I did not click it anywhere-- I simply MOVED it) and my screen went blank and then, it turned this pretty shade of royal blue . . . "A FATAL EXCEPTION OE HAS OCCURRED . . . "  Hey, KEWL!!!  At least this week, I have the time to deal with this "little situation" which I didn't last week.

So, I walked over to the IS department and spoke with Ori, whom I believe to be the manager (I'm not certain that he is but he sits away from the people who actually do the repair work and he is generally the one to tell them to come fix my system so . . . ) of the IS people.  He asks me what happened and I informed him: "I moved my mouse."  With a startled expression on his face, Ori says: "Did you ask it first if you could move it?"  (Ori is quite the comedian, isn't he?)  "No," I replied "I don't have to ask it because we have a deal:  I feed it cheese on a daily basis and it lets me move it."  Ori gave a little chuckle and a grin crept onto his face as he said: "Oh, really?  Mine doesn't like cheese and will only work for chocolate."  "Well, maybe that's cuz you were trying to feed it Velveeta?" I responded and that's the way, believe it or not, the "System Administration Request" ("SAR" in the IS department's terms) got filled out.

I went back to my cube and called Brian, who asked how comfortable Ori was with all of those laptops under him (figure it out for yourself!), and within a couple of minutes, the SysAdmin came to respond to the SAR and is, supposedly, going to fix and lock up my laptop for me before he leaves tonight.

The SysAdmins put in a lot of hours-- they really are over-worked at this company (but I get the impression that EVERYone is over-worked here on some days) but upon occasion, they have fixed my computer and stashed it someplace that I didn't tell them to stash it which results in me taking two hours to find my computer in the morning!!  They generally don't roll in until around 9am and I'm usually there by 7am-- not the most efficient use of my time, needless to say.  Hopefully, Darryl will put the laptop where I told him to and the key to the area it was agreed to leave it.  Well, HOPE springs eternal, doesn't it?

Penguins

Brian's off to his once-a-month Silicon Valley Linus User Group ("SVLUG") meeting tonight.  Its quiet in the apartment and the babies downstairs, if they are home, aren't crying for a change.  My sister and I have a weekly Wednesday night chat (saves on the phone bill and she thinks ICQ is cool) but not tonight-- she's sick and because of the time zone differences, has been in bed for a couple of hours now.  I'm getting ready to turn on PBS and watch "How To" night while I cross-stitch.  I'm glad Brian's started to go to these meetings on a more regular basis . . . he needs to get out and meet more penguins, don'tcha think, Tom?

Have a good, peaceful night . . . I will.

Honey-Did!!

A few weeks back, in a fit of jealousy about the amount of time that Brian was going to have off from before Christmas and into the New Year, I mentioned that he was going to have quite the "Honey-Do List".  Well, he self-assigned a certain number of tasks, i.e., getting the oil, lube & filters on both vehicles, getting the Cavalier waxed properly, and a few other tasks.  I suggested the laundry and a couple of other things but really didn't make his life as miserable as I could've . . . considering.

BUT last week Thursday, I got a call (on my worst day of work all week) from him listing the following: "I've been to Costco, and Safeway and the laundry is done and the Christmas decorations are all in the garage and did you want to have dinner in or out tonight and . . . "  Yes, I've had my little red-wagon appropriately fixed!  Yes, I do realize how fortunate I am and no, he does not have a clone.

HomeWork

Brian has just sent me the contract for his web work to review.  This should be interesting: the man who likes things simple and the woman who knows how a contract should go together are going to produce one (1) document.  Yeah, right!  Any other good jokes?  I don't have to negotiate this one but, there is a method to this madness, y'know?

Later that same night . . .

Well, that wasn't too painful-- actually it was fun and, I think he's going to use the agreement.  I've advised him of the good things and the bad things of "writing your own paper".  Its actually kinda fun to do something like that for him; its certainly something unusual for the correspondences that our email tools usually see between us! ;>)

Tickets!

After only spending twenty minutes dialing the number and approximately 2 minutes on hold after that, I got through to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival ticket line and got the tickets we had wanted for the summer trip we're planning.  The only problem that we've had is getting a hotel and that's not a problem per se except that where we really wanted to stay was the former Mark Antony Hotel, now the Ashland Grande Hotel.  They aren't going to be open until June, 2000-- but if they're not open, we're holding a reservation to no where!  That is not a good thing during the summer in Ashland.  When we were there in 1998, there were no "Vacancy" signs on the hotels until Sunday night which won't help us at all!  Two phone calls and we've got a room set up so we won't have to worry about bringing the camping gear for Lithia Park!!  Notice has been given to our respective offices of our intended vacation dates and approvals have been granted so we are officially "set".  I'm already excited about it!

Brief

A "Contract Brief" is a document that has the pertinent details of an agreement on it, i.e., term of the agreement, discount percentage and on what products, maintenance terms (if any).  I had a couple of these to complete today because of the agreements that were completed last week with customers.  As expected (and predicted), each and every one of them caused me problems on the date.  Maybe I'll be used to it by next month?  I could get lucky and win the lottery, too!  (Hey, it could happen!)

Dates

For years, since I graduated high school (I'm sorry?  Did you think I was stupid and would tell you how long that's been? HA!! Silly Reader!!!), I've always typed the date 19??-- Just typing "Sunday, January 2, 2000" took four attempts: Sunday, January 2, 1999 was first, then there was Sunday, January 2, 1000, then Sunday, January 1, 1999 and finally, I got it right: Sunday, January 2, 2000.

Oh, I think that first contract of the millennium is going to be interesting, don't you?

Other dates today were the ones that Brian and I needed to decide on what plays and what days we're going to see the plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon this summer.  Almost two years ago when we were married, we had already bought the tickets before we became engaged and, even though there was a month and a half between our wedding and our planned trip, we used that time to call our "Honeymoon".  We had decided then that we would commit to going to the Festival at least every other year which is both financially feasible and not too frequent to permit the trip or the plays or the town to become boring or mundane.  While securing the tickets must come first, Brian's already researching hotels in the area so its fairly obvious that this is something we're both looking forward to doing again this summer.

Profound Thought

I went through the phase last night (and at times today), marvelling at how much I've seen change in the past, and wondering with the curiosity of a child as to what the future holds.  I envy my nieces and nephews-- all of them in their various age ranges-- for what they and their children will see in the next century.  "Amazing" doesn't even begin to render justice to the journey we will travel . . .

Webalizer

The webalizer statistics for December were phenominal!!  I've been "read" in 16 countries, from 236 sites, and had almost 3,000 hits with almost a 1,000 pages read.  Now, compared to the likes of Jerry Pournelle,Bob Thompson, or Tom Syroid, I suppose that's not much but, you know what?  I think its outrageous!! WAY COOL!!!!  I'm so glad to have you here, visiting my site and reading my posts, hopefully you have a good chuckle or maybe find a new way of approaching an old idea.  Thanks for visiting!!

Too much time!!

A few minutes ago, I walked into the office where Brian is "working" and announced that since this was a three-day weekend for me, I would be treating it as a vacation of sorts.  This is the most time I've had off since Thanksgiving Day Weekend but, considering that I was sick then, that doesn't say much for "time off".

So what have I done on my three-day weekend?  Went shopping yesterday for crafts stuff: ornament crafts for next year-- or should I say, later this year?-- organizing stuff for cross-stitch; went shopping today for more stuff to organize my cross-stitch and, okay so a few more craft things fell into my hand . . . big deal!  Then I ate lunch (celery with peanut butter) and took a nap and had an orange for a snack.  What's a "regular meal"?  (Brian had brownies for breakfast: "They're made with eggs!")

I refuse to watch college football on New Year's Day however; I think its the size of the football (HUGE!!) that I can't stand.  I love NFL football-- when I lived in Dallas, I went to about 10 or so Cowboys games, but only two college games, one of which was the Cotton Bowl.  When I lived in Cincinnati, I went to Bengals games fairly often and, maybe I haven't been to any 49ers games yet but, I haven't tried to either.  (I'm not particularly "for" the 49ers but nobody likes the Raiders so if I had to choose . . . )  Thankfully, since PBS isn't running the normal Saturday line-up, I've got the four movie channels to "rescue" me from the Rose Bowl, the Citrus Bowl and whatever else they've decided to take millions of dollars for and name a "Bowl" after this year.  (There's a dot-com bowl this year, for crying out loud!!)

The problem with watching movies is that HBO, Showtime, Starz, and Encore ALL know that everyone ELSE is watching Bowl games so they've got every stupid movie you'd never want to see on today.  Thanks-- I've long since gotten over any "need" to see "Desperately Seeking Susan".  Couldn't figure out why anyone was looking for her to begin with, either!  Oh, well, that's why I'm organizing my cross-stitch, right?  Right!

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