Showing posts with label observations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label observations. Show all posts
Monday, August 08, 2011
Today I Made a Server Come Back to Life
...just by looking it. And not physically, at the bare metal, but at the UI indicator that it was down. I'm pretty sure before I looked at it, it was in a state of between-ness, like Schrodinger's Cat. It went this way...Mark looked at it, the probability waves collapsed, it was down. Then he quit looking at it, and it was in a state of flux, neither up nor down. I looked at it and consciously collapsed the down wave and the hung wave, leaving it only two possibilities. Up, or exploding. Up was the easier state, so there it was. I'm sure in 1 out of 100,000 cases, I'll mentally force a server to blow up rather than restart, but I think those are good odds and may even qualify me for super hero status, right along HTML Well-formedness Woman (that's right...<body><breast/><breast/></body>).
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Etiquette
I've noticed that sometimes at the soda fountain, no matter how wide the machine, the next person in line won't get ice or water, despite the fact that I'm filling my diet soda from the far end, effectively several feet away. Usually it's a guy that's standing there waiting until I'm done. Which leads me to wonder, is this some sort of misplaced urinal etiquette?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Headphones
It's sort of nice having Mean Mr. Mustard on vacation. It was my week to bring coffee, and I found myself in a situation where I was sort of "off" by 12 hours, so he was getting a preview of my blog approximately one day early. That's got to be annoying. But the fact that I can't be bothered to tell him things that aren't going on my blog, that I can't be original enough to find a few things to talk about that I don't blog about, may rid him of his recent suspicion that I spend all day putting crap in his cube. Confused the crap out of me when he started talking about apple sh*t the other day.
I didn't blog about the one thing I told him about. Our renters down south (are they the rental house next to you, Steve?) are having problems keeping up their payments. So when I was down there on Saturday, working on the outside of the house, they shut the door so they didn't have to see, hear or talk to me, as it might have led to discussions about, "Where's my money?" Three days later, my brother calls...their toilet is backed up.
"Which one," I ask.
"All of them," he says.
"Not possible," I reply. "It's a 2800 square foot house with three bathrooms."
"Yeah, about that," he says. "They didn't tell us when the first one was leaking, they just quit using it. Same with the second one. Now the third one is plugged up and they don't have a toilet to use."
"They didn't want to talk to us because they were late on their rent, so they let all three toilets back up and leak?"
"Pretty much," said my brother.
"And now it's after hours on a weeknight, and I have to bring in a 24 hour plumber on after hours rates?"
"Pretty much," said my brother.
I would like to reiterate...if you're a good tenant, then good for you. But renting to people has severely impacted my faith in humanity. I am actually a bit surprised they weren't using the backyard as a toilet (like anyone would know - because they don't seem to be mowing, even though it's in their lease).
So on to the actual title of the post. My headphones. My wireless headphones at home have the volume control on a dial on the left ear. I adjust it all the time because even iTunes, as sophisticated as it is, can't seem to get any sort of volume balancing to work appropriately. Yes...I know metal should be louder than Lorena McKennitt (screw you, The Highwayman is an excellent song...if you don't agree I despair of your background in English literature) but often I'd prefer the volume to stay at a nice quiet, level, level so that I can work while I'm doing something else, like biking on the windtrainer, which really messes up your ability to hear some sounds. However, I've found that whenever the music is too loud on my wired headphones at work, as soon as it kicks up I find reach up to my left ear and roll the dial that doesn't exist. At least I don't start salivating if I miss my standard 11:00 lunch.
I didn't blog about the one thing I told him about. Our renters down south (are they the rental house next to you, Steve?) are having problems keeping up their payments. So when I was down there on Saturday, working on the outside of the house, they shut the door so they didn't have to see, hear or talk to me, as it might have led to discussions about, "Where's my money?" Three days later, my brother calls...their toilet is backed up.
"Which one," I ask.
"All of them," he says.
"Not possible," I reply. "It's a 2800 square foot house with three bathrooms."
"Yeah, about that," he says. "They didn't tell us when the first one was leaking, they just quit using it. Same with the second one. Now the third one is plugged up and they don't have a toilet to use."
"They didn't want to talk to us because they were late on their rent, so they let all three toilets back up and leak?"
"Pretty much," said my brother.
"And now it's after hours on a weeknight, and I have to bring in a 24 hour plumber on after hours rates?"
"Pretty much," said my brother.
I would like to reiterate...if you're a good tenant, then good for you. But renting to people has severely impacted my faith in humanity. I am actually a bit surprised they weren't using the backyard as a toilet (like anyone would know - because they don't seem to be mowing, even though it's in their lease).
So on to the actual title of the post. My headphones. My wireless headphones at home have the volume control on a dial on the left ear. I adjust it all the time because even iTunes, as sophisticated as it is, can't seem to get any sort of volume balancing to work appropriately. Yes...I know metal should be louder than Lorena McKennitt (screw you, The Highwayman is an excellent song...if you don't agree I despair of your background in English literature) but often I'd prefer the volume to stay at a nice quiet, level, level so that I can work while I'm doing something else, like biking on the windtrainer, which really messes up your ability to hear some sounds. However, I've found that whenever the music is too loud on my wired headphones at work, as soon as it kicks up I find reach up to my left ear and roll the dial that doesn't exist. At least I don't start salivating if I miss my standard 11:00 lunch.
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