What a BuzzKill

I just read a very interesting article about time, technology, media, participation, and gin. While I don’t especially care for gin, the article was fascinating. Check it out if you have some time.

_{This entry has surplus time.}

My coworker, Rachel, has a blog. She’s been getting into site stats and how well her site ranks on various search engines and social bookmarking sites. She just ran up to me, excited as all get out, exclaiming:

“I’m ranked 4th for ‘I hate dog shit!’”

I, on the other hand, seem to have a rather different view of the metrics that indicate the success of a website. Not that I’m saying my site is any indication of success.

_{This entry wears underwear.}

This is an actual email from one of my personal clients:

“I only use outlook for my calendar on my home computer and blackberry contact info and on my current work computer (desktop that I am not going to use anymore) I used MSN email and no outlook for anything but I think I will be using that with the new laptop for email and blackberry since that is where the technology has gone. I will still have my MSN email address but using it through outlook right? All the contact info is on my home computer to load and with my MSN email addresses. I have most of them but I know this is confusing but I can sort it out with you in person.
Basically I use the following:
Home computer-I log into MSN hotmail and do emails from home-It also has my blackberry contacts through outlook that you put there from my sony clie and I can add new ones and use the calendar but I have yet to sync it to my blackberry. I just use the calendar on the blackberry itself to use the reminder and not sync it to my home computer.
Work destop (will not use anymore) has my sony clie contacts and I use the sony clie for my calendar-(will not use that anymore either I will use the outlook on the new computer) I will need to take my email addresses from MSN and put them in outlook on the new computer laptop as I will no longer be using MSN (I don’t think) and will be using outlook with the calendar and contacts.
We will get this organized and you wil see where I want to go and hopefully I am doing the right thing. To many places that I go instead of using outlook for everything and it is compatable with the blackberry. I am used to that now and it is nice but still some kinks.
See you Thurs..R”

_{This entry is still trying to recover!}

This is astounding!

_{This entry wants to watch an elephant paint!}

I found a cool interactive photo gallery that I could plug in to my site. It’s just a test for now, but you can check it out at:

http://www.standlikeaman.com/im/

It would take quite a lot of effort to keep it maintained, unless I was adept at scripting (which I am most definitely not), so I figure it’d be a place where I’d post only my favorite photos.

Anyhow, let me know what you think!

_{This entry has apparently come down with a tweaking bug.}

This will be the way I post pictures from now on. Very handy and slick interface!

The new gallery to the right will automatically choose random recent photos from my Flickr account.

Downstairs, in apartment #1, lives a woman and her daughter. The mother is a loud and obnoxious person. She’ll sometimes turn up her stereo and open all her windows and doors so everybody that lives in the complex is subjected to her music. She’ll try to start a conversation with you as you’re trying to get into your car. She’s just one of those people I find increasingly annoying.

Once she found out that I worked on computers, she’d ask for help with her computer, presumably for free. Hell, I even did help her once.

The biggest issue I have with her is that we share a 2-car garage. Unfortunately there is no dividing partition, which she seems to have interpreted as meaning she can store her personal belongings on my half. Our lease agreements state that the garages are not to be used as storage facilities (we’re supposed to have enough room to park a vehicle inside).

She’s done this before and after finding a bunch of boxes that had tipped over and collapsed on my drum set, I pushed her stuff back over to her side and insisted that she get her side organized and off my side. 6-8 months later, after I had talked to her about it a few more times (and her promising it would be done “in two weeks” a few times) I arrived home from work and found a couple of guys rummaging through my things. She had hired these guys to restack all her stuff and because they could hardly speak more than 5 words of English they interpreted her instructions as meaning to reorganize the entire garage - including my stuff! After 30 minutes of pointing out my things and having them put back into place, she had the nerve to act as if she had done some great thing.

About 6 months later her boxes and storage bins started making their way back to my side. I told her to move them and she said something to the effect of, “Oh get over it, it’s only a couple of boxes.” Time went on and out of laziness and not wanting to hassle with it, I didn’t do anything about it. This mentality all changed when I went in the garage to try and fix Rece’s bike, after getting home one dark winter’s evening, so he could ride it to school the next morning.

More of her boxes were stacked on my side and I could barely get his bike moved out and into any position to work on. I was furious, but being late and she wasn’t home, I didn’t voice my objections. It took another 6 weeks before I found myself looking at my open garage and seeing just how much room was still left on my side of the garage and decided to speak with her once more.

I knocked on her door on a Thursday evening and told her that she had until the end of the weekend to move her stuff out of my half of our shared garage. She objected, saying that she had to work over the weekend, but I didn’t relent and said that if she didn’t move it, I would and she probably wouldn’t like where I moved it. She threatened to call the cops if I touched her things and slammed the door on me as I turned to walk away. I then snapped some pictures of the garage.

That Sunday, as I got back from a hike, I noticed that she was home. It was 2:30 p.m. - so much for having to work. I didn’t bother to check if she had moved her stuff, but I was positive that she hadn’t.

The next day, Monday, after I got home from work, I opened the garage to check on the status and found everything to still be in the same place. Rece and I had dinner and then went out to the garage to move it ourselves. Fortunately, she was gone, so we carefully moved every box and storage container that was over the imaginary line into her carport spot, as far forward as possible and not stacked too high.

As I was moving the last item, she pulled up and started yelling at me from her car to stop touching her things. She stopped short in her car port and yelled at me some more, then inexplicably pulled back a few feet, stopped, yelled at me again, pulled forward and bumped into her stuff. She then started to yell at me about possibly damaging her car.

A couple of the other neighbors had come out to see what was going on. I kept calm and simply stated that she had been warned. She then started ranting about how she couldn’t move the stuff because she had back problems, to which I replied, “It’s amazing how your back was well enough to move all that stuff into my side of the garage, then” and walked away. She threw a few insults my way, but I just went upstairs and got my camera and took some shots of the garage and her pile of boxes in her carport.

As I was walking back into my apartment I heard her begging one of the other tenants if they could help her and let her store her things in their garage. What a piece of work she is.

I uploaded the set of pictures to my Flickr account.

_{This entry can’t stand people that have no respect for other people’s property and space.}

By “users” I’m talking about computer users. Not all the people I encounter are a problem, but it does seem that business owners are the worst people to help with a computer issue.

For example, I’m working on a laptop for a client who reported getting a BSOD on startup, but he could still get into Safe Mode - at which point he was bombarded with popup messages saying his computer was infected with spyware. I arrived to his office and he was positive that it was our fault, saying that we removed his antivirus program when we installed his printer. I assured him that wasn’t the case and told him about how many current spyware/adware/viruses find ways around older antivirus programs and then prevent them from working. His computer was obviously infected while he was surfing porn sites, based on the types of malware I found. His 2006 version antivirus program was powerless to prevent infection.

Another business owner had grown tired of repeatedly having to call us to resolve user-caused problems. We told him about setting up a proper client-server network environment and how it would make his systems more stable. Granted, my boss under estimated the amount of work it would take to get their systems up to snuff, but the project was all in order. After about a month of working around their staff to get the network and their workstations ready for the change, the owner started to complain about how long it was taking. It didn’t occur to him that it was taking much, much longer because I was unable to just get in there and do what I needed to do and converting one workstation at a time — with the staff member breathing down my neck and/or asking me what type of computer they should buy for their mother — wasn’t conducive of efficient work. Now that the work is done, we hardly hear a peep from them. But when there is something they need help with, the owner complains about how he spent all this money to get the system the way it is and how he can’t believe he still has to call us for help.

Then there are the loony clients. The ones that check their email using their webmail interface, flag spam items and delete them, then open Outlook to download the email - but still leaving the email on the server - and then freak out when their mailbox cap is reached, assuring us that every-single-email is of the utmost importance. These are the types that will log onto the server using the Administrator account, muck something up, then blame us for whatever went wrong. They’ll listen to us when it comes to restructuring their network to a client-server environment and when it’s all done and configured, get upset that users can’t install Incredimail, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, or Limewire on their own — and when we open access for the users to do so, they’re livid that they have all sorts of computer problems again (and after they spent all this money!). Or the bookkeeper that says, “I’m more of an IT guy than a finance guy,” then asks, “what does FTP mean?” in the same conversation — then asks us if we can give him the domain Administrator login info.

Some days the job can be frustrating, but for the most part it’s a lot of fun. It’s those 15% of users who can turn an otherwise mentally stimulating and enjoyable day into a hair-pulling day of mental anguish.

_{This entry still loves working on computers in spite of it all.}

This interesting article did little more than solidify my belief in how people (myself included) are becoming increasingly spoiled and self-important. I’m not in the mood to discuss my views about this right now, but if you have a few minutes, take the time to read the article.

_{This entry is a little sore from hiking yesterday.}

Death Valley is known for its highs and lows: the highest temperature recorded on the planet and the lowest elevation in North America. It’s also known for its once bustling mining towns and strange geology. We felt it was worth checking out.

Christine, Sam, Rece, and I — we really should make up a name for our group, since we travel all over the place together — set out on a 3-day, 2-night journey to view Death Valley National Park. With a rented 4WD SUV, and a few bags and cameras in hand, we made our trek across the desert.

As usual we brought along our GPS receivers, loaded with geocache coordinates along the way. The first of them was at the oddly named Zzyzx exit, followed by Baker and its oh-so-many sights.

The last 3 trips we’ve made out to the desert have given Christine reason to get excited about the prospect of visiting (and eating at) the Mad Greek in Baker, CA. Unfortunately for her, it has always been too far out of the way to justify the long detour. This time our route took us right to Baker, home of the Worlds Tallest Thermometer and also the Mad Greek restaurant (one of their many locations - but she had to go to THIS one).

Having filled our bellies with decent enough Greek-style food, I pointed the 4runner north, towards Death Valley. We stopped quite a few times along the way, either after spotting a point of interest (we stop for almost all historical markers on all of our trips) or to hunt for a geocache.

We’ve come to learn from our past trips that travel time is usually at least double of what it would be if the distance was covered without stopping. So it was already a known variable in our plans that we probably wouldn’t be entering Death Valley on the first day. This proved to be true and drove on to our first night’s stay in Pahrump, NV. I’ll admit that this was probably due a good part to the name of the town, but it was also the closest lodging that probably didn’t have a Norman Bates type of person running it.

Our hopes for word-play were dashed after discovering that we could not stay at Terrible’s Casino (they didn’t have a hotel at this one). Here’s a short list of some possible fun phrases we were unable to use:

• We stayed at a terrible hotel in Pahrump, NV.
• The hotel was terrible — and so was the casino!
• After a terrible night’s stay, we awoke and enjoyed a terrible breakfast.

Then another catastrophe: the Nugget Hotel & Casino was more expensive than other places in town and had no more non-smoking rooms available. So we couldn’t say we stayed in “Pa’s rump nugget” or anything silly like that. We had to settle for the Saddle West Hotel & Casino, which wasn’t a bad place to stay — it just had a boring name, comparatively.

Day 2 began about as planned and we filled up at the buffet breakfast at our hotel. After backtracking to Shoshone, CA, then turning north we reached the southern most entrance to Death Valley. We thought areas of California state highway 395 were remote and desolate, but they seemed pretty crowded compared to Death Valley. Sparse desert hills for miles and miles — the only living creatures were a few crows.

We arrived at Badwater Basin, one of the lowest points in Death Valley (there are a few other points a few feet lower, but they’re difficult to get to) and found one of the largest groups of people we’d see for the rest of the trip. (As introverts, Christine & I enjoyed the lack of people.)

Continuing on our northern route through the park, we stopped at the Devil’s Golf Course, Artist’s Palette, and Furnace Creek Visitor Center (central hub for the park).

Our primary destination for Day 2 was the Devil’s Racetrack (also known as Racetrack Playa) , which is located in a remote part of the park far up in the northern area. The Racetrack is a natural oddity that I just couldn’t miss. You can read more about it here. The road was 27-miles long and washboard gravel/dirt which added to the adventure. I think I took about as many pictures here as I did all at the other areas we visited in Death Valley combined.

With sunlight soon to be gone, we departed the Racetrack and made much better time on the way out than we did on the way in, having discovered that the bumps smoothed out more the faster I drove. How fun is that?

Driving into the night, we again had to modify our very flexible plans and change the town where we’d be sleeping. Beatty, NV turned out to be the closest option. Apparently it was better that we arrived at night when we drove through and decided to stay at the local Motel 6 — daylight revealed a different mood. The town seems to be in a slow, but steady decline. It had obviously seen better days when tourism brought more people through. But now it seems a little sad — or at least I felt a little sad for the town.

A nice fellow in the motel parking lot pointed out that our back tire looked a bit low on air and he told us where we could get it fixed in town. Coincidentally, the tire shop was next door to the hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant we had decided to patronize the night before. Some yummy food and a $20 tire patch later we were headed back towards Death Valley.

A sign along the highway pointed to Rhyolite, NV, a ghost town we had read about while planning for the trip. This was another of our impromptu stops and an interesting discovery. Not only had the town been occupied and thriving a mere 100 years ago, but we also found an open air museum with some bizarre sculptures.

Just a few miles after getting back on the highway we detoured onto Titus Canyon Road. Another 27-mile washboard dirt/gravel road, but this time one-way and through, well, a canyon. Aside from one pickup truck and a mountain biker, we were completely alone. The road brought us by some mines and another old mining (ghost) town called Leadfield. Beyond the ghost town the canyon drive became quite narrow, which made us feel as though we were in an old Western film or an Indiana Jones flick.

With the canyon drive behind us, we made it back to California highway 190 and westward through the park. A few minor points of interest later and we again found ourselves on another dirt road in a desolate area on our way to see the Wildrose Charcoal Kilns. These beehive-looking structures were quite remarkable.

Finally, after leaving Death Valley, our last stop was at yet another ghost town named Ballarat. The caretaker was an interesting fellow with a friendly and playful dog. He pointed out a rusty old truck on display and told us it used to be owned by Charles Manson. We didn’t really believe him until we looked it up for ourselves.

The drive home was uneventful, aside from learning that Carl Kartcher had passed away a month earlier when we went into Carl’s Jr. for a potty break and ended up buying a Captain Crunch Shake - it was the first day they started selling them (and they’re actually quite tasty).

As usual we took pictures. Lots of pictures. You can view them at:

Gabe’s photos

Christine’s photos

Sam’s photos

_{This entry still feels a little dehydrated.}