My life is amounting to a pile of work that never ends, and a pile of MP3s that will never be organized. And I’m noticing a lot of missing CDs. There’s nothing worse than re-buying CDs that you already paid for…except maybe working a bunch of overtime that you won’t be.
Let’s go co-ma, let’s go! [clap clap]
On Sunday, I ran into a ex-coworker that I had sat next to for a number of years. She had left our company to raise her two children about four years ago, and I hadn’t seen her since. Even though we had a good working rapport and sat side by side for a number of years, the difference between a serious nerd and a stay at home mom quickly became very apparent, as the conversation dried up in a mere 10 minutes. I really wanted to talk more, but there was really nothing left to talk about. Time had dried up all of our common ground.
My favorite moment during the conversation came when I was introduced to the woman’s four year old son. When asked if he would say “hello” to me, he smilingly blurted,
“Hello, dick nose.”
Bad I: You Get What You Pay For
A Chaintech AV-710 sound card with an optical output would allow a person to watch DVDs from their Home Theater PC with perfect Dolby 5.1 sound. And $27 seems like an amazingly good deal, until one spends 5 days trying to get more than 2 speakers to work. On the fifth day, when I finally got the center speaker to play music for the first time, I literally jumped up and down shouting, “I CAN GO TO BED! I CAN GO TO BED!”
Bad II: You Pay For What You Get
This morning, there was beautiful orange sunrise over the water that I caught over my shoulder while driving to work. I thought to myself, “I’m leaving this to go into a windowless basement for the next 8 hours?”
I felt like a fool until I stepped on the accelerator and thought, “Mmmmmmmm Turbo.”
Bad III: You Get Nothing and Like It
Dearest Netflix, I’ve been waiting for 7 days for new videos, now. Cut porking me and send the goods.
In the nearly 11 years that I have worked at my company, I can say with authority that I have no clue on how to advance in the corporate world. Working hard, dressing nice, looking frustrated: All tried, all failed. When I explained this to a co-worker he said,
“Getting ahead in the corporate world isn’t about working hard. It’s about getting in front of someone in power and saying that you work hard. Other than that, I don’t think you have to do anything.”
It sounded like good advice, until I remembered that this guy was my age, worked as hard as I do, and had seen about the same rate of advancement.
If you are at work, and you ask out loud, “Hey, how fast can the millennium Falcoln do the Kessel run?”, there is a good chance that you may be a big, fat nerd. If you do not fear strange looks from your co-workers, there is a good chance that your co-workers may also be big, fat nerds. If you get an immediate response and use the phrase, “That’s what I thought,” then both may be true. If you argue over whether the answer “12 parsecs” is correct, because Han Solo clearly described the ship as doing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs, even I could probably teach you what it means to be cool. If you consult with any type of hard copy (Star Wars Trivia guide, Living like Luke, The Jedi Handbook, etc.) to prove you are right, you win. But, on so many levels, you lose.
If you live in Hull, you got 3 feet of snow yesterday, and the hurricane force winds created massive snow drifts that were taller than you by a foot before the plow even got there. You are also facing 8-10 inches tomorrow. 8 days ago, you experienced 2 straight days of 60 degree weather.
If I am offered 2 degrees and sunny or 32 and snowy, I’m taking the snow even if its 3 feet and leaves a 7 foot drift outside my door. If you offer 3 feet and 2 degrees, I’m staying in and playing the PS2.
If you take your garbage out in a blizzard, you will wade through waist deep snow and 40 MPH winds to get to the dumpster. In the short walk, your frozen beard will make you look like Mr. Cold Miser. Because life is a comedy, when you get to the dumpster chute and you inadvertently fling one of your gloves in, you will hopefully smile before sliding down the chute after it while your GF doubles over laughing at you.
If you attempt to further entertain your GF by diving off a 10 foot high rock head first into a 7 foot snow bank, after you finish wiggling your legs in the air like you were stuck, you may be surprised at the kids 25 years your junior laughing an waving out of their windows. You will feel young until you later think, “Man, thank goodness there wasn’t a stick in there to take my eye out.”
If you work in IT, you know that there are people behind the scenes snooping everything you do. If you are not in IT, you should be aware that there are people behind the scenes snooping everything you do.
I control virus protection on over 16,000 machines, so I have pretty decent access when it comes to moving around our network. By a stroke of luck relating to a small virus issue yesterday, I got the opportunity to visit a computer forensics lab that was hidden behind what looked like a closet door and was protected by no less than 3 card readers and a fingerprint scanner. I have pretty decent access, and I had no idea that the place was there.
I mean I’m relatively savvy and know how to snoop and repair a PC (including deleted files) without a typical user having the slightest idea what’s going on, as even most moderately decent admins can. But I can tell you that some of the ways that they can find out what you’ve done and the dirty things that you’ve been looking at are pretty amazing. Due to some hefty non disclosure agreements, I can’t really write about what I saw in there, but I can tell you that you should play nice on your work PC, and leave the nudie pictures at home.
What does a man do when he has 2 weeks off from work?
Even though he braces for Xmas, he learns a boat load of Xmas songs on the guitar to impress his GF. He unfortunately plays them in the “Wait. Oops. That was wrong. Hold on. Oh, Fuck it I’m playing them Heavy metal” quality that only he can muster.
He doesn’t get up before 9, he wears mostly nylon sweatpants, and bedhead replaces hair gel as the style of the times. Showering on a daily basis becomes more of a suggestion than a mandate, and later more of a crap shoot. This policy is later revised when he smells food and realizes that he’s the only one in the room and the stove is off.
He treats Mr. DVD Player like Tommy Chong with a messenger bag full of Acapulco gold, while completely snubbing his closest compadres, Mr. PC, and Mr. Playstation. Neither see a volt of power, and he doesn’t care.
He watches at least 20 episodes of Jerry Springer to teach him perspective: sitting in an apartment in Hull in sweatpants is much better than being on a stage with a mullet getting slapped by the enormously obese transvestite who is humping both your sister and your momma.
He also watches a few episodes of Maury Povitch, which teaches him math: If a woman needs to test 15-20 men who they are “sure” they had sex with on the week they got pregnant, on average, said woman is humping like a thousand cocks a year.
He embarks on a stupid, expensive technical project just because he has the time and some spare cash. Once it’s done he stares at it and realizes that the digital video recorder he built only gets 20 channels to tape from because he will not spend the extra $45 that Comcast demands to release their better channels to him.
He cooks ham, bagel and egg sandwiches, tangerine chicken, and a fully stuffed duck. He makes the stuffing by not really following 2 recipes at the same time, and is amazed at how good it comes out.
He flips the gym the bird, as well as any exercise that doesn’t involve eating or nudity.
While normally averaging more than 1 migraine a week, he gets 0 over the whole vacation.
He swears to his beard that he’s never going back to work, and then accidentally shaves a good portion of it off, nullifying the pledge.
…All allowing him to embark on the path to becoming more human, less cube farm robot like no 1 week vacation ever could.
If I requested a machine name from someone to update their PC, and they reply with “CAPTAINARCHER,” who is the bigger nerd:
For the Geekily challenged: Captain Archer bio from StarTrek.com
End on a High Note
Last night I searched the web for something to entertain me. Anything. I like my job, but after 8 days straight, I start to get a little tired of it. It starts wearing me down, and without any fun time, I start to remember that all this work is going towards a raise or promotion that the company isn’t in a position to give.
I’ll tell you though, even though it’s stressful and I’ve done it a ton of times, successfully planning, coordinating, and executing a 16,000+ machine rollout worldwide is pretty cool. And even though it wears me down, and no matter what crumbs fall of the table again this year, I am proud of my work and I feel accomplished in it. It’s a stupid ideal, but it seems to be the only reward available these days.
End on a Low Note
Working most of the day and part of the night on server upgrades has left me little room for original thought, and relatively less aware of my surroundings (read comatose), but I did notice 2 things while at the gym today:
Note: I’ve been to Sweden a couple of times, and I can say with authority that the Swedes are some of the biggest honkies in the world (in size, color, and fashion).
I am Offended?
I love Slayer (with album titles like Hell Awaits, Reign In Blood, Seasons In The Abyss, and God Hates Us All, how could I not?) But, when someone takes slayer and makes classical music out of it, boy do I get offended.
Thanks, String Quartet. Thanks a lot. Bring Slayer to the cultured masses. There’s something just wrong about a classical song called “Dead Skin Mask.”
Ew.
I am an Idiot?
Today at work, human resources requested confirmation of my salary. When I saw the number that they gave me, I thought that the number was about 7 thousand too low. After a little checking, I confirmed that HR was right and that I don’t make nearly as much as I had thought.
Dear bosses,
Just mentioning numbers randomly instead of giving me a raise may keep me in your employ, as I will somehow convince myself that I make whatever I feel like. The odds of me confirming my assumptions are close to nil.
I am an idiot.
I am Nice?
when we walked into Stars for breakfast this weekend, the host made a small wager with us. Holding a paper napkin and aiming for a trash can he said, “I’ll tell you what: If I make this shot, I’ll seat you now. If I don’t…No wait. If I make this shot, you have to get me a coffee. If I miss, you can forget about the coffee.”
Noting that both sides of a wager should benefit those wagering in an opposite fashion, I thought the bet was a little skewed and useless, but took it by default, simply by not offering any resistance.
He missed anyway.
When he seated us, I thought of the coffee shops within a short distance and asked him if he had won, would he be drinking Dunkin’ Donuts or Mary Lou’s coffee. “Actually,” he said, “I’m a little bit of a coffee snob. I only drink Starbucks.” He then returned to the front.
Even though Starbucks was out of the way for where we were going, I knew I was going to get him a coffee and drop it off just for the hell of it. So, when we left, I headed for Starbucks. I haven’t been in a Starbucks in a while, and let me tell you, Starbucks is chock full of people that I not only knew I could shake down for their coffee money, but their stupid black wire glasses and bad, expensive haircuts made me really, really want to. When the guy behind the counter accepted “medium” from me without using, or making me use the word “grande,” I was placated enough to forget my rising urge to kill. He must’ve sensed my dilemma, and known that there is no way to recoup an ounce of masculinity while ordering a normally macho black coffee if you have to say “grande,” “machiado,” or “touch my fanny, stud.” None. And if a man can’t feel macho, he, by code, is nearly required to lash out at others. Touche, Starbucks man. Touche.
On the way back to Stars, even the bump that put the first splash of coffee on the my new seats elicited nothing above a dull “Fuuuuuuck” from me (at least it was for a good cause, right?). Anyway, when we got there, I made the GF go in and drop off the coffee, so she is the only one who got to see that confused and happy expression that people make when they are the target of a random act of kindness.
She said it was pretty cool.
Dick 1
My Dad described my work situation as follows: And I quote, “It’s like having your dick nailed to a burning building. I mean what do you do? Stand there? Pull away? What do you do?”
He also said that I wasn’t a corporate man, as I didn’t kid myself into thinking that the corporate world is the real world. I think that was a compliment, but I couldn’t get past the image of my burning dick with a nail in it.
Dick 2
One of my good friends went to Siam house in Quincy for dinner. He called me immediately to tell me that there were two kinds of sherry on the menu: Cockburn and Dry Sack. We’ve known each other since we were 8, and never really progressed from there.
Pie 1
Over the last week, I’ve cooked spaghetti squash, homemade chicken soup, and three(3) homemade, from scratch, puree the motherfuckin’ pumpkin, pumpkin pies. Soup is easy. Spaghetti squash is kind of fun. Trying to puree pumpkin pie will leave you finding bits of orange in weird places for a week.
Pie 2
This is the actual recipe for pumpkin pie that I cobbled together from a few sites on the net. It’s easy except for making the pumpkin puree, which sucks fat ass.
Required tools:
Spatula (A)
baking pan (B)
Blender (C)
Paper Towels (D)
colander (E)
fork (F)
spoon (G)
knife (H)
oven (I)
oven mitts (J)
measuring cup (K)
measuring spoons (L)
and a big ass bowl (M)
Ingredients
1 12″ store bought graham cracker pie crust (baking isle)
3 large eggs
2 cups of fresh pumpkin puree
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup light brown sugar (granulated easy to work with)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
Making the Puree
Making the Pie
Then, eat the motherfucker for breakfast.
I’ve worked on a project for a number years, building a nice little one man empire of virus fighting with very little return on my investment as far as pay, promotions, or perks. I’ve done such a good job, that there are sites around the world pushing to get me to manage their systems for them. I also am heavy into scripting and have been at the grass roots working on a plan to bring more security to the desktops.
Today, we are faced with a re-org. Today, we are told do more with less. Today, my 1 man global project is mentioned no less than 5 times in a department meeting to discuss top priorities.
Given that I lack the resources to take on all that I would like to, it was proposed that I might gain some resources in the re-org to get me out of the day to day and back into the planning. As I have had various vapor carrots dangled in front of over the years, I truly had my doubts, but I really didn’t expect it to go the way it did: Two of my peers were moved into my group and given staffs of there own, and a good part of what I had been working on was metered between them. Not that they are not capable of the job, or that I have anything personal against them at all. I like them both and have faith in either of their abilities. I’m actually happy for them.
But, with a layoff coming up, and my projects getting metered out, and that even though I was working on these projects, other people got bumped up higher than me to work on them, I have to wonder if I’m expandable. Can they do my job without me? I have to admit that because of the way I have set things up, my job will run satisfactorily for some time with minimal intervention, giving plenty of time for a trainee to figure out the more advanced stuff.
Then, I have to wonder if I’m just some sort of joke. Is my vision of the work that I do different from the way my management team sees it? Do I do my job so well that no one even notices it’s benefits anymore? That can’t be right because of the number of nods my project got as a priority in the meeting. Could it be that the project is important, but not the person running it? Am I merely a big fucking joke?
I feel like one. I really do. I feel like no matter what kind of effort I put in, no matter how well I learn Perl, SQL, or set up the system to protect itself, no matter how nice my tie or shoes are, I’m never going to get the respect, the title, the pay, or the advancement. I can almost say with a complete lack of enthusiasm that in 5 years if I remain in the same environment, I will be in the same place, working with college kids taking orders from former colleagues. And that bothers the shit out of me.
And I can’t seem to get constructive criticism to help me to correct whatever the issues may be, as there doesn’t seem to be anything available that is worth being discussed. If it’s out there, it’s a secret. Maybe it’s that I don’t golf. Or lick balls. Or dress like I stepped on a Brooks Brother’s mine. I innovate, and get nothing but more work to fill the void. A script saves time that will be eaten up by extra work that I can take on because I wrote the script…until someone steps in, takes over the projects, and reaps the benefits. Looking back over the years, it seems to happen to me quite a bit. A hardworking field mule isn’t brought into the dinner table when he works harder. He just gets more work done. And that’s pretty fucking frustrating. And frustration creates a rotten attitude that I’m really not too comfortable harboring.
I hate ranting, especially about work, but I sink a lot of brain power into creating processes that manage themselves. I don’t try to just get it done, I try to get it done better. And honestly, I don’t think that anyone really gives a shit, and it really makes me wonder why I bother.
Anyone looking for someone who is fast on his feet, appreciates engineering processes, and with the experience to architect and run your 20,000 node enterprise virus protection scheme solo, drop me a line. And I am a stranger to reward, so I am easy to please. But please don’t read the rest of the site, as it makes me seem a little bonkers.
Fuck, this was a bad day for me.
Dear Folks
If you’ve never seen me outside of work, and you call me about what patch is required to fix your rebooting problem, don’t spend the downtime while I’m thinking to ask me pointed questions about my personal life. If you were in it, you’d have all the information you need. If you’re not, and there’s something that I wanted you to know, I’d probably tell you.
Otherwise, if I don’t feel that it’s your business, I’ll politely sidestep you, and then you can assume whatever the fuji you want and dish it to all your gossipy co-workers as if it were any of your business.
Let me know when you graduate from high school so that I can get some work done.
When in doubt, Link
Since I really have nothing to say, I provide links of joy for later amusement.
Shatner’s got a new album. It’s no transformed man…or is it. See for yourself: ShatnerHasBeen.com
I found a new site to waste time on called Screenhead.com that could easily be mistaken for boingboing.net’s evil twin brother.
On it I found C-Mon & Klypski’s who do a really old school-sounding DJ song called “shittybum” (link) which I really enjoyed. It reminded me of something from the Beat Street days.
On C-Mon & Klypski’s site, they also explain “Clocktaves”:
“A ‘Clocktave’ is a note scale to scratch with, with a range of 2 to 4 octaves. The notes of the octaves are divided between exactly ONE rotation of a record so when you look at the record as if it were a clock, the root note of the scale will always appear at, let’s say 12 o’ clock, depending on where you have your orientation sticker or marker.”
I had no idea. So the DJ essentially uses the turntable as a musical instrument, rolling the record to the notes that he or she wants. They provide some pretty kick ass examples, too. Tell me your not amazed by “All four” from this page.
Note: I accidentally hit ‘replace’ instead of ‘ignore’ when spell checking, and “whatever the fuck” became “whatever the fuji.” I laughed enough thinking of walking around my apartment saying “Oh what the fuji!” that it had to stay.
Dear Jon
I joined a new gym after 2 awesomely flabby months off.
Today, I had a meeting with my boss, my boss’s boss, and my boss’s boss’s boss to discuss general virus stuff. I figured that if my boss and his boss wore ties, and I didn’t, I’d look like an idiot. If I did, and they didn’t, no one would care. So, I played the odds and put on a tie.
On the way to work, I thought, “What the fuck am I doing? I’m wearing a tie. I’m not a little bit corporate and a little bit rock and roll, anymore. This tie is quickly and voluntarily choking the rock and roll out of me. I’ve somehow gone corporate.
How the fuck did this happen?
A small angel appeared on my left shoulder said, “Don’t worry about it. Patience is a virtue. The meek shall inherit the earth. You’ve taken your first steps toward a fine German automobile, which are heavenly. By the way, you look very nice.”
In a puff, a devil appeared on my right, jumped onto my left shoulder, and kicked the angel square in the ding-ding. Then he said, “I’ll tell you how this happened, dumb ass. You worked your ass off for the same department for the last 5 years on infrastructure that is done so well that no one even notices it, anymore. On the very rare occasion when the proverbial shit hits the fan, you jump in front of it and do a spotless clean up before anyone notices the mess, leaving you nothing but covered in shit.
Because no one really knew or cared what you do, that promotion that might’ve raised you to the level of your peers was tabled for two years unsigned, while some real pieces of work whizzed up the chain past you. Yea, you remember them don’t you? Real geniuses. Thanks for fucking things up, here’s your promotion. On the other hand, your responsibilities got bigger, your raises got smaller, and your grade level completely stagnated. You know why? Because smile beats substance. A tie beats merit. And all the while you sit and hope that your work will get noticed one day. Boo hoo.
Then one day you woke up and realized that it’s not going to happen. You’re not going anywhere. Nowhere. Because the harder you work, the more work you will be given to do. The reward for working hard is more hard work. The only time you will be rewarded is if your agenda somehow aids the agenda of someone more powerful than you. And even then, you’re probably screwed. The promotions will go to the guy wearing the tie or the guy with a better golf game over the guy who works hard and tows the company line. You like to pretend that it’s not, but it’s who you know, dumb ass. Good thing you wasted all that time reading documentation instead of people, huh? Your fault. Boodily hoo.
No major calls regarding virus protection are made at your company without your consultation, and you’d think that would be enough to get you noticed without having to resort to wearing a fucking tie, right? Well, it’s not. Get over it. It’s all about fucking marketing. And even if it makes you sick, all you are at work is a fucking brand.
Jon can be the best corporate antibiotic on the market, but until you get some prime shelf space and spend some money on advertising, getting it in everyone’s face and convincing them that Jon brand worker is better than the national leading brand hands-down, Jon will sit there on the bottom shelf for eternity while less reliable brands are brought in by the truckload. And you don’t even have to be the best. Just pretend you are. And bullshit people. And wear your tie. And become the tie-wearing, Yanni listening, BMW driving, enormous empty nest buying, golf playing, fake-smiling, non-committal corporate bitch motherfucker you’ve always dreamed of being.
Play the game. Buy the car. Buy the house. Make VP. Sell out. And know that hard work is not rewarded in this world. Perceptions are. P.S. You have a big goddamned nose and your ears stick out.”
With those words ringing in my ears, I found the magic and importance of my job sort of draining away, leaving me to give some serious consideration to handing in my resignation. Just then, the tiny angel reappeared and kicked the little devil square in his ding-ding, causing him to vanish in a tiny puff just like they do on bad sit-coms.
And I sat there in my car, with my tie, feeling like an asshole.
And all day I caught good natured shit for my tie. People joked about this being one of the signs of the apocalypse or asked how my interview went. And all the while I knew it wasn’t working.
But when my band takes off, man, I mean it: I’m totally out of here.
A while back I wrote a post about a woman at work who was prying into my personal life by circulating rumors about me behind my back. I don’t believe that work and High School are identical, I didn’t ask my GF to kick her ass in the parking lot at 3:00. I simply told her that she was making my work life difficult and professionally but firmly asked her to stop minding my business.
I never heard another word from her.
As I was walking down a big empty hall the other day, I happened to see her coming the other way. I decided that it would be best to let things go and let out a big friendly “Howdy!” when she got close.
She grinned a twelve year old’s “go fuck yourself” grin and walked by me staring at me without saying a word. I shook my head and smiled. Given the nature of her character, I chalked her up like the scumbag that consistently ducks you for the 10 bucks he owes you: voluntarily and gladly absent from my life.
I guess that some people prefer to talk about me than to me.
So, I walk down to eat lunch today, and they’re doing another United Way drive at work. It seems like every time I look up, they’re pushing another fantastic United Way cause at us at work. Today, it was draw chalk drawings on the sidewalk to show your United way spirit.
Fuck.
So, I got my pre-packaged tuna sandwich and my milk, as I do every day, and headed down to eat with the other geeks. Within 3 seconds of sitting down, an old bearded guy in a wheelchair rolls over next to my chair and begins his pitch, “Hey fellas, we’re doing a great thing for United Way today. You think the three of you could get together and draw a heart or ‘peace’ or ‘love’ on the sidewalk to show your United way spirit?”
We all sat there staring at each other as if he was asking us to saddle up and ride each other around the courtyard. I could see shoulders start slumping as the “how the fuck are we going to get out of this one” glances started. It was like watching 3 people simultaneously try to hang up on a telemarketer.
I didn’t want to pussy-foot around, but I didn’t want to come off like an asshole so I just told him, “No, thanks.” Then wheelchair man started in with the wheedling and the “it’s for a good cause” speech. I tried the “I’m not really an artist” tack, which failed miserably, as drawing hearts takes minimal artistic talent. One of my co-workers simply gave him the “I’ll think about it” brush.
And wheelchair man busted into, “Oh I know what that means. It means ‘No fuckin’ way! Doesn’t it? DOESN’T IT.”
Smiling, I simply stated, “Yup, I think that’s what he means.” By then, wheelchair man was getting as hostile as I could imagine Santa getting were he in a wheelchair. He wasn’t spitting at you hostile, but more like crossing you off the list aggitated. It was like he had never heard an O preceded by an N before. He began to roll off and then rolled back visibly flustered.
“Why? I just want to know WHY?”
“I just don’t usually give to the United Way.”
“You just don’t give to the United Way, huh?”
“No, I don’t.”
See, another thing is, is I am stubborn as a mule. You want me to dance for your benefit? Fuck you. You want to make me? Double fuck you. Oh it’s going to benefit me, and I just want to sit here and eat my sandwich? Keep asking. It’s a triple fat fuck you.
When he was well into the octuple fuck you range, a couple more of my co-workers sat down looking rather surprised when he started in on them. One even tried to reverse direction and leave before he fully sat down.
“Hey fellas how about doing a drawing for the united way? Don’t be like this [jerk? Something like that, I forget.] here.” He was peppering the speech with f bombs, and he was poking me.
Ever been poked by a guy in a wheelchair? It’s an emotional hodge-podge. All I could think was “Hey. FUCKHEAD. I come to work every day to do a job which involves keeping 16,000 machines virus free. Most days I emerge from the basement and sit here eating a tuna fucking sandwich and drinking some fucking milk. And I talk to a bunch of geeks about geeky topics. Nowhere in my job description does it say that for the one fucking hour that I spend away from a series of monitors and panics, I have to draw fucking hearts on the sidewalk for no other benefit than to make you feel like your helping a worthy cause. The people that you’re looking for are way shorter and are playing kick ball up the road. Now, I’m really sorry that you’re in a wheelchair, but FUCK OFF.”
And how the fuck does drawing on the sidewalk help the United Way, anyway? I may have majored in finance and minored in economics, but I can’t seem to remember if ‘chalk drawings’ is part of M1, M2, or M3. But then, the United Way has never been one for accounting.
A few days off will invariably humanize me just enough to dump me into a 2 day migraine when I return to my job of robotically staring at monitors all day. Said migraine will then prevent me from posting results from aforementioned days off, even though converting said information 0’s and 1’s for you to read somehow re-humanizes me even more.
I think the machines are winning.
Because the life of a virus administrator is feast or famine, time spent not in the middle of a shit-storm is spent doing extremely mundane maintenance tasks. Somehow even the inclusion of a Friday the 13th in this week did nothing to spark the script kiddies to produce a worth-while virus.
To pass some of this time, I scan our servers for non-business related material that might be deleted to free up some space. Usually, to the delight of my co-workers I’ll find a few gigs of MP3s and a few funny videos, as well as a bunch of stuff that would be disturbing enough if stored at home, nevermind on a work server.
Because employees do store presentations and other business related files on our servers, I can’t merely find all the movie files on the server and wipe them out. In that case, I would have some very irritated suit-wearing types calling in an air strike on my management chain. To avoid this, I have to open each file individually to verify whether 423adoc.mpg is a business related file or a 10 second video of a monkey drinking his own pee.
Today, there were no less than six times that I exclaimed “Oh geez!” while scrambling to close videos that employees felt strongly enough about that they stored them on our servers. There were videos of military killings of all sorts, gay sex acts that were graphic enough to make me wince, some lady repeatedly kicking a masked naked guy in the family jewels while he counted it off, and something called “cumshot blooper porno” which I had a feeling was not a powerpoint marketing presentation. There was even a huge directory of porno called simply “naughty pictures”.
As an admin, I am never really amazed at the way a typical user leaves his common sense at the front door, but I can’t help but wonder why they do it. The only two reasons that I can think for storing porno on a server at work are that they are sex addicts and can’t help themselves, or they think that the admins will never catch him or her.
As for the unfortunate sex addicted females, I can do nothing more than offer counseling. For the typical non-sex addicted users, I can only help by cluing you in to some simple but powerful facts to induce just enough paranoia to help you keep your jobs.
Now if you are a star employee, a smart company will turn a blind eye to your monkey pee addiction or may quietly ask you to stop. If you’re not a star (like most people) and you accidentally fill up a server with monkey pee videos and it crashes, or if the company is looking to save a few bucks by firing you rather than laying you off, a good place for them to start investigating is your violations of the company policy against monkey pee videos.
Can you get around all this and store tons of porn wherever you want? I’m not going to say that it’s impossible, but it would take quite a bit of work. You can install a free file recovery tool called PCInspector to examine or recover any files that you’ve deleted that haven’t yet been overwritten. You could also use another free tool called Eraser to overwrite all “free” space on your drive to government standards to prevent others from using file recovery tools to examine them. Or, you might be able to avoid detection by using OpenSSH to set up that encrypted tunnel to your home machine and surf the web from there.
Are you seeing the amount of work that it’s going to take to learn to stay ahead of people whose jobs depend on staying one step ahead of you? Even after all that work, you might not even avoid our monkey pee sensors, anyway. Is seeing a monkey drink pee that important that it can’t wait 8 hours until you get home? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Be paranoid. Be careful. Befriend a Geek.
Note: I did find a sick, but funny commercial for the Ford Sportka (995 KB) (Cat lovers or the sensitive need not look).
I handle virus protection for 16,000 machines at a corporation. Think of me as an alarm company in a neighborhood. I monitor you, I swing by and fix broken sensors, and dispatch someone if your house gets broken into.
There is another group in the company that focuses on intrusion detection. Think of them as the police. They set up barriers, patrol your neighborhood, and track down the bad guys.
Now, if I make a house call to test your alarm, the police know me, and should ignore me. If I need to silently test every alarm in the neighborhood while you’re all napping, the police shouldn’t send helicopters under the impression that the neighborhood is under attack.
When we all work together, and everything runs smoothly.
For some reason in the last two days, the police stopped ignoring me and my boss, and no one knows why or how to fix it. For most admins, there is nothing worse than telling them that he or she does not have access to something, no matter how insignificant, except for not being able to give a good reason why said access was revoked. Know why?
Because while you work up there on the sunny surface laughing through your power golf luncheons and jauntily sipping tea, we work deep in the basement. And for the geeks, access is all that we got.
On a completely unrelated note, the #12 search string for June was “female escort Nantasket”. The #7 search term was “asselss chaps smurf”. The #1, for the 6th month in a row? “Onion Booty.”
From a Co-worker
“What do you have philosophical Tourette’s or something?”
I might’ve taken offense if the guy didn’t play various Brady Bunch themes to accentuate his conversations, or use phrases like, “Well, I’m a two sneeze man myself.”
From the Boss man
“Thanks for staying late again. Pick a day this weekend (whenever) and take off a couple of hours early.”
Giving employees time off on times that they don’t normally work may just be the most effective cost cutting measure of the future.
Long Talk
Friday, I saw a co-worker I hadn’t seen in a few years in a local restaurant. It was a long five minutes.
Her: “What’s wrong with your eye?”
Me: “What the cross-eyed thing? Oh when I get tired I get a lazy eye.”
Her: “No you don’t”
Me: “Yes I do.”
Her: (with authority) “Well, I don’t remember that.”
Me: “Well, I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
Her: “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Me: “Yes, it’s true. People have made fun of it forever. I do.”
Her: (Incredulously) “Well, whatever. I don’t remember it.”
Listen, I know the cross-eyed look is in right now, and people everywhere are faking lazy eyes to look cool, but mine is real. It shows up when I’m tired, so don’t argue with me about it. Just point, laugh, and move on.
Long Walk
Yesterday, I walked 9 miles in 4 hours for no reason. It was actually more of a stroll, although I did carry some rocks until my forearms burned.
Long Day
Today, I was fighting the new myDoom variant. I know that virus writers are to thank for my prestigious role in the basement of my corporation, but fuck, shit, ass, piss, poop, cock, doody, can you lay off for a few weeks and go the fuck outside or something? If you’re going to write a pain-in-the-ass virus that’s going to give me a splitting headache and cost me gym time yet again, at least give it a little ingenuity.
When one finds a machine named “Uranus,” turning toward a coworker and stating “I can’t access Uranus. Do you know if Uranus is patched?” will draw laughter and a slew of follow up comments.
Note to Self 2
If you see a link called “random blog” on a co-worker’s blog, do not click it at work. You will be directed to a site called swolen Vagina, making you yell “Oh Jesus!” while closing all your browser windows at the speed of light.
Given the fact that I had a major server upgrade to do tonight, I got to go to work at noon. It is really, really fun to spend the morning playing video games and laying around, but the payback is having to leave work after dark in the summer.
The upgrade went perfectly, and I noticed that fountain is off by 8 PM. Man, writing on a daily basis can be tough. Full refunds will be distributed for this post with valid proof of purchase.
Urban
A voicemail message from a female came in for one of the e-mail admins today:
You took my fuckin’ money. You fucked up my motherfuckin’ credit…I’m quit witch you!! Bye!
As funny as the message was, you absolutely cannot imagine how funny this message was after being set to the various pieces of Brady Bunch theme music.
sub-Urban
For some damn reason, I am now dying to use the phrase, “Slow your roll, homie.” Yes, I absolutely know how uncool it sounds from a 30 something white male, but that’s what makes it so attractive. It’s enigmatic. It’s forbidden. It’s verbal lambada.
Stupid movies
(sing) Spider man, spider man, made of all legos he’s spider man. Nanana any size. nanana something something. Look out! Here comes the SpiderLegoMan.
With practice, even very angry people can sell Winnebagos. Even Winnebago man.
At work, we’re fortunate enough to have a courtyard that holds a 15 foot pyramidal fountain and a reflecting pool. Due to cost cutting measures, the fountain had been shut off for the last few years. This year, the fountain was turned on again, and has made an immense difference in the quality of the atmosphere around here.
On my way to my desk a couple of weeks ago, I turned and happened to see the first drops flowing down the pyramid, freezing the scene as a moment in my mind. I looked down at my watch and noted that it was 7:02. So last week, I came in a few minutes early, walked into the courtyard and waited for the moment to repeat itself.
The courtyard is dead quiet before the fountain goes on. There are no birds due to the plastic owls perched five stories above, and even though we are in the middle of a city, you can’t hear the traffic on the street. Generally, there are very few smokers out there at that time of the morning, and even if there are, the silence weighs on everyone out there. It’s like a theater or a library. There isn’t really any noise because the place itself is keeping you quiet.
Like clockwork, at 7:01, the pyramid started to rumble and fill. By 7:02, the first water spilled down the sides, and the sounds of rushing water filled the courtyard. At that point, the courtyard transformed from silent to serene.
Even though I look like an idiot out there, staring at the fountain and looking at my phone, having no excuse to smoke to keep me out there, it’s a simple moment to look forward to.
Last week, a co-worker was telling me a quick story while I waited in line for coffee. As she told her story, her mannerisms became as exaggerated as a teenage girl’s. She used sing song pitch, waved her arms, and leaned forward with her hands on her hips to accentuate her points.
Somewhere in the first 2 minutes of the conversation, I lost track of the content of her words and started mimicking her body language. Two minutes later, she realized that I was making fun, and carried me right back to high school.
Her face twisted into an evil smile, her eyes opened wide, and her fist transformed into an evil pinching machine. She then darted in for the evil purple nurple. Being the subject of many such attacks throughout my teenage years, I instinctively covered my nipples and dove backwards.
Halfway to the kill, the woman must’ve realized that her instinctual reaction did not quite fit with her corporate surroundings and withdrew, leaving me with my mouth agape. I had suddenly dropped fifteen years in two minutes via one attempted purple nurple.
Synopsis
Wrote a review, went to dinner, introduced GF’s Mom to Tyrkisk Peber (imagine licorice candy with a battery acid center), saw fireworks.
Self Review
At work, the rules are constantly changing with respect to pay, grade levels, and the review process. In the corporate world, this is a given. I think it’s either Human Resources’ attempt to justify itself, or a way to keep the employees so confused about rank and pay that it creates within them the illusion of movement where there is none.
In any case, this year we will now get two reviews a year. Not two raises mind you, just two reviews. To me, this seems like a great way to stay on top of the progress of a problem employee, while serving to better recognize a successful employee’s accomplishments. By having two reviews a year, everyone wins (excluding, of course, the manager that has to write them).
Then, I found out that the review is a self-review. Because no one with a normal self-esteem or a modicum of business sense is going to sit down and write an official document pointing out their own flaws to be filed in the HR office until the end of time, the odds of someone actually writing something constructive is highly unlikely. This means that at best, the self-review is a personal press release, and at worst, an exercise in creative writing.
My initial reaction to writing a self-review was to ask my manager to take the time to write a review for me, so that I could have something useful to gauge his perception of my performance. Then, even though I felt it was an exercise in futility, I realized that I could easily write a sterling review of myself better than my manager ever could.
So, no complaints. No bitching. I just sat down and wrote a kick-ass review with all my accomplishments for the year thrown in to back up any assertions of greatness. I’m sure that I can’t post it here due to a major confidentiality agreement, and I’m sure that it won’t mean diddly when it comes to the year end raises, but as the hardest working employee that has ever worked for my corporation, I can say that it was fun to write.
Career Types
Myers-Briggs Work Type: ENTP (Extrovert, Intuitor, Thinker, Perceiving)
Pearson Career Type: AIR (Artistic, Investigative, Realistic)
Robots in Disgust
Co-worker 1: Do you realize that an 18 year old was born in 1986? 1986.
Co-worker 2: (creepily drawn out) Oh, I don’t care.
Co-worker 1: Wait. Who said it? Aren’t you the one that finds 18 year old girls annoying?
Me: That’s me. I just want them to shut up. All the time. Shut. Up.
Co-worker 1: But there so good.
Me: You have nothing in common with them. Things wizz over their heads. You can’t even relate to them. Hell, they can’t even remember things like uh… um… Transformers for God’s sake.
Co-worker 1: (frustrated and loud) Transformers! Transformers! Who gives a shit about Transformers! You can’t go home and do a Transformer in your bed!!
Me: (silence)
Co-worker 3: (silence)
Co-worker 4: (silence)
Co-worker 5: (silence)
Co-worker 1: Ooooh Optimus Prime.
My response should have been “You can’t do an 18 year old, either,” but that thought arrived a mere four hours too late.
Shaving 102
I put up Shaving 102 a month or so ago, but decided not to explicitly tell anyone at work, because when Shaving 101 came out, they posted the pictures all over the office. Well, despite my hiding it in plain view, they found it today, and I think that they said something about me having issues. They seemed to be laughing, so I can’t really be sure.
Underblogger
Excerpt: Do you know of a quality blog that deserves more attention and exposure than it is getting? Celebrating the Underblogger…(link)
Hopefully, this little contest will spawn some worth-while reads, as everyone that I used to enjoy reading on a daily basis has since stopped blogging, leaving me reading technical articles, SQL manuals, and CPAN docs in lieu of laughing like hell at stories about when they fell down the stairs into a big pile of doody.
Deep down, I don’t get on the net to see if it’s going to be Bush or Kerry, or if a satellite can orbit Saturn. If I want frustration or in-depth knowledge of seemingly pointless endeavors, I’ll go to work. On the net, I seek only amusement, and the occasional off the wall projects. Mainly, I seek to laugh. It’s the worst kind of addiction with the best kind of consequences.
The problem with the net is that I always forget that when I find someone that lays down something that makes me laugh, they have no idea that they’ve done it. They never heard me laugh, and I never tell them. I just read their stories, laugh, and somehow think that by talking to the words on the screen, I’m giving positive reinforcement to the author. It’s stupid, but I think I treat the words as if they are being spoken, and respond in kind.
If anyone that I knew was still actually writing, I would take this opportunity to nominate them for the thingy at the start of this post (ahem). And when they got so popular as a result of my nomination that a stalker cuts their head off, I would go on with my life and try not to blame myself. If, on the other hand, the fame and fortune snowballed blessing them with an awesome TV show like “Pimp My Mr. T. Statue” which allowed them to work directly with Mr. T…man, I would call them up at their mansion in Beverly Hills, 90210. Then, I would call in a favor and ask them to pimp out my Mr. T. head.
And they’d say, “Jon, for you, I can do this. You were the key to my success.”
And I would meet Mr. T., and I would get a personally autographed, pimped out, hydraulically lifted, neon glowing, solid gold Mr. T head suitable for display in my home or office. And then I would kick more total and utter ass than anyone in the world, including, but not limited to: Hulk Hogan, HAL9000, JOSHUA, or the toughest Ninjas you ever saw.
Oh yea. But no one I know blogs anymore, so, I guess that dream would have to be lived out by some other lucky bastard who knows someone who still blogs. And makes them laugh. Ahem.
And another thing: I hate the word celebrate in conjunction with words like life, diversity, culture, or yourself. I have no idea why. I think it goes against some unused manly gene somewhere deep down that was made for killing. If you’re going to celebrate yourself, please do the rest of us a favor and do it at home with the lights out where no one can see…
Hopefully with a partner of some sort. Who remembers the Transformers. And is not a Transformer themselves.
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