jr conlin's ink stained banana

i start my new job today, and i'm really looking forward to that. (Granted, i'm going to be spending the first few weeks drudging through a few systems, but i'm even excited to do that. i lead a sad, sad life.)

Still, i'm no longer doing something i did for roughly eight years. My previous Official Unofficial title has been "Infinite Monkey Wrangler". This was because i dealt with handling incoming data from various external businesses that wanted their stuff on our system. They're smart folks. They sell cars, run hotels and keep ships running, so it's completely understandable that they may not be aware of why putting an unescaped "&" in an XML feed. So my job was to make sure that our stuff was smart and flexible enough to handle whatever they wanted to post and it just works.

As one person astutely noted, it was like that old sage about "If you put an infinite number of monkeys in front of an infinite number of typewriters, one would produce Shakespear". i got to handle the rest.

Heck, that's one of the reasons this blog is called "The Ink-Stained Banana".

Still, time (and monkeys) march on and now i'm not doing that quite as much.

So instead i'm starting to think that i should change my title. Lately, it seems like my role is more pointing out the obvious. You know, things like "Uhm, i don't think that'd work because you kinda need to have power." or "Why don't you just ask them instead of try and guess?" or other like things.

i'm starting to think that perhaps my role has changed, and that i'm fulfilling rule 12.

i'm thinking of becoming the first "Corporate five-year old".

Back in the 90's i lived in Virginia. In the span of a couple of years there were two accidents where a loaded gas tanker crashed beneath an overpass. i remember these pretty well because i drove over and under these every day, including that day.

Let me again point that out.

i drove both those sections even after they'd had a full tanker of gasoline burn beneath them. The Virginia Department of Highways inspected the bridge joins and determined that while there was significant heating from the incident (gosh really?) there was no significant structural damage. The sections were cleaned and repainted a few months later and i believe one beam had a re-enforcement plate welded onto it a year later.

These were major roads, by the way. One was half of a six lane overpass, the other was part of a fly-over ramp from Malfunction Junction in Springfield (the latter was eventually removed as part of a general fix-up of that nightmare, but that's beside the point.) i'll even note that these were not recently retrofitted to prevent for major earthquake damage.

So why the hell did that ramp in Oakland fail?

Some structural engineer or contracting company gots some 'splainin' to do …

[Stuff removed]

i'm getting guilt trips about someone else's dog.

i'm pathetic.

Yesterday, the new box arrived. Well, most of it at least. In two boxes.

Needless to say, i was a bit confused.

Then i opened the box.

Yep, i get to keep my geek cred (well, some of it at least) and now i know why it was so cheap. So, into the living room, out with the socket screwdriver and on with the latex gloves (they kill static far better than a strap does). Two hours later, the box was mostly built. It's still missing a hard disk, but it's got a CD/DVD player, so it's good enough to run a burn program for a few hours. Actually, i had to run a pair of burn in programs (Dual core, don'cha'know.)

Once i was reasonably confident that the machine wasn't going to catch fire (about 10 hours and never crossed 35°C, half of it's critical operating range) i felt fairly confident that i could move the old drives into the new box and set things up.

Let me take a moment there to let that sink in.

Previously, when i got my windows box, changing computers took several days, most of which consisted of moving data from old drives to new drives, reconfiguring stuff, reinstalling software, and otherwise convincing the machine to do what i told it to.

With my server, it involved me moving the disks from one box to another, and updating ifconfig to use the new network device.

As much as i say that linux is still not ready for the masses, By the Sacred Ghost of James Thurber, i wish it was.

Ooh, break room snacks! There's cookies and crackers and, mmm those shrimp flavored poppers. Ooh, and a big jar full of those brightly wrapped little candies! i love those! They've got such intense flavors and the foil is pretty and … remind you of cat food.