I graduated highschool for a reason, and it wasn't to go to college.
March 8, 2008
Dare I go back to Live Journal?
I'll admit, sad though it may be, I've actually been tossing that particular idea around a fair bit. Particularly after yesterday or the day before, my web host rather inadvertently fubared its own network setup, thus knocking me, and probably the rest of their network, temporarily offline. I'd keep the domain name of course, and email and whatnot would remain relatively intact. I'd just, uh, do all kinds of moving this blog to a subdomain, forget about updating it anymore, and go all LJ on this here website. Yeah, thought about it. Thought rather long and hard about it, too. For all of about a half second. Maybe one of these days I'll randomly decide to do so. In the meantime, this pointless entry brought to you by uh, I have no damn clue.
So we finally got around to trying to get in and see Untraceable last Tuesday, except thanks largely to the fact poor Trish is currently minus a vehicle, we were left at the mercy of OC Transpo, whom I've bitched about on an occasion or two on here. Now, not that there's a single problem with the bus system at all–cough, cough–but I still suspect that they're the sole reason why we missed by like 10-15 minutes the actual start of the movie. Suckitude galore, seeing as that one was supposed to be pretty good. At least judging by what I've been able to pick up on it. Instead, we decided to see I am Legend (sorry, no IMDB linkage for this one, which is rather odd) instead. It was… well, meh. Best way to describe it. It's a Will Smith movie, so anyone who's watched I, robot or Independence Day pretty much knows what to expect. Sadly I, Robot is probably one of his better movies. Though props do go out to the fact his character actually dies in I am Legend. Really though, as odd as it was to see him take on a more serious role than anything he's done in, say, either of the two movies I've linked to aside from that one, I think that also went towards knocking the movie down a couple coolness points. Nearly the movie's only saving grace was the fact it was actually one of the more believeable zombie movies I've seen. And far enough away that it's almost realisticly possible something like it could happen. Official decision from the opinionated jackass: we should have gone to see Untraceable. I'd watch I am Legend if it came out on TV, but um, I wouldn't pay for it. Wonder if there's a torrent for it on the intarwebz. Further investigation is required.
We got hammered good with a freezing rain storm on Monday. We got absolutely dumped by snow on Wednesday. Upwards of 30 CM in town, here. And we're expecting a crapload more over the next day or so.
A STORM IS CURRENTLY OVER WEST VIRGINIA THIS MORNING AND WILL PUSH
NORTHWARD TODAY GIVING SIGNIFICANT SNOW TO MOST OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO.
THE FIRST ROUND BEGAN FRIDAY MORNING OVER AREAS NORTH OF THE LOWER
GREAT LAKES AND LAST EVENING ACROSS EASTERN ONTARIO AND SKI COUNTRY.
THE NIAGARA PENINSULA AND OTTAWA HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED NEAR 20
CENTIMETRES AS OF 9 AM. THE SECOND ROUND OF HEAVY SNOWFALL IS NOW
RAPIDLY SPREADING ACROSS THE REGIONS. KEEP IN MIND THAT THE ENTIRE
SNOWFALL DURATION WILL BE ABOUT 36 HOURS BUT THE HEAVIEST SNOW WILL
BE THIS AFTERNOON INTO THIS EVENING.
STORM TOTALS WILL LIKELY BE NEAR 30 CENTIMETRES ALONG AND EAST OF A
LINE FROM LONDON TO LAKE SIMCOE THEN TO PETAWAWA. THERE IS POTENTIAL
FOR 40 TO 50 CENTIMETRES OF SNOW FROM THE NIAGARA PENINSULA THROUGH
TRENTON TO OTTAWA BY THE TIME THIS STORM SYSTEM MOVES OUT.
Thank god I don't have to shovel the crap, but still. Methinks someone really, really hates me…
The biggest monopoly on Canadian telephone and DSL service is apparently set to become the biggest US owned Canadian monopoly. Thanks largely to a ruling courtesy a Quebec judge. There are no words for this. Except, that is, a thank you. You see, I didn't think the government could sell us out to the US all on its own. Thanks for the help, moron.
Because while it was a pretty accurate summary of my opinion of the current situation on Monday, it doesn't really do a whole lot of explaining, well, anything. So here goes (warning: the below is probably going to be an essay. Deal.).
So back in November, they transferred a lot of the overnight folks–okay, *all* of the overnight folks–over to the XPS division. Now, I have no interest whatsoever in doing hardware related support, which is what that department's primarily involved with. Not that I can't do it–it's relatively easy to do, particularly when you're not the one fiddling with the inner workings of the bustified computer. But that's also the problem; it's too freakin easy. If something physical is broken, it either works, or it doesn't. End of story. You either replace the part, or tell the customer he's an idiot and to RTFM and go on to the next call. The longest and quite probably most irritating part of the job now is more than likely going to be waiting for the diagnostics Dell builds into their systems to finish running and tell me which part I'm going to be replacing. Now, I'm all for easy as pie work, usually. But this is ridiculous easy. In a week or two of doing this, I suspect I'll be able to just coast right through it like it's nobody's business. Not good when it's me. I tend to get into things I shouldn't. Like finding random little tidbits about my coworkers about which to insult them on here. But primarily just… being me. Which can and often times is a little freaky in and of itself–just ask any member of my family! So, yeah. This week I'm going through the retraining process that goes along with a rather forced change of career path. On the bright side, it means at least for the next month or so, I'm back to having 3 days off–and an actual weekend to boot! On the not so bright side, holy late. But that's another rant for another day. Like say, on the weekend when we're being hammered yet again by snow–a third rant for the next 3 days. That one I'll probably fire off tomorrow, when I have linkage to back up my pissedness. In the meantime, though, there be hockey on my television, and I barely watch that anymore. So I go do that now.
So apparently now I'm going to be a hardware technician for XPS computers. Which should be… thrilling, according to what other folks who've already made the switch are saying. Entertaining the prospect of looking for alternative employment, just in case this does take a nose dive…
Particularly when they mean you've only had to troubleshoot and actually fix maybe 2 or 3 calls all freakin' day, and it's now 2:30 in the afternoon. Ladies and gents, somebody up there loves me, methinks.
As I told the whacky bus driver this morning–yes, that one was behind the wheel again–it's minus too damn cold outside. I heard in the neighbourhood of -23. I don't care. It's still minus too damn cold. I wanna go back home and to bed. Because bed is awesomely good.
Fixing apple's. What's worse than fixing Apple's mistakes? Fixing that which they already know about. For the record, I never want to get that involved with anything Apple related again. And this from a guy who's got a well documented hatred of Microsoft. But at least their software doesn't break everything else when you're installing a supposedly updated version. Good job, dipsticks.
A few months back, they started making it mandatory in Ottawa that the bus drivers call out the stops as they come to them. Most of them do so, and the others probably won't be working there for very long. The driver I was stuck with this morning though, oh my. There's calling out the bus stops, and there's having way too much freakin' fun with a microphone. He was doing entirely the latter. I think, now that I actually have time to think about it, I might have seen him on YouTube…
And yet, Microsoft's status site says it's all stable.
Now that's a cover up for anyone who doesn't happen to bother reading the local news. I probably shouldn't be irritated about it–well, or using MSN messenger either for that matter, given my already stated opinion of Microsoft. But I do. So this morning I thought I'd jump online and see what was going on. Except it was apparently down. Not that Microsoft's status page said so. According to that, all systems were stable. Well, things that get media attention are obviously true, or so I'll keep telling myself, so does the fact that CTV has escentially told us otherwise change Microsoft's opinion? Nope.
This page will be updated when information becomes available.
.NET Messenger Service All systems are stable and running.
The error message on my screen that says it's temporarily unavailable says otherwise, but thanks for coming out. Ladies and gentlemen, corporate snow job at work. Just thought it deserved mentioning. Because I do that when people and companies are morons.
Is today the national day of malware or something?
Only explanation I can think of for the reason every call, except maybe 1 or 2, has been a badly messed up system in desperate need of a serious cleaning. If I really wanted to play dirty, I could probably break the single-person record for amount of times reinstalling Windows in a typical day at the office. Ah well, on the bright side, by the time I get off lunch I'll only have maybe 2 hours left. I can drag a call or few out long enough to cover it I'm sure…
I think Google may have had a momentary laps. A Dell technician in India has, apparently, stumbled across this entry while looking for a solution to one of I'm sure a meriad of Sympatico related problems. Particularly surrounding Windows Mail. Now, uh, don't get me wrong–I like the attention, but that's got nothing to do with that particular entry. Oops. Ah well, hopefully it's the same idiot I was talking to shortly before writing that entry. Now there's open feedback for ya.
It's a sad, sad day when you work for a computer company, doing tech support, and your computer goes on the blink. Mine's already developed this nasty habbit of restarting for no real apparent reason. And now while making someone pay me to fix their brokenness, my computer started to again display its brokenness by half freezing up on me all over the place. There was much of the suckitude. I wonder if they'll let me bring in the beast from home. At least I know that one works.
So apparently they've gotten smart and blocked all the good web to IM services out there. I didn't want a way to kill a lunch hour anyway. Anyone have an alternative to things like meebo, MSN's web messenger, ebudy and… um, all those? Will pay in… um, praise. 'Cuz that's all I gots.
I have no idea what's normal anyway. But I don't think you can put much faith in a quiz who's questions only ever have 2 answers. It's a 50/50 thing. I don't do well with 50/50. I don't do well with normal either. I blame anyone who isn't me.
