Seven O’Clock in the morning and the fire alarm goes off at work. A few minutes later, the Inergen fire suppression system fires off in the primary data center. D’oh. 12 hours later and I’m finally at home. There are still several failed systems that we’re working to recover, but all the biggies are back up and running in some form or another. I’m just happy that it was only the Inergen system that fired; the water backup charged and was online to go next. Eeeeep. Fellow nerds and Operations geeks will understand that the above story is a nightmare that most of them dream to avoid.

Finally, the seasons are turning into more “me friendly” areas. I appreciate the Summer on many levels, but I just can’t stand the heat, the humidity and the influx of mosquitos. I’m a wimp, I know. Fall is my time: I love the chill in the air, the leaves turning colors, the smells of composting leaves, the way the sky gets clear when the air is cold, the way the fields (if I’m lucky to drive by one - usually a golf course in these parts) get covered in dew and frost when the morning sun hits them - pretty much the whole deal. (more…)

I am typing this in the dark. This means that I have finally had the opportunity to use the gift certificate my parents gave me last Christmas to purchase a Deck backlit keyboard. She’s purty in the dark…I can see all mah keys now, and I ain’t gotta turn on no lights. I’m a giant nerd. I just hope I don’t spill any beer on this baby as I’m not used to keyboards that cost more than $20. (more…)

College is back in session and the expected flood of college kids has indeed arrived. There were at least four groups moving into my building at once, all on the same day, so who knows how many moved in, all told. All I know is that over the course of the long weekend (Labor Day, for you non-U.S. people - I’m looking at you, squid) the closet that hosts the trash chute was filled to overflowing with pizza boxes, empty 30-packs of Bud Light and bags of miscellaneous trash. This, I’m sure, was a combination of the long weekend (meaning no one on duty to pick up the usual weekend build-up) and the fact that a whole mess of college kids just moved in and added to the amount of trash. Tonight, I returned from a night ride on the motorcycle and held the door for a couple of cops, who remarked about what apartment they were visting. This is the first time I’ve seen cops at the building, and I’d bet a week’s pay that they were checking on complaints about our new residents. All told, I’ve still been very lucky. (more…)

I assume it was bound to happen sooner or later, but some assclown (or assclowns) has spoofed my domain and I’m now getting flooded with delivery failure and spam blocking notices. Kind of a pain since I’d finally gotten the comment spam down to a reasonable level using Akismet. Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about this spam since I can’t prevent the spoof. Part of me believes this is payback for facilitating the spamming of our Marketing department: I am the Ops guy who works on the campaign management hardware/software. At least the spam my company sends out is opt-in (so technically not spam, even though I call it spam), but the fact that I’ve tweaked the system to make it capable of sending out 500,000 messages an hour still makes me feel dirty, somehow. Stupid karma.

It’s been a long 7 days for a fella, what with all the demands of work. Tonight, no longer on-call and ready to have a few drinks (a fella’s been on the wagon again, just to make sure he can still get onboard) I decided to have me some steak at a chain restaurant (sadly, not Mortons, but good enough for the price). I had a decent sirloin, a couple of Sam Adams and headed out to the parking for the drive home. As I’m walking through the parking lot, somone in a large, gold pickup truck with a cab on the back (effectively an SUV, since it’s one of those dealies with the 4 seats up front) starts backing up and maneuvering out of their space. Instead of backing fully out and heading up the lane, they back up only enough to wind their way through an open spot diagonally in front of them. Only problem is that, just like most people who own trucks/SUVs (in my opinion), they don’t know the size of their vehicle. With a crunching noise, they run up against a parked Volvo. (more…)

So my plan for this weekend was to head up to Vermont, but due to my usual lack of planning when it comes to visiting people I wasn’t able to nail down any plans. It actually worked out well for me, because this weekend turns out to be the 20th annual Lowell Folk Festival. I decided I’d check out today’s acts over at the Boarding House Park stage, since it’s within easy walking distance of my apartment. (more…)

What the christ am I doing up at 5:30 on a Sunday morning? It would be one thing if I’d not slept and was just staying up to watch the sunrise, but that ain’t the case. At 7:30pm last night, I was asleep in my living room and woke up only long enough to drag my ass into bed. So here it is, 5:30am on a Sunday and I’m wide awake. Why? (more…)

Tonight is my third night in the new apartment, and so far I’m quite happy. The neighbors have been quiet, and I think I can chalk that up to luck (having met 5 young ladies who spent 10 minutes in the liquor store down the street buying a slew of different liquors, beers and cigar products…I don’t think the latter was intended for the smooth enjoyment of a mass-produced, cheap-ass cigar…who happen to live in the same apartment complex as me) but I’ll take it as long as possible. Once the summer’s over and school’s back in session, I imagine there may be more college-age kids running about. All I can say is if they keep me up all night, they better be feeding me drinks. (more…)

So I’ve spent some time digging around on various anti-spam tools available for my blog, and have decided to go ahead and activate Akismet. I’m hoping that this will significantly reduce not only the amount of spam messages I have to moderate, but the number of spam messages I even see. While I was at it, I upgraded my blog and gallery sites to the latest revisions, as well as the theme for my blog (which took a little tweaking, but wasn’t bad). So as of now, comments are allowed on this and the previous 11 (ours go to 11) posts I’ve made. This ought to provide a good testing ground to determine how well Akismet beats up the spammers. It’s not like I get a lot of readers or comments, but I hate having to turn off a feature just because a few assclowns are shitting in the middle of the playground.