Author: cdwan

Find this movie. See it.

Had this thought. Wanted to share it.

My thought

I got home today, and Jen was finishing up the window installation of my EIGHT THOUSAND BTU window mount air conditioner of DOOM. The ones they sell in the grocery store average 3500 BTU’s, and top out around 5,500. Home depot had a few of these 8,000 BYO units laying around at a 30% discount. Now, my only question: What the hell is a “BTU?”

Bo-Tox Unit?
Booty Tonnage Ultrakools?
Bitchin’ Temperature Undulations?
Beyond Tornado Underpressures?
Beth Twists, Undulates?

I’m certain that the internet knows the answer…but do you?

In other, unrelated news, I got my first taste of a customer going nuclear on me. His complaint shot up the Apple hierarchy, and came rapidly back down to me (within about an hour or two). Fortunately, he wasn’t complaining about any aspect of my behavior. In fact, when pressed, he admitted that I had been more helpful than most of the other folks in the process. It was just, see, my email (asking how things were working out and offering assistance) was the last one he received before going ballistic…so my name (and my company’s name) were the ones that he forwarded all over Apple under the heading “I AM GOING TO SCREAM.”

I saw my career flash before my eyes…but fortunately, I work with cool and reasonable people who have seen this sort of thing before. A major complaint to our biggest corporate sponsor in the first three weeks of employment? Sheesh, at a big firm that would be “see ya!” material.

Damn, this AC unit can cool some air…

It has been commented, over dinner, by a particular spouse of mine (who shall remain nameless, to ensure her privacy) that I whine a lot about a job that I seem to like far more than any of the previous four. To recap, those four involved: Doing whatever the heck I felt like at a University; making targeting systems to more accurately pick which people get blown up; backing up pr0n collections for professors; lifting heavy things.

This is true. I am way happy. It may be difficult and stressful, but in the past four weeks I’ve helped people to build four or five cluster computers and it *mattered* to them. At the end of our interactions, people walked away going “sweet! Now I get to do cool stuff with the system that Chris helped me set up!” That’s worth a lot of commuting, and a lot of computers that have been submerged in water.

In other news, I’m now the proud owner of am 8,000 BTU window mount air conditioner and a gas powered lawnmower. Zoom! Whacka Whacka Whacka!

Oh wow. Pretty lights…colors.

Today, I got beaten like the bad house elf. Beaten like a dirty rug. Beaten like the red-haired stepchild. Oh man, am I beat. On the other hand, it turned out okay. Managed to (I think) turn two people whose clusters did not work and who were starting to hate our software into people who may eventually forget the initial pain of getting stuff working and may someday praise us.

My very favorite part was the bit where we had finally gotten the cluster nodes to start correctly downloading their software. It was working, after hours of detailed tweaking and button pushing by remote (said customer is in Europe). Suddenly, it stopped. “What happened? Did anything happen?” I asked? “Yes, he said. The computer fan kept going faster and faster. We’ve never heard it go so fast before, so we rebooted all the nodes.”

Noooooooo….

Originally published at chris.dwan.org. You can comment here or there.

This is more common as an example of source code than the unwashed masses would like to think.

Originally published at chris.dwan.org. You can comment here or there.

Three news articles caught my eye today:

1) A PETA person worked undercover at a chicken processing plant and took some truly savage video of the employees flinging live chickens against a wall and similar stuff. The employee KFC has promised to look into it, and stop buying from that plant if they don’t shape up. Apparently, said undercover employee got only one bit of chicken slaughter sensitivity training: How to wring a neck with his bare hands.

2) Women in Lesotho are infected with HIV at a rate of FIFTY PERCENT, and the men with whom they engage in the obliquely put “transactional sex” are infected at something like one out of four. The transactions are for things like rides to work, and food while their husbands are away. Apparently, the signal for the local supporters to lie low for a while because the husband is home is a box of detergent in the window.

“In Lesotho, married women are legally minors, unable to open a bank account or own property without a husband’s approval. Men decide all sexual matters, down to the number of children a wife will bear.

“Once you get married, you become a child, in a way, of your husband,” said Dr. Itumelang Kimane, a senior lecturer in social anthropology at the National University of Lesotho. “You cannot use devices like condoms and contraceptives without the husband agreeing.”

3) The Boston police are going to picket the democratic national convention, since they’ve been working for two years without a contract and see this as their chance to get the issue resolved.

I’d say that it’s still a fair generalization to say that people pretty much suck.

Originally published at chris.dwan.org. You can comment here or there.

Once again, it’s on

So, seattlesque (a high school classmate) appears to have hit the rocks pretty hard and documented it on livejournal.

It’s interesting (and sad) to me to follow seattlesque‘s descending perspective along with the objective reality of bartosz. Brian sees himself as a warrior in some great struggle. Bartos is letting his friends know about visiting hours at the mental hospital.

Originally published at chris.dwan.org. You can comment here or there.

Kaboom

Originally published at chris.dwan.org. You can comment here or there.