Not Just A Force Of Nature
{ Category Archives }
Went to a local geek event a few weeks back, and suddenly found myself being pulled aside for a podcast they record every week.
I of course took the chance to plug Zyps, but the conversation was broad-ranging, and wound up being a good summary of everything I’ve been up to the last few months.
We’re finally sending updates to the vendor en masse, and there aren’t many errors, but the ones that do come up are interesting… For example, the spec has this phrase:
[We] will enforce U.S. Sanctions as required by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC prohibits U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with certain sanctioned countries (such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Syria), organizations, and individuals deemed to be acting on behalf of, or located in, certain sanctioned countries, terrorism sponsoring organizations and individuals, and international narcotics traffickers.
I didn’t concern myself with this much, as I doubted my own company would be doing business with anyone in North Korea. So I was surprised when this error came back…
This property record has been rejected due to it being located in an OFAC sanctioned country.
…for a customer in the Cayman Islands. I think the vendor needs to update their database…
Cox’s stupid Scientific Atlanta cable cards won’t sync with it, and even the people who got theirs working start missing shows every 2 weeks and have to reboot (unacceptable after the smooth operation we’ve had with our Series 2).
No release date announced for a fix, and it looks like Scientific Atlanta is the one that needs to produce it. (But gee, don’t they have their own DVR now? Wonder how quickly they’ll move to fix the problems their competitor is having?)
Was fidgeting with my wedding ring this morning when I felt an odd bump on it; looked down to see a lovely little scratch in the gold. Had to stop for a minute and think how it could have gotten there…
That’s when I realized that wearing it through the Lava River Cave was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the easiest cave imaginable short of going in and paving a walkway, but I was propping my hand (and therefore the ring) on the walls, floor and ceiling pretty much the whole time. (The alternative was slipping and cracking my head open.)
Oh, well, I’m sure a jeweler can get the ring back to like-new condition. I need to think about the fact that I’m wearing it more often, though.
We made it all the way to the end of the cave, by the way, even Lenny. (I think he had an easier time than I did, in fact.)
Great… The heartburn is kicking in again.
I’m not really stressed, just a bit depressed. Wasn’t I blogging something along these lines last fall? I need to go back and read.
Edit:
Okay, I think I’m seeing a pattern here…
2007-08-15:
I’ve got that burning, aching melancholy again. It’s like the calm before a storm.
It’s not even about the baby… I think this happens to me every fall.
2007-08-15:
My heartburn’s starting again. I know it’s not triggered by weight, because I just came off a diet. Must be stress, then (and I have no shortage of that).
2006-09-05:
Ah, that’s why I’ve been in such a blue mood lately! I forgot to listen to The Campfire Headphase for, like, a whole month!
Clearly, I need to just spend the months of August and September in bed from now on.
The Dell Inspiron laptop (”Mini-me”) has been sending phantom keystrokes since we got it… It doesn’t interfere with ordinary document editing, but it renders Alt-Tab useless, makes new windows pop to the back of the stack, and plays havoc with context menus. It wasn’t bad enough to return it immediately, but it’s driving both me and Diana crazy. I don’t have any upcoming presentations now, so it’s finally time to send it in for repair.
Of course, first I have to get past “Lalit” with tech support. Her first action was to point me to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on System Restore. Here was my terse response:
> This is a hardware problem, not software. I'm certain of this because > I was able to reproduce the issue on a live Linux distribution (i.e. > without Windows running). > > Sorry, but performing a system restore won't help. Please make > arrangements for us to return the system for repairs.
Sitting in my e-mail this morning was a request for an address to ship the return box to.
I’ve done my time listening to muzak while on hold for techs who don’t know their systems half as well as I do; I’m through messing around.
Heh… My old Rage Games site just got (properly?) credited on Rocketboom’s August 15th episode as the original poster of an “All Your Base” animated GIF. I have no idea if the Something Awful people (who eventually popularized the meme) got it from me, from Zany Video Game Quotes, or just on their own, but it’s always nice to just be sitting there flipping through Tivo programs and hear your work mentioned.
Can’t stream last.fm at work due to tight bandwidth. Doesn’t help me in the car, either. So their introduction of personalized podcasts looks pretty damn cool.
Back from John and Lacey’s wedding in Iowa. Our schedule, as usual, did not include time for sleep.
The newlyweds, being but recently out of school, had to do things on the cheap. Among other things, that meant taking care of the reception hall themselves, both setting up (we helped till 1:00 AM the night before the wedding) and cleaning up (we helped till 1:00 AM the night of the wedding). Add in the Iowa State Fair the following day (Ruth wanted to take her granddaughter), followed by a long drive back to Omaha, and you have a recipe for exhaustion. Sorry we didn’t even attempt to see Omaha friends during the trip. We knew there wasn’t gonna be time, though.
John and Lacey are pretty darn cute together. I’ve thought so throughout their four-year-long engagement, of course, but their uber-mushy vows just reaffirm it. Here’s wishing them many, many happy years together.
