Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v.3.02

Lots of Quotes

Richard Feynman - "I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there."

John Kenneth Galbraith - "If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

Doug Larson - "A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience."

Sir William Bragg - "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."

Laurence J. Peter - "Everyone rises to their level of incompetence."

Horace Walpole - "The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."

Thomas H. Huxley - "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."

Napoleon Bonaparte - "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Socrates - "By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

David T. Wolf - "Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows."

Niels Bohr - "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

E. V. Lucas - "I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them."

Eugene McCarthy - "Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important."

Thomas Pickering - "In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known."

Google Scholar, Plane Rendevous, Police Cars

Google is great. Google Scholar is... is... a huge tease. You can get lots of stuff, but some of it just provides the abstracts. You have to register for the paid-for site to actually view the articles. It might be premature to drop your Lexis-Nexis subscription.

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Hmmmmm... plane flights are a way to meet a potential spouse? The only interesting woman I recall sitting next to was the 4'10" law school student headed to DC. Pretty much every other time I was sitting by myself or with a family member or a guy. Don't think I will pick up flying more to make up the difference.

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Fake police cars are a better solution to speeders than humps or speedbumps, I think.

Cookies!!!

There is a theory that some people have that providing goodies to IT personnel makes them like you and help you whenever you need it. How true is this? Dunno... but it means that I get cookies, cake, pizza, etc. This all hurts my waistline, but it is mmmmm mmmm good. :)

Today, I got a bag of oatmeal cookies from someone I help all the time. They are quite frankly some of the best I eat all year. Hard to pay for some at a store when you know around Thanksgiving or Christmas you are going to get these which are 3x better.

Contentment

My life is... well, pretty good. There are not any major problems about which I feel I need to vent. There are majorly good things that I don't want to spoil by bringing it up to people I am not sure have any business knowing at this point in time. Which means this blog stays pretty barren.

Well, some people may or may not know that I moved recently. Here are pics of my apartment for those who are interested. This was based on pics of my office from a while back.

Another reason is that I have been playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic like a fiend. Bought it for $20 a month ago and only played it a few hours when I moved. Now that my computer is set up, I am all too often playing it.

Challenges

Had fun last night. The manager of a local pub called me on my cell and asked me to help him with a problem he was having getting their new point of sale software to run. I went over and spent almost 2 hours dorking around until I called in a friend who gave me what I needed to make it work. The challenge of making something I know so little about work was awesome.

According to the vendor, it is just a matter of following the instuctions on his sheet. If only it were that easy, then people like me would be jobless.

Step one: The floppy drive did not recognize the disk. Replaced the drive with another drive salvaged from a discarded computer. Note: USB floppy drives might require drivers.

Step two: Installed Microsoft Novell drivers which did not work.

Step three: Installed Novell client which removed MS drivers.

Step four: Stumbled around why the computer could not see the Novell tree. [This is where I called in assistance.] The solution? Remove the Novell client and install with the "IP and IPX" option. It saw the tree fine.

Step five: Stumbled around what user logs into the computer. Our solution? Take one of the dumb terminals and have it reboot. Pause the screen at the point it logs into the Novell server. Crack the password for that user.

Step six: Follow the vendor's instructions.

I didn't offer to fix the remote printers or make the card swipes work. Maybe that can be next week?

Three Flat Tires

I am driving somewhere and in a hurry because I am late. So naturally, Murphy's Law takes into effect and causes my car to rumble as though I have a flat. So I get out to take a look and mutter that I am so glad I have the flat fix stuff. I take a look and realize that I have not one or two but three flat tires at the same time. I realized that there is no way I have enough to fix all three. I called up my mechanic and didn't get anyone. I called my insurance company to get a tow and got a voice message that they were having technical difficulties.

The Boat Dream

This dream is a couple weeks old, but it stuck in my head. Okay, I was in a very small boat on a river. I was laying in the bow (the front) as we are speeding along at breakneck speed for such a winding body of water. Tree branches sometimes narrowly missed my face. We are chasing another boat. We decide to take a shortcut... and just like a video game, we jump across a bend in the river and end up in front of the other boat. I am about to board the other boat when they pull out a police light. Our driver does a fast U-turn which throws me out of the boat into the river. The other boat takes after mine and leaves me alone in the river.

My alarm wakes me up.

Palm Stone

I am having an Instant Message conversation describing myself as a loser in the 3rd person as though I am someone else who is much better and worthwhile.

Yup. I am weird.

Petri Dishes

My social skills were described metaphorically yesterday morning as treating people as though they are in petri dishes. As an ex, she probably has deeper insights into me than most anyone else.

It is true.

People are my experimental subjects. The various components of my life are carefully kept segregated to prevent possible contamination. I perform a covert and expansive battery of tests on them to gauge their capacities and capabilities. Those with closer ties get the brunt of the experimental barrage.

Usually my behavior is interpreted as playful or random. This is only because I really enjoy screwing with people's heads. Call it a hobby, I guess.

The most fun is when someone tries to screw with my head. The tussle we get into over who is better gets me very excited. A challenge in an area I consider myself mostly superior to others makes my day.

I voted.