cybrpunk.com

Gone

I dropped Muse off with her luggage and waited for her at the bus stop to the airport. I put her bags on the bus when it arrived. I asked her for the fifth time if she had her passport and drivers license. I waited by the bus and watched as it pulled away.

Now I’m sitting here with the pets waiting for the exporter to arrive. They are late. Soon though, they will all be gone.

I’m very sad.

EDIT——

I’m back from taking the dogs and cats to the airport. I don’t know how Muse did it before. They were so scared and pitiful I actually was crying when they put their cages in the air-conditioned live animal room. There were two small white dogs in crates in the room already. They were excited to see people. Our animals looked and acted like they were being sentenced to their deaths. They were that pitiful.

Now I’m even more sad….

Colors & Shapes

Here’s something I made while just having some fun with Adobe Illustrator.  Nothing fancy, I was just playing around and thought I’d share the results.

There’s still alot of things that I prefer Photoshop for but Illustrator is really growing on me.  If only I could merge my favorite features of both applications….

Meh.

Mixed up PCs

For as long as I’ve been with this company they have been using only Dell computers and servers.  Recently though our parent company has decided that all companies under it’s umbrella must start purchasing and using HP computers and servers.  I don’t mind HP at all but this shift in hardware was not thought out other than to make this mandate and then leave people wondering: How?

We have no corporate or global agreement with HP like we do with Dell.  We have no standardized pricing and discounts like we currently enjoy.  And so far, it looks like the first HP notebook I’ve ordered is going to take at least three weeks to arrive.  Unlike Dell which takes, at most, a week.  Someone should have thought about this just a little more.

Now add to this that we also have to deal with Lenovo on some projects so we have to be able to buy Lenovo notebooks as well.  I just received a brand new Thinkpad X61s this morning (which was ordered one week after the HP) and have started removing the bloatware.  Thinkpads have always been notorious for putting tons of extra crap into their computer builds that no one will ever use.  It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

I just ordered six PCs from Dell last week.  They are all here already.  I think I’ll just worry about HP later.

Thursday Tech Tips

I had a user setting up his notebook at the last second in a conference room full of expectant visitors.  When his notebook wouldn’t connect to the room’s built-in projector it seems that he went and grabbed our nice Dell portable projector.  When that didn’t work and the meeting was two minutes overdue to start, they finally came running to me.

Unfortunately, this left me with no time to help him with the problem he was having with connecting to external displays.  The only thing I could do was grab a spare Dell notebook on the way out of my office and have him copy his presentations to it so he could continue on with the meeting.  Problem not solved but crisis averted.

Today he tells me that he’s leaving on the weekend for a week and he needs that functionality to work and he won’t be able to let Dell have the laptop before then to fix it.  Uhh….  So I dredged through my rusty databank of a mind and remembered that I kept seeing a little graphic pop-up each time he hit Fn+F8 and it said “Presentation Mode: OFF.”  I remember thinking that that wasn’t right but couldn’t troubleshoot it at the time.

I contacted Dell Support and of course they can’t do much without me having the PC in front of me, but they did give me a hint that I thought might work.  There’s a Dell QuickSet application that runs in the background and gives some control over certain system settings and functions.  So I got the PC for a few minutes and checked QuickSet and sure enough, there’s a Display setting that, if unchecked, will not allow you to use external displays.  Presentation Mode was indeed turned off.

So I checked the box to enable Presentation Mode and tested it with an external LCD monitor and a HD Plasma TV in the conference room.  Imagine that…   it works now.  Not so hard of a fix after all.  But how did it get set like that in the first place?  That I can’t answer… yet.  I have two new D630s sitting here in my office though and I intend to see what their default settings are on this.

So that’s the first tech tip for today.  The second one is more of a common sense tip that should be obvious after reading the above.  If you need help with your PC, please… for the love of all that’s silicon, give us technical people a little time to fix your problem.  Asking for help at the last possible second is the worst time to do so.  Especially when you knew the problem existed previously.

Hong Kong: Closed

A severe tropical storm passed through Hong Kong this morning and the goverment instated the highest weather warning of Typhoon Signal 8 at around 10:30pm last night.  Because of that, our office along with pretty much everything else in Hong Kong, was shut down until the warning signal was lowered to a 3.  It makes sense when you consider that most of Hong Kong is water.

So that means that I was up every 30 minutes or so after my alarm went off to check the Hong Kong Observatory website to see what alerts were raised.  As long as the Signal 8 was in effect, the ferries to leave our island wouldn’t run, the busses to leave our apartment wouldn’t run and as far as I know, even if I were to make it out of Discovery Bay alive, the MTR trains don’t run either.  So, as I said, Hong Kong shuts down.

If the signal persists to 2:00pm then we can forget about work and do whatever.  But if the signal lowers before then we have to come to work within 2 hours.  That kind of sucks.  So when I saw that the signal had changed back to a 3 at around 11:30am I reluctantly took my smelly self to the shower and got cleaned up.  I had to go to work.

It’s not a bad thing.  I have a lot to do today.

Less than a week

In less than a week Muse and our two dogs and two cats will be flying back to the States.  In less than a week I’m going to be quite lonely.

This morning I stayed home to help Muse get all four of the fuzzy kids to the vet for their final health inspection and certification.  Because of her flaky friend we had to wait for a hire car to get us to and from the plaza where the vet office is located.  Her friend was supposed to help her take the pets to the vet in her golf cart.  Knowing how flaky she is, I knew she would cancel so I let work know that I would need to stay and help.  Sure enough, two days ago her friend calls and says that she can’t go but we can borrow the golf cart.  OK we planned for that so no problem.

Yesterday she called Muse all pissy and gave her this lame-ass excuse about how she had to give up her golf cart for four days starting on the day we needed it.  Yeah… right.  Like this woman could possibly stand using the standard buses for four days.  That would be beneath her.  So we had to get a local hire car to come get us and take us to the vet.  It’s way to far to walk with them all.

Of course her “friends” golf cart has been sitting in front of her building across from ours all day.  It hasn’t moved and it was available the entire time we would have needed it.  But oh well.  That’s one good thing about consistently flaky people is that you can safely ignore them and plan alternatives in advance.

Whatever.  At least its done now.  One more thing crossed off the lists.

Our government: Clueless

Have you seen this yet?

House Passes Telecom Immunity Bill, Expands Domestic Spying Powers

I don’t think any commentary is really necessary on this one. Nice parting shot Bush. Asshole.

Atlas Shrugged - book review

Ever since my commute changed from being an hour long to an hour and a half to two hours long each way, I have been burning through some books.  This is definitely a silver lining to an otherwise sucky situation.  However, at 1,074 bible thin pages of tiny type, I thought that Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was going to kick my ass and it actually intimidated me a bit.  Not because of it’s subject matter but because of the sheer volume of words that a book like this contained.  It is, by far, the longest single book I have ever read.

Luckily, this book is so old that I had no real pre-conceptions of what this book would be like because I had no idea what it was about.  I vaguely remember the ‘pseudo-intellectuals’ of high school and college talking about the book (and dismissing them as I usually did) but I never knew what it was about and never bothered to find out.  Then I played BioShock on my XBox 360 and read the reviews for that game and noticed that this book kept coming up in the comments and comparisons.  I was mildly intrigued.

Then it just happened that Muse was asked to collect a stash of books from a family that was leaving Hong Kong and donating all their unwated books to the local used book store and its charities.  Of course I helped.  I noticed and battered and taped up copy of Atlas Shrugged in that stash and knew that no one would miss it and that it wasn’t worth anything in decent condition much less the state I found it in.  So I stuck in my pile of books to read.  And then proceeded to avoid it like the plague.

So when I ran out of easy reads I broke down and tried to fit this thousand page beast into my messenger bag.  It barely fit so I figured I was stuck with it.  From the first day I started reading I was enthralled.  I had no idea where the book was going for the first few hundred pages and no idea what was going to happen.  Considering when it was written, it has aged quite well and is not written in an arrogant quasi-intellectual way like I had always feared it would be.  I guess you could say it’s actually the most arrogantly written book ever written in a certain view but not in the ways I feared.

THIS is the book that I wish I would have read in high school or college and that it might have had some profound effect on my life.  However I say this now knowing full well that no matter how intelligent I was then, it wouldn’t have meant nearly as much to me then as it did now.  This book deals with life and it’s experiences and they way those experiences are managed and dealt with.  For all those high school kids who say they read and understood this book, I say “I doubt it.”  Maybe on some level, but I doubt they understood the gravity of what was presented.

Sometimes the dialogue can be a bit forced or cheesey like watching an old movie from the time period.  Sometimes the theories and morales can be a bit (read extremely) heavy-handed and repetitive.  However, even in it’s repetitiveness, the book seems to be reinforcing instead by introducing slightly new or vaguely different situations or moralities to really drive the point in.  I do have to say that the monologues are completely out of control though.  When I got to one part where a non-stop monologue was over four pages of tiny text, I thought “Wow. That was insane.”  Later in the book there was a 56 page monologue.  I shit you not.  No one could talk that long.

But this book didn’t deal with common people.  They are the backdrop to this story that takes place over many years.  This book is more like a story of supermen and the evil villians who oppose them.  All the “good guys” are described as gods or goddesses with perfect features and tall bodies and muscular frames and boundless passions.  All the “bad guys” are sniveling backstabbers and fat whiners and ugly losers.  Ayn Rand seemed to idealize more than the premise of the story.  But this alone with that sometimes cheesey dialogue just helps to reinforce the feeling of watching an old black & white movie from the Golden Age.  Back when celebrities were noble and graceful instead of the pitiful excuses we have today that can barely stay sober long enough to complete an interview.

This is a book that I will encourage my children to read; but only when they think that they are ready to tackle it.  This is not the sort of book that should be forced on someone.  If this would have been assigned to me as a reading assignment in school I would have probably burned the building down and taken my red stapler with me.  This is a book that is to be read in appreciation of a time long past that could be more prophetic than expected.  This age of everyone being too scared to be “politically incorrect” is kind of what this book warns against.  Among many other things.

Atlas Shrugged is not a difficult read as I thought it would be.  It’s just a very very long read.  It does not play to the lowest common denominator and it may not be understood by everyone.  I’m not trying to say that you have to be an elitist asshole to grasp this book.  Quite the opposite, really.  You just have to take it with an open mind and accept that this is not an action filled story in the modern sense.  The ‘action’ is in the mental dueling, the wit and deceit, the double-crosses and the acts of resolve in the face of evil.

If you have a chance to read this book - especially if you have never done so - take the time.  It’s worth it.  But make sure you’ve got some years of life experience under your belt first.  Or if you read it when you are young, try reading it again now and see if its changed at all for you.  If so, maybe you’ve changed as well.

Joke Day II

A blonde goes into the dry cleaners to have her sweater cleaned.  She asks the clerk, “How much?”

He doesn’t hear her correctly and says “Come again?”

She giggles and says “No, it’s just mustard this time.”

Joke Day

A blonde goes into a library and says, “Hello. I’m here to see the doctor.”

The librarian replies, “This is a library.”

So the blonde lowers her voice and says, “Oh sorry!” Then whispers, “I’m here to see the doctor.”