The mind can exaggerate traumatic memories...

For instance... this is (I would swear) exactly what I saw as I neared the fallen tree.

This is pretty much the worst ride ever!

Oh like anyone could actually know that Napoleon...

What you might ask was so bad about my bike ride home from work today??? Well let's start at the beginning shall we?

1. Accuweather.com sucks; said the rain would start after 7PM... started at 5PM right as I got going.

2. Hard rain stings (foreshadowing folks... wait for it)

3. I met unabashed cyclist at Swope Park (yes this is on my list of grievences... you'll see why later)

4. I say how about we take 79th... he says how about we take 67th... I agree to 67th.

5. Nearby lightning is scary when riding a bike

6. Wind is not fun either and vitually always blowing in your face rather than at your back.

7. Now we have time for an anecdote... The rain has slackened and the wind has also slackened. It looks like a decent ride home now. Unabashed is about 50 feet ahead of me and I see him pass an old rotten fallen tree stump sticking just maybe a foot into the road... He yells loudly "TREEE!!" Well it is hard to make out because there is still a bit of wind and he is not very close... I continue as he pedals hard ahead of me and calls back again even louder and with a note of frustration "TREEEEE!!" Well yeah duh... I see the tree it is kind of hard to miss. It is just an old tree stump that must have gotten knocked over by the wind. I can easily swerve and avoid it. I am getting closer to the tree and suddenly see a swarm of flies... ah I get it now. He was warning me about road kill. Wait these are some freaking big.... BEEEEEES!!! BEES EVERYWHERE!!! THEY'RE RIPPING MY FLESH OFF!!! YOUR FIREARMS ARE USELESS AGAINST THEM!!! AAAAHHHHH!!!!

So yeah we both rode through a swarm of very pissed off honey bees... and yeah we both got stung (I took one to the eye brow, a couple on my arm and one on my hand... unabashed got hit at least 5 times.) It was pretty much the worst ride ever. Oh and then it started raining again... hard... the rest of the painful way home.

I hope you all had a wonderful night... I am firkin going to bed!

And now... its ALL good.

So today is a day of great rejoicing, albeit somewhat harried and busy rejoicing as we engage in the various clean up tasks/issues that always arise at the culmination of a very large project. The Data Center is in place and for the most part everything is working as it should. Here are some memories of my Saturday (apologies for the poor image quality on some of these... still learning how to use the camera and its many settings):

Servers awaiting their new APC home.


The servers IN their new APC home (the racks are APC)


My attempt to be photographically artistic


The Network Operations Manager holds great power


Have you ever seen such beautiful cable management in your life????


Room for growth


You look upon the core... a Cisco 4500 series Catalyst switch... plus all of our other communications equipment here in our wiring rack.


Pretty aren't they??


And now my work is done...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

The Good represents our new Data Center which will be filled with twinkling lights and noisy server cabinets this Saturday. Take a look-see... (clicking on the images will get you a nice zoomed in view)



The Bad and the Ugly are both reserved for our existing server room. The picture should say all that needs to be said.

User moment of the day...

Today is the day after. Technically yesterday was the day after, but yesterday being Sunday was a completely uneventful day after as there were no users to initiate all of the headaches that the day after generally produces. Saturday we migrated our users, computers, file shares, etc from the old Windows 2000 domain to the new Windows 2003 domain. Today the users were here...

I won't actually get into it here because it was enough to have gone through the experience in real life and I don't at this time wish to relive everything in writing but I'll share the brilliance of one female (and I am not make any allusions here... the user merely happened to be female) Finance department employee. Last Wednesday IT sent out a notice to all corporate users that we needed laptops to remain if at all possible at the office over the weekend so that we could get to them in order to migrate them to the new domain. She was one of the few who disregarded the notice. Today when she came down to inquire why her laptop couldn't be logged into the network, we asked her why she took it home on Friday. Her response was... "Well I didn't take it home! I turned it off and locked it in my desk drawer for safety and privacy. I thought just having it in the building would meet your requirements. You should have made the email more explicit."

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Expectations drop to... well something deep into negative space.

This will be the first and likely only Starwars movie I will get to take my son to see in a theater which is fine I guess since he is at that age where even ewoks would be cool if they were in a Starwars film. For myself I have, after reading this review especially, decided to not only lower my expectations but remove them altogether and just consider this as something I am taking my son to for his sake... like Dragon Tales Live which we took my daughter to a few times when she was younger.

If you wish to read it for yourself...
http://gizmodo.com/5037486/star-wars-the-clone-wars-review-verdict-the-first-star-wars-movie-you-will-truly-hate

My only consolation is that in a week I will have a 52" Hi-Def LCD with which we can watch Empire Strikes Back on to our hearts content. Of course I'll have to wait for Lucas to release about 4 various modified special edition BluRay versions before he will agree to release the original theatrical release in BluRay which is the only BluRay I will buy of Starwars... in the meantime my DVDs will suffice.

There was an old drummer who swallowed a gnat...

It wasn't this big obviously but I thought I should find out exactly what it is I am currently digesting. I've discovered that the unseasonably cool but still humid air is quite agreeable to gnats, who like to swarm particularly at long stop lights around the heads of passing cyclists. Also the swarms seem interested in keeping in touch because they follow you across the street and until you hit about 10 mph they continue following you. Ironically the gnat in question, which is to say the gnat in my stomach, was not part of one of the afore mentioned swarms but rather he seemed to be on a solo reconnoissance [holy crap I spelled that right on the first try!] mission.

His mission ended abruptly when a sudden vacuum formed in front of him and he was sucked into his final resting place. The vacuum was created by the sharp and repeated intake of air as a result of the steepness of the angle of the hill up which I was forcing my bike, and by extension myself, and the as of yet lack of good physical shape in which I find myself. Mission Hills is an aptly named bit of real estate.

Anyway, I followed that little snack with about a liter of Kiwi/Stawberry Poweraid and then continued on the last 1/2 mile to the office. The gnat provided little protein but it did give me something to blog about so I am grateful.

Thanks to the Angry Coder for automotive assistance.

Last night we replaced my Honda Civic's fuel pump. It was a smashing success in that the car now runs. Things I learned:

- My car was made in Canada... eh?
- My car is labeled as a Civic but my exact engine type doesn't seem to have ever been put in a 1994 Civic and it would appear that the car is in fact a Del Sol... or something like it.
- I don't have the inner strength required to siphon gasoline through a garden hose. I even practiced in the kitchen with a sink full of water and had it down pretty good... but the problem is water is not preceded through the hose by heavy noxious fumes. I never even got to the point of accidentally getting gas in my mouth because as soon as the fumes came through the hose I very nearly yacked each time I tried. I guess there is not enough Indy Redneck in my blood.
- Blvd Lunar Ale does quite a good job at getting a bad taste out of your mouth.
- The fuel pump is not in fact under the fuel filter as I was previously led to believe.
- The fuel pump is in fact inside the gas tank... under the car... accessible only by removing the back seat.
- A torque wrench does not very well register a mere 4 foot pounds when tightening a bolt that only requires 4 foot pounds.
- Commuting in a car that smell heavily of spilt gasoline causes mild light-headedness and mild headache after 10 miles.
- The Angry Coder saved me approximately $430... for which I will repay him with various invitations to drink good beer while watch hi-definition 52" entertainment.

Could be more effective than water boarding...

Imagine a 10'x10'x5' room with video monitors and speakers covering the walls, ceiling and floor. The ceiling is 5' so that you cannot fully stand, though after you witness this you'll understand that a fetal position is the only position the subject is likely to be in.

What is playing on the monitors and through the speakers... 24 hours a day... is...

This.

Douglas Adam's passage of the day...

(a little context: Arthur just yesterday returned to Earth... 8 months time has passed on Earth since his departure)

Arthur awoke feeling wonderful, absolutely fabulous, refreshed, overjoyed to be home, bouncing with energy, hardly disappointed at all to discover it was the middle of February.

He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he's picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.

The Mummy has arisen!

...And he smelled like feet wrapped in leathery burnt bacon.

Seriously folks. This one was a stinker. I mean not like Mr. Balrog bowels stink... but stink nonetheless. This movie was completely and horribly aweful. My wife and I wondered why Rachel Weisz didn't return to play the Mrs. O'Connell character, but 10 minutes in... nay 5... it was obviousy that Ms Weisz no doubt had read the script and politely fled in terror. Of course Brendon "George of the Jungle" Fraser will play any role that pays money so no surprise there.

Now the first two Mummy movies of this particular series I thought were passable as fun loving popcorn flicks. Yeah they were sort of Indiana Jones wannabes, but even in that they sort of poked fun at themselves in the process for even trying. This movie was not even in the low range of mediocre popcorn action movies. The plot was so forced and illconceived it made me slightly ill... the jokes were just a bit below the level of George Lucas and his "I'm beside myself" or "what a drag" C3P0 lines from the prequals... no they were even below that. Let me put it in terms you can understand; A Yeti kicks an enemy through two pillars and a second Yeti gives the two arms up "extra point" football sign. Holy freaking crap it was bad. I can't believe I payed $10 a ticket OR that I stayed until it was over. I kept hoping that something... maybe a cool Jet Li fight sequence... perhaps some really clever bit of CGI... ANYTHING would offer even the slightest redeeming quality to this should-have-been-straight-to-DVD-then-to-the-garbage-can piece of crap. If you think I am over reacting, go watch the movie for yourself. Ya know I wouldn't even say this movie is worth a Red Box $1 rental. Maybe kids under the age of 10 would think it funny or like the three headed dragon that the Chinese Emporer mummy for no apparent reason could turn into. I'd better just stop. I am just trying to persuade as many friends and loved ones as I can to not subject themselves to this experience.

DON'T GO!!!

94 years is a pretty good run.

Well yesterday afternoon my Grandpa got to go home to the Lord and his Elizabeth who he's been without for the last 16 years. It was difficult yesterday seeing my extended family in large part greatly troubled by his death. One particular family, the one that does not have a firm foundation in the Lord, took it the worst... even my cousins were fairly beside themselves in grief. They simply aren't looking at this from Grandpa's perspective. He can see again; he can hear again; he can walk again unaided; and by far and most importantly he is in the presence of the Lord who gave his life for him and saved him. The whimsical side of me also believes that he's sitting up there holding Grandma's hand. I'm sure our earthly relationships are not the same up there, but it is a nice thought that after the Lord, she was the second person to greet him.

My mom also had a very rough time, but I chalk that up to a girl losing her dad. She knows the Lord and understands (as well as any of us can I suppose) the infinately better state her dad is in now. Anyway... I don't feel as much loss as I do relief for him. Maybe at the funeral I will feel the loss a bit more. Well that is all I have time to say for now. I've got to be on the bike and riding in 10 minutes.