Some Blogging Guy

Mission to a Rock?

September 2nd, 2010 by Howard | 4 Comments | Filed in Speculations

Somehow I missed this. Way back in April of this year Obama apparently set forth a goal for NASA. Land a man on a small rock.

“By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space,” he said. “We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.”

I’m not quite sure why we would want to try to land on a tiny speeding piece of rock. I’m certainly not questioning the brains of the Great Wise One, but I don’t see that the benefits outweigh the risks. I guess that is why he is president and I am not.

Some Blogging Guy

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Help for IT People

August 30th, 2010 by Howard | 2 Comments | Filed in Humor, Main, Techology

I don’t know if any IT people read my blog, but I hope so. Folks, when your entire computer system is down, dead like a rock on the road, keeping the users updated is critical. Listen, I know communication with human beings is a challenge for you to begin with, but try it. Consider the airline industry. I’m sure you have flown before, and no doubt one time or another your plane has been delayed in taking off. On most competent airlines you are updated every fifteen minutes or so. What they tell you is pure fantasy, as most times the pilot or flight attendants don’t have a clue what the mechanics are doing with their heads stuck in the number 3 engine. But whatever story they tell the passengers calms them down, makes them think that someone is working on the problem, and that maybe, just maybe they might make it to their cousin’s wedding in Cleveland after all. More than that, internally they know the airline crew respect them enough to lie to them every 15 minutes. Its what they would want if they were sitting in a tiny seat breathing stale air.

So, when your system goes down, it is really important that you send out a message to everyone that you are aware of it and working on it. We aren’t sitting in tiny seats unable to stretch while breathing stale air, so you don’t have to contact us every 15 minutes. But hourly would be nice. Maybe every 90 minutes. Also, it would really help if you passed along some information. Just like the airline model, it doesn’t have to be the truth. You could say “The core server coils failed and the neon tubes have to be refilled with rayon.” We don’t know crap about computers, but we will spend the next 90 minutes discussing the neon tubes and coils with each other and pondering possible options. We may even Google the price of rayon while we are at it.

The worse thing you can do is to be 100% silent. Which by the way, seems to be the standard operating procedure with IT folks world-wide. Everyone is sitting around staring at their blank rocks on their desks, customers are standing around glaring at anyone who works for the company, and pretty much everyone is angry with you. Even though it was the squirrel that the Biology lab let loose that chewed the rubber bands off the hard drive circuit boards so it isn’t even your fault to begin with!

I am aware that I am addressing a skill set that IT people lack. Hell, if you could talk with people you would have a real job, right? So, to make things easy for you, I’ve prepared a series of emails or voice messages for you. All you have to do is send them out in sequence every 90 minutes. Just mail me a check for $99 and I will send you back enough made up messages to last you through three outages. But that’s not all. If you act today I will include my new book, “How to Dress Not Like a Geek Who Lives with his Mother Still” totally free!

And if that isn’t enough to get you off your rapidly enlarging fat ass, I will include my pamphlet, “Guide to complete sentences”, normally selling for $12.99 completely free, all you pay is the extra shipping charge of $49.99.

Wow…that felt good. Hmmmm….I wonder what else I can do while I wait for my network system to come back online???

Some Blogging Guy

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Compulsive Typitis Syndrome

August 28th, 2010 by Howard | 4 Comments | Filed in Humor, Personal

These are the moments that usually get me in hot water. I have absolutely nothing on my mind this beautiful hot muggy Saturday morn. Nothing. Yet, because I am a sufferer of CTS, I must type something today. CTS? Compulsive Typitis Syndrome, a dreadful condition that instills in bloggers the compulsion to type letters into words into a blog even when they have absolutely nothing of any value to say. The tips of my four typing fingers actually ache to feel the smooth plastic keys as they press them down to form the letters.

Like a guy who has to wash his hands 73 times or check the front door lock 44 times, CTS sufferers must type out meaningless blog posts constantly and continuously.

Normally, since I seem to have a very mild case of ADD there are somewhere around 13 million thoughts floating inside my head, and it is a simple matter of reaching one hand into the swirling mess of thoughts and yanking one of them screaming and wiggling back down and then nailing that sucker onto a page.

Poor you, dear reader, as the river of thoughts in my head is dry. Just dust and smooth rocks.

The last week of work was affectionately termed “Hell Week” due to the long hours and the packed days, not to mention a thousand things to accomplish amidst screaming and gnashing of teeth. I may have overthunk my brain. Ran it at the maximum RPMs too long and thus today it is resting.

The only thought I see anywhere in the huge expanse that is my brain is a small wandering one, barely a thought at all. He’s leaning against a light pole in the darkness, pointing one hesitant finger at the “g” in the word gnashing. What is this one thought? Silent letters. Why do we insist on letters in words that are silent? Isn’t the purpose of letters to represent sounds so one can pronounce the sound? So, why add letters that have no sound?

This shadowy thought is pushing his hat back on his head in order to scratch his noggin, wondering why we don’t have a “W” in noggin, such as wnoggin. “Heck, that would cause you to mispronounce the word!” You explain. Well, you ever try pronouncing the word gnashing using the “g”? G-nashing??? Ga-nashing???

The wife desires more coffee. And then we want to do a little garage sailing. (Yes, I refer to it as sailing as opposed to saling, since we are not selling but floating through the neighborhood purchasing other people’s junk.)

However, when my mind is not working, something else wakes up. Wink Wink. Nudge Nudge.

Have a great morning folks. (I’m going to!)

Some Blogging Guy

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Coral Gables Bans Pick-up Trucks

August 27th, 2010 by Howard | 1 Comment | Filed in Observations

Apparently it is illegal to park a pick-up truck in your own driveway overnight in the city of Coral Gables. Or paint your house an unapproved color among numerous other rules and regulations. Someone received a $50 ticket and sued, and the case has been going back and forth for years. The Sun-Sentinel reports on it today. It could potentially wind up in the Florida Supreme Court.

As most of my readers are aware, I drive a pick-up truck. I am after all, a man, and men drive trucks. I have discovered that a pick-up truck is one of the best vehicles to navigate the terror-filled highways of South Florida. Plus, it is cheap on gas, cheap to maintain and I really don’t care if some random Florida driver hits me on the highway. I just shoot him my middle finger and then drive on to work. What, I’m going to stop and attempt to engage the guy in a conversation? Why? He won’t have a license, he won’t have insurance, he won’t have money and he won’t speak English. It is easier to just keep driving. So I have a dent in my truck. It just adds more character to it.

Besides, the BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus and other “high end” leased vehicles on the highway steer clear of me. They don’t want to risk scratching their precious paint jobs which probably is valued higher than my entire truck. This comes in handy when my lane is ending and I have to merge.

But, back to this story. In this particular case, the truck was a very nice looking F-150 that Lowell Kuvin was parking outside his rental house in Coral Gables. A house that did not have a garage to hide his vehicle. The city asked him to park it outside the city limits. While there are non-truck vehicles parked in the city that look like hand-me-downs from the Clampett family, that is OK. But park a beautiful truck in Coral Gables, and it is $50 a day until you remove it. You can read about the case on Kuvin’s website, where there is also a hilarious video from The Colbert Report that you really should watch.

My Ford has about 160,000 miles on it. It is twelve years old. It still hugs the road better than my wife’s SUV, drives faster without the wind blowing it about, and costs nearly nothing to maintain.

Yeah, I like pick-up trucks.