Epic Fail

Think about all the technology that keeps you connected to the world around you. Cell phones, email, texting, instant messaging, gps, laptops, wireless hotspots, cellular modems.. the list goes on. Hell I have two cell phones now that I carry around and can get my work email from anywhere. I can connect my laptop wirelessly at home and VPN into work, control my desktop at work and run any application.

Yet in this day of technology and staying connected, I was just informed by one of our vendors that the shipping company that Cisco used to send out our new UCS servers can't find the semi that it was shipped on. Yes, you read that correctly. THEY LOST AN ENTIRE SEMI TRUCK. Follow that up with a notice that they had delivered a set to one of our other locations and then had to take that back this morning as it had not actually left the factory in CA yet!

I know.. keeping track of big trucks and products that have been delivered or haven't actually even shipped is REALLY hard. But cmon.. this is Cisco. I would think a company that big would utilize some technology to keep that stuff under control. /sigh

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Bad Form!

It's common courtesy. It's common sense. When planning a meeting and you look at the week as whole.. you DON'T plan meetings on a Friday afternoon. It's bad form to do so. Yet repeatedly I find myself stuck at work slugging through some boring ass meeting on a Friday afternoon. What is wrong with these people? Just because you have nothing better to do than work on a Friday.. don't make that a problem for the rest of us.

Friday's are for easing into the weekend. Friday afternoons are for wrapping things up and shooting the shit with your coworkers. Something major better be going on for there to be a meeting after 12pm on a Friday. If it turns out to be something lame that definitely could have been done on a Tuesday ... then you get to stab the one that called the meeting in the neck. That's the new rule.

Since I am stuck attending a 2pm meeting today.. I think I need the tattoos this guy has so I can look like I am paying attention while I take a nap.

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The Adult Rock Show

This past Saturday I went to see G. Love and Special Sauce with my brother, my younger son and a friend. It was a great show and I really enjoyed it. I was a little leary upon arriving and finding the opening band was GPGDS.. which I had to google to find out stands for "Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad". I didn't know what to expect from those guys at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find they were a decent reggae band, but was vastly disappointed that no one was dressed as a giant panda.

Never let it be said that I don't expand horizons for my children. As it was an all ages show and my friend happened to have an extra ticket, my 12 year old got to go with us. He was far from the only youngster there, in fact it was quite a mixed crowd. However, the majority of the crowd was that 18-25 year old college crowd. If you know anything about G. Love, you know he is partial to his weed.. and even has a couple songs detailing his love for the stuff. Therefore I am pretty sure my 12 year old can now identify pot smoke and may have even come away with a little contact high there. He spent the latter part of the show sitting in his seat just listening. He said it was because he was just tired.. but who knows for sure :P Just the same, he said he enjoyed the experience and I enjoyed getting to share the joy of some good live music with my son.

The opening band started at 9pm. They played for about 50 minutes and then the stage change. G. Love came on about 10:15 and played for over 2 hours, meaning the show ended around 12:30am and then getting out and the drive home. My son was asleep in the car on the way home. I was not far behind him. I was starting to get that "old" feeling again. I remember the days when I could stay up til all hours of the morning, sleep for a bit, and get up and do it all over again. Those days are gone now.. and I found myself wishing the show started at 7 instead of 9 and maybe that opening band just played a couple of songs isntead of an hour. Or skip them all together. O. L. D. I tell you.

I heard this guy on one of the XM comedy channels on my way to work the other day.. and he summed it up perfectly. His name is Greg Behrendt and he has a great concept called 'The Adult Rock Show'. Watch the clip:

Greg Behrendt - Adult Rock Show

Greg Behrendt is Uncool	Watch more
www.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

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Gravity can be your friend...

To all those who might have a hand in ever designing a hotel, or house or any other kind of structure that might contain a shower....let me remind you that gravity makes water fall from the shower head in a downward motion towards the ground. Therefore, in case you are not grasping the concept, you can put the shower head as high on the wall as you want.. and the water will still get to the ground, hitting all the short people, children and midgets along the way.

So why do I constantly go into showers and find the shower heads somewhere around 5'5" on the wall? It's a major pet peeve of mine. The hotel here at work is actually very nice, so imagine my dismay when I went to take a shower at 1am this morning only to have to deal with crouching to get my head under the water. I was already not thrilled to be up and showering to go to work at that time of the morning so running into that did nothing to help matters. :P

Well here's hoping for a smooth cutover this morning. Time to make the donuts!

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Shake me like a Monkey

I finally got to listen to the Dave and Tim: Live in Vegas recordings that were released and they are amazing. I had the fan recorded concerts that were out there, but in the smaller venue there was just too much crowd noise interrupting the performances. There were some amazing acoustic versions of some of their new material such as 'Shake Me Like a Monkey' 'Funny The Way It Is", 'Alligator Pie', 'Squirm' and a few others as well as some of their classics. There were some cool covers they did as well.

The bluesy acoustic version of 'Shake Me Like a Monkey' is by far one of my favorites on the disk though and while the audio isn't as good as studio release, here is a video I stumbled across that is actually very clear and from somebody with very good seats. How they got away with recording it I don't know.. but enjoy:



Already making plans to see DMB both days they are at Alpine Valley this summer over 4th of July weekend. Sunday's show will actually be on the 4th, which should be very cool. Going to have some tailgaiting fun and then enjoy the concert both nights!

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Test Post

This is merely a test post to see if I have the Networked Blogs thing working on FB which I stole from Ren's post.

Been looking for a way to get my blog into FB so I don't have to decide which place to post things since Facebook only imports the text and doesn't bring in videos and such.

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Access Denied!

I had a dear family member call me yesterday to seek help with some computer related issues. After about an hour of trying to help walk them through getting their new router connected, I suggested they contact their ISP to see if there was something on that end causing an issue. I got a call back a bit later saying that they managed to get it worked out and that it was some confusion over which device was which and thus was a simple cabling issue.

This family member felt bad I think.. so I thought I would share what I deal with on a daily basis to put it in perspective.

There is an individual who works as a PC Tech.. who told a user who was having printing problems to "Just reboot it a few times.. sometimes printing problems can take up to 7 reboots to fix". Which for you non technical people is completely made up out of thin air. If one reboot doesn't do it.. another 6 isn't going to magically resolve it. That PC tech spent two days working on the printing issue before that facility called over here looking for further assistance. As I was headed over there for a different issue, I said I would take a look. After about 15 seconds of investigation I was able to determine the cause of the problem. The print server for that printer was unplugged. No power. But hey.. maybe another 10 or 12 reboots of the computer would have made the power cord jump back in. You never know.

Then on Wed. I had a user call me and say this.. word for word.. no joke: "I need you to change my password for me and then set it to not change ever. New passwords are just too hard for me and I lose them when I write them down." This is an adult. Who gets paid a good salary to work here. Who can't handle changing her password once every 90 days. It only has to be 6 characters and you get to pick. I'm sorry, but if you can't come up with a password that you can remember.. then obviously you need to not work in a position that involves computer network access and go back to being a greeter at Walmart.

So to my dear family member....worry not. It's still much easier to help you than a good portion of the people I have to deal with at work.

Happy Halmark-ChocolateCandyCompany-JewelryStore-FlowerShop holiday all :P May your day be full of cliche and over priced meals and gifts! Or something like that.

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