I’ve scanned big paper and got quite good at it, now I’m starting a new project as a time filler until the new real project that involves scanning starts. It’s scanning little drawings! 8 x 11! And unlike the 1st project where I had to scan 3500 drawings, and the 2nd project where I had to rename 2535 drawings, now I only have to scan 48 linear feet of stacked paper. W0000000!
Month: January 2009
Next Project Mystery Revealed
I’m nearing the end of my current project and was signed on for another month to finish another project but everyone I’ve talked to either doesn’t know anything about it or “doesn’t think they can tell me”. Really? We work on poop bags, our definition of Top Secret is slightly different than most people. Things started appearing on my desk for me to review ranging from software manuals to supercomputer specs to patent applications and the person who was going to help me on the project described it as “completely different”. Today, after months of scanning and folding and then months of relabelling, I found out what my new job will be: Scanning a drawing, folding it, and then turning it into a CAD drawing so I can relabel it. Brave new worlds.
Guerrilla Upgrades
My previous reasonably nice PC at work was taken for a validation process that requires four identical computers to the point that one candidate PC was rejected its RAM having come from two different lots. So my 3.2 GHz Xeon was replaced with something having a 1/3 the processing power, 1/2 the RAM and a video card that could maybe power Q*bert. The low RAM’s killing me as I normally leave an instance of Firefox open as well as each of the programs I use in my workflow and it chokes if open an instance of Notepad beyond that. I’m seriously considering breaking into my bosses office, stealing the case key, installing an extra gig of RAM and installing my spare NVidia 7900.  Could I be fired for improving the assets at work?
Boss: Terry, we’re going to let you go for messing with company property
Me: But everything I did improved my throughput.
Boss: You think you can just waltz into your workplace and increase your productivity? We live in a society of laws, Mr. Robinson.
Although that’d be an awesome interview story “why were you fired from your last position?”, “I was too efficient”. Although that comes close to the phenomenon of “what’s your biggest handicap?”, “I work too hard” or “I don’t let go until everything’s perfect”. Boy does that anger me. Should I ever encounter that as an interviewer I’d reject them for failing to understand the word “handicap” and thus not meet workplace communication standards.
The Greatest Microsoft Product Ever Released
While I may hug my Windows Home Server once a week I’ve discovered a Microsoft product that may beat it: Songsmith. It creates backups and accompaniment to a melody or other tonal input and while it may work great with lounge singers and Casio Keytronix admirers, what it does to existing music is nothing short of stunning. All I can say is, behold what it does to Sting and the Police:
This star treatment has been done to a plethora of other artists, Youtube and grow wise. In a moment of genius, someone songsmithed the Songsmith commercial.
User Authentication Questions Second Life
Over the past month, I’ve been migrating my passwords from weak security to 37 character random strings using Keepass which has a portable version and allows me to connect to my key database remotely. But even after changing my passwords I’m miffed that I can’t write my own security questions used for authentication and am stuck with the stock “what was your first job?” which is easy to figure out with some digging. So, I’ve been putting in fake answers and recording the proper responses and have answered enough that I could provide a reasonable back story to my fake person Joe Baloke. Joe had an odd childhood as he went to school at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and his first car was an Eremotherium which he took to his job at a ninja factory.  Some of the details of his sordid class are shrouded in mystery but I think he’s got enough background to get a library card.
Life Immitates Air Supply
Kyle, Joe and I decided to visit Bill Schilling in his camp oubliette and we arrived early at Giant to meet up with him so we hit Wawa for superfluous energy drinks. Joe and I seem completely unaffected by them but we enjoy the trainwreck-like pull of their flavors ranging from something akin to burnt Mountain Dew to fermented bull urine. Needing to kill more time we pick an appropriate mix to go with our Rockstar drinks, which I think is made largely of caffeine and drummer sweat. So what line and so is blairing on the radio when I roll down my window to talk to Bill? “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you…“ from All Out of Love by Air Supply. Timing, I has it. To regain our lost masculinity we watched Prescilla, Queen of the Desert and debated proper appletini technique.
Inferior Scissors
The haircut was dull. I asked them how long they could buzz hair and got it buzzed to that distance. Somehow, there’s still a divet in my hair despite it being easier to generate than a bowl cut. I don’t mind getting “the bad barber” as I don’t care enough to complain when my bangs are uneaven, my sideburns disappear against my wishes, the cowlick is accentuated or head turning into a follical ski slope.
The person next to me asked his barber how many shears he had, and the barber responded five. I asked my barber the same and he said twelve. Apparently, that’s the recommended maximum and the selection is the barber’s choice, much like the clubs of golf. I learned that a good pair runs about 50 dollars and cheaper ones “rips out hair rather than cutting it” and “can’t cut paper”. I asked to see the catalog and expected an LLBean shears catalog with attractive people leading interesting and well appointed lives through the usage of their scissors. I was disappointed when it turned out to be much more utilitarian containing shears, combs, razor equipment and barber-specific first aid equipment. Apparently, the black leather bag on many stylist workspaces is a first aid kit. I supposed I’d be sceptical of going under the hollow straight-edge if there were a massive first aid kit immediately behind me.
I also learned that the turn around time for shear sharpening can be up to five weeks. That’s ridiculous. My local sharpening shop can do a whole knife set over a weekend and I can get an embedded device battery done in about a week. Either there’s a reforging process involving aging in fine charred oak casks or there’s room to start a shears-oriented startup that will make the current fat-cats of scissors sharpening quake in fear.
Beaten to the Insult
I’m engineering a campaign to rename my otherwise dull-pepper coworker “giggles”. I began planting seeds and went to begin plastering his Facebook walls with references to him as “giggles” only to find he’d already been given another nickname by a friend “faggot pants”. Don’t think I’ll be spreading that one around at work.
My First Printer
I’m watching my coworker nearly attack the large, Soviet-style printer to the left of me. The thing jams like Dizzy Gillespie and no longer faxes. A coworker commented that this was caused by increased complication of modern gadgets and that he wanted a phone that just made calls and printer that just printed. Being a child of the 80s and growing up with surly printers like the HP LaserJet II that would only print under a waxing moon or certain tidal periods, I have no problem making the device function.  It is like a child that’s a picky eater and won’t take a ream of paper if the top sheet is off-kilter or toner cartridge isn’t seated just right. The noise of a properly inserted toner cartridge is that of loading a Thompson submachine gun with a drum of 50 caliber dum-dums. In the modern office environment is unmistakable.
So my older coworkers are a lost causee, my peers are versed in the ways of hardware-fu but what of our coworkers’ children? Having grown up in the age of functional printing knowing neither mimeograph nor tempermental laser printers we need to give them the tools to succeed with the next generation of grumpy technologies. I propose the Fisher-Price My First Printer. It’ll be large and plastic with easy to identify trays and cartridges with a display that simply shows a happy face everything’s ok and a sad face if something’s jammed or otherwise out of order and will play happy music with bursts of bright light when a printer problem is properly fixed. Best of all, there’ll be a “at least you tried” feature where the device will provide audible instructions if the operator isn’t able to solve something quickly to avoid early frustration. Wouldn’t it be great, going up to a printer, having it jam and that experience bringing up memories of a joyful childhood. That’s the world I want my kids to live in.
30 Minutes of Commercials
I don’t watch much television, so when I do (I was baking), all the commercials are new to me. Observations:
- Why is Thor in The Hulk vs. Thor cartoon speaking Medieval English rather than either Middle English or contemporary English? The guy he inhabits was born in the 60s and Thor was last worshipped around 1200.
- Buzz Ballads offers RUSH delivery. I suppose for a small fee it’s dropped off by Geddy Lee.
- The latest issue of Reader’s Digest has “Secret Tips to a Healthy Heart”, I’ve read them, I can’t wait to cash in as a cardiologist dispensing “10 Life Extending Facts That’d Be Immediately Obvious to a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child Raised by Tak-!Sung Tribesmen”
- I was so thunderstruck by the idiocy of the Cash 4 Gold commercial (does anyone notice that the foundry worker is covered in prison tattoos?) that I missed our dog Max eating one of my silicone baking mats. I’ve heard chocolate can kill dogs, how about silicone? It certainly didn’t hurt my brother.
- There are over 200 types of dwarfism.