Author: Tom Kern

Prolonging the magic….

I work in I.T. which I’m pretty sure all 3 of you know. I’m sure all 3 of you have called me up at various intervals in the last 7 years and heard me utter the following phrase “I can’t come out I’m on call”.

Call at Scottsdale isn’t nearly as bad as it was in Kingman. The call volume is much lower and I get paid to be on call. Lower volumes and paid or not it’s still damn annoying to be on call. Mainly because it puts my social life on hold for a whole damn week.

I know what your thinking right now… Wait when did Tom get a life? It happened a long time ago but those are details that you don’t need to know.

Finally this week I threw caution to the wind while “On Call” and said fuck it, I’m going to continue my social life “On Call” or not. Now I’m not a dummy if your going to talk the talk you have to walk the walk, so to that end I took advantage of several “perks” of being on call for Scottsdale. Namely a laptop (which is actually my daily usage computer for work) and a celluar broadband card (you know those nifty data cards you people with when your in the park because the park doesn’t have free WiFi yet). Laptop and Broadband card aren’t the only things you need when your on call you also need your pager (yes pager because in my particular line of IT work cell phones are still new fangled technology not to be trusted), Cell Phone (of course your personal cell phone because other then the random grandparent who doesn’t have a cell phone these days), blue tooth head set (have to type when your on call), and since you have so much crap anyway why not throw in a backpack for good measure. Oh and don’t forget the Keyfob because it looks really bad if you can’t dial to fix a problem when your on call.

OK now that we have our “On Call” kit built lets go out to dinner on a Friday night at (rolls 100 sided dice for dinner location) Rula Bula! And for kicks lets round out our party with the usual D&D sterotypes (Ogre, 2x pixies,rouge on a motorcyle, and a Paladin). OK good so we have our party established (IT Geek, Ogre, 2x Pixies, rouge on a motorcycle, and a Paldin in a pear tree) off you go to dinner…… ***BUZZZ*** ***BUZZZ***

FUCK! the pager just went off…. and you are like a block from Rula Bula!.

Drop off your party and tell the rouge on the motorcyle that you have to work. The Ogre gets the laptop booted before he bails, thank you Mr. Ogre. Once again you are alone and call into the help desk to find out what the problem is, oh this is a two for one special and you are going to need to dial in. So you find a nice parking lot and log into your laptop and fire up the broad band card which con…. dammit it won’t connect.

Reboot the laptop, login, restart broadband card (throw the dice to see if it will connect this time….) and nope no connection. Repeat this act 4 more times in the next 10 minutes. While rebooting also throw a dice for how helpfull the report from the helpdesk is… not very.

So at this point it’s very apparent that your laptop isn’t going to work with the broadband card, start looking for a Starbucks. Hey look a Borders! They have WiFi and are always quiet on the inside. OH look all the inside tables are full, but there are a few out side that open it’s only 100 degrees and you won’t be dialed in for long. You sit down and start looking for WiFi score you found some! Your finally logged in to work have your bluetooth rockin this problem (throw dice for ambient noise…) This is when you notice the following things… The water fountain built in to the ground… the two guys who are far to faboulus to the left… and the two women who have hair cut to a #1 blade… both couples are not being quiet neither is the water fountain and (roll for help desk volume) the help desk is speaking in a very soft voice as well.

Damit…

Your quest for a quiet place begins again… after several minutes you find (roll for location…) the drive through of a Bank of America. So with laptop, bluetooth, and empty drive through you begin your quest to start fixing what ailes your caller. So starts your saga… (roll for time to fix problem…) 1 hour later in the same bank of america drive through you finally fix the problem (roll for problem fix…) by rebooting the whole damn server.

You close the laptop, and deposit all of the items into your back pack of IT trinkets and stash the bag in the truck. You find your way to Rula Bula! to rejoin your party. Upon rejoining your party you sit down (roll for action….) and drink the Ogre’s beer.

The Ogre is not pleased.

Still Alive

Yes I’m Still Alive

That said… what the hell have I been doing?

Well the things that stand out in my mind are several marathon sessions of Rock Band in Colorado and even more marathon sessions of Grand Theft Auto in Arizona.

Speaking of Colorado I went to “Beer Mecca” aka “The Fat Tire Brewery” so there is that.

But yeah alot of Rock Band and Grand Theft Auto.

Rock Band has a strange effect on how I listen to music, no longer do I listen to a song I start to think about how the various pieces parts will interact in Rock Band… Like the drum opening to “Jambi” by TOOL… or the Guitar Solo’s in just about any Led Zepplin or Pink Floyd song. I have questions about Pearl Jam too specifcally “Lukin” At one point there was supposed to be the capablity to import your iTunes library into Rock Band and be able to play those songs. I’m sure that got nixed because some record label exec was mad that they weren’t making a sufficent amount of money from anything.

I do have say, any time I hear a Disturbed song on the radio I cringe when I think about the guitars/drums/vocals that would be required in Rock Band.

After dinner….

Me – Wow I never noticed this before but there’s the date when my grand parents started the insurance policy in Kingman back in in the 60’s on my proof of insuran….

R – I’ve only got 20 minutes of quality Mario Kart time before my show hand me the remote…

Me – Oh yeah huh….

R – Babe I’m a woman I can multi-task

Me – But don’t you want to hear my story about how my grandparents met the familie’s orginal insurance agent

While on the couch….

So the lady friend has been over a few times over the last week… Friday night she says “Battlestar Galactica is on don’t you want to watch it?”  So I turn it on and pause the show at several points to explain the various back stories.

Thursday rolls around and “Greys Anatomy” is on and she wants to watch it… so turn about being fairplay I sit on the couch with my laptop while she watches “Greys Anatomy”.  She pauses the tivo and explains all of the back stories…. 15 minutes later she is done and all I can say is… “that is fucked up… I want to hear nothing more about Battlestar Galactica”

So other then the Grey’s anatomy thing she’s awesome.

Hmmm the suck indeed.

45 minutes of dicking with the site and I can’t get the damn post by email to work.  I’ve spent more then a little bit of time on this problem to and I just can not get it licked.

I started out with a host gmail apps domain and that didn’t work (actually failed because there was no way to do a SSL connection between the site and google).  So not a huge deal I just load up godaddy email change the dns settings and let them perc for the next 12 hours.  So I’m using a godaddy hosting site with godaddy email and I’m in Arizona which is where godaddy is located and the shit still times out on me?

Oh this is good.

Frustration level is just a bit high.

Of course I’m also the same person that spent the better part of a year trying to get Samba to work in an active directory domain at home because I thought it would be “fun” for the record I did get samba to play nicely with windows once I got it out of my head that I needed to run a domain server at home.

There is another thing that is pissing me off… the damn window keeps reseting on itself when I stop for a second to think about what I’m going to bitch moan and groan about next.

damit it did it again!

And I won’t back down….

So I’ve been working with the dual blog setup for about a month and half now and while there are somethings that I really like about this wordpress blog there aren’t enough things to make me switch from blogger to my own personal Idaho of a blog.

What was the killer?  The post by email is what pretty much killed it for me.  One of my favorite things to do with my blog is post pictures from my blackberry.   It’s not huge, but for me it’s a killer app that I don’t have here.

Also the first upgrade of the back end while not a huge deal made a few changes that I just don’t like at first blush.  I’m sure if I give them time I will like them though.

What now?   I will keep this blog up and get the whole email thing worked out at some point.  It may be handy for certain expectant mothers in Colorado to keep an eye on this blog since this could be almost called “tom unfiltered”.  I know what your thinking how could I become any more unfiltered?

Easy… full knowledge that people check this site infrequently.  I do have google analytics setup so I know if you’ve been by or not.

And I now return you to your reguraly scheduled garbage.

The song remains the same….

It’s not often I get a text message that says “fuck you, I’m going home”   it’s even less often when I get that very same text message from my own phone.   Needless to say my liver is not real happy with me and hasn’t come out from under the bed for a couple of days now.

The reason?

Oh that’s easy, I spent the weekend in Californa for Kinsey’s wedding.   Which I have to say as weddings go is one of the better ones I have been to.  The personal highlight for me was the “Super C” theme as done by the “Minibosses” which if you haven’t checked out well you will know very quickly if you will like them or not.  As always the groom looked his damn goofy self and the bride looked stunning… Congrats guys.

And is true for all people in their late twenties when someone gets married it’s a reason to spend money and abuse your liver… Which is why mine is snoozing rather soundly under the bed.  Along with the drinking there was much discussion on everything under the sun, but the discussion that sticks with me the most is the one about music.

Basically it went something like this….
Nick… I usually give the iTunes store $12 a week, but I haven’t been lately since nothing good has come out.
Tom/Scott/Cody…. it’s not you nothing good has come out recently.
Curtis was there but he was more interested in the either the magazine or the basketball game it’s hard telling with him.

That one conversation sent me down a deep dark path of thinking of what have I bought recently that is good?

The last album I bought was Bauhaus, which is a 80’s new wave band that has put out their last album ever.  It’s ok I don’t like it as much as I thought I would.  This was all in the last two weeks.

Before Bauhaus, the last album I bought was the remastered Led Zeppelin Collection “Mothership” which I have been listening to alot since I bought it in November.

And as I look at the iTunes emails from the last year or so with very few exceptions I have mainly been buying “Bests Of” Talking Heads, Social Distortion, Led Zeppelin.  Along with some older stuff… Pink Floyd and a couple of missing pieces parts in my Soundgarden/Pearl Jam collection.

The new music I’ve picked up has been real hit and miss….

The Raconteurs… not as good as I expected, but not bad
Silversun Pickups…. Crap
Chris Cornell’s new album….. mostly crap
Chemical Brothers…. weak compared to their older stuff
Smashing Pumpkins…. weak and completely forgettable (in the interest of full disclosure I find 98% of Pumpkins stuff to be crap)

Mind you I had to look through my old email receipts from iTunes to tell you what I bought.  So on the whole pretty forgettable.

The only band I have nothing bad to say about is “The Yeah Yeah Yeahs” and that is pretty much it.

Of course looking at the new music on iTunes I saw that “Fall Out Boy” has covered “Beat it”

I really hope that works out as well for them as it did for that band that covered that other Michael Jackson song a few years ago.

Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go try and coax my liver from out under my bed.

Summer Project…

I’ve been thinking recently about what kind of projects I want to do when the weather gets to warm to really brew beer well.

Greg sent me a couple of emails with a idea and I think this just may be what I do.

http://www.oregonbrewcrew.com/freezer/freezer.html

As I look around the internet there are a few more like this one, but the basic concept is the same.

The freezer I have hooked up is only 7C.F. so that I means I will probally forgo the fermentation chamber. I should be able to fit 3 Corny kegs in my freezer if I put the CO2 on the outside.

Of course if I do it right I could also put half and pony kegs in there…. mmmmm Fat Tire on tap.

OK bad thoughts… this could be deadly.

Stay tuned this could be fun.

Pigs (three diffrent ones)

So with the recent demise of HD-DVD as a viable High Definition physical video format I’ve been kicking around the idea of making the jump to Blu-Ray and all of it’s glory.  This thought was helped when my brother bought a PS3.  And since he is not a game one can only assume that he bought it for Blu-Ray movies.  And over the course of the last month or so as I’ve mulled this decision over in one form or another I kept hearing about how integrated the PS3 was and all of the other normal chest thumping when the users of one particular technology smell blood and indecision in the water.

I honestly had not been bombarded with so many reasons as to why the PS3 was superior to every other platform out there since Jr. High when Donny Witt and I used to spend hours on end taunting each other as to which was the greater the 16-bit system Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis.  Hey when your 13 these things make a difference.  And just for the record the Super Nintendo still kicks the Sega Genesis’s little white butt!!!1!11!!0ne

However I digress, so through some weird combination of coworkers, an alignment of stars, and a promise to not hack or break anything I have been loaned a PS3.

Que jaw dropping… for those of you keeping track the last time I owned a Sony system willingly was 1996 when I bought the then state of the art Sony Play-station using money from my job at Albertson’s.  I had sold it within a year and bought a N64 which I still have to this day.  I do have a PS2 that my brother gave to me, however I have not hooked it up and have made no attempt to.   In the ten years since I sold that first Play-station   I’ve bought two other Nintendo systems and when I’ve played them I’ve enjoyed them immensely.  Key phrase “when I play them”.  I’m a PC gamer and I hold a special place in my game playing heart for all things Nintendo as I’ve often stated here I don’t care much about games other then are they fun?  And my general experince with Nintendo games is I often find them to be immensely fun!

So what gives with the change of heart?  First off, at $400 the PS3 is a bargain of Blu-Ray player right now and will be BD 2.0 compliant when that spec comes out.  And since Blu-Ray is a Sony format you know damn well that any future profiles will be supported by the PS3.   Second it’s backwards compatible with that gianormous library of PS2 games and more then a few are sure to classics when we look back on them in 10 or 15 years (classics in the way I see “Super Metroid” and “The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past” as great games of my youth).  Finally all of the new gaming platforms support some sort of link to your PC so you can play movies, show pictures, and stream music to your living room (sorry Windows only apparently Mac/Linux et all don’t want to support or just don’t care to support anything that would make their platforms accessible to the box in the living room (yes Tivo does run a Linux Kernel, but it’s heavily modified and we will get to why that is not a media platform in a bit)).

So for the past 5 days I’ve been playing with a PS3…

It’s more fun then I expected so it’s got that running for it.   The downloadable games from the Play-station Network makes ALOT of sense and I do I really like it.  Even if the selection is somewhat limited at the current time.  Hooking up with my home network was no worse an experince then the Wii or the Tivo was.  It’s a good media server  for the front room of the house and I could see me streaming things to the PS3 with out to much of a stretch of the imagination.    The games were “OK” I had a couple loaded onto the Hard Drive (Teken 5 being the closest thing to a “A” title and unless your a 12 to 18 y/o male a fighting game won’t hold your interest for long).  Teken has held up suprisingly well over the last decade or so and I have to give the the developers credit it’s still the fighter to beat.  “Call of Duty4” was a abysmal experince…. the game looked good, but I’ve never liked FPS type games on a console with the loan exception being the “Metroid” games.  I’m a PC gamer first and foremost and “COD4” on the PS3 reminded me of why this is in spades.

So what finally turned me completely off to the PS3?  My cable provider!  One of the big points of the PS3 is that you can stream music and videos off of it onto your PSP over the wireless network in your home or the internet!  And the PSP can play Tivo To Go files too!  Imagine my utter dismay when I was presented with the following screen.

Content you can't touch....

And this is true for about 85% of the shows on my Tivo, there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason other then for some obscure reason Cox sees fit to set the copy protection flag on certain programs.  Ultimately this what led me away from the PS3/PSP combo more on principle then problems with technology.  Since if you look on current TIVO and PSP advertising they each tout how you can transfer tv shows from your Tivo to your PSP!  This killed it for me right here.

That and after watching “300” on Blu-Ray I could not tell a difference in picture quality, but the sound did seem improved.  Not enough of a reason to switch physical media formats.  But enough to give me faith that Apple may be onto something with the Apple Tv.

Good night and good luck.