Early morning cats
Originally uploaded by sldownard.
Meow.
Browsing Posts published in January, 2007
so, i had a really shitty day at work today.
first of all, there was a crap meeting on friday that had me all stressed out so that i basically didn’t sleep sunday night. then i went in, and things kept going wrong. since customer service means never having to say you’re not sorry, i had to keep accepting blame and apologizing over and over to people who were emailing and calling me for help about brokenness. i had a massive headache, and it was not at all improved when finally one of the users said to me, “sabrina, what the hell! you used to be so awesome! what happened?!” (he’s a good guy, and i know he was just giving me shit, but it still stung badly. especially since basically none of the things i’d been apologizing to him about all day were actually my fault.) that pretty much spelled the end of the day’s productiveness at that point.
when i left work, all i really wanted to do was collapse into a heap and have a beer, but of course i had class tonight so there was no beer. i was so dispirited i didn’t even run for it when i saw a brown line train coming, i trudged up the stairs as it trundled into and out of the station, and then just waited balefully under the heat lamps for the next one. and then i texted the lovely and delightful pirate dan to have a whiskey on my behalf — i believe he was happy to oblige — and went on my way to class, which i was convinced was going to be boring because today was tire day: we were going to learn how to mount and unmount tires on rims. booooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.
…hours pass…
turns out, though? TIRES ARE AWESOME. i mean, they’re a really big pain in the ass (at least when you’re working with crappy old tires that are all bitchy about going on the rims without a lot of force), and i have a lot more sympathy for the guys who put all new tires on my car a few months ago, but it was so much fun! with enough heavy machinery and getting my hands all greasy, apparently anything can be fun. i gleefully went “WOO!” really loudly at one point after successfully getting my tire back on the rim after a couple of tries, which was a little embarassing because it turns out giddy, girly woohoos echo really well in a shop.
then i walked out of class and it had warmed up a little bit and was snowing and it was so nice, and i was in a great mood. i’m so glad i decided to take that class, even if it does mean being tired during the week. this class is the best decision i’ve made in months.
Rearrange!
Originally uploaded by sldownard.
When ‘i think i’ll clean my living room today’ goes wrong
<niqui> FUCK YEAH
<niqui> this is how awesome snmpd is
<niqui> in order to show a failure that it gets from an external script, i put this in the config file:
<niqui> exec SOMEARBITRARYNAME /path/to/script arg1 arg2
<niqui> but it expects an immediate response, so since my script-to-see-if-a-database-is-being-updated takes minimally 10 seconds to run, i can’t exec it directly
<niqui> so i have to run something out of cron that runs it periodically and writes state into a file on disk
<niqui> i have it basically run “$scriptname >/dev/null ; echo $? > /var/run/whatever.state”
<niqui> then, since snmpd will understand nonzero return to be failure, i think i can do this in my snmpd.conf:
<niqui> exec SOMEARBBITRARYNAME exit `cat /var/run/whatever.state`
<niqui> except it isn’t being interpreted by the shell, and exit is a shell builtin
<niqui> so i write a script called ‘exiter’ that runs ‘exit $1′
<niqui> but then, of course the shell isn’t interpolating the backticks either
<niqui> so now my exiter script runs ‘exit `cat $1`’
* wasy admires niqui’s ENTERPRISE software
<niqui> so i have to have snmpd run a wrapper around exit to check the state written by the wrapper around the actual script that runs the check
<niqui> THIS IS FUCKING FANTASTIC
<niqui> SNMP IS A DREAM
<niqui> there are so many ways for this to break i don’t even know where to start
<niqui> but at least this is THE STANDARD
* niqui coughs
Snow on the abandoned platform
Originally uploaded by sldownard.
i don’t watch football, but my first hint as to how the game was going was while i was out front shovelling snow in front of the next-door neighbor’s house (there was barely enough snow to have bothered going outside; so long as i was out there i might as well have made it worth while) when said neighbor came outside and, without saying a word about snow or shoveling, shouted “DA BEARS! WOOHOO!” and went back inside.
indianapolis is totally going down.
so my little lark (“i think i’m going to take shop class! this will be awesome! and, ooh, only $72 a credit hour!”) is turning out to be more expensive than i had anticipated.
first of all, yes, it is $72 per credit hour for four credit hours — $288. plus a $50 student activity fee. plus a lab fee which was not disclosed in the course catalogue or even at the time of registration; just when they rang me up for $400. sadly, i am meek as like unto a mouse and didn’t say “hey, wait” like a normal person would; i just handed over the debit card. so i still don’t know exactly how much the lab fees are. but evidently they are $(400 – 50 – 4 x 72). at least it should be noted that the lab fees pay for not one but two pairs of safety eyewear — one traditional “high school chemistry” elastic-band pair and one more traditional glasses-like pair (not entirely dissimilar to the pair i use when working with lye). also included was the free advice to keep said eyewear in an old sock to keep it from getting scratched up, so that’s helpful.
then there’s the textbooks. god bless the textbook publishing industry and the college textbook store industry, for they are raking in the cash. $110 for text and lab shop manual.
then it turns out that we have to buy uniforms. we are not allowed in the shop without work apparel. and we cannot just wear t-shirts and jeans like ordinary grease monkeys in training; no, this is a professional program and we have to dress and act the part. so i bought work pants in a stylish polyester/cotton permanent press blend ($20) and belt ($15 on sale), plus a cotton work-shirt ($14). with not insignificant regret, i had to pass on the custom embroidered name tag ($6) due to time constraints, since those take an extra 12-14 days to ship and dude, i want to get in the shop. then throw in a nice pair of electrical hazard, oil- and alkali-proof, slip resistant hard toe (not steel toe; i do not want any steel toes cutting my actual toes off, thank you very much) boots ($95).
so now we are up to, what — $654? a far cry from the just-under $300 i had first anticipated (okay, yes, i forgot about the expense of textbooks). this class had better rock hard on toast, i tell you what.
i recently rearranged my apartment slightly, which has led to a Crisis™.
you see, i have very little in the way of furniture. when i say “very little,” i mean i have a desk and chair, an easy chair, a futon to sleep on, two cat trees, an ikea wardrobe and dresser, and some wire baker’s racks. since i no longer live in a studio and the futon can no longer do double duty, when i have company over, they have to sit on folding camping chairs. so, recently when i decided to go back to school, i needed to find a place where i could sit and do homework. i have a desk — a rather nice, large desk, actually — but it is covered with computer stuff (a display, two laptops, speakers, full-sized keyboard, two mice, et cetera) and so it’s ineligible for study nook status. so i decided to relocate my kitchen table — a vinyl-topped card table (but a nice one) from the kitchen to the office. this choice renders my office full (i have to fold up and move the table if i want to open my filing cabinet), but at least it’s someplace to put books.
of course that means my kitchen is empty and now i don’t have any work space (or, perhaps more accurately based on recent historical usage patterns, any “pile crap up rather than putting it away where it belongs” space). so i have been searching for a table.
i have a very specific vision of what i want in the way of a kitchen table: i want a non-wood, lightweight, inexpensive table that i don’t have to take care of. i want something that i can get flour all over it when i want to knead bread dough. i want something that i can leave cold glasses of ice water sitting on without a coaster. i want a table i can carry upstairs to my apartment by myself. i have a very specific image of my Dream Table™: it’s formica-topped, has a leaf, and four legs, which come off easily so i can fit it in my car and carry it up my stairs. i want someone to find this table in their basement and sell it to me for $10 or $20. the trouble is that the intarwebs are not coming through for me on the “people cleaning out their basement for convenient prices” front. (also troublesome is the hipster kitsch revival meaning that although all i want is a table i don’t have to piss and moan about taking care of, everyone else is going to be competing for the swank retro boomerang pattern or for the “ironic” green ice print that’s so tacky it’s hip (…if you’re still in college), and so even if someone does find my Dream Table in their basement, everyone else will read the ad it appears in before me, and snatch it out of my fingers.)
despite this, i cannot find it in my soul to dedicate significant swathes of time to haunting ad sites in search of the Dream Table. i spend an hour or two a week scanning sites. the energy required to stalk ad sites multiple times daily is beyond me. at heart, i am a slacker who believes lots of people have useless crap in their basements, and so, if an ad goes by once and i miss it, there will inevitably be another later on. and perhaps then my dilettantish efforts at searching will be happily synchronized with someone’s efforts to get said Grandma’s Old Useless Crap Table out of the basement. oh frabjous day!
the only question is how long must i wait for this celestial Dream Table/Useless Crap synchronicity to occur… and will i lose patience before it does?
so far, i have been searching on craigslist (and lest you think i am not willing to go the extra mile, i have branched out from chicago.craigslist.org to milwaukee, champaign-urbana, peoria, and even indianapolis). i have been searching the chicago reader classified ads. i have searched for local flea markets and estate sales. i have joined the chicago freecycle group. and friends, i am still just not having much luck.
i admit that i do have some sort of aesthetic that i’m requiring be fulfilled in my Dream Table. specifically, when it comes to formica/laminate prints, i do not want that skanky faux-butcher’s block print. i’m okay with faux woodgrain; i just don’t want that ugly, nasty brown fake plank design. it transcends kitsch and retro; it goes beyond the call of duty for tacky. it is ugly and while my interior design scheme may in fact look like Target Clearance Chic i have at least enough good taste to just say no to “blindingly hideous.”
naturally, that is the only sort of table i am having any luck finding.
oh, i’ve found lovely dinette sets that i would happily call Dream Table candidates if not for minor problems like “For Pickup Only – Albuquerque” or “Must pick up – Nashua, NH.” i contemplated for days a $10 table in Kokomo, Indiana, three hours away; i deliberated for longer than i really should have over a five-piece set in excellent condition that i could have had for the $0.99 opening bid price and a drive to Hutchinson, Minnesota (slightly less than 8 hours according to mapquest, not counting snow conditions). but apparently people in and around chicago are selling formica-topped tables either in rickety condition (i’m not talking “slight chip on corner”; i’m talking “leg not stable so place it against a wall”) or only with that ugly freaking fake wood that i detest. of course i could use a tablecloth but i would know that under the cloak of fabric lay shameful ugliness, and my soul would wither.
for now, i am continuing the cheapskate hunt. i don’t want to buy new. i know someone has my table in their basement or attic. i want to rescue it and give it a loving new home; i want to save it from the landfill. but, dammit, i just didn’t think it would be this much effort to buy someone’s crappy old kitchen table. sigh.
Another happy birthday to me!
Originally uploaded by sldownard.
B-Mac!
so. scene:
there i was, an average sunday afternoon at home. nothing much going on. i was, in fact, cleaning my kitchen and doing the laundry. my hair was pushed back with a plastic headband to keep it out of my face; i was wearing khakis stained with pink paint from painting my bathroom, a t-shirt wherein a nerdy joke about emacs versus vi was being explained in comic form and, horror of horrors, i had grabbed a pair of Doc Marten sandals to put on over my socked feet while i ran downstairs to the basement to pull out the last load of laundry.
i had just gotten it upstairs and dumped it out on the bed to be folded and put away when m. showed up at my door with some soup he’d made. i went downstairs to answer the door … and he said, “get in the car!”
he then proceeded to steal me off to the hopleaf, one of my favorite beer-fan bars in the city, where others were lying in wait for us. we had a fantastic dinner (venison! and their wonderful mussels! and the “unhealthiest appetizer ever”! and the apple fritters (by which they mean deep fried tart apple slices with crème anglaise) and the chocolate torte thing (that was so dense with dark chocolate that we kept cracking jokes about how it was about to collapse into a black hole — okay, yes, two of the people there work at Argonne and we’re all giant nerds; shush)) were delicious, and of course the beers were marvellous. (i was having a very Unibroue evening, so several glasses of Maudite were had, along with a mug of warm Quelque Chose, though i did start out with some St. Louis framboise which was also excellent.) but best of all was the company of my friends.
this was an awesome birthday, even if i was caught, in fact not dead, in public wearing socks with sandals. :)
Chief conspirator for the birthday beer
Originally uploaded by sldownard.
Kidnapped!
i went back to truman to deal with placement exam waivers and takings (have college english comp credit; have no math credit == sadly, must take the math exam) and register for class. i shocked the hell out of myself by remembering enough weird and useless algebra junk to actually test into for-credit math courses (!!), and then suffered through truman’s incredibly archaic registration process (it involves lots of paper and no fewer than FOUR waitings-in-line — yuk — including “payment due at time of registration,” which sucks). but! i am now officially registered for the class i have been referring to as Auto Shop 101 (which is really Automotive Technology 101). i’m really excited. plus i can’t wait until i get to take fuel systems class and transmission class. transmission class is going to be really cool. gear ratios, baby!
I ARE A GREASE MONKEY!
in between liberating my car from the bastardry of The Man and being trapped in subway tunnels (p.s. my (first) train home friday got stopped too, in about the same spot, but for only about ten minutes and they never shut off the motors, thankfully), i am still up to no good. i promised Pirate Dan a spinning post the other day, so a spinning post i shall now make.
m. saw my spinning wheel last night. said he, “it’s so PVC!” said i, “i know!” i have a ghetto fabulous spinning wheel. i’d hug it except that i suspect i’d wind up accidentally poking an eye out.
so long as i’m posting knitterly stuff — i made another pair of socks, my second, out of the beautiful yarn my secret pal sent me, and on my way to work i decided i should photograph them on their first wearing.
today i decided to teach myself navajo plying, mostly because i don’t really like plying two singles together; it’s annoying that i always have leftover bits. so as it turns out it’s very easy, and i used some of those leftover bits i hate having to practice. my first attempt might have had a little more twist than it really needed:
but the second turned out a lovely little tiny, tiny skein:
(don’t mind the television in the background; i’m just a giant nerd whose idea of wholesome saturday morning entertainment consists of an entire pot of coffee, yesterday’s episode of “Washington Week” on PBS, and spinning yarn. I DO SO HAVE A LIFE; SHUT UP.)
then i decided to watch the extended version of The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring
i’ve actually got another bobbin full of the pink stuff, navajo plied (i had that one already spun into singles, and plied it during the movie), but i was too lazy to wind it off onto the niddy noddy and wash it, so there it sits, sadly enbobbined, awaiting its chance at the shower curtain hook drying area. perhaps tomorrow it will have its chance. or perhaps tomorrow i will actually do something productive other than make yarn that i have no idea what on earth i will do with it. it’s very nice yarn; don’t get me wrong. i’m just not sure what i can do with, oh, probably 400 yds. total of worsted-weight 80/20 merino/silk blend. in cotton-candy pink.
anyways, those are my latest excursions into the field of fiber arts. watch this space! coming up soon: an in-depth soul-searching analysis of the knitted christmas gifts i never finished (or hey, in most cases, started), and how perhaps they might be good rebranded as st. patrick’s day gifts, instead. or arbor day. people need gifts for arbor day, right? TREES ARE NICE! CELEBRATE THE TREES! HERE, HAVE SOME HANDKNITTED GOODS!
i just got to work.
i was supposed to be here at 0930, but unfortunately, the blue line caught on fire, and my train (standing room only, sardine commuters!) was stopped in the tunnel for half an hour. it was evidently an electrical fire as they had to depower the line because — as the operator said — every time they supplied power, the fire flared up, so that meant no motors on the train running. no motors, no lights. NO AIR CONDITIONING.
y’all, it takes very little time for a packed subway car full of people to get HOT.
i got some knitting in. i would have taken a picture of it, but, y’know — no lights.
i finally walked in to the office about 10:10. amusingly/sadly, this is not, in fact, the most time that the blue line has ever taken to get me to work. i believe 80 minutes is the record.
of course amidst all the excitement of FIRE!, i forgot the other thing that happened to me on my way to work. according to the flourescent orange sticker on my driver’s side window, my car got booted at 0738 this morning. i am not really sure what i have done to deserve getting booted. there’s only one unpaid parking ticket on my car that i’m aware of (one which i actually tried to pay, but the City of Chicago pay-your-parking-ticket site could find no record of the ticket — typical), so that’s interesting if one unpaid parking ticket is now a bootable offense, as, last i heard, you had to have three. i’m sure this is going to cost me at least $300 to get dealt with, so, you know, that’s nice. good thing i quit smoking so i have extra money to give to the city of chicago for being bastards.
i wonder what other surprises today has in store for me? i think i would just as soon take a pass on them if they are anything like the first two!
