the everyday adventures of sabrina

i'm happy, hope you're happy too

the road to linux fest

Comments off

expected length of travel: 5.5, maybe 6 hours. it’s only 350 miles, and i do that to kim’s place in 5 hours on a good day.

depart the office: 1600 on the nose. in the hotel room preparing to call asleep: 0100 on the nose (ET). time spent in chicago stop and go traffic: five minutes, working my way up the skyway ramp from stony island. time spent in ohio stop and go traffic: half an hour to forty minutes, as we hit construction on I-70 about 20 miles east of the IN/OH state line. i should note that although miles and miles and miles of highway was blocked off to one lane, i saw two trucks, neither of which appeared to have anyone doing anything. on the phone to the front desk to get security to tell the idiots in the hallway to shut the hell up: 0230 (ET). (score one for security: i heard drunken laughter and conversation, then MUMBLE MUMBLE IN A STERN VOICE, drunken mumble, MUMBLE MUMBLE, then blissful, blissful silence.) i’m not normally a very vengeful person about stupid bullshit like people being giddy but i have to say that i am just the slightest bit sad that my call was not the call to result in those idiots being thrown out of the hotel. y’all, i was tired. alarm went off at 0730, but it doesn’t matter ‘cos i was already awake. no force on earth could compel a restful night’s sleep for poor sleepy niqui. … also, the christians need to change their marketing materials. i have found hell, and it was neither on fire nor did it smell particularly brimstoney. however, it was unpleasant and i don’t recommend anyone go there: centerville, indiana, where they may have a Warm Glow Candle Outlet but their one BP apparently shuts off the lights and closes for the night at just after 10 PM (especially annoying when you’re down to 1/8 tank and the car is beeping at you to feed it). what are we living in, the dark ages? closed gas station on the highway?? — and then you stop in richmond for what you expect to be about 12 gallons of “shit i gotta get gas before this road trip goes even more wrong” gas and the sunoco pump claims to have sold you 15.58 gallons instead which is strange because — you have records of every time you’ve ever put gas into your car, and the most you’ve ever put in it was 13.6 gallons, and you were pretty sure the gas tank only holds 14 gallons. plus the gauge was still hovering at the top of the 1/8 mark, so either (a) you do have a 14 gallon tank; the pump measures wrongfully and you got ripped off, or (b) you do have a 16 gallon tank, your gauge is reading wrong and in need of repair, and you narrowly averted the disaster of bone-dry fuel injectors. i am not actually sure which of these scenarios is less annoying but i will be checking my owner’s manual as soon as i make it out of the hotel this morning to see what it has to say about the size of the fuel tank. also i am cranky because i was hoping that with my shiny, lovely new tires — installed last weekend, as you’ll recall it took FOUR AND A HALF HOURS — my fuel efficiency would have returned to its pre-august 2005 levels of 32-34 mpg highway. alas, i still did not break 30. i am cranky about that whole situation. am thinking i might write in to click and clack about it actually. am tired of mechanics staring at me funny when i ask about things like spark plugs misfiring or timings needing adjustment (YES I KNOW IT’S COMPUTER CONTROLLED BUT THESE THINGS HAVE A WAY OF GOING WRONG TRUST ME I KNOW QUIT PATPATTING ME ON THE HEAD LIKE A SILLY GIRL AND JUST PLUG IT IN TO THE DAMN DIAGNOSTICS). ahem. … in other news, two linux weenie — by which i mean poorly socialized nerds, the kind of person who’ll bitterly, bitterly argue about why his choice of distro is the best and anyone (such as you) who uses something else is clearly mistaken and must be corrected at length, using as much sarcasm as possible. if you’ve been to any geekly events i know you know what i’m talking about — sightings so far, one last night before even checking in, and i haven’t even made it to the conference hotel yet. i fear for the future. … yes friends, sabrina’s cranky today.

the world is mine

Comments off

sld@sabsbitch ~% rpm -q -a | grep ruby
ruby-1.8.5-gelber.0.1

in the past two weeks, i have built a network install server, set it up to perform automated/unattended installs, and learned how to build my own RPMs so that i can roll out our customized versions of software as a part of that automated install, rather than having to script (or worse, perform manually — shudder) configurations and compilations post-installl. oh, did all that while continuing to do general tech support and some specific applications support for an in-house application.

i am badass. i love my job.

this weekend’s going to be a blur. tomorrow, drive to columbus; saturday, con, then drive to brunswick; sunday, hang out with the craigs’ (and probably get in some good quality omgwhydidthisseasonstinksobad baseball kvetching, wherein i expect all concerned shall insult the twinkies mightily for lo, do they invite it), then drive home. then monday, 0600 shift… and the start of my first week with the pager! my coworker d. has this week solicitously advised me to get all the sleep i can this week, in light of the new night guy’s increased propensity to page versus the old night guy (who has given up his tech support ways and is trading full time). hah, hah, sez i; who needs sleep? by this time next week i may well be living in a hallucinagenic sleep-deprivation-instigated surreality. at least it’ll be colorful.

am confirmed for SP9. hooray! cannot wait. am also confirmed as doing a square for Knit a Square for Grandmother Purl. had thought i had the perfect yarn for that project — a skein of Plymouth Yarn Colorspun worsted — which was one of those yarn purchases where i am not really sure my thought process in buying it was really all that much more involved than “oooooh, pritty colors!” — but at 75% acrylic it’s outside the project’s requirements of all-natural fibers. this is frustrating because basically all my washable natural fibers are either an acrylic/wool blend, or, like, the sock yarn i’m actively turning into a sock right now. i came up with a second stash idea, namely some hunter green lamb’s pride i bought a while ago to make someone a hat (but then later on found i did not wish to invest hat effort and materials on that person, because they were mean to me (in the nutshell first-grader’s condensed version)), but they want washable too, and lamb’s pride isn’t washable. so, hmm. i’ll have to hit up the LYS and find some superwash something or other, i guess. and, dude, the colorspun would have been perfect! dang. oh, yeah, sock. got quality knitting done on the sock last saturday while sitting at the mechanic’s for !!!!FOUR AND A HALF HOURS!!!! getting new tires put on my passat. i mean, not that the tires aren’t awesome, smooth and quiet and they grip the road so much better than my old ones and i don’t squeal as i turn any corner no matter the speed or angle anymore, but, seriously, did i mention FOUR AND A HALF HOURS? ‘cos it was FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. i thought i was going to die there, and they’d come around with my keys to find my dead mummified bones blowing to dust in the wind. holding a half-complete sock. anyways, i finished the heel — MY FIRST HEEL, YAAAY — and got into the, you know, foot part. finished the first ball of yarn and joined a second. got home after FOUR AND A … you know, and tried it on … and the damned thing is way too big. i mean, i could wear it around the house, but, it’d fall down and i’d slip and break my remaining glassware or something. so i have to find a male friend of my acquaintance who wears, hmm, maybe a men’s size 9 or 10 or something, who deserves handmade socks. and who wouldn’t mind that one of them is a little wonky from being the first heel i ever turned, on my own, at a white sox game. actually, no guarantees the other one won’t be a little wonky in its own right. this whole having-to-give-them-to-a-big-footed-boy thing in mind, maybe it’s a good thing i used the blue sock yarn instead of the purple, to learn socks on circs with. because i have a feeling that if they were purple socks i’d have somewhat of a harder time finding someone who wanted them. alas. (also, how cranky am i that i knit off a women’s sock pattern, I HAD GAUGE!!, and they’re too big? what, do i have to make the child’s pattern to get socks for my own feet? i wear size 10s! dang.) in other news, i spent literally about 5 hours uploading stuff to Flickr, then tagging the photos and sorting them into sets, and trying to delete the duplicative or especially crummy photos i’d accidentally uploaded. someone promptly favorited a handful of pictures of kiyoshi. i now entertain myself daily by talking to my cat about his net.stalker. he doesn’t get the joke, but it just never gets old to me (that might be the sleep-deprivation kicking in there), so. anyways, mostly i just wanted to upload old travel photos. so that’s one thing i can chop off the to-do list. i am exercising my flickr pro account to its, well, really, its merest potential. i just don’t take all that many photos. but i did use like 4% of my 2G bandwidth in uploading all that stuff, so, go me! okay. enough rambling on about random nonsense. time to drink more coffee get ready for work. thank god i got some sleep last night, the situation was starting to get desperate.

sigh.

Comments off

oh well. there’s always next year, right?

*cries*

the whiteboard of doom

Comments off

where i used to work, we had a whiteboard which eventually became covered with a numbered list on comments about making it through the day. (don’t stress too much about the numbering. we didn’t!)

Marinate in Failure!

1. thwart.
2. YAY!
3. Rah!
4. Whee.
5. Feh.
6. Grumble
7. Grumble
8. Grumble
9. Grumble
10. Grumble
11. Grumble grumble
12. Fuck
13. thwart.
14. Fail
15. Make listhost not suck
16. Atone
17. secede from the state
18. Fix it. it sucks.
19. Whinge.
20. Elide whinging.
21. Kvetch
22. FIX IT.
23. Whinge.
24. Surrender.
2019. despair.
2120. we have always been at war with Eastasia.
2221. thwart
23. thwart.
24. weep
25. obstruct!
26. kvetch
27. Ride ’em, cowboy!
28. commit ritual suicide with alcohol
29. celebrate a success to only later realize it was actually a failure that was just lying to you.
30. Backtrack
31. YAY!
32. fail.
33. trouble deaf heaven with bootless cries
34. fall down
35. go boom
36. quote old country songs or Tom Waits, as appropriate
37. Place blame
38. do favors for whoever is complaining
39. Marinate in failure.
40. …and grow tender with flavor!
41. Eventually, fall apart.
42. And mildew.
43. Enumerate
44. Branch
45. Hire more management
46. Scowl.
47. Weep.
47b. sniffle.
48. co-opt
49. bi�re!
50. be resigned.
19. Shit! I forgot what I was going to write!
20. DOCUMENT
21. Flee
22. Come dragging on back
23. Commit ritual suicide w/alcohol
24. Work on someone else’s suck-ass project to avoid your own. Fix it. Yours are all still fuck.
20a. wait
20b. !
20c. wait
21. feh.
22. trifurcate.
23. Comply!
34. dammit.
25. zzz
26. lie
27. Don’t interfere with registration, o-week, finals, midterms, reading period, any time in between, or when the students are gone.
54. bemoan your fate.
55. limit your career options.
56. walk out.
57. come crawling back.
FOAD CPAN!

the reason the numbering is so wacky is that the whiteboard was actually leaning against a wall, sticking out of a box of junk, and when it would shift, we would just shift along with it. this was the work of many months. i don’t know if it’s more a product of the environment, or a product of what the environment did to us specifically.

this is your sysadmin team. this is your sysadmin team on drugs. any questions?