I have updated all of none times since I last said I should update more often.

However, I'm a sucker for cheesy 80's guitar riffs and unrealistically optimistic lyrics. SO, in order to feel like I've dared to do something or other, I'm posting.

I go tonight to see Mr. Izzard perform in Columbus, OH. With any luck, I'll come back a wittier and funnier person for it. Most likely, I will just end up having an enjoyable evening with my fiancee, sister, and some of our friends.

While I appear to have spent my last several posts whinging about rather mundane things, a good quantity of actual good things have been happening lately...

I have 50%+ of the addresses for my half of the wedding list... drd2be has all but 3 of hers. (Overachiever!) I'm getting together with 4/5ths of the groomsmen (shy one Twitch) next Saturday to pick out our tuxes and get sized. We have a lot of our supplies and such for the reception, and drd2be found a good quantity of scripts online that we can write ours around.

And my first paper in my US History class came back with a perfect score. (Which surprised the snot outta me.)

When one has spent nearly 13 years in an industry as I have, one tends to forget the basic things that one learns in the early years. The past two weeks have been a reminder of this, as a call to Tech Support has just reminded me...

1) When getting random computer errors, check the memory. Even if it passes a single pass through MemTest86, there may be timing errors between multiple chips.

2) When building a new system, always, always, always update the BIOS before installing the OS. The updates exist for a reason, and can save headaches later.

3) When in doubt, pull 1/2 of the memory in the system, run it for a bit that way, then pull the other 1/2. This eliminates sockets and controller paths from the problem.

4) A 24-hour heavy-duty burn-in is a MUST on any critical system. Forgetting to do this causes issues of "it ran fine during setup" and "what in the world is THAT?"

If I had just followed these simple 4 rules, I may not have burned a 1/2 tank of gas running to work after-hours for emergencies involving the new server since Tuesday...

I get to work, get chewed out for not setting the brush on the vacuum low enough for the throw rugs (I had it set appropriately, the boss thinks the brush is a scrubber instead of a beater...) and was told that I obviously never clean, since I missed the trash in the conference room.

I admit to doing a quick, lazy job on the cleaning because I wanted to get started working on his laptop. His laptop that he insists on powering down whenever it hangs for more than 20 seconds, including during login / logout... So I power it on, configure the new backup software, get ready to install Works (why he insists on having it....) and he asks me to open his Outlook. And.... corrupt .pst. And it was corrupt before he logged out yesterday, so the corrupt copy is on the server... and in the backup...

Please note that we haven't had alternating backups in over a year because of a hardware failure, so last night's backup is as far back as it goes.

So I ask him what the issues he was having exactly was, and it turns out his Outlook was not acting properly for almost 3 days, but he left it open and running because he had half-written drafts and attachments open. He had not synced neither his files nor his profile to the server in a week because he was "too busy".

So I open up ScanPST to fix the smegging file, and it dumps everything but 120 contacts. Repeating reminders he's had on the calendar for years and years, contacts numbering in the thousands, and 6 months worth of e-mail, all gone...

Oh, and did I mention that I have a Compilers midterm at 5 tonight?

For anyone who still hasn't heard:


Courtesy of rob_t_firefly

So, because all of my local friends loved Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, I bought it. Watched it. Loved it.

This has been mentioned as possibly one of the best stoner comedies for both those who like to toke and those who don't, and as a member of the latter, I have to agree.

However, my local friends can now all flagellate themselves for neglecting to mention that there was not only a sequel, but one that touches on something near, dear, and rantable to all of us:

Harold and Kumar Escape from Gitmo

I am not making this up. Navigation Officer Sulu and House's new whipping boy are going to Gitmo, and coming back, with Neil Patrick Harris along for the ride.

There are a lot of people on my Flist now that I don't really know outside of LJ. If you've got the time and inclination, go ahead and fill this in. If not, no big worry, I'll get to know most of this just through reading your journal, right?

Technically a Meme, but I'm not requiring anybody to repost. I'm even taking out the "Will you repost?" question, because that's just dumb. :P
( Cut, because it's longer than I thought. )

So... The officants at the wedding want to wear robes. And they made the error of not saying what type of robes.

So, here are the options:

Poll #1126447 Pastor's Robes
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

What kind of robes should we saddle them with?

Not that anyone cares, but:

( B'z Checklist )

So, I found out during registration for Origins yesterday that our (sgtrocknroll and I) event information (The Gaming Wedding Chapel, for those not keeping score) is due in by the end of this month if we want any special billing in the program guide. Had I known that it was this early, we would have started contacting the dice and collectables companies about a freebie last month! Instead, we're rushing through the event Excel sheet later today and trying to not include any information that would need to be changed later... (Smithketeers, this is where we could use your help! Help!)

First off, we're considering a Friday at 4 PM start time, and run for 2:45... Hoping that, under ideal conditions, we can get a wedding setup, performed, and cleared in 20 minutes, we can get 9 happy couples through this year. If we actually get 9 couples, then next year we'll see about expanding our hours or having a second session. (Personally, I'd like to run for a bit on Thursday too, to work the kinks out, but sgtrocknroll isn't too keen on that idea. Perhaps run it for a bit by myself?

Anyway, on to the important stuff. We're going to be writing a few different ceremonies later this month, and I was hoping to fish for some ideas for "theme" (D&D/general fantasy, Vampire, etc.) and also for wedding marches. (Do we put a sign on the door that says "Paravonian says NO to Canon in D!"?) I'm going to try and borrow a boom mic and use my camcorder to film the weddings, and send a video to the happy couple after Origins is over.

On the First day of Christmas, The Order gave to me:
A losing lotto ticket
Autographed photo of Diffuser
Nintendo Bowling Shirt
and IOU's from three of the guys.

On the Second day of Christmas, Dad's family gave to me:
Nothing!
(But I got them Nothing too, but we had a wonderful dinner all together and great conversation, and we're really all okay with that.)

On the Third day of Christmas, drd2be's family gave to me:
One Talking Optimus
Black Mages II
Three useful books (A Stats textbook, a Networking textbook, and Douglas Adams' second Liff dictionary)
Wireless Mac Mouse
Two Sweaters
Chuck Norris T-Shirt
A not so useful book (Book about Douglas Adams by Neil Gaiman, so it's at least fun.)
And Spongebob Boxers from my Nephew.

On the Fourth day of Christmas, my family gave to me:
Box of Cordial Cherries
Spider-Man 3
Shiatsu Chair Massager
And a drawing of Dr. I done by a Marvel Employee. :D
EDIT: And not getting my arse handed to me by DrD for buying her a present when we said we weren't going to trade presents this year. (As she so kindly points out below.)

While the 12" Optimus, Mouse, Chuck Norris T-Shirt, Bowling Shirt, and books were all awesome gifts (not saying the rest weren't, just that those stuck out the most), I think the one that wins "Present of the Millenia" is the drawing from my sister. The inked, e-mailed, and printed proof is awesome, and I can't wait to see the original (held up to avoid holiday mail) or the colored finished product (which my sister is still working on, as she's doing the color.)...

I have several friends who seem to get their sleep schedules all screwed up. (And the one who reads my journal is welcome to stay anonymous.) I never have quite understood the mechanics of this... You get tired, you sleep. You're not tired, you don't sleep. You have something to do, you don't sleep. And forcing one's self awake for the stuff you have to do generally keeps the sleeping in whatever portion of the day you prefer. If you don't have anything to do, then what, exactly, constitutes "All screwed up"?

I mean, in the day and age where you can earn a living, pay bills, purchase groceries and other household items, and have meaningful relationships, all without setting a foot out of the door of your own home and on whatever schedule you prefer, is there really any reason to follow a certain circadian cycle?

On the other hand, if you're upset with where your daily cycle falls out of habit or preference, what really is to blame? There are such modern wonders as alarm clocks, caffeine, and loud music to keep one's self awake during the hours you prefer, and warm milk, sleeping aids, and Yanni for when you're finally ready to succumb to sleep.

So to all my friends who have issues sleeping at night and being awake during the day, I say turn up Funk 49, grab yourself a Coca-Cola or coffee, and enjoy the freedom to sleep when you're tired, and not when you're not. Trust me, the whole up-at-7-for-16-hours thing is overrated.

(And if you're sleeping through things you have to do and not caring enough to buy a cola or an alarm, then I'd say it's time to seek professional medical and/or psychological help.)

I really have been at a loss for things to post to the Journal lately...

drd2be and I put up the Christmas Tree on Saturday, complete with the wonderful pre-lit goodness... but sans ornaments and garland. Eventually we will get the latter. (Some ornaments are en route from her parents, the garland we may have received from my Grandfather yesterday.) We're too busy (and poor) for cards this year, and really for presents too, but giving to our family and close friends is still important to us, so shopping shall commence soon.

The house is mostly taken care of now, with the new siding being delivered today or tomorrow, and installed over the course of the next few weeks, as weather permits. Once Spring hits we'll have the furnace looked over and the air conditioner combed out, and we're done. I just hope we don't have another hail storm next year and have to start the whole thing over again.

The band has been recording in my absence this semester, and we're supposedly stalled waiting for a soundproof room to record vocals in. Once the vocals are complete, we'll have an album. I can't wait to hear it and get back to practicing. Of course, at this point I'll have only done the bass on about 1/2 of the album, but that's okay with me. (All 4 demos on the band's website have me on bass.)

I'm sure there's more to talk about, but that's about all that's on my mind right now. If only I could sneak my lappytop out and work on homework today at work...

Leave a comment, and I'll pick 7 of your icons. You then explain what they mean, in comments here or in your own LJ.(From explosiverain...)


Chris Knight, of course. My childhood hero, the man I wanted to be. He's my inner cool geek, for posts that are particularly insightful or well-written. Denote he gets used very infrequently.

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Michael Bolton the Destroyer. Used for work posts. 'Nuff said.

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He's cool, he's bad, he's got a sammich and a chin. It's Bruce. For the moments when I want to be snarky, sarcastic, or narrate the tutorial for a video game.

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I think this icon falls under the purview of "Don't ask, Don't tell"... If not, then I still plead the 5th.

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Me without a SpaceGhost icon? Please! That's like explosiverain's cousin going 5 minutes without insulting me. Besides, it's always handy to have a superhero pointing out when other people are shoveling the BS.

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Have you ever felt like you've been denied something elemental to your existence? Air? Food? The sweet sounds of Zeppelin on a '64 Fender Strat? Yeah... That's what this icon is for.

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I'm a smeghead rather often, though I try to admit it... This is for those times that I'd rather admit it subtly.

I know I didn't post anything here about this before, but I participated in the regional qualifiers for a programming competition over the weekend.

Out of 8 problems, there were 2 teams out of over 100 that got all 8... My team got 1.

For some reason my Roman Numeral summer doesn't work... And that cost us quite a bit...

I've tested using their examples, and a few of my own, and couldn't find anything that broke it until tonight...

( Geek stuff below )

Twitch: "Kucinich's request to impeach Cheney is interesting, since you remember what the problem is with impeaching Bush."

Me: "Yeah... Impeaching Bush is like cutting off The Hand of Vecna because it isn't capable of putting The Eye in."

Acronyms are to be capitalized, bolded, or punctuated as such. Especially with short acronyms such as pdf, cdf, clt, etc.

When using a variable for "whatever coefficient you happen to have", since there is no standard, inserting "with coefficient 'a'" or something similar could be helpful for students who are lacking caffeine and/or sleep.

Phi rhymes with pie, and is (1+√5) / 2. Functions are to be designated by Latin Alphabetical Characters in a Script font, please. (Or should I discover some useful function, I will declare that function to be π(x)!)

Chi rhymes with tea. What statisticians say is spelled Kai or Khi. (A C followed by an H should never be a hard C) Its symbol is specious at best, as it can be mistaken for an 'X'. Since 'x' is quite often squared already, this really, really, really was a bad choice of characters to use.

I just spent 4 1/2 hours at work, finishing the upgrade of a RAID array.

The reason we needed more drive space in this particular array? We were down to 6 GB left on a 140GB partition. Upgrade 160GB drives to 500GB drives, re-build array, repartition, format, reboot, etc. Three sessions of going in on a weekend (since this is our primary server) to get it put together properly. (The second was making up for the fact that after the first trip where I mis-judged the amount of time this would take, I had to re-rebuild the array. If you don't know what that means, it means I had to re-do the long, boring part of what I did the first night because I rushed it.)

And I found out something rather interesting tonight, too. All that drive space? Large quantities of .MP3's, .OGG's, .M4A's and M4V's..... (While everyone knows MP3, OGG is another audio format that, in the office, only I use. Apparently people have been leeching off of my collection not by playing them from the Music file, but by making copies of them over and over and over again into their own My Documents. M4A/M4V's are iTunes downloads.) What has me really torn up are the M4V's... Three complete TV series downloads, five movies, and a good number of music videos.

Note, of course, that in the process of doing this upgrade, I have been told that no longer am I allowed to go in after hours to finish a job that can't be done during the day. I have to pre-approve any and all hours that fall outside of my normal schedule.

But, on the bright side, there is an e-mail about to be written to my direct boss and the CEO explaining the lack of drive space in the server. Funny thing is, the M4V's all belong to my direct boss and one of his underlings. MUAHAHAHAHAHA.

Today has started out being a rather good day. I am actually getting some work done at work, things are quiet, but not overly so, and I have cheered up two friends who needed it. I'm just hoping that class this afternoon goes this well.

Meanwhile, I still want to know what happened to the person I wanted to be as a kid... Nowhere near as uptight, more calm, collected. Definitely wittier, and would laugh off the coursework that I'm doing now. (Of course, when I was really young, I figured I'd be living in the dorms at college, crank through a BA in 3 1/2 years instead of 14, etc.) I'm getting closer, but nowhere near close enough.

I'm thinking that being in bed at 11 (and TV off at 12 at the latest) is a good idea I need to keep following for Work / School nights. I'm more awake and feeling more collected today than normal. Maybe it's all just a lack of sleep?