How does an IT worker and CIS student spend a long weekend? Sitting in front of a computer, apparently…
I snagged a refurb Seagate hard drive for cheap, dropped it into the Sun Blade to replace the crappy old 5400-rpm drive that I’d initially put in it, and installed a fresh snapshot of OpenBSD 4.4-beta. While I was at it, I scrounged up a spare keyboard, monitor and mouse, then installed Fluxbox and a handful of other packages. The end result? I now have a nice graphical workstation on hand in case one of my other machines suddenly dies.
Right now I’m rsyncing over my most important files and making sure everything works as expected; no surprises so far. The more I use OpenBSD, the more I like it. It’s easy, in the odd way that a UNIX-ish operating system can be easy. Pretty much all the configuration is done through nicely formatted .conf files that live in /etc, the man pages are well-written and up-to-date, and there’s none of the ugly hackishness you see in some Linux distributions.
Still, I really should do something non-computer-related this weekend. Maybe tomorrow I’ll even go outside!
Fred “Sonic” Smith from the MC5, Scott Morgan of the Rationals and ex-Stooge Scott Asheton on drums… pure Detroit rock. Too bad they never really made it big.
Some weeks my job is a sinecure, and other weeks it’s purgatory. This, being the first full week of a new semester, has been a week of the latter type.
I’ve been extraordinarily busy (you’ve probably noticed I haven’t blogged all week), and it’s been the bad kind of busy. “Good busy” is having some structure to the busyness; I know what I have to do, when it needs to be done, and how to do it. “Bad busy” is when top-priority, unexpected things get dropped into my lap while I’m already simultaneously working on a couple of other top-priority things and dealing with constant interruptions.
High points of the week:
Getting awoken two full hours before my alarm by a cow-orker calling to tell me, “I just flushed my toilet and it came back up into the bathtub. I won’t be in today.”
Discovering that Disgusting Cow-orker has been using my desk in the mornings (I work afternoons). How did I deduce this? The piles (yes, literal piles) of dandruff on my desk were a clue. I now have to start every shift by shaking loose dandruff out of my keyboard, wiping down my entire desk surface, keyboard and mouse with a Clorox wipe, and Febrezing my chair. Ah, the joys of working with a 350-lb slob who considers bathing an optional monthly activity. And not one. fuckin’. word. of this is an exaggeration.
Calling in Campus Safety to remove a student. He’d already decided to start his college career by throwing a pen at his teacher on the first day of class. She immediately (and rightly) booted him. He showed up again for the next session, protesting that he’d done nothing wrong and wasn’t going to be kicked out. Amazingly enough, he was wrong on both points.
Having 25 clueless freshmen show up at my desk, ask for me by name, and then ask what they’re supposed to do. No one had told me anything about these 25 clueless freshmen and their instructor was nowhere to be found. I still don’t know what the hell that was all about.
On the up side, I’m now on a four-day weekend. Unfortunately I’m too damn broke to do anything since, due to the inexplicable vagaries of the payroll department, I’m in the middle of a six-week gap between paychecks.
Went to the Michigan Renaissance Festival today. Exciting and interesting things happened. I’m withholding elaboration to prevent jinxing.
Season 3 of The Venture Bros. ended tonight. This makes me sad. Henchman 24 died. This also makes me sad. Well, maybe he died. After all, Season 1 ended with the titular (heheh, I said “titular”) characters dying, only to be revived in the first episode of Season 2. Overall it was a damn good season; my only complaint is the near-total absence of Triana Orpheus.
Classes start tomorrow. I am, as always, totally unprepared. Not that it’s ever been a problem.
Eating a giant prime rib sandwich for lunch, a dinner of unadon and sushi, ice cream for dessert, and a big slab of bumpy cake for a second dessert may have been a tactical error. I can barely move.
The blog is now up to date with the latest WordPress (2.6.1 came out, and I always wait for the inevitable x.x.1 bug-fix before upgrading). Please let me know if you spot any brokenness.
Also, I ditched Technorati and Truth Laid Bear, so things should be a bit snappier now (less JavaScript overhead).
I was discussing booze and Iggy Pop (yes, there was, somehow, a connection between the two) with The Breda tonight, which naturally led to me drinking White Russians. Until I ran out of milk. And then Kahlua.
And then the Major Breakthrough came. This is really remarkable, so pay close attention: if you make a White Russian with no milk and no Kahlua, it’s still really, really good! In fact, it might be even better than the original.
So the next time someone calls you an alcoholic just because you’re drinking a handle of vodka, you can correct him and explain that you’re actually drinking a really big White Russian, hold the milk and Kahlua. Or, if you’re not a White Russian fan, you can always say that it’s a Screwdriver, sans the OJ. Or even a Bloody Mary, minus the tomato and lemon juice.
The Breda, by the way, has never heard the first three Stooges albums, which is not the kind of thing I’d go around announcing to the world, but I’m told that the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem…
Got a big batch of lamb chili cooking up in the crockpot. We’ll see if it’s any good; I took a pretty standard beef chili recipe and used ground lamb instead. I like lamb, and I like chili, so lamb chili should be a winner. If all else fails, I can always add enough heat to mask the flavor
Detroit News article here, hat tip to Sebastian here.
My grandpa is in a Detroit cemetery, along with his infant son and assorted other relatives. I photoblogged the drive there once; you can see why I don’t visit as often as I’d like. Unfortunately, moving everyone out would be prohibitively expensive.
