Wee, another Christmas come and gone. As far as presents go, it was a bit anti-climactic after getting a freaking camera last year, but that didn’t make the overall holiday any less enjoyable

First, I forgot to mention that at LilPup’s party last weekend, fox_cub gave me a really cool gift that I really wasn’t expecting: A Lego chess set! I love Legos, and while I don’t often get a chance to play (nor am I any good at it), I really like Chess. The detail on the figures in this set is quite impressive, and adds an element of entertainment to the game (for example, the light bishops look exactly like Obi-Wan Kenobi, complete with brown cloak). Fox completely pwned me both times we played, but it was still fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have anyone around here to play with, but it makes a cool centerpiece for my coffee table (interior decorating is not something I’m good at).

From my mom, I got a bunch of Legos (as per tradition, she’s gotten me Legos every Christmas ever since I started playing with them). This year, it was the fire station and some firetrucks, which was really a surprise, I haven’t had firefighter legos since I was, erm, 10? I also got money, of course, and those were the two big things. Other stuff included sandstone coasters with wolf prints, a wolf quilt, and some wolf T-shirts

That was about all I did on Christmas, we didn’t go anywhere or anything.

Just so everyone knows what’s going on, I’ll will not be moving to Pittsburgh in the next few months like I had planned. When I made those plans, I really didn’t have a specific career goal, and I had planned to just go to school up there and get a pay-the-bills job until I figured out what to do with myself. However, a lot has changed since then, and my current plan is to get a job in my desired career field down here (as I mentioned before, there are some suprisingly nice web design job opportunities around here), build up my finances and gather tangible experience, and then when I’m not living paycheck-to-paycheck, I’ll make the move to the Big City. In the mean time, I want to be able to visit more often, and even if I can get a job where I can get off at 5:00 or so at night, it’d be a huge improvement. Currently, it’s pretty much impossible for me to get up there for a weekend, because I’d either have to leave Saturday morning, or take off work for the evening shift on Friday to be able to leave in the afternoon. Going to DC is a bit more do-able, I need to go up there more often. There’s just so many more people to see in Pittsburgh.

Much to my dismay, the Lupinia server project has been stalled. I have everything sitting on my desk waiting, except for one thing: The second hard drive necessary to create a RAID 1 array.

RECAP: I ordered a pair of really nice Seagate 500gb drives from Newegg at the same time I ordered the server itself, and they even arrived first. Upon installing them and giving the server a test-boot, HD 1 gave the Click of Death. Pissed off, I RMAed the drive, and almost two weeks later, the replacement arrived. I installed the drive, fired up the server and…HD 1 Not Present Or Not Installed. Curious, I gave it power from my desktop computer (which has external SATA ports and is far, far quieter), and it wouldn’t spin up, it just sat there and gave a repeating buzzing noise, like the drive shaft on one of the motors wasn’t engaged or something.

I’ve submitted another RMA, a Refund this time, and I’ll be purchasing a companion drive from another vendor. I’ve heard great things about Tiger Direct, but they don’t have an exact match for the drive I already have. I found a place that has a bajillion positive reviews from Google Shopping or whatever it’s called, but does anyone have any recommendations? Here’s the drive I need, it has to be an exact match to set up RAID properly: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148288

In case you were wondering whether my depiction of the aforementioned tech support client was an exaggerated caricature, it’s not. I even thought I went a bit overboard in my depiction of him in the last post, but as I found out in the last two visits, I was dead-on accurate (I missed one of his printers in the last count though, he has a high-end colour laser in addition to the others, making six total).

Thankfully, I was able to make some progress after nearly eight hours of work. He’s down to two fax machines, we put the two inkjet printers in storage, and I’ve almost talked him into getting rid of one of his two desktop computers, since he doesn’t know how to use a KVM switch (Scroll Lock, Scroll Lock, Up Arrow is too complex), and doesn’t have the desk space for independant keyboards and mice. He’s also managed to move some of his spare computer parts into storage, and is considering holding a yard sale (remind me not to go to it if he does, I’d blow so much money on his stuff). I may jack a USB hub when I go over there this Saturday, he has a store-display 12-pack of good ones that are still in the packaging, among others.

I’m going back over there on Saturday to (hopefully) collect the information I need to work on his website. I outlined in writing exactly the information I need, and how he needs to approach this project, and he claims he’s working on it. He now knows very well that my time is very finite within his schedule, so we’ll see if he gets his information assembled in time. In addition to wanting to build his site for portfolio material, he already agreed in writing to pay a pretty hefty sum for this (more than I’m comfortable charging even now, really, but I was in debt and unemployed when we made the agreement).

Apparently, tonight was the night for old people who can’t drive to cause havoc on the roads. I had two noteworthy encounters while working tonight, and I felt like posting them.

The first was a near-miss on an exit ramp off of I-81. Traffic was fairly heavy, but not unbearable, and I was getting off onto Port Republic Road. It’s a nice straight ramp, but it dumps directly into an intersection with a traffic light. I was about #6 in a line of 12 or so, and I could clearly see all of the cars in the line. The first car was a Buick Park Avenue with Veteran plates, but he was moving along quite nicely, so I didn’t think anything of it. And as luck would have it, our light turned green before car #1 even needed to start braking.

Apparently, Mr. Veteran thought he saw a deer in the middle of the 5-lane road (it was completely clear with a fresh green light and no opposing traffic possible), or suddenly forgot which one was the go-pedal, or something, because he utterly floored his brakes just as he approached the intersection. He stopped so hard that he fishtailed, and the chain reaction filtered back through the whole line of cars, causing at least one fender-bender at the back of the line. I personally came within inches of the car in front of me, enough that I had to get out and look to make sure I didn’t hit her, and my customer’s Coke cans got a brutal shaking as they hit the dash. Mr. Veteran regained his composure and left, but not before I called in his plates and reported the situation in reference to any accident reports that may come in from that location (they had one already on another line).

The second encounter was more baffling than anything else, and I was just an observer this time (thankfully) after the incident occurred. This one needs a diagram:
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For a couple years now, I’ve had a pretty regular tech support client; we’ll call him S. He’s an older guy, very friendly, and he’ll talk your ear off if you let him. And, to his credit, he’s an absolutely brilliant business man, and despite living fairly simply, he’s created a state of personal wealth that I could never hope to equal. However, he has a bit of a problem, which is that he’s obsessed with new technology, and buys all the cool shiny electronics he can get his hands on, but he hasn’t the faintest clue what the device du jour does, how to use it, and half the time he doesn’t even know what it is. Case in point, last year he bought a dozen thumb drives, and then called me to ask what a thumb drive is, what it’s used for, and whether his new toys would work with his computer. As of two months ago (last time I was there), they were still sitting in the pile o’ stuff behind his desk, none of them had been opened. His other problem is that, despite my best efforts, he’s pretty much incapable of learning how to do even the most basic tasks on the computer. In my years of near-constant tutoring, he knows about as much as he did on day 1, which is how to perform basic browsing tasks in Internet Explorer (Firefox was too confusing).
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octan is my hero, because this made me literally LOL, and that’s hard to do:
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Three posts in one day! Teh horrorz!

I was bored tonight, and didn’t particularly want to work on a web project, so I started looking through a stack of old, unlabeled VHS tapes. Most of them appeared blank, but some of them had obviously been used to record something, and never rewound. So, I started watching them.

Tape 1 ended up being some crappy sitcom my mom recorded almost a decade ago. Tape 2 wouldn’t rewind, and after examining it, I found out why. One of the spools had dislocated in the housing, and had seized, I never understood why they made those things so floppy inside. Most people probably would have tossed the tape, but the nerd inside me (same little voice responsible for things like this) decided to disassemble it and fix it. After all, it might have something worth watching on it.

Five minutes later, I had a fully-functional tape, and I popped it in. There didn’t appear to be anything on it at first, but then the image popped up, and it was my high school graduation! And not a crappy recorded-from-the-stands view, but the full production-grade feed recorded by the local news crew and broadcast on the government access channel while the event occurred. Apparently, my mom recorded it from the TV and never bothered to label the tape.

Needless to say, the tape is now prominently labelled, and I’m quite glad that I took the time to do that, at the risk of destroying the tape in the process (I’ve never done anything like that before, never even opened one of those up). It makes a strange clicking sound when it’s shaken, but at least it’s safe now. Score another one for nerdy curiousity!

Some of you have heard me talk about this alarm clock concept called a Clocky, usually whenever the subject comes up. For the uninitiated, it’s an alarm clock with wheels that, after you snooze it, it runs away and hides before going off again.

If you’ve ever wondered whether the thing actually exists, I now have proof that it does: http://www.firebox.com/product/1913?src_t=sbk&src_id=clocky

And if I didn’t think I’d destroy the poor thing, I’d probably get one myself

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Yes, I’m a geek. You are too if you understand the new message ;-D