Open and say Ahhhhh....

I feel like a dentist today.  I come on shift to get a list of little problems.  Nothing life-threatening, but a long list.  Today is nothing more than visiting and correcting problems.  Tape won't run.  Fix it.  Resource is unavailable.  Get it added.  Outputs are corrupt.  Re-run them.  Database variables being overwritten.  Disable updates.  Broken crown.  Send them to a real fucking dentist.

Fortunately, I cannot fix everything, so I have something to stare at in frustration, for 12 hours.  Something to upset my stomach if the 8-shot mugs of espresso don't quite do the trick. (3 mugs so far and it's only 3:45am)  It's nice to have something unfathomable looming over my head all night.  Keeps me company.  Much like the new, extreme-weather parka I picked up this trip.  I wear it here at work.  In Western Australia.  Where it's sunny and 105 degrees.  Every single day since arriving.  I wear the parka while working in my office and the glass house that houses all my computer components.  It's cold in here in my office.  We chill it down to cool and de-humidify the workstations and GIANT monitors.  It's freezing in the glass house, cooled for about 100 processors, 25 servers, a dozen large routers, tape drives, power supplies, etc.  I hate it in there.  My parka is a snorkel-type and you bet your sweet ass I've got that snorkel, well snorkeling.

I think snorkel should be spelled snorkle, despite what spell-check and Google are telling me.  I'll bend to the will of the masses and Merriam-Webster, but you may take this as an official protest.

I'm ready to protest my own review of the HP Pavilion laptop.  While the little 14.1" bastard I bought is light and small and all things good, it also doesn't have the left-hand USB port in the right place for my remote mouse transmitter.  Every time I type, it disengages the mouse.  Then, to use it I have to move the mouse around while simultaneously waving the transmitter up and down, to re-connect.  TOTALLY ANNOYING (like someone typing in all caps) when trying to blog, or intentionally mis-pronouncing words.

There is a young Indonesian girl on here.  She came into my office saying "pee on my ride, pee on my ride".  I was slightly taken aback.  I finally realized she can't quite manage the "mp" sound.  I think the Indonesian language is light on consonants.  Turns out she was saying "pimp my ride"...

Funny how the whole world hates Americans, but rabidly watch Pimp My Ride, American Chopper and the latest International hit, Mythbusters.  Last trip I watched a NASCAR race with a Filipino.  He was totally into NASCAR and even knew the drivers.  I know shit about NASCAR and am not 100% sure I've even spelled it right. 

Tonight, one of the English gunners was up in the middle of the night (for his shift, anyway).  Said he had to get up to see who won the pole at Monaco.  Rabid fan.  I told him if he lived in Alabama, he'd be sitting on the tailgate of his pickup, swilling Budweiser, grilling cheap steaks and spitting between his teeth.  He told me I have no class and shuffled back to bed.  Wahteveh.  We declared your asses officially kicked in 1783.  Get over it.  Red-coated, pillow-biters.  Loooooosers. 

Seriously, I love all my British friends.  They have the best sense of humor on the planet, are often the only ones willing to stand shoulder with us, sometimes have the same last names and speak American as their first language.  Stephen B. Hawking is British.  I don't know what that has to do with anything, but he's one smart dude and occupies Sir Issac Newton's post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (I think LL occupies that post in my blogosphere, or will when the site is up at 100%, just to throw in a mathematical term and the obligatory link to someone).  You must be an intellectual bad-ass if you can fill the shoes of the guy who invented Gravity, much like filling Al Gore's shoes after he invented the Internet, I imagine.

Really, that would be two pairs of shoes; one belonging to Vinnie Cerf, who invented ARPA(net) to connect a few universities and research labs for the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web (WWW) for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).  Al Gore my ass.

Speaking of my ass, it's not so sore as it was, thank you very much, Al.  Sitting down for 12 hours/day is really a pain in the ass.  Really.  Walking, running and flailing around like a jackass, trying to do circuit training do not seem to help, but I'm keeping at it, daily.  Yesterday, the yard was empty.  I did laps with a set of barbells, all alone.  Just me, the fence and the sea.   And the guy on watch with the rifle...

Finally, in a bit of related trivia, did you know that Vinnie (The Man) Cerf actually offered a spirited defense of Al Gore's claim to have taken the initiative in creating the Internet as a senator?  He did.  Al also received a 2005 Webby award for lifetime achievement, recognizing 3 decades of contributions to the Internet.   I think Pornotube won this year's award, didn't they?