zelph.com

I’m here at work late trying to catch up with work that pilled up while on vacation, and so this may not be as funny tomorrow… but it is right now. Found this in a Slashdot article about “What Do People in the IT Field Do for Side Jobs?” in the comments. Naturally many people mentioned how they have become the IT support for their families, when I ran across this thread:

by 2MuchC0ffeeMan
If we could only charge our grandmothers for every time we fixed their cord not being plugged in…

by delfstrom
>If we could only charge our grandmothers for every time we fixed their cord not being plugged in…

I didn’t know grandmothers required electricity.

by Mr. Bad Example
> I didn’t know grandmothers required electricity.

This is obviously an early example of nanatechnology.

Oy… I need to go home.

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“Come on man… everybody’s doin’ it…”

Just figured I’d post about my conformance to more geek customs. I’ve been using bloglines for quite a while now, and have been loving it. I save time in not checking my normal sites every day to see no new content, but now loose time in that I have added another 50+ sites to my Bloglines list. The only reason it’s only 50+ is that I’m trying to be semi-conservative. I’m sure I could add hundreds but I would have no life other then checking things on it.

I absolutely love being able to get information so easliy. I get to sound so much more intelligent (then I actually am) when I am always talking about what I read the other day on dozens of subjects.

Just a week or so ago I decided to hop on to the del.icio.us bandwagon. It’s so much easier to post things there then to always be sending out links to friends about the latest cool site I ran into. So my delicious list slowly begins to grow as I go back to old posts to get them added.

Anyway… two cool geek things that I’m participating in that I wanted to make sure the 4 people that check my site once a month know about.

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Much has been said and discussed about the recent update to the homepage of Microsoft.com. They have moved to a much more css/xhtml driven site, although they are not all the way there yet. More specific details can be found in other articles, but I just wanted to make sure to give one more lowly blog’s kudos for the progress made.

Eric Meyer writes the exact article that I wanted to, and says what I was thinking. Loud and boisterous kudos should be given for the steps taken. Yes we can quitely point to things that may have been missed, but it should not be held over their heads as wrong doings.

Sprint is often given praise as an example of a big company doing great things with CSS and XHTML, and for that we are appreciative. But our homepage, and the recent business section release aside, a large section of our site does not validate. That’s not through lack of trying or desire, but the existing structure of our Content Maintenance System, doesn’t allow us the full control that we would like to ahceive validation. While the higher ups have drunk from the standards kool-aid, they weren’t willing to put in the extra time and money it would take to do a bottom up overhaul of the engine driving our site. Especially since they already spend untold amounts of money getting it in place as it is.

With that in mind, I have no idea what hurdles Microsoft had to overcome to even get as far as they did. Maybe the remaining issues are ones that they have no choice but to leave for now and will address at a later time, just as we hope to do at Sprint. But they decided to get the best they could out the door as a sign of good faith or of things to come.

So once again, kudos to Microsoft for the great step forward they have made. May it continue to permeate into the rest of their site, and may they find a way past their current “small” issues soon.

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We had heard that Weird Al was coming to town and playing at the Starlight Theater several weeks ago and so we went to see if they had any good tickets left… naturally they didn’t. So we decided to try and win some tickets and then maybe if worse came to worse, we’d buy some cheap nosebleed seats. Well the feeble attempts at winning tickets were not helped by my owning an iPod which I listen to on the way to and from work, and for some odd reason no one was giving away tickets during my playlists.

So two days before the concert I decided to see what tickets were left, and for some odd reason some prime tickets were available. So I went ahead and grabbed them.

Now let me take a moment to express my pure distain for buying tickets from ticketmaster (they don’t deserve a link). The tickets were $38 a seat (which isn’t my issue), but there was an $8 “convenience” charge for EACH TICKET!!! What the heck is that all about? We called the place they were playing to see if we could come down and buy the tickets there, but they said the same $8 per ticket charge would apply. So if we didn’t use the “convenient” way to buy the tickets we still had to pay the convenience fee. What a joke! Then to add insult to injury, there was another $4.something processing charge. If you are going to give me this rediculous charge at least do me the decency of masking it, and just make the tickets be $46 each. Highway robbery at it’s finest…

Anyway… we got to the theater an hour early or so and it was a PERFECT evening. 72 or so degrees and just a slight breeze. Our tickets were dead center and 20 or so rows back… pretty sweet. Some comedian comes out and makes fun of various things around KC (the plaza, the triangle, Sprint, etc) and actually made me chuckle a few times (I don’t laugh easily).

Finally the show starts. This was only my 3-4 “professional” concert, and my first time seing Weird Al. He put on a great show, and was easily my favorite out of the shows I had seen. When I started thinking about it, I know more of his songs then probably any other artist. I guess this was an extension of his Poodle Hat tour so he played several songs from that album. Several of them I didn’t know either the parody or the original song… guess I’m getting out of touch.

But he did do some classics… All about the Pentiums, Horoscope (which I proudly know the long fast part in the middle), The Saga Begins (Star Wars I one), Yoda, Amish Paradise, I was Only Kidding, a compelation set or two, and several others I of course forgot.

We had a total blast and are going to make sure to get tickets early next time he comes. A highly recommended show from a great artist.

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Went out last night to support a fellow team member from Sprint as his band, One Degree of Difference, were in the finals for some local competition. It was some form of speed/hard metal (not sure what they classify themselves as), and the place they had it at had more speakers then people. Basically the loudest sounds I have ever heard (and am still hearing)… and my ears and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment. Another co-worker that went had to go home early from work because his head was hurting so bad.

I don’t drink or smoke, but I’ve hear how bad that stuff makes people feel as well. Mix all of the above into one experince and I have no idea how you could subject your body to that on a regular basis. It was quite painful for one night, I just can’t imagine doing it over and over.

As per the band themselves… the music sounded very tight, at least when it wasn’t so overpowering that I couldn’t actualy discern one thing from another. I know it’s just my own opinion, but music is not enjoyable at that volume. When I focused on each individual instrument, I could hear (again, on occasion) some real quality. It’s just a shame that for me it was 95% “too much of a good thing” for me. I think I understood 10-15 words out of the entire set that they played so that begs the question… why even write lyrics if they can’t be understood? Anyway… they took 2nd place, much to the dismay of the crowd who were largely their loyal followers.

24 hours later my ears are still ringing and have a constant ache. Can it really be… that… I’m getting too old for this stuff?? *sigh*

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