Back in the days of working as a long distance operator there were a lot of interesting characters that we met. Amazingly, although some of [url=http://don.oninohana.com/blog/?postid=13]our “regular” customers[/url] with whom we spoke were very quite odd, I think what made the job more interesting were some of our coworkers. At the busiest times (the center would hire summer help for the summers), the operator population was split about 50/50; people under the age of, let’s say, 28 and those (mostly women) over the age of 40.

The women who had been there for some time were comfortable with their positions and were generally happy to be doing their jobs and going home. Being union represented employees, most had some seniority so they got the hours they wanted, plenty of vacation, great benefits and excellent pay for being “unskilled”. Very few had any desire to move up in the company or change anything about the work environment. So, I think it was safe to say that some felt, not threatened because the union had their backs, but a little intimidated by the influx of young temps and new-hires (of which I was a part) who were coming in at a time when the technology and work place was changing. Truth be told, they really had nothing to worry about as very few of us had much interest in making any moves within the company or staying on past a couple of years. It was a pretty good gig for us and there were a lot of stories that came about from the interaction of this interesting cast of characters.

Here’s one to get started: I’m calling it [b]Funny or Happy?[/b]

Tim was a tall, dark haired guy who I thought probably enjoyed listening to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiths]The Smiths[/url]. He wore a long, black trenchcoat, faded jeans, tanker boots and fingerless gloves when he came into the office from those cold New England winters. I’m pretty sure he was going to school part time and he struck me as a pretty smart guy. Although pretty quiet, he could always be counted on for a funny one-liner during the many training sessions that we had to endure. Tim was also involved in an extramarital affair with a late twenty-something woman with a wealthy husband who probably worked a lot and a young kid at home and who also happened to be working in our office. But that’s not what this story is about….

Tim was on one of the many teams that encouraged the employees to get involved and motivated to help increase the efficiency and knowledge of the operators. I was on the Quality Team, for example. This involved weekly meetings to brainstorm ways to increase the level of customer service that we provided to our customers. It was a great way to get “off the boards” for a few hours a week and actually use your mind while at work. Anyway, Tim was tasked with delivering some kind of training that his team had come up with. When it was my turn to take the training, apparently there was no one else who needed to be trained at that time, so it was just Tim and me in a conference room for 30 minutes or so.

I remember coming in, sitting down and making small talk. Then Tim looked at me with a hint or seriousness in his eye and asked “So, would you rather be funny or happy?” (or something like this…I can’t remember exactly – seem my last paragraph for more information)

I thought this a bit odd, but figured it was part of the training package, so I answered “Funny.” That was my personality at the time.

Without missing a beat, he launched into a 10 minute discussion/lecture about this subject that was definitely NOT part of the corporate training. His pauses were perfect and kept me wanting to hear more. His word choice was excellent and the final “punchline” of the story of a man who was reflecting on the idea of whether it was better to be funny or happy was in fact, both funny and poignantly touching.

I remember thinking that this Tim was one smart cookie and a very cool character. I could see how Lauri might dump her husband in favor of him. After this, I sought Tim out during breaks and free time in order to hang out with him. I was hoping to catch some witty words of wisdom or that some of his coolness might rub off on me.

Some time later, maybe a few months, maybe a year, I don’t remember now; I was reading my friend and roommate Chris’s copy of the latest [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_RollinsHenry Rollins[/url] book when I was shocked to run across the same story that Tim had told me that day. Now, most of us would recognize the same story whether it was the general outline or even just a similar retelling. Tim’s words were exactly as written in that book. It’s like he was reading it off the back wall, just over my shoulder after having practiced his delivery a few times before I came in the room. I was really taken aback. My respect for Tim as a hip, smart, funny guy was completely gone. The bastard had memorized the whole story and offered it to me without a single reference to the author! His choice of material was great (probably the best in that whole book) and he managed to keep a little of my respect for having good taste in authors (we were definitely on a Rollins kick at that time).

Whatever happened to Tim? I don’t really recall. I think he got the subject of his affair to leave her husband but then dumped her after a while. I think I remember someone telling me they saw him buying Crack in the less savory part of Worcester, but I’m not sure if that’s true or not.

We bought Chloe and Gabriel a picture book of farm-related items; tractors, animals, crops, etc. They love books and were really excited about having another one to look through. I was sitting with them yesterday while they flipped through and Chloe stopped on a page with an image of a stalk of wheat and pointed, looking up at me inquisitively. I told her it was “wheat” and she said “wheat” and turned the page. After a few minutes, we came back to that page and she pointed again and said “wheat”. I was surprised she remembered and found it really amusing that she was saying “wheat”.

Throughout the evening, I kept asking Gabriel and Chloe to show me the wheat and they did it over and over. I just couldn’t believe my 18 month old kids were saying wheat. heheheheheh.

Each of the last two nights I have had dreams about being in Japan. I don’t know if this is because Joe is in Japan right now and I’m a bit envious of him or what.

Anyway, on Wednesday night I dreamed that I was in Japan at Hatsumi sensei’s house (but not the home that I’ve been to – it might have been some old home because it was rather beat) and he was speaking almost perfect English to me and the others who were in attendance. I remember thinking “so, he really DOES speak english!” and being amazed at just how well he was able to communicate.

Last night, I dreamed that I was going to Japan or was already there. It’s a bit of a jumble now, but I remember riding on trains and planes and being in some posh, futuristic hotel with a bunch of people I didn’t know. It’s kind of funny, because I’ve certainly never been to a nice hotel in Japan!

At work my main project is a database and web front-end hosted on a mostly Microsoft platform. We’ve got dual load-balanced Windows 2000 machines running IIS and PHP connected to a SQL Server 2000 cluster. This setup used to be maintained by a system adminstrator who was our go-to-guy when anything seemed slow or we needed anything done with the boxes. However, this guy was recently absorbed into the main corporate IT group. So, in recent months our support has been almost non-existent and we’ve now been assigned as the administrators of these servers. This is something for which I have had almost no training and about the same amount of prior experience. And of course, right around the time that this happens, our application starts slowing down and we find users are having issues accessing the data and making the necessary updates.

Now, I know Windows and I would consider myself a power-user but keeping these servers in tip-top shape and running well is a tough job. After doing a bunch of research using almost every available online resource, it appears that MS has really not configured these systems to run well “out of the box”. There are so many recommended tweaks and options, it’s amazing to me that this thing was running at all! My partner and I have spent the last two weeks making change after change hoping to see some noticeable performance increases. There has been some mild improvement, but we’re still searching for the holy grail of SQL Server tuning!

So, the lack of recent blog updates is due, in part, to my working pretty much non-stop from about 7:30am to 4pm each day and then going back after the kids go to bed. Coupled with this is the fact that there really hasn’t been too much to write about. This is a good thing.

Chloe is now in the habit of saying “babba-dee” very frequently. I’m not sure what she’s using that word for. Kind of seems like an all-purpose term. In any case, it’s very funny. We even prompt her to say it now for laughs. It’s great when you can start to let your kids entertain you on command. She also says “yayaYA-yayaYA-yayaYA-yayaYA-yayaYA” and also very funny…at least to us.

Gabriel tends to be more on the cute side of things. He says things like “happy baby” or “apple bar”. The latter being a request for, what else; an apple snack back. They LOVE these organic all-natural snacks that we’ve been giving them.

Where did that title come from? While waiting for a slow script to run at work, I was thinking that I’ve been spending a lot of time hacking things lately and then the term “hack it up” came to mind. Which, of course, lead me to think of the Han Solo quote “Laugh it up, fuzzball” from The Empire Strikes Back. Weird how the mind works.

I recently purchased a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G]WRT54G[/url] router so that I could install [url=http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page]DD-WRT[/url] and have a bit more control over our home network and internet connection. The earlier versions of this router come with more memory and are more easily upgraded, but they fetch a pretty penny on eBay. I finally found one locally on Craigslist for $25! The firmware upgrade went smoothly and we were up and running in no time. Check out the [url=http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page]DD-WRT[/url] site for more information about what you can do with this. I particularly like the static DHCP assignments and QOS stuff – although I have yet to mess around with that very much.

Since this went so well, I decided I would try the XBox Media Center stuff I had seen on [url=http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/transform-your-classic-xbox-into-a-killer-media-center-299809.php]Lifehacker[/url]. Once again, I found a relatively inexpensive chipmod’d Xbox on Craigslist and picked it up. The seller had graciously installed a larger hard drive and left a bunch of movies and games on there! I’m in the midst of updating the chip BIOS, the XBMC version and getting the whole thing connected to my home network. I’ll keep updates coming on how it’s going.

Robyn was out tonight, so I had an opprtunity (the first in a while) to get the kids ready and put them down to bed by myself. It’s certainly a busy time when you’re alone with two 17 month-old toddlers, but it’s fun, too. When the whole bedtime ritual comes together and your timing is right on, it’s not unlike good taijutsu. Oh, and it helps when your “opponents” are [b]really[/b] tired and have colds, too.

Since Gabriel always goes down after Chloe, we have a little more leeway and can sometimes spend a little more time with him without knowing that we have another kid waiting in the wings to have his teeth brushed and calmed down for sleep like we do with Chloe. So, once he was done with his milk, his teeth were brushed, his sleep-sack zipped and I was holding him in the living room, his blinking got slow and he put his head down on my arm. I carried him into their bedroom, turned on their little star that projects flying teddy bears onto the ceiling and laid Gabriel back so he could watch the show without straining his little neck. Chloe’s soft snores kept time as I stood there.

As I watched him in the weak light cast by the star, his face looked like the face of a much older child. Maybe an early teen. As I watched, my imagination ran with this and he seemed to age before my eyes. I pictured the endless number of possible life stories that could be ahead of him. Happy things, sad times, good choices and bad, careers, relationships, ups, downs, dangers and sources of joy…they all played out with incredible speed and clarity in the span of a few verses of Brahms’ Lullaby.

As his eyes began to shut, I was roused from my reverie and moved to lay him in his crib, but not before kissing his forehead and telling him I love him.

[url=http://www.barstoolsports.com/article/new_jersey_freakshows/1958/]This[/url] is one of the strangest exhibitions of odd coloring and lip puckering that I have ever seen.

Sometime in December, we actually ventured out to one of the local malls to pick up a few things. While I was looking around the men’s department of one of the department stores (I don’t remember which one…) I meandered into the more fashionable section and I ran into a gaggle of late-teen or early-twenty-something guys who actually looked almost as strange as the ones in those photos. They all wore some version of the baseball cap cocked just-so on their spikey hair. They all wore sparkly diamond studs in both ears and they all seemed very intent on finding just the right pair of jeans.

I guess they are the New Jersey version of young [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrosexual]metrosexuals[/url].

If you’re not sure where you stand on the situation that we’ve gotten ourselves into in Iraq, then I hight recommend that you watch [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158648608X/bujinkanmartia0b/]No End in Sight[/url]. It’s a well made documentary that does a pretty good job of summarizing the first 18 months of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. What is made startlingly clear is both the lack of planning by the Bush White House before the event and the almost ridiculous series mis-steps that were made “after” the war.

If you don’t want to rent or buy [b]No End in Sight[/b], you can watch the slightly more laid back [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/]Frontline episode[/url] that mirrors the film. Once you’re done with that, check out [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/endgame/]Frontline’s Endgame[/url] for more recent developments in the occupation.

Although I was initially against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I think I was hopeful that this move might actually lead to some changes in that part of the world. Almost five years into it, I don’t see a way to win the war or defeat the enemy by lengthening our stay in Iraq. To say that the situation is hopeless and that we should pull the troops out with no regard to the civillian population of that country is inviting what I am guessing will be a “humanitarian disaster” not to mention a likely destabilization of the already tenuous situation with Iran. The irony that is not lost on anyone is that we were probably safer and the Iraqi people certainly better off, with Saddam in power. I’m not sure what the REAL motivation behind the war was (GW getting back at Saddam for the assassination attempt on his daddy? Cheney and his crew’s chance to make untolled billions of dollars in contracts to “rebuild” Iraq?), but the three documentaries mentioned above sure do point out the bungling of the current administration.

I was surprised to see that [url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/]Frontline[/url] has a good part of it’s catalog of reports available for viewing online. In a television landscape that is sorely lacking in good, factual reporting Frontline still seems to be a bastion of real journalism.

This is a quote from a chat that I had with one of the guys on my team at work:

I was makrs suggest about suing the int data base, proably aoog ideea, saves searchign the configs

I believe that this is supposed to read:

It was [i]Mark’s suggestion[/i] about [i]using[/i] the int [i]database[/i], [i]probably[/i] a [i]good idea[/i], saves [i]searching[/i] the configs

Although this guy is practically a genius when it comes to networking, everyone on our team knows this guy is a horrible speller or maybe just a horrible typist or, more likely, both. I know no one is perfect when they are taking part in an online chat, but this guy’s stuff is almost incomprehensible. Makes me laugh…I hope it makes him laugh, too.