Originally published at How to Crush Without Being Crushed. You can comment here or there.

Every now and then, something pops up that’s kind of tangentially related to the whole relationship thing.

This is one of those times.

Shane Snow, writer and artist, produced a nice little infographic over at Gizmodo that touches on a very important issue: technology and our relationships. In this case, the near-ubiquitous iPhone. It’s good for a laugh… probably because it hits so close to home for many of us who are neck-deep in technology.

Check out When Is It Inappropriate To Use Your iPhone?

So… how often has technology (be it cell phones or video games or TIVO or what have you) caused a problem in your relationship?

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Right now, there's a lot of buzz going around about a whole lot of issues with the data being presented over at Recovery.gov, the site that's in place to let We The People know where all that stimulus money is going.

ABC News reported last week that there were some serious accounting errors being found in the job creation numbers. That was followed over the weekend by some adjustments to the numbers. And that's lead to cries of "foul!" from both sides of the floor.

Needless to say, the anti-Obama faction is pointing to this and calling conspiracy. The pro-Obama faction is... well... not doing all that much (comparatively speaking). Democrats and Republicans alike are calling for a closer look at the numbers.

That closer has already turned up some problematic things. Most notably is that a lot of the fictional jobs reported came from fictional congressional districts. Things like this only fuel the conspiracy end of things and get the media machine oozing with vitriolic joy as there's some sort of paranoia to draw people into their stories.

Here's the thing: This is exactly how the process is supposed to

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that some of the errors being found are truly accidents--data entry and transfer issues--that, if all of this wasn't being dumped to the public, wouldn't be caught for years. And, if it was, it would be corrected quietly and no one would ever notice how the number of jobs created/saved drops.

Then there's the "business as usual" habit of places getting money from the government (or anyone else) trying to make it look like they performed miracles with that money. It's a sub-set of the "If we don't spend it all, we won't get the same budget next year" mentality that I think causes half of the waste in this country. No matter who's in charge.

Conspiracy rears its head when interested people don't have access to all the facts. It is fueled when more questions are raised than answered.

Transparency attempts to cut through the fog and let everyone see all the way down to the bones of the matter.

Problem here is, the bones are buried deep under lots of thick skin, purposely obfuscated process, and just plain old red tape.

What we're seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg. We're right to be a little worried about it, but we shouldn't be calling for blood and we most definitely shouldn't be pre-supposing it's a case of the people in charge trying to put one over on us.

At least not yet.

This is just the usual stuff that's been happening behind closed doors for decades (that's right, not just in the previous administration). It's because those doors were closed that it's gotten as bad as it has.

At its best, the press took the initiative to pry those doors open. That doesn't happen half as much as it should any more. Now the 24-hour news cycle is too concerned with keeping people glued to their coverage of scandal, panic, and general fluff that the real investigative reporting that makes The Fourth Estate worthwhile and keeps the rest of the power structure in check (and the public informed) has become a comparative rarity.

The good news is, a lot of organizations have sprung up to keep a watchful eye on the government. (Check out a listing of some over at the Sunshine Week site and the work that OpenTheGovernment.org is doing.) Sites like Recovery.gov make it easier for all of us to do so. And we should. It's our responsibility to watch out for ourselves these days.

There's a big mess to clean up and some of it has been around so long it's become part of the system. It's only with determination and clear heads that we'll be able to clean it up and reinstate some sensibility in our government.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

OK... now that I have this shiny Droid phone (which has a nice keyboard on it, both physically and on-screen, when needed), I no longer have an excuse for avoiding text-message-based things. Gods know I was sending enough texts using the old phone, though doing so grudgingly.

Now you can find me on that Twitter thing: http://twitter.com/kierduros

I've started to go through and add people, but feel free to beat me to the punch. :)

Can't promise that I'll tweet much. It's not like a do a whole lot of fascinating things. But it is another way of keeping in touch, and that's not a bad thing at all.

My Droid showed up Monday afternoon.

Of course I couldn't play with it right then, work and all, y'know.

I did go through the basic setup and get a little playing done before I left. Then I hit Best Buy to scope out some headset and earphone options. Picked up a set that seemed to be good (wired, not Bluetooth). Going to have to return those... don't like they way the sit in my ears at all.

Got home, realized I'd left the Droid charger plugged in next to my desk at the office. That put a bit of a damper on futher playing with the new phone. Did get some apps loaded, still getting the feel for it all.

This post? Written on the new phone.

Not sure how long it's going to take me to get used to the tiny keyboard. Definitely better than a phone keypad, though. ;)

Originally published at A Tarot Experiment. You can comment here or there.

Yeah, didn't get anything new cranked out today. Was more than a little preoccupied with other things... like queezing enough space into the budget for a spiffy new Droid phone. That should show up on Monday. I'll be able to write during my commute again! And read.

This is good.

The next spread for the coming chapter has been drawn. Behold!

1. King of Shields
2. Ace of Swords
3. Two of Cups
4. The Sun
5. Five of Shields
6. Four of Swords
7. Six of Cups
8. Death
9. Six of Spears (inverted)
10. Eight of Swords

Again, I'm not sure right off the top what characters are involved in this chapter, but I'm suspecting (once I further inspect the cards) that we may finally see Solomon Mercado (our Knight of Shields) or Kristy Roth (our Queen of Swords) make an appearance... there certainly is the space for them here.

( Read More... )

Originally published at The Searcher Journal. You can comment here or there.

According to a recent article in Wired Magazine, the Pentagon is once again throwing money at paranormal sounding research.

Unlike some previous attempts at battlefield psi ops, there is actual technology involved this time:

The project has three major goals, according to Darpa. First, try to map a person’s EEG patterns to his or her individual words. Then, see if those patterns are generalizable — if everyone has similar patterns. Last, “construct a fieldable pre-prototype that would decode the signal and transmit over a limited range.”

Neat stuff, for sure, and at least slightly more likely to be taken seriously than the well-known and much ridiculed Stargate remote viewing project that went on for years.

The success of Stargate is heavily disputed by many but its alumni spawned a private company or two shortly after the “official” project was discontinued.

The Farsite Instiute, the better known of the spin-offs, hasn’t done a whole lot to bolster confidence in remote viewing–or the people who offer training in such things. It’s been riddled with a bit of controvercy and in-fighting for years and some of it’s more public predictions (like the insitance that aliens would make themselves known “soon”–it’s been a decade or so since).

Psi Tech is a few years older than Farsite, but it’s history sounds no less like some fantasy spy novel. Their website does nothing to erase or dilute that “psi-fi” image.

Both organizations, though, do put forward an interesting set of theories and experimental control schems that should, eventually, allow some sort of independent verification of their claims.

The problem is, as is often the case with psychic phenomenon, no matter how tight your controls, repeatablility is always a problem. In a very soft science like remote viewing–which often requires heavy intrpretation of quick sketches and anecdotal descriptions of what the viewer is seeing–two outsiders looking at the same set of raw data can (and do) see very different things.

But, the new military “psychic” devices appear to be much  more centered on the indisputable biological and electrical activity in the brain, so maybe we’re finally on the right track.

Of course, as much as I applaud the fringe research, I can’t help but think our money right now would be better spent in other areas of research. Save the government funded fringe research for when our coffers are full. Leave this stuff up to the eccentric private sector folks (like those mentioned above) and then, when the economic climate is a bit better, actually make use of their research and build upon it.

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

Last night's Refresh-DC meeting featured local educator Jeffrey Brown talked a bit about the web design program he runs at Damascus High School and Montgomery County Community College.

One of the big points the talk drove home was that the educational institutions aren't quite sure what to do with all this web stuff. For those of us who've been neck deep in it since there was a Web to be seen, the idea of not knowing can be a bit foreign.

After all, we use it for everything, right?

But how do you teach that? Most of my compatriots have amazingly diverse backgrounds. I come from a liberal arts background with a heavy helping of science and technology. Others were philosophy or art or theater majors. We're all self taught, for the most part... flying by the seat of our pants half the time and getting lucky the other half. When we got our degrees, the Web was only a few years old (if even), not taught about anywhere and yet, we all function quite well in this still wild-west-like industry that's redefining the entire world.

Education is a slow to change industry--like any large beast, it takes time to nudge it into new directions. The Web, by its very nature, changes much more quickly. Bringing the two into sync is no small job. That's what people like Jeffery are doing. Specifically, he's part of Web Standards Project Education Taskforce. They've put together a bit of a curriculum for educators and institutions looking to teach websuff in a more proper way.

Since I'm still flying more by the seat of my pants than most I know--one of the ever-fun bits of being a very non-specific type of "idea" person and nothing easily definable like a programmer or a designer--I'm not fully sure how I can help out.

But I'm sure as hell going to put some thought (and, eventually, action) into it.

Those of you out there with an eye toward the future probably should, too.

Originally published at How to Crush Without Being Crushed. You can comment here or there.

On a semi-regular basis, I toss around the idea of really dating again.

After all, it’s been more than a decade now and sometimes I think I should just go for something different just for the heck of it.

I know that if I were to suddenly start “playing the field”, most people I know would be alternately surprised, confused and, mostly, happy for me. Some would see it as “better” than what I’ve been doing for the past decade, even though I’ve been quite happy myself.

The point is, those closest to me (and some who aren’t all that close) would be actively paying attention to what was going on in my romantic life. Not because I write and talk about it regularly, but because something had changed in it.

Movement catches our eyes, changes in status grabs the attention of our minds. Changes in relationship status not only get the mind going, but pull in hearts, too.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on the social networking sites.

I know that over on Facebook, one of the main profile info lines is about relationship status. Are you single? Married? Taken? Involved in something “complicated”? Or do you hide that status from prying eyes?

Some of the longest comment streams I’ve seen have been generated by changes in relationship status. The comments usually run the gamut from “Yay!” to near dissertations on why the change is a good/bad thing. For changes from single to something else, there’s often as many requests for more information as there are bits of congratulations.  For changes from involved statuses to single (or  hidden), commiseration is the norm with considerably fewer pokes for the more lurid details.

When it comes to the romantic relationships–or the lack thereof–of those around us, we are all voyeurs. Regardless if the reason is selfish (to measure our own relationship success against theirs or maybe we’re waiting for our own chance to ask them out) or altruistic (because we do so want our friends to be happy), it’s something we keep an eye on. It’s something we like to talk about.

Except, maybe, when it’s our own status changes that catch the attention of others.

Sometimes, talking about it, good or bad, isn’t something we want to do. It takes time to settle into a new relationship or to let an old one pass. Some poeple (like me) have no problem talking about it as the process progresses. Others don’t want to mess things up or rub salt into their own wounds. We all work through things differently.

Once upon a time, it was easier to keep things to yourself.

Now, in this day and age of Facebook, once you’ve put your status out there, you can’t help but draw some attention when you change it.

Even if you do so only to get a different set of ads running on your sidebar.

How often do you talk about relationship stuff with your friends, online and off? Are you more likely to toss off a quick comment on a status change or send a private message?

Gah... three instances of Technology Fail! today.

First there was the whole remote log-in to work thing. Turns out the computer there was turned off. Must have done that on Friday instead of rebooting or logging off like I thought I had. Either that or the power went off over the weekend at some point.

Then, when corpse_light and I wandered down to Silver Spring proper to catch Gran Tourino (highly recommended!), I went and got my ticket from one of the electronic kiosks. On my way up the escalator, I checked it and it said it was for Defiance... which was distinctly not what the screen had said. I figure, OK, maybe I hit the wrong button, I'll eat that ticket price and just turn around and get the right one. Well, that second ticket comes out as one for Dog Hotel... and a child ticket, at that. Obviously, their machine is frakked. Up to guest services I go... and get in line behind a half dozen other people who've had the same thing happen. Behind me is at least another half dozen. Good news is, all straightened out right quick.

Now, about twenty minutes ago, I just noticed that, when moving The Searcher Journal the other day, I mis-keyed the URL on my new web hosting account... meaning that the site has been down for three days.

I only figured it out now because I went to crank out a Metaphysical Monday post and got... nowhere.

Site should be back up as soon as the IP gets directed correctly in the DNS... or something.

*sigh*

Technology fail, indeed.

There was also shopping failure as I was unsuccessful in my attempt to get new shoes. Couldn't find what I liked in my size and the right color (black). I could, at best, find something with two of those factors, but not all three.

This, of course, is the story of my life. ;)

Tomorrow is the inauguration. Going to be watching it online through Facebook/CNN.

Wednesday is back to work in the office.

A whole lot of people are doing a whole lot of arm-waving about this article in the Valley Wag which, basically, says "OMG! LJ is down to 8 employees and going to go away right quick!"

But then there's this article from cNET which is a lot less panic inducing. It leaves LJ with a few more employees... like, most of them.

Consider the source of the news before you get too bent out of shape. Valley Wag is by definition a gossip rag. Quick on the draw, not always so quick on the fact checking. The more panic it causes, the more people link to it and talk about the article there, the more revenue its ads generate. Hysteria is their business... just like too many other "news" sources out there.

The important point is, something is up.

Yes, there are going to be changes--especially in this economic climate and even more especially for a platform that's never been adequately monetized. Mostly because every time that was attempted, the userbase got all bent out of shape (sometimes rightfully so, other times, not so much.)

Quite frankly, those of us who love LJ have been damn lucky it's lasted as long as it has.

I expect it to last a bit longer.

Of course, there's no time like the present to start your own backup scheme. I know I'm going to. Using this tool.

And if LJ does go away, there are plenty of alternatives. The easiest being moving straight to a new blogging platform that may not be quite as feature-rich or community-friendly, but will be there. The slightly more involved solution being setting up your own blog on your own website and relying on RSS feeds (or services like FriendFeed) to keep up on everyone else's stuff.

I know I have a bunch of stand-alone, owned by me blogs that feed into LJ. They are where I'd fall back to if this community were suddenly gone. It would be lonely, at first, but it would also force me to work harder to bring traffic (and repeat readers) to those other sites.

Relationships, be they face to face or online, take effort. LJ (and, perhaps even more so, Facebook) cuts back the amount of effort it takes to appear to be in a relationship... and that's more than enough for many people.

So look around at your friends list and ask yourself: if you actually had to make some effort other than hitting "refresh" to keep in touch with these people, would you? If so, you don't have a lot to worry about. If not, well, then you have to ask yourself if you'll really miss them when they're gone.

Survived the 5.5 hour drive up (after only bout a two hour nap after the wedding).

Survived family members for a few hours after that drive.

Realized that sometime between taking one last picture with my cell phone and removing it again from my pocked when i got back to the house it decided to not work any more. This is annoying for multiple reasons, the top two being I've never had a cell phone break on my (and it figures it would be the most expensive one I've ever had) and I use the damn thing as my main (and now only) alarm to get up in the morning for work.

So now I for sure have to get back down MD way in order to make it to a verizon store before they close.

Unless, of course, the phone decides to behave itself and start (with a full battery) even when it's not plugged into the wall.

More after I sleep some...

...it goes on, impossibly and never-ending.

:(

Seriously.

I just want to be done with this thing--as does everyone else, I'm sure.

We're now on a new hosting account. Why? Because, apparently, the one we were using wouldn't allow e-mail to send from a user-written program. Not that they clearly documented that anywhere. Would have been nice if they had... would have saved us some unnecessary stress.

*sigh*

Kind of glad now that we don't do software development on a regular basis.

hmmm... maybe the big world-ending catastrophe with the Large Hadron Collider will happen after it's had the couple of days it needs to fully spin up... would be interesting and vaguely amusing to have the world get half wiped out just as we finish this project...

One way or another, should be done by the end of the week (hopefully Wednesday).

Man, the weekend can't get here fast enough.

So... don't suppose anyone has an extra Pioneer VWR1378 power supply assembly laying around, huh?

I'm pretty sure that's the only thing wrong with the DVD Player/Recorder... looks like a capacitor has oozed out a wee little bit of its insides (seriously, just a little bit... it was sitting right on top of the capacitor and hadn't gotten anywhere else).

I know this because I just popped the thing open... partially in the hopes that the problem would just be a blown fuse, but mostly hoping that there'd be a nice clearly labeled emergency release for the disc tray (there's not) so I can get my Twilight Zone disc out without busting the thing up more.

Buying a replacement board looks to be between $50 and $70 some-odd dollars... a little more than a quarter of the price of the whole unit new. (Yes, the DVD player cost me almost as much as my TV when I got it... but, man, did I use it!) Would be nice if they made these things a little more modular. Like with screw out capacitors or something. Then fixing this would probably only run me a few bucks. Alas, I have no electronics skill nor tools to replace a capacitor without seriously destroying everything else around it.

Today is being dedicated to little projects like this (and laundry... like washing bedding and other big things). I was going to run out to the supermarket, but I don't actually need anything there. Well, nothing that can't wait until the normal trip on Monday after work. Just things that I'd like to have. In the interest of cutting down costs (especially with food prices still going up), this seems to be a good idea.

I think I may also put on No Country For Old Men and Grindhouse, since I missed both of those in the theaters and they're both over on one of the On Demand stations I get as part of my cable package.

In other rambling news...

Talked to the girl I'm almost dating on the phone last night for about an hour and a half. Both of our weeks have been crazy. We do have dinner scheduled for next Saturday. I'm cooking. Kind of a "Dinner By Kier: Vegan Edition" thing. Also attempting to make a kind of double date out of it, since I'd already promised such a meal to rachel_gothic... hopefully trhodes won't be called away for work.

Talked to an old friend of mine this morning. Gotta love conversations that start out with me asking "So, how're you doing?" and having the answer be "Dying, slowly" without any snark or sarcasm involved. I don't expect them to go away any time soon... they've got a good attitude going now (better than I've ever seen them have, actually). The condition is an odd one, involving gall bladder and liver and stuff like that, but there's surgery scheduled and we'll see how it all goes. And if things go poorly, I've told them they are more than welcome to show up in whatever ethereal form they end up in. Yes, I have an open door policy for ghosts of people I know. (If, however, you get turned into a vampire, you're going to have to stay outside... and zombies are right out.)

Normally, that'd be the kind of discussion that would really bum someone out. But we both ended on a relatively high note. And this is why I love my friends: most of us don't behave in exceptionally typical fashions in one or all facets of our lives.

Death isn't something to be feared.

Random people can be very important.

The most amazing things are found accidentally--and appreciated all the more because of it.

Pushing our own boundaries is a normal thing.

Yeah... it's been a good weekend so far.

Just when I'm gearing up to do movie nights (and be ready for the new TV season), it appears my much used DVD Recorder has died.

Came home from work, had to reset some clocks as it seems the power had gone out at some point. Clock on the DVDR was still OK. But, since the display has a much more dim glow when in standby mode, I figured I'd turn the thing all the way on, maybe watch another episode of The Twilight Zone... so I hit the power button on the remote (the remote which has slowly been losing functionality all on its own) and the display turns... off? That's not right.

Hit the power button on the remote again. Nothing. A few more times, shake the remote (like that's going to help?), more button pushing. Still nothing.

Since I'd already moved right up to the DVDR (why do we insist on doing such silly things in a quest to get a remote working?), I hit the actual power button a few times... and the eject button. Nothing.

Pull the plug, put it back in somewhere else. Do that again. Turn everything on and off. Nothing. At all.

So, yeah, this is annoying.

And it raises the question: replace it with another DVDR, another hard-drive-based DVR and a plain old DVD player, or... something else (like put together a cheap-ish home entertainment machine)?

Oh... and I'm going to have to force eject the Twilight Zone DVD that's in the dead machine.

suck. :(

Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.

FCC slaps Comcast’s wrist over network neutrality; Sets precedent

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday ruled 3-2 that Comcast overstepped its network management authority by blocking BitTorrent peer to peer traffic, but stopped short of fining the cable company. The move clarifies the boundaries a bit for other carriers and sends the message that the FCC enforces network neutrality principles.

This is good news. It means there is now precedent for the FCC to enforce the idea that service providers should treat all info flowing through the 'Net as equal.

Of course, it also continues to show just how complex this issues is. How deeply should the FCC dip into how a company manages the traffic on its network? What if something (be it P2P file transfers or something more nefarious) stands to disrupt the clean and clear flow of usage for other users? Where does security come into play in all this?

These are things I most certainly don't have answers to, but I'm sure many smarter and better paid will be debating them behind closed doors, in virtual forums and in other places for years to come.

We are living in the future. Twenty years ago, who would have thought we'd have to worry about how hundreds of gigabytes of file transfers among home computer users are handled?

Here's the problem: How do you read information off of a mirrored RAID array that has been deactivated and then re-activated?

So here's the story:

Friday at work, we were going to pop a new RAID array into our main server.

The plan was to put in this newer, beefier, array and copy all of our files off of one of the other two RAID arrays onto the new one, then get rid of that old array. Our server already had two existing RAID arrays, each on a separate controller card.

The hardware went in with only a minor frustration (due to being unfamiliar with the computer case construction... "Oh! The try pulls out from that side!").

Having never worked with a RAID array (that wasn't already there and doing its job), I wasn't sure exactly what to expect (the meager documentation that came with the new controller card is horribly insufficient--and even kind of out of date and inaccurate when it comes to what the device's own management software looks like).

So I watched the bootup sequence and saw two RAID controller cards pop up with options to enter the on-board management BIOS-type setup.

Picking the one that had the manufacturer of the new controller card at the top, I went in and found what I thought was an out-of-the-box array already set up. It wasn't quite what I thought we wanted, since something looked off.

And so, I disabled the exiting array and began putting in the info for the new one.

Which went just fine until I triple checked the amount of space that would be available. That was what was looking off to begin with... I had figured it was just due to configuration issues.

Turns out it wasn't and I was actually working with one of the exiting arrays. One of the exiting arrays that's full of data that we kind of need to work.

So I backed out of the changes.

Which, as I know now, doesn't count for anything once you've disabled a RAID array. On system re-boot, our main project drive--with everything we've been working on for the past year--is nowhere to be found in Windows.

The problem is: we have no idea how to get the data off the drives now.

I tried setting the array back up like it was on Friday, culminating in the copying of all of one drive to the other. (They're set up in a mirrored format, always have been, so both drives should have the same info on them.)

The boss called me today. He hasn't been able to get it to work. I have no clue what else to do. We've already tried just hooking one of the drives up straight to the motherboard. That got us nowhere (so I'm told--the boss is the one in the office).

Does anyone out there have any ideas?

Pertinent system info: Running Windows Server 2003. The RAID controller in question is one attached to two IDE drives and in a PCI slot (I think).

I have no idea what to do. All I know is the boss wants me in as early as possible to help. Not that I can help. We both know just as little about the hardware. We probably should have never had our hands inside the machine to begin with. I should have probably popped down to the office yesterday to check on things. :(

The really sad part is, I remembered about halfway through the set-up that I had violated the first cardinal rule of adding new hard drives: If at all possible, disconnect all important hard drives from the system before trying to initialize the new one...

This morning, as I was almost rushing to get out the door in time to catch the bus (due to having trouble prying myself out of bed this morning after yet again being up too late on a Sunday), two things occurred to me.

1) The boss and the graphic designer are out of town today (boss in Africa, designer in NJ) meaning I'm going to be the only one in the office today.

2) If I'm going to be the only one in the office, there's no need for me to be in the office. At least not as long as I have an Internet connection at home.

Huzzah! for remote desktop logins!

I see an afternoon nap in my future.

..tell me of them!

Doing a bit of research and I'm curious as to who all y'all out there use as web hosts (either personally or for clients/employers or whatnot).

Also (and I think I already know the answer to this), do you prefer Windows of UNIX/LINUX based hosting?

As I mentioned yesterday, this has not been a good week for me having a functioning brain.

This continued today.

The last two hours and change of my day at the office were spent wrestling with the network.

See, our phone system is a nice little Vonage VOIP setup. We had it turned on and running before we left the old office.

Thing is, over there, it was running behind our router and main network setup.

When things were set up in the new office, it was set up the "right" way--with the VOIP router out front.

Of course, nothing quite worked the way it was supposed to as we followed the directions to set up the network behind it. Needing to be up and running, we just kind of went with what worked at the time. That left us with our main office network on a different subnet, our nice wireless router doling out IP addresses as a good DHCP server should.

But now we really want to get our remote desktop login back up and running (you know, the wonderful tool that let me work from home when I was a bit under the weather and watching the plumbers rip apart my bathroom and closet ceilings).

This would be easy except for two things: 1) We don't have a static IP address at the new office and 2) Even if we did, I have no clue at all how to route the ports calls for individual computers from the VOIP router to the one that actually connects to the computers.

Problem one I can get a work-around in place for relatively quickly, thanks to a handful of free services (that, nicely enough, came referenced on the nice router we have--seems the normal customers are high-powered gamers). No big deal, in the scheme of things.

The second problem was the one I was trying to fix today.

Let me tell you, if anyone needs any proof that I'm not a network engineer, just reference today.

I managed to foul things up so badly that I needed to reset the VOIP router to the factory defaults just so I could access the settings again.

Not. Pleasant.

The good news is, everything was working when I left. Phones were ringing and making calls, the voice mail picked up and the computers were talking to one another and able to get on the Internet.

The bad news is, after two or so hours of work, everything was back to the way it was when I started.

*sigh*

And then my books on web programming weren't here when I got home like I expected. So half my plans for tonight went right out the window.

If nothing else, this job is getting me back on track with keeping up with technology more than I have been the last year or two. I like the challenge. It's been a while. :)

Why does it feel like Monday?

Oh, yeah... technology issues here in the office.

Network problems (nah, we don't need an internet connection or access to our main server drive... we'll just... uh... wait... they're back... now they're not... they're back!... Gone!...) are making life unpleasant.

As are silly people I'm dealing with off-site.

Now, if you were tasked with troubleshooting a problem caused by a Content Management System upgrade that you did... and the solution turned out to be a complete reinstall of said CMS... and everything that had been installed (modules and whatnot) in addition to the base CMS was working perfectly before the upgrade... why in the name of all that is holy would you install old versions of those additional things? Especially when you've been out of the development loop on them (because, really, there was no reason for you to be in it) for at least four iterations of changes on said additional things.

And, just as importantly/annoyingly--why do all of that without getting involved at all in the conversation that was going on for a week that all other parties were trying to bring you in on?

grrrr...

Not a good way to start the day....