What a BuzzKill

I’ve been reading more and more lately about incidents of photographers getting harassed and mistreated for simply taking pictures of things that they are legally within their rights to photograph. We’re on the slow road to a police state and people are overreacting to the most ridiculous things. I read this article on Bruce Schneier’s blog (he blogs about security) where he explains why this sudden and progressing suspicion of photographers is unfounded.

_{This entry likes to take pictures.}

A fun remix of Star Wars cut with lines from James’ other roles.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av1BoAUb8WE]

_{This entry is curious about the dark side.}

I just read a very interesting article about time, technology, media, participation, and gin. While I don’t especially care for gin, the article was fascinating. Check it out if you have some time.

_{This entry has surplus time.}

My coworker, Rachel, has a blog. She’s been getting into site stats and how well her site ranks on various search engines and social bookmarking sites. She just ran up to me, excited as all get out, exclaiming:

“I’m ranked 4th for ‘I hate dog shit!'”

I, on the other hand, seem to have a rather different view of the metrics that indicate the success of a website. Not that I’m saying my site is any indication of success.

_{This entry wears underwear.}

This is an actual email from one of my personal clients:

“I only use outlook for my calendar on my home computer and blackberry contact info and on my current work computer (desktop that I am not going to use anymore) I used MSN email and no outlook for anything but I think I will be using that with the new laptop for email and blackberry since that is where the technology has gone. I will still have my MSN email address but using it through outlook right? All the contact info is on my home computer to load and with my MSN email addresses. I have most of them but I know this is confusing but I can sort it out with you in person.
Basically I use the following:
Home computer-I log into MSN hotmail and do emails from home-It also has my blackberry contacts through outlook that you put there from my sony clie and I can add new ones and use the calendar but I have yet to sync it to my blackberry. I just use the calendar on the blackberry itself to use the reminder and not sync it to my home computer.
Work destop (will not use anymore) has my sony clie contacts and I use the sony clie for my calendar-(will not use that anymore either I will use the outlook on the new computer) I will need to take my email addresses from MSN and put them in outlook on the new computer laptop as I will no longer be using MSN (I don’t think) and will be using outlook with the calendar and contacts.
We will get this organized and you wil see where I want to go and hopefully I am doing the right thing. To many places that I go instead of using outlook for everything and it is compatable with the blackberry. I am used to that now and it is nice but still some kinks.
See you Thurs..R”

_{This entry is still trying to recover!}

This is astounding!

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE]

_{This entry wants to watch an elephant paint!}

I found a cool interactive photo gallery that I could plug in to my site. It’s just a test for now, but you can check it out at:

https://standlikeaman.com/im/

It would take quite a lot of effort to keep it maintained, unless I was adept at scripting (which I am most definitely not), so I figure it’d be a place where I’d post only my favorite photos.

Anyhow, let me know what you think!

_{This entry has apparently come down with a tweaking bug.}

This will be the way I post pictures from now on. Very handy and slick interface!

The new gallery to the right will automatically choose random recent photos from my Flickr account.

Downstairs, in apartment #1, lives a woman and her daughter. The mother is a loud and obnoxious person. She’ll sometimes turn up her stereo and open all her windows and doors so everybody that lives in the complex is subjected to her music. She’ll try to start a conversation with you as you’re trying to get into your car. She’s just one of those people I find increasingly annoying.

Once she found out that I worked on computers, she’d ask for help with her computer, presumably for free. Hell, I even did help her once.

The biggest issue I have with her is that we share a 2-car garage. Unfortunately there is no dividing partition, which she seems to have interpreted as meaning she can store her personal belongings on my half. Our lease agreements state that the garages are not to be used as storage facilities (we’re supposed to have enough room to park a vehicle inside).

She’s done this before and after finding a bunch of boxes that had tipped over and collapsed on my drum set, I pushed her stuff back over to her side and insisted that she get her side organized and off my side. 6-8 months later, after I had talked to her about it a few more times (and her promising it would be done “in two weeks” a few times) I arrived home from work and found a couple of guys rummaging through my things. She had hired these guys to restack all her stuff and because they could hardly speak more than 5 words of English they interpreted her instructions as meaning to reorganize the entire garage – including my stuff! After 30 minutes of pointing out my things and having them put back into place, she had the nerve to act as if she had done some great thing.

About 6 months later her boxes and storage bins started making their way back to my side. I told her to move them and she said something to the effect of, “Oh get over it, it’s only a couple of boxes.” Time went on and out of laziness and not wanting to hassle with it, I didn’t do anything about it. This mentality all changed when I went in the garage to try and fix Rece’s bike, after getting home one dark winter’s evening, so he could ride it to school the next morning.

More of her boxes were stacked on my side and I could barely get his bike moved out and into any position to work on. I was furious, but being late and she wasn’t home, I didn’t voice my objections. It took another 6 weeks before I found myself looking at my open garage and seeing just how much room was still left on my side of the garage and decided to speak with her once more.

I knocked on her door on a Thursday evening and told her that she had until the end of the weekend to move her stuff out of my half of our shared garage. She objected, saying that she had to work over the weekend, but I didn’t relent and said that if she didn’t move it, I would and she probably wouldn’t like where I moved it. She threatened to call the cops if I touched her things and slammed the door on me as I turned to walk away. I then snapped some pictures of the garage.

That Sunday, as I got back from a hike, I noticed that she was home. It was 2:30 p.m. – so much for having to work. I didn’t bother to check if she had moved her stuff, but I was positive that she hadn’t.

The next day, Monday, after I got home from work, I opened the garage to check on the status and found everything to still be in the same place. Rece and I had dinner and then went out to the garage to move it ourselves. Fortunately, she was gone, so we carefully moved every box and storage container that was over the imaginary line into her carport spot, as far forward as possible and not stacked too high.

As I was moving the last item, she pulled up and started yelling at me from her car to stop touching her things. She stopped short in her car port and yelled at me some more, then inexplicably pulled back a few feet, stopped, yelled at me again, pulled forward and bumped into her stuff. She then started to yell at me about possibly damaging her car.

A couple of the other neighbors had come out to see what was going on. I kept calm and simply stated that she had been warned. She then started ranting about how she couldn’t move the stuff because she had back problems, to which I replied, “It’s amazing how your back was well enough to move all that stuff into my side of the garage, then” and walked away. She threw a few insults my way, but I just went upstairs and got my camera and took some shots of the garage and her pile of boxes in her carport.

As I was walking back into my apartment I heard her begging one of the other tenants if they could help her and let her store her things in their garage. What a piece of work she is.

I uploaded the set of pictures to my Flickr account.

_{This entry can’t stand people that have no respect for other people’s property and space.}

By “users” I’m talking about computer users. Not all the people I encounter are a problem, but it does seem that business owners are the worst people to help with a computer issue.

For example, I’m working on a laptop for a client who reported getting a BSOD on startup, but he could still get into Safe Mode – at which point he was bombarded with popup messages saying his computer was infected with spyware. I arrived to his office and he was positive that it was our fault, saying that we removed his antivirus program when we installed his printer. I assured him that wasn’t the case and told him about how many current spyware/adware/viruses find ways around older antivirus programs and then prevent them from working. His computer was obviously infected while he was surfing porn sites, based on the types of malware I found. His 2006 version antivirus program was powerless to prevent infection.

Another business owner had grown tired of repeatedly having to call us to resolve user-caused problems. We told him about setting up a proper client-server network environment and how it would make his systems more stable. Granted, my boss under estimated the amount of work it would take to get their systems up to snuff, but the project was all in order. After about a month of working around their staff to get the network and their workstations ready for the change, the owner started to complain about how long it was taking. It didn’t occur to him that it was taking much, much longer because I was unable to just get in there and do what I needed to do and converting one workstation at a time — with the staff member breathing down my neck and/or asking me what type of computer they should buy for their mother — wasn’t conducive of efficient work. Now that the work is done, we hardly hear a peep from them. But when there is something they need help with, the owner complains about how he spent all this money to get the system the way it is and how he can’t believe he still has to call us for help.

Then there are the loony clients. The ones that check their email using their webmail interface, flag spam items and delete them, then open Outlook to download the email – but still leaving the email on the server – and then freak out when their mailbox cap is reached, assuring us that every-single-email is of the utmost importance. These are the types that will log onto the server using the Administrator account, muck something up, then blame us for whatever went wrong. They’ll listen to us when it comes to restructuring their network to a client-server environment and when it’s all done and configured, get upset that users can’t install Incredimail, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, or Limewire on their own — and when we open access for the users to do so, they’re livid that they have all sorts of computer problems again (and after they spent all this money!). Or the bookkeeper that says, “I’m more of an IT guy than a finance guy,” then asks, “what does FTP mean?” in the same conversation — then asks us if we can give him the domain Administrator login info.

Some days the job can be frustrating, but for the most part it’s a lot of fun. It’s those 15% of users who can turn an otherwise mentally stimulating and enjoyable day into a hair-pulling day of mental anguish.

_{This entry still loves working on computers in spite of it all.}