Nap’mo 5: This is going to suck.

I’m changing the titling so as not to offend KarlaBabble (like SHE ever comes HERE any MORE), but mostly ’cause yeah, I agree that the vast majority of my own “I’m going to write every day for X days” challenges are deeply depressing to myself, ’cause I don’t usually get past day three before skipping a day or two, and then doing one more day, and then giving up, assuming nobody noticed in the first place.

Karla has this to say about it:

Do us all a favor and vow NOT to participate in NaBloPoMo this year. If you’re already committed to it, then at least remove the word “NaBloPoMo” from every post, because that’s like announcing, “This is going to suck” in big letters across the top of the post. Allow us the temporary illusion that you blogged today because you were inspired, and not because there’s a national bore-a-thon going on and you’re determined not to be left out.

This is why I don’t use something like Twitter (or Twittr, or Twitr, or Twtr, or whatevr they’r calling it this wkr,) it’s just too much pressure.  I’m afraid people would actually start to get annoyed by what I’m tweeting.  See?  I’m already annoying myself by talking about it.  Shut UP.

Lots of high-fiving at work this morning, and just general feeling of “Whew.”

I built a Minspec cart today, which is a bunch of machines that are near or slightly above/below minimum specifications for one of our games.  While not terribly interesting, it did give me an excuse to do some other stuff while watching Windows reinstall on some older gear, and see how well our recently-upgraded imager could deal with hardware that is not made by a tier1 company.  After a quick update to September from our current July, everything’s schmoove.  Nice.

Also tried to figure out how to make Ubuntu be a router.  I’m about 95% there, in that the Ubuntu box is now a DHCP server, and is multihomed (two network cards in one machine, so there’s an inside and an outside), but I’m not quite there when it comes to the DNS and Gateway stuff.  I *think* I’m just missing the DNS (which was always my downfall in previous attempts at building “everything in a box” machines).

The ride to work this morning was COLD.  Raining hard.  Big fat drops.  About four degrees out (that’s 38 for you USofA types, if my Bob&Doug-to-metric is correct).  Soaked the thighs of my jeans almost before I got to the corner.  I brought my bike in so I could adjust the brakes.  Had to.  My commute is a short 8 blocks downhill, but when your brakes only sorta/kinda slow you down a little, things get sorta sketchy.  I was all “Oh geez, I’m gonna screw up my brakes, and then I’ll have NO brakes, and how’m I gonna tell Arwen that when I get home?”  Know what?  It was one allen-key turn away from adjusting them.  Amazing what happens when you actually try.

I was going to try to find some helpful information for all of you to do this little trick on your own bikes, and ran into this in reference to my particular model (but not the same year) and have one question:

What the hell are “spoke nipples?”  (scroll way down on that link).

Nobody answer that.  Okay, maybe one person.

I was going to write all about what kinds of lights I have now, and show pictures and stuff, and then thought better of it.  There’s a lot of ’em, I think partly to be seen in the dark on the way home, and partly ’cause the kids love the lights.  I almost bought a pair of blink-when-they-spin lights to go on my wheels this weekend, just so I could be that guy with the stupid spinners on his bike.  Managed to restrain myself from buying more of those little tiny “turtle” lights for $3.50 a piece (although the UFO “spinner” mini lights almost got me).

Parenting Tip #317: If you have kids, and you’re thinking of buying one of those little lights for yourself, do everyone a favour, and buy 3 of them for every person in the house (and one per cat).  The burn rate on these things is very high.  Not burning out, but getting stepped on, or lost under the couch, or under the bed, or into the cat box, or hidden in a book shelf because if you two can’t share then nobody gets them.

Aside: Arwen’s looking at the site for the “New First Dog,” and we’re talking about GoldenDoodles YorkieDoodles and Shitzpoo, and Poodoodles.  When it comes to entertainment, we’re pretty easy.  We’re not proud, we’re just tired.

That headache I had yesterday?  It’s still couch-surfing with me, and hasn’t offered to pay for anything yet.  Jerk.  Maybe if people offered unexpected houseguests nothing but coffee and headache remedies, those “Maybe we’ll just head home after breakfast… tomorrow…” people wouldn’t be such a problem.

“And for dessert, a bowl of Liquid Gel Ibuprofen!  I made it into a mold shaped like a jellyfish for you!  With marshmallows and carrots!  Wheeeee!”

The front desk at work has birds.  Chirpy birds.  That chirp.  This would made me insane.  Just to tease them, we have big tree trunks in the lobby that the birds don’t get to play on.  There’s even a big wooden swing like the cool kids had in their back yard, but people sized.  Birds don’t get to play on that, either.  Maybe they’ll get us a big mirror in there one day, and then one of the Russian Programmer contingent can fight with it.  To.  Ze.  Deth.

Oh, I mention the birds because We (the IT we, the little cluster of us) have an R2D2 USB hub that’s plugged into one of our monitoring stations.  Joe brought it back with him from Japan (I think) and then Allie showed up a few days later with bobbleheads (I got the Clone Trooper, sweet!)  The fun thing is that the R2D2 chatters once in a while, with what is probably not licensed noises.  They’re great.  It’s like having a bird, only geekier (and you don’t need to feed it).  Michelle’s got one of those usb lavalamps (as do I) and I’m thinking we’ll need to make someone buy one of those usb “fish” that has a magnet somewhere inside it to make the plastic floaty fish move around.  Creepy.

Oh, usb news from Japan?  Humpy dogs.  They’re everywhere.  For the record: I do NOT want one for Xmas, mmkay?  And keep them away from R2D2, all right?  Nobody needs to see that.

Yeah, I think that’s all I got for today.