Shoes rule.

Okay so in some ways I'm almost as bad as a woman.
I have 2 pairs of dress shoes, a pair of running shoes, and a pair of sandals .... and I just ordered a new pair of shoes yesterday, from Zappos. They're totally awesome though.

I'll definitely be wearing the black laces with these. The white would just be too much white. I totally love em though. And they're Vans, so you can't go wrong.

Hopefully these will arrive here at work tomorrow. UPS says they are on time... and I keep refreshing every few minutes to check. Yay!

I see stupid people....

And they make me want to cry.
I've probably spent as much time at this job fixing and covering for stupid stupid stupid things that were done before I was here, as I have spent on new development.

Then, there's the users .... don't even get me started.

Microwaves suck!

Why the hell can't all microwaves just be a standard power and all that? I just put a bag of popcorn in for the recommended time... 2 minutes, 30 seconds... and even before I opened the door, I could smell that it was burned. So I pull the bag out, open it up, and find out that probably half the bag is burned. Hell, there's a chunk of BLACK popcorn. It's like freaking charcoal! And now the entire office reeks of burnt popcorn.

Dammit.

Database Relief

So, I've been battling with a database problem for a while now. I have this table that records all the traffic to every website we host at work. Needless to say, this grows. Quickly. At a rate averaging about.. ehhh... 35k hits/day.

Now, thanks to the wonderfully forward thinking engineers in this position before me, we have run into a built-in limitation of MySQL. By default, when you create a table, it's built with the ability to grow up to a size of 4gb. Well with as much traffic as we get here, that 4gb point has quite obviously come and gone. In just over a year worth of traffic. Brilliant.

I have finally found a solution to get us by for now though, as opposed to deleting old traffic records for inactive accounts. (I hate deleting archived data. Always bad.) One little query has made my world all better:
ALTER TABLE traffic MAX_ROWS=1000000000;

Yes, that is 1,000,000,000. One billion. We're at around 12.4 million records in that table right now. I figure if we get to a billion, I'll be retired on a tropical island, sipping on drinks with little umbrellas in them. Now, in the process of rebuilding this table with the greatly increased row limit, MySQL went ahead and recalculated the maximum amount of disk space the table could take up. The new number it came up with is 281474976710655 bytes. That comes out to exactly 256tb. Two hundred and fifty six TERABYTES. Yeah. Drinks with little umbrellas. Definitely.

I complain a lot.

I'm realizing that I really do. I feel sorry for anybody who has to listen to me.

Body modding

I've been thinking very seriously lately about getting into body modding.

I already know that I'm going to do tattoos over a large part of my torso. I have a back piece planned, as well as something for my left shoulder. I would like to get pieces figured out for other parts of me as well... and I know already how I'm going to link them together. That way it's not just a bunch of random patches of ink across my skin... they will actually flow together in a way.

More recently though I've been thinking about piercings as well. Partially because these are much cheaper than tattoos... and partially because I've always liked piercings. Once it was suggested that some piercings might look good on me.. well, it was all over.

So far, I'm thinking I would like to get (eventually) ears, septum, labret and bridge... all nice and symmetrical. The bridge might be a bit awkward, with the way my glasses sit... since I've got such a narrow bridge, my glasses sit right exactly where the piercing would go.

I still have a huge fear of needles... and I would definitely have to give my standard disclaimer of me + needles = passing out when I got pierced.. but I think this would also help me overcome that fear. Maybe.. somehow.

My other problem is, I don't know how these piercings will be viewed at work. I'm not even sure about ear piercings simply because of my job. Granted, this is a business casual environment... but some of these people are also very straight laced. Plus the fact that I actually have to meet with clients on occasion... which I hate (see my previous post about that.) I really want to start doing this stuff.. it just really interests me. I guess I'll have to ask if there's any kind of policy here about that. It just somewhat bugs me that work might actually restrict me from doing things like this, when really, it doesn't change at all who I am or how I perform my job. It just changes how I look... which really, they shouldn't give a damn about, as long as I'm presentable.

Management

So I posted here previously that I will soon have somebody working under me, and the stress and doubts associated with that. I think I can safely say that I'm over those fears. I'm certain that I will be a strong leader and also a good teacher. I have no doubts there anymore. The problem is, now I'm doubting if I want to be in that type of position. It may be that I was born to be in a leadership role of sorts... I have always somewhat fallen into that role in most situations in my life. I'm just not sure if I want that to be my job. I like obscurity... I like being the man behind the curtain, making things work from the shadows. I like having the freedom to actually work, without constraints, without distractions. Most of all though, I hate dealing with political bullshit. And to me, that's what comes with a management role. You have to deal with customers and other managers all the time, and you have to play political footsie with them. That's not something I enjoy, that's not something I want. Sure, I can bullshit with the best of em when I have to, but I couldn't live with myself if that's what I did for a job. I would start to hate my job, and I just got myself out of a position where I couldn't stand waking up in the morning, because it meant I had to drag myself in for another day of worthless time at my job.

Then again, who knows, maybe it won't be that way at all. I may be over analyzing. Being in a management position here might be just what I need. I suppose only time will tell.

Rust 'n Bass

So I was listening to a drum 'n bass mix that I recorded last night... just about a half hour worth. And I realized, that I sound like CRAP. I am way rusty with that stuff. I can't believe how incredibly out of practice I am now... so yeah, I need a lot more practice with that stuff. And probably more records. Definitely more records. Or I could just stick with tech house & breakbeats. Both of which I'm at least decent at mixing. Grr, decisions decisions!

I <3 RedHat.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061116-8240.html
http://www.redhat.com/promo/believe/
http://www.redhat.com/truthhappens/

RedHat rules. Plain and simple. Microsoft pushes, and they shove back. They won't take guff from anybody. That is awesome. More people should follow their example.

Organization

I really need to start getting things organized. I keep finding myself forgetting to do things, or ending up doing them several days later than I really should. It's not that I have too many things to do... well okay maybe I do, but all of this really should be manageable if I just put my mind to it. At least I've started to get my dates and appointments organized, thanks to my wonderifical new phone.
I love my phone. I really do.
I just need to figure out what to do to organize everything else.... my white board is filled with chicken scratch, and I've got sticky notes every freaking where.

Drum 'n Bass +10

I've learned a very valuable lesson tonight.

Spinning drum 'n bass with all the tracks at or near +10% pitch is very difficult.
And it sounds like crap.

Note to self: Never do that again.

Fortune of the day

Slous' Contention:
If you do a job too well, you'll get stuck with it.

Yeah. Yup. That's very true. I now realize, that's what's happened to me. But I like it... dammit.

Decisions

I tend to be a pretty indecisive person. Okay, at times, that's a massive understatement. But when it comes to important, potentially life changing decisions, I tend to put my mind to them and figure out an answer. Especially when it affects other people's lives. Why can't other people have this same courtesy? It really bugs me, the fact that my entire future could hinge on the decisions of another person, and they refuse to make up their mind.

Responsibility

When did this happen? When did I suddenly become responsible for so much? I've had to take on far more in this month than I ever imagined I would have to. And now, I'm finding that I'm going to have a new employee under me at work. I'm going to be a boss. I'm going to be totally accountable for this person.

How did this happen?

Am I ready for this?

Will I be able to handle all of this new weight, or will I collapse?

Mental Exercise

Given the circumstances that I'm currently in, and the state that my mom has come to be in, I can't help but sit here and think that the most important exercise we can get in our lives is mental. You can work your body as much as you want, and even extend your life through these physical pursuits. Unless you constantly exercise your mind, however, who can say how many of these extended years will be happy, harmonious years? How many of them will be spent in misery, wishing that you were no more for this world? How many years will you spend in regression, not really knowing the current or what is going on around you?

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of physical exercise here, not at all. Our country is obese, that is a fact. More people need to get off their lazy asses and work out. But just as many people, and probably even more, need to work their minds a lot more than they currently do. It's nothing terribly difficult. In fact, mental exercise is even easier than physical. You can remain seated on your lazy ass while you do it!

There are any number of things you can do to exercise your brain. Pick up a book, a magazine, or a newspaper and start reading. Do what I'm doing right now and write down your thoughts. Grab a deck of cards and play a game of solitaire. Work on a crossword puzzle or a sudoku puzzle. Troubleshoot a problem in something; a car, a computer, even in your fridge. Any of these activities and thousands more will work your brain and keep it fresh. All you need to do is think, keep thinking... be creative, solve problems, learn new things. This is how you exercise your brain. This is how you keep your brain young. And most importantly, this is how you ensure that your brain will stay fresh through your life, and your final years will be happy ones, not years spent wishing it would all end.

Sennheiser

...makes totally awesome headphones. I've got great headphones for all of my mixing and listening needs, that cost only $60. I would totally recommend these headphones to anybody at all. They sound incredible, they've got excellent noise cancellation, and they're extremely comfortable.

Problem is, the cables they sell with them are CHEAP ASS PIECES OF CRAP!

I've now had 2 cables die on me, just through regular use. Yeah, they get tugged on a bit. They're going to. It's a good thing these cables are detachable and replaceable. Of course, you have to order them directly from Sennheiser. The cables aren't too terribly expensive... $7.62 each (Which is better than last I checked, I swear they were $12.)

Overall, I'm happy with these headphones. I'm just pissed off right now that I can't use either of my pairs, because both of the cables are broken.

I'm ordering 2 new cables as I write this.

Pure, raw stupidity.

You know how it's called a "flash flood" when there's a sudden downpour and areas become flooded nearly instantly? Well, I've just gotten what I like to call a "flash migraine". Except, these aren't caused by sudden downpours of rain. They're caused by sudden downpours of stupid.

I just ran into one of the most ridiculous bugs I've seen since I started at this job. On the locator website for one of our clients, I could add a space (yes, " ") to the end of a zip code in which I wanted to find a location.... and somehow, this managed to make all locations display as being over 5,000 miles away. Even ones that were.. oh, say, 18 miles away.

How do you not notice things like this in development? How do you not CHECK for things like this in testing? Hell... how do you manage to maintain a job in the IT industry, making totally stupid mistakes like this, on major corporate websites!?

I just don't get it .... but I praise the inventor of Excederin migraine.

Home again, home again

Oh, to be home again.

I can't express how glad I am to be back.

I was in Spokane for 10 days, and I'll be glad if I don't have to go back for another long while. While I was there, I experienced below freezing temperatures... in fact, I experienced temperatures near 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Several nights while I was there got down to 9 degrees. Do you realize how cold that is? I saw SNOW! I haven't seen snow in over 5 years! No thanks, not for me.

So glad to be back. I came back to 80 degree weather. In November. Awesome. I want this year round. Actually, maybe a bit warmer... like, upper 80s, low 90s.. that would be perfect. Plus rain. Yeah, I need tropical.

Anyhow, I've wandered and I must work. Just sayin'. It's good to be home.